The Paul Wells Show - Anne Applebaum on Donald Trump’s global shakedown

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author Anne Applebaum joins Paul Wells to discuss her Atlantic magazine cover story, "Empire of Grift." She argues that Donald Trump's foreign policy now has two engines: ideologues who see the Western Hemisphere as America's to run, and grifters using U.S. power to enrich themselves and Trump's circle.She describes her recent trip to Venezuela, discusses the standoff over Greenland, and discusses MAGA's strange fascination with breaking up Canada.For more from Paul Wells, subscribe to paulwells.substack.com

This week, Anne Applebaum on Donald Trump's Empire of Grift. Government power is being used to enrich specific people. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. This week, my guest is the celebrated American author and political commentator Anne Applebaum, a familiar name to people on this show because she's appearing on the Paul Well's show for the third time. And it's always really good to have her back. She's a Pulitzer-winning historian. She's a prolific author of some very first. important books about European and world history.

And she's a staff writer at the Atlantic Monthly magazine, where her latest cover story is Empire of Grift. Of course, that's a reference to the Trump administration. And it gets out a sort of an interesting dual function in the way the Trump administration works in the world in places like Venezuela and Denmark, and the European Union as a whole and in Canada. And it gets at the mix of sort of crass profit

motive and a willingness to line the pockets of members of the administration and those who are friendly to it on the one hand, and a kind of an ideological mission, a sense of America's role in the world, and especially in the Western Hemisphere, which is one that we share with the United States. So I know this is a conversation that's of particular interest to Canadians. Here's Ann Applebaum. Paul Welsho was presented by the Transition Accelerator. The energy transition is disrupting global power. and Canada needs to act now to secure its place in the emerging clean economy.

With its rigorous independent analysis and uniquely strategic approach, the Transition Accelerator is putting Canada on a path to win, economically and geopolitically. Visit Transitionaccelerator.ca.a to learn more. While Wells Show is presented by Camico, a nuclear energy company proudly operating in Saskatchewan and Ontario for nearly four decades. Energy security, national security, and climate security are driving increased demand for safe, carbon-free nuclear energy. With Tier 1 uranium assets, critical fuel manufacturing capabilities, and best-in-class reactor technologies like the AP-1000 reactor, Kamiko plays a large role across the nuclear value chain to deliver power to the grid. Camaco is thriving as a global leader and Canadian nuclear champion.

It's meeting the moment for nuclear new builds at home and around the world. From ground to grid, Camaco is powering Canada forward. Anne Applebaum, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. Your cover story in the Atlantic Monthly, the cover line is Empire of Gryft. And it took me a while to realize that that line has two meanings. It is an operation based on Gryft, on getting the most money possible out of the international order. but there's also ideological elements of empire

and what the Trump administration and its allies are up to. Can you talk about the two aspects of that phrase? Yeah, I want people to understand that what the Trump administration is doing in foreign policy is not what you think it's doing or what it said it was going to do or what Trump said he was going to do. He talked about isolationism,

he talked about pulling America back. Actually, what you have now is, a group of very radical people, and this is true domestically, but it's also true internationally, very radical, ideological people in the State Department, in other parts of the government, who are working very hard to change the way the world works and to change the way America works and to change America's relationships, especially with its allies and also to some extent with its adversaries. And because this is a revolution, and because this always happens when there are revolutions. Lots of other people have joined them. And so what you have is, on the one hand,

you have ideological people who believe both in supporting far-right, what they would call civilizational allies, especially in Europe, but also in Latin America, helping them win elections, putting pressure on governments so that the policies that will help them win are carried out. And at the same time, they're also very interested in reestablishing not American alliances, but American dominance. They want American dominance over North America, over South America, in particular, and over the Caribbean. And they think very much in imperial terms. You know, this is our hemisphere. We should determine what happens to minerals and other natural resources here. We should be in control of the, you know, who gets to be in government in many countries. We would like to have a say in how elections are run and so on. And to some extent, they don't have a full, you know, a panoply of tools that they can use to do this. They're not necessarily going to succeed in trying to do this.

