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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Fiona Hill on What Putin Tells Us About Trump

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Washington Roundtable’s Susan B. Glasser interviews the Russia expert Fiona Hill about Vladimir Putin’s long reign and Trump’s dismantling of American institutions. Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, previously served in the National Security Council and National Intelligence Council. She gained national attention as a star witness during the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, in 2019. Additionally, Hill, who is also a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, talks with Glasser about the Trump Administration’s war on academic institutions.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the political scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics.

0:13.1

I'm Evan Osnose, and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues, Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer.

0:18.4

Great to be back with you, Susan and Jane.

0:22.1

Great to see you, Evan. So happy be back with you, Susan and Jane. Great to see you, Evan.

0:24.2

So happy to be with you guys.

0:39.9

Well, it's officially summer and Washington has totally cleared out. And we figured now would be a good time to take a step back and to try to examine how our town looks right now under Trump 2.0, what he hath wrought.

0:48.3

For the next several weeks, Susan and Jane and I are going to take turns sitting down with a

0:53.0

special guest to help us unpack

0:56.0

the first six months of Trump's second term in office. And there are a handful of central themes

1:02.1

that we're going to be looking at in this series, including Trump's attempts to circumvent the law

1:07.3

and what it means for you. We'll also analyze his relationship with some of the tycoons

1:12.5

in Silicon Valley right here at the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence. But today,

1:18.7

we wanted to look at Trump's foreign policy, what an unleashed Trump means for the country and for

1:25.2

the world. Susan, for this conversation, you chose to sit down

1:28.8

with someone that you've known a long time, someone we both know, Fiona Hill. Tell us a little bit

1:34.7

about why Fiona. I thought she was a perfect person to sort of get us started. First of all,

1:40.6

she's someone I've had a running conversation with really for the last, shockingly enough, 25 years,

1:46.0

we figured it out. It's a long time. And I think the course of that conversation in many ways

1:52.2

is the subject of our podcast, week in and week out, and that is what's happened to the U.S.

1:59.2

Many people remember Fiona for the painful moment that she came to national attention as a star witness in the first impeachment hearings of Donald Trump, because she had served as his very nonpartisan senior director for Russia and Europe at the National Security Council during his first term.

2:18.3

She's worked at the National Intelligence Council. She's been a longtime scholar at Brookings

2:22.9

Institution. She later wrote a best-selling book about all this called There's Nothing for

...

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