Daniella Gibbs Léger: Hey everyone, welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger.
Colin Seeberger: And I’m Colin Seeberger. Daniella, how are you holding up this week, besides being freezing cold?
Gibbs Léger: Besides being frigid and over this winter, I’m holding on—barely, but I’m holding on.
Seeberger: For dear life.
Seeberger: Oh, I hear you. It has been precisely 51 hours at the time of this recording into—
Gibbs Léger: Feels like a year?
Seeberger: And we can fast forward the next four years. That would be just fine.
Gibbs Léger: That would be super. I am looking at a lot of reality television and some cooking shows, and that is how I’m trying to stay grounded.
Seeberger: Yes. I myself have gone down a true crime show rabbit hole. I mean, the other day it was JonBenét Ramsey—
Seeberger: —on Netflix. It was Laci Peterson yesterday. I was just like, I’ve got to find something to distract myself.
Gibbs Léger: The older people will remember the commercial, “Calgon, take me away.” There’s a lot of that.
Seeberger: Correct. Correct.
Seeberger: Well, while we’ve got to keep some hope alive however we can, we also need to address the current political moment. And I heard you had a great, really timely conversation this week.
Gibbs Léger: I really did. I talked to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on fascism and authoritarianism. We chatted about President Trump’s first few days in office, the classic strongman tactics he’s already using to consolidate power, and what we can do to fight back against the authoritarian creep that we are no doubt experiencing and will experience in the next four years.
Seeberger: It is the conversation of the moment, to be sure.
Seeberger: Before we get to it, we’ve got to get to some news—of which I think there’s been a little this week.
Gibbs Léger: Yes, there has been. So first, I want to address the fact that inauguration fell on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year. Trump, of course, felt so bold as to claim in his address that he would, quote, “make MLK’s dream come true.”
Pause. But let’s be clear: Dr. King’s legacy was about lifting people out of poverty, expanding rights and freedoms, and making American democracy a more inclusive project. In other words, the complete opposite of Trump’s agenda.
Mere days, hours into his administration, Trump has already begun enriching billionaire insiders at the expense of the middle class, ripping away our freedoms, and making Americans less safe. Those were his first actions in office, and they speak volumes about who Trump is fighting for: the billionaire donors and the wealthy that he will be beholden to while he’s back in office. We have to look no further than how he’s already walking back campaign promises to make it easier for folks to get by.
Seeberger: I did see that.
Gibbs Léger: Instead, the tariff plans that he’s threatening to impose on February 1—they will make our costs even worse. And in one of his first executive orders, he blocked a program that would allow Medicare beneficiaries to pay no more than $2 a month for certain generic prescription drugs.
He’s also halted leasing for wind turbines in federal waters and on federal lands, even though wind projects have a number of proven economic benefits like job creation, higher local tax revenue, and lower electricity rates.
Seeberger: Oh, like a lower utility bill? Sounds pretty good to me right now.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Sign me up.
This policy isn’t about shoring up our energy system or bringing down prices. It’s about pushing the country back towards a reliant on expensive, harmful, dirty energy and the massive corporations that produce it while making you, the American people, foot the bill.
Seeberger: Yeah, I mean, you got to just look at this also in the context in which we live, as our former vice president would say: This is all happening at the same time the West Coast is still on fire. I mean, Trump’s radical anti-clean energy policies that are only going to exacerbate climate change are coming at exactly the wrong time, right? He’s pulling us out of the Paris Climate Agreement, he is abdicating America’s global leadership in fighting climate change. It was Paris, I got to say, that got China to the negotiating table, getting them to cut emissions that’s helping address the climate crisis.
And we also got to point out that it was the day after Trump was sworn in, he had congressional leaders to the White House—the new Republican majority leader in the Senate and the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson—he brought them into the Oval Office and he told them that they should use natural disaster relief for victims of the California wildfires, that they should hold that hostage as a negotiating tactic in upcoming legislative negotiations.
Gibbs Léger: Unbelievable.
