Live from The Atlantic Festival: ‘2026 Is the Battlefield’

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I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic.
Today, we have a special live show as part of the Atlantic Festival in New York. Welcome, everyone.

We have with us staff writer Ann Applebaum, who writes about the rise of autocracy, and Gary Kasparov, chess world champion, who runs the Renew Democracy Initiative.

They are both hosts of season one and two of Autocracy in America, which is an amazing show, but also a show which I'm hoping there won't be like too many more seasons of. Like,

what will we be talking about in season 32 of Autocracy in America? I shudder to think what the topics will be. So, Anne, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Gary, welcome to the show.
Thank you.

Just one correction. There will be no impossible.
You cannot have too many shows towards America for a simple reason. Either we stop it, or there will be no shows because they won.

Oh, I see. They're going to cut your show off.
So it's not going to be like live from the gulag, a secret episode of Autocracy in America, too soon. Okay, too soon for that, Jeff.

The two of you have been talking about threats. to democracy for a long time.
You started talking about them outside the United States.

Now we're unfortunately talking about them inside the United States. Every week we seem to see a ratcheting up, but this week felt like new territory.

So Anne, when you saw the news about ABC and Jimmy Kimmel, what is the first thing that came to your mind? What did you think of?

The first thing that came to my head, and I have no doubt it was the first thing that came to Gary's head as well, was the memory of Vladimir Putin pushing the satirical program kukli, which means puppets, off the air in Russia.

Dictators don't like satire, they don't like being made fun of. Putin in particular didn't like this puppet that was made to look like him.

And he

we even know how he did it. He sent a letter to the television station that had this satirical program and made them take it off.
I mean this in the United States it went a little bit more circular.

I mean it was the a threat from the FCC that was made on a podcast and then it was interpreted by the corporate owners of a television station and it led them to fire Jimmy Kimmel.

But what's important, I think, about this in both cases is that this is the way modern censorship works. So we all probably have an, you probably have in your head an idea from if you read 1984 or

a novel about dictatorship, you imagine censorship is there's a guy in a room and he gets all the newspapers in advance and he crosses out stuff with a pencil and that's censorship.

Actually nowadays, if you look at Russia, if you look at Hungary, if you look at Turkey, censorship is the government putting pressure often on private companies to adjust their programming.

And that is what we are now seeing here. Gary,

I don't know that for the rest of us, the first thing that came into our heads was Kukli. So maybe you can explain what Kukli is.
Like, do you have a memory of it?

I just want to raise it in people's imagination. Like, what is it? Thank you very much for reminding me about the golden era in Russia.
It was a very short one. So the so-called tumultuous 90s.

But we had

a feeble democracy, but it was freedom of speech. Actually, Cookley was on air for six years.

And they have been, I mean, pushing really the limits. I mean,

they attacked Yeltsin, they mocked him

and Yeltsin's, some of the Yeltsin's

closest advisors. Actually, Yeltsin's

Attorney General, 1995, tried to shut down Cookley, but he lost his job.

And naturally, Putin hated it. And was it like what we are familiar with, like Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel?

They were puppets, but trust me, this is this, they were, in many instances, they went much further than Kimmel or Stewart. So it was really tough.
Yeah.

And again, it's this is the, I think maybe the Yeltsin liked it. Yeah, this is, yeah.
Like they found it funny. But again, fact is that, you know, nobody tried to touch them after this 1995.

You know, the attorney general failed. So

it was number one target for Putin. He actually did two things after being, quote unquote, elected the president of Russian Federation.
One is he restored Soviet anthem just to send a signal.

That's what was in mind. Secondly.
With new words, with new lyrics. No, no, but anyway, this music.
Everybody already heard it, yes. It's still impunity.
What's the music? Do you remember?

Is it like a course we know? You want to say it? Yeah, kind of thing.

I wasn't that good.

And then he went after Kukley after the show. And as a matter of fact, he used similar tactics because it was not just a letter.
It was all about business quarrel.

Because this company that at Cookley owned money and this sounds familiar, huh? So it's all, so it's that's what immediately came to my mind because I said, wow, it's all business.

That's how they always start. And Putin kept repeating it.
Even, you know, just when Bush, 43, asked him, he said, no, no, no, it was business.

Yes, well, look, there was a company and this is it was fair. This is they own money to Gazprom.

Yeah.

