The Good Fight Club: Trump’s New Ballroom, a Looming Attack on Venezuela, and Why Social Media Explains the Rise of Populism

Summary

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Podcast Summary

The Good Fight Club: Trump’s New Ballroom, a Looming Attack on Venezuela, and Why Social Media Explains the Rise of Populism

Podcast: The Good Fight
Host: Yascha Mounk
Guests: Mona Charen, Francis Fukuyama
Date: October 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this ninth installment of The Good Fight Club, Yascha Mounk, Mona Charen, and Francis Fukuyama dissect recent shocking developments in the Trump presidency—primarily the controversial demolition of the East Wing of the White House for a new Trump Ballroom, the administration’s saber-rattling toward Venezuela, and the broader rise of authoritarian populism, both in the U.S. and globally. The hosts use these topics to explore deeper currents in American political life: the personalization of power, the erosion of institutional norms, and the technological enablers of populism.

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1. Trump’s Demolition of the White House East Wing

Key Segment: 00:00–14:13

Main Discussion Points

• Trump has ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to build a massive "Donald J. Trump Ballroom," overshadowing the historic structure.
• The panel frames this as a physical and symbolic act of erasing American history and traditions, emblematic of Trump’s cult of personality.
• The decision bypassed traditional channels, historic commissions, Congressional input, and public comment.

Notable Insights

• Mona Charen’s Personal Connection: Having worked in the East Wing for Nancy Reagan, Charen expresses deep personal and national pain at seeing this historic site demolished.

  "It is the entrance... tourists would always begin their journey of visiting the White House. They would see the garden... and the graceful colonnade. All of it was stately, proportional, and befitting a republic." (01:50)

• Charen details how the new ballroom (90,000 sq ft) will dwarf the original White House (55,000 sq ft, excluding East Wing).
• The hosts agree this act epitomizes Trump’s broader disregard for institutional processes.
• Francis Fukuyama offers a sardonic summary:

  “Now, in his defense, the most important function of a government is surely to hold balls and parties.” (04:01)

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Mona Charen calls out the metaphor of the bulldozer:

  "The metaphor is just screaming at all of us... He is demolishing our history, demolishing our traditions, and in the name of erecting monuments to himself." (00:00, repeated at 04:07)

• Yasha Mounk on process:

  “There is actually a process by which these architectural changes are vetted... He completely bypassed that...a complete abuse of executive power.” (05:23)

• Charen on silence under Trump:

  “So many are holding back. So many are saying they chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.” (08:56)

• Corporate sponsors named: Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, HP, and Union Pacific Railroad have donated to the project, leading Charen to lament corporate America “bending the knee.” (10:24)

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Opening metaphor & framing (Charen)
• 01:41 — Historical significance & design, Charen’s personal history
• 04:01 — Fukuyama’s sarcasm about parties
• 05:23 — Yascha Mounk on abuse of process
• 08:56 — Charen on the chilling effect and fear under Trump
• 10:24 — Charen on corporate sponsorship

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2. The Erosion of Institutional Restraint & the Personalization of Power

Key Segment: 06:28–14:13

Main Discussion Points

• Trump’s actions typify a shift from institutional governance to personalization of power.
• Demand for DOJ compensation, partisan indictments, and disregard for established procedures discussed as part of a broader pattern.
• The hosts debate whether Americans yet feel personally afraid, or if growing fear and silence is already present.

Memorable Quotes

• Fukuyama:

  “Just the sheer personalization of a government in ways that were hard to imagine 10 months ago is really striking.” (06:29)

• Charen on historic preservation norms:

  “To make changes in the White House, you would normally have to go through the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Trust for Historic Preservation... None of that happened.” (08:04)

Timestamps

• 06:28 — Personalization of government, rule of law (Fukuyama)
• 08:04 — Charen on procedural breakdowns

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3. Foreign Policy: Venezuela on the Brink

Key Segment: 14:43–26:04

Main Discussion Points

• The Trump administration’s bombing of alleged drug boats and military buildup off Venezuela raises the specter of a U.S. intervention.
• Panelists are deeply skeptical that a quick, bloodless “win” is possible; fear of protracted quagmire is palpable.
• Concerns raised about “tail risk”—each risky, improvised Trump move increases the odds of disaster over time.

