Susan Glasser
Appearances
Apple News Today
She needed care. A Texas abortion ban cost her her life.
When you say that the other team, it's not that you disagree about what kind of health care system anymore to have in our country. We're now telling our own voters they are an existential threat to the nation. They will destroy America.
Apple News Today
She needed care. A Texas abortion ban cost her her life.
I think it's going to be very impossible when now we've had multiple elections in a row in which the other party is being described as an existential level event for the United States.
Apple News Today
She needed care. A Texas abortion ban cost her her life.
We're now looking at, I think, a next wave of political realignment in this country of which, you know, Trump has profited from, capitalized from, and arguably accelerated. And so we don't quite know exactly where that realignment will go, but it will continue.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Donald Trump, do you believe right now that Donald Trump would go to war to protect Estonia?
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Well, the Baltics are covered by NATO. They are members of NATO. We are legally obliged to defend NATO. And by the way, I know we're going to talk about Greenland later. OK, just think about this. Wrap your mind around this insane situation that is an only in the Trump era situation. Denmark, of course, you know, is the power over Greenland right now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
It is a NATO member, an ally of the United States in good standing. If we militarily took over Greenland, we'd also be obliged to defend Germany. Greenland, from our own takeover. You don't go to war with your allies, people. And again, it's really a remarkable thing. Trump, in that sense, has already made NATO's Article 5, the whole foundation of the treaty, a dead letter.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Because you laughed out loud when I asked, would we defend Estonia? But that, in fact, is legally what we're obliged to do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
The United States is legally obliged to do so. That's,
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Well, to be clear, by the way, we already have a U.S. military presence in- But I meant like combat troops. Exactly. And it's a reminder that Putin has won in every possible respect already by the fact of Donald Trump's reelection. So now we're just- learning the details. And it's not an accident that the Russian state media, Russian newspapers calling this Putin's success already.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Getting Trump back to the table with Russia in and of itself is a victory for Putin after being isolated and marginalized. Trump has already spoken out loud and said that he would like to welcome Russia back into the G7 and turn it back into the G8. Something that the other leading countries rejected out loud, laughed out loud when he proposed this in his first term in office.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Now he's proposing this even after Putin has launched this war. Again, the guy has been consistent in his words. preference for Putin and his preference for America's adversary and his attacks on America's allies. We're the chumps who somehow haven't really fully understood that Trump actually means to sell out the United States to Russia.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, I mean, I think that was the original hope, frankly, of Putin. And he has a long history of manipulating Ukrainian elections and dominating the country through, you know, sort of political methods, disinformation methods. Remember that the invasion itself, for us Americans, we tend to date it back three years to February of 2022.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
But for Ukrainians, they date the beginning of this war to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and the launching of the actual shooting war in the country's east. That followed on the revolution in the Maidan that began in December of
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Russia has dominated Ukraine before in this way that you're suggesting it might want to do again. Obviously, that's a lot less costly of Russian lives. If through manipulation and, you know, dirty dealings, you can dominate a country in that kind of more soft power way, then absolutely.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
I think Russia's always seen that as a possible outcome, that they wanted to gobble up as much territory as they could militarily, but then seek to continue to dominate essentially a weakened Ukraine region. politically, as part of the aftermath. So yes, absolutely, they would seek to put a proxy leader in and replace Zelensky in any way that they could.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
You know, I was struck by that comment too, Tim. You know, you can't sideline somebody that you haven't even let them to show up to the game. Yeah. You can't sideline somebody if they're not even allowed in the stadium. You know, look, this is it's really remarkable at this point.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Zelensky's hope is that he can, you know, rally Europe to his side, that he can help, you know, work with them to come up with a united front and essentially to negotiate among the allies. You know, it's also interesting and notable that the Russians came out of these preliminary talks saying, well, we're not sure when Putin and Trump are going to meet.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Once again, it seems that Trump is the one who is always the eager suitor with Vladimir Putin, always begging to meet with him. You know, and it's notable that Putin isn't rushing Putin. This seems to be on Trump's timeline and that he, as always, is the eager suitor with Vladimir Putin. I think that's very notable.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think you're really right to underscore that this isn't about cost cutting. And, you know, if you wanted to do what Elon Musk stated purpose was of reviewing the government and looking for areas for efficiency and savings, The last agency that you would focus on is USAID, considering what a minuscule part of the American federal budget it was. We're talking under 1%.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
So you could eliminate every single program and it would make literally zero impact on the overall US government spending. So it's not about spending. Let's stipulate that. Even ideologically, it seems very much at odds with what many Republicans, including the feckless Marco Rubio, were advocating for.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
They always wanted to spend more money on this kind of programs that were smartly extending American power in the world at a time when so much of our presence is militarized. You know, it's the leaders in the Pentagon who will tell you for decades that this was a much more effective method of promoting American power. And many of these programs, of course, were canceled so abruptly.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
It's Elon Musk literally sort of taking the knife to many of the poorest people in the world, themselves victims of, you know, previous efforts to protect American power, like you mentioned, the American people. The Agent Orange. And, you know, I just I think it tells you very much about Trump's approach to the world, which is my way and everybody else be damned.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And I think it's it's notable that many of the victims of this are the world's poorest and most vulnerable. I think that's similar in the approach to how they're carrying out the immigration thing. There was a piece today, which I definitely appreciate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
recommend to your listeners in The Times, seeking to, you know, talk to some of the victims of sort of the mass dragnet of deportations that are happening, apparently without regard to who's caught up in it. And they're now housing some of these people in hotels in Panama. They're shipping them to Panama, including...
