Ruth Ben-Ghiat: There Is No Alternative

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 18 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 23 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 24 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 28 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 33 Hello, welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I am delighted to be here with Ruth Ben-Guillat, professor of history and Italian studies at NYU and MSNBC opinion columnist.

Speaker 33 Her latest book is Strongmen from Mussolini to the Present. She writes the substack lucid about authoritarianism and threats to democracy.
Kind of a relevant subject matter expertise.

Speaker 34 Ruth?

Speaker 35 Yes, I didn't plan it this way, but definitely I wrote Strongmen to warn Americans that it can happen here. It can happen anywhere.
I felt I had the skill set from studying fascism for so many years.

Speaker 35 So here I am.

Speaker 33 I know you've been on the Borg podcast before, but I'm not sure we know your origin story. How did this come to pass? Like, how was it that you found an interest in this?

Speaker 33 Were you just a Umberto Echo fan? Or what was it that led you to the study of fascism?

Speaker 35 Yeah, it's kind of strange because I grew up in Southern California in a beautiful town, Pacific Palisades on the ocean.

Speaker 35 So not a place where you think the threat of fascism is around, but it was a place where a lot of refugees from nazism like many years ago had settled like my town and towns around it like famous ones like thomas ma the writer and arnold schoenberg composer so the the grandkids and kids of some of these people were around and i i i knew some of them and i just got curious about why people

Speaker 35 you know what does it mean you had to flee and start over

Speaker 35 and so i was going to study germany and then somebody said i started grad school in history and someone said well why don't you do Italy? Because it's not studied as much as Nazism.

Speaker 35 And it lasted twice as long. And of course, I went to Rome.
I loved Rome. So it started there with me as a child also of immigrants.

Speaker 35 The closest family member was like a 12-hour flight, thinking about people who had to flee from their homes and come sometimes halfway around the world.

Speaker 35 And in fact, Strongman, a sub-theme of my book, is people going into exile. So this is something since I was a teenager, I've been thinking about.

Speaker 33 You know, we do a lot of this kind of the big picture threat assessment conversations around here, and I'm always sort of pulled both ways on this question. How do you assess the degree of the threat?

Speaker 33 I don't know if we're going back to the Bush era of yellow, orange, red homeland security threats. Like, how do you assess the degree of the threat?

Speaker 33 The biggest picture, and we'll kind of talk about some specifics.

Speaker 35 It can be hard because, like, if you think of authoritarian states today, like Viktor Orban's Hungary, he's been there since 2010.

Speaker 35 And so there are times like obviously Hitler with the Enabling Act or coups, a third of my book is about coups.

Speaker 35 And in our country, January 6th, they tried to accelerate history through a force, right? That's one line.

Speaker 35 But if that's not happening, and you still have a functioning democracy and you have an authoritarian threat from within, it can be hard to measure the threat.

Speaker 35 And that's why people, if you see something like an image, I've been on TV recently talking about this image of Biden on a pickup truck, life-size, as though he were a hostage, as though he'd been through a coup and something had happened to him.

Speaker 35 People can say, well, that is just a joke. Oh, you shouldn't take it seriously.
What I do is I look at the aggregate. There's all these things happening.
What are the big picture things?

Speaker 35 There's a concerted attempt to delegitimize democracy in our country coming from Trumpism, the GOP. So those kinds of things are how I approach this.

Speaker 33 What kind of comps do you look at? And obviously you've done the work in Italy. And so, you know, there's some Mussolini elements.
There's some Berlusconi elements to him. There's some Orban.

Speaker 33 You know, I know sometimes I like to kind of think through specifically the comps because claims of, oh, like democracy might end, right? Like some that sometimes feels abstract to people, right?

Speaker 33 It's like, is it really going to end? Like, you know, are we really going to have no more elections? That feels pretty unlikely. Is it possible? Sure.

Speaker 33 But, you know, what could it look like that are, you know, some examples of things that we've seen?

Speaker 35 I'm going to tell you an anecdote, but it's, you know, a story that I think about all the time from my research.

Speaker 35 And it's very important to go back and both interview people who live through these things. And I did that for my book, but just know the history.

Speaker 35 So Mussolini is actually more relevant than Hitler for our situation, for many situations today, because he was prime minister in a democracy for three years.

Speaker 35 And during that time, he chipped away at democratic rights. And then he was accused of murdering his chief political opponent, the head of the Socialist Party, who was much beloved.

Speaker 35 And he declared dictatorship to get out of an investigation that was probably going to send him to jail. So, as this happened, so he declares dictatorship.
It's January 1925.

Speaker 35 And immediately the state starts sending out, you know, the squadrons go, the black shirts go, but also the state, the military starts, you know, rounding people up.

Speaker 35 And there's a communist, all these communists go to a safe house because they're fleeing, right?

