Susan Glasser: An Exercise in National Humiliation

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast

Susan Glasser: An Exercise in National Humiliation

Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Susan Glasser, New Yorker staff writer, co-author of The Divider

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Episode Overview

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation between Tim Miller and Susan Glasser, analyzing the latest developments in American politics under Donald Trump’s second presidential term. They focus particularly on the president’s apparent efforts to undermine and exact retribution against independent institutions and political critics, the entanglement of federal power with personal vendettas, institutional purges, the U.S.–Russia relationship and national humiliation, and the militarization of American cities. Throughout, Glasser draws on her extensive background covering both Washington and Moscow to provide historical and personal perspectives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Move to Fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook

• Topic Introduction: Trump publicly announced the removal of Lisa Cook, the first Black woman Fed governor, citing unsubstantiated accusations about her mortgages.
• Legal and Economic Implications:
  • Tim Miller highlights that legally, the president can only remove a Fed governor for "cause," and the accusation is a stretch ([02:45]).
  • Glasser sees this as part of Trump’s broader war on institutional independence, particularly the Fed, and a dangerous breakdown of governmental norms:
    • "Donald Trump is seeking to break this idea of its independence..." ([03:21])
  • Miller notes the economic impact, with the dollar tanking following the announcement ([04:28]).

Key Quote

"It's really a remarkable sign of the failure of process, institutions, laws, norms, any constraints on the presidency."
– Susan Glasser ([05:20])

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2. Rise of Loyalists and "Gangster Government"

• Example of Bill Pulte:
  • Pulte, a MAGA-aligned private equity exec appointed to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, accuses Cook and others of mortgage fraud, referring them for DOJ investigation ([07:33]).
  • Glasser explains how social media stunts and sycophancy become tickets to real power in Trump’s Washington ([08:54]).
• Incentive Structure:
  • Miller describes Pulte’s behavior as both "insane" and "the playbook for getting inside Donald Trump's good graces" ([10:31]).

Key Quote

"We're living in a world where the director of the FBI wrote a children's book about Donald Trump as a poor persecuted king, and that was enough to get him the job of the FBI director."
– Susan Glasser ([11:41])

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3. Breakdown of Institutional Checks & "Retribution Phase"

• Bolton Raids:
  • Trump’s DOJ raids John Bolton’s home/offices soon after he publicly criticizes Trump’s failed negotiations with Putin ([15:12]).
  • Glasser sees this as an attempt at silencing critics and a chilling message to dissenters – "It's very much about silencing a critic" ([17:06]).
  • They detail the public humiliation at events where Trump fawns over Putin ([18:36]).

Notable Quote

"The last six months have been literally an exercise in national humiliation for the United States."
– Susan Glasser ([20:55])

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4. U.S.–Russia Relations and Putin’s Evolution

• Personal Experience:
  • Glasser recounts meeting Putin in 2001, describing his growth from insecure functionary to unchecked strongman ([22:09], [24:25]).
  • She stresses that U.S. commentary often displays “outright credulousness” toward Trump’s narrative on Russia ([18:59]).
• Putin’s Motivations:
  • Glasser unpacks the myth that NATO expansion is the main cause of conflict, emphasizing instead Putin’s imperial ideology and resentment over the Soviet Union’s collapse ([27:18]).
  • She details Russian interference in Ukraine as early as 2004, long before NATO was a real consideration ([29:57]).

Key Quotes

"For Putin, it's about restoration... Russia essentially cannot be a great state anymore until and unless it's reunited with Ukraine."
– Susan Glasser ([28:53])

"It had everything to do with Putin's desire to control Ukraine by whatever means necessary."
– Susan Glasser ([31:17])

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5. DOJ and DoD Purges & Implications

• Justice Department:
  • Discussion of Pam Bondi’s purges at DOJ, loss of institutional memory, and a climate of fear ([36:19]).
  • Glasser notes that, worryingly, federal judges are still signing warrants for politically motivated investigations ([36:53]).
  • Miller and Glasser express alarm at prosecutors being forced to pursue absurd, cruel or vindictive cases ([38:54]).
• Defense Department:
  • Miller and Glasser discuss the deliberate replacement of senior, nonpartisan defense officials with personal loyalists – a politicization unprecedented in American history ([40:27]).
  • Glasser connects this to broader efforts to militarize action against perceived domestic enemies ([42:41]).

Notable Quotes

"There's been an extraordinary number of... purges going on in the senior levels of the Defense Department that seem designed to replace institutionalists with people who are personally more loyal..."
– Susan Glasser ([40:27])

"It's, in effect, the politicization of our nonpartisan military, of everything that's perhaps the most worrisome."
– Susan Glasser ([41:48])

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6. Expanded Militarization and “Performative” Crackdowns in Cities

• D.C. as a Case Study:
  • Miller and Glasser discuss National Guard troops posted in high-visibility but low-crime sites in DC, like Dupont Circle’s Krispy Kreme, as political theater for Trump’s base ([44:05]).
  • Glasser calls it an "extremely performative abuse of official resources," painting it as revenge targeting a city that overwhelmingly rejected Trump ([44:52]).
  • Miller plays a clip of Stephen Miller touting “liberation” of DC, which they both mock as disconnected from on-the-ground reality ([47:35]).

Notable Quote

"It's not about crime fighting, it's about political point scoring. And, you know, it's just very tragic. But it's also revenge."
– Susan Glasser ([46:16])

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7. The Pageantry of Strongman Rule

• Giant Trump Portraits:
  • Miller and Glasser liken massive presidential portraits on federal buildings to authoritarian imagery found in Moscow or “Central American countries” ([50:39]).
  • Glasser recounts an anecdote from Ruth Marcus's reporting about Trump's AG (Pam Bondi) personally putting up Trump’s portrait in DOJ offices and firing staff who hadn't replaced them fast enough ([51:07]).
  • They close by joking about Trump’s "livestream presidency" and the impossibility of switching the channel ([52:54]).