You've used the phrase the Putinization of America. Yep.

I saw the signs. I saw the signs.
I did say, say, yeah,

people always say, no, America is not Russia. Absolutely.

But, you know, even back in 2016, I wrote that Americans would very soon discover that so many things that they believe were carved in stone, it's actually based on traditions. It's not codified.

It's a very different thing. But just wait, but so I want to talk about this because they are different countries.
Like, Putin's a KGB official. That's what he has in his history.

Trump is a reality TV star. We do have different histories and cultures.
Our Constitution is different. Like, it is built for tests.
They're not exactly the same.

So sometimes I go along with you two, and sometimes I think they're different. It's again, it's the Constitution,

it's as both

letter and spirit.

I think there's so much in America is built on the spirit. Nobody ever did it before.
For instance, you know, oh, every candidate, you know, released his or her taxes. Trump said that?

No.

So it's, and so many things that are happening now, it's just within his powers.

I said it just after

the second coming. So that's the big danger.
It would not be that's what he could do illegally, but what he can do within his legal powers. Because there's so many loopholes.
There's the gray area.

So yes, the Constitution is offering us the means to resist, but it doesn't specifically preclude him from doing things.

And also, Donald Trump, give him credit, is a genius of normalizing things that we thought would never happen in this country. I mean, what does Watergate? It happens every day now.

So this is, in 50 years, you know, something that led to the resignation of the president is absolutely ignored.

And every day, Trump is pushing a little bit, you know, this step by step in this direction. And the Constitution does not defend itself.

In my next article, I'm saying it's just a piece of paper. It's not ironclad.
It doesn't defend itself. It offers you an opportunity to build your fortifications.

But unless you are engaged, well, it says he can go around.

The other point to make is that, of of course, America and Russia are different, but the pattern of how an elected leader takes over a political system, takes over a democratic system, and changes its nature, is something that we've seen before in countries that are also radically different.

So I lived through a version of this in Poland. Then it lasted for eight years, and then there was an election and it changed and so on.

We watched it in Turkey. We watched it in Hungary.
We watched it in Russia. There's a version of it actually in India.

So,

Americans like to think that they're exceptional and special and we have a long history and so on. But when we look at what Trump and I think it's more the people around him are doing,

we see them following these exact patterns and we're not seeing the institutions resist. Mostly, we're not seeing Congress resist because the way our Constitution is written,

the checks and balances are the other two branches of government. And one of them is done a bit, the judiciary, or

that story hasn't played itself out yet. But what's really missing is Congress.
And that speaks to

a deeper problem, which is that there's clearly a,

I don't know what the right terminology, whether it's decay or decline or deterioration.

So the thing that Thomas Jefferson once talked about is democratic virtue or democratic spirit, we see is now missing in at least one or a part of one of our political parties.

We don't see Republicans who are willing to say this is against the Constitution. Congress has the right to determine tariffs and taxes, not the President.

Congress has the right to decide what happens to government agencies and what they're meant to be doing and who's supposed to work for them. Congress decides what happens to the civil service.

And they have decided to let these things go and let the president do it.

So that's the, you know, it's not that Americans are Russians or America's like Russia or American history resembles Russian history.

It's just that the same kinds of tactics that we saw in places like Russia and elsewhere are playing out here, and we're not seeing the resistance that you would expect.

Can I try one more argument for American exceptionalism? Not the J.D. Vance version of American exceptionalism, more the Thomas Jefferson version.
I recently reread the Declaration of Independence.

I think you did something like this too.

The difference is America's founding did happen on a very specific date, at a very specific time, with a very specific idea. And if you, I encourage you all to go read the Declaration of Independence.

It's a boring thing to say but just do it because you are reading about Trump like everything they are saying about the fact that they are talking about

the king's power down to tariffs. So that actually gave me a lot of hope because I thought we knew that this was coming.
Gary you're already nodding your head. Why not?

I also read it a few times recently but I just came to the opposite conclusion. Yes, you're right.
It's all about Trump.

But the problem is we are seeing the growing number of people, mostly on one side, that are willing to defend this practice. They are no longer afraid of that.

So if you want to understand how this administration works, just think about the hearings in the Senate. FBI director was insulting sitting senators.
He doesn't care. These people appointed him.

I mean, by constitution, by all the laws, he has to revere them. No, he was insulting them.
It was always, it's a one-man show, actually, for one-man. And the same with all others.

