I'm joined now by historian and author of the book that I'm sure most people have heard of, and that is On Tyranny, and the author of the newer book from 2024, On Freedom, Tim Snyder. Thanks so much for coming on. I want to start off with this because, you know, you are one of the foremost experts on this idea, and so this is a big question to begin with, but in your exploration of tyranny and autocracies in other countries and then looking to what we have here in the United States, to what extent do you think what we have here in the US right now is salvageable?
I don't think it's salvageable at all. I think we're beyond the point where reform or rescue or even healing is the right way to think about this. I think if the US is going to make it through this, what we're going to have is rather something like a new beginning. I think, just as a matter of practical politics, there aren't any reference points in the recent past which most Americans find acceptable or interesting. I think the task after Trump, or rather at late Trump, is to define what a better America will look like. So that's how I see it. It's not about salvaging something. It's about a pretty drastic rethinking.
Okay. So let me ask a little bit of a different iteration on that question then, because people are going to be watching the extent to which the administration attacks the very concept of democracy on a daily basis, the extent to which Congress, the Republican-led Congress, is willing to allow him to do that, the extent to which the Republican-led judiciary, the Supreme Court, is also willing to be an active participant in this whole scheme. And so, to what extent do you think that democracy in this country—maybe it looks different in the aftermath of Trump, as we were just talking about—but the very idea of democracy persisting is salvageable?
Nope. Not at all. It can't persist; it has to be remade. So we are where we are not just because of Trump, but because of prior mistakes that we made as a people. And Trump has brought to a point several things that were already wrong with the United States. And if we're going to get out of those, if we're going to get out of Trump, we're going to have to, for example, get money out of politics, because there's a reason why Trump's line that everybody is corrupt and I'm just honest about it—there's a reason why that works. And the reason why it works has to be dealt with.
If we're going to win this election, it's not going to be by way of conventional means. It's not just going to be because, okay, there's going to be a normal election and people are going to show up and vote. If we win in a meaningful sense, it's going to be because there's an abnormal—historically speaking, abnormal—big coalition between center-right and far-left. It's going to be because there's enough protest potential that those who want to throw the elections are going to be deterred from doing so. And to win in a meaningful sense, the political party that wins, the Democrats, are going to have to recognize that they didn't win just because Trump lost, but they won because people were angry, and that that anger has to be transformed into something positive right away. So I'm sorry if I sound pedantic, but I think any notion of persistence is also not helpful, because too much is already gone—mentally, psychologically, institutionally, legally—too much is already gone for us to be thinking about persisting or remaining or showing resilience. It has to be more about a stunning, demoralizing defeat for Trump and the people around him and a creative impulse that pushes us towards something that's much better than we think could happen.
Well, so that's basically this idea of like accelerationism and just tearing everything down so that something new can be built in its place. I mean, politics for so long has been focused on the complete opposite—on incrementalism. It's like, okay, we can't get Medicare for all, which Obama has been, you know, on record saying was the initial hope for the ACA. Obviously without enough support it kind of devolved into the more incremental approach that Obamacare turned into. But this country has been pretty resistant to sweeping changes in the more modern era, at least until Trump. I mean, it's been so difficult to get anything done, whether it's Medicare for all, whether it's a more just tax system, big sweeping infrastructure reforms—like it is so difficult to do things in this country. And so I guess the question is, do you think that there is an appetite now for some of these big sweeping changes that people have been angling to see for so long but always feel like we just cannot get done?
Yeah. I mean, I think the American population on most of the things that you're talking about is much more radical than either of the political parties. I think if you put the question the right way, most people, including a lot of Republicans, are in favor of a good deal of wealth redistribution. Most people, including a lot of Republicans, are in favor of rich people paying taxes, which is not the current American policy. Most people, including a lot of Republicans, are in favor of education and health care being run by people for people rather than being run by machines for a few individuals to make a lot of money. And the list is pretty long. Most people are in favor of decent public schools and are against vouchers. Like there's a long list of issues where there's a pretty deep consensus, and it's not the people, it's not public opinion, but it's rather the structures themselves.
And so if you are coming out of a victory in November, you have to be at least ready to talk about changing the structures themselves. And then if you have a majority in both houses and the presidency in '28, you know, assuming we get that far, you have to be willing to change the structures themselves, because I agree with you, the structures are not responsive, and that's very demoralizing, and it's one of the things that went wrong for the Biden people, right? Like some of their policies were quite ambitious and they actually passed some ambitious stuff. But even when they passed it, the consequences weren't felt until three or four or five years later.
