we're really very pleased to be

jacob heilbrunn who's here to talk about. his new book, america the rights century the century long romance with foreign dictators. jacob edits, the foreign policy magazine, the national interest and has been a close observer for a number of years of the right. his previous book, a decade a half ago they, knew they were right. trace the rise of the neo cons who came to have so much influence, particularly in the george w bush administration and helped to lead the u.s. into into the war with iraq. jacobs new book explores as the rather puzzle, at least to some of us, admiration shown by american conservatives toward foreign dictators. this has been very much

evidence, of course, and in recent, for instance, in donald trump's embrace of russia's and china's ji and north korea's kim or in the adulation of hungary's orban by such right wing american as the heritage foundation, found or the conservative political action conference. but the phenomenon isn't all new, as recounts. he cites antecedents as far back as world war one, when some intellectuals on the right expressed a hankering for such authority and leaders abroad as kaiser wilhelm wilhelm. the second and in the 1920s and 1930s, this became even more pronounced as hitler and mussolini attracted prominent american admirers like randolph hearst, charles lindbergh and henry ford throughout the cold.

jacob recalls the right evinced a fondness for such autocrats as franco pinochet. while some conservatives wrote up apologies for the third reich and apartheid south africa. so why this recurring approach authoritarian tendency in elite conservative circles over the past century? well, jacob contends, in part because these strongmen are by the right as models of how to fight against liberalism and progressivism domestically. it also reflects, jacob says, the right's deep rooted emotional commitment, hierarchy, order, family, traditional gender roles and some notion of racial, cultural or religious purity.

jacobs is is very well researched. it's very timely. it's written in a very lively style with apt vignettes and, anecdotes. so, you know, anyone interested, better understanding what's happening on the right, which should be all of us should read america last in conversation with jacob. this evening will be susan glasser. a veteran for the for the new. now we have lots of moderator as you know and i'm not supposed to play favorite play favorites and i won't but let me just say we're really pleased to also have susan here tonight. she's she's the best as you know, if you follow her work in the new yorker she writes about a lot of subjects and has over the years and her other reporting positions. some years ago when working for the washington post she spent

time moscow as a foreign correspondent along with her husband, peter baker. she subsequently co-wrote a book with peter about putin's rise and is also a coauthor, wrote an excellent biography of former secretary of state james baker and most recently a coauthored a book with peter. trump's term as as president. the book's called the divider. anyway please me in welcoming jacob and susan. well of course i want to thank brad. and if we're not supposed to have favorite moderator, we're not supposed to have favorite bookstore owners. but we all know that politics and prose is a great washington institution, and we're lucky to have it. so thank you, brad. and i have to say, this is

really a treat for me. you know, there's a lot of books we're all drowning in historical for understanding the trump era and whatnot. but this is this is i've already read it and i can tell you it's a terrific pick and very valuable book. and it is different than a lot. the other books that i've read and having spent a lot of time over the eight years as, as we all have trying to wrestle with how this seeming outlier of a moment could have come to pass looking for historical and decedents for it. trying to underscore you know, are we just doomed be you know, arguing with each other you know whether this is a repeat of the 1930s or not. until the very moment at which we all become sure one way or the other. i liked this book because. it took me outside of that now familiar doom loop and introduced me to new doom loops. but no, seriously, you know, one of the values, jacob, is that

you introduce us, i think, to characters, stories and a long thread of history that has been all too much. you know, kind of forgotten or just left the wayside. and it finally sense to me, in a way that it really hadn't reading some other books, because jacob takes the story back to, you know, earlier than, the 1930s, earlier them, you know, kind of this quickie version of first ism, you know, it didn't start with trump that we're all familiar with and goes back to world war one actually and even before world war one. and, you know, the the german that this book starts with it's actually not adolf hitler whom americans were admiring. it is the kaiser you know. and by the way who knew the kaiser was such a bad guy. i really appreciate you bringing it back to that. you know so will what is jump

