← The Focus Group Podcast
The Focus Group Podcast
S5 Ep15: Nothing is True, Everything is Possible (with Anne Applebaum)
00:51:53
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- [00:00]
Sarah Longwell
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- [00:43]
Anne Applebaum
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Bridget
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Sarah Longwell
I've lost the weight. I would never be able to do it without them. Get started today and check Your eligibility for GLP1 medication with CO pays as low as $0@trylifemd.com that's T R Y L I F hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're going to grapple with a central question often asked about Donald Trump. Is he an aspiring authoritarian to be feared, or simply a corrupt demagogue looking to cash in on the presidency? Or a petty, incompetent clown whose focus on retribution over the health of the economy will ultimately cause a terminal backlash to his movement? Or is he some combination of all of those things and more? Trump is closing in on the often politically significant milestone of his first hundred days in office. Those hundred days have been notable for the speed with which Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the government, the rule of law, and the economy. Congress has ceased to function as a meaningful check on the executive branch, and Trump is teetering on the brink of fully ignoring the rulings of the Supreme Court. So where are we 100 days in? Is there still hope to preserve American liberal democracy in the face of these unprecedented attacks, or are we sliding into authoritarianism? My guest today knows something about aspiring and full blown autocrats. Ann Applebaum, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators who Want to Run the World Ann, thanks for being here.
- [02:27]
Anne Applebaum
Thanks for having me.
- [02:28]
Sarah Longwell
So you're my favorite person to read when I'M trying to figure out, are we too freaked out? Because people have been throwing the word authoritarianism around when it comes to Trump for a long time. And I don't know if that makes it harder for us to know when we're, like, really there. Maybe it's not even a point in time where we say, oh, now we're an authoritarian regime versus we used to be in a democracy. But maybe you could just lay out, because you study all these foreign authoritarians, where are we now in terms of our democratic slide?
- [03:01]
Anne Applebaum
So there's always a timeline. I mean, unless you have a coup d'etat and somebody gets in a tank and drives down the street and shoots up the presidential palace, which does happen, although less and less than it used to most of the time. Democratic decline is a process rather than a moment. And so I actually think that in our country, it began sometime back. I mean, I'd say a decade ago, if not more. As Congress became more and more ineffective, there began to be more and more distrust in all kinds of institutions, not just government ones, but institutions that produced news and information and scientific research. Those were the beginnings of the decline. I mean, I actually made a podcast last summer called Autocracy in America before the election. And it was about the things that were already declining. So it's been in play for a long time.
- [03:52]
Sarah Longwell
And do you have, like, a quick diagnosis on that? Is that the Internet? Is it post Obama? Why? Why a decade ago?
- [04:00]
Anne Applebaum
I actually do think it's profoundly connected to the Internet. It's connected to the way in which we get and process political information. But I think it's also connected to the speed and pace of change. So economic change, demographic change, social change, and then this change in the way we learn about things, I think it left a lot of people very disoriented. And one of the things that happens whenever you have the speed of change is that you have some people becoming nostalgic. We wanna turn the clock back. We wanna go back to a simpler time. Whatever time it is that they have in their head. The 1950s, or usually it's their childhood, some other moment when everything was simpler and we didn't have all this new stuff. I mean, it's not the first time in history this has happened. I mean, there's a movement like this that happens in Germany at the end of the 19th century when people say, Gosh, things better. 100 years ago, before we had all this industrial development, there have been lots of other societies that have gone through this. And then there were some fluky things that happened. I mean, there was Trump deciding to run for president and to run for president explicitly as someone who's nostalgic, but also as someone who was a conspiracy theorist. So he accelerated this questioning of institutions. I mean, the first really big, an important conspiracy theory that was mouthed about the presidency, I guess, by a serious person was, or more or less serious, was Trump's conspiracy that Obama wasn't born in America. Right. And that was something that we didn't maybe take seriously enough at the time, but something like 30% of Americans believed it. And if you take that seriously, you know, Obama's fake president, you know, he's. He's not really American. If you believe that, that means that you also believed that every American institution, from Congress to the courts to the media, they're all lying and they've all created this fake president. The fact that that was believed, and that was Trump, he pushed it well before he was even formally in politics. Once people began to believe that, you know, then people are ripe for something different. You know, all the institutions are. Are misleading us. We're being taken down a path that goes back 15 years.
- [06:10]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And I know you listened to some of these focus groups, and we're going to hear sound and we'll go through it all. But was there anything that struck you about these voters? Because I will say one of the things just in listening to people all the time, when you say the word disoriented, that is a word that lands really true with voters in that maybe they feel strongly about things, but they also do a lot of. I'm not sure. I don't know what to believe. I saw this here, but I don't really know, because you have this historical perspective when people feel disoriented by this rapid change. Like you mentioned the fact that in Germany, this has happened before, just around the Industrial Revolution, and you talk to people and they say, well, during the time the printing press was invented, people also felt disoriented. Does that make you feel better about things? That people eventually adjust to that disorientation and find their footing and go back to making reasonable, informed choices? Or when you were listening to people, did you think men were doomed?
- [07:11]
Anne Applebaum
I mean, the problem with the two examples that you just cited is that in both cases, people didn't go back to, you know, agreeing with each other and behaving sensibly until there were these horrific wars, you know.
- [07:23]
Sarah Longwell
Sure, yeah, right. We killed a lot of people first. That's a great point.
