← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
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- [00:00]
A
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. So Donald Trump has now opened a new front in his war on everyone. He has gone to war with the Pope. How's that going to work out? He lost his BFF in Hungary despite going all in and sending JD Vance, who deployed all of his negligible term to get Viktor Orban reelected. And that didn't work out. Meanwhile, President Trump is putting out memes, comparing himself. You probably heard this. You have to see it, though. Comparing himself to Jesus Christ. And he's threatening to placate the Strait of Hormuz, which is either open or closed. And it's not quite clear how us blockading the Strait of Hormuz is going to make anything better. And the week is just beginning. Let's go. And joining us on our podcast is our good friend, Ian Basson. Ian, good to see you again.
- [00:57]
B
Good to be here, Charlie.
- [00:59]
A
Ian is the co founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, and in 2023 was the winner of the coveted MacArthur Genius Fellowship and is still humble, which is amazing. Wouldn't you say that that's like your greatest achievement in life is to win the MacArthur and, like, still be, like, a guy, you know what I'm saying?
- [01:18]
B
I mean, look, if you live in a household where everyone mocks you and you forget to put the wash in the dryer and it's like, is that a genius move? It's kind of.
- [01:26]
A
Okay, so you've had two years of. Yeah, real man of genius. Well, see, a lot of people think they're geniuses. You actually have a plaque saying you are, which I have to say, you know, that's. That's kind of high on the cool list.
- [01:41]
B
Yeah, well, they did put it in the laundry room, so.
- [01:43]
A
It is in the laundry room. Okay, so there's a lot to talk about today, including the President's war on. On the Pope. Where is Congress? Congress is coming back and apparently going to start the week by expelling some members. We can talk about that. And of course, the ongoing clusterfuck in Iran with the blockade. But I want to start off with. Because I think that we need to wallow in this. The blowout defeat of Viktor Orban, despite the really dramatic efforts by both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and J.D. vance to prop him up. The autocratic thug leader of Hungary was not just defeated, he got absolutely annihilated. So we get your reaction to that. That. Because that struck me as we kind of needed that. That reminder that this authoritarianism, the illiberalism is not inevitable that you, no matter how much you try to rig the system, the people can blow back. What do you think?
- [02:40]
B
That's right, yeah, yeah. I mean, I had a couple reactions to it. I mean, first, there's this idea that this sort of nationalist, autocratic, illiberal populism was popular and it turns out like, no, actually not so much. And in particular, I think it's not popular when the people at top it are basically just corrupt and are basically robbing the publicity to immiserate the masses, which is essentially what Orban was doing in Hungary. Economy and free fall though he and his cronies were making out hand over fist. And hey, you know what? That kind of looks a little bit familiar, doesn't it? Right, so actually if you're going to try to play the little bit of the strongman game, but you're actually just going to be stealing from the public Fisk, and not actually helping the citizens you're supposed to be helping get by. You know what? That's not going to work out well for you. That was the first thought. The second thing, you know, is for, I think Trump and Orban obviously very, very similar. Bannon once called Orban Trump before Trump.
- [03:41]
A
Yes.
- [03:42]
B
And one of the things that's happened, I think similarly in both countries and the former US Ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, wrote a good New York Times piece about this, is that everybody, the elites in Hungary thought Orban was the only game in town. And so they all caved him, they all sold out, they all gave into autocratic capture and said, well, I guess if I'm running this company in Hungary, he's where my bread is buttered. So I know he's an autocrat, I know he's against the rule of law, I know he's not for freedom, but I'm going to cozy up to him because that's the horse that's gonna get me through to the other side.
- [04:18]
A
This sounds familiar.
- [04:20]
B
Yeah. Right. And not only did the business leaders in Hungary do it, but the other politicians hungry did it too. And that sounds familiar. And you know what? This is a pretty good wake up call to those people that that short term bet that you made may just be short term. Right. And so be careful which horse you hitch your wagon to. And so we should talk about what signal this sends to the business leaders and the Republican politicians in the US about like, just how long is this ride? And then the last one, of course, the one you allude to, which is even when, when a guy rigs the system. If the people unite in defense of freedom and democracy and they turn out. And the turnout in Hungary was off the charts. It was like 80% of eligible voters. Guess what they can do, you know?
- [05:06]
A
Well, he was the role model for Donald Trump in many ways. I mean, for years, I've been reading and hearing about the authoritarian playbook and how much of what Trump was doing was really following Orban's model. But Orban, 15, 16 years to accomplish what Donald Trump has been trying to accomplish in months. Just give me some sense of the significance, why this smallish country in Eastern Europe played such an outsized role in the imagination of Donald Trump. J.D. vance and the MAGA movement, I mean, they were absolutely obsessed. They looked at Viktor Orban. You, and I see this thuggish corruption leader. They saw him as what, as the. As the, you know, bulwark of Christendom
- [05:51]
B
or something, you know, as the avatar, as the avatar of this idea of kind of, you know, for lack of a better phrase, I suppose, sort of illiberal white Christian nationalism. Right. I mean, Orban basically believed that, as he said, Hungary was for Hungarians, which meant, you know, white Christian people. And the other. The other player here that we should bring into this, that you left out there is Vladimir Putin.
