Welcome to another broadcast from the Save America movement. I'm Steve Schmidt of the Warning, and I am thrilled today to have with me a leading voice in a serious hour for the nation and the world about the values that are so much imperiled. Dr. Timothy Snyder. Dr. Snyder, welcome.
Thank you. Glad to be with you. And please call me Tim. It'll save time.
Tim, let's imagine that I'm right about what's going to happen on election night, which is an overwhelming Democratic victory. That gives them the House, gives them the Senate, and for a little while events will overwhelm MAGA. The prognosticators will be on TV calling the districts. Trump will speak sometime, let's call it 11:40 p.m., and he will do what he did in 2020, which is get a foothold with his lie, saying that the election was illegitimate, that the election was stolen. And by the following morning, you'll have the advanced wave of his propaganda troops on Newsmax, on Fox News, lending credence to the lie. And in a week's time, one week on from election day, that lie will have taken root. Talk about what you think is going to happen between imagining Democrats win on election day and the moment that federal officers are supposed to take their oaths of office. What can the nation expect as Donald Trump confronts defeat, imagining that's coming?
Okay. So I'm going to take a slightly different tack, Steve, because the way you've set it up is we go vote and then Trump does stuff. And I think if that is the way that it happens, then things will indeed take a bad turn. I think it's pretty important for people to recognize that going to vote is part of what you're doing. The other part is being prepared to win. Being prepared to win, because I agree with you completely in your forecast. I think this is going to be an overwhelming — I think it's going to be bigger than people think, basically. And I think if anything the Democrats are scared to imagine how big their victory is going to be, because if it's big, they're going to have to take responsibility for stuff. So part of it is not just voting and then being like, 'Oh, what's Trump going to do?' But think, you know what, the people I'm voting for are going to win and I'm willing to take action along those lines, which means telling people how I voted, telling people what I expected, doing your own media work. But the second thing it means is calling the shot in advance. So, however we think it's going to go, like your scenario is very plausible. Probably I have some other ideas of what they might do, but whatever they do, it's what losers do. And you have to get that out ahead of time. And you have to be ready to laugh at it. Like every trick that Trump can play has been played by Viktor Orbán or it's been played by somebody else in the last couple of years. You have to get them out in front of people and say, 'Look, when they do that, like when Trump claims that he won, that's what he does because he lost, right?' And it's the kind of thing that losers do. The third thing that I would say is that in that space, that media space — I mean, I'm happy to talk about November, December, and January too — but in that media space you're describing, I think it's very important for the Democrats to shoot out of the gate with their story of the positive stuff that they're going to do, right? Like evening of November 3rd, morning of November 4th, afternoon November 4th, we should be thinking about money out of politics, end of corruption, right? We should be thinking about the things that are good that could happen. And in that setting, Trump going on TV and saying, 'Well, you know, I'm raising my hand to say that by the way, they stole the election again.' It will seem, I think, a little bit archaic and silly. If you can put it in the context of, 'Hey, we actually have a moment of hope.' You see what I mean? Like, if we allow Trump to frame the whole thing as, yeah, we're going to vote the right way and then he's going to spoil it, then he's got a shot. But I think if the Democrats and more importantly people around the Democrats frame it as we're going to win this election and then we're going to promise and start doing really important transformative stuff, I think that makes the setting much harder for Trump to do the kind of thing that you're describing.
How worried are you, or maybe not at all, that Trump just simply instructs MAGA representatives don't seat the new Congress?
I think he's had — so I think we should assume that he has had that conversation and every other conceivable malicious conversation already, and that we should deny that Trump is omnipotent because he's not, and that the things that he might wish to happen still depend on other people fulfilling his wishes. And whether they fulfill his wishes are going to depend on how big the Democratic victory is, whether those people think they might go to prison for what they're doing, and also the overall atmosphere, right? And so I take it for granted that Trump would like that stuff to happen. I also take it for granted Trump has discussed much worse variants than that too. But I also take it for granted that those kinds of things can be deterred if people think — if there is a response ready, right? So when I said earlier that people have to be ready to do things besides vote, people have to be ready to protest. Like if your side wins and the other side tries to steal it, like the least you can do is stand outside for a couple of hours and that will probably be enough. Like I don't think this election can be stolen unless there is a will not to defend it, if you see what I mean. I think that the scenarios involving shenanigans in the House kind of assume that nobody does anything about it, right? Because they're so obviously transparently against the spirit of the law and the spirit of the Constitution and also just what everybody expects to happen. So, but my main point is you have to be ready to defend. You can't let your story end when you cast your vote on November 3rd. You have to be ready for a story that continues after that.
