In this episode of IHIP News, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses how Donald Trump may react after the midterm election results, which she frames as a rebuke to his movement. She argues that a strongman whose ego has been wounded can grow more dangerous, and she examines how Senate Republicans, inner-circle aides, business elites and the wider MAGA base might respond.
The conversation also covers paranoia around the White House ballroom, the value of accountability for corruption, and the role of Democratic leaders. Listeners will hear her views on authoritarian bargains, elite defection and how societies recover from strongman rule.
In this episode Ruth Ben-Ghiat
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He's not even contesting the election results.
The personalities of these guys, they brewed, and as time goes on they get more and more upset, and they get enraged. But we should not, uh, underestimate how the rage will build. He will become more dangerous.
We're in for a treat. Our favorite guest of the show, my friend, America's top historian on strong men, the best, Ruth Ben-Giot, who has been fighting in the trenches, sounding alarm bells from day one. That fateful, uh, escalator descent. You have been sounding the alarms, Ruth. What a happy day to be together, you and me, right now, after the blue nomi.
I'm thrilled. Um, and it was beyond everyone's expectations. And this is what happens at certain windows in history: people don't expect things happen that people don't expect. Um, and this is why I always say, never underestimate the American people.
You did say that.
It's one of my sayings.
Every episode, yep.
Because authoritarians want us to feel helpless and hopeless and just detach and feel like nothing we do is going to make a difference, or it's all too exhausting. And people came forth. And look what happened. Like, people have power. Um, in the Philippines, they got rid of their dictator and they called it people power. There's a reason.
And that's what we did. And so, as we now have this strong man who has been ubiquitous in all of our lives for entirely too long, and he is officially a lame duck, or as I refer to him, a dementia duck. And so he is officially the lamest duck I've ever seen in my lifetime. And, uh, he's not even contesting the election results. The biggest sore loser I've ever seen in my entire life. I've not seen one temper tantrum. He's moved on just talking about the ballroom and his interior design projects.
You study the personalities of these strong men. What is your take on how he is coping? And is he going to be more dangerous? What are your predictions and your assessment of this?
So our system is a little different, um, because when we have elections, there's months before the people get seated. And we saw what Donald Trump did in 2021 with those months, right? Uh, with January 6th. So it was almost, to me, the fact he was so, like, malleable, accepting the results. Uh, in part, historically, that's when you have, like, a massive voter turnout and big margins for your wins. We saw Orban concede, and people were like, wow, he conceded.
And, and, and then we saw Vučić in Serbia concede. But I felt like Donald Trump was almost in shock because his first thing was to be, oh, yeah, I'm going to accept the results. But the personalities of these guys, they brewed. And this is where, like, all night he has Natalie Harb sending his crazy things. They don't sleep. They brewed. And as time goes on, they get more and more upset and they get enraged. And so I've often said there's nothing more dangerous than a strong man whose ego, a narcissistic strong man whose ego has been offended.
Because he said, make this about me. And then, and then people made it about him. And look what happened. So, and, and they personalize everything. That's why he's like, I'm going to go back in my ballroom, my safe space. But we should not, uh, underestimate how the rage will build. So he will become more dangerous. Um, and the question will be, what do his collaborators do with that now?
Right. So let's talk about two different sets of collaborators. Number one, the Republicans in the Senate that picture themselves as serious people. And let's take, as an example, uh, uh, the Senate current Senate Majority Leader, uh, uh, Thun. Let's take him. How does this election impact? Because he's been a fascist collaborator, and he's been an adult in the room, and he's chosen to, uh, collaborate and endorse all of the things that Trump has done. That's the first one. Does this give those people political power to break away from the cult?
And the second one is the people in the room, the Cabinet, the Chief of Staff, the Steven Millers. Do the people that are in the inner works inner workings around the dictator, does the cannibalism start?
Mm-hmm. So, uh, autocrats who who have had an ego injury or a setback, they obviously take out, they, they hate their people and they become paranoid. They don't trust anyone. Everyone has to serve them and adulate them. That's why we had all those Cabinet meetings and they all went round like, like in dictatorships of, of today and yesterday.
Right.
Praising him. So, um, so he takes it out on, obviously, the people, um, and he goes after his enemies, but he also takes it out on those who are near and not dear to him. And so often you see purges, um, heads will roll. Like in dictatorships, people actually get put in jail or they get killed. But I would expect him to start, he's already started blaming Fox News, which is his, you know, de facto state propaganda arm.
I thought that was interesting. Um, they were supposed to do a better job because it can never be them. And I have lines in Strong Men in the Endings chapter, which we should all reread. I'm going to reread it.
Oh, well done.
Even though I wrote it. Um, because they, they start blaming other people and it's easiest to fire somebody and then you feel powerful again. So I would expect perhaps Pete Hegseth or it does, I don't know who it will be, but I expect some kind of shakeup. Um, and, and as far as the collaborators, the Republicans, I mean, they didn't get it together on January 7th, 2021, when they could have defended Mike Pence, who was targeted for physical harm.
