Parler goes dark, Trump's power without Twitter, and a Friend of Pivot on the history of coups

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

And I just have one question, Kara.

Yeah.

What?

What the actual fuck?

What the actual fuck?

Well, things have happened while you've been away.

Really?

Things have happened.

Yeah.

Well, hold on.

Do you know what one thing I read this morning kind of summarizes the moment?

What?

First off, that guy with the horns and the makeup and the fur covering, he lives with his mother,

which to me

kind of summarizes the convention of you porn enthusiasts, RAV4,

used RAF for enthusiasts,

discovery card, and slow learners that showed up to our capital.

It wasn't just them.

We're going to talk about that more.

We're going to talk about that more, but go ahead.

The physician for Congress, they have a physician, I guess, sent out a memo, an email saying that there's a chance you should all get tested because there's a chance when you are all huddling on top of each other, hiding and barricading yourself, that

you might have contracted COVID because

certain members of Congress refused to wear masks.

I know in the race that we have

to by other people.

People huddling are elected officials.

And when you think about it, these people, they aren't elected officials.

They're America.

They called the U.S.

House of Representatives for a reason.

That we as a nation had to huddle on top of each other and barricade our doors with furniture because yeah

because of these these village idiots that showed up yeah in not just village idiots we're going to talk about that more but by the way the people it doesn't get enough attention i'm going with village idiots people who the representatives who refuse to wear masks they can go themselves in this crisis situation this is they've moved to ridiculous

they're an embarrassment to the united states government and embarrassment not just an embarrassment they should be voted out of office they will be i don't know if they'll be voted out of office but let me just say them anyway we're going to spend uh most of the show talking about major platforms, Twitter and Facebook banning Trump from platforms, where the alt-right movement is headed next.

And of course, my parlor interview with the CEO, which I caused a little bit of a ruckus,

the closed down, essentially.

Good trouble.

Yeah, good trouble.

But first, Scott, you've been away a few weeks since we talked.

So let's banter a bit about what you missed.

Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world.

That call continues to suck.

He surpassed Jeff Bezos last week with a whopping $190 billion.

When are we going to see the world's first?

If he becomes becomes the world's first trillionaire, I don't know what you should do, Scott Galloway.

Something, something.

Yeah, I don't know.

Return my Tesla.

What think you of this?

I know you have a Tesla.

Of course, you love it.

But actually, something you said struck me.

You said that you thought that the world's first trillionaire was going to be someone who solved the climate.

Which he is doing.

Sort of, but it does fit.

It's moving in that direction.

Yeah, it does fit into that narrative.

I just.

I am just so blown away by this, but I think it feeds into a bigger point.

And that is,

and we'll circle back around, hopefully moving to remedies.

I think when people add that type of extraordinary wealth in an era where we have trillions of dollars in deficits, I think we need to revisit capital gain strategy.

Ah, interesting.

Why is that?

Well, one of the biggest problems I think presented by this is that

billionaires on average speak to their senator once every three months, and there's just no getting around it.

The shareholder class has more influence.

Someone worth $100 million has more than 100 times the influence of our government and our policies and someone who has $1 million.

Yes.

And we have to counterweight that.

We have to have a ballast to that.

And unfortunately, I think when the financial incentives around this form of tyranny and having Trump in office and having income inequality, it's easy to talk a big game that you're worried about Trump.

It's easy to talk a big game about how terrible the pandemic is.

But when your wealth is exploding, And you're the individuals that control the government, then our incentive structure is misaligned and will only create more pandemics and more income inequality.

And I was saying, companies, when you have a problem, look at compensation strategies.

So our incentives are all fucked up here.

And when we have the, if you will, the shareholder class influencing our economy, reaping huge benefits in a pandemic and during an insurrection, that means our incentives are.

It is.

It's really amazing how well she does.

And this in another related story, speaking of large companies, Amazon's healthcare venture with JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, Haven Health is disbanded after three years.

You know, not a surprise.

This was one of those press releases.

This is the biggest, this is the biggest non-story story of the week, and that is everyone took it, as usual, the sleeveless dresses and Joe Kiernan

saw this as some sort of evidence that...

Joe Kiernan looks great in a sleeveless dress.

Let's just be clear.

That's another thing.

Why do the guys get sleeves at CNBC?

Why do the guys get sleeves?

I wear sleeves.

I wear sleeves.

Anyways,

so I wear sweatshirts, but go ahead.

But this was, this was the media getting it so wrong.

They somehow interpreted this as, oh, Amazon is rethinking its healthcare strategy.

Okay.

You know what this was?

This was Jamie Dimon, who is friends with Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett saying we should really do something around healthcare.

And they started this thing.

And again, Amazon wants to create a zero cost or a lower

negative margin business to get people to sign up for Prime.

JP Morgan wants to figure out a way just to lower their healthcare costs.

And Berkshire Hathaway probably wanted to do something cool that they could offer the court.

They all have different incentives.

Do you know how many people were working on this?

How many?

60.

Okay, so if Amazon is hiring,

if Amazon is hiring 10,000 people a week, which they are,

that means in 18 minutes, they hire 60 people.

So this was the non-event of non-events of the second.

So it does, but Amazon is still moving into healthcare.

That's my point.

Yeah, yeah.

That's my point.

This is meaningless.

Them closing it is meaningless.

Yeah.

Yep.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Agreed.

But it still is interesting to watch what Amazon's going to do here.

But I'm going to move over to our big story because we need, we have a really great friend at Pivot today.

After last week's insurrection at the U.S.

Capitol, I would call it a coup, insurrection, whatever you want to call it, incited by President Trump.

And that's, let's be clear, that's what happened.

Twitter permanently banned Trump from using the platform.

Trump has also been banned by Facebook indefinitely, along with Instagram.

Shopify and Stripe, the payment company that was processing transactions on Trump's website, is also severing ties with Trump.

There's tons more.

There's tons, tons more of people doing that, including the PGA

not appearing in Trump properties.

Meanwhile, the app

parlor, parlor, it's called, it used to be called parlay, which was the alt-right alternative to Twitter, has gone dark over the weekend.

