So, I want to bring in my guest, who is Timothy Snyder, American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. Good morning, sir. Thank you for coming on this morning and being so patient. How are you doing, first of all? Did I get anything wrong in my little preamble there?
The preamble's great, and I'm doing very well, and I'm happy to talk to you.
Do you think that we have careened into authoritarianism? What's happening here?
Yeah, I think the last part of what you said is the best because the lights are actually flashing. The question is whether we know we've gotten used to it or not. And the clip you showed of Hegseth talking about the press, the lights don't get any flashier than that, right? You're not the American Republic if you don't have a free press.
And we're listening to a guy who has presided over a catastrophic war that was stupid from the outset, which was lost in a few days, and which was morally and also geopolitically totally indefensible. And what he's saying is that we should be able to do the worst, the most catastrophic, the most self-destructive, the most morally wrong things, and no one should be able to say anything about it. The other thing he's doing in that clip is that he's trying to egg on the soldiers to hate the press, which is characteristic of him because he's not somebody who thinks there are enemies abroad. You know, when he says that Iranian state media is okay, I think that's kind of normal for him. He's somebody who says that the enemies are at home. And this is that flashing light, you know, when the guy who's supposed to be in charge of the military says the enemies are at home.
There you go. Yeah. Look, you wrote the book on tyranny. When you look at America right now, Timothy, because I watch you on other programs, I read your stuff, I listen to your comments. I have much respect for you. And I think that I want our viewers and our audience to understand exactly what you're saying. When you look at America right now, what do you see, sir?
Well, I guess the most important thing I would say is that you see things when you do things, so I try to do my little things. I try to help organizers. I try to show up and speak at rallies. I try to raise money for people, and I just want to urge everybody to try to do the same because, you know, as you know very well and your viewers know very well, these midterm elections are hugely significant for the future of the country, or as to whether there's going to be a country. So, when I'm on the inside, I see good things. I see smart, courageous people who are organizing rallies. I see people who are getting ready to defend the elections. I see a country where even a lot of Trump supporters are beginning to understand that the man is weak and untrustworthy. All that is good, right? There's a lot of good things going on. What's most important for me is to recognize that this history isn't going to happen by itself. He's weak. He's getting weaker. He's ever more vulnerable, but this election's going to be messy, and we've got to be ready for several days or several weeks of chaos and be ready to do the things that have to be done.
You said something. You said Trump supporters are starting to figure it out. Do you think that we, I mean, we hear that. I don't know if what I'm seeing is real or not, right? Because there's so much AI. The Trump supporters who are there at the gas station, the farmers, they look like working, you know, Midwestern guys and ladies, and they're like, 'I'm sick of this. I'm not voting for Trump.' Do you think that that has penetrated enough, that that's going to chip away enough at his support to move Democrats into power in November of this year and 2028?
So, I'm not going to look as far ahead as 2028, but I think what I would... So, from talking to actual Republicans and also looking at the polls, including the ones that have been conservative, the sense I get is that there's not going to be high Republican turnout. And so the question is whether there will be high Democratic turnout. I think that's the issue. You know, when I say Democratic turnout, I mean people who want to vote for our, you know, Democratic Republic to continue. But I think that's it. Like, Republicans are no longer enthusiastic about this guy. And so the question is, will we get big turnout on the other side? And if we do, then I think there's enough of a visible landslide that the shenanigans won't work.
Let's talk about, I'm going to go back to cosying up to dictators because I haven't heard him say, I don't know, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, any negative word about Vladimir Putin, but Volodymyr Zelensky he insults in the Oval Office. You heard what he said about Kim Jong-un, like talking about him as if they're all drinking buddies. 'He's a friend of mine. I like him.' What do you hear? What do you hear when you hear an American president talk that warmly about an authoritarian leader? Is that signs of a dictator? Does he want to be like him?
Yeah, that's kind of the sadness of it, right? Because he wants to be a... Like, it's sad for us that we have somebody who wants to overthrow our democratic order. But it's also sad for us that our leader is such a weakling. You know, when you're the leader of the United States, you shouldn't be aspiring to be Putin or aspiring to be Kim Jong-un, right? That shouldn't be your aspiration. That's kind of humiliating for the rest of us that Trump wants to be the little brother of these guys. And so, yeah, of course he wants to be a dictator, but the mere fact that he puts Putin on a pedestal, he puts Xi on a pedestal, right? At the same time he's criticizing communism and calling the rest of us communists. His best friends, the people he admires, are a former KGB officer and the head of the Chinese Communist Party.
We played, you heard the soundbite of Obama and Bush, right? And Biden talking about North Korea. These are different presidents, they're different parties, different policies, but overall largely they treated North Korea and the North Korean regime as adversaries, right? An adversary and a security threat. Trump talks about the friendship, right? That he personally likes him. What happened politically that got us here? Or is it just not logical and it has nothing to do with politics and it has more to do with a person's own psyche who is in the White House, that he is so off-brand from these other presidents and political parties. And his own political party.