- [07:26]
Anne Applebaum
That's right. I mean, the Printing press was invented. People began to argue about religion. What happened after that was many decades of religious wars in Europe that are only ended when they come up with this great idea called religious tolerance in the 17th and 18th centuries. And then it begins to subside. So there was a lot of chaos before people agreed not to be so angry at one another anymore. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the disorientation. I also find disturbing the way in which people only know part or a piece of the story. I mean, they've heard something about the man whose name they might have heard who was accidentally deported. But some people have heard that he's a gang member, and some people have heard that he was an illegal immigrant. And some people have heard one piece of the story, something about tattoos, but they don't seem to really know what happened. And the idea that someone was illegally sent out of the country and sent to a foreign camp where he's outside the jurisdiction of US Law and that, that's just illegal, that doesn't seem clear to people. And, of course, I know how you run the group. You know, you're not giving people information. You're just asking them what they think. But I kept wondering, you know, what happens if someone says, here's the truth or here's what happened? Does the full story of the situation make them think differently? That I just don't know.
- [08:45]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, well, let's get into that, because you're right. We sort of started by asking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador. So these are all Biden to Trump voters on the show today. So they had previously voted for Biden in 2020 and then moved to Trump in 2024. And a bunch of them, like, didn't see why deporting this one guy was a big deal. Many of them were focused on whether or not he was a bad guy and exactly how bad he might be. So let's listen to the first wave of commentary we heard about Obrego Garcia.
- [09:17]
Focus Group Participant 1
People are saying we shouldn't have sent him there. I feel like we should have. He's a criminal. I understand he's part of a gang, and that's why I wasn't supposed to go there. Whatever. I mean, if you're a criminal, I don't know what to tell you, but I'd rather him not be in America. So I don't. I don't understand what the big deal is about it. But at the end of the day, you know, we don't really know what's going on. They tell us what they want us to hear. Is it the truth? Who knows?
- [09:43]
Focus Group Participant 2
You watch like Fox News or you watch cnn. Everything on CNN is a father of three, married, all these different things and everything seems like the perfect human being on earth. And you watch Fox News. I tend to watch both of them just to get two different perspectives on it. Then you hear Fox News with, you know, he was a gang member. He hung out with gang members, he beat his wife. All these different things that are going on with this guy. So I have zero problems with him being shipped over to back to El Salvador in that prison. And then with that senator from. Where is it? Maryland, I think it is where he's originally from. Looks like a complete going over there and expecting Venezuela to open up the prison to let him talk to him and bring him home, which is ridiculous. So I think that's kind of funny. But it's just interesting how you see two different programs spinning it the way they want to spin it. And I'm getting to the point now where it has come out that he did beat his wife with the records that were shown.
- [10:42]
Focus Group Participant 3
This was one of the things that's turning me off on Democrats. Who's this guy? James Carver. That's like a political grandstander, you know.
- [10:50]
Anne Applebaum
James Carell Car Bell Carvel.
- [10:52]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [10:53]
Focus Group Participant 3
So he's saying that this should be the. The Democrats main focus. I mean, all the issues that we are going on in this country, and this should be your main focus. And it just makes me feel like it's production value. I've read reports this guy was busted, what's called a coyote, something here in Arizona where they bring people across the border and they get paid. I mean, this guy obviously has ties to these gangs.
- [11:16]
Anne Applebaum
And.
- [11:17]
Focus Group Participant 3
And then this is your main concern. I honestly, I don't think he should come back. Maybe they could look into it more. But this is not the main problem in America right now.
- [11:28]
Focus Group Participant 4
Actually, he was not here legally. He had two orders of deportation that were entered by a judge and then was appealed and still had to leave. They had evidence he's part of the MS.13 gang. The only thing that they couldn't do was send him back to El Salvador because he was afraid of. Of being killed by a rival gang.
- [11:45]
Sarah Longwell
Right.
- [11:45]
Focus Group Participant 4
So that tells you something right there, that if he's not in a gang, why would this other gang be a rival? Right. That was the only thing that they did. And then even at that once, once they determined that. That Ms. 13 was a terrorist group, then even that, that protection of not having to go to El Salvador kind of falls by the wayside. So there's a lot going on here with this, with this showman. And yes, they're holding it up as, as a breach of, of due process when, when really was not. He was already. He already got his, his turn in court by two different judges and was ruled that he needed to leave. So it is, it is a distraction, another roadblock, another. Another pitfall to try and trip things up and, and cast doubt on what's going on. Could things have been done better? Yes. Could they have been cleaner and not sent him to El Salvador to make sure that they were totally clear on that and avoided this? Yes. But now it's turned out that his, his wife, who is an American citizen, still doesn't give him a right to be here. There are two, two things that have come out in the courts where she had filed domestic abuse against him over the past several years. So, you know, this is not a good person.
- [12:42]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so first of all, let me just say you heard people speaking who were people who had heard about this case. So there were plenty of people in the group who actually had not heard of this guy. They hadn't heard about Abrego Garcia. They weren't following it. For the people who had, they were steeped in essentially what has become the talking points from Trump, the administration, and sort of the right wing media ecosystem just in general, the way that Trump has focused on immigration and on sort of going after disfavored groups because these voters were like, yeah, what's he doing here? The guy's a criminal. He belongs to the gang. Like, they were taking it on faith. But maybe talk about the way that the demagoguing of these out groups or unpopular groups get used as a way to make people decide that, like, yeah, this is fine. Like, we don't have to abide by the rules that we used to abide by. How do you think about it?
