The Bulwark Podcast - Anne Applebaum: The Loss of 'Democratic Faith'

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

The U.S. has been a model for other aspiring democracies since 1776. At the same time, the idea of America as the leader of the democratic world has also had a unifying effect at home. It’s what has kept this diverse country of many faiths and ethnicities together, and it has been our national identity. But with Trump actively undermining those ideals, what will we be unified around? Plus, the potential new whites-favored refugee policy, Trump’s psychological comfort to the Russian war effort, Hegseth got himself a state media press room at the Pentagon, JD is totally cool with lots of Nazi talk—and could the administration be trying to start a war in Venezuela so it can expand its militaristic crackdown on the streets here? Anne Applebaum joins Tim Miller. show notes Anne's new piece, "The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark" Anne on the Nobel Peace Prize winner "Ukraine’s Plan to Starve the Russian War Machine," by Anne Ian McEwan's "What We Know" — second recommendation this week! F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code BULWARK15 at theperfectjean.nyc/BULWARK15 #theperfectjeanpod

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to welcome back, one of our favorite and most uplifting guests. She's the staff writer at The Atlantic. Our most recent books include Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc. It's Ann Applebaum. Hey, Ann. Hi there. Let's do it.

We have quite the outline for today. happening. You've been on a heater. There's some news that Governor Pritzker made $1.4 million gambling out yesterday, according to his tax returns. And that is a real heater in gambling. And I'm upset. I didn't get to ask him about it and see what his gambling of choice was on Tuesday. But you've been on a writing heater. And I want to go through some of your recent articles, but we have, unfortunately, some other news first. I want to start with. I guess we'll start with the overseas stuff. The AP had the story earlier this week that I haven't got a chance to mention that is just brutal about USAID.

That's title is Starving Children Screaming for Food as USAID cuts unleashed devastation and death across Myanmar. I just want to read a little bit from the lead here. Muhammad clutched the lifeless body of his two-year-old son and wept ever since his family's food ration stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April. The father had watched helplessly as his once vibrant baby boy suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.

On May 21st, exactly two weeks after the little boy died, Marco Rubio sat before Congress and said, no one has died because it was government's decision to gut the foreign aid program that Mohammed said is a lie. I lost my son because of the funding cuts, and it's not only me. Yes, obviously, when a program that sent hundreds of millions of dollars in food aid around the world is abruptly cut without making any provision for the consequences, yes, obviously people died. People didn't get their food. They didn't get their medical treatment. They didn't get their AIDS treatment. And that's, of course, not just in Myanmar, but all over the world.

I was in Sudan earlier this year. I think we talked about it before. And I met people who were very directly aware that USAID had been cut, and they were beginning to be very careful how they used the resources that they had. And this is an extremely poor country that's in the middle of the Civil War. And they were rationing what was available because they knew what was coming. So, I mean, it's absurd to imagine that that would have no impact. I mean, it was a, it was a monumental decision. And I think, as we also said at the time, it had all these knock-on consequences because, you know, the U.S. aid was responsible for something like 40% of the world's humanitarian aid, but a larger proportion of logistics. And so others who were

delivering aid also suddenly found themselves, you know, blocked and the ships weren't running or the trucks weren't driving, and it was a real disaster in a lot of places. In addition to the aid not going out, people that are suffering around the world are not coming in, which has been the American tradition. This is a New York Times story yesterday. The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans, and Europeans who oppose migration to the continent, according to documents obtained by the times. This is another thing that doesn't get like a ton of attention because

of all the other horrors and acute issues coming to the country. But the degree to which the incoming refugee program has just been slashed to zero is pretty notable. It was probably true that the refugee system needed to be changed. But it looks to me like what the Trump administration did was take that need for change or that need for reform and to radically reverse it. And and change it into something completely different altogether. Defining white South Africans and Europeans who disagree with their government's migration policies as being somehow victims of human rights abuse or political repression is a bizarre almost, I mean, so I guess it's a kind of troll.

It's a way of mocking the entire system of refugee protection and also of a whole long tradition of American support for people who are victims of real political repression. And, you know, it's just a way of redefining who we are and what we do. Troll is an interesting word because it brings to mind the text chain from Politico's people reporting about the young Republicans that were texting each other a lot of racist stuff. And, you know, some of the pushback to that that you saw publicly from people on the right was like these things were obviously a joke and everything you can, everybody needs to chill out up to it, including the vice president, took that position.

And, like, this policy is an interesting way where, like, the troll overlaps with reality. Okay. Like, maybe you're not really racist in your heart. I can't judge. But if you're making jokes about Nazis, making jokes about white nationalism, and then the people that are making those jokes get hired into the government, and then they get into the government and they do another troll, I guess. And the net effect of that troll is that only white people can come into the country, that kind of doesn't matter what word you use to describe it. Like, in effect, like they're putting in place, you know, white race-based policies. Yeah.

