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- [00:02]
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- [01:02]
Anne Applebaum
It's this performance online culture designed for, I don't know, teenage boys and their grown up equivalents, but it also has a purpose. It makes people say, you know, this war is unserious. The images of violence are frightening, the various different stories that are told are confusing and contradicting. Who knows what's really true. All of this will make people feel disengaged. And it may work. I mean, how can you focus on a serious war when you're being told the story of it through comic strips and videos?
- [01:41]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from this week's guest, Anne Applebaum. Anne is a journalist and historian who
- [01:47]
Emma Ilech Frank
focuses on the rise of authoritarianism.
- [01:50]
Jon Favreau
You may have caught her work in the Atlantic, or read her many books on the subject, or listened to her podcast, Autocracy in America. I've wanted to have her on for
- [01:58]
Emma Ilech Frank
a while now to talk about America's
- [01:59]
Jon Favreau
slide toward autocracy, and I figured that with the very autocratic way that Trump is both waging and talking about the war in Iran, this week was a good opportunity.
- [02:09]
Emma Ilech Frank
We talked about how Trump and the White House are using propaganda to minimize
- [02:12]
Jon Favreau
the seriousness of this war. What Trump has learned from other autocrats, why the war in Iran has been good for Putin, and why she's hopeful that American democracy can still prevail. It's a great conversation you'll hear in a few but before that, I just want to share a few of my thoughts on Iran. You might be wondering how we ended up right back where this century began, fighting a dumb war in the Middle east because of politicians who lied about why they started it, don't have a plan to finish it, and can't stop spending our money on it. You might be wondering why, after the trillion dollars spent in Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost there, or in places like Libya or Syria or Gaza, these politicians still think we can bomb our way to a more peaceful Middle East. Why they still think we can destroy people's homes and kill their families without any repercussions? Why they think we can play God just because our army is bigger? More importantly, you might be wondering, why do the rest of us just accept it? The Washington post interviewed this 41 year old father who had just gone to pick up his two kids from school. He was waiting for them outside when the explosion sent him flying into the air.
- [03:30]
Emma Ilech Frank
By the time he got up, head
- [03:32]
Jon Favreau
covered in blood and made his way back to the school, it was gone. He helped other parents pull children out
- [03:39]
Emma Ilech Frank
of the rubble, but none of them were alive.
- [03:43]
Jon Favreau
Neither were his two little boys. They were 7 and 8 years old. The mistaken US missile attack on the Iranian school that was carried out in our name and paid for with our tax dollars killed at least 175 human beings, most of them children. Many of the more than 2,000 civilians we've killed are also children, as are the hundreds of thousands who've been forced out of their homes in just the first three weeks of this war. It's a war that's also left dozens of Americans injured, some seriously, many with brain injuries. Thirteen have now died.
- [04:25]
Emma Ilech Frank
One of them was a 39 year
- [04:27]
Jon Favreau
old soldier from Minnesota who had served in the military for 20 years and was just a few days away from returning home to her husband and kids for good so she could garden with her high school son and ride bikes with her fourth grade daughter. The day after she and six other soldiers were killed by a retaliatory drone strike that Iran launched at their makeshift operations center in Kuwait. The president said that he expected casualties, but that's the way it is. In the end, it's going to be a great deal for the world. Pete Hegseth accused the press of reporting the deaths as front page news only because they want to make the president look bad. The next day, at a Medal of Honor ceremony, Trump read a few prepared
- [05:17]
Emma Ilech Frank
words about the fallen service members before
- [05:20]
Jon Favreau
going off on a much longer tangent about how he'd saved money on gold drapes for his new ballroom. Neither Trump nor Hegseth said anything about the schoolchildren their missile strike had killed,
- [05:32]
Emma Ilech Frank
though the very Next day, the defense
- [05:34]
Jon Favreau
secretary bragged about unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history, while avoiding stupid rules of engagement and politically correct wars. By the end of that first week, as that father was grieving for his two boys and those kids were grieving for their mother, and hundreds of families in the US and across the Middle east were mourning their losses, the White House had begun posting snuff videos. Footage of actual US Missile strikes hitting their targets in Iran are spliced together with scenes from Braveheart and Gladiator and Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat. Explosions that have killed innocent civilians are timed to the crack of a baseball bat or an NFL tackle. The soundtrack is usually a song with the word boom in the title, in case the stupid joke wasn't obvious enough. Governments have used propaganda to sell war for as long as there's been war. But Trump and Hegseth and the White House aren't really trying to sell this war. And if they are, they're certainly not succeeding. Few conflicts in the last several decades have started off this unpopular, and polling shows that the videos specifically haven't moved the needle even with Trump's base, let alone anyone else. I think that's because instead of using propaganda to sell the war, this White House sees the war as just another chance to generate more propaganda to sell people on the idea that war, like politics, is just part of the show. There are good guys and bad guys, heroes and enemies, suspenseful plot twists and thrilling victories and comic relief. And hopefully not too many sad moments. Because the ultimate goal here is entertainment. Because an audience that's too bummed out might not come back for more. It's why, way back in 2019, when a combat veteran who had lost a leg and suffered brain damage was chosen to sing God Bless America at an event where Trump spoke, the President said, loud enough for people to hear, why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that.
- [07:52]
Emma Ilech Frank
The wounded.
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Jon Favreau
Because if we think too much about that veteran, or the kids in that school, or the soldiers in Kuwait, or
- [08:01]
Emma Ilech Frank
the boats full of people who were
- [08:02]
Jon Favreau
murdered in the Caribbean, or the citizens killed on the streets in Minnesota and the immigrants who are dying in detention camps, if we linger too long on the lives they led or the loved ones they left behind, then more of us might stop scrolling past the war porn and the memes and the shitposts and refuse to accept that this is who we are. Now more of us might decide that people who don't value the inherent dignity and worth of every Life should never be trusted with the power to end it. War is not a game. War is not just another content opportunity. War, even a just and necessary war is born of the ultimate human failure, and it leads to the ultimate human tragedy. The more we see that and hear that and remember that, especially when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth don't want us to, the more likely we are to demand that it stop. And with that, here's my conversation with Anne Applebaum. Anne, welcome to offline.