- [13:40]
Anne Applebaum
So there are two things that strike me. I mean, one is the one that you've mentioned. Trump creates, or the people around him create a group that is legitimate to attack and insult and smear and undermine and then deport to, you know, a prison that we know nothing about. You know, that's a tactic as old as humanity. You give people an out group to hate, or you give them a minority to dislike, or you give them an enemy. And it's a way of unifying your side, you know, so then your side is unified by the knowledge that we are not them and they are to be expelled from our midst, and they are not subject to our rules and our laws. I mean, that's kind of a classic thing. I mean, I was also struck in one of those responses by people expressing that they hear conflicting views and they don't know what's true. And there's another authoritarian tactic, which is this constant repetitive lying. You know, he lies even when he doesn't have to lie. He lies about almost everything all day long. He's lied about this guy, he's lied about other aspects of his policy, and he keeps lying and lying and lying. And one of the things that happens when you have that much lying is that people begin to ask, well, is anything true? You know, how do we know whether anything is ever true? This is an old Russian tactic. And if nothing is true and you can't know anything, then why should you be involved in politics at all? I mean, you're better off staying home because it's all like a big fog out there and nothing's true. Actually, there's a Hannah Arendt quote, that was the title of a friend of mine's book. Nothing is true and everything is possible. Nothing is true. You don't know what's real. There's no such thing as an informed citizen or somebody who's politically active if you can't know anything. And so what they have successfully done around this guy, you know, and around so many other things, but this guy in particular is undermine any sense of reality. So there's. We're not even having a real conversation about him.
- [15:36]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Part of it is though, and I think this is one of the new things, is that there was always kind of a propaganda apparatus that would have these fights. What's interesting today is that like JD Vance is on Twitter saying that he's a convicted Ms. 13 gang member. That is a flat out lie. Now, we do not know everything about this guy. And I think the question of whether or not he's a good guy, I think that Senator Van Hollen who went to El Salvador and met this guy, you know, when he came back, he said, look, this isn't about him really. This is about us. It's about our rules and whether or not we do these things the correct way. But, you know, I always feel sorry for the voters in a way that people get mad at me for because they're like you, you know, let these guys off the hook. And it's not that. When you have the vice President actively lying and saying that they're convicted gang members and Then you have an entire media ecosystem that runs with that. Every Fox News headline just calls him unequivocally an ms.13 gang member. When you have that, what are voters supposed to do? How are they supposed to figure out the truth? Because that line you said where someone was like, I don't know what's true, that is a feature of focus groups of like, people who are trying to make sense of what you're asking them, but they just want to tell you, like, they don't really know. It's so hard to know.
- [16:57]
Anne Applebaum
But that's deliberate. I mean, Vance and Trump and others around them have deliberately created a world in which people don't know what's true. And that is a tactic. That's not an accident. And they're not doing it for momentary gain. I mean, it's a repetitive, long term, permanent tactic and it pollutes the public sphere. So eventually people like that voter will say, well, I have no idea what's true. There's no way I can ever know. Get me away from here. You know, it's all dirty. Everyone's a crook. You know, keep me away. That is a tactic. It's not an accident. You know, Vance, lying like that is on purpose.
- [17:35]
Sarah Longwell
The America I used to know, a vice president would feel shame about doing that. Like Trump does it. And it was sort of new when Trump did it, like the brazen lying. And now it is a feature of Trump and his minions, right? You say if Trump says they're eating the dogs and cats, Vance says they're eating the dogs and cats, even when there's no truth to it. All right, focus group listeners, have I got a podcast wreck for you. In wild times like these, do you ever want to just break fake rules? It's important to rethink some of the dumb rules we follow for no good reason. Well, that's exactly what friend of the bulwark Glenn Galich gets into on his show, Break Fake Rules. Here Glenn and his guests dig into the self imposed rules that hold us back, particularly in the world of America's ultra wealthy philanthropists, to uncover which rules we should commit to breaking together for a better society. Just be sure to break rules in a cool way, not in like an elon way or in a planning drone strikes over signal way, like a legal way. Check out a recent episode of the podcast where Glenn and I sat down to talk about how philanthropists can use their FU money to defend democracy. Because what is the point of having FU money if you can't say F you when People come and try to take over our democracy. So if you've ever wondered why we live by certain rules or dreamed of what becomes possible when we do things a little bit differently, tune in to break fake rules wherever you get your podcasts. So in these other countries where you have these demagogues or these authoritarians who lie, they use social media to lie. They have their own sort of controlled media apparatuses that will repeat the lies. What are voters supposed to do? What do they do in that environment?
