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- [00:00]
Susan Glasser
Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?
- [00:04]
Robert Mays
Thank you so much.
- [00:09]
Susan Glasser
Take a breath. You're not alone. Let's talk about what's going on. Counseling helps you sort through the noise with qualified professionals and online therapy makes it convenient. See if it's for you. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy and and let life feel better. Take control of the numbers and supercharge your small business with Xero that's X E R O. With our easy to use accounting software with automation and reporting features, you'll spend less time on manual tasks and more time understanding how your business is doing. 87% of surveyed US customers agree Xero helps improve financial visibility. Search Xero with an x or visit xero.comacast to start your 30 day free trial.
- [00:59]
Charlie Sykes
Condition the ply hey folks, it's Marc Maron from wtf. Today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile offering reliable nationwide coverage backed by a 30 day money back guarantee. Love your service or get your money back, no questions asked. Boost Mobile offers the coverage, network speed and service you're used to, but at more affordable prices. Why pay more if you don't have to? You can get an unlimited plan for $25 a month that will never increase in price and ever. No price hikes, no multi line requirements, no stress. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find them online@boostmobile.com After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited. Welcome to another episode of to the Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Just another day in America. I mean, where do we start? We start with the arraignment of James Comey, the extraordinary performance of Pam Bondi in front of the United States Senate, the October 7th anniversary, the status of the Epstein case, the occupation of various US Cities, the fact the President of the United States calling for jailing the mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois. No, that's not a parody. All of this is actually happening. The suggestion that he might invoke the Insurrection Act. Who better to talk about all of this with than the New Yorker's Susan Glasser, who, like me, has been strapped to the mast and watching this for the last decade. So welcome back, Susan.
- [02:53]
Susan Glasser
Strapped to the mast indeed. Charlie, stop the boat. I want to get off.
- [02:59]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so right before we started, you raised a really interesting question and I guess it's part of what we all wrestle with is Whether some of the things that we're seeing now are whether there are inflection points, whether there are moments that historians are going to look back on and say, okay, that was the turning point, that was the Rubicon, or whether it's just more of the same. Because for 10 years we've been saying, well, that's a turning point, or, you know, that's the thing that's going to change everything. And in fact, it hasn't because it's been this long, slow slide. So just give me your sense of this moment you're in, because things feel. And, you know, I've been talking to people who say, you know, okay, it's been bad for a while. It feels like it's escalating. It feels like we're heading towards something that might be irreversible. What do you think?
- [03:52]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, this is a dark moment and it feels like a dark moment. And there are so many developments. That's part of it. The other part is that it feels like Trump is really finally now translating that incredibly inflammatory rhetoric into a series of actions and structural changes in America that could send us into a different place. You know, is it shocking? Yes. Is it unanticipated? No, of course not. You know, if anything, this series of just heart rending, stomach churning videos and images of this ice raid and that ice raid and this person being dragged out of the car and that over the top arrest, you know, are you really stunned by it? No, of course you're not. Because the interesting thing is I expected that to happen just much earlier in the second Trump presidency, actually, that we would be kind of marinating in and, you know, like trapped in this endless cycle of shock videos. I actually thought that would happen, you know, closer to right away in January and February. And interestingly, I guess it took them a while to get their act together, or there were more kind of easy, not visible targets of opportunity. But remember in the campaign a year ago, Trump promised the largest mass deportations in history. There were talks about camps. And so just to finish, right, like we anticipated this, we also anticipated he said he was going to arrest and prosecute his opponents. This is a man who's been shouting lock them up. Since he first entered politics. Now he's doing it. And so, yes, I feel like this fall of 2025 is when he's doing it.
- [05:49]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, you mentioned the shock videos and you know, as almost a slight digression, because I, right before we started, I was telling you I was watching a video of a Priest in Chicago, and he's talking to some ICE agents. I don't know what he was saying to them. You know, maybe he was calling them to prayer. And they respond by. And he's not doing anything, really. They shoot him in the head with a pepper ball. And it is genuinely shocking. And yet get the feeling that the Trump folks, the Kristi Noems of the Stephen Millers of the world are. They have a completely different reaction. Like, you and I may be shocked and horrified. They're getting off on this. This violence. The fact that you had the attack on that Chicago apartment building, you know, with the Blackhawk helicopters, and they made that. Made for tv, you know, sizzle reel of people breaking down doors. It's almost as if there's a. It's not just they're doing it, but they're doing it with a kind of a glee or a. It's like MAGA porn. And so this tells me that they are enjoying it. They feel no pushback. They are acting with absolute. A sense of absolute impunity. And so it's not gonna end anytime soon. And it feels as if it's going to rapidly escalate and that they intend to have it rapidly escalate.