If they'd just gotten it together then and kept their word, we wouldn't be in this mess. So it's not clear if they're going to get it together now, but all they would have to do is have unity, real unity, and say, we're not going to take this crap anymore. And he would become a different kind of lame duck because now he still has his veto power, Trump. And so he's going to use that to try and muck up anything that Democrats want to do. But he's been able to have all this power because of his collaborators in the GOP.
So we have to watch what they're doing now.
All right. Now let's move on to the elites. You're the one that, that really helped me understand this, that a strong man comes to power and it's fine, he can come to power, but when the elites, when the financial elites come and prop him up, it really allows the untethered strong man to go bananas, as we all saw. So I will never forget, and it will be etched into my brain forever, all of the billionaires sitting front row at the inauguration. I know the order that they sat in. I know what companies they worked for, because the betrayer, betrayal I felt as a customer to them, that they would sit there and prop up this man who was a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, a compulsive liar who tried to overthrow a free and fair election, wherein his supporters said, hang Mike Pence.
Was unforgivable, unacceptable. You don't play in the sandbox with that man. What happens to the elites? Are they so transactional now they go off and try to buy off the Democrats? How, how do they manage when their free pass, um, has lost? This embarrassingly, I mean, Mississippi, uh, Iowa, Texas is blue, Ruth. Texas is blue.
Yeah. So, um, people who study autocracies call this elite defection. And in dictatorships, um, it can cause the fall of regimes. Like the soldiers won't fight for you anymore. Businesses start defecting. And, and so people talk about these pillars that prop up the strong men. And it's often, you know, the media, um, the military, but business is one of them. So it's very interesting. If we look at what happened in Minneapolis during the popular opposition to Operation Metro Surge, I keep thinking of this fact that 60 local businesses, including Best Buy and Target, signed a letter.
The CEOs signed a letter saying that this has to stop. So there are these precedents recently for a business coming forth. As for the, the billionaires who were lined up, I mean, they were, look what Meta was doing to Indivisible, like blocking their account, you know.
Brazil.
Right. Right. And in Brazil. So I don't think they're going to switch sides just yet because he's still in power for two years. And the whole point of these, they're called authoritarian bargains, where these big elites, they make, uh, a pact with the leader and he doesn't come after them and he makes them richer. In return, they have to stay quiet no matter what happens. So he's still there. Yes, he's a lame duck, but he's still in power for two years. So I wouldn't expect the bad actors like Zuckerberg and Bezos and these people to change sides.
What's will be interesting is to see what happens at the lower levels. What, and there is a lot of business. Uh, there's leadership now, which is a business and democracy organization, um, and hundreds of CEOs come to their annual conferences. There's a whole democracy and business movement. We just don't hear about it.
Yeah. Yeah.
We don't hear about it.
That is, and it's really important. Uh, you know, I was speaking about another podcast, how I went to buy a new iPhone and I was in the Apple store in the meatpacking district and I looked at all the workers in the Apple store. You know, people who work in Apple stores are cool. You know, you can tell they're kind of hip and they have cool tattoos and I all different skin colors, all these cool young people. And I just felt this disgust at the company treating their employees, treating their country this way. And I envision Tim Cook making that ridiculous trophy for Trump and humiliating himself by giving him that.
And I just thought, I hate that I've spent my money here, you know, because I, I, that's the phone I wanted. And, and it, you know, we're all embedded into all of, we're on YouTube right now, you know, which those are Trump sycophants as well. But it's just, it's so depressing to have to deal with these people on top of Donald Trump. So before we move on from this, I want to get back to his personality. So you said he's going to be brooding. He's going to get angry. It's the blame game. And we've already heard there's rumors that he wants to fire Marco, that he wants to fire Susie Wiles because she picked all of the candidates, helped him pick the candidates that all lost, all of his handpicked candidates lost.
Um, Pete Hegseth, I think that's going to happen imminently. I mean, maybe even before this airs, Pete Hegseth could be gone. Um, but what about the paranoia? Last time you were on, you taught us that these strong men become so consumed with their paranoia, they start fantasizing about their safe spaces. And you were the one who informed all of us that the ballroom isn't just for parties. This is a security blanket for him, that all autocrats fantasize about these safe spaces because of their paranoia.
So we know he's going to get angrier and we know heads are going to roll. What happens to his paranoia in this two-year period?
Well, it's going to escalate because he, he's, he's been injured, um, and not just his ego, but people have rejected him. And so he's going to be feeling like people are out to get him. And so, uh, you know, the Washington Post had done an investigation about the things that Trump talked about the most in preceding months. Well, guess what? The ballroom, uh, was at the top. And the ballroom is, so the actual ballroom is his ego where he's going to have donors and they can pay him money and all of that, like corruption stuff.
