I'm Charlie Sakes. Welcome to the To the Contrary podcast. Just a quick note, if you like these

conversations, if you find them interesting and valuable, please consider subscribing. And also,

if you have not yet subscribed to my newsletter, to the contrary over on Substack,

consider doing that. It is free. But of course, we always like it when we have subscribers

who are willing to pay. In any case, we have so much to talk about the anniversary of the murder of Alexei Navalny,

the attempts to indict members of Congress in the last week, the Pam Bondi meltdown,

whatever happened to Tulsi Gabbard, and Barack Obama,

now deciding to speak out more openly about the clown in the White House.

A lot to talk about as we start a new week.

And on today's episode, we're joined by Susan Glasser of the New York to try to break all of this down.

Thanks for coming back, Susan. I appreciate it very, very much.

Well, great to be with you, Charlie. Thank you. Well, I want to do a deep dive into your piece

about Donald Trump, who ran for office saying, if we don't have free speech, then we don't have

anything in a free country. This would be the same Donald Trump who tried to indict six

sitting members of Congress in the last week.

And the, as you point out, the attempt to criminalize political expression is crossing a line that's more or less held in this country since 1798.

And I think sometimes we need to put these things into historical perspective.

But speaking of historical perspective, would you mind if I started with something different here?

For sure. Monday was the second anniversary of the murder of Alexei Navalny. And over the weekend,

European governments announced the UK, Sweden, France, Germany, and Netherlands, all announced

they are confident that Alexi Navalny,

who was a leader of the Russian opposition, was poisoned with a lethal toxin, something that is

...