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Since The Atlantic first released the podcast Autocracy in America last fall, Donald Trump was elected president again. Staff writer Anne Applebaum describes how Trump’s return to the White House fits into the changing geopolitical landscape as she hands the show over to its new host: Garry Kasparov. The former world chess champion and lifelong democracy activist will guide a series of conversations about society’s complacency with liberal values and how this carelessness has fueled a democratic retreat—and a new belligerence among dictators.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

[Music]

Anne Applebaum: From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Anne Applebaum. Last summer, I made the first series of this podcast together with my friend and colleague Peter Pomerantsev. We were not trying to predict the future. Instead, we looked at some of the ways in which the United States had already adopted practices common in the autocratic world.

Jefferson Cowie: My nightmare is that fascism comes to America, but it’s marching under the banner of freedom.

Applebaum: We talked about the use of violence and intimidation in politics.

Stephen Richer: It’s a little bit like the Eye of Sauron. With that—when it’s turned on you, you feel it. You get a lot of ugliness directed your way.

Applebaum: About the abuse of courts and about kleptocracy.

Sheldon Whitehouse: This is a new beast that is stalking America’s political landscape.

Applebaum: About older American traditions of state capture.

Richard White: He would choose all the boards and commissions. He packed the courts. And, once you have the courts and the legislature—and you’ve already got the executive—you have all three branches of government.

[Music out]

Applebaum: Now, in Donald Trump’s second presidency, all of those autocratic behaviors are being accelerated, amplified, even promoted by the federal government. He’s fired civil servants.

CNN Newsclip: Breaking overnight. First, paid leave. Then, buyouts. Now, firings.

Applebaum: He seeks to replace them with loyalists and seeks to intimidate enemies and political rivals.

Laura Barron Lopez: He wants loyalty across the board with little to no resistance. That is his top goal.

Applebaum: Above all, Trump has adopted the practices of kleptocracy on a scale no previous American president ever imagined.

Scott Galloway: I think we’ve essentially become a kleptocracy that would make [Vladimir] Putin blush.

Applebaum: But while brand new in the history of America, Trump’s actions are very familiar to those who have studied the rise of autocracy in other places. Garry Kasparov, who has not merely studied the rise of Putinism in Russia, but lived through it and fought against it, is now joining Autocracy in America to host our new season.

Some of you will know Garry as a former world chess champion—indeed, one of the greatest chess players who ever lived. But Garry also has a long record opposing the rise of Putinism, well before it was fashionable. So at a moment when Western companies were still piling into Russia, when democratic leaders allowed Russia to host the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Garry told a really different story. I looked up something that I wrote about him in 2007. And I found this quote; this is something he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. He said, “Russia is in a moment of crisis, and every decent person must stand up and resist the rise of the Putin dictatorship.”

[Music]

Applebaum: As I noted at the time, this was a pretty lonely view. It was not shared in London, where I lived at the time, and there wasn’t even that much reaction in Russia. Although an angry fan did hit him over the head with a chessboard. And Garry, who’s now with us, said, “I’m lucky the national sport of the Soviet Union is chess, not baseball.”

[Music out]

Applebaum: Garry, welcome.

Garry Kasparov: Thank you very much, Anne, for reminding me about this very precarious moment.

Because this angry fan was of course on the Kremlin’s payroll. Since the moment when he hit me with the chessboard, immediately it appeared online. So, the videos were made from two different angles.

So somebody was waiting for the moment. I guess they wanted me just to get crazy and just to hit him and to ask my bodyguard to attack him. But I decided to keep my calm, which was not easy. But again, thank God it was not a baseball bat. So I’m really, you know, really happy just to continue the program. And I think it’s probably worth, you know, just reminding the audience that, you know, first time we met and worked together it was 10 years ago, and it was not in America, but in Canada. We joined forces at a debate. The Munk Debates. It’s a probably largest public debate in Canada, Oxford-style. So we faced 3,000 people, and the opposition was Stephen Cohen, pro-Putin, U.S. scholar, very famous, and Vladimir Pozner, who has been working for Soviet propaganda since, I think, 1961—before we were born. And we had to deal with a very, very, difficult task, because the house motion was: The West should engage, not isolate, Russia.

Applebaum: Yeah, yeah. It was Be it resolved that the West should engage and not isolate Russia, which of course was what the Canadian audience wanted.