into the conversation but i do you know it's it's not fair for the author to have to do all the work of shamelessly plugging his own book so i will shamelessly plug the book and say that you really should read it's really an excellent read. so jacob, i want to start before we get into, you know, this kind of disturbing intellectual history. why did you write book? you know, i mean, again, i appreciate that you did because it helped me to think about this kind of moment we're living in but. how did you come on to this? because it is personal at points that we'll get into actually, the reason wrote it is i got an email from editor at the atlantic, which right around the corner from here who had written a bunch of pieces for the new york review of books trump about, tucker carlson and and then he he he moved. to the atlantic and he said he a harebrained idea for her for an article that i knew would be a

total disaster. so i said i'd been sort of you know i'd followed the right obviously for a long time. i thought, well, maybe there's an interesting to be written looking back at the history of this. and so i did. i don't. 1500 1800 word piece for the atlantic. i thought, oh, well, you know, that's that's it. then i got a couple of call. a couple months later out of the blue as, i was exercising from an editor at norton, and he said, do you want to turn it into a book? and i said, sure. and then he said, well, we would need it in. 10 to 12 weeks. and i have had a lot of journalistic training, and i had to a lot at the new republic quickly. so i said. and by the way, i say is as someone who's assigned jacob, he is really fast.

i'm not i'm not sure i should be disclosing this the right i. i actually did not know great chunks of this story had to research and write at the same time and you know i have a strong background in history. german literature, partly because i grew up speaking german. both my parents were born, as i point out in the epilog in nazi germany, i still have some relatives in germany. so i had intimate familiarity with that and that sort of serves as backdrop to this book. now, if you're a conservative you're you know, conservatives are always complaining that they're being have complained for decades they're being called fascists or that there's there's there's too much focus on the nazi era and so forth. so i'm just saying that that was the the backdrop that i had as i this book. and that's how i came to write it. and yet what's amazing to me is that, i mean, that makes it even

amazing. the accomplishment of the book, because trust me, you would not know that if he had not just told you the story, but what's interesting as far as the the f word goes and this book is that you actually show that in both pre-dates and posted a nazi germany that the the american preoccupation with and and sort of elevate ocean of foreign autocrats not something at a fever dream out of donald trump's mind but whatever their particular brand of right wing nationalism or authoritarianism doesn't matter so much they like that it's not specific to a some kind of preoccupation with the totality and leaders of italy and germany and world war two right. like and i think that is a contribution in and of itself. but yet obviously we would not here if it weren't so relevant

to today. so before we get into some of history stuff, i mean, first of all, did you pay tucker carlson go on that trip? it's like a blurb, you know, it's like a blurb for the book. what you think where does he fit in to the characters that you write about in this book? what is interesting is that many of these contemporary tucker carlson, michael flynn, they all have their too some. tucker carlson reminds me in many ways of h.l. mencken he's not as intelligent, but he shares his many of the same views. general michael flynn reminds me, there was general in 1938 named george van horn mosley. that mosley an outright fascist and one of the things that i try to stress in the book that we may not have heard these people. i wasn't aware, really aware. mosley before, but these were people, for example, testified before congress several times, was on the front page of the new

york times. he was a well-known figure in united states and he called for sterilize ing any jewish refugees that arrived in america. he wanted the president to use he wanted the military to be employed to crush socialists america. i mean, it's very similar. the conspiratorial a lot of these i talk about another of the famous new york financier the time named marion hart who appears in the new york times in the thirties and forties. and he believed that you know that jewish were communists subversives who had congregated in and that this was why americans needed to exercise second amendment rights we needed to arm ourselves against this pressing. now obviously these these people are you know we would view them

lunatics today but the roosevelt did take them seriously. there was a speech by attorney general robert jackson in 1940, in which he talked about these and called in, called, talked about democracy on fire. and the fact that the united states faced an internal threat to its democracy. he did. he said, you may think i'm going to talk about a broad. i'm not i'm talking about what's happening right inside the united states. an interesting i just think a lot of history has been forgotten or overshadowed. yeah. no, exactly. right. and, you know, it wasn't me until trump came to office 2017 and i started reading more about me, the first america first movement. but even then, i feel like book is original in that it takes it takes the timeline farther back. h.l. mencken, as you mentioned, is, you know, you might have still heard of him. you probably didn't associate

