I'm Charlie Sykes.

Welcome back to the contrary podcast.

We are honored to be joined by our good friend Ann Applebaum from the Atlantic who's talking to us from her home in Poland.

So, you know, thanks for joining me, and I appreciate it very much.

Very happy to be here.

All right. So I hate to ruin your Monday this quickly by asking about Steve Bannon.

You probably heard over the weekend that Steve Bannon is saying, you know, people need to get used to it.

Donald Trump is going to run for a third term.

He is going to be elected president in 2028.

Trump has asked about it, you know, on his Asian trip, does not rule it out.

So give me your sense because we have talked about this in the past.

You've written extensively about sometimes that we have a failure of imagination to believe

that they will actually do what they say they're going to do.

What's your instinct when you hear this speculation about a third term coming from Steve

Bannon?

So first of all, my instinct, which could be wrong, but it's, you know, one has to trust

one's instinct some of the time, is that Steve Bannon is trying to attract attention to himself

and trying to win favor with Trump by bringing up this narrative.

My second feeling is that I am not sure that three years from now Trump is going to be able to run for president because he will be very old and possibly ill and possibly with dementia.

And so I'm not sure it's not the number one thing that I'm most worried about.

My worry and my fear where Americans lack imagination is I'm much more worried

about the midterms and the various games that might be played to affect them. And I'd rather

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