- [07:11]
Susan Glasser
That is, you know, the kind of, as you said, maga porn version of the politicians. Promises made, promises kept. If you look at some of the MAGA communications on social media or in their many, many, many public appearances designed to appeal. What are you getting? You're getting, he promised this, and now he's delivering this. You know, what are you squealing about? You, you know, sort of liberals, you know, we told you we were going to do this. And of course the revolution will be televised. So, you know, it, in fact, to them and Trump especially, who is a nothing if not a man of visuals, it wouldn't even exist if it weren't being filmed. So there's that element of it. But you're right to go always back to this question of is there anyone or anything who can or will stop it from happening and escalating even further at this point? And that's where I think I have to put the asterisk to this inflection point moment, right? Because really what's happened is that we're having this conversation on the same week that the Supreme Court has opened its new term. This is the term when John Roberts has to stop bobbing and weaving and ducking, and he's gonna tell us whether he's gonna be the handmaiden to Donald Trump or not. And that's the truth. We don't know the real answer. We've seen some very worrisome indications, I would say, but we actually haven't seen the Supreme Court take on directly many of the most disruptive or even system altering decisions that Donald Trump has taken so far. Whether it's announcing that he has the unilateral power to upend the global economy with quote, unquote, retaliatory tariffs on our biggest trading partners, or that he has the power to unilaterally, in a sense, rewrite the Constitution and get rid of its guarantee of birthright citizenship. Those are the kinds of decisions that John Roberts and and his Supreme Court are going to have to finally take on the underlying substance of. So far, they've made kind of emergency rulings, interim rulings, but they haven't gotten to the meat of the Trump agenda. And that's happening now. So we don't know. They actually do have the power, at least on paper, at least in our system, to stop some of these abuses. But I don't know if they're going to do it.
- [09:47]
Charlie Sykes
No. And those decisions will be genuine landmarks. I mean, those will be the historical inflection points. And we'll look back on that as well. I think that we're already looking back on the immunity decision as something that has completely changed the environment in American politics. Because here you do have a president who feels that he is above the law and he's surrounded by people who are acting as if they are also above the law. And so this is, and you know, I've said this before, one of the great ironies, of course, is the conservatives have long described themselves as originalists. And I think the original intention of the Constitution was to prevent anyone from becoming a king. Right. From anyone being above the law. From anyone. Yes. From I mean, the whole point was to be a nation of laws, not the nation of men. And we're seeing that. So if you want to go a little bit more meta, part of the disorientation is, of course, the speed with which it's happening, Donald Trump doing what he is doing with impunity. And I guess the question is, let me put it this way to you, is the big both these things are shocking, what Donald Trump is doing to America. But also the question is, what is America going to allow Donald Trump to do? And I think that you set aside Donald Trump and the question is, who are we as a country? Who are Americans? And I think that there's a school of thought out there that is actually Losing faith in the American people and in the American system. Because if, if we were who we thought we were, this wouldn't be happening. And so I'm kind of trying to cling because I, there is a real, there's some tension between, and feel free to disagree with me at any point here. There's a real tension between what I think is, is still the fundamental decency of Americans. You know, the deep belief in some of these values like free speech and due process and the fact that Donald Trump is, you know, riding roughshod over all of that. If the American, I guess I'm putting it this way, if the American people accept, you know, what's happening right now, then to a certain extent, then the American experiment is over. And I think that's what really is the most terrifying thing. Not what Donald Trump is doing, but what America might allow Donald Trump to do.
