How Russia Won

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3:05I'm Charlie Sykes and this is to the contrary podcast. We are less than a month before the midterm elections in Donald Trump's closing argument is what? He goes to Ohio and he says, we're going to shove it up. They like, you know what? I don't want the explicit rating in the first five minutes of this. This is to say that it was not Abraham Lincoln in terms of presidential rhetoric. So what are we getting? Ballrooms, arches, these brazenly blasphemous bullshit ads that he's putting on the air with taxpayer money. But today I want to focus on one of the through lines of the Trump presidency. And it's not just the fact that he lies all the time or he falls asleep all the time. One of the consistent through lines going back to Trump.0 has been Donald Trump's very weird relationship with Russia. There's a new book out how Russia won. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin in the fight for America. It's a very detailed account of the decade long cover war by Vladimir Putin to subvert and weaken the United States

4:08and Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, the Republican party. With the right wing media acting as useful idiots to aid this campaign, you think you know the whole story. Stay tuned. And joining me on the podcast today is the author of that new book, How Russia won. David Korn, who has been writing about this for, boy, you know, since the last century, it feels like good to talk with you again, David. Not quite that long, but it's been a while. Thanks. Thanks, Charlie. Great to be here. Well, at least it wasn't the last mole. I listen and said the last millennium. Oh, okay. So let's just dive right right into this book. On Saturday, we got that big story in the New York Times that Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff negotiating the Russia Ukraine war with Vladimir Putin are also talking about sweetheart deals

5:11which would benefit from cronies and benefit. Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, you know, it just feels as if this has been so blatant. So let's just talk about your reaction to that story, the fact that here we're dealing with issues of war and peace and Trump's appeasement of Vladimir Putin, but also there's always been it seems like it keeps popping up these business deals that Vladimir Putin keeps dangling in front of Trump and his family. So talk to me about that. Yeah, let me put it in the bigger context of my book. Oddly enough, and that is the book describes how Vladimir Putin has been running basically a shadow war against the United States for a well over decade. We had a lot of debate over the 2016 election and the intervention there with Trump ever since calling it a deep state conspiracy. Which hunt a hoax and my book sort of starts a 2016, but it shows that in 2018,

6:13the midterms in 2020 and 2024, Vladimir Putin again and again ran influence operations and disinformation operations to so discord here, but also to help Trump. And this is kind of undeniable despite all Trump's denialism about this. And so this is part of Putin's large strategic aim to weaken the West so that he can pursue his imperial ambitions and restore the Soviet slash Russian empire. This has been going on since he's been in office, attacking the West and weakening it from the inside and helping politicians who are beneficial to him and his project who don't like NATO, don't want to put up a front against him is a big part of this. And so what they've been doing and they just started even before this Russia's been doing this for 30, 40 years almost. They've been courting Donald Trump by dangling business deals before him. He was going to Russia in the 80s, 90s, the early odds and they always had these

7:18business deals. He for some reason, he was held back on getting a big deal in Russia with a tower in Moscow. And a lot of the stuff never came to fruition. He did get the 2013 misuniverse contest that he owned at the time to be held in Moscow and made a couple million dollars off that, which mainly came out of the pocket of a Russian oligarch close to Putin. And his business, you know, projects here, his development projects here, I've gotten plenty of Russian money put into them, in terms of people buying, buying into his properties. So there's always been a strong Russian element to his, to his business dealings and desires. And we know in 2016, when he's running for president, at the same time, he was pursuing a Trump tower deal in Moscow that would have netted him hundreds of millions of dollars. So we all were wondering why he didn't say anything bad about Putin. Well, because if he did, this deal would have been, we would have been, you know, ruined. So he was had this tremendous conflict of interest.

8:20So it seems to me, Russia is long, decade long, attempt to court him, which is part of this overarching strategic aim to, I think we can the West has put these business prospects in front of him. And we've seen that again and again with the negotiations over Ukraine, that, you know, Wichoff and Jared Kushner, who know nothing about the region or the history, get in there and it's like a business deal. If we can get Selenci to give up land, you know, and we can end this business, we can end this war and then go into business with Russia, which is what Trump really wants. He wants, you know, we can talk about this more. He said this long affinity for Putin. You know, he wants him to be his best friend, which he has said publicly. And the war in Ukraine is mostly a nuisance to him that's getting in the way of this relationship that he urns and craves for this man crush he has.

