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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. My apologies in advance. I usually like to start off the week on a lighter note, but that's. That's kind of impossible this week. You can always tell that I'm in a certain mood when in my newsletter I start quoting Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach. That you can tell it's going to be a little bit dark. But the reality is that normally we get caught up in the flotsam and jetsam of the news cycle, you know, just trying to keep up with the flood of it. And then we have weeks like last week, where you have to step back and recognize that history has changed. I mean, there's a bogus quote from Lenin. I didn't realize it was a bogus quote. But there are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. Now, Lenin may not have said it, but I think it's appropriate because I think that what happened last week was feeling the tectonic plates of history shifting. And who better to talk about this than Susan Glasser? Susan Glasser. But by the way, first of all, welcome to the podcast, Susan. I appreciate it very much.
- [01:11]
Susan Glasser
Oh, Charlie, it's great to be with you. These are challenging times, so it's best to sort it through together.
- [01:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, and we have to sort it through together. I mean, Susan is a staff writer at the New Yorker, writes a fantastic weekly column on life in Washington, so host of the Political Scene podcast and was the co author, with her husband, Peter Baker, of the book the Divider Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. You know, we're gonna look back on that as kind of the kinder, gentler era of the Trump, of the Trump presidencies. But, Susan, let's talk about this, because I think part of it is getting our heads around the consequences of what's happening. Everything is happening so, so, so fast. I was looking at your column from last week, and you talk about what happened a week ago Friday. Last Friday night, minutes after President Donald Trump announced the firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a purge of the military's top lawyers, I received an email from my cousin in Los Angeles. Why are we not on the streets? She wrote. And then you go through all the things that had happened that week, and that was before the week they followed, and what happened on Friday. So let's. Let's just start with this. What happened in the Oval Office on Friday?
- [02:28]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, here we are speaking on Monday midday, and it, you know, it feels like that was a kind of a before and after moment, a crossing of the Rubicon, if you will. And you know, in many ways we've been building up to that moment of public rupture between Trump and Zelensky. You know, we've been talking about, I've been writing my column actually for the previous several weeks about the very pronounced shift in American foreign policy that Trump was undertaking. And, you know, so for me the signs were clear and the message from Trump had already been received that, you know, the United States was no longer going to be allies and partners with Ukraine, but in fact was actually openly switching sides in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I think as we digest this sort of catastrophic impact of that confrontation in the Oval Office, though, it's clear that it's a pivot that's not just away from actively supporting Ukraine in the conflict, but it's almost, it's this geopolitical shift in orientation for the United States of America. And we can talk about that. But to your specific question, what happened in the Oval Office on Friday? I think Donald Trump and J.D. vance, you know, had this, you know, already much dissected confrontation with Vladimir Zelensky in which they were supposed to be having Zelensky there to talk about signing this deal that would enable the US And Ukraine to work together developing Ukraine's natural resources. Some of Trump's advisors were promoting this as a way to actually give Trump some skin in the game of supporting Ukraine in the longer term. And you know, it looked to me like, like J.D. vance sort of successfully goaded the boss into to blowing all that up. He played upon Trump's years long personal animus towards Zelensky. They tag teamed him, they got Zelensky in a place where he was pushing back, which has now been interpreted by MAGA world as, you know, how dare he. Levels of insubordination from essentially a vassal.
- [04:49]
Charlie Sykes
Even from, even from some mainstream media. They're saying, well, he misplayed his hand because didn't he understand that he was supposed to go in and grovel on all fours? What's wrong with Zelensky? It's like the first time we see someone stand up to the bullying. It's interesting how there is a stream of a strain of conventional wisdom that somehow that was wrong for Volodymyr Zelensky to defend his country and to correct the President.
- [05:21]
Susan Glasser
That's correct. What you've seen is quite remarkable. And again, it shows how Trump and those around him have become very successful over these last eight years and six weeks and I really insist upon that. People keep saying, oh my God, it's six crazy weeks. It's eight years and six crazy weeks of the Trump era. And, you know, they've been very successful over time at defining the contours of almost any debate. So even Trump's critics often tend to adopt his framing. And I think, Charlie, that that's some of what we're seeing. You know, Trump's critics and independent minded people somehow adopting Trump's frame that let's beat up on Zelenskyy, let's say that it's his fault for this confrontation. And I think, first of all, in a narrow sense, I have looked at that, the, the specific fight in the Oval Office, I've looked at the broader 40 minutes in which it played out. I've looked at the transcript and, you know, unless you define Donald Trump as essentially, you know, kind of a king and, you know, define any disagreement with him as insubordination or fighting or rudeness, other than that, it's very hard to support the interpretation. If you, if you notice, what Zelensky does is he defends the interests of his country in a polite way. Donald Trump and J.D. vance attack him in personal terms. You never see, you never see Zelensky saying anything personal to them except he says, well, you should come visit my country. Is that a personal insult?
