Zack Beauchamp: "You Kind of Have to Pick a Lane to Be an Effective Autocrat"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist
Episode: “Zack Beauchamp: 'You Kind of Have to Pick a Lane to Be an Effective Autocrat'"
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Zack Beauchamp (Senior Correspondent, Vox)
Date: March 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Gist features a conversation between host Mike Pesca and Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, focusing on the survival and decline of democracies, comparative authoritarianism, and what the United States can learn from other countries’ near-dictatorship experiences. With humor and sharp analysis, the discussion covers recent global and U.S. trends, explores what truly constitutes democratic backsliding, and challenges common narratives about the fragility—or resilience—of American democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

How the Project Began: A Shift from Demise to Survival

• Beauchamp shares the origins of his research into democratic resilience
  • Triggered by Trump’s 2024 win and the feeling that years of warning about democratic collapse had not actually prevented or mitigated it.
  • Sought to identify not just how democracies die, but how they survive autocratic threats.
  • Earned a fellowship at Penn to rigorously study countries that have faced high risks of authoritarianism and managed to survive or recover.

"If I’d spent all these years investigating how democracies die, it seems like the question now is, how do democracies survive? What do we do? Maybe it would be more useful to try to answer that question." – Zack Beauchamp (10:08)

Case Studies: Poland, Brazil, South Korea

• Key countries analyzed for lessons of democratic resilience:
  • Poland: Shifted direction multiple times between authoritarian risk and democratic recovery.
  • Brazil: Recent experience with Bolsonaro challenged democratic norms; intense polarization.
  • South Korea: Managed democratic backsliding with robust safeguards and active civic engagement.
• Cross-cultural analogies: Pesca humorously suggests “Brazilian and Korean food inside a delicious dumpling” to break the tension (12:00–12:25).

The Hungary Example: Demolition of Democracy

• Hungary under Viktor Orban is cited as the most instructive example of how democracies are hollowed out from within:
  • Hungary transitioned well post-communism, saw power alternation, but fell to gradual, sophisticated autocratization.
  • “Consolidated” democracies are not immune – even robust, Western-recognized democracies can be dismantled.
  • Orban’s Hungary maintains a veneer of democracy (“competitive authoritarianism”) while structurally entrenching the ruling party.

“They did an incredible job slowly and quietly hollowing out democratic institutions to the point where there are still people who think Hungary is [a] democracy… It’s like a football game where you spot the opponent 28 points at the beginning.” – Zack Beauchamp (13:54–15:19)

The U.S. Comparison: Historical Context and Current Risks

• Beauchamp points out America’s own checkered democratic history, especially at the state level up until the 1960s.
  • Jim Crow-era South operated on non-competitive elections and effective disenfranchisement (17:14–18:43).
  • The U.S. experience serves as a warning: it’s possible to believe you live in a democracy while actually lacking genuine democratic choice.

Techniques of Autocratic Entrenchment

• The “masking” of democratic decline:
  • Retain elections, but tilt the playing field through gerrymandering, control of media, and welfare “thank you” payments timed with election seasons.
  • Hungary convinces even its opposition supporters they still live in a fair democracy; similar dangers exist in the U.S.

“What makes it so devilishly brilliant is it has convinced its supporters even that they still live under free and fair elections.” – Zack Beauchamp (18:43)

U.S. Under Trump: Which Autocrat Playbook?

• Pesca and Beauchamp debate whether the current U.S. movement resembles Orban’s competitive authoritarianism or the more direct repression of a Bukele or Maduro.
• Key quote:

“…they can't make up their minds as to whether they want to be Bukele or Orban and you kind of have to pick a lane to be an effective autocrat." – Zack Beauchamp (20:43)

MAGA as a “Cult” and Media Control Limitations

• Pesca suggests Trump’s lack of ideological clarity leads to inconsistent authoritarian tendencies.
• The U.S.’s vast, decentralized media ecosystem makes Orban-style media domination much harder, though recent moves by right-aligned billionaires and political actors are notable (discussion of Twitter, Fox, CNN, and proposed TikTok buyout, 21:07–22:31):

"The US Media ecosystem is huge. It’s a much, much bigger country… it makes it much harder to impose this kind of informational control." – Zack Beauchamp (22:05)

The “Hungarian Model” vs. “Venezuelan/Turkish Model”

