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- [00:00]
Michael McFaul
Owning pieces of companies by the state. That's called communism.
- [00:05]
Lee McGowan
That's communism, by the way. Yes. I keep, like, I'm like, I can't. When they're like, oh, these socialists, Democrats, the communists, the Marxists. I'm like, you're the ones suggesting you own part of intel, suggesting you take over part of medical companies. So, like, that's the Communist Manifesto right there.
- [00:21]
Michael McFaul
Exactly. State owned enterprises, SOEs from academia. That's. That's a phrase we talk about when referring to China and other communist countries, not the United States, America.
- [00:42]
Lee McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. Well, Donald Trump and his team are testing us. We had a wonderful, joyful day of protest on no Kings Day where the only people arrested were MAGA counter protesters. And 7 million people got into the streets of America to express their displeasure with the administration. And Trump's response was to take a wrecking ball to the White House. I think that despite the fact that most of us know how much of America's institutions, norms and values he has destroyed over the past eight months, somehow seeing it visually represented hit a lot of us hard. It was difficult not to find your spirits dampened watching a historic building that technically belongs to all Americans demolished in front of our eyes. We are clearly in a new America now, an America where the autocrat is challenging everything we know. So I thought it was important to speak to someone who spent their entire career dealing not only with autocrats, but whose new book, Autocrats vs. China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder, discusses the very issues we are dealing with now. So today, we're lucky enough to speak to Michael McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia, the director of the Freeman Spoli Institute for International Studies, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, and professor of International studies and Political Science at Stanford. Michael served five years in the Obama administration, first as a special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia affairs at the National Security Council, and then as the US Ambassador to the Russia Federation. The author of several books, including New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace, Michael is also an international affairs analyst for NBC and considered one of the most preeminent thinkers on American foreign policy. So without further ado, please welcome my guest, former ambassador, Russia, Stanford professor and author of the new book Autocrats vs. Democrats, Michael McFaul. Welcome, Michael.
- [02:33]
Michael McFaul
Well, thanks for having me.
- [02:35]
Lee McGowan
Thank you for coming. Honestly, I've wanted to have you on the show for so long. Originally, I thought we would be discussing, you know, Russia's war in Ukraine. But now I think it's more pressing that we talk about the war that Donald Trump and his administration are waging on America, something I feel like you kind of anticipated in this new book, Autocrats vs. Democrats. So right off the top, please tell me about the book, but more specifically about the competition between autocrats and Democrats here in America.
- [03:04]
Michael McFaul
The book is a big book. It's about autocrats versus Democrats around the world. And I wrote most of it before the re election of Donald Trump. But now with his election, what side of that divide we're on here in America is up for grabs. It's not clear. There's a fight within countries between autocrats and Democrats. Not just our country, but there are many countries in the world, especially in Europe, where you have this division. But it's most acute here. I think you have to go back to the Civil War to remember a time when the challenge to democratic institutions has been so acute. And that's tragically the moment we're in today.
- [03:41]
Lee McGowan
I think that's the thing. It's the acuteness of the challenge that we're dealing with. I mean, the full title of your book is Autocrats vs China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder, which I think is a good word for it. Clearly, Russia has a big part to play in what's happening in America. But I don't think we can also sleep on China's role in this shift of the world order, because we're clearly dealing with a huge battle between autocrats and Democrats, as you said, around the world, not just here at home, because we can't really understand what's happening here at home without widening our lens to what's going on outside of this country. And in the book, you write about the rise of China, and you write about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and then the reelection of Donald Trump kind of reinforces this idea that the old global order is over and a new Cold War era has begun. But I think what you point out is that it's different between the original Cold War between America and the Soviet Union, because this time the autocracies of the world seem united in some sort of an alliance where they all succeed and we fail.
- [04:41]
Michael McFaul
Yeah, I go through similarities and differences, but there are two big ones that are really important, and you just mentioned one of them. One, the autocrats are united. They're helping each other. The Iranians are sending drones to the Russians. North Korea is sending soldiers to the Russians to fight their war against Democratic Ukraine, China buys their oil and gas and sends them technological components. They're all helping each other and we're not doing the same. The democratic world, we are not united because President Trump has decided he's going to impose tariffs on our friends. He's going to threaten to invade our allies, whether it's Canada or take over Greenland. And, you know, maybe he thinks it's a joke, but I can tell you, I have friends in Denmark and Canada, they don't think it's a joke. And so at a time when we need to be united, the current administration is doing a lot to divide the free world. And I think that won't serve our long term interests. But there's a second difference. You know, the old Cold War. At least when, you know, I'm old enough to remember the Cold War. I wrote my dissertation about the Cold War and we used to have these maps, right? There'd be the red team and the blue team and France was blue and they're part of our blue team. The free world and Angola, oh, they're red. They're part of the communist world. The fight, the ideological struggle was between countries. By and large. We had some communists here in America, but they were pretty marginal folks. What's different today is that this fight between autocrats and Democrats is not just between states, it's within states. And Putin in particular, after he consolidated his dictatorship inside Russia, began to invest in finding like minded people in countries like Hungary and Italy and France and here in the United States of America as well. So today there's different podcasts, there's Infowars, right? They're having a different conversation. And over on Infowars, they have guys like Alexander Dugin on, and he is the chief ideologist for Putin. He's one of the ideologues of this illiberal nationalism, right? This, they think the west is decadent and liberal and all this stuff that we've been trying to export to them. Well, now they're united ideologically and that's different. That's harder that you have it not just between countries, but within countries, including here in the United States of America.
