No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans abandon Trump over disastrous Iran deal

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Trump’s Iran deal gets hit with bipartisan condemnation. Brian interviews one of the negotiators of the original Iran Nuclear Agreement, Jon Finer, about this new Iran deal, and Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, about the state of democracy here in the US.Pre-order The Day After and get tour tickets: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/thedayafter Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Trump's Iran deal gets hit with bipartisan condemnation, and I've got two interviews, one of the negotiators of the original Iran nuclear agreement with President Obama, John Finer, discusses this new deal, and Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, talks about the state of democracy here in the U.S. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So I'm going to read a tweet from one right-winger that pretty clearly summarizes the bipartisan reaction to Trump's new Iran deal. Will Chamberlain wrote, quote,

We have the text, the deal is absolutely terrible, there's no getting around it. The text gives Iranians huge immediate financial benefits and protection for Hezbollah in exchange for opening the straight and nothing else. President Trump should renege. So let's talk about the deal. First off, since Obama struck up the Iran nuclear agreement years ago, the JCPOA, Trump and Republicans have criticized it as some big $1.7 billion giveaway to Iran.

In fact, that is literally a comment he made this week. I mean, the JCPOA done by Obama, he has. handed him a billion seven in cash, gave him hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of, gave them billions and billions of dollars, but he gave him $1.7 billion in cash, green cash, from banks, into a Boeing 757 and flew it into Iran. And they stood at the plane. I have pictures of it. Like, oh my, look at this. Money's giving us. And yet, now we find out that this deal gives Iran access to not $1.7 billion, but $300. So if you're looking for cognitive dissonance, it is Trump attacking Obama while simultaneously

bragging about a deal where Iran gets access to 176 times more money. Then you've got Trump coming out and repeating that nothing else matters these days so long as Iran has uranium that can be enriched and made into a nuclear weapon. High gas prices are a small price to pay to denuclearize Iran. And then suddenly, this is what Trump said on that point. To go get it, it's a big deal. Because they say only China and us have the equipment where you can even get. The whole mountain is collapsed on the time.

We have cameras on it. You could make the case why are you even bothering? Because it's not really valuable. It's probably half a million dollars worth it. It's not very valuable stuff. Quote, it's not very valuable stuff. So Trump was willing to let gas prices surge in the United States to prevent Iran from enriching its uranium. And now that he's failed at doing so, suddenly it's not even very valuable.

Another point, Trump has repeated his insistence on regime change, getting rid of the hardline Ayatollah in Iran, which he did. But then he was replaced by his son and even more hardline Ayatollah. So you've got a guy who is bragging about regime change who oversaw Iran going from Kamini to Kamini. Like, bravo. And then there's also the point that Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz through which a substantial supply of global energy passes.

Iran's closure of the strait has sent gas costs soaring in the U.S. which in turn has hurt our economy. And the U.S. government hasn't been able to do anything to stop it, which means that Iran now knows they can deploy that weapon at any time and that the impacts will be cataclysmic and felt by us. Not to mention, whereas ships used to pass through the strait freely, now we can expect them to implement a toll, which will heap even more money into Iran's coffers.

And finally, there's the point that this entire war thus far, according to the White House, cost $30 billion. Now, I would bet my last dollar that we are billions, beyond that figure, but even if it's only $30 billion. Shouldn't that money not go to the exact kind of foreign war that Trump's war he'd avoid on the campaign trail? Shouldn't that go to America in accordance with Trump's own America First Agenda? Was that the whole point of the theory of the case in Trump's campaign?

Like, that we're tired of dumping billions and trillions into pointless wars in the Middle East, only for him to dump billions into a pointless war in the Middle East, one where the regime didn't actually change or Iran didn't lose its enriched uranium, and where Iran actually got access to more money than it had before. Like, if anybody can tell me what we gained in all of this, I'm all ears. And that's the thing. Like, Trump negotiated an objectively worse deal, certainly worse than the Obama nuclear agreement, and just broadly worse for the United States than when he launched this war four months ago. But he wanted the glory. He wanted to show how strong he was. He wanted to be right. So he engaged in a process that he wasn't prepared for,

and now the United States is worse off for it. If ever there was a microcosm for this man's presidency, this is it. And the fact that even Republicans are beginning to acknowledge that objective reality goes to show that perhaps the right is tiring of apologizing for Trump, making us less safe, less healthy, and less prosperous on a daily basis, while he reaps the benefits of his own presidency. Next step are my interviews with John Feiner and Timothy Snyder. But first, a reminder that my new book, the day after, is now available for pre-order. So if you'd like to support my work, that is the best way to do it. And I'll be on tour. So if you live in New York, D.C. or L.A., I'd love to see you in mid-July on the road. I'm going to put the link to both pre-order the book and to grab

tour tickets in the show notes of this episode. Okay, here are my interviews with John Feiner and Timothy Snyder. No Lie is brought to you by Common Power. Last year, when the GOP started early redistricting, they made it clear that earning Americans votes was the least of their priorities. And after gutting the Voting Rights Act, they have doubled down on their attempts to rig the midterm elections. Common Power believes that Democrats can still take back the House and the Senate by focusing on two things. One, policies that benefit the working class and tax the rich, and two, expanding the Democratic coalition. As Republicans rely on rigged maps to win, common power is how Democrats fight fire with people power. Common power is the organizing force for training and

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at commonpower.org slash crooked. So the atomic energy just reported that it was one of the most devastating bombies that they've The whole mountain collapsed on top of it. And frankly, to go get it, we're going to go get it. But to go get it is a big deal. Because they say only China and us have the equipment where you can even get. The whole mountain is collapsed on top. We have cameras on it.

