← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
Narrator
Lights are going up. Snow is falling down. There's a feeling of goodwill around town. It could only mean one thing. McRib is here. People throwing parties, ugly sweaters everywhere, stockings hung up by the chimney with care. It could only mean one thing.
- [00:26]
Tim Miller
McRib is here at participate in McDonald's for a limited time.
- [00:30]
Ann Applebaum
All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and pared all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian.
- [00:39]
Tim Miller
Bartesian.
- [00:40]
Ann Applebaum
It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Cosmopolitan or a Mistletoe margarita?
- [00:51]
Tim Miller
I'm thirsty.
- [00:52]
Ann Applebaum
Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow.
- [00:56]
Tim Miller
Beginning to feel more seasonal in here already.
- [00:58]
Ann Applebaum
If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
- [01:10]
Tim Miller
Tis the season to be jollier.
- [01:14]
Bartesian Ad
Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker@bartisian.com cocktail that's B A R T E S I N.
- [01:38]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Couldn't be more delighted to be here today with a staff writer at the Atlantic. Her books include Autocracy Inc. The Dictators who Want to Run the World and Twilight of Democracy, the Seductive lure of Authoritarianism as well as the Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag A History. It's Ann Applebaum. Welcome back. Anne. How you doing?
- [01:59]
Ann Applebaum
Fine. Thanks for having me back.
- [02:01]
Tim Miller
Fine, fine. We're fine. We're here. We're doing fine. I've got to be more precise in the opening greetings. I think given the nature of affairs, I wanted to start with the seductive lure of authoritarianism because it's more seductive than maybe I had even anticipated. And domestically, we've got a series of rich people who have pre surrendered to the incoming regime. Bezos and Zuck have donated a million to the inauguration. Marc Benioff, who is a resistance CEO the first time around at Salesforce, went on Maria Bartiromo show Maria Bartiromo's coup hour and said, I feel that when we elect a new politician, we have to absolutely support them. This is a moment where we are turning the page. It's an opportunity for a New chapter. You have covered all this from the European perspective. What's happening with our domestic oligarchs here?
- [02:55]
Ann Applebaum
One of the things that's happening is that this is the second time that Trump has won. And when you look at the pattern, whether it's Hugo Chavez or whether it's Viktor Orban, it's a loss and then a return that changes the politics. Having overcome the fact that he assaulted the Constitution, broke the law multiple times, you know, whichever piece of it bothers you the most. He stole documents, you know, he was a corrupt businessman, all those things we now know, and yet he's been reelected anyway. People are going to say, right, this guy has. It's not exactly magical powers, but he has some kind of staying ability that I didn't account for the first time, and, you know, I better get along with him or else I'm in trouble. And that's actually. I mean, it's not unique to the United States. You can see it in other places. The person who broke the law and yet comes back to power. People are. I don't know if it's more. Afraid is really the right word, but they're more willing to say, right, you know, we give up. This is the kind of regime that we have, we better learn to live with it.
- [04:05]
Tim Miller
Yeah, more accommodating. Maybe. Like, the best spin you could put on this, right, is that these rich guys are saying, okay, four more years of this, maybe we can butter him up and feed on his ego and get some stuff out of it, and then we're done with this guy. That's probably their calculation, right? Obviously, some of us feel like the risks maybe are greater than that, but how do you sort of assess that? And what may be a more effective way to deal with a aspiring soft autocrat would be one of the mistakes.
- [04:41]
Ann Applebaum
That people are making is imagining that giving the state more power or giving the executive more power, including effectively, power without control or the ability to bend the law, that that will somehow be good for business. This is a very seductive argument that I think, actually a lot of the people around him do believe. I mean, Musk, Thiel, but maybe also Bezos and Zuckerberg, I don't know. They think that this kind of power, that. Now that seems to be different from the first time, where, as I said, he has this support in a part of the particular part of the business community. They think it'll be good for them. They could be right in the short term. I mean, obviously Bezos is reckoning that all the things he wants to do, you know, go to space or go to Mars or wherever. You know, that those, those things will be facilitated by, by Trump administration that will loosen regulations or, or give him subsidies. I mean, Trump has been known to do that before. The mistake that they make is that, you know, in the longer term, and I don't know, life is so accelerated right now that longer term could come faster than it used to. Almost always these kinds of regimes are really bad for business. And if you look around the world, it. Hungary, which is the state that so many on the far right now admire as a model, is now, depending on how you count, either the second or third poorest country in Europe, putting all the power in the hands of a few favored oligarchs, making the political system dependent on the whim of the leader, bending rules and undermining the rule of law actually made Hungary a terrible place to invest. It made it profoundly corrupt. All kinds of stories there. And I can see the same thing happening in the United States. I mean, if you have a fundamental undermining of our sense that the relationship between the government and business is fair, you will have a different attitude to investment into business and so on. I mean, I can't tell you exactly how it will play out, but it's dangerous. The US Works because we have, I mean, it's a lot narrower than it used to be, but some kind of culture of trust. People believe that contracts will be enforced. They think that courts are neutral. And if you've broken the law, you're in trouble. And if you haven't, you, you'll be vindicated. When people begin to lose that sense, it has a profoundly undermining effect on business and the economy as well. It's just that it'll take some time for people to see it.