I suppose the thing that makes it hard for people to understand is exactly this, is the tone these things are done in. You know, there is a weird, jokey, underground tone that you now find, you know, in a lot of online conversation. And that, you know, for people who are used to a different way of speaking, where people say what they think and they stand behind what they say, It's hard to understand. But as it merges into policy and becomes U.S. government policy, then, yeah, I think it's time to take it really seriously. This is not the only example, of course. I want to kind of lump together a couple other topics here domestically under, I guess what I'd

call authoritarianism at home and the progress that's been made since we've last chat with each other. Three things jump out to me in particular. I want to talk about what's happening with ICE and this sort of show your papers culture. This is something I talked about with Pritzker on Tuesday. Like, you're seeing this more and more, particularly in Chicago now in this country where people, if they're brown, just have to show their papers or they're menaced by the government agents. You've got that. There's another time story out of it, the IRS and how they're reorganizing that to use it to target political foes.

Then the DoD, which is essentially every major media organization in America is no longer badged to go into the Pentagon because of their new rules as of today. I want to talk about all of them. And I'm just, at a biggest level, I was just kind of interested in your view on, like, all of those things taken together, like this attack on the press, you know, what we're seeing with the immigration enforcement and the IRS. So I think what we're seeing is the United States moving away from a rule of law culture, meaning that the law is something that is enforced by courts and is written into the Constitution and all government officials are obliged to abide by it. to a rule by law culture, which is what authoritarian countries have, which means the law is what the government decides it is. And, you know, in that world, the IRS is not a neutral agency with very, actually, historically extremely strict controls over its data

and who can have access to it and how it can be used into something like a tool of the government or, you know, yet another thing the government can use to investigate you. And that's, I mean, actually, that is really, you know, I don't, I don't always like these direct comparisons, but that's really reminiscent of the beginning of Putinism. That was how Putin would get rid of his rivals. He would have, you know, launch tax investigations of companies. And this was in an era in Russia when a lot of people had violated all kinds of laws. I mean, it was a real free-for-all, which is not the case in the U.S., but even so, the threat of an investigation, you know, against you, makes you behave differently. The story is really shocking.

I mean, it says in here, a senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that include major Democratic donors, some of the people said. Like, the fact that they leaked to that, it's an intentional effort to try to chill donors to Democrats. One other kind of related element is Scott Besson was on Charlie Kirk's podcast, I guess on Tuesday, and called Kirk's assassination at Domestic 9-11 and said that he wanted to use the Treasury Department to do. to kind of root out the political opponents of Kirk and use the Treasury Department to do investigations of their finances. I mean, you take all that stuff together. I mean, it's overt what they're doing. Yes, this is a threat to use the power of the government, which can investigate you and can look at your finances and can use the FBI to surveil you and can use all kinds of tools that have been historically really bound and constricted by law to use them.

against targeted political opponents. In other words, not criminals. You're not anybody who's broken the law, you know, simply people that they don't like. I mean, this business of renaming normal political groups and organizations, you know, talking about the demonstrators who will be coming out this weekend as Hamas, you know, or as terrorists. I think that was Mike Johnson who said that. But Scott Besant also said something along those lines. Renaming them is somehow threats or insurrectionists, as long as there have been detainers. This is what they do. Again, they haven't done it yet, and we have, you know, we still have a legal system that will fight back against it and so on. I don't want to give people this feeling of hopelessness. But, I mean, this is a absolutely textbook way of abusing the arms and the powers of the state that were set up by all of us to benefit all of us. You know, the IRS collects money so that we can have, you know, a federal government and an army and, you know, social security system. It's not set up to terrorize Americans. And the FBI exists to protect all of us and the people who go to work for it.

Swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the MAGA Republicans and not to Donald Trump. And so all these things were set up to protect us and keep our society safe. And it looks like what they're trying to do is reverse them and, you know, use them deliberately. And actually, as you're right, one of the weird things very publicly that they are leaking this stuff or talking about it against their so-called enemies. And the point is to make democratic donors afraid to give money, make people afraid to protest, make people afraid to engage in lawsuits, make journalists afraid to write, I mean, on and on and on. The idea is to create a kind of chill, an atmosphere in which people were, you know, are anxious about doing anything political. And that's, that's very ugly and it's very un-American.

I'm not going to be chilled. We all did see it coming. It was about seven minutes into the Biden debate that I texted my husband and I said, we're going to have to upgrade our tax accounting services, I think, for 20, 25. So we've done that. Is your sense talking to people in these circles that the chilling effect is working? Maybe you and I are lucky. I mean, we work for institutions that are going to protect us. And so I'm surrounded by people who are very happy to continue talking and working and writing and so on. I'm here at the offices of the Atlantic Magazine in Washington, D.C. And we're not hiding in a bunker. It's all pretty open. I hear from a lot of people who want to do things. I'm constantly being asked by people, how can I be more engaged?