Notable Quotes

"That's the thing about a strongman type leader. He wants his picture on everything. He wants credit for everything."
– Susan Glasser ([51:07])

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Memorable Quotes

• On Trump’s governing style:
  "The President is entitled to be the single decider of everything in this country—that is so antithetical to what you and I saw as a vision of an American democracy."
  — Susan Glasser ([05:20])

• On U.S. humiliation:
  "That is going to look terrible in history... Donald Trump greeted the Butcher of Bucha with applause, with literal applause on a red carpet."
  — Susan Glasser ([20:55])

• On the gutting of institutions:
  "If you give someone a hammer, they find nails... We know that the hammer is in their hands right now."
  — Susan Glasser ([34:41])

• On the rise of strongman pageantry:
  "He wants his picture on the wall in every government office... How long is it until we have the Donald Trump radio with the word of the leader blaring at us at all times?"
  — Susan Glasser ([51:07])

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• 01:59 — Trump's firing of Fed Gov. Lisa Cook
• 03:21 — Rule of law and breakdown of process
• 07:33 — Bill Pulte and the rise of loyalist bureaucrats
• 11:41 — Incentive structures for sycophants in Trump’s government
• 15:12 — Trump’s explicit revenge campaign and Bolton
• 18:36 — Trump/Putin Alaska summit and “exercise in national humiliation”
• 22:09 — Glasser’s personal encounter with Putin; his evolution
• 27:18 — Putin’s true motivations and the myth of NATO causality
• 36:19 — Pam Bondi, DOJ purges, and legal system resilience
• 40:27 — Defense Department purges and politicization of the military
• 44:52 — Militarization and “liberation” of DC as political theater
• 50:39 — Trump’s portraits and the strongman aesthetic

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Tone and Style

The discussion is sharp, clear-eyed, and urgent—frequently critical and sometimes darkly humorous, especially when lampooning Trump’s theatricality, the posturing of loyalists, and the "mockumentary" character of current events. Glasser is incisive, at times exasperated, but always measured in her analysis. Miller, meanwhile, maintains a conversational, occasionally sardonic tone, punctuated by biting asides and attempts to keep things engaging with humor.

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Useful For

This summary will be valuable for anyone seeking to understand the current American political climate under Trump’s second term—especially the risks to institutional independence, the transformation of incentive structures in government, the manipulation of law enforcement and military, and America’s national posture vis-à-vis Russia. Glasser’s perspective as a historian and Moscow observer adds valuable depth and context. The timestamps allow listeners to dive into topics of greatest interest directly.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back. Staff writer at the New Yorker where she writes her weekly column on life in Washington. She's also a host of the magazine's Political Scene podcast. Co author most recently of the Divider Trump in the White House with her husband Peter Baker. She was also Moscow bureau chief of the Washington Post. It's Susan Glasser. How you doing, Susan?

[Susan Glasser]

Hey, Tim. Great to be with you. Too much to talk about, I'm afraid.

[Tim Miller]

Much to discuss. Where are you coming at us from? You in D.C. right now?

[Susan Glasser]

No, I'm with my mom up in Massachusetts. So escaping the occupied city for a few days.

[Tim Miller]

All right. We'll have something to discuss about the occupied city and the troops hanging out outside Krispy Kreme and Georgetown Cupcake, keeping the people safe.

[Susan Glasser]

But.

[Tim Miller]

But first we gotta discuss Lisa Cook. This is the big news of last night. Trump has posted a bleat, I guess that he's going to remove the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, effective immediately. By law, he can only fire her for cause. He is citing accusations that she has two primary mortgages. I guess though she's not been charged with any crime. Cook has a statement out this morning saying that she is refusing to resign. She's going to take him to court. She's the first black woman to be a fed. Governor, I think is worth noting. I think this is of a pace with, you know, your last article about Trump's retribution and the you know, creeping authoritarian aspirations that he has. But I was wondering your reaction.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, there's so much to unpack there. I mean, first of all, let's just say that Donald Trump, the first convicted felon to serve as president, his conviction was recently upheld, although the enormous civil fine in court was struck down. So it's really quite remarkable when he's accusing people of various crimes who have not been charged of them. And I know there's so much to be kind of overwhelmed by. We can tend to forget that.

[Tim Miller]

But Donald Trump has never fudged a mortgage. I promise. He has never done a financial filing that was not one, that was not 100 with T's crossed I's dotted.

[Susan Glasser]

