Anne Applebaum: The Irreparable Damage of a Second Term

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Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 3 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 11 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 2 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 8 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 14 Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Mona Charon, sitting in for the vacationing Charlie Sykes.
I host a different bulwark podcast that you may not know about.

Speaker 14 It's called Beg to Differ, and it comes out every Friday.

Speaker 14 We do a panel discussion where we have conversations, civil conversations, may I add, from the center-left to center-right perspective with a panel of four regulars, Bill Galston, Damon Linker, Linda Chavez, and me.

Speaker 14 And then every week we have a guest. So I recommend that you check us out, Beg to Differ.
It's a good way to start your weekend.

Speaker 14 Well, today I am delighted to welcome as the guest on this podcast, Anne Applebaum.

Speaker 14 She is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of a number of important books, including Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine, highly relevant to events now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, a history, and most recently, Twilight of Democracy, the seductive lure of authoritarianism.

Speaker 14 Anne, thanks so much for joining me. You're in Warsaw, right?

Speaker 15 I am in Warsaw. I just arrived, actually.

Speaker 14 Well, so I also should tell our listeners that your husband has now taken the post of foreign minister of Poland, a post that he held before in the interregnum where there was a hostile government.

Speaker 14 He was out of government, but now he is back in. So that's Radek Sikorski.
So we should just acknowledge up front that he is involved in the Polish government.

Speaker 14 And I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about the Polish election and Poland's situation because it is a rare bright spot on the international scene at the moment where an authoritarian-leaning government was overthrown.

Speaker 14 So tell us about that election. And if you could set the scene.

Speaker 14 I don't want to go too deeply into it because we don't really have time, but just set the scene for what happened in the wake of the Cold War in Poland's politics and how the previous government was able to come to power and what they did with that power.

Speaker 15 Right. So 30 years of Polish history and

Speaker 15 less. Is that what I get? I know, sorry.

Speaker 15 So after 1989, Poland had a series of democratic governments, some more right-wing, some more left-wing. Some quite, you know, they had quite radical differences with one another.

Speaker 15 But the, you know, there was a, there was an electoral system that everybody respected and there were different kinds of media that were competing, you know, more or less.

Speaker 15 What happened in 2015 was that a political party won power. It had actually had briefly been in office previously.
And I should say,

Speaker 15 just if you want to know how complicated it is, my husband was actually briefly in that government the first time that this party called the Law and Justice Party was in office.

Speaker 15 They had a kind of mixed coalition government, and he was in that. Later, he resigned.
But the second time they came to power, they were determined to make sure that they would never lose again.

Speaker 15 And so, this will sound familiar to those of you who know Hungarian history or Turkish history. They put pressure on the judicial system.
They tried to eliminate independent judges.

Speaker 15 They put a lot of pressure on media. They transformed the state media into a kind of propaganda tube.

Speaker 15 But they also, through games with advertising and political pressure, they tried to destroy the independent media as well. They did whatever they could to win the election, including

Speaker 15 transferring millions and millions of dollars, zloties, worth of state funding to their own campaign. They did it via these kind of fake foundations.

Speaker 15 Really, every rule they could break short of actually changing the way votes are counted, and that was hard to change because the law in Poland says that it has to be a kind of cross-party group that counts the votes.

Speaker 15 They tried to win that way. And they did not win.
And the reason they didn't win was because of a massive and unexpected turnout.

Speaker 15 And the turnout was very heavy in cities, which is, you know, Poland has the same kind of politics as the U.S. in that sense that the cities are,

Speaker 15 I would not say left-wing, that's actually, it's not really left-right in Poland.

Speaker 15 It's more that the cities believe in European integration and they want Poland to be, you know, an open economy and an open society.

Speaker 15 And then they are put against the countryside, which turned out to be more susceptible to the former ruling party. But there was a massive turnout.
Lots of young people voted.

Speaker 15 The numbers for young women, I don't remember the exact figure now, but they went up by something like 15 or 20%. I mean, it was just a huge leap.