So it's, yeah, it's fantastic. You have all these laws, but just for a moment, just, you know, look in the mirror and think hard.
If the moment comes, day X,

Cash Patel, Pambundi and others, will they follow constitutional Donald Trump's orders? And when you answer this question, you'll understand that everything is a piece of paper.

There are many ways around. Okay, one more, one more.
The courts.

In what you guys have seen, in wherever you want to talk about, Poland, Russia, wherever, the courts actually have, not perfectly and not in every case, shown up a lot.

It depends on whether the courts themselves have been taken over, because usually the first thing that happens, and in this country it's been happening actually over the last two decades, but the first thing that happens is that the would-be autocrats, the people who want to undermine the system, take over the courts.

This is exactly what happened in Poland.

complicated long story, but the elected government changed the Constitutional Tribunal, which is their equivalent of the Supreme Court, and they managed to do it by changing the retirement age law.

Like what Israel is trying to do. Exactly.
And actually, I think the Israelis were copying the polls.

Israelis said that to me. So they changed a whole series of small rules without passing a constitutional law in order to change the nature of the court.

And the purpose of that was so that when they began to do things that were unconstitutional, they would get away with it. And they

didn't quite get far enough, and

they thought they had enough controls over the system so that they would never lose an election again but they were wrong and so on however it has to be said as an as a as a little footnote unpicking that so getting the courts back to the where they were before and figuring out what to do with hundreds of illegally appointed judges and so on that took place during that period is a nightmare I mean so putting putting back the the the the cracked egg after it's been smashed is also very difficult but but judges can make a decision they cannot enforce it that's why you have three branches of the government.

And the first one, Article I, is Congress. So, yeah, it's this, you remember, I think it's in 1833, 34, it's this President Jackson.

You know, he had to deal with the Supreme Court ruling against some of the colonies that were trying

to steal lands in Georgia. And he said, okay, fine.
You know,

I cannot stop them. You know, I'm not going to send troops.
Let them enforce it.

Apparently, that's apocryphal. I have to.
Apocryphal? He didn't really say that, but that's more or less what happened. But more or less what happens.

He said,

yes, he said specifically, Jackson said, let the judge enforce.

But Gary, have you seen any signs of that in the courts? You're taking away all hope. No, but again, it's the courts.

Go ahead. But I'm just asking.
The courts just, you know, most of them are just doing their job. But again,

let's talk about, for instance, the National Guard in the big cities, in the blue cities. So now it's all pending.

And the court decision was, yeah, it's probably saying it probably was not exactly legal. But now, let's say Donald Trump sends its troops to,

you would call it contempt of the court, but ignoring it, just, you know, just to Chicago, just or Memphis,

any big bull city. It doesn't matter what the court decided.
The keys, you know, the test, the general that will have to make a decision.

will be forced to choose between Donald Trump's order and constitution. But let's just be clear, he actually hasn't.
Sending the troops to Memphis is not illegal. Not yet.

Not yet. Not yet again.

It happens fast, but

he's in the office for just eight or

less than nine months.

And they're moving really fast. They move really fast.

And again, the problem is that

because

his hold on MAGA base, he, through the MAGA base, he controls GOP, and through GOP, he controls the house. House is silent.
And with House basically absent. So he can do virtually anything he wants.

There is one

court case that he hasn't enforced. This is actually the TikTok case, but this is an ongoing story.

But I agree with Gary that we could get there. We could get there.
We could get there.

It's getting the big test is next year, the midterm. Let's remember, Donald Trump doesn't lose elections.
He said it. Donald Trump doesn't accept bad numbers.
They don't exist.

He lives in the world of his own reality. On January 6th, 2021, he tried to overturn

the elections. He had to rely on the mob and few elected officials.
Now, he will do the same. And

for me, it's not if, it's when.

But he will have FBI, DOJA, ICE,

same MOP.

and more elected officials on his side.

To do the numbers. What exactly? Like, what are you saying?

Oh, there are many ways of influencing elections. If you think that the numbers, you know,

will secure the victory for Democrats, and that you can rely heavily on health care or tariffs, that's not enough. Oh,

FBI will be a player.

Unless Democrats can actually change the situation on the floor of the House, FBI and DOJ will be a player. How many law firms acquiesced? How many big companies acquiesced?