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
this image that I'm going to have a hard time getting out of my mind, Tim, of a woman desperately trying to open the window and escape from this locked room in Panama where she had been taken. She sees reporters down below on the street. So she writes on a sign, Afghan, holds it up, and then pantomimes what appears to be an airplane and then her being killed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
The point being that if she was sent back to Afghanistan, she would be killed. Remember, we fought in Afghanistan for two decades. We broke our promises to these people. When they were evacuated, we said those who had helped the United States could come to our country to escape the Taliban. We're the ones who've broken our promises.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And I just, that image of that woman is really going to stick with me.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Well, that's right. There's no point. It's capricious. And I'll tell you, I mean, again, that is a horror story that really resonates for me. When I was a correspondent in Moscow more than two decades ago, you mentioned it already, Tim, the Washington Post paid for medical evacuation insurance for us and By the way, I needed to use that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And in January of 2004, I was evacuated from Russia to London because I was hemorrhaging with what turned out to be a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And, you know, I mean, look, we're at war on... on women now in this country, along with all the many other shocking things that are occurring. And I can tell you, if it was men who face the possibility of bleeding out and dying from ectopic pregnancies, then we wouldn't be talking about it like it was some optional abortion procedure, which it's not.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
That's the world that we're living in right now. So I appreciate you bringing it up. Even though it's one example, I think it speaks to a larger... phenomenon that's happening in our society due to the toxic politics that we have.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, I mean, I really, again, that is a piece that I highly recommend. Larry Diamond is one of the foremost scholars of democracy around the world, scholar at Stanford University. And in this piece, he makes a distinction that I think is really important because Trump has operated on such a broad front. You know, you can conflate different things, but not all aspects of this crisis are equal.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And, you know, while there are, let's put aside for a second, the many extreme far right policies that he and his team are seeking to implement. many of which might be implemented by another Republican president. So, you know, even if you or I disagree with any aspect of it, you know, there are the policy disputes that are extreme but fall within the spectrum of American political discourse.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
But then there's the frontal attack on the structures of American democracy. And, you know, his point, which again, I feel like it should be said again and again and again, what's Dangerous is not that Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't like foreign aid to take the conversation we were just having about USAID. That's a policy fight in this country.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
The thing that makes it radical and scary is the unilateral assertion of authority. Congress has appropriated the money, has authorized the creation of this foreign aid agency, has appropriated the billions of dollars to carry out this strategy. If they don't like it, then they have to play by the rules of our system
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
and negotiate with Congress and have a political fight that yields a different result.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Just do it. Because they don't have the votes to do what they're doing by executive fiat. And the great fear right now that Larry points out and others do as well is that we're hurtling toward a situation where with so many of these actions being challenged in court, that Trump might become really the first president of the post-American Civil War era, literally.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
You know, there's this line in that piece that says, no one has found any examples since 1865 of a president refusing to carry out a judicial decree. And That's the fear right now that is animating many of the legal experts and that is animating many of those who study democracy, because that could be the way in which he breaks the back of this thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
I agree that that's consistent with Trump's approach always, which is the blizzard of legal approaches. And then they'll just make an argument, even if it's completely spurious, because frankly, that's what January 6 was. It was insane. It was, you know, there was no lawyer who thought that you could
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
turn January 6th from a ceremonial ministerial, essentially rubber stamping of the electoral certificates the states had already approved, that you could turn that into an event, you know, with consequences. And yet they find one lawyer to make a kind of crazy argument. That was John Eastman.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
So that's the approach that I have thought they would take to undermining the sanctity of some of these judicial rulings. They'll just say, yeah, exactly. Well, when the judge said we weren't allowed to spend the money, he didn't mean this money, blah, blah, blah. And then it'll spawn its own series of lawsuits. And again, we only have one four-year term.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Look at how successfully Trump tied up all of the lawsuits and criminal cases against him, even when he was out of office. So I would see it as more of a sort of a rolling ball of legal uncertainty that has the effect of undermining law. any of the checks and balances and accountability that the court rulings are supposed to impose upon a rogue executive.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
So I think that scenario that you float is one that I've been bracing for as well.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