- [07:06]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, I'm only laughing about the decadence of the west when I think about, like Trump building his ballroom and how Putin lives and all these guys, I mean, they're the ones that are the most decadent. I mean, Anne Applebaum wrote an article for the Atlantic about five years ago called the Bad Guys Are How a New Brand of Autocrats Are Outsmarting the West. And the article which became a book was about how modern autocracies are not just run by one bad guy, but by a network of bad guys who use their security services, their propagandists, their wealth of the nation, to both benefit themselves and retain power. Then these autocratic networks connect with other autocratic networks. And you're talking about that not only within their country, but in other autocratic nations around the world. And then they help each other there. Like this police force in one country can arm and train a police force in another country. The propagandist networks share resources like troll farms, who then promote multiple dictators propaganda and repeat it to anyone who will listen, which is often entire countries, since these dictators come in and control the media as well. And we are seeing that happen so clearly here in America right now with this consolidation of power, but also with them all amplifying each other and working together. What do you think about that?
- [08:21]
Michael McFaul
You're exactly right.
- [08:22]
Lee McGowan
Well, Ann is exactly right. I credit Ann with all of it. She's so brilliant.
- [08:26]
Michael McFaul
She is brilliant. She's an old friend of mine. I've known her for decades and she actually blurred my new book.
- [08:31]
Lee McGowan
Good for you. I love her.
- [08:32]
Michael McFaul
So I'm glad to have Ann on my team. But there are two things I want to underscore that you just said that are important for everybody to remember. Number one, the hypocrisy of these so called populace right here in the United States, but in Russia and throughout Europe, yes, Putin, he's talking about how the rich people are trying to take over our country and taking your jobs. And this should sound familiar to some Americans, right? We have our leaders saying that when in fact he has stolen money from common people in Russia to build his giant mansions. He's one of the richest people in the world and he's done so with oligarchs who flipped to support him because they decided that if he cut their taxes, they're better off being with him rather than not. So you have this just incredible hypocrisy inside Russia, where the richest people in the world are claiming to be populous in defense of the working people. Sound familiar, right?
- [09:30]
Lee McGowan
Yes, very familiar.
- [09:31]
Michael McFaul
And that's exactly what President Trump is doing here. It's a playbook. It's a playbook you see all over the world. And the second piece that you're also right about is they do help each other. They invest in each other's companies, they run things together. And Russian oligarchs and American oligarchs have been doing this for years. And Years. And it creates a system of mutual support and we need to interrogate it. Anne's one of the best in doing that to just expose the hypocrisy. These are not people that are interested in the interests of the common people, either in Russia or Hungary or Italy or the United States of America.
- [10:08]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, no, I think they would be perfectly fine if we all died. Honestly. I think Stephen Miller is saying that America should have 100 million people. There are currently 330 million people here. And I'm not sure exactly how they plan to get rid of 200 million people, but I would say, you know, cutting our health care and making sure we can't eat is one way to do that. Obviously, mass deportation is another way. It's the way these leaders behave. Like, I know that when. And you're a Russian expert, you were the Russian ambassador when Putin came into power. He was. He started off as a low level KGB agent like he was not a billionaire. He is a billionaire now. So you question like, how did we get from here to here? He came into power and he started doing things like going to companies and saying, listen, you're on my side or you're against me. And if you're against me, I'm going to find some trumped up charge and I'm going to throw you in a gulag or I'm going to take your whole company as part of the state. And so they were like, all right, well what do we do? We can split it halfway. You get some money, I'll get some money, I'll pay you off. That is what we're seeing happen over here. Now. Trump making deals with major corporations, saying, I will give you favored nation service, I will give you the deals that you want, I will give you the water that you want, I will give you the, you know, you see what happened with CBS News? I will take you off the air if you don't say what I want you to say. This is exactly the same playbook we saw in Russia and it's what Russia taught to Belarus, what Russia taught to Hungary, what they're all kind of doing. I feel like it's important to remember that it isn't just happening here, is happening all around the world. And I feel like we all need to come to terms with the fact that we're not going back to the way it was before, that we either accept that this is the new world order and we, you know, capitulate to these self serving monsters who are showing us what they're offering, which is they get everything and we get what scraps they throw us or we defeat them and we build something brand new. So I think people have to stop thinking like, well, we'll just go back to the way it's. It's never going back. We have to build something new from that. And I think about how your book does this sort of overall accounting of the power competition between the United States and China and Russia over the past 30 years. But you kind of also lay out a new strategy for America in this age. What do you think we should be doing right now?
