← The Al Franken Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript171 lines
- [00:00]
Anne Applebaum
This holiday season, reach for the one butter that never disappoints. Kerrygold. Made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy and perfect for baking. Whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerrygold's high butterfat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture. Holiday treats will taste extraordinary.
- [00:27]
Shipstation Advertiser
Running a Shopify store and drowning in shipping chaos. Shipsation can fix this for you. Shipsation goes beyond just shipping labels with advanced automation, batch processing and shipping discounts that a single platform just doesn't offer. Like discounts up to 90% off major carriers. See how Shipstation can make shipping for your Shopify store better. Go to shipstation.com and access all features. Free for 30 days. No credit card or contract required. Cancel anytime. That's shipstation.com.
- [01:01]
Podcast Host
Hey everybody. We got a great one today. You know, for a change, Anne Applebaum and Franklin Ford, both brilliant journalists for the Atlantic, join me today to talk about what happened around the world in 2025. It didn't actually turn out the way Donald Trump said it would. He said he was going to end the war in Ukraine on day one. And of course, looks like he won't get it done in year one. As we taped the conversation, more was coming out about the oil tanker we seized off of Venezuela. Trump says it's the biggest tanker that's ever been seized. When I first heard about it, I thought, wow, that could transport a lot of cocaine. Well, it wasn't cocaine. It was carrying oil, Venezuela's whale and oil. But it turns out the tanker had a federal judge's order against it because it has a history of illegally carrying Iranian oil which finances Iranian terrorist activities around the world. Well, we on the Al Franken podcast are steadfastly against Iranian terrorist activities. But subsequent to my discussion with Anne and Frank, the Trump administration announced it had sanctioned six more crude oil tankers with Venezuelan oil that will be headed, they say, to China, I guess through the Panama Canal. Hmm, I see. This is Trump's plan to drive Venezuela into even deeper poverty and overthrow Maduro. This is about regime change so that Trump and his pals in the oil business can get a piece of that action. I see, I see. Well, closer to home, Indiana, to be specific, 21 Republicans in the state Senate sided with all 10 Democrats to defeat passage of a new gerrymandered map to add two more Republican congressional seats. Another grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia refused to indict Letitia James. This is the third attempt to Indict the New York Attorney general. The first was successful, kind of, but it was thrown out because a judge determined that Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney who indicted James, wasn't legally the U.S. attorney. Then a second grand jury refused to indict James because presumably the charges just for so weak. And now the third attempt has failed. But they'll try again. Trump will get his retribution, or at least add to James legal fees. Well, Mike Lindell, the MyPillow Guy and election conspiracy nut who spread false accusations at the 2020 presidential election, was stolen. Is running for governor in my home state of Minnesota. I don't know Lindell, but he made a fortune with MyPillow, a fortune he's evidently lost, in part because many big Box Stores dropped MyPillow in 2021 after he became a national election denial spokesman. He says he's $10 million in debt after being successfully sued for defamation by Dominion and smartmatic voting machine companies. He owes millions in legal fees. Plus, he hosted a Prove Mike Wrong challenge in 2021, offering $5 million to anyone who could prove his election data analysis was false, while someone did. I know the people of Minnesota, and that's just the kind of guy they want as chief executive of our state. And the Republicans in the Senate have refused to extend the ACA subsidies, meaning that millions of Americans will see their premiums skyrocket. That's an issue that Democrats will carry into the midterms, an issue I wish we didn't have. But our focus today is on the globe and Applebaum and Franklin Foer on what happened around the world during Trump's first year back in office. It's a great one, you know, for a change. Yeah, we did this two years ago.
- [05:54]
Franklin Foer
The people wanted more.
- [05:58]
Podcast Host
They want more two years later. I want to start by highlighting President Trump's remarkable achievement of ending eight wars. Six this year so far. Anyway. He was honored this last week at the Donald Trump Institute of Peace and celebrating the piece that he, I guess, brokered between what is called the Republic of Congo and Rwanda. But the next day, there was new fighting between.
- [06:32]
Franklin Foer
The Nobel Prize is coming.
- [06:37]
Podcast Host
I guess we're going to kind of do a review of the year. I want to start with something that happened toward the beginning of the year, which is usaid, that Musk is head of doge, and one of the first things he did was cut USAID aid. And you went to Sudan.
- [06:57]
Anne Applebaum
I did.
- [06:59]
Podcast Host
And saw the results of that.
- [07:01]
Anne Applebaum
I did. I mean, I'll preface it by saying it looks like Musk cut USAID on the basis of some weird conspiracy theories that were cooked up by people on the Internet. So now we know. You know, anybody who says it doesn't matter what they say on the Internet is wrong, because tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of people might die because of cuts to food aid and medical aid that we've done very abruptly. I mean, I think the main thing to understand about USAID is that it was. We didn't. Us didn't contribute all of it, but we did a lot of the logistics. So the shipping of food around the world, the keeping of websites, the collecting of statistics, a lot of usaid, that was a lot of usaid. And when that ended abruptly, remember, it was just like they crashed the websites and they burned the warehouses and they got rid of everything all at once and canceled all the contracts.
- [07:56]
Podcast Host
This is food. This is medicine. This is food.
- [07:59]
Anne Applebaum
This is medicine. This is life savings. I mean, that's most of what USAID did. There were some things it did that were. Arguably, some people in Congress liked them and some didn't. But the really dramatic cuts were to provision of food to refugees and to war zones and to places where there are food shortages.
- [08:20]
Podcast Host
And medicine.
- [08:20]
Anne Applebaum
And also. And medicine. And even medicine, you know, US HIV treatment. Exactly. Huge program in Africa created by George W. Bush called pepfar, which was. Which was giving AIDS medication to newborns and mothers and all kinds of people. And it was just ended overnight. I mean, literally, they just didn't send it out anymore. And people died almost immediately, and they've been dying ever since.
- [08:45]
Podcast Host
I think Harvard School Health or something said it was 600,000.
- [08:52]
Anne Applebaum
I think that's projected over the next few years. That's a very positive. Sounds very plausible to me when you think about what it was. I was in Sudan and in Sudan, I was there in March, and it was just. In April. It was just the beginning of this change. And I have to tell you, the. I mean, the chaos was already evident, and people were already starting to feel that there was things going wrong in the system. The really most awful thing to me, though, was a conversation I had with a doctor there. I've said this before, but it can't be repeated enough. It was a very young doctor, very brave, was working in a pediatric hospital near the front line. This is outside of Khartoum. He started to explain to me that he had been given these. There are these special nutritional supplements that the US and others make that the US Gives to malnourished babies and children. And. And they're made of peanuts. And they're made in Georgia and they're made in a couple other places. And they are sent by USAID around the world. And they're just, they're very efficient because they give you a lot of calories at once and they're easy to store and various other things. And he still had some of these. He had a hospital with malnourished children in it. So these are very tiny babies that are very thin and dying. And, you know, if you give this food to malnourished children, they recover. And he was explaining to me that he was using these packages and he wanted you me to know as a representative of the United States that he wasn't wasting them. In other words, he was giving them to real Mel. And I just seen the malnourished children, you know, so here is a guy, you know, who feels he, you know, has to explain that he's not waste. It's not waste. Because he had understood Americans are cutting this because of waste. And I have to tell you, for me, it was unbelievably embarrassing. You know, why should this guy try to justify his use of life saving, life saving, you know, to me, and I think that's echoed, you know, it's echoing all over the world, not just Africa, all kinds of places where people are genuinely confused, like, what did we do wrong? And why is this suddenly stopped? And maybe, maybe if we explain to the Americans that we're not wasting it, that they'll understand. And the layers of, I mean, the damage in terms of human life, but also in terms of America's reputation, I think it's going to go on echoing for years and years.