Speaker 15 And because of the very large turnout, a coalition, which I should say is a center-left, center-right, and kind of center-center coalition of three parties, formed a majority.

Speaker 15 And although it took a long time for the power handover to happen because the former ruling party did what they could to string it out, they finally formed the government last week.

Speaker 15 And somewhat, I should say, surprisingly, my husband is now the foreign minister again.

Speaker 14 Well, congratulations about that. Now, there are some similarities.
Obviously, there are major differences, but there are some similarities in Polish politics and American politics.

Speaker 14 And one of them is on the question of abortion.

Speaker 14 So I'm wondering what your evaluation is of how much of a role did that play in the big turnout and how much of it was real concern about the drift toward anti-democratic, anti-EU policies of the Law and Justice Party?

Speaker 15 So I would say that the democracy language in Poland, I'll get to abortion in a second, did work and it was effective because the three opposition parties related it to real life.

Speaker 15 You know, so why, you know, why was Poland cut out of a European funding scape? It's because we don't have democracy. Why do the courts, are the courts so dysfunctional? It's because.

Speaker 14 Let me interrupt really quick and just have you explain. It's because the EU imposed sanctions on the previous government.

Speaker 15 Yes, because Poland didn't meet the standards for rule of law inside the EU, the EU didn't give Poland some funding.

Speaker 15 And that was funding that would have gone to local councils and to build roads and so on. And abortion was one of those issues that was related directly to essentially they changed the abortion law.

Speaker 15 Poland had a very strict abortion law. Actually, abortion was illegal in Poland, but there were some exceptions, including for exceptions for the life of the mother and for very damaged fetuses.

Speaker 15 And they changed that law to make it even harder. So even in the case of when the mother's life is in danger and the fetus is in danger, it was very hard to get an abortion.

Speaker 15 And we had in Poland a couple of instances of women dying.

Speaker 15 And one very prominent one, you don't want all the details because they're horrible, but as she was waiting for the fetus to die essentially so that she could have an abortion, she died instead because she got sepsis.

Speaker 15 And there were a couple of cases like that and they led to really big nationwide demonstrations.

Speaker 15 And for a lot of young people and I think a lot of young women, this was their first involvement in politics.

Speaker 15 You know, they'd been apathetic, they didn't take part, and this was where they understood that this, you know, the former ruling party's capture of the court system, the way they were running the country, had caused these deaths of young women.

Speaker 15 And it turned out to be, I wouldn't say it was the only issue, but it was a very important issue, partly because it showed the way in which stuff that seems very vague, you know, rule of law arguments or independent judiciary, you know, how does that relate to my life?

Speaker 14 it showed actually that it can relate directly to your life and it can you know kill you and so it was a very big issue as a part of a range of issues that people were dissatisfied with so i think there's a certain amount of continuity tell me if i'm right between the previous government and the incoming government on policy toward ukraine I mean, Poland has taken a huge number of refugees, has been unbelievably supportive for obvious reasons, worry about Russia.

Speaker 14 How How will policy toward Ukraine change, if at all?

Speaker 15 So you're right, there will be continuity. The previous government, after a little bit of hesitation, became very gung-ho on helping Ukraine.
They were an important part of the NATO coalition.

Speaker 15 They've been a very important part of logistics, of getting weapons to Ukraine.

Speaker 15 And yes, there were a lot of refugees who came to Poland, although I should say many of them have either moved on, gone back, or been absorbed.

Speaker 15 We don't have refugee camps in Poland or anything like that. People, you know, you hear Ukrainian in the street, you hear people working in shops and so on.

Speaker 15 But I don't think it's a very difficult problem for Poland in that sense, at least not in most of the country.

Speaker 15 The difference now will be that it will be better and easier for Poland to make the case for Ukraine in other parts of Europe.

Speaker 15 I mean, so a Poland that is cooperative, pro-European, democratic, and not constantly trying to, I don't know, use,

Speaker 15 you know, be difficult in foreign policy, create arguments, you know, create conflict. A Poland like that will find find it easier to help contribute to the coalition around Ukraine.

