Ian Bassin on How to Save American Democracy from Trump

I do think it's important for reasons you and I would both appreciate, which is this sort this sort of cultural dominance, that there's nowhere you can look where I am not the center of attention and that I do not control. There's a reason why these personalist emperors, dictators, autocrats do this. It's a it's a it's a way of demonstrating total domination in terms of bringing opposition to heel. And now the good fight. with Yasha Monk.

When you look at the news today, there is a blizzard of concerning headlines. It is, at least in my book, quite clear that Donald Trump is trying to expand his hold over American society in all kinds of illegitimate ways. The most recent example which I wrote about on my Substack is the investigation by the Department of Justice into Jaleil Powell. It is clearly an attempt to go after Trump's perceived political enemies and to expand his hold over things like monetary policy which have traditionally been independent of the will and the whim

of the American president. Well, I thought this was as good a week as any to talk with one of my old friends about whether our fears for Trump's influence on America's political system, which we shared when we were getting to know each other, in late 2016, early 2017, where coming true or not. Ian Bassin is the executive director of Protect Democracy. He is a former MacArthur Fellow.

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