- [12:14]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, of course, it's, it's the non maga majority in the country whose morals and political beliefs and values are being tested in a core way. We understand what this MAGA minority wants to do. And I think your point is well taken. What's still a question mark is what the non maga majority is gonna do about it. And I just was traveling overseas in Australia where as you might imag, there's a lot of distress about the turn inside the United States and what it means for the world order that the US wants guaranteed. Australia is one of many western oriented countries that bet its entire geopolitical security on the United States and they are in a very fraught region of the world with China literally circling their waters. And you know, you have a shaken faith in the United States so far overseas. I think many Americans don't realize that. But I was on, you know, one of their premier kind of international radio shows, kind of the Fareed Zakaria type show of Australia. And I was really struck by the host's reaction when I said, well, you know, Donald Trump is a very unpopular president historically. In fact, he's the most unpopular president since we've had polling, except for Donald Trump in his first term. And you know, this is a minority of Americans. It's a minoritarian movement that's accrued enormous, in some ways unprecedented powers to itself given that it's not supported by a majority of the people. And she was kind of shocked and she said, what you mean it's not all Americans? It's not a majority of Americans who are in favor of this. And I just thought, wow, that is so telling. Right? Because in some ways she's kind of right, you know, in the sense that if a majority of America goes along with this and lets it happen, even if they don't consider themselves to be subscribers to this ideology, to this style of politics, and, you know, none of it would be happening if there hadn't been the hollowing out of our institutions, the erosion of faith in other centers of power, the extreme polarization that have been gathering force for a variety of reasons over the last few decades. So, you know, this is an American tragedy and not just some kind of external Donald Trump imposed tragedy that's occurring right now. And, you know, people have to ask themselves, right, look in the mirror and say, well, do I have anything to do with that, you know, priest who's shot in the head with a pepper ball in Chicago? Do I have anything to do with Portland, Oregon? You know, and many, many individuals are stepping up. You know, I at times am able to take comfort from words of a Trump appointed federal judge in Oregon who says we have constitutional law in America, not martial law. That's the opinion that she wrote over the weekend that may well, by the way, be overruled or stayed soon by the Supreme Court.
- [15:36]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and this was the same judge who said that, you know, that Trump's justifications were untethered from the facts or untethered from reality, which is kind of the theme of many things that are going on here. So let's talk about some of the specifics because it's hard to get away from them. So you and I are speaking on the day when the former FBI director James Comey is arraigned. Now, you know, if you wanted to have peak, you know, peak Trumpian revenge, it would be that moment when James Comey is perp walked in on these charges, which, you know, quite frankly, the more I read about them, I am not a lawyer, but the more I read about them, the shakier they are. But, but what is distinctive about this, of course, is that, you know, Comey is criminally charged and arraigned on the orders of Donald Trump. He made it very, very clear he fired the acting U.S. attorney from that district, installed one of his loyalists who pushed through this. So give me your sense of that, because this feels as if, you know, people are going, okay, now that's an inflection point. And yet it feels like this is just the beginning, this is just the down payment that they intend to walk through. The entire list of people who have challenged, whether it's Letitia James or whether it's Jack Smith, I mean, we can go through he's, I mean, I, I think it was naive to think that he is not going to order the, the criminal prosecution and the arrest of each and every one of them. Do you agree?
- [17:01]
Susan Glasser
Look, Charlie, he told us so. He told us.
- [17:04]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [17:05]
Susan Glasser
And, you know, it's kind of for, for me, there is this slow motion car crash element of it in the sense of having anticipated this event that's now finally occurring. It doesn't make it any the less, you know, scary when it does happen. And, you know, like those pictures that are constantly bombarding us now of the ICE arrest, which is something, again, my only, my mistake was thinking it would happen earlier, you know, that we would become obsessed with these images and they would happen all the time. Right. You know, I remember when he appointed Kash Patel as head of the FBI and Pamela Bondi as head of the Justice Department. And for months there's this sort of, right, this, it's like, you know, the phony war period, you know, saying like, well, why has he accrued all of this power and eliminated all of the barriers to full control and full weaponization of the Justice Department and the law enforcement system? You know, he's going to use it. And so when there was a period of time, I'm sure you had the same response when over the spring and summer, people would say, what's next? What's gonna happen next? And, you know, was fair to say at the time, it's very likely that Donald Trump, having acquired all this power for revenge and retribution, is at some point going to act upon it because he has a four year term and he's only a few months into it and he's already more or less knocked away remaining constraints and barriers to action. So now with the indictment of Comey and other investigations that are already underway and have been announced by the White House and the Justice Department, we see them beginning to act on the threats and doing the things that he told us he was going to do for many, many years.
