Transcript

IHIP Next: Trump RAMPS UP Fascism as He Grows WEAK; Expert Breaks Down Why HE WILL FAIL!

From I've Had It · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 44 min · 6,809 words · 77 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "IHIP Next: Trump RAMPS UP Fascism as He Grows WEAK; Expert Breaks Down Why HE WILL FAIL!", an episode of I've Had It published January 17, 2026 (44 min, about 6,809 words). It mentions 20 people, works and ideas, including United States (states), Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Benito Mussolini, Fascism, autocratic gamble.

What this episode is about

The discussion highlights the alarming trend of authoritarianism in the United States under the Trump administration, with historian Ruth Ben Ghiat explaining how weakening governmental structures can serve to consolidate power and suppress dissent. She asserts that this approach reflects a disdain for democracy and the populace, suggesting that such tactics are ultimately self-destructive and destined to fail.

Key takeaways

  • Democracy isn't just about voting; it's about ensuring that votes actually count in the long run.
  • The speed of authoritarian erosion in the U.S. is like watching a train wreck—fascinating yet terrifying.
  • Voter suppression has a storied history, reminding us that democracy's fragility is intertwined with racial injustice.
  • Electoral autocracy is today's tactic; a dictator in disguise can still wear the crown of legitimacy.
  • Authoritarians rarely leave office voluntarily; the real power play is about preserving control under the guise of democracy.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, United States (states), IHIP News, plunder
  2. – 10:00: United States (states), electoral autocracy, Augusto Pinochet, voter suppression
  3. – 15:00: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Fascism, autocratic gamble
  4. – 20:00: autocratic gamble, kleptocracy, Iran
  5. – 25:00: plunder, Strong Men, United States (states), Adolf Hitler
  6. – 30:00: United States (states), Strong Men
  7. – 35:00: Strong Men, Ruth Ben-Ghiat
  8. – 40:00: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Renee Mlin Good
  9. – 44:20: United States (states), Benito Mussolini, Fascism, Adolf Hitler

Notable quotes from "IHIP Next: Trump RAMPS UP Fascism as He Grows WEAK; Expert Breaks Down Why HE WILL FAIL!"

  • Information regarding what's happening in the United States because all of this, and you say this a lot, is new for the United States to have this form of government. And I…
    about United States (states) · at
  • One is of course and this has a long racialized history of voter suppression. So we have a long precedent of some of these authoritarian practices and I consider the Jim Crow South a kind of regional authoritarianism. So we have.
    about voter suppression · at
  • Allow the very few, the billionaires, the oligarchs to have unlimited liberties to plunder the workforce, to plunder the environment. You roll back all the regulations…
    about plunder · at
  • And so today, we have the something called electoral autocracy. So in the old days, you declare dictatorship or you had a coup. And so that's that's it.
    about electoral autocracy · at
  • My cases in my book and I interviewed people. I did a lot of work on Chile. he came in via military coup and then he lost power over the time. He was there for 17 years and the…
    about Augusto Pinochet · at
  • He didn't really trust the armed forces of Italy and they were under the command of the king. So he created a militia, the fascist militia and when he became prime minister and…
    about Benito Mussolini · at
  • And political scientists call this gambling for resurrection. And so Mussolini did this. things were so bad because people hated his Italians hated his alliance with Hitler that in.
    about autocratic gamble · at
  • To be doubling and tripping down and tripling down. Now they are using straight up Nazi propaganda translated from German to English and it feels very intentional. It feels…
    about Adolf Hitler · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Ruth Ben-Ghiat — Person · Main guest (historian/author) · 2 mentions · first at
    She provides the historical framework for comparing contemporary U.S. politics to patterns in fascist and authoritarian regimes, drawing on cases like Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, and Putin.
    Welcome to this special episode of IHIP News. I am joined by the best-selling author of Strong Men, Ruth Ben Gillot, a historian. Ruth, welcome to IHIP News.
  • Benito Mussolini — Person · Referenced historical exemplar (fascist dictator) · 5 mentions · first at
    Mussolini is used to illustrate militia-building, pardoning violent loyalists, propaganda, and escalation when facing declining popularity.
  • Adolf Hitler — Person · Referenced historical comparator (Nazi dictator) · 8 mentions · first at
    Hitler is referenced for learning from Mussolini, for the 'generals like Hitler had' remark, and for Nazi propaganda parallels and escalation dynamics.
  • Augusto Pinochet — Person · Referenced historical exemplar (coup dictator) · 2 mentions · first at
    Used to illustrate coup-installed dictatorship, pardons for human-rights abusers, and a rare case of losing power via referendum.
  • Renee Mlin Good — Person · Referenced victim (illustrative incident) · 3 mentions · first at
    Her killing is used to illustrate alleged lawlessness and escalation by ICE and the erosion of norms like investigation, evidence, and peaceful assembly.
    These guys and they you see what's going on in Minnesota right now and after Renee Good was shot after she was murdered by an ICE agent our logic as Americans being part of a…
  • Henry Kissinger — Person · Referenced historical actor (U.S. foreign policy) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as part of U.S. backing for Pinochet's coup, illustrating U.S. involvement in undermining and later restoring democracy abroad.
    Lost power over the time. He was there for 17 years and the United States which had backed his coup, Kissinger and Nixon, they made it possible, right?

