Trump, authoritarianism, and what Americans think makes a good leader
On Point | Podcast
WBUR
4.2 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2024
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat was one of many who warned about Trump and his authoritarian leanings. But this didn’t seem to matter for the nearly 77 million Americans who voted for him. What conversations about authoritarianism should we be having in the U.S.?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for WBUR comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. |
| 0:09.0 | MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. |
| 0:13.6 | Learn more at MathWorks.com. |
| 0:16.7 | This is on point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi. |
| 0:19.6 | Ruth Ben-Giott is back with us today. |
| 0:21.9 | She's a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University. |
| 0:25.7 | She writes a substack newsletter on threats to democracy called Lucid. |
| 0:29.9 | And she's author of Strongmen, Mussolini to the present. |
| 0:33.3 | And throughout this year, she has spoken frequently and eloquently on the threats to democracy |
| 0:37.7 | posed in the 2024 presidential elections. Professor Ben Guiat, welcome back to On Point. |
| 0:43.5 | Thank you, Magna. Glad to be here. |
| 0:45.8 | I want to start with something that took place on November 9th, just four days after the election |
| 0:52.0 | of now President-elect Donald Trump. |
| 0:55.5 | You were on MSNBC. |
| 0:57.5 | The show was The Weekend. |
| 1:06.8 | And co-host Michael Steele, there's this moment where he asks you about what the United States is in for now with Trump's win. |
| 1:09.6 | And you talked for a bit describing your concerns. And then towards the end of your comments, |
| 1:11.9 | this happened. He did a really good job of conditioning over and over. We've had eight years of |
| 1:17.3 | this. Americans to see democracy is inferior to something else. That something else would be |
| 1:26.2 | strong men ruled by him. |
| 1:33.1 | I'm sorry, no, Lord. |
| 1:35.5 | George. |
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