S2 Ep1024: Anne Applebaum: Everything Is a Game to Trump

Speaker 1 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 9 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 32 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 36 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 40 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 42 Learn more at MS.NOW.

Speaker 43 Degree Advanced, the world's number one antiperspirant, provides up to 72 hours of protection against the sweat and odor that comes with life.

Speaker 43 Degree is the getting a walk before work, getting dressed in the car, running from the parking lot, antiperspirant. The deadlines approaching, crunch time, hustle hard, play hard, antiperspirant.

Speaker 43 The sweating, working, maximum exerting, antiperspirant for when the heat is on. So you can do what you need to do and work how you need to work.

Speaker 45 Sweat moves you forward.

Speaker 43 Degree is here to make sure it doesn't hold you back. Degree, here for sweat.

Speaker 4 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 22 Delighted to be here with Staff Writer at the Atlantic.

Speaker 30 Her books include Autocracy Inc., Twilight of Democracy, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag a History.

Speaker 47 It's Ann Applebaum.

Speaker 33 Let's do it, Anne.

Speaker 19 How are you doing?

Speaker 48 I'm well. I'm well.
How are you? Well enough, anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 41 Well enough.

Speaker 49 I'm doing well enough, you know, here in my personal life.

Speaker 30 Given all the gulag news out there, I thought I was talking to Katie and I was like, we better get Ann Applebaum on.

Speaker 49 Who better to have than the author of Gulag a History?

Speaker 3 And we had a minor, maybe,

Speaker 52 maybe positive green shoot late Thursday night when Chris Van Holland got to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, possibly the first person,

Speaker 13 first known person to actually get out of Sukote, the El Salvadoran prison that people have been discussing as a gulag.

Speaker 47 So I was wondering what you thought about that news, the fact that Chris Holland was successful in that advocacy, and then we can kind of get into the details.

Speaker 48 So I worried a little bit about why they let out Abrego Garcia to meet Chris Van Hollen. I mean, clearly, well, one of the reasons was to show he wasn't dead, which people were beginning to wonder.

Speaker 48 But it also, the way it was staged, you know, it was meant to say, look, this guy is absolutely fine. There's nothing wrong with him.
He was wearing clean clothes.

Speaker 48 He was in some kind of restaurant-looking setting. It was clearly designed to show that nothing all that bad is happening.
So I worried about that aspect of it.

Speaker 48 Obviously, the fact that, you know, U.S.

Speaker 48 Senator is willing to go there and put his reputation on the line and make an effort to save an innocent person from a horrific and pointless fate is fantastic. And

Speaker 48 I think it's gestures like these that will remind people that Congress has agency and senators can do things.

Speaker 48 I'm pleased that he did it. I mean, of course, what matters now is what happens next.
I mean, does the administration listen to the Supreme Court, which has demanded that this prisoner be sent home?

Speaker 48 Is there movement on the other people who were unfairly and without due process sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 48 I mean, the thing that worries me the most about the situation, I mean, since we're talking about Gulag, is that Sisote, if that's how we're pronouncing it, which curiously, the word gulag is an abbreviation.

Speaker 48 It means main camp administration. It's an acronym for what it is.

Speaker 18 Wait, it's an acronym for what?

Speaker 48 Main camp administration in Russian.

Speaker 6 Camp Administration. Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 55 I did not know that.

Speaker 48 Gilavna Upravlini Lagri. It means main camp administration.
And Sisot is also an acronym. And

Speaker 48 these these are names given to institutions that have unclear powers and exist outside of the rule of law and Sassot from our point of view is doubly outside the rule of law because it's outside of our country so it's outside of our legal jurisdiction it exists according to the unclear laws of some other country the fact that we're taking people out of our country and moving them to this lawless place.

Speaker 48 It's perhaps easier to sympathize with Abrego Garcia because he's innocent and he's the father of an autistic child and he's never broken the law and he's married to a U.S. citizen and so on.

Speaker 48 But really, even the ugliest and most unpleasant people who were sent into this lawless zone, that was

Speaker 48 a grave violation of the spirit of our Constitution.

Speaker 48 What a rule of law society is designed to be is one where there aren't exceptions, there aren't emergencies, you know,

Speaker 48 there aren't gray areas and gray zone. And we have some already in our system, but this is an expansion of that.
And it really is profoundly disturbing. And

Speaker 48 for that reason alone, it's really right that Senator Van Holland went there to make that point.

Speaker 15 Yeah, do you worry at all about the propaganda side of it with the taking him out?

Speaker 4 I guess that's the thing that I don't, it's hard for me to process.

Speaker 27 Like, so why did they do it?

Speaker 55 Right.

Speaker 31 Like, there's the positive way to look at that, which is that he responded to pressure.

Speaker 41 You know, Van Holland is there.

Speaker 57 I've pointed out at a press conference that El Salvador is a party to this international covenant on civil and political rights.

Speaker 51 And as part of being that covenant, it's required of them that they give these prisoners access to an attorney or to outside access.

Speaker 58 So, on the one hand, that's good.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, they do this weird thing where they put these pretend margaritas up in the picture, and then Bukele is like retweeting people who are talking about how it was all part of the troll, and they're going to reveal that Brego Garcia is

Speaker 52 a bad MS-13 guy, and the Democrats are going to look like they're sucking up to MS-13.

Speaker 47 I guess I just don't, like thinking about kind of how this works in other countries, it's hard for me to kind of wrap my head around whether we think that Bukele did this from a position of weakness, like in response to pressure, or whether it was like a propaganda tool.

Speaker 48 Oh, I mean, it was certainly a propaganda tool. And, you know, everything is about how it's packaged and how it's sold.
Probably it matters as much inside El Salvador as it does in the U.S.

Speaker 48 You know, this will be an effort to, you know, to portray the prisons as nice places and the regime as fair, and maybe, as you say, also to somehow smear this particular man.

Speaker 48 You know, that doesn't mean that we are, we meaning the broader American community of people who still care about due process and the rule of law.

Speaker 48 We Democrats and Republicans and members of the legal establishment can't also use this incident as a way of making our points. And so

Speaker 48 I hope we find a way to do it.

Speaker 48 But yeah, I mean, you know, when you're dealing with a regime like that, like everything is a game and everything is a trick and everything will be somehow used to attack you.

Speaker 48 It's important maybe that Americans start to learn that propaganda is not just words

Speaker 48 or images. Propaganda is also actions.