- [07:09]
Tim Miller
Yeah. The tough thing to figure out is who exactly are the naive businessmen that think that this is going to help them and who are the ones that are on board with the dismantling of that system and the dismantling of that trust. And to that point, Peter Thiel, we know which side he's on. He was on with Piers Morgan the other day, and I just want to play one clip from that interview. The ancien regime, that is liberalism, is really exhausted. The 1990s are over. The 20th century is over. The 2020 election was not a return to normalcy, but it was, in retrospect, a last stand for the ancien regime with its very ancien president. And I think that's kind of what's over the Ancien regime there. The liberal order is over. And I think in Peter Thiel's mind is going to be replaced by the autocratic order, maybe the techno feudal order. I don't know of him and Elon and Marc Andreessen with Donald Trump as their puppet. Just wondering your thoughts about that.
- [08:17]
Ann Applebaum
I think that is what they think. Interesting. Oncien, or old, as we say in English, is a word you could also.
- [08:24]
Tim Miller
Apply to Donald Trump and to Peter Thiel. If you looked at his face for the YouTube viewers, he's trying to pretend like he is not part of the ancien. But he's looking pretty on Sienne too.
- [08:32]
Ann Applebaum
Right. I mean, he's of course, a product of the United States of America and its educational system and its financial system and so on and on. So it's not like he represents something new. But that's a separate question. Yeah, I do think that there are now there is a part of the media, there is a part of the business community, there's a part of whatever you call it, the online world that now believes we will transition to something different. And I think they do mean some kind of techno oligarchic regime where ordinary people have less influence on politics. Peter Thiel has been talking for years about how giving women the vote was a mistake and the poor being allowed to have influence on politics means has negative implications for the state. And I think they. The reason I was talking about Trump being old is they think that they will control him and they will hasten the transition to that regime. I mean, this is not some kind of made up dystopian nightmare. This is what they've been saying. This is what Thiel has been saying. This is what Curtis Yarvin has been saying. This is what others have been saying. Why shouldn't we believe them when that's what they say? What exactly that means and how it works in practice, I don't know. I mean, we still do have a legal system, we still have a Congress, we still have courts. Most judges, federal judges are not partisan in the sense that they will vote for a different kind of regime. I mean, some of them are conservative and some of them are more progressive or whatever word you want to use, but they have different interpretations of the Constitution, but they still operate out of those interpretations. They still think the Constitution matters. I mean, there are a couple exceptions in Florida and elsewhere, but most of them do. And so there will be a lot of systemic resistance or systemic hurdles that you will have to overcome before you can establish a system whereby Some version of Musk and Thiel or whoever, whichever puppet they back, whether it's Trump or Vance, are actually controlling the country and have more ability to make decisions and more power than anybody else. But it's clearly what they want, you know, it's clearly the direction they're hoping to go in.
- [10:44]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I guess I would. I don't think Peter Thiel is listening to me, but I guess I would caution him. You don't really know what exactly is going to replace the current liberal order. You know, excuse me from being a defender of the status quo, but it was funny to me that later in that interview, Piers asked him about the Brian Thompson murder. And Peter was like, I just, I've never seen a stutter. He had like 25 seconds of stuttering before he finally said, I think we should use words to settle our disputes. It's like, well, you know, when the liberal order, when the ancient liberal order gets overthrown, it might be a feudal techno oligopy, but it might also be something else that they, that they don't like.
- [11:23]
Ann Applebaum
One more word on that. I mean, once the people understand that the country is run, in effect, by unelected billionaires, then whatever anti elite sentiments they have will be directed at those unelected billionaires. You can see that happen in other countries, too.