Apple and Google kicked it off their app stores.

Amazon said it would no longer host its site on Amazon Web Services.

And a spate of smaller vendor companies like Okta and others have suspended their vendor relationships.

So

a lot has happened over the weekend.

Suddenly, the things we had been talking about for years, Scott, suddenly come to Jesus, as they say.

Yeah, but let's be clear.

Let's be clear.

Jack Dorsey did not kick Trump off the platform.

Mark Zuckerberg did not shut his account down.

Stacey Abrams did.

Yeah.

All of a sudden, these people have woken up.

And okay, I want to be clear.

Let's give credit where credit is due.

Jack Dorsey decided to stop hate, polarization, and insurrections 1,449 days into a 1,460-day tenure.

Way to go.

Way to go, Jack.

And just personally, just

yeah, it's we were talking about this this morning.

If I come home after being on vacation for two weeks and I see my son vacuuming the living room,

your first inclination should be, oh, that's great.

He cares about the house and wants to be a good, a good guy.

No, he's not.

No, he's not.

He's thrown a rave and has been selling meth and Molly for the last two weeks out of the house and is trying to cover his tracks.

Yeah.

And that's what these guys.

There was a lot of tweets about that.

Yeah.

Flushing drugs around the toilet when the news.

This is Lorraine Bracco trying to like cover up the evidence.

They deserve absolutely no credit.

So, okay, first off, first off, Stacey Abrams kicked Trump off these platforms.

And not only that, Amazon.

By winning in Georgia, meaning the Democrats have control.

Sit back.

You're going to love this because it's about you.

Amazon, Jeff Bezos didn't kick Parlor off AWS.

Kara Swisher did because that interview with him that you did pointed out this guy is the newest addition to the menace economy.

And people have realized that, wait, you know, Japan in Europe, they decided that Nazis are a bad thing and they can lead us down and hate speech can lead us down a bad road.

So they don't have the same First Amendment quote-unquote protections that we so dearly hold and have been totally perverted, which make absolutely no sense.

And guess what?

They still have a pretty free, open, progressive society where people get most of their viewpoints across.

And everyone realizes that is just total bullshit.

And then it is interesting, the reaction.

I mean, it was interesting.

Let me, this interview was an interview that I

had been talking to him for a while to come on the show.

And then when the coup happened, I'm sitting a mile away from it, I thought now is the time.

And so I got him on in the evening as this was still being controlled over in the Capitol, again, which is about a mile, a mile and a half from my house.

And I was sort of, the way I wanted to approach the interview was let him talk, let him say what he's doing, what does he think?

And what I think is was the devastating thing is not so much everyone's like, oh, Carrie, you got him.

I'm like, I didn't get him.

He got himself.

He just said the truth.

He said the quiet part out loud.

And he did the, he did the unfortunate thing, which is telling the truth about what he thinks.

And then he talked about the system to police the site, which of which it was, it was laughable.

It was a laughable system.

And so I just let him go on.

And then when he said a bunch of ridiculous things like the New York Times promotes looting,

I pushed back.

And one of the things I think worked really well is I said

a line that has gotten around a lot, which is facts are not feelings are not facts.

And he kept doing that.

Like he kept doing the Trumpy things.

And I pushed back appropriately.

But what I think the most devastating thing in that interview was I just let him talk.

I didn't have to, I just got out of the way, which was,

it's difficult in an interview to do that, but I think it worked best.

I think one of the things I thought, and we talk about this a lot, is the lack of thought, the lack of thought about consequence, the lack of thought about impact, just like we talk about Robin Hood or Facebook or anything else.

It's this, he is sort of the quintessence of that.

Like, well, not my problem.

I just, you know, I just have the room where they're, where, where they're planning the assassination of Lincoln.

What do you, I know about it, but I, it's not my fault that they're planning it.

That's, he was, they're mad.

They're, they kept going, they're mad.

I'm like, uh, I'm mad, but I don't go over to the Capitol and, you know, trash it like, like, you know, like I'm with some like duck dynasty terrorists.

And by the way, let me just say one of the things that was duck dynasty terrorists.

That's good.

That's good.

That's what they look like.

But here's the deal.

We all laugh about it like horn guy and guy, you know, doing parkour and this and that.

If you see the videos coming out now and you see the intent of the people, there was an intent to kill our representatives.

There was an intent to kill the vice president.

You can laugh all you want about horn guy, like fine, whatever.

This was it.

As you begin to see them beating a police officer to death, as you begin to understand what that there were a lot of paramilitary people in there.

This was an attempted coup as funny as they look.

A lot of them were there for just taking selfies and doing stupid shit, just like dumb, just dumb people.

Others were there for much more malicious intent.

And the whole thing being egged on by Josh Hawley, whose career it looks like is ruined, Ted Cruz, same thing.

They deserve every single bit of

people not funding them and everything else they want.

And they can go on and on.

And what's fascinating is they all shifted.

And I want to know what you think to this idea.

Like if you've noticed a lot of them, like Matt Schlapp, who is really talk about village idiots,

he was going on about AWS without revealing that he is a lobbyist for Oracle, by the way, which was, I pointed out pretty quickly.

He's in charge of CPAC, the conservative political action, whatever.

How do you think about their argument, like this narrative?

I've lost 50,000 people.

I've lost this many people.

It's because Twitter started cracking down on QAnon.

What do you imagine?

Matt gets another fatuous pop and J.

What do you imagine that argument that they're losing people on Twitter because of this?

I just, you know, you wonder how we got here.

And I also, I do want to acknowledge.

There's an image,

the seriousness and the tragedy of the moment on so many dimensions.

There's an image that really rattled me.

And it was an image in, I guess, the rafters of the Congress.

And it was a congressman from Colorado trying to comfort an absolutely terrified representative, an elected representative of our country, who was lying flat on her back.

And you could see she was in a state of sheer terror.

And

they'd had to board up or

secure the room with furniture.

And you saw in this woman's eyes, she thought she was going to be murdered.

