What Happens When a Megalomaniac Begins to Fail

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Political Scene | The New Yorker Episode Title: What Happens When a Megalomaniac Begins to Fail
Air Date: February 14, 2026
Host: Evan Osnos
Guests: Jane Mayer, Susan Glasser, Ruth Ben-Ghiat (historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present)

---

Episode Overview

This episode examines the dynamics and dangers of megalomania in political leadership, focusing especially on Donald Trump as his popularity declines. Drawing on historical analysis and psychological insights, the panel (joined by historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat) dissects how autocratic leaders respond when they start to lose their grip on power, the patterns that mark their behavior, and the risks posed to democracy when such figures "double down." The discussion explores lessons from history, the psychology of narcissistic leaders, the enabling role of political structures and supporters, and contemporary parallels with global autocrats.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dysfunction and Corruption at DHS: Current Events Backdrop

• The episode opens with commentary on chaos at the Department of Homeland Security, citing Kristi Noem's alleged abuses (personal travel using a government 737, Wall Street Journal exposé), and using these as an example of the excesses and behaviors associated with megalomaniacal leadership (00:45–02:33).
  • Jane Mayer: "To keep them in conditions like this is a scar and a shame upon the country... to have her flying around with her alleged boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski, and behaving like sort of Marie Antoinette is really all the more horrifying." (01:47)
• The personal excesses and scandals here are juxtaposed with ongoing humanitarian issues, particularly immigration detention conditions, highlighting the moral and political consequences of unchecked leadership.

Defining Megalomania in Political Context

• Evan Osnos introduces the main theme: the "explosion of ego" seen in Trump and other leaders, referencing the science behind megalomania as a near-addictive pursuit of power and adulation (02:51–03:14).
• Susan Glasser: "There's a kind of an explosion of ego taking place that you can't miss... Trump talking about building an Arc de Triomphe... there's actually a science behind it, and that megalomaniacs experience a surge of dopamine when they take power." (03:14)
• Trump’s actions are placed in a psychological framework: seeking power as both stimulus and addiction, with increasing risk-taking and disregard for limitations.

The Psychology of Power: Nature, Nurture, and Addiction

• The discussion delves into the personal histories and characteristics of strongmen:
  • Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "They arrange governance so that there are ideally no boundaries on their power. And then they become filled with grandiosity. They feel they are infallible." (08:01)
  • The panel draws parallels between historical figures (Mussolini, Orban, Erdogan) and Trump, noting that their megalomania is both a personality disorder and a political pattern enabled and magnified by circumstances and systems.
• The addictive nature of power is reinforced by quotes from insiders (e.g., Susie Wiles comparing Trump to an alcoholic in his compulsions, 05:02) and by the documented struggles of staff to manage the leader's ego (e.g., John Kelly seeking psychiatric analyses of Trump, 05:27).

Historical Patterns: Rise, Rule, and Autocratic Backfire

• Ruth Ben-Ghiat introduces the concept of "autocratic backfire": as megalomaniacs' power is threatened or fails, they become risker and often double down, leading to strategic and sometimes catastrophic errors (11:49–14:32).

  Quote: "When these start to go badly, they never retreat... Instead, they double down and they engage in even riskier behaviors. And it’s actually when they start to falter and their popularity is down... that they can do things such as go to wars." (14:10)

• Discussion of "the inner sanctum": as rulers face challenges, they surround themselves with sycophants and loyalists, further isolating themselves from reality and feedback.

• Examples include Putin’s miscalculations with Ukraine, Trump’s obsession with personal loyalty and larger-than-life monuments (the "Arc de Triomphe for Trump" anecdote).

• The "hunt for Greenland" (14:45) is dissected as emblematic of the resource-plundering instincts and fixations of autocrats.

• Electoral manipulation, military adventurism, and repression become more pronounced as their popularity or grip on power wane.