him with, you know, kind of a apologies or if not for the german side in world one. so, you know, i feel like alone, you know, helps contextualize it in a much broader picture of the american right than having it be so specific to world war two. of course, there's also members of congress all along the way, both in the first world war and the second world war in. not a dissimilar way to i was thinking of j.d. vance going to the munich security conference over the weekend to sort of sum nose in his you know, kind of cheerleading for for putin. why do you think there the origins of are though are they fundamentally about a view of the world or are about a view of america because that's another part of your thesis that i find pretty provocative which is that it's it's actually a it's part of the rage critique of what's

happening here in the country that leads them the road to elevating exalting foreign and thugs right. the reason that i begin with world war one and it's it is because the defenses were they h.l. mencken and others in the united states admired prussian autocracy. they were it sounds like a historical curiosity. but then when you start looking at it. so prussia was the premiere state in central europe at that time, and why is is mencken defending it? well, because he harbored grave reservations about democracy in the united states. he viewed himself as a nietzsche and and he feared the mob. he did not like the rabble. he was essentially an elitist. so he actually articles for the atlantic, calling for prussia to conquer the states and and that this would be this would this would lead a better society here. now, why is that relevant?

well, there was a book in the 1980s that came out called political pilgrims, and that was a history of left wing socialists who traveled to the soviet union or mao's china and saw that as foreign utopia. and i see this phenomenon as similar idea is that there is a society abroad, an authoritarian or even totality in society that represents a better model than the american system. and that that's what i think we facing. see also the epic debunking. tucker carlson's trip to the moscow this week and a supermarket in in which is very much in the tradition of the political pilgrims that you're about i believe he goes through the supermarket which by the way is a french chain it is actually a branch of social when he's the middle of the supermarket he

says i am filled with revulsion for my country because the price of bread in moscow is cheaper than it is in wherever it is that he lives. so it's very much in keeping with a long tradition there. exactly and back then were called fellow travelers or you can use the word political pilgrim it is almost a romantic, awfully generous, i have to say, political pilgrim. you know, i feel like i'm like thinking of dudes in like white hats, you know, white. i mean, blackouts, white collars. it's it is in some ways a it's a romanticization of, a foreign society. and that's what's going on with hungary today. and viktor orban. so a lot of, you know, people at the heritage, they admire the values. and i that they believe that hungary is espousing and opposition to immigration and. hungary and i saw that one of

heritage foundation and member today they called for a ban on recreational sex in the united states. so there there is this again i would say authoritarian an impulse it all sounds weird. but that person probably likely remain a minority viewpoint. i'm just going to go out on a limb and say, but. but it's donald is not getting behind that campaign platform. let's be real. fair enough. mike pence. but i hungary is a really interesting example. and of course, you know, both orban and putin have almost in an explicit courted the support and connections with the american right by emphasizing these kind of culture war issues, things like opposition to lgbtq or, you know, that

we're going to be a christian nationalist kind of country. how much was that true in the kind of pre-war iterations of of these this movement in the united? was that already like was there a 1918 version of the culture wars that was playing out, or was it motivated by different issues? i don't think it was a culture war during world war one. there was a desire to project protect german identity. we had sebastian schall german american population in the united states. i think it does become, including donald trump's father. i think in the 1920s. it's in the 1920s, interestingly, that it starts to take off. there was a an ambassador that warren harding over to italy named, richard washburn child who was who wrote for the saturday evening post and was an ambassador during mussolini's ascension to power and he praised mussolini for cracking

down on hedonism. in contrast, see the united the united states was weak and effeminate. whereas mussolini represented masculine virility and that that's an interesting theme that i thought came out as far as the america first movement. again, i don't don't think that these cultural themes except as far as they they lapse into anti-semitism. i mean, if you view that as a union, that is in a way a cultural issue to. yeah, definitely. i mean, you know, hitler's idea of, you know, kinder culture, you know, that that was related to, a kind of an idea about cleansing german culture, right. and seemed to have an appeal here in the u.s. but the conventional narrative that i was familiar with before this book and certainly before the last few years was essentially that, you know, world war two

