The Daily Beast Podcast - Zelensky’s Videos Are Giving Ukraine a ‘Fighting Chance’

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Author Francis Fukayama thinks Zelensky’s communication-style, and his creative team, will be one of the main factors in overcoming Russian forces. Both he and former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch joined this episode The New Abnormal to talk about the Ukrainian president’s transformation from comedian to hero and what they each think will be the outcome of the war (hint: it doesn’t look good for Russia.) Yovanovitch also details what she was told the night Trump ordered her to be removed from her position. Plus, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy discuss the Russian social media influencers who are very mad at Putin because of his Instagram ban and attempt to answer a vital question: Does Kyrsten Sinema understand Daylight Savings Time? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. This sure is an interesting show today. First, we'll be joined by political scientist and author of the classic book, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama. And he'll talk to us about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Then we'll talk to former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Yovanovitch, about her new book, Lessons from the Edge, a memoir. And she's going to tell us about her experience there. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. It's another day of complete and utter fuckery. Discuss. Where to begin?

Well, let's talk about a group that doesn't get the sympathy they think they deserve. Okay. Influencers. Oh, not where I thought you were going. I don't know if you know the real victims of Russia's invasion to Ukraine that has displaced millions of people, hundreds of thousands of children, and killed in the thousands, probably, possibly in the tens of thousands. We have no way of knowing mass graves, orphans, people starving to death, all sorts of weapons being used by Vladimir Putin

that are, you know, we don't even know the half of what's happening there. But there's a group in Russia who feel that they are the true victims. Do you know who they are? Well, I'm going to guess that they're influencers because that's what you said earlier. Monday, the Kremlin claimed to the social media site was causing an incitement of violence against Russians. This is Instagram or?

Instagram. Some of Russia's most famous influencers have broken down in tears after learning that Vladimir Putin is Instagram. instituting an Instagram ban. Wow. And they are mad. I hadn't even thought of them.

And I feel, like you said, I feel, I feel bad about it. Like, I, you know, I try to be as compassionate and, you know, worldly as I can be. And I must have had, this is good because you learn what your blind spots are. Right. You're busy worrying about orphans. Yeah. And I completely overlooked the Russian Instagram influencers. They must be like in tears.

And identified Russian beauty blogger. apparently wept at the news of the ban, with footage posted to Twitter. To me, it's all life. It's the soul. It's the one thing with which I wake up, fall asleep with. Fucking five years in a row. I don't know what to tell you.

God, there's a bigger story here about the fact that there are people in the world who, like, live or a social media site. But I don't know. I would not have thought that sort of Russian beauty influencers would be this insensitive. and narcissistic. That's just, this comes as a bit of a shock to me. And it really does. It changes my whole outlook on influencers in general,

who I thought were very deep up on the ways of the world and current events and politics. And from what you're telling me, Molly, if you can be believed, which I guess you can, they're not like that. And they're really just into themselves. And I just, yeah, I have to rethink a lot of things after we are done taping.

I think I'm just going to. Shocking. Yes. TikTok is also blocked in Russia, which I guess is causing other influencers to be upset. TikTok has blocked 95% of content previously available to its 55 million users in Russia. Oh, wow. Without announcing the move. I mean, that I also think is interesting because TikTok is Chinese.

And we know that Russia has gone to China for help. Again, the reporting on this. Who really knows? Here's what I think is going on with TikTok. I think they are doing this sort of, I don't know if it's at Russia's behest, but I think what they're doing, they're blocking it in Russia so that Russians don't see anti-Russian stuff and pro-Ukrainian stuff. I think that's what's going on with TikTok if what I've read is correct. So they're not doing it out of any sort of anti-Putin or anti-invasion thing. They're doing it like, you know, as you said, they're a Chinese company.

and China and Russia are, you know, frenemies at worst, I guess, at this point. And I think they're doing it to stop the Russian people from seeing outside stuff. If that's the case, if what I've read is correct, that's a whole other can of worms. And I enjoy mindlessly scrolling through TikTok, but at some point, we are going to just decide and figure out that this shit is just evil and, you know, and that it's not good for the world. It seems like it, but it's a fascinating. discovery. So we're into this. Most Republicans have sort of come around to the more normal Putin is a war criminal, which Biden actually said yesterday, which seems meaningful. But some members of the Republican Party are still trying to have their racist and eat it too, including

the ever-dubious. She's a CrossFit. Is she a champion? Influencer. She's a CrossFit influencer. Influencer. Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah, she's doing the whole both sides thing, right? Where it's like she's not coming out in favor of the Russian invasion, but there's a lot of Ukraine has been wearing short skirts a lot type of statements. Why did they make Russia hit them? Yeah, exactly. You know, well, Ukraine shouldn't have drank that much. So yeah, she's doing that really fun both sides things and pretending that this is some kind of conflict that we can't possibly understand. And then she likes to throw in that, of course, that President Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney all have financial interests in Ukraine and that that's what this is really all about. And there's really nothing she can say where you would go, I can't believe she just said that. I mean, we're way past that, right? So it's just more of the same with. her. But the good news is I'm sure that Kevin McCarthy will, you know, take appropriate action because he always does. Oh, yeah, he always does. There's reporting that says that people who believe