- [09:13]
Anne Applebaum
Thanks for having me.
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Jon Favreau
I've been wanting to have you on
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Emma Ilech Frank
ever since the world has become overrun with autocracies. So I have several things I want to talk to you about, but let's start with the Iran war, which is now entering its third week.
- [09:28]
Jon Favreau
Reactions how are you feeling about where things are right now?
- [09:30]
Anne Applebaum
I'm really disappointed and disappointed and yet not entirely surprised that there appears to have been no planning for what would happen after American Israel started dropping bombs. There was no planning for the reaction and the collateral damage in the Middle east, and there was no planning for Iran. You know, we over the last year, we dismantled many of the tools that we've had in the past to speak to Iranians, the radio stations, the broadcasters. And we also stopped funding or broke our ties with some of the Iranian democratic opposition who we might be speaking to. And it doesn't seem like anybody, they reached out to anybody or spoke to anybody in the in the planning for what would happen to Iranian people after this started. And I think now we're seeing the result.
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Jon Favreau
I can't recall another time, maybe not
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Emma Ilech Frank
even Iraq, where an administration has delivered so many conflicting justifications for war that they can't seem to settle on, you know, imminent threat to US Troops, then to Israel, then nuclear capabilities or nuclear aspirations, then, you know, regime change. What do you make of the fact that they haven't been able to settle on a single reason? It seems like now they have narrowed the objectives to, you know, degrading ballistic missiles and destroying the Navy and then, you know, all under the umbrella of, I guess, degrading their ability to develop nuclear weapons.
- [11:02]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, I think the difficulty that everybody's having, not just in the US but everywhere I'm in Europe right now, is that all of us are seeking to put a rational frame on the actions of the US President, people, because it's so unbelievable and impossible to process the idea that he acts out of impulse and whim and that he doesn't have a bigger strategy and he doesn't think about what happened in Iran up until before he became president or what will happen in Iran after he's president. He doesn't see Iran as connected to other places. He thinks of it as a kind of one. You know, he's going to go in and go out like. Like he did successfully do, or he thinks he successfully did in Venezuela. Of course, that story's not over yet either. But all of us want to make this into a story, and that's why people keep asking for reasons and rationales. And it seems to me, especially in these conversations he's had in the first few days of the war with journalists, that what he's doing is kind of message testing. You know, he tries out one explanation for why he did it and sees what that sounds like, and then he tries out another explanation for what did it. And you can even see his administration kind of running to catch up with him. You know, he says one thing and they try to echo that, and then he says something different, and they have to change their story as well. And, you know, I think we're dealing with something that was fundamentally irrational. I mean, he felt like it that day. It. You know, we'll learn eventually whether it was ultimately Netanyahu who convinced him or whether it was Jared Kushner who convinced him, or whether, you know, he just looked at the map and thought he'd like to do something dramatic this week to distract from other things. We'll eventually find that out, but trying to see it as a rational strategy makes no sense. And you're right, the comparison to Iraq is interesting. I mean, actually, the Bush administration made a case for Iraq. They made it to the American people, they made it to the UN they made it to Congress. It was about weapons of mass destruction. And you can say the case was wrong and it was based on bad evidence. But they built the case. They made it, they presented it, they argued for it. They got what they thought was a kind of UN Approval. They had congressional approval. They had support from Americans. This is totally different. This is a completely different kind of war. It's being fought because the president had a psychological need, as he put it when he was talking about Greenland, to have a war.
- [13:24]
Emma Ilech Frank
I mean, it seems like the lesson, if you could call it a lesson, the lesson that Trump has taken from Iraq is the bombing and the regime change is fine. Just don't send in a large. Just don't have ground forces there for an extended period of time, because he knows that looks messy. I mean, you know, Trump and Netanyahu have made this decision to attack Iran, but You know, Republicans and even some Democrats have supported some kind of military action for years to remove what is objectively a violent and dangerous regime in Tehran.
- [13:56]
Jon Favreau
What I'm still trying to figure out
- [13:57]
Emma Ilech Frank
is, like, why does it seem that no lessons have been learned from what has happened in Iraq or any of the other, you know, misadventures in the Middle east over the last several decades?
- [14:12]
Anne Applebaum
So in order to learn lessons, you have to be interested in reading some history, and you have to read, at the very least, a short version presented by one of your advisors. You know, you have to think about what happened in the past, and you have to seek not to repeat it in the future. And it just doesn't look to me like this is something that Trump does. Maybe there are people around him who do it, but it's not clear that their advice gets to him or who it's filtered through or whether he listens. And so, once again, as I say, asking about lessons learned, again, you're assuming that the president has a rational reason for wanting to go to war and that he would have a plan to make it work. Just isn't clear that he does. I mean, I suppose they learned the lesson not to send troops, but if you don't send troops, then you don't really have any impact. You know, you can drop bombs, but you don't have any ability to shape what happens on the ground, for better or for worse. And much of what they say is certainly in the first few days implied that they would have an impact on the ground, but it seems that they hadn't thought that through.
- [15:15]
Jon Favreau
You referenced a piece you recently wrote
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Emma Ilech Frank
for the Atlantic called Trump has no Plan for the Iranian People. You know, the Iranian people have been sort of fighting for their own freedom for years now.
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Jon Favreau
If the goal really is to free
- [15:26]
Emma Ilech Frank
them from this regime, what would that actually look like versus what we're doing? Like, what role do you think the US and the world could play in helping to free the Iranian people from this regime? That isn't what is happening right now.
