Eve Blau:
Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Eve Blau, I'm the faculty director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. And I want to thank you very much for joining us for this fifth session of a new year-long Davis Center series, which is called Russia: In Search of a New Paradigm, Conversations With Yevgenia Albats. And today, we have the privilege of hosting Peter Baker, who is the Chief White House correspondent at the New York Times. And Susan Glasser, who is a staff writer at The New Yorker. They're here to help us to make sense of the outcome of last week's presidential election with a particular focus on the potential impact on US-Russia relations. I invite you, our audience, to participate actively in today's discussion, which is going to be video recorded and it will be posted on the Davis Center YouTube channel.
But first, I want to introduce our participants. Yevgenia Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, a political scientist, author, and radio host. Since receiving her PhD in political science from Harvard University, she has split her professional life between academia and journalism. She taught political science at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, where she has the distinction of having been the first professor to be fired for her political views. She has been the editor in chief of the Political Weekly, the New Times since 2007, and the host of the Talk Show, "Absolute Albats" which formerly ran Ekho Moskvy, the Russian NPR, and is now available on YouTube. Since being forced out of Russia in 2022, Albats has taught at NYU. She has served as a media and democracy fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and she is currently a fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard, which we're very pleased about. In addition to her journalism, Dr. Albats is the author of four books, including "The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia, past and present and future.”
Peter Baker is the Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times and Political Analyst for MSNBC. He's covered the last five presidents at The Times since 2008, and prior to that, at the Washington Post where he worked for 20 years. While at The Post, he also served as Moscow co-bureau chief, chronicling Rise of Vladimir Putin and cover the opening months of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Susan Glasser is a staff writer of The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Washington. She's served as top editor of several Washington-based publications, including Politico, where she founded the award-winning Politico Magazine and Foreign Policy, which won three national magazine awards among other honors during her tenure as editor in Chief. Before that, she worked for a decade at The Washington Post, including four years as the Post's Moscow co-bureau chief. Both Susan Glasser and Peter Baker are prolific authors of books and web, including three books that they wrote together, "Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution." "The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, 2020." And most recently, "The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021," published in 2022.
Before I turn things over to Dr. Albats, I would like to let you know about the final conversation in this series this semester. The conversations go on next semester. That will be a week from today on Tuesday, November 19th, when Dr. Albats will talk with the human rights activist and recent Russian political prisoner, Vladimir Kara-Murza on The Real-Life Gulag. And now it is my great pleasure to turn things over to Yevgenia Albats with our thanks.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you. Professor Blau, thank you very much for your lovely introduction. I'm also happy to welcome my great colleagues and friends, Susan Glasser of the New Yorker and Peter Baker of the New York Times. They're also mom and dad to the future dream editing chief, Theo Baker, currently an undergraduate at Stanford, but also an investigative journalist whose investigation forced to resign the then Stanford seating president. And he's the youngest ever recipient of a prestigious George Polk Award. I submitted my application to the future dream editing chief when she was 12 or 13, I believe year old, and I still hope to work for Theo Baker.
Now back then to mom and dad, as Eve said, you know, she was an editor of Political at the same time in Moscow. I was running the magazine the New Times. And there was written Political, you know, Political came up with all kind of applications that allowed to broader the orders and to broader, you know, the ways to attract ads. And I was so jealous and kept thinking, "How are they doing this? How do they have money to do that?" It was absolutely amazing read. At the time, Peter was the senior White House correspondent. He covered, I believe, four different White Houses of at least four presidents. So as you can see, they're real power couple in Washington DC. They know this city, your capital, in and out, and they really understand the way this capital works. In fact, you know, the book that Eve mentioned, you know, on James Baker, the man who ran the White House, it's sitting on my shelf in Moscow. And I know exactly where to sit on my shelf, you know?
So I also want to say that, you know, this book, "Kremlin Rising," it's amazing book because it's been written, you know, after both of them, they were core chiefs of The Washington Post in Moscow. And they wrote this book during the first Putin's stir, but already, you know, it was the time when much of the West, much of the western elite were still in love with Putin. And they loved this guy, especially when he was topless. However, they were probably among the very first who realized all the dangers that they teach and Kremlin was doomed to bring to Russia and to the entire worlds as we're well aware now. And this is the book that also Eve mentioned, that's "The Divider." It's called "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017 and 2021." It came out in the order of 2022, and that was when I first read it through. And I was reading it was amazing, you know, insights in the way, you know, the White House works and the way you different federal agencies operate, and what's the power of the presidency? How crazy, how, you know, unstable executive can make a little bit of problems for the entire world. But I kept reading that and I was telling myself, "It's so pity it's a past tense." Little did I know.
And I really think that anyone in what future is in the cards, and anyone who is interested in Washington politics should just read this book. Because it's absolutely amazing expose of Donald John Trump, then the 45th president of the United States, and now the president elect, the 47th president elect of the United States. So I turned this floor to you. Thank you once again. And I'm so honored that you greet the Trump and speak especially a week after these elections that made, you know, many people in despair and apparently, another half of your country happy. That is also, you know, a little bit, you know, it's a very interesting outcome. All those days, I've been talking to lots of experts and friends and analysts from both sides of the aisle, and I was reading a lot of papers and listening to tons of podcasts who were trying to explain what happened, why happened, and how did it happen. And I was listening to different YouTube channels and watching, you know, these endless TV shows who were trying to figure out, you know, whom to blame. And the notion that was coming out of those publications and those, you know, podcasts was that we are visiting the land of uncertainty. Nobody knows what to expect and what's going to happen.
However, I keep asking myself, "Wait a second, Donald J Trump was the 45th president of the United States, so in fact, you do know something about him, so to say what to expect." So I remember, you know, in this book, you wrote that when he entered the White House, when Trump back then, entered the White House, he knew little about the government, healthcare policy, foreign affairs, but he knew everything about lighting, how to make pictures well. He was a TV guy. So now, eight years later, please tell us, what do you know about him? What's going to happen? Thank you.
Susan Glasser:
Well, first of all, Yevgenia, we must say thank you. We are so glad to be here with you. And you know, Peter and I are also checking it out. We heard you guys might be offering political asylum up here in Massachusetts, the great commonwealth of Massachusetts, I should say, for anyone in an official position, has visas to offer. Peter and I would like to, you know, we may soon end up having the distinction, or at least I will, of possibly being both on the banned list from Russia and also from America. So, you know, we'll see how that works out. But you know, I mean, no joking aside, we're only one week into whatever this new moment is going to be. But you know, it is a grave moment and you know, it's hard for any of us who experienced the first go round eight years ago already. And I recognize that many undergraduates for them, they were literally, you know, in middle school at the time. And so for them, it is the first time. For us, it's not the first time. And I think that's an important insight for people to understand is that it's not, you know, week one of the Trump era in American politics. It's sort of one week plus nine years. And that, I think, tells you a lot about why this second term will be somewhat different in our expectation from a first-term Trump.
And, you know, we can talk in detail, of course, about what that means for Ukraine and Russia, but just in terms of, you know, to give a little bit of a 30,000-foot view to start off the conversation today, you know, you all experienced this campaign as well as we did, but you understand that a president running to return to office on a campaign, an explicit campaign of revenge and retribution, is not the same person who simply vowed to come and, you know, kind of shake up the system and, you know, be an outsider and drain the swamp eight years ago. So there's a much more precise agenda. And a lot of that does actually concern what he considers to be unfinished business, both personal business, you know, we can talk about his legal cases. But also unfinished business in particular on his effort to really fundamentally reorient America's position in the world. America's foreign policy. We can talk later as well about what some of these initial appointments might signal. But my basic perspective and message for people, I think one week into this is, you know, Trump is a 78-year-old man who has a few very clearly defined, you know, thoughts about the world.
One is a lifelong view that America's allies are ripping us off. A lifelong preference for a dictator, strongman and authoritarians. He demonstrated this when he was in office, essentially suspicion of allies and preference for adversaries. These will continue his views about trade and protectionism, again, a lifelong obsession. So we can say those are something that matters. He's not a policy wonk, he's not going to become one now. So the personnel around him matter as well too. I always think of the old Soviet slogan, the cadres mean everything. And I think that's particularly true for Donald Trump. He is not only a highly transactional figure, but he is also highly manipulable. And I think that's the conclusion of many of our international, both partners and adversaries. And so, you know, understanding who's surrounding him and what that setup is, it's almost an American form of criminology, you know, that we're looking at. And that I think that Peter and I practiced in the first term.
And then just my final observation to get us going is, you know, a kind of a chilling thought that we included in the divider that came from a very senior US national security official who had spent a lot of time personally in the Oval Office with Trump himself, and who said to us, "Listen, you have to understand if this man ever comes back to power, it's going to be very different than the first term in the sense that not only will there not be constrain around John Kelly's, but that Trump and his inner circle have learned. And the metaphor here is the Velociraptors in the first "Jurassic Park" film. And you know, I'm sure you remember the scary scene where the little kids run into the industrial kitchen and they think they're safe, and they lock the door and they're hiding under the counters and then click, they hear the door knob turn because the velociraptors have learned to open the door. And the point of this is that they learned while hunting their prey, and that Trump, you know, he didn't learn about healthcare policy, but he learned how to make the machinery of government do more what he wants. You know, I'm sure Peter has other thoughts, but I really want to underscore that becasue right now, I'm sure you're seeing on TV, you're reading a lot of pieces, you know, it's human nature to be like, "Oh, it'll be okay. Oh, you know, it wasn't so bad. Oh, we survived four years of Trump." But it's important to be clear-eyed, and there's a real agenda here, and there's more capacity to execute that agenda in my view.
Peter Baker:
Yeah, thank you very much, Yevgenia, for having us. And we are in fact, such extraordinary admirers of Yevgenia Albats who inspires us with her courage and her journalism and her pursuit of truth. And I think that you all are lucky to have her here with you to, especially to study Russia but just to talk about, you know, freedom and the future of world events at this point at which Russia and the United States are at the heart of it. I would add to what Susan said, the book is titled "The Divider," and it says the Trump in the White House, and it says, "Trump in the White House 2017 to 2021." Our original subtitle is just "Trump in the White House." And our publisher said, "No, let's put the dates on there."
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, we're really cursing that. We did not envision a sequel.
Peter Baker:
The publisher's idea was we would put that on there to emphasize the book about his time in the White House, not a general biography, but it did seem like kind of a threat to readers in a way. Like this is-
Susan Glasser:
And actually, our entire book tour at every single stop, you know, this is just two years ago, we assured everybody, you know, no plans in the work for a sequel.