9:20And part of that, you know, more practically is getting business deals. And a year ago they talked about a deal in that they could be done with rare earth, rare earth minerals in the Arctic and other things. So they've been dangling these business things in front of Wichoff and Kushner for well over a year. Well, what's happened in terms of ending the war? Nothing. No. And so who benefits from this is this? I think Ann Applebaum wrote this over the weekend. Is this an America? Is this a foreign policy that benefits America, that benefits Europe, that benefits? No. This is a foreign policy that seems to only benefit Vladimir Putin and Trump and his Klineys. So let's just focus on all this. So that there are elements where Vladimir Putin can be delusional. But, you know, almost alone among world leaders at least a couple of years ago. I remember thinking the only guy that really gets Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin. He understands how what motivates, I mean, so what motivates Donald Trump,

10:24the kinds of flattery, the kinds of transactional deals. So there's a couple of things that I want to walk through like Donald Trump's, his hold on Donald Trump and Donald Trump's attitude toward Vladimir Putin, including Compromot, whether he's an asset, all of all of those things. But the business deals, this idea that Vladimir Putin has that he can buy off people close to Donald Trump. And why would he think that? Because, well, I mean, David, we're living in this world where Donald Trump, I think there's part of him that's continues to be amazed at what he can get away with. And the fact that it's so blatant. And so if Vladimir Putin is giving him these massive deals, why not basically surrender American foreign policy in our NATO allies? Is it that crude? I mean, that's the thing I think that makes people scratch it is Donald Trump really that transactional that because of business deals, he would be willing to sell out the West to one of our, you know, most dangerous

11:26geopolitical enemies, really? Well, I'll say not entirely. I do think that transactionalism is the key thing that motivates Trump. He's a narcissist. He's a malignant narcissist. And he views the world in only one way. What he can do for him. So he judges everybody on how they approach him and what they say about him and what they offer him and what they can do for him. And, you know, the former KGB man of Vladimir Putin certainly sees that and understands that and knows how to exploit it. Now, I don't think Trump is though just cynically pursuing business or enrichment. I think there is something else when it comes to Putin. Not saying this about others, but when it comes to Putin in 2013, when he announced he was holding the Miss Universe contest in Moscow, he put in the announcement, well, Putin become my new best friend. And when he was there for the Miss Universe contest,

12:29for about 40 hours or so, all he did was ask his handlers, when do I get to meet Putin? When do I get to meet Putin? He has consistently shown this desire to be friends, to be close to emulate and to work with. Why? Why? Because it is that it's been on display. We've been wrestling with this for 10 years. What is this weird fascination that Donald Trump has on Putin? Is it, you know, there's the poll that Donald Trump wants to be Putin, but does Putin have something on him? That's the question I get asked all the time. Well, we'll get to that. I can get to that. Yeah. Because I talk about all in the book, how Russian one? Which I'm owning a Russian one. How Russian one? Yeah. And, you know, I remember, I interviewed Fiona Hill for the book and she was a Russian policy for Trump in the first two years of the first term. And she, you know, everybody who worked with Trump then in the White House and National Security issues had the same question.

13:32Every time they told him that Putin was doing something, he was attacking a U.S. election, he was sponsoring assassinations around the world. Whatever it was, he kept saying, why would Putin do that? No, you're wrong. I don't want to hear that. I don't, like a kid putting his hand over his ears when they had a John Bolton dance hoats, who was the director of National Intelligence, Chris Ray FBI, they had a press conference before the 2018 midterms saying Russia is again trying to interfere in our elections. And I describe how they were doing that in the book. And afterwards, Trump yelled at them for saying this stuff. So he was always, you know, and they were trying to figure out. Dan Coats told his wife at some point, I think they got something on him. Fiona Hill said that why? Said that when her best explanation was that because Putin was, was the demagoguered dictator and maybe one of the richest men in the world, that that was all that Trump saw in him and wanted to be that. He wanted to be like Putin. And if you watched,

