Making Sense with Sam Harris - #461 — Dictators Always Tell You What They'll Do

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Garry Kasparov about the erosion of American democracy and the global authoritarian threat. They discuss Trump's systematic corruption, the GOP's moral collapse, the 2026 midterms as a decisive moment for democracy, Trump's entanglement with Russia and Putin, what a Ukrainian victory would mean for the free world, why Putin's nuclear threats are a bluff, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast,

and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. I am here with Gary Kasparov. Gary, thanks for joining me again. Thank you for inviting me. It was great to see you.

So I think it's been something like five years, four or five years, six years, maybe since we've spoken. A lot has happened, but still we were speaking under the shadow of Trump and Trumpism. I think each of the times we spoke. I think our first conversation was in 2016 and then maybe like 2022. I think that's what we've got. So then about four years. Well, first, just to introduce you properly, many people will know you as one of the greatest chess masters of all time and world champion for many years, and maybe we'll return to the topic

of chess at some point. But now you're currently the chairman of the renewed democracy initiative, and also you have a substack, the next move.org, which is associated with that foundation and where you write. Tell people, what does the renewed democracy initiative do? What do you focused on? I mean, I think we can guess from the title that you care about democracy, but what specific problems are you focused on at the moment? Yeah, I also pretty active on the other side of the Atlantic, so in Europe, where there's most of my colleagues in Russian opposition located. And the Renew Democracy Initiative was formed in the beginning of 2017 after Trump's

first victory in the presidential elections. It was a quite kind of friendly group of individuals, some of them, moderate Democrats from New York. Some of them, the group I called the refugees from the Wall Street Journal, like Brett Stevens or Max Boot. And I called for them just, you know, trying to figure out so what's next because I could smell the danger. It's probably because I was born and raised in the Soviet Union. I knew what was KGB, not from the books, but from personal experience. I also fought Vladimir Putin.

I saw the second rise of KGB and how it took over my country, Russia, after we had a period of very fragile, so nascent democracy in the 90s. And I could see that there's some very troubling signs in America. So the idea of RDI was to actually point these potential problems, actually challenges to the Americans, because what I didn't like especially was the polarization. It's like, or you may call tribalization of American politics, the rise of the extremes on both sides. And as a good scholar of history, I knew that, you know, that's how. democracy dies because it's not about attack from one side or another. It's when it's being besieged by extremists. And one day there's people discovered that, you know, they have no choices,

what I call the, it's a paradox of the Spanish civil war, you know, when just you wake up one morning and you see Frank on one side, the fascist or communist on the other side and nothing in the middle. Of course, America was not in 2016. Even today, it's not in the same situation, but I could smell, smell the danger. And the idea of RDI was to, often. for an opportunity for people who were not comfortable with extremes on either side to get together. It's what I call the home for politically homeless. I could never imagine in my, you know, worst nightmare that 10 years later, these threats that I only had in my imaginations could become a mainstream politics in America. Yeah. So I want to talk about where we are at

present and maybe what has surprised you in Trump's second term. But let me just kind of set this up in a general frame because I've had many conversations of the sort that you and I are about to have on this podcast. I mean, many, for, you know, now a decade, many smart people have come on here worrying about the threat of authoritarianism globally, but especially in America under Trump, people like yourself and Ann Applebaum and Timothy Snyder. And it's not that everyone agrees, you know, sets their, the weights in precisely the same, to same degree there. but, you know, many, many smart people who are students of history and who have a spidey sense for the erosion of democratic norms of a sort that you do based on your personal history. But they can wind up sounding fairly paranoid to normal people who aren't tracking these things so closely. And, I mean, it's true, I think, that in the last year, in the second Trump term,

reality has caught up to the paranoia to some considerable degree, and many people have noticed that things are on several fronts surprisingly bad, but many people still don't. And so I guess I would ask you, what would you say to someone who even this far into Trump's second term doesn't really feel that much out of the ordinary has happened? I mean, there's been a bunch of tariffs coming on and off and on again. There's been, I mean, Trump has obviously said some uncouth things. You know, he'll share tweets and memes that no president should ever touch, right? I mean, all of that is deplorable. But what would you say to someone who just thinks that, yeah, sure, he's enriched himself

and what's a few billion dollars here and there? And there's the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, right? So both sides are a little sleazy and corrupt. But nothing really is at stake here. Give me just kind of your big picture sense of, you know, how far America has slipped in your view toward authoritarianism. Thank you very much for this question. I'm used to be called paranoid, kind of crazy ankle that is spoiling everybody's celebration. My first article, by the way, just talking about