Kasparov: Exactly. It was one year after Crimea’s annexation and the beginning of the war in Ukraine. But still, the mood of the audience was not in our favor. But we proved to be a very good team, and we won, which I think was quite a shock for our opponents—and for many in the audience, because again, it was Canada. So that was the beginning of our cooperation. But I’m just wondering: Could you, in your worst nightmares, imagine that 10 years since this debate in Canada, we would be talking about the real threat to America shifting sides, and no longer being a beacon of hope, the guardian of democracy, but becoming a potential ally for “Autocracy Inc.” worldwide?

Applebaum: I have to say that I did not imagine it. I mean, it’s funny. Roundabout 2014, 2015—that was when I started following the rise of Russian propaganda and influence campaigns, mostly in Europe. I saw them in Poland; I saw them in the Czech Republic; I saw them in Hungary. And I even wrote something about it at the time, and I remember talking to people about it in Washington. And people said, Well, this is all very terrible, you know, for Slovenia, and we feel really bad. But it, again, it felt like a very distant problem. And really, just a year or two later, in 2016, we saw the Russian influence campaign being conducted in the United States. And since then, the gradual accumulation of, as I said, these authoritarian practices and behavior in American politics.

And we are now at a point where it doesn’t sound crazy to talk about the Putinization of America. Or the rise of Russian-style kleptocracy in America. So it’s been a really extraordinary decade. I mean, it’s really been one in which the United States has gone from one polar opposite. From a symbol of, it’s not just … democracy might even be the wrong word. It’s about the rule of law. It’s about transparency; it’s about accountability. It’s about Americans believing in freedom, and Americans having allies and being part of this network of other rule-of-law countries in the world. And we’ve gone from that to being a really rogue power which seeks to break up all of our alliances and maybe instead do deals with dictatorships. You know, you, as I said at the beginning, you were an early observer of the changes in Russia that created the system that we saw today. Tell me: When you look at the first months of the second Trump administration, do you see something similar? What’s setting off alarm bells in your head?

Kasparov: The similarities are really frightening. It’s a creation of classical oligarchy. And I think many Americans, they get confused, because they believe that any rich person who is buying influence is an oligarch. But by my classification, when you look at Putin’s Russia, you should disregard the simple spread of this word for any rich man. [John D.] Rockefeller, [Andrew] Carnegie, in the past, J. P. Morgan. Or now we just have [Jeff] Bezos, [Mark] Zuckerberg. I still wouldn’t call them oligarchs, because—while they are buying influence, clearly, so that’s what happens in any representative democracy—they are not involved in the decision-making process. What we saw with [Elon] Musk and Trump, it’s basically creating money and power. It’s like in the same hands. That’s what Putin did. So it’s a gradual merge, or synergy, between those who control money and those directly making decisions. It’s not about trying to find, you know, buying favors from Democrats or Republicans. It’s basically sticking to one group of people that are under your control and making decisions. Also, Trump’s statements—to my trained ear, it’s loud and clear. He disregarded the Democratic opposition, basically saying, I can rule only relying on Republican votes. That’s a proclamation of a one-party system. We can definitely give Trump credit for being very consistent. He has been pushing through his agenda, ignoring the laws of the land, and always, you know, just trying to bully people. That’s also a typical sign of this early oligarchy where, you know, you don’t have resources to go against everybody, but you pick a few best targets, and you go after them. And the rest have no choice but to obey. Unless they want to feel the power of the dictator’s wrath.

Applebaum: Yeah, and then I was going to say in the case of Putin’s Russia, it was even more brutal. So if you kill one journalist, then all the other journalists are afraid.

Kasparov: Yeah, exactly. You kill one journalist; you start closing TV stations. And then you go after the richest man in the country. So you basically confiscate his company, put him in jail. And the rest recognize that it’s time to play by the new rules.

So again, Trump is facing much tougher challenge, because American democracy has 250 years, even if we do not count the colonial years, that also had the rule of law as a basis for society. Russia, it’s never experienced the long period of law and order, in its normal, democratic terms. But still, you know, certain things are just, you know, just have to ring the bell. It’s an alarm. When they say, Oh, it’s urgent, there’s a mandate. The president had a mandate we have to push through. And if the judiciary is standing in the way, to hell with them. So the moment you hear urgency that should go over or should trump—pun intended—should trump the rule of law, that’s another sign that they are aiming at the very center of America’s democracy. It’s a separation of powers.

Applebaum: Yeah, it’s exactly what Putin does. I mean, Putin—because of the war, it’s an emergency. Therefore he has special powers.