Speaker 35 And one of them said that people were lining up at La Scala Opera House and dictatorship had just been declared. Roundups were going on.

Speaker 35 They were lining up to see the opera like nothing had happened because they didn't see how it would affect them.

Speaker 35 And there are lots of stories like this.

Speaker 33 Yeah, and I wonder when you interview people, like living through that can kind of be disorienting, right?

Speaker 33 Because you do feel like, you know, you see a threat, it seems not great, but it's hard to calibrate, you know, and you're, and you, you know, rationalize, right? This isn't. Yeah.

Speaker 33 And it's like kind of the cliche line that this isn't going to happen here. This won't happen here.
But there's a reason that's cliche, right?

Speaker 33 Like that's a real feeling that people have, like that this can't happen here.

Speaker 35 Well, it's not just that it can't happen here, that it's also that it's not going to happen to me. Right.

Speaker 35 A big picture, a thing I see happening, which I personally find very unfortunate, is that a lot of the same conservative elites, the sectors of, to some extent media, but especially business and finance, the people who have always backed authoritarians right now in America, they're kind of arranging themselves in a self-protective manner in case Trump comes in.

Speaker 35 So that involves self-censorship. So not only they took away a lot of the asset managers, et cetera, they took away ESG because they were being under attack.

Speaker 35 Now it's DEI because the race war is being fought at the workplace as well as schools.

Speaker 35 So there's a kind of a bang in advance, which happens, and that's part of an accommodation that's done so that you're set up in case the autocrat comes in.

Speaker 35 And that's very unfortunate because what you could do, this is the window to turn it back.

Speaker 35 We have a window here to turn it back, but it means that these elites, they're called pillars of support in autocratic studies. These are the people who have real influence.
in society.

Speaker 35 And if they speak out, if they oppose, and it's actually in their interest to support democracy because the studies, you know, we don't hear enough about how in Turkey Erdogan is plundering the economy, how Russia is actually a kleptocracy.

Speaker 35 Terrible things happen to businesses, private businesses in autocracies, but we don't hear about that. Instead, people think they have to obey in advance.
And so that is happening here.

Speaker 35 And I'm quite disturbed about that.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I want to bring up two examples of that that have just popped up in the last day. The first one's a little bit of a silly example, but I think it's a silly example that's worth talking about.

Speaker 33 I don't know. Have you opened up Axius this morning?

Speaker 35 No, not this morning.

Speaker 33 We have a two-siren article by the head of of Axius, Jim Vandehei, Behind the Curtain, How Trump's Mind Works.

Speaker 33 The article, former President Trump thinks and talks and acts like no other politician in our lifetime. There is a Rosetta Stone that demystifies how his mind works, his closest friends tell us.

Speaker 33 His Spotify playlist

Speaker 33 goes on to talk about what we can learn from his Spotify playlist, that he likes things traditional. He likes famous people.
You know, he likes to control the volume. The songs.

Speaker 33 I mean, this is just preposterous. But the treatment of him, right? Like that is part of this, right?

Speaker 33 There's some more serious examples of the accommodationists, but right, like that journalists, you know, now, like mainstream journalists that are thinking, well, he might win again.

Speaker 33 Every day we can't talk about the threat of Trump's fascism. Like some days we got to keep it a little light so the team still talks to us.

Speaker 33 You know, we'll just do a little soft, a soft focus profile on his Spotify playlist today to make sure that, you know, his black shirts are happy, you know, the next time we call looking for a scoop.

Speaker 33 That's part of this, right? It's not just the Republican Party, but like they're all the elements of the establishment start to accommodate themselves to the possibility of him coming into power.

Speaker 35 They do. And I guess I would say

Speaker 35 one of the things that I have been able to do just personally because of my training, and it's a bit of a blessing and a curse, is that I started writing about Trump and company in 2015.

Speaker 35 And I was writing them for CNN and The Atlantic.

Speaker 35 And I did a couple of pieces, in particular one for CNN called Trump is Following the Authoritarian Playbook that was published right before he was inaugurated.

Speaker 35 And if you look at that today, from delegitimizing civil rights to threats on judges, I think everybody would find it unfortunately to be 100% accurate. And I don't have a crystal ball.

Speaker 35 It's that I've studied these people for years and Trump unfortunately, you know, matches in his psyche. The outcomes are different.
Of course, we're not going to have a North Korea or

Speaker 35 Nazi-style one-party state, but the personality traits are the same. And that's why in Strongman, that's documented from every point, every sector of corruption.

Speaker 33 You didn't need to look at a Spotify playlist to determine that he had some authoritarian tendencies. No.

Speaker 35 However, what's interesting is that when you look at we could call it the private lives of authoritarians, which I did, and it was one of the worst things to write about, especially as a female scholar, like Qaddafi in Libya, when he would go on trips abroad.

