Anne Applebaum: Globalized MAGA Kleptocracy

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1:01Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. I'm delighted. We'll see how my husband and other listeners feel by the end of the podcast. So recent books include the 12th of democracy and autocracy in ink. She's a staff writer at the Atlantic where a latest piece, Empire of Griff, is the October cover story for the magazine. It's Ann Applebaum. Welcome back, Ann. Thanks for having me again. It's always a joy for me, even though I'm looking at my outline here and we'll see how we all feel by the end. I can't be any darker than the air pocket lips episode. So we'll see how we land. I want to start here. We'll get to your article next. But first, we have more important thing. Ann Applebaum, Radical Revolutionary. I saw a tweet you sent this week and there was a video overhead video of the ballroom.

2:02And so you could see the size and scale of the ballroom and how much bigger it is than the White House. And you quoted it with these five words. It will have to go. And I'm like, okay, because I've been kind of squishy on this. And I'm like, if Ann Applebaum is out there saying we got a bulldoze, the ballroom, that peaked my interest. So I want to hear more. So I grew up in Washington and a lot of the institutions that we're talking about, the Kennedy Center, the monuments around DC, the reflecting pool. These are places I've known all my life. And I know how important they are to people who live in the city and to people who visit the city. And I've been taking people to see them for years and years. And I took kind of generations of children to the Nutcracker Suite. I was taken to the Nutcracker Suite at the Kennedy Center at Christmas time and watching the president systematically destroy one after the next has, yeah, has probably radicalized

3:02me. The White House was built in a certain style for a certain reason. It was meant to evoke Republican, small-ar Republican virtues. It was supposed to be modest. It wasn't a palace like the palaces in England that we had the revolutionary revolution had broken away from. It was classical and design. It was supposed to evoke palladium virtues, you know, this sort of architecture of balance and symmetry. And by destroying it, by building a monstrosity next door to it, Donald Trump has changed its meaning and changed the way it looks and changed that original, the original intentions of the architect and the intentions are related to very deep American values. And he's imposing a new set of values on them. And I object. It impacted me to see that you were there because it made me feel like, well, maybe I'm not radicalized enough, you know, and if an apple bomb is ready to get out there at the

4:03sledgehammer, because, you know, I don't know, part of me is just like, well, okay, why don't we just name it the Barack Hussein Obama ballroom and move on to bigger and better things? I mean, if it were in proportion, if it were done with an eye to history, if it were not a grotesque statement of Trump's personality imposed on Washington, DC, then we could talk about having a ballroom. But that's not what this is. This is a very, very strange project. It's something that Trump has obsessed with. He talks about it all the time, apparently. According to people who have reported on what goes on. Yeah, Ben Terrace reported on us for the new magazine. Yeah. And so, you know, this is not a normal construction project. It's not a bit of improvement to the White House. It's not an upgrade. It's an imposition and it's doing a lot of damage. And architecture is important because it reflects who we are, as I said, reflects a set of

5:05values. It was built that way originally for a reason. And Trump is destroying those seeking to change the values and undermine the way the city looks. Hell yeah, to the barricades. I'm with you. You've won me over. I'm with you on it. Okay. And it relates to your cover story, which covers kind of the globalized mega-grift. You know, I think that there's, of course, been a bunch of reporting and, you know, Johnson Swan on the way this week. And if you hear him tell it, it's just, I mean, we're barely scratch the surface of the amount of corruption and double dealing that these guys have done. And, you know, we all know some of the individual stories. We bring this all together. I think in framing up in an interesting way about how their program is not at all isolationist. It is a very globalist program, just in a different way of thinking about it. So what want you explain that concept? So I think it's important to understand that the people who now occupy important jobs in the US administration, not all of them, but a significant number of them.

6:08Think of themselves not as ordinary Republicans who won an election and a few years from now will happily hand over to Democrats and are part of a long chain of history. And, you know, as we've been discussing, uh, uh, inheritance of values going back a long way, they think of themselves as revolutionaries who are enacting a profound change. And in a revolution, always needs an international dimension. You know, so to stay secure at home, to complete their revolution at home, they need to create a world where they have lots of friends and allies who agree with them and will help them continue to build the revolution. And so they think about how do we help bring to power like-minded political parties in other countries? They're particularly interested in Europe because they have this idea of, you know, white Christian civilization that they believe it comes from Europe and they want Europeans to agree with their vision of the world. They're also very interested in Latin America and more broadly the Western hemisphere because they think the US should be dominant.