Seeberger: It’s crazy. From pulling us out of these climate accords to withdrawing us from the World Health Organization—the organization dedicated, of course, to protecting public health and making us more safe—Trump is making us less safe day by day. And it’s literally been just a few!
Seeberger: He also revoked President Biden’s order allowing transgender Americans to serve in the military, which, among other things, profoundly dishonors the legacy of trans veterans who bravely served our country. But it also makes us less safe.
We don’t have enough people who are signing up to volunteer to serve, and yet he wants to push out people who’ve dedicated their lives, in many cases, to protecting us, protecting our freedoms. It’s just disgusting.
Gibbs Léger: It truly is outrageous. And speaking of making Americans less safe, we’ve got to talk about another thing that Trump did on Monday.
He pardoned the over 1,500 insurrectionists, many of them criminals, who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power during the 2020 election.
Seeberger: My dear, I can’t.
Gibbs Léger: I mean, honestly, over 60 percent of these cases involved felony acts of violence against the police. Insurrectionists like Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, and David Dempsey—someone who stomped on police officers’ heads—shouldn’t be given a free pass for their serious crimes. But that’s exactly what Donald Trump has done. And this is the opposite of law and order. I thought they were supposed to be the party of law and order?
Seeberger: Sure is. Back the who?
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Not the blue.
Gibbs Léger: It is one more example of Trump giving the powerful and well-connected special treatment over the rest of us.
And let’s not forget, the majority of Americans oppose these types of pardons, especially the insurrectionists who engaged in violence and for those who are convicted and jailed because of their actions. Rightly so.
Republicans, including now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio—they tripped over themselves before Trump took office trying to suggest that he wouldn’t issue blanket pardons for the most violent criminals. JD Vance even said on the campaign trail that if you committed violence on January 6, you shouldn’t be pardoned. Well, how are they going to respond now?
And since these criminals have been released from prison, some, like the self-proclaimed “QAnon shaman,” have said they’re going to buy more guns. That’s not keeping the American people safe, and it’s not what they want.
Seeberger: No, it’s not. And I think we’ve got to point out that Trump is determined to give more rights and freedoms to convicted felons who beat up police officers with deadly weapons than to anyone else, including people who have been in this country and contributed to their communities for decades.
I’m talking about huge swaths of the immigrant population in the United States. He wants to deport them while giving get-out-of-jail-free cards to people who have actually been convicted of felonies.
Let’s also be clear: It’s not just that Trump wants to stop illegal immigration. His actions this week show he’s intent on blowing up the immigration system even more, including by turning off the CBP One app, allowing people to make appointments with CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] to have their cases adjudicated. He’s also signed an executive order allowing immigration raids to go into schools and go into churches, places of worship. And he’s also signed an executive order trying to ban birthright citizenship. I’ll remind you that birthright citizenship is guaranteed quite plainly by the 14th Amendment.
Gibbs Léger: Very, very clear.
Seeberger: It sure does. Yes. Trump may want to, but he can’t change that with a stroke of a pen, which is why it’s already being challenged in court. Trump is already failing to prioritize the false promises he made on the campaign trail and clearly putting America and the Constitution below his own political power. And, the most concerning thing is he’s far from done.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, I thought that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) put it pretty well this week. During his inaugural address, Trump tried to suggest that we’re entering a quote, “golden age of America,” which Chuck Schumer called out for its blatant hypocrisy. Sen. Schumer said nothing President Trump did on Day One lowered grocery prices. Nothing helped Americans achieve their dream of owning a home. Nothing will help working families earn more and save more.
And, you know what? This is exactly the type of focus that we need to see from Democrats. They can’t get distracted by Trump’s constant barrage of chaotic actions or chasing talks of invading Greenland or Panama down a rabbit hole. They need to focus on key priorities to push back against his actions.
Seeberger: That’s exactly right. And unfortunately, that’s all the time we have for today. But if there’s anything you’d like us to cover on the pod, hit us up on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, or Bluesky @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Gibbs Léger: And stick around for my interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat in just a beat.