- [19:04]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, you made an historical reference that is really, I think, very, very apartment And I'm hoping that most of our listeners picked up on it. But in case they didn't use the phrase the phony war just to remind people what that is, that World War II began in September 1939. I mean, people will say it began earlier than that. You know, so Britain and France declare war against Germany and nothing happened for a very long time. You know, the, you know, the war was taking place in the east in Poland. But from September until the spring of, of 1940, not much was happening. I mean, they were sitting behind the Maginot line and people called it the phony war. And of course, the phony war ended with the extraordinary Nazi blitzkrieg which swept through the lowland countries, swept into France, drove England, you know, out through, through Dunkirk. So yeah, there is that pause that can cause some people to think, like, hey, this isn't going to be the big thing that we thought it was going to be. And then boom, it actually hits you. So in the context of all of this, Pam Bondi's appearance before the U.S. senate, I really tried not to wallow in this because we now know what these performances are. I mean, we know what Donald Trump, the audience of one, expects. He wants people to come in there, be as belligerent, as insulting, as disrespectful as possible. But it is still one of those, Take a deep breath. This is the Attorney General of the United States sitting there performing in a way in which, and she knows that this is her job to show as much contempt for, for the United States Senate, for the senators who are talking to her, refusing to answer questions. There is no historical parallel in terms of the relationship between the Department of Justice and the Congress of the United States. I mean, people do need to recognize that you have the show, but it's also a moment that was inconceivable in our own lifetime. What do you think?
- [21:12]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, inconceivable in our own lifetime. It's a good sort of epitaph for the moment, writ large. Right. I mean, it's the age of the unthinkable become real. And this is one data point along the way to that. I did watch actually a fair amount or listen to a fair amount of the Attorney General yesterday. If you're looking to increase your blood pressure quickly, that's a way to do it. You know, it was, and you're right that it wasn't even the content of her non answers as much as it was the tone and the style and the decision to be so extraordinary, hostile and combative that really seeped through, you know, basic factual questions, you know, became occasions for just, you know, absolute kind of Trumpian rants. And actually Trump himself wouldn't have behaved that way were he ever subject to questioning. He wouldn't be, but, you know, wants his minions to. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, what's painful, Charlie, is that people are still buying into the idea that it's some kind of normal oscillation in our system. And well, you know, we've Gone, you know, and, you know, just the other day I was on a show and someone said, well, not a kind of pro Trump show, of course, but the anchor said, well, I mean, isn't this just. Isn't Trump maybe winning the narrative? And, you know, isn't it really a sort of, you know, and I just thought, like, are you kidding me? You know, there's underlying facts here. And the problem is we're now speaking to completely different worlds. And again, not a new phenomenon, but Attorney General Pam Bondi, she's already, in a short amount of time, eclipsed, I think, any of the most partisan figures of our past. And, you know, not even close.
- [23:30]
Charlie Sykes
I don't think John Mitchell there's.
- [23:32]
Susan Glasser
And John Mitchell was a partisan actor, right? He literally was absolutely Richard Nixon's election chief and also the head of the Department of Justice. And that's the reason why we had these post Watergate reforms. And in particular, trying to insulate the Justice Department from the kind of partisan political hackery that John Mitchell represented. And yet I find someone like Bondi to be kind of more threatening because she is not an actor in our system, in our own right. You know, she has no stature or standing outside of, you know, Trump, who is her purely her host organism. And that's so true with so many of these other officials. And I think it's what makes them uniquely dangerous, is that it is not a government of people who have stature in their own right, but simply people who owe their entire careers in the public sphere, certainly in the national sphere, to Donald Trump.