We're in the laugh or cry stage of the podcast.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Oh, man, you know how to get right at a mom's heart here, right? By the way, the best title of all, I must say, is parent for sure.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Laugh or cry. I mean, you know, it would be laughable if it weren't so serious to have vested so much power in
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
people who could say absurd things like this uh you know it's hannity is state media and you know this this press secretary that's a frankly an orwellian misnomer for someone whose job seems to be to undermine and dismantle the free press and you know until she brings the associated press back into the press uh pool i don't want to talk about caroline levitt i want to talk about how she's dismantling freedom of speech and the first amendment in this country period
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
I think they should go to court, number one, and I think they should all sign on to the lawsuit. And I imagine they will go to court, but I also imagine that they won't all sign on to the lawsuit. And, you know, I get it. I get it because it seems pretty clear that the goal is to have an actual trial.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
what I'm calling a Kremlin press pool, as opposed to a real press pool by the end of the year, if not much, much sooner in the Trump White House. I think that, you know, is a part of their agenda that I definitely anticipate, offering Americans the facsimile and the appearance of Trump being surrounded by reporters when in fact they're not
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
you know, truly independent reporters, but handpicked for their loyalty to the regime. Certainly it would be very consistent with the playbook of authoritarianism that he's following in every other respect. So to me, this looks like an early testing, you know, probing fight. And by the way,
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
when somebody who's seeking to undermine democracy and our constitutional principles goes after such a straightforward one, where is the uproar? You know, I can't say tactically speaking what's the right course, but I can tell you that for me personally, This is a line that is crossed that is serious.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And I would say to all your listeners, it's no joke when the president of the United States is trying to put his emperor hat on and tell the Associated Press, the backbone of independent, neutral news in this country that goes out to all of the papers in all of middle America, when he attacks the backbone of our free press and says,
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
I am so all powerful that if you don't adopt my language and call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, then I will ban you. That is literally what our first amendment was designed for. And yes, if you allow it to pass without complaining, then you are part of the problem. And I hope that the bulwark will stand up for the Associated Press.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And I hope that all of the people listening will too, because yes, it matters. Absolutely.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Ah, Tim, you know, you do do flattery well.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, no, that's right, Tim. And look, you know, the goal here is to overwhelm us with outrages such that we're kind of soporific and unable to respond effectively to any one of them. But, you know, I hated the post election, you know, kind of democratic chest beating and media chest beating over. Whoa, is us like, you know, we can't have a resistance this time because it wasn't effective. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
I will tell you, I saw this happen in Russia. I've seen it happen in other countries that have lost their democracies as fragile and imperfect as they were. You have to object when lines are crossed because you have at a minimum the ability to slow it down, to obstruct, to gain allies. And Donald Trump and Elon Musk, they're not going to stop because you give them just this one little thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
They're going to keep going and take something else. You are playing a game against the clock here. And absolutely, it's not our job to predict the future or what's effective or what's not. We're not partisans. The Democratic Party, they screwed things up. They're going to have to have their own reckoning. But we're civil society. That's what it means.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And we have to be able to call it out in a clear, grounded, And, you know, unequivocal way.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Well, you know, I mean, way to lead off with a mom.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
You know, Tim, this one is I'm glad you brought it up, because when Peter and I were reporting the divider after Trump left office the first term, we weren't really focused on, well, we should do some reporting about the whole Greenland incident. Like, you know, like many people, it was treated as a laugh line when he brought it up first in August of 2020.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And it became public and it was really kind of treated like a laugh line, you know, Trump and his grandiose ways. And obviously that's not going to happen. Ha ha ha. He's really kind of crazy. That was the summer of 2019.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Well, then we started doing the reporting after Trump left office and a number of his former White House officials, including a very senior economic official, actually not national security official, mentioned to us. hey, you know, he was really serious about that Greenland thing. And actually, it wasn't a laugh line. And he had brought it up a lot.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And I had even had a decision memo that was circulating in the White House. And we were really intrigued by that. So then when we were doing the reporting for the book, we started asking, you know, everyone we could think of, hey, wait, you know, is it true? Like that he was really interested in this Greenland thing. And we eventually...
