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- [00:05]
A
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up. Trump touts a new deal with Xi and shocks with an order to restart nuclear weapons testing. What does it mean? The former US Deputy national security adviser and China expert Matt Pottinger joins me. And unspeakable horror and carnage in Sudan. Nada Bashir brings us a chilling report about the people trapped in a bloody civil war. Then the Zoran Mamdani effect, a name now known around the world. And New Yorkers begin voting for their next mayor. I speak to a close confidant and campaigner, Ambassador Patrick Gaspard. Plus, motherland author Julia Yoffe speaks with Michelle Martin about surprising feminist history of modern Russia. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiana Manpour in London. We're President Trump's long awaited meeting with China's leader Xi Jinping has resulted in some success for both sides with agreements on rare earth minerals and tariffs. But while these deals may be a welcome sign of diplomatic engagement, Trump's unexpected order to start nuclear weapons testing again for the first time in 33 years grabbed the bigger headlines. Matt Pottinger served as the president's deputy national security adviser during his first term and he was a particularly influential voice regarding the administration's China policy. And he's joining the program live now from Utah. Matt Pottinger, welcome to the program.
- [02:01]
B
Thanks, Christiane. Good to be with you.
- [02:03]
A
So tell me, is this a big deal? Give me the sort of the wins and loses, if any, on what Xi got, what Trump got, what China got, what the US Got out of their meeting.
- [02:19]
B
Yeah. So this is the first time that President Trump has met in person with xi Jinping in six years. It was back in Osak at the G20 in 2019 that they last met. So I would call it sort of a fragile truce on trade matters that came out of this. China's not going forward with its most draconian threat, which was to regulate all trade between all nations so long as goods contain trace amounts of Chinese rare earths. And of course, a lot of technology that matters do contain Chinese rare earths. So that would have been a very extreme step by China that would have led to a global recession. And at the same time, President Trump has agreed to withhold implementing further tariffs on China. In fact, he even agreed to repeal some of his new tariffs, about 10 percentage points of his tariffs on China as sort of a down payment on the idea that China's gonna finally rein in its state. Subsidized support for the fentanyl Trade that is killing so many Americans. In fact, it's the leading cause of death for Americans between the age of or at least men between the age of 18 and 49. So this looks to me like a fragile truce. Cristiane.
- [03:36]
A
Okay, so that's interesting. And just one quick question about the American farmers, because I think China agreed also, at least I don't know for how long, but to re. To start buying American soybeans again. Correct?
- [03:51]
B
That's right. That's sort of coming back to where they were in a sense that maybe they'll go beyond their typical purchases. But it's been in recent months that China completely zeroed out purchases of American soybeans as a way to acquire leverage for talks. And the leverage worked. You know, it was one of the things President Trump asked for. He's getting that. But he's also made some concessions. The tariffs on fentanyl. President Trump's agreed to withhold not just new tariffs, but also some of the new rules that his Commerce Department had put in that would have prevented American companies from doing business with about 20,000 Chinese companies that might have military ties and the like. So some concessions on both sides.
- [04:39]
A
So let's just step back a little bit from the details and try to figure out what was the strategy here. Now, Jonathan Zinn, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, has said, I think it's an approach that can safely be described as tactics without a strategy. Ostensibly, the goal was to address some of the meaty trade issues that had long bedeviled the relationship. Instead, the PRC China has successfully orchestrated a game of whack a mole for the Trump administration. So the question from me to you is, did President Trump sort of start this trade war by the tariffs he put on and all the rest of it? Xi then hit back. He didn't bend. He hit back on what you say, rare minerals and soy. Now they've got back to status quo ante. Is that a correct reading of the situation?
- [05:27]
B
Yeah, more or less. I mean, remember, the big sort of salvo in this trade war was back in April when President Trump did his Liberation Day tariffs, you know, reciprocal tariffs with the world. There was only one country that retaliated rather than going straight into negotiations. That was the People's Republic of China. President Trump counterescalated all the way up to 145% tariffs on China, which his treasury secretary rightly described as a trade embargo on China. Now, what did China do next? It began to cut off the flow of rare earths and the magnets, the permanent magnets that are made from rare earths, that go into everything, they go into computers, they go into military equipment, they go into electronics and phones and the like. After that happened, President Trump came all the way back down to where basically a 30% tariff rate on China. So that told Beijing that they had found a pressure point that works. And so they recycled that pressure. They began to apply it again and again and again in order to back President Trump off from some of his more aggressive trade moves.