vaccine misinformation are more susceptible to Russian propaganda, which gets us to a chicken or the egg, like, were they influenced by Russia first, or were they anti-vaxxers first, or are they stupid because they're anti-vaxers, are they? But you really are seeing, and I mean, I wrote about this in my newsletter for the Atlantic. Wait, what? I talked about this where you're seeing a kind of anti-antiputin, right? They're not pro-Puton. They're just against what, you know, and Tucker's doing this very hardcore. They're just against Putin. The confluence with the anti-VAC stuff is interesting, but also, I think, I guess, sort of unsurprising, because if you look, it's the same people that say that they've done their own research, and then they link to, like, Gateway Pundit. Right. Which is not even a joke. Like,

that's what they do. They say, well, I've done my own research and then they link to some source that is just like, that looks like it was done on one of those, like it's on a GeoCities website from 1997. And some guy who says he's a doctor and if you look him up, he's like a, you know, he's like a former chiropractor. And they'll explain to you why the vaccine was causing people to grow an extra nose. And so, and then they're doing the same exact thing with the Russia stuff. But in this case, it's just more directly, like, you know, again, Russia has sort of cut out the middleman with the, with the misinformation and disinformation. And they're just sending it out themselves now. And then you've got, you know, you've got the sort of fellow travelers like the Tucker Carlson's

and people like that who are more than happy to, you know, sort of parrot their talking points or in some cases give them their talking points. It's the same right-wing echo spheres. that promoted all the anti-vax stuff and told us that, you know, COVID was no worse than the flu and that at most there would be like 5,000 deaths. It's those same people who are now spouting the Russian talking point. So, yeah, if that's where you get your news, that's why you believe both of those things. It's sort of incredible stuff. I think we spend too much time as pundits or writers giving these people too much credit.

Like we're always like, oh, you can't say they're dumb. You can't say they're racist, right? Don't say they're dumb. These anti-vaxxers aren't dumb. They're creative. But, you know, when you get down to it, and I want to talk about bio labs, Russia, in the middle of invading Ukraine, decides that they're going to push this idea, which, again, we don't know if it came from the right-wing media or it came from Russian propaganda,

but now the two are in sync, as they often are. about bio labs. Again, when America invaded Iraq in 2003, they at least pretended that there was something they were invading for before the invasion. So I'm just saying, like, before the Gulf War, America at least said they have weapons, they have weapons, they have weapons. Of course, they didn't have weapons, but at least they had a lie that they had been shopping the entire time. We are mid-invasion and Russia's like, it's about the biolabs. We're three weeks into this thing. And they're like, it's the biolabs.

It's the people who first told us that Russia wasn't going to invade. People, again, like Tucker Carlson and others who said, oh, Putin's not going to invade. The Biden administration is ginning this up. There's no threat from Putin. Then Putin invaded. And then when he at first just only moved relatively few troops in, they were like, like, well, this is not really an invasion. He's just sending some troops into these contested areas.

And then two days later, it was a full-on invasion or the next day. I don't even remember the time frame. They've been consistently wrong on this, but instead of this prompting any sort of self-reflection, it's just on to the next lie and on to the next untruth. And so then they sort of, they heard the word biolab and they perked up. Right. They got very exciting. It sounds like an evil word.

And you say Ukrainian biolabs. And you're like, oh, my God, what the hell are they doing there? And then you're like, well, wait a minute. Biolabs are where they, you know, that's why we have vaccines and stuff like that. Because people in biolabs study deadly diseases. Like, biolabs does not equal biological weapons. There's a ton of different stories. Jared Holt had a really good one at The Daily Beast a day or so ago,

sort of laying out the genesis of this biolab story and where it came from. whatever, and I would encourage you to read it, people, you know, listeners to read it. But they really did. They glommed on it. They were like, this is it. This is the one we can go with now. We were wrong about him not invading. We were wrong about this. But now we can, we can tell people that he invaded because the Ukrainians had these evil labs where they were creating, they were looking to create weapons that would wipe out Russians. So that's what they do. They just jump from thing to thing to thing. And they never say they were wrong. They do the thing where they They blame everyone about themselves.

They do the Glenn Greenwald thing where they somehow find a way to blame this all on the American media. Like the American media made Putin invade Ukraine. Right, exactly. Why did they make them hit him? Yeah. And it's just, you know, this is what they do. And it'll be, you know, who knows whatever the next one is. I remember when the biolab story came out, I forget who I was tweeting with.

But I said something like, it's going to be like six days until they're claiming that the Ukrainian biolabs is where COVID. was developed. Yeah. And that Fauci has some kind of connection to them. And I didn't even know that like earlier that day, I guess Janine Piro on the Five, had brought up Fauci in connection to the Ukrainian bryo Labs. And I was like, man, I was off by six days. Like, they beat me to it. So it's just, it just never stops. We're talking about Congress, which is notoriously fast and good at passing legislation. Really? Is that right? Yes. For example. I know you're going to be shocked by this, but yesterday, Senate and Congress passed a bill, just the Senate, but the Congress is going to, the House is going to pass it now, making permanent daylight savings time. That's it.

