The Bulwark Podcast - Anne Applebaum: Hungary's Surreal, Post-Reality Campaign

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Putin puppet Viktor Orbán—whose nepotistic and corrupt government in Hungary has become the model for the far-right in America and Europe—is facing his first serious election challenge in 16 years. It turns out that voters get mad when a president steals from the public and tanks the economy. Vance tried to bolster Orbán with Kremlin-esque fake propaganda, but the energy may be with the grassroots campaign of Peter Magyar. Plus, Vance's arrogance and ignorance about Ukraine, Trump is still coming up short on his Iran war goals, the administration made some weird threats against Pope Leo, and Kari Lake is still a loser. Anne Applebaum joins Tim Miller. show notes Anne's piece on Hungary, "The First Post-Reality Political Campaign" Thursday's "Morning Shots" Giselle Donnelly's Bulwark piece on how Trump's war is impacting global navigation Anne's book, "Twilight of Democracy"  Anne's "Autocracy, Inc." in paperback  Anne's book recommendation, "Furious Minds: The Making of the Maga New Right" Letters from Leo on Substack 

So and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. So delighted to welcome back to the show, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her books include Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators who want to run the world increasingly relevant by the minute. Now it's out in paperback. It's Ann Applebaum. How you doing, Ann?

I'm fine. How are you? You know, I'm going on vacation. I'm going to Coachella this weekend. I'm going on vacation. So I'm pretty good. And if I have a little bit of senioritis on today's podcast, that's why. So you might have to carry me.

But I'm going to do my best. I'll do my best too. Yeah. You were recently in Hungary covering the campaign. You wrote about that for the Atlantic. Before we get into your story, like, give us the basics for people who have not been, like, following closely. Like, when is the election? Talk to us about Peter Maggiar.

I kind of tried to describe his politics earlier this week, but I think it would be better for people just to give a full briefing from you. So the election is soon. It's this Sunday. It's on the 12th of April. I suppose the most important thing to know is that this is the first, election in 16 years where it feels like there's a really serious challenger to Victor Orban, and the challenger, at least in the opinion polls that we've seen, is way ahead. Victor Orban is, in the grand scheme of things, not important at all. He's the leader of a very

small country, less than 10 million people. But he has taken on an outsized importance to the American and European far right, because he has deliberately set himself up as a model. So he's somebody who, just for those who want a little bit, even deeper history, who was an anti-communist back in the days when I was also an anti-communist. He spoke at an event in 1989, attracted a lot of attention, founded a youth party, was considered a leading liberal in central and eastern Europe, was friendly with all the other leading liberals, had a scholarship to Oxford paid for by George Soros. And over the years, he discarded that persona.

he decided that his political career would be better served by him moving to the right, and he moved first to the center right and then to the far right. I actually wrote about him in a previous book called Twilight of Democracy, where I talked about this process of radicalization in Europe and elsewhere. The main thing to know about him is that when he took power 16 years ago, having he was in power once before and then he lost, he took power 16 years ago, and he was determined he was never going to lose another election. And so he set out changing the Hungarian political system. He played around with the Constitution. He changed the way voting works, and he slowly took over all the institutions of the Hungarian state. So the judiciary, the bureaucracy,

with the help of these oligarchic companies that he helped to create, took over the media, the television stations, radio stations. Also, those companies control between, depending on who you ask, between about 20% and 30% of the Hungarian economy. And he built a kind of nepotistic, corrupt system that keeps his party in power and keeps him wealthy. He owns a kind of neo-Beroque palace somewhere in the countryside with zebras in the garden and that kind of thing. I mean, it's all just like in novels about dictators. Yeah, zebras?

That's a new data point for me. I did not know that Orban's good zebras. And then also the funny part of the story is the zebras at some point disappear. And so the question is, where are the zebras? But we'll leave that. We don't know what happened to the zebras. Maybe a Christy gnome situation. Sorry.

Sorry. I hope not. Anyway. But he created this system that was designed to make sure that he never lost. And also important that he took over universities, cultural institutions. And he became a kind of role model for other far right parties and leaders, including most notably J.D. Vance and the manga world who, who literally imported his ideas, many of, much of what Project 2025 is is based on the experience

of Orban, the Trump administration's assault on universities, DEI, a lot of that comes from Orban as well. They saw him do it, and they're copying it. And so he has taken this outsized importance on the, as I said, American and European far right. He is now being finally challenged by a leader who is from his party, who came out of his, movement, Fidesh, the name of his political party, but who is younger, more energetic and has focused on the corruption of the regime. So the corruption of the party, the corruption of Orban, as well as the failures, because one of the things that happens when you take over the state is you, and you, especially when you take over the judiciary, the legal system, and you make

your system untransparent, which is what they all want to do, it becomes much easier to steal. And so the system has become very corrupt. The economy is stagnant. The health care system is terrible. You know, the lack of normal conversation and normal politics has begun to bug people. And Peter Magyar has been hammering all those things home. And Magyar himself is a little bit of a, he's a little bit of a wild card. He's a, he's very energetic. He's very emotional. He's been running this very emotional campaign. Lots of Hungarian flags and patriotism. I know some of the people around. him and they are genuinely committed to making Hungary into a different country. I mean, I should say another thing that's important about Hungary is that in the recent years, Orban has also played the role of Russian puppet in Europe, which I know is very strange and hard to get your mind around if you think of Hungary as fighting the Russians in 1956, and you think of Orban as an anti-communist in 1989. But Orban's decided to link his fortunes to Moscow. He has gas deals with Moscow, probably some that benefit his party as well as less so his country.

