In this clip from May, 2025: Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Anne Applebaum explains what a kleptocracy is, why she sees no precedent for a U.S. president enriching himself in office the way Donald Trump has, how she answers Scott Galloway's point that members of Congress have traded on inside information for years, and why opponents need to show voters, as Alexei Navalny did in Russia, that the people at the top get rich at their expense.
From The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway.
Guest: Anne Applebaum (Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic)
Full episode here 👉...
What Scott Galloway said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Anne Applebaum defined kleptocracy as a system where leaders use political power for financial gain, citing Russia as an example and arguing the US is rapidly moving in that direction. She said there is no precedent for a president enriching himself while in office like Trump, responding to Scott Galloway's estimate that the Trump family gained $3 billion since the Trump coin launch. She distinguished Trump's behavior from past congressional insider trading, noting Nancy Pelosi's actions were not her entire policy goal. Applebaum highlighted Trump's financial ties with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and said the White House now decides economic winners and losers. She argued most people don't yet understand what's happening, citing daily emoluments clause violations and conflicts like Elon Musk's. She suggested connecting corruption stories to ordinary Americans' personal experiences, as Alexei Navalny did in Russia, to build political leverage.
Key takeaways
Applebaum said there is no precedent for a president enriching himself while in office like Trump, calling it unprecedented.
She argued the US is rapidly moving toward a Russian-style kleptocracy where policy benefits the wealthy, not ordinary citizens.
Applebaum said the White House now acts as an arbiter of the economy, deciding who wins and loses among large companies.
She suggested the Democratic Party must connect corruption to ordinary Americans' personal experience, as Navalny did in Russia.
Numbers and commitments
Figure
What it refers to
Type
At
$3 billion
Estimated increase in Trump family net worth since Trump coin launch
1:15... — there are questions now to be asked about some of our foreign policy: is it being conducted in the interest of Americans, or is it being conducted in the interest of Trump, maybe his family, maybe the business community around him?
You recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic arguing that under Trump, the US is sliding towards kleptocracy, a system where leaders use political power for financial gain. Before we get into the specifics, can you help ground us? What exactly is a kleptocracy and how is it different from other forms of autocracy or corruption?
So, a kleptocracy, maybe it's a fancy word for a profoundly corrupt dictatorship, but it's a political system in which the leaders of the country not only exercise political power, but they also exercise economic power and probably own a lot of the economy. So, Russia is a kleptocracy. You have people who have both political and economic power at the top of the system, and they use — I think maybe this is the key point — they use their political influence to make money for themselves. In other words, the policy of the Russian state, its foreign policy, its domestic policy, is not being made for the benefit of Russians, of ordinary Russians. The policy is being made for the benefit of a group of very wealthy people who earn their money out of state decisions, and the US is very rapidly moving in that direction.
The question — there are questions now to be asked about some of our foreign policy: is it being conducted in the interest of Americans, or is it being conducted in the interest of Trump, maybe his family, maybe the business community around him? We've had presidents before who were incompetent, or who made mistakes, or whose foreign policies failed in various different ways, but I don't think we've ever had a president whose foreign policy and whose perhaps domestic policy are not designed for the purposes of making American life better. And I think that's where we're heading.
By some estimates, the Trump family has increased their personal net worth approximately $3 billion since the launch the Friday before inauguration of the Trump coin. Can you think of any other instance in history anywhere where one president, prime minister, dictator, you know, general counsel, whatever, has managed to sequester $3 billion from the economy in 100 days?
I mean, obviously not. You can point to many other instances of corruption around the world. In US history there have been corrupt presidents in the past, or people who were thought to be corrupt, but that usually was, if you look at the details, there were people who perhaps tolerated some corruption around them. I don't know, Ulysses S. Grant supposedly let his wife's family make money off government contracts, that kind of thing. But there is no instance of a president while in office enriching himself like this. I don't think there's any precedent for it, and I don't think we've seen anything like it before.
How do you respond to the notion or the argument that we've been a kleptocracy for a while when you have Speaker Emerita Pelosi meeting with HHS and getting a sense for they're considering using AI for payment systems, and then she goes and buys call options on Tempest AI, and when it's disclosed she's purchased those call options, they surge? I mean, effectively, isn't Trump doing what everyone's been doing, but he's not doing it for small ball — the Democrats do it for hundreds of thousands and he's doing it for billions. But hasn't this been going on for a while?
5 more exchanges in this transcript
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Galloway, S. (2026, November 12). "I Don't Think There's Any Precedent for It" — Anne Applebaum on Trump and Kleptocracy [Interview transcript]. The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3271628/
MLA
Scott Galloway. ""I Don't Think There's Any Precedent for It" — Anne Applebaum on Trump and Kleptocracy." The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway, 12 Nov. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3271628/.
BibTeX
@misc{galloway2026_3271628,
author = {Scott Galloway},
title = {"I Don't Think There's Any Precedent for It" — Anne Applebaum on Trump and Kleptocracy},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3271628/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