Notable Insights

• Yascha Mounk on the Build-Up:

  “For them to back away from an actual military incursion is going to actually be pretty hard...there’s a story...the CIA is making plans for trying to overthrow the Maduro regime.” (15:59)

• The panel notes the destabilization and risk of U.S. responsibility for chaos post-Maduro as a high-stakes gamble.
• Mona Charen on Pretext:

  “The attacks on Venezuela have been lies and pretexts...to blow up boats off the Venezuelan shores...is patently a violation of international law.” (22:27)

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Fukuyama:

  “One of the genuine strengths that Trump has...is that he can somehow say he’s going to do things and then desist from them with less damage...because Trump is such a bully and has so much bluster...” (19:30)

• Mounk describes the risk of American responsibility for chaos:

  “That’s a formula for getting the US involved much more deeply on the ground.” (18:53)

Timestamps

• 14:43 — Topic pivot to Venezuela
• 15:59 — Mounk on military build-up and regime change efforts
• 19:30 — Fukuyama on Trump’s political resilience
• 22:27 — Charen on legal and moral violations

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4. Authoritarian Personality & Escalation Risks

Key Segment: 26:04–32:15

Main Discussion Points

• Discussion pivots to the dangers of repeated high-risk gambits—eventually, “the mine goes off.”
• Trump’s personalized approach lacks strategy; more like “a ten year old with a flamethrower.”
• The panel bemoans the abandonment of Congressional oversight and checks and balances, placing the responsibility back on voters.

Notable Quotes

• Fukuyama:

  “Perhaps he gets lucky and we all get lucky and none of them go badly wrong. But...eventually you’re going to stumble across the mine that explodes.” (28:02)

• Mounk:

  “He really is like this, you know, 10 year old with a flamethrower. He said, wow, look, I can set this house on fire. That’s great. Nobody’s going to stop me from doing it.” (30:29)

• Charen & Fukuyama on Congress:

  “I’m old enough to remember when we had a Congress that did oversight.” (Charen, 31:59)
  “What’s a Congress?” (Fukuyama, 32:09)

Timestamps

• 26:04 — Mounk on risk to Venezuela’s opposition leader
• 28:02 — Fukuyama on escalation and global risk
• 30:29 — Mounk’s “flamethrower” analogy
• 31:59 — Reflection on Congress’s abdicated powers

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5. Why Populism Is Rising: The Internet’s Role

Key Segment: 34:37–End

Main Discussion Points

• The closing segment sets up a broader discussion on the roots of global populism.
• Fukuyama introduces his recent essay “It’s the Internet, Stupid,” arguing that technological change—not just economics or immigration—best explains the wave of populism worldwide.
• Mounk adds that a convincing theory must pass the “geography, timing, and phenomenological tests”—why populism arises seemingly everywhere, at roughly the same time, with similar tactics.

Timestamps

• 34:37 — Fukuyama introduces the global populism question
• 36:20 — References his “It’s the Internet, Stupid” article

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Notable Quotes & Speaker Attributions (by Timestamp)

• Mona Charen (00:00):

  "The metaphor is just screaming at all of us, right. That this is the physical representation of what Trump is doing to the presidency and to the country."

• Francis Fukuyama (04:01):

  "Now, in his defense, the most important function of a government is surely to hold balls and parties."

• Mona Charen (08:56):

  "So many are holding back. So many are saying they chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution."

• Yascha Mounk (05:23):

  “There is actually a process by which these architectural changes are vetted by a lot of people that have a concern for the, you know, the surroundings and the history and everything else...a complete abuse of executive power under this presidency.”

• Francis Fukuyama (28:02):

  “But if you have to expect another 10 of these over the next three years, what comes when he gets bored of Venezuela?”

• Yascha Mounk (30:29):

  “He really is like this...10 year old with a flamethrower. He said, wow, look, I can set this house on fire.”

• Mona Charen (31:59):

  “I’m old enough to remember when we had a Congress that did oversight.”

• Francis Fukuyama (32:09):

  “Remind me, what’s a Congress?”