- [06:15]
A
Yes.
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B
Right. And that's the other reason why I think this, such an important global moment, is Putin has been trying to export his brand of illiberal authoritarianism, which, let's just be clear, it is a ideology and a theory of government that basically says, I and my cronies at the top shall have all of the power and all of the money, and we shall simply take the money from the public and share it amongst our little. I think you were saying this before we got in the air, and if I'm going to use this term properly, kistocrats.
- [06:49]
A
Yes, thank you.
- [06:50]
B
Among our little cadre of kistocrats. And we're going to use a appeal to people's tribal instincts and say, hey, you know, it's not us who are stealing from you. It's those people who are not white or not Christian or coming across the border. They're the ones who are stealing from you. And that's just. That's the oldest ploy in the book. Right. I mean, tyrants have been using the sort of divide and conquer since antiquity. If you can, you know, management bosses trying to break up labor unions would do this in the early 20th century. Right. If we can pit you against each other, you won't notice when we pick your pockets of money and Power. And that was Putin's play in Russia. And Putin wanted that to be the dominant ideology in Europe, certainly, and globally, to the extent he could, because that would protect his position in doing it. And Hungary was, I think, one of his early initial laboratories for it, where Orban was his puppet there. And to the extent that Orban was successful, it became a model, as you note, for those who wanted to do something similar in the United States. And so they looked to it as a model. And I think the good news for us is Orban has really been kind of the canary for the warning for us of everything that was going to happen here. Right. He served in office for one term then from 98 to 2002, he was voted out.
- [08:12]
A
He.
- [08:13]
B
In 2002, when he was voted out, he blamed it on what? He blamed it on fraud. He spent the intervening years when he was out of power trying to purge his party of anyone who wasn't sufficiently loyal to him and build what he called was a central political force field that would keep him and his allies in power when they returned. So, sound familiar? From out of power returns back to power, and then, as you note, kind of slowly dismantles Hungarian democracy over sort of the next 15 years. And to sort of put that. Put some numbers to it. The Financial Times recently put out a new study of kind of the deconsolidation of democracies around the world, where Trump was basically deconsolidating American democracy upon his return to power during his second term, faster than Orban did it in Hungary or Iran in Turkey, or Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela. And I think what that suggests is that the speed and the rate at which Trump is playing the Orban game in the United States is faster than it was in Hungary, which is not good news for Donald Trump because it took Orban a while to consolidate power and then have the door hit him in the behind on the way out. I think it is gonna take Donald Trump less time to follow in Orban's footsteps and have the door hit him in the behind on the way.
- [09:26]
A
Well, and it's hard to overstate how much damage Orban did to the democratic institutions. You had the. I heard the term, by the way, state capture. I know that's a term of art, where basically it's that you're looting the country, but because you control the state, you make your crimes legal and you justify it. But also, he rigged the electoral system. He undermined the independence of the judiciary. If he did not destroy it. He launched this campaign against academic freedom. In universities, by the way, something apparently J.D. vance was particularly excited about. And yet, having done all of this, and you describe how civil society had caved into him, one institution after another, despite all of that, what happened on Sunday happened where he got blown out. So that somehow, and I think this is the concern that a lot of people have, is that does it reach a point of no return where the autocrats rig it so much that, frankly, there is no exit ramp, there is no way back? And Hungary basically said, look, this guy had 16 years to do this, and it was gone in one evening.
- [10:37]
B
Yeah. I mean, there's a term that we've been using for what Orban did there and what Trump is trying to do here, sort of playing off this idea of state capture, which is its autocratic capture. So if state capture, you know, is the idea that moneyed interests buy undue influence in government and are able to basically control government because they're so powerful in the private sector, financially, autocratic capture is kind of the opposite, where the politician uses the levers of government to say to the big players in private industry, unless you tow a political, political line, unless you are loyal to me politically, I will crush you financially.
- [11:19]
A
Right.
