Masha Gessen

And you see him beginning to absorb this as a political threat, talking about the affordability hoax.

How much do those voters now turn on Trump, which is why his poll numbers are bad?

I mean, you have economic sentiment at levels that look like the Great Recession, you know, that look more like moments of economic rupture.

And so when I think about those voters, they often seem to me to be anti-system.

This whole thing isn't working for me, voters.

not voters who are kind of Trump cultists, but are willing to support, you know, a charismatic democratic socialist?

Let me ask you a question that actually does relate then to Russia on that, because you know it so much infinitely better than I ever will.

But certainly the conventional wisdom in America on the politics of Russia under Putin has been that there is a dimension of national revenge and restoration, right?

that the political psyche of Russia was that we were a great power.

We were the world-spanning, globe-spanning Soviet Union, and now we have been humiliated and contained and shrunken.

And the deal at some point Putin offered was, you will not be rich, but Russia will again be powerful.

The American psyche as I read it, and also as I read in the 2024 election specifically, is almost the opposite.

Americans feel America is powerful.

It is powerful.

And what they want is to be richer.

And what they were mad at in many ways, and what Trump very effectively potentiated in the electorate, was why is Joe Biden getting us involved endlessly in Ukraine and in Israel and Gaza?

And why doesn't anything seem to be happening here?

And what Trump said was that

we're going to chill out on America's role in the world.

Stop it with all this endless engagement with, you know, foreign quagmires, and I'm going to make you rich again like me.