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That’s what author and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told Frank Figliuzzi about just some of the similarities of the strongmen of the past and the comparisons to leaders like Donald Trump today.

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Ruth Ben-Ghiat joined the The Frank Figliuzzi Show on Lincoln Square. She writes the Lucid newsletter on Substack and has taught how ideologies like fascism and totalitarianism have crept into societies across modern history. And since Trump’s entrance into U.S. politics over a decade ago, she has been sounding the alarm bells on how closely he’s modeled his governing style upon authoritarian figures of the past and present, like Viktor Orban in Hungary.

“Here we’re in a process where we’re starting to fit the conditions under which today’s studies say that people start to wake up. And one is blatant corruption. If the government and the leader are just getting really rich, that was partly why Viktor Orban lost and had to concede,” she said. “Another is autocratic overreach. Either the state is on the streets being openly brutal and we have ICE, or they’re actually, we don’t discuss this enough, they’re just absent because these people don’t care. They’re in power to get rich and to amass more power. And then the third is that when they cause hardship, economic hardship, and we are getting in that zone.”

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You don’t want to miss a second of Frank’s insightful interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat on how we got here and how we can beat back the Trump’s strongman politics.

Plus, don’t miss Frank’s comments on the court’s dismissal of Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit against him on The Frank Figliuzzi Show, right here on Lincoln Square.

There’s a moment in every Trump-era career arc, and I mean every one, where the walls close in, the flop sweat starts, and the doomed apparatchik begins thrashing around like a catfish on a hot dock.

For FBI Director Kash Patel, that moment arrived this weekend with a sickening thud.

The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick dropped a devastating report on Friday night detailing what more than two dozen sources describe as a pattern of heavy drinking, chronic absenteeism, and behavior so erratic that his own security detail once had to deploy breaching equipment … the kind of gear SWAT teams use to knock down doors … just to wake him up.

Let that sink in. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was so incapacitated, so deep in his cups that the people sworn to protect him had to treat his residence like they were on a meth lab raid just to rouse him from his boozy stupor.

Patel is reported to get sloppy on weekends in private Vegas club called the Poodle Room.

Dude. Come on. The jokes write themselves.

His meetings for his day job as FBI director are apparently often pushed to later in the day because the nation’s top law enforcement officer is a liver-pickled booze sponge, reeking of hooch who has to sleep off the night before. The man entrusted with protecting the homeland from terrorism, espionage, and organized crime was, according to these sources, a national security vulnerability all by himself.

If I may use the technical term: duh.

And then came the detail that tells you everything about Kash Patel’s fragile psyche and his tenuous grip on reality: On April 10th, unable to log into his FBI computer, Patel had what sources described as a “freak-out,” convinced Trump had fired him.

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Republicans have been way ahead of the gerrymandering game, even before Trump. And now the Calais Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act could essentially flip 12 to 19 seats across the South in favor of Republicans.

But whether Dems do it or Republicans, gerrymandering does not make for a healthy democracy. And with changing demographics, by 2035, roughly 70% of the U.S. population will live in just 15 states, diluting Democrats’ power even further.

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David Daley, author of RatF*cked and the new book, Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, joined Susan J. Demas to talk about the damage that could be inflicted to us all if we don’t push for fair elections.

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Matt Hildreth, executive director with Rural Organizing, believes that now is the time for Democrats to rebuild that bridge to rural America. He spoke with Susan J. Demas and laid out how the “No Kings” rallies and chapters of Indivisible groups popping up in rural areas are a positive indicator for Democrats going into the midterms.

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He also explains how Democrats can just keep it simple and embrace community organizing and put together watch parties to rebuild their coalition.

“We are having really good results with the grassroots kind of taking over. And so I think what’s happening is there is a new willingness among Democrats to be visible in their communities,” says Hildreth.

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Find out more about why the window’s open for Democrats to connect with rural America with Rural Organizing’s Matt Hildreth and Susan J. Demas, right here on Lincoln Square.