I think the through line for me of a lot of these really eye popping developments of August is this idea of making war on institutions and individuals that challenge Trump in any way and no longer even feeling the need to kind of obscure one's motives at all. Right. The explicit link between defiance or political opposition or just simply saying stuff that Donald Trump doesn't like on tv and the idea that you're gonna use whatever the powers of the federal government are against that opposition. In this case, it strikes me that his opponent here is not a woman, it's an institution. It's the Federal Reserve. Donald Trump is seeking to break this idea of its independence, as, you know, gone after its chairman, Jay Powell, again and again and again, threatening, but not yet actually following through on firing him. And I wonder if this is a sort of a creeping back doorway into finally provoking that full scale confrontation with the independents of the Fed.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, this is at some level a confrontation with independence of the Fed. And she's just one of the governors. But the law is pretty clear, right, that there has to be a for cause reason to get rid of her. And this is an extreme stretch on that front, especially since this is just based on an accusation of one guy that we're going to get into in a second. And so that loss of Fed independence, we saw an immediate reaction last night with the dollar tanking, rebounded somewhat, has come back down. I mean, I think that, you know, kind of before we get into just sort of the personnel and the authoritarian way that he's, he's treating, you know, federal civil servants like the economic impact here is not zero. Right. On the one hand, again, it's just one federal ward governor. On the other hand, it's sending a really bad signal globally to the markets about the stability of our institutions in this moment.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, It's a classic example of, like, you know, the rule of law. You'll miss it when it's gone. But a million tiny attacks on it, which is the one that really signals the absolute end of it. And I think you've seen the Trump administration, on a variety of fronts, attacking this idea that there are rules of the road in our economy, in our civil society, and, you know, many businesses. Of course, that's part of what has powered the American economic engine over the last, you know, nearly a century, since World War II. And, you know, is this the moment? Is it some other moment? We can't really say for sure. Hindsight will give us plenty of opportunity to say we knew when, but maybe we didn't. But I have to say that it's the basic notion that the President is entitled to be the single decider of everything in this country that is so antithetical to. To what you and I saw as a vision of an American democracy. And this idea that you can just take literally a guy tweeting something. Right. So you have an obscure political appointee tweeting something on a Wednesday, and a few days later, the President of the United States is firing you for an investigation that has not yet occurred. It's really a remarkable sign of the failure of process, institutions, laws, norms, any constraints on the presidency. That's what all these events have in common.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. The subhead of our morning newsletter this morning is, a president who doesn't believe in checks and balances is no president at all. That's not how our system of government is supposed to work. Right. It was fundamental to what was laid out in the Federalist Papers, what has, you know, been the model for our government. And if nobody, you know, from any of the other branches, from any of the independent authorities can. Can check him, well, then. Then we have to have a different name for it. You mentioned the. The obscure government official that tweeted an attack on her. I just. I do want to mention him briefly here because I think this is a. I don't know what the right word is. He a synecity for the entire government kind of, or. He is certainly a very representative example of, I think, where things are going in the Trump gangster government. The guy's name is Bill Pulte. No reason anybody would have ever heard of him. He's a private equity executive before this that had gone maga. He was named as the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which, like, usually just kind of oversees Fannie and Freddie. This is. This is not a public figure that you would know about in another situation. But I don't know if he's been given Cash Patel's enemies list or what exactly is happening. But this one guy has now publicly made accusations of mortgage fraud against Adam Schiff, Tish James, Attorney General of New York, and now Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. He referred all three of these to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. I mean, this is crazy. Like a random bureaucrat that has oversight over one, know, sort of element of the federal government, like, taking upon himself to do, I don't know, like a Minnie McCarthy campaign, like, just like singularly targeting the president's political foes on the narrow question of whether they've filled out their housing paperwork correctly.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, Tim, I mean, it's a big country and I think the Trump years are giving us proof that, you know, somebody's going to find a way to market themselves, you know, into Donald Trump's inner circle. And essentially that appears to be what the case is with this official. There's a very interesting piece in Politico that your team flagged for me that talks about how he even got this job in the first place. Now, of course, there's the usual menu of voluminous contributions to Republican candidates and causes, but he came to Donald Trump's attention by, quote, unquote, Twitter, philanthropy. Basically, he said, I will give this person, you know, x thousands of dollars if Donald Trump retweets this, you know, or retrosis or whatever, you know, his social media platform is. And, you know, he now has something like 3 million followers on Twitter. And so he's a classic example of a non entity, perhaps in the broader spectrum of American politics. But in this niche world of far right social media influencers, he's managed to parlay interaction with causes and themes that Trump likes into a large social media following. And then all of a sudden, he's in charge of overseeing America's mortgage finance agencies. And by the way, since he got into that post, what has he done? He's pulled a full Trump move and fired the entire boards, as I understand it, of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and appointed himself as, as the chairman, which really seems literally ripped from Donald Trump's playbook.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, luckily I only have one home, so I'm not too concerned about the mortgage paperwork. But I might be doing a double check. I don't know if you're in cash, Patel's book. I might do a double check on, you know, with your mortgage lender. This morning, Pulte posted. I hear Jay Powell is Scrambling this morning. He can scramble all he wants, but he might as well be scrambling eggs because the party at the Fed is over. This is insane. This is capo, like threats from a random bureaucrat at the Housing Finance Agency. And I guess it's crazy, it's insane, it's mockable, it's a little scary. But the thing that is the most frustrating about it is it obviously is going to work. I mean, this is the playbook for getting inside Donald Trump's good graces. And that creates this incentive structure around the entire government where, you know, if you want to see yourself on the path towards the cabinet or the inner circle, as you know, we get into 2027 and 2028, act like this guy, like, you know, finding whatever little fiefdom you have and using it to go after political foes.

[Susan Glasser]

I mean, look, Tim, we're living in a world where the director of the FBI wrote a children's book about Donald Trump as a poor persecuted king, and that was enough to get him the job of the FBI director. So obviously we're living in a kind of crazy alt reality where individual, let's call them social media entrepreneurs are finding a way to get to the king's attention. And the more outlandish, over the top and sort of slavish in defense of Trump or carrying out his feuds, the more power you may accrue in this warped situation. The question for all of this, and last night I really was beside myself cuz there's so many examples in the last few weeks of Trump really going over the top in terms of challenging norms and rules. The question for all of this is not about the guys like Pulte who exist, but is there any institution left in our society that can check this? What has happened to our legal system? What has happened to Congress? What has happened to rational actors? And I have to presume that some of them do exist inside the federal government, inside the, the executive branch. Like there's a rampage sort of going on here. And the question, I think is when it all shakes out, are there going to be any institutions that stand up and check this? And so Donald Trump says he's fired this governor of the Fed. Well, has he? How long will it take to litigate this in the courts? Is this a way that he will then use to say, see my firing of her stood and therefore I can fire the chairman of the Fed next? And, you know, it's the events that pile on top of each other. We're only 200 something days into this administration you know, what are we going to look like when we're a year out, 18 months out, two years out, and the escalation suggests we're going to be in a very different country by then.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no doubt. The Pulte thing does feel like kind of like a mockumentary version of like a Russia story, so, you know, kind of like where some random boob gets into the good graces of the leader by just, you know, going after the people that have annoyed him.