- [11:19]
B
And that's what, that's basically what Donald Trump is trying to do to business in the United States and say to, you know, in video, I won't let you conduct the business globally that you want unless you cut me in with a little bit of a share. Or US Steel, you want to make a deal with. With Nippon Steel, you can do that, but you got to give me a golden chair. Right. And you got to basically be a supporter of mine. I mean, he's trying to do it. They both. The other place where both Orban and Trump decided to do it with the media, and this was one of the reasons why people thought that it might be a point of no return, was that, you know, Trump. Bas. I'm confused. Freudian slip, Trump, Orban. We'll just. We'll just use them interchangeably, use that. That regulatory power of the state to go after independent media outlets who were insufficiently loyal to the regime. And they had a playbook that Orban modeled and Trump is now copying, which is use the levers of the state to go after media outlets that are. That are independent, drive down their market value because it becomes hard for them to do business successfully when the government is putting its thumb on the scale, then have some white knight investor come in and offer to rescue and buy the property. David Ellison, when it seems distressed, Larry Ellison, TikTok. And then once the new investors take it over, it turns out they're allies of the regime. They fire independent media, Zorbunda there and hire Barry Weiss. I'm sorry, I'm confusing Orban and Trump. I don't know why. But you see the pattern there, right? Playing on both places. And so the concern was that among all the other things that you note, the capture of the judiciary, the capture of the federal regulatory system, the capture of the national election system would make it impossible to dislodge them. And I think there was concern, I shared it, that Orban was undislodgeable. But it turns out that, you know, lo and behold, people like freedom. Turns out people like freedom, it is like it is a natural human condition. And when you try to deprive them of it, they will react en masse if they are able. And in, in Hungary, they were able and so are we here in the United States. And then, you know, Orban tried all the levers. I mean, the, the propaganda that was coming out of all of the media.
- [13:35]
A
Amazing.
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B
The. He tried all the levers and eventually his fear mongering and the campaign he ran in Hungary was basically Peter Magyar, the now prime minister elect, was a puppet and a tool of Zelensky and Ukraine. And if you voted for him, there was going to be a war and your teenage kids were going to get sent off to war. That was the fear mongering they did. And Orban had been fear mongering for so long that eventually the Hungarian people were like. To do a Jay Z. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. We don't buy it anymore.
- [14:08]
A
Well, and also, he didn't shitify the economy.
- [14:11]
B
We're confusing Trump and Orban again.
- [14:13]
A
Right. But it's also about the fact that Hungary is one of Europe's basket cases. Right. It's one of the poorest countries in the eu and a lot of that is his mismanagement. So let's just go to Trump for a moment because, I mean, to say that he went all in on Orban is putting it mildly. I mean, you know, his son was there. He sends J.D. vance there, you know, to the fixer.
- [14:35]
B
Yeah, he sent Vance there, the cleanup hitter. What a weekend. J.D.
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A
i almost felt like J.D. was set up. They're all the J.D. like, let's send J.D. to do the negotiation which we know is going to fail and do the campaign that we know is going to fail. And so JD was. I mean, JD Vance was 02 this weekend, wasn't he? I mean, it was pretty bad.
- [14:55]
B
And it's interesting, I was thinking about the contrast between Magyar and Vance, right? So Magyar, who was elected in Hungary, had been in Orban's camp and had broken away from Orban's camp when he realized that what the, the Orban project was actually a really corrupt and bad project. And by breaking away from the corrupt and bad project, oh, and doing the right thing, he's rewarded as the successor. And Vance is almost like the mirror opposite. Vance was a guy who early on said, right, what did he say? Trump was America's Hitler. Trump was cultural heroine. And then he says, oh no, wait, maybe this cultural heroine Hitler guy is where the right is going. I better, I better completely subjugate all of my principles and grovel to become a part of this and that'll help my career. And oopsie, right it Vance, after this weekend, I mean, I just think he's political toast in the United States. The notion that he's gonna succeed Donald Trump is fanciful. He has been completely embarrassed and is a dead political quantity and deservedly so. And so let Magyar be your model, not J.D. vance. And we're seeing some Magyars in the United States, people breaking away. Who was critical of Trump's attacking of the Pope and portraying himself as Jesus Christ this morning was Marjorie Taylor Greene came out and called it the spirit of the Antichrist. She called it. That's the direction you want to go in.
- [16:34]
A
Well, that's bringing out the big guns. I'm going to come back to that in just a moment. But you talked about Orban being very, very much the model for Maga and for what Trump is doing. So let's talk about the opposition being the Hungarian opposition, Magyar being a model for the opposition in the United States. Because one point I wanna get your take on this is he comes from Orban's orbit. He broke away from. He's still quite conservative, does not disagree ideologically with him. So what they did in Hungary was to create this pan ideological big tent, right. And I saw somebody on social media say this be the equivalent of the Democrats nominating, say Liz Cheney. But it neutralized many of the attacks. So your thoughts about that? Because you know the folks in this country that want the Democrat, the opposition to shift hard left in Hungary, they went pretty center, center right to beat this. You know, the, the right wing, Viktor Orban.