That really did come out of nowhere. I think there were a bunch of people tweeting on Saturday how much they hated changing the clocks. And then three days later, we had a Senate passed a bill by, like, acclamation. saying that, okay, we're not going to change the clocks anymore. Marco Rubio said he initially planned to bring it up on Monday, but Senator Roger Whitaker had placed a hold on it, and his flight was delayed. The consensus request was bumped till Tuesday so that Whitaker could block it, but he never did.

Yeah, and I guess there were some senators who had no idea that this was coming or anything like that? Other senators, it seems, were not told by their staff that the request was happening. Look, I think changing the clocks twice a year is unbelievably stupid and we outdated and we shouldn't do it anymore. I'm trying to figure out why they want to change to permanent daylight saving time as opposed to just permanent standard time. Why are they not doing that?

I don't know. And the thing is, like, and this is where I get a little confused because, like, your favorite Senator Kirsten Cinema was very excited about this. And Arizona does not, her state, does not observe daylight saving time. So does she realize that they are now going to be an hour off for all 52 weeks of the year? Oh, no. Well, I guess. She thinks they're going to be on sync.

But unless I'm completely wrong, like, they don't do daylight saving time. So they're on standard time. So if we go to a, if the other 49 states go to permanent daylight saving time, Arizona will perpetually be an hour off. And I don't think she realizes that. I mean, okay. Well, it's very important to me that Senator Cinema get this right, because she always does. I don't understand the permanent daylight saving time. And I feel like, I don't know, I just, I'm happy not to change the clock.

So I'll take whatever. I'm excited because I've read some stories about what happened when we did this in the 70s, and it was not good. So I was very against daylight savings time, and I'm impressed that Whitaker, who seems like an abject moron, every time I've heard him speak, like shockingly so from Kansas, Republican Senator from Kansas, Marco Rubio, who is still cowering from the last time that Valde. Demings tweeted at him. So I'm excited that they did something and I feel good and I want to honor that. And I support it because I hate messing with the clocks. But the stuff I've read recently make me think this is going to be a total fucking disaster. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm an insomniac and a night owl. So I could not care less if it's light out at 7 in the morning. In fact, I detest it. I casually detest it. So I'm happy for it to be lighter later and darker earlier, but I don't have

kids that have to wait at a bus stop and stuff like that. So I fully admit that there are people who have concerns that I don't. Again, let's not overlook, as we stated at the beginning, the amazing thing about this is not even what the law is or what the bill is. It's just that they passed it in like 10 minutes. Exactly. Exactly. Frances Fukuyama is a political scientist and author of the book The End of History and the Last Man. Welcome to the new abnormal, Frank. Thanks very much. So I have so many questions for you.

You're sort of one of the most famous people and writers and thinkers. I was hoping you could talk a little bit for people who don't, the very few people, who don't kind of understand what the end of history means and how you feel, may have been misinterpreted or interpreted. The end of history was not my phrase. It was first used by the German philosopher Hegel and then picked up by Karl Marx. And if you translated into, it's history with a capital H. Today we might speak of modernization or development.

You know, it's the slow evolution of human societies. And Hegel asked the question, where is this process leading? And Marx picked this up, and for the next 150 years, his followers said, there is an end of history, and the end of history will be communism. That's the highest form of human society. And what I argued at the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, was that it didn't look like we would ever get there. And that the highest form of society looked to be some form of liberal democracy connected to a market economy. And even if everybody wasn't there at that moment, that was the direction. The most modern societies were liberal democracies of that sort.

And I still think that that's largely true. I think that many countries have alternative forms of government, but most people would not regard them as higher. Right now, China is probably the most realistic competitor. But I don't see millions of people, you know, yearning to get into China and become Chinese citizens. They still want to come to Europe or North America because liberal democracy, you know, still constitutes in a way the best way of life for lots of people around the world. And so that's the meaning of the end of history. It's where are we headed in terms of our

global development of institutions and politics and the like. When you wrote that book, I mean, the world was so different then. And I was actually reading it thinking about writing about the 90s. And I'm curious. Did you ever sort of foresee what we would head into? Actually, the title of my book, my 1991 book, was The End of History and the Last Man. And a lot of people never got to the last man part, which is the last two or three chapters of that book. And in that section, I talked about the threats to democracy. And in particular, I talked about the side of the human personality that seeks risk and danger

and strives to be something more than simply, you know, contented, peaceful people. They want justice or their view of justice. And I had a line there that said, if people are done struggling for a just and peaceful society, they'll struggle against a just and peaceful society because there's this underlying part of human nature that isn't content just with peace and prosperity. And I think a lot of what's going on in the world now is kind of a reflection of that, you know, that people aren't content just to live in the European Union. They want something more than that.

They want strong national community. You know, Americans take their prosperity and peace for granted. And so, you know, you have populism and you have progressive politics that seek to, you know, aim at something more. You know, so people really want the struggle. And I think that's really what's ailing democracy right now because it seems boring to people. They want to go beyond it. It seems to me that the situation in Ukraine could be, and I don't know that we know this yet, a moment of sort of stark contrast between autocracy and democracy.