Speaker 48 You can seek to make a political point through doing things, through staging events, through executive orders, or through singling people out.

Speaker 48 Regimes like that of Bukele are adept at creating situations that are designed to have a particular effect.

Speaker 48 And so paying attention to that and understanding it, you know, is part of what has to be the response.

Speaker 30 Are there any other lessons or comparisons, you know, that you can think of?

Speaker 22 You know, as just, to me, obviously, this is like a little bit of a testing ground for the Trump administration, right?

Speaker 63 Like they're putting the toe in the water to kind of see what they can get away with.

Speaker 52 I have to imagine like this

Speaker 52 slow walking

Speaker 47 towards the type of place where you're sending more and more people to prison camps such as this.

Speaker 51 There have got to be parallels, right?

Speaker 58 I don't know.

Speaker 47 I'm just wondering, as you've been watching this play out, has it struck any memories from the research you were doing for the book?

Speaker 48 The Gulag was also something that developed very slowly, and it began with justifications. These were labor camps.

Speaker 48 People who had committed some minor crime or some offense or were a problem for the state were going to be made useful to the state. So

Speaker 48 there was a whole ideology about labor and work and how these people were working off their crimes or their misdemeanors and they were contributing to the construction of socialism.

Speaker 48 And that was the slow build-up to it. But of course, as time went on and as it expanded, the faster it expanded.
There were a couple moments when it went very fast, you know, in the 1930s.

Speaker 48 And then again, after the war, when it went very fast, then all kinds of people were accidentally locked up.

Speaker 48 And random people were denounced by their next-door neighbors who wanted their apartments, or, you know, people would denounce their bosses at work so that they would get their job.

Speaker 48 You know, the ugliest part of human nature was on show as the denunciations got wider and wider.

Speaker 48 And, you know, we're not at that stage yet, there is a logic like that: that once it's okay to send a random person out of the country to a zone of lawlessness, once you can't get them back, or you can't get the Venezuelan hairdresser back, or even that you've sent a bunch of Venezuelans who's, you know, none of whose status we really know anything about.

Speaker 48 I mean, were they really illegal?

Speaker 48 Did they really commit crimes? And we have very little knowledge of that.

Speaker 64 And at least one, at least one, not the, and we know, obviously, there's no accusation of lawlessness for Andree, the gay makeup artist you you referenced, but like there's at least another one the Miami Herald was reporting that was legal, like that was like that went through the legal refugee process, went to a third country, went to Columbia, then came to Florida, right?

Speaker 52 So, you know, in some of these cases, we know they weren't even illegal.

Speaker 48 Once you've made the established that it's okay to do that under whatever ideology or explanation or justification, then if you can do it for one person, why can't you do it for 10 people or 100 people or 1,000 people?

Speaker 48 And that was the logic. That was how the Soviet gulag expanded.
I mean, of course, it was part of a much bigger system of fear and repression that we don't have yet.

Speaker 48 So I don't want to, you know, make a direct comparison. They aren't exactly the same thing yet.
But yeah,

Speaker 48 there is a logic to them pushing for this one person to be punished unjustly, because then that gives them effective permission to punish anybody unjustly.

Speaker 48 And that is exactly how it works. I mean,

Speaker 48 there's also something similar in that you know, a lot of the most notorious camps of the gulag were far away and nobody saw them.

Speaker 48 And you could live your life in Moscow or in, I don't know, Novosibirsk, and you could go through your day, and you wouldn't be aware that there was this great injustice happening somewhere else inside your country.

Speaker 48 And the El Salvador camps serve that function in a way, too. I mean, they, you know, are we bothered walking down the street in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 48 or Minneapolis or, you know, Dallas, Texas, thinking about people who've been unjustly shipped to a foreign prison. I mean, we don't see it.

Speaker 48 It's not part of our daily life. And that's another way in which you can see how these monstrous prisons function and why they're able to function.

Speaker 48 And then the third thing I would say, I mean, we haven't really had this national conversation yet, but at some point it's going to be important to ask, who are these people doing the arresting and putting these people unjustly away?

Speaker 48 Are they cops or are they immigration officials who are stopping students who may or may not have student visa problems on the street and bundling them away into cars.

Speaker 48 Because no dictatorship, it's never the work of a single man or even, you know, even a few people.

Speaker 48 There's always a, there's an apparatus that wants to do it, that's motivated to do it, that has reasons why it thinks those things are just.

Speaker 48 They're the ones who, some of the justification is for them. as well.
So it's not just that they're saying Garcia, Abrego Garcia is, you know,

Speaker 48 is a vicious criminal. It's not just for us, it's also for the people who are doing the arresting.

Speaker 48 And the corruption of those bodies, of those institutions, the people organizing deportations, is also going to be an important part of the story down the road.

Speaker 64 Yeah, JVL wrote about the mindset of the kind of ICE agents doing the arresting in his newsletter earlier this week.

Speaker 57 I'll put a link in the show notes for people because that's a starting point for a conversation that we do need to have.

Speaker 47 I want to just really quick go to your point about the logic of sending Obrego Garcia and these Venezuelans to Sokota and what we heard yesterday on the Fourth Circuit from Judge Wilkinson, it was a Reagan appointee, Conservative judge, who essentially upbraided the administration for not responding to the court order to facilitate the return of Obrego Garcia.

Speaker 47 And he wrote this: It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter, but in this case, it's not hard at all.

Speaker 69 The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.

Speaker 47 Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, there's nothing that can be done.

Speaker 54 This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

Speaker 47 Extremely blunt from a Reagan appointee judge there.

Speaker 48 And this is the kind of statement that we've been waiting for. I mean, this is what the courts should be doing.

Speaker 48 They should be making it absolutely as clear as possible why this is a violation of, it's not just the law,

Speaker 48 it's the essence of our constitutional republic.

Speaker 48 Rule of law, it's older than American democracy.

Speaker 48 I mean, preceding the Declaration of Independence and preceding the Constitution, there were courts in colonial America, there were arguments about independence of judges.

Speaker 48 One of the reasons for the American Revolution was the fear that judges were being influenced by the king. Colonists wanted independent judges, they wanted also separation of powers.

Speaker 48 You know, those arguments have been around for, you as I said, longer than the United States itself. And the rule of law is a very deep part of how the U.S.
became prosperous, how we

Speaker 48 remain a unified republic, how we became one of the leaders in the world, how we came to be widely admired, at least by some people some of the time, how we came to be so influential, why so many people imitated us.