Speaker 15 I really do think that they will find it easier to make the case because simply by, you know, the previous government, for example, had a long-running argument with Germany.

Speaker 15 They used in their domestic politics, they were very anti-German. They used a lot of anti-German language.

Speaker 15 This government won't do that, you know, and that will immediately make it easier to talk to Germany about Ukraine and talk to ordinary Germans too.

Speaker 15 So the previous government on its way out also, during the election campaign, picked up on some. There have been conflicts between Polish and Ukrainian farmers and Polish and Ukrainian truckers.

Speaker 15 And they kind of, instead of resolving those problems, they

Speaker 15 exacerbated them. And I think you will now find a different kind of attitude.
I mean, there will be trouble.

Speaker 15 There will be difficulties between the two countries like there are between neighbors all the time. But instead of using those as a lever to

Speaker 15 create popular outrage, I think they'll try and solve the problem. But I don't foresee a break in the wrong direction.
And I think on the contrary, you'll see more support for ukraine

Speaker 14 so despite the presence of erdogan and viktor oroban in the nato alliance in some ways it's stronger than ever we have new two new members we have the changing government in poland which strengthens nato and then we have the prospect of donald trump potentially being re-elected in the u.s

Speaker 14 You had a great piece in the Atlantic about this.

Speaker 14 I think a lot of people have not thought through exactly what it would mean if Trump were to be re-elected for the NATO alliance and not just for the NATO alliance, but for American world leadership in general.

Speaker 14 So you quoted him in this piece saying, I don't give a shit about NATO. And that was conveyed to you by John Bolton.

Speaker 14 who also said that the damage Trump did in his first term was reparable, but the damage he would do in a second is irreparable.

Speaker 14 So let's talk a little bit about the threat to NATO, Trump's views on NATO, et et cetera.

Speaker 15 So Trump's attitude to alliances of all kinds is transactional. And really his attitude is not what's good for America, but what's good for me? What's good for me, Donald Trump?

Speaker 15 And in that sense, he does bear some resemblance to autocratic leaders in other parts of the world.

Speaker 15 You know, I'll have a good relation with Saudi Arabia because then my son-in-law can do deals with Saudi Arabia. You know, I will have a good relation with Erdogan because then my hotels

Speaker 15 will get special deals in Turkey.

Speaker 15 I mean, I'm not saying that's exactly what happened i'm just saying those are examples that's how he would think about it he wouldn't think you know over the long term america builds alliances the alliances help america have you know a kind of outsized role in the world it helps american companies to operate in friendly countries he doesn't really care about any of that you know and i think his attitude to nato is part of that you know it's it comes from a very deep isolationism and this idea that america doesn't need any allies we you know we can just do deals with whoever we need to at a given moment what's dangerous about nato what's specific about it, you know, there is a NATO treaty, which is very brief.

Speaker 15 I advise everyone to read it. It's very, very short.
And in the treaty, there's a famous article called Article 5. And this Article 5 just says that

Speaker 15 members of the alliance are obliged to come to the aid of other members of the alliance in case one of them is attacked. And it's not specific about what they have to do.

Speaker 15 I mean, come to the aid could just mean shout very loudly. You know, I mean, it doesn't say you have to bring in

Speaker 15 your troops. But the implication is that there will be collective defense.
And so, why didn't the Soviet Union ever invade West Germany during the Cold War?

Speaker 15 It was because they knew there was this premise of collective defense. If they did that, other NATO members would, especially the United States, would come.
Why don't they invade Poland now?

Speaker 15 Poland is helping Ukraine. Weapons are going through Poland to Ukraine.
It's because it's presumed that if they invaded Poland, there would be an American, you know, NATO-wide response.

Speaker 15 All that Trump has to do in order to eliminate that expectation is say, I won't do it. So, you know, the treaty has been ratified.
You know, lots of people, you know, the Senate would back it.

Speaker 15 You know, I'm sure American military leaders would back it. You know, if Trump were to announce a withdrawal from the treaty, there would be a big political fuss and so on.
All that is true.