You could make the case why are you even bothering it? Because it's not really valuable. It's probably half a million dollars worth. It's not very valuable. But I think psychologically we're one together. I'm joined now by former Deputy National Security Advisor and someone who helped to negotiate the former Iran nuclear deal, John Feiner. John, that was Donald Trump speaking today about this latest, I guess, aspect of the negotiation between the U.S. and Iran. And he says, you can now make the case, why even bother it's not very valuable stuff while he's talking about enriched material, which I had thought, based on Donald Trump's own statements, was the whole basis for this stuff that we have to get enriched material.

out of Iran, and that's why we have to do all of this because Paramount is stopping around from getting a nuclear weapon. So first and foremost, can I have your reaction to this latest comment? What seems like him moving the goalpost today? Unfortunately for him, Brian, you don't have to take my word for it. You can take President Trump's own shifting rationales for why he launched this totally unnecessary war. Initially, it seemed to be about toppling the Iranian regime.

He and Prime Minister Netanyahu cooked up this idea. that if you just hit them hard at the beginning, they will fall. That didn't happen. Then it became, as you said, about getting the enriched uranium out of Iran. It does not seem like that's been agreed to as we head into a potential longer term ceasefire. All that really has happened at this point, it feels like, is that Iran has learned from Trump how to hold the global economy at risk by closing the straight of four moves. And now we are paying them to open it when it wasn't closed before this war started. So a bit of a debacle, unfortunately, in terms of how this is playing out. Now, in terms of him paying them, I think the number that's floating around is 300 billion,

is that correct? Well, so $300 billion, again, according to leaked versions of this document, I mean, another strange element of this is the United States government, which negotiated this deal and has apparently signed it electronically, has not put out publicly what it actually says. So we're relying on leaks from various places and we don't know what's actually in it. But yes, in one of the leaked versions, there is a $300 billion fund that Iran could draw on to rebuild, reconstruct its country. That fund would be capitalized maybe, again, according to these leaks, by the Gulf countries that were attacked by Iran. But now that we're in such a bad situation, unable to defend them, that they are going to put all of this money in play to help Iran rebuild itself,

if that ends up in the final deal. And what was the dollar amount that Republicans had spent so long attacking the Obama administration over? Well, there was a $400 million figure. That's million with an M, by the way. There was a $1.7 billion figure. That's $1.7 as compared to $300. Right. So any way you cut this, it is a fraction, a fraction of a fraction of what the Trump administration is dealing with right now. And so how do you reconcile the same party that had attacked the Obama administration for, as they claim, unlocking millions or just over a billion dollars of funds for Iran that is now reportedly, or if the leaks are true, considering allocating $300 billion to Iran, and yet that's fine.

You can't reconcile those arguments, and people will tie themselves in pretzels to try to do that. But even more important than the discrepancy in the numbers is what that money actually paid for. In the Obama nuclear deal, that funding was to compensate Iran for diminishing and putting constraints on its nuclear program. 98% of the enriched material going out of Iran, inspectors and monitors being physically present inside Iran 24-7. This deal does not get any of that. It is just at this point to reopen the Strait of Formuz, which yet again, to remind

people, was wide open. Nobody had to pay for it before this war. They have not actually gotten anything, according to these leaked documents, on the nuclear material, which is much more important. So is there any way that the Trump administration could spin, objectively speaking, could spin this as a win or that the United States can point to something that we have or will get now that we didn't have before? Look, the president believes he has the ability to create his own reality.

And honestly, maybe with his base, given how they committed, they seem to be to him, he will have some success in doing that. He is certainly going to try to say that this is some great victory. But objectively, I think most of the analysts looking at it, including some people who are quite strong supporters of the president on other issues, are concluding what is unmistakable, which is that this is a significant failure for the United States. By the way, not for the United States military. They were put in an impossible position given a task that was not possible to accomplish, just hit the Iran government from the air and hope they fall. This is on the policymakers and ultimately the president who made this decision. So at what, at this point, what happens now? Like, where do we stand for those who are just tuning in to this negotiation? So what will happen now is for the first time in quite some time, the Iranians and the United States are going to start actually negotiating on the nuclear program.

So this is a lot closer to the beginning of talks about what to do about Iran's nuclear program than it is to the end. The last time the two sides were face to face with each other, you'll remember when J.D. Vance flew off to Pakistan. and spent 19 hours on the ground, ultimately giving a news conference saying nothing had been accomplished. This next round of talks is supposed to last 60 days. That may sound to some people like a long time.

When we negotiated the Obama-era-Iran nuclear deal, it took more than two years, including 19 consecutive days at the very end stage just to get the fine print right. So they are difficult to negotiate with. They feel like they're in a strong position, they, the Iranians. The idea that this is going to get done in 60 days when you're sort of starting from scratch, I think is going to be pretty difficult. What are the differences between what the Trump administration is trying to negotiate right now and what had already been in place with the JCPOA?

