behaving in a marauding imperialist fashion. Maduro is a horrible dictator, but this kind of

extraction to get the oil, this plundering, that's the big picture. And there's a relation between

this international behavior, the allying with autocrats, and trying to destroy our democracy.

Welcome to Independent Americans.

Welcome to episode 412. It is Tuesday, January 13th. I'm your host, Paul Reikoff, and I am coming to you from New York City, USA. Like most of New York City, most of America, and I think America itself, I am still fighting this damn flu. But amazingly, it's sunny and supposed to be 50 degrees here in New York today, the opposite of the dark and frigid temperatures in Ukraine right now.

But it's another tense and volatile week in America and in the world.

And I'm going to share the five eyes of this show that have always guided us, and I haven't

mentioned in a while. Every episode, I want to bring you independence, integrity, information,

inspiration, and impact. And our guest coming up brings that. Ruth Ben-Giott is a brilliant historian,

a clarion voice of reason and warning. In 2020, as I did and a few others, she warned that Trump

would not leave office. She's the author of Strongman. She's a professor of history and Italian

studies in NYU, an expert on authoritarianism and the authoritarian threat that we face right now.

She's a leader that I've wanted to have on this show for a long time,

and there couldn't be a better time than now. I've repeated over and over again, too many in this

country have a failure of imagination. Ruth Ben-Giatt does not. She's coming up in just a minute,

but first, there's a ton happening today. America is still very tense as ICE continues to run

rampant across America and especially

in Minneapolis. And the Minnesota Attorney General and Twin Cities mayors are punching back.

They are suing DHS to end what they're calling a federal invasion. Illinois is doing the same.

Mayor Jacob Fry in Minneapolis is a star who continues to rise. I think he's

meeting the moment. And he's also doubling down on his tenacity. He told critics that he's

sorry if he offended their delicate ears after dropping an F-bomb. He said that I should get the

...