Speaker 35 He was a very showy person, and he had these female bodyguards. And that was kind of bait for the media, and they would focus on the glamour of these female bodyguards who were often very beautiful.

Speaker 35 Well, that was their day job. They were actually sexual slaves, and he had an entire system.

Speaker 35 It's as though Jeffrey Epstein was the head of state and used the secret police to scout women, recruit women.

Speaker 35 And so these bodyguards actually had to, they were kept in a compound and they had a night job. So the private lives of dictators, when you study them, actually reveal things that are interesting.

Speaker 35 Now, that's very different than a Spotify playlist, but it's all about context. It's all about context.

Speaker 35 So you can publish that article to be light, but I think that we always have to mention that Trump tried to overthrow the government.

Speaker 35 Like that gets left out, and that is to the interests of the right that's trying to rewrite this, you know, every which way.

Speaker 33 Yeah, and there are many things that are left out. I have one of my complaints always about the coverage of Trump is that, again, obviously there are limits to comparisons.

Speaker 33 Like he didn't have women in sexual slavery, but he did commit many, many sexual assaults. And I feel like a lot of times he gets back in, and those stories are considered old news, right?

Speaker 33 Like he won already. We talked about this already.
So we're not going to revisit it. We're not going to retell the stories.

Speaker 33 We're not going to contextualize policy discussions about women's rights or anything by reminding people about some reservos and all the other women who made credible threats against him.

Speaker 35 I talk about that in the book because what so that's like you could say that Gaddafi Mussolini also had a similar system. He didn't keep them captive.

Speaker 35 He just abused them, invited them in and abused them. But Berlusconi and Trump are examples.
There are these authoritarian personalities.

Speaker 35 And in general, they have a mania of control of of bodies. Now, that extends to locking people up where their machismo is part of their brand, which is true with Berlusconi and also Duterte.

Speaker 35 But Berlusconi, he owned all the private TV networks in Italy. So, he used, I call them pipelines of bodies.

Speaker 35 Basically, these men go, they go into side business gigs, businesses that allow them access to female bodies.

Speaker 35 So, Berlusconi had TV networks, and women would want to come on and become stars, but he also was interested in beauty pageants.

Speaker 35 Trump had Miss Universe, he had Trump models, and there's various stories about the different types of models, whether some of them escorts.

Speaker 35 So he also went into businesses that allowed him, and this is all documented, to go into changing rooms of Miss Universe and give him leverage, give him a pipeline of bodies.

Speaker 35 And this is relevant because it's part of a larger mania of controlling as many people as possible and needing the adulation and the power over these people. So that's how I link it in the book.

Speaker 35 So what happened before, and he actually did not get rid of Trump models until I think it was well into 2017. So when he came in as president, he still had it.
And that, I think, is relevant.

Speaker 33 It is relevant. I want to get into the accommodations a little bit more, but now that we're down this path, Bill Kristol is like, who put me on to the echo, the You Are Fascism essay.

Speaker 33 And it is like, when you read it, I encourage, we'll put it in the show notes. I encourage everyone to actually read it.
It's not that dense of a document.

Speaker 33 And he gives the characteristic traits of fascism. And some of them are not.
particularly relevant, but so many that are. And you look at it, number one is the culture of tradition.

Speaker 33 Number two is rejection of modernism. This is all right there with Make America Great Again.
Irrationalism is the third point. And we could go on and on.

Speaker 33 But the twelfth point to this is how the fascist mindset transitions itself to sexual matters, right?

Speaker 33 And he talks about machismo, disdain for women, and you know, giving a lot of credence to power dynamics with regards to women. And so it ties directly to the strong man.

Speaker 33 You are much more schooled in this than me, but you do see this across other fascistic, aspiring leaders, this trend.

Speaker 35 You do. And basically, if we get into the authoritarian gender politics, as I've analyzed it, it's a triad.

Speaker 35 Hypermasculinity, where the leader, and Duterte did this, also Bolsonaro did this, is boasting about their attraction to women, their sexual prowess.

Speaker 35 Sometimes certainly Duterte and Bolsonaro and Bellusconi especially boasted constantly about this.

Speaker 35 And that's one pillar. But it's linked to two others.

Speaker 35 Another is misogyny, which becomes institutionalized in bans on abortion, in, you know that something that flew under the radar during Trump's presidency, he partly decriminalized domestic violence.

Speaker 35 Meaning before it was a much broader category, Trump made it so that economic impoverishment, psychological harassment, everything short of physical violence was now decriminalized.

Speaker 35 The big concept is that we think of authoritarianism as controlling people, and it is, as with the misogyny, control of women's bodies, what they can do.

Speaker 35 But it's also, so some people have more controls. Other people, perhaps the male elite, have freedoms they never dreamed of to plunder.
And women's bodies is one area.