Actually, it's a very similar structure. They're going to be negotiating monitoring and verification. Our inspector is going to be allowed back inside Iran. They were there, by the way, until Trump pulled out of the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2018, can we get them back in? Can we get Iran to agree to allow them back? Can we get Iran to take its current stockpile of enrollment? rich uranium. It has about a thousand pounds of 60% enriched uranium, which is just below the level

you need to make a nuclear weapon. Just a short period of time would be required to enrich that further and make weapon. Can we get Iran to give that material up, send it out of the country? And can we get Iran to agree to cap future enrichment, either at zero, which is what the Trump administration wants, or at some low level so we would have confidence that they're not going to seek a weapon? The problem, Brian, is that, again, Iran feels like it has a lot of leverage. It feels like it's in a strong position. And there are voices inside Iran that say, now, look, we put all these constraints on our program for Barack Obama. Then Donald Trump pulled out of the deal.

Why should we make an agreement with America, again, that gives away this sovereignty, gives away this deterrent for us. Maybe we actually need a nuclear weapon now. That is the most dangerous aspect of all of this is they may feel incentivized to actually develop a weapon that they were not seeking before. Right. I mean, the reality is we're not a, uh, a, uh, a, good faith negotiating partner because Trump has shown that he's willing to rip up any agreement, even if it's just to put in place the same kind of agreement or try and strike the same kind of agreement, except this one won't have his predecessor's name on it. I mean, to what extent do you think

that because so much of what the new negotiation is seeking to do as it relates to the JCPOA, to what extent do you think this is just kind of assuaging Donald Trump's ego? If he's looking for the same, the same outcomes from whatever, you know, agreement he strikes up versus the JCPOA, then like, the only difference is the guy who's, the guy's name at the top of this thing. Right. We used to joke when President Trump started negotiating with the Iranians again during this term that all he wanted really was a TCPOA, basically the Trump comprehensive plan of action. He doesn't really care that much about the details.

He'd settle for anything. But to your point about the United States revealing itself to be not a very good. good negotiating partner twice during this Trump administration, the second term. He has launched negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. And both times he has interrupted those negotiations by attacking Iran with the 12-day war last summer. There were negotiations going on when that started. And again, this year, when this war began now more than 100 days ago, there were negotiations underway in advance of that. So, you know, you can kind of forgive the Iranians for having a lot of skepticism about how serious he is about a deal that can stick.

On this point of leverage, how does that play in here? Because, you know, the Iranians don't have midterm elections coming up, right? This is not a democratic form of government, but the United States does. And so there are certain political pressures, even in an era where Teflon-Don isn't impacted by anything that happens. You know, there is still political pressure that exists in the United States. And so to what extent are the Iranians able to leverage the usual, liberal democracy political pressures to their advantage. So the Iranians are astute observers of the United States.

Many of them have lived in the United States. Many of their senior people they've served at the United Nations and other places. Some of the people in their government even attended university in the United States. So they understand our political system. They understand our election calendar for sure. And they understand and believe that they can endure more economic pain, more political pressure to do a deal than we can. This is not to say Iran does not have politics.

Now, remember that before this war started, there were demonstrations in the streets of Iran that were crushed mercilessly by this regime in a cruel and brutal way. And President Trump, to his credit, stood up for the people of Iran rhetorically and said, I'm with you. And by the way, I am here for you

and I'm going to come and back you up. Unfortunately, he then did not do anything about that protest and that promise until well after it had already been crushed, by the Iranians, and he hasn't said much about those demonstrations ever since. But the Iranian regime does have to worry about its own economy, does have to worry about resuming basic economic activity that's been damaged badly by this war, which is why they are trying to get sanctions relief and looks like they are succeeding in getting sanctions relief and why they're also now talking about charging some sort of fee. They won't call it a toll because President Trump has said

there can be no tolls, but some sort of service fee they'll call it, or like a resort fee at the bottom of your hotel bill for ships that want to pass through the strait. They're going to try to monetize that and say that basically they control it going forward to help rebuild their economy. And I think they're going to have some success, unfortunately, in doing that. So at the end of this, I mean, won't Iran be in a better position financially than they were even before all of this started? Because now in perpetuity, they have the ability to monetize the Strait of Hormuz where prior to this ships were able to go through freely, but it didn't cost anything to do so.

So I think the tail of the tape, if you're going to kind of assess where this landed, is you have a harder line Iranian government in place, more anti-American, more against Israel, more against the West, more dominated by the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps that is the sort of military that protects the Iranian government. So a worse form of government, you have not yet any meaningful constraints on the nuclear program, so basically a draw on that issue because nothing has changed. And yes, Iran now possessing this card and knowing how to use it where they can hold the entire global economy at risk if they're unhappy with how things are going in these negotiations or unhappy with something else the United States does. And they have that card to play in perpetuity.

So I think you can make a strong case that while the Iranian regime has suffered a significant blow, many of them during this war, they ultimately end up strategically in a better place. And we end up strategically worse off. And so, you know, given that pretty dire assessment of what's going on, how do you think about Donald Trump basically casting off any questions about high gas prices here at home or the impacts, the global impacts that the war with Iran is having? Because, you know, he presents himself as being singularly focused on preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Has that been shown to be successful for him, does what he's doing right now seem to be in service of that theory of the case?

I guess the question is how successful will he be at essentially pulling the wool over people's eyes? Because one of the things that he is claiming now, the big accomplishment he says, that's in this deal that he struck with the Iranians, is they have agreed they will never pursue a nuclear weapon, which is, I agree, a good thing. But if you look at the original Obama era nuclear deal that Trump pulled out, that Trump pulled of the second line in this document says that Iran will never pursue or acquire a nuclear weapon. And he threw that agreement in the garbage and now here we are.