- [06:40]
A
Okay, so where does this leave the United States now in terms of relative strength vis a vis China? These are two superpowers. Well, one is in ascendant power. And Xi makes no bones about wanting to surpass the United States on all fronts, economic, military, and trade and all the rest of it. You've recently written in the free press that the summit will determine, quote, whether America will remain a technological superpower or if Xi gets his way, becomes an agrarian commune beholden to Beijing. You also talk about the idea of allowing Nvidia to sell artificial intelligence chips to China. That would be tantamount to a US Capitulation not only on trade, but also on technological supremacy. And apparently, according to the New York Times, Trump didn't rule that out, that possibility out during the summit. The Nvidia thing. So where are we on this? Cuz it's crucial to the relative dominance of the U.S. correct?
- [07:36]
B
That's right. If President Trump had given indications that he was toying with the idea of talking to China about selling the most advanced US AI chips, the Nvidia B30A, which is basically as good if you have two of them, it's as good as the most advanced chip that American companies used. So it looked like President Trump might be putting that on the table. In fact, though, it doesn't seem to have come up in the actual meeting with Xi Jinping, I'm very glad that it didn't. I'm glad that there was no concession by the US on that part because the implications would be so severe. Now, when I was talking about this idea that if Xi Jinping gets his way, we go back to being an agrarian country, the stakes really are that high. And it was something that the Chinese late premier, then Premier Li Keqiang laid out for President Trump back in 2017. I was staffing President Trump when we visited Beijing in 2017, and Premier Li Keqiang came out and said, look, here's what's going to happen in the not too distant future. China's going to dominate all Technology, the world will be more dependent than ever on China. China's going to beat the U.S. at AI and the United States isn't going to sell China anything except for corn and soybeans when China is happy with how the US is behaving.
- [09:01]
A
Whoa.
- [09:01]
B
So this was a bit of psychological warfare by the premier to say, you know, we're going to win the future, so you might as well surrender now. The thing is, if we were to actually give up the advantages that we still have technologically, including in AI, it would put us on course to where we're pretty much just talking soybeans with China and we become increasingly dependent on China.
- [09:25]
A
So that I find really interesting again in the context of a foreign affairs essay, it was titled China Against China, arguing essentially that there's sort of a difference in American diplomats and political analysts view of China. Now, is China actually more resilient than Washington gives it credit for? Or is China a paper tiger on the brink of economic problems and this and that. And so do you feel that, that there's a division inside? Yeah. Tell me what that'll lead to.
- [09:57]
B
Yeah, look, I think there's truth to this. When you look at China, you almost have to have a split screen in because two things are true simultaneously. On the one hand, China is actually achieving many of its goals in dominating really critical technologies this century. They dominate us in EVs, they dominate us in batteries, solar manufacturing. China's manufacturing base is now double that of the United States. Twenty years ago it was the opposite. We were double China. So all of those things are real. That's not paper tiger. On the other hand, China's overall economy is not going to be carried by just really by making EVs. The consumer economy is a shambles. The overall economy probably is not growing. China claims low to mid single digit growth in real terms. A lot of economists I know think that China is actually shrinking in real terms, becoming a smaller economy in global terms. And relative to the United States, unemployment is off the charts. Many times they don't even report some of their statistics because they're so bad. Both things are true simultaneously. It is a centrally controlled economy that is having big success in areas that they're grossly over subsidizing. And then it's failing in so many of the other key components of what would make for a normal economy. So if the US doesn't lose its nerve, I still think that this is our race to lose. We have more natural advantages, but it's going to be a close run thing.
- [11:43]
A
Okay, so, and if the US doesn't lose its alliances, because that also is exponential power to confront China. And it's been said that Trump, with all his tariffs and his demands and demanding hundreds of billions of dollars of Japanese and South Korean and other money to be invested in the US Is somewhat destabilizing their economies. He's basically alienating the very allies he needs to be tough with him on China. Do you buy that? Do you think he did enough on this trip to shore up his alliance bolus?
- [12:17]
B
Yeah, I think that there's with no doubt. I mean, his approach on tariffs creates friction with a lot of allies. But at the same time, remember when President Trump came into back into office, a lot of people were concerned that he was gonna take a really hard isolationist bent. And in fact, that's not what's really happened in the first nine months or so that he's been in office. He went to NATO in June and left basically embracing re embracing the organization. NATO allies agreed to more than double their spending as a percentage of GDP over the next decade. He has not turned his back on Ukraine. Ukraine's still getting access to US Weapons as long as Europe's paying for them. The Middle East, I mean, when President Biden came into office, Arab Gulf states were really quite upset with the approach that he was taking. And now I think there's a much higher degree of comfort. We might see President Trump achieve a new Abraham accord sometime in his term, going beyond the three peace agreements he made between Israel and Sunni Arab states. So both things can be true there as well. There's friction in the relationship on trade, but at the end of the day, there's no one other than the United States there to serve as the key guarantor of peace and security.
- [13:36]
A
Exactly.
- [13:37]
B
And President Trump is just asking them to carry a bigger part of that. And I think that's now happening.