Speaker 15 But the impact of the treaty is actually, the important impact of it is psychological. You know, the U.S.
is a reliable partner. It would aid its allies.

Speaker 15 Once nobody thinks the U.S. will aid its allies, that could have consequences.
It could have consequences, you know, for Poland, for the Baltic states, for Germany.

Speaker 15 It could also have consequences in Taiwan. So, you know, if the U.S.

Speaker 15 doesn't believe in collective defense anymore and Trump isn't going to come to anybody's aid, then they're definitely not going to come to the aid of Taiwan or South Korea or Japan.

Speaker 15 You know, if you look around the world at all the countries that rely on the U.S.

Speaker 15 as a kind of backup security guarantee, then all those countries would instantly be in trouble. And it is very, very dangerous and possibly very destabilizing.

Speaker 15 I mean, you know, we could get lucky and maybe, well, it wouldn't happen, but the possibility is suddenly much higher that there would be a much larger scale war in Europe and possibly a war in Asia.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it's so important this point you make about the psychological impact, because the treaty really is dependent upon psychology.

Speaker 14 It's dependent upon the assumption that we are coming to the aid of our allies. And if there is any doubt about that in the mind of an adversary, it undermines the alliance from the get-go.

Speaker 14 There has to be that assumption.

Speaker 14 I will note that just recently in the defense authorization bill, there was an amendment tacked onto it by Marco Rubio and a Democratic senator where they said, you know, no president can withdraw from NATO without the approval of, I think, two-thirds of the Congress, et cetera.

Speaker 14 So they're trying to nip that in the bud, in a sense. And that's great.

Speaker 14 But as you point out, that doesn't solve the problem of the intent that if Trump is the president, there would still be doubt in the minds of adversaries.

Speaker 14 And as you also point out, and we can talk about this for a minute, what does that do to allies or to countries that are neutral? Don't they then think, all right, you know, the U.S. is unreliable.

Speaker 14 I guess we have to make our peace with China or Russia or Iran or another big power?

Speaker 15 That's exactly right.

Speaker 15 I mean, stipulate, you know, the Europeans do have a defense budget. They're paying, you know, half, I think even more of the cost of the war in Ukraine.
I mean, it's not as if there's nothing there.

Speaker 15 But yes, I do believe that a feeling that NATO is over, that U.S. protections for Asian allies are gone, would lead people in both of those regions to start to recalibrate.
Okay.

Speaker 15 Maybe I better do a deal with Russia. Maybe it's better to have a relationship with China.
Maybe, you know, I don't want to have that U.S. investment that the Chinese don't like.

Speaker 15 Maybe I should have a Chinese investment instead.

Speaker 15 It would inevitably change the atmosphere and mood, even if, again, even if there wasn't a war, even if there wasn't a Chinese occupation of Taiwan or invasion of Taiwan, there would be a change in the feel.

Speaker 15 So we can't rely on the U.S. We can't assume that

Speaker 15 deterrence will work. Therefore, we need Plan B.

Speaker 14 And I think you would see that kind of, you know, this kind of cringe or I don't know what the right word is, you know, kowtowing to authoritarians you would see it all over the world right and it would have economic consequences one of the things that trump you know is constantly boasting about is that uh you know he will produce the best deals and which is of course ridiculous but if our security guarantees are shown to be worthless then it has economic consequences too because those countries are going to be less cordial toward economic integration with the U.S.

Speaker 15 That's absolutely true. I mean, why are we so integrated with Europe?

Speaker 15 Why are the trade links so deep? You know, why is it so much easier to travel there? Why are there so many connections?

Speaker 15 You know, all that is based on a very unfundamental security arrangements and alliances. And if you took those away, a lot of the business relationships would eventually go away too.

Speaker 15 I mean, none of it would happen overnight, but... But there would be a sense that, you know, it's not too safe to have too close relations with the U.S.
You know, it's not reliable.

Speaker 15 Maybe we need backups, maybe we need alternatives, and you wouldn't see that shift. And it would be bad for U.S.