Well, one of the things that I hear you saying is that it's a mistake to process all of this chronologically, that we're in the middle of an ongoing event, and that you have to be prepared for everything holistically. One of the things that Democrats have done routinely over these many years is grant Trump powers that he doesn't have. I was at an event after the State of the Union, a Democratic Congresswoman is talking backstage to a person and I'm in the conversation, 'Well, if we even have elections.' And I say to her afterwards, I said, 'I would really hope that you would not say that again.' It's like saying Trump has the power to turn a light switch and shut off the sun. He doesn't have the power to stop an election unless you grant him that power because that power is not constitutional. It's illusory. It doesn't exist unless you believe it's possible for him to do that. And what I hear you saying is that it is essential for Democrats to embrace reality, assuming they win, announcing that we're now in the majority and this is what we're going to do.
Yeah, from hour one, at hour one, in an organized manner.
No, that's a beautiful synthesis. And when you say holistically, the only thing I'm going to add to holistically, which I agree with completely, is that holism requires a lot of planning. So you don't wait for their chronology. You have your own chronology of what you're going to do and you have your own steps that you're following the whole way so that you're not reacting to some surprise, right? Because adding to your point about power, one of the things that Democrats and other Americans like to give to Trump is the power to surprise. Like this is one of the things that we've given to him, that we kind of write our media accounts and sometimes talk as citizens as though the whole point of politics was that we're just going to go around to be normal and then Trump's going to do something surprising and then we're going to throw up our hands, right? Because that's the plot of the television show. Whereas the plot should actually be: we're going to vote, we're going to win, he's going to do something illegal, unconstitutional, and also ridiculous, we're going to laugh at him and we're going to move on. Something like that, right? And not because we're going to be prepared for these things — we already know they're going to happen. And so your point about giving Trump power goes very deep and it's been true from the very beginning. And the other side of it is, you know, since we're worrying about Democrats here, you got to want to take power, right? Like you got to want to win. So Trump has spoiled the notion of winning, right? Like many other things. But in an election, you got to want to win. And then you have to want to demonstrate right away what are the things you'd like to do and what are the things you can do. And that's not only important for the Democrats, I think, to want to win and win like win, but also win big. Like not just win the Senate, but I think they're going to win it by two or three seats. I mean, I think they're going to have a clear majority and not just a one seat majority. But you want to win because you want to set the frame. You want to tell a story about all the great things that could happen now. And all those things are an argument against listening to this guy who's telling you that the procedure didn't work or whatever, whatever, whatever.
What is it, if you were to sketch out the first draft of history tonight and seal it in a time capsule, imagining that MAGA is about to be repudiated in a very significant way? This was — what in these second and third decades of the 21st century, 90 years on from the rise of fascism in World War II, did it answer the question definitively around 'could it happen here?' What happened here in the United States in the 2010s and the 2020s?
Yeah. I mean, this was why I wrote my book 'The Road to Unfreedom', which I wrote in the 2010s and which was about the 2010s, because I thought it was happening here, happening here also as it happened elsewhere. Fascism is an international movement and people copy tactics and they also share expertise, as we see with Trump and Orbán and Putin. I think there are fascists in this administration and I think Trump certainly has fascist ideas and his taxpayer-funded ad is certainly — if you need an example of what fascism looks like, that ad is what fascism looks like. I think, you know, Trump is a charismatic politician with a defined skill set which spoke to a historical moment. And the historical moment was defined by crushing and increasing wealth inequality and thus the slowdown in social mobility, as well as the rise of social media and thus changes in communication, changes in cognition, changes in politics. So, I mean, can it happen here? Of course it can happen here. I mean, for me, that was never a question. And if you think it can't happen here, you're inviting it to happen here because you're letting down your defenses. Democracy only exists if you really want it. And the moment you say, 'Oh, democracy exists because it's the default of history,' well, you're going to lose your democracy if you think that. And I hope we've learned that lesson. Of course it can happen here. Of course Trump was special in certain ways, but there are processes having to do with social mobility, right? Like we need to do something about that. It's not just the Democrats. It's the coalition of Americans who win this election. We need to make it possible for the federal government to actually make streets better and schools better and health better. Americans should be living longer, better lives. Americans should have better choices in the workplace. Americans' kids should be going to better schools and paying less money for it. And all those things are possible, right? So we created the conditions for Trump by slowing down U.S. social mobility and by allowing social media, now AI, to have such a free run over our brains. And there are other problems too, but those are the two that I like to focus on. Both of those things are fixable with policy.
I'm reacting to your use of the word charisma, and I appreciate that you can have a myopia about that culturally. And so when I hear the word, I think John Kennedy, I think Bill Clinton, I think Ronald Reagan, I think Barack Obama. I can name some politicians from other countries as well. But when I think about charisma, and I don't deny that Trump has a charisma, but I'm curious, how do you characterize it? Because it's distinct, it's autocratic. It would have been viewed as un-American by authors imagining — who did imagine whether it could happen — would have been understood as un-American in character by a generation of politicians who fought in the Second World War. What is the American aesthetic of that strongman charisma which he has, which I think is unique but maybe not singular in the American experience?