• Debate on whether competitive authoritarianism (pseudo-democracy) or “hard authoritarianism” (open repression) is more common and sustainable.
• Venezuela under Chavez began as “Hungarian-style” (controlling elections, media) and evolved into overt authoritarianism under Maduro.
• Both Turkey and Venezuela demonstrate how attempted coups accelerated autocratic consolidation (23:36–24:43):

“In Turkey, the democratic backsliding had begun before the attempted military coup… Afterwards there was a massive crackdown on basically any kind of dissent.” – Zack Beauchamp (23:36)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Pesca's self-deprecating humor and jokes about anti-Semitic scandals in the NFL frame his transition to serious political analysis (01:03–06:12).
• Pesca on the limits of historical comparisons:
  “We don’t get it right for many years… This allows us a bit more resilience.” (15:56)
• Beauchamp on the American deep history of non-competitiveness:
  “Up until the 1960s, the south was not democratic…” (17:13)
• On illusion of democracy:
  “The system maintains its legitimacy because most Hungarians say they want to live in a democracy by convincing people it is still a democracy.” (18:43)
• On Trump’s approach to autocracy:
  “…you kind of have to pick a lane to be an effective autocrat.” (20:43) [episode title quote]

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Important Timestamps

• 09:47 – Beauchamp reflects on why he shifted his focus from documenting democratic decline to studying resilience.
• 11:52 – Discussion of case study countries: Poland, Brazil, South Korea.
• 13:54 – Hungary’s rise and fall as a democracy; Orban’s long-game playbook.
• 17:13 – Beauchamp frames the U.S. South’s exclusionary politics as an early form of “Hungarian autocracy.”
• 18:43 – How “competitive authoritarianism” works and the maintenance of a democratic illusion.
• 20:43 – “You kind of have to pick a lane to be an effective autocrat.”
• 21:07–22:31 – Discussion on government/media control in the U.S. vs. Hungary.

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Tone and Style

• Conversational, policy-savvy, and at times darkly humorous.
• Host and guest engage in friendly banter to lighten profound political observations.
• Analytical but self-aware, with recognition of historical complexity and inherent uncertainties.