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a spirited analysis of the Trump administration’s most recent provocations, warning that the erosion of norms and personalization of the presidency are destabilizing American democracy. The talk culminates in a provocative thesis that the rise of global populism owes less to material conditions than to the disruptive power of digital technology and social media—setting the stage for future discussions.

For further discussion: The hosts encourage subscribers to listen to the extended discussion on the internet’s role in populism, available to paid subscribers.

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Transcript

[Mona Charan]

The metaphor is just screaming at all of us, right. That this is the physical representation of what Trump is doing to the presidency and to the country. He is demolishing our history, demolishing our traditions, and in the name of erecting monuments to himself.

[Yasha Monk]

And now, the Good fight with Yasha Monk.

[Francis Fukuyama]

Welcome to the ninth installment of the Good Fight Club. Today I am joined by Mona Charan, as well as our regular co host and panelist, Francis Fukuyama. Welcome, Mona. And Frank.

[Mona Charan]

Thank you.

[Yasha Monk]

Yeah. Good to see you, Yasha.

[Francis Fukuyama]

So, you know, we thought that we would talk about this thing that Trump has done and that thing that Trump has done and the third thing that Trump has done, and then we thought we'd just consolidate it into a general Trump palooza. You know, we've seen the demolition of parts of the East Wing of the White House to make way for his ballroom. We have seen Trump demand hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Justice, payment in compensation for the prosecution of Trump by the Justice Department that may be greenlit by. By his own political appointees. Of course, we're now into a number of Trump opponents being indicted in a row. Has the government been fully personalized and submitted to the will and the whim of Donald Trump? Where are we at?

[Mona Charan]

So I should start the discussion about the demolition of the East Wing with a little bit of personal history, because I actually worked in that building back in the Reagan administration for a period of about six months. I worked for First Lady Nancy Reagan. So I was in that building quite a bit. And it's wounding to me. But for that reason, but not just for that reason, I think many Americans are shocked at the images of bulldozers tearing down a part of the White House. Yes, it's only been in its current form since World War II. That's right. But that's a long time. There's a lot of history that has transpired since then. And it is the entrance. It was the entrance through which tourists would always begin their journey of visiting the White House. They would see the garden that Jacqueline Kennedy put in and the graceful colonnade. All of it was. Was stately, proportional, and befitting a republic. Right. The White House was carefully designed not to be a palace, not to be a king's residence, not to be monarchical, but to be stately and befitting this country and for this president to simply demolish it and in the name of a gaudy monstrosity of a ballroom. Yasha and Frank, to give you a sense of the scale, the current White House, the basic centerpiece White House, including the west wing, is 55,000 square feet. That's the whole thing. Okay? Not counting the East Wing, the ballroom that he proposes, what I've called Morrow White House, is 90,000 square feet. It will dwarf the existing White House structure.

[Francis Fukuyama]

Now, in his defense, the most important function of a government is surely to hold balls and parties.

[Mona Charan]

Yes, exactly. You need an event space. And look, I mean, it is a. It's obscene. It's obscene to do this, and yet you cannot help. I mean, the metaphor is just screaming at all of us, Right, that this is the physical representation of what Trump is doing to the presidency and to the country. He is demolishing our history, demolishing our traditions, and in the name of erecting monuments to himself.

[Francis Fukuyama]

I mean, I have to say that it's very hard to predict what images are going to be in history books that commemorate this era of American politics. And one of them may be the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. There's lots of other images that one might imagine surviving the history books. But a bulldozer taking down part of a White House surely must be one of the candidates for that.

[Mona Charan]

And they attempted to prevent Trump. Treasury. The Treasury Department is just across the street. They attempted to prevent Treasury Department employees from snapping photos because they knew would be a bad look.

[Yasha Monk]

Yeah. Yasha Jvl on the Bulwark suggested a couple days ago that it be on the agenda of a next president to tear down all of these monuments in the name of historical preservation and restore the old building. And I'm fully supportive of that because I really don't think that elected American presidents ought to be allowed to just raise monuments to themselves. And this is exactly. Mono's exactly right. That's what he's doing. The other thing is that it's just another illustration of his view of executive power. There is actually a process by which these architectural changes are vetted by a lot of people that have a concern for the, you know, the surroundings and the history and everything else. He completely bypassed that. It just. It doesn't seem, even within his administration that they didn't talk about this. This is just his idea. And so, once again, it's, you know, I think, a complete abuse of executive power under this presidency.