Speaker 48 It wasn't just democracy.

Speaker 48 I mean, actually, the flaws of our electoral system are pretty clear to everybody else, especially to people who live in parliamentary democracies and have somewhat more civilized politics than we do.

Speaker 48 But the advantages of the

Speaker 48 separation of powers and the rule of law is clear, even in countries that aren't democracies. So I think the judge, by drawing everyone's attention to this really basic point,

Speaker 48 has done us a huge favor. And the more, I would say, the more that the judiciary can speak in plain English and not use complicated legal language, the more they will get through to Americans.

Speaker 48 I mean, I think Americans have this basic sense. You know, we have this say, you know, this is a free country.

Speaker 48 You know, there are things that we say about ourselves that I think some of this is so much in violation of the basic self-definition of who we are that it goes beyond partisanship, I hope.

Speaker 48 and goes beyond polarization. So I hope that some of these incidents can get people to realize how dangerous this usurpation of power has been.

Speaker 59 Yeah, speaking before the Declaration, I was struck by this from the Magna Carta 1215 the other day.

Speaker 58 No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled, or ruined in any way except by the lawful judgment of his peers and the law of the land.

Speaker 19 I mean,

Speaker 13 this is pretty old material.

Speaker 48 It's pretty old material. And those ideas, which were English ideas,

Speaker 48 are the basis of our legal system too, at some

Speaker 48 long time ago.

Speaker 3 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 9 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 31 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 36 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 40 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 42 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 70 Did you know Delta Airlines just turned 100?

Speaker 72 That's a century of connecting people to the world.

Speaker 74 But they're not just looking back, they're launching forward with the Delta Sustainable Skies Lab.

Speaker 77 You won't see it on a terminal map, but it's where Delta and its trailblazing partners are reimagining the future of flight and making it real.

Speaker 79 Think electric air taxis, next-gen aircraft designed to cut fuel use significantly, and modifying today's planes to lower emissions.

Speaker 83 And this isn't just future talk.

Speaker 85 Today, the Boeing 737 features marine-like finlets that reshape airflow to reduce drag, helping each journey go farther on less fuel.

Speaker 87 Travel isn't going away, and the future of travel is more sustainable, with Delta leading the way.

Speaker 88 Learn more at delta.com/slash sustainability.

Speaker 26 I want to go to the most recent article for the Atlantic, Kleptocracy Inc., you write, American government, American foreign policy, and American trade policy are slowly being transformed, not to benefit Americans, but to benefit the president, his family, and his friends.

Speaker 57 Only voters can stop them.

Speaker 51 Give people kind of just a top-line summary of what you wrote about.

Speaker 48 So in a way, this is the same issue. This is also about the rule of law.
More specifically, it's about people who have political power also using that political power to enrich themselves.

Speaker 48 To be clear, wealthy people have been very influential in America forever, and probably they always will be like they are in every country.

Speaker 48 And there have been other examples of corruption in the past. But I don't know of another administration where there were so many people who had double interests.

Speaker 48 You know, the president himself, you know, on the day that the stock market was crashing, Friday, April the 4th, instead of going to Wall Street to find out what was going on, he went to his personal golf course and to his club in Florida, where a golf tournament was taking place that is sponsored by companies from Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 48 One of the people in attendance was the head of the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. Several other Saudi companies were on the list of sponsors, including Aramco, which is the Saudi oil company.

Speaker 48 TikTok was one of the sponsors of this golf tournament. You know, these are companies that have a direct interest in U.S.
foreign policy and are directly interested in influencing Donald Trump.

Speaker 48 And in effect, their sponsorship is a form of payment.

Speaker 48 They're paying him, they're supporting his course, they're supporting his club. That's unthinkable in any other administration, that there would be so much blatant abuse.

Speaker 48 The genesis of that article, though, was that I started trying to pull together some of these things, you know, both the Trump.

Speaker 48 Trump's family, Trump himself, but also other people in the administration, you know, and other instances of people trying to buy influence or get out of court cases or get out of you know other other tangles with the government through influence through through financial influence or financial relationships with the Trump family or with Donald Trump and as well as lists of what the Trump administration is doing to loosen all the laws against fraud and against corruption that we have in our system and the list is astonishingly long.

Speaker 48 You know, there are dozens and dozens of instances already, and we're only three months into the administration.

Speaker 48 I mean, like, it starts in December when the Trump family announces a big investment in Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 48 You know, it continues with the Trump family's cryptocurrency business, which in effect, almost anybody can be an investor in that business. And that's, again, a way to pay the Trump family.

Speaker 48 And there's already one instance of somebody who is a major investor having a piece of civil litigation against him lifted or suspended.

Speaker 48 You know, we don't know whether there was a quid pro quo, but it certainly looks like there could have been. So nobody's made any effort to avoid that.
Elon Musk's conflicts of interest.

Speaker 48 I mean, Musk is responsible for firing people at government agencies who were responsible for regulating his companies.

Speaker 48 And he has a presence also in government agencies that are able to subsidize his companies or buy things from his companies, you know, whether it's Starlink or whether it's the State Department, I think, is buying armored Teslas.

Speaker 48 That's a grotesque conflict of interest of a kind that I also can't think of a contemporary precedent. Again, rich people, influential,

Speaker 48 they get laws passed, you know, they lobby for things and so on. But to actually have the owner of major companies that have major interests, have been heavily subsidized by the U.S.

Speaker 48 government, personally going into government agencies and firing people and making policy there. And I can't think of anything like that.

Speaker 48 I mean, that is oligarchy of a kind you see in autocratic states. I mean that's Russian-style oligarchy.

Speaker 48 Once again, it is a profound challenge to the rule of law, to the assumption that democracy needs transparency and accountability, and that people who are acting in the public interest should be acting in the interest of Americans and not in their personal financial interests.

Speaker 48 I mean, when Musk has people fired at the transportation safety regulatory bodies,

Speaker 48 is that because it's good for Americans or because it's good for Tesla?

Speaker 48 And if it's just good for Tesla, then that's a catastrophe for Americans. And sooner or later, there will be repercussions.
I mean, we will be less safe and we will be more badly regulated.

Speaker 48 And our taxpayers' money will be wasted on Musk's companies.

Speaker 48 I feel that partly because some of this stuff sounds complicated.