What can I do? What do you think? I pass out suggestions all the time. So I, you know, the speed with which they're moving and the aggression they're using is creating kind of backlash. I mean, what we need, of course, is for their supporters or even just the people who voted for them to begin to see this. And I don't have any way of measuring how, how effective the backlash is in that area. I do think it's kind of effective with Democratic donors. The donor thing is interesting that they said that by name because I had Chris Murphy on about two or three months ago now. And he said he was alarmed about it at the time. And my understanding is it's gotten kind of worse since then as far as to chill among big donors, not people giving $10.00. There are a lot of

people out there doing that. But that's concerning. I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of those people, you know, if they have a lot of money, then they have some kind of dealings with the government. Maybe they're nervous in a way they didn't ever have to be before. All right, y'all, traditional phone systems weren't built for how businesses work today. when you miss a call, you're not just missing a conversation. If you're doing this for your company, you're losing business. Our sponsor, Quo, is helping to solve that. They're designed to help you work smarter, build stronger relationships, and never miss an opportunity.

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Join over 90,000 businesses using Quo. Get started free plus 20% off your first six months at Quo.com slash the bulwark. That's QUO.com slash the bulwark. And if you have existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over at no extra charge. Quo, no miscalls, no miss customers. Back to the DOD. So this is a statement for the Pentagon Press Association yesterday. The defense department has confiscated the badges of the Pentagon reporters from virtually every major media organization in America today.

Today is a dark day for the press. This is all about having their accreditation revoked because they refused to agree to the Defense Department's new restrictions. on news gathering. Crazy. What's interesting is that, as far as I know, as of yesterday, every single news organization refused to sign this, you know, this document that the Pentagon handed them, which... I think OAN and the Federalist were the two. One American News, which is platforming the Matt Gates podcast.

He's a competitor in the podcast space now. And the Federalist, which was just a right-wing, you know, mega online outlet. Those were the two that I've seen, yeah. Yeah, but that meant a lot of, I mean, Fox didn't sign a. Right, yeah. Newsmax even. Newsmax didn't sign it. So a bunch of others didn't sign it. Even for Fox, it's dangerous to sign a piece of paper that says your journalist could be investigated or prosecuted if they asked the wrong questions.

I mean, that's how some people interpreted what that said. I mean, what's disturbing to me is I'm worried that the purpose of this exercise was to get everybody out of the building. In other words, they didn't expect people to sign it. It's a little bit like these documents they give universities that no university can possibly sign. You know, they wanted everybody gone, and that will make, you know, One American News Network and the Federalist, in effect, state media. All of the Pentagon press conferences will be just directed at them. And so, for official government statements, you'll have to go on to One American News Network. I think that might be the intention.

Of course, it doesn't mean that Pentagon reporting will stop and people will just do it from somewhere else and they'll, you know, they'll use different kind of sources. Sure. I know, you know, the Atlantic has somebody who's going to continue, you know, what she was doing from somewhere else. But I do think that the purpose was narrow it down, you know, and make everyone use state media. And then that reduces the ability to report and use the news of others. I mean, it's very strange, actually, because actually the U.S. military has mostly, I mean, there are exceptions, find plenty of exceptions, has usually benefited from its relationships with the press. I mean, you know, all the journalists who have been brought into battalions during wars to fight alongside the soldiers and take pictures of what was going on. I mean, that's something that has always been, I mean, the armies worked with journalists for decades, you know, forever, really.

And I'm sure there are people in that building who are really upset about what's happening. Yeah, I think another possible reason here is just simply Pete Higgs has paranoia. And that circle has kind of shrunk, but early in the administration, there were a lot of those kind of leaks and stories. going out profiles of how paranoid he was and I was freaking out at people and I was giving people polygraphs and stuff. I don't really have any reason to believe that that has ended in the subsequent period of time, right? And so this might be motivated by that. He won't see people out of the buildings because he's so paranoid. Maybe, but it doesn't mean they won't report. Yeah, right. You know, and it doesn't mean people won't leak. So it's a very strange way to be paranoid.

I guess if you're paranoid, you're paranoid. That's what you do. Paranoid people do paranoid. You make mistakes. I don't know Pete Hex is, so I don't know whether, you know, I can't make any judgments about it. And then the ice, the show your papers stuff, and just the parallels are pretty striking. I know you just said earlier, you don't want to always make the parallels, but like, how can you not? I mean, this was, you know, another time story out this morning. I saw that just that reporter just witnessed this. This was not like one of the things got put out by a group. It was like an unmarked black car. Two people are running next to the lake. Agents jump out, ask them what their legal steps. statuses. They say they have H-1Bs. They're detained for a little bit and they're let go.

And that's just a one tiny example, but this stuff is happening all over the city. I mean, all over the country, really, but particularly in Chicago. Look, I mean, it's a violation of how we've done law enforcement forever, I mean, at least in modern times. You know, approaching people without cause, you know, people who clearly aren't criminals. It's also this use of civilian cars and people wearing masks. And there's, there's no tradition of that, again, in contemporary American history. You know, again, East Germany. East Germany. Our soldiers wear name tags, you know. And our policemen wear name tags. And that's on purpose, you know, because that's part of how you build trust in the police. And the idea of having some kind of paramilitary force that wears face masks.