And he plays the role of blocking EU money for Ukraine, blocking EU sanctions on Russia. Magyar has said he will change all that and he will change Hungary's geopolitical direction as well as its economics. And just on Magyar, I just think this is important for people to understand because it's important, as we'll get to the J.D. Vance side of this and how crazy it is what side we're on of this fight. Like, he's basically, like, if you're going to make an American analogy, like, somewhere in the, like, Alyssa Slotkin to. Center right. Yeah, Liz Cheney type figure, right? Like, he's, you know, this is not. Liz Cheney, I mean, he comes from the ruling party.

You know, he left the ruling party because he was, there were series of outrageous incidents and evidence of corruption. And so he left the ruling party. Not a socialist, not somebody that's planting, planning open borders to bring in all the refugees from the Iran War to Hungary. Right. I just, it's important as we get to, like, how this thing is being framed. When you were there, you talk, I think this is also kind of relevant to what could be coming for us here.

And I think important to look at it through that lens. You talk about this kind of post-reality politics that they're living in. So Orban is now trying to run for this reelection, finally has a legitimate opponent. Economy is shaky there. Like, there are a lot, you know, a lot of things in Hungary. are, you know, not, you know, he's not living up to the promises, maybe. I'm trying to think of the parallels to something that the Republicans might be going through soon, right? Economy's not going well. He's not living up to a lot of his promises.

And so the campaign they are running is just a full kind of earth-to disinformation campaign to try to muddy the waters and denigrate Maguire. Yeah. So the campaign is not even about Hungary. The campaign is seeking to create an evil enemy that the Hungarians should be very, very afraid of. And believe it or not, that enemy is Ukraine. And all over Budapest, when I was there, there were big posters of Zelensky. So not Orban, Zelensky, with the slogan. Like honoring him and honoring as a freedom fighter? No. Big poster Zelensky is saying, don't let him get the last laugh. because the implication being that Zelensky and the Ukrainians are a threat to Hungary, like they might invade or they might do sabotage or they might create some violence inside Hungary. And if you step back for 30 seconds or not even that, like five seconds, you realize how insane that is. The Ukrainians are fighting the Russians. Like, why would they invade Hungary?

But Orman has now run out of enemies because the migrant thing that he used for so many years, which, by the way, had a seriously fake aspect to it as well. just isn't working anymore. There aren't any migrants in Hungary and there aren't any who want to go there. You know, the LGBT threat, you know, that isn't really working either. You know, people just aren't that scared of gay people. And so he's creating a new threat. And he has to create it literally from scratch. And so there are these AI videos of Zelensky snorting cocaine on a golden toilet or Hungarian soldiers being shot in the head by presumably, I don't know, Ukrainian snipers. I mean, It's a completely post-reality campaign.

So it creates an absolutely fake world for people to live in. And that's what he's been campaigning on. Magyar is trying to run a campaign that's about housing, economy, you know, health care, and of course, corruption and trying to focus it on. And McGiard is running this very grassroots campaign as well. The opposition doesn't have access to any mainstream media, any media, actually, or in even billboard space they can't control because that's somehow owned by the government are owned by the ruling party.

And so they're running this intense grassroots campaign. Magyar is doing like six public meetings every day. I got a list of them, actually, for the last few days of the campaign. And it's very intense. And Orban is running this campaign that's like based, as you say, in Earth 2. Among the things that you mentioned in the article, I guess there was a protest that people had signs, probe Orban signs that said, we won't be a Ukrainian colony. It was on the sign.

And what are they even talking about? then in order to advance this imaginary world, Orban and the regime seized a Ukrainian truck, I guess, with bank cash and arrested people. Yep. And maybe injected one of them with something? With truth serum, something. Yeah.

What's the deal with that? There was a regular bank run from a Ukrainian bank to, I think, to a bank in Vienna. I may mix up the details, but they're in my article. And the Hungarian stopped them, made this whole fake story about how it was some of terrorist or money laundering incident. It was more than one truck. It was a group of people, injected one of them with truth serum or something, and he had some kind of bad reaction and passed out. It was a crazy, again, an attempt to create a fake incident that would convince people that there were some bad Ukrainian thing happening in Hungary. And actually since then,

there's been another incident where the Hungarians claim to have found explosives on a pipeline between Hungary and Serbia. And the bizarre thing about this was I heard that that exact scenario was flagged like three weeks in advance before it happened. And people in Budapest were already talking, oh, this is what Orban is going to do. And it was already being publicized and discussed, as there will be this false flag operation. And then they did it anyway, as if no one knew what it would be. And I'm told it had very little impact. You know, they keep trying to create incidents and create stories and use the police or use the art. me in order to create some image of thread and danger so that people will say, well, we better

unite behind the leader. One other tactic that they're going to use that we might see back here is just good old fashion cheating, cheating through quasi-legal means, which I think is what the Republicans are trying to do with the Safe Act. In 2021, they fedes passed a law allowing Hungarians to vote wherever they had a registered address, not just where they live, creating like this voter tourism, you know, where, many, many people can register at the same house. It's kind of funny because it's what the MAGA folks say is happening here, right?

