Welcome to part two of my interview with the phenomenal Ruth Ben-Giott.

In this part, Ruth and I discuss how we hang on to hope in this time of massive upheaval

in which the Trump regime is dismantling our institutions, and Donald is trying to remake America in his image. As I said, I wanted to shift gears a little bit and talk about a document that was released

by the Trump regime a couple of weeks ago, I think, the national security strategy, which,

you know, that is something that happens annually, I believe, and it essentially is meant

to identify the bad actors, the people from whom

we need to protect ourselves, why we need to protect ourselves from them, the resources we need

to deploy, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, Ruth, this was like nothing I had ever seen before,

not to coin a phrase.

So can you talk a little bit about how suddenly it seems that China, Russia, North Korea,

and Iran and others that used to be at the top of the list of bad actors seem not to exist in the world anymore,

certainly not anything we need to pay attention to, and that suddenly our main problem

is European liberal democracy and the EU.

Yeah, so this has been coming for a while. In fact, in June 24, when Trump was campaigning, he gave a speech.

And I've started one New York Times op-ed and numerous lucid pieces with this quote.

And he said, if you have a smart president, they are not going to be your enemies.

You're going to make them do great. And he was referring to Russia, China, and North Korea.

And indeed, that's what he's doing. He, a mandate of his administration is to solve Putin's

problems for sure. And, and, you know,

insert the America into this kind of axis of autocracy. And, and a lot of things that have

gone on are to that end. So, for example, if, you know, I'm a, I'm a scholar of autocracy,

so I try and think the way they do.

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