[Unidentified Personal Caller]

Yeah.

[Francis Fukuyama]

One of the striking things in this moment is that, you know, there's fears about what the personalization of a government will do to the rule of law and the separation of powers. And I think we're in a bad place there. But it's not yet the case that most Americans are afraid they're going to be chucked in jail or they criticize the president and all kinds of things. But just the sheer personalization of a government in ways that were hard to imagine 10 months ago is really striking. This is, to me, what connects these two stories. The sitting president saying, the Department of Justice owes me money, and the Department of Justice apparently considering paying that to him. I imagine the courts are going to have something to say about them, but that's striking. The president would want to make alterations to the White House, in principle, an appropriate thing for a president to want to initiate. But there would have been some kind of process. There would have been some kind of way in which you would get in stakeholders and make decisions. And it's both, I think, the popular appeal, but also the way in which this administration is going to really lose the patience of the American people to say, I can just do stuff, and if I think the East Wing sucks and we should have a big, beautiful ballroom, I'm just gonna do it. And, I mean, who's the architect even, right? I mean, is this, like, who came up with these plans, by what process? It is really striking that nothing seems to be able to stop Trump from doing this. Like, nothing seems to be able to stop him from the tariffs. So I guess the Supreme Court is going to eventually rule on that, and nothing is going to be able to stop him from bringing a bunch of dodgy indictments against his political enemies, even though perhaps we're not going to end up being actually sentenced to prison terms.

[Mona Charan]

Mona, I have a few reactions. First of all, Yasha, I think your idea that the image of the bulldozer will go down in history is a good one because it is such a perfect metaphor. Yes, he is bulldozing all of the traditional checks that have restrained presidential whims in the past. So, just on this topic, I mean, to make changes in the White House, you would normally have to go through the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and you would get notice and comment from the public, and you would discuss it with Congress. None of that happened. And it is simply, he is bulldozing not just this part of the building, but all of the normal procedures that would have governed this kind of thing. I mean, to build, you know, there was an idea to build a federal building in New York a few years back, and while they discovered that it had been a burial ground for black slaves in the 17th century, and so all construction was halted in the name of historic preservation, the Thing was suspended. That is the way things normally work. And here, where it's a far more important historical building, a symbol of the country, it is just. It is just bulldozed. But also, Yasha, if I may, I'd like to just push back a little bit on something you said a second ago, which is that people aren't afraid of the president coming after them. I think you're underestimating it. Yes, some people are continuing to vigorously express their views, but so many are holding back. So many are saying they chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Read any story about what Trump is doing and you will see that quote repeated constantly, that people are afraid of retribution, they are afraid of being targeted. And certainly that applies to even members of the press. One more thing, look at the list of companies that have contributed to this ballroom. This, you know, so giving money directly into Trump's pocket. Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, hp, Union Pacific Railroad. I mean, it is amazing the degree to which all of these corporate titans are lining up to bend the knee to pay the Dane Geld. And it's a different. It's a different country.

[Francis Fukuyama]

I mean, you have to wonder whether, you know, he's going to give one of those companies naming rights, whether the biggest donor is going to be able to make it, you know, the open AI at the White House ballroom.

[Mona Charan]

I think the name has already been chosen. It's the Donald J. Trump Ballroom.

[Francis Fukuyama]

Or whether it's going to be the Trump Ballroom. Exactly. Frank, what do you think the. The import of the personalization of the American government is beyond the sadness of this historical building being altered in this way with its resonant symbolism. But in terms of the impact this is actually going to have on the functioning of the American government, what are the elements that you're most worried about and what are you watching to see whether we're reaching yet another stage of escalation?

