Ann Applebaum

The use of these forces, the way they're being trained, the way they're masked, the way they drive in unmarked cars, this is not a normal police force, and it's functioning much more like the way a paramilitary force functions in a dictatorship.

And I think Americans should begin to look at it like that.

We are going to be here.

We have to run away immediately.

We are going to the top of the street.

No, and I think the speed with which they lied about the events in Minneapolis, particularly coming just a day after they changed government websites to lie about what happened on January 6th, was genuinely chilling.

And once again, it's proof that the purpose of these actions isn't...

what they say it is.

It's not about fixing our border.

It's not about maintaining the law.

It's about exerting a form of power.

And then the question is how they might use this down the line.

Will they use it to intimidate people during midterm elections, for example?

They hear him echoing their arguments.

So they say we get to decide what the law is.

I mean, the definition of what an autocracy is, is that there is no rule of law.

So there is rule by law.

And so the law is what people in charge say it is at any given moment.

And the law can change depending on what the people in charge want it to say.

And that characterizes the political system in Russia.