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
pulled on the thread and discovered that in fact, it never became public. But Trump was obsessed for years in his first term with purchasing Greenland. Privately, he was bringing it up at cabinet meetings. We talked to one of his former cabinet secretaries who said they literally were like, oh my God, this is crazy. What is he talking about? And this was years before it became public.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Then when John Bolton, his third national security advisor, comes in in March of 2018, so again, really a long time before we ever heard about it, at one of his first private meetings with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Trump tells him, hey, there's this really interesting idea that's come up, you know, from a friend of mine that we should purchase Greenland.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And, you know, you'll be hearing from him and you need to get on this. And sure enough, The phone rings and it's this cosmetics gazillionaire, Ron Lauder, who's been a friend of Trump's for decades. In fact, they went to the University of Pennsylvania together. I kid you not.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And he calls up the national security advisor and he says, yeah, I would like to volunteer myself as a secret private envoy. to Denmark and negotiate the purchase of Greenland. Well, Bolton demurs on having Ron Lauder as our secret envoy to Denmark, but he has to sort of placate Trump and he orders some of his national security aides to begin working up various options for Greenland.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And by the way, Bolton is one of a number of national security types who believes that Greenland is a very important strategic place. You know, not so much because of the minerals, which initially attracted Donald Trump, but because of its strategic location, the competition with Russia and China over the North and the like. And so he recognized that publicly talking about purchasing Greenland
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
would be very antithetical to the goal of achieving more cooperation with Greenland, because it would mean exactly what we've seen, which is that Denmark gets its back up, which is that everybody is polarized and divided by Donald Trump. At any rate, so that's the backstory. And so I wasn't surprised at all when
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Greenland came right back up after Trump won reelection, even though I think for most people, they were like, what the hell is this all about? Great example. Like there's nothing new with Donald Trump. He thinks what he thinks.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, I'm not even clear on what terms those two are actually on these days. You know, he was supporting Trump, then he was falling out like a lot of these gazillionaires, and then... Many of them, of course, went back to sucking up to Trump. But I haven't heard much about him lately. And, you know, Trump obviously has his own very strong views on the makeup front.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Tim, thank you. I'm hoping that you don't move into 24-hour-a-day podcasting mode. I might have to. It's your own thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, I mean, look, it's two decades and more since Putin came to power in Russia. And of course, the biggest transformation is not only the return to dictatorship inside Russia, but the idea that the United States would come full circle and elect a president like Donald Trump, who rather than view Putin as an adversary, is now seeking to welcoming him back into his
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
You know, sort of the family of nations after the largest unprovoked land war in Europe since the end of World War II. We are talking, you know, a mass casualty event with extraordinary implications for American security as well as European security issues.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
not to mention the message that Putin's invasion has sent to Xi Jinping and to others who would seek to revise by force the international boundaries. I mean, it's just the act of lawlessness, murder, mayhem that is being sort of condoned by Donald Trump is pretty extraordinary. And I think that, you know, it's another of those clarifying moments in which Donald Trump specializes, right, Tim?
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
He loves to almost make a mockery of his apologists and enablers. And, you know, frankly, for months, I was hearing even before the election from the sort of more conventional Republican types here in Washington, every kind of BS and gaslighting and, you know, oh, don't worry, Donald Trump is going to piece through strength. He's not going to sell out Ukraine.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
He's going to, you know, he's actually going to give more weapons to Ukraine. He's actually going to shore up Ukraine. He's going to show Putin How tough we are. You know. OK, fine. Donald Trump laughing at those people. But I think you see why that kind of gaslighting is successful.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Europeans were shocked and terrified to realize that all their sort of fantasy hopes of maybe it won't be so bad after Trump. gets reelected, you know, dashed almost in an instant in the last few weeks. So we don't know yet what's going to happen in these talks specifically. But I think we understand now in a big picture sense where Trump is headed with this.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Correct. And I actually think it does matter. I mean, you know, but to your point, I remember a debate I had over dinner at a very senior European ambassador's home with a Republican who just this morning I saw, you know, tweeting as the first critical tweet I've ever seen this Republican who's very pro-Trump make about Trump.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And it was specifically in regards to Putin, you know, something like, gee, you know, you wouldn't want to invite Hannibal Lecter to dinner. And, you know, this is a guy who was angry. literally in a knock down, drag out argument with me to the point that it was clearly rude at this ambassador's home going on and on about, you know, we were just fantasizing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
We were just absolutely, you know, victims of Trump derangement syndrome. And, you know, Donald Trump was actually going to be great for Ukraine and great for European security. And, you know, there was no issue, nothing to worry about for NATO. And, you know, the people at the dinner were like, what is this man doing? talking about.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
But I think that lying to people over and over again, whether you really believe the lies or not, that's something I feel like you have to answer for your own character. But, you know, the net effect is that, you know, the lies have consequences. And when you see the comments and you see the visible shock and dismay that were written all over the faces of Europe's
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
leaders over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference as they understood that they had both been lied to and also clearly lied to themselves about what was happening. And, you know, that has consequences. It certainly means, at a minimum, Tim, that they were not prepared adequately for a scenario that they should have been very, very prepared for.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Well, what's remarkable is that, you know, you saw some comments suggesting that even from the first Trump term on, Europeans understood that the United States was not necessarily an unwavering partner that they could always count on, that, you know, we were having these sort of four year lockdowns.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
wild oscillations in our policy that would affect them at a minimum because of our inconstancy and that we might make a pledge now that we wouldn't be able to redeem for six years on. But to take it from an unreliable ally to some of the comments saying the U.S. is now the adversary, that the U.S. is now undermining in an active sense European security, that's something new.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
You saw, however, the continued... frankly, fecklessness of the response on the part of the Europeans. They have, in fact, relied upon American security guarantees, on American military leadership, on, until recently, American diplomatic leadership. NATO has been established by the US and led by the US since its inception in the aftermath of World War II.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
And it's hard to see what a NATO without the US in the lead, or possibly what a NATO without the US at all would actually mean. And they called an emergency summit President Macron did in France on Monday in the aftermath of Trump's phone call with Putin last week and the comments by J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
I can't say that that summit came out with a resounding sense of how Europe is going to proceed going forward. And remember, There are multiple interlocking issues here. It's not just, well, gee, is Trump going to pull the plug on U.S. assistance for Ukraine? Is Trump going to make a bad deal or a separate peace with Putin on Ukraine?
