Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

In public, he chanted single-phrase solutions, and in private he reportedly asked a foreign policy adviser repeatedly why the United States couldn’t use nuclear weapons “if we have them.” In the third month of his presidency, he authorized a bombing in Syria. Buoyed by positive television coverage of the event, he ordered a giant explosive device known as the “mother of all bombs” to be used in Afghanistan, and then bragged of giving the military “total authorization”—because why complicate things by restraining the generals? The following month, Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the complex, sprawling, painstakingly negotiated Paris climate accord, which he apparently had made no effort to understand: the complexity of the agreement was itself an offense, and the simplicity of pulling out was itself the solution.