14:37let me talk about the compromise issue because everyone brings that up. Okay. Yes, there's, I don't, I don't believe there is a p-tap. I wrote a book in 2018 with Michael Isaacoff. We went through Trump's whole weekend in Moscow and they just never even seemed to be a break in his schedule where something like that could happen. But that said, we know that Trump went to Russia in the 80s, 90s and early odds and he engaged in what we can politely called Playboy like behavior. He would show up with women on his arms. He said to be dating a Russian woman at one point in time. He told, and I got to calm us, you should go to Russia. You won't believe what the girls there will do. You know, so he had a very active social life in Russia and we do know with a hundred percent certainty. So any prominent American who went to Russia in those days would be watched, recorded, surveilled. So if he was engaging in any sort of

15:38interesting activity, there was likely some Russian recording of that. They captured it in some way. But having said that, I don't believe they've ever had to use it because of the psychological affection he has for Putin to be put in. And all you have to do my book, this book, open with a yeah, opens with the scene that you might recall from a year ago or August when he met Putin in Alaska. He invited the red carpet. He had said that Putin had 12 days in the Ukraine war or there would be major consequences. It's always two weeks with Trump, right? Two weeks, two weeks. But before the major consequences came, he then invited Putin to meet with him in Alaska. This is at a time when Putin is totally ostracized around the world. He's been indicted for war crimes. He's, as he's doing today this week, he's bombing civilian targets in Kiev and elsewhere.

16:43And he's kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children. So he invites him, no one wants to, we'll see him. So it's not just meeting him. He invites him to American territory. He elevates him and Putin lands in his presence for plain. There's a red carpet that's been laid out for him. American soldiers had to get on their knees to lay out this carpet, which was much commented upon back in Russia by their state TV commentators. Look at the American soldiers on their knees for a glorious leader. Anyway, Trump comes out first and he's waiting for Putin at the end of the red carpet. And he's literally clapping his hands and jumping, you know, bobbing up and down. He looks like a kid on Christmas morning. Putin comes down. Trump is beaming. He, you know, grafts him by the hand. He grafts him by the upper arm. And he leads him to a podium where it says pursuing peace. Alaska, he is showing that Putin is his equal and Putin is smiling through this. I look at that. And Trump does not look like a

17:48man who's being coerced or being pressured or blackmailed to be crude about it. He is delighted. He wouldn't want to be any other place in the world in that moment than to be in the company of Vladimir Putin. And to me, the only reasonable explanation for that, the deepest explanation is psychological. It's not that Putin is going to give him business deals. It's not that Putin is, you know, and you're going to make decisions and divide up the world. He wants to be with Putin. And we saw what came out of that meeting, the diplomatic term is Bupkis. You know, he got nothing out of it, but Putin could show the world that he's now shares a stage with the American president. He looks at Trump legitimized Putin at a point where he didn't deserve to be a war criminal and died at war criminal. And that's been the continuation of that over the last year. Well, and he's invited to the G7, the G20, some at the same thing.

18:53And he keeps saying, Charlie, he keeps saying, I know Putin wants to end the war. Well, there's a very easy way for Putin and the war. He could end the war. And so he keeps legitimizing Putin as a man who wants peace and who he just, you know, and now he's more recently has been leaning on Zelensky. If you give up the right amount of land, this will all be over. And we can have, you know, I can get my Nobel Peace Prize and I can have art, you know, a big oil deal with Russia. So there is something both transactional, business oriented, but deeply psychological about Donald Trump and Putin. You know, those pieces in your closet, you find yourself wearing on repeat the sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants or the tee that you somehow always reach for first. Well, those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy. And that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials, like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and marina wool. The styles are timeless,