- [19:25]
Anne Applebaum
Well, in a lot of those environments, I mean, in Russia, for example, what happens is that people become apathetic and they stay away. Not only do they not vote, I mean, not that voting matters, who you vote for in Russia, but they stop reading the news they check out. And that's what the authoritarians want. That's the goal. You know, get people to stay home. Yeah, the opposite. The thing that voters should do is make efforts to find out what's true and what's not. And I concede, I agree with you, that it's very difficult. Now, the answer is to try to understand what makes a good source. Is it a newspaper that fact checks? Is it somebody who has a background in the subject? Is it somebody whose record on telling the truth goes back a long way? Is it someone who, when they make mistakes, correct them? I mean, there's a series of things you can do to ask whether the sources you're looking at are good. But, you know, most people either don't have the time for that or they don't care enough about it, you know, or they've checked out already. I mean, some large percentage of Americans don't get their news anymore from journalism. And by that, I mean any journalism, good journalism, bad journalism, Fox News or cnn, they just don't read any journalism. They get their information from, you know, vibes and entertainment shows, and they watch weightlifting shows, and the podcast guide says something about Trump or Biden or Vance or whatever. So a lot of people just don't get any information. And if you want to be a responsible citizen, you need to be informed. I don't have a better solution than that. I mean, the reason why authoritarians do this, why do they lie? Why do they create their own media? Why do they try to destroy independent media? They all do it. Why do they do it? They do it because it works. You know, if you can get a sufficient number of people living in an alternate reality where the only things that are true are the things that Trump says, then they win. You started this program by asking you know, what is Trumpism? You know, is it just corruption? Is it authoritarian? These are often the same thing. I mean, you can be corrupt if you live in a political system where no one holds you to account because there is no media and there are no government ethics offices, and the courts, you know, aren't able to hold you to account. And then you can steal a lot of money. I mean, there's a. There's an absolutely, you know, 100% compatibility between corruption and authoritarianism. So the reason to do that is both to stay in power and to be able to steal down the road.
- [21:48]
Sarah Longwell
But here's the thing. You mentioned the court and to this point, of trusted messengers. All right, so you think, okay, won't these Trump voters, like, if you tell them that the Supreme Court just ruled 90 against Trump on the Abrego Garcia case, will they take that as valid? And let's listen to what they said.
- [22:09]
Focus Group Participant 1
I don't even understand why they are, like, intervening with this. Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, I don't even know why we're wasting money on this stuff. I mean, we're spending a fortune on all of this, and it's like, the guy's a criminal. What do you want? So I don't understand why they're trying to intervene with all of this stuff or why they're even involved.
- [22:31]
Focus Group Participant 5
Honestly, I think the reason we have these branches for checks and balances, just to make sure one person doesn't take advantage of their authority. And I think the way that Trump expects everyone to follow the law and he's doing this stuff so that he can help decrease the amount of people who might be doing things illegally. But he can't maybe kind of go against that himself and not take into account the Supreme Court's say, like, he is enforcing all these things, trying to get people on track and to follow it. But that also goes for him as well. And I don't think that he should be taking advantage of that just to kind of get what he wants, even if it is for a good purpose.
- [23:17]
Bridget
No, it is a little bit disturbing, like the, the lack of administration, respect for the court system or the Supreme Court. So, you know, I mean, there's a reason that we have these, like, checks and balance system. And if we don't listen to the courts, you know, I think it just sets a bad precedent. And yes, it was this time. It was not a great person, but they scooped him up because they saw his tattoo. I mean, there could be somebody who used to be a gang member and is now changed their lives and come here legally and can we scoop them up and send them away just because they have this tattoo? There needs to be more of a, a better process for this. I think it's a little bit scary that it happened in this country. The Supreme Court has the highest say. So to just ignore that, I think sets a bad precedent. I think if they disagree with it, I think you bring him back and then you can jail him and you can put him through the process the correct way. But I think, you know, just ignoring the Supreme Court should not be an option.
- [24:21]
Focus Group Participant 6
You turn to cnn, he's this great family guy. You turn to Fox, he's this criminal. So we don't know what is the truth. And if that's the case of middle school sick, his class says we all have due process by the law. So I'm like, he did not deserve that. And then another question I was going to say too, is I, I really think everyone deserves, you know, due process, regardless of what we think.
- [24:39]
Focus Group Participant 2
Fox says that the Supreme Court said, you need to facilitate taking him back. Okay, I'll facilitate it. I'm not going to do anything. They didn't tell me to bring him back. They didn't say physically go there and bring him back, facilitate it. And then you got CNN saying the complete opposite. So the first couple days, I had no idea what was right or what what was Supreme Court was saying. But it's just who's spinning what.
- [25:04]
Sarah Longwell
So we had to raise it like, hey, you know, the Supreme Court said, I know he has to return this guy. Some people were like, who cares what the Supreme Court says? Or I don't even know why they're getting involved in this. Even one of the guys in there is playing the word game that Trump was trying to play, facilitate. But there were a few other people when they heard it went, oh, yeah, he shouldn't ignore the Supreme Court. We are in this moment of a showdown between Trump and the Supreme Court and whether or not this administration is going to listen to the Supreme Court when it comes to authoritarian countries. Is that a tipping point typically or a turning point? I don't know. I mean, Trump is doing everything he can to discredit the courts as he tries to discredit anything that would be a check on him. But I guess I wonder how big of a moment you think it is when, or if Trump outright defies a Supreme Court order.