- [07:06]
Charlie Sykes
You know, they, they, they were thin skinned enough to take it that way.
- [07:09]
Susan Glasser
Right, Exactly. Now you could, I think, question Zelensky and, and many have, including many of his supporters, on a sort of tactical level, you can say, okay, fine, fine. Clearly, you know, Trump is a bad guy here. But look, Zelensky knows this and he should have just, you know, bowed and scraped and said, thank you, Mr. President, and gotten the hell out of there with meaningless piece of paper. And by the way, I talked with many people before the meeting, including senior European officials, who believed that it was essentially a meaningless piece of paper, the rare earth minerals deal between the United States and Ukraine. And so of course, Zelensky should have just signed it, gotten out of town and regrouped with his actual partners who are not in the Oval Office. Yeah, so again, it's hard to know. I mean, certainly that might have been a wiser course of action. But I will say this, Farley, Donald Trump had made it clear in the previous, any number of weeks and years, frankly, where he was taking American foreign policy. And so in a way, it exposed what was going to happen one way or the other. And I actually do, I believe that very much so.
- [08:32]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's go. There are a couple of interesting questions about this. And as you point out, we have switched sides in the conflict. We had done that earlier in the week. You know, time moves so quickly, we forget the UN Vote was a real inflection point where we sided with Russia in the United nations on this particular issue. And that was breathtaking in and of itself. But then, of course, you came to this meeting on Friday, which was supposed to be what Vladimir Zelensky was supposed to come in, kiss the ring, sign that deal. The latest shakedown. It's not the first time that Donald Trump has tried to extort Ukraine, but was it an ambush? Because there was a couple of things that felt wrong. It was supposed to be a photo spray and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, which can last like 30 seconds to a minute or so, and then the press is ushered out and then you, you know, you have a private conversation. This thing went on for 40 minutes. So that was unusual in and of itself. Also, it's extremely unusual for the vice President to insert himself into a conversation between two presidents. And you were mentioning the transcript and I, I've gone over the same sort of thing. And it was going on until J.D. vance basically like felt like pulled the pin and as you point out, goaded Trump into it. So in one interpretation is that everything just went off the rails because people lost their temper. The other interpretation is what was this whole thing about? Were they setting Zelensky up? Was the goal to humiliate him and. Well, was the goal to humiliate him? Or was this something that nobody really wanted, that everybody wanted that deal signed and everybody was going to go away and then something went wrong because J.D. vance is, you know, the bearded homunculus who doesn't know how to behave around grown ups. What, what do you think?
- [10:21]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, look, look at the aggressive and I mean aggressive spin emanating from the White House all weekend long after the confrontation through friendly journalists who they've essentially gotten to amplify the idea that, you know, no, we were shocked, shocked at Zelensky's rudeness and we were, you know, planning this really nice thing, you know, so that's a data point. You know, I would say, beware aggressive spin emanating from the Trump White House, number one, but you know, that that's their line and they've been pushing it very aggressively and, and with success among journalists. Number two, you have the actual transcript. And you know, what that suggests is it went on for a long time there wasn't anything in particular that was different, except for J.D. vance's interjection. And I had the sense, well, Vance understood that this public televised event was going to come to an end soon. And it was almost like, oh, wait, I need to get my point in before the press leaves the room. So to me, that is one very legitimate possible interpretation. The other thing I would suggest is that while it had the effect clearly of undercutting Zelensky and giving Vance and Trump ammunition that they then used essentially to make the rift with Ukraine more permanent and visible, it also might have had the effect of boxing Trump in. You know, remember that J.D. vance has been probably the most public and visible leader of what you might call the anti Ukraine, pro Putin caucus in the Republican Party, predating his time on the Republican ticket with Trump. So going back to, you know, his early tenure as a senator and as a politician, JD Vance openly campaigned for the Senate, saying, I don't care about Ukraine, I don't want to do anything for Ukraine. He was against all of the military assistance for Ukraine and has been even more publicly critical, arguably of Zelensky and Ukraine than Donald Trump has been. And Trump himself has also been very critical of Ukraine and calling Trump's invasion of Ukraine strategic genius. And so you said you started out the week thinking of Matthew Arnold. Well, I started out the morning, you know, thinking about George Orwell because now, you know, right before we got on this podcast, you had Donald Trump, you know, putting out more social media hate, really hate toward Zelensky and making it clear that it wasn't a one off aberration or a fit of temperature on Friday, but a new foreign policy direction for the country. And you know, frankly, the reason I'm thinking about Orwell is because the United States seems to be backing the war candidate and calling him the man of peace. You know, if you say for peace, then you're not for the guy who started the war. That is an Orwellian inversion of fact and history. And we don't know where that's going to lead us, but it's never going to be taking us to a good place when the leader of the United States of America calls war peace and calls lies truth.
