Welcome to this special episode of IHIP News.

I am joined by the bestselling author of Strongman, Ruth Ben Giat, a historian.

Ruth, welcome to IHive News.

Thank you.

I want to cover some very important information regarding what's happening in the United States because

all of this, and you say this a lot, is new for the United States to have this form of government.

And I read your lucid substack and listener, you should read it as well.

Because when you're armed with information, when the government is abusing its citizens, it can be cathartic and therapeutic to know what is going on.

And Ruth, you speak a lot about the government.

The Trump regime is intentionally weakening the government.

Explain to my listeners, why would you get power and then want to weaken the government

that you operate within? Yeah, this is this is one of the most tragic aspects of what's going on now

and I was calling it out in Lucid, like in February, in March.

You have somebody who's ahead of state who really long ago internalized Kremlin and other authoritarian views of the world that see democracy as the problem.

And then the question is, why would you kneecap your

own country? Right. And authoritarian do that so they can more easily grab control. If you have

an impoverished, diseased population, they're less likely to be protesting in the streets.

And if you care about profiting off of governance and you really don't care about the people

you are supposed to be governing.

And remember, President Trump did the AI video of him, like, dumping excrement on American

people and protesters, that kind of shows you the mentality.

And they're all like this.

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