• In just about two months, President Donald Trump has managed to thoroughly shake U.S. democratic structures to the core. From firing thousands of federal workers and plunging the U.S. into a trade war, to testing the limits of our three supposedly coequal branches of government, it’s been a lot to process. And the constant chaos makes it hard to grasp what’s actually happening, big picture: Are we watching a wannabe strongman fumble through enacting a policy agenda that will likely prove to be deeply unpopular, or are we actually watching the end of American Democracy as we’ve known it for roughly the last century. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University and author of the book ‘Strongmen,’ explains what history can tell us about our current moment and what we can do about it.
• And in headlines: Venezuela said it would start accepting deportation flights from the U.S. again, Palestinian health officials said the death toll in Gaza has topped 50,000, and the White House said Second Lady Usha Vance is heading to Greenland… just for fun… scout’s honor.

• Check out Ruth’s book and newsletter – https://ruthbenghiat.com/
• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
• Support victims of the fire – votesaveamerica.com/relief
• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, March 24th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that fully supports Louie and Ophelia, two otters that have run away from the new zoo and adventure park in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Run free little otters, run free. [music break] On today’s show, Venezuela says it will accept deportees. And Second Lady Usha Vance is going to Greenland to watch some dogs sled. That’s definitely the only reason she’s going. Just for a visit. For dogs. But let’s start with perhaps the biggest question you might be asking yourself right now. How bad is all this going to get and how scared should I be? Let’s just set the stage here. Right now, the President of the United States is screaming on his personal social media website about impeaching judges who rule against him, while the government is disappearing migrants who may or may not be gang members to a nightmare prison in El Salvador, and then posting about how funny it is on social media. And the people closest to this administration all sound like Trump Assistant Sebastian Gorka speaking to Newsmax on Friday. 

[clip of Sebastian Gorka] And there is one person according to the Constitution, according to statutes of the nation, who has the right to decide who can be in America, who are the aliens, who the foreigners who are allowed into the nation and who we keep out. That individual is the Commander-in-Chief. 

Jane Coaston: That is both untrue and extremely creepy. But this is all very, very bad. The kind of bad that at absolute best is going to take years to make right. At worst, well, history tells us it doesn’t end well. And the resistance to the actions of everyone involved here looks really feeble in the face of their constant threats. On Friday, Columbia University agreed to a list of demands from the administration, including major reforms to its protest policies, after the White House cut off $400 million worth of federal grants earlier this month. But even that level of capitulation may not be enough for the Trump administration. Education Secretary Linda McMahon seemed to give the White House an opening to demand more during an interview Sunday with CNN’s Dana Bash. 

[clip of Linda McMahon] I believe that they are on the right track so that we can now move forward. 

[clip of Dana Bash] Does that mean that the money will be unfrozen? 

[clip of Linda McMahon] That means that we are on right track now to make sure the final negotiations to unfreeze that money will be in place. 

[clip of Dana Bash] Okay, so not yet. 

[clip of Linda McMahon] We’re working on it. 

Jane Coaston: On the right track, sure, doesn’t sound like you’re definitely getting your money back. Now, I am not by nature a panicky person, but I’m feeling pretty anxious right now. And maybe you are too. So I wanted to know more about what history could tell us about our current moment, and more critically for us and for me, what we can do about it. So I spoke with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She’s a professor of history at New York University and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Ruth, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: It’s a pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: I think it’s really hard for me and it’s hard for a lot of people to tell what we’re watching right now when it comes to the Trump administration. Are we watching a wannabe strong man fumble through enacting a policy agenda that will likely prove to be deeply unpopular? Or are we actually watching the end of American democracy as we’ve known it pretty much for the last century? How have you been thinking about his second term so far? 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: There’s no doubt that what what they would like to do is kill off our democracy and have some form of an authoritarian state. I mean, I’m somebody who’s been saying that he singly, Trump, is an authoritarian since 2016, and I saw his first administration as like a trial run. And so now they use their time out of office brilliantly to set everything up so they’re ready to go. Um. I also think, though, that it’s going to be deeply unpopular, and I think there’s going to be a reckoning that we’re already starting to see. So it’s both. Um. And I do want to say this is one of the scariest things. Comparatively speaking, the speed and the scale of what they’re doing does not resemble how even Putin got started or Erdoğan  or Orban. it resembles after a coup. So that’s that’s uh very sobering. 