Speaker 48 There's a thing called the Corporate Transparency Act, which they've announced they're not going to enforce, which requires people to reveal owners of shell companies to reveal who they really are.

Speaker 48 These are anonymous companies that are often used to hide stolen money or to escape paying taxes.

Speaker 48 You know, those sound like those are complicated big words, and they, you know, kleptocracy can be a complicated thing to describe.

Speaker 48 But to me, this should cause, you know, as in aggregate, I mean, almost more outrage than anything else.

Speaker 48 And if there's a way that opponents of this administration can explain it to people, you know, your money is being taken and used to enrich people around Trump, and your policy has been stolen, and

Speaker 48 it's been captured by people who are using it to enrich themselves or pursue their own interests. I mean, this is about as fundamental a violation of what government is for.

Speaker 48 I mean, forget about democracy, as anything that we've seen.

Speaker 48 I mean, and in a way, combined with the illegal deportations, they both show this scorn for the rule of law and this scorn for any kind of basic responsibility that government officials should have to the people who elected them.

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 65 I'm actually doing a deeper dive later this afternoon just on the crypto element of this.

Speaker 58 There's this great substack article by Molly White. I'm going to interview Molly so people can get that on YouTube or in our Bulwark Takes feed.

Speaker 29 But I wanted to ask you about just kind of looking back about the opposition here, because I do think reflecting back on the first term,

Speaker 25 This issue is maybe the biggest failure of the institutions and the oppositions and the opposition, right?

Speaker 32 Like the idea of the emoluments clause became kind of like a joke, honestly, during the first term.

Speaker 29 People would like roll your eyes when you talked about it.

Speaker 12 But like there was a test drive of all this stuff in the first term.

Speaker 57 Like Trump was doing things that were totally unprecedented in the first term as far as enriching himself and his family.

Speaker 89 It was just kind of small ball stuff compared to what you just laid out.

Speaker 52 And so are there any lessons that can be learned from that?

Speaker 47 You know, like the idea that the Democrats had control of of Congress for two years during the Trump first term and didn't really do meaningful investigations on this, like as compared to what Republicans did against the Hillary Clinton server or Benghazi, to me,

Speaker 68 seems like just a huge mistake in retrospect.

Speaker 48 Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean,

Speaker 48 partly because it was stuff like people staying in Trump's hotels, you know, it was some pretty distant connections. It didn't feel

Speaker 48 not as grotesque and egregious as it is now. It was underrated.
But maybe the lesson here is once again to bring back to the illegal deportations.

Speaker 48 I mean, if you don't begin to react when the law is broken and when you're referring to the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which says that American leaders can't take money in any form from foreigners or from foreign governments, which Trump now blatantly does,

Speaker 48 when those things aren't enforced when they're broken, then that makes it much easier for somebody to push,

Speaker 48 you open the door a crack, and then it can be burst open. you know, it can be burst open at a later point.
I mean, this gets to a point that I don't have an answer to this.

Speaker 48 Maybe you have thoughts.

Speaker 48 During Trump's first term, a lot of people complained that, I don't know, the people talking about democracy or people talking about lawbreaking were hysterical and they were exaggerating and they were, you know, there was Trump derangement syndrome and they weren't reacting

Speaker 48 to stuff that Trump was doing. You know, I never knew quite whether that was right or not.
I mean, it's true that if you speak at a very high pitch the whole time, then people stop listening to you.

Speaker 48 So

Speaker 48 there's something right about that. On the other hand, it certainly looks in retrospect like we underreacted.
We underreacted to the corruption. We underreacted to the beginnings of oligarchy.

Speaker 48 We certainly underreacted to January the 6th and a whole series of violations after that. And that people are only beginning to see that now, you know, years later, is tragic.

Speaker 48 I mean, now it's a little late. I mean, now the horse is out of the barn, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use.

Speaker 58 I mean, no, my only thought on that is 100% agree.

Speaker 90 I don't know how to fix that.

Speaker 25 The image I always bring up whenever people talk about overreacting is if you went back and showed a front page of the newspaper the day after January 6th to anyone in January of 2015, they would say, that is impossible.

Speaker 37 That is insane.

Speaker 67 There's no way that could happen here, right?

Speaker 67 And so then how can you convince the people that would have had that view in January 2015 to act that way, you know, how they might have, you know, in January 2021 or 2025?

Speaker 36 And I don't, it's like human instinct.

Speaker 58 Human, like this is more of a psychological than a political question. Humans are adaptable.

Speaker 52 And I guess maybe there's a lesson here from the other article that you wrote that I wanted to reference, which is this America's future is hungry.

Speaker 47 And I don't know if there are ways that we can learn from that to put some limitations in now.

Speaker 41 I mean, one such example is right on this point.

Speaker 69 It was, I guess, Orban was forcing people to stay at his son-in-law's hotel.

Speaker 54 It's just a direct comparison to what we're seeing here.

Speaker 52 But, you know, what else, you know, since maybe we're a little bit behind on the timeline, you know, happened there that might be a useful lesson?

Speaker 48 So actually, what happened in Hungary is a little different from what's happening here. What happened in Hungary was a very slow attack on institutions.

Speaker 48 I mean, it went, it was over a long period of time. And

Speaker 48 it's more the boiling the frog theory. You know, that you keep turning up the heat a little bit and the frog doesn't notice and doesn't notice until finally it's dead.

Speaker 48 And so it was hard to pinpoint the moment when Hungary stopped being a democracy. You know, it was

Speaker 48 lots and lots of small changes over a long period of time. Orban was able to change the constitution.
He kept manipulating it. He undermined the judiciary.

Speaker 48 There was a slow process of taking over the media, which he mostly did through business groups who were close to him. I mean, it's not like there was censorship.
Instead,

Speaker 48 companies would begin to have a lot of financial trouble, and then somebody would take them over and shut them down. You know, that was the, it was rather that system.

Speaker 48 And until we got to a point where it was suddenly almost impossible to unseat him, he controlled all the media in the country. He controlled 95% of the public conversation.

Speaker 48 You know, he took over the universities. He took over all the cultural institutions.
And all that stuff happened one by one.

Speaker 48 I mean, actually, what's happening here in the United States is much faster. It's going much faster.

Speaker 48 The Doge group group of the engineers going into the Treasury Department and cutting off the payment system and deciding what they will and won't fund.

Speaker 48 I mean, I think it's just Musk's personal decision or maybe some of these kids' personal decision about what they're going to fund and what they're not going to fund.