- [12:15]
Michael McFaul
Well, first on the diagnostics, I want to say a couple of things to underscore what you just said, because it's important. We can't get the prescriptions right if we don't get the diagnostics right. What Putin did in the early years in Russia does remind me of what Trump is trying to do today. I actually wrote a piece in February of 2017 at the Washington Post. I no longer work there. They're not as interested in my ideas as they used to be, and that's part of it, but comparing them. And it didn't happen as fast in the first term. And I think that had to do with checks and balances. Some people in his government that stopped him. But it's happening now. And a couple of things you said are really important. Number one, changing who owns media. That's what Putin did. He wrestled control from the very beginning. He got control of all the major media outlets in Russia. You see that happening here in the United States. And then later, when he didn't like a particular show, it was called Kukli Puppets, he didn't like their sarcasm. And the things they said about Putin, they made fun of his height, by the way. You know, he's a small man. I've met him. He pulled him off the air. That should sound familiar. That's what just happened here with Jimmy Kimmel. And then third, this mutual enrichment that they do that you just talked about, very, very important. Putin, when he came in, he said, look, guys, as all these oligarchs, and they're all guys, there were no women. He said, I'm the new guy in town. I'm the new sheriff. As long as you support me, we're going to make a lot of money together. I'm going to cut your taxes. And he did. And I'm going to own some of your companies. And he did. But it's all win, win. But if you cross me, I'm going to put you in jail. And in 2003. The richest Russian oligarch at the time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to send a signal to the rest of them, he put him in jail for 10 years, and everybody then lined up behind him.
- [14:05]
Lee McGowan
Yeah.
- [14:06]
Michael McFaul
Does that sound familiar? Right. All of our folks in this world, they all showed up for the inauguration. And I live out here in the Silicon Valley. I know these companies. I know what they really think. And they all just decided for their profits. They got to. They got to be close to President Trump and his team. And this incredible thing that you alluded to, you know, owning pieces of companies by the state, that's called communism.
- [14:32]
Lee McGowan
That's communism, by the way. Yeah. I keep like, I'm like, I can't. When they're like, like, oh, these socialist democrats, the communists, the Marxists, I'm like, you're the ones suggesting you own part of intel, suggesting you take over part of medical companies. So, like, that's the Communist Manifesto right there.
- [14:48]
Michael McFaul
Exactly. State owned enterprises, SOEs from academia. That's. That's a phrase we talk about when referring to China and other communist countries, not the United States of America. But that's a very similar parallel, but there's a couple of differences. Number one, most Importantly, Russians in 2000 had only experimented with democracy for a few years, and it was pretty rough. They lived through an economic depression that was three times worse than our depression here in the 1930s. And so they associated democracy with poverty. Right. We have a much longer history with fighting against kings. Right. We just had a giant no kings protest. 7 million people. I was there, here in Palo Alto. Where did that phrase come from? That goes back 200 years. 250 years. That's a big plus that our society has. These are values that are deep and not just as shallow as they were in Russia in the early 2000s. But second, the institutions that were checks on executive power when Putin came to power when he became president in 2000 were a lot weaker in Russia than they are today. In Russia, they had something called ntv, that was the leading independent television station, and it was truly independent. And Putin gradually took it over. And then this puppet show I was just talking about, he took it off the air and that was it. We thankfully have lots of pockets of independent media, including this podcast right here. You know, you're still on the air, you're still fighting, and that's fantastic. And I think we need to acknowledge that independent media, much stronger than before, a political party, for all of its faults, but we have an opposition party that's fighting against growing Authoritarianism, non governmental organizations. We have tens of thousands of them organizing in their local communities that were part of what happened last weekend. That's their governors. We have governors that are not beholden to the president. By the way, Putin went after governors in 2004. He used a tragic moment in Russia where he said it was a. It was a horrible terrorist attack in 2004. And he used that as an excuse to get rid of direct elections to governors. And that was a huge consolidation of power. We haven't had that happen yet. So it's a dangerous time. But I'm cautiously optimistic that both because of what individual citizens in America believe that go back hundreds of years, not just a few, that they're there to resist, and these independent institutions, independent media, governors, political party NGOs, they're much stronger today than they were in the early years of Putin's Russia, for sure.
- [17:37]
Lee McGowan
Which is why I think the Trump administration is trying so hard to dismantle a lot of them. Why they're talking about getting rid of, not for profits, anything from the ACLU to Planned Parenthood to Emily's List. You know, they want to get rid of anyone that would fight against them. They are trying to consolidate power in academia, in the law firms, in the media, because it makes it easier to do what what Putin did. And like you're saying, we have a much stronger bulwark here because we have centuries of a constitutional republic, we have centuries of, you know, voting rights being gradually given to more and more people. Obviously, we didn't start the country correctly, but we have given it to more and more people over the years and the people that are running the government now. And we can be both very clear. I think one of the other biggest difference between Russia and America right now is that Putin is way smarter than Trump is, and he just is. And I think the thing is, is that he's more of a mastermind and Trump is more of a, if we want to speak about puppets, a puppet to people who are masterminds, people like Russell Vogt, people like Stephen Miller, people like Leonard Leo, who gave us the court that's giving Trump all of his power. Those people really are very clever. And like you said, the first time Trump was in office, he was held up by people that were still following the Constitution rather than his word. And this time, they had four years to prepare for this. And this is a completely different version. I think we can see quite clearly that China and Russia are aligned in their power and desire for an autocratic world order. China's economic strength is clearly growing. We've seen all the things that say America's going down, China's going up. You've seen Russia's ambitions and you've been saying like, don't underestimate Russia's ambitions. They do not stop at Ukraine. And then you have these autocratic tendencies of the right wing, both in the US and in Europe, as you were mentioning. And these are major threats for us to be keeping our eye on. And we don't really have a precedent to fall back on to say, oh, it's going to be like this because this really is brand new. We are dealing with brand new set of challenges for the democratic world. So if you are telling Americans who don't necessarily follow international conflicts in politics, what do you think they should be paying attention to right now, not only in how it relates to America, but how it relates to the world order. Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I had a big birthday this year and getting older is pretty humbling. One day you just wake up stiff. Recovery from anything takes longer. My nails are breaking, my eyesight feels like a joke. And your skin just doesn't have the same glow it used to. This is where Bub's natural collagen peptides come in. 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Jonesroadbeauty.com code politics girl if you were telling Americans who don't necessarily follow international conflicts and politics, what do you think they should be paying attention to right now, not only in how it relates to America, but how it relates to the world order?