purged the republican party of isolationists that they were, you know the predominant part of the republican. before world war two, that there views lindbergh. senator taft from ohio were discredited fundamentally by what happened in world war two and then essentially the postwar. consensus was one that that encompassed republicans and democrats. you tell more nuanced story about that, though, which that that makes much more sense. me where? because otherwise how do you account for mccarthyism? how do you account some of the policies of the republican party in the fifties and sixties? tell us a little bit to explain what happened there. did did republicans, by and large, give up easily asian ism for a period of time? was it discredited and then something made it come back or what? what's your view? i think it mutated after world war two. it's interesting. in 1944, colonel mccormick, who is the head of the chicago

tribune and a virulent isolationist, set up this publication called human events. and out of that came regnery press and regnery press. a lot of these right wing figures from the pre-war gathered around it and it published a of books denouncing the establishment of israel. and they published books such that the war crimes perpetrated by the united states were as bad or worse, those committed by the nazis and senator joseph mccarthy, he enters the senate is is is looking for an issue. the first thing he does is to is pick up this case that had taken in 1944 ss troops had the adolf hitler division murdered 100 gis

or more and there was a trial after the and the defense prosecutor was embarrassed by the fact that he had lost the case and these soldiers were convict of these crimes. what happened? there's a brouhaha in which the soldiers alleged that they had been tortured and forced into these confession outs by. the war department. so there was an investigation in the senate and mccarthy jumped to it and, defended these ss soldiers. he called them innocent gi joes and it's really a remarkable episode because, you know, in in in these senate hearings, he said, you know, would you want to be in guarded by a man named rosenfeld? and he referred to them as 39 ers. you know. it's terrible stuff. and this case then was the first

instance of mccarthy going after the war department and then the pentagon, which he and going after the military, which did. now, the case blew over, but then the right you all these figures are still there but they to a different authoritarian leader that they back and then i think provides an avenue to out of isolationism and that is chiang kai shek who is perched in taiwan. so what's the new argument? the argument is that those liberals whose out the united states at yalta and allowed stalin to take over are now culpable for the loss of china. in 1948. and so it became asia first movement and the idea that if you only arm shanghai shek enough he could he could the communist forces and this

another really amazing thing that just helped me to understand something i have been at an absolute loss for the last year or so which in the present day as a whole strand of thinking, arguing basically a modern day of asia first and you know, saying, well, we shouldn't, you know, help ukraine in its fight against and really we shouldn't bother about russia all and we shouldn't bother about neda. we should focus exclusively on the challenge that china poses to the united states and on the defense of taiwan. this very, you know, representative most prominently by a foreign policy guy named elbridge colby here in washington. but really become an increasing strand on the right. you see senators, like josh hawley and others glomming onto it. and it's almost a direct echo of your your chapter on this from the immediate post-world war two era. right i i'm friends with ridge

colby and i wrote a piece about all this for politico which i think is imp his i think his take frankly is implausible it's that we sacrifice essentially what he's saying he doesn't say it outright. right. but it would be to sacrifice ukraine that china is the greater threat to taiwan. i actually see it the reverse course. i think putin is attacking ukraine right now and we should aid. i don't minimize the threat that china poses to taiwan, but i don't believe that there is reckless as putin is behaving. well, what's fascinating, too, of course, is wouldn't the chinese, you know, take from our abandoned of ukraine, essentially a green to deal with taiwan as it pleases on the theory that. you know we it's a much harder military target for us to find ways to support anyways and that it's a fascinating echo though again looking for the through lines in this history.

you know, i think it helps to understand how this republican party comes out of world war two and you know, they're the same people who are in power. they kind of morph their politics and then enters characters are more familiar to us, right? more to the present day. people like william f buckley. and they have a whole of kind of dictators and that they end up admiring. you know, i never understood, like, why do they franco so much? you know, whether it's salazar in portugal. i mean, there's a long list in chile. you mentioned why. right. i mean, it's it's a little bit hard to wrap your mind around the party of ronald reagan and the freedom agenda how is it freedom to be supporting people like that? well, bill buckley was the son of fairly irish catholic.