[Yasha Monk]

Well, domestically, obviously, the main focus has been on these prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, by the way, I actually think that both of those are going to fall apart. They're probably going to disqualify Lindsey Halligan as a prosecutor, and there's simply not going to be a case. And something very similar could happen with Letitia. James Bolton, I think, is in bigger trouble because it sounds like that's a much more serious indictment. But I actually think the system will work in terms of the other two frivolous attacks on Trump enemies. The personalization I think you see the most in foreign policy. There is no such thing as a Trump Doctrine. I mean, there's no consistent set of principles that explain his foreign policy. He's not an isolationist. He's perfectly happy to use American power to interfere in regions, in the internal politics of Brazil and India and a lot of other places. The thing that binds everything together is Donald Trump's fragile ego. So he's against attacking Iran up until he's handed an opportunity on a silver platter to do it quickly in and out and declare victory. He is offended by the fact that Prime Minister Modi doesn't want to support his bid for a Nobel Prize. And so he throws 40 years of cultivating good US Indian relations into the toilet. And the only thing binding all this stuff is his ego. I mean, these days, a lot of people, a lot of countries around the world are trying to calculate how they can use his expressed desire for a Nobel Peace Prize to manipulate American foreign policy. Right? That if we make the right moves, maybe Trump will think that he can get a prize for dealing with us and we can get what we want. Right? And, I mean, that's like the. That's the epitome of personalization, right? There's no Trump Doctrine. There's just Trump self interest that's, you know, behind all of this stuff.

[Unidentified Personal Caller]

Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer.

[Yasha Monk]

Unbelievable.

[Unidentified Personal Caller]

Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana, give it a whirl. Love ya.

[Mona Charan]

So good, you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

[Francis Fukuyama]

So that leads us naturally into the second set of topics we're going to talk about, which is foreign policy. Frank, I know that you've been very interested and concerned by some of the Trump administration's actions in bombing Venezuelan boats that are supposedly carrying drugs and operated by drug gangs. And do you think that this might actually be the prelude to a more robust set of actions against the Maduro regime in Venezuela, perhaps even some kind of ground invasion. Tell us about what the Trump administration has been doing in that part of the world and why you think that a president that promised in his inaugural speech, in his campaign that he was not going to get America into new wars that did bomb Iran, but in a kind of very quick Blitz that allowed him to basically tell Americans, this is the first war America has won in a long time, and it wasn't a real war and nobody really felt it, and it was over after a day. Why do you think that he might now get embroiled in a military adventure that is probably going to be of much longer duration, much more perilous to American lives and treasure, you know, a much more substantial operation than the one we'd previously seen.

[Yasha Monk]

Well, I guess the reason I think some military action is going to happen is that they've sent a ton of equipment down there. You know, there are probably like ten or a dozen American warships in the area. They've sent F35s, they've sent drones, they've sent lots of equipment. And I think for them to back away from an actual military incursion is going to actually be pretty hard for them to do, given that kind of buildup. And then they background the press. I don't know who did it, but there's a story that comes out in the Times that the CIA is making plans for trying to overthrow the Maduro regime. That's not a comment that comes from a dissident voice in the administration that's leaking it to prevent it from happening. Obviously wanted people to know that. So I guess the most optimistic construction you can put on all of this is that it's basically a game of chicken, that they're hoping that Maduro, who is really not popular in Venezuela and not popular among the lower ranks of his own military, might actually be intimidated into seeking an out and. And stepping down. And then they get a quick win. They don't actually have to do anything militarily, but they can claim a scalp by getting rid of Maduro. By the way, that would be great if that could happen. All of my friends in the Venezuelan democratic opposition are just so frustrated at this point, because last July, not this past July, but The July of 2024, they had an election which the opposition candidate won by like, 30, 40 points, and they still overturned that election, and they've kind of given up on peaceful ways of getting rid of Maduro. So the goal is fine. But I think that what I fear, Trump's psychology is, is that he's already gotten these foreign policy wins in Gaza. He got Ceasefire, which is a genuine achievement, because Netanyahu handed him this golden opportunity. Netanyahu also gave him an opportunity with bombing Iran, and he's gotten away with both of those. And I sort of think that in his mind, he's thinking, I'm actually pretty good at this stuff. I don't have to observe any of the limits that have restricted what prior presidents thought they could do, and I can get another easy win in Venezuela. What I don't think he's thinking is, okay, we're really going to get rid of Maduro. If that requires putting boots on the ground in Caracas, we'll go ahead and do that. Obviously, the big worry is that even if you do get rid of Maduro, you're going to have the same problem as you did in Iraq, that you don't have any plans for how to replace him with a more reasonable regime. And that leads to an internal dynamic where you get sucked in deeper and deeper because you don't want to be responsible for just leaving Venezuela in a chaotic state where all these gangs and narco traffickers basically take over. And that's a formula for getting the US Involved much more deeply on the ground.