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A second outcome — at least in the coming days — would be a short-term escalation by the Americans to gain leverage. Again, though, after months of pounding, what kind of damage are we proposing in the short term that will bring Iran to its knees? That brings us to outcome #3: prolonged conflict that destabilizes the entire region.

None of these options are great, and none appears to have even a 50/50 chance of working out for Trump. The Iranians are holding a pretty solid hand at the moment, and they know it.

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They also know that the bumbling fools who decided to leap into this worthless war and the idiots trying to get us out of it are one and the same.

Bobby Jones has served in the region as a former Navy commander. He knows the logistical challenges we’re facing. He knows the bases that have been destroyed because he’s stood in them. Heck, he knows what the guys on board the ships are eating.

In this episode of Anchor Watch, he breaks down the stakes of the Iran War in a way few people can.

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Welcome to the law of unintended consequences, GOP. Stuart Stevens gave us all the breaking news out of Virginia and then took us through the history of his former party, as no one can, particularly on issues of race.

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"In 2020, Trump's coalition was 85% white. Four years later it was 84% white,” he notes. “I don't think I'd start worrying about a complete realignment of American politics if you're celebrating that you're only losing African Americans by 88% instead of 94."

And Stuart brings a strong message for Democrats: stop trying to normalize or triangulate Trump. Dems must prosecute the criminality of the Trump administration when they get power. Former President Biden's mistake, he argues, was offering normalcy instead of accountability.

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"If Stephen Miller is not on trial after Democrats win, Democrats have failed,” Stuart said. “ … Those that can be proven to have acted illegally should be prosecuted. It has to be at the top."

This week, we learned that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed several witnesses to appear before a grand jury investigating former CIA DirectorJohn Brennan. A federal grand jury investigation into a former head of the CIA would be big news on its own.

Yet, the attempts to pin some criminality to Brennan’s conduct, related to his congressional testimony about Russian interference with the 2016 election, is just another pathetic part of a continuing — and thus far failing — effort by Trump and his lackeys to punish any official who dared to speak or pursue a truth that Trump didn’t want to hear.

Monday also brought further confirmation that Trump’s Department of Justice is doubling down on its efforts with an announcement that former prosecutor Joseph diGenova, 81, a MAGA minion, will serve as Counselor to the Attorney General to act as a kind of ringmaster over the myriad cases aimed at proving there was a grand conspiracy in the intelligence community against Trump.

DiGenova will reportedly spend his time between Miami, where the U.S. Attorney has been dutifully but unsuccessfully investigating Trump’s perceived enemies, and in Fort Pierce, Florida, where a related grand jury is overseen by a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who repeatedly ruled in Trump’s favor, infamously vaporized the Jack Smith special counsel charges against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and barred release of Smith’s final report.

Cannon is the only federal judge currently sitting in Fort Pierce, which virtually guarantees that the unorthodox practice of “judge shopping” will likely work in Trump’s favor.

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Rick Wilson, Joe Trippi, and Stuart Stevens break down the Virginia redistricting fight, where Democrats have the chance to counter GOP gerrymandering in red states like Texas. Republican enthusiasm is collapsing, and new states and new seats are suddenly in play heading into 2026.

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Why it’s not hopeless — there are some big wins that gun violence protection advocates can point to. What’s the biggest challenge facing the movement in 2026? What’s next for driving the culture change needed to reduce gun violence?

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Read more about how you can help Brady United and Kris’s Substack.

Locked & Unloaded

Cutting through the noise on America’s gun crisis—insights, action, and accountability from Brady President Kris Brown.

By Kris Brown

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Susan J. Demas and Edwin Eisendrath from It’s The Democracy, Stupid look into claims Secretary Chavez-DeRemer was having an affair with member of her security detail, as well as drinking on the job.