- [14:07]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I repeat this phrase too often. But once again, as you pointed out, Donald Trump has been signaling his affinity for Vladimir Putin for a very, very long time. We talked about this during the campaign, that a Trump election might mean the betrayal of Ukraine, but it is still shocking to watch it, to watch it play out in real time. And we need to move on from this. But you mentioned earlier that what happened on Friday was incredibly revealing. And I thought one of the extraordinary moments was when Trump went off talking about his affinity for Vladimir Putin. I mean, there he is humiliating and insulting Volodymyr Zelensky and explaining that he could never say anything negative about Putin because how do you negotiate with somebody if you don't say nice things about him? Whatever. Speaking of Orwellian. But this, this little section here where he goes, let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they use him in Russia, Russia, Russia. You ever hear that deal? That was a phony. That was a phony. Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam, Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff. It was a Democrat scam. And he had to go that. And he did go through that, which is an amazing thing because first of all, it's like he and I together and we're victims. Vladimir Putin is the victim here. And you know, I'm listening to that, reading that transcript and going, so, you know, it is now an article of faith in the right in the Republican Party that Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax. But after Friday, don't you think that Russia, Russia, Russia was a real deal and now we are seeing the disastrous, tragic endgame of it.
- [15:50]
Susan Glasser
Look, Charlie, first of all, we have to say and reinforce it because it's been wildly successful as a point of propaganda for Trump. So let's just re level set and say that it is the conclusion of all of America's intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election on behalf of Donald Trump. It is well documented. It is extensively concluded. Much of the evidence is made public not only in the Mueller report, but also in the bipartisan U.S. senate Intelligence Committee report that came out at the end of Donald Trump's first term in office.
- [16:34]
Charlie Sykes
Again, didn't Marco Rubio sign off on that?
- [16:36]
Susan Glasser
He did. He did. Senator Marco Rubio being a very different character in our public life than Secretary Marco Rubio. But, you know, read the Senate Intelligence Committee report. My guess is that most people haven't, haven't even read the top line findings from it. Russia intervened in our election. The great shocking event in 2018 at the infamous Helsinki press conference following the Trump Putin summit was when Donald Trump took the word of Putin over that of his own intelligence agencies. And by the way, I think it's a marker of our own, you know, sort of political transition and especially the degradation of the Republican Party that there actually was A pretty big furor, even among many Republican elected officials and even members of Trump's own administration after the Helsinki press conference. Well, here we are, flash forward, not even six years later. I guess that's right. Well, the summer of 2018, you know, seven, six and a half years later. And basically it's a deafening sound of silence after this event in the Oval Office between Zelensky and Trump. And by the way, what happened and is happening right now is much more significant for American.
- [18:02]
Charlie Sykes
Much more.
- [18:03]
Susan Glasser
You know, that was a press conference where Trump, shocked by revealing what he, you know, clearly already privately thought, which is that he'd rather take Putin's word than the Intelligence Committee. But there were no actions, really, that were accompanied by that. And the things that he discussed privately with Putin, he doesn't seem to have followed through on at that time. Whereas right now, Donald Trump is taking a series of very concrete and destabilizing actions to change America's alliance structure, to withdraw its support from Ukraine, and to become an active supporter of Russia and its revisionist geopolitical vision on the world stage. So this is much more disruptive, and we've heard much, much less, basically almost nothing from any Republican officials. It's really a moment that should be marked, you know, in our collective frog boiling. You know, the frog is pretty much done and boiled.
- [19:02]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, yeah, no, except for those pictures where you could see, you know, what's left of Marco Rubio's soul leaving his body as he's scrunched down in the couch. Okay. Because we live in the. In the dumbest possible timeline, I do have to mention this, that there was some commentary that that Zelenskyy showing up not wearing a suit was. Was. Was one of the flashpoints that it annoyed. That annoyed Trump. I mean, the first thing he said to him was, you know, you're all dressed up, or something like that. I guess I have to mention this because this is the way Zelenskyy always dresses as a wartime leader. This is basically the way Winston Churchill dressed when he met with FDR in the middle of World War II. But also, this was within days of Elon Musk showing up at the Cabinet meeting, you know, wearing a T shirt and a MAGA hat. And nobody ever says to Elon Musk, you know, nice get up there. So I'm sorry, I didn't want to dwell on the clothes. So let's just talk about Europe. Among the extraordinary scenes was watching the new leaders of the free world gather in London to fill the gap created by America's abdication of this. And of course, then the question becomes, how is Europe going to react? Is Europe going to now step up and is this one of those, again, dramatic turning points in history where Europe realizes, okay, we're alone, we can no longer trust or rely on the United States or even treat the United States as an ally? What happens in Europe now?
- [20:34]
Susan Glasser
Well, first of all, to your point about Elon Musk and Zelensky, you know, I would say Saturday Night Live pretty effectively debunked that as an on the level criticism from Trump. It's not on the level. That's the truth. And actually, the thing about the outfit is the tell. That's how, you know, it's, it's, it's on some level. And that it's, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that on this podcast.