But they're actually doing it in Hungary. And so, I mean, that's basically the plan, right? Like that they can put their thumb on the scale of the system, having people from maybe Serbia across the border, voting in Hungary. Combined that with this disinformation campaign. Romania, excuse me. Or Serbia both. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Combine that with the disinformation campaign. And like, that's what they've got left. And so it's just in some ways it's ominous, but it's also maybe encouraging that they're backed into this corner, that that's what they're left to do strategically. Yeah, I guess as you said, the question is, does this high scale of intense fake propaganda work? You know, can people really be transported into an alternate and different reality?

And can enough corners be cut around the edges? There's a way of cheating by a way of paying people, to vote that they may try. As you say, there are these houses in Eastern Hungary where there's 20 people registered to vote suddenly. There's already built into the system the way the electoral system works and the constituencies worked. You know, the opposition party would already have to have something like 55% of the vote in order to have a majority because it's already tilted in the direction of FEDEF. So there are a lot of things that are already, you know, as I said, built into the system to help Fidesh win. And those have worked for them so far. I mean, they

worked for them for the last several elections. And we'll see. I mean, Maguire is getting these huge crowds. And as I said, it's this very, very grassroots campaign. And people said to me, look, we know we can't reach people through media. We know that, you know, people live in alternate worlds online. And so we're trying to reach them in real life. And it's a small enough country that maybe they can do it. Well, knocking on wood, this phrase in the article about how reality may be reasserting itself. And it's interesting when I read that, it's something I've been saying when I'm speaking to Democratic groups and activist groups, I

speaking to one yesterday before I had read the article fully, and I was making that point, basically, which is that, you have to have faith that that is going to happen, and you have to work to help reality reassert itself, but I do think that that ends up being kind of this weakness

of these authoritarian regimes. Like, if you rely too much on propaganda and fake news, like that works, obviously, to a point, but eventually there's like a level of suffering or a level of betrayal among the electorate where there may be a backlash. And hopefully we'll see that this weekend in Hungary. Do you have something on that? I do want to play the JD Vance clips as well because I think that's pretty important. No, no. The J.D. Vance thing is

really extraordinary, actually, given everything that we know about Orban, given his affinities with Russia and China, given even his foreign minister apparently held out a helping hand to Iran after the Israelis attacked Hezbollah after the pager incident last year. You know, this is a, this is a regime that is firmly aligned with the autocratic world. And yet the American vice president went there to promote it. And gaslight people. And in a speech, I put one of the clips from his speech yesterday with David French. And it's, he's talking about how if you're for Western civilization, you're for Orban. And it's like, words don't even have meaning. What does I guess Western civilization just literally means white people now. But it's like, hey, we're on the side of

Russia in this battle against a party that is pushing for rule of law and reunification with Europe? Like, what is Western civilization, if not that? No, no. Western civilization, as far as I'm concerned, is, you know, the whole history. And you can go back to ancient Rome, to the Roman Republic, if you want to do classical civilization. It's the history of democracy. It's the history of more inclusive politics. It's the history of communication. There's a lot in Western civilization, that Russia and China and Iran are trying to destroy. And the countries who are defending Western civilization are the democracies. Democratic civilization is Western civilization. And the fact that Orban has aligned with forces who want to destroy democratic civilization, I would think,

would be an obvious reason for an American not to support it. But you're right. I mean, they twist words and they twist language. Bans described, he used language describing, it sounded like he was describing Orban's opponents as a small band. of radicals, you know, as if there were some small Marxist groups that were trying to, I don't know, destroy marriage or something or, you know, rape children, you know. But Magyar's movement is, you know, at the very least, it's half of Hungary and probably more. And they're all Hungarians, and they're all participating in public life, and they're waving Hungarian flags and they're singing the Hungarian national anthem. You know, to mischaracterize it as a small band of

radicals is also, as you say, gaslighting. This episode of the Bullwork podcast is brought to you by Wild grain. Wild grain is the first baked from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas. Unlike many store-bought options, Wild grain uses simple ingredients you can pronounce in a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly and richer in nutrients and antioxidants. Plus, all items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less with no thawing required. Wild grains boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their variety box, they have a gluten-free box. a vegan box in a new protein box.

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that you're talking about with regards to the Ukrainians. I want to play a clip of his conversation. When he was over there, he did the campaign speech, but he also did an interview at Matthias College there. Let's take a listen. So first of all, I wasn't even aware that Zelensky had said that he was going to send private soldiers to the prime minister's residence

until yesterday, Victor actually told me that, and then I went and looked it up. Almost couldn't believe it's true, but it's true. It's completely scandalous. You should never have a foreign head of government or a foreign head of state threatening the foreign, threatening the head of government of an allied nation. It's preposterous. It's unacceptable. The head of a foreign state should never threaten a foreign ally.

That's interesting. That's something he should talk to his boss about. I love how he's also. I'm just learning about these things. I was just talking to Victor. And he's like Zelenskyy's coming. And the whole thing is insane. No, it's insane.