Kasparov: But it was always emergency. It was always emergency. In 2004 after this, the tragedy in Beslan when the terrorists, you know, took over the school, and then Putin used it immediately to gain more power by canceling the direct elections of the governors. So that’s—again, it’s every crisis, is always used to enlarge the portfolio of an autocrat. And, again, Trump is facing much more formidable opposition. But he’s trying, I mean, we can’t deny that he’s trying. And, unlike his first presidency, it seems that, again, it says Trump already, succeeded in creating a … I wouldn’t say political class, but it’s a cluster in American politics that is just, you know, following him, obediently. Without any questions. Repeating even the most outrageous lies and statements, that even by the first Trump administration would be unheard.

Applebaum: You know, this is the thing that surprises Europeans the most. Europeans—who’ve been dealing with Americans for years and years in security contexts, economic contexts, business, and so on—[are] discovering that there is this group of Americans who are sycophants. Because nobody ever thought of Americans being like that. But it turns out that you can win them over, or can bully them in such a way that they do exactly as you say. They provide a kind of echo chamber—even to lies. I mean, it’s funny, talking about lies. What’s also surprising to me is the way in which the Trump administration, Trump himself, use lies in the way that dictators use them. In other words, Trump isn’t trying to—for example, as the Soviet Union once did, he’s not trying to create a full story about reality. That, if we all work together and cooperate, then eventually we’re going to build communism.

Kasparov: No narrative. No fixed narrative.

Applebaum: Exactly. Instead, the idea is just to lie constantly, all the time, about almost everything—whether it’s the price of eggs or the price of gas, or what he said to Putin yesterday. Or, you know, whatever it is, he’s lying. And this has another effect. I mean, what it does is: It makes people doubt whether anything is true. I mean, how are you supposed to know what’s true if the president lies all the time? And that is, of course, exactly the same tactic that Putin used in Russia. I mean, if you lie or your propagandists lie nonstop, then the reaction of the public is to say, Right, you know, politics is a dirty game. I have no idea what’s true or what’s not true. I better just stay home.

Kasparov: Absolutely. You know, a constant lie becomes a very important test for loyalty. Because you want to make sure that your sycophants—your administration, your appointees—they follow you without asking questions. And you want to test them, so they have to repeat the same lies. They have to defend these lies. And they know Trump was lying, And they still had no choice, either. Okay. They have a choice. Either you leave, or you keep lying. And so far, I didn’t see anyone leaving. So it seems that, again, Trump still has his hold over a new American bureaucracy, that is just, again, willing to do whatever. Just to stay in power.

[Music]

Applebaum: More on that, after the break.

[Midroll]

Applebaum: You know, there’s something you wrote in The Atlantic this spring, and you were calling on the opposition to Trump to defend the value system that has made America great. You know this question of values underlines, I know, a lot of what you wanna tackle in this season of the show. Say more about it. What’s this value system that you, as an outsider, identify with America?

Kasparov: I think now we just have to identify—that’s the threat to American democracy. And I believe it’s an existential threat. And that means, to defend it, we have to abandon some conflicts that separated American society. It’s normal. We have many issues where we can, you know, argue, we can disagree. But the key is that we always relied on the framework created by the Founding Fathers that allowed us to debate these issues. One day, you know, we win. One day we lose. But again, it was a healthy process. And sometimes, you know, maybe just, too hot, you know, the arguments just were fierce, but it was just—it was a debate. So it seems now that this framework is in great danger. Now it’s time to get together to fight for these constitutional values. That’s something that made America America. And recognizing that Trump’s actions, though they look very spontaneous and sporadic, they are aimed at this very system. To make sure that the balance that has been working for two and a half centuries—the balance between the executive, legislation, and judiciary—this balance will be tilted forever in favor of the executive. And not just executive as an office, but just executive as one person. Again, here is Trump, very consistent, demanding that the president has all powers and anything that stands in his way, even if it’s guaranteed by Constitution, should be removed—because it prevents him from executing his mandate. Which is, again: It’s a funny trick, because at the end of the day, Trump acquired his powers going through the system that created this mandate. And now—trying to use this mandate acquired within the system—he’s trying to destroy the system and to make sure that he and his cronies, his successors, could rule the country without any restrictions that have been provided by this very constitutional framework that made him win in the first place.

Applebaum: So the values are separation of powers, really, and the rule of law?

Kasparov: Absolutely. This is the rule of law, separation of powers, and recognizing that there’s always a balance that keeps very complicated American system, Republican system—Republicans will all, of course—to function and to be so successful. Because there are always forces and counterforces. So whether it’s the federal level, state level, whether it’s judiciary, legislation, so it’s the, [any attempt to spread unanimity. So that’s what is a real existential threat to American republic. Just, yeah. Quite ironic—it’s next year, will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

And if you just read through the Declaration of Independence, almost every claim there—all the grievances of the colonies, again, King George and British monarchy—have been simply resurrected in Trump’s behavior.