- [17:31]
B
Yeah. It is further evidence of something that we have now known for some time, which is that the, the formula for dislodging these autocrats is to form an incredibly broad coalition that is uncomfortable for people within it. And I don't think that that is consistent. Right. That was true in Poland. That was true in Brazil. That was true now in Hungary. It was true in the Czech Republic. You look at all those countries, and the model in all of them is a broad coalition that runs from the left to the right and is united on the importance of democracy and freedom and the rule of law. And oftentimes really focused on kitchen table affordability issues. As you hear being talked about in the United States. What is not consistent among them is whether the person at the top of that ticket is from the right center or left right. So in Hungary, you had someone who was conservative in Magyar and by the way, conservative, but, you know, very much committed to Europe, very much committed to the rule of law and liberalism. And although did not address these issues in his campaign, in his acceptance speech last night made reference to freedom for those, no matter who they love, which was very much a reference, interesting, very anti LGBT position of the, of the, of the Orban government. And although he, although Magyar avoided those issues during the campaign, made a very clear nod to them in his acceptance speech, which I thought was interesting. But so Magyar comes out of the center right. Donald Tusk, who heads the coalition in Poland, kind of like a very centrist, if center left character. And then Lula in Brazil, who led the coalition there to McCarthy, very much of the left. So in all three places, the coalition was broad. They had different people lead it from the left, the center, and the center right, but the coalition was broad. And so I think the lesson for us here is less about whether the person who will replace and succeed Donald Trump is Liz Cheney or aoc. I think the point more is that the coalition behind whoever that is has to be incredibly broad, which means we, as the people who believe in freedom and democracy in this country, have to be comfortable in coalition with people with whom we probably deeply disagree. And frankly, hey, Charlie, we're modeling that here because you and I come from different parts of the political spectrum a bit. But we have really found common cause in this moment. And we have to accept that whoever we nominate is not going to satisfy all of the priorities of the people within that coalition. And I will tell you, I don't think we are there yet, because my experience is that my friends and I love them on the American center right, whether that's center right Democrats or kind of never Trump Republicans, still are deeply uncomfortable with strains of progressivism in America and are Working very hard because they don't like the AOCs of the world. And similarly, my friends on the progressive left are very uncomfortable with the center. The center left, the center right. And I even saw in conversations I was in last night, people friends of mine on the center left saying, oh, well, we can't. Yes, we need a big ten. But like, let's be clear, the big tent has to very much be centered on kind of the progressive vision we have. And I get frustrated by that because I'm a progressive myself. That's my ideal outcome. But the lesson we're getting from all these places is we have to be open to thinking differently and to the fact that maybe our own dogmas aren't the thing that's going to prevail. Maybe they are. I'm not saying they aren't. But we have to be open to the fact that maybe they aren't. We have to be willing to be in a coalition that makes us uncomfortable. And I saw a great quote that someone shared on a chat I was on last night, which is, if your coalition doesn't make you uncomfortable, it's not big enough. And I think that's true.
- [21:46]
A
No. And I think that that's one of the great lessons out of Hungary. You know, I know that there's kind of a consensus of folks on the left that Kamala Harris made a terrible mistake when she campaigned with Liz Cheney. I was there at the moment, so I take this somewhat personally, but that was a perfect example because, you know, who on that st stage was comfortable ideologically with everything, and yet that was the moment. I do think that there's room for a healthy debate at certain points. You know, political party deciding who are we? What are our values? Do we want to morph into, you know, a mirror image of maga? Do we want to do these various things? But it is. But, but when it comes right down to it, you know, you have to decide, you know, you know, that you have to be in this coalition. And I think part of this is what I talk about, that, that we need, instead of thinking in terms of that right left continuum, you need to think of it in terms of the democracy, liberalism versus illiberalism. And there is a common ground there. Okay, so I want to talk to you about Congress because we talk about all the institutions that have caved in. Well, see, this is the thing, of all the things that I think our founding fathers could not have envisioned is how incredibly supine this Congress has been. We have a Congress. All of the things that we have been talking about.
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B
Well, this is breaking news, Charlie. There's a Congress.
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A
I know. Yes. It's almost as if the founders would have understood that maybe if they make it like Article 1 or something where you describe what a Congress would do,
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B
we should make it the Article 1 branch. We should say only it can declare war. We should give it the power of war. That would be. Should we do that?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Cause like I don't seems a little extreme and having the ability to decide that seems dangerous. We should give that to a representative
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A
body and the power of the purse too. That maybe give them that. It would be.
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B
I like where we're going here, Charlie. We have something. I think we've got an idea here.
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A
It is an extraordinary thing. I mean, we talk about there's so many different aspects of authoritarianism, but the one that. And I have to admit, I mean you and I both warned and we got some things right and some things wrong. I underestimated the willingness of businesses and media and law firms and universities to cave in. I did not think that that was gonna happen that quickly. But the complete abdication of power by a Congress, especially a Congress that is so narrowly divided. I mean, Mike Johnson's majority is what, three votes until they expel a bunch of people this week? I don't know. But that seems to be. That's something that they can do.
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B
Fluctuates between 1 and 3, depending on the day.
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A
We will unite in that. We don't want ra.