[Francis Fukuyama]

I mean, one of the genuine strengths that Trump has as political leader is that he can somehow say he's going to do things and then desist from them with less damage to him politically than other people would suffer. Right. If other presidents had gone back and forth on what they're doing to a third of the extent, to a fifth of the extent that Trump had, they would be known as weak and flip floppers, et cetera. And because Trump is such a bully and has so much bluster, it actually buys him the ability to look like he's going to do X, then stop doing X, sell that with the same gusto which he sold doing X, and walk away politically unscathed. So perhaps you're right. But the gambit here is we're going to put all of this pressure on Venezuela, and perhaps Maduro will somehow fall. And if he does, that's an amazing outcome. And I think we all agree that that would be an amazing outcome. And the vast majority of Venezuelans would agree that that would be an amazing outcome. And then I have the third big policy win. I don't think that that's likely. I mean, with dictatorships, it's always very hard to know when they will fall. And Maduro is certainly unpopular, and there must be people even within his regime who would love an opportunity to oust him. At the same time, he has proven to be very resilient. He has bought the loyalty of a lot of the officer class with bribes of enormous proportion. The officers basically are running drug cartels and profiting very handsomely off it. And as long as they are continuing to be able to make those profits, they're likely to be loyal to the Maduro regime. So perhaps they now worry that a ground invasion by the US Would be the end of that trade and that it would be better to, you know, depose Maduro and put in some other guy who continues the same basic record. It's imaginable, but it doesn't seem very likely.

[Yasha Monk]

No, I don't think. Yeah, I don't think it's likely at all. I think that, you know, one of the interesting facts about Venezuela is that they have like 10 times the number of flag officers, generals and admirals that the United States does, perhaps number of enlisted people because he's created this gigantic core of basically people that are leeches. They're all sucking off of the drug revenues that that country can generate. And they have no future if Maduro falls. I mean, there's no kind of legitimate way that they can continue to fund their villas in Miami or wherever. So, yeah, I think it's going to be much more resilient. I do think that there is probably going to be some kind of overt military action like a strike at a terrorist. They're going to call it a terrorist base that will escalate and maybe try to scare them a little bit more. But it's very hard to see a really positive outcome of this.

[Francis Fukuyama]

Mona, what do you think is the game plan here? Are they hoping that Maduro will just vanish into thin air or what are they up to?

[Mona Charan]

So there are a few ways to look at this. One is that Trump does have a style and you can compare his threats and escalation against the country of Venezuela with his use of tariffs where he will threaten, I will impose 100% tariffs on you. It's a way to sort of use shock and awe and then extract concessions and then back down from that original so called bargaining position. So yours and Frank's supposition that this is an attempt to bully and scare Maduro out of power. Maybe that's right. Maybe that's an extension of the same tactic. But it is important to recognize a few things that are, in terms of foreign policy, what we are witnessing here. First of all, the attacks on Venezuela, which I think we all agree Venezuela is a terrible regime and the world would be a far better place if it were replaced by something democratic and rights respecting. That much having been said, the attacks on Venezuela have been lies and pretexts. You know, the notion that trend Aragua is that what it's called is a paramilitary force that reports to Maduro and that has been infiltrated into the United States is not true. The idea that the United States should be taking unilateral action of blowing up boats off the Venezuela shores on the grounds that they may be smuggling drugs is patently a violation of international law. It's a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is a complete departure from the way the United States has conducted itself. So there is that piece. There is also the fact that if Trump does actually make war, kinetic war on Venezuela by using some of those many military assets that he is moving into the region, he will then also have a problem with the maga, with parts of the MAGA base who were sold on the idea of no more wars, no more forever wars, no more any wars. They were already kind of, you know, stirring a bit when he attacked Iran. This would be, I think, much larger than that. And then finally, I would endorse everything that Frank said about the risks of such an undertaking. And there is absolutely no evidence that Trump or the people around him, certainly not Hegseth, are capable of thinking beyond about a week time horizon. So what comes next? What if you do attack then? Have you considered all of the fallout that may happen? What if a even more vicious leader arises to take Maduro's place from within the Maduro circle? I mean, there are all kinds of negative possibilities that I have no confidence this administration has thought through.