Peter Baker:
But now we'll see, obviously, there may be I think one things about people say, "What's the second term going to be like?" And I think it's not to plug the book too much, although, you know, that is sort of our job. But if you read the book, I think what you'll see in there is all the things he didn't end up doing but try to do. You should assume he will try to do them and have more success in the second term. That Trump 2.0 is Trump on steroids in effect, right? That he will not be surrounded by Rex Tillerson and John Kelly and H. R. McMaster and the likes who will resist things that they think are unwise, inappropriate, illegal, unconstitutional. You know, one of the people we interviewed for the book said, "I thought my job every day was to throw sand in the gears." Slow things down, in other words. Now you could say that's not a good practice, by the way. That's not an ideal way of democracy to work. Whether you like him or not, Trump is the elected president. He has the authority and the right to the pursuit policies that he wants to do. But the people around him in that first term found some of them so dangerous in some cases, again, in some cases crossing legal lines and so forth, that they felt the need to do things that White House aides are not generally supposed to do, which is to resist the own president.
In the second term, there will be no resistance inside the White House, and there will not be that much resistance outside the White House. Congress now, it looks like, certainly will be in the Senate controlled by Republicans, very likely to have a Republican majority in the house, although frankly, it'll be so modest that it will constrain their ability to get things. You've seen how dysfunctional the House majority has already been in the last two years. It will be just the same in theory in the next two years unless Trump exerts some influence over the rabble-rousers and the Freedom Caucus, which he might. But he's already now stolen two Republicans from the house just in the last few days to stock his new administration, meaning that a five vote majority, which is what it was looking like they might be, is now down to three votes, makes it that much harder to run the operation. Not just because of the people in the Freedom Caucus objecting to things which happened obviously lot in the last two years, but just through the natural way the house works. The 435 members, any given date, one of them is sick, one of them can't make it, one of them, his wife is sick, one of them dies, one of them retired, one of them resigns, gets a better job. You can't count on all of them being there at all times. So you as a majority is very hard to function.
So that will be not a constraint on him in the sense that they will be resisting him, but it will be gears and sand of a different sort. We obviously take the Supreme Court with a six to three conservative majority is probably pretty likely to give him a lot of support as well. And if he succeeds at removing the top layer of the civil service, about 50,000 people, I think they've talked about in replacing them with political loyalists, they have that much more traction to get the things done that they want to do. So this is a very different era. Having said all that, he's got about two years to do that. Because in two years, then he becomes a lame duck. And there's not been, I think in modern history anyway, an example of a trifecta, which is the White House, House and Senate all being the same party, lasting more than two years. So it was very likely that in two years, as we've seen repeatedly over our recent lifetime, one or both of the houses of Congress then flips to the other side.
So if you’re Trump, your goal is to maximize these two years and get as much done as you can, push the boundaries because that's what he wants to do. And he will not be constrained, as Susan said, by the lack of knowledge that he brought into the first term. He won't be constrained by the establishment Republicans who won't be there in the second term.
Yevgenia Albats:
So, as you said and quoting your book, there are no adults in the House anymore. But to which extent Trump is capable to be a commanding chief and a executive without these guardrails?
Susan Glasser:
So this is a great question. What does it mean in a practical sense? And I think that's the one thing that neither Peter nor I kind of addressed in the first answer, which is Trump is still Donald Trump, right? And so the other constraint that you might consider to be on Trump is the constraint of his own very obvious limitations. And he does encourage a kind of infighting and chaos and dysfunction in any role that he is ever had. That includes, you know, in the company that he ran for many years. It includes, you know, really, in any venture that he's been involved with, including his first term in the White House. So it's certainly, you know, 78-year-olds don't learn a lot of new tricks. And so I think it's certainly reasonable to expect that there will be actually robust disagreements on his staff and between the different agencies. And you can already see this factionism starting to crop up.
I maintain both, you can see that in our book, but also looking ahead, that actually foreign policy and national security is a very important lens, both because it's important to the Trump project. They do have a pretty radical and radically different view of America's role in the world, but also because it's where a president has a pretty free hand. And so you can see, you know, what's directly Donald Trump himself versus, you know, advisors or bureaucracies or institutional matters. And on foreign policy, you can already see the infighting that I think will become endemic to the new Trump administration already cropping up in the public way in which they're arguing over who should have appointments. And so Peter's colleagues have reported last night that Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, is very likely to be the Secretary of State. It's not final, by the way. And also it is final, or Trump has announced that Mike Waltz, a congressman from Florida, a former US Special Forces fighter, very conservative from Florida, is going to be the National Security Advisor. And I can unpack, you know, we can talk later about what that specifically means for Ukraine.
But as far as this question of how will Trump govern, what kind of a commander in chief will he be? I think he picks people for their roles on television. I'm not surprised that he's gone in the direction of Marco Rubio, because what do we all know about Marco Rubio? He looks good on TV and he doesn't have much of a backbone. You know, so that's kind of perfect for Donald Trump's Secretary of State. So you're gonna read a lot of, you know, detailed analyses in recent days, you know, upcoming about Marco Rubio's policy views on this, that, and the other. And you know, it makes a difference, for example, on Latin America, an area of specialty of Marco Rubio's because Donald Trump doesn't care about a lot of it, but on things that he does care about, I think we can feel pretty confident in saying he doesn't really care and he's happy to disregard and override the views of those who surround him if he disagrees with them or, you know, see his appointments of John Bolton, H. R. McMaster, John Kelly, Jim Matt. You know, he feels free to disregard their views. And you know, Donald Trump really, I mean, he's not very good at taking advice really on any subject. Is that fair to say?
Peter Baker:
By the way, while we're sitting here, he just announced Steve Witkoff who is his golf buddy as a special envoy to the Middle East. So that's just the end.
Yevgenia Albats:
That's the former Arkansas governor?
Peter Baker:
No, no, no, no, no. That's Mike Huckabee's going to be the ambassador.
Yevgenia Albats:
The ambassador.
Peter Baker:
Right. This the guy who's his golf buddy, billionaire, who was on the golf course with the time the other fella was caught in the bushes with a gun. He wanted to. So yeah, I would agree with everything Susan said. I mean, I think that what's really interesting is if you look who's in the room making decisions right now. There is no dissent, there's not factions in the same way that there were in that first White House of his, the people who are making decisions all more or less are of the same MAGA crowd to use, you know, that term for lack of a better one. And he knows who he wants this time around. He didn't know who Rex Tillerson was. He loved the idea that the head of ExxonMobil, the biggest company in the world, would report to him. That really was appealing to him. But he didn't know anything about what Rex Tillerson really thought.
He liked the fact that Jim Mattis was called Mad Dog as his nickname. By the way, Jim Mattis hates the nickname Mad Dog. He does not think of that as being a representative of who he is. In fact, he's really not representative of who he is. Actually, his favorite nickname as Chaos, which was his radio call sign when he was the Marine general. He liked chaos because that's what he delivered to the enemy. But Mad Dog, he thought was very disrespectful. And every time Trump would introduce him, he would call him Mad Dog, you would see Mattis kind of like grinding his teeth. Hmm. That's what made him pick Mattis. The idea, 'Ah, mad Dog. That's my kind of defense secretary," which of course, is not what Jim Mattis was. Jim Mattis carts 8,000 books around with him from posting to posting because he's actually a pretty smart, intelligent, intellectual, thoughtful guy as well as a tough war fighter. But Trump didn't know any of those people. He knows the people now. And as Susan said, he is picking the ones who are going to be, you know, aligned with his views and not going to fight.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, although I one caveat to that, and again, we can unpack that more if you're interested, but I do think in Rubio and Mike Waltz, there was a mini sigh of relief from, you know, the people who walked this very closely because they are what passes for a sort of a new MAGA establishment. You know, they're definitely MAGA but they are fluent in engaging with the rest of the world. They are not flamethrowers by personality and disposition. They both have some experience working with Democrats and people of dissenting views and you know, they're seen as probably their real views are actually quite different. And they would've been very comfortable in the old, say, George W. Bush Republican Party. What they are of course is ideologically malleable because they're very ambitious politicians. And so, you know, Marco Rubio, in some ways, I think he hasn't gotten as much attention for his MAGA makeover as some of the other politicians who flip flopped, including of course JD Vance, you know, the vice president elect.
But in reality, I think Marco Rubio's a great case study of what we're dealing with here. As somebody who literally ran for president on a kind of a national security-oriented campaign in 2016, very focused on issues like Russia and China. Now, you know, he's kind of remade himself into a Trump acolyte, but at least to the remnants of the kind of Reagan era party in Washington, they see him as a less scary figure than some of the other names who were mentioned like Rick Grenell, who was Trump's ambassador to Germany, and really a scourge of many, I would say.
Yevgenia Albats:
- So Marco Rubio, you know, he's associated with, you know, from what I read, that he was very harsh on Iran, that he has been very interested in of course, this is in South America, Venezuelan, etc. To which extent, you know, it suggests that Trump is going to sort of disattach himself and the United States from Europe, from what is going in Europe? Is it in any sign that Europe is going to be on a side?
Peter Baker:
Well, I think the first thing to know about Europe in regard to the new Trump administration is that NATO is basically a dead letter. You know, he tried his first term to withdraw from NATO, and that was one of the things that they threw the sands in and the in the gears of, and they managed to keep him from doing that. He made do that in the second term of frankly, almost doesn't matter so much because what he's made very clear is at the heart of NATO which is the Article V commitment, that an attack on one is an attack on all doesn't apply if he decides doesn't apply, right? "If you don't pay up," he has said, "then, I don't care what Russia does to you." He has said those exact words, "Russia can do whatever the hell they want with you if you haven't spent enough on your own defense," in his mind.
That's not what Article V says. Article V says you're a member and we all stand together. So if you're an adversary of, you know, Article V is meaningless. Because if it's a conditional thing depending on the mood of the president of the United States as opposed to a solid commitment, it's a dead limit. So he is already in effect, just by getting elected undercut NATO in a way that has not been undercut since 1948. It's a very different alignment in a very different world. So right now, you have in Europe and Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz and and Maloney and all of them sitting there having conversations with their people saying, "What does this mean for Europe? What are we going to do? Because we can no longer assume that the United States is the same ally that it has been since the World War II era." And they have to figure out, can Europe stand on its own a little bit more? And that means both in terms of its own defense, and will their own defense, you know, will they rethink their defense posture? And it specifically means that we've regarded Ukraine.