But this is their goal. And they say it. You know, they've said it in their national security strategy. They've said it at other times. You can hear it when the president talks about Venezuela. He talks about, to the winner belongs the spoils, you know, we won against them, and now we're going to take stuff from them. And that, I think, is really the attitude of a lot of people inside the administration. They would have an ideological explanation for this.

You know, we're a dominant power. We're the big civilization in this region, and we deserve, therefore, to be dominant. And attached to them and kind of roving around them and sometimes interacting with them and sometimes working with them is also a big business. community. And this is cryptocurrency companies, tech companies, also oil and gas companies to some extent. I mean, they've always worked closely with U.S. governments, mineral companies as well. And some of them have taken advantage of this kind of ideological break and have begun moving in to different parts of the world and seeking to use the power of the American government to enrich themselves. I mean, I suppose the other new aspect of this, and it really is novel

in American history, I can't find anything that's really quite the same, is the degree to which people in and around the Trump administration in Trump's family, you know, companies who are somehow attached to the companies who donated to his campaign or to his inauguration or to his ballroom are also seeking to benefit from the situation. In other words, government power is being used to enrich specific people. It's not just to make the world better for American business, which I guess American governments have been doing since the beginning of time, but it's also specifically to help particular people and companies who are close to the Trump family or who've helped Trump win elections.

And if you begin to look at the world through that lens, if you understand that those are the main goals of American foreign policy, then what they're doing in Europe makes sense, what they're doing in Latin America makes sense, and of course what they're doing in Canada makes sense, because it's also part of that same pattern. And we will certainly get to the situation in Canada. Last time you and I spoke was August of 25, so about seven months into the Trump administration.

And you said it was the scale of the kleptocracy that was the big surprise for you. This sort of, I don't know, quasi-ideological element is that more longstanding? Or is that something that's become more present as this administration has settled in? No, they've been there. I mean, Russell Vote, who's the person who's been in charge of trying to cut the government, has been obsessed with the idea of what he would call destroying the administrative state. And by the administrative state, he was what the rest of us call the American government for many years. So there's a kind of ideological drive to eliminate, you know, people, departments, functions of the government that he thinks are encouraging, or I assume he's

thinks are encouraging the wrong kind of thinking and the wrong kind of behavior. You have Stephen Miller, who's who's very ideologically committed to ridding the country of, you know, non-white Americans, as many as possible. You know, so the elements of white supremacy and of, you know, Christian nationalist thinking that you can see in foreign policy, you know, you can see it in domestic policy, too. You know, and to be clear, this isn't necessarily Trump himself. You know, Trump himself, You know, Trump himself doesn't really have an ideology. But there are a lot of people around him who do. Some of them, they come in conflict.

Some of them, you know, are not necessarily compatible. And what the tech guys want and what the Christian nationalists want won't always be the same thing at the same time. But you, but the, you know, the result of them working together is what we're seeing unfold, whether it's the ice raids inside the United States or the use of tariffs abroad. these are, you know, different aspects of the same story. One of the interesting questions in this story is that it's sometimes hard to tell who the Trump administration is or who America is.

It's not always the people with the titles and the mandates, sometimes kind of accreting around them are tech bros, online influencers, you know, people with one or other acts to grind who've learned that they can get pretty far down the field if they benefit from being in the slipstream of the Trump administration. And that means when there's trouble, it's hard to know who can stop the trouble. So this administration, and this is also true in the first Trump administration, which is more pronounced now, is much more likely to use business people, tech guys, other kinds of figures as intermediaries and as envoys. rather than professional diplomats. So professional diplomats and officials with expertise in general

have been massively downgraded. And so who is negotiating in Ukraine? It's the president's son-in-law and his former business partner. That's Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcoff. Who was the important figure in brokering a conversation about tariffs between President Trump and President Lula in Brazil? It was a Brazilian businessman with a big meatpacking business in the U.S. Brazil, who gave a lot of money to the Trump inauguration. And so these kinds of figures, these sort of business figures, people who somehow have access to the president through business contacts or sometimes through this kind of MAGA world, you know, media people and ID logs, those are the people who are now doing, you know,