his father was actually involved in the revolution in mexico. and became convinced that, you know, the communist threat everywhere after his experiences, mexico and, the much of family, ended up living in franco's and including as well his brother in law, el bozell, who went off the deep end and staged actually the first violent abortion protest here in washington, d.c., in 1969 and was arrested. buckley had, you know, as a soft spot and are the national review had its good dictators. they also defended apartheid in south africa. bill buckley wrote in editorial in 1957 explaining why african-americans should not be allowed to vote in the united states. he then modified that to say in the early 1960s to say that the

uneducated generally should not be allowed to vote. which takes you right back to h.l. mencken in some ways, right? it does. i mean, there is an elitist strand in the conservative movement. many of the people that we're talking attended ivy league university. they're not dumb. not everything that they're saying is which we can get into. i mean, it's not ipso facto anti-american to be an isolate honest. it's actually a venerable tradition. it's just the way in the people that i'm looking at take it to a kind of extreme that i think takes you into very deep waters. but there's a lot of people i mean, i'm really glad you mentioned this. you know, horrific kind of dance, apartheid south africa. that was clearly a decades long very on negative aspect of the republican party. a lot of people what that you

know we're overcomplicating things that you know there's always been a lot of racists in america and that they're racist in how they looked about our inside the united states colored their views of international geopolitics as and of course you know they were in favor of an apartheid country outside of the united states because that's what they wanted inside the united states. yeah, i think that's correct. and i kind of allude to that in the book. i mean, russell kirk, who is a prominent conservative, denounced the war court. he attacks, i quote him the tactic attacking man one vote. a lot of these conservatives you know i guess the the best way to look at some of them is their reaction areas. more than more. you know, they're obviously they're trying to conserve something, but there is this reactionary impulse and what we're talking about that's, what we're talking about with mencken, you're talking about

the old right. and in some ways, they eventually came to be the paleo conservatives. right. yeah. and so cavemen were a little bit too risque for them. well. is always trying to toggle between two camps because he does right. the early 1950s he said well the battle against communism is so important. we're going to have to accept the welfare state. and this caused a division in the conservative movement because people like russell kirk and then later pat buchanan said, no way. they're not going to they're not with that. okay. so you mentioned pat buchanan. he is as close to a direct antecedent for donald ideologically as as you can find. and so tell us, pat buchanan and where he fits to all of this and, you know, he resurrects that, in fact the slogan america first for the modern era. you know, what would he have made of donald trump?

i mean, he's still around. he endorsed him. i believe. but, you know, really what he have made of him. he he likes donald trump. i mean, when i saw him at a party couple of years ago, he said, so do you think that donald's going to make it? you know, he he pat buchanan shannon grew up again with in an irish catholic family, very authoritarian. his his father took the belt to him. so is there but you've mentioned this a couple times. a you have a working thesis here that sort of a strongman home lead to strongman worship in ideology. you know, there is a bit of a pattern there. i'm going to need some, you know, social science research to back this up. but i think there is some, by the way, i'm just giving you a surmise, looking at the way that they were raised, you know, buchanan, too, was raised on the idea that you use your fists. you know, his father taught them all. he put them in the ring with the neighborhood.

they, the buchanan family kids were notorious for their pugilistic explore fights in georgetown. pat buchanan was arrested at least once, if not twice, for getting into fights. so, yeah, there is there is something going on. and where was his ideology, would you say, sort of similar to trump's and the maga catechism that we're living with now? and where did it differ? well, i think buchanan is much smarter than trump and has a has a consistent religious belief think he's a true he and trump may overlap in a tribal view things but buchanan grew up his brothers did serve in world war two but he grew up on america first. he states all this explicitly in his memoirs. he hated globalism the united nations he believe in politics

as an arena of combat and that's he you know he was to the right of nixon in some ways he shored up the right flank when he served the nixon administration. same thing in the reagan administration and buchanan is a guy that wrote 1977 in a syndicated column, adolf hitler is a soldier's soldier. you know, he is some latent admiration for for the nazis and he would dispute it. but you look at his record defending all the war criminals over and over, disputing necessity to trace down and evict nazi war criminals in the united states, which he did, in the eighties and nineties. there's something unhealthy about it. this was an element of national review. i don't think bill buckley shared it. but there was another writer there named joseph sobering who is even beyond buckley sober in