So to the extent that he can convince people that that's some great accomplishment, even though they've said this for a very long time and it was in the previous deal, maybe he'll be more successful in the politics. The thing that is going to be hard for him is there are people who even are Republicans who support President Trump who say that the United States has lost this war. One thing President Trump does not want to be seen as can't stand being seen as is essentially a loser. And that is the analysis that even objective people, even supportive people of him are offering about where this currently stands. I mean, even if you just look at it from a pure numbers standpoint, Iran will have access to $300 billion that they wouldn't have had access to before.

The whole crux of this thing, which is that Iran won't be able to build a nuclear way. weapon was already included in the JCPOA. And also, it's not like we haven't incurred costs. I know the administration has offered up some, you know, some what I assume is a very conservative number of $30 billion at this war is cost. That was weeks ago. So I assume we're, you know, we're tens of billions of dollars beyond that. But that's money that could have and should have gone to the American people, especially at the hands of a president who built himself as an America first president. So any way you cut this, I don't see how Trump can do anything close to resembling a victory lap when we don't have anything that we wouldn't have already had under

the JCPOA, had we not engaged in this whole process? In some ways, what's even worse about this is, as I said, there were negotiations going on before this war began. There is no reason to believe that this deal was not available to the president without going to war, without putting Americans in harm's way. And by the way, there was significant loss of life among American service members during this conflict without all of the economic damage to many of our friends. and partners and allies around the world and to the United States without doing all of that.

By the way, drawing down America's supply of munitions that we need to deter our adversaries in other fields. We have now expended a massive amount of this to fight a totally unnecessary war, and the deal that we will ultimately get is not a good deal, and at least this good a deal and maybe better was available before we even launched this war in the first place. So a pretty bad strategic predicament, and when you launch a bad war, and it does not go well, ultimately your options are limited, which is why president is choosing to do this deal, even though I think he knows on some level how weak it is. Yeah, we'll leave it there. John Feiner, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thanks very much, Brian.

No lie is brought to you by Shopify. When I started this podcast, it seemed like I had to figure all of this out on my own, scripting, set up, filming, schedule, logos. I am definitely not tech savvy, so it was really overwhelming and every day seemed to introduce a new decision that needed an answer. When you're starting off with something new, it seems like your to-do list keeps growing every single day with new tasks, and that list can easily begin to overrun your life. Finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything, can be such a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United

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shipping to processing returns and beyond. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing, sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash BTC. Go to Shopify.com slash BTC. That's Shopify.com slash BTC. I'm joined now by historian and author of the book that I'm sure most people have heard of and that is On Tyranny and the author of the newer book from 2024 on Freedom, Tim Snyder. Thanks so much for coming on. I want to start off with this because, you know, you are one of the foremost experts on this idea. And so this is a, this is a big question to begin with. But in your exploration of, of tyranny and autocracies in other countries, and then looking to what we have here in the United States, to what extent do you think

what we have here in the U.S. right now is salvageable? I don't think it's salvageable at all. I think we're beyond the point where reform or rescue or even healing is the right way to think about this. I think if the U.S. is going to make it through this, what we're going to have to have is rather something like a new beginning. I think just as a matter of practical politics, there aren't any reference points in the recent past, which most Americans find acceptable or interesting. I think the task after Trump, or rather late Trump, is to define what a better American America will look like. So that's how I see it. It's not about salvaging something. It's about a pretty drastic rethinking.

Okay, so let me ask a little bit of a different iteration on that question then, because people are going to be watching the extent to which the administration attacks, the very concept of democracy on a daily basis, the extent to which Congress, Republican-led Congress, is willing to allow him to do that, the extent to which the Republican-led judiciary, the Supreme Court, is also willing to be an active. participant in this whole scheme. And so to what extent do you think that democracy in this country?

Maybe it looks different in the aftermath of Trump as we were just talking about, but the very idea of democracy persisting is salvageable. Nope, not at all. Can't persist. Has to be remade. It's so we are where we are, not just because of Trump, but because of prior mistakes that we made as a people. And Trump has brought to a point several things that were already wrong with the United States. And if we're going to get out of those, if we're going to get out of Trump, we were going to have to, for example,

get money out of politics because there's a reason why Trump's line that everybody is corrupt and I'm just honest about it. There's a reason why that works. And the reason why it works has to be dealt with. If we're going to win this election, it's not going to be by way of conventional means. It's not just going to be because,

okay, there's going to be a normal election, people are going to show up and vote. If we win a meaningful sense, it's going to be because there's an abnormal historically speaking, abnormal, big coalition between center right and far left. It's going to be because there's enough protest potential that those who want to throw the elections are going to be deterred from doing so. And to win in the meaningful sense, the political party that wins, the Democrats,

are going to have to recognize that they didn't win just because Trump lost, but they won because people were angry and that that anger has to be transformed into something positive right away. So I'm sorry if I sound pedantic, but I think any notion of persistent, is also not helpful because too much is already gone, mentally, psychologically, institutionally, legally, too much is already gone for us to be thinking about persisting or remaining or showing resilience. It has to be more about a stunning demoralizing defeat for Trump and the people around him and a

creative impulse that pushes us towards something that's much better than we think can happen. Well, so that's basically this idea of like accelerationism and just tearing everything down so that something new can be built in its place. I mean, politics for so long has been focused on the complete opposite on incrementalism. It's like, okay, we can't get Medicare for all, which Obama has been, you know, on record saying was the initial hope for the ACA, obviously without enough support, it kind of devolved into the more incremental approach that it turned, that the ACA, Obamacare turned into. But this kind of, country has been pretty resistant to sweeping changes in kind of the more modern era,