Jane Coaston: So I mean, you used the word coup, sometimes those aren’t reversible. Like you can’t come back necessarily every time from a coup. So what does that mean? 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Well, I see two things going on because um you can see my book Strongmen in the background and there’s only one guy on the cover because there’s the thing about the Strongmen. There’s one. But here we have two guys, two damaged individuals who would like to wreck democratic governance. And so I’ve been trying to figure out what is old and what is new of what’s going on. And Trump is more traditional. You know, that’s why he loves Putin, he loves Xi. Whether it’s communist or fascist, he loves these dictators. And so the stuff that Musk is doing, um and DOGE was just created as a front so that that he could really infiltrate government and paralyze governance and wreck America so that we take generations to rebuild. So things just fall apart and stop functioning. And that is something that would be more difficult to fix depending on how long it goes on. 

Jane Coaston: I don’t like doing historical comparisons because it’s so difficult–

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: To say, like, you know, we don’t really have a lot of the same scenarios or same context that existed in 1920s Italy or 1930s Germany, or, you, know, talking about Venezuela or the rise of Peronism in Argentina, but can you compare the moment we’re in to the rise of past dictators? Like Mussolini, for example, what did opposition to him look like during his rise with the with the knowledge that the context is going to be different? 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Yeah, Mussolini is a good example, actually, because he was a prime minister in a democracy before he became dictator. And he used that time to intimidate the opposition, and there was a huge left. It’s that’s why you’re right that it’s very difficult to make um historical comparisons, because although MAGA and Trump talk a lot about the radical left, we don’t have a huge left. There’s no big communist party. That’s all that’s all propaganda. But one of the things that we do know is that it’s very important to have unity of opposition. And in places in Europe, if you just keep to today, like in Poland, they were able to get rid of their far-right party after eight years because six parties came together and they have multi-party you know situations. And it’s very challenging for America because we’ve only got these two parties. And the Democratic Party you know has has a wide variety of types of people. 

Jane Coaston: And they all hate each other. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: And we see Bernie and AOC out there getting tens of thousands of people and actually responding to the moment in a very empathetic and and engaged manner. And then we see the institutional part of the party, the kind of more elitist part of party, I would say not responding very well as a as a leadership collective. There are individual people, Chris Murphy and Jasmine Crockett who are fabulous, fabulous. So, it’s a problem that we only have these two parties because um there’s no flexibility. It’s like the party is a bit fossilized and I just don’t think that in this situation, one huge party is very equipped to handle a crisis like this. 