- [20:56]
Charlie Sykes
You are.
- [20:58]
Susan Glasser
You know, it's just, it's, it's, it's not an, it's not honest, you know, the critique of, yeah, what a surprise, Europe, its bluff is being called. And for many years, presidents of both parties here in the US Going back to Barack Obama have pushed Europe to spend more on its own defense and to take more responsibility for its collective security. That has been a bone of contention as the threat from Russia has perceptively escalated. You have seen Russia, sorry, cause European countries to spend more and more. That was a, Putin was a more effective raiser of the defense budgets in Europe than Barack Obama, Joe Biden or Donald Trump combined. And you know, so now the vast majority of our NATO allies now spend 2% or more of their GDP on defense. That was the goal for 2024 that they had agreed upon quite some time ago. Now they are going to collectively need to raise that number. Donald Trump has already laid what I think is kind of a ticking time bomb, frankly, for NATO. That hasn't gotten enough attention where he said from the beginning of this return to office that he thinks NATO should spend allies should spend 5% of their GDP on defense. To make clear, no one in NATO currently spends 5% of its GDP on defense, including the United States, which spends about three and a half percent of its GDP on defense. So why did Donald Trump say that? Why has it not gotten enough attention? My view is he's laid the time bomb there. And then he can say at the appropriate moment, see, they didn't listen to me. I'm out of here. And so I'm really concerned that pulling out of NATO is the next turn of the wheel here.
- [22:55]
Charlie Sykes
Elon Musk TWEETED right, that we should pull out of NATO. And I mean, it's very clear that Elon Musk. Musk has gone rogue, that he has his own foreign policy. He doesn't clear everything, but again, he made it very clear it's time to leave NATO. This has always been the fear and the threat.
- [23:10]
Susan Glasser
Exactly. He did that after the Zelensky meeting this weekend. Remember that Donald Trump is the guy who back in the 2016 campaign campaigned explicitly saying NATO was obsolete. As our book the Divider and others documented, Trump came much closer to withdrawing from NATO in the summer of 2018, right before he flew from Brussels to Helsinki for that disastrous summit meeting with Putin. In fact, he came as close as anyone has ever come to blowing up the NATO alliance and only just pulled back from the brink there. So we know that Trump, unconstrained, would like to pursue this policy because that has been his view for a very long time.
- [23:56]
Charlie Sykes
Well, he is unconstrained. Right? I mean, he is acting as he's completely, completely unrestrained by Republicans, by the other institutions is going to stop him.
- [24:05]
Susan Glasser
No, Pete Hag Seth isn't going to stop him. He's assembled a cabinet of yes men and, you know, empty suits who fit the Fox News camera needs. And so I think this is a very real next possibility. You asked about Europe. They face huge problems of capacity, of working together across national lines that still matter very much when it comes to security and defense. And they face their own political hurdles. I think it would be very, very hard for France and Germany to make the necessary structural changes in their economy and in their government to spend huge sums on defense. Now Germany has a new chancellor, incoming Friedrich Merz. He's a much more national security focused. He says that he's going to spend a lot more of Germany's resources on defense, that he's going to be there for Ukraine in a much different and more robust way. The bottom line is Ukraine would not have been fighting on these last few years without the US not only military assistance, but also intelligence assistance, logistical assistance. And right now, if we disappeared, it would be very, very hard for Europe to pick up the slack, even though I do think we should say to people, Donald Trump is lying and misrepresenting. He constantly says that the United States gave so much more money than Europe. In fact, he claims that it was $350 billion. Nothing like that was, you know, much more in the $100 billion range, first of all. Second of all, Europe collectively has now given more to support Ukraine since Russia's Full scale invasion than the United States has. And, you know, so I just think it's important to tell.
- [26:10]
Charlie Sykes
Well, we don't know. I mean, let's talk about the optics over the weekend, though. They may not be able to step up. But it was rather striking, wasn't it, how enthusiastically they embraced Zelensky. I mean, they went out of their way to make it clear that they were not on Team Trump, that they were not going to support him. And I think the one picture that probably frosted Trump more than any other was when Zelenskyy met with the king, King Charles standing out there, you know, shaking his hand. So they clearly are sending the message. But there's also the undertow of European leaders telling him, you gotta fix this thing with Trump somehow we have to do it. We can be the intermediaries or anything. So what are the prospects? You point out that Trump is still, you know, disgorging hate text. Is, is President Zelensky going to show up again at the White House wearing a suit and a long red tie and willing to go in and tug his forelock? Are we going to see that at least performative? Okay, we're going to fix this or is that off the table now?