- [11:15]
Franklin Foer
Can I just. I've been talking to fired civil servants over the course of the last couple months and talking to people at USAID and at the State Department. And it is these kind of thousand points of small generosity and beneficence where you have soft power happening in remote corners of the world, where you have a guy in Indonesia who's able to come up with a. A program, a nutrition program, where he gets an American Christian NGO in a company to work together with the government to do something where we're not actually making the investment, it's the ability to leverage connections that is responsible for these things that have outsized impact on people's lives, but also on the reputation of the United States. And these people are very aware that in a lot of these countries, the United States is engaged in a competition with China for hearts and minds. But the thing that I've just been so struck by, as far as the future of American foreign policy is concerned, it's not just these. It's not just soft power, it's actual diplomacy that there is no. There's no manual for how you conduct American foreign policy. There's no. There's no school that you can go to that would appropriately train you from scratch about how to do it. American foreign policy is something where you have people who acquire know how over decades, that becomes the wisdom that is then transmitted to incoming generations of Foreign Service officers and of people who work at USAID or in the Pentagon. And the layoffs, the reductions in forces and the resignations that have happened over the course of the last year have afflicted the most senior ranks of the United States government. So the places where that wisdom of know how, that. That archive of how to do foreign policy is deepest have been the most eviscerated. And so when it comes to starting things up from scratch, and, you know, God willing, there's an administration that's able to rebuild some of this capacity someday, they really will be improvising wildly because, you know, all of the senior heads, all the people who remember how to do these sorts of things, are gone.
- [13:31]
Podcast Host
Let's move on, I guess, to kind of during the events of the year, and I want to go to Israel and Gaza. Where was war at the beginning of the year, the beginning of 2025?
- [13:45]
Franklin Foer
At the beginning of 25, the war was raging. And then a couple weeks into that year, there was a ceasefire that Trump was able to negotiate, even though he wasn't yet president, negotiated through his emissaries in the Biden administration, was willing to kind of cede that diplomatic terrain to the Trumpies because it felt like Trump had some unique ability to persuade Netanyahu to end the war. And there was the sense that Trump just didn't like the optics of the war and therefore would apply pressure on Netanyahu that Biden hadn't been able to apply.
- [14:24]
Podcast Host
So we got a ceasefire and Israel broke it.
- [14:28]
Franklin Foer
Yeah, well, so I would say the, you know, the remainder of the. The war continued to grind on, and to some extent, it actually still continues to grind on, even though we have a more formal ceasefire, a more lasting ceasefire in place, that it's. It's kind of a zombie conflict even to this day. But at that early stage in the war, Israel had set for itself this kind of impossible goal. Two. Two goals. One was achievable, which was the release of the hostages, and another goal, which was the. The end of Hamas.
- [15:05]
Podcast Host
That hasn't happened.
- [15:06]
Franklin Foer
That hasn't happened. The release of the hostages did happen.
- [15:09]
Anne Applebaum
Although there had been hostages had been released before. This was just the last hostages, the.
- [15:14]
Franklin Foer
Last batch of hostages.
- [15:15]
Podcast Host
Right, right. And then exchange for, like, 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. And so where is that? That's a plan that was hatched by Kushner.
- [15:26]
Anne Applebaum
And.
- [15:27]
Franklin Foer
Yeah, so most of the terms of the peace agreement were kind of clear from, you know, years ago. And it was. It was clear probably at the beginning of the conflict what. What the terms would eventually look like. And so it wasn't so much the artistry of getting to an agreement where Israel would buy in, but it was creating the conditions where Israel felt as if it had achieved enough of its goals that it could stop the war and that there was a sufficient political pressure applied on Hamas through Qatar and Turkey and through Israel's military pressure for them to agree to terms.
- [16:07]
Podcast Host
Okay, so where. Where are they right now? Where are the Israelis? Where, Where, Where's Hamas right now?
- [16:13]
Franklin Foer
Gaza is bifurcated into two separate territories. One where most of the population is where Hamas is in control, and then the eastern part of Gaza, where the Israelis maintain control. Now, the western part of Gaza is an immense pile of rubble. And I think that part of. There's two main stories. One is kind of what happens ultimately to that rubble, because a lot of that rubble is filled with ordinance. It is such a massive logistical task to kind of to get rid of that rubble. The second is there's this question ultimately of governance, and that is Hamas is willing to make certain concessions and in order to hand over power to some sort of transitional government. But that transitional government is also dependent on there being some sort of security force that is not Hamas. And nobody really wants to be part of that security force. None of the Arab countries want to be part of that security force. That's just a massive conceptual problem that has yet to be conquered, you know.
- [17:24]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, and there's also the pro. There's also the problem of what's going to happen to the people. I mean, there are people living there. What will they do? What does their future look like? And there was some conversation about moving them. I think the Israelis did negotiate semi secretly to move them somewhere else. That's probably not going to work. And so it's not just how they're going to be governed. How are they going to live, what kind of economies they're going to be there, who will rebuild it? I mean, none of these questions have been answered yet.
- [17:54]
Podcast Host
All of them were part of the 20 point plan, but none of them seem very feasible right now.
- [18:01]
Franklin Foer
Yeah, the Middle east kind of defies optimism. But for this brief flicker when Trump went to Charm, he went to Jerusalem and then Charm El Sheikh, and he had every single Arab country kind of standing with him in support of this peace plan. It felt you, it was you. You had permission for a brief moment to feel as if the region was turning its page and that there was this unusual degree of alignment about what would come next. But it's easy to get people to agree to a set of very vague principles. It's another thing to come up with the substance that would allow those principles to be realized.
- [18:42]
Anne Applebaum
I thought it was fake from the beginning. I mean, I was mystified by the coverage of that piece plan, mystified by it, you know, that people imagined the, you know, the Middle east conflict is over for a thousand years. You know, people were saying things like that. And I, I never understood what was going to happen to Gaza. I never understood who was going to be the force that would run it. I never understood anything about it. And, and, well, it was like Trump taking.