The Role of the Public and Enabling Structures

• Susan Glasser points out the public’s pivotal role, questioning how such figures get empowered in the first place: "Are there particular factors that create the setting?... Are there specific things that bring the rise of someone like this and enable them?" (22:46)
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "Often these individuals prosper when there's a sense of a transition needed in politics, that the old ways, the old parties need to be rejuvenated... They are superb communicators... They tailor themselves to the perceived will and hunger for certain personalities... And so often it's when there's been a lot of progress for social justice... that is when some people think they're losing out." (23:55)
• Charisma, media skills, and an ability to channel grievance and backlash (racism, misogyny, reaction to social justice) are key.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jane Mayer: "The consequence of having a megalomaniac in power is... are there examples in other democracies of such a character coming to power?" (10:13)
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "Mussolini and Hitler were appointed... Others come to power via coups... Today many of these people, such as Orban and others and Erdogan, they are elected. And so we need to help people understand who they're voting for, because they tell us who they are." (10:41)
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat (on autocratic backfire): "[Autocrats] overestimate their own abilities... they start to believe their own propaganda... when things start to go badly, they never retreat, they double down." (13:05)
• Susan Glasser: "Brace yourself. Which to me is a prediction that this is going to get worse, especially as you're watching Trump's popularity dip, he's gonna feel threatened and double down." (27:21)
• Evan Osnos: "Is he early Mussolini or late Mussolini? So there was a kind of already an understanding that these people evolve and become something." (28:48)
• Jane Mayer: "It was his own vice president, let's remember, who wrote in a message to a friend that was later made public that Trump might be an American Hitler." (30:27)
• Susan Glasser: "...the entertainer aspect of him. I think people have been very slow. They keep saying, are we there yet? Could this happen here?... there's a kind of a real resistance to saying, we've seen this. We know where this goes, and we're in it." (30:52)
• Jane Mayer: (On Trump’s inner circle) "They're insecure about their place in the leader's inner sanctum. They're desperate to play... the audience of one, although they have positions of great power... the insecure narcissistic megalomaniac surrounds himself with people who are even weaker and more insecure this time around." (33:22)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Megalomaniac behaviors in current DHS scandal: 00:45–02:33
• Defining megalomania, Trump’s psychology: 02:51–06:23
• Historical patterns and autocratic backfire (w/ Ruth Ben-Ghiat): 07:42–14:32
• Inner sanctum, paranoia, and risky escalation: 13:05–16:37
• Lessons from Putin’s Ukraine disaster as case of autocratic overreach/backfire: 17:36–20:06
• Responses to megalomaniacs and challenge for democratic societies: 21:32–25:44
• The public’s role & why the pattern repeats: 23:55–25:44
• What to expect if a megalomaniac approaches failure: 27:17–33:22
• The difference between first and second terms, risk of unchecked actions: 33:22–34:29

---

Flow and Tone

The episode is urgent and reflective, blending dry humor with clear alarm. Panelists maintain The New Yorker’s analytical, slightly wry tone, even as they register the grave risks posed by unchecked leadership.

---

Summary Takeaways

• Megalomania in politics often manifests as grandiosity, addiction to power, disregard for rules, and, especially under stress or declining support, increasing risk-taking.
• History offers clear patterns: as megalomaniacs falter, they become more isolated, overestimate their abilities, underestimate opposition, and can escalate to catastrophic errors.
• Such leaders are enabled by systemic weaknesses, public disaffection, and manipulated communications. Charisma and the ability to exploit grievance are central to their rise.
• The United States, far from exceptional, fits the global pattern: a democracy may enable a strongman who entrances the public and subverts institutions.
• The greatest risks arise when the megalomaniac feels threatened—a stage marked by doubling down, efforts to “fix” elections, intensifying repression, military adventurism, and surrounding with ever-more sycophantic loyalists.
• The panel warns listeners to "brace themselves," noting the particularly precarious moment as leaders like Trump face waning popularity—history shows this is the crucible for the most extreme and dangerous behavior.

---

For listeners or readers seeking a thorough understanding of how megalomania operates—and endangers—democracy, this episode delivers both a sobering historical lens and urgent current relevance, with insights from leading analysts and historians.

Transcript

[Museum Narrator]

Museums are more than places we visit.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

On a field trip across the country.

[Museum Narrator]

Museums protect our shared history, care for.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Wildlife and collections, strengthen local economies, support.

[Museum Narrator]

Job training, and spark curiosity in people of all ages.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Right now, you can help make sure museums stay strong for future generations. Museum Advocacy Day is a national moment when people contact Congress to ask for continued support for museums and the federal agencies that fund them. Learn how to take [e-mail] and tell.