[Susan Glasser]

Can you have a mockumentary inside of a mockumentary?

[Tim Miller]

I guess. I think so. I don't know. We'd have to. We'll call Rob Reiner. We'll have to ask the experts on that. Hey, y', all, I warned you. I warned you. Our Toronto show has sold out. The Canadians love Sam Stein so much that, you know, there are lines around the block to get tickets to it. But the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington, D.C. and in New York coming up in early October. So go get those tickets now@the bulwark.com events. I'm missing LSU versus South Carolina for you guys. I'm going to be in New York for that. And so assuming that's an afternoon game, I might have a couple bourbons in me by the time we get on stage on Saturday night. So that one could be a rowdy one. So if you're looking for an excuse to get to the Big Apple, see, you know, go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night. Could be a fun little weekend. Go get tickets, like I said. TheBullWork.com events TheBuller.com events See y' all soon to your article in the retribution phase. This is all related to kind of what we're talking about now, obviously, but the Bolton and some of these other situations are more directly part of Trump's revenge tour. I want to get into a couple of the details of the Bolton thing, but at the top level, what are your big takeaways from what we saw on Friday?

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, look, Donald Trump isn't hiding it, so we shouldn't hide it either. I mean, there's an explicit link between people who speak out against him and the willingness to unleash whatever powers of the federal government to go after them. And that's certainly the case in Bolton's situation. It's not like random timing. Remember that John Bolton had has been one of the loudest voices out there day in and day out on television in op eds, pointing out the lies and false claims behind Trump's summit hearing with Vladimir Putin. And that's the explicit connection, in terms of timing with this raid on Bolton's home and office that really, I think, should send a chilling effect and is meant to send, it appears, a chilling effect on all of us. Because Bolton is one of the people pointing out that, no, not only has Donald Trump not made peace in the war in Ukraine, but most of what he said about his negotiations with Putin have been proven to be not the case. He's been taken for a ride by Russia. He's humiliated the country, you could argue, in many ways, greeting Putin on a red carpet in Alaska, applauding for him the first time that he's been seen by a leader of the United States since illegally invading his next door neighbor. And we applaud him and we take him at face value. Trump adopts his talking points. He says, oh, a deal is imminent. He says, there's going to be a meeting between Putin and Zelensky. And surprise, surprise, Putin is not, in fact, willing to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, never mind to make any concessions of the kind that Trump and his very credulous envoy Witkoff have suggested that he would make. And so, for me, it's very much about silencing a critic.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no, let's stick on the Putin thing for a second. We'll get back to Baltic, because I hear you on the silencing the critic, but I just don't want to let it pass by the humiliating part, because in addition to all the things you said, did you see the press conference? Was it on Thursday or Friday where Trump had the FIFA head in? And he said Putin sent him this picture and he's like rifling around in the drawers looking for the picture that Putin had sent him. And this press conference is supposed to be about the World Cup. And he picks it up and he says, I have something from a person who I would love to see at the World Cup. And he takes the Putin picture and shows it around the audience like it's a prized possession. And then kind of goes on. It's like, I hope he's going to be here. It depends on the decisions. It is so weird, it is so humiliating to use that word, that that is where he's at. And then he gets asked about whether he's upset that Putin bombed a building that was like an American company in Ukraine. And he offers some minor. Yeah, I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm also not thrilled about this. It is wild. Just the degree to which, in the days after Alaska, there was a little bit of suspension of disbelief among people that maybe this was going to happen, maybe something was different. What has happened in the last week and a half, I just think betrays like a total reality, you know, and then to connect it to John Bolton, that he was just out there explaining to people.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Tim, because this suspension of disbelief is a very charitable word. There was a lot of, you know, I don't know. Is this a family podcast? Can I say bullshit?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. No, you, please. You can say bullshit.

[Susan Glasser]

It's a lot of bullshit. And I will tell you that I.

[Tim Miller]

Tried to get Ann Applebaum to cuss two weeks ago, and she only did it in the green room. So I'm happy that you can fill the void for her.

[Susan Glasser]

I'll have a word with Ann about. I mean, it's been a very frustrating time for anyone who has been observing Russia closely to see the credulousness. And I think it's more than suspension of disbelief, but outright credulousness from so many commentators, including many critics of Trump, who should know better. You know, the coverage, in my view, was a lot of it was really bad. It was misleading. It took at face value statements from Donald Trump that shouldn't be. I think that, you know, people found perhaps the image of Trump greeting Putin on the red carpet shocking. But even that, I think, was not covered as a signal event in its own right. And it seems to me that when we look back on this, historically speaking, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, I mean, that is going to look terrible in history. That's going to be the moment that we remember from Alaska. It's not going to be that peace was made. What it's going to be is that Donald Trump greeted the Butcher of Bucha with applause, with literal applause on a red carpet. And so many people said, yeah, maybe he's going to make peace now. Well, first of all, that's not going to happen. And the last six months have been literally an exercise in national humiliation for the United States. Is as if we have no one in our country who is familiar with what Vladimir Putin has been doing for the last 25 years. And we have to send some real estate developer who has no frickin idea, by himself, without an interpreter, to the Kremlin. I mean, so, again, I do think that it's hard. I understand. There's so many different things that can get one's blood pressure boiling. You know, we can't be on a constant, you know, high boil about every single thing. But this thing, if you pull back, is worth actually being a lot more clear eyed about than I have seen from a lot of the coverage. This is the largest, deadliest war in Europe since the end of World War II. Trump has blundered about, inserted himself in the middle of it with the very clearly stated goal of personal aggrandizement. His goal here is personal aggrandizement. And even that has not produced any results except to reinforce his bizarre public fascination, as you pointed out, with the approval of Vladimir Putin. And he seems to want him to be his friend. All he wants to do is to talk about how they have this good relationship. Well, I mean, you and I both watched that 12 minute press event or whatever you want to call it in Alaska at the end of their summit where Putin spoke for eight minutes and Donald Trump spoke for four minutes. They didn't look like friends to me.