really was a holocaust denier. so these people represent the fringe of the of the right. so speaking of fringe, what would your study of history tell us about people like marjorie taylor greene and matt gaetz and the sort of the constellation kind of maga hangers on in congress and in on fox news who are kind of daily litigating, you know, the modern version of this. are they would they be familiar to their kind of early war two equivalents or are they just something of a product of the modern television social media era? no. i mean, i think they picked up some of the rhetorical tricks i mean, the what about ism? and if you look at buckley, buckley pioneered a lot of it. he was he was more against for. and if you at his book on mccarthy it's called mccarthy and his enemies it's not in it

he doesn't praise mccarthy it's all about the people opposed to him. so it's constantly on the attack. in the book, he says that once we're done with the communists, we're going to go after liberals. we're going to destroy them. so i think that is the what the people around trump would like to do when we're talking about a culture war and when trump refers his political opponents as vermin. i think what you what you're doing is you're you're indicating that you're a you don't just have political opponents. you have enemies who to be wiped out. so that's a and say the kind of anti mccarthyism right as the then equivalent of anti anti-trump is in which has actually been very successful in which you watch fox news often many of the hosts they never never mention donald trump's name for the last few years. what they do is they bash constantly the people who are

against him or against maga against republicans. it's very effect of technique. you know, i want to make sure we have time to get questions from the audience, by the way. so please do think of some questions for jacob. but while doing that, i do to ask about another interesting kind of personal part of the book is, you know, you've sort of lived a little bit inside this world yourself, right? and you write in particular about one character that you worked with a long time at national interest of interest to me because of my time in russia and in looking at russian relations, which is dimitri simes, who was the head of the then nixon center, which national interest was part of you write this sort of fascinating tantalizing story about a guy who ultimately

returned to russia as as a pro-putin propaganda artist. tell us a little bit about dmitri simes. well, during my tenure at the national interest, you i think people tended to overread, you know, the constant this is among the fringe of washingtonians. obviously, this idea that he was a russian agent or something. i don't think so. but you don't know so. well, i'm not the you know, a highly intellectual figure quite, charismatic, as you know. and with you arranged the very first donald trump campaign speech about foreign policy in april of 16. correct. and met trump at that at event and was underwhelmed as i wrote,

which i attended it. oh, that's right. i one thing i can't help remarking is, you know, i met trump, shook his hand and everything i am perplex asked why so many people cowering before him. he's he's not actually that impressive in person but i think there is a lot opportunism. no i think dmitri had a sincere congruence interests with trump. i think he believed a lot of it. i mean he had well, i shouldn't be putting words his mouth. but anyway, he has he has ended up in russia and it's saying some things that i think are quite unfortunate. the is that you have observed at firsthand this phenomenon it's not some academic thing in books or you know that happened in the united states 50 years ago. right. you know, it's it's a very much real time example. which brings us back to, you know, just this past week,

tucker, and in moscow donald trump saying, you know, go ahead, russia, you know, do whatever the hell you want. if our allies don't pay up sufficient. i'm curious, you know, actually about this final question, which is, is all of this an actual threat inside the united states know? does it represent you know? at various times it would have been called an fifth column or something like that. these there's a profoundly undemocratic or anti-democratic, small strain of society that this is a history of in many ways. okay. well if it's undemocratic or anti-democratic is it actually dangerous to democracy or is it an element that a healthy democracy has to learn to to live within contain? and that's part of the price that we pay for having a first amendment. what's your view? i'm actually optimistic. i think this a democracy can,

you know strengthen its immune system? i am not paralyzed by fear that that donald trump is going to win this election. i don't think ultimately that is a winning message. is there is there a problem. yes. you look at the news today with hunter biden that it looks like russian intelligence was responsible for seeding a fabric case against hunter biden. it's it's going to blow up in in congress. i don't think it's going to help the gop. so yeah, that is reminiscent the german foreign office before world war two using one of the characters i talk about, george viereck as an who is in close contact with senators and congressmen disseminating essentially propaganda through through the franking system. and, you know, there is a