And these are the people who, these are us.

Every 675,000 of us is represented by one of these individuals.

was

an absolute mob rule.

And the notion that, and then post-it, we're all trying to figure out a way to have 30-something CEOs met out justice for us.

I mean, how did we get here?

That's that's our solution to get Mark to beg Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey to take them off their platform.

Agreed, but what do you, what do you, this idea of the First Amendment, which is driving me crazy, it's like it is not a First Amendment issue.

These are, these are companies.

This, this is at one point I was like, these people, the people who are

the Ted Cruises and everybody else and Lindsey Graham's, you're socialists.

You want to have the government tell private companies to do business with organizations that allow terrorist activity.

I don't think so.

I don't, you know, I used, I compared it to the, to the, remember when the Christian Baker didn't want to make the wedding cake for the gays?

By the way, you wouldn't want a cake from that guy anyway, if you're a gay.

In any case, that was a big case for them.

It was about the First Amendment versus the 14th Amendment.

It was tried.

It was brought to the Supreme Court, and the Christian Baker wins.

He doesn't have to.

It's a religious thing over

equal rights under the law.

Fine.

That was a regular case.

I don't agree with it, whatever.

But now they're saying, you know, you should have to do this because of the First Amendment.

This has zero to do the First Amendment.

Companies are private companies.

They can do whatever they want.

They can do whatever they want and they are not bound by the First Amendment.

In fact, you're violating their First Amendment rights, forcing them to help terrorist language to go on.

It's just, it is like the selfishness of these people to focus on their Twitter count over what happened at the Capitol is,

I'm going to ride them to the end, this group of people.

It's really, it's an astonishing

reaction.

And then to try to say, besides saying, oh, let's move on.

Like, yeah, you want to move on?

No, let's look at it for a good, that's what tech people do, by the way.

Remember when I did that interview with Mark, where he said, you know, Myanmar and India, let's move on and figure out solutions.

That's exactly what Mark did, the same thing.

These people are doing the same things they complain about.

Okay, so you're exactly right.

The First Amendment goes something like this, that Congress should not prohibit speech of any body.

And there's some carve-outs.

You can't run into a theater and yell fire.

But for the most part, they say you have to let people and organizations have free speech.

But the First Amendment doesn't say, doesn't demand that private companies have to allow speech.

I went on CNBC every Wednesday for five years, and then for whatever reason, reason, they decided they didn't want me back on.

And guess what?

That's their right.

It's

censorship.

Scott.

That's their right.

They're a private company.

They get to make this.

And let's be honest about Twitter.

Let's talk about Twitter.

Twitter stock was at about 27 bucks when Trump got elected.

It had dipped.

It had dipped.

It had dipped.

And then when he got elected, it started skyrocketing.

It went to 55.

And this morning, when he was kicked off, first trading day after he was kicked off, it dropped 10%.

Twitter has built an economic model, and they know this, to enrich the shareholders and the management team and the board

based on invective, venom, and incursion.

And when you build a business where you link enrichment to hate

and to a mob overrunning our government, it means that company no longer works.

And the CEO and the board should be held accountable.

The notion that this has anything to do with the First Amendment is ridiculous.

It has to do with when companies decide to build an economic model based off of teen depression, off of weaponization of our elections, and at this point, and violence.

And another thing, everyone's saying,

Senator Pat Toomey, who I actually like, was on Meet the Press, and their big talk track is he crossed a line.

We never expected him to do this.

Well, guess what?

You realize drunk drivers typically, typically have driven drunk 200 times before they get a DUI.

And by the way, we've seen him drunk driving Trump all the time.

He drunk tweets all the time.

Not only that, but on Twitter.

On Twitter,

there's been plans to kidnap the governor.

There was a woman run over at UVA.

He made fun of it.

At UVA.

And basically, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have been driving drunk and they never got pulled over.

And they knew that eventually a family full, a minivan full of people and kids was going to get killed.

And maybe they didn't want them to get killed, but they have been driving drunk.

They've been behaving irresponsibly.

And this notion that, oh, we were just complying with the First Amendment, Twitter knew that it had direct link to financial incentive and keeping his incredibly vile communications.

And what's happened?

And by the way, First Amendment, we pay for a podium and a press room at the White House.

That got stolen.

These guys have no problem getting media coverage.

Yeah, that's right.

That's the other thing is I can't speak now.

I'm like, hello, you've got the entire press corps.

They want to staring at you.

Come out and talk to us.

He will not talk.

In fact, that, whatever, Kylie, who couldn't leave soon enough,

went out there and said 14 words right after this you haven't heard from him about this except in one video where he encouraged the rioters that he put out and then that's what got him kicked off and then the second one which looked like a hostage video but then he did a one full of dog whistles like right-wing uh fascist dog whistles which was amazing this is what's really interesting is that

look he's not coming back this is this is one thing and he's and he does really use Twitter to do this and there aren't seem to be very as I wrote many months ago there aren't other platforms he can do a really good job on.

Like here, he's only got the podium he's got right now is of the presidency.

He has that.

And eventually he'll have cable when he stops being president,

and et cetera.

So what is a what?

Let me ask you another question, money, money getting kicked.

I think he's still going to make a lot of money, though.

I think he faces enormous liability, criminal and

other liability.

Meanwhile, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is suspending its political contributions to Congress members who objected to the electoral college count.

American Express and J.P.

Morgan Chase said they will no longer donate to candidates who supported last week's insurrection.

Citigroup also confirmed that it is pausing all federal donations for the first three months of this year.

Business leaders are really piling on.

Does this, again, too little, too late, as far as I'm concerned, because they sort of love the tax cuts and the deregulatory atmosphere.

What do you think?

I think this is actually a bigger deal because as, I mean, the Manufacturing Association of America

wanted the 25th Amendment and impeachment.

So what do you think about this?

I think it's healthy.

And actually, just a shout out.

I think Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Yale has played a critical role here.

He's been assembling all the CEOs and saying, are you comfortable with this?

And unfortunately, we have this enormous vacuum, and it's unhealthy when we need Jamie Dimon stepping into the role that Ted Cruz.

