General
There’s a Reason Even ‘Smart’ People Surrender to Trump
The deputy editor of Opinion, Patrick Healy, speaks with the columnist M. Gessen about why so many people and institutions, including Democrats, have bent the knee to Trump, despite strongly disagreeing with him. There’s a Reason Even ‘Smart’ People …
The deputy editor of Opinion, Patrick Healy, speaks with the columnist M. Gessen about why so many people and institutions, including Democrats, have bent the knee to Trump, despite strongly disagreeing with him.
There’s a Reason Even ‘Smart’ People Surrender to Trump
M. Gessen and Patrick Healy try to reckon with the president’s whiplash authoritarianism.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Patrick Healy: I’m Patrick Healy, deputy editor of New York Times Opinion, and this is The First 100 Days, a weekly series examining President Trump’s use of power and his drive to change America.
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about why people choose to give in to Donald Trump, from the Republicans in the Senate and House, who’ve given up any semblance of independence for Congress, even confirming Trump cabinet nominees who they privately oppose, to the government institutions and business leaders and even Democratic Party officials who aren’t putting up much fight where it counts.
And so I wanted to talk with my colleague, Masha Gessen. They’ve spent two decades writing about the rise of authoritarianism in their homeland of Russia and in Eastern Europe.