So at one point, you'll discover that there's probably not enough money available just to run the campaign because they will be attacked they'll find so so yes to be clear what the way you again it's like moderate modern censorship is different from the old-fashioned way and manipulating elections is also different from what it was and so you know you don't just take the big pile of votes and steal them and move them in another room what you do is you try to create the conditions for the election to be in your favor so you you get rid of a level playing field and you make it unlevel so that it works in your favor like gerrymandering or what?

So gerrymandering

is a big part of the story. So

you saw what just happened in Texas. The Trump administration is pushing other Republican states to do the same.

This is why it's very important that Newsom responded the way he did, ugly as it is, that he wants to gerrymander California. It's very important that he drew attention to this as a phenomenon.

I mean, gerrymandering goes a long conversation. Gerrymandering goes back a long time.
A lot of people have done it.

This is the first time I'm aware of that the federal government, that the president, has got involved in telling a state to gerrymander so as to help him,

so as to assist his White House. And the decision of the Texas governor to do it now is out of turn.
It's not when it's, you know, these borders aren't normally rewritten at this point in the cycle.

Usually it's every 10 years to do with when the census is taken. And so this is already one thing that's unprecedented.

The second thing that's unprecedented is the federal government has been demanding voter rolls from states, allegedly looking for fraud or allegedly they're trying to create some kind of national voter race.

It's not clear what. And we had versions of this actually in the 2024 election.
There was some evidence of this, some kind of games beginning to play too.

So they're beginning to look at how they can legally push people off the voter rolls. I mean, it's hard to steal midterms because the rules are different in every state and so on.

But what they're trying to do is set conditions that will make it much harder for the Democrats to win.

That doesn't mean, by the way, again, to go back to another example, you know, in Poland in 2023, this is exactly what happened.

They tried to create conditions whereby the ruling party, it was called the Law and Justice Party, were sure that they would win because they'd created the rules that would make them win.

And actually, there was a huge turnout. The voters voted in very, very high numbers and they lost anyway, which they were very surprised by.

And when they lost, it was funny, they didn't have a plan B. Like they were so sure they were going to win that they didn't plan to steal the numbers or fake the numbers.

And then when they lost, they didn't know what to do. And there was a period when they were kind of disoriented.

But what you're going to see over the next year is all kinds of small things, and it will be different in different states. And what they will do is try to shape a situation whereby they win.

And we could get done. I mean, we saw in 2020, we know that the president called up the Secretary of State of Georgia and said, what was this? I'm missing 9,000 votes.

Could you just get me 9,000 votes? I mean, we could have that again in a state, and we could have it in a state where the Secretary of State agrees.

We're going to take a short break and we'll be back in a minute with more from Ann Applebaum and Gary Kasparov.

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Okay, I'm going to ask you a question that I don't want to ask you, and then I'm going to close my eyes as you answer.

2026.

Most faithful election in American history. Most what? Faithful elections in American history.
If Democrats do not retake the House, 2028 will be a formality.

That's it.

Then I'm afraid the show, Autocracy in America, the show will be shut down.

Hen and I will run it in the underground. Yes, we'll run it in the underground.
In this room.

Okay, 2028.

No, it's this.

2028. 2020 is too far.
2026. This is the battlefield.
You have to make sure that the Congress, that's Article 1 of the Constitution, will take a stand against Donald Trump.

And by the way, I believe the Democrats should actually start working on it now. There are five Republicans, the five members of the House that separate Donald Trump from pushing

his agenda. Three of GOP members, they are retiring.

make them an offer they cannot reject. All you need, you need five votes.
And it's again, be active, try. Offer them a speakership.
I'm just, you know, people are people.

So just just create campaigns, you know, just create conditions where a lot of them will feel uncomfortable and maybe some of them will be lured by the great opportunities. But try.
Fight.

No one is fighting now. That's the problem.
So, and by the way, never accept any deals with the Republicans. Shut down, shut down.
It's bad. But remember, this government is not working for us.

It's against us. So just no deals.
Donald Trump doesn't believe that Democrats exist.

He said it, not me.

Don't deal with them. It says that he is already de facto running one party system.
Don't make deals with him. Just fight at every opportunity you have.

There's another thing that we're seeing here that I've also seen in other countries is that when... I feel like that should have been an applause.
I don't know why. I feel like, you know, fight.

It's like.

Sorry.