Do you see this or am I being overly? No, absolutely. No, absolutely. I think that the thing that Ukraine has done is provide some moral clarity as to what the stakes are in global politics. Because you had a lot of people, especially populist politicians, you know, like. Bolsonaro or Orban or the AFD in Germany or Marine Le Pen or our Donald Trump that all, you know, claim to admire Putin because they saw in him a strong leader, you know, of the sort that they wanted in their own societies. And I think that what we witness now is what happens when you get a strong leader that's completely

unconstrained by law, by a constitutional framework, by, you know, the norms that civilized countries have been living by. And it makes it very clear where that kind of populist politics leads. It leads to open authoritarianism. You know, to this day, Trump has still not managed to say anything negative about Putin. You know, that's going to have a big effect on American politics because morally, I think very few people are going to be with him on taking that kind of position. That's sort of an amazing moment. And I was thinking more about this Russian invasion of Ukraine has only been going on for three weeks. And the public sentiment has shifted so much. Do you think that's hopeful in a way? Oh, absolutely. You know, I think that what Putin was counting

on was that the United States would be paralyzed by its own polarization and that Europe was also similarly divided and wouldn't provide any real pushback if he invaded Ukraine. And he's been, I think, quite surprised on both counts. You know, the biggest transformation really is the one in Germany. Germany had been the Russian's biggest friend up to the moment that Olaf Schultz, their new chancellor, announced a doubling of the German defense budget and a willingness to transfer weapons to Ukraine. Yeah. This is really ending a 40-year period of Germany looking east and a kind of acknowledgement

that that was a big mistake. So, you know, these are all really big changes in the way that people in Western liberal democracies think about themselves. Yeah. I mean, I thought it was incredible. And the thing that I think is really interesting is if we talk about during the Trump administration, Trump was extremely down on NATO and would constantly rail against NATO, most Americans, I don't think, were particularly connected to NATO one way or another.

So it was a bit odd that that was a passion project of his, if you think about it. And the last three weeks, I feel like Putin has done incredible PR for NATO. No, that's right. I mean, according to John Bolton and other sources, Trump was ready to pull the United States out of NATO if he won a second term as president. And, you know, I think we can all thank God that that never came to pass. And it also explains, you know, a lot of conservatives that said that, well, look, you know, the Russians invaded Ukraine while Biden was president, but they were scared of Trump. And I think the fact of the matter is that they were expecting Trump to do their work for them. Right. You know, they wouldn't have to invade in a certain sense if Trump destroyed NATO from the inside.

So that did not come to pass. I think we can all breathe the side of relief that, you know, NATO is not only there, but it's stronger than ever. And it will provide, you know, continue to be relevant. Unfortunately, you know, I wish this weren't true, but it is going to be relevant well into the 21st century. I'm always sort of struck by like what kind of news we get and how we get it and sort of what the holes are. What do you think we are not understanding about Putin and this invasion? Well, I think the coverage of Putin is probably pretty good. I think there's a little bit, you know, people going overboard and being anti-Russian. And a lot of Russians have been unfairly targeted just because they're Russian. And, you know, people haven't been making distinctions between people that are critical of the regime and people that support it. The thing that I have been quite aware of, however, is there's a lot of parts of the world that, you know, they may not be Putin supporters, but they really don't. like the United States very much, and so they're not outraged.

I was just in the Balkans where there's actually quite a lot of support for Putin, partly because, you know, the EU has not lived up to its promises that these countries would eventually be taken into the fold. Or, you know, in large parts of the Arab world, people think back to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and all the chaos that that caused. And, you know, quite reasonably they say, well, you know, we've seen this before. And why is America, you know, daring to be so hypocritical in criticizing Putin for doing this? And these are all, you know, valid points.

So I do think that we in the United States are kind of thinking, oh, the entire world is anti-Putin. But that's simply not the case. Yeah. It does seem like there's a certain sense in which how could you be for this. But it is important to remember. I think a lot about the Gulf War because I'm old enough to have been an adult then, too, unfortunately. And it got Americans very against intervention. Now we're seeing a lot of polling that says Americans want a no-fly zone.

Now they know what a no-fly zone is so they don't want it. But they really, there's really an itching to not watch this thing on television. Are you surprised at how quickly sentiment has changed? Well, actually, I'm not convinced that sentiment has changed all that much. I do think that after Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans are going to be much more leery about military intervention. And as you said, you know, people supported a no-fly zone as long as they thought it wasn't going to cost anything. The moment they, you know, began to understand that that meant actually fighting Russia directly, you know, people have backed away from that very quickly. And I think there isn't much absolutely.

for getting involved at that level. So I do think that things are going to be more restrained. I hope they're going to be more restrained because, quite honestly, we've made some pretty bad mistakes in foreign policy over the last couple of decades. But I do think that, you know, again, there's a moral clarity in what's going on in Ukraine that never existed in any of the conflicts. You know, I think we've gotten involved in the Middle East or politics. It's just so much more complicated and, you know, right and wrong is much more widely distributed and distributed in complex ways. Slensky is a gifted communicator, though, in a way that I don't think most of the leaders we have today are.