- [19:06]
Podcast Host
Trump taking a victory lap. I was, I mean, I was as skeptical as you, I think, Anne, and, and I think that's been borne out.
- [19:17]
Franklin Foer
So I, like, I get, I get delusionally optimistic at certain moments when I feel like just to allow myself. But then it collapsed pretty quickly. What's also interesting is how the prize that everybody was tracing was this normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that, that was always going to be part of whatever interim solution existed, and that's, that's even more remote now than it was a year ago.
- [19:41]
Podcast Host
Why is that?
- [19:42]
Franklin Foer
Because the Iranian threat has been temporarily diminished in the region. There's, there's less incentive for them to. Well, that's part of it. Less incentive for them to make, to, to make a deal with Israel. But the other part is, is that because of their applying Donald Trump, with so many presents and so many gifts and so much investment, they've been able to get a lot of promises of American protection without, without them having to give up anything in return to the United States.
- [20:11]
Podcast Host
Well, you've written about the Saudis and the uae, and that was his first trip abroad. I think he went to the Pope's funeral and. But then were you surprised that he went to the Gulf states?
- [20:29]
Anne Applebaum
That's exactly when he did news first term. Same thing. It was skipping everybody. I mean, if you, I mean, I once, I looked this up in 2017, and historically, the last several presidencies. You know, the first president's first trip abroad, I mean, it went something like Canada, Canada, Mexico, Canada, Mexico, Canada. I mean, it was. And then, you know, and it was always to an ally or to somebody of immediate interest. And this was, you know, this was Trump visiting his business partners. You know, those are, those are the people who invest in his son in law's company. Those are the people who have given him the best gifts. That's, that's who he thinks is important to United.
- [21:08]
Podcast Host
Well, he got a plane. He got the.
- [21:11]
Anne Applebaum
He got a plane. He got investments in his crypto company. You know, huge investments. And we don't know what else, actually, because so much of what goes on in that world is secret or anonymous.
- [21:21]
Franklin Foer
But they also began. They began investing in him pretty massively. It felt like the first Trump term. He was priming the pump in order to get massive investment. And as soon as it became clear that he was going to be the nominee for president, that he was going.
- [21:36]
Podcast Host
To be the nominee the second time.
- [21:38]
Franklin Foer
Yeah, yeah, that's real estate in the Trump Organization in order to develop golf courses in Oman and Trump towers in various Saudi cities.
- [21:48]
Podcast Host
Right. And so this was their way. And they gave $2 billion to the Saudis, gave it to Kushner's.
- [21:55]
Franklin Foer
Yeah.
- [21:56]
Podcast Host
Investment company. Right, right. So this is, I. Speaks to corruption. I think you've both written about that and, and about Ukraine and Frank, about those Gulf states. What have, what have the Gulf states gotten back in terms of, you know, the Trump administration?
- [22:22]
Franklin Foer
I mean, for starters, they got Qatar and Saudi Arabia have gotten assurances from the United States that we will, we will defend them. They, Saudi Arabia has gotten us to lift sanctions on the new government in Syria because they were scrambling to achieve influence in the new Syrian government, and they were worried about Turkey stepping in and claiming territory and assuming greater regional power throughout Syria. So we were able to help them cement their place there. We've refrained from criticizing the Saudis for human rights violations. And when MBS visited Washington, you know, Trump seemed to be less apologetic for the Khashoggi assassination murder than MBS was. And so we're willing to defend things about Saudi Arabia that even the Saudis are embarrassed to defend.
- [23:17]
Podcast Host
MBS ordered the murder of Khashoggi, and Trump repeatedly says that he had nothing to do with it.
- [23:26]
Franklin Foer
Right.
- [23:28]
Podcast Host
So Syria fell, Assad fell. And tell me about this new guy, Ahmad Al Sharah. And he was a terrorist. Right.
- [23:40]
Anne Applebaum
He's one of the most interesting people on the world stage today, which isn't saying he's a good guy or a bad guy, but he's, he's somebody who emerged out of the Al Qaeda world. I mean, there were lots of different groups there and is now seeking to establish himself as a statesman who's interested in good investment prospects and wants to talk to the IMF and wants his country to grow. And he's been interviewed about this several times and he has a very good, he's not very eloquent, at least in these countries, kind of formal interviews that have been published. He repeatedly says, you know, there are different stages of your life. And at one stage of my life I was, you know, I was, I was fighting for independence and now I'm fighting for prosperity and sovereignty of my country in a different way. Then the question is, does somebody really have a conversion like that and is that really possible or can you make that kind of shift in your politics?
- [24:36]
Podcast Host
Well, he's, he's the first former terrorist or you know, considered part of a terrorist group to go to the White House, I would think. Right.
- [24:46]
Anne Applebaum
Probably. I mean, now I'm trying to remember whether the former IRA people ever went to the White House. I mean, because there was a similar, there was an evolution inside the Irish Republican army at one point, which was of course a much smaller scale international problem, but it was still a real one. And they made, some of them made a kind of conversion and decided to do, in their case, even Democratic politics. It was always hard to know how to measure them as well. But yeah, no, presumably he's the first ex Al Qaeda person in the White House.
- [25:16]
Podcast Host
Frank, you and I talked the other day about the hostile takeover that Paramount is trying to take of Warner Brothers. And there's some Saudi money in that.
- [25:30]
Franklin Foer
The three Middle Eastern states that are now backing the Jared Kushner aligned deal that the Ellison family is mounting to take over Warner Brothers and the Trump.
- [25:41]
Podcast Host
Administration will, the FTC and the Justice Department will decide who gets that is.
- [25:48]
Franklin Foer
I think it's mostly Donald Trump is going to be the one to decide that. I mean, I think he's, he has rigged this as a competition between two groups vying for his approval. And so the question is who will deliver the most for Donald Trump and the people. The party that delivers the most for Donald Trump, which apparently includes the transformation of CNN into a more pliant news organization, will be the group that wins.
- [26:16]
Podcast Host
The Paramount group has Larry Ellison, who put $40 billion as a backstop to this deal. And he's a good friend of Trump's. And Trump's son in law is involved in this deal. So cnn, he hates cnn.
- [26:32]
Franklin Foer
And cnn, CNN is likely to be a casualty of this. I mean, CNN was going to be spun off by Warner Brothers as into some sort of separate entity was part of a different deal. I'm not totally sure that he can, he can force this if he wants.
- [26:48]
Podcast Host
Okay, so. So CNN may change its editorial slant. Yeah, this is exactly, I think what in the Atlantic article before the election you wrote about corruption, kind of Hungary model.
- [27:04]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, this is exactly how, not just Hungary, Hungary, Turkey, Russia. I mean this is how countries that are either failing democracies or are established autocracies, this is how they control the media. A lot of us have in our minds the idea that a censor is a guy in a room who crosses lines out of newspaper articles with some kind of thick pen. Actually, nowadays censorship is done through pressure and control of ownership and the control over media moguls or the, particularly the situation that we have here where the owners of media companies have other interests and there are other deals they want to do with the government, then the government has leverage over them.