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B
He wakes up every morning and he checks the weather and how many votes he's got.
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A
Yeah. So let me just set that aside. The other thing that's really extraordinary. Oh, by the way, you know, I'm sorry, now I'm jumping around because I wanted to ask you, because I always have a rant in the back of my head here speaking of how to push back against authoritarianism. And your description, by the way, of the Orban model of co opting the media and the fact that Trump is following is dead on. And this is an extraordinary story. I still have a lot of trouble getting my head around the decision by the White House, the White House Correspondents association to invite Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as honored guests to their event. And you probably read their idea of speaking truth to power is to have these little pocket squares with the words of the First Amendment. I mean, if you're going to resist at some point. Point. Don't. You have to resist if it's abnormal, Don't. At some point you have to stop acting as if it's normal. I don't know where you come down on that. Yeah, this is just my rant.
- [25:30]
B
No, this has been a frustration I have had broadly with the American media in this era. And I think it's nuanced. I think it's complicated because there has been some tremendous investigative reporting and coverage in this era. I think that the credit at, you know, some of the major outlets, New York Times, I hate to say it, this was true in the first Trump term, probably not the second Trump term. The Washington Post in the first Trump term, so many other outlets, the Associated Press, I could go on that, have done incredible reporting, incredible investigative journalism. And of, and so much of what we know about what's going on behind the scenes now, sometimes Trump comes out and just says it, right? So that, that doesn't take a lot of investigation, but there's stuff that we found behind the scenes has been because of incredible investigative reporting. And so that is tr. True. And at the same time, the leadership of a lot of these institutions, I think, has demanded a level of neutrality that they think is actually objectivism, when it is actually abdication. Right. When, you know, when it is, when Trump is saying that, you know, it's raining outside and it's not, you know, this has been said over and over again, you don't get one person to say it is one person to say it isn't, and never allow the journalist to actually say actually, this is the fact. And I think my experience talking to reporters is reporters want to do that. I think it is the reporters want to do it. I think it is often the editors, the headline writers, the people who position things that put pressure. I've heard this from journalists that they get pressured not to do it. And then oftentimes the sort of the level of attention that stories get seems backwards. And that's not the reporter's fault. That's the editor's part. If you think about just the enormous, and these are the famous cases, the enormous amount of attention that Hillary Clinton's emails got on the COVID of the New York Times, the enormous amount of attention that Biden's interview with Robert her got, and clearly there was something to that. So I don't want to suggest that there wasn't something to it, you know, but at the time, I mean, it was just wall to wall coverage compared to the level of attention that we give to. I'll give. Pick one story out. The fact that you had Middle Eastern royals who invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Trump's crypto Enterprises days before the administration began, and then received favors in foreign policy, the ability to buy American advanced technologies. That story was a blip of one piece and gone. And look, I understand that you could
- [28:19]
A
come up with a dozen like that, too.
- [28:20]
B
Two dozen. And look, I understand these media properties are also trying to run businesses in an era in which the media business is a very challenging business. Right. And that they have to figure out ways of doing that, and that there's a little bit of a dance between what the audience wants and what the publication delivers. But there's also an obligation and responsibility on the part of these publications to not just be profit driven entities, but to be the fourth estate who have a role as the conscience of our democracy. Saying, this is important and this does deserve time. And they know how to do that. And I don't think they've quite covered themselves in glory in that respect, but I think it is a very complicated, nuanced picture.
- [28:59]
A
It is. Okay, let's switch gears. We've mentioned some of the things that have happened in the last 48 hours, including Donald Trump putting out that meme of himself as Jesus with angels in the background, but also drones and war fighters and horns.
- [29:15]
B
This is a great example. Right. He does that. You and I are gonna talk about it. But it would be really interesting to figure out how many Americans next week are gonna know that he did that. My guess is a minuscule fraction. Why? Cause it's not gonna be covered in any of the major news outlets. Not with the attention that such a ridiculous thing deserves. A perfect example. Sorry, I interrupted you. Go ahead. I hope you're wrong about preaching about Donald Trump.
- [29:37]
A
No, no, no, no, no, no. This is an interesting thing because this is something that I constantly. I think we need to remind ourselves because we talk about issues and like, will this move the needle? Will this happen? And I think that we need to have that reality check that half the country will not even know it took place. I think I saw something that Fox News is working very, very hard not to do this in part because when people see it, the reaction is not along ideological lines. I mean, this is one of those moments where the blowback was pretty considerable. But one of the things that's been happening, you know, over the last years, but also months and weeks has been this really, of the ratcheting up the performative Christianity. You have Pete Hegseth, who constantly invoking religious imagery to justify the war. Donald Trump increasingly clinging to this sort of revivalist, you know, evangelical Christian, you know, motif. And yet over the weekend he decided he wanted to go to war with the Pope. Why, Ian, do you think that Donald Trump chose this weekend to go to war with a guy who is unlikely to be bullied by him? But what do you think?