Vladimir Putin, my first article warning about threat coming from Vladimir Putin dated back 25 years, January 4th, 2001 in the Wall Street Journal. And people often ask me, how did I know? And my answer was very simple. I was listening to what Vladimir Putin had been saying. Because there's a paradox. A lot of people just don't know it. Again, I was bored. in the Soviet Union, raised in the Soviet Union. I learned a lot about history, just not from the books, but from just real life. I saw the rise of Vladimir Putin and the collapse of the very fragile Russian democracy. So the rule is dictators always lie about what they have done, but very often they tell you exactly what they're going to do. So you'd better believe them.

Adolf Hitler's mind conf was published back in 1925, and you can't blame him for being secretive about the plan. It was a blueprint. But he was nobody in 1925. Vladimir Putin, by the way, you know, laid down his program of recovering the greatness of Russian Empire in 2005 in his speech before the joint session of Russian parliament and Russian Senate when he talked about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of 20th century. I'm just mentioning this, you know, just to give you a better understanding of why Trump should be taken seriously before it's too late. And I've been saying, you know, just to give you a better understanding of, talking about Putin's threat, you know, just year after year, months after months,

unfortunately, even after Putin bluntly told the leaders of the free world in 2007 and the Munich Security Conference about NATO being pushed back to 1997 borders, which meant Russia recovering the control of the Eastern Europe, as Soviet Union had. Again, nobody took him seriously. Then there was an attack on the Republic of Georgia. Again, so nobody wanted to feel that the state as the temperature was rising and it was it was really political heat. I wrote another article, I remember in August 2008, saying next stuff, the Republic of Georgia would be Ukraine. People asked me, how did I know? I said, because I looked at the map. And Vladimir Putin did it. Because again, dictator, you know, just, it's not just moving all, you know, just its all way

forward. It's step by step. It's not question why. It's why not. And in 2014, Putin, basically broke all the international rules. The international law that people so often appeal now ceased to exist in 2014. He violated every treaty to Russia sign, all the guarantees given to Ukraine, and the problem is the other side, Americans, Brits, Europeans, they did nothing. Despite the fact that in 1994, there was a guarantee to Ukraine for its sovereignty and borders by United States and Great Britain and, of course, Russia, in exchange for Ukraine giving up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Now, back to Trump. Donald Trump is not making secret of his plans. He views himself as a king. He acts as a king. And with Congress being

totally impotent and just not acting, there's nothing to stop him. And it's not just sanctions here or tariffs here or tariffs there, just back and force or a few deplorable statements in the tweets. And you just mentioned corruption. Yes, I'm not here to excuse. the previous administration, yes, Hunter Biden was corrupt. But with Trump, corruption is not a problem. Corruption is the system. The way Donald Trump is making himself rich is just it's using the United States resources, United States policies, United States agencies. It's quite systematic. And Trump believes in it. It's, again, it's not that he is trying to make a secret. It's everything he says, and day by day, you know, he's raising the stake. Donald Trump was very successful,

Even back in 2016-17, 17, that's when I warned Americans. He would try to normalize things that were abnormal. I mean, so many things that are happening now, 10 years ago, if you say, oh, the president could do this. Oh, no, come on, that's not going to happen. I remember just a year ago, I was the end of 2000, just more than a year ago, 2004, after Trump won elections. I was on a podcast.

I was a guest of Prid Barra. And I asked Prit about, okay, probably a lawyer. So what about the third term? He said, no, come on, it's not going to happen. I said, yes, I hope it's only going to happen. But I think Trump will try it. He said, no, it's ironclad. Are you sure? Absolutely sure.