7:10And I mean, dominant as in an imperial kind of dominance in the hemisphere, not just the largest country. And they are willing to go to great lengths to make these things happen. All revolutions when they- when they break existing systems, when they change the rules, they bring with them other people who want to take advantage of that change. And this revolution is taking place in conjunction with and with the help of a number of large companies. And they are the tech companies, they are cryptocurrency industry, some oil and gas companies, some minerals companies who see these changes beginning to happen and are seeking to take advantage of them. And so, you have to kind of look at it as two faces of the same project. And it's not a coincidence that a lot of the far right movements and people and groups who are supported by the Trump administration also have deep, very often deep cryptocurrency connections. And they use this language of libertarianism and deregulation, which is what the cryptocurrency

8:13companies want or sometimes the tech companies as well. And they have a group of companies who are using the power of the US government and the power of US diplomacy and maybe even other things to make money. And that is a very, very different way of doing foreign policy than we've known for the past. It's this globalist nationalism, which is like a contradiction in terms at some level. But it leads to these kind of strange quotes going from the administration. You had a lighted one that caught my eye from Sarah Rogers, who is the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. She's been caught up also in this online mega controversy back and forth, or some of the influencers that they're paying online have not been revealed publicly. And she's embroiled in that. But this is a quote you highlighted. We are going to be fully utilizing all the tools at our disposal, exchange programs, cultural heritage initiatives, micro grants, and more to advance the president's America first

9:16to agenda. It's like, okay. I mean, it's weird, but it is. It's what they're doing in a strange way. It's what they're doing. So they are using the tools of American diplomacy to fund or aid or help people with whom they agree. And very often, again, in Europe, these are far right political parties and groups and movements. Sometimes there, as I said, they use libertarian language. I'm not sure they're true libertarians, whatever that means, but they're people who are aligned with companies that want deregulation. A great example. That is in the UK, where they're very close to Nigel Farage. He's the leader of the reform party, which is the British far right, and has recently been involved in a series of scandals to do with him being funded, basically, by cryptocurrency, moguls, some of whom live outside the country. But the US is using tools that in the past were used to promote democracy, to promote human rights, to encourage future leaders of potentially democratic governments around the world to

10:22come and visit the United States to study at American universities, full bright scholarships, for example. And all these tools that have been part of the US kind of soft power arsenal for decades are being reverted. I mean, I'm not sure it's happened yet entirely these things take time. And there are some restrictions on how much can be done. The idea is to revert them and to make them tools of this kind of magna nationalist international. And I think that's the deep goal of some of the ideologues at the State Department. You mentioned they're increasing focus, or like their main focus is on Europe, because the whiteness element. So why don't we start there? You're going to go through some examples. And I think it's interesting to revisit what is happening in Greenland in particular, because I do think that there was a lot of focus, rightly, on the military element of this and how the European countries scrambled their military to protect the diplomatic side of it. But there is this, the corruption side of it, an integration of the administration with

11:26the private sector and other efforts to be corrupt in Greenland is pretty striking. A former president of Stony, to his 100, flagged this for me, which was the story of this Greenland politician, Jordan Weaver, who his wife was representing Greenland in negotiations with the US. And now he's received a house in Greenland's capital, played for by American investors, including Ron Lauter, father-in-law of the new Fed chair and friend of Trump, the guy who's, I think, idea it was for us to do this Greenland deal. In your piece, you talk about a bunch of other examples of Trump donors can griffin, tried to meddle in Greenland. And I think advance those imperialist goals and economic goals all in one. Talk about that. Greenland is really interesting because in Greenland, you see how, you know, it's not US diplomats necessarily doing American foreign policy. It's this world of business people close to Trump who are now de facto carrying out Trump's

12:31wishes or someone's wishes inside the administration. And in Greenland, I mean, you did have this dramatic moment in January when the Danes really did expect a possible invasion, and they got ready to defend Greenland. And they were, you know, they sent blood banks up to Nukh and they prepared a blow of airports. And this is now public information. And they were ready to fight back. And then it didn't happen and it sort of faded away. But since then, as I said, there have been a number of US companies who have stayed in Greenland, sometimes offering really extraordinary investments. There's a guy who wants to build a data center in Greenland, even though it would probably melt the permafrost. And you would have to import all the workers and all the material. Greenland Rember is a frozen, you know, all year round. It's not a, it's not an easy place to do anything. Elon's talking about data centers on Mars. So why not Greenland? Why not? Do you Greenland? Actually, that's not a joke because there are people who have said, let's do a, you

13:35know, kind of one of these sovereign states run by CEOs. Let's create a new civilization in Greenland as an experiment for when we get to Mars. So they're not unrelated to those two ideas. But the point is that, you know, we think nothing's really happening in Greenland, but actually there's this huge US influence operation being funded by private companies, trying to reach Greenlandic politicians, trying to influence the way people think, offering people huge amounts of money in a place where people don't have it, all with the aim of subverting the existing social system in Greenland and imposing something else. And this is being carried out without really any oversight, without most Americans really knowing about it. I mean, it's reported in Denmark. The Danes are very aware of it. Greenlanders, who I spoke to are aware of it. And it's now really US foreign policy is just subvert Greenland. And I thought it was important to make people aware of that. Yeah, and just tying it all in together. It is the same guys pop up.

