Susan Glasser

Right.

And it is actually a hallmark of almost every modern authoritarian government that you can think of that the state wants to get the

bigger control over media companies and have in essence, a fusion between a kind of conservative, favorable oligarchy and a government that is open for business and for being purchased.

And so I think it's media capture

that we're seeing, the effort to transform the media ownership landscape and also the realization on Trump's part.

You know, he's a sort of mapper of power, right, as so many people who get to that position are.

And he has noticed in his first year back in office, right, that who are the weak links?

It turns out not to be.

It's definitely not the individual reporters who are doing all this great investigative reporting about Trump and his administration.

It's the owners.

It's the billionaires.

It's the people at the top.

And he controls them.

He controls what people think about him.

I think that's right.

I mean...

You know, the Democrats are not synonymous with civil society.

And I think that's part of the problem we've been having all along here is that, you know, our politics are so zero sum and our even our way of thinking about it is all sort of like, OK.

You're either all in on one team or the other, that we only have two teams in America.

And I think that's part of why we have this sort of crisis.