Speaker 35 So you've got misogyny, you've got hypermasculinity, and the third is, of course, homophobia.

Speaker 35 And what I found in my research is the true through line of authoritarian regimes and states is homophobia. Because there are even like Qaddafi early on, he was a left-wing revolutionary.

Speaker 38 He actually.

Speaker 33 I'm sorry, the Qaddafi homophobia thing is a little weird since he's so camp. I mean, there's like sometimes a thin line, as we saw in that Ron DeSantis ad, a thin line between homoeroticism and

Speaker 34 homophobia. But anyway, so

Speaker 35 in his case, he actually had male captives as well.

Speaker 33 That's not surprising.

Speaker 35 He went after men too. But that is the true through line of authoritarians.
All of them persecute in some form LGBTQ people.

Speaker 35 So, this triad of hypermasculinity, homophobia, and misogyny, they work together in authoritarian conditions.

Speaker 35 And think of Victor Orban, who banned gender studies in 2018, and then in 2020, you could not be legally defined anymore as an intersex or trans person.

Speaker 35 And so, that's the playbook that, of course, the GOP has been using with its own long history in our country of persecuting gays.

Speaker 35 So, the hypermasculinity can be seen in a larger framework, and that's how it affects the lives of everyday people when it becomes enshrined into law.

Speaker 33 On the misogyny line of this, I mean, you have, it's not just abortion, but you have the birth control and the contraception push that's happening.

Speaker 33 We had Charlie Kirk yesterday talking about how birth control screws up female brains, and that's part of the Project 2025 plan. That's all part of the same kind of control ethos.

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Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 18 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 23 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 24 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 28 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 40 This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast.

Speaker 41 Hello, darlings. I have a little seasonal secret to share.

Speaker 42 It's the new Kahlua Duncan Caramel Swirl.

Speaker 45 Kahlua, the beloved coffee liqueur, and Duncan, the beloved coffee destination, paired up to create a tree that is perfect for the holidays.

Speaker 39 Imagine rich, velvety caramel swirling through bold coffee flavor, kissed with that signature Kahlua warmth.

Speaker 53 It's like wrapping yourself in a cashmere blanket, but for your taste buds.

Speaker 56 Whether you're hosting a holiday brunch, trimming the tree, or just escaping your relatives for a moment of peace, this is your go-to indulgence and what your cocktail cart has been missing.

Speaker 37 Kahlua and Duncan, a pairing so perfect, it's like me in a well-organized pantry.

Speaker 51 So go ahead, treat yourself.

Speaker 62 After all, the holidays are about joy, celebration, and the little caramel swirl never hurt anyone.

Speaker 40 Cheers, my dears.

Speaker 64 Must be 21 or older to purchase. Drink responsibly.

Speaker 65 Kalua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueurs, 16% alcohol by volume, 32 proof.

Speaker 66 Copyright 2025 imported by the Kalua Company, New York, New York.

Speaker 68 Duncan trademarks owned by DDIP Holder LLC.

Speaker 69 Used under license. Copyright 2025, DDIP Holder LLC.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 18 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 23 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 24 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 28 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 33 You've mentioned Berlusconi a couple times.

Speaker 33 I just wonder if you have any other thoughts on the comparisons there and the threats, like looking at it through that frame, because I do think it's more graspable, right?

Speaker 33 I'm always cautious to be like, it's Hitler, right? Because, you know, sometimes people then turn off their brain. It's like, it's not going to be Hitler.
We're not going to.

Speaker 33 But like Berlusconi is real. It's modern and there are a lot of comparisons.
I'm just wondering if there are anything else that stands out to you in that comp.

Speaker 35 I went to Italy. This is back in the 90s as a student.
I was finishing my degree in postdoc, early, early postdoc.

Speaker 35 And I happened to get there right when Berlusconi had his first government. He never gets taken seriously because being a clown was part of his distraction from his corruption.

Speaker 35 He was like a total clown. It was like an outrage every day, which can be familiar to people in America.
Yes. But what did he do? He broke the taboo on having neo-fascists in government.

Speaker 35 In Europe, nobody had done this for a very good reason. So here, along comes Berlusconi, who was a billionaire, a sports team owner.
You know, he was known for other things.

Speaker 35 He goes into politics and he makes his own party, Forzitalia, which is, he gives it the name of a sports slogan, so very popular. And he allies with the neo-fascist party.

Speaker 35 which nobody had done before. He brings them into government.
And so the big point here is he normalized far-right extremism. He made it acceptable to consider them as governing partners.

Speaker 35 So he did in Italy what Trump is doing later on. Here we have, though, a giant party, which is already a very old party, which has remade itself fusing with extremists.

Speaker 35 And there's very, all kinds of interesting data points.