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
But also he may actively and almost certainly will actively undermine NATO cooperation. He might withdraw from it outright. As you know, he's pledged to do that before. Even if he doesn't, what if he pulls out U.S. troops from their forward positions, defending the line essentially between NATO and Russia? You know, that's a very real possibility.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Yeah, well, let's talk about that, you know, $500 billion extortion demand on Ukraine that the United States essentially should be the owner of half of Ukraine's rare earth minerals. First of all, let's put on the table that the United States has given nothing like $500 billion extortion. So the idea that it's payback is ridiculous. That's actually a straight out extortion blackmail demand.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
The U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars in military assistance and security aid to Ukraine since the full scale invasion, a lot of which has gone to U.S. military suppliers who are then essentially the customers and sending supplies. weapons to Ukraine.
The Bulwark Podcast
Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Europe, by the way, despite Donald Trump's lies about it, is now in the position of having collectively provided more money to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion three years ago this month. So let's
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Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Let's be clear, like under $100 billion in US military assistance, you can't exactly then demand half of the country's patrimony and rare earth minerals to the tune of $500 billion and say, oh, that's payback. It's very much in keeping with Trump's view of of the United States, which he expressed even in his first term in office, right? There's nothing new with Donald Trump here.
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Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
He often expressed this idea of the U.S. as essentially a mercenary force, by the way, that offended many of his more conventional Republican advisors in his first term more than that. In fact, actually, it was his references over and over again to U.S. soldiers as basically mercenaries that so offended Rex Tillerson, his ill-fated first secretary of state, that it prompted
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Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
Rex Tillerson fucking moron outburst at the Pentagon in the summer of 2017. So in my role as a Trump historian here, I need to point that out because it's a kind of a shocking view of American power as that we're essentially the mob heavies here and give us money with a gun pointed at your back, or we won't do anything for you. It's a radically different view of American security.
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Susan Glasser: Giving Away the Store to Putin
So there's that we can talk about. But also to your point, I just think the undermining of NATO has already occurred, even short of formally pulling out. You know, our whole premise of NATO is essentially collective mutual defense, right? All for one, one for all. We're attacked on 9-11. That's the only time NATO has ever invoked this principle of collective defense.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
The For-Profit Presidency
Oh, no. I mean, this is the sort of the final death rattle of the post-Nixon era, post-Watergate reforms that were designed to protect the country in many ways and protect our political system from the kind of abuses that Richard Nixon envisioned. Because it wasn't just, by the way, his specific cover-up of Watergate.
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There were a whole host of abuses of power that Richard Nixon- That's why Agnew went down, right?
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Well, that's right. The vice president. That was actually for corruption of a very old-fashioned, you know, Menendez-like crime. He was literally getting bags of cash predating his time in the federal government as vice president.
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That's right. Richard Nixon was seeking to weaponize the IRS against his political opponents. I mean, there was a whole array of abuses of power that will be very familiar to anybody who spent any time reading Eric's terrific coverage in the New York Times about the Trump family and its essential use of the inner – basically the –
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unclear barriers between their personal financial interests, their personal political interests, and use of official government agencies and actions to benefit themselves in a whole host of ways, both personally, financially, and politically. That's what Donald Trump's 2019 impeachment was over, was essentially seeking to take hundreds of millions of dollars in
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military and security assistance that the United States Congress had authorized Ukraine and to say, I'm not going to give that to you unless you undertake this personal political errand for me of investigating my political opponents. So this is Donald Trump's playbook, his MO, and the scale and scope of it is, frankly, Richard Nixon's fever dream.
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I mean, the level of not only the dollar signs, but across such a wide array of fronts. And The fact that Trump sort of does it almost in front of us, flaunting us, has served in a bizarre way to insulate him. But you're right, John, I think to underscore that Trump is the beneficiary of this erosion over time phenomenon. of these laws and institutions.
