Fareed Zakaria

So the really interesting question, John, that I would put to you is, you know, if you assume all the things we're saying are true, the part that's most difficult to understand for me is why are Americans, or at least

40% to 50% of Americans okay with this.

You have a situation where it's absolutely clear that one party, that the president right now, is accumulating powers on a scale that no president has done in decades, maybe ever.

You have a situation where laws are being violated, norms are being violated.

You have a situation where he's intimidating the court, intimidating the Federal Reserve.

And yet, you know, he doesn't lose much support from his base.

And I think he's decided he's governing for his base.

And so what leaves me thinking is, is about half the country really okay with illiberal democracy, with the idea that, you know, it's okay to abuse individual rights, minority rights, separation of powers, all that?

And what does that mean for the future of democracy if half the country doesn't really believe in liberal democracy?

And to be fair, the left has also done this sometimes.

Of course, but not nearly to the extent and never to this.

Yeah, there's no both sides-ism, but it always worried me when Biden would do these student loan waivers using executive power.

That stuff, just because you want the outcome,

You cannot want the outcome so badly that you violate the processes of liberal democracy.

That's the whole point of liberalism and liberal democracy, which is the process is very important.

You don't get to just make your policy happen any which way.

And what Trump is showing you is the real cost of that.

You know, what your point makes me think about is the degree to which maybe during the Cold War, American politics was constrained, was disciplined by the reality of the ideological contest between the Soviet Union, the need for America to be this beacon of freedom and democracy.

There was a sense in which...

Hubert Humphrey once said this, that he thought the reason for the civil rights movement was there was a foreign policy reason.