I mean, that's like the standard Democratic response to some of this stuff is like, okay, we're going to implement what we can even on health care and we'll make sure that it hits eight years down the road where it's basically scientifically engineered so that the party in power can never get credit for it. It's not felt by people and therefore the war can't continue because, you know, by then the parties have turned over and you have Trump that's run roughshod over everything. I mean, back in the day—these are now old references—but when Obama won and the Democrats had both houses, I thought on day one they should pass a law saying we are going to offer health care for Americans on the model of the health care that people in Congress have. End of story, right? Like how could that be resisted? And if they had done that, I think it'd be over. But instead we had debates and we gave the other side a...
And so I want to pause on one point, which is that a lot of this is about power and not expecting history to go your way. So the thing where Obama paraphrases, you know, was it Martin Luther King, the idea that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice—100% not true. History does not have a single arc and it doesn't bend, and justice is something that you fight for. I mean, not that Martin Luther King didn't know that or do it, but the notion that history is somehow on your side and that if you can just somehow correct the parameters a little bit, then the juices of history will flow the right way—the Democrats have got to get out of that. That's just not the way things work. One of the things they have to learn from Trump is that power matters, and when you have the levers of power, you have to use them in the short term—in the time that you have. And to pick up one of your points, they have to be more aggressive about using government agencies and about making government agencies work faster. There's a way that Obama and Biden fell in love with the procedures themselves and praised themselves for following all the procedures, but the procedures are actually there to get things done and not to prevent things from getting done.
Third thing: there has to be, coming out of November, a trajectory which indicates that transformative action is possible. And I think that begins practically with investigation and prosecution of some of the very soft-target, corrupt people around the president of the United States, because if you do that, you're showing that you actually care, that you're capable of some form of directed action, but also you're bringing closer to the center of the conversation issues like corruption and bribery and wealth inequality, which when you have real power you can then pursue. But if you don't have some kind of thing that you're planning to do right after January with your majority that signals that you're different, that you're not corrupt, that you aren't just controlled like the other party is, then you're going to have trouble down the line.
You know, I have a book coming out in about a month called The Day After. And in that book, it's all about this idea of power and how Republicans have abused it, how Democrats have been too afraid to wield it, and finally, what Democrats can and must do if they're fortunate enough to get power back. But one theme that I talk about is that exact idea: Democrats are in power and there seems to be this automatic deference paid to the institutions and not to the outcomes. And so there's this focus on, okay, well, we're here in government, and so now we have to pay homage constantly to the filibuster and the parliamentarian and norms and processes as opposed to just saying these things are there in theory to actually achieve some outcomes. But that gets lost—we lose the forest for the trees at some point in the process and it just becomes, well, now we have to defend the filibuster because without the filibuster all hell will break loose, and if that means we can't get anything done on the governing side, so be it, so long as our precious filibuster is still intact.
Yeah. I mean, there's a structural explanation for this which I'm going to give out of empathy, but also because I think it's true. A comparison would be the '20s and '30s in Germany and the Social Democratic Party in Germany, which was a bit like our Democrats. Like the Social Democratic Party in principle was about the future, but because of the existence of the Nazis they had to defend the status quo, right? And so then they get caught in this position where, hey, in principle we'd like to make the future better, but for the time being we've got to defend things exactly the way they are because, look, there are the Nazis, right? And I just want to say that's a psychologically understandable position to be in, and that's the position our Democrats have been in since the Tea Party, basically, where the Republicans have got them trapped, because the Republicans say, hey, we're radical, we could throw the baby out with the bathwater any day now, and so it's your job to protect the bathwater, right? And so then the Democrats buy this and they say, okay, the Republicans could destroy everything, it's our job to protect the bathwater the whole time. And that's kind of comfortable because you feel like you're doing the right thing, you know, the procedures, the status quo, defend—but before you know it, you're in a rut and you've forgotten that you were supposed to be the party of the future.
And so now we've reached a critical point where you can't say, 'I'm defending the status quo,' because nobody believes in the status quo. The status quo is dead, right? Nobody believes in it. And so you can't—some of the Democratic Party is not where I am on this, obviously—but you can't say that because everybody will hate you if you do. And so you have no choice but to jump over your own shadow and say, 'All right, we're the party of the future again. We're going to do radical stuff.'
You know, you had described a lot of these popular policy positions, taxing the wealthy, making sure that health care is actually affordable—the list goes on and on of what Americans would like to see. And it strikes me that a lot of these positions, if not most or all of them, are positions that Democrats have historically espoused. Like it is not popular to heap tens of billions of dollars every year in subsidies to fossil fuel companies. It's not popular to deny the existence of climate change. It's not popular to strip health care away from people, to strip food assistance away from people, to gut public education. And yet those are the things that they do constantly. And so it would lend itself to reason that when you have one party espousing these egregiously unpopular policies and the other side who is on the other side of that issue, that de facto the default position would be that more people would flock to Democrats. And so is it just a testament to the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party that even when all of these issues are on their side, they can't seem to win elections and to find themselves in the majority in any part of government right now?