- [15:42]
Anne Applebaum
There's an Irish joke about you ask somebody the way to Dublin, and they say, well, I don't know, but I wouldn't start from here. You know, so it's a little bit like that. I mean, the starting point should go back farther. There has been a democratic opposition in Iran. It's been very brave. It's full of thoughtful and resourceful people. And each time it emerges, it has been systematically wiped out, and people have been arrested and sent abroad and into exile and over the years, we've half heartedly supported it, we've given it some money. Some Iranians, US Officials have met them. Macron met with a group of Iranian activists some months ago. The President of France, President of the United States has stayed somewhat away from, I mean, there's that group, there's a group of people around the son of the former Shah. There are plausible groups of people in the exile world and inside Iran with whom we could work and who we could advise and who we could help with money and with examples and so on, but we never did that. And so starting from right now, it's much harder. I mean, I talked to somebody who's a Iranian human rights activists a few days ago and I asked her, you know, this is right after the war had started and I asked her, you know, has anyone got in touch with you from the administration? And she sort of laughed and said, no, of course not. And so, you know, we aren't even, as far as I know, you know, I don't see it and I don't hear it. We don't seem to be talking to people inside the country who would be in a position to help the regime change. I mean, you know, you would have to have some people from inside the system, not probably the leadership, but you'd have to have some people who are willing to resign or walk away. You would have to have some people from the outside who had some kind of credibility. And there are such people. You would have to help them. I mean, we were able in the 1980s, for example, to help the then Polish opposition. I say here because I'm in Poland right now, who were fighting communism. It was a much less violent system and we weren't bombing Poland, but we were able to help them, work together, offer them. I mean, at that time it was about Xerox machines and books and contacts and small amounts of money. And we were able to help the opposition. We didn't make them win, we didn't help them come to power, we didn't decide their future for them. But we had a kind of non permanent set of contacts with people who might be the future leaders of Poland. And we should have had that with Iran for the last decade more probably. And we don't seem to have it now. So I mean, if it were me, I would have started with that. I would have done it. Been speaking to people inside the country and outside the country who had ideas about how to reshape the landscaping. The idea that the US from the air is going to do that has always seemed Ridiculous. It is possible that the regime is weakened, that people won't want to fight for it. There are things that could happen as a result of the bombing that could end up well for the Iranian people, which is what I truly hope happens. But that would be more by accident rather than by design.
- [18:54]
Emma Ilech Frank
I'm curious what you think about how Trump and his administration have been talking about this war. Early declarations of victory, minimizing the dangers and the casualties, bragging about all the bombs they've dropped and the bad guys they've killed. Trump has threatened to make it, quote, virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back as a nation again, which is horrible.
- [19:14]
Jon Favreau
Horrible.
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Emma Ilech Frank
Hegseth said, quote, the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they're going to live.
- [19:21]
Jon Favreau
What do you make of the rhetoric they're using?
- [19:24]
Anne Applebaum
It's very cartoonish, and I think it's a little bit like the rhetoric they were using around ice. It shows how online this administration is and how shaped they are by the performative nature of online communication. It's all about memes and loud language and vulgarities and how do you shock people and how do you stun people and how do you scare people with language? As a nation conducting war where people are dying, including Iranian children and innocent civilians, leave aside the bad guys, but there are other people dying, and there are some Americans have died. That's a really serious matter and it should be treated by. You want to see your head of state treating this as something that's important and grave and somber and not, you know, a Marvel comic dialogue, you know, or maybe a Marvel comic movie dialog. I don't know if they even read the comics, but it's something about the way they've learned to read and communicate. They don't. Once again, it's more evidence. They don't read history books. They don't think about the weight of what they're doing, you know, the consequences over time, you know, the way it will be seen. You know, American presidents have always thought about history, history and their role in it and their predecessors and what will come after. And this is really an administration that has no sense of time at all. Time or seriousness or gravity or the value of life. And so they've reduced this very serious war, which has going to have serious consequences for people all over the world, actually, because of the economic impact and so on, as well as for Iranians, not all of whom are bad guys. And they're unable to talk about it even in a way that that Accords what they're doing with appropriate seriousness.
- [21:17]
Emma Ilech Frank
I mean, I think also about these White House daily propaganda videos that splice real airstrike footage with clips from movies and sports and video games. And I think it's horrific with Trump and Hegseth. They're both unserious people. They spout off all the time.
- [21:35]
Jon Favreau
But it does seem like a concerted
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Emma Ilech Frank
strategy on the part of the government and, and the administration to put out these videos that not only minimize the seriousness of war, but sort of promote this nihilism, this sort of dehumanization, this like, don't worry about what's going on. Everything's a game. I know that you've thought a lot about the way autocracies use propaganda and information warfare. Like what do you think they're trying
- [22:03]
Jon Favreau
to achieve with these videos? Or what do you think the effect
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Emma Ilech Frank
of these videos is? Because who knows what their intentions are.
- [22:10]
Anne Applebaum
Nihilism is the right word. What autocratic regimes learned to do over the last couple of decades in their attempts to control the Internet. Some of them literally control it. The Chinese have tried to control what it is that people see and so on. The Russians and others came up with a different tactic. Their tactic was flood the information space with junk, offer contradictory explanations for things, sometimes inside the same television program, you know, offer people very violent images or very frightening images. And the point of that was to make ordinary people say, you know, politics is horrible. I don't know what's true and what's not true. I can't be idealistic. I can't believe in anything because everybody's lying. You know, everyone seems to lie. And of course, they also smear their enemies in doing this as well. Everyone's lying, everyone's bad. I'm just going to stay home and I'm not going to be involved. And that's what they want. That's what an autocracy wants. It wants disengaged citizens who are maybe disgusted or horrified by the propaganda, don't understand it, and want to stay away from it. And I think, you know, you're right that the point of these videos, again, it's this performance online culture designed for, I don't know, teenage boys and their grown up equivalents. But it also has a purpose. I mean, it makes people say, you know, this war is unserious. It's also, the images of violence are frightening. The various different stories that are told are confusing and contradicting. Who knows what's really true. I mean, actually, even this, the thing you mentioned before, you know, Trump giving multiple reasons why he's fighting. All of this will. Will make people feel disengaged, and it may work. I mean, how can you focus on a serious war when you're being told the story of it through comic strips and videos?
