How important is it that this incoming Democratic Congress hold this fascist regime to account?

It's everything.

Because it didn't happen after January 6th.

There was the amazing commission, but Donald Trump is allowed to be back in office, and I always compare it to what happened in Brazil.

where Bolsonaro senior, Jair Bolsonaro, did his copycat January 8th, 2023 coup attempt.

And because the Brazilians had a national dictatorship that only last, it only ended in 1985.

It's really important because people like Lula da Silva and the jurist who investigated, they did such a broad investigation of this coup attempt of a type that wasn't done here.

As we build this anti-fascist coalition moving forward, how important is it that the leaders of this coalition not be beholden to fascist collaborator interests.

I mean, come on, Jesus.

Yeah, first I just want to return the compliment.

You're doing such good work.

And, you know, you were the first person to have me in studio at CNN, and I'd never done an in-studio.

And I was so terrified, you practically had to hold my hand on the desk.

And so we go way back.

So I'm old enough to remember that Donald Trump publicly humiliated Tim Scott in person many times.

I'm not just making this up, am I?

I mean, come on, Jesus.

Yeah.

First, I just want to return the compliment.

You're doing such good work.

And, you know, you were the first person to have me in studio at CNN, and I'd never done an in-studio.

And I was so terrified, you practically had to hold my hand on the desk.

And so we go way back.

I'm not just making this up, am I?

and turning things around?

Yeah, that long period, not only the campaign being so long, but the long period between the election and the new person being seated or the new people being seated in offices, we saw that in 2020.

It's a huge liability.

It's also quite unusual in a global framework.

And some countries don't do that because they know it's a danger zone.

Right.

So I think, you know, one of the People are hurting economically and they're worried about the future.

Yes, the envy of the world.

But when Donald Trump goes out and talks about election results in this fashion and the way his Justice Department is behaving these days, Todd Blanch not ruling out getting involved, it's worrisome stuff.

Oh, absolutely.

And he has set up the Department of Justice and the political class to do his bidding.

And their number one job is to make sure that his wishes are respected.

And so that's what happens with autocratic rule, where government institutions and, of course, the party, which in our case is the GOP, become transformed into vehicles of of his to do his bidding.

And that's how you end up with a personal lawyer of a leader who can become the attorney general.

And that's exactly what autocrats do.

What we don't have is an honest president right now.

on its face, outrageous.

So there's a couple things to say about that.

And Putin returned the favor and called Trump a humanitarian.

And so if Putin and Trump are humanitarians, then the word has no meaning.

And the Russian model of propaganda would applaud this because the purpose of propaganda is to kind of empty language of meaning so that murderers and poisoners like Putin become heroes.

They become patriots.

It's a patriotic war.

Help us understand what you saw in that instance and, you know, why Pete Hegseth would do it, why the president would walk it back after seeing the reaction.

Ruth, why does this keep happening? Why can't the president say anything negative, anything critical about Vladimir Putin?

He shares the worldview of Putin, and I believe that Trump is in office to solve Putin's problems, to legitimate him on the world stage, and to take down democracy and humanitarianism, which is one of the main ideologies of democracy.

If Putin can be a humanitarian, then the word has no meaning at all.

And Trump is escalating his admiration, his flattery in front of the world because Russia has lots of problems and needs his help.

And he's a de facto client of Putin and he's being told to perform now and he's delivering in so many ways.

Ruth, your response.

She doesn't even know where to start.

I don't blame you, Ruth.

And now, back to the podcast.

Qaddafi came to power late 60s in a coup and he lasted 42 years because he had oil.

But each of them uses the media system, the media that's most common in the day.

So he used television.

And he televised.

This was like, it's totally ghoulish.

And I did not enjoy writing about this for Strongman.

And given the way things like polymarkets and sports betting are just driving so much of our economy and everything's getting gamified, I'm really worried that when he does revisit it this next time, that's where he's going to go.