- [27:49]
Podcast Host
This is autocracy.
- [27:50]
Anne Applebaum
This is, this is, I mean, competitive authoritarianism. And it's not, it's not the same thing as the system they have in communist China. But it's moving off the direct away from the idea of how, of independent media that we've known in the past. I mean, we've been moving away from that for a while, but this is a kind of new stage. What it means is that no, the President isn't directly in control. He wouldn't be directly in control of cnn, but he has influence over the owner and the owner sets the parameters of what CNN can and can't do. And then it just becomes a very different kind of news station. That's how it worked in Hungary and that's how it worked in Turkey and that's what Putin did in Russia. There's a famous incident at the very beginning of Putin's career when he first became president of Russia, where there was a comedy program that he didn't like. It was actually a puppet show, maybe you know the story. And he didn't like his puppet, which was a kind of scrawny, kind of gnome like character. And he didn't shut the show down, but he put huge pressure on the owner of the television station, threatened him in various ways, threatened him personally. Eventually the television station was sold and then the new owner of the television station ended the show. And that's how it works now. It is exactly the same as what Putin did. Exactly the same. Bringing exactly that method of presidential and political control over television to America.
- [29:18]
Franklin Foer
Right. As Brendan Carr said, we can do this the easy way or we can.
- [29:21]
Podcast Host
Do it the hard way with Jimmy Kimmel.
- [29:24]
Franklin Foer
Yeah, but that's. This is. This is the easier way.
- [29:27]
Podcast Host
Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Ann Applebaum and Franklin4. Hey, everybody. I'd like to get an update on how Nelly is doing. Now, Nelly is Peter's dog who's been enjoying our sponsor Ollie's protein pack meals. Now, Peter, tell me about Nelly.
- [29:49]
Franklin Foer
Nelly's great. Nelly's great.
- [29:51]
Podcast Host
She is about seven years old. We think her backstory is a little cloudy, but we, we adopted her during COVID And how long has Nelly been eating Ollie? She's been eating it for three months. And here's the thing. Ali bought ads on the show about.
- [30:07]
Franklin Foer
Three months ago and they sent us a package so that she could try it out. And she loved it so much that we actually just became members of Ali. We just bought our own membership.
- [30:19]
Podcast Host
I imagine that happens a lot.
- [30:21]
Franklin Foer
Yeah, I'm sure it does.
- [30:22]
Podcast Host
It was immediate, how her behavior changed, her appearance changed. We were just out on her walk. She gets so excited for her walks now. She's a much more active dog. Wow. What are the meals like? So what you do is when you sign up for Ollie, you give them some information about your dog.
- [30:40]
Franklin Foer
You can give them a photo, but you tell them how old the dog is, how much they weigh, and they sort of cater a menu based on what your dog needs to be eating. And so then they send these packets of things like pork with blueberries and chicken with carrots and really delicious sounding.
- [30:58]
Podcast Host
Meals if you're a dog. Well, we're human. Some of that sounds pretty good.
- [31:04]
Franklin Foer
I haven't been brave enough to try.
- [31:08]
Podcast Host
And she's been enjoying all this and she's on her third month of this. She's on her third month Al.
- [31:13]
Franklin Foer
And we're going to keep going.
- [31:15]
Podcast Host
Well, thanks, Peter. You know, your dog's well being starts with their food. And that's why Ollie delivers fresh human grade food that your dog will love. Head to ollie.com Franken tell them all about your dog and use code Franken to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box, so if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O l l I e.com Franken and enter code Franken to get 60% off your first box.
- [31:54]
Shipstation Advertiser
If you run a Shopify store, listen up. Shopify's got you covered for selling. But when your shipping volume grows and you're juggling multiple plugins just to get orders out the door, you need tools that can keep up. Stop duct taping your shipping workflow and use the tools that work better together, like Shopify and Shipstation. Think of Shipstation as Shopify's dedicated shipping partner. Shipstation goes beyond just shipping labels to save you time and money by automating the entire order fulfillment process from syncing your orders all the way through inventory management and returns. Automate the rate browser to select the lowest rates on shipments with discounts up to 90% off major carriers like USPS, UPS and FedEx. No wonder businesses that use ShipStation grow three times faster on average and ship 15 times more orders. See how Shipstation can help you scale and boost your Shopify Sales? Go to shipstation.com and access all features. Free for 30 days. No credit card or contract required. Cancel Anytime.
- [32:52]
Ghostbed Advertiser
That's shipstation.com Stop blaming it on holiday stress. We all know it's that time of year when everything feels drained. But both your wallet and you. Well, the real problem is right under you. It's that saggy old, unsupportive mattress. Well, say hello to Ghostbed. Ghostbed is family run, consumer loving. With over 20 years of mattress making mastery, they've engineered the perfect sleep weapon. Durable, insanely comfortable and cool enough to keep you chill all night long. Every Ghostbed packs their exclusive Procore technology, a powerhouse support system that cradles your back supports and aligns your spine. Translation, you wake up feeling like a human again. Hot sleeper. Ghostbed's cooling materials fight Heat 247 so you don't wake up sweaty even when the thermostat's cranked up. And here's the kicker. Fast free shipping in just two to five days, a 101 night sleep trial and up to a 25 year warranty. That's confidence. Right now, Ghostbed is slashing prices up to 50% off compared to other brands. And because you're listening, you score an extra 10% off site wide. Just use promo code. Podcast at checkout. That's podcast for 10% off of already insane deals. Upgrade your sleep, upgrade your life. Ghostbed, the coolest beds in the world.
- [34:07]
Podcast Host
And we are back with Ann Applebaum and Frankfor. Ann, you've written about Ukraine and the corruption there in that country. But compared to the corruption in the United States. Now in the United States and Russia.
- [34:22]
Anne Applebaum
It'S a really interesting comparison. So in Ukraine, what you have right now is the Ukrainian state investigating itself. Those are the body called the National Anti Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, which is staffed by civil servants, you know, paid by the government. And that is the group of people who are right now investigating a kickback system that was running in the energy industry. And it was a very ugly system, especially during the war when a lot there's been enormous attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and people don't have power and electricity. And so, yes, people are very angry that there was money being stolen from the electrical, from the amazing.
- [35:00]
Podcast Host
During a war that would be.