[Yasha Monk]

Yeah. One concern I have is actually for Maria Karina Machado, the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, who is really a wonderful person, very strong leader who guided them through. She wasn't allowed to run herself, and so she supported the campaign of Edmondo Gonzalez that did win the election. She is in a really difficult position right now because she can't alienate Trump. She did this kind of clever thing of after she got the Nobel Prize, she called him and says, well, I think you should have won it. So she understands how you have to play that game. But there's already criticism of her by progressives that a lot of them call her a fascist. It's just a ridiculous moniker, but it feeds into this Latin American anti Americanism. And I think that she's just got some very unpalatable choices because if she actually is put in power by the Trump administration, that's going to taint her and it's going to taint her with a lot of Americans, because there are a lot of Americans that really can't stand anything that Trump does. And if you install a regime in another country, you know, there's going to be a kind of genuine kind of disgust with that. And she doesn't deserve it. I mean, she really deserves to be the real democratic leader of Venezuela. On the other hand, if there's a failed attempt at regime change, that's also going to redound on the heads of all of our friends there that really want democracy for Venezuela. I'm really worried about this situation and how it plays out in domestic American politics as well.

[Francis Fukuyama]

I want to take this beyond Venezuela for a moment. One way that both of you seem to be thinking about what Trump is up to is that he's taking these big foreign policy gambles. And sometimes there may be gambles in which the likely outcome is positive, but there is very bad negative outcome at the tail end that he's not considering. So when you think of something like the bombing of Iran or going back to the first Trump administration, the assassination of a key Iranian general, perhaps the likely outcome of that was that it was going to go okay. But there was a small but significant chance that Iran would decide to avenge themselves on the United States in ways that would be really terrible. And I think it's too early to rule out that is what they are in fact doing, that they are in some kind of way planning to place a dirty bomb somewhere in the United States or whatever else I think the Iranian regime would certainly morally be capable of doing. And when things face that kind of structure, when the likely outcome is that things are going to go well. And so the first three or four times you try it, it goes well. But if you're then emboldened to keep doing this everywhere, well, eventually you're going to hit the negative jackpot. Eventually you're going to stumble across the mine that explodes. And I guess I wonder whether what we're seeing with the Trump administration is that a president who promised and I think had a lot of electoral appeal by saying that he would make America less active in the world, that he would pull back the overextension of the American empire, that he would focus on bread and butter. National self interest is now driven by a mix of hyperactivity and personal self aggrandizement to actually go on this sort of series of low scale military adventures, not the one big military adventure of a Bush administration invading Iraq. It is a series of comparatively smaller military and foreign policy adventures. And perhaps he gets lucky and we all get lucky and none of them go badly wrong. But if we have to expect another 10 of these over the course of the next three years, what comes when he gets Bored of Venezuela, whether he manages to have a huge success and Maduro is ousted. Let's hope that turns out to be the case. Unlikely as it is. Whether that is because they pull back in the last moment, don't actually do anything, or whether that is for whatever other reason. I mean, are they then going to go on to Panama and then going to go on to Greenland, then going to go on to all these other dogs that didn't bark, or what else are we to expect for the next three years?

[Yasha Monk]

Well, you know, again, I think that you have to understand that the Trump administration, the only way you can analyze Trump's policy, either domestic or foreign, I think, is through personal psychology and not through principles or policy positions. And so forth in the domestic and the foreign policy are of a piece, he came with the. He believed from the first term that Article 2 says, I can do anything I want, but he was stopped from doing a lot of the things he wanted to do. So now in the second term, he's kind of saying to himself, yeah, actually, I can go after political opponents, I can go after the prosecutors that prosecuted me, I can bomb Iran, I can do all sorts of things. And look, I haven't suffered any consequences. All these people that told me I couldn't do this stuff, you know, like H.R. mcMaster, Rex Tillerson, you know, they're, I, I proved them wrong. So I think this is just going to escalate. And then, unfortunately, one of these initiatives is really going to end up in a big disaster that everybody can, you know, can see, and it's not going to be good for the country. And I think, really, that's the only thing that's going to stop him because, you know, he really is like this, you know, 10 year old with a flamethrower. He said, wow, look, I can set this house on fire. That's great. Nobody's going to stop me from doing it.