- [25:57]
Anne Applebaum
If he does, it's a huge moment. I mean, in American history, specifically the role of the Supreme Court, which I think is actually, it's even different from many other parts of the world, is something that you heard even those voters saying. It's something people remember from middle school. You know, when you learn American history, part of learning American history is learning various big Supreme Court cases. Right. You know, Brown v. Board of Education, you know, Marbury Madison, you know, they're kind of part of the curriculum. And the court in the United States, partly because of the political battles over it, is well known and its role is well understood in a way that, for example, the equivalent constitutional court in Poland, which was attacked some years back or was undermined, and there was a successful, actually attempt to pack the court that wasn't as well understood because the court just wasn't something people had ever talked about or thought about before. So I do think that absolutely refusing the court or refusing to obey a court order or court directive will be a really important and very major legal break, and it will cause an enormous ripple effect in the entire legal community and in the entire judicial community. The whole federal bench will know it. I mean, it will be a major thing. I also think it is something that Americans will understand. Maybe not every single American, a lot of them have checked out or don't care or so on, but that will be a thing that makes sense to them. You know, the court is supposed to have the last word, and the president has always done what the court says. How come he's not doing it this time? So I think that would be a really important break. It seems to me that it's one of the reasons why Trump himself, I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, but he does undermine courts and he insults judges and so on. But he also has said a couple of times, I'll always do what the Supreme Court says. I mean, he may instinctively understand that an open and outward break with the court would be a crisis for his administration and for how he's perceived. And, you know, I think that's also why they were playing this game with the word facilitate, because they were deciding we're going to interpret it in a way that it doesn't mean what the judge meant it to mean. You know, that's one way of getting around it. But they didn't want to say outright, we're not going to obey it.
- [28:08]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I think that's 100% right. I do think Trump is nervous about the idea of outright defying them, in part because he nominated three of them and everybody knows he's got a 6:3 majority in terms of conservatives versus liberals on the supreme court. But I don't know if he's nervous about it because it provokes a constitutional crisis so much as if they start to consistently rule against him. Everything is being litigated now. So that would create a lot of showdowns. Even now, getting into this fight over the facilitate, what does that word even mean to me? Seems a little bit like a slap in their face. And you know, they gave him a 7:2 ruling on the Venezuelans too. And so, like, he is now in a moment where he's gonna have to decide whether he's gonna abide by the supreme court or not. All right, guys, this show is sponsored by quints. Mother's day is coming up. And if you have a chronic case of what am I gonna buy? Try Quint on for size. Like cashmere sweaters from $50 Italian leather bags, fragrances, and more. The best part, all Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quint cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and, and premium fabrics and finishes. I love that. And I even got my favorite leather jacket from them before they were even sponsors of this show. And some of my friends have some of their cool stuff too, because Quint is great, thoughtful, timeless, and totally her shop. Mother's Day at quint. Go to quint.com the focus group for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U I N C E.com the focus group to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com the focus group. Go check it out. Their stuff is good. You know, he's waging war against the law in general. We did ask these voters about the executive orders against the law firms who are connected specifically to his political enemies. Right. He went and he signed orders pulling security clearances, limiting these lawyers contacts with the government and generally threatening their ability to do business. Some of the law firms are fighting these orders in court, but others immediately gave in and agreed to do a bunch of pro bono work on behalf of Trump and to make other concessions to him in exchange for Trump repealing the orders. So we asked about this and most of them had not heard about the attacks on the law firms. So let's listen to what people said who had heard about it.
- [30:50]
Focus Group Participant 7
Well, I think it's being overblown because, you know, when you think of everything that was done during the Biden administration to, you know, I won't say innocent people, because I don't think any of them are innocent people, but, oh, my gosh, you know, if I were Trump in the administration, I wouldn't want those people in or around or their hands in anything, because look at everything that came out, like, with. Even with, you know, Director Comey, like, he went in and, you know, right after Trump was inaugurated the first time, because, you know, he knew that they didn't know the steps or whatever, and he could get something that normally he couldn't get. You know, if you knew better, like, there were so many dirty tricks and dirty things done. Not that I think Trump should be doing it or the administration, but I wouldn't want those people in my business and sticking their nose and things. God only knows what trouble they cause.
- [31:47]
Focus Group Participant 4
This is news to me, too. So still processing here, I would say. But think executive orders, it's just like a cheat code in general, just to get whatever you want. So it's interesting how they're utilized between administrations.
- [32:01]
Focus Group Participant 2
Trump was getting back at the people that were going after him. I can't remember exactly why those law firms were going against him, but everyone's spinning it that he's taking revenge on those law firms. Forgot the specific of why he was going after them. If he thought he was mistreated, his first term deserves some of it. And then the second term, the stuff that he's doing there, I think they're kind of doing a lot of stuff to fight against him on everything. I think him doing that is a way of maybe trying to correct the system so they don't go after people in the future.
- [32:34]
Sarah Longwell
Now, I know what you're talking about, and I think in total, there's, like, maybe five that have agreed to do $125 million pro bono to kind of, like, keep them from losing out on contracts and their ability to work. It is good to get your payback. But he's the President of the United States. He really, like, come on, man, you proved your point. You didn't get sued. It's nice to get your lick back. But, like, when you're, like, in charge of the whole country, and I know you were. He was saying that he was going to come after these people, that once he won the presidency, he proved his point. So in my opinion, I. Like I said, I'm hoping the coast level stays, but it might drop back.
- [33:11]
Focus Group Participant 4
When the Biden administration took Trump's own clearance away shortly after he took Over. I think that opened the door to a lot of ugly things. And of that, in and of itself isn't enough to try and just counteract and do the same thing on the other side. However, with all of the lawfare and everything that happened subsequent to, I partially have a mind where now it's like, you know, if you're going to do this stuff, then it's going to come back and bite you again.