- [13:42]
A
So just another question then, related to this, but also related to what's happening in Venezuela. The administration has decided that there is a war on Venezuela, there's an aircraft carrier, there's been all these strikes on these boats. It's all obviously non declared in Congress, but nonetheless, I want to ask you what you think if China is the big issue. It's said that President Trump's diplomat, Rich, I'm sorry, Richard Grenell, had this negotiation whereby Maduro, the dictator there, had agreed to allow the United States into all its natural resources and furthermore expel and end its cooperation with China, Iran, Cuba, all the countries that America considers suspect. And that didn't happen. Instead, it went from diplomacy to war. Is that a missed opportunity or do you think it's appropriate to go belligerent in Venezuela?
- [14:38]
B
Yeah, I don't think that we should be. We've tried, you know, sort of an appeasement policy towards Chavez and then Maduro. I don't think it turned out well for our foreign policy. It certainly didn't turn out well for the Venezuelan people. The Venezuela's economy was the strongest in Latin America. It's now fallen 80% from where it was. Millions of people have fled Venezuela. So President Trump, it's interesting, President Trump, when he talks about distant countries, he doesn't usually talk in ideological terms, in Cold war terms. When he's talking about America's near abroad, if you like, the Caribbean, Latin America, he sounds much more like a cold warrior. He gave a major address in 2020 where he talked about looking forward to the day when Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela would be would be free countries. So I think President Trump has pushed aside the idea of some kind of a detente with Venezuela, and that's why you're seeing the gunboat diplomacy. Whether he goes farther than he's gone is anybody's guess right now. But I think he's quite intent on trying to pressure Maduro into stepping down and then restoring democracy. By the way, Maduro lost. Yes, of course, yes, by something like 70 to 30%. That's the proven. And that doesn't even include all the people who fled who would have voted against him. But of course, he overturned the election illegally. So I think that we shouldn't rule out that President Trump might take even tougher steps down the line.
- [16:13]
A
And actually, to your point, we've had the opposition leader, the Nobel Prize winner, tell us that she believes that that election would have been regime change had the results been respected, that there wouldn't be Maduro as president, that she or her colleagues would have been, and that she supports that action by the US Administration. So, Matt Pottinger, thank you. And we'll come back to you for more analysis of this administration down the road. Thank you so much. Talk then and stay with us because we'll be right back after the break.
- [16:50]
C
Hey, friends, this is Audie Cornish, host of CNN this morning and the assignment. And guess what? Every story you care about, every angle you want unpacked is now streaming on cnn. That means you can catch my show or other CNN programming whenever you want on your favorite device. And a subscription also gets you access to exclusive video series and unlimited articles. So subscribe to CNN@CNN.com subscription.
- [17:24]
A
Next to new York and the mayoral race, the whole world is watching. The 34 year old Democratic nominee Zoran Mamdani has led an electrifying campaign with a relentless focus on affordability and a cheery personal optimism. Taking a page out of the Democratic socialist playbook, he is up against the establishment favorite, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, as well as Republican nominee and longtime guardian angel Curtis Sliwa. His relative inexperience, his views on Israel and the war on Gaza have many New Yorkers, including in the Jewish community, expressing fears about Mamdani's election. At the same time, Mamdani himself has faced blatant Islamophobia and racism and yet he remains the frontrunner. So will he win and is the way forward for the party as well? Former US Ambassador Patrick Gaspard is a close confidant and he joins me now. So welcome to our program. Ambassador Gaspard.
- [18:22]
D
Thank you so much for having me on Christiane.
- [18:24]
A
So I said close confidant and you've been advising Zoran Mamdani. I don't know whether you've been campaigning, but you know, what do you think? Is he going to win? I mean you will say yes, but the last minute polls are showing a surge by Cuomo. How do you evaluate the state right now?
- [18:41]
D
You know, Christian, whenever I perform any analysis on any elections, the first thing I look at is the enthusiasm for a candidate amongst those who say they're going to vote for him. If you look at this, those who are for Mamdani are wildly enthusiastic about his candidacy and intend to show up. Those who are voting for Curtis Sliwa, who's actually on the Republican line, again, very enthusiastic, locked into their candidate. Andrew Cuomo's supporter is tepid. His supporters are more in opposition to Zoran, not aligned with Curtis Liwa than they are enthusiastic about Andrew Cuomo. So I'm confident that the near double digit leads that we're seeing consistently for Zaramdani going into the last days of this election will hold and he'll become the next mayor of New York.
- [19:26]
A
As someone who, you know, you were an early rider on the Obama train, if we can put it like this. Do you see similarities between Barack Obama and Zoran Mamdani?