I've talked a lot about, you know, other democracies that have declined and so on. And, you know, Victor Orban's Hungary. I don't remember that. happening there. What is the view on that stuff? Is that the thing that is maybe the most striking in your conversations with people in Europe, people in Poland and elsewhere, like is the masked domestic agents the thing? Obviously, they have more acute interest about NATO, et cetera. But just kind of watching America from afar, you know, what is the, what is the reaction to that? Remember that they hear news very selectively. You know, they don't follow it day to day. They don't follow anybody on social media. I mean, they just hear the big news story.

And they have all heard the stories about Chicago, and they all know who Governor Pritzker is. I mean, if they read the newspapers. And they all know about National Guard troops being sent there and so on. And so, yes, the ICE stories and the police stories are having a huge play there. But, you know, it's not really separable. I mean, the idea of the U.S. as the leader of the democratic world, this is the article that I just wrote that I know you want to talk about, as the leader of the democratic world was, was connected to also what America was at home. America was often hypocritical and we often broke our own laws and so on in that long tradition of that

going back to the very beginning. But America was, especially in Europe, and I think especially in the Asian allies in Japan, South Korea, America stood for a certain way of behavior in a certain kind of political leadership. You know, the American language about rule of law, you know, We've gone all over the world and talked about why rule of law is important for many, many years. You know, other people bought it, and they tried to bring it to their own countries if they didn't have it before. And they tried to, they created constitutional democracies, not necessarily exactly modeled on ours, but with the idea of ours as a kind of loadstone, you know, kind of not a precise model, but an inspiration. And the idea that we are suddenly going back on that or we are

suddenly creating all these institutions that they've all tried to get rid of, I mean, if you come from a formerly communist country or a formalist fascist country, which is almost everybody, then you remember these kinds of paramilitary forces from your past. And you also remember that your country got out of that or escaped from that, partly by aspiring to be more like America and by wanting to be part of an alliance with America. And so those things aren't really separable for people. And so the U.S. is doing a lot of damage. I mean, obviously what's more important what happens in America to Americans, but it's also doing a lot of damage to its standing and its image and its influence in the world by by assaulting its own institutions.

The title of the article, you're referencing as a beacon of democracy goes dark. I mean, the idea of the U.S. as a leader of the free world just feels kind of silly at this point. It's just over. I mean, just functionally speaking. And a part of that is the abdication, and you get into this in the piece, not just of, of the policies because, you know, we always had some, you know, you can just ask black Americans, whoever, we always had people that were, you know, victims of our governments, uh, anti rule of law, anti-democratic moves domestically. But, but there was always like this kind of aspiration, you know, a goal to reach, right? And these guys just have basically

stopped that part, right? It is not as if, oh, we're being hypocritical at home. It's like their stated message to the world is basically that the U.S. is now open for business. We can do corrupt deals. I'm like, that's fine now. It is silly or boomerish or eye-roly to even talk about, you know, advancing democracy. Like, that's some kind of neocon thing from the past. And just the premise that we're trying to promote democracy rule of law is over. I don't know if it's over forever, but it's definitely over for the moment. And let me, if I can have one second to go back. a little in time.

Sure. That the U.S. was a model for other democracies has been true since 1776. And the Declaration of the Independence was passed around and reprinted in all kinds of places. It was an inspiration for the French Revolution, inspiration for the Haitian revolution, not that long afterwards. That language has always been used and copied, even despite what good or bad we were doing at home or abroad. Since 1945, certainly since the Second World War, the language of democracy has definitely been

part of our foreign policy, going through, you know, many, many administrations, which were not neocon or neoliberal. I mean, you know, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, you know, everybody. Teddy Roosevelt. Everybody, Teddy was a little earlier. But everybody, certainly in the last 80 years, has used that language or 70 years. And one of the mistakes I think we made in thinking about that, this is one of the arguments I've come to actually over time was that, you know, we always thought that by promoting democracy

abroad or having troops in Europe or in South Korea that we were doing a favor to those countries, that we were somehow, you know, defending Europe, you know, to help the Europeans. I mean, in retrospect, by putting that language, the defense of democracy at the center of our foreign policy for a long time, I think it had an unifying effect at home. You know, the, it was a thing that people could be linked to, that could inspire people, even in times when bad things were happening here, you know, the idea that this is what America stood for, this is our national identity, and this is our international identity, I think it was really important for Americans. There's a famous moment, you know, during arguments about segregation, where there's an amicus

brief filed by the U.S. Department of Justice of the Supreme Court case in Brown v. Board of education, where they make an explicit reference to this. They say, I don't remember, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but it's something like people abroad will question our devotion to the democratic faith. They use the expression, democratic faith, you know, if we aren't treating all American citizens equally. And this idea that there was a thing called the democratic faith was really important for unifying a really diverse and, you know, very heterogeneous, very, you know, enormous country with people from all different places, with all different ideas and all different religions. And that was the thing that we were unified. That's the thing