Speaker 48 I mean, I don't even know if Trump is fully aware of all these things. I mean, that kind of thing didn't happen in Hungary.

Speaker 48 So this is much faster, much more violent, metaphorically violent, but much rapider. But of course, it's going in the same direction.

Speaker 48 The point I wanted to make in that article was that it's true that the decline of democracy in Hungary has got a lot of attention and people have written about it.

Speaker 48 The right has often pointed to Orban as a kind of model. There's a lot of admiration, in particular, for what he did to universities.

Speaker 48 He did something that we're about to find very familiar, which was saying,

Speaker 48 you know, if you have a gender studies program or some other program that the government doesn't like, then we're going to cut off your funding. I think that's where that idea came from.

Speaker 48 So, quite a lot of stuff they did is widely admired in the sort of MAGA world by different parts parts of Advance. I think it's a particular admirer of some of these tactics.

Speaker 48 Not that many people look at what happened in the meantime to the Hungarian economy or Hungarian people.

Speaker 48 And the answer is that Hungary is, depending on which measure you use, is either the poorest country in the European Union or maybe the second poorest. You know, sometimes it's the third poorest.

Speaker 48 It's gone way down the charts. It has

Speaker 48 very poor productivity. Large numbers of people leave the country.
hospital system and medical system in very poor shape, educational system in very bad shape, you know, by one measure after the next.

Speaker 48 I mean, if you look at, just look at charts, you find that Hungary is now at or near the bottom of almost everything in Europe. There's even one that someone pointed me out.

Speaker 48 I was in Budapest a couple months ago, which is the Heritage Foundation has a measure of, it's a measure of governance, and it puts Hungary at the bottom of the measure of governance and government accountability because Hungary is so corrupt.

Speaker 89 That must be somebody in the back of the heritage building.

Speaker 59 They don't even realize the guy's still back there. He's been there since 1983.
It's like, we've got to fire this guy that's

Speaker 20 coming up with a bad metric here.

Speaker 48 It's some kind of index they do.

Speaker 48 And Hungary

Speaker 48 ranks near the bottom in Europe. And the point is that all these measures, these kind of flamboyant transformation of the state into being the arm of the ruling party and the end of free media,

Speaker 48 and the suppression of statistics.

Speaker 48 You know, the government, you know, the government uses fake statistics, and there's always a fake report at the beginning of the year about how great the economy is. And

Speaker 48 they don't tell people the truth. You know, all that kind of stuff, it's had an enormous effect on people's lives.
And Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors.

Speaker 48 By some measures, they're poorer than Romanians, which is one of their historic rivals, which annoys them in particular. But it's also a really profoundly corrupt country.

Speaker 48 Something like, depending how you count, like 20 to 30 percent of Hungarian Hungarian companies are in effect part of this group of companies who are reliant on who have special arrangements with the government.

Speaker 48 They prosper because they get access to lucrative government contracts. And so the hotel that you read about where

Speaker 48 Orban's son-in-law owns, he owns a bunch of stuff actually, but you know, the hotel that they were trying to get dignitaries to stay in, you know, that's just one tiny piece of it.

Speaker 48 I mean, the son-in-law has had lucrative procurement, you know, contracts, all kinds of special relationships with the state, but no, he's not the only one.

Speaker 48 And those companies are this huge weight on the Hungarian economy. They're a big chunk of it.
They drag it down. You know, they aren't productive.
They exist and they're managed

Speaker 48 in order to please the ruling, you know, the ruling party. In that sense, they're kind of like Soviet companies used to be.
And it's been a disaster for the economy. And

Speaker 48 the point is, is that authoritarianism makes you poor.

Speaker 21 This is a problem with the link.

Speaker 20 There's like, and I don't know how to do this.

Speaker 65 This is another like political challenge, right?

Speaker 37 Where the remaining Wall Street Journal Republican types that are out there, they haven't accepted the reality of how far down the path we are towards the authoritarianism element of it.

Speaker 53 And they think that is, as you were mentioning earlier, like TDS or hyperbolic.

Speaker 13 And since they don't accept the premise, you know, I don't feel like they have pushed back as hard as maybe they would have

Speaker 47 against the economic punishment that is coming as part of that.

Speaker 51 And this is why I was kind of on the side of hoping that he does as big of tariffs as possible, because the more pain that happens, the more maybe that will shake some of these money guys from their slumber.

Speaker 52 But I don't know that they're related in that sense.

Speaker 48 It's also true that

Speaker 48 in some ways,

Speaker 48 an economic crisis or a recession, that's one of the best things that could happen by comparison to the other things that could happen because of our destruction of state institutions.

Speaker 48 I mean, what about a cyber attack that takes out the electricity grid or something? I mean, I'm just making this up. I don't know whether that's possible or not.

Speaker 48 But, you know, when you eliminate regulators and when you eliminate, when you attack, you know, pieces of the security state, you know, then you're putting yourself at risk.

Speaker 48 And so a recession might be the wake-up call. I mean, I think part of the problem also is that people are misled by China.

Speaker 48 And so China is an authoritarian state that did very well economically over many years.

Speaker 48 But the reasons for that, when you look at it, I mean, essentially, it was because the Chinese adopted some practices of free markets, because they let entrepreneurs function, because they sought to maintain elements of a fair bureaucracy.

Speaker 48 I think Francis Fukuyama used to write about this, about how the Chinese had a functional state, which was part of why they were able to grow so fast.

Speaker 48 If you look around the world at just about almost any other dictatorship, if you look at Venezuela, which was the richest country in South America and is now the poorest thanks to dictatorship, if you look at Hungary, which was one of the most promising countries in Central Europe and is now one of the, either the poorest or the second poorest, if you look at a country like, I don't know, I mean, when you think about

Speaker 48 Turkey, Zimbabwe, most autocratic states have been, are poor and sometimes even desperate.

Speaker 48 And even the ones that are successful, you have to ask how much more successful they would be if they had real rule of law, you know, if they had freer markets or freer speech and better exchange of ideas.

Speaker 48 Authoritarianism is a huge cost on the economy. You know, it costs money.
It drags you down. It creates uncertainty.

Speaker 48 I mean, who wants to invest in the United States in a situation in which the tariffs might be one thing one day and one thing another day?

Speaker 48 And maybe, you know, if you're a, I don't know, you're a European company wants to build something in America, you want to bring over your German manager.