Speaker 35 on how you know like from two years ago one in five local and state GOP officials had either affiliations or sympathies with, you know, proud boys, oath keepers.

Speaker 35 So there's been this normalization of extremism. So it's a different setup because we only have the two parties and it was already a huge establishment party providing us with presidents.

Speaker 35 There, you had a party that had been in parliament but would never be in the government because it was fascists and Italy had fascist dictatorship, very loaded. But Berlusconi made it acceptable.

Speaker 35 And so that's how we get Giorgia Meloni as a prime minister today. And Berlusconi started her career by making her a minister of his last government.
She was minister of youth.

Speaker 35 So it takes a long time. And when I saw this happening, it like totally changed my work because I had been thinking of fascism as something dead, right?

Speaker 33 History project.

Speaker 35 Yes. Yeah.
I'm a historian. It was, and then I was like, whoa, so I started paying attention to the memory of fascism.

Speaker 35 And today, so it totally changed my career being around Berlusconi's, you know, normalizations. And that's how I was able to see so early what Trump was doing.

Speaker 35 And so 2015, I wrote a piece about Bannon, like that his white nationalism was going to become a threat because he was in with Trump.

Speaker 35 And so even people who seem clownish or remote or they are very, very important for understanding what's happening to us today.

Speaker 33 Yeah, the parallel here,

Speaker 33 just listening to you talk about it, to me, as somebody that had been inside the Republican Party, is not that

Speaker 33 he brought in a new party into this is like the fascist party or something like that, but there is a direct parallel, which is the staffing.

Speaker 34 Yes.

Speaker 33 Like the types of people. And so Trump can be a clownish front man, and he can have other businessmen.

Speaker 33 Like you hear this now, like he wants the Treasury Secretary to be John Paulson or some serious businessman. He can bring in a couple other serious seeming faces.

Speaker 33 He did this with the military leaders in his first administration, hopefully his only.

Speaker 33 But then underneath that, you have people that never would have had jobs.

Speaker 36 That's it.

Speaker 33 You know, the Jeffrey Clark, the Cash Patels, the Stephen Millers, like the idea that in a Marco Ruby administration, these people would have all been just totally cast aside in a back corner somewhere or been working for some backbench congressman or been working for Paul Gosau, right?

Speaker 33 Like the idea that they would be in decision-making positions of power would have been crazy. And now Trump has empowered the most extreme, you know, the most like what is banned?

Speaker 33 Low life, low-life, yeah, low-life, life, deplorable types, right? And so that is kind of how this fusion has worked for him, right?

Speaker 33 It's been within the Republican Party, but he's taken that faction that would have never been in power

Speaker 33 and empowered them.

Speaker 35 Yeah, this is out of the fascist playbook and all these states. Because, first of all, the leader encourages people to be their worst selves.

Speaker 35 So even people who used to be fairly law-abiding, they have license and permission to do things they never dreamed they could do. Cue in William Barr, you know, Graham, all the people.

Speaker 35 And then the leader humiliates them in public once in a while to keep them in line. So that's one dynamic.
The other is it's very sad.

Speaker 35 You need lawless people to have the culture of autocracy, the bureaucratic and the legal culture of autocracy. So I added a corruption chapter to my book to study this stuff.
And it's very dismaying.

Speaker 35 And you saw I have Trump in it, you know. But everywhere you have the most lawless, extremist, brutal people whose careers flourish.

Speaker 35 In Italy and in Nazi Germany, this was called the little Mussolinis and the Little Hitlers. And often these people are hated.

Speaker 35 Everyone still loves the Duce. They still love the Führer, but they hated these people because

Speaker 35 they were brutal.

Speaker 35 Actually, he's like what Hannah Arendt called the desk killer, the kind of bloodless bureaucrat in the suit who goes into the office every day and kind of drafts legislation that's going to lead to a bad end for many, many people.

Speaker 35 Because you need three levels for autocracy, and the GOP has been working on all of them.

Speaker 35 You need the foot soldiers, you know, the people who attack the Capitol, the thugs, the militia members, all these people. And I'm going to include constitutional sheriffs, even though

Speaker 35 these are just thugs who are lawless, and they need the lawless.

Speaker 33 And the thugs now have their own logos.

Speaker 33 Keeper skull and all that.

Speaker 35 And in our country, we have an extraordinary threat because we have tolerated all these people in ways that other countries in peacetime don't have all this.

Speaker 35 It makes no sense to have all these militias and the gun. It goes back to guns, of course.
So we're different than other places.

Speaker 35 And then you need the bureaucracy, and that's what Project 2025 is about. And note, they chose a very neutral name, but it's creating a legal culture for the state to come.

Speaker 35 And that's why they have, you know, they're vetting people politically, just like in an authoritarian regime, you know, to make sure they have the right people.