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Summary Takeaways

• Democratic decline is rarely sudden; it's often a careful, incremental hollowing out masked by the trappings of democracy.
• The U.S. is more resilient than many feared, due to its size and divided power structures—but it is not immune.
• Comparisons to countries like Hungary help illuminate the strategies autocrats take and the warning signs citizens should watch for.
• Understanding the distinct authoritarian “playbooks” is crucial: Some leaders seek to maintain an illusion of democracy, while others are more overt in their repression.
• Real, lasting democratic resilience requires informed citizenry, institutional checks, and active participation—not complacency or nostalgia.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Monday, March 30, 2026. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Peska. Now I normally read from a wide variety of sources. Put them on the Gist list. I'm going to read from something I haven't read from before. Rams Wire the rams Wire Sean McVeigh comments on Puka Nuku is recent off field troubles Now Puka Nakua is the best wide receiver in the NFL. He was also recently sued for biting a lady on a Strider van and yelling some anti Semitic things. Well, I don't want to be the guy who keeps you from the anti Semitic content out of fear that you'd be offended. So I will quote what he allegedly said. Fuck the Jews. He said fuck the Jews. This started with comments about officials, meaning I think NFL officials and an anti Semitic dance he did while on a livestream in December. Member even getting fined $25,000 by the league. OK, they're against anti Semitism? Oh no. For questioning the integrity of its officials. All right, so I thought maybe they were Netanyahu administration officials. They were the referees. Can't question the referee. The anti Semitic dance, whatever the hell that is, that can go on without a fine. Who's going to find him, right? Who's in the position to take away his money? The Ramswire also said that this the anti Semitic dance, the fuck the Jews, the biting the lady, the the commenting on officials, which is apparently the Only thing that's actually, that's actually resulted in some cash exchanging hands. They describe it as facing some maturity questions because of his off the field actions. Do you age out of antisemitism? You probably age out of biting. You do. My three year old did. But maybe you age into biting after a while. I just don't know the age on antisemitism. Sean McVeigh, his coach just wants pukinaku and not to bite people. And I don't know if he cares about the anti Semitism stuff explicitly to the extent it gets him in trouble with people. Here's the thing that you do now. Being around him for three years. Love the guy's heart. He's got this authentic zest for life. Yeah, he just chews it up. Bites it up and chews it up. Dances the night away in an anti Semitic manner. Again, don't know what it is. Didn't click the link to find out. He pukas just got this vibe about him, but you can't help but love. I don't know, maybe if you're a lady with a shoulder or one of the world's 10 million Semites of the Jewish variety, especially if you have a shoulder and don't want to get danced out in this anti Semitic manner, you might help but love the fellow. He's continuing to mature. Ba ba ba. Amazing player. But with that comes responsibilities, big responsibilities. Responsibilities we can't begin to understand. Like not biting and no anti Semitic dances or yelling fuck the Jews. He might not have yelled fuck the Jews. At first his lawyer tried to say it and bite anyone. Then the other, besides lawyers produced a bite mark. And then this was described as horseplay, which is usually just a random idiom for tomfoolery, but given the chompers of your average equine, I think if the hoof fits, wear it. That has been my puka nakua news. Would you like my pukinaku a joke? That I actually asked a bunch of friends, hey, do you want my pukinaku a joke? And I did this for a reason. And if any of my friends who I texted, hey, do you want my puka nakua joke? Knows that I texted them and then got my puka nakua joke. I did it for one reason. I was trying to play the straight man. I've been accused of not playing the straight man enough. So I asked a half dozen people, would you like my puka nakua joke? And not one answered. Some answered in the affirmative, sure, laid on me. But not one answered I'll bite. That's all I was going for. I'll bite. And then I gave them my Pukinaku a joke, which I guess if you are Pesca plus subscriber, I'll give to you. Sure, ask me and I'll give it to you. I'm not that proud of my Puka Nikua joke. It was just my attempt to be, you know, inclusive in this time of anti Semitic dances. On the show today, it's Donald Trump and a 15 point peace plan in the spiel. A lot of negotiation going on. Or maybe not. Or maybe in his own mind, or maybe with his own mind, or maybe with the markets. We will break it all down. But first, if we're talking about, as we are by implication, sliding into a dictatorship, a good question is, well, who's tackled this head on and how do you avoid it? Zach Beecham of Vox has recently embarked on a pretty big project, and a unique one given how much everyone is worried about sliding into a dictatorship. He looked at the countries that are dictatorships. A lot of people have done that. But then he looked at the countries that aren't. And not just aren't, but maybe almost worse. Spent a lot of time in Brazil, did a little fact finding in South Korea. And he's come back to Vox Media, but also now to the gist, to talk about how to avoid the pesky specter of dictatorships. Zach Beecham, after this

[Zach Beecham]

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[Mike Pesca]

the death of democracy has maybe not been greatly exaggerated. It's certainly been paid attention to in America. There were many studies about how America is entering a democratic decline. There were checklists to see if our leader at the time his name was Trump, was going towards the dictatorial direction. But fewer people have done, or maybe no one has done what my guest Zach Beecham of Vox has done. He took a project that considered all of this worry and said, all right, well instead of trying to prove the case that we're on this slippery or fast track to dictatorship, what are the countries that maybe found themselves in this position and what did they do to forestall that horrible eventuality? Zach Beecham, welcome to the Gist.

[Zach Beecham]

Hey Mike, I'm really happy to be here.

[Mike Pesca]

It was really smart of you to do this. How did you start? Did you say I need to think of countries? Or did you say I need to really assess where America is on this slew?

[Zach Beecham]

Well, the whole project was actually born out of a crisis of self confidence because I had Spent years.

[Mike Pesca]

You, Zach?

[Zach Beecham]

Yeah, yeah, I did. I was.

[Mike Pesca]

So I read you a lot. You seem to be very confident.

[Zach Beecham]

Well, you're confident in some conclusions, but not like whether I'm doing the right thing, because. So here, here's the question, right? So 2024, Trump wins. And some of us had spent years warning that a second Trump term would be an extinction level event for American democracy. And then it happens, and then it's ongoing and it's worse even than many of us predicted. And you start to think, what was the point of all of those warnings? Why did I spend all those years saying a bad thing might be happening? And then it happens? And it felt like all of those warnings accomplished virtually nothing, did little not only to stop Trump. I don't think anyone thinks journalists have that kind of power. I certainly don't aim to change political events like that, but also to insulate and prepare people for what was going to be coming. It felt almost kind of pointless. And so I started thinking, okay, if I'd spend all these years investigating how democracies die, it seems like the question now is, how do democracies survive? What do we do? Maybe it would be more useful to try to answer that question. So then I started to look for examples of countries that I thought really fit the bill of democracies that experienced something close to what the US was going through in the early months of 2025, and started studying them relatively closely. And I got this fellowship at Penn that then insulated me and gave me a little bit of time to just sit there, literally. We're going through Google Scholar and we're reading every paper that has the term democratic resilience in it, which is the academic term for this thing, and trying to see if there's anything that we can learn from all of this. And from that research was born the piece that you were talking about that sort of oriented this conversation today.