- [24:32]
Charlie Sykes
And that's what Donald Trump set out to do, right? This time he set out to surround himself with people who owed everything to him. In the past, there were people who had life achievements or they had independent bases. We now surrounded himself with people who are nothing if they are not attached to the host organism. And the thing about people like Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem is you also know, these are people who, if they get a phone call from Stephen Miller telling them to do something, they're going to do it. And so you know that they're not really the independent actors. So let's talk a little bit about something that happened with the Bondi hearing. She was asked by members of both parties about the Jeffrey Epstein files. And of course, she. She dodged. She refused to answer. She answered with invective. But give me your. This, this Epstein file thing continues to intrigue me, actually, believe it or not, more all the time, because of the links to which they are going to prevent the release and the vote, when you have the speaker of the House of Representatives refusing to swear in a duly elected member of Congress because she will be the 218th signature on the discharge petition that will force a vote, you go, okay, that's. You are spending an awful lot of political capital on all of this. So, you know, where are we at on the Epstein story? Because again, we're in October, and that story, unlike almost every other story of our era, just will not go away, will it?
- [26:05]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, no, I'm actually glad you put it in that way because I think for me, you know, of course we'd want to just be done with this horrible story. And, you know, it's amazing that it's still shadowing our politics. And yet you're right that it's clearly telling us something about Republicans that we need to figure out what it is that it's telling us. Is it telling us that Speaker Mike Johnson is just so completely beholden to Donald Trump, he has such a small majority that basically he serves at the mercy of Donald Trump. So he has to do anything, including stake his speakership on a demand that Trump makes. Is it telling us that it, you know, really is a massive cover up and they're so afraid of what's in there? Is it telling us, you know, like, there, there's a variety of explanations for what this is, but it really is a unique moment. I started out covering Congress when I first came to Washington after I graduated from College in the 1990s. And I cannot remember a time. It's, it's, it's really kind of, you know, Mickey Mouse stuff you wouldn't find in the United States in any previous incarnation that, that Congress is not being kept in session when, and in fact, during a government shutdown that they're supposed to be. It's their job to figure it out because the President is worried that enough of his own Republicans will join with Democrats and force the release of these records about his ties to a year's dead alleged sexual offender. I mean, my God. Right? You know, this is crazy stuff. And yet it's very telling about the moment. It is also, Charlie, telling about the fissures that do exist inside the Republican Party and even at times inside Magaland right now. And I do think, you know, we're talking about Trump demanding these unlimited powers, taking these executive authorities to an extreme of, you know, ordering the military into the streets of our cities and, you know, not having any constraints. So I want to, you know, also mention the other side of it, which is that There are signs of fissures inside the Republicans right now. There are prosecutors who have quit rather than carry out the orders to indict James Comey. And while he found someone new to do it, there's just a report today that even inside the Eastern District of Virginia, they couldn't get rank and file prosecutors who are willing to go to court. They had to bring in people from North Carolina. You know, there's, there, there is that form of objection. There are a Republican co leader of this effort to get the discharge position petition in the US House going. There are public voices who question Trump's tariffs, who question his policies, who question what he and RFK Jr are doing to American public health. So, you know, the problem is, is that they're, they're small, feckless, and tend to back down when faced with, with pushback from Donald Trump. Exactly. But, but, but I do want to note that because these are actually genuine divides in many cases inside the Republican Party.
- [29:23]
Charlie Sykes
So we are in the midst of a government shutdown. The House is not in town. How does this end? Now, you've followed this for years. I see this as a very elaborate, high stakes game of political chicken. Normally in the game of political chicken, somebody will veer, somebody will move off. I'm having a hard time imagining what the exit strategy for either party is right now. I mean, so they may make a deal on health care. Are the Democrats going to reopen the government, refund the government if they get subsidies on Obamacare, Are they going to be able to sell that to their base? How long does this go on, do you think?