- [11:40]
Tim Miller
On the corruption front, we also had Trump in the Middle East. In our newsletter this morning, Bill Kristal and Andrew Egger write about how Trump's son Eric, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, made an announcement about the unveiling of a new Trump Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Yesterday, the New York Times wrote about the dividing line between Trump's family business interests and Trump's power. Eric Trump was in Abu Dhabi celebrating his dad's move to unleash crypto as the family helps launch and profit from a new crypto investment. Obviously, we know about Jared Kushner's investments in Saudi. I want to play a little bit from Chris Murphy and get your reaction to it.
- [12:20]
Chris Murphy
There is no doubt that this administration's policy towards the Middle east is going to be compromised by the fact that they are making money off of the very people that they're sitting across the table from and supposedly having a conversation about the interests of the United States. I mean, it's just extraordinary that we have allowed for the normalization of Trump's financial empire to be woven into the statecraft of this country. All that matters is how much money he makes, how much money his family makes, and it comes at a cost to the rest of us.
- [12:53]
Ann Applebaum
So the idea of US Foreign policy is that US Foreign policy should, one way or another, benefit the United States of America. It should be good for American prosperity, security. It should be good for international security, which is in a more distanced way, but it's still good for us. The idea that American foreign policy would be conducted to benefit the Trump family isn't something that we've had in America before, except we could probably find some examples of corruption in foreign policy and people who made decisions that were good for business partners or something like that. But I don't think we've ever had a version of it that's so blatant and so open. The idea that the Trump children would be openly seeking to benefit from their father's decisions. The idea that relationships between the United States and whether it's Saudi Arabia or Turkey or India or anywhere else would be shaped in order to benefit a particular investment. This level of corruption is brand new. It's not something we've had before. It's also, once again, something that the effects of it aren't going to be felt immediately but by ordinary Americans. This is maybe another. Maybe this is another piece of bad news, which is that people, I saw a version of this happen in Poland when the government begins to do things that are in violation of the rule of law of the Constitution, but they don't seem to affect ordinary people and people don't see it or feel it themselves. There isn't necessarily the reaction and the outrage that you would expect. And that's what I think you were getting from Chris Murphy. He was saying, why are. Why is this normalized? And the answer is that most people don't care. And we are going to discover in a really big way, I think, that most people don't care about this stuff. And that will be an unhappy discovery. But yeah, it's new, it's different. It's a different level of corruption.
- [14:47]
Tim Miller
And Trump's insight on all of this was if you just get through, if you just power through the round of bad press or the initial investigation or attacks from the counterparty, and there's no impact on anyone's lives, then eventually people to get over it, right? I mean, like, this is, like this is related to the Steve Bannon flood the zone with shit. As a tabloid guy, he knows this. He went through the scandal cycles before. It's like, if you survive it and get out the other side, then you can continue to press on. And like in the past, politicians had folded, you know, when they would get new York Times investigations about their family business. Right.
- [15:28]
Ann Applebaum
But by the way, I think that's also part of what, there's a deliberate aspect to what's happening now. You know how almost every day there's some shocking piece of news, you know, some other totally inappropriate person has been appointed to a job or nominated for a job, or it's Carrie Lake or it's yet another relative or somebody, you know, the, somebody else's father in law, you know, or son in law has been, has been appointed to a job. I think that's probably deliberate. You distract people. You put an enormous amount of news on the table and you keep it going all the time. And that's a way of kind of dominating and running the media. And that's also not, not unique to the Trump family and the Trump cronies and people around him. It's a, that's also a known tactic. You know, you just keep going. You know, every day there's another shocking thing that people have to absorb and it's been also directed at different groups. So there's the national security people are upset about one set of appointments and health people are upset about RFK Jr. And you know, you keep everybody divided and angry. And that's a, and that's a tactic.
- [16:30]
Tim Miller
I hadn't gotten to Tiffany's father in law, but since you mentioned it, I do feel like I should at least read the headline for people if they had missed it. Trump's Middle east advisor pick who's Tiffany's father in law is a small time truck salesman. He had, he had lied. He like made up a, it's like a George Santos situation. Like he had acted like he was a billionaire deal maker, but he has like a tiny stake in an African truck company. Let's be honest, what most people really want from the holidays is to see their favorite people more often. Favorite people, maybe not everybody, but you want to see your favorite people more often. And that's why this year the best gift you can give besides a plane ticket for all your friends to some foreign country is an Aura digital picture frame. Named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter, Aura frames are incredibly smart and easy to use, allowing you to upload unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone. The frame. Plus you can order the frame online and preload it with photos and videos using the Aura app. So it's ready to go right out of the box. Heard me talking about Aura all week going into Christmas because look, Christmas, you want to be able to bring a little joy into people's lives. And I don't know about you, I'm grinding right now. I'm on the present grind. I'm trying to come up with good ideas. I've got a couple good ideas, you know, and then for some people you're like, I'm struggling, I'm struggling. If you're struggling with somebody, particularly if it's an aunt or a grandparent or somebody that you don't get to see enough. Aura Digital frames are the answer. So save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get 35 bucks off Aura's best selling carver Matte frames by using promo code Bulwark at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code bulwark. This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions apply. You mentioned Carrie Lake. We have to get our chuckles the absurdity of this when we can. I do want your take on this because Voice of America, which Trump had nominated her to run, domestic folks might not just really even understand the remit or the importance of that. So I am curious your take on fake news. Carrie Lake, running the Voice of America Potentially.