I still think, you know, it will stand, but it's not going to stand because Trump will not try. He will try. Trump is going to try every trick in the book because, you know, it's, that's the way he sees the world. We know Donald Trump doesn't lose elections. That's the way he sees it. And what's, you know, how can you not believe him when he's now mobilized? resources of American, of the state of the, of federal, federal state, of agencies like FBI, DOJ, Interior to prepare, openly preparing to steal elections in November, the midterm

elections. It again, it's not a secret. You just just listen to what he's saying, listen to what is what is being said by his cronies, and look at their actions and believe them. Okay, I wish I'm paranoid. But so many things I said, you know, that were considered the paranoid now did happen. Ukraine now is just, it's four years at war, four years, full-scale war. If you start counting from full-scale invasion and not counting, of course, 12 years from the beginning of annexation of Crimea, it's a four years of war that Europe hadn't seen since the end of the World War II, the probably largest war. I don't know whether you can compare Vietnam or Korea, but it's a massive war. And there's no end in sight. And the United States,

this great country, this is the country that I, I used to see back then in the Soviet Union, on the other side of Aaron Curtain, with millions of my competitors, as the beacon of freedom, the guardian of global democracy, is openly siding with forces of tyranny, with authoritarian regimes. It's siding with Putin. It's openly supporting Victor Orban. I mean, the man who is the prime minister of Hungary just before his elections, where he's supposed to lose, because we see the opposition now is gaining momentum there.

So the United States, Secretary of State is flying to Hungary to support the man who is opposing the entire European Union and preventing them to helping Ukraine and also corrupt like hell. He's just, nobody just doubts that he's in the payroll of Vladimir Putin. All right. So I want to get back there. I want to talk about the loss of American leadership and moral stature and the implications for world order there. But I want to focus on the domestic problem of Trumpism in America and, and, you know,

on landmarks of the sort that you just mentioned, like the upcoming elections and Trump's obvious interest in declaring them fraudulent, should he lose or should the Republicans lose in the midterms, and the prospect of, you know, his nefarious work to actually steal an election. Obviously, we know he tried to steal the 2020 election all the while claiming that it was being stolen from him. So, yeah, I don't think there's any limit to what he would attempt there. the question is, what could he actually accomplish with, you know, his various enablers and sycophants and concubines and, you know, his retinue of enablers in power the second time around? But before we jump into all of that, is there anything that has surprised you about Trump's second term? I mean, you know, you've been actively worrying about kind of this ratchet of authoritarianism and norm-busting, you know, turning in one direction only. month by month and year by year in America. But looking back over the last year, was there anything that was surprising for good or for ill? No, for me, the greatest surprise was the total capitalization,

the moral collapse of GOP. I could not imagine just that they would not enough. They would not be enough senators and members of the House to oppose the most aggressive steps of Donald Trump, like appointing unqualified people just based on their loyalty. and sometimes craziness. And we're not talking about mass defection. It's not about dozens, you know, members of the House or senators. It's, you know, a few votes here and there.

And Donald Trump, he just measures, you know, that's this, oh, I can do this. So there's no resistance. Next step. So it's like a slow motion. It's death in thousand cuts. But it's all goes, the train goes in one direction. And I just only hope that the,

facing the midterm disaster, the GOP might act differently. But what is the first, you know, that's the negative outcome of first year is that Donald Trump has already collected the retinies, maybe not an army, of his cronies that would do whatever. So we really have a critical mass of top advisors, top members of Trump administration who are willing to go beyond existing law, to violate the Constitution because losing power for them could be even worse. Question is whether there is a critical mass, I don't think yet, but it might, you know, just go in this direction, critical mass of the second and third tier of officers of the law and bureaucrats in the agencies that would join this sinking ship.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, I want to keep talking about the sinking ship and just how far it's sunk so far. But for a second, I just want to jump ahead to a possible future where we clean up this mess. So just imagine in 2028 we have a Democratic presidential candidate who comes in, you know, with the best of intentions to reset all of the norms of our liberal democracy and improve them and shore up the places that Trump has revealed to be weak spots, right? So I just imagine a Democratic president who was actually committed to minimizing his or her own power, right? to bring the executive branch back into some line of a sane constitutional order where Congress can't be sidelined to the degree that it has, et cetera. It seems to me that given how Trump has staffed his government with loyalists and psychopaths and grifters and liars and confabulous of various sorts, you'd name some, people like Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, et cetera,

for someone to come in and clean house, again, with the best of intentions, just trying to get back to some basic norm of professionalism and nonpartisanship. I mean, just to get a Department of Justice that is fundamentally nonpartisan in how it works, right? Wouldn't that be nice? All of these efforts will be perceived by the right, certainly whatever's left of the MAGA right in the aftermath of Trump, to be nothing more than a pendulum swing back into hyper-partisanship of the left-leaning sort.