Jane Coaston: Even thinking about Trump in terms of other historical dictators, I think that that’s the challenge of alleged Trump derangement syndrome, right? That like when you point out how alarming his actions are in the context of infamous strongmen that have come before him, or even if you just say things are bad, people accuse you of being crazy. It kind of reminds me a little bit because the term comes from Charles Krauthammer talking about George W. Bush, a president the right has successfully disappeared. But sometimes even I feel crazy thinking about Trump while also trying to live my life and thinking about like how much should I be talking about him or what should I be doing because you want to think what would I be doing if we were in 1920s Italy or early 1930s Germany, you know, what would I be doing and then I’m like, but is that these moments? 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: Maybe I’m crazy. So how do you ground yourself in these moments? 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Yeah, that’s such an interesting question because one thing I saw in my research is that when this happens, people are always unprepared. They always think it’s not going to happen to them as a country. And then often, even if it starts to happen to their country, they think it’s not going to happen me. But here’s this example that I think about a lot right now. So, in Chile, you had the US-backed coup in 1973. It’s a big example in my book. So that’s a coup. So it was like a surprise. And the equivalent of the GOP, which is the Christian Democrats, they were conservatives. The lead of the party, who had been the president of the country, so he’s no naive person, he actually thought that um that the military junta was gonna like, you know, get make order and and calm things down and and get rid of the left, and then hand back power to them to civilians. And then later, a few years later, he starts to wake up and realize that’s not the case and he starts speaking out and he was poisoned and he died. So I think about that a lot because even when there’s been a coup, and so like 24 hours in, they’re like taking people to the stadium and torturing them. Some people are still like, it might be okay, you know? And so here we are and it’s easy to live our lives and try and ignore what’s going on, um but that’s going to become much more difficult and you know, one of the main things it’s important to do is have solidarity because otherwise it’s like, if I’m not X, they’re not gonna come for me and I don’t have to care. And that is a recipe for the whole country being taken over. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I keep thinking about how I spent a lot of time studying um the rise of Nazi Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler. And there were so many people, the industrialists, the socialists, all these people who were like, well, he’s not going to be the problem. He’s not gonna be the problem. It’s somebody else. It somebody else that we don’t know. You know, we don t need to worry about him. Maybe we can even use him for our own purposes. And that’s not what happened. Is there a moment in your writing and in your research, in which you’ve seen democracies tip into a point of no return into authoritarianism, or maybe not no return, but where the road back to democracy is long and terrible. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Well we’re going down that road, because it’s a little deceptive today if people immediately think um, if you hear fascism or, because those were one party states. And today it’s much more common to have, um it’s called electoral autocracy, where you keep elections going, you keep different parties going, and then you fix the system in different ways so that you stay in power. You also change the laws. You also changed the constitution eventually. So for example, in Turkey, Erdoğan, who gets a pass and should not by so many people, he’s always said, well, here we have the ballot box. I’m not a dictator, but he just passed the point of no return because he um he arrested his chief political rival, the head of the opposition party and a hundred of his colleagues. And he removed him from office as the Istanbul mayor. And he basically took out of play the only guy who was would have been able to beat him in the next election for president. So that’s a tipping point. But other times it’s a slow erosion. Um and that’s what we’re living through now. A slow erosion and then test case. So let’s disappear this person. Oh, let’s um buy off this law firm a that’s where, if resistance is not swift and widespread, other examples will follow. 

Jane Coaston: So given everything we’ve just talked about, I am scared. I’ve been scared. What can we do to fight back? You talked about solidarity, you talked about working together, but what does that look like for average people listening to this podcast who are, like me, scared? 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: I think uh we’ve seen that a lot of the resistance is from the ground up. I think that um you know how Steve Bannon came up with uh, partly him and others, the precinct strategy that the right was going to conquer America from from the ground up, the school boards, the town councils, and they were very successful at doing that. We’ve got to take back our country, I’m using a Trumpian phrase and turning it on them. I think that’s important to do. Um. I think it’s really important to engage in community. Communities will save us, and we also know history of resistance. Your relationships will save you. Your real live community relationships are very important. Also, I think being visible and resisting, and it doesn’t matter if it’s small scale. It’s every everything counts. Um. I was in uh Penn Station, the train station, and I went into the bathroom and I saw in one of the stalls, somebody had taped on a you know Trump-Musk fascism, a big sign inside the stall. And because I’m a historian, my mind went back to the White Rose group of students in Nazi Germany, and that’s what they–

Jane Coaston: Sophie Scholl. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: –used to do. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: That’s what they used to and I was like, okay, um people see that, it’s something. And I, the last thing I would say, um most of us have somebody in our lives uh who is um, what I politely say, dwelling in the disinformation tunnel. I think um as it becomes more evident what the terrible fallout is going to be with social security, with the paralyzing the economy, with basically wrecking America as fast as they can, I think that um there’s going to more buyer’s remorse and I think, as unpleasant as it may be, I thinks it’s time to start having conversations with these people. And also people who never voted. I’m very haunted by the 80 million people who didn’t vote. This bothers me every day. And I think it’s time to reach out to those people, to mobilize those people or at least make them aware of what is happening to their country. 