Speaker 15 business, it would be bad for American influence and the idea of democracy around the world.

Speaker 15 You know, the idea of democracy, that it's something reliable and stable, and that there are democratic allies and alliances who work together, that would be really badly damaged.

Speaker 15 And it would have a knock-on effect, probably in ways we can't even think of yet.

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Speaker 16 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 10 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 11 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 2 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 8 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 14 I want to push back a little bit on your description of Trump's way of thinking.

Speaker 14 Not that any of us wants to get into the brain of that guy, but vis-a-vis NATO, et cetera, where you say he thinks what's best for me. And no question that that's part of his rationale and thinking.

Speaker 14 You know, he wanted to have the G7 summit, I think, one year at the Doral Club that he owns.

Speaker 14 You know, that was pretty transparent. But I think it's a slightly different twist.
I think he brings his own perverted psychology about not being respected, not being honored personally to the U.S.

Speaker 14 writ large. So he has this idea fix about NATO, for example, which

Speaker 14 advisor after advisor tried to show him was not true. But he believed that the European allies were freeloading on the U.S.

Speaker 14 and they were making fools of us because we were spending all this money and they weren't, and therefore we were being made fools of.

Speaker 14 He took this personally and felt that this, you know, damaged his fragile ego. I mean, a lot of people have complained that European countries should spend more for their own defense.

Speaker 14 But his idea that somehow these countries owed us money is something that he, despite endless efforts to talk him out of it, he still believes to this day.

Speaker 15 I mean, I think it's a kind of variation on what I was saying. I mean, I still think it's basically about him, you know, Europe trying to rip me off, you know.

Speaker 15 But yes, he never understood there is no such thing as a NATO budget. You know, it's not as if the U.S.
is spending money, you know, and that they, you know, other people owe it to us.

Speaker 15 I mean, instead, each country has its own national defense budget and they try to hit certain targets. And, you there's an ongoing conversation about

Speaker 15 how much defense they really need and how much they don't. And you can argue it in a lot of different ways.
But no, there is no money that we are spending that someone owes us.

Speaker 15 That's not how it works. And you're right, it was explained to him over and over and over again.
And he really didn't get it. But I mean, it may also just be because he didn't want to get it.

Speaker 14 Even more important than that is his idea that the trade deficit is somehow important and that reducing the trade deficit is going to make the U.S.

Speaker 14 stronger, which is just not, no economist thinks that.

Speaker 14 But again, he believes it very strongly.

Speaker 14 Also, we have to contemplate when we're talking about this, and this is going to be the issue that confronts us for the next 10, 11 months, is the fact that this is someone whose twisted psychology is such that he says before a crowd in New Hampshire over the weekend to bolster his view of his own victimization at the hands of the Biden administration.

Speaker 14 He quotes Putin and says that Putin has said, which of course he has, Putin has said that this discredits American democracy because it proves that the regime is merely trying to persecute and prosecute its political opponents.

Speaker 14 And Trump quotes this with approval. It is mind-boggling.
Your thoughts on that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's mind-boggling, but but it's also, he's been doing this for a long time.

Speaker 15 So he has been quoting and using Russian propaganda, you know, since the 2016 campaign. And it was one of the first things about that campaign that struck me as off, you know, very weird.

Speaker 15 There were particular lines. Do you remember Obama created ISIS?

Speaker 14 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 15 We will start World War III. Those were actually propaganda lines that were from Russian sources, and then they were kind of promoted by the sort of Russian amplification machine.

Speaker 15 And then Trump took them up and ran with them. And he kept doing that repeatedly, you know, all through 2016.

Speaker 15 It's one of the many oddities about him that, I mean, that piece of it, I don't know that anybody's ever investigated or resolved.

Speaker 15 Whoever is giving him access to Russian propaganda or Putin's speeches or whatever it is, he is instantly attracted to it and he repeats it. He is attracted to the idea of that kind of power.

Speaker 15 So Putin does have a lot more power than the American president has inside his own country.

Speaker 15 You know, he controls all the media and all the courts and all the companies in a way that we would never want an American president to do. But this is what Trump admires and longs for.