[Mike Pesca]

So. So if your examples were fusion cuisine, I'd eat it. What were your examples?

[Zach Beecham]

She would. So the key cases for me were Poland, Brazil and South Korea.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, so that's why people are probably thinking Poland. But just imagine Brazilian and Korean food inside a delicious dumpling. That's all I'm saying. But go ahead.

[Zach Beecham]

You know, they actually had really, really great East Asian food when I was in Brazil reporting this project. There's, there's an excellent eggplant dish at a place I think it was like, called Dirty Fish or something like that. Sure, Rio. Anyway, if you find yourself in Rio, look for a restaurant with fish in the name it is an excellent.

[Mike Pesca]

That narrows it down.

[Zach Beecham]

Yeah, the English fish. English fish.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, the English fish, yeah. Before I get to them, I want to get to some of the big test cases that show democracies, supposedly show that democracies can die. And Hungary is a big one because it's an ongoing dead democracy or deeply threatened, quasi, not close to free Viktor Orban led country. And much of the right in America seems to love Viktor Orban. They don't love Erdogan and Maduro or whatever became of Colombia. But those are three examples of countries or cited examples of countries that were said to be partly democratic. And I did look it up and now they're not democratic. So I do have a bit of a problem with that collection. There's not a sample size of hundreds. We just can take what history gives us. But if you look at the countries, those countries that frequently get named, oh, we could go in the direction of Turkey, oh, we could go in the direction of Colombia. They were never nearly as free as the United States and not for so long. So what's the usefulness of those examples?

[Zach Beecham]

Well, so I think I found Hungary to be of the sort of collapsed democracies, the most useful test case. And also in my book I look at Israel and India as other comparisons. And those are actually relatively long lived democracies in historical terms, something around like the 10th and 11th oldest democracies in terms of continuous.

[Mike Pesca]

And they started in the 40s.

[Zach Beecham]

That's right. Which should just illustrate that like democracy does not have that long a continuous history. This world that we've lived in for most of your and my lives, where democracy has been the dominant form of government on the planet, is really new. So we're really all trying to learn a lot of this stuff in real time. Your point about sample size is very well taken. It's just all on the fly, all made up, all trying to understand things under modern circumstances. But that's why I found the Hungary case especially useful because Hungary was widely considered to be a success story. Right. A really well consolidated post communist democracy. Consolidated is the term that political scientists use to say this democracy is safe, or that's what it used to mean. They had transitioned very well. Economic growth and political stability seemed pretty good. After the decline of communism in the late 80s and early 90s. There had been power alternation between different factions in Hungary. It just, it looked like it was in a good place. And then the Hungarian government went about what I think is the most sophisticated demolition of a democracy ever to happen starting from the foundational strong point of Central European democracy. It really was impressive if you're just looking at it bloodlessly, without any stake in the game. They did an incredible job slowly and quietly hollowing out democratic institutions to the point where there are still people who think that Hungary is democracy. And they have some grounds for their argument in that it is possible in the upcoming Hungarian election that the opposition could win. But for the opposition to win requires overcoming a playing field that's so tilted against them. I mean, it's like a football game where you spot the opponent 28 points at the beginning of the game. Like, yeah, you could win, but the odds are overwhelmingly against you. And that's basically how.

[Mike Pesca]

And I wouldn't bet against the spread that big. So my critique of that is probably similar to something that you acknowledged. 1990 is when the democracy starts right, with the United States. So we have a 200 year head start on that as a project. This allows us. We don't get it right for many years.

[Zach Beecham]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

But this allows us a bit more resilience. But to take your point, want to throw away historical examples. There was a time in the early 90s where many observers would say the Czech Republic, Hungary, really similar countries. I can't quite. If you ask them, put your bet on which one slides into this undemocratic state. I bet you, you know, a third of them would say the Czech Republic. And I'm picking the most robust of the former Soviet states. So that all being said, what are the lessons for Hungary that absolutely can apply to the United States. But also I want you to talk about, because everyone cites Hungary, what are the parts of the Hungarian experience that you think don't really apply?