- [35:02]
Anne Applebaum
Well, this is the point. So I've spoken to some of the people who were running that investigation and others around it in Ukraine's anti corruption movement, and they point out that it's exactly because there's a war and because they see corruption as a source of weakness in the Ukrainian state that they wanted this investigation to go through. You know, try to imagine right now the current FBI run by Kash Patel investigating the Trump administration. You can't imagine it. It's the same circumstance. And in our country we have so our institutions are so degraded that our anti corruption functions aren't even working. You know, when Trump fired all these inspector generals inside all across the government, there was barely a reaction. You know, what do inspector generals do? Their job is to be inside the institutions and to look for malfeasance and waste and corruption and so on. And he just fired them and there was no public reaction. And instead what we have is a kind of grand scale corruption. So we've already talked about Trump accepting money or accepting favors or his family accepting money from leaders of the Middle east and therefore, which is twisting American foreign policy. And we also now have the specter of Trump's real estate partner and his son in law, who's also a businessman, negotiating with the Russians.
- [36:28]
Podcast Host
And this is Witkoff, and this is.
- [36:30]
Anne Applebaum
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner who've been going back and forth to, to Russia and elsewhere.
- [36:35]
Podcast Host
And, and well, let's talk about that. Those negotiations. And they haven't gotten, I mean, this is very one sided deal. It's been so that we supposedly wrote.
- [36:46]
Anne Applebaum
And their, their prime interest seems to be Russian, American business deals and that they're trying to somehow solve the Ukraine war in some way that will make those deals possible. And the way they're trying to solve it is not beneficial to Ukraine or to Europe or to the United States. So this is now, and this I consider to be really, really corrupt. You know, that it's. That the interests of some business people are being. Are being held over the interests of America and American allies. And I should. You know, the deal is. You know, it's a complicated deal, and there are different pieces to it. I mean, the two most important things is there has been enormous pressure on Ukraine to give up territory that it controls. This is not occupied by Russia.
- [37:30]
Podcast Host
The deal that was cut includes what are the. Donetsk. Is that so?
- [37:36]
Anne Applebaum
Donetsk is a big province, and Russia controls part of it and Ukraine controls part of it. And the Russians want the Ukrainians to just give them the rest of it. And this would include kind of heavily fortified cities and minefields and so on.
- [37:49]
Podcast Host
And this is supposedly what we wrote.
- [37:52]
Anne Applebaum
We wrote it. It looks like, though, the Russians wrote it. And there are a lot of pieces of Russian propaganda that keep appearing in Trump's conversation and statements.
- [38:03]
Podcast Host
And it seems that Trump has favored Putin.
- [38:07]
Anne Applebaum
Of course, he has always.
- [38:10]
Podcast Host
I think if we're doing year in review, the first thing we remember is Vance and Trump yelling at Zelensky in the White House.
- [38:19]
Anne Applebaum
No, no. Which was the first real shock. That was actually the moment when everybody on the planet thought that could happen to my prime minister or my president. And everybody in Europe thought this is a hostile administration. So, yes, that was a real game changer, that moment.
- [38:38]
Podcast Host
And then I remember in August, Putin goes to Alaska, meets with Trump, and he literally rolls out a red carpet.
- [38:46]
Anne Applebaum
Literally rolled out a red carpet, which he has not done for anybody else.
- [38:50]
Podcast Host
And was trying to get him to agree to a ceasefire. And Putin said no.
- [38:55]
Anne Applebaum
It seems that, yes, Putin said no, Putin doesn't want a ceasefire. Putin has not given up his goals. His goal is to conquer all of Ukraine. And his other goal, maybe just as important, is to divide America from Europe and to end NATO. So those are Putin's goals, and he hasn't given them up. And he continues to pursue them well.
- [39:15]
Franklin Foer
And he's succeeded in a large extent in driving us from the Europeans, especially reading this new national security document that the government has published that outlines its primary strategic objectives in the world. We now consider Europe a hostile force. I wanted to just return to one thing about corruption. It's also that Trump has been wielding foreign policy in order to get corrupt autocrats who he likes off the hook. That he's done this in Israel, where he's pushed for a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu. He's done this with Brazil, where in order to try to stymie the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro. He's, he's ratcheted up terrorists in a massive sort of way. And internally he's undone a lot of the apparatus that we have in the Justice Department, in the, in the government that aims to limit global corruption. I mean, he's essentially given a green light to the corrupt autocrats around the world to move forward with all of their corrupt endeavors.
- [40:24]
Podcast Host
This administration, the Trump administration, is by far the most corrupt in our history. Right.
- [40:30]
Anne Applebaum
And there isn't anybody in second place. You know, there are other, there have been other administrations where, you know, somebody gave a, helped his brother in law get a deal or something. But I mean, there's nothing grand scale like this before where American foreign policy is corrupted by foreign money. I can't think of it an equivalent.
- [40:50]
Franklin Foer
And I don't think we actually know, you know, we're talking about this Ukraine deal. We don't even know the full dimensions of the corruption. Right. Some of the seedier parts of it reside in appendices to the deal that haven't been reported on that aren't available.
- [41:05]
Podcast Host
There's not going to be a deal, is there? I mean, basically Zelensky said not giving up any land that they haven't conquered.
- [41:13]
Anne Applebaum
And well, there may still be, who knows. But one thing about the land that's also mystifies me is that I'm not sure Zelensky can give an order that will be obeyed. In other words, if he tells the Ukrainian army to retreat and give up territory, I'm not sure they'll do it. So I'm not sure he can do this. I mean, it would be so unpopular. And that's an army that functions in many ways much more like a grassroots, like a revolutionary movement. I mean, it has different controllers and some of the commanders have their own loyalty and their own sources of funding. And I just don't believe he can give an order that will be followed in that sphere, nor can he do it and stay in office. So it's a, it's an incredible thing to ask. I mean, it's an, it's an impossible and improbable ask. He's already said he would have a ceasefire on current lines, which is already a concession. He said if there were, you know, if there were a ceasefire, he would hold elections, which is also a concession. I don't know why, why he should have to have elections and not Putin. There hasn't been a free election in Russia for 20 years. He's made a series of compromising, but he's not going to be able to order his army to retreat. It's just not going to happen.
- [42:26]
Podcast Host
Well, in this national security strategy that Frank was talking about, we're not very keen on the priority of democracy, are we?
- [42:37]
Anne Applebaum
No, we don't mention it at all. I mean, the strange thing about the national Security strategy is it feels a little bit like, you know, how the Bible is written by different people and biblical scholars find different voices in the Bible. That's kind of what the national security strategy is like too. And there's some parts of it where someone is writing about, oh, well, we need to do X or Y. We need to get Europe and Japan and South Korea on our side to do X or Y. And then there's another part of it where they say, and actually there's some governments in Europe that we don't like because we feel they're. They. I don't know whether it's gender or immigration or there's something we don't like about them. And so we're going to try and overthrow them. And it's going to be very hard to get countries to work with us and do things with us if we're trying to overthrow their governments, if we're intervening in their democratic process. The other weird thing about it is that it talks about how, okay, we're not going to try and change anybody's government and not everybody has to be a democracy and we're going to be realistic and so on. Okay, so the only countries that we're now interested in intervening in and whose political nature we care about are our democratic allies and we want them to become more authoritarian. That seems to be our policy now.