Speaker 15 He admires Putin, he admires Xi, as he said several times. And of course, he admires the North Korean dictator, even though the North Korean dictator presides over a horrifically poor, sad,

Speaker 15 backwards, unpleasant police state. But he admires the power that those kinds of people have.

Speaker 15 And he was never able to understand, you know, the American system of checks and balances or why presidential power is limited.

Speaker 15 And by the way, you know, our presidency is very powerful and much more powerful than it used to be. But there are still some limitations.

Speaker 15 You know, there are laws about ethics, there are rules about people who work for the president and so on.

Speaker 15 And he was never ever able to understand those and never able to understand why he couldn't simply defy everything.

Speaker 15 I mean, a classic example of this is the stolen documents case, which is really very, very weird. He took secret documents with him.
He was told over and over again that he had to give them back.

Speaker 15 He doesn't have any need for them or reason to have them. I mean, unless he's selling them to somebody, I mean, which for all I know, he is.
He was repeatedly told,

Speaker 15 you know, and yet he persisted. The only explanation for that I can think of is that he had this idea that I was the president, I can do whatever I want, no one can tell me what to do.

Speaker 15 And so, even a kind of standard law that everyone else, you know, has obeyed, you know, or when someone has broken that rule about secret documents, usually they say, oh goodness, I'm sorry, and they give them back.

Speaker 15 I mean, there's no previous president who behaved as he did.

Speaker 15 It's a small thing, but it's a reflection of his inability to understand that the president is subject to the rule of law, that there are checks and balances, that that's how our system works.

Speaker 15 And he admires people who have absolute power, and that's what he would like as well.

Speaker 14 I don't think it's a small thing. I think it's a fairly large thing.

Speaker 14 Another aspect of that whole tropism of his toward authoritarians that hasn't gotten enough attention since he left office is that on any number of occasions, it's very clear if you go back and trace his phone calls with autocrats or dictators and then the things that come out of his mouth a few days or hours later, he will frequently parrot their line.

Speaker 14 Do you remember the bizarre situation where I think it was Moldova, where Trump started going on about how they're very bad people after he had spoken to Putin?

Speaker 14 And he said, you know, they're very warlike. They're very bad people.
And then, you know, if they're in NATO, well, then what do you know? Next thing, it's going to be World War III.

Speaker 14 It was, you know, just after he had spoken. Do you remember what I'm referring to?

Speaker 15 I remember. I mean, it's a classic thing.
You know, he repeats these lines from Russian propaganda, and you're right, from Putin himself.

Speaker 16 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 16 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 16 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world. I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 16 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again. I wanted the same edition back.
Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one. So I started searching.

Speaker 16 And that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.
It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live. Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story.

Speaker 16 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 16 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 3 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 11 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 7 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 14 One more thing that we should discuss vis-a-vis Trump and his weird thoughts is how he views Ukraine.

Speaker 14 Because of course, the first impeachment was about him attempting to strong-arm Ukraine into announcing, not necessarily performing, an investigation into Joe Biden because Biden was his most likely political opponent.

Speaker 14 We all know that. But he also has swallowed this whole narrative about how Ukraine was really the country that was interfering in the 2016 election, not Russia.

Speaker 14 And so his hostility to Ukraine, and he has already said he would abandon Ukraine, you know, he would solve the problem in 24 hours, which means abandoning Ukraine.

Speaker 14 Can you talk a little bit about his weird fixation there?

Speaker 15 So, David Fromm recently, a couple of days ago, wrote an article in which he described this concept of undernews, that there are these sensational stories that float around on social media or

Speaker 15 in weird corners of the internet that lots of people know about and talk about, but aren't really presented on the main news because they're just too weird and they're invented and they're propaganda.

Speaker 15 But lots of people are referring to them. And one of them is what you've just said, which is this kind of weird underground version of 2016 in which the Ukrainians somehow swung the election.

Speaker 15 And Trump will sometimes refer to this or sort of imply, you know, he'll sometimes say things that depend on that particular mythology. My assumption is that there is someone around him.