If in fact, the United States decides that they're done with arming Ukraine or providing aid to Ukraine, how much can Europe fill that vacuum? Not a lot of optimism there on that front, because it's not been Europe's history, but they actually have been spending more on Ukraine than the United States, contrary to what Trump says in his public rallies. And I think that they are committed to Ukraine because they recognize that Russia under Putin, if he is given a, you know, what is perceived at least to be a victory in Ukraine, then becomes an even more dangerous figure.
Susan Glasser
Yeah, and just as far as Europe goes, I think, you know, there's also the economic piece of it. And you know, Trump is, as you know, promised unspecified levels of tariffs on every country in the world, and he throws out numbers anywhere from 10% to 1,000%, which by the way, is actually something he said at a rally not long before the election. He is a persistent target of his that he threatened throughout his first term. And if we're going on our theory that the unfinished business of the first term is something you're likely to see recur in the second term. He has had a particular decades long obsession with Germany's car manufacturing industry, which of course is at the core of its economy, increasingly threatened by China's rise in China's own auto manufacturing industry. And I think that, you know, if Trump follows through on old threats to specifically target Germany with tariffs like that, it would cause a blow to the largest economy in Europe at a time when it's already struggling.
So there's that, there's energy prices, you know, both of those are big levers that you could imagine Trump using to do what he wants, both the tariffs and the energy policy that the US has. So I see those as increasing fault lines. And remember, this is what's, in a big picture sense, so shocking is that we have a president coming in who will often perceive his interests as more aligned with those of Vladimir Putin's in many ways than of our partners in Western Europe. And I think it is so shocking, I think that people in Washington actually have quite a hard time processing this. But this is a good example of that, that, you know, Trump may seek to use energy crisis, for example, against our partners. He may seek to use those to drive Ukraine to the table. You know, it's a good example of where Putin's interest is in dividing Europe, right? And not just the United States dividing us and from its allies in Europe, but also dividing Europe from within.
If the United States withdraws support for Ukraine or pulls back or pressures them, I think what we're not going to see is a completely unified European response as much as a different emphasis. The countries that are most immediately threatened by Russia, Poland, the Baltic states, they have a very different perspective on this than than France and Italy and Germany do, than Hungary does. And I think that it is the fissures inside Europe that are likely also to become more pronounced and more clear to us as a result of the pressures that Donald Trump will bring to bear in addition to the pressure that Vladimir Putin is already bringing to bear
Yevgenia Albats:
During his election campaign, Donald Trump time and again said that A, he was going to stop, you know, that too much money went to Ukraine. And in fact, you know, I heard an echo of that also from some Democrats couldn't vote for Trump, but they keep saying, you know, why did we have to put so much money into Ukraine? And second, he's also said that he was going to end this war in 24 hours. So what is your understanding? I don't know any other two people who know better Trump than you two. So what is your understanding? What does he exactly mean, but saying 24 hours? Is he going to tell Zelenskyy, "Okay, you know, so we draw the line, you know, if Putin, you know, takes, okay, you know, it'll be tested." So all occupied terrorists will stay with the occupies. And, but you know, in exchange for that, there will be cease fire. So how do you see this?
Peter Baker:
- Well, look, JD Vance has actually even said that. He said that out loud. First of all, he said, "As a senator, I don't care about Ukraine. So he is made very clear his priority." Secondly, he said that a peace plan, as far as he was concerned, meant that Russia keeps, the territory is taken roughly about 20% of Ukraine. And Ukraine is officially neutral, you know, declares how you would want to frame the neutrality, can't join NATO obviously. Declares neutrality, which basically means they're under Moscow's thumb. And that would be his idea of a peace plan. Now, what Ukraine gets out of that, other than an end of the war, isn't really very clear why Zelenskyy would go along with that. Also, not so very clear. But the worry on part of Ukraine advocates is that they would use the levers of money to try to force Zelensky into making such a deal. Could that happen in 24 hours? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. There's been no peace of any war has ever been made in 24 hours. But he has said he would do it in 24 hours. He hasn't told us how. And he said not only that, he said he would do it before he is inaugurated.
But the inauguration clock has started. That means that somehow before becoming president of the United States on January 20th, without the power of being president yet, or the authority of being president yet, he is going to negotiate somehow a peace between these two companies. Nevermind the Logan Act, which would in theory, make that an illegal act. It probably wouldn't be applied anyway, but there's no way you could see that happening. But that's what he has promised, and we're hold that promise. If he fails to live up to it, we'll hold that. And again, he's already had a conversation with Zelenskyy. It's been reported that he had a conversation with Putin. Kremlin has denied it. Trump has not confirmed or denied it. So we're in this very bizarre world now. We don't even know if the President-elect of the United States has spoken with the president of the Russian Federation or not. And if so, what was said?
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, I want to underscore this is an RNA. For anyone who's keeping track on, you know, scorecard, this is a norm that has already been shattered, and we're literally not even one week since Trump one the election. And the idea that an incoming president of the United States would be conducting rogue personal diplomacy that is quite possibly at odds with the existing US national security policy. That it's possible that he's speaking with our main adversary in the world on an unsecured telephone without the existing government of the United States. Even being aware of whether that conversation occurred or not, I can assure you that this would've been a ginormous scandal in any other moment except the moment we're living in where I don't think anyone's even registered that this is actually like an enormous, and by the way, very rational breach of protocol. Think about this. Like this is not a way to run superpower, folks.
And so I think it's actually worth noting down because of course, we will be blowing through many other norms. That doesn't tell us, you know, really about the contents of where Trump is aiming at. But there is a hint as well, not only, you know, I don't note that these appointments tell us much, but I would note that both Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz did vote against the most recent military assistance for Ukraine. I think that was seen as frankly a precondition for getting a job in this Trump administration is opposing the military assistance for Ukraine. And I'm sure many of you noted that Donald Trump Jr., who fancies himself, the new power broker in this incoming administration actually tweeted out a social media video of Vladimir Zelenskyy with money raining down and said essentially, "Boo hoo, you know, aren't you upset that your allowance is soon gonna be cut off, you know, from Daddy?"
Peter Baker:
- While we're sitting here, as we speak more breaking news, he just announced John Ratcliffe as the director of National Intelligence. Or sorry, as the director of CIA, he had been the acting-
Bill Burns' gone, and John Ratcliffe, who is a believer that there was a Russia hoax committed against Donald Trump.
Susan Glasser:
And by the way, the house initially refused, the Republican House initially refused to go along sorry, with Radcliffe's appointment. And that it was only after, you know, a series of personnel debacle that they then very reluctantly gave him the job in the first place. So he's definitely an extreme figure. And remember that politicizing the intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, you know, it's going to be an important part of it. And I just, again, to go back to the big picture, Yevgenia, what does it tell us that, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia, as Trump would put it, sort of shadowed and defined the start of his first term in office/ And it's quite remarkable. But once again, Russia is actually the very first issue to crop up in Trump too, even before he's been inaugurated. And you know, this is, again, it's an anomaly and it's one that we should pay close attention to.
Yevgenia Albats:
You already mentioned that the Washington Post reported that Trump called Putin. And according to the Washington Post, Trump asked Putin to stop escalation in Ukraine and he reminded Putin that the US troops are stationed in Europe. End of quote. Do you think this kind of talk was plausible? Does it sound realistic to you?
Peter Baker:
No, it's a good question. We don't know, to be honest. Let's be clear about that. As I said, the Kremlin has denied it, and the Trump people have not confirmed or denied it.
Yevgenia Albats:
Peskov said, you know, Putin's speaker, said it's a pure fantasy.
Now, of course, he also said a lot of other things.
Peter Baker:
Yes, not that much trustworthy person in the world. And for that matter, neither is always the Trump side. So we are in this position where we don't really know, as Susan said, which is very odd. If he did speak to him, the notion that he somehow laid down a line like that in tough guy form does not seem keeping with the history of their conversations. And so therefore, one wonders about the story and whether this has been portrayed that way for other purposes to make it look like he's tough and really being strict with Putin, which doesn't seem, again, consistent. And let's keep in mind by the way, he wants to pull those US troops out of Europe. He tried to do that at the end of his last term, he ordered the troops out of Germany what remained and was stopped only because they didn't manage to get their act together, basically. So I would be very skeptical of that.
It's very possible that there was no phone call, but Trump is not denying it because he likes this version of the truth to be out there. It's possible there was a phone call that was made, for instance, say I'm just speculating here to Elon Musk or from Elon Musk and Elon hands us a phone. You know, this is the way that this White House incoming works in a way that would not be the way any other White House Republican or Democrat has worked in our time. You would never have sort of an impromptu phone call like that with a president or president-elect of the United States, especially with an adversary just like off the cuff like that. But it is very possible something like that happened. Remember the last thing I would add is that Bob Wood report in his new book that he was told by a Trump aide that Trump spoke with Putin about maybe seven times during the last four years, that Trump didn't deny that when asked about it. Didn't confirm it, didn't deny it, Kremlin did deny it. Once again, same pattern that.
Trump, again, they like the idea that people thought he talked with Trump or with Putin, even if he didn't. Or it may be that they communicated through intermediaries like Elon Musk or Viktor Orban or something like that. So the problem is we don't really know, but what does that tell us about our diplomacy at this point is not very transparent and it's very consequential.
Susan Glasser:
Well, I think I would also add that, you know, where I can see the plausibility, Yevgenia, is that Trump is a believer in this almighty notion of leverage. And anyone who worked for him or in contact with him, this is a word he would bandy about. I think real negotiators would say that he wasn't all that good at deploying it, and he actually had a history of making out such great deals, or, you know, he's more of a showman really than a negotiator but his, you know, kind of branding is that he's a negotiator, but really, he's more of a showman. So for example, in his first meeting, famous first meeting, remember the summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. Well, he, you know, the jig was up even before they ever sat down, which was, "I'm going to declare that we made a great deal even if we didn't." And by the way, that's exactly what he did.
He pronounced that this was a, you know, sweeping denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Well, here we are in 2024, obviously we didn't have a sweeping denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but Trump's plan was essentially to announce, you know, some great breakthrough and then hope that his people could backfill and actually build a deal which they were unable ultimately to do. Why do I raise that? Because, yeah, this isn't day one of a Trump presidency. There's a framework, I think look at that experience with North Korea. Another way to think about North Korea is the very beginning that led to that Singapore summit. Remember fire and fury and the nuclear threats? That was escalate to deescalate. That was Donald Trump's first version of how you might gain leverage with a nuclear adversary.