[Museum Narrator]

Your representatives that museums matter to education.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

To communities, to the economy, and to our democracy.

[Evan Osnos]

In a world of insanity and insane headlines, the story about what is going on inside DHS right now. The bizarre relationship between Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski.

[Jane Mayer]

We're talking about that Wall Street Journal story.

[Evan Osnos]

I mean.

[Susan Glasser]

Oh, my God. Okay, I just.

[Jane Mayer]

I know, but who doesn't fire their pilot over, you know, misplacing a blanket.

[Susan Glasser]

Listen, we all know that losing a binky is a really sad thing. It's hard when your security blanket disappears.

[Evan Osnos]

Particularly under the age of six.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah. I mean, especially when you're 54, as she is.

[Evan Osnos]

I mean, the part of the reason it's so gruesome is that DHS is, of course, the agency responsible for so much of what is happening, happening in front of our faces in Minneapolis and elsewhere. And the idea that this agency itself is convulsing around some of the most, according to this Wall Street Journal piece, the most extraordinary abuses and corrupt abuses of power and privilege, allegedly using the 737 to go around like it's their private plane is really wild.

[Jane Mayer]

Well, that's the thing. It's the juxtaposition. Right. That's so horrible. I wanna call out an incredible piece of reporting, in fact, that ProPublica did this week of getting accounts from children who are being held of these facilities in Texas and the conditions there. Whatever your position on immigration, every American ought to be ashamed that this is what we're doing to people who came to this country. If you want to deport them, fine. But to keep them in conditions like this is a scar and a shame upon the country. And so to have her flying around with her alleged boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski, and behaving like sort of Marie Antoinette is really all the more horrifying.

[Evan Osnos]

Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Evan Osnos, and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues, Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser. Hi, Jane and. Hi, Susan.

[Susan Glasser]

Hey, Evan. Hey, Susan.

[Jane Mayer]

Hey, guys. Great to be with you.

[Evan Osnos]

Our Subject today is a pattern that is as old and volatile as power itself. The megalomaniac. These figures appear throughout our history. And recently, guys, it seems like Trump's fixation on the veneration of power, on having it, on having it recognized, on keeping it, has really reached a kind of fever pitch.

[Susan Glasser]

No, absolutely. There's a kind of a explosion of ego taking place that you can't miss. It's happening around us here in Washington, where we see him putting his name on various monuments and talking about building a Arc de Triomphe for Trump that's bigger than the original one in Paris. And I was fascinated by a column that Tom Edsel wrote in the New York Times about this. That's about megalomania. And what was new to me anyway was there's actually a science behind it, and that megalomaniacs experience a surge of dopamine when they take power. And it's a form of addiction. You build up a resistance, a tolerance, and need to take more. And so I think applying that sort of frame and looking, looking at Trump adds a dimension to understanding what we're facing.

[Jane Mayer]

Well, right, Jane, I think your point is absolutely well taken. Trumpology is, on some level, always going to begin and end with psychology. That means inevitably, for someone who seeks to personalize power so much, trying to get inside that whatever the loud shouting, voices in the head are seems to matter, especially at this particular moment. Right. This is not the 2016 Trump that we're talking about anymore. And that's what has got me very alarmed. And I'm very much looking forward to talking with our guest today about this question of what happens when things go badly for a megalomaniac like Donald Trump. Trump 1.0, we saw when things went badly for him in 2020. The country is still paying the price and the consequences of the catastrophic actions he made then. So now that his popularity is plummeting, you know, what kind of catastrophic actions can we expect going forward?

[Evan Osnos]

I am reminded of what Susie Wiles said recently in these interviews with Vanity Fair, where she described as you'll remember Trump as having an alcoholic's personality. She said she grew up with an alcoholic as a father. And then her quote with the part that really stays with me is she says he operates with a view that there's nothing he can't do. Nothing. Zero, nothing.

[Susan Glasser]

And amazingly, Trump read that and said, that's right.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, right.