Gibbs Léger: Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and one of the foremost experts on fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda. She is the author or editor of seven books, including Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. She was interviewed twice by the House Select January 6th Committee and wrote a report for the committee on Donald Trump’s incitement of violence as an authoritarian strategy.
Ruth, I want to thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: It’s a pleasure to be here.
Gibbs Léger: So, you are our first guest of the second Trump administration. I know a lot of people have probably told you that they wish they didn’t have to speak with you—the expert on authoritarianism and fascism—about this political moment, yet here we are.
We know Trump plans to make heavy use of executive orders, both to implement policy and to give himself more control over executive agencies and other parts of government. Can you tell our listeners and talk to us about how we’ve seen him hit the ground running already, and what we might see over the rest of his first 100 days in terms of rolling back Democratic guardrails and consolidating power?
Ben-Ghiat: So what he’s already done is designed to be a show of force because [for] authoritarian-minded leaders, it’s all about expanding the purview and the power of the executive branch, and what we call hollowing out institutions where public institutions and civil servants, judiciary, even the institution of the media—they become kind of hollowed out in the sense that they are staffed with loyalists. And there are various ways that—for the media, you have cronies buy papers. Modi does it, Orbán did it.
So you have this perception of a total political will united behind the leader. And Trump has been very smart domesticating the GOP so there are no dissenting voices, virtually, no matter what he does. So he’s coming into power, if you look comparatively—and this is very dispiriting—he’s coming into power now with an amount of control and political will behind him.
If you think of Zuckerberg and Bezos and the state of the party and Project 2025, which has almost been like a shadow government while he was out of power—he has more political will and more power, also due to having been granted immunity by the Supreme Court, than many autocrats do when they first start out. Because we forget that Orbán has been in power almost 14 years, as long as Hitler. Putin’s been in power as long as Mussolini. It takes a long time for these people to amass the amount of executive force necessary to domesticate the state institutions. And Trump has hit the ground running because of how adroitly he maneuvered while he was out of power.
Gibbs Léger: Well, that’s terrifying. I’m particularly interested in your take on his demonization of certain minority and underrepresented groups like immigrants and the transgender community. What is behind that? And has history shown that this is an effective tool to divide people?
Ben-Ghiat: In terms of [the] transgender community, the through line, if you look at the groups who become targets of authoritarians, whether left or right wing, you have a high recurrence of certain groups. And LGBTQ people are among them. But the through line is homophobia.
Because even on the subject of women’s rights, most times women’s rights suffer because you have a pronatalist return to having more babies. And this has implications for women’s rights and women’s imaginaries in the national collective. But homophobia is something that has produced persecution around the world for 100 years.
And within that, it’s been very tragic but historically interesting to see how the transgender community has been singled out. Because ever since the Nazis decided to target a community, the Jews, who were an infinitesimally small percentage of the population, most Germans didn’t know any Jews. It’s easier to dehumanize a group of people who you don’t know.
And so there’s now, in America, a broad acceptance among, if you look at the Pew Research surveys, of same-sex marriage, for example. So they have singled out transgender [people] and made them the kind of devil incarnate of the collapse of all values. And this has worked for them because there’s a lack of familiarity among most Americans with somebody who is transgender. Propaganda works better if the subject is someone you don’t know, and thus you are more susceptible to the kind of false narratives spun about that group.
Gibbs Léger: So, you touched on this a little bit, and we know that the transition to authoritarianism isn’t instantaneous. It usually happens gradually under administrations like this one through actions like weaponizing the justice system, and law enforcement—both are courses that Trump has promised to take.
How is this new administration already mirroring the tactics of other strongmen around the world, past and present, including some that Trump has professed to admire, like Putin or Orbán? And what should we be particularly watchful for as things unfold? And what can we do to protect ourselves?
Ben-Ghiat: Yeah, there’s several questions in there. First, there is a high degree of similarity in, for example, Project 2025. There’s a trifecta of—there’s pardons, there’s privatizations, and there’s purges. And these are things that certainly right-wing authoritarians have followed ever since Mussolini, who did all those three things. As soon as he became dictator, he pardoned all the political criminals, meaning the black-shirt thugs who had helped him get to power. And Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s pardoned all human rights abusers from the military. He had a military dictatorship. And so that’s going on.