And I don't rule out that that's part of what he has in mind to bring Russia to the table here is a threat to do some things that the Biden administration has been reluctant to do. For example, you know, there's been a kind of a micromanaging of some of the weapons that the US has provided to Ukraine. For example, the attack comes, which are the long range missiles. We've been very clear that we would not lift the restrictions on using that to strike targets inside Russia itself. And you could imagine Trump saying like, you know, here's my 24-hour clock and you know, we're going to bomb hell out of you guys if you don't come to the table with a reasonable proposal. Now, my personal view is that Trump is, you know, kind of what you might call a chicken hawk. You know, somebody who's much more comfortable with bluster than he is with following through.
But I just throw that out there because I do think, you know, maybe Peter disagree is that we could see some of this language towards Russia, but I would, you know, be skeptical because in effect, what we're really seeing here, we already know that from Trump himself and from JD Vance, is we're going to force Ukraine to trade land for a piece that, you know, it's very hard to believe would be a credible long-term secure piece for Ukraine with Russia.
Yevgenia Albats:
In the latest Economist, there was a big piece on Ukraine. And so I would allow myself to read a quote from this piece. "On paper, Donald Trump's return to the White House looks like Ukrainian's worst nightmare. America's incoming president has constantly refused to condemn Putin's invasion. He appears to admire the Russian dick style of rule. He once tried to blackmail Ukraine by withholding military assistance. So it comes as a quite a surprise and as an indication of just how bad things have become in the country in recent months to learn that many senior officials were hoping for Donald Trump victory." Meaning senior officials in Ukraine. "Forced with the choice of continued their life support or a wild cut president who would rip up the rules and almost certainly cut aid, they were prepared to gamble." And this is to say that all of us, you know, who are interested in the politics, in my part of the world, we were watching, you know, the Biden's administration promises to help Ukraine time and again, time and again.
We promised F-16, I remember I was speaking to the then assistant Secretary of State to, she said, "We are going to give them F-16, F-35." resigned. Americas provided no F-16 to Ukrainians. Netherlands gave F-16 to Ukraine. No, of course, F-35, no long-ranged missiles, huge shortage of shells and etc. etc. And at least for the outsider like me and you know, the one who was in Ukraine in March of 2023. And I talk constantly, speak to people. There is, you know, sort of time, and again, there is, you know, this big question, what going on? You know? I mean, I do understand that it's hard for the American president to deal with who keeps blackmailing using nuclear weapons. Of course, you understand, you started Putin, you know him, you started him and learned him there. You understand he will never push the button. But that's my approach. Okay.
But so sometimes, you think that maybe you know someone, you know, radical as a con suggest maybe it's better for Ukraine, maybe Trump decides. So one of the former advisors to President Barack Obama told me, you know, "Just think, Yevgenia, that maybe Trump decides not to look weak. And so giving up Ukraine will make him look weak." Maybe that's what can help you.
Peter Baker:
Well, there's a theory in American foreign policy called the madman strategy, right? This was famously made popularized by Richard Nixon, who would tell Henry Kissinger, "Just tell them I'm crazy and you have to hold me back." And it'll help Kissinger then leverage whatever he was he was trying to get from some other partner adversary or what have you. I've got that, White House, you got to help me here. Well, in this case, I mean, well, we could debate whether that was the tactic or just the actual reality. But the truth is, there is the unpredictability and volatility of Trump is a factor in American foreign policy at this point. And it's true that it, I think it does play a role. I do think it has had at some points an effect on both allies and adversaries in terms of what they're willing to do, whether they're willing to take chances on things because they don't know what it's going to do.
Now on Russia specifically, what you would hear a lot of people say is, well, "Yes, he talked a love affair with Putin in public, but his administration still did this and that." And the other thing that were actually relatively tough on Russia in terms of sanctions and kicking out diplomats after the Skripal poisoning and so forth. And there is some truth to that. People below Trump were not in love with Putin, and they did manage to push whatever policy they could that would've been more conventional for a Democrat or a Republican. But-
Susan Glasser:
Although the two people who are most associated with that have already been publicly not welcomed back-
Peter Baker:
Exactly.
Susan Glasser:
Into another Trump administration, both Haley and Mike Pompeo.
Peter Baker:
The very first announcement he made is no Haley, no Pompeo. Why does he say no Haley, no Pompeo as first announcement? And in tandem with each other, even though they have nothing to do with each other otherwise, because they were both known as hawks when it comes to Russia and it comes to Ukraine. So he was sending a signal from the very beginning that that doesn't mean he will not be unpredictable, right? Nixon went to China and in some ways there's, you know, who... But if the only way I would see if I was a Ukrainian official that Trump's unpredictability might be useful is if you are willing to give up land and you do want somebody to force you into an unpalatable and politically unpleasant, but maybe in their view, unavoidable trade off that they're willing to make and that therefore they could use Trump as a way to, you know, excuse something that they otherwise would domestically have a hard time selling because they don't see another option. I could see that it's unpleasant, it's uncynical in a way, but because Biden probably wouldn't force him into that.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, I think it's really important to underscore here just what a horrible situation the Ukrainian leadership is in right now. And so some of it is surely spin. I've said it's not just in the economist. I've read multiple reported accounts from Kyiv in recent days or from journalists who've been to Kyiv, were analysts. They're all saying the same thing. So A, I would say that's a line, you know, that the Ukrainian government decided upon. You know, it's a plan that they have for dealing with the new Trump administration. I think it's kind of smart because it plays into, you know, Trump's own view and that of some of his advisors, it's actually kind of sucking up to him, right? Because he likes the idea that he's not only tougher than Biden, but more unpredictable. And if you look at some of the things they said on the campaign trail, "What did they say about Donald Trump and foreign policy?" They didn't say very much. What they said is the world will fear him and they will not fear Kamala Harris.
And I think, so this kind of plays into that, you know, okay, well, Trump might want to have the image of being a madman first of all. Second of all, I think Peter's right that, you know, if you think that this ends with a concession that's politically, you know, basically nuclear for a Ukrainian politician, right? To agree to give up your territory in any other sit situation would mean the end of your presidency. But possibly, if your very largest benefactor withdraws its support, you may not have a choice and you may still have a political future in Ukraine. You know. But I also think it's important for people here to recognize that there is real frustration between Ukraine and the Biden administration and it's sort of been a paradox that the Biden people were kind of good at not making that widely understood.
But the truth is, is that there was a lot of resentment and a real feeling that the relationship between Biden and Zelenskyy never gelled, you know, was always infused with tension that the micromanaging from the administration was not helpful. And that as a result of that, they missed a window that might have, and I underscore that, right? Might have been able to have Ukraine push Russia out more territory before they had the time to dig in, had some of these weapons and capacities been more forthcoming on the front end. Is that fair?
Yevgenia Albats:
I have two questions with respect to what you just said. One in your book you write about meeting in Helsinki and John Bolton. John Bolton, yeah. The then Trump's national security advisor. He said about, you know, there was this, you know, bizarre meeting, that meeting between Trump and Putin and there was only interpreter and citing the interpreter, Bolton said that Putin outplayed Trump. In fact, Putin is a smart son of a bitch. I'm sorry. You know, I never voted for the guy and he ruins my country, he ruins my second country. You know, my family comes both from Ukraine and Russia. So I am unable to call him any other names and usually I use something stronger than that. So, but you know, he's very smart and he's very crude and he knows that your presidents, they have constituencies back home. And then he understands that, you know, Trump has probably two years that there will be midterms and you know, everything will be about elections. And he does understand that he can sit in Kremlin for 25 years with all his KGB mans around and he's fine and no, you know, until somebody will slit his throat.
But, so my question, to which extent these people who now around Trump, Rubio and Waltz and you know, this new CIA guy both knew, which is very, very, very, very well. He was one of the best American ambassadors to Moscow and, you know, I was there. So anyway, to which extent they understand that they're dealing with the evil man, but very smart evil man?
Susan Glasser:
I don't think there's a lot of Russia expertise in this group.
Peter Baker:
No, I think Rubio 1.0 was pretty skeptical of Putin, but doesn't know much about him, but would look at him as scance. Rubio 2.0 as he is remade himself. I'm not really sure. he understands what matters to Trump and he's not going to do anything across.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, and by the way, Yevgenia, to your point about what kind of a commander in chief is Donald Trump, one of the things, you know, that was really notable and it's likely not to be changed and even to be more. So the case in the second term, is that Trump probably won't be surprised to hear this, he doesn't do the homework. You know, he doesn't prepare, he doesn't like to prepare. He doesn't do, you know, briefings, he doesn't read, you know, he does oral briefings, but he definitely doesn't read briefing papers. He doesn't like to take advice even from people if he might agree with him. He still doesn't really like to take advice. Preparing for that summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore that I was mentioning, you know, in fact, there was this amazing moment when Shinzo Abe, that Prime Minister of Japan, who was one of the better kind of Trump whisperers among the world leaders at that time, is trying to get Trump on the phone to focus on like, "Well, what are you gonna do? Let's run through it." And he was like, "No, no, no, no. I just trust my instinct." And I think that's really important.
You know, Trump is not only a gut player, but on this particular issue of dealing with Vladimir Putin, nobody else is going to be trusted to do that. So, you know, other people may, you know, have roles to play in whatever drama we're about to see unfold. But this is something that's going to involve Trump personally. It's not going to involve anyone with a real deep understanding of Putin's. It's not going to involve, you know, him having really researched it or, you know, thought through. I think some of the implications, he's a gut player, and that's what he is going to do, is get on the phone with Elon Musk and make a deal. I mean.
Yevgenia Albats:
- But do they understand that Putin is not going to stop? That Putin is, and you write about this in this book.
Susan Glasser:
I did not pay her for repeated product placement.
Peter Baker:
We will later.
Yevgenia Albats:
That first of all, you cannot trust Putin. You just cannot. Secondary, Putin respects only those who are capable to project force. That's the KGB if you want, men. You trust those who are strong, they're real opponents, and those who get on their knees, you cannot trust them, sooner or later, in any case, they will jump and, you know, slit your throat. So those steps from the side of the United States by, you know, advising Ukraine to give up fight and, you know, to cease fire, you know, at the current front lines, will manifest to Putin his victory, his success, and will prompt him to go further. There is, you know, Latvia, so far, you know, gives less than 2% to tonight. Trump already said he's not going to support those countries in Europe who invest less than 2% net. By the way. I think he's right on that. But Latvia, so Latvia is under attack. Putin is dreaming about reinstating the Russian Empire. It means Finland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. So, to which extent there is this understanding that you are dealing with a very specific type of regime. It's not just Putin. There is the whole cohort of this KGB men who respect force and force only.