14:35And so it gives you a sense of the scope of their project. And you highlighted this, Dryden Brown, who was interested in, if the US integral Greenland buying Greenland, he wants to build a city there for his crypto back to network state, his backers include Palantir, Peter Tiel, Sam Altman, all of these same figures. So the degree to which that's all tied in together, I do think is greater than people realize. Sometimes they isolate. Trump has these goals over here and the big tech guys have these goals over here. And there's a little bit of overlap. I just think there's a lot more overlap than people realize. There's a lot of overlap. I mean, it's not a neat and crisp setup. You know, where I can identify who's in charge. But what we have now is a kind of group of people around the Trump administration, including I would say, you know, the tech guys, the some mineral guys, some other hedge fund guys and so on. We also have some, you know, mega ideologues and influencers who are part of this too.

15:41And there's some of them who are seeking to make money and some of them are trying to help Trump. And they work together in a loose way, you know, just as at the time of the Bolshevik revolution, you had the Bolsheviks, but then you had lots of other people attaching onto them and trying to achieve some other goals while the system was breaking down. So where you've destroyed the normal ways of doing diplomacy and all kinds of people have piled in. You led the story, folks, you know, happening in Brazil. And I do think this has flown under the radar for a lot of people, the Brazil case, which is that Trump simultaneously was putting exorbitant tariffs on Brazil as, you know, as part of his on again, off again, tariff regime, taking visas away from Brazilian political leaders and judges. And judges. Yeah, judges. And at some level, basically refusing to even do bilateral diplomacy with the Brazilian government and using all these levers of power inside and outside of the government to undermine the Brazilian government so that the Bolsonaro can come back to power.

16:45And is that basically the summary? That was the summary. I mean, Brazil is weird because there were different phases, but that was certainly the summary for the first, I don't know, eight months of the Trump administration that, you know, there was a, there was a very strong group of people inside the Maga movement. So it's going to be CPAC who are very keen on promoting the Bolson or a family, the son of the former Bolson or president is running for president now. And they were trying to use these different levers of US power to help them. There was a weird break moment where yet another billionaire, a Brazilian meat packing billionaire intervened and brokered some kind of meeting between Trump and Lula, the Brazilian president. And they seemed to kind of hit it off, you know, kind of too elderly populace and sharing their grievances. And that seemed to calm things down for a while. And there was a, there was some tariff relief. And then it reverted back to where we had been before. So, you know, it's not like there's a clear trajectory.

17:47But yeah, you're right. I mean, I think basically the, you know, the administration would like the Bolson or a family to return to power. And that's something that's maybe of interest to some people in the business world. There is a Brazilian Supreme Court, which has been willing to block or regulate tech companies in a way that not that many other people dare. And Elon Musk in particular was angry with fine that Twitter had to pay because it broke some Brazilian laws. And he ran to it against the judges, especially the chief justice on Twitter. And all those things are putting pressure on the, on the Brazilian system. But the idea that, you know, that we would intervene in Brazilian politics in such an over-weight that we would use again, we're using these ascensions of a kind that were created to deal with criminals and, you know, repressive monsters. And we're applying them to judges in a fellow democracy because we, in this case, it was

18:48because either the judges restricting Twitter or this just same judge was also involved in inditing and trying the previous president, Bolsonaro, for having tried to overthrow the results of their election in this sort of their version of January the 6th. Anyway, we're involved there in a, in a, in multiple ugly ways. You know, guys, hiring's tough. I don't, even though I interview for a living, I don't trust myself in the interview process to the judge somebody. I look at little tips and tricks I like to use, but it doesn't always work. One thing that does tend to work. One thing that I've come to rely on is when people demonstrate how excited they are to the job in ways that you might not expect. And that's happened to me. You'll come up to me in JavaScript. Other places talking about when to come to the bulwark. We're creating a little bulwark crew of New Orleans people behind the scenes, by the way. I think we've got three now with New Orleans connections. So I like going that way, but, you know, you can't just wait till somebody shows up to

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20:51And I want to play some of that for you. Okay, because President Trump said on July 27th, we've paid for that war many times over. We're taking in a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars from Venezuela. Who is the weed that he is referring to? Well, I think President Trump may have been referring to the oil deal that the Department of War is done within his way. But he seemed to imply that we, the United States people are taking in money to offset those costs. That would suggest flows to US persons. Again, that this is one of the largest assets that maybe ever to go on the US balance sheet conference. And we'll, okay. Are the accounts that the Treasury is managing tied only to the sale of oils or are you also taking control of other Venezuelan assets? It is many Venezuelan assets. Many? So you've asserted control over Venezuelan assets. They know interior recently said they're taking control of Venezuelan gold sales. So we're also taking control of those assets in the dispersions. You can't testify as we sit here whether or not those are flowing to US persons.