- [27:22]
Susan Glasser
Look, I think there will be, of course there are already robust efforts to fix this, but probably fixing this would not involve that kind of a face to face meetings with Zelenskyy because I don't think it would be productive. So that's first of all, second of all, as far as Europe goes, I think one thing it underscores is a fallacy in Washington's thinking. And I've heard this, you know, for, well, more than a year, talking about a possible Trump presidency. Republicans and even some Democrats, just the hubris that Washington often applies to foreign policy thinking has really colored so much of the commentary that people are hearing and emanating from Washington these days. And I would like to debunk some of that and say it was always a fantasy idea that Donald Trump could kick his, you know, click his heels together, wave his magic wand in the White House and force Ukraine to accept a deal that was not in their national interest. And that was always bullshit. Again, sorry for the use of the word again.
- [28:29]
Charlie Sykes
Don't worry.
- [28:30]
Susan Glasser
No, what I was hearing very clearly from my Ukrainian sources, from Eastern European sources, I think is now proving to be correct, which was that, hey, wait a minute. Any negotiations by Donald Trump that failed to take into account Ukraine's national interests are not going to result in peace. They are going to result in a weakened Ukraine, possibly aided by, you know, Poland and its Baltic neighbors and some other Europeans fighting on without Donald Trump's deal. Because Donald Trump will try to impose conditions that are impossible for Ukraine to accept. So that I think hopefully has now become a little bit more clear to people that Ukraine can't simply just be negotiated with, you know, out being at the table. And frankly, you know, the, the Afghanistan precedent is, is one that people should have taken into account here. And it's, it's, again, it's the inward looking stupidity, frankly, of much of our kind of pundit class, Democrat and Republican, that they just pretend like countries are just going to do it because you know what that happened to Afghanistan. And Ashraf Ghani, the then leader of Afghanistan, our alleged ally, was not at the table when Donald Trump negotiated a shameful exit with the Taliban and excluded the government of Afghanistan. And look what happened. You know, the government of Afghanistan collapsed. Ghani was, you know, rushing out of town on his helicopter, leaving his country to fall. Well, Zelensky saw that. And, you know, he's saying to Donald Trump here and he, he and the Europeans are saying, you can't leave Ukraine out of the deal. It now has the second most powerful army in Europe. And it's not just going to roll over because you have some weird obsession with placating Putin. So that's, number one, is maybe the death of that fallacy that Ukraine will just accept whatever deal Donald Trump has to make. And Donald Trump is kind of going crazy over that. Number two that I'd like to just suggest, and again, I don't know what's behind it, but I think it's important to consider is some of the bizarre behavior from Trump we are seeing may be because Vladimir Putin has not indicated a willingness to make a deal, that Vladimir Putin hasn't exactly come to the table with Donald Trump and said, great, you know, here's, here's the deal I'd like, as far as I can understand it, Putin is still saying, I would like everything that I demanded from the very beginning. And, you know, that's, that's really not much of a deal for Trump either. And so I think the reality is sinking in a bit for Trump at the White House that he's not going to solve this war in 24 hours or even in 100 days. And that doesn't look good for him, as he might say himself.
- [31:40]
Charlie Sykes
All right, let's switch gears here because one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you was your column. Why aren't we in the streets, which felt like kind of a cry of the heart that a lot of people are experiencing. And you walk through all of the things that are happening right now, all of them, and it is incredibly difficult to keep up with the fire hose and the zone being flooded. You know, again, cliches that we keep recycling. But it is true that, you know, a lot of things that are happening, you know, I was thinking about this over the weekend. A lot of things that are happening, actually things are happening every single day that if we had said they were going to happen last year, we would have been accused of Trump derangement syndrome. And yet, you know, you point out like, you know, Trump is, you know, Trump the Almighty keeps moving ahead. And so far, the response has been quiescent. Where are the Democrats? Where is the opposition? So talk to me about that, because one of the big questions is, can he be stopped? Because, I mean, he's not all powerful. I mean, we still have the courts. There still is a Congress not totally made up of potted plants. There are still people in government. There is still a ragtag remnant of the media out there, although that seems to be shrinking all the time. So talk to me about that column when you sat down and you wrote, why are we not in the streets? What needs to happen? What do you want to see happen? What could happen?
- [33:11]
Susan Glasser
Well, look, Carly, first of all, I should give credit where credit is due. Why aren't we in the streets? Was from an email that my cousin Linda, a lawyer in Los Angeles, sent to me minutes after the previous Friday night's outrage when.
- [33:26]
Charlie Sykes
The previous Friday night.