- [18:42]
Ann Applebaum
So Voice of America is one of a group of US funded foreign news services. There's RFVRL Radio for Europe, Radio Liberty. There's Cuban radio. There's an Arab language radio. There's a group of, I mean they're called radios, but they're not really radios anymore. Media properties. There's Radio Free Asia, which I think used to be at least the most Uyghur language broadcasting of any outlet outside of China. They play a really important role and they could play a more important role in countering Russian and Chinese propaganda outside of the United States. So there is an enormous effort to shape narratives and conversations in Africa that the Chinese invest in. They've actually invested billions and billions of doll. I mean are way more money than we spend on radio for Europe and all those, all those media properties put together. The Russians have a huge investment in information campaigns of different kinds in Europe and Asia. Elsewhere. One of the few tools that we have is Voice of America and those other properties which are designed at least to put a. It's not so much they're not meant to be American propaganda. I mean, I'm sure sometimes that's what they are. But mainly they're designed to be outlets that build trust because they report things that are true. They're meant to contradict the Russian and Chinese messaging. They're meant to build a different set of arguments, mostly, as I said, in third countries. I mean, they're most important in places where the US and the democratic world are competing directly with the authoritarian world in narratives and in arguments. The idea that Carrie Lake would be the head of Voice of America is absurd on many levels. I mean, she's, she has no journalism experience. She has no public diplomacy experience. She's a liar.
- [20:35]
Tim Miller
She has journal. I mean, she has, technically, she was a local TV anchor.
- [20:38]
Ann Applebaum
All right, okay. Well, she hasn't run, as far as I know, she hasn't run a large international media institution. And of course she's a liar. I mean, she's somebody who supported a false narrative about multiple elections. Actually, you know, Trump's elections, her own elections, and actually her anti election sort of campaigns or her election denial campaigns in Arizona had a big effect, I think, on the culture of Arizona. I mean, I did a podcast last summer, and we interviewed an Arizona election official whose life was essentially ruined. I mean, he was just a guy who said Trump didn't win the election, and he was harassed and doxed and his family was attacked. And you can imagine what people go through if you're a Maricopa county election official and you live in a world in which Carrie Lake dominates. So the idea that she would be, be somehow the spokesman for American values around the world and fighting Chinese authoritarian propaganda in Africa's ludicrous. I mean, on top of that, last year, the Senate confirmed a board of. There's an institution that governs all of these media properties, and there's a board. I know it's half Democrat, half Republican by law.
- [21:49]
Tim Miller
I think it's three and three.
- [21:51]
Ann Applebaum
It's three and three. And there's a. I think the Secretary of State is the, is the fourth vote on it. The Senate confirmed that board, and actually that board is what decides who will be the next leader of these various institutions. VOA has a current leader. It's somebody who was just appointed a few months ago, Mike Abramowicz, who used to be the leader of Freedom House, which is one of our. It's like a Cold war era democracy promotion organization that also did most of its work outside of the United States. So he's a. He's not by any means some kind of left wing or progressive figure. He's just somebody who's worked on democracy issues for a long time. So that board would have to agree that Kerry Lake will replace him, and we'll see what it does.
- [22:34]
Tim Miller
I'm not that optimistic about the board. If Marco Rubio is The tying vote. I don't know, maybe we'll have Kerry lake. It will be a good investment for the Russians to then having the head of the American VOA also being sympathetic to their messaging. The NATO Secretary General this week gave a speech. Mark Rutte, issuing a warning, said, among other things, we are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years. The Russia economy is on war footing, you know, obviously, with your husband being government officials in Poland. Talk to me about kind of the view from our NATO allies here, December 2024.