- [23:54]
Michael McFaul
Well, these are very challenging times for Democrats versus autocrats. But I also think as a. As a consequence of that, also for American security interests and our prosperity, I think these are all intertwined. If I'm cautiously optimistic about checks and balances on Trump at home, there's a lot fewer checks on his power abroad and the institutions of foreign policy, there just aren't constituents that care about it. So he just shut down the US Agency for International Development, and there was hardly any pushback because most Americans don't even know what they do.
- [24:28]
Lee McGowan
Yeah.
- [24:28]
Michael McFaul
And then it's been cartoonized what they do by Trump, and he just shut it down in a heartbeat. There's now blowing out of the water these ships in the Caribbean, not following any rule of law. And where is there our ability to check that power? That just is crazy to me.
- [24:44]
Lee McGowan
That feels like a raptor at the fence. Jurassic park stuff. Like, he's testing, testing, testing.
- [24:48]
Michael McFaul
Yes.
- [24:49]
Lee McGowan
Because if you can just blow up someone with no evidence that they're these narco terrorists you claim there are, with no evidence that, you know there's even drugs on the boat, there's obviously no evidence left after you send a missile after it. What is that saying? It's saying, I'm testing to see if I can indiscriminately kill people because I say they're terrorists. And how does that stop in international waters? It could easily be brought home to here and say, well, you know, I've already said antifa is terrorists, and this car was filled with antifa, so we had to send a missile after it. They just gave ICE the ability and power to have missiles and warheads and chemical weapons. Why would you give chemical weapons to ice? That makes no sense. How does that have anything to do with immigration? Right. That has to do with intimidating the American people. And I think that should really alarm people because these explosions in the Caribbean are really testing the waters for what is acceptable for this administration. Do you find that?
- [25:45]
Michael McFaul
Well, that's scary. I haven't thought about that as closely as you have. I can tell, but that is a scary thing to think about. You're right. Might makes right without any rule of law. That is a dangerous, slippery slope. And on the International side, what it does, it just makes us look like we're just like everybody else. So, you know, when I was ambassador to Russia, I used to always hear about whataboutism. Right. Well, we would criticize what they were doing there. And they said, what about this? What about this, what about this? That has grown because of these kinds of actions. And it kind of helps Putin say, well, you know, look at what they're doing in the Caribbean. That's what I'm doing in Ukraine. And God forbid it might happen in Asia. If we're in a dog eat dog world with no rules, then Xi Jinping can invade Taiwan and he can say, well, that's what, you know, Trump's using unilateral power for how he defines their American national interests. I'm going to do the same. And I think that is a bad world for us to return to. You know, we fought a war, a horrible war in World War II when we decided we're not going to just allow countries to invade each other, we're not going to allow annexation. And we've, you know, the Cold War was hard and difficult and there were lots of wars we shouldn't have fought. We made mistakes during the Cold War. I write about that in my new book. But we also created that kind of international system that said we're not going to do these kinds of things. And what I worry about as we begin to erode that international system will be by and large, okay, because we're a powerful country. But China's a very powerful country too. And in my view, we're better off with allies than not. We're better off with our friends rather than going alone. We're better off participating in multilateral organizations rather than these unilateral actions. And I fear that this course of isolationism and then if we act, then unilateralism, you know, short term, sugar high, you know, we look powerful, but I think in the long term it puts us in a much weaker.
- [27:48]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, I think there's absolutely no question that Trump's shift towards isolationism and only I can decide, and I will make the call. This whole autocrat way of thinking only weakens our place in the world order. These arbitrary tariffs that he's made have made us an unreliable trading partner. So we're losing a lot of deals. Right. Our behavior at NATO has made our allies realize that they can't count us anymore. So they're making other deals among themselves. They're doing other things because they, they can't count on America. We lost Our soft power that we were wielding with things like USAID by just pulling all of that. So now they're going to get their food in Africa from China, right? And then they think, well, China helps us and America does not. We took the cdc, which was the golden jewel of the world science and health community, and we just basically set it on fire. So it kind of explains why our dollar is falling. I just, I don't, I think, I don't understand, Michael, how there's any way that anyone can look at what Trump is doing to America and think, yeah, this is working. Right? And yet his people just seem to be unwaveringly supportive or terrified of going against him. And is this, is this normal for this kind of leader? Because you mentioned Putin before and, and the concept what, what America's doing to itself right now is kind of Putin's best deal. Because he could say, no, there aren't really fair elections, you know, and people could say, but look at America. And now we can say, yeah, look at America. See, it's all corrupt. Everywhere is corrupt. Every leader does this. Every leader blows up people without things. Every leader has false elections. Every leader, it's like, we couldn't have done him a bigger favor by not showing an alternative anymore, by just becoming what he is. Because now the world says, well, I guess this is the way it all goes.