- [43:46]
Podcast Host
They're not high on European countries. At one point they warned the NATO members risk becoming majority non European, which is absurd.
- [43:59]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, if you look at the numbers, it's absurd. Even the countries that have the highest number of immigrants, I mean, Germany, for example, has a high number of people who are born outside of Germany, but most of them are. Or anyway, a very large percentage of them come from other European countries. Like they're Polish, you know, or Italian or Romanian. And so it's a, it's a very bizarre argument that I think must come from, again, some ideologue in the State Department. Maybe it's Darren Beatty, maybe it's somebody else who is reading some far right fever dream material online. And that's where they got it from. You know, it literally bears no resemblance to reality.
- [44:38]
Podcast Host
You live in Poland some of the time.
- [44:40]
Anne Applebaum
I live in Poland about half the Time.
- [44:42]
Ghostbed Advertiser
Yeah.
- [44:42]
Podcast Host
Okay. This is Trump talking about European leaders. He said some are, okay, I know the, the good leaders, I know the bad leaders, I know the smart ones, I know the stupid ones. You get some real stupid ones too. But they're not doing a good job. Europe is not doing a good job. In many ways, they're not doing a good job.
- [45:08]
Anne Applebaum
And this is after a year of European leaders doing flattery and doing meetings and doing, you know, saying nice things about Trump. You know, I mean, they, they put a lot of energy into this Trump diplomacy. I mean, some very notably so. And at the end of the day, what matters most is who's around Trump all the time and who's showing him what pieces of information. And he is surrounded by people who are saying, you know, who knows what. There's pictures they're showing him of Sweden or Stockholm or London or Berlin. You know, he's also, remember earlier this year he was under the impression that there were some kind of riots in Portland, maybe because he'd been shown old photographs from some years back. You know, we don't know what he's being told about Europe, but what he's doing, every day it becomes more damaging and every day it becomes harder to imagine a normal transatlantic relationship proceeding in the future.
- [46:06]
Franklin Foer
It's also, this is also part of the problem of corruption when it arrives via foreign governments is that it becomes impossible to discern why America is acting the way that America is acting. And if it's even acting on behalf of its own citizenry or if it's acting on behalf of, of as a proxy power for other governments that are enriching the leader. This is the thing that the founders were most freaked out about as they crafted the Constitution.
- [46:39]
Podcast Host
Yeah, like you wrote a piece about that. Benjamin Franklin, when he was leaving Paris was given. What was that? He got some kind of snuff box.
- [46:50]
Franklin Foer
It was a very ornate snuff box. It had a portrait of the king surrounded by a bunch of diamonds. But he was obliged to presented before the Congress under the Articles of Confederation. And he wasn't supposed to take it, but they voted and they allowed him to take it. But that snuffbox informed much of the discussion that happened as the Constitution was being corrupted and led to there being some fairly clear cut language in the Constitution prohibiting the acceptance of gifts from foreign countries.
- [47:21]
Podcast Host
And Trump, of course, is just completely.
- [47:26]
Franklin Foer
Yeah.
- [47:28]
Podcast Host
Negated that. Well, let's talk about Venezuela. We sent a carrier group. Well, not carrier group there, but the Gerald R. Ford, which I guess is the largest Aircraft carrier in the world, and we have a fleet of warships there, and we've killed more than 80 people who are suspected traffickers. The one we're talking about, which is the first strike we made, that was a boat with 11 people on it. And these are pretty small boats, right. If you're going to traffic drugs, do you want 11 people in this boat instead of a lot of drugs?
- [48:04]
Franklin Foer
I mean, narco terrorist, I believe is the term.
- [48:07]
Podcast Host
Narco terrorists. Yeah. And, of course, the second strike on that boat killed the two survivors of the first strike. And Admiral Bradley showed that to members of Congress in closed session. They, a number of them were very disturbed, wanted the video released to the public. Trump had said he would do that, and. But now has changed his tune and said that it's up to Hegseth. And Hegseth won't release it, of course, because it's pretty obvious that we murdered those two. A couple days ago, we stopped a tanker, Trump says, the biggest oil tanker that's ever been seized. Imagine how much cocaine that can hold a big oil tanker. So are we going to invade Venezuela, you think? What's going to happen here?
- [49:05]
Franklin Foer
I mean, I kind of go back to the inaugural address, which kind of had this strange reference to taking back the Panama Canal, and that within whatever form of America first foreign policy, we have the idea that you kind of. You. You can take that which is closest to you and that's easiest to grab. Seems like it's somehow informing all of this, or that this is maybe some sort of giant manufactured distraction that they have concocted. But these things become an idea fix for Trump, and this is the thing that's on his brain and that he wants desperately. And I interviewed Nicholas Maduro in 2006, and Maduro is a terrible guy.
- [49:53]
Podcast Host
This was when Chavez was a terrible state.
- [49:56]
Franklin Foer
Yeah. And I. I met him, and he's. He's a. He is a clown in a lot of ways. He believes that he kind of in there, that there are spirits that inhabit him and that he channels in his speeches. And when I met him and interviewed him, I thought that this guy just is a buffoon. But the thing that struck me in the interview was that he told me, the thing that you don't realize about our country is that at some point there's going to be a civilizational war where you're going to invade us. That war is the future between our two countries. And when he told me that, I thought, oh, well, this is just further evidence of this guy being an idiot. There's no way in which the United States is ever going to invade Venezuela.
- [50:40]
Anne Applebaum
Well, turns out, I mean, Venezuela is a, is a strange situation because on the one hand, as Frank says, I mean, this is a very, very ugly dictatorship. Venezuela a couple decades ago was the richest country in South America and Chavez and then Maduro have turned it into the poorest country in South America and it produces more refugees than Ukraine and Gaza combined. You know, so, and that's with no war. That's just with poverty. They've created poverty and they've created this, this terrible disaster. And there is a legitimate Venezuelan opposition. Actually, as we're speaking, the Nobel Prize has just been awarded in Oslo to the leader of the Venezuelan opposition. They won a legitimate election. You know, at the end of last year. They proved that they won it. They, they conducted it. They had, you know, they had people inside the polling booths who, in polling stations rather, who collected data and they, and they won. There is an alternative government waiting to run Venezuela and they are the legitimate government. So I have no problem saying that. At the same time, there are a lot of mysteries about this. I don't know what it is. War, military action, drug, drug game. I'm not, I'm not sure what it is. I mean, one is they don't actually talk about democracy or about Machado much. I mean, so that doesn't seem to be their motive. It seems to me one of the possible motives might be domestic. Trump needs to have a war so that he can declare an emergency, so he can suspend some more laws. You know, he's created this kind of pseudo battle inside the US against brown skinned people who are supposedly criminals carrying drugs. And this, maybe this is in a.
- [52:18]
Podcast Host
Kind of, it's hardly a pseudo battle.