Yeah. Go ahead.
Sorry. I was going to say another thing that we're seeing here that we also see in other countries is when you have a political party come to power that seeks to change the rules.

And another country I didn't mention actually is Venezuela, where this very much was true, that seeks to change the rules. It doesn't have to be right wing, it can also be left wing.

So they seek to change the rules. One of the things that happens is that the political opposition immediately fragments and they immediately don't know what to do.

And this is like, you can look at every, you can look at Hungary, you can look at Poland, you can look at Venezuela. So is that what's happening now with the political case?

I think it's what's happening now. Because the old rules and the old ways by which people made political careers and by which they did messaging and did campaigning aren't working anymore.

And nobody really knows why. And the new rules aren't clear yet.

And actually, I think that what we're seeing Democrats doing, I have a little bit more patience with them than Gary does, is

you see a lot of different people trying different things. And so...
Like Mom Donnie. Like Mom Donnie, for example, he's trying to reach young people in a new way.

Who else? Just so that we can start looking around.

Chris Murphy, okay, who's a senator from Connecticut who's made it his business to be constantly on social media and to be talking all the time and to

go around the country and speaking. AOC got a whole bunch of people

with Bernie Sanders, held rallies in different cities, including in red states around the country. Gavin Newsom, he's doing something completely different.

He decided to use Twitter, which is the most important forum for

the sort of far right, for the MAGA conversation, and he decided to flip it back on them and make fun of them and use satire and humor

to attract attention and to break through in the algorithms. And that's it's completely different from what Mamdani is doing, right?

But it's another way of seeking to gain attention and build a constituency. Governor Pritzker in Illinois is another one, and he's very different from Gavin Newsom.

You know, he's doing these very heartfelt, very authentic speeches about Chicago, about Illinois, about

the history of his family, relating them to the present.

And he's breaking through in that way. One of those styles will win.
I mean, one of them will become the thing that's most popular. So why is Gary not with us here?

Because there are many more red states than blue states. And

something that works in New York does not work. Actually,

it's counterproductive with many other states.

But Gary, but this is why you need multiple people.

The idea that we need one leader.

My problem is not having the big tent. tent.
Actually, I'm saying it's very important for us to understand. We're fighting just

for the soul of American democracy. And we have to protect the framework.
And within the framework, I'm more than happy to debate with people that disagree with me.

But this framework is in grave danger now. That's what Donald Trump is trying to destroy.

But to beat Donald Trump, we have to make sure that within this big tent, the leadership of the coalition will be accepted. accepted by people in the middle.

Because at the end of the day, you still need just to build a coalition, to win it. And our coalition is not strong enough.
We need people that are just in the middle.

And unfortunately, in 2024, many of them shifted to the other side. And one of the reasons, you know, in the middle, culture war, for instance, they said it.

So we have to make sure we'll build a coalition that will concentrate on the key elements of the campaign. And these key elements just

have to be associated with people that have no political liabilities. I'm very happy to work with this grand coalition.
But again, as the faces, as a people on

the frontliners should be those who will be accepted by by the majority but they also have to be people who will motivate their base and they also have to be people who are creative and who are not simply saying let's go back and have everything be the way it was you know there have to be people who have a different kind of inspiring vision there's so many tools available for american citizens to put pressure on members of the house on senators even on administration on local governors uh you can just just, you know, you can go to demonstrate on the streets.

You know, it's not Russia. It's not, God forbid.

There are many ways for Americans to demonstrate that they disagree

with the current policies. But to do that, temperament.
You know, you have to be engaged and you have to understand that it's the real battle. And stop thinking about 2028, as Anne said.
It's 2026.

And even just every month, every week between now and 2026 elections, make sure that we'll be ready. If God forbid, they'll try to do things.
And didn't even mention this.

It's the social networks. In

one of my episodes

in the podcast, I talked to Gary Marcos, it's the expert on AI and neuroscience. So

we talked about techno-fascism.

There's so many subtle ways of influencing elections. Again, make sure we're ready for this battle.
And I like our chances. It's much better than Russia.
Probably

it's as good as in Poland, even better.

But Poles knew they had to fight. So this is,

please recognize it's a fight. And it's not 2028, it's now.
Yeah, the thing I like to say is that people often ask me, what should I do or what can ordinary people do? And

the answer to that question is it depends who you are.

If your job is, if you're a lawyer, then work pro bono on some of the cases that

will determine which way the system goes.