that kept us together. And it feels at the moment like the administration wants to destroy that abroad, obviously, and no longer have the U.S. be the center of a big series of Democratic alliances. But the impact of that at home is also pretty big. You know, if that's not what we are anymore, what are we unified around? You know, what is the national identity? I mean, is it white people? I mean, I don't think so. I don't think that's going to work for everybody. Seems like J.D. Vansing, so. You're pretty good on this quote here. This was Dean Acheson and the Department of Justice had filed the Amicus brief. And it said racial discrimination raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the Democratic faith in that

brief. It's a famous note. And I know that behind the scenes in that era, that was part of the argument in favor of civil rights. The idea was that our failure to treat our citizens equally at home is damaging for us, you know, because people felt this, you know, this contradiction between what we stood for, what we said we stood for, and what we were doing. And that was part of how we got the Civil Rights Act and the civil rights, you know, changes to rights for all Americans. All right. We are back with a couple of our listeners' favorite ad reads. I like to hear me talk about my gay genes and how much genes are attached to my identity as a gay man and how it's been kind of sad.

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to check out that's 15% off for new customers at the perfect gene dot nyc with promo code bulwark 15 after you purchase they'll ask you where you heard about them please support our show and tell we sent you fuck those khakis and get the perfect gene all right so this is where i go just dark for a second on you because this is why i do think it's kind of over is doesn't it have to be a bipartisan commitment to the democratic faith in a country that's basically a two-party system right sure like the democrats could win in 2008 and there could be an internationalist democrat that talks about the ideals of democracy and rule of law it's the president in 2029 but if you get into a place where countries abroad, you know, leaders abroad think, well, this is only a commitment that they

have as long as these guys are in charge. If the other guys gets back in charge, they will, they won't care about that anymore and they'll go back to, you know, whatever you want to call it, real politique, the nicest way you could call it, like a divorce from those values. That doesn't work, right? Because we can't be relied upon to care about that. So other countries will change their actions to meet that new instability, right? Yeah. I mean, that's happening. You know, although nobody says so in public, I mean, almost every European country is now

looking at how to reconfigure their security in the event that the United States is no longer an ally, how to think differently about economics and trade. There were a lot of decisions, a lot of investments were made. on the assumption that the relationship, this is about Europe, which I know the best, although I'm sure it's true of other countries, on the assumption that the presumption of the United States was a very stable ally and that there was a predictable long-term relationship. I mean, if you're a, I don't know, you're a Dutch company or you're a Danish company, you want to make a huge investment in America.

You do that because you feel like, well, the legal system is compatible and the trade rules are going to be predictable, and so I can trust it. And that has now gone. I mean, and you're right. That's not coming back. And so it just doesn't mean people won't make investments, but they will do so differently and at a different pace and with different kinds of safeguards. And the assumptions that were almost unspoken assumption, well, you know, about how America

and Europe work together are all being questioned right now. I mean, I talk to a lot of different kinds of European audiences at different times, and this is what everybody says. you know i think about kind of the younger generation coming up again kind of harking back to that text chain even though some of those guys aren't that young on the on the republican uh young republican chat but you know i go to tPSA things and hear from those young people about their worldview i think you think about kind of the worldview of the types of college student that was showing up to the protests uh about gaza i think a lot of them would like listen to this

conversation and roll their eyes a little bit like you know and just like this is all stupid boomer stuff. You know, it's out of date. This like democracy promotion, you know, on the left, people would say, well, this obviously was this huge failure. If you look at the Iraq War and stuff, we need to go a different route. And on the right, you'd hear that. Iraq war was a failure. But as I was reading your article, it's striking. And you kind of go through all the countries that like joined, you know, the democratic world over the past one of 70 years, Greece and Spain and South Korea and Taiwan and countries in Central Europe. And imagine, I'm imagining the counterfactual world, right, where all those countries are various, varying degrees of authoritarian kleptocracies.

Like, that is bad for the world. It's bad for individuals that live in those countries. It's bad for us in America. But that argument feels like it's a losing right now. Do you sense that? So Iraq is a very bad example. You know, we invaded Iraq for a lot of different reasons. And later, somebody got the idea that this was about democracy.

but that was not, you know, that was actually atypical of the post-war period. You know, most of the countries that became democracies and aspired to be part of an alliance of the United States did so peacefully or relatively peacefully. And there was a huge expansion of the democratic world after the Second World War, and it was led or inspired or somehow encouraged by us. And so there is a long list of huge successes. I mean, as you know, I live part of the time in Poland, and Poland is, yeah, actually, by any measure of success, economically, politically, and every other way. I mean, it was a

basket case. It was a, it was a victim of other countries for 100 years, and now it's not. So, you know, so we had this long experience of success. You know, we are at a moment where the pendulum is swung the other way, and the forces of, you know, doubt and cynicism and also, you know, corruption and secrecy is a big, is a big inspiration for a lot of autocrats. And money and corruption are pushing a lot of countries in the opposite direction. So I don't know how broad you want to look at it. But I mean, there is a, my other book topic, I mean, there is a coalition of autocratic states who have spent the last decade trying to push back, trying to find the propaganda and the tools to push back against the democratic world. Because our language, that language