- [29:32]
Michael McFaul
It's not in America's national interests.
- [29:34]
Lee McGowan
No.
- [29:35]
Michael McFaul
And let me say two things about what, just to echo some the. Of things you just said. So first, we are a very powerful country. You know, we're still the most powerful country in the world.
- [29:44]
Lee McGowan
Michael, can I ask you, are we the most powerful country in the world? Because we hear this all the time. We're the richest country, the most powerful country. And I think most people feel like I'm poor as hell and I don't have any power. You're talking military might and financial might. Right?
- [29:58]
Michael McFaul
Right. So in the book, I go through all the data, by the way, military might, aggregate data, even GDP per capita. And to your point, how you feel may not, you may not care that you're richer, but, you know, even our poorest state, Mississippi, GDP per capita is still higher than almost every European country. You don't feel that, but we're comparatively, we're better off both in the aggregate and GDP per capita individually. But when you're that powerful, you can coerce other countries to do things that you want them to do, and you can force them to do that. You know, you mentioned tariffs. That's a great Thing we're telling everybody you have to do this and you can coerce them to do it. But you know what? People don't like to be coerced. You know, I grew up in Butte, Montana, pretty rough mining town. And from third grade to sixth grade, there was this guy, Eddie, who was a thug. And I had to, every day I had to worry about getting beat up by Eddie. And if he cornered me, I did what he told me to do, but did I like it? And when I got strong enough to resist it, guess what? I defected from, you know, Eddie's World Order. And I feel like that's what we're doing right now. You know, Donald Trump, Trump is out there bullying everybody. And so in the short term, they got to go along. But in the long term, you know, he's not the only bully on the block. There is alternatives. There's Europe and there's China. And if we continue to bully our friends, eventually they're going to defect and they're going to go in this opposite way. So I think it's a very short term strategy that makes us worse off in the long term. But the second point you made is really important. You are absolutely right. To autocrats like Putin, there is nothing better than to see us tearing down our democratic institutions. There is nothing that delights them more than to see us fighting amongst ourselves. This polarization, right, January 6, 2021, that is just manna from heaven. Just dropped on the autocrats of the world to say, you really want to be like them. And also, this is different than the Cold War. In the Cold War, the Soviets tried to present to the rest of the world an alternative set of ideas for a better modern world. Right. I think it was wrong, but it was communism. It was this, this alternative, alternative set of ideas. Putin's not trying to do that. He's trying to say that we're all corrupt, we're all bad, no elections are free and fair. All media is bought for, you know, you are, you know you are also paid for, right? This is, that's this whole world, this kind of corrupt thing that we're all in the same category. There are is no truth, right? And when we go along with that, when our government does things along that line, that is exactly what the kind of world that Putin wants to live in.
- [32:46]
Lee McGowan
It's almost like we sold the narrative for him. We bought into what he was trying to sell to the rest of the world. And I think it's one of the things that I thought was so interesting about no Kings is that the Republican Party tried really hard to paint the no kings. Eventually, you know, two weeks leading up to it as some violent, horrible terrorist attack that was going to be scary for everyone. And everyone that was going to be there would be antifa or a violent Marxist. And the response by the American people, who all came out in a rather joyful, silly way. It was people, I saw some of The Republicans on TV and Don Jr. And people talking about it like, these people look like fools. And you're like, no, what they don't look like is terrorists. They did not play into the narrative you built using your media machine, using all of the networks, using the bully pulpit, and you still see the alternative. And I think that's really important as we move forward. You know, I think it's really important to show a, the amount of people who are out there so that when universities are, you know, approached with like, do our way or no way, they feel like, oh, there's still a lot of people who don't want that and they don't capitulate. Right. When we saw the law firms capitulating and when you see other people standing up, it gives other people power. This courage is contagious because so is fear. Right? And we have to be really clear. This man doesn't want America first. He doesn't want what's best for the people. He wants what's best for Trump, which is why his allyships keep changing. He will make a deal with whoever serves him, not who serves America. That's why we're making deals with the Saudis and Netanyahu right now. And Russia and Argentina and El Salvador. Right? It doesn't matter if there are allies. In fact, he's giving our allies the finger. Most of the time. It's not what's best for us, it's what's best for him. And I think we have to keep reminding the American people of that because I, I don't think the Russians got such a chance to do that when their country was taken over. As a Russia expert, do I seem, do I have that right? I am so pleased that we have aura Frames back as a sponsor of the Politics Girl podcast, especially in time for the holidays, because aura frames are one of those gifts that never get old. It's a perfect thing to bring to your loved ones to share memories. Every day, aura frames play live rotating photos and videos up to 30 seconds. But the photos look like real prints because the aura frames have meticulously calibrated high resolution displays. So unless you are watching really closely or you see a photo transition, you would never know it was a screen. One of the coolest things about an aura frame is when you load your original photos to give as a gift or have in your own house. 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That way you're getting the luxury quality pieces delivered directly to your home at half the price of similar brands. I have worn their navy blue cashmere boat neck sweater that I bought last season so much and it still looks great. I spent the summer in an oversized blue linen button down. Their stuff is terrific. So find your fall staples at Quint's. Go to quint.com politicsgirl for free shipping on your order and 365 days of returns. That's Q-U I N C E.com politicsgirl to get free shipping and 365 days of returns. To get free shipping and 365 days of Returns, go to quince.com politicsgirl it's not what's best for us, it's what's best for him. And I think we have to keep reminding the American people of that because I I don't think the Russians got such a chance to do that when their country was taken over. As a Russia expert, do I seem. Do I have that right?