If you are a teacher, make sure that you are teaching children about the nature of our political system.

You can demonstrate, you can join a political party, you can join an organization, you can contribute to organizations.

And very often, by being engaged, in other words, by doing something, then it will become clear to you what to do next. So

it's by being involved that you understand how to become more useful.

And I also, the other thing, and I found this very much in Poland as well, for those of of you who don't know, I live there part of the time, is that also by doing something, by being engaged, you feel better.

I mean, so you don't feel like you're helpless and

history is washing over you and you can't do anything. If you're involved, then you're doing something.
And

that's the way to fight pessimism. Gary, you mentioned this, but I think it's important to illuminate in detail.
This is where you did say, we are different from Russia.

There are things that you can do. So what is the experience in Russia of this moment in the playbook for an average citizen versus the experience in the U.S.?

I think it will just let some air in the room to know that we do have options. We're not in Russia

compared to, say, 2010. So take the moment when Putin bans, you know, Kukli.
Like the moment we started out talking like that.

It was actually the beginning because it was the year 2000. So it's a very good question.
Right. So you take that moment.

Our options, as you said, are different and better, and we have more more of them. And I want people to understand that.
What was it that Russians couldn't do in 2000 that we can do now? Yeah.

Oh, yeah, this is, look, Russia didn't have the same traditions of democracy. Great.
Russia, Russia's. No political parties.
It's the ES. It was all...
No, no, no. Look, it's the EU.

No, this is where the EU is. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

and

the KGB was still too strong. So the oligarchs had no interest in defending democracy.
So it's the look, it's nothing to compare.

But you know, this is, it's,

you know, the fact is that Russia in 2000 was so different from America in 2025 should not make you feel happy. So this is because

it's just difference. It may disappear because Donald Trump shows determination to destroy the checks and balances.
So you have a bully there.

And again, it says it's, imagine is the man lies every minute. So I just, I think we have to just find, find just, you know, just a unique opportunity just to caught him saying the truth.
yeah

uh it's so and and it works and it's not it's not just him being there it's just so many sycophants around and you have many intelligent people there that keep repeating the same lies again that tells you that you know this is we already we the critical mass of people have been willing to cross the red line it's it's not no we're not yet there but you know we have to fight so this is and and there's still again many opportunities here but remember again this is it's the constitution it just doesn't defend itself it's just it's it's

You have tools, phenomenal tools. It was created by founding fathers.
But I don't think Americans ever just face this kind of threat. So

it's a different... I would say it's somehow even worse than a civil war.
Because again, this is now you have a sitting president trying to undermine the constitutional principles.

In 1861, it was easy. Okay, you have, you know, this is the renegades, the Confederacy, the war.
Now

it's the enemies within.

So this is, it's no, by the way, when you look at the world now, I grew up in the world and I grew up in the world when we knew, you know, there was this Iron Curtain, you know, this is the unfree world, free world, America, the beacon of hope, you know, guardian of freedom.

Now, when you talk about autocrats and democrats, you know, there's no geographical border anymore.

No, yeah, one of the points that I make in the book I published last year was that this competition between autocratic ideas and democratic ideas is not, it's not a new Cold War.

It's not this one guy's on one side of the wall and the other's on the other. It takes place inside every country.

It takes place in the US, in the UK, in Poland, also in Russia. I mean, there's a

moment over a moment is over.

For the moment it's over, but I mean, think of, you know, the most successful political movement in Russia in recent years was an anti-corruption movement, which was essentially a rule of law movement.

And so the idea that rule of law and transparency and accountability are important is something that at least some Russians understand. Some.
That unfortunately it is.

And why does it matter that it's internal versus on one side and the other side? Like, why does that change?

Because

it's much easier for all of us to say we're all together against the foreign enemy, whatever, against the aliens, against the communists, against the people who want to,

you know, and then you create a sense of national identity and unity and so on. We don't have that now.
You know, the division is inside us and it's inside families.

I'm sure many people here have had this experience, or inside friendships or friend circles. And that makes it much harder to negotiate and much harder to recreate a narrative of unity once again.

Although I have noticed, one positive thing I've noticed is that there are counter-reactions to Trump. Like in Canada, you see different countries saying we don't want to go there.

It's sort of like we've become the enemy in a certain way.

I was in Canada two days ago. I just had a speech there.

Great audience.