- [24:02]
Emma Ilech Frank
Yeah, I mean, I just, you know, I served in the Obama White House. I remember had the Bush White House, even dealt with this, which is like, you know, the loss of life is the most serious consequence you can have. And presidents forever have treated the loss of life in war with, like, the utmost seriousness and sobriety and spend a lot of times honoring the dead and
- [24:26]
Jon Favreau
talking about the fallen soldiers and honoring their sacrifice.
- [24:29]
Emma Ilech Frank
And I just noticed in this war that not only does Trump seem not
- [24:34]
Jon Favreau
to care, but he does seem like
- [24:36]
Emma Ilech Frank
he's trying to, like, minimize the casualties and minimize, with some of these videos, sort of minimize how we feel about people dying and about the loss of life. And, you know, it does remind me of what he's done domestically with ice, what they did with Alex Preddy and Renee Goode and all these immigrants. Like, they just don't want us to see the people who are being hurt and who are losing their lives as human beings that have equal value to
- [25:05]
Jon Favreau
the rest of us.
- [25:06]
Anne Applebaum
No, that's exactly right. I mean, if you remember, Alex Preddy was, within half an hour, was being described as a domestic terrorist, as was Renee Goode. So you're right. Immediately, the idea is to minimize it. They're not real people. They're radicals. They're enemies. They're terrorists. I mean, all the Iranians are terrorists. But, you know, Trump has been telling us this all along. He's been telling us two things all along. Number one, this kind of dehumanizing language he was using during the 2024 election campaign, you know, he was talking about his enemies and immigrants being vermin. He talked about. He used literal language from Hitler talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of the nation, you know, as if they were a disease. You know, he talked about Kamala Harris as a radical Marxist leftist, and all of his enemies, as, you know, he pinned them in extremist political boxes. And that's what dictators do. They pretend that their legitimate political opponents aren't real. They're parasites who can be wiped out. They're snakes who can be stepped on. I mean, that's the kind of language that Stalin and Hitler and others have used. I mean, it's a known tactic. And of course, the other thing Trump has been telling us, and I mean, you know, the editor of the Atlantic wrote this, and then it was backed up by some of the generals who worked for Trump in the past, is that Trump doesn't respect soldiers and he doesn't respect fallen soldiers. And he calls them suckers and losers, and he doesn't know why they would fight and he wouldn't do it. And at the funeral of the six soldiers who came home from Iran, whose bodies came back from Iran, rather, he showed up at the funeral in a blue suit and a red tie and a baseball cap, which is. I don't know of any head of state who would do that anywhere. And I don't think there's any American president of any political party who would dress like that at a solemn funeral. And I think you're right. I think the point is he doesn't want Americans to take this seriously because he's afraid of the consequences for him.
- [27:01]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
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Anne Applebaum
Ultimately, again, the consequences of the war and the purpose of the war are for him. And, you know, he doesn't want people to be against the war. Cause then that might be a political problem for him. And so the way he thinks about it just isn't the way anyone else has ever thought about it. It's not about the people who've died and the families who need to be comforted. It's about him and how it will affect his popularity or whatever it is that he. That he cares about.
- [27:27]
Emma Ilech Frank
Yeah, I was thinking about that story. It's in the. Maybe the same piece as the Suckers and losers revelation. But it's. There's been two times now, I believe, where Trump has seen wounded veterans, combat veterans, at an event. And I think once he turns to John Kelly as Chief of staff at the time, once it's Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he said, well, you shouldn't have them in the front row. Why is this guy singing who's a wounded veteran? People don't want to see that. That doesn't look good for me. So the idea that these combat veterans who've been wounded, that somehow their presence is going to bum the audience out or somehow reflect poorly on Donald Trump is really all he cares about because the whole thing is a show, which is a very autocratic thing to do.
- [28:15]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, it's a show. It's a performance. The consequences aren't for other people. The only consequences that matter are the ones for him. And he does think in terms of, as I said, performance. What does it look like? How are people reading it? Not what does the war mean? What's it doing? What's the impact? How's it affecting Americans? How's it affecting other American allies? None of that is important because it's, it just doesn't register on his, on his radar of what he cares about.
- [28:52]
Jon Favreau
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Emma Ilech Frank
Yeah, your eyes are looking great.
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Anne Applebaum
Yeah, that's right.
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Jon Favreau
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Jon Favreau
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- [31:42]
Emma Ilech Frank
I want to talk about the global reaction to Iran and what you're hearing.
- [31:47]
Jon Favreau
How's Europe reacting to this? How are our allies reacting? Because I was sort of surprised at
- [31:51]
Emma Ilech Frank
the outset that I think the statements from some of the leaders in Europe and Mark Carney in Canada were, like, more supportive than I imagined or at least somewhat neutral. And I don't know how they've been thinking about things since then.
- [32:04]
Anne Applebaum
The silence that you're hearing is the silence of people who are pretty angry. But, you know, the question is, what's to be gained by criticizing Trump at this point? I mean, everybody has mixed feelings. Even I have some mixed feelings, because the Iranian regime is such a horrible regime, and nobody's sad about the idea that it might fall. And there was a big demonstration in Berlin of Iranians in exile who were, you know, dancing in the streets because they were so happy that Khamenei died. And so I think people certainly at the beginning of the war wanted to kind of pay homage to those feelings and say, well, you know, it's not a regime that, you know, that anybody wants to be seen supporting. And I understand that. But I mean, I think certainly as it's gone on and as it's become clear that there's no plan, and maybe it's not about regime change, maybe it's about these other seven things as it's become clear that the costs are going to be borne by Europeans because that's who will pay the higher oil prices and will pay for the disruption in air travel and the rest and maybe eventually costs of refugees and other things. I think people have been getting angrier and angrier. You know, you heard already the Spanish prime minister say that he absolutely refused to, you know, let, I mean, I think he's, he's balanced that a little bit, but he made a very strong statement against the war. And I'm fairly sure he did this because he thought it would be popular. And you will also start to see other European leaders because as the war goes on, it's less and less popular. Who will begin, those who have elections coming or who might begin to, you know, see that the dislike of the war will, you know, it's worth coming out because it'll, you know, it'll help them. I mean, it's interesting. I just by coincidence, I was in Romania in the last week, and the Romanians had a dilemma because they were asked by the Trump administration whether they could use one of their bases. There's a Romanian military, NATO military base in Romania. Could they use it for transport of some equipment to Iran? I don't know exactly what it was, but it was something. Could they use the base for Iran? And, you know, in Romania, the war is also unpopular, but the Romanian president agreed to let them do it because, you know, and this is, this is how a lot of NATO states will be thinking, because Romania wants the US to stay engaged in Romania. Their main concern is the war in Ukraine. And so you have that set of mixed feelings as well that people don't like the war, they don't want to contribute to the war. But countries who, whose main focus is still on Russia and Ukraine don't want to alienate the United States completely at this point, or Trump at this point. And so they'll let them use bases or they'll remain somehow engaged. But I don't see the war anywhere being popular. And people are as horrified in Europe by the constant change of narratives as people are in the United States.