- [39:36]
Michael McFaul
Well, there's some parallels. Putin took over and he cracked down on, you know, we already talked about that, how he controlled the media and then the business, but there was still pockets of resistance. And when I became the ambassador in 2012, I landed in Moscow. I worked for President Obama. I landed in Moscow. Right. Where there were massive demonstrations. Kind of reminded me of what we just had in our country just last week. Right.
- [40:01]
Lee McGowan
Less blow up frogs. Maybe.
- [40:04]
Michael McFaul
To your point, they did play with humor. I think humor is a really good tactic. And going even back farther, a couple decades ago, when they brought down Milosevic, the kids that did that, they were really good at humor and making fun of him.
- [40:17]
Lee McGowan
Tell people where Milosevic was in case they didn't know.
- [40:19]
Michael McFaul
In Serbia. Yes. In 2000, he was the last dictator in Europe. Massive demonstrations eventually brought him down in 2000. And it had that similar feel to me watching what happened here. But the thing I wanted to emphasize was this similarity. You know what Putin said about those people. He said they were terrorists. He called them traitors. There was this guy, Alexei Navalny, he was one of the leaders. Right. And you know what he said? Oh, he's paid for by the CIA. He's not one of us. Right. He's a traitor. Of course he wasn't. Just so everybody knows. Alexei Navalny was later arrested and killed by Putin. He was killed by Putin in jail last year.
- [40:58]
Lee McGowan
We should tell people that Alexei Navalny was seen as the potential choice against Putin. He was seen as an alternative to Putin. That really felt realistic. And Alexei Navalny was, I believe, poisoned, then recovered, then left the country and then came back knowing he would probably be arrested if he was. And he came back because he really felt like he needed to fight for his country. He was in fact, arrested, sent to gulag and killed. And I think that is what Trump would very happily do here to his enemies. I think he's showing us very clearly that he has no scruples or morals. And he sees that it works in countries like Russia.
- [41:38]
Michael McFaul
Calling them traitors, calling them terrorists, that's exactly what Putin did against the people that mobilized against him. And then arresting your critics like Putin did with Alexei Navalny, tragically. And I used to know Alexei was a friend of mine, just so you know, his daughter went to school here at Stanford. I know his family, I know his wife. Incredibly courageous human being that didn't have to go back and decided he had to fight for his country because he had the audacious belief that people should decide who lead them, not autocrats, and we should all take inspiration from people like him. But this othering saying that they're the enemy, I don't think it worked for President Trump. I think it failed. It was very important, as they always did in Russia. And people, when they demonstrate, should continue to do here, never fall into using violent tactics, because that only plays into their tactics. But it just listening to the rhetoric in the run up to those protests, it reminded me a lot of the way Putin used to talk about protests in his country.
- [42:40]
Lee McGowan
Well, it clearly works. It worked during the Second World War to say, these people are poisoning the blood of the nation. These people are the ones. We should round up these people. It's the othering of people, which is what we see here all the time, especially from the right wing, against anyone, if they're trans, if they're lgbtq, if they are you know, not within the world, that that is the white, straight, Christian nation that everyone from Hungary to Russia to now America is saying is the right way. The othering actually helps them because it says, every problem you have isn't your fault. It's these people's fault. It's these people's fault. And that blame really does help people dehumanize people, because they would rather have a way to pass the blame than take responsibility for things not going right. I mean, I think the question becomes, where do we go from here? I mean, clearly, as Ann said, the bad guys are winning right now. It feels like that we just watched the East Wing of the White House be absolutely demolished. That's against probably every single Congress should have had something to do with that. You know, the Historical Society should have had something to do with that. But I feel like in many ways, that was a response to how well the no Kings protest went. It was like, I'm angry, and I'm gonna show you how much power I have, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. So. So if the bad guys are winning, how do those of us who believe in liberal values and human rights and the rule of law, how do we fight back against people that don't believe in any of those things and really just believe in their own continued wealth and power?