Pro-Ukraine and anti-Trump.

Yeah.

Actually, I was in Sweden.

I was in Sweden last week, actually, and I also talked to a lot of people there, and there you have this 100% unity in support of Ukraine and against Russia.

And part of that, part of where that's coming from, is

I would describe it almost as fear of the United States. Right.
You know, that they understand they now need to be together. Maybe you said Sweden, yes, maybe.

Sweden, yes. But when you look at some other countries, Germany, the most popular party in the polls now, AFD, alternative alternative for Germany.
That's almost openly.

It's not just neo-NASIS, it's on the Putin's payroll. Yep, it's a party that was created with Russian money and Russian influence campaigns.

So maybe we can end by just talking about the world realignment outside our borders. We've just talked about the positive elements of that.
The U.S. has become a kind of

warning signal to some countries. But then there's, you know, there was the recent meeting with Russia, China, and North Korea.
You just visited Sudan to talk about the threat of the U.S.

kind of carrying out further. What do you guys see in the broader world that is

what you see in the broader world

is almost

total collapse of faith and belief in the United States and a kind of shock that is still, the waves are still coursing as people try to understand what does it mean that the United States isn't the leader of the democratic camp anymore.

The democratic world is not just Europe, it's Europe and Asia and elsewhere. And how does that affect our trade relations with America? And how does that affect the way we think about our defense?

And how does that affect the way we think about social media, which is all American, you know, mostly American?

And so you have this, it's almost a constant topic in the domestic politics of all of our allies. How do we rethink who we are and what we do, given that the United States is not what we expect it is?

And I don't think you can understate the amount of shock and disruption it's caused.

Yeah, you mentioned this, the summit,

was not just Russia and North Korea, there were many other countries there.

You may call it, you know, this dictators international.

But I think what was important, it was not just the meeting, it was a meeting where Xi Jinpin was crowned as the capo-de-tuti capi of this international authoritarian network.

I think if you remember the picture when he was, you know, just he was in front and then Putin on his right hand and Kim Jin

on his left hand. And, you know, body language.
I mean, Putin was, it's subordinate. And by the way, Russia is a Chinese satellite now.

I always call it, you know, it's a Chinese gas station with nukes. Yeah.

And

Putin follows Chinese orders. CGP needs this war in Ukraine.
So that's why expecting Russia to be bankrupt is probably a bit of an exaggeration because the war helps him.

It's just Russia is getting weaker.

And since China is the only country that has a massive territorial claim to Russia, it's 1.5 million square kilometers, three times France, the entire territory from Vladivostok to Irkutsk used to be China prior to 1860, and China now believes it's Chinese.

And the Chinese have now produced maps that have the Chinese name of Vladivostok on the Chinese.

First time since 1960, the Chinese custom was working there, yes. But the one element you just remember, because dictators always, you know, pay attention to symbolism.

First time I saw Xi Jinping wearing Mao's outfit, not a Western suit. Everybody else was wearing Western suit.

He's a leader, you know, and it's China. But again, what do you expect? You know, there's no vacuum in geopolitics.
If America moves out, somebody gets in, and guess who

will be in? So

it's a real challenge. And I wrote an article for Develd, a German paper, and I said, there's a status, we saw maybe not yet the New World Order, but definitely a bid.
for the new world order.

And American corruption and European impotence are as cornerstones.

Okay, so this is our last thing. I'm going to summarize what I think you guys, the message you're sending to this audience, and you can correct my summary.

At stake in the 2026 election is not just the future of democracy, but the alignment of the entire world. And that's what the stakes are for us.

I don't want to overwhelm people and think, well, it's just one bully, we can take it. But if it's like one bully, a bunch of dictators here, an entire culture, forget it.

We are fighting not Donald Trump, but Trumpism as a phenomenon. And that's why you have Nigel Farage in Britain, you have Le Pen in France, you have AFD in Germany, you have Orban.

It's a global phenomenon. And unless we can defeat it here, chances elsewhere are not looking good.

I'm going to say this without irony. Thank you for inspiring us to fight.
Thank you.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend. It was edited by Andrea Valdez.

Thank you to all the staff at Atlantic Live for helping organize this event at this year's Atlantic Festival.

Rob Smirciak is our engineer, Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Listeners, if you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic, you can can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic at theatlantic.com slash listener.

I'm Hannah Rosen. Thank you for listening.

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