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And by the way, one of the most important of the post-Watergate reforms was a level of campaign finance limits, disclosure. There was even a system of public financing that had previously collapsed for our presidential general election nominees. And the Supreme Court essentially dealt the final blow to those post-Watergate campaign finance rules in its Citizens United thing.
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And actually, last year when I went back and did a big piece for The New Yorker on the kind of Republican fundraising in this post-Citizens United era and looking at basically the final co-opting of the Republican establishment on behalf of Donald Trump in the 2024 campaign,
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The amount of money that was flowing into Donald Trump's coffers in that campaign, that should have been this incredible warning sign for democracy. And of course, we all know now that Elon Musk managed to spend at a minimum around $300 million essentially to promote Trump and other Republican candidates and causes last year. It's just an extraordinary amount. And I think it's the classic thing.
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The red lines were crossed before people even understood that they were red lines. And now we're living in a world where what really frightens me is, as Eric said, that most of the watchdogs are gone. Most of the accountability that had been built in our system is gone. And even when journalists like Eric at The Times are doing this great reporting,
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The public is, even those people who don't like Trump, I fear is supine, is overwhelmed, is unable to meaningfully process how serious a blow this is to our democracy. And actually, what I'm worried about, I don't know if both of you think this as well, what I'm worried about right now is that we're actually seeing corruption being institutionalized
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into our executive branch and Congress refusing to operate as any kind of a check and balance in ways that will actually have long-term ramifications even beyond the personal enrichment of Trump and his family.
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You know, I mean, I take the point, but I think that we're capable of holding multiple different levels of thoughts in our head. And, you know, the difference between the petty crook who keeps cash stashed in his freezer and the most powerful man in the world accepting billions of dollars in personal enrichment while at the same time negotiating major international problems.
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arrangements is so fundamentally different in scale, scope, and character that it is, of course, a much greater thing.
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Yes, it is. By the way, it's interesting. I think insider trading among members of Congress is a good example of something that they may finally be doing something about right now, which is something. But it's like handing out traffic tickets when the head of the city is a murderer. I mean, the scale of the actions that you're talking about are... so vastly different.
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And I think Eric is making a point here that, you know, imagine essentially if Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller was the president of the United States setting the rules by which he could have that railroad monopoly, you know, in the end of the 19th century and, you know, disabling his competitors and, you know, rigging the system in every possible way and performing both functions all at once.
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On the crypto thing, by the way, it's not just Donald Trump and his sons who are now in this business that the government is essentially going to determine the future of at the same time they're earning money from it. Their partners in this business are the sons of Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's everything envoy, who is... No, that's literally true.
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And who is traveling the world going from Gaza and Hamas to meeting with Putin all by himself without a translator to Iran. Witkoff and his two sons are the business partners of Donald Trump and his two sons. Howard Lutnick is a huge proponent and investor in the crypto industry.
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Last summer, I think one of the signal moments, very overlooked, although covered in The Times and The Journal and elsewhere, was when Donald Trump took time out of the campaign trail in 2024 and went to Nashville, Tennessee for the annual National Crypto Conference. He was cheered like a hero by the crypto industry and he made promises that he is now fulfilling
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to this industry to essentially help treat it like a currency and to give it the status that will enable them to become even more wealthy. And he followed that up in September, again, in the middle of this campaign by taking time out to announce that they were going to get into the crypto business with the Witkoffs and his sons and create this company called World Liberty Financial.
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There's a classic quote from Donald Trump because he used to call crypto a quote scam. And then when he made this announcement in September of 2024, he said, well, you know, I don't really know what it is, but everybody's got to get into it. So we got to get in it.
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You know, John, right now, the United States of America is the single largest source of global instability.
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Yeah. I mean, there's no question about that. When a superpower goes rogue, you have an enormous crisis for the world.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
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And the one element that we should add to Eric's already very daunting and distressing list of ways in which the co-mingling of Trump's personal business and America's foreign policy interests create a crisis is, of course, Donald Trump's single-handed upending of the world economy.
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by imposing quote-unquote reciprocal tariffs that aren't reciprocal on essentially all of the world's major economies. And in particular, targeting America's allies as much, if not more so, than most of her adversaries.
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And the reason this matters is because this is the ultimate vehicle for conflicts of interest, for ways in which the President of the United States personally is the decider on what happens to the fate of countries and companies. And that opens up corruption.
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Every lobbyist in the world is busy investing and getting other companies to invest in lobbyists who have direct connections to the Trump family here in Washington right now. The reason for that is that Donald Trump has fundamentally shifted the balance of power in our society to essentially instead of a rule of law society, to essentially a personalist regime. So he has become- Transaction.