Zelensky did make an unfortunate, half-joking comment about, you know, something like that. But, you know, to make it into a real threat is nuts. And it's even more nuts given that Trump literally was going to invade an ally, you know, Denmark, and has repeatedly threatened leaders of other countries. You know, repeatedly insults, threatens tariffs, punishes, shouts at leaders of foreign countries. And Vance himself is sitting in a foreign country playing a role in their campaign while saying it's very bad to play roles and, you know, to be involved in other people's campaigns. There's this level of surreality that's very hard to cope with. He's a little worse at it than Trump and Orban, you know, because he's trying so hard to be clever.

And I don't know, it just comes off as so, so phony. I don't know, in some ways it's like revealing of the lie because he's being just too clever by half with his little. patronizing tone about that. I want to play one other clip and kind of move us over to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In the same interview, Vance gave his take on the status of the Ukraine war. Let's listen to that too. What I would say to both the Russians and the Ukrainians is, you know, we're talking about haggling at this point over a few square kilometers of territory in one direction or another. Is that worth losing hundreds of thousands of additional Russian and Ukrainian young men, is that worth an additional months or even years of higher energy prices

and economic devastation? We think the answer is clearly no, but it takes, you know, two to tango. I just like the way in which he frames up the war just continues to be such an affront and an outrage. It's an affront and an outrage because the war is not about a few kilometers. You know, the war is about whether Ukraine gets to exist as a nation. And the Russians have, and I've said, this before. I'm probably on your program. The Russians have never said they want to cease fire. They have never given up their main war aim, which remains the conquest of all of Ukraine or the control of all of Ukraine. They've never conceded that Zelensky is the legitimate leader of Ukraine. None of this has ever happened. And Ukrainians have been continually pressured by the

Trump administration to give up territory to Russia. And the Ukrainians keep saying, what will we get in return? How do we know if we give up territory, the war will end? And the answer is they don't. You know, there's nothing. No one has given them anything. And the territory they're being asked to give up is heavily fortified territory. This is like fortress towns that have, you know, that had been protected and fought over for years and years, places where Ukrainians live. You know, you're not just giving up territory or giving up, you know, a protective zone. If you gave it up, you would then enable the Russians to move further. I mean, I suppose it's because they don't want to understand it.

You know, what they want to do is they want a quick business deal between the United States and Russia and they want to move on and the war is in their way. And so they keep talking about it like it's some trivial, you know, trivial problem that, you know, Zelensky is just blocking it. And if you would just step out of the way, we could solve it. It's just a profound kind of arrogance and ignorance and hubris wrapped into one. You know, this is a really big war. It's a war about European civilization, the same civilization they say they care about. It's about whether. And sovereignty, their favorite words. And sovereignty.

And sovereignty. Do the Ukrainians not deserve sovereignty? I mean, so anyway, it's illustrative of their deep shallowness and the, as I said, their inability to even spend five minutes trying to understand what these conflicts around the world are about. I mean, you know, we haven't talked about Iran yet, But, I mean, they didn't even talk to the Iranian opposition before starting that war. Raise your hand if you've been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual checkup, or honestly, any kind of doctor's appointment. Yeah, my hands up too. When something feels off, I'm usually doom-scrolling my symptoms,

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Go to Zock.com slash the Bullwork To find and instantly book a doctor you love today that's ZOCDOC.com slash the bulwark Zocdoc.com slash the bulwark. Thank you to Zock Doc.com for sponsor sponsoring this message in this episode. I wonder back into the Iran stuff with just a couple of the other little news items related to how we're engaging with our European friends and allies as we engage that war.

And then we'll get to the ceasefire itself. This is the craziest story. And I just think it's an interesting pairing with what we saw in Hungary with J.D. Vance, you know, talking about how you should not be threatening allies in any way. Also, one of your colleagues of the Atlantic wrote a great story about Gladden Popper. There's like this American Catholic integralist type who's now an Orban advisor once Malamia had a rule as Queen of America and Jayd Vance's new book is about his Catholicism. It's like all of this like they're trying to tie their Catholicism and the religion

into the nationalism in a very real way. Simultaneously to that, we had a story that broke yesterday. This is from my buddy that writes letters from Leo. It's a good substack about Pope Leo. In January behind closed doors at the Pentagon, under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, summoned Cardinal Christoph Pierre, Pope Leo's then ambassador to the U.S., and delivered a lecture. America, Colby and his colleagues told the Cardinal has the military power to do whatever at once. The Catholic Church had better take its side.