- [44:04]
Michael McFaul
Well, first, I worked three years at the White House for President Obama, and watching his photos of that beautiful building being destroyed without any debate, without any conversation, that just symbolically was just tragic for me. And again, you know, it reminds me of Like Putin building his weird, you know, buildings and stuff that were exposed by, you know, Navalny. What he was most famous for was exposing the corruption inside the Putin regime. So that. That was truly tragic. What can be done? The first thing, I just remind you about what a Ukrainian friend of mine said. He was here at Stanford and somebody asked, well, you know, aren't you tired of fighting? And he quoted that great strategic military theorist, Mike Tyson, and he said, you know what Mike Tyson said when asked that question? He said, yeah, I get tired. And, yeah, I think about sometimes quitting when I'm in the. In fighting. But he says, I know that if I quit fighting, the consequences are going to be worse than continuing to fight. And that's what Ukrainians get up every day, and that's what they face. And they're fighting literally for life and death, literally for the independence of their country. And so I think that's an important message that you just gotta keep in the fight. In various ways. I'm impressed by what Trump has not been able to accomplish. You can look at half full or half empty, but I'm impressed with the resilience. You know, I'm impressed with every day that, you know, what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. And then, you know, people started canceling their Disney. You know, they took action with their money.
- [45:41]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, we played with the money, man. I think there's a lesson there.
- [45:44]
Michael McFaul
Huge, huge. And, you know, my friend Lisa Cook, who's, you know, he tried to remove Lisa, we went. I went to school together with her, and instead of just caving and saying, okay, put your own person on the Fed, she said, no, I'm going to fight this. And I don't know if she's going to win, but she's fighting. And, you know, I think those that have been recently indicted, Letitia James and James Comey fighting and taking it to court, I'm impressed with that. And I want to be clear, like, what we're talking about is not differences in what you think our healthcare should be or the tax rate. That's a normal fight between Democrats and Republicans that should be argued about. I'm not talking about Big D, Democrats and Republicans. We're talking about the rules of the game. We should not be having fights about the rules of the game. We should. All Americans should be on the same side of our democratic institutions. And tragically, we have forces in America who want to change the rules of the game, and we got to fight to preserve them. And. And if we don't fight, if we just say, well, there's nothing I can do. You know, there's, it's all over. Then we lose, then we lose. And I've seen that in other countries. We can't do that. We got to keep fighting.
- [47:00]
Lee McGowan
You know, it's funny, you're talking about the rules of the game. I was listening to someone make an analogy the other day about Monopoly and like, you don't play Monopoly. Like once you, you get to a certain level in Monopoly and like one person is winning, right? Like they have all the hotels on the board and every single time you're like, oh God, you know, you're gonna like, you have no money left and this person has just won everything. And they're usually quite smug about it, like they did something as opposed to they just rolled. But I feel like you can still win the game by pooling your money on the other side of the table, right? By changing the rules of the game. And I think it is really important that you don't just say, well, we're done. That's it. Like, I mean, they won and they have, you know, hotel on Boardwalk and Park Place and I'm always in jail and like on so. Or you can say I'm working with every other person here at this table and we're gonna work together against that person. That seems to be inevitable. And I think the thing is, is that a lot of the work that they're doing is about inevitability. Like, don't bother fighting back, cuz we've got everything. I think that's what part of the White House just knocking it down was to us. It was like a physical. We felt it physically in our body, but I think it was also almost a visual representation of all the institutions they're destroying that we know they're destroying. Oh, they're wrecking the c. See, but we don't see it. We saw what they did to the East Wing, right? I think it's why it's so essential that we don't allow the Republican Party to gerrymander or cheat the Democrats out of winning elections without fighting back, without pooling our money on this side of the monopoly table, right? Because it's essential that democracy have free and fair elections. It feels like we're too dangerously close to becoming a place like Russia if we allow that where they have elections but nothing's ever going to change because of them because they're completely corrupt and the fix is in. We can't allow that. Even if it seems like, well, the Supreme Court's in the bag and they're changing the rules and they're gerrymandering. Here you look at someone like Gavin Newsom and Prop 50 that's coming up and you say we have to vote yes on Prop 50. We have to say we are fighting back, we are fighting fire with fire. And hopefully then we can encourage states like Illinois and states like New York to do the same thing. To say we're not just going to roll over. We're not just going to say you won. That's it. You know, I think it is very essential that we keep fighting back with every opportunity we have.
- [49:07]
Michael McFaul
I think that's right. And I think history is on the side of small D Democrats. I think if you look, we've had these fights before and some of them ended. The most tragic, of course, ended with the civil start of the Civil War. But if you look over the history of America and the world over centuries, not just the last last few years, the trajectory is in the right direction. The arc of the universe bends towards justice. Right. Martin Luther King said that. That was on the carpet of.
- [49:34]
Lee McGowan
I hate that quote. I hate that quote, Michael.
- [49:37]
Michael McFaul
But I'm going to add to it. I'm going to add to it, okay.
- [49:40]
Lee McGowan
Because I'm always like. But that just assumes that it's just going to go in the right way.
- [49:43]
Michael McFaul
If we don't do something. But that's exactly what I was going to add. It doesn't bend unless small D Democrats bend it.
- [49:51]
Lee McGowan
Right.
- [49:51]
Michael McFaul
And in this, you know, in my world, in social science, there's like these structural theories and these agency theories. Right. I'm on the agency side. Without agents there's no democracy. Without agents there's no justice. It is not just going to happen. We have to bend it in that way. But I'm optimistic. I think we have better ideas. We're not as organized right now, to your point. And you know, something that's striking to me that studied democratic movements around the world, not just America. We've never had to, we haven't for a long time had to fight for democratic institutions. So we're divided in our interest groups and our parties. Other places had to overcome that in order to have these breakthroughs. But we're, we're inching towards that. I see it. I would rather be on the side of the Democrats than the autocrats.