Speaker 48 Well, what, he's going to have visa problems because now we're attacking foreigners and we take away their cell phones at the border. Once you disturb, you create the idea that the U.S.

Speaker 48 is an unstable and unpredictable place, that's a disaster for long-term economic growth and for investment and for planning and for everything else that you need to make people prosperous.

Speaker 48 I mean, it's, and we've seen that. You can look around the world.
I mean, over and over and over and over again in authoritarian countries.

Speaker 48 You know, they destroy their citizens' futures by leaving aside the rule of law.

Speaker 1 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 9 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 32 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 37 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 40 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 42 Learn more at MS.NOW.

Speaker 70 Did you know Delta Airlines just turned 100?

Speaker 72 That's a century of connecting people to the world.

Speaker 74 But they're not just looking back, they're launching forward with the Delta Sustainable Skies Lab.

Speaker 77 You won't see it on a terminal map, but it's where Delta and its trailblazing partners are reimagining the future of flight and making it real.

Speaker 79 Think electric air taxis, next-gen aircraft designed to cut fuel use significantly, and modifying today's planes to lower emissions.

Speaker 83 And this isn't just future talk.

Speaker 85 Today, the Boeing 737 features marine-like finlets that reshape airflow to reduce drag, helping each journey go farther on less fuel.

Speaker 87 Travel isn't going away, and the future of travel is more more sustainable, with Delta leading the way.

Speaker 88 Learn more at delta.com/slash sustainability.

Speaker 52 You mentioned China yesterday.

Speaker 57 We were on Nicole Wallace together, and you kind of alluded to the fact that there are some similarities with what's happening with the universities to, or some maybe echoes of the cultural revolution in China.

Speaker 61 Afternoon cable news isn't really the best place to explore those kind of metaphors at length.

Speaker 90 So I was like, I was listening to you, and I was like, I want to hear more about that.

Speaker 13 So luckily we're together today.

Speaker 51 So I would like to hear more about that

Speaker 10 comparison.

Speaker 48 Again, it's like, you know, I don't want to push it too far. I mean, we're not using mass violence and so on, and we're not sending intellectuals to concentration camps, or not yet.

Speaker 48 But what was the Cultural Revolution?

Speaker 48 I mean, the Cultural Revolution was an attempt to get rid of a layer of, you know, what the what the Chinese, you know, radical part of the Chinese Communist Party thought were, you know, backward-looking elites.

Speaker 48 And those were professors, they were civil servants, they were older people who had some kind of status, and they were hauled before

Speaker 48 student groups who shouted at them and

Speaker 48 demanded that they resign. And in some cases, they could arrange for them to be sent to, I don't know, cut trees in outer Mongolia.

Speaker 48 But the point was that it was a revolution against the existing culture, against the cultural institutions, universities, museums,

Speaker 48 everybody who had some kind of educational rank or status. And this attack on American universities and on science more broadly has a whiff of that.

Speaker 48 You know, what they were asking Harvard to do was something Harvard could never have accepted.

Speaker 48 You know, it was, we want control over your admissions process, over what courses you teach, over who you hire, you know, over decisions the faculty makes. I mean, no university can accept that.

Speaker 48 And, you know, Columbia tried to accept some of it, and they still didn't get their federal money.

Speaker 48 Even accepting some of it, it meant there was a further demand for more and it becomes pretty clear when you look at this stuff that the point is not you know it's certainly not about anti-semitism or whatever fake story they give and the point is they want to destroy all these institutions and they are cutting funding and by the way most federal funding for universities doesn't go to like gender studies or even like history or whatever you think it goes to.

Speaker 48 It goes to scientific research, it goes to biochemical research, it goes to medical research, it goes to the physics departments.

Speaker 48 I mean, the vast bulk of federal research funding goes to things that we all care about, that make our lives better, that create the products that America then sells around the world.

Speaker 48 And the fact that they're going for that, they're destroying those people and that layer of society, means they really want to destroy the essence of what makes America work now.

Speaker 48 And they want to replace it with something else.

Speaker 48 And I genuinely don't know what they think will replace it because it it isn't like there's some other group of MAGA scientists who can replace the Harvard scientists and do the same thing.

Speaker 46 And colleges are, though, and they did this a little bit in Florida.

Speaker 51 Again, we're restraining the metaphor a little bit to talk about what Ron DeSantis did as like a cultural revolution.

Speaker 49 But they had the new college in Florida.

Speaker 51 They put Christopher Ruffo, who is this, you know, who's at a conservative think tank, who's like a social media gadfly, like ends up, I forget what his job is, but like a top job, like running a a university in Florida and instituting

Speaker 52 more, whatever, conservative, traditionalist values. So that would be one prime example.

Speaker 58 No, there's not really an NIH version of that, but there certainly is for the universities.

Speaker 48 Yeah, I mean, as I recall, and I read about this, you know, a year or two ago, so I didn't know whether it's still true.

Speaker 48 One of the only ways they could change the nature of that college was to bring in a lot of athletes.

Speaker 48 Again, it wasn't like there was this other group of great intellectuals who'd been repressed by this, the fake censorship complex that they imagine exists.

Speaker 48 Instead, what they had to do was fill the university with people who play baseball.

Speaker 20 That's a cultural revolution of a sort.

Speaker 48 That's a cultural revolution. No, I mean, but you're right.

Speaker 48 I mean, it's the replacement of people who think with, you know, with, they're looking to find people who think differently, but what they'll end up doing, which is, by the way, exactly what happened in China, is just destroying everything and then realizing a few years later that they need to bring everybody back again.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 9 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 32 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 36 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 40 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 42 Learn more at MS.Now.

Speaker 70 Did you know Delta Airlines just turned 100?

Speaker 72 That's a century of connecting people to the world.

Speaker 73 But they're not just looking back.

Speaker 74 They're launching forward with the Delta Sustainable Skies Lab.

Speaker 44 You won't see it on a terminal map, but it's where Delta and its trailblazing partners are reimagining the future of flight and making it real.

Speaker 79 Think electric air taxis, next-gen aircraft designed to cut fuel use significantly, and modifying today's planes to lower emissions.

Speaker 83 And this isn't just future talk.

Speaker 85 Today, the Boeing 737 features marine-like finlets that reshape airflow to reduce drag, helping each journey go farther on less fuel.

Speaker 87 Travel isn't going away, and the future of travel is more sustainable, with Delta leading the way.

Speaker 88 Learn more at delta.com/slash sustainability.