As tempers rose, one U.S. official reached for a 14th century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French crown used military force to bend the time. the bishop of Rome to its will. We literally brought the ambassador from the Holy See to the Pentagon and told them Pope Leo's got to get in line. All right, we're going to do some invasions and we're going to need Pope Leo on our side. It's an amazing story, although at first I wasn't sure if I believed it, but if you look at the timing of it, it makes sense because this supposedly happened in January. And you can actually hear in the way the Pope has talked about the war in Iran and the way in which he's talked about migrant issues and immigration issues inside the

United States, that he senses a threat from America and, you know, and the threat turns out to have been a real threat. The ambassador from the Holy See inviting him to the Pentagon and a Pentagon American military official threatening him and saying, you know, the Pope better shape up and support us or else he's in trouble. I mean, again, it's this level of sort of arrogant and failure to understand reality and also the failure to understand what American influence is and can be. American influence in the past

never worked through military threats, at least not in allied countries. You know, it worked through the power of persuasion, an example. And the idea that you can threaten the Pope and that that's, you know, I mean, anyway, many have observed that what's really impressive about the story is that someone in the Pentagon

or in the Trump administration knew what the Avignon Pappacy was. I mean, that's kind of... I disagree with that. So here is why I was with you. I was skeptical it was true as well. And then it was confirmed by Christopher has done good reporting on the Vatican. But for me, that was the anecdote that made me think, no, only these clowns are dropping the Avignon Pappas.

So you couldn't make that up, right? You can't make that up. You couldn't invent that detail. You couldn't invent that anecdote. Right. And it's important to understand like the combination. nation of people that Trump has around. He has like total losers and clowns who had no hope in politics.

And he was their tickets, like he has them. And then there's a handful of like aggrieved super dorks, okay? Like Roosevelt, who got swirlied in high school and went to Harvard and Yale. And now this is their moment for revenge. And those are the guys that are dropping the Avenue on Papacy historical threats to the investor from the Holy See. Similarly on threats to NATO over Iran, just two bleats

from the president over the past 24 hours. All caps, NATO wasn't there when we needed them, and they won't be there if we need them again. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run piece of ice and then posted this morning, none of these people, including our own very disappointing

NATO understood anything unless they have pressure placed upon them. I think he's trying to say that they don't understand anything. thing unless they have pressure placed upon them. So that's it. I mean, again, he's like threatening Greenland obliquely, threatening NATO again, upset that they did not join us in the war of choice in Iran that we did not ask them to be a part of or brief them on or include them in any way. Right. So, you know, we put tariffs on Europe. We insulted Europeans. We sneered about Europe's

own security needs, which involve mostly revolve around Ukraine and winning the war there. And, you know, we've already talked about Vance's, you know, dismissive attitude to that war. We didn't tell them we were going to invade Iran or whatever we did to Iran, bomb Iran. We didn't involve them in it. And if you look at the kind of the timeline of Trump's comments about Europe, you know, he first he says, we don't need you, then we do need you, and then we don't need you. And then the British say they're going to send some ships, I think, to defend some interests in the Gulf or in Cyprus. It's too late to send ships. We've already won the war. You know, this kind of stream of insults and invective, which I think comes from the fact that, I mean, Trump, I think he's now at the point, I don't know whether it's psychological or physical deterioration. I just, I'm not able to explain it. But he does, he no longer seems to connect the events of one day with the next day. You know, and what he says, he doesn't, he acts like it won't have any impact. You know, when you insult the leader of a country that is heard in the, that country and that affects how you are perceived by that country. These are democracies. Trump is

unbelievably unpopular all across Europe. You know, in Denmark, it's like 90% unpopularity. This war in Iran is unbelievably unpopular in most of Europe. And they're not going to leap to the defense of an unpopular president fighting an unpopular war, especially when they know that if they did, that would be forgotten the next day, too. I mean, you know, you help Trump and then so what? You know, he doesn't remember. I mean, he's, he's insulted the countries who sent troops to Afghanistan and the people who died there. You know, Vance said something about, oh, Afghanistan, that was a long time ago, we don't care about that anymore. You know, the only time that Article 5 of NATO, this is the thing in the treaty that says, you know, an attack on one is more or less an attack on all.

The only time it's ever been invoked was after 9-11. And the only countries who've ever fought on behalf of another country are Europeans fighting for the United States. The other thing is, you know, It's also just not true. I mean, the U.S. has been using European bases all the way through this conflict. That plane that went down in Iran took off from a British base. You know, the German bases are in constant use. You know, the U.S. would have no ability to fight in the Middle East if it wasn't for the European bases. It's unreal. It's detached from reality. I mean, the only thing I can think is that it's his, you know, the war isn't going the way he thought it would. He needs somebody to blame. You know, he doesn't want to blame the Russians, you know, because they're his friends. And so he's looking for some kind of target. You know, it's NATO's fault. We should have mentioned, or I should have mentioned during the, when we're discussing Hungary, like, that's another crazy part about all of this. Like, he's blaming NATO and they're campaigning for Orban and Hungary who's on the Russia side of that election. Meanwhile, the Russians are providing aid to Iran and helping them shoot down our planes and helping

them go after our soldiers. We're not in a hot war with Russia, but like through proxies, We are kind of at war with Russia right now, too, and yet we're on their side everywhere else. And have been for a long time. I mean, the Russian cyber attacks, Russian sabotage, those are the main security issues in Europe. And they're issues for us as well, you know, for our bases around the world and probably inside the United States as well. And yet Trump, you know, is fixated on the idea that his enemy is, you know, France and Britain and Germany, as opposed to the actual enemies and the actual enemies of democracy, who are. who are Russia and China and Iran. It's a very, very weird inability to shift some ancient prejudice he has, I don't know, from the 1980s. Yeah, the lack of object permanence that Trump has is really important observation because I think he wants the other guys to have that too.