Professor, I wonder if you just wanna weigh in on the latest development about this MSNBC Now report about Ford's Theatre and the president's response.

Yeah, so this is part of him, uh, puffing up his personality cult.

Um, you know, he...

The same, uh, kinds of cults that dictators have, and we know that, um, President Trump admires dictators such as Xi Bin- Xi Jinping.

He constantly, um, com- you know, he constantly compliments them, and he wants that kind of power, but he's saddled with this democracy of ours.

And he, he's in a quandary 'cause he hasn't been able to, um, consolidate power fast enough, uh, before he became deeply unpopular.

And so he's got judges ruling against him.

This pattern of Donald Trump renaming institutions after himself, um, my guess is that you believe it fits properly right smack in the middle of the authoritarian playbook.

Tell me what you mean with those words.

that if you get into an authoritarian frame of mind, how their minds work, how they see things, they really don't think that the free press should exist.

They think that it's a privilege to be letting outlets that publish things that will damage his reputation into the White House at all.

And so what we see here is an escalation because this administration is in a very bad shape.

with voters right now, and they know it.

So in his first term, he was banning individuals who he found difficult, such as Jim Acosta.

Now he's escalating this silencing attempts, and this is with the bans on entire media outlets, who will no longer be able to have access inside the White House to his person.

How do you make a connection between the business developments there and the broader project of this administration?

Mm-hmm.

And so we see that happening as well.

So although we, um...

There, there, there are many people who are not personally affected- Especially if they're not political, and they're like, "There's no, there's nothing going on.

It's fine." There are cultural changes, um, in, for gender, for behavior in, in the leadership class too that have far-reaching consequences.

We're, we're really early in this, and I'll, I can just re- keep repeating.

A lot has been done in 18 months that to wreck our institutions.

Is it too late?

I mean, he has really devastated the Republican Party right now and they're paying for it dearly.

They're paying for it.

And there's also, so he's broken the party.

And, you know, as a reminder, and I need to remind everybody that we have only two major parties.

So in other countries that have multi-party systems, if a leader kind of corrupts and starts to, you know, engineers the decline, of a main party, the defectors who want to save their skins have somewhere else to go.

They can go to other parties.

But here, there's nowhere else for people to go.

This is a reaction to what has been a corruption bonanza under donald trump in this second administration i don't think we've ever seen anything like this in america before maybe even in like i don't know the north america or the western hemisphere i mean among western democracies where a president of the united states or president of a country has enriched himself to this degree i mean you really have to look for other examples besides donald trump

I mean, he has really devastated the Republican party right now and they're paying for it dearly.

They're paying for it.

And there's also, so he's broken the party.

And, you know, as a reminder, I need to remind everybody that we have only two major parties.

So in other countries that have multi-party systems, if a leader kind of corrupts and starts to, you know, engineers the decline, of a main party the the defectors who want to save their skins have somewhere else to go they can go to other parties but here there's nowhere else for people to go now maybe tucker carlson will run for president one day who knows what could happen but so the other thing i wanted to say is really interesting there's uh you know we're living through this global renaissance of resistance in the world and there's a whole subcategory of gen z protests and resistances.

And we are rapidly approaching having the three main conditions that around the world are sparking resistance.

One is economic hardship.

I mean, you really have to look for other examples besides Donald Trump.

Stay with us.

So what is going on here, trying to, um, you know, gut this corporate, uh, transparency act, which was a bipartisan measure.

It was one of many things the Biden administration did to, uh, make financial malfeasance, uh, more difficult.

And Marco Rubio called it My Corporate Transparency Act.

He was very proud of it.

And it required people to, um, when they opened a shell company, to put down a, a name.

So you couldn't be anonymous, and that matters because shell companies and the US is the largest, um...

From Melania, yeah

Right.

And so that way they don't...

That's enough to make sure that the opposing message isn't heard by as many people.

And then it's some people, many people got off X, um, because it's hostile environment for many people.

But they, they don't want to close it down.