Applebaum: It is funny, actually: I reread the Declaration of Independence, too, recently, and there’s even something about tariffs. There’s something about sending people abroad to be imprisoned.

Kasparov: Absolutely. It’s so many elements of the Declaration of Independence, and of course the Constitution. So, I think by fighting such a powerful enemy—because again, we know that, again, Trump is not accidental. And that’s one of the ideas of the second season, is to talk to different people. From different fields—Americans and Europeans—and to give our audience an idea, somehow, why Trump was inevitable. I mean, what’s happened? What are the events that helped Trump to become almost invincible in American politics?

And what are the other trends in global politics, in geopolitics, that made this overall climate so friendly not just to Trump, but to many other would-be autocrats, right-wing populists, across other democracies? Yeah; it’s very important to see this big picture. Because to fight Trump is not, you know, just simply to go, Trump is bad. It’s very important to show why it’s bad.

Applebaum: You know, it’s interesting. In the first season of this podcast, one of our episodes was about American alliances. And it’s actually one of my arguments that I’ve been making for a long time—that American democracy has also succeeded in the past because of who America’s allies were. That it was very important, not just for our foreign policy, that we were very close to the European democracies or the Asian democracies. That that also reinforced our domestic politics. In other words, you know, that it matters who your country’s friends are. And so, I suppose, maybe one of the things you’ll explore is: Does it matter if America’s friends are the German far right and the Romanian far right and autocracies in the Middle East?

Kasparov: Yes. But it’s like chicken and egg. So it’s whether these alliances embolden Trump or, you know, that America’s change from within help Trump to build these alliances. So think it will be wrong to actually oppose Trump without understanding all these underlying currents—you know, all the factors that made Trump and Trump’s phenomena, both domestically and internationally, such a powerful threat. Not just to American democracy, but to democracy worldwide.

And of course, Putin, as we know, he’s very happy to support whoever. So he’s happy with Marine le Pen in France, but he’s also happy with [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon, who’s far left. Of course, AfD for Germany [the far-right party Alternative for Germany] is his biggest bet in German politics. But, Russia was not shy of supporting Die Linke and the new newly built [Bündnis] Sahra Wagenknecht. Also, far-left groups. So, for me, it indicates the collapse of the traditional left-right balance that has been, you know, in place for probably nearly a century. And I will talk about it throughout the new series. But: Do you think, Anne, it’s a legitimate, you know, issue, just to recognize why this right, left—or center, right-center, left—equilibrium that served us for so long is no longer, you know, protecting us against the rise of authoritarianism?

Applebaum: Yeah. No, I think it’s indicative of something even bigger—which is that politics, which for such a long time was about policy. In other words, what was the, what were the center left and the center right fighting about? They were fighting about the size of the state and whether taxes should be high or low, and whether we should have state health care or private health care. And those were the subjects of politics and the subjects of political debate. And what’s happened over the last decade—partly thanks to the change in the nature of online information, partly thanks to the way that social media has reordered our conversation and made it more emotional and angry and divisive—those things aren’t central to politics anymore. And instead, politics is about these very existential issues. Cultural ideas, national identity, other kinds of identity. Issues where there’s much less area for compromise, and where there’s much less that the different various parties can do together. I mean, so if you have an argument about taxes, you can find a compromise between the center left and the center right. If your argument is Who are Americans? And should people of only one skin color get to be Americans? And, if people come from another country, and they don’t come through the border in the right way, they should be expelled, or not expelled? I mean, those are much more existential issues, and there’s very little area of compromise. You also have the rise of political movements that challenge the system itself. And this is, of course, something that I think happened over the last four years, after January the 6th. Really, all of the extremists in America—and this happened in other countries, too, for different reasons—gathered around Trump. So, people who believed that there shouldn’t be democracy in America, there should be a kind of CEO who runs politics—that was a kind of tech-authoritarian idea. People who believe that America shouldn’t be a secular state; it should be a religious state. That’s the Christian-nationalist idea.