You have privatizations because authoritarians use those to make their bargains with big capital, with the elites of various sectors of society. And so that’s why Project 2025 has, as some of its pillars, deregulation and privatization. Because authoritarianism is about taking away the rights of the many and giving the very few—the billionaires, the elites—more freedoms than they ever dreamed possible to be free of checks from government regulation.
And this started during Trump’s first administration. He rolled back over a hundred environmental regulations and food safety regulations. So we’re seeing a slew of these things right now, but these are things that are common to authoritarians around the world, not just in the present, but also in the past.
Now, what can we do? One interesting thing that I predict will happen is a lot of the contradictions in the fake populism, as I call it, of MAGA, where Trump says “I stand for the people.” And this is an international thing. Think about Javier Milei, Mr. Chainsaw, who said, “I’m going to cut all the regulations. I’m a man of the people. I care about you,” when his job was advising billionaires in Argentina.
So this fake populism, it purports MAGA is going to be for the working man. And instead what we see is it’s cashing out. It makes government not about public welfare, but about creating the conditions so that those in power—the leader, the cronies—can cash out. And we’re already seeing this.
So the contradictions and the hypocrisies of MAGA as an ideology and as the promises are going to become more apparent to Americans. And so that’s a place that we need to amplify and expose this fake populism. Because it’s going to be felt by Americans at the level of daily life: “You promised us X, and instead we’re getting Y.”
And so in the long run, I think that the political opposition, which is what we Democrats are now, or [you] don’t have to be a member of the Democratic Party—anybody who is for democracy is the political opposition now, if you have an autocratic-minded regime or government. This is a space where we can maneuver to attract people into voting, people who perhaps weren’t voting before.
So this is something I see over the long run that, out of tragedy, because this will be a tragedy for many people in their daily lives, can come a political will to build something better.
Gibbs Léger: So, we’ve already seen signs that the media is hung up on the outrageous claims that Trump makes to distract us from his dangerous agenda, and that they’re even willing to go along with some of his narratives to try and win favor or access with the new administration.
ABC News donated $15 million to his presidential library a few weeks ago over a defamation suit, if you could call it that, a case that experts thought the network would have won anyway. So, what are the dangers here? And, how can the media’s seemingly bending of the knee impact democracy and truth telling over the next four years? And I’m assuming that we have seen this happen in other democracies or in other countries that are facing democratic backsliding.
Ben-Ghiat: Yeah, those of us who work on autocracies globally have been disappointed, to say the least, at the speed with which the bending of the knee is happening and how many of the knee-bendings happened before Trump even entered.
And this is because he was so smart about using intimidation through lawsuits and other means to make life difficult. It’s the promise and the threat of real intimidation once he goes back to office for social media platforms, for media outlets. And so they respond in the ways that you’ve described.
Avoidance of conflict is a classic thing that corporations can pursue. Risk averse. How do you deal with the risk? For example, Mark Zuckerberg did the two things that he believes will keep Trump off his neck. One is to donate money, and the other is to stop fact-checking. And that’s another form of deregulation. You’re not going to be upholding standards of truth; you’re going to be letting all the lies circulate.
The reason Trump and MAGA have concentrated so heavily on intimidating the media, like suing CNN for almost $500 million in 2022, is because who would Trump be without his lies? In particular, the big lie that he won the 2020 election. Because that lie made January 6 justified, in the minds of his supporters.
So as autocrats consolidate power, they become more dependent on their lies. And that is why they go after journalists, they go after critics in the academy, the same groups over and over again. Because the more they become dependent on the lies to stay in power and they pay PR firms to say their trains are running on time, it’s a whole superstructure scaffolding of investment of time and resources to prop up their lies, because they’re nothing without them.
Gibbs Léger: So there’s a lot of discussion today about how all of the various steps our political leaders took in recent years to try and hold Trump accountable for his wrongdoing—be it two impeachments, which you’re very familiar with, multiple special counsel investigations, criminal trials, you name it—all seem to empower or embolden Trump.