[Tim Miller]

Well, it looks kind of like a situation where one person was smitten with the other person, kind of. So, you know, we've all been in those situations before. I have to correct you though, Susan, I'm sorry, because the Vice President was pushing back on you in a recent interview on Fox. He said the American media is giving a false image of Putin. He's actually more soft spoken than you would necessarily expect. He's very deliberate, very careful. That's what he's absolutely learned.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, I've actually met Vladimir Putin. And J.D. vance, as he also admitted in that interview, has not met Vladimir Putin, but he's talked to him on the telephone is what he said. He's heard him on the telephone several times. I've met Vladimir Putin. In fact, I was in the first group of American journalists, American bureau chiefs who met with Vladimir Putin in the spring of 2001 at the Kremlin. And I, you know, it was a very revealing episode. This was a much different leader of Russia, much more insecure, obviously, still making the transition from obscure former KGB official to leader of Russia appointed by Boris Yeltsin and then elected in March of 2000, and that Putin was eager to impress Westerners, different than this Putin perhaps. But when I asked him about the war in Chechnya that he was then prosecuting, and remember that war and Putin have gone hand in hand for the entire quarter century that he's been in power in Russia, this man's visage immediately changed. He was a cold eyed killer then in the same way that he is now nearly two and a half decades Later. And I think that for J.D. vance, who has never supported Ukraine, has always said publicly since he's begun his political career, essentially that there's nothing for us in Ukraine. It's not our fight, it's not our issue. You know, there's a credulousness that's embedded in this sort of fantasy MAGA version of Vladimir Putin that is just not borne out by the reality of him or the Russia that he's led over the last couple decades. And right now, he's the most serious threat to European stability that there is. And Europe is our closest allies and partners in the world. It's just that there's a vision of American foreign that J.D. vance has, that Donald Trump has, that doesn't care about that kind of alliance and partnership anymore.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's interesting. He said you felt like when you first got to meet him back in the early 2000s that he was more insecure. How did that manifest? What do you see has evolved in the two decades? Do you observe anything that's notably different or similar?

[Susan Glasser]

It's interesting that you asked that. This is the subject of the next book that my husband Peter and I are working on, which is Putin and. And the five American presidents that he's dealt with. So from Bill Clinton at the very beginning of his tenure all the way through Trump now a second time. And there's an old Russian saying that captures some of it. The appetite grows while eating. And so, of course, a man who's had essentially unchecked power over 25 years has a very different kind of point of view about what's possible. And the Putin of The spring of 2001, when I first encountered him, was not in a position to invade Ukraine. He wasn't in a position to work on reassembling parts of the former Soviet Union. Did he have those kind of Russian nationalistic and imperialistic ideology? Absolutely. I think that his views were not dissimilar. He's always been a great statistic. He's someone who believed in restoring the power, the untrammeled power of the centralized authority in Russia. So that part was obvious from the beginning. That was his agenda. It was the subject of our first book together that came out in 2005. But at the time, I would say what we didn't get was that Putin's kind of ideology of strongmanism at home, eliminating the kind of national democracy, flawed institutions as they were, we could see that clearly. What we didn't see is that it would soon and eventually and inexorably translate into going after Russia's neighbors and the other parts of the former Russian empire. And so is that aggressiveness in Georgia, in Ukraine, restoring Russia's role in the Middle east, which he's tried to do at various points. That's the part that I think is the appetite grows while eating part of Vladimir Putin.

[Tim Miller]

Well, now you've piqued my interest, so I have to ask you one more question, since you're working on the book, and then we can save the rest of it for when we get to book time. Just thinking about it through that arc, through that period, from Clinton through now, what are your observations that would challenge Putin's claims about the root causes? Now you get into this root cause of debate, and I see a lot of people, I guess the word of the podcast is credulous, who are very credulous in this argument on kind of like, both sides of the argument, even kind of the more lefty foreign policy, skeptical of U.S. foreign policy. Obviously, you see this on the MAGA, right, which is kind of accepting at face value that, like, you know, Ukraine was wearing their skirt a little too short. And, like, we did do some things that tempted Putin. So I'm sure even going back through all those remarks from those couple of decades, like, how do you assess his claim now about the root causes?