- [33:31]
Focus Group Participant 3
I wasn't entrenched in this, as I was the guy that got deported, but I know these guys did a lot of unethical things during the Biden administration. So, I mean, I can understand, you know, taking their security clearance, especially if they're not, you know, doing work in the government right now. Anyways.
- [33:48]
Sarah Longwell
All right, so you were talking before about the kind of apathy that runs through people, or the way that sort of the authoritarianism can be built on that apathy. So, for example, you know, yeah, sure, Russia's bad, but Ukraine's not that great either. There's also, though, this deflection, we call it. What about ism, that you can sort of defend the ruling party's corruption because of the real or perceived sins of the opposition. How is that at work, do you think, when these voters justify sort of shrugging off Trump's actions because they, like, they really didn't care that much about him going after the law firms? And a lot of times people do bring up, well, Biden did this. You know, Biden took people's security clearances. Is that something you see often in other countries to sort of justify this death spiral?
- [34:36]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah. I mean, I was struck by another thing, which is that nobody said everybody has the right to a lawyer. Of course lawyers represent other people. Of course they represent people who sue Trump and people who are sued by Trump and they've represented the Trump administration and the Biden. That's what lawyers do. They're there to represent everybody. Not one person said that, you know, that that's the function of law in our society and that the president going after private law firms is undermining that principle. So that was very striking. I mean, that was completely absent. But your point about whataboutism? I mean, Putin's whole modus operandi for the last two decades, really. I mean, he doesn't say it like this, but more or less his argument to the Russian people has been, okay, I'm really corrupt, and our billionaires have stolen a lot of money and they live a lot better than you do, but look how bad things are in Europe. And look how terrible everything is in America, and look how degenerate and declining and sad those places are. Would you want to be over there? No. So you better just suck it up and live here, because it's not like there's anything better anywhere else. It's also a way for voters who support them, or for anybody who supports them, of explaining to themselves why I don't object. I actually have a friend who falls into this category who became very worked up about Hunter Biden and so on, and became very angry about perceived bad doings of the Biden administration. And I gradually realized that in her case, it was because she wanted to support Trump for various reasons, and she needed to explain to herself and to me why she was going to do it. I mean, I think her real reasons lay elsewhere. But it's a tactic for justifying yourself. I mean, if you are supporting something that's clearly bad, in the case of Trump, it's corruption. Everybody wants to feel like they're a good person, so they don't want to say, I'm pro corruption. And so in order to justify it, they say, well, look how bad Biden was.
- [36:31]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, there were things that Biden did, including how he handled Hunter Biden, especially at the end, that I thought were really terrible, that I wouldn't have supported at all. But I also can't ever understand how somebody could compare the two, because a lot of people do this, right? They're like, well, but the libs are worse. And I'm like, no, they're not. Like, just as objectively speaking, they're not. And, like, what we are living through right now with Trump, there is not an analogous thing that the left has done or that Biden has done. Like, if you want to go cherry pick one bad thing that one Democrat said somewhere, but in terms of having a Democratic administration behave the way this administration, it's just absolutely untrue. But not only do voters believe it, but a lot of elites, the people that I used to run around with in conservative circles, nothing that Trump does on this front makes them say, like, oh, yeah, you know what? Kamala Harris would have been just fine. She would not be doing this right now.
- [37:33]
Anne Applebaum
No, I mean, there's also another thing that happens, which is that once people have made a morally wrong choice, I mean, once they've chosen corruption or they've chosen authoritarianism, once they've made that decision, you know, and for thinking people, it was often a pretty big decision. You know, they had to absorb a lot of information and reject it or Justify it or something. I find that it's pretty rare for them to change their minds.
- [37:56]
Sarah Longwell
It's a sunk cost. Somehow.
- [37:58]
Anne Applebaum
It's a sunk cost. And then they have to defend it.
- [38:00]
Sarah Longwell
Right.
- [38:01]
Anne Applebaum
You know, read Bill Ackman's Twitter feed. You know, to defend it, they will have to contort themselves in various directions. They'll have to say, you know, this is okay because of that. I mean, and the more intelligent and the better informed and better educated the Trump supporter is, seems to me the less likely that they'll back down because the more they've put into it and the more they're going to need to find explanations for why it's good. Actually, funny enough, I would think it's more. The less informed voters for whom this matters less for whom it was not such a big decision. They're the ones who might say, well, I don't like the fact that he's done these tariffs and screwed up the economy and they might switch sides. The better educated voters, I think they made a choice and they're going to stick with it. I mean, we'll see, but that would be my guess.
- [38:46]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. You know, it's funny, I would love to not know what Bill Ackman thinks about anything, but the Elon algorithm feeds him to me constantly, so I do see him. But here's another really good example of what we're talking about for these thinking people. Like they've frozen Harvard's federal funding and they're talking about revoking their 501c3 tax exempt status. This is an interesting one for me because I remember and immediately went and just like dug up 100 clips of Marco Rubio and JD Vance and every Republican talking about how it was literally the end of America if you could target people based on their politics or what they thought and go after their tax exempt status. Because of course, they accused the Obama administration's IRS of doing this to some of the Tea Party groups. And so, you know, I remember not being able to conclusively know at the time whether or not they had actually definitely done it. But I certainly thought if they had done it, people should be punished for that. That was like a really bad thing and you shouldn't do it. And Republicans believed that right up until the point that Trump said he was going to go after Harvard. So we asked these voters about it. Let's listen to what they said.