at least until Trump. I mean, it's been so difficult to get anything done, whether it's Medicare for all, whether it's a more just tax system, big sweeping infrastructure reforms. Like, it is so difficult to do things in this country. And so I guess the question is, do you think that there is an appetite now for some of these big sweeping changes that people have been, been angling to see for so long, but always feel like we just cannot get done. Yeah. I mean, I think the American population on most of the things that you're talking about is much more radical than either of the political parties. I think if you put the question the right way, most people, including a lot of Republicans, are in favor of a good deal of wealth

redistribution. Most people, including a lot of Republicans, are in favor of rich people paying taxes, which is not the current American policy. Most people, including, a lot of Republicans are in favor of education and health care being run by people for people rather than being run by machines for a few individuals to make a lot of money. And the list is pretty long. Most people are in favor of decent public schools and are against vouchers. Like, there's a long list of issues where there's a pretty deep consensus and it's not the people, it's not public opinion, but it's rather the structures themselves. And so if you are coming out of a victory in November, you have to be at least ready to talk about changing the structures

themselves. And then if you have a majority in both houses in the presidency in 28, you know, so when we get that far, you have to be willing to change the structure themselves because I agree with you, the structures are not responsive. And that's very demoralizing. And it's one of the things that went wrong for the Biden people, right? Like some of their policies were quite ambitious, and they actually passed some ambitious stuff. But even when they passed it, the consequences weren't felt until three or four or five years later. I mean, that's like the standard democratic response to some of this stuff is like, okay, we're going to implement what we can even on healthcare and we'll make sure that it hits eight years down the road where it's basically

scientifically engineered so that the party in power can never get credit for it. It's not felt by people. And therefore, the war can't continue because, because, you know, by then the parties have turned over and you have, you know, Trump that's run roughshod over everything. I mean, like back in the day, these are now old references, but when Obama won and the Democrats had both houses, I thought on day one, they should pass a law saying we are going to offer health care for Americans on the model of the health care that people in Congress have. End of story, right? Yeah. Like, how could that be resisted? And if they had done that, I think they would have, you know, it'd be over.

But instead, we had debates and we gave the other side of chance. And so I want to pause on one point, which is that a lot of this is about power and not expecting history to go your way. So, you know, the thing where Obama paraphrases, you know, was it Martin Luther King? The idea that, like, the arc of history is long, but it had been sort of justice. 100% not true. History does not have a single arc and it doesn't bend. And justice is something that you fight for. I mean, not that Martin Luther King didn't know that or do it.

But the notion that history is somehow on your side and that if you can just somehow correct the parameters a little bit, then the juices of history will flow the right way. The Democrats have got to get out of that. That's just not the way things work. One of the things they have to learn from Trump is that power matters. And when you have the levers of power, you have to use them in the short term in the time you have. And to pick up one of your points, they have to be more aggressive about using government

agencies and about making government agencies work faster. There's a way that Obama and Biden fell in love with the procedures themselves and, like, praise themselves for following all the procedures, but the procedures are actually there to get things done and not to prevent things from getting done. Third thing, there has to be coming out of November, there has to be a trajectory which indicates that transformative action is possible. And I think that begins practically with investigation and prosecution of some of the very soft target corrupt people around the President of the United States. States, because if you do that, you're showing that you actually care, that you're capable of some form of directed action, but also you're bringing closer to the sound of their conversation, issues like corruption and bribery and wealth inequality, which when you have real power, you can then pursue. But if you don't have some kind of thing that you're planning to do right

after January with your majority, that signals that you're different, that you're not corrupt, that you aren't just controlled like the other party is, then you're going to have trouble down the line. You know, I have a book coming out in about a month called The Day After, and in that book, it's all about this idea of power and how Republicans have abused it, how Democrats have been too afraid to wield it. And finally, what Democrats can and must do if they're fortunate enough to get power back. But one theme that I talk about is that exact idea of Democrats are in power, and there seems to be this automatic deference paid to the institutions and not to the outcomes. And so there's this focus on, okay, well, we're here.

here in, you know, in government. And so now we have to pay homage constantly to the filibuster and the parliamentarian and norms and processes as opposed to just saying these things are there in theory to actually, to actually achieve some outcomes. But that gets lost. Like we lose the forest for the trees at some point in the process. And it just becomes, well, now we have to defend the filibuster because without the filibuster, all hell will break loose. And if that means we can't get anything done on the governing side, so be it, so long as our precious filibuster is still intact. Yeah.

I mean, there's a structural explanation for this, which I'm going to give out of empathy, but also because I think it's true. A comparison would be the 20s and 30s in Germany and the Social Democratic Party in Germany, which was a bit like our Democrats. The Social Democratic Party, in principle, was about the future. but because of the existence of the Nazis, they had to defend the status quo, right? And so then they get caught in this position where, hey, in principle, we'd like to make the future better. But for the time being, we've got to defend things exactly the way they are because, look,

they're the Nazis, right? And I just want to say that's a psychologically understandable position to be in. And that, you know, two-proposcing Godet, right? Like, that's the position our Democrats have been in since Tea Party, basically, where the Republicans have got them trapped because the Republicans say, hey, we're radical. We could like throw the baby out with the bathwater any day now. And so it's your job to protect the bathwater, right? And so then the Democrats, the Democrats buy this and they say, okay, the Republicans could destroy everything. It's our job to protect the bathwater the whole time.

