S8 Ep111: CONTINUED 6/8 Michael McFaul's book Autocrats Versus Democrats argues that Putinism is driven by anti-Western ideology, making Putin a risk-taker, and McFaul believes the US erred by lacking a robust response and failing to provide arms after the 2014 Cri
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
6/8 Michael McFaul's book Autocrats Versus Democrats argues that Putinism is driven by anti-Western ideology, making Putin a risk-taker, and McFaul believes the US erred by lacking a robust response and failing to provide arms after the 2014 Crimea invasion, stressing that helping Ukraine win is essential to inspire Russian democrats.
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| 0:24.8 | The home of your kind of cozy, D'Nelm. |
| 0:27.8 | The Home of Homes. |
| 0:31.3 | I'm John Batchel with Professor Michael McFault of Stanford University. |
| 0:35.4 | He's at the Hoover Institute. |
| 0:36.5 | He runs the Freeman Spogley Institute, and he's the author of a new book that is the beginning of what Michael promises to be several more examining autocrats versus Democrats. |
| 0:48.2 | And I credit his researchers. |
| 0:50.6 | The facts are way on me. |
| 0:53.0 | And so I want to go to a scene. |
| 0:55.2 | I like scenes, Michael, because you enter into the opera halfway through. |
| 1:00.9 | Right. |
| 1:01.4 | It's Mar-a-Lago, first Trump term. |
| 1:04.7 | Xi Jinping is in Florida. |
| 1:07.1 | There are photographs in the front of the building. |
| 1:09.7 | And later on, we're told, when they served chocolate cake, Mr. Trump conveyed in some fashion that he just fired missiles into Syria. |
| 1:21.0 | This is the Assad Syria undergoing civil war at the time. It didn't resolve anything, but it was missiles and chocolate cake that I remember. |
| 1:28.4 | This is Donald Trump learning Xi Jinping and vice versa. Now, Xi Jinping is a man who resents |
| 1:36.0 | his childhood and what was done to his father, a princeling. He was repressed by Mao and the |
| 1:42.1 | center of the Communist Party for many years, stripped him of his authority and humiliated him. |
| 1:48.1 | That was the cultural revolution. |
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