- [39:55]
Focus Group Participant 1
I get where they're coming from and why they're wanting to do that, but there's a lot of things that Harvard does when it comes to research, especially with medicine, the funding is really critical. And having that tax exempt status helps them invest more in research and studies and things like that. So I get what they're trying to do. And I don't necessarily agree with what Harvard is doing, but at the same time, I don't agree with pulling all their funding and pulling their tax exemption status.
- [40:25]
Anne Applebaum
Harvard has $60 billion in assets sitting.
- [40:29]
Focus Group Participant 2
Off to the side in cash. Why we're subsidizing that school in the first place, I don't get it. Tax exact status is where they're funneling all this money through their foundations and things. I don't think they need the money. Here we are paying off people's tuitions and then we're giving the colleges money. Where does it all end? I mean, there are for profit companies. They should be paying taxes.
- [40:52]
Focus Group Participant 7
I think that if you want to continue getting money from the government, then you should be following their specifications. If you don't want to, that's great. Don't take the money, go off on your own. That's my way of thinking. Whether it's Harvard, Columbia, whether it's a state, no matter who it is, I think everyone should be treated fairly. And I think the administration and the staff at any college should certainly not be promoting ill will against any ethnic group, period. Any nationality.
- [41:28]
Focus Group Participant 4
And we saw the testimony during the campus riots where they couldn't even say when if it would be a bad thing to have anti Semitic behavior happening on their campus. They just couldn't say that that was a bad thing, just flat outright. It depends on the context. No, I don't think so. So I think it shows the shift. And I think it's only fair that if, you know, you don't have a fair feel for everybody, then really you don't need to be taking government money.
- [41:50]
Bridget
The amount of money some of these universities are getting from the government is insane and seems, you know, ridiculous with, you know, the amount of money they're charging, tuition, whatnot. But as far as auditing the viewpoints, I'm kind of torn on this because I do see where, especially with the process that's been going on recently, there's a lot of Jewish students are even afraid to be on campus and a lot of universities tend to be more liberal. That's the environment, a lot of time in higher education. But alternatively, I do think, you know, we have free speech, we have the right to feel how, you know, we feel and make up our own minds. So I don't know when we have A government who's saying DEI is not right and fair and we can't hire whatever certain people because of, you know, their gender or their sex or whatever. But then we have to audit and make sure you have a viewpoint variation. Seems a little backwards to me.
- [42:43]
Focus Group Participant 4
I think that goes from the viewpoint being tilted too far in one direction and not in the other. I think that what we tend to overlook how the shift has happened. I think what it's almost 70% of all university faculty say that they lean Liberal with the 30% being in and only in STEM are on the other side. I think that the fact is that when we, when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, we tend to not apply that to different thoughts.
- [43:08]
Sarah Longwell
So a surprising number of the people in the focus groups had heard about the Harvard stuff for whatever reason. But when we've talked about the various ways Trump is punishing his enemies, we just heard that people kind of flatten it into, well, that's what the other side did to him last time, especially with the law firms. But you've drawn a parallel between Trump and Orban, Viktor Orban in Hungary, who's also made academia a major target. Tease those parallels out for us in light of what we've seen for the last couple months.
- [43:38]
Anne Applebaum
So what Orban understood was that academia could be made unpopular because these are smart, clever people. They were the people who were annoying in school and they got as. And if you're from a provincial town, they probably left your town and went to a bigger one to go to university, and then they didn't come back. Our universities in particular have done a really bad job of explaining themselves to ordinary Americans and explaining what it is that they do. Why do they need this money? What do they use it for? Of course, most of it is for scientific research. It has nothing to do with DEI or history department or the English department doesn't need billions of dollars of government money, but actually biomedical research does, and they've done a poor job of explaining it. I hope they have worked out now that that's something that they need to do. But going back to Orban, he understood that they were a useful target because what authoritarians do is they look at each issue and they say, we want to divide people, we want to polarize them, but we want to polarize them in such a way that the majority are on our side. So every issue that Trump picks, whether it's immigration or whether it's universities, it's over an issue that they reckon they have the majority. So the larger number of People probably don't like Harvard or don't like universities. And so we can attack universities, and of course there'll be resistance, but the majority are with us. I mean, that was the decision that Orban made, and I'm guessing that's the decision that the Trump administration is making, too. There is another thing going on both in Hungary and in the US the leaders around Orban, and also some of the people around Trump have understood that what they're really at war with, they're at war with education, they're at war with knowledge, they're at war with the kinds of things that universities do and teach people, quite apart from politics, just critical thinking. And so they've understood that if they can undermine those institutions and preferably replace them with new ones, that was what that letter to Harvard said. You know, they'd like to decide who was on the faculty and decide what courses are taught. If they can do that, then over the long term, they can make Americans more malleable and more likely to go along with what they want. I mean, I think there's an aspect of real cultural revolution in their thinking, you know, that they want to change the culture, they want to alter the nature of America, they want to change who are the elites, alter that forever. And that requires getting rid of the professoriate, which, by the way, is not just what Orban did, it's what Mao did in China. Except that Mao used violence and he sent the professors to concentration camps in Mongolia. And presumably we're not going to get to that. But the instinct and the impulse is the same. You know, we want a revolution, we need to replace the elites, carry out the march through the institutions, as Gramsci said. I mean, it's actually a Bolshevik idea, too. It's a communist idea. We need to transform society. And so we need to get rid of people who know things and people who are educated in the old system. I don't know whether they can achieve that. Probably not. But in trying to do so, they can do a lot of damage.
