Masha Gessen

It was spectacular.

It was a message.

It was showing what they could do.

It was a deed that everybody could see and would talk about.

Liberation Day.

You can keep going on and on and on like this.

The Trump administration is an administration of spectacle.

And I've heard it sometimes described as reality TV administration, but I don't think that's quite right.

Because what reality TV wants is ratings.

But these spectacles, this propaganda...

is meant to carry messages.

It is meant to make clear how the world now works.

My guest today is Masha Gessen, who grew up in the Soviet Union, who's my colleague here at Times Opinion, has written remarkable books like The Future is History about living under Vladimir Putin, and who's been a clear and relentless and very perceptive voice

on what it means and what it is like to live in a country that is turning into a different kind of regime.

And I wanted to talk to them about what propaganda is being spread through these deeds, what rupture with the way things were done, what revolutionary moment

The Trump administration is trying to instantiate through all these moments of spectacle that we are living through one after another after another.

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

Basha Gessen, welcome to the show.

Great to be here.

So on one level, the target of the recent operation in Venezuela was obviously President Nicolas Maduro.