21:55No. Can you identify where or what US bank those funds are being held? No. What? Right. So you had no way of knowing this, but I just got back from Venezuela a couple of days ago. Oh. I'm really glad that you're stealing their gold and other unstated assets. They aren't happy. I'm in the course of writing about it right now. I was, it's what I was doing before we started talking today, but actually what Scott Besson said was not entirely accurate. I'm actually this, even before Trump's oil deal was announced, we have set up a system by which Venezuelan oil and gas and other assets. The US is controlling the sale of those things and the money is going into a bank account. It was originally a cutter. It's been moved to the US. I was told city bank, but I mean, that's that's less. That's Marco said Marco does testify city bank. Right.

22:55So city bank. But what's important about it is there is so far and as far as I'm aware, I'm just going to check this now, there is no audit of how much money is going in. And there is no audit of how much money comes out again and goes back to the Venezuelan government, even though we've been told that some does. So that somehow the US is doling out money back to the Venezuelan leadership to pay for I don't know, government workers salaries or investment into the oil industry. I don't know whether money is disappearing into private bank accounts or elsewhere, but I also don't know that that's not happening. And nobody in Venezuela knows whether or not that's happening. And it's a very strange moment because this is all happening with a government of Venezuela, which as far as the Venezuelans are concerned is illegitimate. I mean, Delce Rodriguez was not elected by anybody. She was appointed by Donald Trump. She was Maduro's vice president.

23:57Her regime, she's part of a regime which is still in place. So the repressive apparatus, the secret police and so on are all still there. They have let some prisoners out of jail, not all of them. But the system, as it was, remains largely intact except that the US is now somehow collecting the revenues. I asked a Venezuelan economist at Harvard on Carter's Houseman to describe it to me. What did this look like to him? And he said, it's a union of two corrupt oligarchies. And he even said something like, it's a caricature of what imperialism is supposed to look like. It's a sort of exaggerated version. Yeah, it's insane. We're in a free country. There's no audit of it. Congress doesn't have oversight. Like there's just rogue bank accounts out there with Venezuela and money that somebody in the Trump administration, we don't know who has oversight over.

24:57Yeah. And this is even before we get to the oil deal, which the details will also become clear. But it's a deal that it looks like the Trump administration has done with a famously corrupt Venezuelan oligarch, like a guy who's been under investigation in multiple countries. And I met fisherman on Lake Mara Kaiba. Don't ask. This is where a lot of the oil comes from. And they'd heard of this guy. So it's not like he's an unknown person. It looks like we're doing these very dodgy deals with people associated with the repressive regime. And so far, we haven't made a declaration of when there will be an election. And the guy that we're doing the deal with is like was under investigation for money laundering in multiple countries, the Betancourt. Betancourt, Alejandro Betancourt. Yeah. So it seems like money's probably being laundered. I don't know if it's walks like a duck. I didn't know and I don't want to preempt your article. But I am just curious about the mood among the Venezuelans.

25:58Like, is the type of oppressive, you know, government behaviors of the previous administration. Do we have a sense whether that's still ongoing or the scale of it? So the Venezuelan opposition is in a very weird position. They are not historically anti-American. They know that they want Venezuela to do business with U.S. companies, including U.S. oil companies. They've been very circumspect up until now. They haven't wanted to criticize Trump. They were very happy about Maduro being exfiltrated. The announcement of the oil deal did create a kind of break. Because people were expecting something will change and so on. And now people are beginning to get quite angry. You know, it looks like maybe something will happen in the next few weeks. It will change it. But it looks like the regime is being cemented into place. And while I was there, I went to meet a Venezuelan political prisoner called Perkins Rocha. He was one of Maria Creena Machado's lawyer. She was the opposition leader who's now out of the country and has been unable to go back.