[Jane Mayer]

And the plight of the chief of staff here is worth noting because it's not just us sitting on the sidelines operating as, you know, sort of Trumpologists and psychologists. But to engage with Trump is to try and struggle, I think, to contain that uncontainable, unquenchable ego. And this, I think this quote about the addictive personality that she gave is fascinating to me. Trump's first term chief of staff who served the longest, John Kelly, we were told in reporting for our book that he even secretly went out and bought a copy in Trump's first term of a book by a group of psychologists and psychiatrists trying to understand the problem of having this extreme narcissist in the White House. And I'm just always struck by this image of John Kelly sitting at home, this former four star Marine general, furtively reading Pops, Apologies, you know, a psychologist analysis of Trump to try to contain him.

[Susan Glasser]

Susan, when you talk about Kelly secretly going off to read the psychology books, you know, it reminds me that I remember I interviewed Gerald Post. He was a psychiatrist who worked for the CIA who did character studies, and he had done one of Trump, of course. But Trump's personality triggered a huge dispute within the psychiatric community about whether it was appropriate or not to make the kinds of points that we're making here because we haven't actually been his doctor and were not qualified. We're not psychiatrists or psychologists. Yet. When you have somebody like the guest we're having today, what's wonderful is she can bring to it a perspective from history and say there are patterns here and we have seen this before and watch out.

[Evan Osnos]

That's exactly right. Yeah. I think what we can do today that we don't do every week is really dig into the science and the history of this phenomenon. We'll be joined by historian Ruth Ben Guyot. She's the author of the book Strongmen Mussolini to the Present. She has thought a lot and studied a great deal about how dictators rise and fall. And she also explains a phenomenon known as autocratic backfire. Ruth, welcome to the show.

[Jane Mayer]

Hello.

[Evan Osnos]

Hi.

[Susan Glasser]

Thank you so much for joining us.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Thanks.

[Evan Osnos]

Before we get into this idea of autocratic backfire, which is very much on our minds these days, I thought we need to understand some terminology here because we talk about autocrats and megalomaniacs, but what is it? What is a megalomaniac and what is it not?

[Ruth Ben Giet]

I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but autocrats, they arrange governance so that they are ideally, there are no boundaries on their power. And then they become filled with grandiosity. They feel that they are infallible. Mussolini's slogan also was Mussolini is always Right. Donald Trump has repurposed this or copied it. Trump is always right. Trump has always been right. And so megalomanias, when their ego, their self is unbounded, unrestricted, and they feel that they can do anything they want, and this is very important, pay no price, that no one can hold them accountable.

[Susan Glasser]

So you've made a study of these people, and one of the questions I had was, and just listening to the way you're describing it, are megalomaniacs born or are they made? Is this nature versus nurture issue? Is it something that happens once a person is in power and they knock down all restrictions on their power? Or is it a kind of a personality disorder, an illness almost, that propels them into power?

[Ruth Ben Giet]

It ends up being a personality disorder. They can have, as with Trump, role models such as fathers who teach them values, or lack thereof, and behaviors like getting away with things. Mussolini was a very violent child. His parents were not violent. His father was a blacksmith. His mother was a schoolteacher. He came from very humble origins, but he was stabbing children and raping women when he was young. And many of these strongmen who succeed in coming to power have a past of personal violence or lying, constant lying. So they're very problematic personalities, personalities. And then what matters is that they create political systems that institutionalize lying, corruption, and violence. So they refashion the world of their rule, their country's value systems, around their own warped and damaged personalities. In a sense, that's why it's called personalist rule.

[Jane Mayer]

Yeah, Ruth, that is such an important point, because it's the consequence of having a megalomaniac in power is are there examples in other democracies of such a character coming to power? Because I think part of the problem for a lot of Americans when we have this conversation over two terms of Trump is, okay, Mussolini or some other sort of historical bad guy. But how does that connect with what's happening in the US it seems too distant, maybe for too many people.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Yeah, well, what I've been trying to do is for 10 years now is civic education. You know, Mussolini and Hitler were appointed, although Mussolini was. He was prime minister in a democracy for three years before he declared dictatorship. Others come to power via coups, and then there's no way to prepare. But today, many of these people, such as Orban and others and Erdogan, they are elected. And so we need to help people understand who they're voting for, because they tell us who they are. I started this civic education when Trump January 2016, said I could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and I wouldn't lose any followers. And this is what got me into this path, because he was saying he was capable of violence, associating himself with violence, and that he would be praised and loved for this violence. That's why he wouldn't lose any followers. And so there are many warning signs. And that's why I wrote strongmen to look at cases around the world of these problematic personalities and what happens when they are in power. And today it's through elections.

