Mehdi Hassan

That's the kind of thing you used to hear in, quote unquote, banana republics.

You now hear that in the United States of America on its 250th birthday.

I wonder how you think the Trump presidency will be viewed by history today.

Well, first of all, if democracy doesn't survive, it doesn't really matter what history writes because, you know, to the winner goes the spoilers, including writing the history.

They're already trying to rewrite American history.

We haven't talked about how on this 250th anniversary, they've gone out of their way to censor at museums, to rewrite at national parks, to go after, you know, books in government facilities.

But in terms of going forward, if we are able to get through this dark period, yeah, historians will look back on two terms of Trump as kind of neo-fascism, as authoritarianism of a very American kind.

This is not some foreign import.

This is very much who we are.

This is not who we are.

No, it is.

But I also think historians will look back on the people who enabled Donald Trump.

For me, the real criminals, the real sinners are, you know, the tech bosses, the big universities, big media organizations, which rolled over for Donald Trump in the second term.

In a way, they didn't in the first term.

But in the second term, they decided it's much easier to just go along.

And I think, you know, the Jeff Bezoses and Mark Zuckerbergs will be judged very harshly.

Well, time will tell.

Mehdi, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

That was Mehdi Hassan, Guardian US columnist and the editor of Zateo.