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He's become the kind of instability that you're talking about.
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That was America's theory of the case in what we saw in the 1990s as kind of the democratizing world. It's like democracies don't go to war against each other, that this notion, call it the quaint Washington consensus of the late Clinton era, which was the notion that integrating
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uh, countries who had previously been outcast into the world economic and political order, drawing China and Russia into the rule of law to the web of institutions would lead to democratization, to further stability and to further peace in the world. It didn't work out that way. And so now we have a situation where, you know, a quarter century later,
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It's the United States that has gone rogue on the very institutions in the world that have actually secured and maintained our power. So, for example, Donald Trump is going after... He doesn't like the idea that the U.S. dollar is so strong. He wants to weaken the U.S. dollar. Right. He's risking... undermining the US dollar as the global reserve currency. And why does that matter?
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Because that's one of the main reasons that we're all so rich and we enjoy this incredible lifestyle here in the world. When countries are making now a determination that Donald Trump is not just some crazy four-year aberration in the world, that he might actually be a long-term new direction for for the United States and therefore the world.
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They're making decisions in a way that I think they were avoiding making in Trump's first term that really have the kind of consequences. But yeah, I don't think it's overstating it. Maybe you guys do. But in my view, we're the instability.
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That is such an important point. Donald Trump sketches this American hellscape vision, which is fascinating that, you know, for the guy who also- A shining city on fire on a hill. Yeah, exactly. You know, the dumpster fire vision of America is what he's been selling to his base for essentially this whole almost decade that he's been in politics.
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And it's completely at odds with the notion if America was getting ripped off and was at a disadvantage because we wouldn't pay bribes and everybody else would, then how come we were the world's largest, most successful economy? How come everybody from around the world wanted to come here? How come our regulatory norms used to be the leading norms for people around the world.
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Obviously, since the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was passed, I believe in the late 70s or early 80s, it was kind of one of the last gasps of that post-Watergate bout of reforms. The United States economy has only grown and grown and become more dominant and successful. And so it's really about making war on the idea of America as being a kind of a value-based global superpower.
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And, you know, in the past, right, you know, you look at other superpowers, other empires, they were ethnic based or they were nationalist at core. And the United States was always about the notion of an idea. Now, we didn't always live up to it.
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Yeah, and by the way, that continues to fuel a lot of Donald Trump, right? You can definitely continue to see him as a reaction against the excesses of his predecessor's foreign policy and activism in the world. In fact, just in his Mideast tour this week, you hear him complaining about neocons and military adventures, and I'm not going to lecture you.
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And he's responding as much to George W. Bush's Republican-led invasion of Iraq as he is to any acts by Democratic predecessors. So it's a reaction. It's a reactionary movement that Trump has led of a minority of Americans, by the way. He won the popular vote. He came just short of a majority in the 2024 election. But it's really the core of MAGA is a minority of Americans that have
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passionately subscribed to Donald Trump's essentially rejectionist view. Somebody said to me, you know, Donald Trump wants to repeal the 20th century. Well, a lot of it came with all these rules and norms and laws.
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You know, certainly in the Middle East, he is in his preferred aesthetic. There is enough gold everywhere to satisfy him. But I think you're right. You know, he essentially does not subscribe to the basic principles in our constitution. And in fact, He was directly asked about this in a television interview a couple of weeks ago and meet the press, Kirsten Welker.
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And she said, aren't you supposed to uphold the Constitution? He paused and he literally said, I don't know.
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I think you're right that, again, this was a key shift from Trump's first term to Trump's second term is understanding, especially in the key positions like attorney general, like White House counsel, you want to have lawyers who are going to give you what you want. And so he's taken the extraordinary step. of appointing multiple of his personal lawyers, by the way. So it's not just Pam Bondi.
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Todd Blanch, who's the Deputy Attorney General, now also acting Librarian of Congress because they fired the Librarian of Congress.
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No, that is not what's happening at the Library of Congress. What are you talking about? It's the personalization of power, which is so fundamentally at odds with and incompatible with a system of constitutional checks and balances. That's what Trump doesn't subscribe to. This goes all the way back to his first term, by the way. He said, you know, I have the power to do anything I want.
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I'm the only one that matters in our system. You know, he's long... I alone can fix it. Exactly. He's long betrayed sort of a complete... not just ignorance for the Constitution, but a sort of rejection of its basic principles. So he goes to the Middle East. He's surrounded by emirs and kings. He's greeted with monarchical reverence. Loves it. This is what he wants to be. This is who he is.
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It's not an accident that since he stepped on the world stage, it's our allies, our democratic allies he's consistently attacked, and it's our adversaries that he's praised. And just a point, it's not about lecturing, by the way. Human rights is not some abstract construct.