And quite frankly, Elizabeth Warren should be playing.

Money in politics is obviously the mother's milk.

And they've said, all right, we've got to cut off their funding.

And unfortunately, I think when corporation stock kept going up and the

tax rate that they paid on their options kept going down, despite what they saw were very troubling behavior out of the president, you know, when it's raining money, your incentives and your sense of urgency just kind of go away.

And I think they thought, Jesus, this is

it doesn't matter how rich we are if we lose the democracy, if we lose the republic.

So

I salute them and all of us are guilty of a certain, what I'll call lack of sense of urgency.

And what I feel we're infected with is both sidedness, where we feel, and you said this, we feel this need to understand them.

And

that's just not true.

There's a right and there's a wrong.

These guys have been wrong for a long time.

And we should have taken action, should have taken action earlier.

But I hope.

You know, I really hope there's a level of accountability.

I want facial recognition software.

And by the way, I want facial recognition software for the people who destroyed property or hurt people from Black Lives Matter.

And I want every person that set foot in the Capitol to be tracked down and prosecuted.

You can't can't have, and this, I'm already skipping to healing, you can't have healing without accountability.

Right.

I agree.

I agree.

That whole moving on thing, no.

Moving on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's not move on.

How about we investigate jail and trial people and then we can move on?

That's how we, that is how we move on.

But this is what's so, what's so scary.

Accountability, Scott.

Incentives, the algebra of deterrence.

What's so scary, though, is that, and

it's difficult to obviously anticipate his next move, but I genuinely believe believe he believes he's going to jail because the risks he took and what he did is

I think he's done the calculus and said and been advised, if you're no longer president, you're going to jail.

I just think there's so many attorneys generals lining up to

serve him with civil and criminal suits within 30 days of him leaving office.

And it's very difficult.

I mean, one of the interesting things, I love this guy, this Carlo Sipola, a professor in Berkeley, wrote a book on stupid.

And he basically says that the definition of stupid is someone who levies damage on other people and other things with no apparent benefit to themselves.

And it's hard to imagine.

And the reason why stupid people are so dangerous is in addition to the damage they levy, they're very hard to counterattack because you can't predict their movements.

This was a difficult thing to predict.

And what I don't understand.

is even the My Pillow God probably isn't going to advertise in the new Trump network.

I just don't, I don't understand.

And the only thing I can figure out here is that someone advised the president close to him and said, if you're no longer president, you're going to jail.

Look at these cases they have against you.

Yeah, that was Pat's sip.

Otherwise,

why would he take a risk?

Why would he,

I'm the CEO or I've been the CEO of companies.

I can't imagine saying to my number two person,

people show up at that person's office and say, we want to hang that guy.

And from my window, I reach out and go, you're very special.

I love you.

I mean, did you see what he has done to Pence?

Our next guest is going to talk about that in a second, but one of the things is because he's thinking it could work.

Right now, the FBI now reports in a bulletin that armed protests are being planned in all 50 state capitals from January 16th through January 20th, and that the U.S.

Capitol from January 17th through the 20th.

So he thinks he can pull this off.

He still thinks he can pull this off somehow through armed insurrection.

I think that's really the game.

What's fascinating about it, and then we're going to get to our friend of pivot, is the amount of

one of the things that struck me watching, not the violent people, because they were there to cause violence 100%, but the others who just were wandering around doing selfies like it was like they're at Disney World.

That to me was like, are you kidding me?

All right.

So, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

And when we come back, we have a perfect person to talk to about, friend of Pivot and fellow NYU professor Ruth Bengiat.

She's an expert on the rise of fascists.

Perfect timing for a book and what she's talking about when we get back.

Only murders in the the Building, season five.

The Hit Hulu original is back.

Was he killed in the hit?

We need to go face to face with the mob.

Get ready for a season.

This is how I die.

You can't refuse.

You're going to save the day.

Like you always do by being smart, sharp, and almost always find mistakes.

The Hulu Original series, Only Murders in the Building, premieres September 9th, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

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Scott, we are back.

We have Ruth Ben-Giat here.

She's a professor of history and Italian studies at NYU.

Oh, my son is a studies Italian studies at NYU.

Expert on authoritarianism, fascism, propaganda, and threats to democracy.

Author of the book, Strongmen, Mussolini to the President.

Thank you.

Ruth, thank you for coming.

First off, shouldn't your book have been called Mussolini to the President?

Yes, some interviewers make a slip and do Mussolini to the President.

Well, that's basically what it is.

Yeah.

All right.

So let's talk about you talking about you saw last week's insurrection coming.

Why do you think it was able to escalate to the point it did?

I know that seems like a, just talk through your thinking about what.

It's the product, it's able to escalate because it's the product of five years, if you include the campaign, of Trump

making these people feel like they mattered

and preaching to them and signaling to them

that he was their man.

using the we term, which he did even in his January 7th, you know, concession speech, right?

So there's that.

And the other part of it, which is really important in leader-follower relationships, is that

the authoritarian is an aggressor, but he's also the victim.

He always has to be the victim.

So these were people who are responding to, they were rescuing the leader in distress.

And Trump's always been the victim of the press, the prosecutors, everyone who wants to unseat him.

Nancy Pelosi.

And that's, yeah, Nancy Pelosi.

And that's very, very potent.

That combination of making people feel like they're on a mission together and rescuing the leader, which goes back to fascism, like the black shirts, the brown shirts.

That's kind of irresistible.

And then the final thing is this lawlessness, this celebration of lawlessness.

And that's one of the big

lessons of the Trump era is that lawlessness can be glamorized and put on TV.

So all of those things were mixing in to cause this escalation.

Can you talk about the impact of social media?

Because right now, obviously, the social media has finally cut off the, I don't know, the heroine of doing it.

Talk about that impact.

Because, you know, look, Mussolini happened without Twitter.

So did so many other strong men.

So talk about what it does here.

Is it just another way to communicate or does it have a special impact?

What it does, I mean, I would, just as a preface, it's really interesting.