26:59And he, I met him. He was in prison after their disputed election of 2024, which the opposition won, but was stolen by Maduro. He was then in prison for a long time. He was released in February, but he was, he's still under house arrest. So to go and visit him, I had to go through a kind of police cordon. And he still has an ankle bracelet on his leg. And this is a, this is a constitutional law scholar who has committed no recognizable crime. But he's still under surveillance by the regime. And everybody knows that this repressive apparatus is still in place. I look forward to reading that one. It's out. And now a message from our sponsor, The Reading Room. Here at the Bullwork, we talk a lot about Jeff Frippstein and how important it is to keep the story in the news. Some friends of ours are really working to make that happen. They printed out all 3.5 million of the released, important word, the released Epstein files. They bound them into 3437 volumes and built a free traveling exhibit

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29:03and our globalized mega club talker see. I saw you're posting about Umar Kremlev, who funded Don Jr.'s wedding reception. I want to be very clear. No, just the fireworks, just the fireworks. Just the fireworks? The day after party. The day after party. Yeah, I mean, because the public are at the story, shout out to them. And Don Jr.'s new wife, Bettina Postet, I forget where, somewhere on social media saying, this is fake news, he did not pay for a wedding. There was another party who was already paying for us. And we decided to tack the wedding onto that the day before. And we paid for that. Like we paid for all the stuff the day before of the actual wedding day, but the Russian gangster paid for the party that included Jared Kushner, of course, our point man and these negotiations, Eric, and a bunch of other Americans. It's a pretty alarming story. It's a stunning story, actually. There's a Russian journalist who wrote a very, very good description of the gangster and his background.

30:07And he is someone who comes from the criminal world. He changed his name to avoid association with previous indictments. He was like JD Vance. He changed his name. I didn't know that. Yep, he had a different name. And he changed his name. And he has become wealthy, not because of great business talent, but because he became friendly with Putin's bodyguards. They gave him control essentially of their sports betting industry and then a kind of car dealership. And he's someone who's quite well known in Russia. He posts frequently on social media. Yeah, the box, you know, he runs the boxing. Head of the International Boxing Association, which allegedly is how he met Don Jr. But he's someone very close to the Russian security services. And close to Putin, he was in China with Putin, according to the reports recently. And is very much part of the hard side of the inner circle. So it's not the diplomats. He's not involved in the sovereign wealth fund.

31:08He's involved with the security guys. And somehow he's, you know, he's cycled up to the president son, ingratiated himself with him. Apparently he doesn't speak a lot of English. But he brought a group of friends to the wedding. Neither does Don Jr. Sorry. Sorry. Continue. I apologize. Anyway, it's in any other administration, any other country, this would be a huge scandal. And the FBI would be investigating. But will that happen in this administration? I don't think so. And then we had Jared, again, who's at the wedding reception, funded by the Russian gangster who doesn't speak that well in good English. I don't speak. I don't speak that good English either. Turns out I don't speak English that well. I don't speak English that well either. Turns out, Krishna was doing an interview. I played this early this week, but I think it's worth playing a second time just to listen to it, where he explains how he sees the state of play in the negotiation.

32:11Let's listen to Jared. Look, I think right now, from the Ukraine perspective, I mean, President Putin slayed out his line of what he wants to achieve. If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously, we have the rest of the deal set up and put together Ukraine right now. It's not I want to do that. And obviously, our job is the mediators to figure out how can we come up with a creative solution that doesn't violate their desires and that helps them achieve their objective and doesn't know way that we can get Russia to end the conflict in a way that hopefully allows both parties to move forward in their framework that where this doesn't happen again. We're just looking for a win-win here. And we're looking for a win-win. As long as if Ukraine would withdraw, we don't have any requests from Russia. But if Ukraine would withdraw, Jared says that he already has the rest of the deal cooked. I'm not familiar with that. I wonder what does that look like? I wonder, the rest of the deal, that's already if Ukraine would just withdraw. So this is basically the same deal we've been talking about for many months. And the strange part of it is it

33:13looks like what Russia has been trying to do is persuade Jared to get the Ukrainians to surrender territory. And I should remind everybody that territory means people. It means defensive positions. It's not something you could just give up. I mean, it's like asking the US to, would you just give up a part of Florida to Mexico because the Mexicans want it? Family members on the other side of the line. And we should have mentioned with Kremlin that allegedly has associations through his family with an organization that was kidnapping, Ukrainian children, right? I mean, so. So this is what happened. And remember what happens to Ukrainian territory when it's occupied? Exactly. The leaders are killed. They're mass arrests. The Russian language is imposed on everybody. Ukraine is banned. People who have Ukrainian flags or symbols can be arrested in the street. And children are kidnapped and taken to Russia where they're trained to be in the Russian army. So it's a very, it's like turning over territory to the Nazis, really. I mean, it's no different from that. And so they keep making this request

