NPR’s Scott Detrow talks to The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum about why the Trump administration appears to be backing off some of its actions and what that means for concerns about democratic backsliding.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Trump administration has gotten its way so much over the past 16 months – from Republicans in Congress, especially – that it feels unusual to see it back down anywhere. But on Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed to a House subcommittee that the Department of Justice is not moving forward with its $1.776 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund. The proposed fund was criticized by Democrats and many Republicans who saw it as funneling federal money to the president’s supporters, possibly including January 6 rioters.
In recent weeks, the Justice Department also backed off its investigation into former Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. And last Friday, the president posted that he had, quote, “canceled” his involvement with the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ruled his name could not be on it.
So how do we make sense of all of these reversals? Is there a broader trend happening or not? Let’s bring in Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of authoritarian regimes. Welcome back.
ANNE APPLEBAUM: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: Let me start with this. What, to you, was so particularly alarming about this $1.8 billion fund?
APPLEBAUM: It was alarming because, No. 1, it was the president illegally directing federal money – so taxpayers’ money – towards his supporters, including some who had clearly and obviously broken the law. It was also disturbing because it seemed like the process by which they got to this figure was also less than legal. And so you saw the president bending the law in order to fund, essentially, his own political supporters. That’s what happens in regimes where one party or one clique or one person has captured the state.
DETROW: One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because you have written so clearly – whether it’s about Trump or whether it’s about many other countries where we’ve seen similar trends – an authoritarian or an authoritarian-type leader will push, and they’ll push, and they’ll push, and they’ll push, and they don’t stop pushing. Here, we saw Trump try to do something, his own party say, no, this is too far, and Trump backing off.
APPLEBAUM: What you’re seeing now is the American system of checks and balances beginning to work the way it’s supposed to work. When Trump first came to office the second time, it almost seemed as if his party – in particular, his party in Congress – had decided to ignore the Constitution, to forget that they are also supposed to play a role in American government. For reasons of intimidation, ideology, fear, they did it anyway.
Now that the president is unpopular, now that he’s lost some important court cases, now that, you know, some of the arguments that people have been making about him breaking the system are beginning to seep through, what you’re seeing is the leaders of Congress – in this case, it’s the Republicans who lead both the Senate and the House – deciding to use the power that they have. And that’s a sign that our political system still has some health in it.
DETROW: As somebody who’s closely following and worried about anti-Democratic drift, does it matter to you whether or not this pushback is happening because Republicans are worried about saving their own seats or because they have broader constitutional concerns?
APPLEBAUM: I mean, I suppose I would prefer it if Republicans had broader constitutional concerns and were thinking about the welfare of all Americans. But if it happens in some cases that their motivation is political – in other words, they see that these things are unpopular – and maybe they’re unpopular also because they appear to a lot of Americans to be undemocratic – then so be it.
DETROW: You’ve studied leaders in other countries – Hungary, Russia, Poland, specifically. Is overplaying a hand part of the storyline, sometimes? Is that sometimes something that kind of leads to losing power?
APPLEBAUM: Some of them do. So we just saw – in Hungary, we saw a prime minister who’d been in charge for 16 years and who very much overplayed his hand, who captured most of the state institutions, who controlled 90% of the media. We saw that for a majority of Hungarians, that became too much, finally. People recognized that that system had enabled quite a lot of theft, quite a lot of graft, quite a lot of corruption, and Hungary was becoming poorer, actually, very rapidly. And so you had a mobilization of voters and a pushback. And so it can happen. I mean, there are, of course, states where it doesn’t happen. Usually, that’s because the authorities either find ways to cheat in the elections or they begin to use violence against their opponents.
DETROW: Do you think this is a turning point or could be a turning point, or are you still a little skeptical to call it that?
APPLEBAUM: I’m skeptical to call it that because I want to see how the midterms play out. And by that, I don’t mean who’s going to win. I mean, are the elections fair? Are they conducted fairly? Do all states respect the rules? Does the federal government try to play any games with voter lists? Is ICE used on Election Day to intimidate voters? All those kinds of things that people have been talking about – that’s the real test. You know, is this a normal American government in the sense that it is willing to lose power and will lose power with good grace if it does? Or are they going to try to alter the outcome of the election both by manipulating it or maybe by not accepting the results?
DETROW: That is The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum. Thanks so much. And I suspect we will be talking to you this fall.
APPLEBAUM: Great. Thank you so much.
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