- [46:41]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. All right. As we wrap up here, finally, we asked these voters about Trump's revenge tour more broadly, whether this administration wants to treat its opponents fairly, like we asked people, do you think they want to? And there were plenty of people in the group who were clear eyed about this administration not wanting to treat his enemies fairly. Then there were others who think he is just evening the score. So let's listen to how people talked about revenge.
- [47:11]
Focus Group Participant 3
It's retaliatory, I guess, a little bit, because they didn't Treat Trump right. But I was worried that he was going to do something like that. And I don't agree with it, but I don't have to agree with everything.
- [47:21]
Focus Group Participant 4
Some of two lines of this kind of thing. But I think at some point, you know, the tables turned and then it'll kind of come back to middle.
- [47:28]
Bridget
He turned on people pretty quickly in his first administration that were really close to him. If you defy him. And it gets a little bit scary that I feel like a lot of time and effort in our government is spent on retaliating on our opponents. I mean, and it goes both ways. It's like the first term of Trump. The whole time, all the Democrats were worried about was trying to impeach him and trying to show that he was corrupt or he had some issue with the Russians, and then all the efforts to pursue convictions against him, you know, so that he couldn't run again. And. And so, you know, I feel like he's kind of doing the same backwards. So, I don't know, it just seems kind of like a waste of resources to me.
- [48:06]
Focus Group Participant 4
I don't think that any administration is fair with their political opponents, which it's escalated over time to get where it is now, which is why there's such a deep divide on everything, because it's always retaliatory and tit for tat. I think with social media and everything, I think these things come to the forefront. We see them more so than we did in the past, but I think it's always happened. We just haven't been privy to as much as we are now.
- [48:27]
Focus Group Participant 5
He doesn't seem to have a tolerance for anything that goes against him. And sometimes it seems like he refuses to listen to the other side. A lot of the times he's right about the things he believes in and what he wants to get done, but the way that he goes about it or just anyone goes about it, I feel like because the country's so divided and we'll never have a candidate that pleases most people.
- [48:56]
Sarah Longwell
You know, his lawsuits he's been convicted of and been charged with. I think it's only natural to hold resentments for all that to. I don't know if I'd use the word punish my enemies, but make sure that they couldn't do it to him again. But I'm kind of torn. I mean, I don't hate Donald Trump, but I'm not as big as fan either. This is really why I try to steer clear of politics, because it's so complicated for me to Put my how I feel into it into words.
- [49:27]
Focus Group Participant 3
I think the way approaches things may.
- [49:30]
Sarah Longwell
Make him seem like he is more vindictive than he is because, I mean.
- [49:35]
Focus Group Participant 3
You know what's going through his mind? I mean, he's got to come out of his mouth.
- [49:39]
Sarah Longwell
It's like a five year old kid, you know, it's got to come out. If he's going after somebody, they know it.
- [49:45]
Focus Group Participant 3
Whereas I think previous presidents, maybe they're.
- [49:48]
Sarah Longwell
More under the table, tight, getting back or getting even.
- [49:53]
Focus Group Participant 6
As someone said earlier, Trump is going to be Trump. We all kind of knew that going in. So I kind of prepared myself. The guy was like, it's going to be a revenge to or anybody that made him mad. He is going to get his lick back, so to speak. So it doesn't help that we elected a lame duck president so he does not have to earn our vote again. So he's really going to run a book. So Trump being Trump, I knew he was going to go for revenge.
- [50:15]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so I'm going to end us kind of where we began, which is these are swing voters. I mean, these are people who voted for Biden last time and Trump this time. They do not think we are in an existential crisis. They don't use words like authoritarianism. They think we're in a politics as usual. Tit for tat. Dems do it, Trump does it. But maybe Trump's a little more overt about it in terms of where we are in the progression. You say it started 10 years ago, but where are we now? 100 days in Trump's move fast and has broken a lot of things in the first hundred days, issued a lot of executive orders, he's going after the law firms, he's going after judges. On a scale of one to Orban, where are we?
- [51:04]
Anne Applebaum
It's funny because we are moving faster than Orban did in some ways. I mean, Orban never had teams of people who went into government ministries and got into the computer systems and reoriented programs. He never actually went after law firms in the way that this has happened. I mean, a lot of things that Trump is doing in a full frontal way, in your face, are things that Orban did over many years and very slowly. But I think your point that people don't recognize it because they're already used to this level of political chaos and they're already used to the way that Trump talks and they're already used to the lying and the fact that they don't know anything. I mean, I think that puts us pretty far along. I mean, I don't know what number we are, you know, six, seven. I mean, but the fact that people are already prepared to accept stuff that would have shocked them a decade ago because of everything that's happened over the last several years, I think that's already an authoritarian sign, man.
- [52:00]
Sarah Longwell
Having done focus groups now for a lot of years straight, I have watched people normalize this. And I'll tell you, sometimes we get repeat people. And there was one in this group who we saw way back before the last election. And you watch people change. You watch people get used to it. You watch them become accustomed to it. And they are not as shocked now as they were back in 2017, 2018 when I was talking to them about what was going on. All right, Ann Applebaum, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, remember to rate and review us on Apple podcasts, subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bull Work plus member at thebull work.com and we will see you next week. Bye.