Speaker 35 So there's going to be a big purge of the bureaucracy. So you get people who are already corrupt.
Many of them will be already lawless. They don't respect the rule of law.

Speaker 35 And then they'll be the perfect people to do what Trump needs them to do. And the final is that you have the inner circle of the leader.
And these are sycophants. These are, you know, people who

Speaker 35 should be nowhere near power. and yet they're perfect.
Or they have some connections. Like if you go back and analyze Trump's cabinet, who was in it, very interesting.
You've got like Wilbur Ross.

Speaker 35 We never talk about him, but he was Secretary of Commerce. He forgot to mention during his confirmation process that he was in business with Putin's son-in-law.

Speaker 35 So every one of those people was chosen for their ties to an autocrat or for their corruption.

Speaker 33 Okay. It's actually very clear, right?

Speaker 33 Like these different concentric circles and how Trump uses it to gain power and how he uses it also to project to folks that aren't paying close attention to this sort of thing, like an unscary

Speaker 33 persona, right?

Speaker 33 One that's like, oh, we can't believe that he could do that because he uses these other concentric circles, these other layers of power just to execute the stuff that would make people afraid, that would make people cringe.

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Speaker 40 This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast.

Speaker 41 Hello, darlings. I have a little seasonal secret to share.

Speaker 42 It's the new Kahlua Duncan caramel swirl.

Speaker 45 Kahlua, the beloved coffee liqueur, and Duncan, the beloved coffee destination, paired up to create a tree that is perfect for the holidays.

Speaker 39 Imagine rich, velvety caramel swirling through bold coffee flavor, kissed with that signature Kahlua warmth.

Speaker 53 It's like wrapping yourself in a cashmere blanket, but for your taste buds.

Speaker 56 Whether you're hosting a holiday brunch, trimming the tree, or just escaping your relatives for a moment of peace, this is your go-to indulgence and what your cocktail cart has been missing.

Speaker 60 Kahlua and Duncan, a pairing so perfect, it's like me in a well-organized pantry.

Speaker 51 So go ahead, treat yourself.

Speaker 62 After all, the holidays are about joy, celebration, and the little caramel swirl never hurt anyone.

Speaker 40 Cheers, my dears.

Speaker 64 Must be 21 or older to purchase. Drink responsibly.

Speaker 65 Kalua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueurs, 16% Alcohol by Volume, 32 Proof.

Speaker 66 Copyright 2025 imported by the Kalua Company, New York, New York.

Speaker 68 Duncan trademarks owned by DDIP Holder LLC.

Speaker 65 Used under license.

Speaker 69 Copyright 2025, DDIP Holder LLC.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 18 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 23 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 24 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure.

Speaker 29 The past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 33 When we were talking earlier, you were talking about how people accommodate themselves because in case he takes power, they want to be able to, you know, have a place for themselves.

Speaker 33 And that's pernicious. But we've also seen in the Republican Party people that aren't really ever going to have a place in power, but just are unwilling to fight, right?

Speaker 33 Unwilling to take the heat that comes with challenging Trump. And you mentioned The Atlantic earlier, which you'd written for, which is much more lucid, to borrow a phrase, about the potential threat.

Speaker 33 And the editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote this week about a study in Senate cowardice. Republicans like Rob Portman could have ended Trump's political career, but they chose not to.

Speaker 33 You know, talk about that group, which I think is the group that makes me the maddest, but that gets off the hook the most, which are the Republicans who know better, who are not in any of those three concentric circles that you talked about, but aren't doing anything to undermine the power of the people inside those circles or those levels.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I see this as a moral collapse, a collective moral collapse. And the collective frame is important because we know that what matters most for people's actions is that there's some kind of unity.

Speaker 35 They don't feel that they're alone.

Speaker 35 And one of the saddest missed points off the Trump Highway to Hell, the missed exit, is that these people, maybe on January 7th, and some of them did, and then they retracted, you know, they went back on their words.

Speaker 35 They could have banded together and said, this isn't who we are. I mean, after a coup attempt that cost, you know, the lives of people.
They would have had the public probably on their side.

Speaker 35 And they didn't. And they've missed the exits at every moment.
Now, why have they missed the exits? Definitely, Trump has mobilized threats against them.

Speaker 35 That's been going on since his first impeachment, where Republicans who voted to impeach him had to buy body armor and get security.

Speaker 35 And there's the interaction with the thugs, right, who have been the extremists. And he keeps them, right? He keeps them foaming at the mouth through the right-wing media ecosystem.

Speaker 35 But it's also, yes, taking the easy path.

Speaker 35 So that's why I think it's very important to make outcome arguments to these people and to the public that ultimately you know, a little pain at the beginning is going to avoid a lot of pain further on for business, for prosperity.