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I think this is really important. The real root cause is the breakup of the Soviet Union, which in many ways imploded from within. But for Vladimir Putin, that is the original sin here. It's not about NATO. It's not about anything other than the fact that he considers the breakup of the Soviet Union to be the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, which is something that he said in 2005, and I think it's a core principle of his. So when it comes to this question of Ukraine and other parts of what was the Russian empire, and I do say the Russian empire, by the way, because I think that it's a mistake to view Putin as a sort of narrative neo Soviet figure. You know, he is not a believer in the communist ideology that had largely disintegrated into empty slogans by the time he became a KGB official in the later years of the Brezhnev era. For Putin, it's really much more an ideology that harkens back to the late czarist period. The slogan of the czars in the early 20th century, it was orthodoxy, autocracy, nationalism. And that's a pretty good fit, probably not in that order, with Putin's own personal ideology. And sure, he defines NATO, and the United States in particular, even more than NATO, to be kind of the main enemy, to use a Cold War era term. But for Putin, it's about restoration, that Russia essentially cannot be a great state anymore in the future until and unless it's reunited with Ukraine. And by the way, interestingly enough, this was the view of a big geopolitical expert, the late Spigot Brzezinski, who very presciently said in the 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union that Russia without Ukraine could not be a great power. And so I think a lot of that is what's driving this on Putin's part. He's very skilled, very skilled, and has people who are skilled around him at creating divisions within the west, creating a narrative in which they are the victims as opposed to the aggressors. But I would just point out one final thing on this point. We could talk about this endlessly, but I lived in Russia and covered Russia for the Washington Post during the 2004 election in Ukraine. So this is years before there was any consideration in a serious way of Ukraine joining NATO. It was four years before there was the famous Bucharest summit of NATO in 2008, where this kind of Frankenstein plan to someday admit Georgia and Ukraine was discussed. So years before the quote was root cause. And yet it was Vladimir Putin who was very aggressively interfering in Ukraine's presidential election. He sent his top Kremlin political advisors, he personally campaigned right before the election for his handpicked candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. Then, when the election was determined to be rigged, and it brought millions of people in Ukraine out in the streets in what we now know as the Orange Revolution, caused an incredible, incredible reaction on Putin's part, blaming the west, you know, increasing his paranoia. And this had nothing to do with NATO. Had nothing to do with NATO. And it had everything to do with Putin's desire to control Ukraine by whatever means necessary, including, by the way, In September of 2004, the mysterious poisoning of the leading pro Western, pro democracy candidate, Yushako, who ultimately did become the leader of Ukraine. Okay, that happened before the Orange Revolution. It happened in the middle of a campaign. Clearly, the implication is that the Russians poisoned this democratic candidate for the leadership.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe just had some bad goulash. Maybe it was just a bad luck coincidence.

[Susan Glasser]

I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. Can you imagine the poisoning by Russian secret services of the leading presidential candidate in Ukraine? This isn't about NATO. It's not about the United States. It's about Putin's long standing decades long desire to keep Ukraine under Russia's control by whatever means necessary.

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[Tim Miller]

All right, that was a fulfilling diversion for me, so I'm glad that we did that. But back to John Bolton.

[Susan Glasser]

I hope it was.

[Tim Miller]

I know I enjoyed it. The listeners, we'll see what the listeners say, but I needed that. Okay, back to Bolton. I guess I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about. This is just so blatantly like political retribution, intimidation. Right. I think that the ramifications of that broadly are more important than like the narrow details of the Bolton case, which I feel like unless there's some secret out there that we don't know, which would be very shocking to me. Seems like a pretty big nothing burger. So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about the kind of that element of the retribution campaign and what the Bolton raid means.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, look, you know, Donald Trump and his then Justice Department tried to stop Bolton from publishing his Inside the Room memoir of the first Trump administration and its dysfunction in 2020 and they failed. They looked into this. They accused him at the time of doing this and that nefarious releasing of classified information, and it didn't stick at the time. So is this a do over, in effect for Trump and his people now that there's no one there to stop them? But I do think, again, you go to the idea that we don't even know if there's a there there to any of this. And I keep coming back to this notion that if you're Trump, why have you gone to all the effort to put these extreme loyalists in positions at the Justice Department and at the FBI, if not to use it, ultimately, that that's where this is headed. So we haven't seen yet any actual cases brought of this nature. Prosecutions, people in jail. Is that where this is headed? I mean, if you give someone a hammer, they find nails.

[Commercial Announcer]

Right?

[Susan Glasser]

They find ways to use it. We know that the hammer is in their hands right now. And I think this is one of many potential examples we're about to see.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, luckily, maybe our institutional bulwark will be the grand juries, because you do have to convince a grand jury if you're going to bring it to people. And there's an interesting time story, either today or yesterday, about how they've impaneled like three grand juries going after, I think it was a woman that was protesting the ICE raids and I don't remember the exact situation where they but had some kind of confrontation with the ICE officials and they wanted to charge her and they've literally gone to three grand juries trying to get a felony failed and now are charging her with a misdemeanor. You know, that will also be the case in these Bolton kind of situations. And, you know, it takes us to the Bondi of it. I mean, Bondi's tweet on Bolton's arrest was so absurd, America's safety isn't negotiable. As if these documents in Bolton's house are about America's safety. But your colleague Ruth Marcus wrote a big piece on bonding the doj. I just wonder what you think about all that. I mean, is there a possibility that this DOJ can be so ham handed about all of this, that the actual wheels of the justice system will. Will prevent them from being successful in their clear endeavor to go after political foes?