How much do you think that has affected the calculus? For example, I mean, a good example is what Putin is doing in Ukraine is almost exactly what Putin did. in Syria. I mean, how much do you think Zelensky's ability to be on television and constantly do these videos and constantly, I mean, I was watching the video he showed Congress. And I mean, the man knows how to communicate. Yeah. Well, it's not just Zelensky. He's got a team. Actually, that's one of the things that gives you confidence that Ukraine's going to survive this because it's pretty clear that they've got a production team and a lot of very creative. people in Kyiv right now that are able to produce, you know, really high production value

video like the one that he showed to Congress. He obviously has a down-to-earth speaking style that he perfected when he was doing this TV show, Servant of the People, where he was just this ordinary schmo that just happened to become president. So he's, you know, he played that role as an actor, and I think he really understands the psychology. of the everyman president. And that's been extremely useful in portraying, you know, the Ukrainian struggle right now. You know, I've traveled to Ukraine a lot since 2013. I have lots of Ukrainian friends.

And the one thing that's really been amazing is actually internally in Ukraine, you know, up until really the war started, people were complaining about Zelensky. There wasn't kind of unified country in Syria. support of their national government. There's lots of rivalries and, you know, dissension and so forth. And that's all completely ended. I think that Zelensky has really unified the nation in a way that a good leader should. And it's very inspiring. And hopefully, you know, he'll have imitators in other democratic countries, you know, as we go down the road. Yeah. I think that's certainly the hope is that this resets how important liberal democracy is and how that has to be the main goal. Some of the stuff we're seeing about the invasion shows that Russians are really, the Russian soldiers are, you know, leaving.

There are tanks there. It seems like their morale. And again, we don't know. We can't get polling out of Russia. We really can't get a straight story out of what's happening there. And certainly people do not feel comfortable expressing their opinions freely. But what is your sense as someone who really knows what's going on there? Well, yeah, I don't really know. I mean, I'm kind of dependent on many of the same sources as everybody else. What I would say is that, first of all, the ordinary foot soldiers that were sent into Ukraine seem to have extremely low morale. I mean, just looking at the videos coming out of the war, the ratio of abandoned to destroyed vehicles, Russian vehicles, is very, very high. So, you know, the moment they get stuck or they're sitting there, you know, without food or fuel.

they just leave. They got up and leave their vehicles, surrender, or, I don't know, try to walk back to Russia or something. And that doesn't, and there was one really very kind of, in a way, heartbreaking picture of a Russian soldier that had been actually chained to a post with his grenade launcher, because obviously his superiors were worried that he would run away rather than, you know, post-guard duty. And then he froze to death. So all of this indicates, you know, very low, morale. The Russian people, you know, as far as I can see, are still trapped in this information bubble that's created by the regime. And, you know, we've got lots of anecdotal evidence of people calling their relatives, you know, Ukrainians calling their relatives in Russia, and then the relatives simply don't believe that there's a war going on. And so I would say that, you know, eventually all that information is going to break through, but for the time being it hasn't. And I would think that, you know, Putin has managed to whip up a lot of nationalistic fervor in the short run. If he actually is defeated or if he has to really make a big concession, then I think, you know, it's going to be very bad for him because people like, they like the idea of a strong man as long as that person is strong.

But the moment they show weakness, you know, not so much. I know you don't want to make predictions and it's mean to ask you. but how does this end? Well, look, the one thing I'm pretty confident of is it's not going to end in a Russian victory or anything that really looks like a Russian victory, because even if they could take Kiv, which I don't believe they can, even if they can somehow depose Zelensky, they're not going to be able to rule over this big a country that's this mobilized and this, you know, stirred up.

What may happen is they'll partition the country or they'll take part of the country in the East, that's, I think, kind of the maximum that they could achieve. I do think that there is a possibility that things could go very well for the Ukrainians, because, you know, when an army like Putin's is under pressure, the decay doesn't happen in a linear fashion just a little bit every day. There's a certain point at which their position becomes completely untenable, and then there's a kind of rapid collapse. And I don't rule out, you know, the possibility of that happening, especially the army that came out of the north that's surrounding the Ukrainian capital. If that were to happen, then, you know, you'd get a pretty decisive Russian defeat. But look, I mean, I can't predict the

future any better than anyone else. But I do think that we've been quite pessimistic over the past three weeks. And there are, you know, if you focus on the actual fighting that's going on, I think there's some reason for a certain degree of optimism. Yeah. Thank you so much. this was an incredible interview. I'm really thrilled to get to interview you. Okay. Thank you very much for talking to me. Maria Yovanovitch is a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the author of Lessons from the Edge, a memoir. Welcome to the new abnormal, Maria Yovanovitch. Well, thank you very much for having me.

It's funny, but we don't talk so much about the foreign service jobs that are not ambassador, the ones that are going to countries that are where the job is very different. and the life is very hard. And you went to a lot of those countries. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. And just a note for your audience, I know you know this, but being ambassador is kind of hard too. And I'm sure we'll get into that later. Right. I feel like we think of ambassadors parties and as sort of a privilege for wealthy people, whereas there are a lot of people in the State Department who are just have these very difficult jobs. Yeah, that is certainly the perception. I don't think it's an accurate one. Part of the reason that I wrote the book, Lessons from the Edge, is that I wanted people to understand that why we have diplomats overseas, the kinds of work we do all over the world that helps American citizens every day. So whether it's advocating for an American company, and I certainly go out of that in my time, bringing jobs and profits to the United States, whether it's helping American citizens overseas, if they're arrested, they've lost their passport, or trying to adopt a child overseas, we do that.