- [30:42]
B
I mean, one explanation is the Iran story is bad for Trump, the Hungary story is bad for Trump, and he'd much rather have people on Monday talking about him tweeting about the Pope. That's possible, right? Okay, yes, that gives him credit and agency that he's being strategic. But the other is that he views anyone who has any institutional authority other than him as a threat to his power. And he believes that he has the ability to take them all down a notch below him. I think he genuinely believes that he can do that and that his job is to sort of kneecap anyone who has the ability to challenge his authority. And historically, kings and popes have been trying to kneecap each other in various ways. And in the modern era, they've sort of put that to rest. But Trump doesn't want to put it to rest. He wants to go after.
- [31:35]
A
It is interesting. I've been thinking that this rivalry between the American Pope and the American President has been an undercovered story, but it's going to be a theme now going into 2026 and beyond. There's no question about it. You know, Pope Leo has been, I think, eloquent, very direct, very specific. And I was saying on another podcast, it's not just that he's an American Pope who speaks English. You know, I've gotten used to Pope speaking in that weird Latinate formulation where you kind of think, you know what they're talking about or, you know, you need the gloss and then you need the experts. Rome. Leo is an American from Chicago, and he is very direct, and he has been roasting Donald Trump. He's been going after him, he's been calling him out and really hitting Trump at a key point, which is saying, this is not Christian, this is not pro life. And when I talk about J.D. vance's bad weekend, imagine being the most prominent Roman Catholic in the Trump administration at the moment. The Trump administration has decided to go, you know, all in fighting against the Catholic Church and the pontiff who he's calling weak. And you saw his post. I don't want a Pope who does this. I don't want. Here's the thing. Donald Trump doesn't get the Pope he wants. And this is not a guy who I think is gonna be bending the knee anytime soon.
- [32:50]
B
Yeah, nor. And I'm not a Theologian schooled in these things. Nor do Catholics. Right. The pope get the cardinals pick the pope. Right? And that is the Pope, and that's the Pope you don't get to pick. God picks the pope.
- [33:05]
A
Well, the cardinal with the cardinals help
- [33:08]
B
with the cardinal, the cardinals with a divine influence. Right? And that's the idea that it's not something that people pick. But look, I think Trump invited this. Hegseth invited this by trying to, even before the tweet or the truth, or whatever it's called, where Trump tries to appear as Jesus. You know, I have a dear friend, loved for many years, hardcore maga, and sends me all the stuff that he consumes to try to persuade me. He sent me something the other day that was a video of some kind of extremist crazy imam talking about how Islam is the only religion and was put on the earth to conquer all of the others and was trying to sort of gin me up with this sort of like Islamophobia, you know, And I sort of pointed out, I was like, hey, you know, there's people in all religions who do that.
- [34:04]
A
There's.
- [34:04]
B
There's Jews who believe that about their religion. There's Christians who believe that about their religion. There's Muslims who believe that about their religion. They are the minority in all of those religions, right? The majority want to live together in peace and just be able to worship what they worship. But one of the members of that minority who does believe in kind of they should dominate with their. Is the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hagseth, who, you know, I. I pointed out to my friend, I was like, as proof that every religion has done this. Think of the Crusades. And he said, well, the Crusades were hundreds of years ago. It's like, that's true. Except Hegseth is basically saying they're happening now, right? I mean, Hegseth is doing this unbelievably un American thing of saying that our military is out there to carry out Jesus's will. So by claiming that they are inviting the pope, and they are almost requiring the Pope to say, as the person who actually in the Catholic Church, is there to help us understand Jesus and his teachings. That's wrong. That is not true. Jesus is not the commander in chief of the US Military. Contra to what Pete Hegseth is trying to divine. So Hegseth and Trump are kind of bringing it on. So Trump then responds, and here's the thing. I think that in addition to all the American Catholics, and I don't purport to know what their Reaction will be, I don't imagine it'll be good, but that'll be for them to decide. J.D. vance. Here's the other thing. The three swing justices on the Supreme Court, all Catholic, right?
- [35:39]
A
Not irrelevant.
- [35:40]
B
So you're kind of relevant here. Right. So I don't know, we'll see what the reaction to this is, but I can't imagine it's gonna go over that well.