Jane Coaston: Ruth, thank you so much for joining me. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: It’s a pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She is a professor of history at New York University. We’ll link to her sub-stack newsletter, Lucid. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

[clip of Tom Homan] I’ve noticed that [?] a lot of them don’t have criminal histories, well a lot of gang members don’t have criminal histories, just like a lot a terrorists in this world, they’re not in any terrorist database, right? 

Jane Coaston: Huh? Am I a terrorist? Or a gang member? I would hope someone would have told me. That’s border czar Tom Homan on ABC Sunday explaining how the administration is, quote, “using the laws in the books to enforce immigration laws.” Homan’s comments came a day after Venezuela said it would start accepting deportation flights from the U.S. again. Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, had halted the flights in early March. In a statement on Saturday, a representative for Venezuela’s government said, quote, “Migration isn’t a crime, and we will not rest until we achieve the return of all those in need and rescue our brothers kidnapped in El Salvador.” The comment appears to come in response to the Trump administration’s use of a wartime act to deport hundreds of people, including alleged Venezuelan gang members, to El Salvador earlier this month. A federal judge tried to temporarily block the flights, but the government said planes were already in the air when the ruling was issued. The administration has continuously refused to provide the judge with information about the flights. Borders czar Tom Homan said officials are, quote, “confident the deported Venezuelans are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.” 

[clip of Tom Homan] The bottom line is that plane was full of people designated as terrorists, number one. Number two, every every Venezuelan migrant on that flight was a TDA member based on numerous criminal investigations, on intelligence reports, and a lot of work by ICE officers. 

Jane Coaston: Sure would be great to have some due process, just to make sure. The Trump administration has been given a Tuesday deadline to answer questions about the flights or declare the state’s secrets privilege, which could allow it to withhold information it considers a national security risk. Teslas are being traded in at record rates, according to new data from the car shopping website, Edmunds. The site found that of all the cars traded in March, more than 1% were Teslas from Model Year 2017 or newer. The trade-ins are not really that much of a surprise. Tesla dealerships and vehicles continue to deal with vandalism attacks stemming from apparent protests of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to slash the federal workforce. Despite the backlash against the billionaire’s car company, the Trump administration is still desperately pleading with Americans to buy Tesla stock. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gushed about Musk on Fox News last week, calling him the best entrepreneur in America. 

[clip of Howard Lutnick] I think if you wanna learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla. It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again. 

Jane Coaston: Some government ethics experts say Lutnick’s endorsement broke a law that bans federal employees from using, quote, “public office for private gain.” I say it’s giving the Simpsons monorail episode. President Trump is especially taking the attacks on Tesla personally. He wrote on Truth Social Friday, quote, “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador.” No. The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s war with Hamas rose to 50,000 after a relentless weekend of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The tally was reported by the Gaza Health Ministry on Sunday. Israel resumed strikes on the Gaza Strip last week after a two-month fighting pause. The Health Ministry reported more than 600 deaths since then. The Israel Defense Forces ordered residents to evacuate southern Gaza Sunday as its military is reportedly considering launching a full ground invasion of Gaza. Israeli officials said they will decide whether or not to escalate based on how ceasefire talks progress. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week, quote, “this is just the beginning.” Mediators from Egypt and Qatar are pushing for an emergency fighting pause between Israel and Hamas. Hamas has long said it will only agree to a deal that promises a permanent end to war in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops. The White House announced Sunday that Second Lady Usha Vance and her son will travel to Greenland this week with a U.S. delegation. According to a statement, the visit is geared toward touring the island and learning more about its culture. One of the items on their agenda is attending Greenland’s annual dog sled race. Though, notably absent from Sunday’s statement was President Donald Trump’s obsession with owning Greenland. He’s said many times that he thinks the U. S. should annex the territory, even during his first term as president. Here’s what he said during his joint address to Congress earlier this month. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I think we’re going to get it one way or the other, we’re gonna get it. 