Speaker 90 I want to talk a little bit about Africa.

Speaker 19 I've given a short shrift on the pod just because there's so much happening, but there was an Atlantic article yesterday or maybe Wednesday that said the headline, ominous headline, in three months, half of them will be dead.

Speaker 53 That's about how the Trump administration has quietly doubled down in its plan to stop sending emergency food to millions of children who are starving in Somalia and other countries.

Speaker 67 There was also an NPR article I saw earlier this week about Zambia and how it was 12 Zambians sharing their stories about how HIV drugs are running out.

Speaker 54 It was this horrifying image from like a church in Zambia where half of the congregants didn't show up because they were sick, because their HIV medicine was running out.

Speaker 69 Really horrible story.

Speaker 51 So just, I saw you shared the Atlantic story on Blue Sky.

Speaker 61 Wondering if you have any kind of thoughts about the ramification, the global ramifications.

Speaker 48 So as it happens, I have just been to Africa. I was in Sudan.

Speaker 48 I haven't written about it yet, so won't talk about it extensively, but I have to say one of the most kind of moving moments for me, I was at a hospital in Khartoum, outside of Khartoum rather, and it was a children's pediatric hospital, and there was a very young, attractive doctor there.

Speaker 48 And he was talking about there's a feeding supplement, a nutritional supplement called Plumpy Nut, which is made in the U.S. It's made in two factories in Georgia and in Rhode Island.

Speaker 48 And it's one of the things that USAID has been buying from these factories and shipping to Africa, you know, and not just Africa, you know, all over the world, wherever there are malnourished children.

Speaker 48 And

Speaker 48 there are malnourished children in Sudan because of the civil war.

Speaker 48 He had heard that USAID was being cut because of wastefulness, and he said to me, you know, I just want to assure Americans that we're not wasting any of it.

Speaker 48 You know, I keep track of exactly how much of it there is. All of it makes its way to these children who are on the brink of starvation.

Speaker 48 And it was, you know, the idea that a doctor in a hospital like that, in a war zone was having to justify, you know, to an American that he was using their, you know, we're talking about probably a few dollars worth of stuff.

Speaker 48 That he was justifying that was to me so tragic and so moving.

Speaker 48 The way in which USID was destroyed, it's a catastrophe all over the planet. And it's not even just the food being cut off.
It's also you know, the logistics, so the delivery of the food.

Speaker 48 So the United States was supplying something like 40% of all humanitarian aid in the world, which is a high number. But the U.S.

Speaker 48 was also doing a lot of the logistics, so physical delivery, trucking, but management, monitoring, surveying, you know, I mean, how many people are starving in this part of the world or that part of the world?

Speaker 48 There's somebody has to know that

Speaker 48 before you can deliver the aid. And a lot of those programs, which were USAID-funded programs, have been cut.

Speaker 48 And the ramifications and the echoes, you know, I think are going to be with us for years and years and years.

Speaker 48 I mean, it just people will absolutely begin to die because of these decisions that Elon Musk made. You know, he says he's feeding USAID into the wood chipper and isn't that great?

Speaker 48 You know, well, the effect is going to be children dying, people being sick, lifelines and systems that worked for people falling apart.

Speaker 48 It's one of the most tragic and catastrophic things that we've done so far.

Speaker 66 Just horrifying. And it's like, for what?

Speaker 65 We're also harming the people at the Plumpy Nut Factory in Georgia.

Speaker 7 Like the whole thing is just so maddening.

Speaker 3 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 9 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 11 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 32 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 37 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 40 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 42 Learn more at MS.Now.

Speaker 70 Did you know Delta Airlines just turned 100?

Speaker 72 That's a century of connecting people to the world.

Speaker 74 But they're not just looking back, they're launching forward with the Delta Sustainable Skies Lab.

Speaker 77 You won't see it on a terminal map, but it's where Delta and its trailblazing partners are reimagining the future of flight and making it real.

Speaker 79 Think electric air taxis, next-gen aircraft designed to cut fuel use significantly, and modifying today's planes to lower emissions.

Speaker 83 And this isn't just future talk.

Speaker 85 Today, the Boeing 737 features marine-like finlets that reshape airflow to reduce drag, helping each journey go farther on less fuel.

Speaker 87 Travel isn't going away, and the future of travel is more sustainable, with Delta leading the way.

Speaker 88 Learn more at delta.com/slash sustainability.

Speaker 25 Since we've been on, Marco Rubio has been talking about the Russia-Ukraine war.

Speaker 66 And I want to kind of end,

Speaker 58 I want to end with a fun thing, but so we're end with the fun thing, the penultimate topic.

Speaker 52 Marco speaking about the Russia-Ukraine war.

Speaker 7 Let's listen.

Speaker 92 So, we came here yesterday to sort of begin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end the war, to try to figure out very soon, and I'm talking about a matter of days, not a matter of weeks, whether or not this is the war that can be ended.

Speaker 92 If it can, we're prepared to do whatever we can to facilitate that and make sure that it happens, that it ends in a durable and just way.

Speaker 92 If it's not possible, if we're so far apart that this is not going to happen, then I think the president's probably at a point where he's going to say, well, we're done.

Speaker 92 You know, we'll do what we can on the margins. We'll be ready to help whenever you're ready to have peace.

Speaker 92 But we're not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.

Speaker 6 Pretty shocking. Marco Rubio setting the stage for abandoning Ukraine there in a matter of days, maybe even.

Speaker 58 I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. I know I'm dropping it on you live here.

Speaker 48 Well, no, I did know about it, and I know that the Europeans with whom Rubia met don't know what it means. And what does it mean to say we're dropping it? We're just not doing it anymore.

Speaker 48 It's a mystery. Does it mean they won't give Ukraine access to satellite information? Does it mean they're not speaking to Putin anymore? It's very, very unclear.

Speaker 48 I mean, the only thing I would say is that the idea that it's not doable and they've tried really hard is

Speaker 48 laughable. This war continues because the Russians remain on the offensive.
By the way, they've started a new offensive in northeast Ukraine. So they are continuing to push forward.

Speaker 48 They have still never recognized the right of Ukraine to exist as a sovereign state. So they have never agreed to a ceasefire.
They have never stopped fighting.

Speaker 48 They've never acknowledged that Ukraine can come out of this war and remain an independent country, which has to be the fundamental requirement of Ukraine, apart from where the border is going to be and everything else.