that the 35-year-olds or however old they are young Republicans make fun of, our language was such a big threat to them. Since 2010, the Russians have been trying to find ways to find language that undermine democracy, that made fun of NATO, that reduced the power and influence of America and culminating in the invasion of Ukraine, which was designed to show that America is helpless and NATO is worthless. I mean, they haven't succeeded in that yet, but it's not a plot and it's not a, you know, it's not a conspiracy, but there is a, there has been a lot of pressure put on, on the scale from the other side. There are a lot of people in the world who don't like transparency and don't like the rule of law and want to have different kind of political

systems. And of course, they're, they're threatened by their own protesters by, you know, by Navalny and Russia or Hong Kong. And the political memory of the stuff starts to fade, right? Like the people that live through the greatest period of successes. where a lot of these countries became democracies are getting old or dying. Yeah, I hate to say it. But, no, I was in Poland in 1989 when communism fell. And so I guess I'm one of the group of old people. I, me too.

I'm on the younger side of it. I don't know. It's just something I think about a lot. You mentioned Ukraine. You had another article about that recently talking about how Ukraine is targeting Russian oil and gas. You visit a company called Firepoint. talked to what they were doing since then, since you've written that our president has had maybe a temporary, maybe permanent, who knows, change of hearts, it seems on the war a little bit.

And there's some discussion that more offensive weapons will be sent to Ukraine. What's your sense of the state of play? So, Ukrainians are very sanguine. Of course, they would like the American president to give them more offensive weapons. And if he does, they will use them. And they will be very happy. There's no question about that. But they have also focused for the last year on building their own weapons.

And the thing that they built, and this is them, not us, the thing they built that has been unusually successful are different kinds of long-range drones. And so the factory I went to makes these drones that are like little airplanes. They look like planes. They're much bigger than what you think of as a drone. They can fly for seven hours. They carry warheads. The factory I went to is one of many, but it's one of the more advanced ones. And they make a hundred of these huge drones every day.

And I was told that they launch 100 of them every day. So as soon as they're made, they go up in the air. And there are several dozen drone attacks on Russian military facilities and in the last few months on Russian oil refineries and other pieces of equipment to do with the oil industry. And the goal is to deprive the Russians of money so that they can't keep the war. going so that the oligarchs suffer. One of the effects of it has been that there's been this massive gas shortage across Russia, you know, people queuing for gasoline and diesel. So it's having an effect. Of course, what the Ukrainians want is a U.S. contribution, but they don't count on it. I mean, the idea that the Ukraine war can only be won by the U.S. is one, I think, is an idea they

want to fight back against. I mean, I suppose there is one important element. were Trump to make this decision. This is also, like all wars, this one has a psychological element. And one of the things that Trump did when he first came to office and he attacked Zelensky in the Oval Office and he had the meeting with Putin in Alaska was he gave the Russian leadership this belief that they could still win. It sort of reinforced their confidence. Right. We can keep going. You know, we don't need to have a ceasefire. You know, the American president is not going to do anything. Nobody's going to do anything. So it was a reinforcement of their strategy. which remains the same as it always was. They've never changed their language. Their goal is to

destroy Ukraine as a nation and to remove Zelensky and to expand the Russian Empire. They've never dropped that. Despite all this talk about ceasefire, they never promised one. You know, were Trump to start using different language in a consistent way, you know, that would help the inevitable process of the Russians coming to understand that they can't win the war. You know, had he done that in January, you know, we might be closer to the end of the war now, but instead we've lost, you know, six months, eight months. It would be useful if he did that, but it's not like the Ukrainians are desperate for American weapons and they'll, you know, the front line will collapse if they don't have it. What's your sense for how dire the straits are in Russia and all this? And so it's

hard to kind of to kind of break through all the messaging and counter messaging on all this about the Russian economy. I mean, there've been some people saying the Russian economy's on his last legs for years now. And, you know, you have others that, you know, are like, Tucker Carlson or whatever that spread misinformation about how great things are in Russia. They've got the best grocery stores. Like, what's your sense, like the actual situation with their, you know, economic, the economic threat? This is partly an unsurious answer. I was in a very large American grocery store recently, and I thought of that Tucker Carlson comment.

And I wondered, actually, whether he had ever been in an American grocery store. Maybe he hasn't. Yeah, not for a while. Maybe he hadn't for a while and didn't know how big they and large they are. So the Russian economy is very hard. It's very hard to measure because we don't know how good the statistics are. There are some things we know. I mean, their oil imports are low.