And, and Donald Trump is one of the most skillful propagandists in history.

He truly is.

Mm-hmm.

And I think it is extraordinarily important, more important than during good times, that we do as much as possible to elevate the good and remember that there is good despite the darkness and the horrors.

Yeah, that's very eloquent.

And certainly, I guess the way I have come to understand these problems is more systemically, because when you study fascism, which is where if there are people... didn't know, I started this whole thing by being an academic scholar of Italian fascism, which lasted a very long time.

Mussolini gave Hitler a lot of his ideas.

And then I branched out to doing other things.

And then a certain someone came down the escalator and and started talking about shooting people on Fifth Avenue.

And then I broadened my purview to America.

And it is people who reject that who are actually the weak ones.

That has consequences.

Yeah, and bringing together what both of you said, there's a relation between the many failures of President Trump and his need to puff himself up.

putting his name and his face everywhere and having everything revolve around him.

And the more failures he has, his tariffs and all the other things that have happened, his polls, he's tanking in the polls, the more he feels panicked.

And so, in fact, the Washington Post did an investigation about his last months of his speeches.

What is he talking about the most? Well, guess what it is? His ballroom and his bunker.

Because strongmen live in fear.

Why do this for an 80th birthday?

And every time the administration does something like, you know, not promote women in the Pentagon or basically dismiss people of color and women as leaders in the Pentagon, there is very little backlash.

Yeah, so the trajectory of what they are doing is increasingly clear.

It's really in the last month that it's come together for me that the ultimate aim of people like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegsteth and Trump himself is to really convert our multiracial democracy into a kind of white Christian male-dominated ethnostate.

So we have the only immigrants allowed in now are white people, including white South Africans.

That's to please Elon Musk.

We know very well what's happening to immigrants with ICE, which and so that that is a trajectory.

But you're right that people can say, well, it's not affecting me.

But, but I think you see what I'm getting at, which is nobody on the Republican side takes him on.

And, and that's to say, and, and I should say, it wasn't even going on [laughs] under Joe Biden, but he has, he has doubled down on this, Donald Trump has.

Yes, because, um, again, governance is about, uh, amassing power and punishing your enemies.

And, um, he's trying to break Minnesota, uh, from the horrible things ICE is doing in the streets.

They're living under a kind of military occupation, um, th- in, in Minneapolis.

And then trying to break, you know, uh, Walz and the, and the mayor and, and just go after them with every possible, with brutality, with lawsuits, with investigations, so that they can show that they've broken this democratic state.

And, you know, the, there have been these test cases, like Los Angeles was a test case in June for bringing the Marines into, um, you know, a Democratic-run city, a very big, important city, Los Angeles, and seeing if the Marines could work together with the Guard to repress protesters.

And so, uh, we, we, it's horrible what's going on in Minnesota, uh, and in Minneapolis in particular, but it's a test case, I believe.

Yeah.

And, and that's to say, uh, uh, I should say it wasn't even going on [laughs] under Joe Biden, but he has, he has doubled down on this, Donald Trump has.

Yes, because, um, again, governance is about, uh, amassing power and punishing your enemies.

And, um, he's trying to break Minnesota, uh, from the horrible things ICE is doing in the streets.

They're living under a kind of military occupation, um, in, in Minneapolis.

And then trying to break, you know, uh, Walz and the, and the mayor and, and just go after them with every possible, with brutality, with lawsuits, with investigations so that they can show that they've broken this democratic state.

And, you know, the, there have been these test cases, like Los Angeles was a test case in June for bringing the Marines into, um, you know, a Democratic-run city, a very big, important city, Los Angeles, and seeing if the Marines could work together with the Guard to repress protesters.

And so, uh, we, we ...

Yeah.

That would seem strange to some people, but in fact, your study of history and strongmen suggests it's not actually strange at all that this is happening, that those two things are happening at the same time.

Yeah, they're in, they're in relation.