34:14without putting on the table any future for Ukraine. So, you know, for Ukraine to, I think the first of all, I think the Ukrainians would accept a ceasefire on current lines right now. But the point is that for Ukraine to be a viable country in the future for people to want to come back there and invest there and live there, we're going to need to have some sense that the war isn't right about to start up again. In other words, what it looks like the Russians want is for the Ukrainians to, you know, give up something with draw and then they wait a little while and then they invade again. And that can't happen in the Ukrainians can't agree to that. It doesn't seem like Jared gets that. No. It seems like Jared has been convinced or doesn't or maybe doesn't care or has been bribed, who knows, to kind of argue that like, if you just gave some of this territory back to Russia, then Putin would, everything would go back to normal. It would be the 90s again. Putin wants to want to do economic deals. So, Jared has spent a lot more time with Putin than he's spent with Ukrainians.

35:14He's been to, he and Steve Woodcoff have been to Moscow multiple times. And we know because they've said it and it's also been reported, it was reported in New Yorker again this week that in addition to negotiating with Ukraine, they are also negotiating a set of business deals with Russia. I mean, the deals are not necessarily for Jared and Woodcoff, although who knows. Good taste. But the Russians have played them like a fiddle. The Russians have dangled these supposedly lucrative deals in front of the meet. If you just end the war, the way we want it to, we're gonna give you all this stuff. And the Americans have been, we know that some of these deals have moved forward. We know some of the names of, some of the names of players. And for all the Europeans involved and of course for the Ukrainians, this is very shocking. So are you trying to achieve peace in Ukraine or are you trying to promote the business interests of this group of nebulous oligarchs

36:14around the Trump administration? This goes back to the beginning of our conversation. I think this is, some of this is in my article as well. I mean, either he's unbelievably greedy, and this is all he thinks about is, or he's unbelievably naive. He falls binary. Or Putin has played them. He's wrapped them around his little finger. He's offered them this stuff, and they are prepared to believe that they can get all this stuff. If they just get the Ukrainians to allow more of their people to be murdered and more children cannot. And that seems to be the deal. It's so unprecedented that I know that Europeans who've met with them or have been in the room with them are kind of in shock. Like they don't, somebody said to me, you know, I couldn't even believe I was in the room with them while they were saying this stuff. I mean, it's very hard for people to wrap their minds around who aren't Americans. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium.

37:16It's destroying, athlete, creator, and YouTube Maxor. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day. Plus, I get ad-free videos, background play, and so much more. YouTube Premium is like YouTube got some extra gains. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Hey, what's up guys? It's Hayley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads. So I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad-free, I get background play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. So try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Try out eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. That's a mouthful. The difference between a HELOC and an HEI is more than spelling. A HELOC means monthly payments.

38:17A splotero HEI doesn't. A HELOC has strict requirements. A splotero HEI only requires a 500 minimum credit score with no income requirement. Visit spltintiro.com today and access your home's equity. I want to come back to the war, but just while I was talking about cushioning in these guys, you mentioned in the Yorker piece, Dexter Filkins, and a lot of that was in there, stuff we knew, but you kind of tied together like the just degree of how close the ties are and the golf states and how easy it was to call Jared for favors and then the golf states. You do, we did see the kind of limits of that this week though. It does seem like Trump might be leaving MBS hanging. With regards to the war with the hoodies, MBS requested military cover and additional weapons and resources for combating the hoodies that are bombing Saudi oil infrastructure and Trump's endowl. And then simultaneously that there's a Reuters report that maybe the administration's might be back channeling with the hoodies and Yemen and just being like, so long as you let our boats through,

39:19we'll stay out of a wet in Saudi. I was intrigued by that given the amount of money they've invested in the Trump family. It's extraordinary actually. I wasn't clear whether the refusal to help the Saudis was because of the hoody connection or whether it was because the US is running out of weaponry and the ability to help the Saudis. But imagine if after all this, if the US turns out to be a bad ally even to the people who've paid, even, I mean, forget about you. Wasn't that kind of how things work? I don't know. I've watched some gangster movies. These kind of allies of convenience, these corrupt allies of convenience, they don't quite have the staying power of values-based relationships. But it would really royal the Middle East. I mean, it would be a, that the US is proves to be an untrustworthy partner even to the Gulf states. Even to the people that bribed them. Yeah. Then that will change the way people think

40:19about the US and the region forever. I want to go back to just the, actually, what's on the ground? What's happening in the Russia-Crane war? You posted about the city, Holeschi, so Ukrainian city under Russian occupation and how bad the situation is there. You had an article a little while ago about the Russian drones conducting. We call it humans safaris and hair-sawing when other parts of southern and eastern Ukraine was kind of tracking individual civilians of the drones, the aim of killing them. What's your sense for kind of, what's happening on the ground and how things have changed? So what changed in the last couple of months is that the Russians now have a kind of drone that is jet-powered and is much faster and is harder to hit than previous drones. And they've been using them in, instead of doing nighttime raids, they're now very, very frequent. So they're these constant drone attacks and they're not really hiding anymore that these are on civilian targets.