- [34:56]
Emma Ilech Frank
Speaking of the war in Ukraine, how's Putin viewing all this?
- [35:00]
Anne Applebaum
It's a very interesting question because in a lot of ways, the war is good for Putin. Oil prices are high. Again, that's good for him because that's his main source of income. The US has announced it wants to lift sanctions on some Russian oil exports, which is interesting. I mean, that means that it shows what choice has been made. The US Preferred to pursue this war of choice in the Middle east rather than to defend Europe against Russia and to keep pressure on Russia to force them to end the war. And so that will be good for Putin. There's also the strange Zelensky said a few days ago, the president of Ukraine said a few days ago that in the first three days of the war in the Middle east, more air defense missiles were let off. I think it's 800, he said something like 800 air defense missiles were let off than Ukraine has had access to since the beginning of the war. And so Trump is demonstrating. As I said, he's made this choice. He's more interested in pursuing this whimsical war that he can't explain in the Middle east than he is in defending Ukraine. Ukraine had a terrible winter. They were short of air defense missiles, and their electricity system was destroyed, which was horrible, when it was really cold there especially. And this is yet another demonstration to Putin that Trump just isn't that concerned about his war and doesn't want to end it. So it's sending all kinds of signals to Putin as well. And remember, it's really important to remember that in many ways, this war, the war in Ukraine, has a very important psychological element. So this is a war that will be over when Putin stops fighting, when he decides he can't win. Ukraine is going to remain an independent country. He's not going to be able to conquer it, and then the war will be over. And so everything that Trump does to encourage Putin with the idea that the US doesn't really care and the US Is out of it and the US Is not going to put pressure on Russia, and the US Prefers to fight Iran rather than help Ukraine. I mean, all of those things will build Putin's willingness to continue the war and his desire to pursue it. So in that sense, it's good for. I mean, there is one other nuance, which is that Iran is a country that's been connected deeply to Russia for the last decade. You know, the Iranians gave their drones to Russia at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Russians then learned to produce them. It's pretty clear that Russian technology is being used by the Iranians. Russian tactics. I don't know why this surprised the US Administration, but it did. And so Russia has an interest in Iran not being defeated. And so you will see, or we may not see it, but it may happen that there will begin to be more. If the Russians think the Iranian regime in some form is going to survive, they may also begin sharing more. I mean, we know from a lot of reporting we've been told that the Russians are sharing targeting data and satellite information with the Iranians. We see them sharing drone tactics and electronic warfare tactics that come from the Ukrainian war. We've seen those being used in the Gulf. And so particularly if the war goes on and becomes more embarrassing for the United States. Putin's going to have an interest in pumping up the Iranian side. And then finally there's one more aspect which is interesting, which is of course, the one country on the planet that really understands how to fight Russian style drone warfare.
- [38:21]
Emma Ilech Frank
Ukraine is Ukraine, yeah.
- [38:23]
Anne Applebaum
And Ukrainians have put together teams. They've sent three teams to the Middle east already, I think to the uae. Three of the Gulf states they've sent teams to and they're talking to some others. And because their systems aren't just about the physical drone, it's about how you operate them, how you use the software, how you use drone interceptors. And they're sending some teams to train people in the Gulf and for which I hope they're going to get some kind of compensation or, or some weapons sharing in the future. I'm sure they will. But this is a monumental American oversight. Why didn't anyone think about talking to the Ukrainians before the war? Why doesn't the US Use their style of technology? Why didn't the US Suggest that the Gulf countries do it? Why are we doing this now rather than beforehand? And it's evidence more of what I was saying before that Trump just doesn't see the bigger picture. He's not interested in how Iran relates to Russia or to Ukraine or how the war that's happening in Europe can affect the war that's happening in the Middle East. He doesn't think in terms of that kind of geography or those kind of interconnections. It's sort of every incident is separate. And again, his interest in each one of them is how it relates to me, to him, to Donald Trump.
- [39:39]
Jon Favreau
There's a Times piece when the war
- [39:41]
Emma Ilech Frank
started about how Trump's rhetoric around Iran echoes Putin's rhetoric around Ukraine. The dehumanization, the denial that there's a legitimate government to negotiate with, on and on and on.
- [39:54]
Jon Favreau
What do you think Trump has learned
- [39:56]
Emma Ilech Frank
from Putin about how to wage and sell a war? And more broadly, like, do you think autocrats like Trump and Putin, like, study each other's playbooks consciously, or does this kind of rhetoric and behavior just sort of converge naturally?