They're beginning to drop. This is because of the Ukrainian attacks. I mean, we know there have been gas shortages because we've seen the pictures. And I think even the Russian media was forced to report on them. We know that inflation is very high. We know there's all kinds of dislocations in the economy. You know, I think the piece that is missing and is really unknowable is what impact these kinds of things can have on the leadership. So in our country, when there's inflation or when the price of exit high,

that can have an immediate political result, right? Because it changes the way people vote. In Russia, people don't really get to vote. I mean, they vote, but it doesn't count. So, you know, there's only one candidate. So there isn't a mechanism that translates economic hardship into policy change in any way. But there will come a point eventually in Moscow, and maybe were close to it, and it could be closer depending on the actions of this administration, when enough people will say this war isn't worth it and it's costing too much and too many people have died and we don't want to fight anymore. You know, this is a colonial war. And so you can compare it, for example, to the French war in Algeria or the Portuguese wars in Africa.

You know, eventually the colonial power says, right, you know, it's not worth it. And very often that decision brings with it a lot of political turmoil. And so it, it, Maybe that, you know, Putin is hanging on because he's afraid of the consequences of that decision. But, you know, it will be made sooner or later. I want to go to Venezuela. You wrote about Maria Machado and the Priests Prize that she won to Donald Chagrin. And the Venezuela situation is so interesting. And on the one hand, I'm obviously extremely sympathetic to getting rid of Maduro and, you know, bringing freedom to Venezuela.

And I want to hear more about Maria Machado. and her work. And then simultaneously, it feels kind of crazy. I guess Donald Trump said that he approved CIA agents going into Venezuela. It seems like a strange target for the U.S. as far as regime change is concerned, especially given what we were talking about earlier, about the broader rhetoric that the administration is using in other parts of the globe.

So I guess just give us a sense for what exactly is the state of play there. So it's really important when you think about Venezuela to be able to keep two ideas in your mind at the same time. And I know that's very difficult for all of us. I'm good at that. You can do it. I've got that. I've got a lot of flaws, but that one I can handle. Okay. On the one hand, it is a brutal and ugly regime in Venezuela. Maduro held a presidential election last year, which he lost. He lost it following a really extraordinary election campaign in which the Venezuelan opposition, which had been notoriously divided for a long time, managed to unite. They united around a single figure, and that was Maria Carina Machado. The regime barred her from running,

and so the actual presidential candidate was someone else. It was a retired diplomat called Edmundo Gonzalez, who's now in Spain. And they came together. People voted. There was an enormous pressure on the opposition. People were arrested. People were killed during the election campaign, and yet people still voted. I mean, we think, you know, we think voter suppression is bad here. This is at a different level. And then not only did they win, they had constructed a system before the election of a way of keeping track of the tallies, the sort of bits of paper that produced by each, or the computers produced at each polling station. So then not only did they win, they could prove they won. Nevertheless, the regime

announced, you know, we're staying in power. They never just, they never produced their own tally sheets. They never produced their alternative numbers, but they, but Madura refused to leave. a lot of people wound up leaving the country. Machado herself isn't hiding. I've actually spoken to her twice, but I don't know where she is. The people are at a very high level repression. I actually met a group of Venezuelans who were here in Washington a couple of days ago, and one of them had a mother in prison and one of them had a boyfriend in prison. So, you know, it's very, very, very repressive and ugly regime. And I think the Venezuelan opposition would do pretty much anything to see it gone. Some people have been offended by Machado's saying on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize,

she mentioned Donald Trump in her acceptance and, you know, dedicated partly to him and that bothered a lot of Americans. But of course, you know, their concern is Venezuela. And if, you know, if Trump can do any, I mean, I put her in the same category as the NATO leaders who say obsequious things to Trump or the British Prime Minister inviting Trump to London. Yeah, it's not their fault we elected this fucking moron twice, you know? Yeah, I'm glad you put it that way. They got to live in the real world. It's our problem.

We can't get mad at them. And I'm just, I'm not imposing purity tests about what she said and differences say on somebody who's in exile, not in exile, excuse me, in hiding. So that's, that's one story. Then the second story is what the administration plans to do in Venezuela. You know, I'm not sure exactly what they're going to do, but there is talk of so-called kinetic actions.

So some, it's not just the CIA, but maybe some. strikes, I don't know, on Venezuela. There's a lot of U.S. military assets being gathered in Puerto Rico and around the area. There's clearly some planning going on. I mean, I would be amazed if there hadn't been CIA people in Venezuela for a long time. I doubt they showed up this week. But there's clearly some military action planning. You know, there have been these strikes on boats, which, by the way, whether those were drug dealers or fishermen, those were extrajudicial murders. You know, we're already in the realm of war crimes. Which just cut against the whole peace prize desire, right? It's doing the war crimes. It cuts against the peace price desire.