[Evan Osnos]

And not only what happens when they're in power. I think one of the things that you've pointed us to is what happens when they're in power and things don't go well. I mean, we're having this conversation at a moment when Donald Trump's polls are dropping dramatically. And at the same time, he seems to be doubling down. He seems to be getting more adventurous, ambitious, fixated on these larger and more bizarre personal targets. You call this autocratic backfire. What is it and what is the phenomenon we're seeing?

[Ruth Ben Giet]

So the purpose of autocratic rule, or rule by personalist rulers, is to enrich the ruler and his family and also his officials and their families. It goes back to Fascist Italy and to transform government into institutions that obey his will, punish his enemies and make him untouchable. And so there's something that's important to the backfire process called the inner sanctum. All of these guys have them. They surround themselves with loyalists, sycophants. It's not just cabinet officials. They're informal advisors from the old days. So Putin has people from St. Petersburg decades ago. Up comes Steve Witkoff, who Trump has known for 30 years, and then Jared Kushner. And these are people who are safe because they'll keep his secrets, or they're related to him somehow. And the key is that they end up constructing with these people a kind of echo chamber. And so they overestimate their own abilities. They're not having any objective feedback like any manager CEO gets. And so they also underestimate their adversary, as Putin did with Ukraine. And they start to believe their own propaganda. And of course, this was easier in a one party state, but we see today with Orban, with Trump, it can happen in a damaged democracy. And then that's when they promulgate these idiosyncratic policies, like Erdogan's economic policies or the tariffs. And the key is that when these start to go badly, they never retreat because they're infallible. Because their pride, their hubris is at stake. Cause they're doing these things because they think they will make a difference in history. Instead, they double down and they engage in even riskier behaviors. And it's actually when they start to falter and their popularity is down in 21st century, when we measure these things that they can do, things such as go to wars. Like Putin, he was gonna save the Russian empire. He was gonna restore the Russian empire.

[Susan Glasser]

I mean, when you're seeing Venezuela and a hunger for Greenland, is that a familiar process? Are we in that phase? And if so, how does that go?

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Yes, absolutely. And the, quote, success of Venezuela as operationally as a military operation. And now he has a captive body, which is very important to the possessive nature of the autocrat. A captive body that can be used. Trump with Maduro, and so he feels that he succeeded, and this makes it more possible he'll do other things. And that's the whole, you know, the Greenland thing. Greenland is an old idea. It's about plunder, because autocr need to plunder the natural resources of the world. And Greenland was a fixation in 2019. I have something in Strongman about that. So this also directs us to another of their character traits. They're tenacious, they have obsessions, ide fixes, and they never give up on them. So as things go worse for Trump, we have to, and we already are, we have to plan for him to become more aggressive about trying to fix our elections. And that's the menu of electoral autocracy, where you have elections today, you keep them going, like Erdogan and Orban, but you fix them because as things go worse, their fear. Because autocrats are people who are driven by fear, a fear of their own, what will happen to them. Right? And so they want to make themselves untouchable, so they do that. And then we should brace for, you know, heightened use of the military or attempts to use the military, either domestic repression or more imperialist aggressions abroad. And that's a whole thing that, you know, Trump has been making life easier for autocrats who have imperialist desires, such as Xi Jinping with Taiwan and, of course, Putin in Ukraine.

[Evan Osnos]

We're going to take a quick break. The political scene will be back in just a moment.

[David Remnick]

Hi, I'm David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. At this year's Academy Awards, Timothee Chalamet and Teyana Taylor aren't the only major nominees. The New Yorker will be there, too, with two nominated short films, which you can [e-mail] video. Two people exchanging saliva was executive produced by Julianne Moore and Isabel Huppert. And it's set in a distance dystopian Paris where kissing is illegal. Our animated short film Retirement Plan follows a man as he dreams about all the things he's going to do when he's done working. You can enjoy both of those films and our full library of acclaimed short [e-mail] video.