problem, but i'm not convinced that we face a crisis. viereck is another one of those amazing characters in this book by, the way who is in world war one and in world war two, an apologist for very different german governments? well, because he venerated both kaiser wilhelm, adolf hitler, both of whom he met and wrote about. i mean, he he's an easy he's one of these curious figures in american and rachel maddow writes about him to in her new book. yeah no. if you've read prequel or you're interested in that, i think both of these go together very well. if i the amazon recommendation engine of course i would tell you i would recommend you buy all your books at politics and prose. you know, if i were to be a human recommendation engine, i would say those two were very complimentary books. why don't we go now to questions? i think we have a microphone so just raise hands and we'll give you the mic please do tell us

your name and make it a question. thank you, richard. you've touched on this already, but impossible to imagine trump is aware of any of the historical in your book. so my question is, is an outlier or is it a truism that at least initially all are born and not made. well, this is a treacherous question because, you know, you look at, there are historians now who argue that, for example, adolf hitler, a social construct of the society than than he was anything original. and in trump's case, and i don't think that he's adolf hitler. i'm not trying to this is where i get in. we get into difficult charity ery i think trump i believe in the importance of the individual

history ultimately and in accident and trump does have these consummate salesman abilities. so i think he constructed i think if anyone is a construct, it is donald trump. he has created an image which people can invest their hopes. that's what they're doing. i don't know if that answers, but what about the question of, the historical antecedents, do you think trump is aware of any of them? i mean, allegedly he had mein kampf next to his bedside. don't know. i don't think trump is really ever cracked a book. that's that's how he works. but that, again, he just kept it there to impress the ladies. whatever i that to by the way, that was from ivana trump's divorced, right? i think. yeah yeah i mean certainly possible. okay.

jacob, congratulations. your book, how do you deal with the disaster in iraq in your book, one could argue that trump tucker, numerous others who are opposed to u.s. aid to ukraine today might see the issue differently or might make different arguments. we had not had the disaster in iraq under george w bush, tucker, for instance supported the iraq war in during that era. and it was an invasion against an authoritarian dictator. and so certainly can't say that tucker is a is opposed to all it you can't say that tucker is in love with all and i don't you know he's been very critical of xi jinping most almost on the right is very critical of xi jinping in a way that they some

may not of putin. and in you know i think criticize them and denunciation of china is probably one of the few bipartisan activities in dc going back to the iraq war you look at people like tucker people like jd who actually served in the military to lots of republicans who advocated for the war. do you not think that they would that what they're saying today is of a practical reality and it may be an overreaction, the disaster and hence trump came to power announcing that he wanted no more stupid, endless wars in middle east. i don't think that slogan have resonated. if we did not. iraq and. so are you. i'm curious how you deal with the iraq issue. your book ideal it head on which

is stuck in the left that was a very restrained question from you, by the way. i have more if there's time. what i. i do not create some scenario where i suddenly exculpate all the never trumpers for their sins of the past which is that many of the never trumpers were neoconservative and were gung for the iraq war, which was obviously based both on lies as as trump pointed out in his south carolina primary. of course, he was also for it before he was against it. but my, my, my point is that the neocons believe did open the door to. the rise of trump and this movement and is j.d. vance are they wrong, josh hawley are they wrong about the iraq war? no, but what is what's happened is they've gone overboard where they were not making

distinctions. now they call themselves foreign policy. but what's realistic? is it realistic to abandon ukraine, which is fighting for itself, which is not demanding soldiers, which is simply to asking for support. how is that analogous to the iraq war? i don't think it i think it's more analogous is that we we are the russians are in the that we were in afghanistan where they're being hit by locals. now, obviously, the parallels different. i'm not trying to compare the taliban to the ukrainians. the ukrainians are actually trying fight for their own liberty. and i don't think that as many would be as hostile to ukraine, absent donald trump's long standing hostility to american abroad. and i think that's what's driving this well. and that is a big in the book by

the way i would again because i think it's an important part of your argument actually. no, let let's get someone else to have have a chance and then we can come back again following up on that. but if hostage to ukraine and hostility to intervention abroad, how much of that trying to be on putin's side for all sorts of nefarious reasons. this is you know could give you my it's it's it's difficult to know and it gets into conspiracy i you know i'm not an expert putin's tie what's whatever putin and trump's ties are i can tell you that trump has been intellectually consistent in his views. he has argued even during the soviet union and from 87 on. and then in the playboy