[Zach Beecham]

Yeah, great questions. So one thing I want to say just up front about the US in this comparison is the United States has a much more checkered history of democracy than we like to remember. And I don't mean at the national level, though that's true.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Zach Beecham]

We got through a lot of sort of unfairnesses there, but I mean at the state level, so, I mean, up until the 1960s, the south was not democratic. And it's not just not democratic because their black people were disenfranchised. So that's obviously a massive strike against it. It's also that the rules of the game were rigged such that white supporters of the Republican Party had little chance to make their voices held because black people were disenfranchised and because there were rules that were created to make it extremely difficult for anyone to win on a non democratic ticket in the American South. So we have had what I would call a version of the Hungarian autocratic system, a little more obvious than the Hungarian one, but one with non competitive elections that were supposed to seem like they were fair in this country right up until the mid-1960s.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, sorry, but. Except our national assembly was dominated by the more democratic states, though imperfect states of the North. And so therefore, even though we were stymied in terms of civil rights, you could get past, I don't know, the highway, Eisenhower's highway bill and other things that were democratic. So I even think that comparison. I'm not taking the United States off the hook and calling us a full democracy and saying that before there was true political sorting as advised by Schatznider and others. I'm not saying that any of this marks us as a great democracy, but still, even then, big exceptions and differences from Hungary.

[Zach Beecham]

No, no. The reason I brought that up is not to like to say US democracy, good or bad, but to illustrate that the same kind of tactics that could mask democratic decline in Hungary, which is still holding elections, still allowing opposition candidates to run, but letting them run on a tilted playing field, have effectively reduced or eliminated democracy in US states in the past and allowed people who thought of themselves as living in a democracy to continue going about their daily lives even under non democratic social circumstances. And that's the crux of the Hungarian system. And what makes it so devilishly brilliant is it has convinced its supporters even that they still live under free and fair elections. Right. 80% of government supporters believe Hungary, according to the last poll. I saw Hungary as a democracy. And so they don't think that by voting for Orban, they're voting for an autocrat, they're voting for an authoritarian. They think they're voting for somebody who represents their values, who delivers them concrete gains. He does a lot in terms of welfare redistribution payments right around election time to make sure that people are getting good amounts of money to vote for him. There's lots of different facets to this, but the point is the system maintains its legitimacy because most Hungarians say they want to live in a democracy by convincing people that it is still a democracy. And that's what happens. That was my fear about the United States too. We've gone through periods where we've lived under many Americans have lived under non democratic regimes and they've been fine with it or thought of themselves as still living in a democracy. And that is in many ways emblematic of the Trump project. A lot of what the Trump administration has done has not been we're going to declare no more elections. We're going to do what Nayib Bukele did in El Salvador and just say we're going to suspend civil liberties entirely and I will run for an extra term just because I want to. We'll see if Trump ends up doing that, but I don't think so. So I think it would be very hard to do So a lot of

[Mike Pesca]

what Trump has done is set the stage for that. Right. Execute it yet.

[Zach Beecham]

Right, right, right. They're they and I think that's actually a problem. They can't make up their minds as to whether they want to be Bukele or Orban and you kind of have to pick a lane to be an effective autocrat. They're, they're mutual.

[Mike Pesca]

I have an analysis for that. It's because it's a cult of maga and does Trump really have a clear habit of mind on that? And when all you do is take your symbol signals from such a dissolute thinker, what are you to do?

[Zach Beecham]

Yeah, I mean there are people in that administration like, like Russ Vogt who very much would be of the Orban mindset and you've seen elements of the administration that have done that. Most notably the way in which they've messed with media, I think is, is the thing that strikes me as most similar to the Orbanist means of control. Orban now controls something like 80 to 90% of Hungarian media due to putting using regulatory power to force people to sell to either the government or aligned conglomerates. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

And what do you think that number is in the United States now?

[Zach Beecham]

It depends on how you count TikTok and how you count media. Right. The TikTok US sale to if the Ellison's having some degree of control over it is significant. But in the US it's going to be a lot smaller. Right. Because. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

So I would say it's. I don't know how you count it, but it's a single digit percentage just based on the last four pieces of information that a U.S. citizen got, where did it come from and who controls it. Say the vast, vast, vast majority is not the federal government.