We're like, McCrone wakes up one day and it's just like every morning is a clean slate. It doesn't matter what happened. And for Trump, it's reminiscent a little bit for me. this is something that has worked for Trump politically, but like we're seeing the weakness of this trait. But like back in 2016 on the debate stage, like Trump would be on stage and like talk about how Jeb's wife is an illegal immigrant, and that's why Jeb likes illegal immigrant drug trafficking killers or whatever.

And then they would leave stage and on the way back, he'd be like, what's going on this weekend? You want to go golfing? You want to come by the club? Right. Like it was all just fake. It was all, you know, it's all performance, right? Trump perceives all of this like he perceives the apprentice, right, or WWE.

And so for him, it's like, yeah, I can, whatever, threaten Greenland one day. And then the next day say, hey, we need you guys to send us some troops and put them at risk. And I think that, like, he literally either is incapable of making that connection or, like, that type of attitude has worked for him for so long that he just assumes that it will work. and everyone will bend to his will, and everyone is kind of like him in a way. They just don't admit it. No, he has no sense of history. He doesn't understand that he says something. It has a reaction.

It's as if he has no memory and assumes that others have no memory. You know, Greenland, just to fixate on that for one second, this was a huge trauma in Denmark. I've been to Denmark since then. The Danes are still talking about it. So the Danes got ready for a variety of reasons, public and private statements made by Trump, they got ready, they were prepared for an American invasion. So that meant they went through the thought process, what will we do? Will we shoot down American planes? You know, will our soldiers shoot American soldiers? Will they shoot us? What are they going to be the economic consequences of

that? And other European countries were involved in that conversation, too. The Germans and the French and Poles and others. They knew there might be a war in Denmark between Denmark and the United States, and everybody got ready for the catastrophic consequences of that. And then, okay, Trump then went to Davos and he made a speech and he mixed up Greenland and Iceland a few times and he sort of backed off. But do you think everybody forgot about that? You know, do you think the Danish military forgot that they had been through that exercise or the Germans forgot that they were, nobody forgot? You know, and so, you know, the fact that Trump forgets it doesn't mean that, you know, that the slate is blank for the rest of Europe. Everybody remembers.

Everybody knows that there's no, there's no value in doing anything for Trump. because he doesn't, you know, he doesn't remember or he doesn't or doesn't count. What only counts is what he cares about right now. In that second. In that second, is he winning right now? That's all he cares about. And that's not how the rest of the world works. To that point, really great newsletter from my colleague, Andrew Eger, this morning

on how this negotiation of the ceasefire in Iran is demonstrating the end of madman theory. Madman theory is this idea that Trump benefits from the fact that he's so crazy that the counterparties do bend to his will because they're worried that, you know, he might do, you know, this extreme thing that no other Democratic leader would have done in the past. Andrew writes about it like this. Somehow Trump and his supporters insist that his threats to run are supposed to exist in some mythical space where we on our side are permitted to discount them as not real, but they on their side are expected to take them deadly seriously. This is supposed to unlock for Trump devastating levels of negotiating pressure that only he can access.

That's basically what Trump defenders have been saying about him for a long time. And there have been ways in which that is true, like ways in which certain leaders have given them things because they're like, it's just not worth dealing with the crazy guy on the corner. The problem is that this situation has revealed the limits of that. And we have this morning, as we're taping this, obviously this is a dynamic situation. The straight isn't open.

There isn't really an agreement, actually. There's no agreement over whether Lebanon was part of the deal. Trump bleats this morning all. ships, aircraft and military personnel are going to remain in place around Iran until such time as there is a all caps real agreement reached. Our great military is loading up and resting, looking forward to its next conquest. So that's where we're at right now. We're like Trump made this big threat, presuming that the Iranians would buckle. And the Iranians like, you know, paid him some lip service, cut a deal. But like, not really. I mean, the straight is still being heavily

monitored by them. They're making ships go through along the Iranian shore and taking bribes from people. So that's the state of play right now. That's the state of play. And we've still never heard what's the plan to get out of it. You know, it is a bizarre negotiation. I mean, on the one hand, you have this completely unreliable, uninformed, you know, I guess Trump and now they're sending Vance, who's, you know, equally unprepared and has equally no basis of knowledge in the region. You know, on the other side, you have the hardened remnants of a theocratic regime whose leader is probably in a coma somewhere deep inside in the country, probably underground somewhere. And, you know, is that a reliable team of people to do business with? I mean, do they even control all of their military units?

I mean, the IGRC, the Revolutionary Guard supposedly had, you know, after the leadership was killed, I think by plan had splintered. And so there are different groups now who are operating maybe not even in contact with one another. I mean, so it's not even clear like who is negotiating with who and are the right people even speaking to the other right people. And is there a deal even to be done? I mean, we've created this very bizarre situation where, I mean, the regime is still in place and, you know, and so on. But the leadership is, it's unclear who the real leaders are. Yeah, as you talk is making me think about it, that maybe Madman theory is working on Iran side this time. Maybe the feeling is that they are the madmen, right?