- [30:06]
Susan Glasser
Well, first of all, isn't it a marker of this sort of insane moment that we're only getting to the shutdown of the federal government of the United States 28 minutes into our conversation? And I think that, you know, a sort of telling reflection of how much other genuinely worrisome, disruptive stuff is happening. So that's just observation number one. Observation number two, the incentive structure for both parties to make a deal or even to have meaningful talk seems to have evaporated at this very, very contentious moment in our politics. Right. These people, they're not, as far as we can tell, having serious talks. They didn't even have serious talks of any kind, as far as I can tell, before they shut the government down, they just did it. You know, essentially these things now, these bad, disruptive, dysfunctional things now just take on their own internal logic. The incentives for these feuding parties to talk to each other, especially with a leader like Trump are just gone. So that's number one as far as the shutdown itself goes. And I just a. I don't see them talking now, even though we're a week in to this process, Trump and the Republicans on the Hill to our earlier conversation about fissures that exist, they're not on the same page. And that's kind of interesting to me as well. You know, you have these senators and some of the House members who, you know, essentially, you know, you can tell they wouldn't be this kind of maga, blow up the world types left to their own devices. They wanted. Many of the Republicans on the Hill seem to want to play this out as a kind of classic shutdown fight. And they were convinced they had the upper hand by the logic of previous government shutdown, since it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who were the ones who by their logic, insisted on this one to make their point about health care. And so, you know, Republicans went into it thinking they had kind of a, you know, strong hand, but that was by the logic of the non Trump world. I think that was by the logic of Capitol Hill. And the truth is Capitol Hill is kind of an insular place in a way, and they have their own rules and their own games and, you know, their own sense of messaging. Donald Trump doesn't really care what the Republican strategy is and nor the Democratic strategy. And he's like, this is an opportunity for me. And I think that was clear to me a few days ago when he started saying, essentially, yeah, my strategy is to tell Democrats that I will execute even more of the federal workers and fire them outright if you keep going with this. And so it was a sort of stop me before I cut again strategy. That was not what the Republicans on the Hill wanted him to say. In fact, it appeared to then make Trump culpable. You know, so now Trump is partially the owner of this shutdown. That's not what Republicans wanted. Who they wanted to pin it all on the Democrats.
- [33:26]
Charlie Sykes
You know, you said something a little bit earlier that kind of brings us back to where we're at right now now is, you know, this impulse to treat everything as if it's somehow within some normal parameter and we apply normal standards, the normal rules of punditry. Who's winning, who's losing, who has the right narrative? Is it like, hello, guys, you understand that we are in extraordinary times. My concern, of course, is that people like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are still treating this as if it's kind of conventional politics. Let's make a deal on healthcare subsidies and we will go back.
- [34:02]
Susan Glasser
We.
- [34:03]
Charlie Sykes
When, in fact, we are no longer dealing with conventional, you know, conventional politics. Actually, I saw an older tweet, and somebody says, if you're playing chess with somebody and they stand up and they punch you in the face, you know, the answer is not to get better at chess. You know, I mean, it's just like you're not. You people are not playing the same game. You know what I'm saying? It's a. And I am frustrated as well by this sort of the horse race punditry that we get the who's winning, who's losing, what's the strategy? It's like, folks, you know, can we find a way to meet the moment? Okay, so let me ask you a completely different question, okay? And feel free to not answer it honestly, because I get asked this question all the time. And I'm specific. I'm especially interested in your answer. You. Everybody knows you, the New Yorker, you write about this all the time. You're married to Peter Baker, one of the most prominent White House reporters in the entire country. So how do you guys cope with this? I mean, how are you. I mean, really, how do you get through this? You know, at night, do you. Are you able to turn it off? Are you able to check it out? Are you watching things? Are you reading things? Are you drinking things, smoking things that are getting to you through this process? You don't have to answer the last two.
- [35:27]
Susan Glasser
You know, you're making me stressed out just thinking about this, Charlie. But I appreciate that because we're all experiencing this, right? And it's very.
- [35:34]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, we are.
- [35:36]
Susan Glasser
It's a really even, I think, compared with the Trump first term, this has been the amount of stress that one can take in at any given moment. You turn away and look back for a minute and it's like, oh, no, I didn't see the video of the ice people shooting the priest in the head. Right. Okay, here's the answer. You're going to laugh because it's totally dorky. But Peter and I are working on a new book. And so I can't make any reasonable claim to say that this is an upbeat book. The subject is Vladimir Putin and the five American presidents, from Bill Clinton through to Donald Trump, who have struggled and in many ways failed to take the measure of what's happened to Russia. You know, that we went. This is a kind of a full circle book for Peter and I. We started Our married life 25 years ago in Moscow as correspondent for the Washington Post there, it turned out to be Putin's first few years in power. That certainly shaped some of my reactions to the Trump era in the sense of seeing what happens in a capital city undergoing a rollback of democracy in some ways. But, you know, for us, it's not really a Moscow book, this book, it's a Washington book. It's a book about, you know, the US and its own fairy tales, in a way, about foreign policy over the last quarter century. So, you know, it's a really fascinating book. We're really trying to do a ton of reporting. I think we've done more than 250 interviews for it. You know, is it escapism to write about, you know, Bill Clinton and Strobe Talbot and, you know, what did they think of Vladimir Putin when they first met him? You know, it's not upbeat, but it is a form of escapism. And then also, we're watching a lot of Netflix.