- [19:38]
D
Here's what I see that I think closes the daylight between that generation of political talent and political leadership. The first time I ever engaged with Barack Obama, he was a state senator running for U.S. senate. I found myself in conversation with him and very quickly I realized that this was somebody who could take complicated issues and make them accessible to average voters. And he could talk about them in the idiom of aspiration that the nation is known for. Zoran Mamdani is very, very similar, can take complicated issues, boil them down to what is absolutely essential, talk about them in very inviting and accessible ways. And he is always affirming a vision for the future. Bill Clinton told us a long time ago that campaigns and elections are never about the past. They're always about the future. And if you look at Obama, you look at Mamdani, they're always talking about the thing that's yet possible for us all, the aspirational North Star. And so many New Yorkers are finding that to be inspiration, inspirational. And I'd say many Democrats across the country are paying attention to the New York race because of those qualities that Zorati has.
- [20:46]
A
Let me ask you, because people say, okay, New York, you know, New York City especially is pretty liberal. And actually, it's not within New York. The rest of the nation, um, the rest of the nation has not voted for progressive candidates. When Bernie Sanders presented himself, for instance, as a presidential candidate, they went centrist, with Hillary Clinton as their nominee. Do you think that times have changed? Is Mamdani, if he wins, a sign of things to come for really a Democratic Party that appears to be in the wilderness right now and a little unsure of how to get back on its feet?
- [21:23]
D
Christiane, I'm a proud New York nationalist. I love my city, but I think that sometimes we lean too hard into this notion of our exceptionalism. If you look at performance in 2024, Donald Trump significantly improved his performance in New York by about 18 points, closed the margin between Democratic traditional performance in cities and states like New York and Republican performance. We have seen early on in this contest, right through this moment, that independents, centrist Democrats, even some conservative ones, and many, many people who voted for Donald Trump because of the cost of living in 2024 have found Zonma's emphasis and overall focus on what it means to have an inclusive economy to be compelling. And they're supporting him in very, very large numbers. I think that there is something that can be taken from New York and modeled in other contests across the country on this essential question of what matters to people. The very first video that Zohar Bamdani had that went viral were conversations that he was having man on the street interviews with people who had voted for Donald Trump. And he was caught doing a thing that Democrats don't do often. He was caught listening to them Understanding and appreciating why they slipped away as working class voters from Democratic Party party, and then modeling what it means to take that listenership and make it actionable in a set of very simple policies and an overall story about who we are that people could locate themselves in. That's something that you can replicate in Maine, in Nebraska, in Florida, et cetera.
- [22:59]
A
So it's interesting because you're essentially saying that Trump is a movement on that side and Mamdani is the incipient movement, at least in New York, on your side.
- [23:10]
D
I would complicate that further, Christiane. I'd remind all of us that even though there's all this hand wringing about the Democratic Party, before Donald Trump started defeating Democrats, he had to first wrestle down mainstream institutional Republicans. He moved that party away from the party of Mitt Romney. There's a way that Democrats are still seen as out of touch, remote elites who frankly have been captured by their donors and corporate interests. And you're going to see, I believe, more and more candidates like Zormandani who are putting emphasis on pocketbook issues that Americans across socioeconomic stripe can lean into and agree with.
- [23:48]
A
Okay, but talking about wrestling support, you know, the most senior New York elected official, Senator Schumer, has not thrown his support behind Zoram Mamdani. Here's what I want to. I want to bring out Mamdani's interview with Jon Stewart because I thought it was very revealing. Um, there was a lot of humor, but a lot of, you know, very important policy talk as well. But this is what they had a slight sort of interchange about. Now, you know, you're a front runner because all the slings and arrows are coming at you from the usual suspects. Here's this sound bite.
- [24:22]
D
You are clearly right now in the front running position.
- [24:24]
B
I can tell because they've gone 911 on you. So that's clearly a sign of a closing argument. A closing argument. That's 9 11.
- [24:38]
A
So it's obviously, you know, people are, they're reacting to what's becoming increasingly negative targeting of Mamdani. Apparently the Quinnipiac poll finding an increase in unfavorable views of him slightly since. Since the, you know, slightly right now. But so he has to convince New Yorkers, and particularly Jewish New Yorkers. Right. That he is their friend as well. He would be the first Muslim mayor. Is America, is New York ready for that?
- [25:11]
D
You know, after the primary victory, Kristian, I joked with Zoran that he would soon discover that winning was a lot harder than losing. Zoran Ramdani is preparing himself to govern a city that some consider to be ungovernable, that has more than 8 million New Yorkers in it. There are equal number of Muslim New Yorkers as there are Jewish New Yorkers. He is somebody who has made it very abundantly clear that he is willing to go and have the most difficult conversations in spaces where people don't necessarily agree with him on every single issue. And he's confident that through that, the work of persuasion and organizing can kind of close that gap in order to make it possible to achieve really important things on affordability and in order to push back against the authoritarian policy agenda that Donald Trump has against New York and cities across the country. Christiane, I laughed when you showed that clip, but that's no laughing matter. To see the Islamophobia, the bigotry that we're seeing in the closing parts of this campaign. I'm confident that New York, like America, is ultimately better than that and a new kind of truth will win out. But let's be very clear that this New York contest you mentioned, institutional Democrats who have not yet supported Zoamdani. This New York contest closes the firewall between domestic policy and foreign policy. Zoramdani's views on Gaza, the conflict, the humanitarian crisis that is ongoing there, has definitely informed the trajectory of this contest, both for those who are fervently forged on Mamdani and those who have some trepidation about his candidacy. But across the board, even his critics would agree that his message around what we've got to do to build inclusive opportunities in our economy is breaking through and one that can be a winning one for Democrats across the country.