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Saudi Arabia, it's not just that they took a bone saw to a critic of theirs, Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post. This is one of the most unfree societies on the planet. This is a place where women don't have basic rights. uh, granted to, uh, others in the West centuries ago. Uh, China, it's not just that Donald Trump wants to treat as an equal with Xi Jinping.
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It's that he's been perfectly fine. At times in his first term, he seemed to even, you know, wave away or to justify China's human rights crackdown on the Uyghurs putting a million people in camps, not a big deal to Donald Trump.
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Yeah. I mean, the fear is that an election is a long time away, first of all. Second of all, Democrats have a much harder road ahead to actually win back control of the Senate. So that seems more unlikely. The House is much more in reach in the midterm elections. But it's not just about the partisan advantage, right? The system is being changed right now in ways
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some of which will be quite hard to undo. So that's first of all. Second of all, I do think that the drama of Republicans was the story of the first term. And Trump won that battle. That was a hostile takeover, as he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, put it in the first term. And they succeeded in that hostile takeover. And
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Now you've essentially got Lisa Murkowski and a fully Trumpified GOP Senate. So, you know, I'm not wasting a lot of energy or breath thinking that Republicans are going to do anything other than the most mealy mouth of statements. In fact, Mike Johnson, you referenced him earlier. He also, I think, came out and said, oh, the plane crashed.
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Never mind, even though that emoluments clause in the Constitution specifically says it would require congressional approval for some kind of massive gift from a foreign government.
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Well, remember that Democrats and Republican presidents have participated in the creeping imperial presidency. You know, right now, Republicans definitely subscribe to much broader, more sweeping vision of executive authority. But, you know, most presidents want to have more authority not left. And the institutional shifts, like not just in foreign policy, but broadly speaking—
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toward the presidency are a long-term trend that have happened under Democrats and Republicans alike. So I think you would see some reorientation where Democrats to regain control of one or all of the branches of government. But I think that it's really hard to see a meaningful way where this is just going to be wiped away, given that one of our two major political parties has become
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completely all right with a series of things that just don't check the box for basic democracy anymore. And that's the part that is a long-term trend, especially because we're in so much more of a politically polarized system. It is basically a fully partisan system now.
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The idea of a nonpartisan civil service Trump is blowing up, the idea that there's institutional imperatives for Congress rather than just partisan imperatives, that's all I think disappearing very quickly.
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Rule of law, you'll miss it when it's gone.
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You thought a conversation about Trump's corruption would end on a glass half full moment?
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I mean, I was kind of focusing on, you said it a few times, I think, about how crazy it is that Trump is just like so comfortable on this trip. And of course he is because he's making lots of money. But I just cannot imagine being in the same room as MBS and doing what he did, which was fall asleep.
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Also, the proving. I mean, I can't imagine trying to parse through all of the companies and all of the shady movements to prove.
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And it's crazy. Like you just had an hour-long conversation. You didn't touch on the media. What about all of the money he's making there? Like it really is endless.
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Look, let's stipulate on the front end here that corruption knows no party and no bounds. We are here in Washington, both Eric and I, and we've been around long enough to see Democrats and Republicans. Of course, Menendez, not the only gold bar. I remember there was a congressman, Bill Jefferson, years ago. They found piles of cash in his freezer.
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So I want to say that on the front end. However, I also want to say that even for we journalists who are generally allergic and should use this word unprecedented very, very sparingly, that this is a fair word in my view to use right now for what's happening. And the reason that I think Eric is being cautious about the word corruption, it's good to be cautious.
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But what I would say is that that's what we used to have a Justice Department for. And the thing that I think is the particular tragedy of the moment is not only that Donald Trump and his family members are literally adding zeros to the amounts involved in any previous known examples.
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Yes. But it's not only the scale and scope of the corruption that take it into a different realm, but the fact that they've systematically gone after weakening the rule of law that would go along with constraining our leaders from accepting this kind of money, from You know, it used to be a big deal to do something that had the appearance of potential impropriety or the appearance of confraction.
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I mean, this is what a lot of Washington, quote unquote, accountability reporting was like when I got here as a kid right out of college in the 1990s, okay? You know, there was a whole Bill Clinton fundraising scandal, no controlling legal authority, and Yeah, forget about that, right? Okay, now we've just exploded the campaign finance laws.
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We have, and I'm sure we'll talk about it, crypto coin for the Trump family that's literally going into the pocket of the president of the United States. So for me, this issue of, I'm glad we started with this question of when is it corruption or not? Because
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If we stick to that legal definition, Eric, unfortunately, in a world where Donald Trump has appointed his former personal lawyer to be the Attorney General of the United States, who literally was a registered foreign lobbyist for the government of Qatar, and has, according to you and your colleagues at the New York Times, personally signed off on a legal guidance allowing Donald Trump to accept a $400 million Boeing jet to be the new Air Force One from Qatar...