- [33:27]
Susan Glasser
Exactly. When Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and all of the military's top lawyers and the female head of naval operations. And so she, she sent that in and she made the point not only why aren't we in the streets, but, you know, if this was happening in France, you know, they'd have occupied all the government buildings by now. And I, I feel like that just viscerally kind of connected with me. So I was thinking about that all week long as the subsequent kind of unprecedented jaw dropping developments unfolded. Monday, the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine, Trump voting with Russia and North Korea and Belarus against all of our allies. And Ukraine staggering Tuesday, eliminating the central tradition of an independent press pool and saying from henceforth, it was only Trump and his minions who would decide who could be in the press pool. And by the way, that being accepted largely by the media with nothing more than Susan Collins esque bleats of concern, you know, Wednesday, Elon Musk strong emails Elon Musk on Wednesday holding forth at the first Cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration before any of the members of the actual cabinet were allowed to speak. Thursday, you know, the renewed threats of tariffs, 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and more tariffs on China as well. And we could go on. So in the middle of all this, you have James Carville come out with this op ed in the New York Times saying Democrats should essentially roll over and do nothing. And those, by the way, were his actual words. You know, it sounds like a parody, but, you know, that was the context for my, my cousin's words ringing in my head by the time I was writing this on Thursday. And, you know, I'm a journalist, you're a journalist, where we're observers. We, you know, put things together critically. We, you know, try to analyze, we try to look to history or precedent. You know, we try to frame up different arguments. There are always different arguments on the side. And the reason I mentioned the Carville thing is because it wasn't some crazy Carville outlier, as sometimes they are, but actually something that I have heard from many senior Democrats since the election, and it's mystified me, frankly, throughout. You know, this idea in particular that's taken hold that the resistance, quote, unquote, in Trump's first term failed. You know, I feel like, just as a matter of fact, and again, I'm not a political strategist, it's not my job to advise or to know what the right thing to do is. But just as a matter of fact, did the resistance fail when they defeated the Republicans in the midterm elections, when they defeated the Republicans in the 2020 elections, ousted Trump from office successfully, when the, you know, the internal resistance constituted many of the most senior officials in Donald Trump's own government who successfully constrained him from pursuing many of the very, very disruptive policies that he is now implementing with striking speed and effect. So from my perspective, in fact, you know, flawed as it was, you know, it's just not a historically accurate framework for Democrats as they try to come up with something that should work right now. And then the final point that I just think is so important to make is that, unfortunately, I see this as a sign of our extreme political polarization, that in this moment, everything is now seen through a partisan lens as exactly as in the interest Democratic Party. But my view is, in the first six weeks of Trump 2.0, we have seen quite clearly that the interests of the elected political class of the Democratic Party are not the same things as the interests of civil society in America, as the interests of America itself.
- [37:52]
Charlie Sykes
Crucial point.
- [37:53]
Susan Glasser
Whether individual democratic strategists or politicians may decide that they don't want to do anything because they can benefit personally more in the midterm elections by shutting up right now. Okay, maybe that's their calculation. But I will tell you, as someone who has lived in a society, Russia, where democracy was rolled back in a very short period of time, you know, the time to stand up is not when it suits democratic elected officials, but when institutions of our democracy are being threatened. And that's the absence that I've noted. And I will just finish here. Sorry to go on.
- [38:36]
Charlie Sykes
No, no, this is very important.
- [38:37]
Susan Glasser
Important about this. Last night, I was speaking with a really good friend, not really a very political friend, who grew up in Iran and left that country before the revolution. And, you know, she was saying to me, going through all the ways in which a huge swath of Iranian society, not just the ayatollahs, were against the corrupt and dictatorial regime of the shah in Iran, but only one faction in society. You know, the extreme religious faction, had the militia, had the, you know, power ultimately to seize control. And they're still in power decades later in Iran. And she just. She said to me, she said, look, the time is now to act to save American institutions. And again, I just. It was so powerful and deeply upsetting to have that conversation, because who are you hearing as. As the Democratic Party has failed much of the country and has not spoken out, as leaders like Barack Obama have absented themselves. You know, who are you hearing the concern from right now, Charlie? You're hearing it from historians, from journalists, from comparative international political scientists who are saying, you know, listen, we know how this playbook goes. And those are the people. These are not hysterical people. These are not partisan political actors. The people who I've heard most cogently and loudly and clearly speaking out right now are people who are much more oriented towards civil society and the national. And they're the ones who are saying as loudly as they can, the time to act to save American institutions is before they are dismantled.