Books & papers

  • Strong Men — Book · Referenced source (guest's book) · 6 mentions · first at
    The guest draws on her book to support claims about strongman behavior (fear, plunder, propaganda, pardons) and historical parallels.
    Welcome to this special episode of IHIP News. I am joined by the best-selling author of Strong Men, Ruth Ben Gillot, a historian. Ruth, welcome to IHIP News.

Companies & orgs

  • IHIP News — Company · Podcast/show (episode container) · 1 mention · first at
    The transcript is from a special episode of IHIP News featuring an interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat about authoritarianism and U.S. politics.
    Welcome to this special episode of IHIP News. I am joined by the best-selling author of Strong Men, Ruth Ben Gillot, a historian. Ruth, welcome to IHIP News.

Concepts & topics

  • Fascism — Concept · Core topic (historical/political framework) · 4 mentions · first at
    Fascism is invoked to interpret militia tactics, propaganda, dehumanization, and leader-cult dynamics, with Mussolini and Hitler as reference points.
    Been an excuse to build an infrastructure of repression. and ICE is like they remind me of like the fascist militia. When Mussolini came in, that was the original stuff I…
  • autocratic gamble — Concept · Core topic (episode’s explanatory concept) · 3 mentions · first at
    Explains why autocrats escalate with reckless actions when facing blowback—framed as 'gambling for resurrection'—with examples including Mussolini, Putin, and Trump.
  • electoral autocracy — Concept · Core topic (regime type) · 1 mention · first at
    Central concept describing how leaders gain power through elections and then hollow out electoral competition via suppression and intimidation while maintaining democratic appearance.
  • plunder — Concept · Core topic (motivation/behavior of regimes) · 3 mentions · first at
    Plunder is described as a key driver of authoritarian governance: deregulation, oligarch enrichment, and foreign resource extraction (e.g., oil, minerals).
  • voter suppression — Concept · Core topic (mechanism of electoral control) · 2 mentions · first at
    Presented as a long-standing U.S. practice with racialized roots and as a key tool in modern electoral autocracies to hollow out elections while keeping them nominally intact.
  • white Christian ethnostate — Concept · Core topic (alleged ideological goal) · 1 mention · first at
    Discussed as an ideological project tied to immigration repression and anti-diversity politics; the guest argues it is unlikely to succeed in the U.S.
    Am an optimist. I think that it will not be possible to dominate and transform America into a white Christian ethnostate. It's not who we are. And the reason they're working so…
  • military coup — Concept · Referenced pathway to dictatorship (contrast case) · 1 mention · first at
    Used to contrast older routes to dictatorship with modern electoral autocracy; also central to the Chile/Pinochet example.
    My cases in my book and I interviewed people. I did a lot of work on Chile. he came in via military coup and then he lost power over the time. He was there for 17 years and the…
  • kleptocracy — Concept · Referenced regime characteristic (corruption) · 1 mention · first at
    Used to describe Russia as a corruption-ravaged state and to connect authoritarianism with plunder and oligarch enrichment.
    And Russia is not doing well. It's a failed state. It's a kleptocracy. And they had to call, that's why they had to call North Korean troops in to help them. That's not a good sign of a.

Places & events

  • United States (states) — Place · Primary setting (country under discussion) · 8 mentions · first at
    The conversation centers on whether the U.S. is shifting toward an electoral autocracy and how its size, federalism, and diversity affect authoritarian consolidation and resistance.
  • Canada — Place · Referenced adjacent country (border context) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned to emphasize the perceived oddity of enforcement activity far from the southern border, supporting the claim it is about terrorizing citizens rather than border control.
    They are terrorizing. And I think Minnesota, Minneapolis, Canada. I'm thinking about border protection. I'm thinking, okay, why aren't they in Florida or in Texas or Arizona or on the California border? They're all the way.
  • Iran — Place · Referenced country (rhetoric/realignment example) · 1 mention · first at
    Raised in the context of U.S. political rhetoric ('Make Iran Great Again') and concern for Iranians amid perceived global autocratic realignment.
    Even posted he was the acting president of Venezuela. Lindsey Graham was on Fox News with Make Iran Great Again. And our heart goes out to everybody in Iran right now. But it…
  • Arizona — Place · Referenced U.S. state (contrast point) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as another expected border-enforcement area, used to highlight the perceived strategic choice of Minnesota instead.
    Thinking about border protection. I'm thinking, okay, why aren't they in Florida or in Texas or Arizona or on the California border? They're all the way up there. And it…

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to this special episode of IHIP News. I am joined by the best-selling author of Strong Men, Ruth Ben Gillot, a historian. Ruth, welcome to IHIP News.