“We have another Trump cabinet official who’s bitten the dust. And I know, terribly surprising I’m sure to you, Edwin, it was another woman in his cabinet. And let’s be clear, there are not that many of them,” Susan noted of this shakeup, making Chavez-DeRemer the third woman after DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to depart within the last two months.

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There’s also a redistricting measure on the ballot in Virginia Tuesday. While experts are predicting that the Yes vote could squeak by, what will that measure mean for the fight against Trump?

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Jump into that conversation and much more with Susan J. Demas and Edwin Eisendrath now on Lincoln Square.

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But when you connect the dots, a much larger strategy comes into focus.

From NSPM-7 to Project Esther, this episode explains how these efforts tie together, what they mean for dissent, and why this moment is about more than just politics — it’s about long-term power.

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If you want to understand what’s actually happening beneath the headlines, this is the conversation.

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I was in Berlin with a film crew when the wall came down. A Congressman running for the Senate had family ties in East Germany, and we thought it could make for some powerful scenes reuniting with family members.

Less than a thousand days earlier, Ronald Reagan demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Eight hundred and eighty-eight days was all it took for Reagan’s moral challenge to be answered by history.

My candidate was a Republican, of course, because I only worked for Republicans. Political consulting is like that. You pick a side and stick with it. If not, neither side will trust you.

We were there hoping that the pixie dust of freedom would fall on my candidate. He was what would have been called an “establishment” Republican, which was the sort I tended to work for. I’d like to say that was driven by a deep ideological commitment, but the truth is, those were the kinds of Republican candidates who won most frequently. I learned very quickly that the key to a successful political consulting career was to work for people who were going to win anyway and not screw it up. I was good at that.

At the time, there was more ideological diversity in the Republican Party. More than half the Republican governors were pro-choice in varying degrees. When President Reagan vetoed the 1987 Civil Rights Restoration Act, twenty-seven Republicans voted to overturn his veto. This was a party that included Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, who received a mind-boggling 90% approval from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, and Senator Jessie Helms of North Carolina, who won reelection in 1990 with the infamous “white hands” ad that was an openly racist racist attack on affirmative action.

But across the party, there was an assumption that the Republican Party was united in opposing the tyranny of the Soviet Union. To challenge that fundamental truth would have been like arguing that gravity was a regional phenomenon. Since World War II, the most consistent opponent to the Soviet Union and an expansive Russian Federation has been the Republican Party.

Now that Party is the beating heart of the pro-Putin movement in American politics.

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“It’s a disease by its definition ... an entity [that] causes or can cause disability and death—what we call in health morbidity and mortality,” he told Sam Osterhout.

And like many diseases, violence can be contagious, Slutkin added.

“It’s contagious because it causes more of itself. People who are exposed to violence a lot are more likely to do it, like people who are exposed to flu a lot."

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So what’s the best way for us to cure this disease? Slutkin talks about that and much more. Don’t miss this fascinating conversation.

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But one thing has been constant: some people are making a killing off of these wild swings in the financial markets and bets with insider information in betting markets.

On The Weekly Assignment, Susan J. Demas and Sam Osterhout look at the corruption running rampant through this administration. And why we’re all losing with higher gas prices.

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Plus, Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run For Something, stopped by to talk about the amount of people under 40 rushing to run for office. She discussed the resources and support they offer, as well as some of the success stories they’ve had in special and primary elections. And according to Amanda, it’s not too late to, well, run for something!

“It’s not too late in a couple places to get on the ballot for 2026. And it is definitely not too early for 2027 or 2028!” she said.

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Head to their Run For What page for more information on how you can get involved and check out more with Amanda Litman on the latest edition of The Weekly Assignment with Susan J. Demas and Sam Osterhout, right here on Lincoln Square.

It’s time again for your weekly checklist of Losers and Winners, and a reminder that all of the chaos, tumult, awfulness, and catastrophe you are experiencing is caused by people.