carrying out foreign policy as well. I mean, I know this from other European diplomats who look for contact or to Trump. And they don't do it in the normal way that you would have done once and upon. You know, you would have looked for his chief foreign policy advisor or somebody at the National Security Council and you would have tried to reach the president or that way. Now they look for, you know, who are the online influencers who can help us, you know, who are the people at CPAC, you know, who is a business guy. This is very hard for Europeans who don't have this tradition of using business people to make contacts with politicians. It works better in the Arab world or in

you know, in some elsewhere on the planet where it's more normal. But they, you know, so people look for ways to get in touch that are non-traditional. And that's because that's what the president prefers. And I think it's what a lot of people inside the administration prefers well.

You know, they like to, they don't want experts, they don't want diplomats. They want somehow transactional figures who have money in the game. I wonder as you follow this story to some extent closer than almost anyone about your capacity for, surprise. When the President of the United States gets up before the United Nations General Assembly

and says, to the victor belong the spoils, is that a surprising moment for you? It's bold. It's bold. So honestly, I had just been to Venezuela and it wasn't surprising because the arrangements that we have in Venezuela now are, I mean, it's actually very hard to find the right language because imperial colonial is kind of the way it works, all. although it's something very unusual. I kept asking economists and others in Venezuela and others who know the country well how they would describe it because it's not quite a colonial occupation, right? There's no American army there. And it's not quite, it's obviously not a relationship between two equals, you know, two sovereign nations. And somebody said to me, look, it's a

union of two corrupt oligarchies. And that is, you know, that's what it looks like on the ground as well. I mean, you have the Maduro regime still in place of Maduro's vice president, Delcia Rodriguez, is running the country. The Trump administration, you know, is comfortable dealing with her and has appeared so far to make no effort to help the legitimate leader of the Venezuelan opposition return to the country. She's been blocked in multiple ways. Actually, she said so this week there was another, she made another couple of attempts to come back by boat and by plane, and she keeps getting her plane. turned around. And that's, you know, the U.S. has a lot of influence in Venezuela and it's chosen not to use it to help her return. And so that, you know, this is Trump's attitude. This is, this is a country I control. I get to decide who runs it. And I'm going to decide what happens to its natural

resources. And that's, you know, he said it repeatedly, actually. He said it many times since January. I'm going to ask you a little bit more about Venezuela. I mean, what was your impression of ordinary life for ordinary people in Venezuela. Is it better now or worse than it was before the helicopter gunships went in? So I tried to be objective. I asked a lot of different kinds of people that question. I think for ordinary working people who are primarily concerned about the economy, nothing much has changed. There's very, very high inflation. You know, some oil started moving again, but there's been no big investment. Big, you know, this is one. one of the paradoxes, you know, the really big companies are staying out of Venezuela because they can see

that this is a shady arrangement and they would prefer to deal with a legitimate Venezuelan government that's going to be there for a long time. And so most people haven't felt any real change in that sense. I mean, there's a little bit more political openness. Venezuela had a horrible, really brutal crackdown in 2024 after their, after the Maduro lost the election. He just, he simply, you know, arrested people. And there's been some space since then and people are speaking more openly and I was able to meet people who had been in prison only a few months earlier. I mean, it has to be said that the repressive apparatus is all still in place. And if Rodriguez wanted to reactivate it, she could do so at any time. And everybody can see that. So there's been no structural change.

There's no real economic change. There's a bit more openness than there was, and that's good. but the people's people had really very high expectations in January. It's important to understand that most Venezuelans, I mean, at least very many Venezuelans, were very happy that Maduro was taken away. He was seen as responsible both for the economic ruin of the country and for this, as I said, this very harsh period of political repression. But then there was an expectation of change and that that expectation has not been met. Do you see any prospect for that changing?