- [27:01]
A
And just to further what you were just saying about various groups, he's responded to the Islamophobia. There was a pretty bad moment in the campaign when Governor Cuomo was apparently laughing during a radio interview. It was, you know, all this business about 9, 11. This is Mamdani's responds.
- [27:20]
E
I want to use this moment to speak to the Muslims of New York City. I want to speak to the memory of my aunt who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not find feel safe in her hijab. I want to speak to the Muslim who works for our city, whether they teach in our schools or walk the beat for the nypd. New Yorkers who all make daily sacrifices for the city they call home, only to see their leaders spit in their face.
- [28:06]
A
You know, very briefly. We've only got 30 seconds. It's very emotional. It was last week in the closing moments, taking a page out of the Obama playbook, going straight at the smears and addressing the issue head on. The right thing to do.
- [28:22]
D
It's the only thing that you can do in the media ecosystem that we're in right now. If you don't go and address an issue, others will fill the vacuum and they'll do it in a way that stereotypes and makes a caricature of it all. You're right, it is very Obama esque. Confront the thing head on. Reminiscent of Obama's Philadelphia speech on race. But this is different in that Zoran Mamdani expressed a vulnerability there that I think comes through in the new mediums that we use in ways that's altogether different than what we experienced 10, 15 years ago. So the right thing to do, but the necessary thing to do at a time when the composition of our town, our city is changing, composition of our nation is changing and we've got to find ways to bridge these divides. And you do that by going head on into the most uncomfortable spaces and helping folks extend grace to one another. Zoran Mamdani is exceptional at that.
- [29:16]
A
Really interesting to hear from you. Ambassador Patrick Gaspard, thank you very much for being with us. Next you can see the blood from space. Sudanese rebels have captured the key city of El Fhasha, reportedly attacking civilians and committing unspeakable atrocities and carnage. Satellite images reveal the utter horror. Piles of bodies and and pools of red. The rebel commander has even had to apologize and promise an inquiry after his paramilitary Rapid Support forces stormed Al Fasha after more than a year long siege. About 150,000 people have been killed in this conflict. 14 million are displaced from their homes in the battle between the RSF and the Sudanese armed forces. Some American senators are pushing Trump to label the RSF a terrorist group. Nada Bashir has this chilling report and a warning. The details are disturbing.
- [30:12]
F
With each passing day, more harrowing videos emerge from Al Fashar in Sudan's Darfur region. In the wake of the retreat of the Sudanese armed forces and a violent takeover by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, civilians in the basin besieged city have faced atrocities on an unthinkable scale. Some of the footage we have obtained from Al Fasher is simply too graphic for CNN to broadcast. Civilians gunned down as they attempt to flee. Bodies strewn on the ground, lying in pools of blood, filmed by RSF fighters. In this video, two men are stopped by an RSF vehicle. Within seconds, one of them is shot. The other is heard pleading with the soldiers. Moments later we hear another gunshot. As the camera pans back around, the man is seen lying motionless on the ground.
- [31:08]
A
We have received credible reports of summary executions of unarmed men lying on the ground being shot and of civilians as they try and flee the city. There are still civilians who remain in Al Fashr. We're not sure how many. Could be 120,000. Could be more than that.
- [31:28]
F
The scale of these attacks are such that evidence of the RSF's atrocities are now visible from space, with indicators of bodies and what appear to be large blood stains detected by experts at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. In satellite imagery of Al Fasher's Al Saudi Hospital, clusters of white objects consistent with the size and shape of bodies and reddish discoloration nearby appear to reflect reports of mass killings in the area as documented by the Sudan Doctors Network, which claims that the RSF cold bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Al Saudi Hospital, turning it into a human slaughterhouse. The RSF has described the claims as baseless, but According to the UN, nearly 500 people were killed in the assault.
- [32:17]
G
We have seen over the past 48 to 72 hours the proliferation of objects across Al Fasher that are consistent with human bodies to the point where we can see piles of bodies across the city. From space, they're moving neighborhood to neighborhood. They're systematically wiping out those they find that have remained.
- [32:37]
F
While many remain trapped in Al Fashr, thousands have fled the violence on foot in search of of safety. The accounts of those who survived the journey are distressing.
- [32:49]
H
They harassed the people and beat some of them. They separated the young men from the women. I don't know where they took them in.