And then there's the political and the military work that we do working very closely with other agencies as well. But let me tell you, if you'd like, about my first tour. Yes, please. Yeah. So my first tour, I've been living in Manhattan, working in advertising and marketing. And my very, very first tour, I was sent to Mogadishu, Somalia, which is. is a pretty remote place today, but at that time, super remote. I mean, this was before the internet and social media and everything else. I think I had two or three phone calls home in

my year and a half tour. It took a letter round trip three months, so I would write home and I could expect a response in three months. That was pretty intense. The job that I had there was to provide administrative support, logistical support for the embassy operation. Embassies are little communities and in places like Somalia where the government really doesn't provide too many services to their local population. They also don't provide it to us. So we have to provide all of the backup, right? So I was in charge of the motor pool. I was in charge of the generators that kept our whole operation going because often there were there were only a few hours of city generated electricity a week. So you can imagine the stress

that I was under as a relatively young general services officer was my title, trying to, you know, keep the generators going because a lot of them, you know, they break down and, you know, do we have the spare part? But the other thing was, do we have the diesel to keep them going? And that was a hugely stressful thing. I think being a diplomat sounds super glamorous. This was kind of not a glamour job by a long shot. But it was essential. It was essential to keep our mission going. So talk to me about what happened that day, because you were doing an anti-corruption event.

So President Zelensky had been elected several days before. I was holding a reception in honor of Katzha Han Zuk, who was a journalist and a civil society activist and was fighting corruption of officials in her hometown of Harrison. And of course, we are hearing a lot about Harrison in the news right now as the Russians are bombarding it. She was super brave in calling out powerful people in that town. Three men came up to her in the summer of 2018 and threw acid on her. And she died in November a long and lingering and very painful death. Not only was it a tragedy for Hatsya Hans-Zouk, but the message it sends to anybody else trying to take on powerful interests and hold them to account. It's terrifying. It is terrifying. And so the State Department

has an award called Women of Courage. Embassies around the world, nominate people from their host country for this award. We had nominated Kasia Hanzuk and thought we had a very, very strong case. Unfortunately, the department at that time did not give the award to people who had already died. And so we honored her in Ukraine. And so this was an event where it was a reception. So again, feeding into that stereotype that we were a bunch of cookie pushers, cooking cookies at our guests and have great time. But this was a very serious event. event, where we had tried to have a mix of civil society, journalists, government people, and the new government people that were coming in. Because Zelensky, as you know,

President Alex Zelensky was a comedian. He had never been in government. The people around him had never been in government. And so we tried to use this event. First of all, we wanted to honor Katsya Hunzuk. Secondly, we wanted to send a message, the brave people. that are trying to bring change in Ukraine and were holding people accountable, that the international community, especially the United States, was with them and that we supported their efforts and recognized how brave they were as a group of people. And that same message to the people who were on the other side and trying to continue the old corrupt ways that, you know, we have eyes on in the United States and we believe that you need to be held accountable. And then the last part is

that U.S. embassies are often convening platforms. So people who may not necessarily be able to meet in each other's offices or don't really know each other because they're in opposite camps. The U.S. Embassy, in this case, my residence, is sort of a neutral space where people can have conversations on the side with people that they wouldn't normally do. And that's, in my opinion, in one of the most important functions that the U.S. government has in countries like Ukraine, that we can bring people together and they can have conversations that they might not normally have. So that was the other thing. And because President-elect Zelensky had just been elected, we also invited some of the close-in people around him. And they came, which I thought was important,

because we could introduce them to a number of people that they would not yet have had the opportunity to meet. So it was, you know, from my point of view, it was a really important event. And with the fight against corruption being front and center and our partnership with Ukraine also being front and center. And you write about this in the book, how ironic it was. You're a person who's always been very committed to doing the right thing and a rule follower, as you say. I also am terrified of authority figures. So it must have been so incredibly strange. to find yourself in trouble for doing the right thing? Yeah, it was Kafka-esque almost. So, you know, there I was at this reception and kind of the background was that my assistant kept on getting these calls

that I needed to go into the embassy for a secure call. And then I went in, and I was told I needed to come home over the course of two different telephone conversations and not really offered an explanation as to why. I mean, I suspected that it had to do with the, attacks on me, the articles that had appeared in the Hill, and then the subsequent attacks on me here in the United States. But I didn't really know. And, you know, I was told that it was important for me to go back, quote, for my security. And I didn't know what that meant either. Subsequently,

it became clear when I had a conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Sullivan when he told me my tour and Ukraine was over and I was being pulled out. Subsequently, he said that what that referred to was that I would be fired by tweet by President Trump. himself if I didn't actually lean. And so, you know, I mean, I know the title ambassador has a lot of cachet, but actually most ambassadors are not that high level, and I certainly wasn't. And the thought that President Trump would be sparing even a minute's focus on me was craziness. Really something else was going on. Right. You know, we're still finding things out. over time, you know, I kind of piece together the story. But when the most powerful man in the

world wants you fired, I will tell you that that is, that is a terrible feeling. It was frightening. Yeah, I'm sure it was. Especially when the State Department was saying I had done nothing wrong. I mean, it would be one thing if everybody thought I had done something wrong and I had to fight that. But no, that was not what they said. They said, we know you've done nothing wrong, but we want to protect you from the tweet. But the State Department didn't want to. want you to testify. No, they did not. Neither did the White House.