- [50:38]
Lee McGowan
Oh, without a doubt. I often say that America and democracy are like a couple in a long term marriage. Like we, you know, you, you just think, oh, they'll always be there. Like, I don't need to pay much attention to it. I feel like America for a long time looked at democracy like that. Like, yes, it's just something we're always gonna have. And then, you know, it got a wandering eye for autocracy. And that's where we are right now when we need to, like, dig back in. Right? We need to, like, put work back into this marriage. Right? Like, we want to be united with democracy again. We have to put work back into the marriage. We have to pay more attention to our institutions, pay more attention to who we elect, pay more attention to when elections come. No, no. Election Turnout should be 13%. It should be 86% every single time. And it wouldn't matter how many times they gerrymandered. You know, we would have more people coming out saying, yeah, I want a higher minimum wage. Yeah, I want to have fair elections. Yeah, I want to have health care. That would actually happen if people really dug back in and engaged in the democratic institutions. Because I think we can safely say the Supreme Court will overturn what's left of the Voting Rights Act. I think we could safely say that Citizens United destroyed so much of what we take for granted with that much money being able to buy our elections. But that doesn't mean that engaged public couldn't turn that around, that we couldn't make a difference and then reverse so many of those things. People have to understand that that can be reversed if you don't give up. Autocracies have been defeated in the past, and we're not even a full autocracy yet. So, like, sand in the gears. Sand in the gears until we can start flipping things and turning things around. And then we need to put leaders in there, my God, that have the courage to make really big protective changes of our institutions.
- [52:12]
Michael McFaul
Well, I couldn't agree more. I think that's the task at hand. I've been given talks about this book around the country, and not just to Harvard and Yale and Stanford, but I was at the University of South Carolina yesterday. I was at UT Arlington the week before. I was at Trinity University in San Antonio. And I am. Every time I go talk about these things, and people say, Americans don't care about democracy, they don't care about the world. They're all sold out. And at the end, the thing that people get most animated about is exactly what we're talking about. The abstract stuff about Chinese manufacturing and the harder things to get. But when we talk about our democracy and values, actually, Americans, I think, care a lot more about. I don't want to generalize about all Americans. And I get the fact that there's a selection bias who comes to my talks in these. These red states. But what gets people most animated is what we're talking about right now. And I think Trump and his team have underestimated how deeply Americans care about the Democratic rules of the game. Small D, Democratic rules of the game, not Big D, Democratic Party or Republican Party. I think people are energized. We kind of. We're asleep at the wheel. We took it for granted, just as you said. We weren't really paying attention. Now we gotta pay attention. And people are. And I'm optimistic that we're gonna be okay.
- [53:38]
Lee McGowan
Oh, I love that. Optimistic that we're gonna be okay. I always say, forget Big D, Democrat, forget Republican. Like, do you want a free America or a captured America? Like, go with one of those two sides, right? Free America. Captured America. Read what you wanna read. Love who you wanna love. Vote who you wanna vote for. Or we'll tell you what you can read and do and say and pick a side. Like that Seems pretty easy. And most of us would choose the free America side. So thank you so much for joining us today. Michael, please tell people how they can buy your book, because we want to support your new book.
- [54:08]
Michael McFaul
You can buy my book anywhere. It's HarperCollins. But on wherever you buy books, it's available. So just Google my name, Autocrats versus Democrats. And you will find many ways to buy my book.
- [54:18]
Lee McGowan
Well, thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope you'll come back again and we can talk about more international issues.
- [54:23]
Michael McFaul
Thanks for having me.
- [54:26]
Lee McGowan
So that was Michael McFaul reminding us that the autocratic world is united while the democratic world is not. And we have to get it together. We can't just ignore what's happening or give up because it's hard. If we do, the consequences will be even worse. We have to unite with those who believe in a free America and a fair world. We must find our allies both at home and abroad to work with them to defeat what we have been told is inevitable. We have to support leaders with the courage of Alexei Navalny and embrace our inner Ukrainians who get up every day with a fuck you, make me mentality. Remember, our country has deeper ties to democracy than any wannabe autocrat has ever dealt with before. Our roots are deep and we need to hold up and support those institutions who can protect us. The governors, the judges, the not for profits, the independent media, so they have the courage and power to fight back on our behalf, I want to thank Michael for joining us today and you for caring enough about democracy to be here. Now go and buy Michael's book, Autocracy vs. Democracy, and Support one of the brilliant people fighting back until next week, PG Ed, before you go, if you're already a premium member of this podcast, thank you. And if you're not, I want to ask you to support my work. We are living through a propaganda nightmare right now, and if the mainstream media's response to all the things that are happening, as Michael says, we require an alternate source of media to support. So if you see worth in what we're doing here, please consider becoming a member of Politics Girl Premium by going to politicsgirl.com and signing up. You will get this podcast ad free, along with my rants sent directly to your inbox. So even if my work is silenced on social media, you will still get access to the truth. There is a link to sign up in the bio of this episode, but also@politicsgirl.com and as always, please like follow and share this podcast so we can grow the audience. Because the more people who have access to real information, the better chance we have. As always, thank you for your time and support. The Politics Girl podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.