Honestly, because just being blunt about the situation, Trump had to beg Pakistan like a dog to help him get out of this. Right. Like, I mean, they sent Pakistan the language for a tweet that said, hey, we're making progress. You know, hopefully you will come to the table, Mr. Trump, you know, to try to save face. But we wrote the language that we sent to Pakistan for them to put out, you know, Pakistan. calling on Iran and the U.S. to come to the table for a ceasefire. So we've asked them to do that. And now we're trying to get a negotiation to happen in Islamabad while the straight is quasi-closed.

And we're sending Vance, who has, as you mentioned, no expertise, but the only advantage he has in this situation in this negotiation is that he doesn't want anything out of it. Like, they can give Iran whatever they want. Like, we have no goals. We have no objectives. Like, basically all we want out of it is, like, letting. the letting global trade get back to some quasi-normal place or maybe we can take some money. Yeah, the only thing we want out of it is to go back to where we were before.

Yeah, and maybe get some cash. Maybe get half the toll money in the straight. Who knows? I mean, but. Yeah, right, but like, so then it's easy to negotiate, kind of, because it's like we're not really asking them for anything because we didn't have a. We don't have any goals anyway. No.

Right. Another colleague of mine, Nancy Yusuf, wrote a very good piece published yesterday the day before. you know, saying that basically none of the goals that had been, were described by the administration, you know, or by Trump over the weeks of the war, you know, they gave different goals at different times. None of them have been reached. I mean, certainly not regime change, which they never even really attempted. They didn't ever talk to the Iranian opposition. They didn't ever involve them anyone else in the conversation. They don't seem to have destroyed the Iranian military, which at some points was the goal. They don't seem to have destroyed the Iranian nuclear program, which was sometimes all. also the goal. What did we achieve? I mean, I guess we destroyed a lot of Iranian military assets, but now the world is in a worse situation because the Iranians have, first of all, demonstrated that the Gulf states, all of which depend on this illusion of safety and freedom and desalinization plants in order to exist, has shown that they're more vulnerable than anybody thought. So it's destabilized the region. And also Iran has now taking control of that

straight and has said they're going to, you know, make people pay to go through it. I didn't understand what's been gained. To this point, I mean, I think, I guess I don't have my podcast guest list in front of me, but I think pretty much everybody I've had on this podcast loz the Iranian regime. And if they could snap their fingers, you know, would have had a peaceful transition to a different regime that offers more freedom for their people. Sure. Of course.

Yeah. So everybody wants that. And so, like, the point of this, like the conversation is all around the question of like, how can you go about that in a way that is effective, you know, the kind of. you know, that could be helpful with minimizing potential costs and risks. And so I just, in order to be as fair as possible, this blew me away this morning. And somebody that I follow on social media over the National Review, who's been a supporter of the war of the actions,

talked about the state of where we are out with the ceasefire. And I just want to read some of this. This has become a unilateral ceasefire with Washington alone abiding by its top line terms. The consequences of letting this status quo persist are grave. The U.S. would effectively ceded, its role as guarantor of global maritime navigation rights. The world would make its own separate arrangements, spheres of influence would arise, the evidence that the modest or even theoretical application enforced to a contested waterway

can close it will tempt Beijing to test the premise, all but ensuring a soft or hard blockade of Taiwan. That's from somebody who thought this was good. And they're like, we're risking a permanent end to peaceful global maritime navigation. We saw, Jozel Donnelly's writing about this in the bulwark this morning. So the stakes and risks are just so high. And like the geopolitical, you know, potential for things unraveling so great. And it's like, for what?

This is the other thing Trump is incapable of doing. Like, the word geopolitics and the word, it's like the word strategy, they mean nothing to him. So the idea that something happens in Iran, and that has implications for Taiwan, you know, or implications on another part of the planet, or that people, you know, see what happens in one place and they draw conclusions in another place. He can't think like that at all. He can only think in terms of what's happening this minute

and how do I solve this problem. And Iran is now this problem for him. He just wants it to go away. Like he wants the Ukrainian War to just go away. You know, if we just want to abracadabra disappear. He even said something like that. You know, he tweeted something a few days ago saying, oh, the straight of one day, the straight of Ormuz will just open. It will just magically open.

You know, just like COVID would one day, it would just magically disappear. You know, he has these fantasies about problems just disappearing. And that's literally how he thinks. I can't tell you how many people I've had this argument with these are Europeans and foreigners. You know, they let you know, there must be something else going. It's impossible that the American president doesn't have a strategy and doesn't understand that, you know, if he breaks up with NATO, that will have an effect on Russia or if he does something in Iran that will affect on China. It's impossible that he doesn't understand that. But he genuinely doesn't. Okay. I'll move on to a couple really quick final topics. Is there anything else I didn't ask you about with regards to the conflagration

in the Middle East that you want to get off your chest? The only thing that continues to upset me, and this is the piece I wrote at the beginning of the war, it continues to upset me is the administration's failure to talk to any Iranians. You know, there are Iranians to talk to. They're in exile. Maybe there's some inside the country, they're Iranian Democrats, they're Iranian monarchists, if you want to talk to the son of the Shah, the failure to include them in any conversation to understand, you know, to listen to people who are actually affected by this conflict. That drives me crazy. I don't understand why. I mean, even Iraq, which you could argue was despite all the planning and was also a disaster. In Iraq, we did talk to Iraqis. And there was some attempt to understand

what Iraqis might want. And here there's just nothing. And I think that's, I think that's an important cause of the, of the disaster. We always touch such bleak topics when we're together, you know, and I feel bad about that because you're a happy person. And so we're going to try to end with an actual happy thing today. But I have to laugh about the fact that I went to look at the outline of our last discussion, try to see what we had talked about, kind of refresh my memories, if there's anything I missed, I wanted to get back to today. And in my outline, the final topic, happy talk was maybe some good news for Iran question mark because it was in January. I know this is a it's pretty macabre laughter, but it was in January right when those protests were starting.