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24:09psychology that Donald Trump looks at this man there's brutal killer anything's he's strong in his rich and so just give me a little bit more about being a what it tells you about what Donald Trump thinks about power what he thinks about himself who he wants to be who he admires because in many ways that is him this is actually much more terrifying than just the fact that there might be a p-tap when you think about it. Yeah I mean I think it is I think it goes to the fact that we have a guy with his finger the nuclear button and it could trail as much else who is psychologically warped inside and and we know it's and there's something special about Putin but overall he has love affairs with demagogues and dictators right whether it's you you know Jingsheng Ping or love letters literally has he described them with Kim Jong Un he liked authoritarian CC in the Egypt, Erdogan and Turkey he doesn't like democracy he puts down and he dismisses and gets into

25:13spats with the leaders of our democratic allies you know he called Canada the the other week the worst country I mean worst country maybe you don't like bacon but I don't know it's not the worst country and he has nothing bad to say when he met with Jingsheng Ping nothing about human rights abuses there of trying to encourage democracy which every other president has done who's ever met with a Chinese leader it again and again and again and I think this shows that he wants to be that type of leader himself he doesn't want to deal with Congress you know he's trying to expand presidential power but it's not just the way that Dick Cheney viewed you know the unitary executive theory with Trump it's me I want the power I should have the power I'm the emperor I'm building the arch I'm building the ballroom I am the code as he said the other day about the building the ballroom or whatever it was and he does want to be bothered with

26:17talk with Congress or the courts if the you know he only likes the courts if they rule in his favor so he has this egotistical desire to be an authoritarian leader ruler he called a fascist dictator tyrant whatever you want that's what he would prefer to be our system makes that hard and then he admires those people who are able to act that way and then on top of that there's something special about Vlad there's something special about Vlad well let's talk about you know part of the Kremlin strategy because you lay out this you know you're pulling out you know Putin doesn't just stumble into this you know he's he he engineers this long-term multi-layered subversion strategy so you talk about election interference which we've gone over let's talk about the the information warfare how he weaponizes societal friction you know and in in in in fact he is behind this his return on investment maybe one of the greatest of all time right I mean

27:22if if his real goal was to elect Donald Trump but also to turn Americans against one another oh my god it has been successful so how much of that is him how much of that is just sort of stumbling upon the fact that we were about to break apart just give me your sense of the evaluating the effectiveness of the Russian role because here we are Donald Trump's and power Donald Trump is betraying our allies we are as bitterly divided going from one culture war to another culture war how much of that is actually Russian uh disinformation my dad always said it was smarter to be lucky than it was lucky to be smart yeah I think that I I think that Vladimir Putin has scored big here and I would imagine bigger than he expected to yes um right so when they started you know I talked earlier about how they had an aim to weaken western democracies from within because they are the you know that's the force that could thwart his hegemonic imperial ambitions right and I think most

28:28people kind of agree that that's where he's going and you know the way he intended to do that at least you know the start was to try to exacerbate existing political divisions here and in European governments as well and you know we own those divisions there you know they they they didn't they weren't created out a whole cloth by Russia but they figured out there is a way to make them worse than they might actually be and in 2015 they start doing this with with social media campaigns to get you know people more riled up over immigration and other cultural abortion and other cultural war issues and they also Vladimir Putin hated Hillary Clinton so he wanted to impede her election so there were two things happening in 2015 2016 there was this gigantic social media campaign where they were flooding US platforms with divisive messaging often that

29:29would work to the disadvantage of Hillary Clinton and then they did the hack and leak operations were for separate which targeted her campaign to get material that they could leak that would cause problems or her campaign and they and they certainly did particularly the last three weeks with the WikiLeaks leaks in October 2016 and when Trump started to show that he was going to be the nominee in 2016 they added a third priority which was to help Donald Trump win he had said you know he had been dismissive of NATO he had said good things have landed Putin and he was obviously a force of chaos and conflict and discord so it helped everything that they obviously were trying to do so I think you know they ended up getting a little bit lucky there and you know it was very close election and I think that the Russian hack and leak operation for sure in the social media campaign probably were one of I don't know a dozen factors that if you flip them the other way