The, the more they become, uh, unpopular because they have these idiosyncratic and nonsensical policies, the more they, uh, feel insecure and, and yet they get megalomaniac because they've surrounded themselves by sycophant-- with sycophants and loyalists.

And so they want to see their name and their mark on everything.

And I would also add that authoritarians have a very proprietary mentality about, about governance, and that's how, uh, classified documents had ended up at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private residence.

And so in this case, everything is theirs.

And so taxpayer money for the greedy authoritarianIs a pot of money that they should control, that they should use for their personal fixations, obsessions, their vanity projects, and that's also why...

It is the goal

Yeah.

So when he says he doesn't care about what happens with, you know, uh, i- i- the Iran war, or he doesn't care about elections, that's in part true because he's very, very focused on his ballroom/bunker.But that also tells us something, that he's, he, he, like all autocrats, is actually very fearful.

Like, the strongman is actually weak and insecure and fearful.

And so the whole thing about the ballroom is because there's a bunker that he's enhancing, and he says, "Oh, there's a military hospital," you know? And it's all about him.

So as he gets further into his autocrat bubble, he's, he's...

The fact he's only interested in himself and self-preservation comes out more.

So that's part of, like, he, he's...

Um, when you look at all this as an expert on authoritarianism, uh, do you have fears that democracy will hold in 2026 and 2028?

Uh, explain your view.

Yeah.

Well, first we could see a relation between the fact he's tanking in the polls, and even though the sycophants around him try not to give him, uh, anything except good news, um, but there is a relation between his failures and his, uh, his megalomania, his desire to have his face everywhere.

And, and this is not unheard of with autocrats, uh, i- from Mussolini, who had bathing suits as well as his portrait everywhere, to Putin, who had calendars and, and, and a gold iPhone, so Trump has to have his own gold iPhone.

So there, there is, you know, precedent for this.

But I, the way I see this, and you mentioned that right now he's trying to do something illegal.

So what is this? From, from autocratic studies point of view, this is a loyalty test, and autocrats are nothing if they don't feel important by forcing, uh, you know, GOP politicians or, say, the treasury secretary to support these ridiculous, uh, you know, ego and vanity things.

Hmm

But can you just give a l- a bit of an elevator pitch on The Strongman thesis, just for anybody who's not aware of it?

Yeah.

What I tried to do i- in the book is, um, look at these tools of rule that these autocrats, um, use.

And the strongman, I kind of isolated a, a kind of subset of authoritarians who use machismo quite consciously and actively as part of their, uh, their kind of tools along with corruption and violence and propaganda.

And the machismo's very important because it, it's part of their personality cult, and the rules of personality cults have not changed for a century.

It's quite amazing.

Of course, the media that they use to, to popu- you know, to popularize these cults is obviously different, but has to be a man of the people, so relatable, um, seems authentic, right? So Modi's very good at that.

We're gonna, we're gonna be in a pretty raw place when we are forced to really step up and resist.

How does that level of corruption, that blatant, shameless, out in the open, no accountability corruption, how does that compare with autocratic regimes around the world?

So one of the hallmarks of this government is that they're moving very fast.

If you compare what's gone on this last, let's say, fifteen, sixteen months with the first year of Erdogan or Putin, even Putin or Orbán, um, what the destruction of government, the blatant corruption, it has been of a scope and a scale that there is no comparison.

It really resembles more like after a coup or a revolution.

That's how fast, you know, the wrecking of science, all these like contextual things.

So they-- it's as though they are just grabbing everything they can, and they are giving Americans, uh, a civic education in the purpose of autocratic government because autocrats are not, um, they're not-- they don't consider governance the same way democrats do.

The purpose of being in power is to enrich yourself off of public office, um, and not just yourself, but your clan, your family, and also to amass enough power so you feel safe, so no one can get you.

So it's like, what's going on in his head? Is he just delusional or is he, like you said earlier, he's just spitting out the propaganda no matter what actually is being said and done around him?