[Zach Beecham]

Yeah. Like even if you spot in this Twitter, CBS News, Fox News and likely soon CNN to be government controlled because they're owned by the Ellisons or government allies like the Murdochs and Twitter is of course owned by Elon Musk. That's still. The US Media ecosystem is huge. It's a much, much bigger country than Hungary. And it makes it much harder to impose this kind of informational control. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, for a record, I'd say that that is overstated, though I would, I would certainly keep my eye on it. And, and I'm not sanguine. And also on TikTok, you know, I almost never use it, but the other day I logged on and the first thing I got was this, I guess just propaganda video supposedly in the voice of the Japanese prime minister blasting Donald Trump for the meeting he had. So if that's government controlled media, they're not doing a very good job, which by the way, is a characteristic of the things that Donald Trump. Trump controls. I want to ask you though, that we could go in different directions and that's fine. The example of Hungary, you have an essential non democracy by convincing people that they still live in a democracy. Is that always the playbook? Because when I think about Venezuela under Chavez, there were real elections. Under Maduro there were early on elections and then there weren't. And so there is another playbook where you have a democracy until you don't and then no one, there's nothing anyone could do about it. And Turkey's, I think maybe somewhere inside that transition.

[Zach Beecham]

I think both Turkey and Venezuela are closer to the Hungarian system than you might think in terms of the evolution over time. So Chavez, there was a coup attempt against chavez in the 2000s, and that coup attempt led Chavez to begin with attacking the ability of the opposition to compete fairly in elections and going after free and fair media that evolved over the course of time. And actually there's a similar story in Turkey though. In Turkey, the democratic backsliding had begun before the attempted military coup. Afterwards there was a massive crackdown on basically any kind of dissent inside Turkey and it led to significant progression towards an authoritarian regiment. And so in Venezuela, I think the opposition didn't really have a fair shot for many years before Maduro took power after Chavez's death. And it was more Hungarian. Like what happened under Maduro is a shift towards a much harder form of authoritarianism. Right. Where Maduro just used violence to constrain the opposition. Right, Just straight up.

[Mike Pesca]

So sorry to interrupt, but how is Maduro like Hungary? In Hungary, if they had elections in a year, the populace would vote for Orban's party and think they were involved in fair elections. But that is not the case. Well, taking, removing the fact that Maduro was removed, I don't think that's the case with.

[Zach Beecham]

Under, under Venezuela, under Rodriguez. Yes. No, it's. I'm saying under Chavez, the system was much more like the Hungarian system. And then Maduro at first tried to continue that, but the economic collapse and then the mass protests and it was clear the opposition would win. Elections led to a shift in the opposite direction. So it is in some ways a similar story. They fit similar patterns. There are a number of different countries that did too. But the end point in Venezuela was different than what it looks like the end point. There's now a very stable equilibrium in Hungary on this kind of what political scientists would call competitive authoritarianism, whereas Venezuela is just authoritarianism. Authoritarianism. Right. Just like the pure unvarnished version right now under Rodriguez.

[Mike Pesca]

And we'll be back with more of Zack Beachum Part 2 tomorrow. It's a big topic, so we broke it up into two pieces. Zach Beecham of Vox tomorrow on the gist.

[Zach Beecham]

From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with prime because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today.

[Mike Pesca]

And now the spiel. Donald Trump has said that Iran gave the US most of its 15 demands. It is issued to Tehran to end the war, even as it remains quite unclear if there's actual negotiation going on. Why wouldn't they give in? Trump told reporters on Air Force One. We're going to be asking for a couple of things in addition to the concessions. White House spokesman person Carolyn Levitt insists that the country US Is in talks with Iran. Now, you don't have to insist that it's sunny outside when it's sunny outside. You don't have to insist that dogs love kibble. You only insist on what's in contention. And the Iranians insist they are not negotiating with the United States. The people doing the insisting include the foreign secretary, who would be in a position to know, but also in a position to lie. 15 point plan. This is Trump's proposed plan. He didn't officially release it. It was then printed in Israeli media and now it has been printed here. Some of it, what we say is the plan, it has been taken up by Pakistani intermediaries. It had been put forth to Iranian negotiators and has been agreed to, mostly according to Trump. Now I can detect a problem with that chain of events. I just laid out that none of it might have been an actual event. In fact, Jim Himes, the top ranking Democrat on the House Intel Committee, told Face the Nation that Trump is just making it up. Oh, I think he's flat out lying

[Zach Beecham]

last Sunday when he was told, and by the way, we're in exactly the same position today. You know, oil prices now $112 a

[Mike Pesca]

barrel and you know, futures, when the

[Zach Beecham]

stock market down 2% last Sunday, he

[Mike Pesca]

realized, oh my God, I've got a

[Zach Beecham]

financial cataclysm on Monday.