- [40:10]
Anne Applebaum
So certainly autocrats do study each other's behavior and they borrow tactics and they borrow ways in which you suppress demonstrations and so on. I mean, it's really clear that they copy each other and they learn from each other. Whether they actually sit down and discuss it, I don't, I don't know. And I, you know, again, I've, you know, as I'VE written. I don't think there's, like, a secret room where they all meet like in a James Bond movie, and they, like, exchange information and, you know, secret handshakes or anything like that. But they do watch each other, they do speak to one another, and they do pay attention. I mean, in the case of Trump and Putin, there's a weird way in which Trump has always admired Putin, and what he seems to admire is the fact that Putin has no restraints. There's no Congress, there's no courts, there's no opposition. There's nobody who can, you know, he can do whatever he wants. Or that seems to be how Trump sees it. And he seems to aspire to that himself. You know, this idea that you had since the beginning of this administration that the president can do whatever he wants, he can break the law and then let the courts catch up with him afterwards, as he did with so many institutions, or the president can break all kinds of norms from one day to the next and not have to apologize for it. I mean, that all seems to me that it's coming from his observations and some of the people around him observing Putin, observing Viktor Orban, who's operating in a different context, he's a democratically elected leader who then decide to undermine institutions around him. I mean, in the case of Orban, we know they were learning from him, and we know that lessons were being transmitted because it was done by the Heritage Foundation. But Trump seems to admire that kind of absolute power. And it does seem that in the case of this war, why should he bother explaining it to the American people? Why should he ask Congress? He's picked up this idea that a real leader can break the law, can do what he wants, can act without legitimacy. And he sees Putin doing that, and he wants to do it, too. And so I don't know, again, whether he studied Putin's language.
- [42:16]
Emma Ilech Frank
It doesn't seem to me he's much of a studier.
- [42:18]
Anne Applebaum
No, he studies very much. But the attitude, I mean, I just don't think it's an accident that the language is the same, because the attitude is the same. The attitude is I can do what I want. My enemies aren't real people. All I need to do is perform for the public. I don't want anyone involved. I don't want any debate. And that's an autocratic way of thinking. And that's, you know, that's how he behaves. That's how Putin behaves. And it's not that surprising that they have, you know, they come up with similar, you know, similar ways of speaking.
- [42:48]
Emma Ilech Frank
Well, I've been thinking about this because, you know, when you. When you zoom out on sort of Trump's foreign policy, he shows deference to Putin, respect to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong, Un, Orban. And he probably shows the most deference, I think, to, like, powerful autocrats who many with nuclear weapons, while, you know, showing outright hostility to liberal democracies. And I'm sure part of that is his style. You know, he admires what they've done in their countries, how they're strong, all the things you were just saying.
- [43:24]
Jon Favreau
But also I sort of wonder where,
- [43:26]
Emma Ilech Frank
like, he doesn't want to mess with Russia, he doesn't want to mess with China. He doesn't want to mess with people who he thinks are strong and could sort of unleash, whether nuclear weapons or
- [43:37]
Jon Favreau
other kinds of warfare on the world.
- [43:38]
Emma Ilech Frank
And I wonder about this sphere of influence theory that I've heard floated around where maybe Trump thinks, and some people around him think, well, China, Russia, United States, we can sort of divvy up the world, and then maybe there'll be peace among nations and we can all oppress our own people and everyone can just, like, live their own lives. And that's the way it is.
- [44:03]
Jon Favreau
I wonder if they think that at all.
- [44:04]
Anne Applebaum
This is a theory floating around that I had heard at the beginning of the administration from some Trump people, and I think it's actually originally Russian. And the idea is that the world should be divided into spheres of influence. The Chinese should have Asia and US should have Western Hemisphere, and somehow Putin should have Europe, I guess, although the European economy is five times larger than Putin's economy. And even the European armies, when you put them together, are larger than Putin's army. And Putin is actually unable to defeat the Ukrainians, let alone all the Europeans. Leaving that aside, it was a theory that always flattered Putin because it put him in this higher group that he shouldn't be in. And I do think there are people around Trump who wanted him to pursue this and all that language about the Western Hemisphere and Greenland and, you know, dominating our neighborhood. And he's used this very aggressive language about Latin America in. In various contexts, both in documents, but also in, you know, in public, almost colonialist language. You know, I think that was the intent of many of people near him. I mean, Hexith has talked about a little bit like this. Vance has talked a little bit like this. There's some ideologues at the State Department who talk like this. I mean, the one thing I would say is that if, you know, if your ideas, everybody should have their own sphere of influence, then the war in Iran is somewhat out of line with that. And again, I think this is just further proof that Trump doesn't stick to strategies. I mean, sometimes he's interested in this sphere of influence strategy, and sometimes he's interested in fighting Muslims, and sometimes he's interested in something else. And so the attempt of people around him to get him to stick to one thing and to bring, I mean, there are people in the administration who want to bring American troops home from everywhere, from Asia, from Europe, and, you know, just leave the whole thing. But he is now somehow enamored of the idea of using American military power, and so he's somehow busted that up. But no, I mean, the idea that, you know, large, big countries should be able to bully smaller countries, which is fundamentally what's beneath the sphere of influence idea. I mean, I think he's absolutely fine with that.
- [46:17]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [46:17]
Anne Applebaum
And this, by the way, is another thing the Europeans have heard, and you heard Mark Carney say it, but you now hear it everywhere you go in Europe. Everybody gets it, okay? We're middle sized powers. We need to stick together. We need our own defense industry, we need our own tech industries. We need to pull away from the United States because, you know, if they're going to be bullying smaller powers, then that's going to be us. Unless we're one thing. And I hear that over and over. I hear from Germans, I hear from East Europeans. You know, I hear it from everybody.
- [46:44]
Emma Ilech Frank
I mean, every time I hear about, talk about China and whether they're going to invade Taiwan, I always think to myself, like, there is no chance in hell Donald Trump is going to have the United States come to Taiwan's defense in a situation like that. Because that to me is a classic example of somewhere where Trump's like, oh, that's, that's China. They're big. Taiwan's not.
- [47:04]
Jon Favreau
Why would, why would we get involved in that?