And that's kind of comfortable because you feel like you're doing the right thing, you know, the procedures, the status quo, da, da, da, but before you know it, you're in a rut and you've forgotten that you were supposed to be the party of the future. And so now we've reached a critical point where you can't say, I'm defending the status quo, because nobody's, you're believes in the status quo. The status quo is dead, right? Nobody believes in it. And so you can't, you know, some of the Democratic Party is not where I am on this, obviously, but you can't say that because everybody will hate you if you do. And so you have no choice but to jump over your own shadow and say, all right, we're the party of the future again. We're going to do radical stuff.

You know, you had described a lot of these popular policy positions, taxing the wealthy, making sure that health care is actually affordable. You know, the list goes on and on of what Americans would like to see. And it strikes me that a lot of these positions, if not most or all of these positions, are positions that Democrats have historically espoused. Like, it is not popular to heap, you know, tens of billions of dollars every year in subsidies to fossil fuel companies. It's not popular to deny the existence of climate change.

It's not popular to strip health care away from people, to strip food assistance away from people to gut public education. And yet those are the things that they do constantly. And so it would lend itself to reason that when you have one party espousing these egregiously unpopular policies and the other side who is on, you know, the other side of that issue, that the de facto, the default position would be that more people would flock to Democrats. And so is it just a testament to the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party that even when all of these issues are on their side, they can't seem to have to win elections and to find themselves in the majority in any part of government right now.

So again, I'm going to be a little, I'm going to be a little empathetic because we don't live in a country where the playing field is level, right? So the media playing field, in my view anyway, is wildly right-wing in a way that distorts these conversations in a fundamental way. And so the notion that we should have better health care, people agree with that. But if I say health care is a right, so much ideological work has been done for so long across so many popular media channels that that position is going to bump up against a lot of resistance.

It shouldn't, in my view, like health care is clearly a right? And we could start from there. But the media playing field isn't level. And the wealth playing field is also not level. So there are entrenched interests who are working for the things like, you know, fossil fuels is a classic example. It's one of the wildest things that one could do to invest in fossil fuels right now because it's going to literally destroy the basics of the world that we take for granted. And yet we're doing it, but largely because there's a lot of money to be made there. And our politics, and this is where we want to land, because it's an issue that everybody agrees on, that really has to be done.

Our politics is not insulated from money. It's just not. I mean, like from Canada, where I'm sitting now, or from Europe or from other democracies, it's just bizarre the degree to which money penetrates our politics. And so where I would land is to say, if we had the dark money out of politics, if our campaigns are public finance and so on, I think the party that's called the Democrats would win everything because your argument would then hold. But that's not the system that we're reliving in.

And so the Democrats have to bite the bullet and some of them are thinking along these lines and say, if we ever have power, we're going to get the money out of politics, even though it'll make our lives a little more complicated too. We're just going to do it. We're going to be the party that leads to that, right? Because if you don't do that, ultimately things are going to get clogged up because it's not just bureaucracy. It's also special interests. It's well-funded campaigns. It's big companies that are holding things back. We have seen instances where Democrats have tried to practice good governance in the past. I think in that instance it's important not just to try and lead by example, but to make sure that it applies to everybody. Because for example, as we look at redistricting and gerrymandering, we have these Democratic weapons, so to speak, of California, of New York, where these independent redistricting commissions are in place. And yet because it's not a national standard, it's allowed the Republicans to

gain a huge edge on on blue states because while we're practicing good governance and making sure that everybody has fair districts in all of these places where we could garner a lot of a huge advantage. Instead, you look at places like Texas that just has gerrymandered maps on top of gerrymandered maps. You look at places like Florida. Again, same deal. Jerrymandered maps on top of gerrymandered maps. And so in these instances where Democrats do try to practice good governance, I think the fatal flaw that they incur here is that they do it by thinking if we just do it ourselves, we'll set a good example and will be rewarded by the people for that, not recognizing that when you put yourself at that disadvantage, the disadvantage in and of

itself is going to be crippling for you. You're not going to win because the other party is not going to be interested in playing by the rules, and they're going to take, they're going to squeeze every benefit they can out of that asymmetry. So I want to push this in a slightly different direction. Because while I agree with you about all of that, and I would add the point that there's been a lack of long-term thinking, the factors you're talking about have to do with Republican control of state, Republican control of state houses, which was a long-term project, which they successfully implemented. The Republicans understood the necessity of appreciating the federal character of our system, and they invested intellectual and financial resources

in getting hold of state houses. And state houses control elections, not just state elections, right? And so that was a project of theirs, which was not seen and not and not answered. So I would add that to the list of grievances or problems. That said, I want to add that the Democrats are who they are right now, and I don't expect them to change without people inviting them to change, right? So, I mean, I look forward to your book, but it's a matter not just of showing like their internal contradictions and their weaknesses. It's a matter of pushing them.