41:20So they hit school buses, they hit passenger trains, they hit a passenger train that was very close to another one that was carrying a lot of European and some American officials. They're terrorizing people in the cities on the border. I mean, the drone piece I wrote was inspired by really a kind of dystopian video of a guy who was selling onions and vegetables in a street market who was being chased around just truck by a drone that eventually fell down and exploded next to him. He survived, actually. But they're chasing people and they're chasing people who are obviously not soldiers. And that's now a part of life in a lot of Ukraine. I mean, at the same time, the Russians are not winning on the front line. They are not moving forward. They've actually lost some territory in the last few weeks. Ukrainians are hitting regularly their refineries, other oil infrastructure, other military infrastructure. The war is actually accelerating.

42:22I mean, it's more on both sides becoming worse than it was before. And so while, I don't know, while Putin talks about, oh, if you just give me this little sliver of territory, it will be fine. He's accelerating and escalating. I should say also that he's accelerating and escalating in Europe. There have been a rising number of drone attacks. There was one that was thwarted at a German airport. There have been some on the borders and the Baltic states. So that's all escalating as well. Yeah. And you talked about how at this point, you kind of have to call Russia's actions in the rest of Europe like kinetic war. And there have been multiple now drone attacks in Europe. Like you mentioned Germany on Zelensky's plane. You know, there hasn't been one that caused mass casualties yet. But there have been several that tried. There was an attack on a passenger train inside Poland that was thwarted and didn't go off, but had it done what it was supposed to do, there would have been a lot of deaths. So there's beginning to be, as I said, this kind of real attempt to do violence inside Europe.

43:25In a Poland, Germany, the UK, Spain, I mean, there have been, there have been assassination squads. There have been targets in all of those countries. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Hailey Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad free, I get back room play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads so you can watch without Wi-Fi. Background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely ad free. Yes, I said it, ad free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free

44:27at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. The difference between a HELOC and an HEI is more than spelling. A HELOC means monthly payments. A splotero HEI doesn't. A HELOC has strict requirements. A splotero HEI only requires a 500 minimum credit score with no income requirement. Visit spltint.com today and access your home's equity. I want to talk about how this interacts with what else is happening in Europe. I see there are two trends happening at the same time right now that are in conflict with each other a little bit. We have this European Union and Canada like talking about different ways to cooperate diplomatically, militarily, economically. It was even a float that Canada can join the European Union potentially. That was disgusting. The associate member, yeah. Associate member, excuse me, associate member. And then simultaneously to that, we saw some of the AFD elections in Germany and it's happening in some other countries.

45:28You know, the populist right gaining a little momentum again. How do you kind of assess like those two trends in the state of play? So those two trends, I mean, that is the drama of politics in Europe right now. And to be clear, not all the populist parties, but most of them are pro-Russian. And the AFD is very pro-Russian. It has people in it who've been paid by the Russians. Its leader openly says if she were to win an election which she won't any time soon, she would end funding for Ukraine. You have on the one hand European leaders seeking to hedge, mostly they're thinking about Trump. How do we build stronger alliances between countries that believe in liberal democracy and share values? And you have them directly in conflict with people who are both pro-Russian and pro-Maga. I mean, the AFD is also supported by elements of the Trump administration and by the far right tech guys. And so that's the drama. It's a, you know, you have a competition

46:29between those two world views. And in some countries, one slide seems to be winning and some countries the other side is winning. And that's, that is now the central argument of European politics going forward. Is there sort of, how do you feel about Russia? How do you feel about the United States and which side of that line are you on? I gotta tell you, I worry a little bit about the good side and their political strategy right now in Europe. And I do think there's some structural differences in Europe and in the way that their parliamentary democracy works and all that and, you know, a bit that make it somewhat less susceptible to the populist right total takeover that we're experiencing here. But like from a political standpoint, I worry that you have these like insurgent populist right parties talking about cultural issues, talking about, you know, whatever, Italy first, Germany first issues. And that being a very powerful message. And then you have Merz and Karinny and all these guys

47:30seeming very, I don't know, academic and international and out of touch. And I don't know, maybe that's wrong. I'm watching this from America, but I do worry about like, I'm watching over there and I'm having a little bit of PTSD from kind of what didn't work here. Yeah, I mean, here it's hard to generalize because actually Karinny is incredibly popular right now in Canada. Sure. And he does talk a lot about Canadian sovereignty and our identity and who we are and so on in a way that people find appealing. Merz is in Germany that German chancellor is less good at that. You know, although he was chosen as leader partly because people hoped he would be better at that and he's been disappointing to many people. So there's a different dynamic in different places, but in some places people are, you know, there's a sort of different learning curve and people are working out better ways to fight back. But I mean, as we know from here, there's no ideal formula.