Speaker 15 Maybe it was a client of Rudy Giuliani, maybe it was someone else who puts this in his head and, you know, then he repeats it. But you're right.

Speaker 15 It is another one of his ide fixes that is exactly this that you know that somehow ukraine is opposed to him you know the ukrainians of course you know in 2016 and afterwards have been how do we cope with this you know the last thing they wanted ever was to be at the center of u.s politics in some scandal i don't know if you remember the first time vladimir zelensky volodymyr zelinsky came into probably american consciousness when he met there were these weird meetings with trump where you know zelensky looked around and trump would say weird things and there are these funny memes of Zelensky's face in response.

Speaker 15 I mean, the Ukrainians did their best to get along with Trump. You know, they tried to figure out what could they do to, you know, placate him.

Speaker 15 It's one of his fixed ideas, you know, along with his admiration for dictatorships, he has a kind of scorn for democracies. I mean, he doesn't like France particularly.

Speaker 15 He doesn't like Germany, you know, but in that list, he also dislikes Ukraine. And again, where it comes from exactly, I don't know.
I mean, it probably predates his presidency.

Speaker 15 I mean, you remember the weird incident at the republican national convention in 2016 where there was a some language about ukraine and the platform that some guys tried to get removed so there have been there have been people working on him to get him to see ukraine that way for a long time and i cannot tell you exactly who they are but it's not that's not a conspiracy theory i mean we can see it what exactly it is i can't say and of course unfortunately you know trump is now the leader of the republican party he has an enormous amount of influence you know, on elected Republicans, on the Republican Congress.

Speaker 15 And I think, actually, a lot of what's going on in Congress today, the resistance to signing a bill on aid for Ukraine, I mean, some of it maybe is about, you know, okay, we need to give money for the border, but I think a lot of it is just Trump.

Speaker 15 People in Congress desire, they want to suck up to Trump. They want to cater to his weird prejudices.

Speaker 15 In order to do that, they're going to block money for a country that's fighting for its life, you know, an American ally. It's so horrifying and and so kind of un-American, also so self-defeating.

Speaker 15 You know, a war for Ukraine would be such a catastrophe for the United States, for American business, for America's image in the world.

Speaker 15 If you think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad, you know, wait for that. It would be an unbelievable catastrophe.
And yet, you know, you have senior Republicans.

Speaker 15 particularly in the House, but also in the Senate, who seem willing to risk that in order to suck up to Trump. And it is very, very disturbing.

Speaker 14 In addition to sucking up to Trump, I think some of the members are also responding to their constituents getting their information from Putin apologists like Tucker Carlson and others.

Speaker 14 So it goes even beyond Trump into the conservative information environment.

Speaker 14 But let's talk about an idea that you also wrote about recently, which is, so after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western countries froze about $300 billion in assets.

Speaker 14 And so there's a proposal going on now that that money should, or most of it, maybe certain carve-outs.

Speaker 14 My husband is actually representing somebody who's suing the Russian Federation on another matter. And so that we don't maybe want to do all of it.

Speaker 14 But anyway, the idea is to transfer these funds to Ukraine. Tell us about that.

Speaker 15 It's been around for a long time, this idea. There are a couple of economists, Sergei Guriev and also Larry Summers, have been talking about it.

Speaker 15 Lawrence Tribe, the Harvard legal scholar, did a big paper that he wrote about it that was published in September that goes through the legal and the moral and the practical case for why it should be done.

Speaker 15 Of course, actually, the moral case is easy.

Speaker 15 We froze these $300 billion worth of Russian assets. Russia is damaging property

Speaker 15 in Ukraine and removing sovereignty from Ukraine. So the rest of the world has absolutely the moral right to take that money and to give it to Ukraine to help their economy, to do reconstruction.

Speaker 15 You know, sooner or later, people are going to want Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine. You can call this a down payment on reparations.
I think it would be very popular.

Speaker 15 I think everybody would instantly understand it. I don't think it's kind of morally difficult at all.