I didn't realize till I wrote this book how many of these men who have success come to politics with a background in mass communications.

So Mussolini was a journalist, but so was Mubutu.

And this matters because they know how to be what their people need them to be.

They're amoral, but they're also actors.

A lot of people used to say about Mussolini that he was an actor, he'd be whatever you wanted him to be.

So some of these things haven't changed, right, across the century.

But the social media, it's really, it allows us to see in real time what is going on in a way that we couldn't before.

This has another side to it.

We're also able to see the drama of dissidents and resistors.

And that's been very effective in Putin's Russia to gaining, like gaining support for resistors, where you have the police knocking on the door.

Now they stream it live.

or they they show their drone being flown out with their hard drive to rescue.

But you also have this where if it doesn't exist on TV or on social media and then it can be tweeted, it doesn't exist at all.

And this is partly,

this also we'll have to reckon with what Trump, the entertainment president, has brought us.

Scott.

Professor, over the weekend, I started doing some research on coups.

Don't unsuccessful coups usually lead to successful ones?

I mean, is this a canary or a,

are we about to see more of this?

I mean, most coups, the majority of coups are to get somebody into office.

Although there are, this is like a self-coup, right?

But it's true, and it happened in Chile before the famous 1973 coup.

There were one or two, especially one other coup that failed, but it was part of making this climate of uncertainty so that in fact,

people expected a coup.

You start creating a narrative of expectation.

And I actually,

Chile is more relevant than I think people think or know because what I am worried about is

before

the coup when Allende came in in 1970 as socialist president, and this US and Chilean right worked together to create a kind of stress, a kind of

climate of uncertainty with constant violence, with economic downturns, with political impasse, so that Chile didn't seem like it could be governed unless you had authoritarian politics.

So you started having these coups that didn't succeed, but people, by the time Chile's Pinochet did succeed, people had coup bags packed.

I talk about that in my book, in case for their kids, like go-to bags packed, because it was like something people came to expect.

And I'm worried that we will enter into this.

kind of uncertain climate that will make people

more eager for another savior, like a Trump.

So we'll put him into context of other directors' rise to power.

What do you expect to see from him next?

So he could, you know,

he can perhaps become like an agitator.

And in a way, it's true that he won't have the presidential imprimatur, he no longer has Twitter, but that could in a way unleash him.

And he could be a very effective outside agitator working with...

Well, effective is not a word you use with Trump, but could be a very important thing.

I think it's been very effective.

He's somewhat actually.

So do I.

Yes, yes, yes.

Right.

I'm talking about discipline, the discipline that Pinochet has.

Yes, because he's a very different personality in that way than Pinochet.

He's not disciplined, but that's part of his appeal.

And in fact, Pinochet surprised everybody because they thought he was Mr.

Constitution and then he became Mr.

Torture.

So he was liberated.

But Trump could be,

you know, he could work with extremist elements that are not only outside with these ragtag malicious seeming people, but they're inside our institutions.

And the more we know, and more is going to come out about who was involved, we see it was Republican donors, Republican officials, people from the military, law enforcement.

So the threat is inside our institutions.

And Trump could work very effectively with some kind of media, you know, TV network, whatever that will be, to be more than a thorn in the side, to be an active advocate for overturning democracy.

So do you think him, the Democrats pursuing the second impeachment of Donald Trump?

It seems somewhat, even that seems too weak when he leaves office.

Do you think it's an important thing?

It's very important.

I mean,

he needs to be detained, in my opinion.

He's a danger.

He's an inciter of violence.

That couldn't be more clear.

But it is important to have this

because it's incitement to insurrection.

And it also shows the link between

rhetoric and propaganda and violence.

And it's classic Trump, as it was Mussolini and Hitler, to light the flame, put down the kindling, light the match, and then say, Oh, I'm going to be with you, but then they're not really there.

So they're not on the site.

This is very important, and they all did this

from Mussolini forward.

So that's plausible deniability.

And in fact, the logic of authoritarianism is a lot of the people around them go down, but they rarely go to jail because of this.

They're very skilled at exploiting others, at playing others like violins, and then retreating for self-preservation reasons.

Can you think of any other societies that mimic what's happened to here, where we've kind of come to this ledge or we've peered into the abyss, if you will, of tyranny or fascism, and then they've come back and they've actually built healthier societies?

Is there a best practice for what you'd like to seal and see in terms of a healing?

Rather than, I mean, healing is important, but

we've had a huge wake-up, Colin.

And actually, we have done something, just the feel-good moment.

We've done something really unusual.

And that we interrupted by voting Trump out this process of authoritarian capture, which was clearly going on.

And had we had a second term,

and the Senate and the House.

I mean, there are some, the immunities do appear to be kicking in, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And it's also exposed

that there's a world of people who worked for this on the ground and in institutions.

And,

you know, one of my laments,

which I end in my book, that democracy needs heroes and media need to cover them.

Like all these, this like large, you know, Greek chorus of people who are working, legal pushback, bureaucratic pushback, people who speak out, you know, as academics, all these people were all involved together, but the media,

it's easier to glamorize villains.

So, you give Dana Lush of NRA a New York Times styles, you know, a styles profile.

But if we're going to be serious about protecting democracy, we need to give people role models.

And of course, we have some.

Stacey Abrams, we haven't even been able to enjoy the Georgia victory.

No, remember that?

There are so many more

angles that could be pursued to lift up people who are doing this important work and incentivize the culture to work for good instead of

being complicit.

Although you also have to let people hear the actual voices of some of these people that are problematic.

I just did the parlor interview where he just said what he thought, and I think that killed off that company.

I think it was just

listen to what he's saying and judge whether you want to do business with him.

And I don't think I was, I didn't stop.

No, it's very important.

It's very important to do that

because

we have to know what we're combating against.

It's just that it's been asymmetrical.

Yeah, 100%.

So, can I ask you, when you're thinking about these platforms, what do you think the responsibility of tech platforms to regulate the rise of authoritarian figures are?

And now that Trump has been stripped of Twitter, his favorite mode of communication, it's been so quiet.