30:35you get a different result and that would be you could talk about problems with Hillary Clinton's campaign as being a factor the way she campaigned it last week you can talk about Jim Comey reviving the email investigation but so I think it was one of several factors not the only one but that got Donald Trump in place and the Donald Trump acted in a way that was two rushes benefit on many fronts including you know being dismissive NATO and not bringing our country together but actually sharpening the divisions and the gaps and causing chaos and if you look at you know and then they tried in 2020 in 2024 they had influence and and massive disinformation operations again which I detail in the book obviously to help Trump they all were aimed at discrediting Democrats and causing discord but they were very it was very clear like in 2020 they had an influence operation where while Rudy Giuliani was trying to smear Joe Biden with debunked allegations

31:40about corruption in Ukraine he ended up hooking up with a Russian agent to advance the cause and put out information disinformation and why do we how do we even know this Trump's own treachery department sanctioned this Russian agent who was a Ukrainian parliamentarian and called him a Russian agent working to discredit a presidential candidate so it's not like not in the sources or on me reporting this it was Trump's own treasurer department and then the intelligence community said the same thing so we know that Putin kept doing all this stuff and it didn't work for him in 2020 in 2024 with a massive disinformation operation that you know was again a factor right and and Trump's victory so you're right but I call this perhaps the most successful covert operation in modern history if not in the history of the world you would he would have to be yeah because he got Trump in place and Trump has weakened the United States our financial

32:40standing these days are as low countries are pulling their investments out our economy is is erratic at best we have war war war what seems with our allies Canada particularly yeah stuff the BS with Greenland and but also look at what's happened to our public health system our research system our higher education we used to get the best and brightest minds around the world coming here they're not coming here are standing around the world by destroying aid and everything USAID and everything else is much weaker so yeah I mean Putin's got a lot of what he's wanted by helping to put Donald Trump in office not once but once so so we've been focusing on on Donald Trump but your book also makes it clear that that Russia Vladimir Putin exploited domestic allies you know in Trump's inner circle republican leaders right wing media who validated and spread a lot of this disinformation effectively gaslighting the public we found out that a lot of the right wing

33:46influencers who are still all around who still are influencers we're actually on the payroll we're actually accepting Russian money so it's one thing for Donald Trump to have a psychological fetish for Vladimir Putin but this this the the Putinization of American politics also you know involved a lot of republican leaders and influencers who are willing to sell out so talk to me about that because in many ways that's also shocking particularly on the right that they were so vulnerable to you know and into the KGB leader of Russia yeah I mean there are a couple of different currents here they all flow in the same direction but they're different you know Trump turned the GOP your old GOP into a cult we don't think of the other yes argue about that in which all that mattered was him his policies his actions to you know previous principles and free trade or whatever whatever or the deficit didn't matter if Trump said something the party went along with that

34:49and so when he's out there saying and he started doing this in 2016 that Russia is not attacking and he's covering for them I which I think you know we talked a lot about whether there was collusion we can I my book gets into that but I think more important there was complicity while Russia was attacking the 2016 election and everything it's done since you know Trump keeps saying it's not happening I call it Russia denialism and that way he's helping of Vladimir Putin and it's a profound active portrayal to help a foreign adversary attack your own country but that's what he's been doing and because he got out there and denied this was happening most of the Republican party at first and then all the Republican party eventually came along for the ride and said this is just you know the fake news the left wing deep state conspiracy and they adopted his narrative I mean he won the messaging war on this I'll give him credit for that and so part of it was political they just went along and then part of it was well if the Democrats are claiming this is happening

35:51well it can't be true so the enemy of my enemy Putin being the boogie man of the Democrats well he can't be that bad we have to be on his side and then there was a whole ideological shift which I get into in the book under a chapter called useful idiots where you had people like you know it started maybe with with Patrick Buchanan back in the early 2010 we're saying that Vladimir Putin was the defender of white Christianity there's no there's no diversity there's no DEI there's no wellness no transgender no gay rights and you had people like Ann Colter saying Russia was the last white European country and you and that goes up to Tucker Carlson today you're praising Putin for defending Russia as a white white christian nation so you had parts of your old conservative movement you actually look to a tyrant and a dictator because he was on their side