And I think the elections in November, if they're going to work out, have to be a matter of people pushing the Democrats towards more radical positions. That's where I think the whole thing hangs because if they win in November and they say, oh, we won, that's because everything we've done so far has been okay. and now we'll make a few gestures about affordability, then I think we're really in trouble. That's the thing that I fear the most, because then the Democratic Party fails to function, and we don't have any viable political parties. So I think the thing that we have to think about in November is not,

are the Democrats going to win? In my view, they're going to win. What we have to think about is what they do with that victory, and whether they take drastic radical steps afterwards, which will tell people they have in mind something significant and that they're going to do down the road. And what I'm trying to say is we can't, we're not going to get them there just by debating. They have to be gotten there by massive voter turnout, by demonstrations, by other organizations

who are making these arguments. Being who they are in June, 2006, they're not going to get there on their own. I completely agree. And I think, I think, A, this moment right here is the moment to have that argument, to let them know so that we don't waste time doing what I think. would be the default reaction, which is, okay, now that we have power, we can start doing commissions. We can start really giving this a good think. We can try and convince ourselves by having, you know, all of our teams go out and do and do their meetings and come back in six to eight months with

their findings and decide whether we want to implement something. I think that's the default position for a lot of Democrats. And I think that you're exactly right by focusing on this stuff now so that if and when we get power again, we don't waste any valuable, precious time, modeling over it and talking about it, but rather just doing it is going to be, is going to be crucial here. I'm going to, I'm going to add criminal prosecution. Yes. And I'm glad you said that.

And I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's actually a great point. And I wanted to jump in on this. And I want to get your opinion. I'm going to ask a general question here. And then you can add on to this. But a lot of what we saw in the aftermath of Trump 1.0 was. a return to normalcy. I think we can all agree that that didn't, I mean, it objectively didn't work. Like, we are not more normal. There was not some yearning, longstanding desire to just go back

to the status quo. We also watched as Merrick Garland sat on his hands for most of the Biden administration, as opposed to aggressively prosecuting the misconduct from Trump 1.0 and offering something of a deterrent effect. And so do you think that had Merrick Garland Holland moved quickly and aggressively to take on Trump, that we would be in the position that we're in today. And then just more broadly, I just want to hear your thoughts on the idea of prosecuting misconduct and corruption as we move forward from what we're seeing right now. So short answer, yes.

I mean, there are two kinds of conclusions one could draw from those four years. One is that you shouldn't try to prosecute because it's too complicated, you know, and people don't like it per se. and the other is that you should do it, then you should just be more determined about it. And I'm definitely in the second camp. So if you are, here's where I think they went wrong at a theoretical level. If you're going to say, okay, we're the good guys in the sense that we're the defenders

of the rule of law and the Constitution. And the Republicans are the wild and crazy people. If that's your position, then you damn well better defend the rule of law and the constitution when you got a chance. You can't be, if you're going to be, you can't then compromise on that, right? Like if that's your fallback, that's your bulwark, that's where you are, then you've got to hold tight to that and not just be like, oh, well, you know, things will work themselves out. Otherwise, you just look weak. Yeah, but also you make things, you make things worse.

I mean, you make things, it's not neutral. You're making, you're participating. I mean, Trump looked at that and got emboldened by virtue of the fact that he was not, he was not held to account. I mean, there's no doubt that the lawlessness is, is multiple levels higher. in Trump 2.0 than it was in 1.0. And I'm in the same camp as you. Had action been taken to hold these people to account in Trump 1.0, we wouldn't be here. He wouldn't think, oh, if my opponent is this unwilling to hold me to account for what I did the first time, sky's the limit. Yeah, it's more than that, though, because since he wasn't prosecuted

and convicted, he could raise tons of money. Since he wasn't prosecuted and convicted, his whole story. His whole story is like, I'm an outlaw. The rules don't apply to me, right? Oh, well, looks like his story's true because nobody made the rules apply to him in any meaningful way. But I'm going to add something from outside the U.S. here, which I think is very important. We do know that these Democratic small D, Democratic comebacks are possible. But in the recent cases where they have succeeded, Poland and 23, Hungary and 26, the person running the, the campaign said, I'm going to prosecute the people who have broken the law. And that's a very important message for two reasons. The first is that it communicates to people that you're not in

La Land, that you actually are going to dig into stuff, right? But the second reason is that it deters people from committing more crimes, which is relevant in the U.S. now, because whether or not we have a decent election in November depends partly on whether people think it's going to be safe for them to do criminal things on Trump's behalf. And if you're talking about prosecuting, you're giving a, you're giving people a reason not to take part in criminal conspiracies to overthrow the elections in November 2006. So that legal language is there not just out of principle and not just to change, you know, the corrupt practice of the country, but it also has to be there to deter things from happening that it could otherwise happen. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point.

Look, I know that you are a historian and your job is to make sense of how history kind of informs the present. And so not necessarily your job to make predictions about the future, but insofar as you're comfortable making a prediction, what do you think America looks like in late January of 2009 based on the trajectory that we're on right now? So about, I mean, just about predictions, I think historians can be invited to make them as much as anyone else since like everybody else seems to be wrong all the time about everything. There's nothing wrong. I mean, right? Like, totally. I think, try to think quickly of a political scientist being right about something about the future or, you know, like anybody. So what I would say, I mean, I don't mean to dodge, but what I think is that we are heading towards an axial moment, which is November. And that with the critical thing is do the Democrats win with a big coalition and are they ready to act afterwards? If that's the case, I think there's a pretty decent chance the American Republic survives. And we'll have a more or less normal election in 28 and we'll get a decent president. But if the Democrats win and they don't have an aggressive agenda,

And they discredit themselves, you know, before they even take power in January, which is all entirely possible. Then I think we're in a very bad situation because no matter how unpopular Trump is, if people think, well, he's, you know, he's terrible, but the other side are completely ineffectual, you know, they just won power, but they didn't do anything. If the Democrats don't do the things they can do, and this, by the way, is why investigation and corruption are low-hanging fruit, because you can seem to be doing something about something people care about, right? So you go after people who are making money because of Trump. Sure, Trump can pardon them or whatever, or he can veto your legislation. But that just identifies him with the corruption. It creates some daylight between you and him on the corruption issue, which is what you want. So the Democrats have to go after the low-hanging fruit.