- [52:20]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, that's, I mean, it's a real, I meant pseudo in the sense that it's, there's not a real enemy. You know, there's a real battle and they're, and they're locking people up and arresting them. It's a, it's, it's a fake excuse and maybe the war is designed to give him some kind of excuse. You know, maybe it's really about the oil. I mean, there is a lot of oil in Venezuela and it's, it's a very badly managed, and it's been sanctioned for a long time and so on. So maybe, maybe they have business people in the way that they do in the, in, in the, in the case of Russia who are waiting, you know, who are egging the administration on because they want the oil I mean, that's another. That, that's, that's possible. So this could be another kind of kleptocratic oligarchic war. But the strangest thing about it is just that they have made no attempt to explain it. Why do we have soldiers in Puerto Rico and, you know, aircraft carriers around Venezuela? You know, if it's meant to be a wag the dog, you know, jingoistic distraction, like they're not even doing the jingoism. So it's a strange and mystifying moment.
- [53:25]
Podcast Host
Well, I don't think we're going to invade Venezuela.
- [53:29]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, I don't think so either. I mean, the Venezuelans think that there might be some military actions or strikes on the territory of Venezuela as opposed to these ships. And I have talked to several people in the Venezuelan opposition, and they're very ambivalent. I mean, of course they want Maduro to fall, and if Trump can make him fall, then they're in favor of that. They're also targeting people who may or may not be criminals, and even assuming there's no death sentence for small level drug smugglers normally. And so that's making them uncomfortable. And of course, they're nervous about how Trump might go about this and what they'll do and whether even this would result in a positive change for Venezuela. So it's a very complicated moment for them as well. They would like Trump to put pressure on the Venezuelan administration, but of course, they can also imagine all the many ways in which this might go wrong.
- [54:22]
Franklin Foer
I think also, I mean, just to tie it back to some of the foreign policy stuff we've been talking about earlier, there was this period where people were taunting Trump and saying that he always chickens out. Taco, he did strike Iranian nuclear facilities. I think that there's the sense that he's, he's all bluster when it comes to applying American force, I think is not correct.
- [54:48]
Podcast Host
We hit Iran and we bombed three of their nuclear facilities and we said we obliterated them. That wasn't the intelligence, actually, but we probably did a lot of damage. I have a question. If we had just stayed on the jcpoa, if we had stayed on that, would we be in a better place with Iran's nuclear program?
- [55:15]
Franklin Foer
Possibly. With. I mean, there's. Yeah, probably. As it relates to the nuclear program, there were, there were limits to that deal. It was set to expire at a certain point, I'm sure, but we would have been able to. We would have had greater insight to.
- [55:27]
Podcast Host
What they were doing, more monitoring that was that was the deal.
- [55:31]
Franklin Foer
Yeah. I think that the thing that's changed the most over the course of the last last year is that Iran, Iran as a, as a regional power has been neutered. And that's not really the, the, the strikes themselves. It has more to do with the way in which Hezbollah has been set back, in the way that Hamas has been set back. The ring of fire that they had intended to construct around Israel has been not quite extinguished, but a lot of it's been snuffed out.
- [56:00]
Anne Applebaum
But by the Israelis, not by the.
- [56:02]
Franklin Foer
Not by the Israelis. Yeah.
- [56:04]
Shipstation Advertiser
Running a Shopify store and drowning in shipping chaos. Shipsation can fix this for you. Shipstation goes beyond just shipping labels with advanced automation, batch processing and shipping discounts that a single platform just doesn't offer. Like discounts up to 90% off major carriers. See how Shipstation can make shipping for your Shopify store better? Go to shipstation.com and access all features. Free for 30 days. No credit card or, or contract required. Cancel Anytime.
- [56:32]
Ghostbed Advertiser
That's shipstation.com Stop blaming it on holiday stress. We all know it's that time of year when everything feels drained. Both your wallet and you. Well, the real problem is right under you. It's that saggy old unsupportive mattress. Well, say hello to Ghostbed. Ghostbed is family run, consumer loving. With over 20 years of mattress making mastery, they've engineered the perfect sleep weapon. Durable, insanely comfortable and cool enough to keep you chill all night long. Every Ghostbed packs their exclusive Procore technology, a powerhouse support system that cradles your back, supports and aligns your spine. You wake up feeling like a human again. Hot sleeper. Ghostbed's cooling materials fight heat 247 so you don't wake up sweaty even when the thermostat's cranked up. And here's the kicker. Fast free shipping in just two to five days, a 101 night sleep trial and up to a 25 year warranty. That's confidence. Right now Ghostbet is slashing prices up to 50% off compared to other brands. And because you're listening, you score an extra 10% off site wide. Just use promo code. Podcast at checkout. That's podcast for 10% off on top of already insane deals. Upgrade your sleep, upgrade your life. Ghostbed the coolest beds in the world.
- [57:45]
Anne Applebaum
Think about the last time you had to cancel a subscription. There was probably some waiting on hold, some guessing at your password, some mind numbing small talk, and maybe after all that, you still weren't able to Cancel it. Good news. It doesn't have to be this way. Thanks to Rocket Money. Rocket Money tracks, manages, and can cancel your subscriptions for you. When you connect your account, you'll see a complete picture of all of your recurring subscriptions all in one place. Rocket Money organizes your subscriptions by due date and notifies you when something is coming up, so you'll never be caught off guard when you get charged. If you see a subscription you want to cancel, Rocket Money simplifies the process. Instead of waiting on hold for an hour, you can cancel it right from the app. Rocket Money will even try to get you a refund for the money you spent on subscriptions you forgot about. Stop wasting time trying to cancel subscriptions the hard way. Make your life easier and go to RocketMoney.com cancel. That's RocketMoney.com cancel or download the app from the Apple app or Google Play stores.
- [58:47]
Franklin Foer
Forget everything you had planned for this weekend because you are sitting on your couch and winning from the comfort of your own home. I'm here with spinquest, where you can play hundreds of slot games, all the table games you love, and you could even win real cash Prizes.
- [59:03]
Anne Applebaum
New users. 30 coin packs are on sale for.
- [59:05]
Franklin Foer
10@Spinquest.Com SpinQuest is a free to play social casino or where prohibited.
- [59:11]
Podcast Host
Visit spinquest.com for more details. The tariffs that we, this was, I guess Liberation Day was April 2nd, and how have they played internationally and what has that done to our economy?