- [35:47]
A
Yeah. How the world has changed. Back in 1960, there were millions of Americans who were wondering whether the, the Pope would have too much influence. And now we have millions of Americans hoping that the Pope does have more influence. Speaking of which, apparently there's this commission on religious liberty that Donald Trump put together and I think it was meeting on Monday or Tuesday, and it includes our former archbishop, Timothy Dolan, who went on to become a cardinal, know him quite well, who had become very, very, very pro Trump. I would love to talk to Cardinal Dolan about what are you thinking right now? What do you think about what? You know, the things that Donald Trump is putting out. You know, if only you had been warned. Cardinal Dolan. The other one is another bishop, I think his name is Barron, who has shown up to be kind of a clapping seal at some of Trump's events. He actually put out a statement though, saying how offensive he found an unfair the attacks on the Pope were. So I don't know how this plays out. I don't know whether it is strategic, but this comes at a moment and I guess this is the other thing that I'm having a hard time, hard time putting together because we've been told about all the razor sharp political instincts that Donald Trump has. You saw that CBS YouGov poll over the weekend, which the numbers were just utterly horrific. The public is just not buying any of the bullshit about Iran. They do not have any confidence whatsoever. And then you've had the, you know, we're going to annihilate a civilization. Oh, wait, we're not. Not peace in our time. We have this two week thing. We're going to have these peace debts. Oh, they failed. Now we're going to blockade. This strikes me as it's going to make the energy crisis potentially worse, raise the affordability price worse and sort of numb people to like every week. Are we going to have to go through this kabuki dance of I'm going to nuke you? No, I'm going to love you. I mean, what do you make of the blockade thing? Because I don't get it at all, to be honest with you, with you.
- [37:49]
B
I didn't. I didn't get it initially because I was trying to view it through the lens of, you know, sort of mature geopolitics.
- [37:57]
A
Always a mistake.
- [37:58]
B
Once I started to view it through the lens of a middle school cafeteria, then I was like, oh, wait a minute. This is, you can't dump me. I'm dumping you. Or for the guy who made his, you know, his name firing people. You can't fire me. I quit. Quit. Right. I think he's actually going to say, they didn't blockade the straight. I did.
- [38:22]
A
And I wanted to. I wanted it blockaded.
- [38:25]
B
I wanted to. Right. I always wanted to. They didn't do it. I did it.
- [38:29]
A
This is why you won the genius award. This is the kind of thing I think this is the insight we have. All these people out there trying to do. The strategic geopolitics say it all. Truths come from middle school lunchrooms, if you understand that. Dynamic school lunchrooms.
- [38:43]
B
Yeah. Because if he doesn't do that, then he's dealing with a situation where he can't. He sent his crackpot JD Vance to go over there and unblockade the straight, and Vance failed. So now he has to deal with a situation where oil prices are going to continue to rise, inflation is going to continue to go up, prices are going to continue to be a political cudgel against him, and he's going to be unable to stop the fact that Iran is blockading the strait, and he's not going to be able to do anything about it. So his answer is to set, oh, no, I blockaded the straight. It was me. I have total control. I actually think he's going to come out and say, they didn't do it, I did it. And that's going to be his defense.
- [39:21]
A
And we don't know, I don't know what the markets are doing as we're speaking. I'll look at it later because I don't need the anxiety right now. But I wonder at what point the markets go, you know what? We're not going to react quite as dramatically because we just assume that whatever threat he makes, he's going to back off on, which also then creates that dynamic for miscalculation. That is the most dangerous possible situation where everybody miscalculates.
- [39:51]
B
So, I mean, I think the markets are already pricing that in. I think you can see the markets are already kind of taking some of this as just bluster. And you're right, in all seriousness, because I think you're making this very serious point right now about the danger of miscalculation. I recently went back and read the World of Yesterday by Stephane Zweig. I highly recommend it. It is an incredible memoir by a Viennese writer writing about the pre war period in Europe before 1914.
- [40:26]
A
That's what I was thinking.
- [40:27]
B
And essentially the book, the book is really about kind of what the atmosphere felt like in Europe in the lead up to 1914, but it's so resonant today. And one of the things he says in the book was that everyone had become so accustomed to things working out during a prolonged period of relative global peace that people just assumed that whatever crisis they were living through, eventually cooler heads would prevail and resolve the crisis. And so when the real crisis came, people were insufficiently attuned to the danger of the guns of August and the true explosion because they just assumed it would work out. And I was struck. You know, I just read it, I've been thinking about it a lot. And there was a question that someone put to Trump the other day about two or three days ago where they asked him about how this all was going to play out. And he said, and I wish I had it in front of me. I don't have it in front of me. He said something like, yes. I said, it's all going to work out. And they said, how do you know that? He said, because it always does. And one, I think that is his personal experience of life, that he has failed over and over again and gotten bailed out over and over again. So I think his genuine own personal experience is that no matter what he does, it will always work out. And two, it is exactly the danger that the world fell into before 1914. That's why identifies and it is in the fact that the President of the United States, the commander in chief, the most powerful person in the world, thinks that way, is a profound warning sign for all of us.
- [42:03]
A
That is the scariest thing I've heard so far today. I have to say that. Okay, I have one last question. In the time that we have left and that I knew that I was going to ask you, we have seen the power of Project 2025, that this administration came in with a game plan. They came in with a playbook which they have executed with actually remarkable speed, some cases more effective than others. Is there going to be be a Project 2029 plan? Because if there is, you probably know something about it. Are there ways to undo all of this and will it be in place if in fact there is a Democratic president in 2029.