- [32:57]
B
There have been many tragedies.
- [32:58]
A
Men and women have been killed.
- [33:00]
B
We hope that the international community will stand with us.
- [33:04]
F
The leaders of both the RSF and the Sudanese armed Forces have faced Western and sanctions due to their involvement in alleged war crimes. But UN officials say the RSF has displayed a pattern of systematic and often ethnically motivated attacks on a large scale. According to a report presented to the UN by a panel of experts, the RSF and its allied militias have allegedly received support from the UAE in the form of weapons. Though the UAE has denied backing the paramilitary group, the RSF has also been accused by the United States of committing a genocide during the ongoing civil war. The paramilitary group has acknowledged what they've described as violations in Al Fatah.
- [33:51]
D
Its.
- [33:51]
F
Leader, Mohammad Hamdan Daghlo, saying in a statement that an investigation will be carried out to hold those responsible for criminal acts accountable. In a directive issued to its fighters. RSF leaders also called on all personnel to adhere to rules of conduct and to ensure the protection of civilians. Evidence on the ground, however, tells a very different story.
- [34:15]
G
The rapid support forces have surrounded this city in an earth wall called a berm that's as high as 9ft. So the context here is these people are inside what we call a kill box. They have been walled in to be killed systematically.
- [34:31]
F
The fall of Al Fashar could mark a dangerous turning point in the conflict, allowing the paramilitary group to consolidate and strengthen its grip on the broader Darfur region, all the while putting civilian lives at greater risk of violence, persecution and what aid groups are already calling a humanitarian catastrophe. NETHER bashir, CNN.
- [34:56]
A
It is truly awful. We will be right back after this short break. Now, if I were to pose a question about significant figures in Russian history, who would spring to mind? You might think of well known leaders like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin or President Putin. But how many of you could name the women who stood alongside them? A new book written by our next guest, Russian American writer Julia Yoffe, confronts the forgotten narratives of these women and places their remarkable stories in the spotlight. Yoffe joins Michelle Martin to discuss Russia's complex history of motherhood, marriage and much more.
- [35:48]
I
Thanks. Christiane Juliette Yoffi, thank you so much for talking with us.
- [35:52]
H
Thanks for having me.
- [35:53]
I
Michelle, your new book, Motherland is so interesting. It looks through modern Russian history, Soviet and Russian history, but through the lens of the women. How did you get the idea to do that?
- [36:07]
H
Well, the first germ of the idea was to write a book that wasn't about Vladimir Putin. I was so tired of talking about him, writing about him, thinking about him. And I wanted to write a book about Russia that wasn't about him. And then I realized I wanted it to not be about most of the men that we read so much about, the Vladimir Lenin's, the Joseph Stalins, the Nikita Khrushchevs. And then the other part of the idea came from the fact that I was constantly having to explain to American friends, to Western friends why it was so normal for women like my great grandmothers to be doctors in the 1930s and scientists. And something that seemed completely extraordinary to them was totally ordinary to me. And so to bridge that gap, I realized I had to tell the story of the whole thing.
- [37:00]
I
You write about this extraordinary social revolution that followed 1917. Soviet women were, quote, given the right to higher education, equal pay, no fault civil divorce, child support, including for children born out of wedlock, paid maternity leave and access to Free maternity hospitals. And in 1920, the Soviet Union legalized abortion. How did that happen?
- [37:26]
H
Well, the new Soviet authorities, the Bolshevik authorities, wanted to emancipate women, and they wanted to destroy the bourgeois family which they felt imprisoned with women. It was part of their project to remake society, starting from the individual to remake a Soviet person. And for. If you think about where they were coming From in the 19th century, women married mostly for economic reasons, right? They went from their father's house to their husband's house, and it was impossible to get out of that divorce. Excuse me, out of that marriage, even if there was abuse or cheating or she just didn't want to be married to him anymore. There was nowhere to go. Women were expected to, you know, working class women were expected to work through their pregnancies and come right back right after giving birth. Right. I mean, you don't even have to think about the 19th century. Right. We're still fighting for these rights here today, 100 years later.
- [38:27]
I
Feels I'm embarrassed that I didn't know some of these names. Everybody knows Lenin, but who was Alexandra? How am I saying it correctly? Kollontai.
- [38:34]
H
Yeah, that's right.
- [38:35]
I
Who was she? And tell us why she was such an important figure.
- [38:39]
H
So she wasshe became an ally of Vladimir Lenin, and she voted with him in the Bolshevik Central Committee to seize power in October 1917, for which she was rewarded with a cabinet ministerial post. So she became the first female cabinet minister in history. But she was a writer and a thinker that really fleshed out the ideas of how to emancipate women, specifically Marxist writers. Most of the men wrote about how to get rid of capitalism, get rid of private property, and how this would just emancipate everyone. And Colontai said, well, no, women do have specific needs. She wrote that the most important thing for a woman, the thing that gave her meaning in life and gave her purpose on this earth, wasn't getting married, wasn't having children, but her own work, her own creative labor. And she could get married if she wanted to. She could not. She could have, you know, a fling or an affair to drink from the cup of love until she was sated, as Colin Thai wrote, and then get back to work. She wrote that in 1913. I think that is still a very controversial and radical statement today.