Speaker 48 And this administration has put no pressure on Russia.

Speaker 48 On the contrary, it has given the Russians the impression that they're about to do lots of deals with them and there are all kinds of arrangements are going to be made and people are going to start making money.

Speaker 48 And so until they have put pressure on the Russians, then they haven't done anything.

Speaker 48 There hasn't been a negotiation. There hasn't been a strategy.
There's just been the president shouting about how he wants to end the war, shouting at Zelensky,

Speaker 48 waving his hands in the air, and nothing. I mean, they've done nothing.

Speaker 48 And the idea that they've worked really hard on it and

Speaker 48 now they're blaming everybody else for failing to achieve anything. I mean,

Speaker 48 it's ridiculous.

Speaker 46 Completely ridiculous. They've never even been able to enunciate what the ask is of Russia

Speaker 49 across multiple people, Trump and Rubio, Wyckoff, anytime a reporter asks us, well, what are you asking for them to concede?

Speaker 52 They have nothing.

Speaker 55 They say nothing.

Speaker 58 I think they were just hoping that Trump's friendship with Putin and the supposed great economic deal we were going to do with them would be enough for Russia to just stop their conquest of Ukraine.

Speaker 58 It was just gullible in the extreme.

Speaker 48 Trump has an imaginary idea that he has a deep relationship with Putin, but

Speaker 48 it exists in his head. It's not in reality.

Speaker 8 I know guys like this. He doesn't have real friendships.

Speaker 55 He doesn't have any actual friends like this.

Speaker 53 So he thinks Putin is a friend.

Speaker 90 Anyway, okay, we're going to end with this.

Speaker 58 Last time we talked, you mentioned the book The Captive Mind of Milos.

Speaker 49 It was a Polish book about the totalitarianism coming into Poland.

Speaker 58 Me and Bill Crystal discussed this a little length a couple of weeks ago about how the thing that really struck me from that book was he was talking about how we in the West have a lack of imagination about how bad things could get.

Speaker 91 That was among the things that struck me when I read it.

Speaker 13 This time, my request for you is: you know, we're always, we're so serious.

Speaker 36 You have to have an escape, right?

Speaker 33 Annapolis must have a rosé and must read like trashy romance novels or watch a TV show, or

Speaker 37 there must be some type of escape for you.

Speaker 47 And I thought maybe you could make a recommendation for the listeners also looking for an escape.

Speaker 48 I mean, lots of my real escapes are to do with walking in pretty places and going outside.

Speaker 48 That's good.

Speaker 13 Do you have a favorite walk?

Speaker 45 Favorite pretty places?

Speaker 48 It depends where I am. I mean,

Speaker 48 know, in Washington, there's the Billy Goat Trail.

Speaker 48 In Warsaw,

Speaker 48 there's the kind of central park in the middle of town, Woženki Park. I have a house in Polish countryside, and we ride bikes a lot there.
I mean, that's really what I do

Speaker 48 when I want to switch.

Speaker 26 Is there Polish alcohol at the house at the countryside?

Speaker 48 So I am not a big vodka drinker, but there are other kinds of European alcohol. We have no tariffs in Poland that prevent the import of French wine.

Speaker 42 No tariffs preventing the French red wine from making it.

Speaker 22 The Billy Goat Trail is great.

Speaker 49 I did the Billy Goat Trail a couple of times, hungover when I was in Washington.

Speaker 47 It's very manageable for our DMV listeners, and maybe you'll see Ann Applebaum out there.

Speaker 58 And thank you so much.

Speaker 24 It's been so educational and helpful.

Speaker 29 And I hope you'll come back soon.

Speaker 16 Thanks a lot.

Speaker 30 Everybody else, we'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal.

Speaker 24 Have a wonderful Easter weekend.

Speaker 52 We'll talk to you soon. Peace.

Speaker 93 Should there at any time become a clear and present danger initiated about the radical elements threatening the operations of the government of the United States of America, members of this radical element shall be transported to detention centers until such time as their threat has been eliminated.

Speaker 93 Code King Alfred.

Speaker 93 Got the Uzi and the cannon, where the drama at? Oh, they asking for a favor.

Speaker 82 Where the commas at? Bueno, dos, thres, ayy, cuato cigo ses. Ayy.
We shall overcome.

Speaker 44 And if we don't, you better run.

Speaker 82 They coming with the sticks and the drums.

Speaker 82 The money make the band sound great.

Speaker 82 What's your rate? What's your rate? I'd rather do the flight than wear the cape.

Speaker 82 R.P. The SCP the great.

Speaker 82 SMG, we got it out the crate. SMG here.
Ring a bell and make a play.

Speaker 82 Like what it do, Bob. This a war zone, send them to the gulag.

Speaker 82 They was talking, now they talkin' Tupac.

Speaker 82 Now they JFK with the roof off. Like we shall overcome.

Speaker 82 And if we don't, you better run.

Speaker 82 They coming with the sticks and the drum.

Speaker 82 The money make the band sound great.

Speaker 44 Buh bubba.

Speaker 12 The Bullark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 94 Fall is the perfect time to explore California in a brand new Toyota hybrid with 17 fuel-efficient options like the stylish all-hybrid Camry, the Adventure-Ready RAV4 hybrid, or the spacious Grand Highlander hybrid.

Speaker 94 Toyota has the perfect ride for any adventure. Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, and an exclusive hybrid battery warranty.

Speaker 94 Visit your local Toyota dealer and Test Drive One today. Toyota, let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 95 This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart podcast. Hi, darlings.
I have a little seasonal secret to share. It's the new Kahlua Duncan Caramel Swirl.

Speaker 12 Kahlua, the beloved coffee liqueur, and Duncan, the beloved coffee destination, paired up to create a treat that is perfect for the holidays.

Speaker 95 So, go ahead, treat yourself. Cheers, my dears.

Speaker 96 Must be 21 or older to purchase. Drink responsibly.
Kahua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueur, 16% Alcohol by Volume, 32 Proof. Copyright 2025, Imported by the Kahlua Company, New York, New York.

Speaker 96 Dunkin' trademarks owned by DDIP Holder LLC, used under license. Copyright 2025, DDIP Holder LLC.

Speaker 74 Ah, greetings for my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 97 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money. Getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 48 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 74 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 93 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 97 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 4 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 98 N'1231, see paypal.com slash promo terms. Points can be renewed for cash more paying for subject to terms and approval.
PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.