interview gave in 1990, he's always called for some kind of rapprochement with russia and the soviet union. so i'm less inclined to go down the rabbit hole than some people are, by the way, that 80 the i think it's actually a 1990 interview with playboy. i highly recommend that it is like a like a rosetta stone to the earth foreign policy views of donald trump, an interest dingli. in that interview he criticizes mikhail gorbachev, the leader of the soviet union. at that time, for not being strong enough and praises the leaders of china for square because. so this theme of strength is one that that comes through even even then. it's actually kind of and really interesting. all right. we have time for a few more questions. before get to the repeat when we go away. here.

thanks, jacob. i've interested in urbanism, urban and just seem how self-consciously the man to be kind of appealing to these people you're writing about in this book. are there have there been other autocrats like orban kind of like figured out how to like like throw the bait in the water and kind of like set up these this amazing relationship he's developed with people like run to and a lot of other people. i, i almost felt like ron desantis was trying to recreate hungary in florida. you know, the close list, i suppose it's a lot warmer we'd be chiang kai shek. i mean, you had the china lobby in the 1950s, but more recently. well, actually as seen as heroes

at least pinochet that set up lobbying operation in washington that actually the justice department using the foreign agent act crackdown down on one of bill buckley's associates named liebman had set this whole lobbying effort for chile that turned out to be illegal. and then in 1980s, i talk about jonas savimbi, who became a hero for the right also engaged pr firm here in washington that included paul manafort and roger stone stone. because time is a full we are just about out of it. if you both wanted to have quick follow ups, we can we can do that. it's up to you you. how surprised both of you would be if trump wins. jacob, here is a model. you know, come i would i would be surprised. i mean, i because i again, i

think that he is sold this product successfully once but has been unable to do so but would i be would i be thunderstruck. no mean it's happened once before and it's certainly possible. but i think in 2016 trump was vastly underestimated. i don't think that's to occur again. i think it could tell me how you deal with the china question. i know you mentioned asia first, but specifically the people you consider isolationists on the right. whether, you know, obviously they would but many you know many of them actually not have any affinity for the one of the

inside probably the biggest dictator in the world is xi jinping, arguably far more important than putin. so how does that fit into your thesis? are you talking about in the 1950s? so aside from the fact that trump likes go around saying he is very friends with xi jinping, i don't believe anybody else on the right, including all of those people who oppose u.s. and or u.s. aid to ukraine, i don't believe any of those people have any for seasoned peng and so how does that fit into your thesis of know the right has this inherent love for autocrats? well, it's it's the the autocrats that i'm looking at from the china case has always been an exception the right and it's still a communist society today and i think that it's interesting you see that distinction made today. i asked one anti someone was an anti fervent anti-communist former editor, the american

conservative. he said, well, putin's russia is not communist. so that's the difference. i think that does linger on. however i would say that if trump were president, he's been equivocal on defending taiwan and he well, tear up the alliance system with both japan and south korea. so i think you know, at least in trump's case, all bets would be off, but probably not because loves dictators. but just as you said earlier, he has this inherent hostility toward engaging in armed conflict. so his first instinct would be to find some sort of a deal and and not pay for others defense. i think it's little more complicated than that as these him the crackdown in tiananmen square i think he likes the that dictators provide and i think he likes working them man to man so to speak and he finds it easier he doesn't like dealing with an

obstreperous public. he wants to command issue orders and have them executed. so that's what he admires, it seems to be like. i mean, king john, the same thing, you know, talking about exchanging letters and so forth there, there something demented going on there. and what a note to end this conversation on. you know. i want to think these are all great questions and a terrific, really stimulating book. and i think it's a really important one right now. i hope that a of people get a chance to dig it. so, jacob, thank you for writing it. and the fact that you did so unbelievably speedily like we won't tell. okay. thank you, susan. and thank you very much for coming.

dr. theresa. girl duty. i am so honored to be here with you today to talk about this very important issue that affects all of us, whether you're old or