[Evan Osnos]

If you've been enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and a review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. We're sort of seeing in real time, Ruth, the study of autocracy being expanded and tested. And I am really drawn by one of the details that you noted about Putin, which is that before the full fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he could have been secure, meaning Russia was the main sour of energy in Europe that he had basically locked up or silenced a lot of his opposition. But as you say, he had become insecure. And that feeling of insecurity, of paranoia, is it the inevitable result of this kind of rule or is it specific to the circumstances?

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Yeah, what a great question. The longer they stay in power, the more enemies they make and the more they become worried about their futures. And they become. So they start purging. Look at all that, the people who have died in suspicious circumstances, elites in the energy sector, especially since the war started. So this is how all of the dysfunction that we've described doesn't help them in such circumstances. And in fact, Putin, he was supposed to expand Russia's power in the world with the revival of the empire by Ukraine. Instead, a very embarrassing thing happened. At the beginning, the world saw the toll of his kleptocracy on instit Russian military incompetence. And indeed now, several years after it started, the country has actually recruited fighters. Not just we hear about North Korea. It's not just North Korea, it's Cuba, Syria and many African nations. They have had to supply fighters for Ukraine because the Russians, they don't have the supply. And then another story we don't hear enough about is that Russia has become highly economically dependent on China. And so in the end, this is classic backfire. The autonomy of Russia and its actual power in the world, apart from its propaganda power, is reduced as a result of Putin's gamble to increase Russia's influence in the world.

[Jane Mayer]

Can I just. Ruth, it's a very interesting argument that's been sort of raging among Russia hands about this question of is it sort of backfire or actually Putin succeeding, even if ways that are completely anathema to us. And I think the essential thing is to look as well at Russian history, which has constantly been a story of internal weakness papered over by external expansionism, that the definition of wielding power was this empire and the pushing outward of boundaries. But it goes back to Evan's question, which is if Putin is not stopped in a meaningful way, if he believes that he's succeeding in the long term, I think he's willing to expend. And we're seeing that many lives, even millions of Russian lives, either lost or essentially squandered in this debacle. He has a different set of calculations around power. And that goes back to then, what is the response to a strongman? What is the response to a megalomaniac? And I find that to be an interesting question, both for the lessons learned for Xi Jinping, but also in the west, if he sees, well, look at how weak the west is, I can just wait four years and I'll get a new American president who is already given him the welcome back to the world in some ways that he craves. I'm just curious what you take away about countering the megalomaniac.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Just one thing about Putin before we get to this. Because autocrats don't care about human life. They don't care how many people live or die. I remember in March 2020, I was being interviewed and it was Covid time, and I said that Trump doesn't care if you live or die. And people weren't ready to hear that at all. But so Putin, autocrats, he may have foreigners now fighting his battles from North Korea, et cetera, but he doesn't care how many Russians die, except if it's going to harm his ultimate military outcome. Human life, except for their own, has no value. That logic is every day he survives, and also Ukraine, he's trying to Russify, and some people call it an ethnic ethnocide, what Russia's trying to do with Ukrainians. So every day he survives, and every day they're still in Ukraine, killing Ukrainians could be a kind of victory. So they think about military campaigns differently as well. They don't have to answer to anyone, the press or political opposition about how many Russians they're killing or other things like that. So they think about things differently.

[Susan Glasser]

I mean, you can see the same kind of lack of empathy, heedlessness in Trump's treatment of USAID and The numbers of casualties that are gonna. That are piling up because of that. But I have a question for you. About. I'm interested in the interplay between the public and the rise of such personalities, such warped personalities. I mean, are there particular factors that create the setting that makes it ripe for allowing the empowerment of such misrulers? Honestly, from where I stand, I see Trump as more pathetic than powerful. When I see someone trying to build edifices to him and put his name on the Kennedy center and whatever else, it looks almost embarrassing to me. But the public seems to be. They voted him in, and the entire Republican Party has fallen in line. What are the requirements? Are there specific things that bring the rise of someone like this and enable them?