It's actually quite lovely.

Do you think he'll be able to maintain that somewhere else?

Twitter is uniquely suited to an authoritarian personality because, and it's classic that he and Bolsonaro use their personal accounts.

Right.

That's right.

Just so people don't know, he uses real Donald Trump and not POTUS.

And he tried to move over there when he got kicked off, but then

that was ridiculous.

But this is also important because authoritarian politics is a personalized politics where

and

the process is that

all of the party and if they're successful, more and more of society become tools of the leader's whims and particular private financial needs, and everything gets sucked up and focused around his person.

So it makes sense that, and Twitter, in particular, for its instantaneous

qualities,

is highly suited to

ego, you know, egomaniac and insecure and needing affirmation 24-7,

which is how

Kara and I can relate to that.

That's why Scott and I like it.

Both of us were racing for a comment on that one.

Yeah.

But we don't.

We don't.

One of the paradoxes of this is, and you...

Professor, let me just interrupt you right there.

What do you think when you look back on different mediums that have been leveraged by these fascists or dictators?

What do you think should happen to the mediums?

What do you think should happen to Twitter and Facebook?

And maybe give us which each one of these people used, you know, Hitler, Mussolini.

Well,

the key is that they have to have an unmediated direct connection through the media of the day with their people.

So Mussolini had newsreels, and he was highly skilled at using his body, and

because at first it was silent, and his voice, and he was incredibly effective that way.

Hitler used newsreels too, but of course Hitler's tool was radio.

And he had this very particular voice where

he would become so emotional, people would feel an intimate connection with him.

Now we call it digital intimacy, but it existed at every era of communications and history.

And the ones who succeeded best were the ones who knew how to manipulate this.

So one of the paradoxes is that the more that these rulers are skilled at this

mediatized politics, the better they seem, the more they seem authentic to their people.

Because, and Modi uses Instagram.

That's his platform.

And he's highly, he's kind of Instagrammed his life.

So this sense of authenticity, which is important for populists, especially,

depends on this unmediated connection that these platforms give them.

So where does he go?

I'm not sure where he's going to go.

I'm only asking because because about six, eight months ago, I said the problem is once he gets kicked off Twitter, he's got a problem because, you know, especially if Instagram doesn't let him, because none of the other, even Facebook is good for ads and all kinds of group organizing.

It's not the same.

It doesn't coalesce people.

Parlor really wouldn't have worked because it was, it's talking to one side, essentially.

And he needs all of everybody there.

He needs the liberals.

He needs the politicians.

He needs the news media there all together.

So is there a place he can do this?

Because he's also not going to be able to command television in in the same way.

Will his own network really work except to talk to a small network?

No, and he, and he, he won't, there isn't an equivalent of Twitter.

And the one thing he'll still be able to do is rallies.

And these men need the

affirmation and excitement that rallies give them.

And there's an anecdote when Goebbels signed on very early to work with Hitler.

He realized that if he put Hitler in a studio, Hitler Hitler was wooden.

He was boring.

He needed the like energy of the crowd.

And Trump is the same way.

So he can do rallies, but he has a big problem.

He has a communications block because there is no substitute for Twitter.

And he's not always good on television.

He's not always as dynamic.

Yeah, and he seems a little crazier.

When there's any pushback, he falls.

Like, as you noticed from all the interviews with Chris Wallace or John Swan of Axios, anytime he gets any pushback, it's a problem.

So this is going to really limit his impact because the other part of this, as we all know, is that he was amplified incessantly.

I had followed him years ago.

And I remember in 2018, I published an op-ed in the Washington Post that said how to push back against Trump's propaganda machine.

And it was like, don't amplify him.

You know, don't retweet him.

And, you know, we know all about the circuits, but he's deprived of that now.

What about any of his followers?

Do you see any of them rising to the occasion?

Tucker Carlson is one I look at really strongly.

Who are you worried about going forward?

Yeah, I'm worried about Tucker Carlson.

I mean, I think he's a gypsy.

He's very,

I think.

And if you analyze the content of what he says, it hits the

best,

the low peaks of all authoritarian rhetoric from talking about, quote, gypsies to he's got all of it there, and he's quite skilled at it.

And he also has a veneer of respectability in his person, the way he looks, which is important for some people because they can justify that he's not.

Yeah, Trump seems crass.

Yes.

And in fact,

one of the reasons that the GOP, I think, are angry at Trump for many reasons, those who are, is that he wrecked it for them because the gloves were off.

He was too crass.

He was too

open about all the games that they play.

And he led those games to their logical extreme conclusion, which was January 6th, and all the other things he did.

And it's much better to have people who do it behind the scenes and

have the rules, you know, respect the rules of politics where you're just as dirty, but you do it and you're wearing a, you know, you look.

Mitch McDonnell does that right.

Yes.

And the Paul Ryans and all of the Kevin McCarthy's, the people who kept his secrets about Russia.

And but this

undisciplined, as you put it before, this is why these people love him.

it's exactly why they see him as different than other

all other politicians and that's been the secret of his success and why he got more votes in 2020 despite the pandemic crisis

right can I'm gonna ask one more question and Scott may have one so what are you scared of most now going forward what layout the next two weeks and then the next six months to a year in in the short term the the two weeks uh i'm i'm very concerned about these coordinated um

violent aggressions

and the sense they will give of a society in crisis and the damage, physical and

traumas they will cause.

And when Trump said on his January 7th speech, he said, our journey is only beginning.

This really,

this was important because it's the start of it may be the end of his uh it was the end of one stage of his quest to stay in office but it's the start of something that's more viscerally dangerous

okay and then out into the next year what would you see him do that you would worry

as i said and what would you see him do that would say okay he's just a lazy golfer who well the golfing was actually not lazy at all it was about promoting Trump prop Trump branded props sure absolutely but i'm saying that he just wants to make money like he's not really really interested in actually being king.

He just wants to make money.

Yeah, he wants to make money, but he's also put a lot of effort into, he's not really making money from signaling to all these militias, but yet he's done that.