It does. It does. I mean, I have another fear about the action. I mean, obviously it could backfire in different ways. It could create a backlash or, you know, I mean, the Venezuelans don't think this would happen, but maybe, you know, nobody likes to be invaded by America and Latin America, so there might be a, you know, rally to the flag. Again, my opposition. doesn't think that would happen, but who knows? We did give him a PR win. It's just worth saying with the El Salvador prison camp. I mean, Maduro did get, you know, a nice little PR victory there,

bringing back the people that we had interned in El Salvador. And, you know, he got that deal, which maybe we were involved in with Buckele. And, you know, those Venezuelans came home and there was a lot of coverage of that. So it's possible that it could backfire, yeah. And believe me that the Venezuelans in Venezuela know that there, relatives and countrymen are targets in the U.S. and their targets of ice. And that's also, you know, that's horrible. I mean, these are people who escaped this very vicious and brutal dictatorship. And then they become targets inside the United States. So that's created a huge

amount of desperation and fear. So I don't think they have any illusions about Trump. There's one thing that worries me, and this is maybe, I don't have any proof of this. What I'm worried about is that I don't know if it's going to be an invasion or or some kind of military action, some kind of something, attack on Venezuela. I worry about how it will be used in the U.S. as part of the domestic narrative. You know, we're fighting a war against terrorism and drugs and crime, and we're doing it in Venezuela, and we're doing it here, and therefore it requires extra measures and greater crackdown and more police. That's my fear about it, is how it will be used inside the United States.

And, of course, that's of no concern to Venezuelans. You know, this is our problem, not theirs. And I understand why they want their regime gone. So those are the two ideas I want you to hold in your head at the same time. Yeah. Okay, I've got that. You know, it's hard sometimes, but I can handle it. We're running out of time.

Is there anything else you want to pop off on before I have two non-politics topics for you? Ask me the non-politics topics. Okay. We're ready to move on. We have an informal Ann Applebaum book club that's been created the listeners like it uh you suggested the captive mind the opermans and the director in past podcasts i want to say i read the first two people ask me this is like going to be a humble brag which i didn't mean it to me but it's already halfway up my mouth so i'm going to say it like they're

like how are you doing so many podcasts and how are you like doing so much stuff i see you everywhere and like the answer is kind of sad which is like i'm not there are things i've cut out of my life which is like i'm not reading i'm not going to the movies you know and so i've not read the director yet, which I feel bad about. And so I'm trying to, you know, do better myself this winter at actually reading and learning things besides reading, you know, the news, besides reading the Atlantic, reading things with a little bit more distance. Anyway, some of our listeners don't have that problem, though. So do you have a fourth book for them, for the Ann Applebaum Book Club? First of all, the directors are really great book. It's a, it's sitting down there.

It's been right on my kitchen counter for about two months an hour, whenever you're last down here. And it has parallels with the current... So the book, I have just read another novel. I find novels actually help me a lot because it's, you know, you enter a different world and that's, it's like a relief. It helps you deal with too many contemporary events. This one is called What We Know.

And it's by Ian McEwen, who's one of the great British novelist writing today. It has a lot of different themes. And one of the things I like about it is it's written from the vantage point of someone who lives in the future, but not that far in the future, like 100 years from now.

And it's about the central figure as an academic looking back at our time. This must be going around the Atlantic the water cooler because Frank Foer recommended this book as well three days ago. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I didn't.

No, that's great, though. It validates his. I take your advice a little bit at higher a cohort than his. So it validates that suggestion. No, I wouldn't do that. The initial surprise of the book is that he looks back onto our time

as this wonderful, amazing, happier era when things were so much better than they are now. And so it's kind of, it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, there's a lot more to the novel than that, but it's, it's a welcome, you know, kind of corrective if you think everything is terrible. Okay, great. That's a good one. And also, as per my husband's request, he wants to know what brings you joy. Last night, I saw a Magdalena Bay concert, which brought me joy. So I was able to do that, which maybe I could have been reading during that time instead. So, um, We'll take people out with an uplifting Magdalena Bay song. But you offered your flowers on your Instagram, which we shared so people could see the flowers in Poland.

I guess the flowers are probably going down for the winter now. So without flowers, do you have any other joys in your life? For me, the real joy is still having dinner with my friends and spending time with people. Do you talk about authoritarian creep with your friends at dinner? Sometimes we do. But sometimes we talk about other things. this is another reading assignment

it's a shorter one there's an essay by an Italian novelist called the choice of comrades and he's as long as Ignacio Salon at the time he wrote it

he was very disillusioned he'd been a communist he had lived through the war and all the ideologies had failed and so what is there and it's a long sort of long essay

but the conclusion is the only thing there is is your friends so find people who's whose values you admire and who you like and who you care about and stick with them. And so when you're choosing, don't choose people because they're right wing or left wingers

that they do this year. You choose the people who you instinctively know and like. And those are your political comrades and your personal comrades. And I, the more I, you know, the more things happen and the more politics changes, the more I think that's true. I love that. What we know, the choice of comrades. I appreciate you. And Alpham, you always make my job easy.

I was going back through your recent articles. I was like, this is great. I'm just going to bring up a country and let you cook for 10 minutes. So I appreciate it very much and hope you can come back again soon. Thanks. Thank you. Everybody else will be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. See you all then.

Look inside through holes in the sky. The fallen days bring tears to my eyes. That's always fun. Dream so big of a half. Life like mine, sun your side up and ready to fly. Heavens always have life. Love is certainly me. Here, if you want to play.

Always doing what I should, I'd turn back to a ride if I could, yeah, always doing what I should, start thinking about the bad and the good, good, good, good, The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.