[Ruth Ben Giet]

There are. And writing a book that goes over 100 years made this clear to me. Often these individuals prosper when there's a sense of a transition needed in politics, that the old ways, the old parties need to be rejuvenated. There's a lot of disaffection with politics, and they come and they. A lot of them have a background in either entertainment tv, like Berlusconi and Trump. Mussolini was a journalist. Maputu was a journalist. They are lethally charming. They are superb communicators. Trump is one of the most skilled propagandists in history. He really is. And they have charisma, and so they galvanize the public. It's like they scan the political marketplace. They see a void, and they put themselves in there. And because they have no morals and they're transactional, they will be whatever the moment needs them to be. This is very important. They tailor themselves to the perceived will and hunger for certain personalities. And so often it's when there's been a lot of progress for social justice. It could be workers rights, it could be gender equality, it could be racial equality. That is when some people think they're losing out. And this was very important for Trumpism. And so the strongman comes up and says, oh, no more of that. We're going to turn the clock back. And so we've seen this with misogyny, the racism, the concrete evisceration of DEI policies. And so they reshape the nation to fit those anxieties that some people had. And in European American context, it's for white male supremacy. It happens over and over in history, these transitions, and that is when these individuals have success.

[Susan Glasser]

Fascinating.

[Evan Osnos]

Absolutely fascinating. Ruth, I have to tell you, the highest praise we can give a guest is that your expertise is regrettably timely and we have to say it's just immensely helpful and valuable to have you with us today. Thank you so much for the time, Ruth.

[Jane Mayer]

Thank you so much. That was terrifically helpful.

[Evan Osnos]

We're going to take a quick break. The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.

[Museum Narrator]

Wired has always put a microscope on the people, power and forces shaping our world. Uncanny Valley brings that same fearless reporting straight to your feed. Is DOGE finally over? Will AI actually democratize American healthcare? Each week, Wired journalists from across the newsroom are going to unpack where politics, technology and Silicon Valley collide. From conversations with tech leaders across Silicon Valley, Internet fandom investigations, and government crackdowns on rigged gambling, we're taking you all over the news cycle, going straight inside the priorities, pressures and power plays driving today's biggest decisions. Uncanny Valley tackles the questions keeping you up at night and helps make sense of the future taking place shape right now. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Evan Osnos]

Absolutely fascinating. What struck you most, Jane?

[Susan Glasser]

There was a particular sentence of hers which was brace yourself. Which to me is a prediction that this is going to get worse, especially as you're watching Trump's popularity dip, he's gonna feel threatened and double down. She mentioned elections particularly. So that's what stuck with me.

[Jane Mayer]

We could have done this show at any point in the last decade, more or less. Certainly in the first term. There was also a lot of discussion about Donald Trump's malignant narcissism. George Conway wrote a 12,000 word story in the Atlantic covering this ground. And so for me, it does come down to why now. I think it's very urgent right now because Trump is approaching a crisis in his public positioning, one that he's very unlikely to be able to dig out of on conventional means. Right. If you look at sort of where public opinion is headed, Joe Biden was never able to dig out of the trench. Our second term presidents recently really haven't been. So it strikes me that the numbers going down for Trump, it's very hard to see in a conventional American political sense how he's gonna dig out. So I think the reason why this strikes me as so relevant right now is because he is entering the crisis period, number one. And number two, I would like more answers maybe than any of us are able to provide about that intersection between the aging and the megalomania, because I think that's the moment that we're in.

[Evan Osnos]

What is so important. And you guys both just flicked at this idea of when in the course of the Trump phenomenon. We're talking about this. I'm reminded, haunted, honestly, by a conversation I had back in 2016 with a Republican who was trying to decide whether to get on Team Trump. And this person said to me, you know, the question I'm facing is, is he Mussolini? But then this person added, really? Actually, the question is, is he early Mussolini or late Mussolini? So there was a kind of already an understanding that these people evolve and become something. And I think the history here that you have to remember is, look who we're talking about. Mussolini made the catastrophic errors. These were the things. The decision to invade Ethiopia, and then also the decision to ally with Hitler against the advice of his generals. And eventually you get further and further out into completely indefensible strategic choices. And if you are surrounded by this inner sanctum, as Ruth said, then you're insulated from the effects, and until they are visited upon.

[Susan Glasser]

Well, I also think it's incredibly interesting that we think of America as exceptional and exceptionalist. And what she's describing is we are very much part of a pattern here. We're seeing something that the world has seen happen over and over again in history, and you can learn a lot from it. And the people who knew the history, like Ruth Ben Giet, heard Trump talk about how he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue way back in 2016. And she said, I know what's happening here. And so, yeah, but a lot of people did, right?