- [40:44]
Charlie Sykes
This is such an important point because I think that to a certain extent, and I don't know if this is. I'm going to make up the word, the sort of the pundit fication of some of the analysis where you have a lot of the strategists or the people who are fronts for political action committees, or they are activists, they do tend to frame everything in terms of like, what works for the Democratic Party, what works against the Democratic Party, what will happen in the midterms. And part of this is a little bit it's nihilistic to say that we should just roll back and let Trump insidify the country because, you know, there are children who are going to be at risk for measles. There are, you know, people losing their jobs. There are services that are being cut. There are real dangers for America. So I guess the question is, do you prioritize the partisan needs of the Democratic Party or do you prioritize, as you point out, civil society and all of these values? And I think this is a distinction that sometimes gets lost. I think that sometimes, and I'm going to criticize cable television, they don't make a distinction between the people who are just reading the talking points because they work for a political party versus the people who are saying, hey, excuse me, I have people back home who need this help, who are being hurt by this. The fate of the democracy itself is bigger than the fate of a political party. So I guess the question let me ask you a very specific question is I got asked this yesterday, and I didn't have a good answer for it. I mean, I we are seeing some of the resistance popping up in some of these town hall meetings, which sounds which echoes what was happening during the what was happening during the Tea Party. I don't know how effective that's going to be, but it's something, and maybe it will light a fire. But Tuesday night, Donald Trump is going to be speaking before the gelded Congress, the Congress that he has dissed and disempowered so dramatically. What should Democrats do when they show up? First of all, should they show up and then how should they treat this? And the reason I'm asking this is another overused word, the normalization of it. If they really believe this is an existential threat, if they really believe there is a coup going on here, then do we still go through all of the rituals as if it's same old, same old? What should they do? SUSAN?
- [43:05]
Susan Glasser
Well, I mean, I again, you know, I'm lucky not to have to, you know, come up with a strategy. But I think you're exactly right about the normalization. That's what I found embedded in Carville's argument and that of others that I found so troubling. There's a political cynicism embedded in that argument, Charlie, that this is forget about everything we told you about fascism in America and Donald Trump, actually, it's just A normal oscillation in American politics, even if a regrettable one. And I think I understand why elected Democrats might think, as a matter of strategy, it's better to go after extreme right wing policies. But remember, extreme right wing policies, while you and I might disagree with them, can be rectified through the tools of our institutions, through normal politics. People can organize to defeat them. They can get a majority in Congress to vote against them. They can get, you know, judges who will not go along with them. Right. That's our politics. That's our system as it's working. What's happening right now is our system is being changed and dismantled. And that's the part that's the real crisis. And I think for Democrats, they tend to be much more comfortable talking about the policy fights than they are talking about the more existential fights. And, you know, I get that that's not an easy communications task for them, but I think it's very important to explain and to point out to people that you may not like Donald Trump's policy for dismantling clean energy initiatives and, you know, deregulating things, but as long as he goes about that legally, that's a policy fight that we have to play out in our normal political system. When Donald Trump flouts the law, flouts judicial rulings, tells Congress, I don't care about the fact that you legally appropriated this money or authorized this agency, I'm going to destroy it anyways because I have unlimited powers. That's the crisis that we're in right now. And I just feel like clarity of thinking will lead to more clarity of communicating.
- [45:27]
Charlie Sykes
You would hope. You would hope. So your big question was, why are your cousins questions, why are we not in the streets as they would be, say, in France? And again, I'm genuinely trying to work this out whether or not that would make a difference. I mean, it does feel. The lack of, you know, physical pushback like that does make it feel as if we are sort of rolling over. On the other hand, we know how Donald Trump works and the system that he is creating. And he would like nothing more than to have disorder in the streets. That would give him an excuse to use his loyal military to invoke the Insurrection act to reclaim the mantle of law and order. Any act of violence would be used to supercharge his power. It would be his Reichstag fire. So, you know, how do, how do we, how do we. What's the clarity of thought there? We want to see people pushing back, and yet there are forms of protest that would be counterproductive thoughts.
- [46:32]
Susan Glasser
Yes. And, Charlotte, I really appreciate you bringing that up because that is a very important point. And again, I don't think, you know, neither my cousin nor I were in any way advocating, you know, for this as a particular strategy. I think Democrats, if anything, are acutely aware of the risk of calling people into the streets, and that that could well be taking Donald Trump's bait. And, you know, he's made it very clear that he would be prepared to and in fact, is looking for the opportunity eager invoke the Insurrection act and to call troops out into the streets. So I think that's very important. That is something that we should be acutely aware of the risk there. So it's a descriptive and analytical point that underscores the extent to which our society is more passive than European society about politics and seems to be accepting a lot of very excessive steps taken by Trump and his administration so far. So that's, number one, what does it tell us about America? You know, number two, I think you're articulating a fear that many people have when they look at the history of this kind of change in a society by someone with Trump's predilections and views. And the fear there is that not only there will be violence, but in some ways that the Musk revolution demands a sort of violence at some point or another to further consolidate power and to use the shock of the violence to move even more rapidly along the revolutionary path. And I think it is very notable that Musk has already started referring to what he's doing as a revolution. Frankly, when I think of the reading that I've done, that's useful in understanding the mindset of Trump and those around him. I look back, a lot of people talk about Germany in the 1930s, but actually, I spent a lot of time studying the consolidation of power in revolutionary Russia in the early and mid 20th century. And, you know, some of those political and, frankly, psychological lessons apply here as well.