And a series of people who were on the extremes of politics were drawn to him. And drawn into really the center of political life. And they have now redefined political debate. And, as I said, political debate is not anymore about practical policies that people can understand. Instead, it’s about these central, you know: Should Harvard exist? Or Do we want science? And it changed the nature of debate altogether. And of course, one of the things that has been very slow to happen is that the center—meaning the center left and the center right—failed for a long time to understand that the rules of debate had changed. So they went on squabbling with one another. You can actually see it right now in Germany, in the German coalition, which is the center-right/center-left coalition. They went on squabbling about the things that divided them, failing to see that there was a threat from people who wanted to change the nature of the system altogether. So what we really have now is a pretty existential argument between liberal democracy, small-l liberal, small-d democracy, and an authoritarian system run by an executive who is not controlled by the rule of law. That’s actually the real debate we have right now. But, it’s taken a long time for the rest of the political world to understand that and catch up with it, and to understand that in order to defeat the appeal of the autocratic world, we need different kinds of coalitions.

Kasparov: But that also includes international coalitions. Because, you know, we use the word existential regularly, but the most existential battle between the force of tyranny and freedom now is happening in Ukraine. Literally the battlefield where the force of autocracy—Autocracy Inc., led by Putin’s dictatorship—launched the most blatant invasion of the country. And it’s much bigger than just an attempt to redraw the borders. It’s a challenge, open challenge, to the existing world order—probably, it’s no longer existing; it’s collapsing. The liberal world order that we used to live in for decades. And the outcome of this battle, the outcome of this existential, mortal combat, will probably, most likely, will decide the future of humanity and future of freedom worldwide for decades to come. And, it’s not surprising that the war in Ukraine also divides political forces here. And it’s not, it’s no longer, right and left. You can find people on both sides defending Ukraine. And unfortunately, you can find people on both sides—mostly, of course, on the right now—who are trying to undermine the Ukrainian heroic struggle for freedom and sovereignty. And to argue that it’s no longer our business to be involved.

Applebaum: Yeah; I mean, what you’ve just described, it’s one of the arguments of my book Autocracy, Inc. Which is that while we’ve been failing to understand the importance of these new coalitions, the autocratic world has understood it. And you now have a de facto coalition or network that’s been created by Russia, by China, by theocratic Iran, by Bolivarian-socialist Venezuela. By countries actually with very different systems—some of them are one-party states, some of them are one-man dictatorships—but who’ve understood that it’s very important for them to work together to undermine the idea of democracy. One of Putin’s great realizations was that it wasn’t enough to undermine the democrats he was fighting at home, and it wasn’t enough to poison the political debate inside Russia with lies and alternative reality. That he had to spread that farther—that really he needed to destroy the appeal of democracy everywhere. And part of the purpose of the invasion of Ukraine was to show that there’s no sense or purpose to lead to having a democratic revolution of the kind that took place in Ukraine. That democracies are doomed to failure, and that they can be defeated by a much more brutal, a much angrier, form of autocratic power.

Kasparov: Yeah, absolutely. So that’s why I will do my best, throughout episodes of this second season to show this connection. You have Ukraine; you have the collapse of the traditional center-right/center-left coalition. Also the rise of AI and how AI has been playing a role in this fake-news industry and with new attempts of the tech bros to take control of the political system and electoral process. So it’s looking at the big picture and hearing the voices from the Baltics to the United States. So: people that are experts, who have great experience in their field, to go to the roots of this global Trump phenomena. And find, you know, just throughout this conversation, find the best way for us to get together and win the battle.

[Music]

Kasparov: And that means voices from all over the political spectrum, people who disagree about many things but have in common the desire to protect democracy. Because, again: It is an existential threat. Which requires just this total mobilization of our forces if we want to preserve what was given to us 250 years ago.

Applebaum: So it sounds to me like this show is in very capable hands, which I’m delighted to hear. Tell me, what’s the first conversation?

Kasparov: It seems that the best one to begin with, to set the table for us about an American electorate gone amok with both apathy and partisanship. And we’ll talk with an excellent pollster and someone I know for many years: Frank Luntz.

Frank Luntz: All the institutions that keep America moving forward are disliked and distrusted.

Kasparov: Okay. This is, it’s very, very important, because you said a few times the word, the key word, in my opinion: trust.

Luntz: Yes. That is—by the way, let’s stop there. That is the key word. It’s the No. 1 priority that Americans have: trust and truth.

Applebaum: Well, thank you, Garry. I’m looking forward to hearing the second season of Autocracy in America.

Kasparov: Anne, I hope you will not be disappointed. Thank you. (Laughs.)

[Music]

Kasparov: This episode of Autocracy in America was produced by Arlene Arevalo and Natalie Brennan. Our editor is Dave Shaw. Original music and mix by Rob Smierciak. Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado. Special thanks to Polina Kasparova and Mig Greengard. Claudine Ebaid is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I’m Garry Kasparov. See you back here next week.

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