- [47:06]
Anne Applebaum
No, it's true. He's afraid of big countries. You know, he's afraid of China and he's not willing to stand up to China or even to create a kind of strategy to resist China or even to galvanize his Asian allies to pull Japan and South Korea and Taiwan together, which is what the previous administration was trying to do. So, no, he's afraid of big countries and he would rather bully smaller ones. There's no question that that's true. And I don't think China wants to invade Taiwan. I mean, I could be wrong, and I hear lots of different theories about it. And so they may still hope that they could somehow get Taiwan differently through pressure. But it's true that if they were going to do it, I would expect this administration would be the time they would try.
- [47:52]
Jon Favreau
So, just to talk about the US For a second, like, where do you
- [47:55]
Emma Ilech Frank
think we are from your perspective in our slide toward autocracy? Are there ways we are actually worse off than some countries you've studied? Are there ways we've been more resilient? What would you say?
- [48:10]
Anne Applebaum
I have to say that the progress of dismantling institutions and changing the rules happened much faster in the United States than I've ever seen it happen anywhere else.
- [48:21]
Jon Favreau
Wow.
- [48:22]
Anne Applebaum
So Viktor Orban took years to do the same stuff, and even Putin took more time. I mean, Russia wasn't really a democracy board of that, so it's a different story. Or Hugo Shovetz. This is not always, by the way, a coded right wing way of taking over the system. You can do it from the left as well. And historically that's happened lots of times, too. And the Chavez takeover also took a number of years before it was complete. But the Trump administration arrived with a very clear plan and with an attempt to do a kind of break stuff and then see what happens. Policy put doge in charge illegally, destroy a lot of institutions, and make everybody pick up the pieces afterwards. And the number of rules they broke and laws they broke, and, you know, even spoken and unspoken rules of American politics, the pressure they put on big media companies, the pressure they put on some law firms, all of that was pretty unprecedented. And it all happened very fast. The other thing I think that's unusual and different about the Trump administration's assault on the system is the role played by the tech companies, the richest companies in America, or some of them, not everybody, but some of the richest companies and richest people in America aligned with this process from the beginning. I didn't know of a precedent for that. So it wasn't just the government doing it. It was also the tech companies doing it. And they seem to be doing it because they see a financial advantage. I mean, they can get contracts with the government if they help the Trump administration win. If Musk manipulates Twitter in order to make the world see far right propaganda more often, then they get something in exchange. And the power that they have, I mean, I don't know. There are no Hungarian companies that had that kind of power and were able to help Orban in that way. I mean, he later created kind of Oligarchic companies who helped him, as did Putin. Actually, you know, usually it works the other way around. The authoritarian creates the oligarchs, and in our country, we had the oligarchs already. And it was when they aligned with Trump that he was able to do all these things much faster. Having said all that, the fact that they did it fast, the fact that they broke so much so quickly, the fact that at the very least, they've unsettled the economy, and with this war, they've created real anxiety and fear. The fact that they did all that so fast means that there is backlash and there will be. I mean, resilience is the wrong word. I mean, there will be people who will be much more dedicated to being involved in politics, to getting them out, because they present a much greater threat than they would have done had they done it smoothly and softly and quietly and without, you know, video game war videos, you know, that offend people and anger them. So there is a downside to what they're doing. They're creating a lot of enemies, and they're doing it pretty fast. I just hope that our politicians are able to mobilize that anger and, you know, mobilize people to vote them out. I mean, the real test, of course, is going to be the midterms, and not only will people vote, but how fair will they be? I mean, we know that the administration will cheat because they did last time, and we know they will try and do what they can to manipulate the result. It's harder when you have 50 states and 50 different electoral commissions, but they will try. This is why they're trying to pass this national act, determining what kind of ID you need to vote. And then there may be an issue with, I don't know about counting votes or accepting the result. You know, if they lose badly, will they accept the fact that they've lost the House Speakership? I mean, Trump didn't accept that he'd lost the presidency in 2020. So all of that is still ahead of us. And that will be a real test. I mean, that's really the test of whether Americans can stay focused, whether they can stay organized, and whether the political system will hold. I mean, I think this year, the midterms are a test. And then, of course, two years from now, it'll be even more dramatic.
- [52:33]
Jon Favreau
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- [55:18]
Emma Ilech Frank
What do you make of how the opposition has responded to Trump, particularly the Democratic Party? When I've talked to people who live in countries who've gone through the same thing, and I always say, like what? You know, what do you wish you would have done? The most common answer is, I wish we would have had a better, stronger opposition party and stronger opposition leaders when this whole thing started. But I don't know what your view of how the Democrats have handled this is.
- [55:44]
Anne Applebaum
So one of the things that always happens when you have the rise of a regime like this one, like we have in the US what always happens, like, everywhere, is that the opposition shatters and splits into factions. This is actually normal. And the reason that happens is because what. What Trump is doing is changing the rules of politics. The way you do journalism, the way you act in Congress, the way you reach people and talk to people, all of it changed. And some people understand the change and are able to cope with it, and a lot of people can't. The reason you're hearing these 95 different strategies, how do we fight back? Is because there isn't a right answer and because a lot of people just don't have experience dealing with this kind of politics. We have a lot of ugly politics in our country's history. You know, I don't want to deny that. And we have negative campaigning, dirty tricks. It's all happened before. But we haven't really had people in power, and it's not everybody, but we haven't had people in power who are actually dedicated to changing the political system and to altering the rules so that they never lose and who are building a kind of army of people who also want that and who are seeking not just to say they disagree with their opponents or their opponents are, you know, they don't like their opponents or their opponents have bad opinions about taxes or welfare or something. These are people who say their opponents are illegitimate, you know, or even they're vermin, and are trying to eliminate them from politics altogether and say only we have the right to win and figuring out how to navigate that and fight back against it. I mean, I do cut some slack to people who haven't seen it before and are surprised by it.