There are some negotiations. is going on between the government and a part of the opposition, not including Machado herself. There is a, you know, there's discussion. Marker Rubio has talked about there being three phases of transition, you know, stabilization, reconstruction. And there have been repeated, people have repeatedly said, well, there will be elections, there will be elections, there will be something. But, you know, until there's a date, until there's a, you know, something to aim for, none of that seems really real. And in the meantime, facts are changing on the ground. You know, the Trump administration a few weeks ago announced a really extraordinary

oil deal with Venezuela, in which the United States of America's main partner is a person in Venezuela. He's called Alejandro Betancourt, who is a, you know, nationally despised figure. He's somebody who's believed to have damaged the nation's electricity grid when he was responsible for renovating it is believed to have laundered money. He's under investigation for money laundering in Switzerland and Spain. His house was raided and has a house near Madrid that was raided by Spanish police a few days ago. And so he's somebody who is, you know, at least adjacent to criminality is, you know, close to the worst parts of the old regime. And the idea that he is America's partner was, I think, a big shock for people. I mean, it came as a blow. Nobody, nobody had expected that an American

oil deal with Venezuela would look like that. Okay. Now, in any discussion of American foreign policy, sort of at any point in my lifetime, there's always lots of room for what aboutism, people who would say that given the extraordinarily checkered record of the United States in Central and South America in the 20th century, how much worse is this than that? What would you say to that kind of question. I mean, if you, if you, I'm sure if you go back far enough, you know, some people cited to me relations that America had with some Caribbean nations at the beginning of the 20th century, Dominican Republic, where the U.S. controlled the customs, which is a little bit of how they control the oil now. I'm sure you can find, you know, equally ugly stories.

You know, there was a company called United Fruit that had the backing of the CIA and did a lot of damage in Central America as well. You can find, you know, I've got no doubt that you can find that. You know, there are some differences. The scale of this is different. And also, we're living in a different era. You know, we're living in an era when the United States for some decades now has acknowledged the sovereignty of nations in its hemisphere and respected it. And so this, you know, at the very least you have to say that this is a big step backwards. This is a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, It's a departure from the policy that we've had for several decades. And of course, the policy towards Europe and towards Canada is radically different from what it has been in the last 60, 70, 8 years.

Now, this is one of the places where what I find really interesting is that it's a mix of private gain for a small clique and a sort of a revolutionary or evangelical. sense of mission for the American project as they define it. And here I'm talking about the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the idea that as some administration officials have said, it's our hemisphere. This is, of course, a matter of some pressing interest to a lot of Canadians because we live in that hemisphere. Again, I don't know how you would portion out how much of this is ideological and how much of it is being on the make. It depends where and when in which country, but I think it's both. I mean, I think the ideology is useful to some people in the business community and, you know, and the business is important

to some people in the ideological community. I should also say, as I just said, I mean, in Venezuela, this might backfire for a lot of big U.S. companies because, you know, not, you know, big multinational oil companies would like to be in a place where there is a long-term prospect of a legitimate government that has national support and there's not going to be a social explosion, you know, because of their presence and so on. So, you know, so this is also very, I guess what I need to say is this is also very short term. You know, this is about let's take advantage of this current situation right now while we have this president and what happens, you know, two years or four years. that's not really our problem.

Okay. The other really lurid case recently has been Denmark and Greenland. And the astonishing initial phone call that the Danish Prime Minister had with President Trump right after the inauguration, the growing sense, which led, I mean, it felt like we were within a couple days of this coming into some sort of shooting confrontation or an attempt to land forces. in Greenland. It's calmed down a little bit now, but what the hell was that about?

So first of all, I, yes, there was a moment when the Danes were preparing for a military invasion. That doesn't mean that it would have happened. But they prepared. They sent troops to Greenland. There were other European countries along with some, sometimes symbolically, but in a few cases, there were a number of soldiers. they were prepared to blow up airports because there's no way to land in Greenland because of snow and ice except on an airport. So you can prevent a landing, apparently even of helicopters by blowing up the runways.