Speaker 35 So I'm trying to speak to business people, also pointing out that, you know, you see Erdogan, he looks harmless. Well, he's not harmless to business.
And this goes back to our point where people think

Speaker 35 not only is not going to be bad.

Speaker 33 The economy also is not crushing it in Hungary right now either.

Speaker 35 No, it's a disaster. It's a disaster.
And Putin is only, you know, it's a kleptocracy. These places do not function.
They're totally dysfunctional.

Speaker 35 And I tried to show that in my book that, you know, how Trump kept hiring and firing people and there was a 68% turnover. They're all like this.

Speaker 35 We just don't hear about it while it's going on because of censorship. And so that's very sad.
So it's larger than the GOP, but they all know better with very few exceptions.

Speaker 35 And so it's cowardice, it's moral collapse, and it's a lack of strategy. Because if they all banded together and made a big statement behind Liz Cheney, that would, you know, move the needle.

Speaker 33 Even forget behind Liz Cheney, because I always used to say this. I'm no fan of Ron DeSantis.
I think that he has some autocratic tendencies as well.

Speaker 33 But they could have all just banded behind Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 33 They didn't actually need to go full ball, right? Like that would have been a possibility.

Speaker 33 Had they just convicted Donald Trump in February of 2021 and united behind Ron DeSantis, he would have won the primary, and that's where we would be. And we would have other threats.

Speaker 33 There'd be certainly things that we could debate and be upset about, but the acute threat of Trump would be over. And it would have been better for the Republican Party.

Speaker 33 It probably would have been worse for us. You know what what I mean?

Speaker 33 But for the Republican Party's institution, if you're just looking at the Republican Party and saying, well, what would have been the best to preserve its own power?

Speaker 33 Getting rid of them actually would have been the best thing to preserve its own power. But they didn't have the courage to do it.

Speaker 35 No, and then you can get into a situation that the party of Berlusconi got into. And the acronym for this is Tina.
There is no alternative.

Speaker 35 Because these guys can't hear any talk of successor or alternative because of the personality cult.

Speaker 35 We haven't talked about that yet, but the personality cult thing, which all of the Republicans are bowing to. You can't talk about anybody else.

Speaker 35 I mean, Nikki Haley persisted, but you can't talk about anyone else.

Speaker 35 So if he starts to crash and burn, or if people no longer want to be part of him, associated with him, there's nowhere for them to go. And so it's Tina.
There is no alternative.

Speaker 35 And in fact, even though Mike Pence is going out on a relative limb saying he's not endorsing Trump, who is he endorsing? He's not going to be endorsing Biden or RFK Jr. So the system is stuck.

Speaker 35 The system is actually in a stalemate as far as Republicans are concerned.

Speaker 33 We have a prime example of that this week where we had a little bit of courage shown by somebody in maybe unexpected quarters, but still succumbing to the Tina conundrum.

Speaker 33 Let's listen to Karl Rove here this week.

Speaker 70 I worked in that building as a young man. To me, the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a jewel of the Constitution.

Speaker 70 And what those people did when they violently attacked the Capitol in order to stop a constitutionally mandated meeting of the Congress to accept the results of the Electoral College is a stain on our history.

Speaker 70 And every one of those sons of b ⁇ who did that, we ought to find them,

Speaker 70 try them, and send them to jail.

Speaker 70 And

Speaker 70 one of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said, I'm going to pardon those people because they're hostages. No, they're not.
They're thugs.

Speaker 70 There were people, some of them had automatic weapons at a hotel in Virginia hoping to be able to be called up. We had people saying, where's Nancy Pelosi?

Speaker 70 We had people who were taking desks and sitting at the desk of the Speaker of the House and attempting to find people in order to bring them to justice and saying to the, yelling at the police, kill them, kill them all.

Speaker 70 And so why Trump has done this is beyond me.

Speaker 70 If he had said, you know what, I trust our jury system, I trust law enforcement, anybody who assaulted the Capitol ought to be, I mean, he said it once or twice, but now he's got, he's appearing at a video with people who assaulted police officers with an intent to take the Capitol by force.

Speaker 33 He's so close. Really good, powerful.
Thank you is what we're asking for. But then why Trump has done this is beyond me.
Why is he sticking by them? It's beyond me. Ruth, educate Karl Rove.

Speaker 33 Answer that question. Answer that rhetorical forum.

Speaker 35 Well, yeah, the why he's done it is to have an authoritarian takeover. That's my, I feel my job is to like go there because it's, it's backed up by research.

Speaker 35 You know, one of the saddest things, we talk about moral collapse. I've never been a Republican.
I never will be, but it's very painful for me as an American.

Speaker 35 The burying of January 6th as a violent act and its conversion into kind of a patriotic thing has meant that these men and women who were serving the country who had to run for their lives, imagine their families on that day, their children, have had to forget

Speaker 35 to the public, have had to silence themselves and, quote, forget that this trauma ever happened to them.