But it's what's underneath is the real focus, the military bunker. And the things he says about it are really psychologically interesting. He says it's going to have anti-sniper, you know, protections. It's going to have a hospital because, you know, Trump is a germaphobe and he's very worried about his body, although he doesn't say so. Yeah. He doesn't take care of it.
Right.
The McDonald's diet.
Yeah.
Right. He clearly has cognitive and physical issues. But so he's very worried about his safety. And they all have these bunkers. And as they go down, I mean, Hitler literally retreated to his bunker and said, let Germany perish. It wasn't worthy of me. And I have a quote in Strong Men. These are these quotes that are in the Endings chapter of Strong Men. And Mussolini started saying, Italians were just sheep. They didn't deserve me. And so we're not in a one-party state with World War going on, but Trump has his bunker.
And so I found it really interesting that he's like, yeah, I'll accept the results. Oh, but my ballroom. Because he has to cling to that ballroom slash bunker even more. And the, the sad thing is no matter how many people they purge, um, they're never going to feel safe because they are, um, they have egos that, that need a claim. That's where the narcissist stuff comes up. So I always think who would the Strong Men be if no one showed up for his rallies?
And, and that's also why Trump was canceling rallies. I mean, he's 80 and he was tired.
Yeah, yeah.
But they can't stand that. They can't, if their personality cult starts to fragment and shrink, they don't have anything left. They're empty inside.
How painful do you think it was for him that in the tail end days of campaigning for these primaries, um, he was, I mean, for the midterm, he was filling up, barely filling up high school gymnasiums and Barack Obama filled up 10,000 seat stadiums. And he's very, I mean, one thing I know about him, he's very jealous of Barack.
Yes.
And he is very into size, crowd size, all sorts of things.
Yes. So, um, a couple of things. So a lot of these guys are, have an obsession, these leaders with another man who's more popular. And, or, and they're often younger, right?
Better looking.
Better looking.
Smarter.
And so, um, and they have popularity because Trump is a man of media. He's a man of reality TV. He's very savvy about appeal and popularity. And he just can't have what Obama has. So he's obsessed with Obama, right? So that's his obsession. But the other thing I've noticed, um, is as he knows he is losing his appeal, he's losing his personality cult. He, he also knows he's degrading physically. And again, he's 80. He's obsessed with other men's bodies.
Oh, yeah.
And he's talking about other men's bodies and there are various theories about why he's doing this. But from my point of view, it's that he, he knows he can't have that. And yet he wants to associate himself with the winners, with the strong men in a small S. And that's also why like game recognizes game and he's trying to stay in the game. That's why when that crazy meeting with Mamdani, remember Mamdani came to the White House and Trump was looking at him like he, he never looks at anyone.
No.
Like very unguarded admiration. He's like, yeah, you can call me a fascist. If it's you, I don't care. And that's because he was recognizing that Mamdani is a star.
Yeah.
He's young. He's handsome. Yes. He's a star. So there's something going on with the obsession with talking about men's behinds and all of that. So we, we can look at these as clues to his mentality. And so let's just say it doesn't bode well for the next two years.
I think it's a great theory. I, I also have one that he's in his deathbed confession era stage. Like you go to visit your grandmother and she's like, I never really liked your little sister. You're my favorite. So I think he's kind of like, look at this hot guy. And I, then I remember Roy Cohn was his mentor, who you've taught us. Roy Cohn taught Trump, get, uh, blackmail evidence on everybody and use it, you know, for control. But I want to, I, I was dying when this happened. I want your opinion on this.
Trump's closing message, he trots out to the reflecting bull, literally tens of people. I mean, I'm talking 20 or so. And he's standing there doing a show and tell presentation, rambling on, you know, like, and here's a photograph, here's, here it is with Algi and Barack Hussein Obama, Sleepy Joe. As you watch that, a person who has written a book, Strong Men, and you study not only what they do, but their personalities, their egos, the cult of personalities.
When you watched that, what went through your head? Last chapter of your book?
Really, how sad it is that, um, his enablers and his bad faith collaborators have allowed him to, uh, stay in power like this, who backed him, uh, an adjudicated rapist who had a coup attempt, all the things he's done to come back to power for their own power-hungry means. And, and he's brought down the United States. I, he's in office to solve Putin's problems. And a mighty America was a big Putin problem.
So he's trying to wreck America, putting people like Kennedy in charge of public health, wrecking science. And all of this is connected. And so we have this person who's not, nobody would hire someone like Trump. No, no small business person.
Ever.
Would ever hire him. He wouldn't last as a teacher in a university. No job that anyone does. This is why the election results, the midterms, people want care and they want competency. So I thought about how sad it is. I love this country, right? I'm first generation. I love it. And, um, I thought how sad this was that the power structure has allowed this person who is, is just incompetent and losing his mind in some ways to just, and they all pretend that nothing's wrong.