[Susan Glasser]

Well, I mean, Ruth's piece is a terrific piece. And one of the points it makes is that Bondi has instilled a culture, a climate of fear inside the Department of Justice with a scale of purges that is really without precedent in the Justice Department of Modern memory. So, you know, huge swaths of institutional memory are gone. Civil servant career prosecutors gone, whole offices decimated, whole capacities lost. So there certainly, you've got to imagine, comes a point at which they're stretched by fighting so many different legal battles on so many different fronts. But at the same time, this goes then to the question of the courts and ultimately, if they're going to stand up or agree with any of these arguments. And I do find it notable in that respect, Tim, that whatever searches were being carried out of Bolton's home and office, they had been signed off on, they did have a legal warrant to conduct those searches, which means a federal judge had agreed to those searches. On what basis, we don't know yet. And I'm very interested in that question. What was it that proved enough for them to get a warrant to conduct those searches? What is the allegation or what is the evidence that they had that enabled them to do it? And again, a federal judge signed off on this. And so that's a question that I have going forward. What's remarkable, I think, is that they are getting lawyers to make some of these absurd arguments. You know, another thing we didn't talk about today is the, you know, the return of the Albergo case. You know, remember, he was the detained guy whose situation went all the way up to the Supreme Court, who was improperly deported to El Salvador. And then the administration, even after admitting its mistake, didn't want to bring him back. Now they're attempting to send the guy to Uganda. To Uganda, all because his case inadvertently became this public brouhaha. And I just thought, imagine being the federal prosecutor who has to, like, wake up in the morning and, you know, look in the mirror and say, yeah, I'm going to send this man to Uganda and I'm going to go into a federal court and argue this. And I was really, actually, before we had this conversation, for whatever reason, that's what I was thinking about. Like, imagine being that person. So we have people who are willing to go into court right now and make extraordinary and even absurd arguments on behalf of a very extreme agenda that Pam Bondi and Donald Trump are comfortable carrying out.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. DHS tweeted yesterday, just Uganda man, like, trolling him. It's.

[Susan Glasser]

So the cruelty is the point.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Even if you oppose the policy, the idea that the federal government, like an official federal government agency, is engaging in social media trolling, mocking somebody that they are, like, deporting to a third country that has not been convicted of anything that they charged and had to withdraw charges from. It is a really just grotesque escalation. And, you know, this stuff just kind of starts to get washed. So I'm glad you brought it up. The firings. Also, the doj, the sort of scary part of it for me is, okay, so at doj, they're washing out all this institutional memory. It's horrible for the lawyers that have been pushed out of there. You have your Maureen Comeys and people of that nature who do real work for the government and should be in there going after bad guys. They're replaced with these hacks that are gonna make these absurd arguments in front of courts and get denied by three grand juries and go after the sandwich man. So you have these hacks that are in there. But, like, that same thing is happening at the dod, which is a little alarming that there's a real military confrontation that happens with regards to the United States rather than our proxies or allies. But like Hagseth fired the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency last week. Air Force chief of staff got kicked out. These are the latest. There's like a ton of institutional memory has gotten washed out of DoD as well.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, that's right. There's been an extraordinary number of what you would call in any other country, purges going on in the senior levels of the Defense Department that seem designed to replace institutionalists with people who are personally more loyal or perceived to be personally more loyal with the defense secretary, the president. It's, in effect, the politicization of our nonpartisan military, of everything that's perhaps the most worrisome. It might get the least attention because it's a more opaque and less transparent, generally operation, the Pentagon. But I think it's. If you're looking for something where the red light indicators are really flashing, it would be in what appears to be a very concerted effort to politicize the Defense Department, because, again, what are you going to then ultimately use that for? We're seeing what we're going to use it for, which is to turn the military not into an instrument of national security in terms of our international interests, but in terms of against what Trump and Hegseth consider the enemy within. And I think that's, again, the through line to so many of these developments. Take just one example. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency fired apparently for the sin of his agency having produced an intelligence assessment that Donald Trump didn't like, that said that the attack on Iran's nuclear installations had not, as Trump claimed, obliterated completely the Iranian nuclear program. But had probably only set it back by a matter of some months at some of the facilities. That was a very initial preliminary assessment, obviously conducted not by the director of the DIA personally. And yet in the same way that Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics within hours, within hours of having an unfavorable economic report produced, he's firing through Hegseth, the head of an intelligence agency because intelligence analysts produced a report that he didn't like. And you know, again, this is so.

[Tim Miller]

Antithetical the second time this has happened. And this happened with some intelligence officials that were lower level. But you know, people have put out a report about how Venezuela wasn't exactly invading America, which is like not even really an intelligence report. They just were stating facts like it's just clear that, you know, Venezuela did not have a plot to invade America. And that was enough to, you know, have a couple people pushed out as well.

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[Tim Miller]

I want to talk about your comment there about what the military is planning on doing, which is going after the enemy within and the expanding militarization of our cities in the National Guard, trump said yesterday and Hegseth was in the Oval about how they're looking at Chicago. He had this confrontation with West Moore over the idea of sending folks to Baltimore. I think it's very obvious that they're going to do this in New York. Whether they wait for Zoran to win or try to do it in front of the election to impact it. I don't know, but that I think is the writing is on the wall of that. So I'm wondering, you know, what we can learn. And I guess as you said, you're out of D.C. at the moment, but you've been there about what the vibes are in D.C. right now and what your sense is for what's happening and what's to come there.

[Susan Glasser]

Well, Tim, you mentioned, I think at the beginning of this conversation, the National Guard troops standing outside the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. And if anyone knows dc, that's right at the Dupont Circle Metro station. I can assure you that no murders are happening in broad daylight at the Dupont Circle Metro station. You know, maybe if they're there at 4 o' clock in the morning on a weekend or something, but, you know, then the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts wouldn't be open. So maybe they don't wanna be there at that time. I mean, you know, the point, right, is that it appears to be an extremely performative abuse of official resources to make a political point for Donald Trump to his red state constituency that doesn't know or care very much about dc, that has believed years of, you know, sort of propaganda that these Democratic run cities are sort of hellscapes of, you know, crime and homelessness and horror. It's so sad and tragic in a way because of course, nobody is in favor of crime. And I keep reading these political analyses from people saying, oh well, you know, it's just a classic. This is great for Donald Trump and he's just, you know, Democrats have walked right into his trap and now they're, you know, he's shown how they actually defend crime and they're in favor of all this terrible things. And this is just brilliant politics for Donald Trump. Trump obviously believes that because he wouldn't be trying to do more of it if he didn't think that this wasn't great politics for him. But it is the height of cynicism. I think it was J.B. pritzker, the governor of Illinois. He's worried, of course, that the next stop is Chicago on Donald Trump's sort of dictator tour with the National Guards this summer. But Pritzker pointed out on Monday in a press conference that if Donald Trump actually cared about crime in America, then he and Republicans on Capitol Hill wouldn't be cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in public safety funding from the Department of homeland security. In DC's case, directly cutting funds from DC's budget, which as you know, has to be approved by Congress because of Its unique status. And, you know, again, it's not about crime fighting, it's about political point scoring. And, you know, it's just very tragic. But it's also revenge. I think it's also part of the Trump revenge tour because D.C. probably voted for Donald Trump less than almost any big city in the country in his first election. I think it was back in 2016, I think it was something like 4%. I could get the number wrong, but in the low single digits. Voted for Donald Trump in his first election, and he sees this as enemy territory.