Can you explain a little bit about that situation? Well, I think it was President Trump's belief. Obviously, the Republicans all backed him up. The first impeachment inquiry was not a legitimate kind of a forum, that this was just all politics, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you can look up the things they said about them. Basically, the administration first informed on Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and the heads of the three committees that were running the inquiry that nobody in the Trump

administration would testify. And then subsequently, my lawyer received a letter instructing me along those lines. So the thing I thought was so striking was these guys were really targeting you. Yeah. It was very hard for me to testify because, as you said earlier, you know, I'm a rule's follower. I had worked at that time for 33 years for the State Department. And while there is often a robust discussion about policy and how should we do things. You know, once there's a decision, I followed the lead of our political leaders. We work in a democracy. The American people elect our government, our president, our vice president. They have the right to set policy at the end of the day. And it's important that the civil service, the foreign service,

be apolitical. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have your own personal views, but that they be apolitical and that they implement the policy as stated. For me, you know, sort of being directly told not to testify, that was really hard. And I wasn't sure whether there would be retaliation. You'll recall that during the perfect phone call in July of 2018, between President Trump and President Zelensky, President Trump said I was going to go through some things. And when I read that transcript in September, I thought, well, what more is he going to do? He's already pulled me out of post, he and those around him, trashed my reputation. What more is there exactly? And then you're told not to testify. I wondered what the consequences would be. It's so interesting because I know so many people

like you, like Alexander Vindman, like even, I mean, a totally different world, but Lisa Page and Peter Strick, where they had these government jobs that they just wanted to do. And because of Trumpism, because of Trump himself, they are no longer able to do them. Are you still in State Department service? I did retire in January of 2021 after, you know, the whole first impeachment saga. I stayed with the State Department. Even after I came back, they arranged for me to have a fellowship at Georgetown University. And I was very grateful because I didn't know what was coming next.

I wanted to keep that coming in, frankly. I didn't want to be chased out of the State Department. I mean, I just wouldn't. And after the fall of 2019, which was just a terrible time, I decided I could finally leave on my own terms. And so I retired in 2020. I mean, this is not how you thought it would go, right? I never anticipated this.

There's so many parallels in my mind between what happened with Trump. He was corrupt trying to fight anti-corruption. Right. You send Rudy Giuliani to fight corruption. You're obviously not on the side of fighting corruption. Do you feel these parallels between, you know, the sort of fight in Ukraine against corruption and the fight in America against corruption? Yeah. Well, when I came back, I was really struck that I was seeing things in the United States that I had seen overseas and hadn't expected to see. So, you know, just taking my cases as a lot of. an example, people who are not in the government have no official role like Rudy Giuliani, apparently being able to influence, and not just Rudy Giuliani, but Parnas and Fruman, the two Soviet-born individuals who were creating the ties with Ukraine. You know, there's that video of, I think it was Parnas, sort of telling the president of the United States that, you know,

I was disloyal. And Trump's saying, get her out of there, get her out of there. The first thing is, of course I was never disloyal. But the second thing is that Trump could be so easily manipulated like that is a real problem for our democracy that non-governmental people could manipulate the system in such a way that I was ultimately removed. And so, you know, for me, that was my sad story, but it has greater implications because it kind of sends a signal to Putin or other autocrats or just bad actors because, you know, there are lots of shady business people who also have interests in having a certain kind of government representation that will close their eyes to, you know, some of the things that they might be doing overseas.

And so for that crowd to kind of get the green light that they can, they can cut deals because the president can be manipulated. And then fast forward to the summer of 2019. the perfect phone call, when the President of the United States is holding up security assistance for one of our partners, Ukraine, it was our policy to help the Ukrainians, to help them defend themselves against the Russians that had, you know, attacked in 2014 for no good reason. And the president was holding that away from Ukraine with a new and inexperienced President Zelensky because he wanted a favor, which was not in the interest of the United States or the people.