That's one of his top things he's done.

So I'm very worried about the instability and sense of crisis and the Republican enablers making it impossible for Biden Harris to

govern properly.

The attempt that's been going on to sabotage the help for coronavirus victims for economic relief.

So that Trump, his famous 2013 or 14 Fox News interview, where he says the only way to get the right kind of government is to have a total collapse in society.

You have riots.

You have people who are desperate, will do anything, and then you can have

national unity.

I'm worried about that scenario.

Let them speak.

Yes.

That's my longer-term

Any hopefulness whatsoever, Ruth?

I know you traffic in Mussolini, so, and Hitler, and finished Pinochet.

Yeah, I mean, we've had a huge wake-up call.

And there are people who had, you know, voted for Trump who don't approve of what he's done.

My mother, she's shifted.

Yeah.

Lucky's on board now.

She doesn't like a taxi kill.

Lucky's on board.

Although she still hates Nancy Pelosi.

So I have one final question for the professor.

I think that there's a cold comfort that that once Trump is gone, a lot of this goes away.

And he was elected by an American electorate.

He surrounded himself with enablers who are Americans, who went to American schools and have American children.

What does this say about us?

We're the latest nation to find out that no one is immune from the temptations of authoritarian politics, from a cult of macho lawlessness.

And what Trump has done is to give a roadmap to the GOP for a future way of doing politics where election results that don't go your way become just another item or fact to be denied or fabricated because you find the votes.

And there's plenty of politicians in that party who would go along with this.

And the GOP has become

a largely authoritarian party now.

They have one foot outside of democracy.

So

that's the for the future.

All right.

Ruth, this has been so great.

This is an astonishing thing.

Can you, the name of your book is Strongmen Mussolini

to the president.

I keep saying the president.

I didn't want to say it.

It's an amazing book.

Thank you so much.

And

you are continuing to teach at NYU?

Do you ever run into Scott?

I don't think so.

No, we haven't.

No.

Yeah, try not to.

Once you all get the vaccine, stay away.

No, I'm kidding.

We'll have a lovely time there.

I'll come up there.

My son's up there.

It'll be really fun.

I really appreciate all the the work you do.

And it's astonishingly.

I hate to say it well-timed, but it's an important read and you should all read it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me on.

All right, Scott, that was a big bummer from Ruth Bengayat.

She is her book on Mussolini to the present, Strongman.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, Wins and Fields, how are you feeling about that segment?

Look, I love NYU, and

I find it inspiring and reinforcing when you hear from thoughtful people who decide to go very narrow and very deep.

And then occasionally, in an irrelevant and meaningful way, their expertise is needed.

And I think that we in America didn't think we would need scholars on fascism.

And it's unfortunately, it's become very appropriate and very, very relevant.

So look,

I think Professor Ben Guillet has a gift.

And that's why I think universities are wonderful things.

Should I leave D.C.

during this next couple of days?

I can't imagine.

You know, that's a really interesting question.

You're down there.

I'm not.

Are you actually worried about what's going to happen?

You know, last week on pivot, when Stephanie was on, I said I was worried about violence on January 6th because of the, I thought they would go right up to Capitol Hill and try to to stop the electors from electoral

making them official.

I said it.

I said, I think there's going to be violence.

And my kids didn't want it.

I had been reading because I was preparing for the parlor thing eventually.

And I was reading them and I was like, they're organizing on this platform.

They're organizing on Facebook.

And so I, Seven, I went back and forth and I said, I, do my kids wanted to go down there?

I said, absolutely not.

They are stupid people with guns.

And I think they're going to mount an attack.

Like, I don't think, I think this is not a peaceful protest.

Or will not, a lot of people there were not intending it to be.

I think a lot of people did.

And by the way, go for it.

Like God's, good, Godspeed on if you want to scream about Hillary Clinton being a lizard.

Go for it in lots of ways.

But I was worried.

I was totally worried.

And I don't know what I think now.

I think what's going to happen is there's going, hopefully our real, I think the insider stuff, she's absolutely right.

There's a lot of people within our government that are, that went along that are

on that side.

The guy who was killed was a trust.

And they're going to find out.

A lot of lawyers from the RNC.

I think a lot of stuff's going to come out.

Not just that.

Military people, there's a lot of police presence.

It was in the crowd.

There's a lot of people in the army who are not against this kind of thing.

And so

Germany is suffering this problem.

And so

maybe, you know, I hope they are planning in each state capital and here, what I'm fearful of at this point is a massacre of people, including law enforcement and military people not of them i think they're going to come in with heavy force and these some of these people are going to be killed and this is not an outcome that i don't think it'll happen you know why and i because they're white why

well that's fair but i don't know this time i think if they start pulling out those guns they are going i think they're ready for it i think they'll show up with such a level of force that they're basically

Well, just this week, I went up to the cabin.

I went down over to Capitol Hill this weekend.

Just to, it's a lovely area called Eastern Market and driving home.

It was looked fine, everything normal up on Capitol Hill.

But the minute you got down near the Capitol, there were fences, there's black fences, tall black fences around the Supreme Court, around the Capitol, which you've never seen, ever used to be able to drive up to it, but that's over.

Very high fences.

There was deployed National Guard at every 10 feet along this fence inside.

And then police officers, the amount of whom, this was on a Saturday or Sunday, it was a Sunday.

I've never seen

with their lights on, dozens and dozens and dozens of police cars all the way down the mall for several blocks.

And it was a show of force.

And I think the issue is the visuals of the military,

I think correctly, the visuals of the military.

patrolling the Capitol is disturbing.

There was also a bunch of military in front of

Trump's hotel, which was really interesting too, to see,

right down there.

And so I don't know.

I don't know.

So maybe that's my

fail.

But I think probably my biggest fail is as this is happening, as the Capitol is being stormed, it is also the deadliest day of the pandemic.

I think that's really it.

I think we've forgotten that, by the way, there's a pandemic going on and people are dying at an astonishing rate, 3,000 deaths a day or more.

And that is also a

gift from President Trump that keeps on giving, not a gift.