And the regime seemed weak. And like this is the thing. This is one of the things that frustrates me so much about this whole thing is like they all they all just keep lying about why we did this too. And they keep lying when they're creating post hoc new rationales for like the real purpose of this was degrading their Navy or whatever. It's like, fuck you. Like we know what happened. Like, the real purpose of this was they seemed weak in January. And Israel saw an opportunity. MBS saw an opportunity. And, you know, we thought that, hey, maybe if we can just, like, knock over one block here, the whole thing will come tumbling down.

And, like, that was the initial point of doing this. And we're farther away from that than ever. Yeah, I know. It's the thing I'm most upset about, actually. I'm most upset about what is what this does to Iran and Iranians. Final topic. Let's make fun of Carrie Lake for a second. You wrote a couple months ago now about what's been happening with the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which she's allegedly running. I've had a few run-ins with old Carrie. But I haven't really followed that closely. So get us up to speed. What's happening there? Is she managing an efficient ship? No. No. Carrie Lake has run really a disastrous ship. U.S. Agency of Global Media runs Voice of America, but it also runs some

other things. Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, which are the radio stations that run in Russia and Belarus and other places. Radio Farta, actually, which is in Iran, that's part of Radio Free Europe. Radio Free Asia, which broadcasts in Mandarin and Korean and North Korea, and actually was famously broke the story

of the oppression of the Uyghur people in China. There are some very legit, very good journalists who've been part of, you know, not All of it is excellent or wonderful, but a lot of it's very good. And in some places, it's really important. And she took over, I think initially thinking maybe she was going to become a TV star by doing so. And then, I don't know, inspired by Musk and some crazy people on X, she decided actually her job was to destroy the whole thing.

And so she literally set out to fire everybody and break up everything and the whole thing. The journalists and the system fought back. People sued her. And what's happened most recently is she started losing lawsuits. And one judge has already said she needs to reinstate everybody that she fired at VOA. And there's also a bizarre legal question as to whether she is even legally in charge of USAGM, whether she's even able to do it because she was appointed in a strange way. And according to the law, she would need Senate confirmation, which she doesn't have. And on top of all this, like actually what she spends most of her day doing all the time is tweeting, you know, nonstop stuff about Trump and Rick Brunel and the Trump Kennedy Center.

And, you know, so mostly what she does is promote herself all day long. And meanwhile, seek to destroy this agency, which used to do good things. And I should say another piece of the story is has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in doing this. Hundreds of millions. You know, she fired a lot of people illegally and that meant their stuff. salaries were still being paid. She shut offices in such a way that she will have to pay fines for having shut them. You know, she broke contracts. I mean, almost everything, she has literally trail of destruction behind her. And now it's not even clear she was even legally able to do that,

which I think that's the good news. Courts fought back. Yeah. So to sum up, Carrie Lake is a loser who's pretending to be in a job she doesn't really have. That's familiar. That seems like a trend for her. All right. We'll close with this. Jeff, Goldberg got mad at me a couple weeks ago because he was trying to suggest to me some World War II military strategy book that I should read. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I only have time for one Atlantic Book Club and it's Ann Applebaum's. And it's an informal one. You've previously suggested the captive mind, the opermans, the director, a poem, a poem, that's nice, the choice of comrades, what we can know by Ian McEwen was the most recent suggestion. Anything else? Anything you're reading watching? A team. TV, a streaming show? Do you have anything bringing you joy that you'd like to add to the list of Ann Applebaum recommendations? I don't know about joy, but I really enjoyed Furious Minds by Laura Field. Have you read that yet? You know what I'm talking about? I'm going to get in trouble that I haven't read it because I love Laura and she wrote as she was doing the research for the book. She wrote for the

bulwark, some really great pieces that I enjoyed. And so for that reason, I kind of felt like, I kind of get it. So I haven't read the whole book yet, but I should read the whole book. It is on my list as well. What's really useful about it, for those who don't know, it's a kind of academic history of the far right.

And it places them in, you know, the universities and academic spaces they came from. And she observed them as they were developing. And so there's some good character portrayals. And a lot of stuff made more sense to me after I read it. And it's very well done. It's a good book. I needed this kick in the ass.

apologize laura that i haven't read it uh you know there's a lot of content creation happening out here furious minds that is a great suggestion we'll put a link uh and the show notes that is an apple bomb i will be here tomorrow taping from california so it might come out a little bit late and then on monday sarah and bill crystal will be sitting in for me and then i'll be back on tuesday all right everybody appreciate an apple bomb so much as always and we'll see y'all back here tomorrow Let's think of him for a vision, the Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper,

and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.