They have to do aggressive, obvious things. They have to announce they're going to do them, like the day after the election. If we go that way, then I think we're going to be okay. But if we go the other way where the Democrats, as we've been talking about, say, okay, we won, forces of history on our side. Now we're just going to like kind of wait until January. We're going to pretend everything's normal. Then I think we then I don't.

My negative scenario is that then the U.S. becomes dysfunctional. Like I'm more worried about the dysfunctionality of the republic than I am about Trump succeeding in some kind of plot to make the whole country authoritarian. That's what he would like. But what I worry about is that if we have Trump levels of dysfunctionality continuing and no effective resistance inside Washington, D.C., will be in a different. international conversation, which will be more about why am I paying taxes at all for this? Why am I involved at all in this?

That's my negative scenario for 20207, 2008, is that Americans, like Trump keeps doing worse things. He does things that don't work. He tries to use the military in politics. It doesn't work. But the fact that doesn't work doesn't mean that people like America more. They just kind of throw up their hands and say, well, okay, why are we in this thing? Right.

That's what I worry about. That's my negative scenario. Yeah, I think when we see mass disillusionment, along the lines that we saw in 2028 and beyond, when we see this kind of mass disillusionment, I think the parties that are going to lean into that are parties that exhibit autocratic behavior. And that's the fact that Trump won again

in an era of such disillusionment already is a testament to exactly that. I want to finish off with one question international. And you had mentioned Hungary this year. Was that a surprising development for you to see and how unorthodox in a historical context is watching an illiberal state like Hungary was turn into what I presume will be a much more liberal democracy? I want to remark before answering that question that it's not just a comparison that

Hungary in the U.S. overlap. There's a reason why Trump and Trump Jr. and Vance, et cetera, all wrote love letters to Orban, or in Vance's case, actually went to Budapest and told Hungarians that God needed them to vote for Orban. There's a reason why they did that, and that is because they all belong to a transnational network of the far right, which shares money and memes. It's mostly Russian money, which was filtered through Hungary, and now that's going to stop. But I make this point because we, I think we fail often to see how cosmopolitan or how international the far right is, that the stuff that Trump is doing, almost none of its original, it's mostly laundered Orban stuff or some of its laundered Putin stuff.

None of its original. And like in that sense, they're not, like, they're not American in that sense. Like they believe that they belong to a kind of international oligarchy and that's how they act. And then they pretend that, okay, this is all somehow about American nationalism or whatever. So I just want to make that point that before we get to the lessons that Democrats might draw, we should note that the fact that Hungary lost, that Orban lost in Hungary, isn't just, it's a sign that democratic oppositions can work, but also it was a body blow to the Trump people.

Like it was, for them, it was an important moment marking their own decline. And we should notice that. We should notice that that was a huge loss from their. point of view of their guy. On the positive side, it's not unusual. It doesn't always happen, but it's not unusual for there to be democratic comebacks. And it's a very pertinent question. David Shimer wrote a really good op-ed about this in New York Times about a year ago now. There's scholarly literature on this about how democratic combats happen. And I think, you know, since we're Americans, it can help sometimes to look back and sort of take a broader view of this

stuff, Democratic comebacks depend upon, number one, you have to have a big coalition from center right to far left, which means that you've got to get along with people who you might not agree with about everything, and you have to do it in practice, like in demonstrations, in organizing and stuff, not just in theory. So that is what you need. You need that thing if you can't have that thing. So it's like the way these things work, it's center right to far left plus like some sponsors against foreign oligarchs, native billionaires, and the far right.

I mean, I put it in a very primitive way, but that is the clash, and you can only win that clash if you can hold that coalition together. Second thing is, personal politics really matter. In both Poland and Hungary, the guy who ended up winning the campaign spent a huge amount of time actually engaging human beings. So America is a big country, and it's harder, but there's still a lesson there, which is that if you go out and actually talk to people, you'll learn stuff. and you'll learn how to talk to people in a way that maybe not all of our leading Democrats have.

And the final thing is you have to have a strong message and stick to it as the leader of the coalition or the political party. It doesn't matter even so much exactly what the message is, but you have to not be boxed in as the opposition. You have to have your own affirmative message. And that affirmative message tends to involve how we're going to prosecute people. it tends to involve like a willingness to assert that you're going to use power when you get power because people respect that and listen to it. Like being against is not enough. In order for that coalition to actually get across the finish line, there has to be somebody who at the end of the day says,

I am positively going to do these things. And it's going to have costs for the other side when I do these things. Tim, for those who are looking to follow your work, where can they go? Well, there are a whole bunch of history books, but we're, and you know, Bloodlands and Black Earth and Road to Unfreedom. You kindly mentioned on tyranny. My philosophy book on freedom is my positive vision of where the United States can go. Most of my writing about day-to-day stuff is on my substack. So that's where you can find me.

Great. Well, I'm going to link that right here on the screen and also in the post description. For those who are listening on the podcast, I'm going to put it in the show notes. Thank you so much for the work you do. and for taking the time with me today. It's been great. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to John Feiner and Timothy Snyder. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday.

You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels,

or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more. Thank you.