36:57in the culture wars and there's still you know a lot of them are still doing that today so you had going into the Ukraine war Tucker Carlson saying I'm on Russia side here and you had Steve Bannon and Eric Prince the night before the invasion of the day before the invasion joking you know we like Putin you know he there's no there are no rainbow flags no pride flags in in Russia and you know there's only two bathrooms and you don't have to worry about trans stuff so there was this you know cultural affinity for him that developed on the right as well so all that kind of merges together so that this Russian shadow war against the United States is not recognized by Fox News OAN Tucker Carlson all the Republican Party no all these people used to be Hawks even Republicans you know the one of the best accounts of what happened in 2016 in terms of Russia attacking the election and Paul Manafort being working with Russian intelligence office and all that comes from

38:01a Senate Intelligence Committee report that came out in August 2020 during COVID during the during the public conventions no one paid much attention to it so thousand pages long it says Russia attacked the election it did so to help Trump and Trump helped the attack by claiming it wasn't happening who chaired the committee that put out that report that bipartisan report Marco Rubio who was part of that committee Tom Cotton who now chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee so there once was a time when Republicans recognized Russia was attacking the United States with this shadow warfare to help Trump but yet and this document is out there people can download it you can read what Marco Rubio signed off on you know in in in real time you can see what he did but of course that was then this is now yeah it's it's called it's Senate Intelligence Committee just Google Senate Intelligence Committee Russia volume five that's the best volume there okay so you can read about it in my book but yes

39:04and so yes Marco Rubio was out there saying this was real and now he serves the president who says it's all our hoax and Russia Russia Russia which is interestingly I think you know you mentioned this earlier in the intro Charlie I there's a lot that's happened in the Trump era right a lot has gone on I do you think one of the central stories is Trump's relationship with Russia and the Russian attack oh I totally agree but yeah what Trump learned from this is that his his he got caught denying something was happening and he was helping Vladimir Putin he got out of that by claiming it was a hoax in a wichon and deep state conspiracy and by saying Russia Russia Russia ever since then whenever he gets caught doing anything when he was being investigated for inciting the January 6th riot or for stealing documents yes yes all the time the case you know not released documents even doing covid he always says it's back to Russia Russia Russia it's become his template for saying that

40:09what you know all the accusations against him are false and part of a grand conspiracy being waged against him so that's one reason I think it's very important to reclaim the Trump Russia narrative because he's twisted it into this all purpose defense of whatever he does if you ever accuse him of doing anything wrong and you can say oh that's just more Russia Russia Russia right and unfortunately you know members of his cult have been you know pre-programmed now to accept you know that dog whistle whenever he declares something a hoax said then to believe his hoax therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applaud those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions

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42:17briefly blocks a denocene the chemical that tires you out when it stops working your system is flooded and you crash. Medaphineil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way Medaphineil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness including dopamine serotonin nor epinephrine histamine glutamate and erexin it's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy to learn more go to mod.com fill out your intake form meet with a license provider and if approved modeler ships straight to your door go to mod.com to get started that's m-o-d dot com okay so let me ask you this because it's a lot in your book but do you have confidence that 50 years from now 70 years from now 100 years from now historians are going to look back on this and they will think they will have access to you know all of the things that we don't know about

43:19what's been going on and will be able to paint a picture of what you described as the most successful cobert operation in history the reason I said that I've been actually reading was reading Ben McIntyre's book about you know Kim Philby and you know a friend among spies and all of that and what we knew back then versus what we now know about you know how the KGB had so in you know effectively infiltrated British intelligence and it is mind boggling and I keep as I'm reading this thing if people had known back in the 1950s what we know now you know how explosive it would have been but it's sometimes it takes generations and decades for the full truth to come out and I just have a gut feeling that someday this history is going to be among the most remarkable stories of a successful subversion of of a government in in world history I mean do you have a sense that someday we will get that kind of a history the full story well you know I don't think you write a book