And I've seen this with dictators, like with Idi Amin. I'm not trying to say he's Idi Amin, but psychologically it's about the collaborators pretending nothing is wrong. Remember these scenes when Trump would fall asleep?
Yes.
And there was a famous picture where, uh, the cabinet was standing behind him and they were just deciding to ignore the fact he was asleep. And this was symptomatic. You ignore the elephant in the room. And this is also why Vance and others are saying, and it's on Fox News now, Talking Point, oh, it was, it was the war that did us in. And it was partly the war, but by focusing on the war against Iran, they don't have to rent, they don't have to talk about the elephant in the room that Trump is completely incompetent.
He's also corrupt, but they're part of the corruption, so they don't mind that.
Right.
Right?
Right.
But the incompetence and the ravings and the, the lack of dignity, lack of respect for the office, if they just keep talking about, uh, Iran and the war, they don't have to deal with any of that.
All right. The election happened and it was better than any of us could have imagined. I mean, it was, when I've had you on before, you spoke, you said, never underestimate the power of the American people. And that you were right. You called it. You called it several months ago on this podcast. And I remember you're saying that. So your prediction that people value a multi-faith, multicultural, uh, secular democracy and that that would prevail.
Um, and this right now it has. How important is it for our country that we deliver accountability, that there is accountability for the, um, the foreign policy that has been privatized, privatized diplomacy, where Jared Kushner and Wyckoff and Donald Trump are making all this money. Trump has a, a pact called MAGA Inc. And, you know, Musk can say, here's 50 million.
And then that Trump gets that money and then he goes, boom, here's a multi-billion dollar government contract. All of these things, plus the shooting of American citizens, denying people habeas corpus, potential war crimes in my, my opinion, uh, shooting fishermen in Venezuela. Uh, how important is it that this incoming Democratic Congress holds this fascist regime to account?
It's everything. And because it didn't happen after January 6th, um, there was the amazing commission, but, but Donald Trump was allowed to be back in office. And I always compare it to what happened in Brazil, where, uh, Bolsonaro Senior, Jair Bolsonaro did his copycat January 8th, 2023, coup attempt. And because the Brazilians had a national dictatorship that only lasted, it only ended in 1985. It's really important because people like Lula da Silva and the jurists who investigated, they did such a broad investigation of this coup attempt of a type that wasn't done here.
Like who were the rich people who were paying for the thugs to come and who, who bought them food, who delivered them food, all the chain of collaboration. They investigated that because they lived under this dictatorship. Again, it only ended in 1985. So they knew the stakes of accountability. And so they had a trial and Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest for 27 year sentence. Um, and then we narrowly missed, so his son Flavio tried to come back to power and was going to pardon him. And that didn't fly.
Now he's in Milago.
Yeah. And now he lives in Florida, right? He, he was allowed to come in the country with like no, with a canceled passport. That's a whole other story. But we didn't do that. And I think about that all the time. So we have a chance now. We control the House and the Senate and we have a chance to, to fulfill the wishes of the American people for, um, you know, to, to rent, to reckon with this corruption, to reckon with this arrogance and to show care for the American people.
So many people are suffering and it's, it's, it's devastating to see your country being taken over by, um, billionaires and mafia-connected people. And so we need accountability and it's a chance that the Democrats have. And, um, I thought it was great that, uh, Representative Garcia did that post saying, you know, lawyer up, because they need to lawyer up. They've been using the justice system with Todd Blanch as Attorney General, and he's there because he was Trump's personal lawyer.
They've been using the justice system as Trump's personal vehicle. That has to stop. And so I'm hopeful that they recognize they have this historic window to address these wrongs. And if it's not done properly, then they will continue in the future.
So taking personalities out of the next question I'm asking you, I'm asking you this as a historian. We have two people on the Democratic side in leadership, um, uh, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies that take money, corporate pack money from the same fascist collaborators that have funded MAGA. Um, and I, I see this as problematic. I see that the mandate from this election is that people, we, the people saved us.
Strongly worded letters did not save us. We saved us. And you see this, these, these seats getting flipped all over the place. I mentioned Texas is blue and not just kind of blue. It's a blue state now. They want a trifecta state government. Their Supreme Court is now Democrats won there. The governor, the Senate, the lone remaining Republican in Texas is Ted Cruz. So this is, this is a massive, massive, massive people-powered mandate for these politicians to work for the people.
And both of the individuals that I mentioned earlier have been on the news since the victory and have said Americans aren't interested in getting even. And some people on Morning Joe were mad at Robert Garcia about the lawyer up and they said, nobody wants that. And I'm like, I don't know what planet these people in, but everybody I know wants that. As we build this anti-fascist coalition moving forward, how important is it that the leaders of this coalition not be beholden to fascist collaborator interests?
