Hello, my name's David Rundsman and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas podcast.

Today it is part two of my conversation with historian Chris Clark, in which we explore how German history

can help us understand a politician like Donald Trump. Today we're going to be talking a bit about

Bismarck. We're also going to be talking a bit about tyrants, emperors, presidents and kings.

And we're also going to be talking about Trump's

literature. Chris will be exploring what he thinks we can learn from the art of the deal.

Chris, we were talking about an emperor, as you said, Kaiser Wilhelm, a warlord, a hereditary monarch,

and alluding to the possible comparisons with Donald Trump, we're going to talk much more about

Trump now. But I suppose one place to start is whether it really makes sense to compare a democratically

elected politician to a hereditary monarch. People listening to us talking

about Wilhelm will have noticed the many ways in which these situations are not analogous. He inherited

the throne. He was there for three decades. He had a literal court around him. Trump didn't

inherit the presidency. He will be gone, I think,

almost certainly in a few years. There is a time limit on it. Presidents are not kings.

But do you still think it makes sense? Because temperamentally, there were so many, it seemed to me,

points of overlap that you can make that comparison, notwithstanding the fact that democratic leaders are not.

There is a movement happening as we speak in the United States, pointing out that America does not do kings.

So he has kingly characteristics, but he's not a king.

I don't want to make a case for the comparison because I see it just as an exploratory device,

just to hold these things in each

other's proximity and see if all these people in each other's proximity and see what

you might learn from that rather than to assert or deny the comparability of two singular

...