- [59:27]
Anne Applebaum
And the strange thing about the tariffs is they seem to be very whimsical and very unpredictable. And, you know, Trump has almost used them to, as a way, as a kind of blackmail bargaining mechanism, you know, to get stuff for himself, you know, or to get stuff for some companies. You know, there was an ugly scene a few weeks ago in the Oval Office when a Swiss delegation came to negotiate tariffs and some of the business people brought him presents. And one of the presents was a gold bar. You know, that's pretty, that's a pretty, you know, crass present, you know, worth $130,000 or something. And so there's so the, so the tariffs have. Look to the outside like another game to enhance Trump's, you know, greed or power. And they don't seem very consistent. They, they aren't. They. It's hard to see the consistency even as how they apply to the US Economy. I mean, are they, are they supposed to bring back American manufacturing, in which case they're not doing that because, you know, switching and changing them all the time certainly doesn't create a business environment that will people make people want to invest. You know, are they supposed to just punish countries we don't like? Because that's sort of irregular too. And, you know, we. There were tariffs on Ukraine, but not Russia.
- [60:48]
Podcast Host
There were tariffs on Brazil because they wanted.
- [60:52]
Anne Applebaum
Exactly, yeah. So the tariffs seem to have a political purpose that, you know, so and so there. It's a very muddled, very hard to understand policy.
- [61:02]
Franklin Foer
It's also one of the primary justifications for the tariffs was trying to contain China. But if you look at where China sits a year into the Trump administration, arguably Xi is in a much stronger position he was than when Trump came into office that there had been an effort to regionally contain China. But you take a country like India, which I think had been pulling much closer to the American sphere, much pulling away from China over the course of the last couple years because of tariffs, they've swung hard in China's direction. Or you look even at the sale of, of chips to China that the President just approved the, the sale of Nvidia to China, which it's not even clear that China wants all of these chips. But if, you know, the whole national security rationale for containing China, that had driven our policy, it's just not a primary part of this whole national security strategy. It seems to be receding. It's even receding as far as tariff policy is concerned.
- [62:11]
Podcast Host
And we talked about this. You call this the most corrupt administration and you talk about, in terms of the dealing like Witkoff and Kushner basically seemingly doing business deals with, with the Russians they were negotiating with. And Frank, you talked about it in terms of the Gulf states and we've talked about being an autocracy. What do you see coming up? He's got three more years left. Are we going to recover from this? That's a philosophical question. I'm sorry.
- [62:53]
Franklin Foer
Well, it's also a political question. And I think that it's weird watching Democrats because they've swing from. From fatalism, I think, about their political prospects. And then they have a good election day in the off year elections and they swing in the other direction where, you know, you start to see triumphalism begin to kick in, in the sense that it's inevitable that they're going to clean up in the, in the midterm elections. But I think the question of whether the Democrats are able to present some sort of viable alternative or whether the American.
- [63:26]
Podcast Host
It's a long way till the midterms. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [63:30]
Franklin Foer
Or the. Yeah, right. Or Trump actually pays a price for absurd things like imposing a tariff policy that he needs to then correct for with $12 billion in aid to American farmers, that would seem, you know, like ripe political conditions for him paying a severe price for his corruption policies.
- [63:53]
Podcast Host
Well, he, he did that in the first term, too. He, he bailed out the, you know, and rightly so. I mean, these farmers have been really badly hurt.
- [64:03]
Franklin Foer
I, I think about is just the, the, the way in which the state was destroyed kind of willy nilly in such a short period of time where we lost so much competence. And the whole ethos of the government, which was based on ideas about disinterestedness and neutrality, have all just been kicked, kicked in the stomach over the course of this administration. And then it seems like we're going to have this Supreme Court ruling in the Humphreys executor case, where the court's going to overturn the independence of our regulatory agencies, which sets up the prospect that massive decisions about the future of our media or the future of competitive capitalism are no longer settled in the idea of neutrally applying the law. Those questions then just become a matter of the executive imposing themselves on the country, which becomes an avenue for further corruption, for further consolidation of power, for further arbitrary punishment of enemies.
- [65:17]
Podcast Host
And that is just a rush to autocracy.
- [65:21]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, look, Congress can stop Trump. A Congress that decided it will not accept this level of kleptocracy, that will not accept violations of the law, that will not allow the President to destroy congressionally approved programs and institutions could stop Trump. So it is not as if nothing can possibly be done. It could be done. And this kind of aura of invincibility that Trump had at the beginning is already crumbling. And people are beginning to pay a price in some cases for having gone along with him. And people who care about this stuff and who are bothered about it should focus very, very hard on the midterms, because those will be determined. You know, they can make a big difference into what, you know, maybe not the coming year, but certainly what the final two years of this Trump administration looks like. And I think it's maybe worth ending with the thought that Trump and his people will try to cheat. They're already trying to cheat. They're trying to use, I'm talking about the midterm elections. There are other things going on. They are demanding from states, some states, access to their voter rolls, which is unprecedented. They're, they're looking at changing ID requirements for voting, which is also. Which they're trying to do at a national level. I mean, there are all kinds of small ways in which the administration is trying to shape these, these midterms. And it will be really, really important for ordinary citizens, politicians, journalists, everybody who cares to pay attention to this stuff and call it out over the next year. Because that, I think, is going to be a big theme.
- [67:05]
Podcast Host
And this is what other countries have done to move to this kind of autocracy.
- [67:12]
Anne Applebaum
One of the reasons Trump there are a lot of secrets about what Trump has done and he doesn't want us to know, for example, what are his deals with Russia and what are his deals with the Gulf states. And he knows that a different Congress would expose those things. And so he and many people around him have a lot of interest in making sure that elections aren't fair. I think that's the theme for the next nine months.
- [67:40]
Podcast Host
Okay. And thank you. And Frank, great as always. Thank you.
- [67:44]
Franklin Foer
Thanks, Al.
- [67:45]
Anne Applebaum
Thanks. Thanks.
- [67:46]
Podcast Host
Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.
- [68:14]
Franklin Foer
I'm here with spinquest, where you can.
- [68:16]
Anne Applebaum
Play and win from the comfort of.
- [68:18]
Franklin Foer
Your own home with hundreds of slot games and all of the table games you love with real cash prizes. Right now, $30 coin packs are on sale for $10. For new users, it's all@spinquest.com that's S-P-I-N Q U-E-T.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited.
- [68:39]
Podcast Host
Visit spendquest.com for more details.
- [68:44]
Anne Applebaum
This holiday season, reach for the one butter that never disappoints. Kerrygold. Made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy and perfect for baking. Whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerrygold's high butterfat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture. Holiday treats will taste extraordinary. Did you know you can save up to 70% on the best brands just by shopping at from rebel.com we're talking about strollers, car seats, high chairs, espresso machines, cookware, everything you need for way less. Here's how it works. Every single day, Rebbl drops thousands of new products on the site for up to 70% off. It is a constant stream of endless deals from top brands like Uppababy, Nuna, Baby Bjorn, Breville, Nespresso, Kitchenaid, Le Creuset, and more. But you have to act fast because every deal is one of a kind. So if you see something you love, make sure you add to cart fast. So stop paying full price when you don't have to. Whether it's baby gear, kitchen upgrades, or a treasure for your home you didn't know you needed, Rebel has it for way less. Up to 70% less. Shop from rebel.com and save big.