It's, it's key because there's, you know, yes, we have, we have a bipartisan system and there have been some, you know, remnants of bipartisan feeling, but most of it has been this BS where Republicans complain to their Democrat, um, colleagues behind the scenes, but then in public they still prop up the cult. And, and again, propping up the cult means being party to, to murder, to execution style killings in the streets of Minneapolis, to all the things you mentioned before, to massive corruption and, oh, propping up, uh, autocrats around the world, murderers, dictators, mafia states, bad stuff.
So we need a new paradigm. Um, of course we're going to need bipartisanship, but the Republican Party is an autocratic entity. They are not a Democratic Party anymore and haven't been for some time. They don't play in the same sandbox. They have different rules. That's why so many of them are pro-Putin. And so until, you know, so you can't pretend things are, uh, normal. They haven't been normal for some time. And so it's really important to send a message not just to Trump, but to the American people saying our party is taking accountability seriously.
And if we have to refuse money from certain sources, that's a sacrifice we're willing to do. Because again, we have a window, a window has opened. We opened the window. I won't use the passive voice. We opened the window.
Yeah.
And many politicians, uh, got it. And there's a new leadership that reflects who we are as Americans, the first Muslim senator. There's so many firsts that came out of this.
Yes.
Because we, you know, the beautiful thing about democracy, it's very moving. We elect our leaders who represent us and, and they, they enact laws and propose things that are fulfilling our wishes. And that's why we elected them. But they also represent us. Now we have this, we'll have a Congress and a Senate who that looks like who we are as a nation. And we've had this, it's a rebuke to this ideological project, which is the core of MAGA, to turn our multi-faith, multi-racial democracy into a white Christian ethno-state.
That's been the plan. And this was refused. And so the corruption and everything else that goes with it has to be refused too.
All right. And so when I look forward, um, to the country and you say a window has been opened and as you say that it, it doesn't sound permanent. It sounds like the window's been opened and we have a moment to get through it. And I feel that this is existential, that we get through this window and get to the other side, what's on the other side. And in your study of the aftermath of autocracies and the takedown of strongmen, how bold are the following governments?
Like I'm feeling right now that this mandate we have and the, the, the financial contributions that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies have received, I feel, this is my personal opinion, that they're somewhat compromised, that they have a foot in that, in that pot that funded this fascism. And I feel like we have a mandate to do something really, really bold. The people you talk about, all of these new dims that were elected that look like all of us, that sound like all of us, that aren't taking this corporate pack money, that took on the billionaires and won Elon Musk spent half a billion dollars and he lost every race he invested in.
It's just so empowering, right? So I feel like we need to, my personal desire is that we need politicians that are beholden to only the people to truly heal and get off of this fascist trajectory. What is your take on that?
Yeah, we need healing. We need, um, I feel like the, my, again, personal opinion that it would be very wise, uh, of the Democrats when they start thinking about 2028 candidates to, uh, have, have new people, have people who have come up more recently.
I agree.
To not have the establishment. In fact, when we look around the world at a, we are living through this global renaissance of protest, mostly nonviolent. I, I feel it's very important to stay nonviolent unless you have a foreign occupation like in Ukraine or World War II, Europe, that's different.
Right.
But when we look around the world, we see that people, because of corruption, because of economic hardship and a government that doesn't care about them, when people realize there's this trifecta and we have this, they want entrenched elites who have colluded with the system to go. And this has happened all over the world that, um, in Thailand, in India, in so many places, and most recently in Serbia, they have managed to, um, to get rid of these people, but not just the figurehead of the leader, but also entrenched elites.
So it's a system. So we need people who are going to defend us, uh, our, our, our climate, climate conscious people, uh, people who want our economic well-being. You know, it has to be a holistic thing. And so when I look around, I'm going to hope that the Democratic Party will have this renewal because that's where the window we opened, it continues through 2028 and then we retake the White House and we can now implement these things. So this is like an incubation period.
That's what, yes.
That's how I'm seeing it. Um, and we started this. We should all feel very proud.
Are you surprised? There was this moment, Ruth, when I woke up on Wednesday and it was like, oh my God, the election survived. He tore down so much, but that survived. And we had that one little nugget. And I just take so much pride that their incompetence prevented them from tearing down. And they tried the gerrymandering and all of those things. And they tried to cheat, but they still lost. And I was just, I felt so much hope and pride in being an American that the elections held.
And so this reigniting of feeling for me, I didn't feel patriotic at all. And I'm not like one of these people that like, that's not my identity, but there are moments where you feel national pride. And I think more than anything, camaraderie and kinship with your fellow Americans.
Solidarity.
Yes, solidarity. And so seeing that our elections held and that we all showed up, how powerful is that, that the people-powered movement in defeating these horrible fascists?