- [37:39]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so that's where I was going to go. I mean, I do. And I know exactly what you're talking about here. So I try to. At night, after a certain point, I'm going to binge watch a series or something on a variety of different things. Netflix, Apple T, all of that stuff. I try to read a lot of history to try to give myself some perspective. But ultimately, the only way, and this is why I understand what you're telling me here, the only way to really get through it is the work itself, is to engage. That the work is. The therapy is like, how do you do it? You have to, in fact, keep your mind engaged to be able to do this. You know, people ask me, you know, why do I do what I, you know, doing the newsletters and things like this is because this is how you get through this. You don't get through by trying to just pure. The escapism is important, but I think it is the engagement. And this is one of those moments where it is the work. And for people who are writers, you know, how does a writer get through a period like this? They write, they think, they do the research, they engage. And so it's the engagement that is the therapy.
- [38:47]
Susan Glasser
You know, you're making me feel better about the fact that I have to spend, you know, the next couple days doing what I do every week, which is writing my. My column for the New Yorker. It is. Sometimes I compare it to, you know, watching the, you know, the solar eclipse without the glasses on.
- [39:04]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [39:05]
Susan Glasser
But you're right that it is a form of what I think it is. Is a form of giving oneself back. Agency, Right? For a writer, at least, it is agency to be able to write in a moment like this and to work through it. And I remember, in fact, the origins of this column for the New Yorker back in 2018, during Trump's first term, also a very destabilizing period of time. You know, a president like no other. We're waking up every morning to a series of early morning tweets. And, you know, that was, for me, there were two kind of impetuses for doing the calm. One was just that so much was happening that people tended to forget by Thursday and Friday all the crazy stuff that had happened, you know, on a Monday and a Tuesday, and trying to give us through lines and a way to navigate the kind of news meltdown aspect of the early Trump era. But then the other one was what you're talking about right now, and it's become more important over time, and that is to restore a sense of agency. And I'm going to grapple with this and not just have it as one undifferentiated ball of anxiety around politics and what's happening to the country. I'll end with this. My friend Constanze Stelzenmuller, who is a wonderful, wonderful German national security foreign policy expert. She lives here in Washington with us. And at some point in Trump 1.0, I asked her for a year end column. I said, listen, there must be some German word for the fact that, you know, Donald Trump hangs over our every waking moment. And even when you're watching Netflix or working on your, you know, history book, you know, it's always there. And so she. She thought about it. She came back with a word that I think really kind of captures the moment we're still in. She's the word she get. I don't speak German, but it was Trump Regnerum, schlamassel, schmerz. And she told me, thank God you could shorten it to Trump Schmerz. And basically the translation, as I understand it, essentially is that kind of worry about Trump running the country, the government, right? So Trump smirzes Trump worry. And, you know, we're in a constant low grade or high grade, as the case may be. State of Trump smirt all these years later.
- [41:32]
Charlie Sykes
Well, we're going to end with that because you have a column to write and I have a newsletter to write, because these are our times, and what else are we going to do, right? This is why we do what we do. And I am so grateful that you spent the time with me this morning. Susan Glaser thank you so much.
- [41:51]
Susan Glasser
Thank you, Charlie. I'm going to go do my therapy, as you put it.
- [41:56]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Well, I think we've explained why we do this, but we all we also do this because we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you. The longer you stay alive, the longer you can enjoy Boost Mobile's unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. So here are some tips. Do not parallel park on a cliff if you want to enjoy an unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. Do not mistake a wasp nest for a pinata if you want to enjoy an unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. Do not microwave a hard boiled egg if you want to enjoy an unlimited plan with the price that never goes up. Stay alive and Enjoy Unlimited Wireless for 25amonth forever with Boost Mobile. After 30 gigs, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay 25amonth as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows home so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte, paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today.
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