- [39:58]
I
So I was fascinated by Raisa Gorbachev because, you know, a lot of Americans had seen her because she traveled here with her husband. Just talk a little bit about her.
- [40:10]
H
Raisya didn't really fit in at home. Soviets really hated her. She was. They didn't like that she was so independent. They didn't like that she was one of her husband's closest advisors. She helped him write his speeches. She was with him on foreign trips everywhere. It was really jarring for Soviets to see her when they had been used for decades to seeing only old male faces at the top. She was stylish and kind of running around the world at a time when Soviet women couldn't find clothes or food to eat. They didn't have menstrual products. They didn't have bras. They gave birth in filthy conditions in these maternity hospitals that were just horrific, as I describe in the book. And they certainly couldn't travel abroad the way she did. And she enchanted a lot of people in the west, including American feminists, who said, oh, look at her. She's this amazing working woman who has it all. She's a wife, a mother, a grandmother, as well as a College professor, a PhD. And she's still so feminine. You know, how does she do it? Whereas Soviets were like, our lives look. Soviet women were like, our lives look nothing like hers. And we hate her for rubbing it in our faces.
- [41:30]
I
Then we get to Putin, and I know you said you didn't want the book to be about Putin. It's not. But it's about. Because he does take up a lot of space. That was one of the most depressing chapters. This why he. They dated for years before they actually married, which is unusual at the time. And he kind of made it clear that, you know, she was there to kind of be his administrative officer and raise the kids and do whatever, but didn't give her any kind of support or affection from what we see at all. Why don't you just tell me a little bit about her?
- [42:07]
H
So Lyudmila Putina, who is now Lyudmila Chiriatna, because she's done okay? She's married a man 10 years her junior. For her silence, she has gotten lots and lots of money. She has mansions all over Europe, including beer. She's doing fine, okay? But Lyudmila Putina was born in Kaliningrad, which is kind of this outcropping of Russia in the middle of Europe. And she had an alcoholic father. She dropped out of. She lived in a communal apartment. She dropped out of technical college and became a flight attendant. And she met Vladimir Putin when they were in their early 20s. And she @ first thought he was quite unremarkable, but then she came to really admire him because he was so Unlike other men their age, he didn't drink, he was physically fit, he was disciplined, he was focused, he was decisive. And in a generation that was born after World War II, when there weren't a lot of men around and the men that were around were kind of broken, psychologically alcoholic. I mean, alcoholism took off like crazy after World War II because of all the trauma people suffered. And he just struck such a contrast that she was like, this is a real man. And I want to seed some of the responsibilities that Russian women have. So when he starts making every single decision for them and she has absolutely no agency in the relationship, she really finds it comforting and reassuring because she doesn't feel like she's carrying everything. But then, of course, quickly, you know, once they actually do get married, after he strings her along for three years, once they do have kids, she realizes it's all completely on her.
- [44:02]
I
In fact, the most disturbing story is then she was in a car accident and wakes up in the hospital.
- [44:10]
H
And sure, Vladimir Putin is called. He's now the second man in the city. This is now post Communist St. Petersburg. He races over to the hospital. They're like, oh, she's gonna be fine. And he says, okay, and leaves without seeing her, which is just incredible in the worst way. But it was, to me, it was so him, right? It was before he was really in the public eye. And the kind of. The coldness, the cruelness, the withholding of warmth and affection, the little things we see him do, these little power plays, like when he made The Pope wait 45 minutes with Mila, he was late to every single date by about an hour and a half. And she still came back for more.
- [44:56]
I
So then let's go to the present day. You write 100 years of the Kollontai, and Lenin railed against traditional economically motivated marriage as a prison for Russian women. It had become their ultimate fantasy. And the evidence of that is in other chapters in the book where you talk about these wives of oligarchs, these former wives of oligarchs, and this mad. I don't know what to call it, like Hunger Games match for these men. How did that happen?
- [45:30]
H
So what happened is the Soviet government in fighting, well, fighting part of one World War and all of a second World War, a civil war, having mass famines and putting down peasant rebellions and having mass political repressions, killed a lot, a lot of men. By the end of 1945, there were so few men in some places that there would be 19 of them for every 100 women. And at the Same time, the Soviet Union really wanted a baby boom, the kind that the US was having, because they needed to, as they said, replace the dead. And there were villages in Russia where only one man came back from the war and his wife would pass her husband around so that the other women in the village could become mothers as well. So this combination of the state telling women they need to become mothers, that this is their, unlike what Colin Tighe was saying, that their main role in life, their sole purpose in life was to become mothers when there were so few men around. How do you do that? So it creates this mismatch between supply and demand.