Tariffs, my friends, do not exist in nature. They are constructed. Bombing a civilization into the Stone Age is a choice made by a (not very smart or moral) human. A fair society is built on a foundation of accountability. Minh Ly, the author of Answering to Us: Why Democracy Demands Accountability, gave me an incredible analogy a few months ago. It’s possible you’ve read about it in this column before, but here we go again:

Imagine you live in a small village. You hire a sheriff and give him the only gun in the region. Without any mechanism for accountability, this sheriff may or may not become a king-like figure, able to kill or coerce anyone on his own whims. The gun — or any power we bestow upon our leaders — needs to be in service to a civic purpose, not in service to calcifying control in the hands of the person who wields it.

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It sounds pretty obvious. The sheriff in this analogy must understand that if he uses the gun for his own purposes, he will face consequences. The more power we bestow on our leaders, the more severe the consequences ought to be for its misuse.

Obvious, maybe, but not inherent. We have failed to hold Trump accountable for anything. We have failed to even make him fear accountability. His shit polling is great as a headline, but a terrible poll is just, well, a piece of paper that predicts the future. Trump doesn’t fear paper, and he doesn’t fear the future.

The election of Biden in 2020 was at least a measure of accountability. It was a relief, sure, but look what happened. Trump did not accept that measure of accountability (he still doesn’t believe he lost!), and nobody on our side or any side went the extra step to enact durable, real accountability commensurate with his crimes.

And here we are. Kinda fucked.

But not totally fucked! This week’s Winners & Losers is about the possibility of real accountability, and the incredibly difficult work ahead of us.

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JD Vance, Loser

What a repugnant piece of shit. I hate to write that because it’s more, like, ad hominem than I like to go. Maybe more puerile. But I’m just so sick of this guy.

Turns out, most Americans are, too. In a recent YouGov poll, the most positive takeaway for Vance is that 96% of respondents had heard of him. That’s where the positives stop, because to know him is to hate him.

Since January, most polls have his favorability plunging into the mid- to low-30s. To be fair, what’s not not to love? This guy sucks.

But the last two weeks have been especially bad for our Vice President. Let’s review.

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This is Episode 3 of History of the Present, a series from The Intellectualist focused on the convergence of major forces, including artificial intelligence, robotics, climate change, inequality, democracy, and space exploration, and how they are interacting at a critical moment in human civilization. The series examines how these forces intersect and reshape the world, bringing in voices that help make this moment more legible.

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In The Kneeling Man, Leta McCollough Seletzky reconstructs her father’s life and his presence in that moment. At the time, he was a young Memphis police officer and, as the book presents it, operating in an undercover capacity in connection with the Invaders, a Black activist group in Memphis during the civil rights movement. After the shot, he moved toward Martin Luther King Jr. and attempted to render aid.

The conversation also touches on FBI surveillance of Dr. King during this period. In the discussion, the memo is referenced in connection with J. Edgar Hoover, but upon further clarification, it was, in fact, written by FBI official William Sullivan.

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Learn more about the book

• the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and its historical context

• the Memphis sanitation workers strike and the tensions in Memphis in 1968

• Marrell “Mac” McCollough’s role at the scene and his later work in law enforcement and government

• the civil rights movement context surrounding the assassination

• how a daughter reconstructs her father’s past through research and writing

• how identity can shift across institutions, roles, and historical moments

  ---

This is a conversation about a moment in American history that is widely recognized, and the person within that moment who was not fully understood.

Follow The Intellectualist for future episodes of History of the Present on Youtube.

The Intellectualist

The Intellectualist Substack delivers fact-based analysis and thoughtful commentary focused on defending democracy and fostering informed public discourse. At a time when truth and civic engagement are under threat, it serves as a vital platform.

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It’s the End! ... of the Week with Max Burns and special guest Peter Rothpletz, who writes with for The New York Times and Zeteo, break down the biggest stories of the week.