It's key, but I want to recognize they tried every trick in the book before the elections. Remember, we were fearing all kinds of things. And there's been an enormous legal pushback that's happened. There are activists, organizers, lawyers, uh, who are pro-democracy have been working around the clock for many months. And then we had judges who were not compromised, who believed that, that they should be independent arbiters. That's a democratic notion. And they turned back over and over again these schemes that MAGA and Trump tried to rig the elections because they have a whole bag of tricks, autocrats, and they tried all these things and they all failed.
They all failed, which is why the elections proceeded as they did. And then they didn't bring out ICE to the polls and there were lawsuits about that. So a lot of what we were hearing, we needed to take it seriously, but it was also intimidation measures. It was psychological warfare. Um, and Bannon was big in this. He's a big psychological warrior to, to make people so afraid that they wouldn't turn out. And that didn't work either. So I just want to recognize that behind this smooth.
You're right.
Um, unfolding of our elections around the country was.
A fight.
Hours and hours of work, um, and lawsuits. So although we do have Todd Blanch and the DOJ is a personal vehicle of Trump, there are many judges and many legal professionals who are doing their job to protect our democracy.
Okay. What happens to the cult of personality? We've spoken about the elites. We've spoken about the people in the room with them. We've spoken about the collaborators in Congress and the Senate. What's going on to just your average MAGA cultist, a true believer, watching him in front of the reflecting pond, watching this election happen, happen, do they finally start to deconstruct a little bit?
I think there's going to be a core of people and I haven't seen all of the, the data points about how people voted. Maybe it's too early to have them. There's going to be a core of people, um, including your favorite group of Christian nationalists who are, are just in it for the long run.
Yeah.
And there's always, that's how it is in dictatorships. In fact, in Italy and Germany, it literally took being bombed by the allies to get people to wake up and start saying, hey, maybe Mussolini isn't our savior after all. And I have that in my book.
Wow.
Like people waking up, coming out of bomb shelters and being angry in public at Hitler for the first time. So that's what it took in those extreme cases.
Okay.
So there's always going to be people who are the loyalists, but it, the reason we have this result in the elections is that more people are waking up that Trump isn't, he doesn't love them like he told them. He doesn't care about them. And they were willing to take a risk on somebody else. So his personality cult is shrinking. And this is where we go back to, this is having very destabilizing effects on him because he's nothing without his personality cult. And we may have a thing where in the country, more and more people turn away from him.
In fact, I saw an article that said that stores across the country that in MAGA areas that sell Trump merchandise, they're doing really badly. And then we know that viewership of Fox News is down.
Yes.
So these are signs of the fragmenting of a personality cult. So this is why though, will his, um, sycophants, he's arrayed around him, keep praising him in meetings? So he's going to purge some people, but new sycophants will come in. And the kinds of people who end up around him during these last two years is going to be really interesting because often, I mean, we, they don't get better, higher quality people, they get worse.
So I'm, I'm.
It's so true.
We're going to keep our eye on that. I'm sure we'll talk again.
You're saying this is could possibly not be rock bottom as to the people surrounding him. He can go lower.
Well, think about if he gets rid of whoever.
Yeah.
Who's, who's going to come in their place in the sense, in the case of the military, a miracle could happen and somebody actually competent could come in. But in the other places, I mean, there's a lot at stake though, like with foreign policy, there's too much money and deals with other autocrats at stake. So I don't know what will happen, but, um, he's not going to have an epiphany and all of a sudden people should not think just because he said, oh yeah, I'm going to accept the elections, that everything is fine.
He's birding. That's really important information because I, because you know these personality types. Okay, let me ask you this. How does the strongman handle the situation that's unfolding currently? JD Vance has his site set on 28th and they had a meeting in the, you know, Oval or wherever. And after that meeting, JD Vance went rogue and he's being disloyal. And on Fox News, somebody's like, JD Vance is not being loyal. And basically JD Vance is saying going to war with Iran was wrong.
And insiders are predicting that he is already separating himself from Trump while being his vice president and saying he's going to start this, you know, like new America party or something. And he, um, has said we shouldn't be fighting the war in Iran and Israel's wars. What does that type of loyalty, disloyalty do to the, the, the autocrat? How, how is that? I mean, he's mad that he lost. He feels exposed, but that disloyalty, how does that trigger him?
Well, that creates more paranoia because, so, um, the reason that Vance is just, uh, almost compartmentalizing, saying it's all about the war in Iran and we fought for Israel. Because remember Trump just recently said, oh, we're not going to give Israel any more money.
Yeah. Hail Mary. Yeah.
Right. But in doing that, they're not addressing the domestic stuff because what they want to do is keep all the repressive domestic stuff, the ICE. They want to keep the white Christian nationalism. They have no intention of backing down on immigration or anything. And so they're, so Vance's thing is like, okay, well, I'll come out on Iran, but he's not criticizing any of the other policies. Note that, right? And, you know, people have talked about Vance, you know, having a different party or going ahead and also Tucker Carlson.