- [23:11]
Ann Applebaum
Okay. For clarity, I don't speak for my husband who's the Polish foreign minister. I don't represent him or, you know, or the great nation of Poland, you know, in any way. But I mean, I think what Ruta was saying is something that's becoming increasingly clear, which is that the Russian economy is now increasingly a war economy. It's built around and for the purpose of producing weapons, which is making it look a lot more like the Soviet economy, actually, from the 1970s, which is an interesting parallel and also shows where it could end up. But at the moment, they're building this weapons producing economy and that they're putting all their best technology and their best researchers and engineers and so on are all pushing in that direction. That's what they're doing now. And that means that for Putin to somehow reverse course or stop the war has a lot more consequences than people think. So what would happen to all that enormous investment? They would just stop it? I mean, I don't think so. What would happen to the hundreds of thousands of armed soldiers who are now in the field? Would Putin just bring them home and then they would go back to regular life? Is that something that's going to be good for him or healthy for Russia? I mean, I think what Ruta was saying, the NATO Secretary General was that naivete about the ease with which you could get a deal or negotiate with Russia is unwarranted. I'm really worried because I hear both in Europe and in the US and in Ukraine, actually, a lot of people who, who do seem to believe that there's. Because Trump has said he wants a negotiation, that there will be one. I mean, I am happy to be proven wrong. There is no one who will be happier to hear that there's a real negotiation happening and that the war would end. It's been a misery for so many of my friends. It's a huge political and economic problem for everybody else in Europe. I really want the war to be over. Ukrainians have made clear that they will negotiate. And they've made that clear in public. They've also made it clear in more specific ways in private. They would be happy to do some kind of deal. Of course they're not going to give up their sovereignty and they're not going to allow the Russians to replace the current government with a pro Russian government. There is right now, as we're speaking, no indication that the Russians want to negotiate at all. Again, maybe I'm going to be proven wrong, but they haven't said they wanted to. Whenever Putin is asked about it, he's repeated his goals for Ukraine, which include the removal of the government and its replacement with. With someone he approves of. Sometimes the goal is Russia occupies and incorporates eastern Ukraine, creates a little fake state in the middle of Ukraine and gives western Ukraine supposedly. I mean, this is what they say, not what anybody would want to be divided up by other countries. So it's a recipe for the destruction of Ukraine. That's what Putin has said. He's never offered a vision of an alternative. He's built his economy around war and the need to continue war. His power base also might depend on him continuing the war. He now has around him people who are dedicated to and are profiting from because this is an oligarchic, corrupt economy and are profiting from the continuation of the war and the construction of and the building of more weapons. So what Ruda was saying was that this is not a problem that has an instant or easy or short term solution. You know, once you are a leader whose power inside the country and who has all kinds of people dependent on you to continue fighting, it becomes very hard to stop for a lot of reasons. And so that was a warning.
- [26:52]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's interesting that it is that conventional wisdom outside that some deal is coming, but it's now my colleague Bill Kristol, Michael Weiss, now you. This podcast is the home for skepticism of Putin's interest in a deal because everybody has echoed your point of view on that. I want to talk about another news story related to the Russian desired sphere of influence over in Central and Eastern Europe. And that's a story out of Romania, which I kind of have mixed views on. I guess the basics of it, and you can correct me or add more color to this, was that there was Russian interference in this election, particularly via TikTok and via influencers. There was money in the Romanian elections that went against the laws and so they called off the election, essentially. Like I said, I have mixed views on it, but I'd like To hear your perspective.
- [27:38]
Ann Applebaum
I also have mixed views. It's a complicated story. I mean, basically what happened is that one of the candidates whose name barely figured in polling and who wasn't seen much on mainstream television and wasn't taking part in the sort of the debates of the leading candidates, turned out to have been conducting a campaign on TikTok that somebody was funding. You know, I think it's more than a million dollars, which goes a long way on TikTok. And there were influencers being paid to support him, and there were. There was some kind of network of bots or accounts that were. Were activated on his behalf. And. And so there was a. There was this whole huge campaign on TikTok which was, under Romanian electional law, illegal. You know, so. So he broke the law, or someone broke the law on his behalf in order to campaign on TikTok. I mean, it's maybe worth saying just a couple sentences about him. I'm writing something about him that will appear soonish. He's called Colin Georgescu, and he is someone who is both simultaneously speaks warmly and favorably of the old Romanian far right. This is the people who carried out the Holocaust in Romania, the Romanian fascists from the wartime era. And at the same time, he has a very weird, spiritual, mystical, health, anti vax kind of.
- [28:59]
Tim Miller
Oh, great. So kind of like a Ceausescu meets RFK junior Type candidate.