44:21like mine without hoping that eventually it becomes the how Russia won eventually it becomes you know you know part of the main narrative now you're assuming that in 50 hundred years we'll have history yeah and historians and I mean the thing is you know you we know from looking at the Soviet Union in Russia and I'm not you know comparing us you know apples to apples to to that but they kept history you know repressed for a very very long time then there was a period of glass notes when they revisited their history and now Putin's back in and that's there's no freedom to do that I mean so I mean ultimately a lot of what we know about the Cold War came out of the you know Soviet and East German files yes doing that period of glass notes which you know and then you know that kind of shriveled up that that openness so there will probably be at some point in time we'll see

45:23how this is happening from the Russian side and what they aim to do and yeah that's what I'm thinking like I mean my book you know describes a lot of these operations but I am assuming there are operations that that that that's been part of this overall goal of Putin that we haven't seen and that hasn't that haven't been caught out and then eventually some of that stuff made you know long after Putin's gone may may come out and on the American side I mean I think this is one of the almost paradoxes of what what I was trying to deal with in the book here is that we have so much of this information already you know from yeah I mentioned the Senate Intelligence Committee report but from indictments from news accounts I mean it's pretty clear I mean a lot of this is hiding in plain sight and I think our political system and our media has not really been able to process it and one of the one of the reason I wanted to do this book was to knit it

46:26together and show that these things that sometimes get reported individually are part of a larger picture and have that register and so you know it shouldn't be too hard for that to eventually happen on our side but you know our media is such that things get cut up into little distinct pieces and I do think as I said earlier Trump has done a great job of bullying I think Democrats and some of the media into looking at the Russia story as just you know something that is only for obsessives and that has been overblown and is not worthy of continuous attention. No I'd agree with you he's not only succeeded in that but he's also exceeded in destroying our attention spans that you may have a massive story like the one we started off that the New York Times had on Sunday and by Wednesday people will have forgotten about it there is just so much to think about. Speaking of so much to think about I wanted to switch gears here

47:28get your take on what you think of the state of play is on the midterm elections we are less than a month from the election the polls would suggest a movement I still have over PTSD from polls being wrong in the past you've watched this in the past but I've also seen waves where you just feel that there is particularly in an off-year election that a wave is coming but who knows how many hearts will be broken David Corn give me your sense of yeah where we're at in early October and the midterm elections of 2026 all the conventional measurements and I highlight the word conventional conventional right show that it's you know terrible for Republicans as off-year elections usually are for the party that controls the White House with Trump the numbers are even worse than they often are at this point right he's 31% in the AP poll in terms of approval on all the

48:29issues that people care about he's even he's lower on some of those the economy immigration national security the war in Iran his brand is in the gutter no one wants him no one wants no one's buying this except for the 30% of the public that are with him no matter what they believe whatever he says if they believe it's a golden age they believe the trade of her moves is open they believe that he's only you know deporting the worst of the worst and not you know law-abiding residents and neighbors who help us you know trim our you know cut our lawns and build our homes and teach in our schools I mean these are you know that we're hitting he's hitting his floor he's in the basement maybe he can go a little bit lower and so even though the Democratic brand itself doesn't pull well the people who are out there the candidates who are not Trump candidates anti-Trump as Democrats seem to be doing rather well particularly in some very unusual places Iowa

49:30Kansas Alaska and even in Texas right you know all this are your listeners and viewers are smart they know which races are the key races here yeah and so to me you know they're it's clear that that there's a trend line in one direction right the question is always how big and how forceful and what can be done through chicaneery and big money politics and even maybe some Russian meddling which you know they they are indeed running disinformation operations against certain candidates again now and some in even quoting me miscoating me in trying to bring me in my book into it but nevertheless oh they are yeah so they're doing yeah they're doing all that so can't you know can any of these things the big money coming from Elon Musk and the AI super pack and the crypt actually the crypto super pack you know the you know can can that can

50:32use the big question and then what can Trump do this is obviously the wild card right he you know you know he he so far the big things he's tried to do in terms of mail and ballots have failed right he got the gerrymandering he wanted and that and and it was some of it was racial gerry mandering because of the Supreme Court decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act and all that kind of got baked in and so that gains them probably a couple of seats at least there um so if the wave is small that you know might be enough but if the wave is big that's not enough so what else can you do this guy believes chaos is his friend right so where the sending item forces national guard troops trying to declare a national emergency which really should have no bearing on how states hold their elections yeah creating confusion and I think what we we've called voter suppression not making it illegal for people to vote but making it uncomfortable or difficult for people to vote if