- [42:48]
B
Well, look, I think that there was something unique about Project 2025, which was that a couple of unique things about it. One, the forces on the right at the time understood who their standard bearer was going to be because Trump had basically demonstrated that he still had a hammerlock hold on the Republican Party. And two, they saw both the policy political project that any president would normally run on the sort of platform of presidential campaign and the complete takeover of every aspect of both the government. American society is all one project, right? And that what bill they wanted to pass or what executive order they wanted to sign and how they wanted to make sure that the bureaucracy, the civil service, American culture, the universities, the private sector, all were in lockstep with that. A very illiberal vision made it so they could have one giant project under the banner of one political avatar. And I think you're unlikely to see that in 2029. I think you're, and probably for good reason, which is one, the project of rebuilding the civil service, the project of rebuilding the Justice Department, the project of rebuilding the cdc, it should be a relatively nonpartisan project. That doesn't mean that it won't be the responsibility. If there is a Democratic president to oversee it, it will. But that's a very different project than the policy agenda that a Democratic president wants to put forward. That will be typically a partisan policy agenda. And so one, I think you're going to see, and you already see, I think this is happening, you're seeing different pockets of what would ostensibly be Project 29. You're seeing some pockets that are, you know, how public health experts and communities saying, how are we going to rebuild the cdc? Legal experts talking about, how are we going to rebuild the independence and respect and the rule of law at the Justice Department. And then you're going to have another project which is what should the economic policy agenda be for a Democratic president? And then with respect to the latter, nobody knows who the Democratic nominee is going to be. And so hard for that to live in one place because that nominee, as we were alluding to earlier, could come from more of the center wing of the party. It could come from more of the left wing of the party. And that's going to mean a fairly different potentially policy agenda. So I don't think you will see that sort of Unified Project 2029, the ESAN Project 2025. I think you will see different pieces of it live in different places. And let's, let's end maybe going back to where we began, which is how Hungary can be helpful to us because in the way that Hungary has been the precursor to what we're seeing happen in the United States, with Orban being sort of the warning sign and then Trump following suit, Orban getting thrown out, and Trump following suit, the next piece is Magyar has made very clear that he is going to undo the damage that Orban has done to Hungarian institutions. Right. And he has said, if you were one of the sort of loyalists who was put into an independent institution to basically do the bidding of Orban in corrupt ways, quit now, so we don't have to fire you because we are going to rebuild these institutions. And importantly, they want a third governing majority so they can undo the constitutional rigging that Orban did. And I think this is a really important thing for us. Back in, back in the fall of 2020, the end of Trump's first term, a bunch of reporters were starting to write about whether if Biden won in 2021, the right move would be to hold Trump and his people accountable for violations of the law and look backwards, or whether the right move would be to sort of bring the country together, Kumbaya, look forward and like, let bygones be bygo. And we at Protect Democracy took an agnostic view initially to research the question. We said, well, let's look at what history and international experience teach. The world has a lot of experience with autocratic regimes and high level abuses of power. There must be a body of data on whether the right move is to do the accountability piece or whether the right move is to do the forward looking piece. And so we set out and we talked to experts around the world. We looked at all these historical examples and the conclusion was clear, clear that if you don't have accountability for those sorts of abuses, they are more likely to recur. And so we live that. We put out a report, we helped with a whole bunch of different efforts at accountability post 2020. And I should note, and that report and that research suggested that accountability isn't just people tend to think of it as like criminal prosecutions. That's a piece of it. But pieces of it include truth telling, investigations, commissions like the January 6th Commission, which is an important part of accountability. It's about reforming norms to reset norms, about what is expected going forward. There are cultural interventions to say, hey, this sort. I mean, Trump has been just such a cancer on American culture. And the way we talk to each other, the way we relate to each other. There was a report in the New York Times this weekend about how Democrats now are using you know, sort of expletives more in their public remarks. I mean, that's all coming from sort of Trump's model. And how do you reset some of those norms? So I think we need to be careful that the failures to hold Donald Trump accountable are not read as a reason to not do those things again, because the overwhelming history and international experiences, you need that. And Hungary is going to do that, it looks like. That seems to be Magyar's plan. And it'll be important for us to look at how they go about trying to clean up the mess that Orban made, which has a lot of very tricky questions in it as a sign of what we might need to do.
- [48:34]
A
It's an incredible challenge and an incredible opportunity as well. Ian Masson is the co founder, the executive director of Protect Democracy. We'll have links to some of his recent work on our website, to the Contrary. Ian, thank you so much for all your time.
- [48:47]
B
Appreciate it. Great to be with you, Charlie. Thank you.
- [48:49]
A
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this, why we will continue to do this? Because it is so important, particularly on weeks like this. But then when is it not to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.