Speaker 15 And actually, legally, I talked to Larry Tribe a few days ago and he said, you know, look, you can point to the number of

Speaker 15 international laws that Russia has broken, you know, one after the next, after the next, and you can make the justification on those grounds. The main objection has been pragmatic and practical.

Speaker 15 You know, would there be retaliation? You know, would there be consequences for

Speaker 15 other countries not wanting to put their money in Western financial institutions? You know, could that, you know, and there is probably some risk of that.

Speaker 15 But, you know, look, we're getting to the point where I think, given that there are, you know, pro-Russian forces now, you know, at work in the U.S.

Speaker 15 Congress, and there are, you know, there's at least one country in the European Union which is also pro-Russian. This is Victor Orban's Hungary.
And we're running into difficulties

Speaker 15 because our systems require consensus and because it is possible to block the majority with a determined minority, you know, it's getting to the point where we need to take the risk and give that money to Ukraine.

Speaker 15 You know, it's something that could be done very quickly. The money, I should say, is in different places.
Some of it's in different European countries. I think a lot of it is in the UK.

Speaker 15 It's not all in the U.S. gift, but the U.S.
could certainly lead, you know, as the leading financial power, the leading economic power in the world, the U.S.

Speaker 15 could lead a coalition of countries who are determined to do this. And I think it would make a big difference.
And also, it would be an important psychological blow.

Speaker 15 Because, again, Putin is beginning to gather strength, you know, this feeling that, all right, I'm going to make, you know, the West is cracking.

Speaker 15 If I just hold on long enough, you know, I'll be able to take more territory, or maybe I'll even take Kiev. He's actually repeated last week his goal, which is still the conquest of all of Ukraine.

Speaker 15 You know, it's still the destruction of Ukraine as a nation. You know, he's still saying that, you know, even almost two years later.
And a blow like that would give him pause.

Speaker 15 You know, it would ruin his narrative. So no, you're not going to get to keep going because Ukraine has just been given $300 billion of your money.

Speaker 14 There's a good answer to the case, I think, that this would undermine confidence of people in putting their money in Western institutions because, oh, you know, politics could come along and then your money would not be safe and the governments could just decide to give it to someone else if they think you've committed aggression or whatever.

Speaker 14 And the answer to that that is, actually, there aren't that many safe places to put your money in the world, right? Where are they going to go?

Speaker 15 Goodbye. I don't know.
I mean, these are all countries that would be ruthless with your money if they needed to be.

Speaker 14 Which is another lesson, unfortunately, that a lot of Trump supporters do not understand, namely that one of our great strengths as a country and part of our economic vitality is the perception that we are politically stable.

Speaker 14 And when you begin to tamper with that, you're undermining the foundation of a lot of our economic power as well, because people trust the U.S. dollar.
If they cease to trust the U.S.

Speaker 14 dollar, that would be a disaster for our economy.

Speaker 15 That's absolutely true. I mean, and they trust the U.S.
in a lot of other subtle ways as well.

Speaker 15 People believe in contracts that are made in the U.S. and people believe in financial regulation in the U.S.
And all of that is dependent on the image of the U.S.

Speaker 15 as a stable country in which there's predictable changes of power, in which there aren't these wide swings, but you know, we don't have one political system one day and another one the next day.

Speaker 15 And yes, I'm afraid a Trump re-election would damage that image. And not just the image, I mean, it would damage the reality.
You know, we would become a more unstable country.

Speaker 15 You know, if we were to re-elect Trump, we would be re-electing someone who was running explicitly against the Constitution and against the rule of law. You know, he's saying it every day.

Speaker 15 That would have all kinds of implications and consequences across our country, but also around the world.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 14 Thank you, Anne Applebaum, for a great discussion. Really appreciate you joining us.
Happy holidays. Happy New Year.

Speaker 14 And I want to thank our listeners and just remind you that you can tune in to Beg to Differ. It usually is available on Friday mornings.
Look for it on wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 14 This podcast will be back tomorrow and do this all over again.

Speaker 17 The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

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