- [57:28]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [57:29]
Anne Applebaum
The other thing I would say is that, you know, this is about this year and not 2028. It is true that we have 50 states, and even within the states there are different constituencies. And I am not sure that right now having one leader and one idea and one platform would be the way to win the election. Yeah, you know, I am fine with there being someone very different running in rural Colorado or urban New Jersey or East Texas or West Virginia. I think having people who are using different ways of speaking to local issues and speaking to local concerns, I think that's good. And we've seen it already. On the one hand, we had Mamdani win a landslide election. On the other hand, we had Abby Spanberger in Virginia win with a much larger margin than anybody expected. You know, and those are two different places. And it seems right to me that two different kinds of people were able to take advantage and win. And so I don't think there's, you know, there are people out there who are looking for one answer or one message. And I think it's fine that there are different messages. I mean, the main thing is that people recognize the reality, the way in which the right. And these aren't conservatives, these are radicals, you know, where this kind of radical right has captured a part of the population and find ways to reach them and find ways to, you know, to go to wherever they are, you know, so that make sure they're using YouTube, they're using Instagram, they're using TikTok. I mean, I don't like all of these forms of social media, but I accept that people are on them. And if that's where they are and that's where they're getting their information, then all of our politicians have to be on all of them, too. And so figuring out what is the message for your state or your county or your constituency, and then using the tools that people use to reach them, I think that's most important.
- [59:32]
Emma Ilech Frank
Now, your argument in Autocracy, Inc. The book that you wrote, is that corruption is the glue that holds these regimes together. Do you think corruption is also potentially their Achilles heel, the undoing for these regimes?
- [59:47]
Anne Applebaum
So it has been in other places. The one really successful political movement in Russia since Putin came to power, which was Alexei Navalny's movement, was an anti corruption movement. And I've talked to the people who created that campaign, and one of the reasons they did it, you could pick a lot of issues to organize people around was because it was the one issue that unified people across different classes. So across social classes and across Russia also has a huge geography and a lot of. Of different kinds of people in it. And it was the one thing that they could find that people identified with all the guys, and they made a very important link. And this is something that I haven't seen actually yet in the US in that, of course, they talked about Putin's corruption. Navalny famously made these kind of mini documentaries about Putin's palace and the ways in which his entourage hid their money and spent their money. And this was important in Russia, where there's a lot of secrecy around money. And he showed it, and they were kind of humorous and well produced, and hundreds of millions of people watched them. But they did something else, which is they connected the story of that corruption to ordinary people. So they said they have palaces, and that's why you have bad roads or that's why you have bad hospitals. And one of the things that I haven't heard American politicians do yet, and this is partly because I think some of this stuff is so new. I mean, this is the most corrupt administration we've ever had, and there isn't anyone in second place. This is a. Trump has his own companies. I mean, we've been talking about the Iran war. For all we know. The real reasoning of the Iran war is that the Saudis are his business partners and they asked him to do it, and because he's in business with them, he did it. I don't know that the explanation was that simple, but it might be. And the fact that that's even a possibility already makes Trump totally different from any American president before him. And there's nobody who's profited off being in office, whose family has profited off being in office to the tune of billions of dollars. This isn't. What was it, Billy Carter with some little. The weird relative who tries to make money off his cousin, the president. I mean, this isn't that. This is. This is huge money, and it's out
- [62:02]
Emma Ilech Frank
in the open, most of it, and it's open.
- [62:03]
Anne Applebaum
And, you know, I mean, we were talking about the negotiation with Ukraine. I mean, we know there's two negotiations. There's one about the future of Ukraine and there's one about America's business deals with Russia. And we know they're going. I mean, it's been reported. And also, Witkoff doesn't really hide it. He said it in front of European leaders, you know, just so that, you know, I'm doing these. I'm negotiating these deals. And that's also unheard of. And we don't really know what Trump's motives are in Ukraine because they might just be. Once again, they might be financial Anyway, the point is, is that there's a lot of this reporting. You know, I try and keep track of it, and I write about it periodically. But what we need at some point is for politicians to begin to connect the dots for people.
- [62:41]
Jon Favreau
Yes.
- [62:41]
Anne Applebaum
You know, why is your government dysfunctional? Why are you losing your health care? You know, it's connected to the fact that, you know, you have enormous corruption at the highest level, and the corruption isn't somehow systemic. And it's not like the deep state. It's actually Trump and his family and the people around him and the numbers of conflicts of interest in this administration also. There's no comparison. The people who have private interests in whatever cabinet position they have or sub cabinet position they have is also. It needs to be presented to people and told as you know, so that people understand it. Otherwise, it really is a story that's complicated. It's far away. A bunch of rich people who live in Washington, we don't know about it. And making people understand how it affects them, that's something that I'd like to see American politicians follow the Russian opposition in doing.
- [63:31]
Emma Ilech Frank
Yeah, and it also has the benefit of outflanking Trump on sort of the populist rhetoric and policies, even that sort of led him into the White House in the first place by actually connecting the corruption to people's everyday lives and what they're angry about.
- [63:46]
Anne Applebaum
You know, Trump presented this completely false story, you know, of the elite that's. That's hurting you. But, you know, he is the elite, and the people around him are the elite, and the richest people in America are on his side. And, you know, they are reshaping the system in ways that we can see to their own advantage. And I don't think it should be that hard to explain it to people. You know, he lied to you. You know, he said he was gonna fight the swamp, but he's made it much worse.
- [64:10]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [64:11]
Emma Ilech Frank
Yeah.
- [64:11]
Jon Favreau
Anna Applebaum, thank you so much for joining Offline. This is a great conversation and appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on.
- [64:18]
Anne Applebaum
Oh, well, thanks for having me. Hope to talk to you again.
- [64:20]
Jon Favreau
You too. Take care,
- [64:23]
Emma Ilech Frank
as always.
- [64:23]
Jon Favreau
If you have comments, questions, or guest ideas, email us@offlinericket.com and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of Offline and Pod, Save America, exclusive content and more, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilech Frank. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jerrick Centeno is our sound editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos Every week. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.
- [65:49]
Grainger Advertiser
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- [66:19]
Jon Favreau
with its two juicy beef patties and three slices of melted cheese topped with tangy Big Arch sauce. The Big Arch is what happens when you start making a McDonald's burger and never stop. The Big Arch the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet for a limited time.