Peter Baker:
Well, in our book, we write at the scene where he's being briefed about how NATO works, Trump is, and he says, "Wait a second, wait a second. You mean if Lithuania gets attacked, I have to go defend them?" He says, "That's crazy." I mean, he has no interest and no commitment whatsoever to defend, frankly, anybody, but especially the Eastern European countries. And I think that if you were to give the leaders of the Baltics, you know, right now, they would be nervous as heck because they no longer can assume that they're under the American shield. And frankly, Finland is a new member of NATO, obviously has to worry about that as well.
Yevgenia Albats:
So more than 1,000 kilometers of a joint border was.
Peter Baker:
Absolutely, right.
Susan Glasser:
I think the other thing that, you know, the other side of the Trump is crazier. How will Putin respond to this is, I do think it's plausible that Trump can threaten some escalation and maybe even follow through in, you know, some minor ways on it in order to get a deal. But I also think that what we're seeing is indications that Putin is very likely to tweak Trump and to test him pretty aggressively. And I think that's different than what we saw in Trump one, or it will be more so. Putin did do this a couple times. It never got as much attention as I thought it should. For example, maybe you remember when the Russians debuted news about their new hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal and Putin at his, I believe it was his annual press conference, showed a very crudely made graphic that essentially showed this nuclear--
Yeah, exactly. And that was a direct tweak at, you know, "You think you're such a tough guy, Donald." And I don't think that kind of posturing ever got the attention that it should have. And the reason I'm bringing that up now is I'm not sure how many of you paid attention to the way in which Russian State television greeted the news of Trump's reelection as president. But one of the things that happened was that on Russian State television, on a program called their version of 60 Minutes, they actually aired a more than three minute-long segment of naked pictures of Melania Trump from when she was a model. And went on and on and on. And in fact, it was actually the most graphic I've ever seen those pictures. And I've seen like individual versions of those pictures, but I've never seen any television, you know, that did an entire thing. There's no way that segment was not approved not only by the Kremlin, but I would imagine by Putin himself. That is the most direct kind of personal insult to Trump. And I think it's very important that we, you know, take that seriously and assume that other kinds of more substantive testing of Trump are possible. And to my mind, that would involve some of these more vulnerable NATO allies. If you wanted to prove that Article V was really dead, what would you do? You know, you would test the proposition and show that Trump wasn't gonna do anything for his so-called allies.
Peter Baker:
Yeah, I would just ask an alternative theory on the Melania and Melange on TV. Maybe it's an insult to Trump, but Trump may look that as a positive. Trump thinks that's pretty cool. "I got a hot wife. The Russians know I have a hot wife." That's kind of the way he thinks. So I'm not 100% sure what the criminal thought I was doing with that, but it is true that-
Susan Glasser:
Now, you know, he meant to insult him.
Peter Baker:
I'm not sure about that. He likes that. He's excited about that.
Susan Glasser:
That was an insult.
Peter Baker:
But there's no question that Putin-
Susan Glasser:
The audience agrees with me.
Peter Baker:
Well, good for you. Playing to the audience as always. But look, there's no question Putin has his number. I mean, Putin understands Trump. We have a scene in the book where, in Osaka, Japan, I was there G20 meeting, and the two of them have a side meeting. And behind closed doors, and the cameras are left, the room, they get into this thing about the hypersonic missile. And Putin's kind of boasting about that and that sort of manly way he has. And Trump's like, "Well, we're going to get one too. We're going to get one too." But then there's this really interesting moment where Trump is kind of bragging the way he does. "You know, the polls, they love me, they're going to name a fort after me, Fort Trump. And the Israelis, they love me so much, they've named a settlement after me. You know, Trump Heights." And Putin has this sort of, you know, like this. Kind of, you know, this sort of droll, "Maybe, Donald, they should just name all of Israel after you." Yeah. And I'm not sure that Trump got that Putin was mocking him for his narcissism and his, his egoism and so forth but Putin definitely has his number.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, and you know, I mean, he is an agent who's manipulating a very manipulable character.
Yevgenia Albats:
Oh, yes. That was his job. But look, you know, if you recall his injury with .
Susan Glasser:
Yes.
Yevgenia Albats:
And Taka was basically was about to give him, you know, his piece. God knows where I am. All of a sudden we, he said, "Oh, by the way, you tried to get into the CIA, but you never got."
And it was like, "Wow." Yeah, just to show him that we know, "You weak guy, you even failed to get into CIA, whereas I am KGB guy."
Susan Glasser:
By the way, and that's why this was an insult of Trump. You know, Putin is a weaponize of information. Now so is Trump but, you know, in a very different way. Clearly, Putin believes that a certain amount of insulting, you know, is a way of establishing power and dominance. And what's amazing about that Helsinki moment is that it worked with Trump in a public situation. That was something that I think for many Americans, that was the reason why they saw it to be shocking. Because it was a physical display of Putin's dominance over the American president. And, you know, I was there and really, it was, I think a shocking moment.
But unfortunately, you know, what we're seeing with this election result, and with all that Trump has done in the system, you know, we're not as exceptional as we thought we were in the United States. And, you know, our ability to normalize, you know, the strikingly abnormal is now going to be tested once again with Russia. I'm kind of blown away, right? That we are really, the beginning of Trump one is all about Russia. And really, you know, it's going to be all about Russia the next few months. In addition to, of course, mass deportations of million people.
Yevgenia Albats:
Why do you expect Trump to drop sanctions against Russia in exchange for something? Because as I understand from your book, you keep writing, he's a businessman. So it's all about money for him. You know, you are quoting somebody, I don't remember who, when you say that it's all about money for him. So it what you expect that Trump will make a deal that he will drop sanctions against Russian economy in exchange for something in Ukraine?
Peter Baker:
Yeah, I think so. Absolutely, it is a tool for him. And he would rationalize if that made sense, and that we should be doing, because Russia, every time he is asked about his relationship with Putin, he says, "It's a good thing that I have a good relationship with Putin. It's a good thing he likes me and I like him because we want to have good relations." I would assume he would drop all sanctions that he's allowed to drop if he's able to. Now, it is a Republican Congress, and there are still split among Republicans as to between the more old fashioned Reagan, Bush, you know, skeptics of Russian, you know, aggression. And the ones who are willing, the Putin caucus, as some people call them.
So whether they would go along with dropping certain scientists that require Congressional approval or not, whether Democrats presumably being in the negative, that's a little harder. That's a little harder. But there are a lot of the sanctions within his executive power. I think he would drop as part of a deal for sure. He tried to do, at the very beginning of the last term, he actually was ready to drop some of the sanctions that had been imposed on Putin for the 2016 election interference until Mitch McConnell basically stopped him and said, "If you do that, I will legislate them. You'll have to eat them. And he kind of back down one of the few times that that happened."
Yevgenia Albats:
Are there any people in Congress who are capable to stop Trump now?
Peter Baker:
Few. I mean, McConnell is still there, but he is a back bencher. He's no longer the leader. And whoever becomes the leader tomorrow, that's when they're gonna have the election, will feel that they owe Trump, because they have been playing to him for his support in this contest. And none of them, none of the three that are really up for it. One of them is in his pocket. And the other two are not particularly strong. I mean, you know, they're not the kind of strong people who would stand up Trump and all.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, John Cornyn, if he wins, he's the one who's most, you know, sort of McConnell's protege and would be the most of what you might consider kind of, you know, more old model Republican. But this is not his particular issue. McConnell does not have the say. And I think the thing that's happened in the last two years, two to four years that's really notable, is what you might call the Trumpification of the Senate Republican Conference, in addition to, you know, the almost complete Trumpification of the House Republican Conference. That was already taking place in the first four years. And I think what you've seen in the last four years is how the Senate is really much more Trumpy than it used to be. And you know, you don't have Mitt Romney, he's not even in the Senate anymore. McConnell is essentially on his way out the door. You know, obviously, nobody like a John McCain figure.
There are a few people who are definitely still supporters of Ukraine, supporters of NATO. People like Dan Sullivan from Alaska, Roger Wicker, who is likely to be the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I mean, you know, he's more of an old fashioned, you know, right wing Republican, right form, you know, this part of the country. But they don't stand up to Trump is what they don't do. And I think it would be very hard for them to do it. I do expect infighting. I do think you're going to see signals. And what I've noticed over the last year as the prospect of Trump's return became more and more, you know, imminent, there are the kind of residual hawks in Washington, Russia, skeptics in Washington among Republicans. But because they now have this kind of leader of Trump, what they do is they advance all sorts of kind of fanciful notions about, you know, Trump is actually a hawk.
He's actually very tough on Russia. And, you know, that gets traction, you know, each time, there's some little data point. But, you know, the record is pretty clear here. You know, there may be outlier moments as they find their way, but Donald Trump has been a consistent admirer of Vladimir Putin. He has been a consistent skeptic of Ukraine and more broadly of NATO and of continued American military and security support to Europe. So that's the trajectory that we're on.
Yevgenia Albats:
During his election campaign, Donald Trump time and again, claim that he was going to go after his opponents. After procurators, after investigators. And so, you know, judges and etc. However, when you recall his first campaign, he also kept promising that, you know, to lock up Hillary, lock her up. Remember that was the slogan. And he never did it. And he never did it. so do you expect that this time, Trump will go after those who fought against him, or, you know who.
Peter Baker:
I would be stunned if he didn't. He did, you're right. It is true he says a lot of things he doesn't always follow up on. He did say lock her up with Hillary once it was over. He didn't do that, but he never completely gave up on that. There were times over the four years that he said, "You know, we should go after Hillary. Why aren't you investigating Hillary?" And he badgered his attorney's general, first, Jeff Sessions and then Bill Barr to go after Hillary Clinton. And they did it. They resisted. So that one thing is different. They will not be an attorney general who will resist him second time around, I think it's safe to say. So if he decides, you know, to pursue any of these, he will not run into the same kind of blockage that he had the first time. Or secondly, while he didn't ultimately successfully have them go after Clinton, he did have them successfully go after a number of other people, including FBI agents who had investigated him, including media outfits that angered him, including others who got on his wrong side. And they did. Many of them, they were forced out of their office, out of their jobs. They lost a pension, they were investigated, had pay hundreds of thousand dollars in lawyer bills, so on and so forth.