- [29:03]
Ann Applebaum
Exactly.
- [29:04]
Tim Miller
Great.
- [29:04]
Ann Applebaum
I mean, genuinely. Exactly. He's like. And he's a huge fan of RFK junior And talks about him. And there's a video of him where he goes swimming in a pond in the winter, appearing to suffer no back. You know, it's snowing outside. There's a voiceover where he says, I don't need vaccines. I just have my faith and my belief and I'm, you know, and I'm kept safe by God or something like that. That's not an exact quote. That's a paraphrase, you know, but so that it's that kind of combination of stuff, you know, it's appealing to the people who are skeptical of medicine. Plus the people, oh, here's the thing about water as well. That water is mystical, and we have a special connection to water. And carbonated water is like pollution. And when you drink carbonated water, I don't know if it's literally or metaphorically. It's like you're ingesting nanochips that will change your brain or something like that. So there's the energy.
- [29:54]
Tim Miller
My daughter will be devastated to hear that. As a big carbonated Water consumer.
- [29:59]
Ann Applebaum
Yes. Right. So anyway, that's who he is. He's also very pro Russian and very anti war. And he and his wife, who's also a health kind of mystic, healer kind of person, have this whole thing about peace. We need peace. We mustn't, you know, contributing weapons to the war, you know, just continues the war. And of course, the truth is that if they're. If you. If Romania and the rest of Europe stopped contributing wars to Ukraine, then Ukraine would fall, Russia would be on their border, and actually, it would cost Romania more. It would be more difficult to stay secure, and the price of weapons would be higher. So, anyway, it's a lie on many levels anyway. This is the guy who wound up with 22%, and in a field with many candidates in it, he came first. There was supposed to be a runoff between him and the second best candidate. And a Roman high court kind of constitutional court annulled the election on the grounds that electoral rules had been broken. In addition, they found 85,000 supposedly separate evidence of different kinds of Russian cyber attacks on the campaign and on election infrastructure as well. There have been a lot of weird stories in Romania in the last couple weeks connected to it. There was a group of armed people arrested. There were some odd links between Georgescu and some Moldovans have been found and so on. I mean, I can't. I can't speak to whether any of that is true or how it's related. The deep question here is whether Romania gets to decide what its electoral laws are like. Does Romania have the right to decide what its electoral funding laws are, or does TikTok decide? Does ByteDance, the Chinese owners of TikTok, do they decide? There are other countries that are facing a version of that question, too. I mean, you can create laws about. I mean, Germany has laws about hate speech that other countries have laws about electoral campaigning and what kind of how much you can spend and what you can do. And we here in America have no electoral laws anymore, really. And we have a free for all, and you can spend whatever you want, and we're used to that, and we think it's okay. But I think other countries are allowed to have different rules. But are any of those rules enforceable in a world where actually the campaign is conducted on platforms that are owned by bytedance or by Elon Musk or by Mark Zuckerberg? And right now, the Romanian court made this decision that we still get to decide. And of course, there are a lot of people who think that's unfair, and they robbed this guy of his chance to be a candidate. And actually the number two, the woman who came in second, she's angry as well. And lots of other people feel that this is, this is the wrong way to fight the far right. And maybe they're right. But it's a pretty fundamental question and it's going to come up in a lot of election campaigns. We have a German election in a few weeks where there will absolutely be a huge Russian roll. There are other elections coming and in each one of those we will now face this problem. And by the way, it's not just a Russian role now, it's also an American role or I don't know, American of South African origin role. Twitter is now also is not merely a platform that lets you decide what you want to see. Twitter also has an ideology that it pushes and promotes and so should countries accept that as well. And I think this is going to be over the next year. A lot of different places are going to grapple with this problem.
- [33:29]
Tim Miller
So challenging as I'm just listening to you describe the situation instinctively, my view is this is bad. Nullifying an election because of disinformation leads to just myriad other problems and loss of trust. On the other hand, it's like, what is the punishment for breaking local election law? It's like, what is an appropriate punishment in this case? The candidate hadn't won yet. But imagine the case where they can, then they're controlling the government. What is the balance between this decision to nullify the election and as you said, our like, you know, American Vegas rules politics where anything goes.
- [34:13]
Ann Applebaum
I don't have a good answer either. And you know, of course the decision to nullify the election has horrible repercussions and maybe it's going to result in a surge of support for the far right. I don't, you know, I don't know. I mean it might.