So again, I'm going to be a little empathetic, because we don't live in a country where the playing field is level, right? So the media playing field, in my view anyway, is wildly right-wing in a way that distorts these conversations in a fundamental way. And so the notion that we should all have better health care—people agree with that. But if I say health care is a right, so much ideological work has been done for so long across so many popular media channels that that position is going to bump up against a lot of resistance. It shouldn't, in my view—like health care is clearly a right—and we could start from there. But the media playing field isn't level, and the wealth playing field is also not level. So there are entrenched interests who are working for things like—you know, fossil fuels is a classic example. It's one of the wildest things that one can do to invest in fossil fuels right now because it's going to literally destroy the basics of the world that we take for granted. And yet we're doing it, but largely because there's a lot of money to be made there.
And our politics—and this is where I want to land, because it's an issue that everybody agrees on that really has to be done—our politics is not insulated from money. It's just not. I mean, like from Canada where I'm sitting now, or from Europe, or from other democracies, it's just bizarre the degree to which money penetrates our politics. And so where I would land is to say, if we had the dark money out of politics, if our campaigns were public-financed and so on, I think the party that's called the Democrats would win everything, because your argument would then hold. But that's not the system that we're living in. And so the Democrats have to bite the bullet—and some of them are thinking along these lines—and say, if we ever have power, we're going to get the money out of politics, even though it'll make our lives a little more complicated too. We're just going to do it. We're going to be the party that leads that, right? Because if you don't do that, ultimately things are going to get clogged up, because it's not just bureaucracy. It's also special interests, it's well-funded campaigns, it's big companies that are holding things back.
We have seen instances where Democrats have tried to practice good governance in the past. I think in that instance it's important not just to try and lead by example but to make sure that it applies to everybody, because for example as we look at redistricting and gerrymandering we have these Democratic weapons, so to speak, of California, of New York, where these independent redistricting commissions are in place, and yet because it's not a national standard, it's allowed the Republicans to gain a huge edge on blue states, because while we're practicing good governance and making sure that everybody has fair districts, in all of these places we could garner a huge advantage. Instead, you look at places like Texas that just has gerrymandered maps on top of gerrymandered maps. You look at places like Florida—again, same deal, gerrymandered maps on top of gerrymandered maps. And so in these instances where Democrats do try to practice good governance, I think the fatal flaw that they incur here is that they do it by thinking, if we just do it ourselves, we'll set a good example and we'll be rewarded by the people for that, not recognizing that when you put yourself at that disadvantage, the disadvantage in and of itself is going to be crippling for you. You're not going to win because the other party is not going to be interested in playing by the rules and they're going to squeeze every benefit they can out of that asymmetry.
So I want to push this in a slightly different direction, because while I agree with you about all of that, and I would add the point that there's been a lack of long-term thinking, the factors that you're talking about have to do with Republican control of state houses, which was a long-term project which they successfully implemented. The Republicans understood the necessity of appreciating the federal character of our system and they invested financial resources in getting state houses, and state houses control elections, not just state elections, right? And so that was a project of theirs which was not seen and not answered. So I would add that to the list of grievances or problems. That said, I want to add that the Democrats are who they are right now, and I don't expect them to change without people inviting them to change, right? So, I mean, I look forward to your book, but it's a matter not just of showing their internal contradictions and their weaknesses. It's a matter of pushing them. And I think the elections in November, if they're going to work out, have to be a matter of people pushing the Democrats towards more radical positions.
That's where I think the whole thing hangs, because if they win in November and they say, 'Oh, we won. That's because everything we've done so far has been okay and now we'll make a few gestures about affordability,' then I think we're really in trouble. Like that's the thing that I fear the most, because then the Democratic Party fails to function and we don't have any viable political parties. So I think the thing that we have to think about in November is not, are the Democrats going to win? In my view, they're going to win. What we have to think about is what they do with that victory and whether they take drastic, radical steps afterwards which will tell people they have in mind something significant that they're going to do down the road. And what I'm trying to say is we're not going to get them there just by debating. They have to be gotten there by massive voter turnout, by demonstrations, by other organizations who are making these arguments. They are who they are in June 2026. They're not going to get there on their own.
I completely agree, and I think this moment right here is the moment to have that argument, to let them know, so that we don't waste time doing what I think would be the default reaction, which is: okay, now that we have power, we can start doing commissions. We can start really giving this a good think. We can try and convince ourselves by having all of our teams go out and do their meetings and come back in six to eight months with their findings and decide whether we want to implement something. I feel like that's the default position for a lot of Democrats. And I think that you're exactly right by focusing on this stuff now so that if and when we get power again, we don't waste any valuable, precious time dawdling over it and talking about it, but rather just doing it is going to be crucial here.
I'm going to add criminal prosecution.