51:34if you if you create you know violence at the polls or you start rounding up you know you just have to arrest a couple of people who don't serve to be arrested you know you then you let them go it's a mistake I'm sorry we arrested you yeah we thought you were not documented and if you do enough of that legitimate voters may not show up because who wants to be put in that situation so there's a lot of you know and then there's all you know so I worry about that chicanaery and then you have to worry about what might happen after the election after words right that's when control and they hope you know we saw this with the electoral college and votes in 2020 in 2020 going into 2021 the idea of certifying the election results and seating the the members who win you know acknowledging the legitimacy of their elections and Trump has already said that the democrats will be cheating which any total you know he said at the midterm convention

52:38we have to cheat like hell so he's already set up a foundation for saying these he won't acknowledge or recognize these results if they don't go his way so the question then is how far does he lean into that does he try to incite his base the way he did in 2020 do they try to put up some bogus legal challenges I mean so I I don't think I don't think the election will be over on November 3rd or whenever the votes are finally counted so those are all things to worry about I think it where it works I agree you know we he has made democracy and if he uncertain thing for us so how much he's going to lean into that afterwards how much energy and and and and and vervy has I mean he likes to sleep a lot maybe at some point he'll just give up he's already also said if this if he loses you know the republic publicans lose it's not his fault he says the election is about him

53:40but he also says oh this I wasn't on the I wasn't on the ballot but you know what your point though is you know go back to what you said though he's he learned you know that he calls something a hoax people think it's a hoax he's already also learned that he can actually try to overturn an election in sight of violent mob and get away with that the people he admires have found a way to subvert democratic regimes I think that is incredibly naive not to think that he will engage in some sort of chicaneery given the fact that this is someone who's actually already tried to overthrow the government because he lost an election and so you know in terms of like what we already know in broad daylight you know should we be worried are you kidding how can we not be worried knowing who and what Donald Trump is knowing what Donald Trump admires knowing who Donald Trump wants to emulate so yes this all I mean it is amazing that we collectively put back in

54:42office a guy who tried to destroy our currency community republic right and so you know the old saying full me once shame on you full me twice shame on me I mean the American public saw what happened on January 6th and despite all his you know conspiracizing that it was that you set up and all the right wing magga you know conspiracy theories about January 6th it's pretty clear what happened and yet they you know we gave him the keys to the car again and you're right the best judge of you know the future is an evaluation of the past and so we saw what he did when he lost last last time last time he lost so yeah I mean I would expect that he there would be something out there he would you know he would try to deny this you know an election that he loses so I think people need to sort of like strap in and be prepared I know the Democrats you know you know we often see them

55:44as feckless and not they haven't been fierce enough in some ways I know that there's a lot of thinking going on in that side a lot of lawyers have been engaged and they're trying to look at you know what where the possible pressure points can be and what the legal arguments can be and what they can do but you know and we we see the surround the world America sometimes you have to get out on the street and just raise a lot of noise and that you know that there was a lot of engagement of that sort in Hungary I mean it was an election that eventually Arbon accepted but there was a lot of street action prior to that people and it showed Arbon that he couldn't get away because he considered that was the key yeah you consider I think the morning of the election they they thought that they were either going to win the election or they could steal the election it was so overwhelming that they decided that they couldn't and again that's that's a key thing so thank you David Quinn for writing this book how Russia won I I hope Russia hasn't won yet but I'm thinking that

56:45you're you're your your thesis is unassailable at the moment could you show us the book again for those of people watching you know nice red covered yeah nice red and if people want more information if they if they if what we've talked about isn't enough for them they can go to how Russia won dot com and find the book there order order wherever you get your books David Quinn thank you so much for all your time today I appreciate it very much and thank you for writing this book thank you Charlie and thank you all for listening to this episode to the contrary podcast I'm Charlie psyched you know why we do this why we delve into these issues in depth because it is so important to remind ourselves these days and in the future we are not the crazy yeah

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