Yes.
And luckily Vance is so unlikable and has actually very bad political timing. Remember when he converted, he went, came out about being a Catholic and then he insulted the pope.
Yeah.
The same week.
Yes. This is why I've endorsed JD Vance as the Republican nominee. I've given him my full endorsement because I want, that's a fight we need.
Yeah. And, and he's just, again, he's unlikable personally. He's, he's openly hypocritical. So he doesn't, I don't see him as much future. And he's propped up, and people are knowing this more now by Peter Thiel, one of the, you know, and Palantir, he was created, he's a creation fully of that billionaire who backed both his Senate race and his private businesses.
Yep.
And so he, he is the representative of the bad billionaires. And so he doesn't have any future. Um, uh, and, and we'll see what happens. Um, but it's very interesting. People talk about, um, founding another party and Tucker Carlson has done the same, but we, we don't treat third parties very kindly.
Right.
Now the GOP though, I, I remember I wrote a piece for the Atlantic in 2016 about Trump being, you know, like Mussolini. And I ended it saying that, um, the GOP, uh, should take a lesson from what happened to the parties that backed Mussolini in Italy. They no longer existed after World War II. They just died. Now we only have two parties and it's too big to die. But I was sending a message that the GOP, it's what Lindsey Graham said, right?
Remember that in '16 he said, if we back Trump, we're going to get, what was it?
Yeah, we're going to get whipped and we'll deserve it or something like that.
So I was sending a message to the GOP saying that if you do this with Trump, you're not going to come out very well. And here we are 10 years later, I don't know what will happen to the GOP.
It's interesting because I think leaning into my theory, my armchair historian psychiatrist theory, that he's in his deathbed confession era. I think, you know, he loves to grandstand on camera and that's not going to go anywhere. He loves it. He's in his happy space. And I can just see it getting worse and him getting crazier and it's going to be like, and JD, JD sucks. And he's just going to start just throwing them all under the bus and just get more and more erratic. And instead of him blaming the, you know, the, the socialists, wild, libtard, maniacs, you know how he goes on, we're communists, terrorists, all of this stuff.
I see it shifting towards him starting to publicly blame, uh, the people around him, which is a full circle moment because what, what brought Trump up was he did something that was refreshing. And, and I can't believe I'm saying it, but I remember experiencing this. And it was in 2015 before when he was campaigning, he called Ted Cruz a liar. Lying Ted Cruz. And I remember, and I'm a Democrat, I can't stand Republicans. I hope, I hope that your prediction of, uh, what happened after Mussolini, I hope that happens to the Republican Party, because I've lived in a state where I see the destruction of Republican policies.
But, um, I remember him calling them all out. Low energy jeb, lying Ted, little, little Marco. And I, and it was refreshing to him to say, they're all full of it. And he said, they're all full of it. They tell you what you want to hear. And then they take all this money. And he called the game out. Then of course he ended up playing the game. He's a pathological liar and all that stuff. But I think it would be a beautiful book for you to write. This full circle moment. He rose up criticizing Republicans and then he killed the Republican Party, criticizing them all the way until biology took care of him.
And humiliating them. And we see, for example, uh, Tim Scott has been publicly humiliated, uh, on national television by Trump while standing next to Trump. And he's out there being more loyal than ever. And so these humiliations are, they all do it.
It's crazy.
Like a lot of like old, old school dictators, they, they had these sadistic games because they have, they have a sense of humor, but it's sadistic humor.
Right.
They used to, uh, have a big rally and have all their cabinet people there. And then he would, they would fire them in front of everybody and, or they would fire them on television or people would learn by reading the paper that they were fired.
Trump did that. The tweets, Rex Tillerson and others. I think Kristi Noem found out while she was giving a speech.
Yes. That's what they do.
The humiliation. Let's talk about this. Cause this is fascinating to me. This party of, uh, you know, we're so masculine, but if anything, it's just a very, um, uh, uh, uh, stunted form of masculinity, emotionally stunted, uh, unevolved form of masculinity. But nonetheless, they run on the veneer that we're so masculine. And time and time and time and time and time again, these people within the Republican Party and the elites to an extent, the humiliation rituals, which they engage in fascinate me.
And here's the most recent one that fascinated me. It's about Ted, lying Ted Cruz. So Trump's on the, uh, snap in Texas and they're trying to get Ken Paxton. He just talked about Ken Paxton not having a great anatomy and it's going to be difficult for him to talk about how hot he is. Ken Paxton stands up and waves to everybody after he just basically said, Ken Paxton's ugly AF and I'm not going to, I'm not going to thirst trap over him. Then he sets his sights on Ted Cruz and he's like, you know, I think I'll nominate Ted to be Supreme Court.