Fast forward to now, and there is an active debate about when and how folks should draw the line this go-around. And I’ll give an example. Let’s take Elon Musk’s apparent—I think it was very obvious it was a Nazi salute that he did not once, but twice while giving a speech on Monday at one of Trump’s inauguration addresses.
Is there a risk that by not calling out this repugnant behavior, that you aid and abet it and you signal to the American public that it’s OK? I know that these are really tough calls to make, focusing on the noise that’s out there versus the things that do immediate, irreparable harm. But on stuff like this, what should folks do?
Ben-Ghiat: It’s very important to call out egregious behavior, corrupt behavior. Because if we don’t, we are helping to normalize extremism. We are helping to normalize corruption. Now, it’s true that autocrats and individuals like Musk are really expert at creating noise as a distraction.
A good example—and Trump is expert at this—but Bolsonaro was really good when he was president of Brazil. And there was a time when he faced a corruption investigation or corruption charges, and he was worried about this. So he held a press conference, and one of the journalists asked him a tough question. And he said, “You have a very homosexual face.” So that became the story.
And he has a history of homophobia, said he would strangle his son if his son were gay, and everyone knows this in Brazil. So that became the story, and the news cycle was about that and not about the corruption worries. So, in Musk’s case, the important thing was, in a way, it was upstaging Trump. He was also signaling to the far right and the extremists not just in America, but all over the world, because he operates globally.
And it is important to call these things out. Now, there’s a very good reason people don’t, though, because they have intimidated people. All these defamation suits and individual people worried that they would be sued or Trump’s people would go after them. And so very unfortunately, a climate’s been created in our country.
And it reminds me of early fascism. And I don’t use that word lightly, where even the most powerful people in the country—senators, judges—they are living in fear. Gabriel Sherman reported on this. They are living in fear, and they’ve been living in fear for a long time. And what did January 6 do? It taught the political class that no one was off limits. Anyone could be targeted, even Mike Pence.
So this is a huge, huge problem. And it will become more of a problem, except that the history of resistance and the history of anti-authoritarianism says there’s safety in numbers. If one person only stands and calls things out, that person’s easily targeted. If many call it out and the media makes this a counternarrative, calling it out, makes it a focus, then it can have some traction.
Gibbs Léger: So, you wrote a piece in The Atlantic a few years back about how people in Chile were able to win their democracy back after the Pinochet regime in the ‘70s. Can you tell our listeners more about that victory and how it could possibly be bottled here? What lessons can we learn from other countries about effectively counteracting the authoritarian creep that we’re seeing right now under Trump?
Ben-Ghiat: Yeah, that’s a very moving example, because this was in the early ‘80s and you were full in the middle of a terrible military dictatorship that used torture on thousands of people. Very, very frightening.
And yet, the neoliberal policies created an economic crisis, which manifested by the early ‘80s. And so you started to see mass protests. And one of the reasons they were successful was that they involved a lot of the pillars of society. They involved labor. They involved some of the opposition media. The Catholic Church actually helped the resistance, and they involved individual people, including middle-class people who’d been impoverished by these new liberal measures.
And so you started to have these mass demonstrations. And what we know from the history of mass demonstrations, they matter if they have an electoral outcome. And so in the case of Chile, there was a plebiscite that Pinochet, the dictator, had agreed to. And so there was a goal. And so these mass demonstrations, they also had optimistic slogans.
And part of this was repeated in Poland in 2023. You had the biggest turnouts of mass protests since 1989. You had optimism in Poland. They had a heart and the “March of the Million Hearts.” In Chile it was the “march for joy.” And I feel very moved when I think about that. That’s why I wrote that piece. Who would have a march for joy in the middle of an awful, repressive military dictatorship? You have to be a certain kind of bravery to come out in a military dictatorship and march for joy. But that’s what they did. And that’s how they forced Pinochet out of office.