So even in the first term, when people say, "Well, I didn't really follow up." He did follow through. He just wasn't as successful as he wanted to be. In the second term, he has been even more expansive in his campaign in terms of talking about this NPR account, they counted more than 100 times. He threatened various people with investigations, prosecution being put in jail. Will he follow up on all of them? No, but let's just say he follows up on five of them. Isn't that enough? He said that he would appoint a special counsel to go after Joe Biden. He said that Liz Cheney and Barack Obama should be put on military tribunals. Those probably think won't happen. I think the highest profile people, he probably won't go after, but if you are Alvin Bragg in New York, if he could find a way to go after you, he'll find a way to go after you. It may not be that he locks him up, it may be that he finds a way through funding to go after him or some sort of a lawsuit, not through the government, but through private ways. He is angrier this time coming into office than he was eight years ago. He is more embittered. He is more aggrieved, and he is more openly talking about revenge than he ever did before. And I think we ought take that seriously.
Yevgenia Albats:
Will he go after journalists?
Peter Baker:
Yes, he will. Absolutely. Even before the election, just last week, he filed a lawsuit against CBS. He filed FEC complaint against The Washington Post. You know, he's come after us through private people, and I think he will continue to do that through certain-
Yevgenia Albats:
After you two?
Peter Baker:
After the New York Times.
Peter Baker:
And I think that he will continue to do that through, at the very least, through private means, but probably also through public means. Remember in our book, we document this, he tried to stop the merger of Time Warner. And one-
AT&T, sorry. Because he was mad at CNN. He tried to raise social rates for Amazon to cripple them because he is mad at the Washington Post Again, both times we had those sand in the gears, people who either stopped him or the Justice Department actually did go forward with the lawsuit in the Time Warner-AT&T case, and just lost in court. So it doesn't mean he'll always be successful, but he did try in his first term, and I think we should expect him to try in his secondary. And before the election, again, he talked about taking away the licenses of CBS, NBC, and ABC and CNN. By the way, they don't actually have licenses, doesn't work that way. Individual stations have licenses, but networks don't. He doesn't know that, which is helpful. But he will find ways to punish media if he thinks he can get away with it.
Yevgenia Albats:
Wow. Last question from my side, and, you know, we have to open the flow to the question for the audience. China, would you expect Trump to trade Taiwan in exchange for some deal with China?
Susan Glasser:
Well, I do think that, you know, China really, for the last three presidencies has been the thing that, you know, president comes into office as we're going to reorient our foreign policy, we're going to focus on Asia, we're going to pivot to Asia, and then of course events, whether it's in the Middle East or Europe, come roaring back. And then they don't really pivot to Asia. This new foreign policy team, I think is much more focused on China. I believe Mike Waltz actually called China an existential threat to the United States in a recent op-ed. You know, that being said, the Republican hawks, in my view, have misread Trump. And they have talked in recent years about, you know, how the United States has go to throw everything into the defense of Taiwan and that it's, you know, really Taiwan and not Ukraine. That's our strategic interest. And I think that misreads the situation on a couple levels.
One, obviously, if we cave in and withdraw our support for Ukraine, that sends a pretty powerful message to China and Xi Jinping that we would not be prepared to follow through in defensive Taiwan. But more importantly, Donald Trump's record to me as president, does not suggest that he's prepared to take the United States to war in any way on behalf of Taiwan. And in fact, his record as president suggests that he's willing to overlook an enormous number of security incursions, human rights incursions, sovereignty, incursions by China, and that he's much more interested in forcing China to come and make economic terms than he is that, you know, would he outright, you know, make a deal involving Taiwan security? I don't think so, because I think that the center of gravity in his party is so strongly pro-Taiwan, it would be very hard for him.
There would be a huge internal fight over that. But I do think that anybody who thinks that Donald Trump is going to go to war on behalf of Taiwan, I just don't see it happening. I mean, Peter, you've said in recent days that you know, if anything, we might be looking in the next four years and thinking that, you know, she might be smart to make a move against Taiwan because Trump is so unlikely to follow through. I think maybe we're understating that risk. And remember, you know, there's been reporting in the last few years from some Pentagon sources suggesting that China might have the capacity to do something like that in the next few years. And that would end pass Trump's next term in office.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you. Okay, so now we're, oh yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah, I would ask you, if you don't mind, and if you're not afraid to be acknowledged, you know, when we download this on the Davis Center YouTube, please name yourself and you know, so we understand who we're talking to. Okay. Yes, please.
Andrew:
Thank you. What a really interesting, if not. Thank you so much. I was gonna say the conversation was very interesting, if not always uplifting. My name is Andrew, I'm a political scientist. I study democratic backslide. I'm just curious to ask you guys about constraints on Trump. So I have two burning questions. I think the first is two political scientists at Harvard have argued the New York Times that the main constraint in Trump two will be societal mobilization. Curious if you see ways during Trump one where society did in fact, get to the administration constrain Trump? And if so, how? And second, I'm curious, has some of the worked in Washington during, during Trump one? I was surprised that there were ways in which Congress did constrain Trump on foreign policy, but in very quiet ways. I'm not going to put a bullseye on anyone's back. In particular, for example, Trump wanted to cut aid to support democracy on the world. Congress constrained him in many ways, not. So I'm curious if you think that kind of quiet constrained continues to be possible?
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, I mean much more the latter than the former. You know, I do think that, you know, Congress, you know, it is a huge country. There's a huge array of interests. You know, especially in a Republican party, there's a lot vested interest in different Pentagon programs and things like that. And you can fold a lot in under the rubric of national security. So, you know, I imagine that there will still be ways to protect some, but not all. The bigger problem, right? Is things that actually draw trump's attention. So, you know, Ukraine is on his radar screen, whereas some individual programs funded by Congress might not be. And that's where the personnel matters too, because if you do have a completely MAGA, American first JD Vance in all the key positions, then they're the ones who might be, you know, furthering that policy. Because many of the key positions in Trump one were filled by people who were more kind of establishment types and were willing to work with the Republican Congress.
In fact, that was one of the things Peter and I were struck by. But how the constraint worked in Trump one was at times, Trump's own staff conspired with members of Congress and even with foreign leaders such as Abe, I mentioned before, to actually undermine what Trump wanted. Again, this is highly, highly unusual stuff, and we documented a few examples of that in Trump one. I do not expect that to occur in Trump two. And I'm trying to think, I mean, as far as societal mobilization, Peter, I'm dubious honestly that Trump cares at all about that, but.
Peter Baker:
I mean, look, I think she says right. Yeah, and it is true. Like if he's not paying attention, you can do a whole lot in Washington. I think even the next four years. He didn't even know he was funding transgender transition surgeries in prisons, which seems to now be a really big issue according to him. But he was funding it for four years when he was president. Oh, well, you know, as long as you don't tell him, you can get-
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, don't let facts get in the way with $230 million advertising.
Peter Baker:
Yeah, you can get away with an awful lot. So you know, like, if congressman slips on back into the budget, he doesn't know anything. He's not reading the budget. So his thing slip stuff back in that he wants out and doesn't, don't let him know that. Yeah. I think they can do so. Societally, I know about societal, I mean, certainly as a federal system, you know, Gavin Newsom has already made clear, it's of course in his own self-interest politically to, to position himself this way. But he is positioning himself as a opposition leader to the states. And what we have seen over the years when Trump was in power before states, you know, through their own ability to shake policy, making a difference.
I think that societally, you might argue, has constrained him to some extent on going further on abortion restrictions. And that will be the big test on this one, right? I don't think he will sign, I don't think Congress actually could pass an abortion ban national. And he's clearly a little burned or feeling burned about the issue, feeling like it's radioactive and worried about it. That's one place where I think he's nervous, but it's possible his agencies could find ways to, you know, federal regulation to limit, for instance, the ability to access medications and so forth. And whether he goes forward with that will be a big test. How much does he actually concerned about a societal rejection to that? Because that's obviously something that's there's no consensus on, in favor of. Beyond that, I mean, he doesn't like marches against him, but I don't know that it really, you know.
Susan Glasser:
Well, I mean, look, we're going to have a test really soon. That's the thing that I've been struck by and that I recall from, you know, Peter and I living in Russia in the very beginning of Putin's tenure, is that Putin and those around who moved very quickly to establish new facts on the ground, to change laws, to you know, change the structure of Russian politics. And frankly, they did it while the Russian opposition was just busy, you know, kind of like yakking with each other about what just happened here. He's already moved forward. And that's the thing that I've been particularly alarmed by over the last week, is thinking that like, of course, I understand why there's a need for Democrats because they're Democrats and they do that, but also, you know, for them to have their kind of, you know, fight about how we just screwed up the last election, if that's coming at the expense of organizing and mobilizing for what's coming. Remember, Donald Trump hasn't theoretically promised mass deportation. He has specifically promised mass deportation that begins on January 20th at noon with the largest mass deportation, he says, in either American history or in decades since Operation Wetback in the Eisenhower era. That's a very specific thing. You can see that they're already moving very quickly on some of these appointments because they have the specific goal of doing that.
My question is, and I don't know the answer, what kind of a societal pushback is they're going to actually be to that? Or, you know, many Americans said in exit polls that they, you know, including many Latino voters, that they were fine with deporting these people here. So are people going to come out in the streets or not? And does Trump care if they do?
Yevgenia Albats:
Nina please? Thank you very much. Laura and Donna. Thank you.
Nina:
I'd like to go back to Trump and Russia and Trump and Putin. For me, the most shocking lines in the transcript of the news conference at Helsinki was not about the intelligence agencies. It was when an American reporter asked him what New York had done to it contribute to the worsening of US Russian relations. And Trump couldn't think of anything. Nothing. So it raises the question of who was briefing? I mean, what does he know? Who's telling him about Russia? And what's the prospect?
Susan Glasser:
He knows nothing.
Nina:
Yeah. And then the prospect of who's going to be informing? And that's one thing. The other is something we are, you know, we've said it again and again for years, you two really know about Trump and you really know about Putin. Can you explain psychologically, why it is that Trump admires Putin so much? I mean, can you say just your take? I have an agenda I teach a freshman seminar and we're going to meet tomorrow.
Peter Baker:
It's a great question. It is-
Susan Glasser:
That is greediness.
Peter Baker:
Yeah. It is still the unanswered question. I mean, the truth is, you know, Trump has managed very successfully to diminish the whole question by saying Russia hoax, Russia, Russia, Russia, as if there was nothing there. And the fact that the Mueller report didn't find a prosecutable crime does not mean that there wasn't something very odd and unexplained there. And they had the Mueller report to go back and look at it, put aside the obstruction of justice stuff, which they did identify, found remarkable amounts of contacts between Trump campaign and Russian figures and Russian intermediaries that the kinds of, which we've never seen before in any other presidential campaign. Still unexplained, why? What on earth is that all about? Now, as for Trump's personal affection for Putin, I think there are two theories, right? One is, you know, it really is a strongman thing. He just loves strong. If you ask Fiona Hill, who was his Russia advisor and later testified during the impeachment of course, she says it's really just about his affection for strongman.