All the Democrats have voted for him because they hate him. They can't stand him. And the Republicans have voted for him too because they can't stand him. Ted, where are you? Ted, stand up. And I'm like, no, he is not there. Ted stands up, smiles big and just starts waving. Is this common in these dictatorships? It's crazy to watch.
But the, the, the tragic part of, well, it's not tragic, it's fortunate in some ways. When this happens in like in Mobutu's Congo or like, you know, Saddam Hussein, um, they would be, if they didn't stand up and wave and smile, they would be killed. And what's always struck me is all this collaboration, all this sycophant stuff.
Without a gun to their head.
They were going to, they're, they're, what would they happen to them? They would be primaried. They, their political career would be compromised and they still did it. But, but Trump insulted, uh, Ted Cruz's wife very early on. And when Ted Cruz didn't, uh, reply and he ended up supporting Trump, Trump knew he owned him because you have to, it's like, uh, it's very similar to organized crime and there's a lot of overlap.
And so you want to own somebody either through blackmail, which the Russians call compromat.
Right.
And, and Trump is an expert at, you know, through Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, let's not forget him, of, of getting dirt on people. But you also want to own them because if you insult them and humiliate them and they still come back for more, they, they've lost respect for you. And so they own you now. And so Ted Cruz has had, this is 10 years of this. And it's, it's very sad. Um, I don't have particular sympathy for him.
Right. Right.
But it's a, it's sad. And, and the whole party has been captured and owned in this way. And that's why accountability is really important. And so many of them have now lost. Um, in my book, I talk about the first one, the Jeff Sessions. So two weeks, less than two weeks after Trump said that I could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, which isn't exactly a very good recommendation for leadership. Jeff Sessions was the first. He went to the MAGA rally.
He put on the hat and Trump was like, wow, I'm being normalized now. And then he made him attorney general and then he fired him and he backed Tuberville. And so he's gone or Tuberville.
Yeah.
So Jeff Sessions ended up with no political career in the end. So he's like a microcosm of what happens when you subject yourself and you go along with the humiliation game of Donald Trump.
Totally. Okay. Final question. We've talked about the aftermath of these elections on the, on the strong man, the coal, the elites. You taught us about the moral collapse and the, the strong man and the movement displaying and bragging and putting it in our faces, the moral collapse and rebuilding that, because that's created a cultural rot that has trickled down. And we see that in rebuilding after this is the accountability component apart, punishing that moral rot, showing that we're not okay with that.
How do we as the survivors of the strong man's reign rebuild that?
So it's, the accountability is part of it because it's, it's, it's, you know, saying that you can't get away with this. You can't get away with the corruption, the lawlessness, the violence, the cruelty. And I think that, you know, so often we have like, um, movements of the right to truth or moral renewal after, um, the dictators go, but I think we have to integrate it into, uh, the Democratic Party platform. And some people did tell Rico, he, he actually ran on, uh, he kept talking about a politics of love.
Yeah.
And some of them are coming from a Christian background of Christian piety and love. Some are secular, but we need that moral renewal. Um, that, that has to be part of it because we want to return to fairness, to decency, to solidarity, to caring. And, and we have these, you know, so there's Elon Musk who's talking about empathy is suicidal. Well, we don't, we don't think that we're better than that. So I think that's the way to go.
Moral renewal. I'm going to work on that though. That could be somewhat brand damaging for me, considering I love bullying fascists, but I would say that bullying the bullies and showing that that is not acceptable, um, is part of moral renewal because we have to be outraged at outrageously cruel crimes that are committed against our fellow citizens.
Yes. Because it's when we, um, become desensitized to the violence, when we decide to turn away when our neighbor gets deported, um, or we see someone, uh, in the street getting beaten up by the state, right? That's when the moral collapse is inhabiting in us. And so, you know, everything can start with us. And that's why voting, we went out, some people were afraid, but they went out and they did it. Um, and we can model the values we want to see in the world, each of us.
So that's where calling out and, uh, calling out injustice, um, it isn't necessarily bullying. It's, it's reminding people that these are bad actors and we deserve better.
Yeah. Righteous indignation and the good fight.
Yes.
It's a good, we're picking a good fight by doing that.
It's a good fight.
Yeah. Ruth, I could talk to you forever. This is obviously going to be very interesting to study until January and then the final two years. I can imagine this would be like your Super Bowl because you're actually living through an historical moment. And what you write in your observations will be in the permanent record forever. Ruth, I cherish our friendship. Thank you for your help on my book. Ruth helped advise on my book and we share just a such a warm friendship. She's one of my first friends in New York. And so I just adore you.
We are so lucky to have you as a guest. I'm so lucky to have you as a friend and the country and the world is so lucky to have you as a historian.
Thank you. And your passion inspires me and your book is amazing.
Oh, thank you. All right. We'll see you all soon.
Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains the enormity of the midterm election results.
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