And they were ready to go. And I think the Trump administration knew they were ready to go. And that may be the reason why Trump backpedaled and moderated and moderated his rhetoric. Since then, so that was in, you know, that was at the beginning of this year. Since then, the Trump administration pulled back, but there have been a number of U.S. companies active in Greenland who seem to have dual motives. They, you know, at the very least, they are, some seem maybe genuinely interested in doing business there or drilling for oil there. some of them seem to be there for political reasons. So there's an investor who wants to build a data center in Greenlander. That's what he's been saying he wants to do. And this is very impractical for a lot of

reasons. You know, it would melt the permafrost and so you would need some some arrangement for that. You'd have to bring in all of the equipment, probably all of the staff. You know, this isn't something anybody in Greenland has the experience to build right now. I mean, it would be a big and very expensive project, and there are a lot of other places where you could build data centers. And so that, that, for example, is the kind of project that Greenlanders find very suspicious. You know, so why is he walking around you're saying he wants to build a data center? It seems pretty impractical. And some of these business people have also tried to make political contacts. They've tried to befriend, especially there's a kind of populist independence party in Greenland that they've been

trying to court that party. And, you know, what it's created is a lot of discomfort and anxiety in Greenland and a lot of anger in Copenhagen. As you probably know in the last week, a deal was signed between Denmark, Greenland, and the United States that seems designed to put a political lid or an ending on the problem. It adds a few nuances to the security treaty that Denmark signed with the United States in 1951, some language about not letting Russian and Chinese or other hostile non-NATO power. is built basis in Greenland, which is something that wasn't going to happen anyway, or any of those countries making big investments in Greenland also probably wasn't going to happen anyway.

So there are a few nuances. It recognizes Greenland explicitly as part of the treaty. But those are things that could have been added to the 1951 treaty in a normal negotiation at a normal pace without creating anxiety and fear and anger and without forcing the Danish army to think about blowing up runways in Greenland. And so what you had is the Trump administration creating an enormous amount of anger in Europe, especially in Denmark, but not only. Enormous amount of anxiety and insecurity.

A lot of tumult in Greenland. I mean, actually, funny enough, I spoke this morning to a colleague who's half Greenlandic and half Danish, and she told me that since the treaty signed it's the first time she's starting to sleep well because she's not as anxious. anymore. So it created a lot of anxiety and distress. And, you know, and the presence of these

U.S. companies remains and the interest in somehow occupying Greenland remains. And the president continues periodically to post these memes of himself, you know, glowering over Greenland or implying that he's about to take over or maps of the whole, you know, all of North America in red, white, and blue. So it's, it's over-diplomatically. And you have to say, you know, good job to the Danes. And I think the NATO Secretary General played a role in this too. But the anxiety and fear that it started arch over. And as I said, for all we know, the business plans might still be going forward.

While Welsha was presented by the transition accelerator, the energy transition is disrupting global power. And Canada needs to act now to secure its place in the emerging clean economy. With its rigorous independent analysis and uniquely strategic approach, the Transition Accelerator is putting Canada on a path to win, economically and geopolitically. Visit Transitionaccelerator.ca to learn more. All Well's show is presented by Camaco, a nuclear energy company proudly operating in Saskatchewan and Ontario for nearly four decades. Energy security, national security, and climate security are driving increased demand for safe,

carbon-free nuclear energy. With Tier 1 uranium assets, critical fuel manufacturing capabilities, and best-in-class reactor technologies like the AP-1000 reactor, Camico plays a large role across the nuclear value chain to deliver power to the grid. Camico is thriving as a global leader and Canadian nuclear champion. It's meeting the moment for nuclear new builds at home and around the world. From ground to grid, Camaco is powering Canada forward. As you and I speak, we're about three weeks away from a referendum in Alberta on whether to secede from Canada. And several months ago, you actually sent me an email and you said, do you know anyone who's studying the possibility of U.S. interference in that process? And I sent you to Marcus Kulga, who's an Estonian Canadian journalist who runs an NGO called Disinfo Watch,

