Ezra Klein

So I wanted to do an episode looking at China, Iran, but also just trying to assess Donald Trump as a geopolitical force and as a force that is remaking what America means and what its role is in the world.

Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group and GZERO Media.

He's also the author of, among other books, Every Nation for Itself, What Happens When No One Leads the World.

As always, my email is reclineshow at NYTimes.com.

Ian Bremmer, welcome to the show.

Ezra, good to join you.

So I was going to do like a direct into the news question on Iran, but I was reading your global risks report from the beginning of the year.

And it made me want to ask a bigger question first, which is.

What to you is the meaning of Donald Trump?

What does he historically and geopolitically represent?

But then he becomes cause, right?

One of the ways you have described Trump, which I've not really heard many people say, is as the generator of a political revolution.

a kind of upending of the American state and the way it works and the expectations one should have of it on the level of FDR.

So talk me through that comparison.

Why FDR and what then is Trump's political revolution?

So one of the reasons I thought the FDR framing was interesting is that what I think gets right is that FDR is

exerted tremendous power, sometimes in ways that followed American norms, sometimes in ways, as you know, that didn't, to build professionalized structures.

This is what is always very interesting about FDR.

He's somebody who could have become a dictator.

And what he creates is a highly professionalized administrative state.