It was a personal, political thing of his own that he perceived would help him. He was using his office for private gain. It was shameful and it was wrong. You're watching what's happening now in Ukraine. You were there. You know many of these players. I think it would be hard to argue that the president hasn't been absolutely incredible. I completely agree. He improbably went from being a comedian to becoming president of a country, and he faced many of the same challenges that his predecessors did. But then when the Russians invaded, the man met his moment. He has used his outstanding communication skills to not only reflect the spirit of his nation, but unite his nation and inspire his people and inspire the world. And, you know, with the addresses to the various parliaments in Congress over the last several

days today, I think he's speaking to the Bundestag in German, at the German parliament. And he is galvanizing not only public opinion to support his country. He's galvanizing our legislators and our executive branches. It is phenomenal, actually. Back in the day in 2019, I think there were a lot of doubts about him. Why did the Ukrainian people support him to the tune of 73% in the elections? Well, I think now we see why. They trusted him. He was a trusted presence in their living rooms. And I think that trust has been rewarded. How do you think this ends? Well, here's what I know. There is no path to victory for the Russians because the Ukrainian people will continue to resist. The Russians may dominate militarily, although over the last three weeks,

I think many of us, I certainly, have been surprised by the paper tiger that appears to be the Russian military. I think it's way too soon to count them out. And obviously they are switched from what they thought would be a quick and fast war to a grinding war of constant bombardments and targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, nuclear power plants even. I mean, it is a crime. It is a war crime against humanity. I think there's probably going to be a long period of continued hostilities. But I think in the end, even if Russia has prevailed militarily, they will not be able to conquer the Ukrainian people. There will be a guerrilla war and there will be civil disobedience. And Russian officers, when they go to restaurants, will be poisoned or something like that. I would not want to be a Russian occupier in Ukraine. I mean, you can see what people are doing now. That's not going to stop. The short term is, kind of grim. But I think in the long term, the Ukrainian people will prevail. I'll just quote to you, the most favorite poet of the Ukrainian nation is a guy named Taras Shevchenko, who was born as a slave

and ultimately inspired a nation in the 1800s. And his most famous line is, fight on, and you will prevail. And I think that's what the Ukrainians are doing. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast,

tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy.

Molly John Fest. Who is your Fuck That Guy? My Fuck That Guy is a gal. I think possibly for the second time in a row, I'm going with the gal. She's someone we just talked about in the segment about. Daylight Saving Time, and she is a senator from the great state of Arizona, and her name is Kirsten with a Y cinema, with an I, with an S, I guess I should say. And a new book that is coming out by a couple of New York Times reporters, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, says that

basically while we've spent the last part of the year watching President Biden and the Democratic leadership trying desperately to get Senators Cinema and her dear friend Joe Manchin from West Virginia on board with the stuff that, you know, they actually want to get passed, only to be rebuffed pretty much every time. So while they've been doing this outreach, according to this book, Senator Sinema has basically been making fun of him and other Democrats and talking up people like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and insurrectionist supporter

Andy Biggs. It was a congressman from Arizona and he's one of the people who has, you know, maintain that Trump won the last election. He's also heavily anti-LGBQ. So you would think that the fact

that she is, uh, B would make her less likely to like Andy Biggs, but apparently that's okay with her. She doesn't care. And she accused other moderate Democrats, according to this book, of, quote, hiding behind her skirt in terms of, like, of her, again, her and Mansion, basically sinking any hope that Joe Biden had of passing a lot of the signature legislation that he wanted to. So this all just confirms what, you know, what we've pretty much known is that she is far more comfortable with Republicans than she is with Democrats. and that, you know, unfortunately, the Democratic majority in the Senate is pretty much an illusion.

So for that, she gets a hell and hearty fuck that gal. Who is your fuck that guy, Molly? Hard to disagree with that. That's a well-deserved, I think, fuck that guy. Also, I wonder, just to talk about this for a second, I wonder how she thinks this plays out. Does she think eventually Republicans, like Andy Biggs, who's deranged racist, decide that they're going to support her? Like, does he eventually go like, yeah, I'll vote blue because it's this woman who says she likes me?

I mean, I think that she's a little overly optimistic about how this plays out for her. Yeah, I mean, unless she's planning on not running blue. and she's going to switch to independent. I don't think she would switch to Republican, although who knows with her, but she could switch to independent. Or, I mean, this is a long shot. Is she trying to grease the skids for a 2024 run for POTUS? Yeah, she's definitely going to be our next president. It makes sense because she's neither popular with Democrats nor Republicans.

Right, exactly. That's how you want to do it, man. Right. Yeah, I agree with you, Molly. I don't know where she thinks this ends up. So my fuck that guy is James O'Keefe. You may know him from Project Veritas. I do.

He sucks. Part of what they do is they find a journalist. They get them to say stuff that is either incriminating or, in this case, I mean, is it so incriminating? I don't know. He got him to say, it looks like it may also be deceptively edited. I mean, the goal of Project Veritas was a lot of these, like, conservative gotcha. groups is to sort of show journalists bribing sources or doing things that are against journalistic ethics. But these comments are sort of him complaining. Yeah. I don't know how those comments

have anything ultimately to do with his, you know, and they're sort of edited in a way that it seems a little sketchy. And ultimately, O'Keefe has a real axe to grind with the New York Times. along with every other legitimate news source, but yes, particularly the New York Times, I think. Because they reported on his hunt, on the, on the Ashley Biden diary. Right. Project Veritas somehow came into possession of Ashley Biden's diary, but again, like with so many things in this situation, it's impossible to know, A, if it's actually her diary, and also if it's, if it's, if it's, if it's, It's the real thing and how they got it.

Right. Which is, you know, what reporters do, oddly. Well, not Project Veritas, though. I mean... No, I said, I specifically said reporters. Yeah. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond

from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite. podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.