With rising gas prices and looming oil shortages, Rothpletz hammers Trump for being unable to relate to the common man. “This is one of those things that absolutely penetrates. And I think that Trump is uniquely vulnerable to an issue like this. … He’s just untethered from our daily common experience as human beings. And similarly, I don’t think he’s probably once in his life ever pulled up to a gas pump.”

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Get your doomsday prepping done because It’s the End! … of the Week with Max Burns and special guest Peter Rothpletz, right here on Lincoln Square.

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Tell Congress: Impeach Trump

Something new is happening in America. Something entirely new in the world. Again.

European historians and philosophers since Plato have argued that democracies progress into tyrannies. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, first published on the eve of World War I and finalized in 1922, went further, arguing that whole cultures are like living organisms with life cycles — and that they all die. In his formulation, cultures pass through phases. There is the creative, inward, religious, and artistic phase.

Then there is a phase characterized by technical mastery, outward focus, and urban life. In this latter phase, the political forms created earlier become corrupted. Spengler described Western civilization, that thing J.D. Vance is always talking about, as Faustian. He meant that it is a culture of striving. He saw the invention of perspective in painting, the creation of calculus, the discoveries of physics, and the technological advances that gave humans vastly more power as all pointing to a soul that would not be contained. And yet he expected that spirit to be crushed by its own materialism. In his view, money and mass entertainment come to determine national direction; political forms become meaningless.

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In this final era of a culture’s life, people would no longer see any point in elections — or in whatever system their culture had adopted to determine political power. Instead, their popular will thwarted, they would turn to leaders grounded in myth and force. Spengler calls this Caesarism. In that last phase, the leader harnesses those with money and media. It is where cultures go to die. And about 20th-century Europe, he was correct.

Many see a similar pattern here in the United States. Instead of leading to collapse, however, the pattern points to revival. In Donald Trump and MAGA, we see the Spenglerian turn from civilization to Caesarism at work. Its main narrative is that America has been betrayed and humiliated by cosmopolitan elites, immigrants, and globalism. It claims the primacy of decision-making over law and of force over procedure. It uses lies that everyone knows are lies to create a myth of overcoming. We see, as Spengler predicted, those with money and control over media harnessed by the myth-making strongman. And yet, at the very moment when America faces a decisive cultural breakdown, its people have posed a constructive counter force.

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Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister-elect, said he would halt any use of state money to finance the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest and called for an inquiry into what he described as improper government spending, according to remarks reported by Mediaite. The report, echoed by other outlets, reflects translated versions of his public statements.

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The comments come after an election that ended Viktor Orbán’s 16-year tenure and have raised questions about whether public funds were used to support recurring political events in Budapest. English-language accounts rely on translation from Hungarian. No full official transcript tied specifically to the CPAC allegation has been released. He did not present documentary evidence to support the claim.

A transcript of Mr. Magyar’s broader post-election press conference shows him outlining wider concerns about government transparency during the transition. He alleged that documents were being destroyed within ministries and said the incoming leadership lacked access to key state records. Those statements, delivered in Hungarian and reflected in available transcripts, underscore his broader framing of institutional opacity, though the CPAC-specific allegation is not contained in the excerpt reviewed.

The Conservative Political Action Conference has been held multiple times in Budapest, including a fifth gathering announced in 2026, according to the Hungarian outlet Telex. The event has featured Mr. Orbán alongside conservative political figures from Europe and the United States and has become a recurring fixture in Hungary’s political landscape.

Independent investigative reporting by the Hungarian outlet Átlátszó has found that earlier CPAC events in Budapest were financed through government-linked institutions, with estimated costs reaching into the millions of euros. Those findings were not cited as evidence in Mr. Magyar’s remarks but provide context for how the events may have been financed.

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What is Lanny’s third way to reignite a political party? Is there a way to reframe compromise between the Republicans and Democrats? Lanny shares what inspired him to write his new book, Finding the Third Way: Lessons in the Politics of Civility from My Journey through History, and what it means to compromise.

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