I mean, it's a toxic gift that keeps on giving.

So that's my fail.

Win, I find it hard to find a win.

I don't have a win this week, Scott.

Yeah, my fail is this plague or this virus that infects us called both-sidedness, where through some fucked-up version or version of wokeness, we feel a need to try and understand

and make excuses for people saying, oh, they're the Americans that America left behind, or they didn't have access to higher ed.

And the reality is when you...

when you show up and you insult America like that, when you are violent,

when people die,

you know, I always go back to World War II, 1941, a lot of young men said, I'm the only person supporting my family.

I've been drafted.

My father came back and slowly suffocated to death because of the gas attack and we got nothing for it.

So no, I'm not going back.

I need to support my family.

And we stuck them in jail.

And there is a right and a wrong.

And in America, we have a certain set of values that try to discern what is right and wrong.

And we need to start holding people accountable.

And

I don't think this is a time.

I just think it's so ridiculous that we feel this need to try and understand how they feel and not hold them accountable.

I also want to highlight that there's a difference between showing up to the Capitol and protesting loudly with an American flag.

There's a difference between that person, the person who trespasses and goes in and puts people in Congress under threat, and then the person who breaks into the Speaker's house and throws his feet on the desk.

And by the way, I can't wait.

I love seeing that guy's mugshot.

So there is a difference, but I think that's both-sidedness.

I think there is a right and a wrong, and we need to show more leadership and start holding people accountable.

I think when Representative

Gates gets from Florida, gets up literally minutes after this incursion and starts spreading misinformation and saying that it was Antifa, when he knows that is a lie.

He knows that is a lie.

He should be censored and he should be prohibited from any matching funds because when you lie and those lies directly, and you know you're lying, you're not just stupid.

Like I think Rep Gomer, I think he's a fucking idiot.

Okay.

But I think Matt Goetz will show in his emails that he knew he was spreading misinformation and that misinformation is directly linked to violence and he should pay a price.

There is a right and there is a wrong here and I'm done.

We have been infected with a level of both-sidedness that is damaging to our nation.

Yeah, that is, I think, a perfect thing to end on.

We have to have a positive thing, Scott.

We got to stay a positive.

Well, the immunities are kicking in.

We've had all three houses of government change hands.

We've had

a lot of people including business leaders say all right the line has been crossed here and there he's been silenced by the way hasn't social media been nice and better

there's something like it has i've there are 37 accounts i think it was the new york times the atlantic did an analysis there are only 37 accounts that are responsible for like 60 to 70 percent of the misinformation that could result in violence because what people fail to realize it's not what you say not only what you say but how powerful you are and as as this is a lesson for me, I try to be more thoughtful as my audience grows about leading with opinion as opposed to facts.

Cause what you realize is when you have shitty takes on things, they have shittier outcomes based on how much influence you have.

And when a house, when a representative takes to the floor after something like this and spreads the misinformation, that is dangerous.

And all Twitter needed to do, all Facebook needed to do, and they did that analysis was recognize the accounts that were causing and leving the most damage on the Commonwealth.

And they failed.

And they should be held accountable.

They fail.

Yep.

I think we're going to end on that, on that note.

But what positive think we think, Scott, I am so happy to you.

I missed you.

I called you Friday.

I wanted to do a hot take and a quick.

I know you did.

You called me a lot.

You called me more than I call you.

You called me a lot.

Come on.

Come on.

Yeah.

What was the thing that Tom Cruise said at the end of that movie?

I, I, I know that.

No, we're not in that movie.

No, the one where he goes, I need you.

Or

you complete me.

You do.

Say it to me.

You, you soak.

You complete me.

I want you to say you completely.

Absolutely.

You are the missing piece.

It's true.

You are the missing piece.

You are the zacapa to my sialis.

Seriously.

I did miss you.

Amanda was like, you seem

to.

I can't believe it.

Even though you're tasteless beginning of this show.

And by the way, can I just let's celebrate the officer, I believe his name is Officer Goodman

at the Capitol who threw that

asshole who was attacking him, this guy who's been since arrested.

I'm going to say his name because he's such a douche.

This guy, Officer Goodman, who deserves the Medal of Honor or Freedom, whatever we can give him,

who fended off people.

Individual, you know, she was, Ruth was talking about individual leaders.

This guy was amazing.

What he did.

He saw.

that he was being uh that they were going towards the capitol uh to the senate i think it's the senate uh of the capitol police and um

and he risked his life.

It's Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman.

I also hope, just sorry, I'm going back.

Black man,

black man being chased by white people.

I really hope.

I hope and I hope our elected officials, for a brief moment when they were sitting in Senate conference rooms, hiding and barricading their doors with furniture, realized we're all Americans.

I hope.

I hope.

No, they were keeping their mouths.

You gotta hope some of them saw the middle.

Anyway, you gotta hope some of them saw the middle.

No.

Yes, I think a lot of them did.

A lot of them did.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

As a reminder, we love listener mail questions, so we're trying something new.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the pivot podcast.

The link is also in our show notes.

Read us out, Scott.

Today's show is produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Our engineer is Ernie Endertot.

Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burroughs.

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What a terrible week, Kara, but what a wonderful time to rethink what's required to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

This has been,

what an awful week.

Hopefully the immunities are kicking in, but let's not take for granted that these things can't happen.

They can happen and they have happened.

Let's trust that it's a way to.

Get your vaccines if you can.

The number,

the ages are going down.

I'm very close to D.C.

to getting it.

I'm very excited.

I'm very excited.

Get your vaccines.

Let's start America.

Let's build back.

I think it's, Biden's thing is build back better.

Let's build back better.

Well, we have, in fact, that's a great analogy.

We've gotten a little bit of

this hamstrung virus called tyranny and fascism.

Let's such that our immunities will recognize it and respond more aggressively.

Hopefully this nation has been vaccinated and hopefully we're all in the midst of being vaccinated on a number of dimensions.

For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra-value meal for $8.

That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink.

We may need to change that jingle.

Prices and participation may vary.