And so I guess my question to you is how do we how do we fix this without seeming to be just yet another iteration of hyperpartisan politics that is part of this race to the bottom? Because it will be cast that way by what remains of the Republican Party. I think you made a huge strategic mistake talking about 2028. It is important, but it's not. We're going to, I'm going to go back into the morass with you. I just want to know just in a perfect future, like, well, we get to 2028 and we get someone in charge who really wants to reset things and can, I think a full third of our society, if not half, will perceive those efforts to be purely corrupt, hyper-partisan, you know, cleaning of, you know, the cleaning of the deep state of the sort that Trump imagined he was doing or claimed to be doing. Yes, but it's 2028 will be two years after the midterm in 2026. And I don't want now to preempt the political landscape that would surround the elections at 2028.

The future of American democracy, the fate of this great republic will be decided this November. And I'm not here to bet my bottom dollar. I think that is if Democrats win, if Trump loses badly and fail to steal the elections and he will try to steal the elections. if he's losing support among his base to go as far as he wants, which means, you know, just to control the whole process, what he talks about, federalization of elections, that should sound like anathema to Republicans. This is the people who grew up, you know, just preaching the state's rights.

Right now, they just, you know, they don't even sound like Democrats. They sound like, you know, socialist. I mean, it's just sometimes, you know, you can hardly find difference between mega-retoric at some of the far-left progressives, which again, proves the horseshoe a political theory. So, 2026 will be the decisive battle that will, you know, prepare the landscape for 2028. And if it goes as we expect,

2028 will not be a formality, but I think it will offer a democratic contender an excellent chance to retake power. And maybe, again, it's a good chance. If 26 goes well, it's probably, you know, I think this, I would, again, I would say there's a big chance that the next Democratic Challenger will not be facing Donald Trump by J.D. Vance.

Okay, but let's say, I just want to answer this question. I'm going to come back to the present, but so let's say a Democratic challenger faces J.D. Vance and wins, and now we have a Democratic administration that really wants to clean house. When they start cleaning house at the DOJ, right, and the Department of Defense, right?

And, I mean, clean out all the loyalists, it is going to look to the Republicans like a pure, purely cynical, hyper-partisan, a move of the sort that Trump has just made in staffing his second administration? Look, you raise a key issue that I believe it is in the heart of the crisis of American democracy. It's a credibility. Yeah. So when you have two parties, you know, it's a dichotomy.

It's a binary choice. And in binary choice, you know, very often you go not for the best, but for the lesser evil. And unfortunately, you know, the last couple of decades, definitely since 2016. So Americans have been reduced to the choice of lesser evil. And Democrats lost credibility. The Biden administration did a huge damage to the credibility of the whole party. And obviously, when you look at Trump's campaign in 2024, it aimed at the weak spots. It talked about immigration, about transgender issues, about issues that helped Trump to drag

many, many people in the middle to support him. again, considering him a lesser evil. So restoring credibility is the key issue, but that means that Democrats should not just simply go to the center. Again, that's what we at RDI is saying. So this is very important to fight extremes on both sides. But it's about, you know, just illustrating that it's a healing process. Maybe, you know, they will have to start inviting some people just from the other side

of the aisle in the administration. Again, I don't know what will be the solution. But it's very important to recognize that it's, the country should, should, should depart from this deadly, you know, deadly cycle of tribalization. It's me versus them. So this is, it's recovering the, where are the Americans? So it's, it is, it is very challenging. But I think it's doable. It's doable. So, and, and we can know, for instance, this is the, the latest decision of the Supreme Court. I think it says it was a great opinion just written by, by Neil Gorsuch. But basically blasted two, three conservative judges and three liberal judges saying, look, guys,

So how come that, you know, when Biden was in the office, you voted the opposite, you know, just using the same arguments. So restoring credibility and trust in the system, confidence in the system. This is very important. And I think that should be the core of democratic programs. So they should definitely, you know, eliminate everything that is just irritates the public. I understand that there's this ideological differences, you know. And I may even be sympathetic to some of the views of the progressives. But it's very important that we'll make, you know, the core of the campaign in 26 and especially in 2008 is rebuilding the system and trusting the system. Probably, you know, we'll reach a point where people say, look, two-party system doesn't work anymore because we don't want us to have a choice of these two. And both parties have been infected by the virus of radicalism. Maybe we should

look for the third party. I don't know. It's unlikely because the system has been built over in our centuries. But clearly there are challenges that go beyond, you know, just our disputes of First Amendment or Second Amendment. As we could see now, the fight with Maga is not about Second Amendment. I mean, Maga doesn't care. This is the, if it doesn't, if you Trump, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's through Second Amendment, First Amendment, Constitution. So it's Supreme Court. But unfortunately, this, as you pointed out, it's not just Hunter Biden.