- [49:03]
Charlie Sykes
So let me go back to something that you we mentioned in passing, which is the, you know, the various institutions that you would hope would push back the, what do we call it, the mainstream media, the legacy media, very much under assault, very aggressive assault from the White House, removing outlets from being able to cover various events. I mean, I thought it was striking that on Friday, the AP continues to be forbidden to cover events, but somebody from Russian state media was, was allowed in the, in the Oval Office. One of the biggest differences between this year and, say, 2017, 2017, it felt like the media had come into its own, that this was going to be the big story and that they were going to push back. Now it feels as if they're in retreat. Not just the Jeff Bezos of the world, but also the, as you point out, rather tepid responses to the assault. So give me your sense of what is going on, because among the various guardrails out there, if you lose the free and independent media, then we are in a much darker place than at least if you have that voice out there. So what is the state of play now?
- [50:18]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I think you're right. The trip wires have been tripped at this point. And, you know, what I experienced in Putin's Russia, what others have documented in places like Turkey during Erdogan's first years in power, or in other countries that have experienced a rollback in democracy, inevitably, going after the independent media is one of the first moves in the playbook. It's the indicator light that starts to go off that's flashing. You know, would be authoritarians want to dismantle or at least defang independent sources of power and information in the society. And I think that the fact that this Trump administration would move so rapidly toward defanking, dismantling the institutions of independent media, how they covered the White House, I anticipated that, to be honest, Charlie, in this second Trump term, I didn't know that it would happen quite so quickly. And I find that particularly alarming because for me, that has been a tripwire. And I, you know, I was privately, you know, saying to my husband and others like that I expected the White House to eliminate the press pool and to come up with, you know, sort of Kremlin press pool by, by the end of this year. Instead, it happened in only five weeks. And, you know, I saw that Stephen Colbert, you know, went off on the Associated Press thing and said that from his perspective, the second that the press corps failed to stand up for the Associated Press was the moment that they writ their own doom. And I, you know, I basically pretty much agree with that. I think that, remember, Donald Trump isn't even trying to come up with a pretext here. He explicitly said, not only did I order the banning of the Associated Press, but for speech reasons, because they refuse to adopt my bogus rewriting of the map of the world and decreeing that the Gulf of Mexico would now be the Gulf of America. And that is as a clear cut case, as you could imagine, of punishing a news organization for exercising their First Amendment rights. And when you didn't have the rest of the press saying this is unacceptable. A line has been crossed here. I thought it was. It made me queasy. As a career journalist who spent decades here in Washington, again, I am nonpartisan. I know I've been outspoken in my role as a columnist critical of actions of Trump and those surrounding him. But, you know, I'm not here telling you what kind of health care policy or tax policy to have. I'm not a partisan, nor do I have any desire to be. I've been a journalist my entire career, and I will tell you that it made me feel queasy and really frankly, nauseous to see how quickly other news organizations were rushing to put out statements saying, well, we're gonna follow Donald Trump. Don't worry, we're gonna called Gulf of America and oh, would you like to take your colleagues seats in the press pool? Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, it's just a good reminder, if you want a friend in Washington, you know, or even a colleague, you know, get a dog. But those people are acting against their own self interest, honestly, Charlie, because for the AP first, but eventually it comes for everybody.
- [53:59]
Charlie Sykes
Well, sure. I mean, it's like, what will the standard be next month? So I, I also was not surprised that they went after the media as aggressively as they did. What was shocking was to me was the, the acquiescence of major media outlets. And I think one of the real, the worst moment was when ABC settled that lawsuit for, for $10 million or whatever about, about using, you know, sexual abuse versus rape. And. Deep breath, when CBS settles the completely bogus lawsuit against 60 minutes, this will be abject surrender, but also an indication that there's a loaded gun aimed at every single commentator or reporter out there. Because if ABC won't stand up, if CBS won't stand up, who will stand up against lawsuits that have no merit whatsoever? And I think that. So as you watch that and watching Jeff Bezos and the owner of the Los Angeles Times, it's not simply that they don't fight back, it's that they're actively rolling over. And I didn't see that coming, to be quite honest with you. Did you? I mean, that's pretty.
- [55:12]
Susan Glasser
Unfortunately, you know, the story in other countries suggests that Trump and his team were right, that the weak links are at the top of many of our organizations. Charlie. That these ultra wealthy billionaires turn out to be much weaker.
- [55:29]
Charlie Sykes
Isn't that something?
- [55:30]
Susan Glasser
You know, like the, you know, the $50,000 a year park ranger in many cases has shown a lot more spine than Jeff Bezos. And it's a sad inversion of, you know, the sort of power and responsibility. Gene it seems that the more power these people have in our society, the weaker they are as people.
- [55:52]
Charlie Sykes
Isn't that something? Susan Glasser, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Susan Glasser from the New Yorker. You have to read her weekly newsletter. And thank you all for listening to this episode of the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charl A. Sykes. We do this several times a week because more than ever, we need to remind ourselves that we were not the crazy ones.