And in Poland, where this is a population that suffered under Nazi occupation, and then they had a decadeslong communist dictatorship. They know the stakes of liberty. And they did everything right. They had a cross-party coalition. They had optimistic slogans, the “March of the Million Hearts.” They had the recall to the history of resistance, so Lech Wałęsa of Solidarnosc came, and they successfully drove out their far-right government.
So we can learn from the organizing, from the messaging, and the connection of protests to electoral tactics. We can learn from those things as we go forward in this new period of our history.
Gibbs Léger: Well that is a very encouraging, almost optimistic note to end this very sobering but insightful conversation on. So Ruth, I want to thank you for all of the work that you do, and thank you for joining us on “The Tent.”
Ben-Ghiat: Thank you for the conversation.
Gibbs Léger: That’s going to do it for us, folks. As always, please go back and listen to previous episodes. Before we go, Colin, it’s football. We’ve got to talk about playoffs.
Seeberger: We’re in the thick of it, Daniella.
Gibbs Léger: We certainly are.
Seeberger: Conference championships coming up this weekend.
Gibbs Léger: I know, I know. So let me just state for the record that I was wrong, and the Washington Commanders beat the Detroit Lions, whom—I thought the Detroit Lions were the team to beat. I did not think that anyone was going to beat them, potentially including the Chiefs and or the Bills. So, I now think that the Commanders are going to beat Philadelphia.
Seeberger: Oh, I think so too. I mean, Philadelphia is banged up.
Seeberger: I also think that Philly may not have won if not for the weather this past weekend.
Gibbs Léger: I totally agree. I think that the cold, the snow, the ice, whatever it was doing up there—
Gibbs Léger: The Rams are from LA, they’re not used to that kind of weather.
Seeberger: That they are not.
Gibbs Léger: No. So I think that definitely helped them. But I think the Commanders are going to go to their first Super Bowl in 30 years?
Seeberger: Something like that.
Seeberger: Yeah, 25 years.
Gibbs Léger: Oh gosh, it’s going to be insufferable to be in this city. I mean, it already is insufferable because Trump’s here, but now it’s going to be even worse. But AFC, who’s going to win? Bills, Chiefs. It’s going to be a great game, I think.
Seeberger: I mean, it’s hard to bet against the Chiefs, but I mean, I think Josh Allen is the most talented quarterback in the league right now. He just looks good.
Gibbs Léger: He does. And they already beat them this year.
Seeberger: They did. They did.
Gibbs Léger: Their only loss.
Seeberger: That is true. I mean, how do you bet against the cheese in their conference championship?
Gibbs Léger: They always win.
Seeberger: They always win, right?
Gibbs Léger: I know. I know.
Seeberger: It would be so wild if it ends up being the Bills and the Commanders, right?
I mean, two complete underdog teams, right? I mean, the Bills have never won, but Commanders—I guess they’ve not won as Commanders.
Gibbs Léger: I guess that’s true. I don’t want them to tie the Giants for a Super Bowl victory, though.
Seeberger: Oh, I know, I know.
Gibbs Léger: I don’t want that for them. So, if they make it to the Super Bowl, I’m rooting for whoever the other team is.
Seeberger: I mean, I guess if there’s any solace in it being the Commanders and Philly in a conference championship is it makes both of our teams look better, which—that they surely are not right now.
Gibbs Léger: I don’t think anything can make the Giants look better, to be honest.
Seeberger: OK. Fair enough.
Gibbs Léger: Terrible. Awful season. Horrific.
Seeberger: Just ctrl-alt-delete it from the record books, folks.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Just erase it. We’re going to start over.
All right. That’s it. Watch some football. It’s freezing. There’s like a blizzard in New Orleans right now. Folks, get your flu shots. It’s not too late. My doctor friends say it is not too late. Please protect yourselves because there’s some nasty viruses going on out there.
Seeberger: Norovirus, too.
Seeberger: I mean, it is wild.
Gibbs Léger: Let’s not have that be a thing, please.
Seeberger: That would be great.
Gibbs Léger: That would be awesome. All right. You take care of yourselves, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Erin Phillips is our lead producer. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer. Mishka Espey is our booking producer. Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Hai Phan, Matthew Gossage, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.