and to Taylor Owen, who runs the Center for Media, Tech, and Democracy at McGill University. and they said, you bet some stuff is going on. What did you hear from them? So what they told me, and Taylor-Oan has an ability to monitor podcasts, which he does, you know, he's some hundreds of them, he's able to monitor and keep track of them. What they told me is that there had been over the last year an uptick of interest in Canada, you know,

on a range of right-wing, MAGA, and other podcasts, and they were monitoring those conversations. And this could have been for a number of reasons. I mean, some of it is, you know, Canada is sort of a little bit like Sweden makes a very good whipping boy, you know, for the right, you know, look, a mushy socialist country we can make fun of. Some of it might be that they were interested in building support and building, you know, viewership and therefore making money in Canada. I mean, the Canadian and American media markets are integrated and almost identical. and, you know, Canadians can listen to U.S. material, so they may have been looking for new customers, and that was also possible. And, you know, some of them may have been inspired by the ideology of the Trump administration, you know, that, you know, Canada should be our territory and Canada should be the 51st state.

And we should encourage the, you know, the MAGA influence in Canada or whatever is the Canadian influence of us. that's what we want to have in charge in Canada. I mean, by that way, that's their policy towards Europe as well. So that's nothing new. So there had been this, you know, much more information about discussion specifically of Canada, but also more specifically of Alberta and Alberta separatism. So it's a big theme of some of the podcasts, you know, brought up repeatedly. And that was something new.

So as they both said to me, you know, in the past, Canada would sometimes be mentioned in this world and like, you know, some story might create a buzz for 24 hours and then it dropped, but that's not the case now. Now it's one of the themes that comes up quite often. And so there is a, there was a kind of the movement itself began looking at Canada and looking at, okay, how do we, how do we help our people or how do we find or create or inspire like-minded people there? So that, I mean, and that seems incontrovertible.

I mean, that happened. And I'm sure Canadians will argue about whether it's. influential or not. I mean, maybe it matters to some people. Maybe it doesn't matter to others. Maybe some people, you know, don't watch these podcasts and don't care about them. I mean, when you start talking about information campaigns, you always run into this question of how much does it really influence people and how much does it matter? And that's always hard to say. But these campaigns did happen alongside a couple of other diplomatic and governmental changes, right? So the most important one came from Trump himself using this kind of language. So

Trump talking about Canada as the 51st state or referring to Canadian prime ministers as governors. It happened alongside Scott Besant appearing on a podcast and talking, you know, alluding to the idea that maybe, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't it be interesting if Alberta was independent or Alberta had its own sovereignty and then that would make, you know, so you hear American officials, you know, this is the Treasury Secretary, American officials also speculating about how one might break up Canada and what that might mean. And then, of course, and this I'm sure has been reported in Canada, you have meetings between Alberta separatists and officials in the White House, which is just not a kind of meeting that would have taken place in any previous

administration. It's just not a, wouldn't have happened. I mean, I think the Trump administration excuse was, well, we meet with people from civil society. Okay, well, but in the past, you wouldn't have met with people with those kinds of aims. So there is a, you know, you have Trump's rhetoric, you have Trump's economic policy, which has been to weaken Canada. It has been to weaken the Canadian economy. And you have these signs of encouragement for Alberta separatism coming both from the MAGA sphere, the MAGA, you know, maga, you know, podcasters and influencers, and you have some of it, some receptivity, let's say, to it in the officials of the administration themselves. And all those are, those are all new things. You know, again, I don't want to say

that this is the primary reason for your referendum. You know, I understand that Canadian, you know, Alberta's identity is, you know, they have their own identity. It goes back very deep. I think I even right in the article. I was in Calgary a few years ago. I looked out a window and I saw protesters with a sign saying, we heart Canadian oil. So there was a, there was a, you know, it's a, it has local roots and so on. But what you're just seeing is kind of American, um, manga world interest. How do we encourage this? What do we do? How do we maybe take advantage of this? How do we, how do we weaken Canada in a way that's useful to us? And I think, I just don't think there's a previous American administration that would have used that kind of language.