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, that's the thing that's so horrible about watching it unfold, is that this has been the idea that Donald Trump was an authoritarian. It was his own vice president, let's remember, who wrote in a message to a friend that was later made public that Trump might be an American Hitler. He wrote that in the first term of Donald Trump. So it's a tragedy.

[Susan Glasser]

They seem to keep finding excuses. They seem to not take him seriously. I think it's probably because of this entertainer aspect of him. I think people have been very slow. They keep saying, are we there yet? Is this. Could this happen here? The question over and over again, there's a kind of a real resistance to saying, we've seen this. We know where this goes, and we're in it.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, I think. I mean, part of what's at work is this question of, let's face it, some portion of the public wants the strongman. This is a persistent fact of history that, as Ruth said, when you. You have this sense of the need for a change in the culture of politics in Washington, when you have also then a person who slots into that moment, who is possessed of the personal characteristics, the experience in front of the media, the ability to manipulate the tools of communication at that moment. That's when it happens. But I think part of what I find as a takeaway for me is that there is a portion of the public, public that responds to this even when things are indefensible.

[Jane Mayer]

And Evan, that I think is such a key point. So a, when we get back to the moment we're in right now, what are we looking at Trump to do and what is the response going to be? You mentioned something that I think is really important and Ruth did as well, which is the isolation and the sort of inner sanctum that increasingly becomes the entire world for one of these entrenched leaders, especially when things go badly. And I'm looking at some of the examples just over the last week of just really extreme behavior from people like Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Pete Hegseth. All of these are people who, what do they have in common? They're insecure about their place in the leaders inner sanctum. They're desperate to play on this shorthand in Washington of the audience of one. They're constantly playing for the audience of one, although they have positions of great power. And for me, that's again, why if we're having the conversation now versus say at some point in Trump's first term, many of those people were very compromised people, very problematic people who surrounded him his first term. But there were people who in a way they acted to check him from the consequences of these bad strategic decisions that he wanted to take.

[Ruth Ben Giet]

Right.

[Jane Mayer]

Evan, to your point about, okay, he didn't invade Ethiopia in place the first first term, I think for me that's always been the great risk factor in the second term is that the insecure narcissistic megalomaniac surrounds himself with people who are even weaker and more insecure this time around. And now is where we might see those strategic errors pile up on him in a way that I think the story of the first term is that he made a lot of screw ups, but he was checking from doing certain very catastrophic things only just by the skin of his teeth. This week, let's just talk about the fact that just a few anonymous citizens and a judge have stopped the administration from literally seeking to arrest six members of Congress. Do you know there's only one time in our history that this has ever occurred? It was in 1798 when there were the alien sedition Acts A congressman thrown in jail. This was one of the most disgraceful chapters in our entire history. Donald Trump came this close this week to sort of breaking a barrier that's held since the late 18th century.

[Susan Glasser]

It's an echo of the kinds of people he surrounded himself, which are yes men. And he only wants to hear yes from the country. So he is weaponizing and criminalizing dissent and trying to stop it at every turn, whether it's suing the news organizations, as you write about in your column this week. Susan, excellent column. And as we've seen in theater after theater, whether it's the civilians who are trying to just be witnesses to what the government's doing who are being criminalized for doing that, or trying to prosecute dissenters in Congress up and down the line, he's trying to turn the country into yes men and basically punish anybody who is not.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, I have to tell you, this is exactly the kind of conversation that I like to have about this because we've sort of scoped back into history to understand what we can learn about it. But honestly, we're also talking about this precisely because of what is to come and how this might affect the actions over the course of the next few months. Thank you guys, as ever. Great to be with you.

[Susan Glasser]

Wonderful conversation. Thanks so much, you guys. It's great to hear from you. See you.

[Jane Mayer]

Great conversation about megalomania, everybody.

[Susan Glasser]

I know.

[Evan Osnos]

I mean, such is life these days, right? This has been the political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Evan Osnos. We had research assistance today from Alex d'. Elia. Our producer is Nora Richie. Mixing by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

[David Remnick]

Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlemagne, the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Jane Mayer]

From prx.