[Mike Pesca]

So he just made it up that

[Zach Beecham]

they're in negotiations with the Iranians. Look underneath that statement. The Iranians have now realized that they have the reins.

[Mike Pesca]

The problem with Jim Himes assertion is how would he know? I mean, he's probably right that there's more than a little fiction to what Trump is saying. I'm going to go further than that. There's a little fiction to a lot of it and it's plausible that there's absolutely nothing actually going on here. So let us go through all the ways that the plan and the negotiation isn't happening. So what we are told is a duly designated representative of the Iranian government is engaged in good faith negotiations with Pakistan. Pakistan accurately representing the interests of each party and reporting the results accurately as such. All right, here are some areas where what I just said might not be true. The Iranian negotiator might not have any authority. The Iranian negotiator might know he doesn't have authority or he might not believe that he doesn't have authority. Might think I'm doing a good job for my country. The Iranian negotiator might think he has authority, but other Iranians in authority don't think he has authority. The Iranian negotiator might be lying to the Pakistanis, to himself, to other negotiators. There might not be an Iranian negotiator. The Pakistanis could be making it up. Trump could be making up the Pakistanis. I mean there are those people and there's that country, but in this case them doing anything to help the US interests. Trump could be 100% accurate in the readout on actual negotiations actually taking place, but just be lying to the American people for self serving purposes. Or Trump could have an accurate readout and be lying for strategic purposes. That is he wants to further sow division within Iranian factions. Some Iranians are saying we're giving in to Trump and then they're saying that can't be. We've got to slaughter the people who would give in. Or they might take say we're giving in. Okay, I'm going to get on the side of the people giving in. There's a lot more if I just want to concentrate on the Trump side. But if you want to go with the simple heuristic that Trump is bullshitting and I wouldn't believe a word that he says, I would not blame you. But does that mean he's lying? Again, how would Jim's. Again, how would Jim Himes know? I mean, if there were an actual Iranian in the middle of a negotiation somewhere, and the parties talking to this Iranian might think they're onto something and Trump hears this and agrees to credit this with actually serving to end the war, how would Jim Himes know that nothing like that is going on? Because I will tell you, normally he would. He'd be in a position to know during more normal negotiations. He'd know it if Putin and Vladimir Zelinsky weren't really negotiating, because he's the minority chair of the Intel Committee and the Intel Committee is briefed by the intel community. So the CIA could normally tell someone in him's position or Himes, yeah, we happen to know there's nothing going on. But even if the CIA says we don't know of anything going on, that doesn't mean there's nothing going on. Here's another power center that would normally be able to tell Himes if something was or wasn't going on. The chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff. Now, like the Pakistanis, this guy actually exists, but he's not actually or officially a real part of the government. He's just a guy Trump knows and likes. There are negotiators who are official. Wyckoff's not one of them. Add in, Trump says a lot of things to affect the market, and the market is being affected not in the direction that he wants and not by words of plans and denials thereof. Today, Trump threatened to, quote, obliterate Iran's power plants and oil wells if a deal is not reached soon. You know, maybe there is a deal actually going on in Trump's mind and the obliteration will be staved and Trump can declare victory, capitulation and vindication then. And somewhere an Armenian actor who could do a great Persian accent, grew out his beard for this role will get up after days at a table with a bunch of Pakistanis or possibly actors from Lollywood or even Bollywood. Why not? They'll toss away their costumes and they'll collect their fees for negotiating a peace plan that took place mostly in Trump's reality, but at the same time brought about actual, real world peace, or at least a staving off of some horrible eventuality that Trump was going to commit to out of a fit of pique. And that's it for today's show. Cory War is the producer of the Gist. Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list. Jeff Craig is our editor for how to To. Benister is our booking producer. And Michelle Pesca is the CBSO of Peach Fish Productions. Improve G Peru. Do Peru. And thanks for listening.