And I myself go back and forth. I mean, even the premier of Alberta has said that she has seen evidence that there could reasonably be foreign interference in this process. And it kind of is what it is. I have a hard time deciding how salient it is to the outcome of the vote. But it's absolutely newsworthy that it's going on. And I also ask myself this question, does the Trump administration have a clear policy with regard to Canada, or does it have sort of a trope and some reflexes and a bunch of people who are taking their cues from whatever the boss puts on truth social overnight? Like, I mean, how sort of concerted is this sort of activity, in your opinion? So with this administration, there is no such thing as a clear strategy created by a group

of policy people at the top that's then filtered down to everybody else who just takes directions, right? That's not how it works. I try and explain that a little bit also in the article. The president has given his guideline. He is interested in toying with the possibility of destroying and dividing Canada and somehow reabsorbing it or parts of it into the United States. And so seeing that, you then have other people with their own interests. So you have the MAGA podcasters interested in new audiences, interested in new stories, trying to take advantage of this and using the president's language and playing up what he says. You have White House officials taking their cue from the president's, you know, his ill-treatment of Canada

and saying, well, if he's not, we're not, we're not our main relation, our important relationships aren't with the Canadian government. Let's talk to the Canadian separatists and see what they think. You know, and as I said, then you have the Treasury Secretary himself going off and speculating. And of course, there's big, there are a lot of U.S. companies who are invested in Alberta. I mean, I have no evidence of them doing anything or having any nefarious role. But when someone is important as Scott Besson starts this kind of chatter, you have to, you know, it has to be taken seriously. It's not a joke. It's part of, you know, it's. it's part of an atmosphere he's trying to create.

So the atmosphere that, yes, it's possible that we could somehow take Canada or take a part of Canada, you know, that suddenly opens up a new Overton window, right? It's a new way of thinking about Canada. I mean, and in the context of Venezuela, where you did have an American military operation and you did have the removal of a leader and you do now have this very unfair, American relationship to Venezuela, which involves the U.S. taking Venezuelan oil and doing deals with crooks in Venezuela, you have to, you Canadians would be wrong not to take it seriously and not to ask what it means for them. Parenthetically, I wonder what you make of Mark Carney as a figure in the global community right now. There was huge fascination with his Davos speech and with his trip quite recently to Strasbourg to speak to the European Parliament. I think here in Canada we're so preoccupied with trying to make sense of this new government's actions day to day that we're sometimes a little taken aback when the prime minister is treated in some corners of the international commentary as a sort of hero of the resistance.

I assume you're probably not going to go that far, but I wonder what does Mark Carney represent in the current moment? So Mark Carney is playing a really important role, and I'm sure it's hard for Canadians to see. nobody ever appreciates what their political leaders do abroad because they just, you know, they have different interests. But because he is not dependent on American troops or security in the way Europeans are, he has been able to be much clearer about what has to be done and how new connections and new organizations and new relationships need to be built in a world where America is. is no longer reliable ally. And in that, through saying that, he's been, he's very important. I mean, he's met with most European leaders.

As you know, he was just in, in, in, at the European Parliament where he got a standing ovation. You know, he speaks with a kind of clarity about this problem that almost no one else does. So, and that's, again, you've to understand the position Europeans are in, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the Germans want American troops to stay in Germany. Everybody wants the U.S. to retain some commitment to the defense of Europe. And so people are more careful what they say. Carney doesn't have to be careful, and he's very articulate and very clear. And I think what's important about him also is that he understands the economics of this as well, that there will need to be, you know, Europe and Canada will have to find,