And it's not just Putin, it's also Xi Jinping, el-Sisi and Erdogan or Duterte and Orban and so forth. And it is true. I was on Air Force 1 with him once coming back from a G20 summit in Buenos Aires and he had just had dinner with Xi Jinping. And all he could sit there and talk about with us in the back of the plane was Xi Jinping. You know, it's so amazing he doesn't have to worry about a Congress getting in his way. He doesn't worry about federal agencies stopping it from doing what he wants. If he wants to put somebody on trial for fentanyl abuse, he could do it in the morning and they're executed by night. And he said, this waxing enviously jealously of this ability to get past due process or anything else that we would consider to be a check and balance in our system. He said he just admires this.
Why is he admire this? He's a 78-year-old man. His entire experience prior to becoming president was running a family business, which there were no shareholders. There was no board of directors, there was no check or balance. One-man operation. Everything was him. He decided everything. He snaps his fingers, it's done. That his entire attitude coming into the presidency, the first present in our history, not to have had a single day in either public office or the military. In other words, never learn to experience what it's like to live in a system which you have to work with other power centers or compromise or what have you. Because, you know, he was his own man for the entire time.
So there is that theory, the strongman theory, his admiration for strongman, who's the strong man. You know, who's strongman in the world today is, it's Vladimir Putin. The second theory, which comes from Michael Cohen, who was of course his fixer, then it broke with him as well. Convicted and then testified against him in this trial in New York. His theory is, look, it's all money. He is motivated by nothing more other than narcissism. He had motivated by money and that he wanted for years to build a big tower in Moscow that was his big white whale. He wanted to get this big tower there. And he tried for 35 years essentially to build in Moscow seeing the riches of the new post communist Russia and the oligarchs and so forth. And he never did. And it really comes down to that.
And it obviously he money was important to the business when they started. They couldn't get American loans anymore because they stiffed their lenders. So they got Deutsche Bank and they got Russian assets. Eric Trump quoted saying, "We were fine because we got Russian money and go to those condos in Miami that were sold at inflated prices largely to Russian old arcs," it seems like. So Michael Cohen's theory is, don't go too far beyond money because that's what really drives him. So those are the two theories, I think maybe some combination of both. Maybe someday we'll learn something that we haven't learned yet about something more, you know, clandestine or secret. But those are two pretty good theories to begin with, I think.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I would add sort of an addendum to what shapes Trump when he's thinking about Russia when he is thinking about Putin. You know, really, he is as empty of a vessel when it comes to history or context on Russia. The Soviet Union as you could possibly imagine.
Peter Baker:
He didn't know Finland was a separate country.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, he didn't know Finland was a separate country.
Peter Baker:
He thought the Balkans were the Baltics.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah. Yeah. And he said that in a meeting with the three Baltic leaders in his office. He said, "Welcome from the Balkans." That being said, to the extent he has a frame of reference on Russia and the former Soviet Union, it's really almost everything for Donald Trump goes back to the 1980s, his own personal golden age. And this is another one of Fiona's theories of the case, and I think she's right. She and John Bolton both identified in their memoirs that, you know, this is probably the origin of Trump's. He has a mini obsession with nuclear weapons and with arms control dating back to the 1980s. People don't even remember this, but he actually told Ronald Reagan that he would make a very good nuclear arms negotiator back in the 1980s. His services were politely declined. But I think that tells you, you know, both of his self-image.
But he really, in particular, if you look at some of his rhetoric, he does mention nuclear weapons. And it's, I think part of his own abhorrence of war is very specifically the idea that you really can't screw around, you know, something like this. So it's not all that complicated. It doesn't mean that he knows a lot about nuclear weapons. In fact, you may remember in his first campaign for president, he was asked about the nuclear triad. He was not familiar with that basic principle of how we govern our strategic arsenal. So he doesn't know a lot about nuclear weapons, but he sort of obsessed with them and he sees the origins and the roots of Russia's power as being grounded in their possession and their being the only kind of pure competitor to the United States on nuclear weapons.
So that's another factor that I wouldn't discount. And you'll hear him talk when he talks World War III, in his rallies, what he means is nuclear, right? So that's actually his current code word for nuclear is World War III. And that you can see that's still a button that's pushable, therefore by Putin. That's leverage in my view, that Putin has over Trump is decades of Trump's fear of nuclear conflict.
Yevgenia Albats:
Yes, please. Well, by the way, Laura, she's from originally from Lithuanian. She teaches Lithuanian here in Harlem.
Audience Member:
Thank you very much for this very fascinating discussion. I'm from University of Southern Denmark. And I admire New York Times, and this is, in my opinion, best paper in the world when I compare with other newspapers in Europe. And you have a very opinion and you'll see what you think and what your analyst, but I have a question.
After this election, because I notice a certain difference in the opinion part of New York Times, and now we're asking why. And I like very much to articles, we are not Trump. Is it still true? Or are we part of Trump? And I'm asking now about US society, because you have been talking about media, about certain history of the society. We are the best US universities. So all of us are the same opinion. And now going back to the issue of a strong men, perhaps US society needs say he is a opinion, a strong man. So perhaps it is like Russia or Russia people admire Putin because he is such a strong man. And civil society simply needs, I mean the majority this feeling that will decide for them because it's much easier. So a question for you, what do your society needs for the future to not repeat perhaps the same result in four years to avoid this?
Peter Baker:
Yeah, well I think you're right to say that a lot of the people who support him are looking for a strong man, right? They don't find that to be an insult. They find that to be a qualification and that he played on that, right? His campaign was as overtly testosterone-driven as any we've ever seen. It was very male-oriented. It was very macho. I mean, he did everything other than take his shirt off and ride the horse that Putin did. Thank goodness he didn't, please. But he had Hulk Hogan, right? Ripped the shirt off at the convention. The people he highlighted were tough guys from his 1980s heyday.
And they diminish women and had a very old fashioned view of gender relations in which the man is in charge. And women, well, they just love being protected. "I'm going to protect them even if they don't want to be protected," he said, right? So I think you're right that part of his appeal is the strong man appeal, no question about it. And it's a time when the world feels a little off kilter. He played to that, right?
Where there's war in the Middle East, there's war in Europe, we have inflation at home. The border is a crisis. People are coming over in mass numbers. Mind you, the numbers today coming over the border are lower than they were when Trump left office. Inflation today is at its historical norm. Crime is actually at its lowest in many decades. But if you listen to his rhetoric and certainly earlier in the Biden presidency was not that way. It felt like everything was spinning out of control. He's a strong man. There's no question that that's part of his appeal. Now is he America? I wrote a piece about this. I think we have to accept that in fact, he is, at least representative a part of America, an important part of America, maybe even a majority.
Because in fact, I think this idea that we had, that a lot of us had perhaps that he was going to be a historical anomaly, right? He didn't really win in 2016. It was kind of a fluke. He got 150,000 or whatever in three states, but he was still lost a popular vote by 3 million and somehow snuck in because James Comey announced a late breaking investigation into Hillary Clinton. So that doesn't really represent the American public. And he certainly lost in 2020 and every day in between while he was in office, he never, once not for a single day of his presidency, had the support of a majority of Americans according to Gallup polling, right? First president ever not to have a majority approval rating at any point of his presidency. So we all could say that's not who America is. Today, it's impossible to say that because he did get a majority. Now it's not a huge majority, right? At the moment, they haven't finished counting, but his popular vote margin is 50.3%. That's not a landslide.
It's possible slip under California is about three quarters done in terms of counting. She's of course winning three to two over Trump. She probably had another million votes to Kamala Harris's final popular vote total, which will bring down his margin to about 2 million across the country. Okay? It is not bad. He won popular vote, which he didn't win the last two times, but it's not a big margin fact. I went back and look, if you go back to 1888, since 1888, every presidential winner who won the electoral college vote and the popular vote won a bigger margin than Trump has just won but for four times, which was the very, very close elections in '76 or in '60, '68, '76 and '04. And it may be that '04.
Susan Glasser:
So this is my breakfast table.
Peter Baker:
Yeah, okay. My point is, this is not a landslide and it's not even a very big win historically. But you also can't write it off and say, "Well, he doesn't represent who we are," because he does obviously represent who a lot of us are. And people, that's why the Democrats are having the circular firing squad saying, " Oh my gosh, how is it we didn't, you know, find a way to tap into that?" And so forth. Having said that, four years from now, unless something remarkably, drastically happens, he will not be on the ballot. Right? Unless some had the 22nd amendment goes away. And it's very likely that Democrats are just as competitive in four years as in any other time.
We have a cyclical political system. In 1974, after Watergate, Democrats were high in the sky and Republicans thought they were done for a generation. Six years later, they were back in the White House. You know, I've been covered in the White House since Clinton. I heard the Clinton people tell me after 1996, and they had their big win. This is a paradigm shift. 20 years of Democrats were going to be four years later, George W. Bush was in the White House. I heard the Bush people say the same thing after the '04 election, we're going to have 20 years and four years later, Barack Obama was in the White House. So I don't think that the fact that Trump won means that Democrats are done. And four years from now, the argument will be different after. The last thing I'll say is after the 2012 we election, when Obama beat Romney, the Republicans were all sad. "My gosh, what do we do wrong? Let's have an autopsy of how badly we did."
They did an autopsy by a guy named Rice, who was the RNC chair at the time. And the autopsy said, well, we need to be more inclusive. We need to be less, you know, hateful toward Latinos, better with women on abortion and culture issues. And then they had a nominee for the next time come along to exactly the opposite and was successful. So whatever the Democrats think they did wrong this time may be the exact opposite of what works in four years. You know, it's all a game that people like to play because they lost and they want to try to figure it out and it's natural, but they may have no relationship whatsoever to four years from now.
Susan Glasser:
Unless you actually believe everything that we've been saying about Trump's threats to democracy and he follows through. In which case, that is not only a wrong but catastrophically wrong scenario. And the answer is, we don't really know the answer. But I think that's the difference between what's happening right now and in 2016. Is that right now, I think the question posed to us very clearly by Trump's return to the White House is, is Peter right? And is this one of those normal oscillations in American politics? Is this, you know, the pendulum swinging in ways that have become quite familiar to us because the country has become more partisan divided.