- [46:45]
I
But you also write about the connection to the way wealth is achieved in Russia and just the whole, this tremendous sort of economic dislocations that have occurred since the fall of communism, which are two different stories, but they're kind of related. So would you talk a little bit about that? Like the drinking, right? The drinking, it doesn't come from nowhere.
- [47:06]
H
That's right. So basically, when the Soviet union collapsed in 1991, with it collapsed, the teetering Soviet economy, factories closed, mines closed, and parts of the Soviet government closed. And men and women responded very differently. Men said, I was a factory foreman or I was an engineer. I will not do lower status work. I'm going to sit around and be sad and complain and wait for.
- [47:39]
D
Work.
- [47:39]
H
Of my status, of my station to come back online. And the women didn't have that option. And they took to drink because they were depressed and, you know, stressed out. The women didn't have that option because for the last 50 years, Parenthood had become motherhood. They were. Or motherhood became all of parenthood. Fathers weren't expected to father their children and parent them in any way. So women didn't have this option. And they had to work really hard, wash floors, schlep rags from Turkey to sell in markets, you know, chop chicken parts to keep their families fed while the men just lay down, took to drink and drank themselves to death. Which again, exacerbated this perceived shortage of men. And at the same time, there was this new oligarchic class coming, coming into being. And they were all men and they had such fantastical wealth that plus all the imagery coming in from the west, there was this idea of like, wouldn't it be wild and amazing to be a stay at home wife and a mom? So instead of being a Soviet woman who has to work full time, do, then do seven hours of housework per day and take care of the kids full time while the man Just maybe works. The idea was, well, can I just be a mom?
- [49:09]
I
You know, these pictures of Putin, you know, bare chested, you know, shirtless on horseback, or Putin, you know, fishing or playing hockey, where magically he scores all the goals in the West. We think this is hilarious. Yeah. You know, we're like, what is this? Like, what's this guy? You were saying that in Russia, this is actually part of his allure and that it's actually directed at the women. Yes. Because the women find this, what, comforting in a way. Say more about that.
- [49:42]
H
Yeah, so because Russian men are seen as so useless as these kinds of overgrown man children that the women have to take care of in addition to their actual children, you know, they can't be trusted with the money they earn more than the women, but, you know, can they be trusted to bring it home? Can they be trusted not to drink through everything, not to get into a crazy car accident or just drop dead at work? Men die. Russian men die so much younger than Russian women. They're in such terrible health and in such terrible shape. They smoke, they drink, they eat a lot of mayonnaise salads. And Putin is so. Not that he doesn't drink. He exercises regularly and on camera, he makes sure people see it. He makes sure to show people how disciplined he is, how much longer he's lived than the average Russian man. And for a lot of Russian women, he is the man they never had and the man they wish they had.
- [50:46]
I
Julia Yaffe, thank you so much for talking with us.
- [50:48]
H
Thank you, Michelle.
- [50:51]
A
Fascinating read. And finally, children's entertainer Ms. Rachel proves empathy and courage are award winning qualities, as Glamour magazine names her one of its Women of the Year. Rachel Accurso became an Internet sensation during the pandemic after posting educational videos for toddlers on YouTube, gaining her 13 billion views. But most recently, it's her activism in speaking openly about Gaza that has garnered international attention and accolades such as this. Before this award, I had asked Rachel what drives her advocacy.
- [51:27]
J
I think in your advocacy journey, sometimes you get really frustrated because it feels like you're in a nightmare, saying, Hey, 18,000 kids have been killed. They're the highest cohort of amputee child amputees in modern history. And you just try so hard to get people to move. And so I was frustrated, but I have to hold on to hope for them. And there was a beautiful quote I read recently about how we need to hold on to hope for children of the world.
- [52:02]
A
You quote, figures. And I will say that the UN is quoting as well. Carry on.
- [52:08]
J
So sorry, Christiane. I will say that I also think a lot about child development, being an expert in that area. So 0 to 3, the brain, it's such a critical time. So if you're exposing children to trauma and malnutrition during that time, it can have effects for a lifetime. And I'm thinking about all those little ones who aren't getting that chance. And don't we, as, as grown ups in this world, have a responsibility to give all children that chance? I don't believe that deep care and that responsibility ends at our own children.
- [52:44]
A
From Gaza to Sudan to many, many other places, it is for the children. That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online on our website and all over social media. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
- [53:11]
B
One year after Trump's election, voters head back to the polls for New York City mayor, Virginia governor, New Jersey governor and more.
- [53:19]
D
Which party has the Momentum? Election Night 2025, Tuesday, November 4th at.
- [53:23]
B
5 Eastern on CNN.