Jane Coaston: Vance and the U.S. delegation will arrive in Greenland Thursday. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing, my conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat earlier in the show, well, it got to me, especially thinking about how divided the opposition to Trump has felt. I don’t know about you, but it seems like a lot of Democrats have enjoyed fighting with other Democrats more than they have, say, opposing everything that’s happening right now. But that’s not true everywhere, or actually in most places. Case in point, Denver, Colorado this past weekend. 

[clip of Senator Bernie Sanders] We don’t want a king in the United States, we overthrew a king! 

Jane Coaston: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined forces to rally for progressive policy over the weekend, but it felt like they were rallying for way more than that. The duo hosted a rally in Denver on Friday, expecting 2,000 attendees. Over 30,000 showed up. Sanders said it was the biggest crowd he’s ever addressed. The event was part of Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy Tour. The independent senator is visiting cities across the country to speak out against the Trump administration and push Democrats to fight back. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez also stopped in Tucson on Saturday, where they spoke to a crowd of more than 20,000 people. 

[clip of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] We need to be taxing the rich on the floor of the United States Congress. We need to be establishing guaranteed health care on the floor of the United States congress. Not erasing American history on the floor of The United States Congress. 

Jane Coaston: And Sanders made a point to condemn co-president Elon Musk’s efforts to downsize the federal government in what seems to me to be the stupidest way possible. 

[clip of Senator Bernie Sanders] Does anybody think it makes sense that we have a campaign finance system where one man, Musk, can put 270 million dollars to get Trump elected? [crowd yelling, ‘no’] And then his reward is that he becomes the most powerful person in government. 

Jane Coaston: According to Representative Ocasio-Cortez, more than 86,000 people came to see her and Senator Sanders speak in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada. And about half of the people at their first stop were going to their first political rally. And the tour keeps getting bigger, especially as Republicans try to avoid their constituents. In Greeley, Colorado Representative Ocasio- Cortez sent a message to Republican Representative Gabe Evans, who has avoided doing a town hall. She took a picture of the 11,000 people in the crowd and reminded Representative Evans that elections still happen here. 

[clip of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] If you will indulge me for a moment, since um since Gabe hasn’t been around here, if we could just uh say hi to him for a, for a minute, can we just say, hi! See you in November! Thank you. 

Jane Coaston: Now, currently, the Democratic Party is very unpopular, which you probably know. But why they’re unpopular matters too. Yes, a portion of Democrats want the party to moderate while a section want the party to move further to the left. But pretty much everyone, from people getting polled to the people who showed up in Denver this past weekend, to the thousands of voters and constituents going to town halls and protests, wants the Democratic party to stand up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk, even if companies don’t, even if universities don’t. They want the Democratic Party to stand in opposition to Donald Trump and, you know, oppose him. Because we’re not just sad at what’s happening to our country, my country. We are fucking mad. And sure, there are a lot of things we don’t agree on and a lot values that we might not share and that’s gonna be tough to figure out. But what isn’t and what Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Sanders have figured out, along with thousands of our fellow Americans, is that we know what we don’t want. We don’t want oligarchy. We don’t want MAGA-Putinism. And we don’t want this. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, salute the University of Michigan’s men’s basketball team for making it to the Sweet 16 despite, um, me not thinking that would happen, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how Michigan went eight and 24 last year and this year have gone 27 to nine and will now play the number one seed, Auburn, for a spot in the Elite 8, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and sure, in the scheme of things, Michigan men’s basketball isn’t that critically important, but also it is always important to remember today and every day that it’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.