48:31You know, there are different theories like the right is doing culture wars. Should you answer with economic solutions, you know, or the right is doing culture wars? Should you also do culture wars? I mean, there's a, nobody has a perfect formula for victory so far. And so what you're seeing in different European countries is different strategies playing out. But it's not, we're not where we were a few years ago where people didn't get it. They didn't think it was important. They didn't, they dismissed the fringe as, you know, immaterial, which was true in Germany like five years ago. And that's not true now. The other thing that I'm noticing and you tell me because this is kind of the world that you're swimming in a little more, but I worried a little bit that the particular of the Democrats have a good midterm election that European countries, Canada, other, other of these allies kind of think, okay, we can wait this out now. You know, it's only two more years. And then we can kind of just keep going on business as usual and it doesn't feel like that's happening at all. Like it feels like they now sense

49:33that they need to do a more permanent shift away from relying on us because who the hell knows what happens in 2028 or beyond. I think it was the French foreign minister who said European security can't be reliant every four years on 40,000 voters in Wisconsin. We are, hey. I think after the first Trump term, they thought, well, that was weird, but now we're going back to normal. And now I think that's that there's a very different mood. And it's not just Europe actually. I mean, Asian allies, others and other parts of the world. You know, almost everybody I talk to anywhere. I mean, I went to India this year. Everybody I talk to is hedging. Like everybody's looking for who can we do deals with. You know, there's now an India Europe trade deal for example, which nobody really cared enough about five years ago to bother with. There's a Europe South America arrangement. You know, people are looking for, you know, new tech alliances in the outside of the US tech world. And all that stuff that wouldn't have happened before. So there's a there is this kind of reordering.

50:35I mean, whether it's efficient or whether it's working or whether it's fast enough is hard to say right now. But definitely, I mean, there is no leader of any longstanding American ally who doesn't right now, spent a lot of time thinking about how to, you know, put a break, you know, or how to distance, you know, himself or herself from the United States. All right, well, this wasn't quite as do me of a podcast as I thought it could be. Is there anything else you're worried about? Anything I didn't ask you about any anxieties you have that I that you look at, you know, the state of autocracy in the world that you want to get off your chest? I was going to make a joke about, you know, what to wear next week. But I, you know, since it's worth serious podcast, here I won't do that. Yeah, okay. All right, well, that's great. We are serious podcasts, but we try to offer people, I still like the end of 50 minutes discussing, you know, creeping autocracy, people are looking for a little something. And so we started an informal Ann Applebaum book club. Now, I will say the books, I looked back at the list

51:35of the books we've recommended and they aren't, it's not a ton of giving people a break from fascism. I mean, there was the captive mind about Polish fascism, the operamins, not the Nazis, directors about the Nazis, choice of comrades, Italian fascism. I offered it, I added one which was a gay book, my tender Matador, that was about Chilean fascism and Pinochet, time of cherries. I think it was your last one, Franco's Spain. So it's, I mean, that's a little bit of an escape, but not a full escape from what you're getting here. Do you have anything to add? Anything over the summer you are reading that stuck with you? Do you do want a full escape, like a complete escape? Or whatever kind of moved you over the summer? No, so I read a nice novel by Ann Patchett, her new novel, which is called Whistler. And it's a very elegantly written story that has a satisfying conclusion. I mean, as somebody said, as a criticism, it's a nice story about nice people, but, and which was meant to be negative. Okay. But if you want to read something a little bit uplifting

52:38and it's extremely well written and insightful, there you go. A nice story about nice people. That sounds great. Okay. That sounds great. I'm just, there's a dark, there's some dark moments that I should say, but they resolve themselves. So, I just started the, the disappears, which is a Jamaican, too novel, which is very, very, very, very good. Yeah. Very high claim right now. So I'm, I'm a little bit in. So I don't know how dark I light it is. I'll, I'll report back the next time you're on. Okay. That's Ann Applebaum. Do check out her work in the Atlantic, of course. And I hope to talk to you soon, all right? Thank you. Thanks everybody. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday. Go Tigers.

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