may not be able to rely forever on U.S. technology, that there should be, undersea cables connecting Europe and Canada, that Canada and Europe should have joint research projects and scientific institutes. You know, all these things that are the sort of infrastructure of alliances, that in the past, everything has kind of gone through the United States. So the United States was the most important, was the central member of NATO and the central member of the Western Alliance more broadly. You know, he's now saying we need to build some of those things in different ways. And he's just, he's somehow able to say it, maybe it's to do with his experience, his contacts, he lived in, you know, in England for a long time. He's, you know, he's, he's known a

lot of world leaders for longer than other leaders have. And so he is able to have an impact that not everybody can. I mean, he's not alone in thinking what he's thinking. So when I go around Europe, I hear a lot of people basically hedging, you know, talking about how do we find different technologies, maybe we need to pivot away from some U.S. defense. technology because we need to have our own. You hear people, you hear new relationships. You know, there's an EU-India agreement, which nobody would have thought was necessarily five years ago. There's a EU's Mercosur, South American agreement. Also, all these things are being built as a way of, as I say, hedging. And it's just that Carney is also doing that. And he's doing it in a way that's

very articulate, easy to understand, and increasingly popular. Okay. Maybe one more thing I want to talk about, which is does the United States come back from this? I mean, Ronald Reagan and two generations of Reagan Republicans were a force in America and in the world for 30 years. And now a whole generation of young, politically involved Americans have grown up learning that Trump's way works, that Trump has gotten an awful lot more done than Jeb Bush ever did, and that it upsets the kind of people that they like to upset. And so why would they stop? I mean, is it possible to turn off this expression of id in the American psyche and get back to the way things were in 2013 or 2012? So it's important to remember that Trump's foreign policy is very unpopular. The war in Iran is very unpopular. The conflicts with allies are unpopular. The conflict with Canada is extremely unpopular. There's no mass movement in America to crush Canada. Nobody, I'm sure you can find some people who believe that, but it is not a mass movement of any kind. And so, you know,

yes, it's possible that the next president, whoever he or she may be, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, would reverse some of this strategy because it's not, it's not popular, it's also not successful. It's not going to, you know, my view is that in the long term, it's a kind of superpower, It's not going to be good for America. It's not going to enhance American power. It's not going to help the American economy. Maybe it will enrich a few guys, you know, who are friends with Donald Trump, but it's not going to be good for the small and medium-sized businesses who trade with Europe and trade with Canada every day. But that also leads me to the next point, which is that counting on things going back to how they were is also not a useful policy.

because whatever happens, some of those links and contacts and good feelings that we used to have will be eroded by this period. So imagine that we will somehow turn the clock back and it will be the way it was. I think this is also wrong. I think it was the French foreign minister who said French security cannot depend on the votes of 40,000 people in Wisconsin every four years. And I think that has to be true for everybody. You know, these ideas are now part of the American political spectrum.

The ideas, it's imperialist ideas, this far right, you know, white nationalist ideology. It's part of the mix. Some members of Congress adhere to them. Some part of the voters do. Some, as we've discussed, some part of the mega-influencer sphere do. And so, and they're not leaving. They're not going anywhere. Whoever is the next, you know, whoever runs the next Congress or whoever's the next president.

And so you can't count on the idea that they will just somehow disappear or be defeated or vanish. And so I think everybody that, you know, I think the hedging makes sense. I mean, understanding that we're not going back to the world exactly as it was is a healthful and, you know, healthy and useful, healthy and useful way to look at the world. I mean, maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe things will be eventually better than I imagine right now and then we all hope. But I don't think you should expect it. Because those questions about America's future are now central to Canada's domestic politics. And that's why these are the kinds of questions we ask one another all the time.

Is this thing going to end with the midterms or is it going to end, you know, long after the rest of my life? Americans ask themselves that all the time, you know, and what happens after this and how much has been destroyed, how much can be rebuilt, how much trust in the political system is already going. on and, you know, can't be revived for the foreseeable future. So it's a, you know, and you're not alone. Well, with a little luck, we will get more chances to talk about this sometime in the future. Anne Applebaum, thanks once again for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

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