- [34:25]
Tim Miller
And it's also just to be fair, it's like hard to imagine. Look, it's not like America hasn't tried to involve ourselves in other countries elections before in the past. Like, it's hard to imagine like the situation where Western European, European country is like, oh, we're going to nullify the elections because the Americans were putting their thumb on the scale. Right. You know what I mean? Like, it's hard to, it's hard to think about like a way to adjudicate it consistently.
- [34:47]
Ann Applebaum
It's very difficult. I mean, I think Twitter is going to be a problem for a lot of European countries depending on how it's used. I mean Musk has explicitly threatened the leaders of other countries. He threatened Trudeau, he's threatened Irish leaders. Twitter is thought to have played a role in some riots in the UK a few months ago. If Twitter becomes not a neutral platform where we can all have a debate, but a platform with a clear political agenda, then it's going to become a difficult problem also for a lot of countries, not because of its Russian influence, but because it's American far right influence. And I don't know how people are going to deal with it. Maybe they'll discount it or ignore it, or we'll all decide that it's free speech and end that again. There are countries who have different rules from the United States, who have a different way of conducting elections and political debate. And those are their rules and they created them. And the question is whether or not they get to keep them or not. And maybe the answer is no. I don't know all right, we're all.
- [35:51]
Set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheese. And I plugged in the Bartesian Bartesian. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Cosmopolitan or a Mistletoe margarita?
- [36:10]
Tim Miller
I'm thirsty.
- [36:11]
Ann Applebaum
Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow, it's beginning to.
- [36:16]
Tim Miller
Feel more seasonal in here already.
- [36:18]
Ann Applebaum
If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you you've got a Bartesian because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
- [36:30]
Tim Miller
Tis the season to be jollier.
- [36:34]
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- [36:51]
Tim Miller
I want to move on to the Middle east before we lose you. You wrote about the collapse of the Assad regime. The collapse of autocratic regimes tend to happen gradually and then suddenly, slowly, and then all at once. You led the story in a nod to Hemingway. You also wrote on one of these social networks. I forget where I saw you writing this. It's a bad day for the international network of dictatorship who live in similar palaces. This is a video of the Assad palace being stormed. Just wondering your thoughts on what happened in Syria and the ramifications.
- [37:24]
Ann Applebaum
So I mean, you've all know, we all know by now what happened in Syria. What happened was that the Russians withdrew their support from the regime. They were fighting their war in Ukraine. They ran out of stuff and equipment and men and they took it away. You know, the Israeli attack on Hezbollah damaged the main Iranian form of support for the regime as well. And then suddenly it turned out that the regime was, not only was it bankrupt, but it was unable to protect its people. So here's, to me, what was the most interesting thing about the fall of Assad, was that when the rebel movement came into Aleppo, they took it. Not after this bloody, bitter battle in which lots and lots of people died. They basically walked in. And then once they'd walked into Aleppo, then they walked into a bunch of other cities and villages, and then they basically walked into Damascus. And that is to me is really interesting because it means that the army, the police, the security apparatus, you know, the people who worked for Assad suddenly lost their belief that he would protect them. And all of these people, everybody who's in the army or in the police or wherever, they also live in this country that has been ruled by this unbelie brutal system for a long time. And they all have cousins and friends and relatives and acquaintances who were in prison or who were tortured or who are refugees because everybody does in a state like that. They're loyal to the regime because the regime pays them, presumably, or because it gives them some kind of access to goods. That's how it works, for example, in Venezuela or in Cuba, but also because it protects them from the wrath of their fellow citizens. And once they lose that, once the regime appears weak and then it was a collapse, then they just all melted into the woodwork and they took off their uniforms and walked away. It's a really interesting model because we tend to think about these systems as eternal and they can't be stopped. And they're so brutal that their violence, violence controls everything. But again, remembering the subject that we started with, which is that the long term effect of brutality and centralization and oligarchic control is poverty, you know, and that eventually it destroys any culture of entrepreneurship or business or investment those regimes can. Once people lose faith in them, then they can go quite closely. I mean, a really interesting country to watch. I have this weird web of connections that I make in my head that is maybe peculiar to me. But like, when I saw Syria, I started thinking about Venezuela on the other side of the planet. I realized not really similar culturally or any other way, but it's also a country where the regime is still there because of the army and the police continuing to work for it, even though there's a lot of evidence that the army and the police are very uncomfortable with the system and sympathize a lot with the population. And it's another place where you could see maybe some kind of rapid change. All of these apparently stable regimes have some very fundamental, profound flaws. And that includes Russia too, of course.