And so actually we've been having more swinging back and forth in the last two to three decades than we did even in before that. So is that scenario that he just outlined, is that correct or should we take seriously what Trump has said about changing some of the structures of our politics, changing some of the norms in ways that would cause Trumpism to actually gain adherence over the next four years rather than to lose them? Our recent history has been that after two years, there's a backlash and divided government has returned and you know, that people look for a new way forward. We've also been looking in a very, very anti-incumbent era. The last time that a majority of the American public thought that we were on the right track as opposed to the wrong track. It was back in 2004. So this is an incredible long run of anti-incumbency.
So again, by the laws of our last couple decades of politics, this would be very threatening, but relatively short term. I'm not convinced of that. And I think that's what gives some additional urgency to these Democratic after action reports. I think that there's the possibility of a kind of capture of parts of the government sweeping changes that could disenfranchise people, a supreme court that tilts the playing field in ways that possibly this immunity decision is a precursor of others to come. I think there's a sort of a checklist of the kinds of, you know, what you might call authoritarian actions that could be taken. Those are the things that I would be watching for. You know, obviously on a personal level, right? I care about reproductive freedom or things like that. But in terms of democracy, in terms of the authoritarian playbook and whether we'll keep having a kind of natural ebb and flow in our elections, that's where I'm worried about things like active measures to restrain or curb the press and other institutions. The weaponization of the justice system, the use the effort by a unified Republican house and Senate to go after things that would affect our ability to vote or to vote in a free and fair way. Those are the kinds of things.
I think it'd be very hard to do that, to be honest, in like two or four years given the, you know, the pushback that still exists in the country and given our federalism. I mean, honestly, I think it's the federalism that ironically has been the Republicans main argument over the last say, you know, 50 to 75 years. I think a lot of Democrats, as in capital D Democrats, are going to realize that that's the remaining check in our system right now is the fact that the states have so much power.
Yevgenia Albats:
Would you envision Trump refusing to step down for years from now?
Susan Glasser:
By the way, this is not the first time we've gotten this question in only a week. I guess I don't rule anything out.
Peter Baker:
- I do think that it's hard to see, it is hard to see how he would not. The 22nd amendment's pretty darn clear. And I don't know how he would get around it. You can't pass a constitutional amendment, just wouldn't be practical. But it is there in the dark recesses of some Trumpian corner thought about how they can reinterpret the 22nd Amendment to allow him to run again? I guess I couldn't rule that out. He has playfully teased his opponents, mocked his opponents through overtime by video saying, you know, Trump forever or Trump 20.
Susan Glasser:
Is the last election, you won't need another election.
Peter Baker:
He has said that. Which could also be interpreted as, "This will be the last election, but I won't give a crap after I'm done." Which is also a way to look at that. And so it's hard to say, I mean, clearly, he is not constrained by the traditional view of democracy that every other American president has been, or at least modern one has been. But again, I don't see, I'm not sure structurally how he could get away with not doing it. He did say two days before the election that actually, I made a mistake by not staying last time. In other words, by not staying in the White House, even though he lost. So, you know, you can't take anything for granted.
Tom Johnson:
Thank you very much. I'm Tom Johnson at UMass Boston, and I'll take 60 seconds to invite you to comment on three insights from history. First of all, there was a war that ended in 24 hours or less in 1896 between Great Britain and the Sultans of Zanzibar. But the whole war lasted less than an hour, 56 minutes to be precise.A Gilbert and Sullivan war has not reproducible results. Second, when Louis XVIII was restored to the French throne after the final fall of Napoleon, it was said of him, he learned nothing and he forgot nothing. Substitute Trump for Louis XVIII These are both cold comfort, sorry. Winter is coming. But the third insight is unlike those is not time-bound and specific. It's, I hope, timeless and immortal when it comes from the Reverend Dr. King. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Susan Glasser:
Well, you know, Barack Obama really believed that. And I think it's going to be harder, not only for us, but I think for our children to see that as the narrative. You know, I'm a product of the late Cold War, you know, the sort of Gen X, what turned out to be a very optimistic moment in American history. And you know, I just think generationally speaking, we're asking young people who are coming of age in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, climate change, we've now elected once again, an administration that has the official position that it does not exist, never mind taking measures to mitigate and to stop it. And, you know, we are talking about essentially, a minimum of a 12-year Trump era in American politics. A minimum of that. Because I think historically speaking, we're going to end up considering the Biden era to be a part of the Trump era in American politics.
You know, not only was he bookended by Trump, but arguably, it was the question surrounding Trump, which overshadowed and hung over his entire presidency, whether it was cleaning up the legacy of how COVID was handled or it was wrestling and not very successfully wrestling with a question of what kind of accountability that Trump and his followers should have for the ending of that first Trump presidency. So, you know, for me, you know, again, 12 years is an enormous part of a life cycle of any of us. And you know, I think this goes to the question of, is Trump an is he America on some level? And you know, I appreciate the optimism, but this is not a super optimistic moment in American history. And you know, what's hard for me is that I see, and we saw this during the campaign and I'm seeing it even more in the weeks since the election, is that, you know, some of these facts are very painful, I think for Americans. And there's just the human psychological tendency to always want to be an optimist.
And I totally get that, right? You know, that's a very good coping technique, but it requires a willful suspension of disbelief to a certain extent about who this guy is and what his history is. I don't think we need to catastrophize either. You know, Donald Trump, good news, you know, he actually does not want to go around the world starting a lot of wars of conquest and you know, he's really scared of blowing everything up. So, okay, great. You know, so I don't think we need to embrace always the worst case scenario about Trump to be clear-eyed about what we're looking at.
Yevgenia Albats:
Yes, please. Thank you very much.
Catherine:
Hi, my name is Catherine. I study international relations, international law. And I was wondering with the overwhelming presence of the America first rhetoric, how could we see that play out in comparison to Russia and in comparison to like the strengthening of the BRICS Alliance in comparison to the waning potentially of the NATO alliance? And could that potentially frame an entire global power shift, not only throughout the next four years of Trump's presidency, but again, if the Democrats see that they need to also campaign on this America first agenda, how do we see that playing out in the future, just within the next 10, 15 years?
Peter Baker:
Yeah, no, it's a good question. Thank you very much, and I'm just reading Bill Brands' new book on the America first, you know, Roosevelt versus Lindbergh period, which is very good if you haven't read it. Look, you know, America first worked for him because it had a certain appeal, for some of the reasons Susan just talked about it. After the financial crash, after Iraq, after Afghanistan, there was this sort of palpable exhaustion of the United States always having to, you know, be there or to exhaustion over globalization, to backlash over that. And Trump very expertly tapped into that, exploited it, exacerbated it. And it is now, I think, if not the defining policy of the Republican foreign policy establishment is at least a defining one. And I think that it's not going to go away with when he goes away necessarily. Whoever comes next in the Republican leadership is going to have to, at the very least, address that strain of thinking in America.
Now, the question, whether they try to make themselves a champion of it or to, you know, convince people that there's still an American role in the world, that's an open question, but you're right. I think to talk about the bricks and the changing alliances we now have China and Russia, you know, knit together in a way that really haven't been in decades. Russia, the junior partner, right? China is the dominant one, but you know, more aligned than ever. And it may be that Trump is, for whatever else he is, may feel some desire to try to break those two apart. And if he does that, it'll be because he is making nice with Russia while, you know, waging economic war against China. But that is a concern I think that any foreign policy person would have to have going forward is the shifting lines, especially if we're going to abandon, you know, artificial European alliances.
Everything for Trump is, he has very few ideological convictions. Very few. He believes in almost nothing. But one of the, you know, he's for abortion rights before he's against it before he is for it again, before he is against it. Gun rights, same thing. Remember he wanted to have a ban on assault rifle weapons? He wanted to raise taxes on the rich when he was a businessman. He's all over the place on most of these things and you know, he's subscribed to the hard right because it was politically opportunistic for him, but he doesn't really believe it has got, the one thing he believe in has got is this idea that America has been taken to the cleaners by the rest of the world, by both our adversaries and more importantly, by our allies. That is a core thing for him. That's one of the few things I think he genuinely believes in. And he would never have gotten where he is today, had it been 15, 20 years ago.
But he actually finally, his 1980s view of the world where Japan is buying Rockefeller Center and oh my gosh, it's terrible, you know, has now caught up with, you know, where America has gone. And he became a man for the moment. I don't think he would've won in a different moment, but the atmosphere in the American electorate was right for that kind of argument. And the question is, does somebody try to make the counter-argument or just try to convince people, "Okay, I'm as Trumpian as he is when it comes to that." And that's where I think the real test for the Republican party will be in four years.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you. Probably the last question. Yes, please.
Audience Member:
Hi. Thank you very much. I'm binational French and American and I'm very concerned about security for us in Europe. And is there a way in the institution of NATO for all the members to circumvent in a way, a decision taken by President Trump that would make the breakaway of our European Union, for example?
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, I mean, you know, we saw this actually when Brexit came up and the British wanted to withdraw from the EU, that there was not really a provision for doing so. The same thing is the case in NATO which is operated historically by consensus in the North American Council. And so it would be extremely difficult. It would potentially break NATO, certainly NATO as we know it, and would have to be reformed. But there is the possibility of putting more and more security functions under the rubric of the EU, which is something that Macron for example, has talked about at various points, but now he's so politically crippled that he's not in a position to offer it. And that's the real story. You know, a few years ago I wrote a piece for the New Yorker about this question of, you know, not only why did Donald Trump have such an animus toward Germany and toward Angela Merkel, but you know, could Europe really stand on its own militarily? And the answer, you know, including for many people who regretted it, was very clearly, no. No, we are not able to. We are not able to provide our own security. We have an entire framework that is built around the United States.
And so while we may say that we accept that the US is not going to be the superpower of the past, in reality, Europe has no answer for that. And as I look at the political landscape right now, the dysfunction in Europe seems as bad or worse than it is here in the United States. And Macron is in, you know, trouble politically, the Scholz government is collapsing and certainly is not in a strong position to exert leadership economically or militarily at the moment. Italy, I mean, really? You know, you have that. And you have Britain, which is on the outside now looking in and wondering should it, you know, double down on its historical ties to the US or try to get back in with Europe? So, you know, I think that Putin and Trump are making kind of a fair calculation that they have the upper hand in dealing with Europe right now. And that doesn't bode well for our friends in Ukraine this winter.
Which I know kind of brings us full circle back in this conversation, but I just want to say thank you. You're such a great and patient audience and I do apologize for our gloominess. I would be the first to be delighted if we are wrong about most of this. And you know, we'll come back and say we're sorry for being wrong, but aren't you glad that we were? Thank you so much. Let's... Thank you, thank you very much. You were brilliant as well.