We had many excesses on the other side, not as bad as Trump, but they. definitely fortilized the ground for somebody like Trump to show up. Trump was not accidental. That's something that just, many people just is still considered, oh, he's here and he'll be gone. No. Trump is the embodies the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the spectrum of all the problems are that American, American democracy had been facing

over quite a long period of time. And it's very important to talk about, it's not just reduction of presidential powers, but definitely, you know, building the system of control because it's, you know, you know, We have to make sure that we will never again have the same fights about presidential ability to inflict damage to order Americans by just, you know, signing just its new law on tariffs and ruining American relations with our allies and openly, you know, enriching himself by making both coalitions and financial deals with our enemies. Yeah.

All right. So a similar question, but now focused on the midterm. So let's say there is success in the fall, right? There's, let's say in the perfect case, the Democrats win both houses of Congress and the defeat is just unignorable right of center. What would you recommend those new members of Congress do at that point? Do you think there should be impeachment proceedings? Do you think there should be everything that can be inquired about, should be inquired about,

no matter how provocative those inquiries are? into the law-breaking of the Trump administration? Or do you think they really have to be careful not to antagonize half the country? Again, excellent question is, it's, again, it depends, first of all, depends on whether Democrats win the Senate as well. I think the House is, yes, it's everybody knows. It's kind of fataccompliant. So I think Democrats will gain at least 20 seats. I would not be surprised if you get 30 or even more. So this is every, every indicator shows that the House election will be, will be blood-blood-bast for GOP. They know that.

Senate is another story. And again, it depends on whether Democrats can secure, you know, this is the centrist position. For instance, if Tala Rico versus Paxton, I think that Democrats have excellent chance. I mean, but if you just imagine for a moment it's Gordon versus croquette, it will be just, you know, exactly the opposite. So it's a very important Democrat will come up with with people that look reasonable and will not be associated with the far left excesses of Biden administration. So now imagine they win both, you know, Senate and the House. I think they have to find the exact balance. I would not say that, oh, to stay away from any action. It just says, no, you have to do subpoena. You have to use the power of subpoena. You have to attack, you know,

the Republicans, the current administration. So it's just with addressing their most excessive acts of corruption and abuse of power. Definitely you have to impeach, you know, This is people who are just in charge of DOJ and FBI. But as for impeachment of Donald Trump, I don't know. I think it's very important to understand you have X amount of political capital and you have to spend it wisely. And I think that Trump is not, you know, just our main target. It sounds a bit odd now.

It's about Trumpism. It's about this. That's exactly what you discuss now. We will discuss now. It's this how to restore credibility. So if Democrats control both parts of the car. of the Congress. So I think they have to find the right approach to obviously to punish those who caused so much damage to American democracy and naturally make sure that the cases of

corruption will be highlighted. I don't know whether you can investigate them or not, but that's how to be highlighted. And it's not about, again, going after Trump is it's limiting his ability, and the ability of his cronies to cause further damage, basically to defang the snake. So it's not just about going just, you know, after its head. So 26 will have to secure American democracy. It's quite ironic that 250 years later, Americans will have to fight another mad king, you know,

just for their freedom. But if 2026 goes well, then 2028 will have in mind. And also very important to start, you know, just sending signals to our allies to make sure that this state department and other agencies will not continue this very destructive policy of destroying American alliances. Because this kind of relations, it's easy to destroy, easy to harm. It's much more difficult to rebuild. And I go back and forth.

So for many Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, America today just is viewed as an, almost as an enemy. So just rebuilding trust. I want to get there. I want to talk about the international scene, but just I want to linger on the domestic, the immediate domestic problem. What are you worried about happening between now and the midterms? And I guess you could take it beyond the midterms as well. But what bright line that if crossed should signal some sort of emergency of a sort that we haven't experienced? If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at sam harris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast.

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