- [40:34]
Tim Miller
All right, I want to close with one tough question I've been noodling in my head. So you got. I mean, this has all been. All been heavy material, but somewhat of the Romania question, this one is one that it's hard for me to see clearly the right path. But over the past year, God more at this point, many in sort of the pro democracy kind of space have had issues with Bibi and his corruption and the way that he has had some Trumpian an Orbanish behavior. But you look at the past year now and the weakening of Iran and the weakening of Hezbollah and Hamas, almost elimination of Hezbollah, do you look at that situation any differently? I mean, do you assess Bibi any differently than maybe you would have a year or two years ago?
- [41:26]
Ann Applebaum
First of all, I don't find that he fits very easily into any kind of paradigm like autocrats versus democrats or whatever you want to look at. There are two things about him that are true at. Well, there are a lot of things about him that are tr that at least two things are true at once. One, that he is. He intends to rule Israel forever if he can. He intends to undermine Israeli democracy if he can. He was trying to do it before the Hamas attack. He was stopped by one of the most massive and well organized protests that have taken place in any democracy. And he's trying to use the war now to achieve those same things. As far as I can see from a distance, I haven't been to Israel or worked on Israel in the last year. But at the same time, Israel is right about Iran. And this is something, you know, Israel, it's not Netanyahu. It's like, you know, the army, which by the way, is mostly the army and the tech community in Israel were the biggest supporters of the democracy movement. They've all been right that Iran is the source of an enormous amount of disruption and pain and tragedy in the Middle east through its various proxies, you know, including supporting Assad. And so Israel as a nation is right to try and damage them. So, you know, you have to hold those two things in your head at the same time. I think There's a third thing that really worries me about Israel, which is that the attacks on Gaza and to a lesser extent, Lebanon, the attacks on civilians, some of which may have been accidental, but a lot of which seem not to have been, are contributing to the general feeling of lawlessness, that you can do anything you want, that the Russians are allowed to kill as many Ukrainians as they want, and maybe the Chinese will be able to kill as many Uighurs as they want, and nobody's willing to stop them. And so Israel, the war is doing a lot of damage to any idea of international law, of protection for civilians during wartime. I would lay those three things on the table, and I would say, I think it's too early to judge, but Israel has done both good by destroying Hezbollah and a huge amount of damage by the horrific and unnecessary deaths of thousands of people. But they've also done an enormous amount of damage both to their own country and to the region and really to the world. So that's where I am.
- [43:42]
Tim Miller
It's very well put. I'm glad I asked you. Been noodling on this one. In my head, you're bringing some clarity to three points, and I think I fully concur on all three. Well, Ann Applebaum, I think there's gonna be much to discuss around the world in the coming years. So I hope you'll be coming back to the Borg podcast often. Maybe. Maybe with some happy. I guess we had happy news with Assad, but maybe with some other happier news in the future.
- [44:06]
Ann Applebaum
Assad was really happy news. Let's end by celebrating the exit of Assad and the release of people from prison. And, you know, come on. I mean, that was great news, and it was beautiful.
- [44:18]
Tim Miller
The video with Clarissa Ward. I'll put it in the show notes. People haven't seen it. It's really heartwarming. He was such a depraved bastard. So anyway, getting rid of him, and I hope he enjoys the winters in Russia. Anne, thank you so much. We'll be seeing you soon. Everybody else, we'll be back here as always on Monday with Bill Kristol. See you all then. Peace.
- [44:40]
Narrator
Like a California woman with a global point of view. You wear it well. It's unbearable. You found it in Peru? Well, five stars. Great. You got it made. I've been reading the reviews. It's a new world, babe I can't behave as if I know what to do? Cause I belong to not a song It's a feeling unrelenting And I might have apologized But I've never been wrong I know the world is ending? You both inspired spontaneous choirs, angels surrounding you? The psychic's vision came to pass and the critics all withdrew? The palm leaves laid for you to play on? They swear as you come too? And all this new happiness makes it all the more good that I belong to an older song? It's a feeling unrelenting and I might have apologized but I've never been in the wrong? I know the world is ending.
- [46:44]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [46:52]
Ann Applebaum
All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian Bartesian. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Cosmopolitan or a Mistletoe margarita?
- [47:12]
Tim Miller
I'm thirsty.
- [47:13]
Ann Applebaum
Watch.
- [47:13]
I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow, it's beginning to.
- [47:18]
Tim Miller
Feel more seasonal in here already.
- [47:20]
Ann Applebaum
If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30. 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
- [47:32]
Tim Miller
Tis the season to be jollier.
- [47:36]
Bartesian Ad
Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at bartesian.com cocktail that's B A R T E S I A N dot com cocktail.