Speaker 35 So authoritarianism asks you not only to betray your neighbors and your teachers and whoever, it asks you to betray yourself.

Speaker 35 And I can't think of a better example of these people who running for their lives. Some of them, we have studies, right? It was 30 seconds more and they would have been in the hands of these thugs.

Speaker 35 And they're not allowed to talk about it or they don't allow themselves to talk about it. And that's why all the work I'm doing is like, we can't forget.

Speaker 35 Because in other countries, when we forget, we give into these revisionist narratives. We get myths of autocracy that prop them up.

Speaker 33 And that's why it's so refreshing to hear even people like Karl Rove talk about it. Because you're like, yes, just say it.
Just say it. Why isn't everybody saying it? It's so nice.
Okay. Final topic.

Speaker 33 We've had a little internal dialogue here at the bulwark. Jonathan Lass wrote earlier this week that Trump, if he wins, will run again in 2028.

Speaker 33 And the Republican Party and Supreme Court will go along with it. On the next level podcast, people can go listen.
We had a very lengthy discussion about

Speaker 33 maybe JVL is a little authoritative in that claim. I certainly think it's possible.
And I think the fact that it's possible is insane enough, right?

Speaker 33 And, you know, so we don't need to get in the prediction business. We can just be in the probability business.
But what do you think? Your crystal ball from 2015 was ended up being pretty clear.

Speaker 33 If Donald Trump gets in again, what do things look like from there, from your perspective?

Speaker 35 Well, unless there's a natural cause for him, he will never leave because he cannot leave.

Speaker 35 Because the purpose of authoritarianism for these strongmen is to be protected, allow themselves to protect themselves from jail. It's really simple.

Speaker 35 In fact, regular politicians politicians who have charges against them, investigations, they don't want to run for office.

Speaker 35 But strongmen, and you can add in Netanyahu, Putin, Berlusconi, and Trump all ran for office repeatedly while they had investigations or charges against them because they have to get into power and arrange government to protect themselves.

Speaker 35 So the whole deep state thing, they said they're going to, you know, even Project 25, these are the desk killers who are going to kill off the DOJ.

Speaker 35 They're going to kill off this, that, and the other, all the agencies that can harm him. So once he gets in, he's going to legalize crimes.
He's telling us that, right? He wants immunity.

Speaker 35 And so he has to stay there. Yes.

Speaker 33 And he's going to legalize other people's crimes, too. He'll pardon them, yeah.

Speaker 35 That's right. And let Putin does whatever he wants, et cetera.

Speaker 35 It's like global disaster. But he'll never leave because he can't leave.
Otherwise, he'll have to pay consequences, and so will all of his collaborators.

Speaker 33 This is the lack of imagination that the Donald Trump defenders have. This was my point yesterday.

Speaker 33 I don't exactly know what will happen if he gets in again, but I do know this, which is that if he is in again, he will do more crimes.

Speaker 33 And that the Democratic Party and that the people who still believe in the rule of law in this country will try to stop him and will try to punish him and hold him accountable for those crimes.

Speaker 33 And he will not allow himself to be held accountable.

Speaker 35 That's right. And if you know how they operate, I just found an interview I did with Salon on December 20th, 2020.

Speaker 35 And I said that Trump's coup is not over. I felt like something was going to happen.
And so that was like right before January 6th.

Speaker 35 And then I had to turn in my book to the publisher in the late summer of 2020, but I said that I didn't think he would leave quietly. So none of this for me is a surprise.

Speaker 35 And you can kind of predict sometimes what they will do based on what others do in such circumstances.

Speaker 33 Ruth Ben Giel at RBG has the Substack newsletter Lucid. I do hope you come back to the Bulwark podcast.
It's not maybe the most uplifting space, but we have to have these conversations. And I'm happy.

Speaker 33 No, no, no. I'm happy that you are just as candid and as lucid as we need in this moment.
So thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 35 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 33 All right. We'll be back here tomorrow with the weekend Bulwark pod.
We'll see you all then. Peace.

Speaker 33 You say that you want to go to a land

Speaker 33 not so far away.

Speaker 33 How are we supposed to get there with the way

Speaker 33 that we're living today?

Speaker 33 You talk lots about

Speaker 33 God,

Speaker 33 freedom comes from the calm. But that's not what

Speaker 33 this bitch wants.

Speaker 33 Not what I want at all. I want money,

Speaker 33 power

Speaker 33 and glory.

Speaker 33 I want money

Speaker 33 and all your power.

Speaker 33 All your glory.

Speaker 33 I wanna take you for all that you got.

Speaker 33 Oh,

Speaker 33 light

Speaker 33 who we are.

Speaker 33 I'm gonna take them for all that they

Speaker 33 The Bullworth Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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