[Mona Charan]

And it's, it's, you know, it's a reminder that, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when we had a Congress that did oversight.

[Francis Fukuyama]

I'm a couple of years younger than you. Remind me, what's a Congress?

[Mona Charan]

Congress, you know, that big building with the dome on Capitol Hill? Yeah, that's where there's a protest there

[Francis Fukuyama]

on January 6th or something. I never.

[Mona Charan]

Yeah, yes, exactly. Actually, it was amusing. I participated in the no Kings rallies and noticed that there was fencing up. They had put fencing around the White House in preparation for these protests. And, you know, we all wanted to send the message that, no, no, it's your people. Government buildings. Not our people. Not the no Kings protesters. But in any event, look, yes, Congress used to exert oversight. It used to hold the President's feet to the fire. It used to call the secretaries of Defense and State for grilling publicly. There were all kind. There are. The Congress is still the first branch. The notion of three co equal branches, it's been rightly said, is a myth. The founders intended and thought wrongly that the Congress would be the most powerful branch. And the Congress still has inherently tremendous power. But now that the Republican Party has chosen to abrogate all of it, to sacrifice all of its power to the President, it makes it all the more pressing that the other party gain at least control of one house. And we have not, you know, we haven't seen the Democratic Party yet come out of its low approval, although it's improving a little bit. And so, you know, it is up to, alas, it is up to the voters. It shouldn't have been up to the voters to do this. It should have been the major institutions that held fast, starting with Congress, against this usurpation of power, this personalization of power, which was exactly what we fought a revolution to get away from. But that hasn't happened. And so now it really does fall to the people. And therefore the no Kings rallies were at least a sign of spirit and life out there in the electorate.

[Francis Fukuyama]

I'm sure we'll come back to both the state of the Democrats and the likely fate of the Democrats in the midterms many times over. Upcoming Good fight clubs. For the final segment of this conversation though, I want to do something that I think is important in these regular conversations, which is to go beyond this political moment to some broader questions that really I think help to explain this moment. And one of the key questions that we should ask ourselves at the moment is why is populism rising not just in the United States, but seemingly everywhere? I'm in Switzerland right now as I'm recording this. I'm speaking here at an event. And the comparatively moderate far right populist party in Switzerland is top of the polls and stronger than ever in Britain. In France and Germany, populists are leading in the polls or at least co equal in the polls. We have these political figures who have won power in India, in Turkey, we have ones that were in power for currently out of power, waiting to perhaps come back in and Brazil and Poland and all of those other places. And I've tried in the past to explain why that is. And a variety of people have tried to explain in the past why that is, and one of the obvious explanations has always been the Internet and social media. But it was in a list of different possible candidates. Frank, you recently published an article called it's the Internet, Stupid. It is one of the most read articles in the history of persuasion. And in the article you're saying, you know what, all of these other causes, meh, perhaps they also kind of matter. But the one explanation that's really convincing is the Internet on social media. Why did you change your mind about that? Why do you think that it's really the technological dimension that is so key to understanding and explaining this phenomenon? Thank you so much for listening to this episode of a good fight. In the rest of this conversation, Frank answers my question. Why is it that he has changed his mind? Why is it that he thinks that the Internet and social media are really the core reason for the rise of populism? I also talk a little bit about how I frame this in the classes I teach, saying that any convincing explanation for the rise of populism has to pass the geography test, the timing test, and the test about the ways in which our politics actually looks a phenomenological. If you want to listen to that part of a conversation, if you want to support this podcast, if you want to stop hearing these annoying appeals, if you want to stop hitting the paywall, please support what we're doing. Please become a paying subscriber. Please go to yashamonk.substack.com and subscribe to this podcast. Yashamunk.samstein.com.

[Mona Charan]

Sam.