[Tim Miller]

I know you write a newsletter on life in Washington, but I have to push back. There's another Washington resident who has a different view about what's happening outside the Dupont Circle Metro. And I'd like to listen to it overflowing with gratitude because for the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets. You have people who can walk freely at night without having to worry about being robbed or mugged. They're wearing their watches again. They're wearing jewelry again. They're carrying purses again. People had changed their whole lives in this city for fear of being murdered, mugged and carjacked. It is a literal statement that President Trump has felt freed 700,000 people in this city who were living under the rule of criminals and thugs. Do you feel free, Susan? Have you changed your jewelry habits?

[Susan Glasser]

Well, I'm glad that Stephen Miller is so concerned about all of us. You know, as I understand it, Stephen Miller not a resident of Washington, D.C. and, you know, is that not true?

[Tim Miller]

I thought he lived there at the new place down by Metro.

[Susan Glasser]

That's a good question. We need to fact check that. I saw this morning. I don't know that he does actually live in D.C. now, in the second.

[Tim Miller]

Trump term, it's kind of irrelevant whether or not he lives in D.C. i don't wanna know where Stephen Miller lives. It's like a dark cloud. You just follow the dark cloud over town and know where he is. I think.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, Tim, it's not irrelevant because he's speaking quite authoritatively about the liberation that he and Donald Trump have accomplished for 700,000 people. It's interesting that Miller believes that's what he's accomplished here. And he's speaking in a way that, like a lot of what he says bears little resemblance to reality.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, I know that he did live at City center, and you know that the thugs have overrun and control City Center. When you see that there are places like Arc' Teryx there, Brunello, Cuccinelli, Burberry. There's the Burberry, the Chanel. It's totally Lawless there. Nobody wants to wear any jewelry. Actually, if you buy your David Yurman jewelry, they mail it to you from there in kind of a lockbox.

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[Tim Miller]

I have one final question for you about life in D.C. though. Have you seen the new portraits of Trump hanging on the Labor Department? I like this memory of being a child and my parents, we went to, you know, country like Central American country, South American country, and it was like you have the pictures of the leader. It feels like a very un American thing right now. But in Washington, D.C. of these massive portraits of menacing Trump on like the Department of Labor building now.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, that picture really, really caught my attention. You know, it reminded me, of course, of Moscow, you know, where the gigantic visage of Vladimir Putin is everywhere and omnipresent. That's the thing about a strongman type leader. He wants his picture on everything. He wants credit for everything. You mentioned my colleague Ruth Marcus, excellent piece in the New Yorker about Pam Bondi. It begins, the piece begins with a remarkable scene in January of this year with the Attorney General of the United States personally entering an office in the Justice Department where she had apparently been told this is like within hours or days of the inauguration, that the old portraits of the president had not been taken down and the new presidential portraits of Trump had not yet been posted. And this head of an office in the Justice Department is stunned to find the Attorney general standing there carrying portraits she's ripped off the walls. And not surprisingly, the head of this office is then fired, you know, immediately afterwards. This is what strongmen care about. They care about having their picture on the wall in every government office. They care about putting their name or their signature on government checks. Remember how Donald Trump did that during the pandemic? They care about having their gigantic portrait hanging on the walls of government buildings so that people drive around and see them. You know, how long is it until we have the Donald Trump radio with the word of the leader blaring at us at all times?

[Tim Miller]

We kind of have that. I think he had three press conferences in the Oval Office yesterday. So we're getting close.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, the live streaming presidency, Tim. You know, in the first term, right, it was the constant tweeting presidency.

[Tim Miller]

He was kind of a consumer in the first term. Like he was watching the news constantly and he was live commenting on it. But now he's made himself a full time character. And the reality show.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, he's livestreaming the presidency. And you don't have the ability to turn it off.

[Tim Miller]

I'm going to try, but you're right, I don't. I'm stuck. That makes me feel sad that I don't have the ability to turn it off.

[Susan Glasser]

You're right.

[Tim Miller]

I don't get stuck. The channel, the remote doesn't work. There's no other channel. Susan Glasser, what a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much. My love to the fam. And we'll be having you back here soon.

[Susan Glasser]

All right, Great to be with you, Tim. And now I'm gonna go have a drink. Is it too early to have a drink?

[Tim Miller]

Nah, not in Trump 2.0. You know, it's noon somewhere. Everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Peace. I know your smile is just an evil friend You've been lying all the while all of the truth is just sinking and you, you left a big mess behind that I'm going to have to clean up. You think you can change my mind but you clean out of love. But I got a handle on things. I got my prescription. I'll change the channel. I stop my. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and and editing by Jason Brown.

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[Susan Glasser]

Off terms apply this Labor Day.

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