Thank you. I want to cover some very important information regarding what's happening in the United States because all of this, and you say this a lot, is new for the United States to have this form of government. And I read your lucid substack and listener, you should read it as well. Um because when you're armed with information, when the government is abusing its citizens, it can be cathartic and therapeutic to know what is going on. And Ruth, you speak a lot about the government, the Trump regime is intentionally weakening the government. Explain to my listeners why would you get power and then want to weaken the government that you operate within?

Yeah, this is this is one of the most tragic aspects of uh what's going on now and I was calling it out um in Lucid like in February in March um you have uh somebody who's a head of state who really long ago internalized um Kremlin and other authoritarian uh views of the world that see democracy as the problem. And then the question is why would you kneecap your own country,

right? And um authoritarians do that so they can more easily grab control if you have an impoverished diseased um population. They're less likely to be protesting in the streets. Um, and if you care about profiting off of uh governance and you really don't care about the people you are supposed to be governing, and remember uh President Trump did the AI video of him like um dumping excrement,

yes, on American people and protesters. That kind of shows you the mentality. And they're all like this. They despise the people they govern. And so sometimes the bad outcome economically is over time and it's a result of incompetence. Here everything has happened so fast and and you know taking away vaccines, doing things that will increase the likelihood of mass disease, things like that. Um they are part of really a mentality that wants to create the conditions to be able to rule more easily in an authoritarian fashion. And is it that in a democracy historically we think the power is within the people of the people by the people for the people we've learned that mantra you know from from school age on and is it to take the power away from the people and consolidate it in this regime.

Yeah. And it works in different ways. One is of course and this has a long long racialized history of voter suppression. So we have a long precedent of some of these authoritarian practices and I consider the Jim Crow South a kind of regional authoritarianism. So we have that precedent but we can't really um only define authoritarianism as in a legal way which which is important. So the executive wants to get as much power. That's why Trump has marginalized Congress. That's why he keeps doing ruling by executive orders. He's made the judiciary, the Department of Justice into his personal like revenge tool. All of that is like by the book.

But I think we also need to see authoritarianism as a process by which um you deprive the many of their rights and you create hardship for them to allow the very few, the billionaires, the oligarchs to have unlimited liberties to plunder the workforce, to plunder the environment. You roll back all the regulations including moral regulations that kept people behaving ethically. You take all of that out of government and that's going on too. And that's one again it's very tragic. Um but it's all preceded very quickly which is one thing that's that differentiates what we're living through. If we feel like our heads are exploding every day,

it's because the pace of change, it doesn't really resemble um other um states where the authoritarian came to power via elections. So, that tease up my next question. A lot of people say we're in the middle of a power grab and is it a power grab if this candidate was democratically elected? A lot of the things he's doing,

he telegraphed that he was going to do during the campaign. He was going to root out the enemy from within.

And so, will you please talk to that and also speak to the role that the oligarchs are playing in this specific power grab in the United States of America.

Yeah. And you're right that he did campaign on this. At one point during the campaign, he said to um an ev evangelical Christian group, "I'm going to fix it so good that you'll never have to vote again. If you only vote for me now, you'll never have to vote again." And so today, we have the something called electoral autocracy. So in the old days, you declare dictatorship or you had a coup. And so that's that's it. Today, they come to power via elections. That's what happened with Putin, with Orban, with Erdogan in Turkey. And then you use the system and you actually hollow out elections. You you use voter suppression. You use intimidation. You do everything possible. So you keep elections going. So you can say like Victor Orban, "Oh, I'm not a dictator.

This is illiberal democracy." That's his phrase. But there's nothing democratic about it. Um and elections, so you keep them going, but they mean less. and and the Trump administration is very uh worried about this now because Democrats have had unbelievable successes electorally because there's a blowback to what's going on. And so there's going to be a push to perhaps do something with elections, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep registering people to vote, right? because um the elections are the last thing that you have sometimes. Um and that's true in Turkey, that's true in Hungary, and you have to use them.

I read somewhere probably on Twitter that I really shouldn't be on, but we all peek over there from time to time. Yeah.

That um rarely do authoritarians or autocrats or dictators, whatever we want to call him, rarely are they voted out.

What do you have to say about that? That terrifies me. Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest cases um in Chile where Pinocha, it's one of my cases in my book and I interviewed people. I did a lot of work on Chile. Um he came in via military coup and then he lost power over the time. He was there for 17 years and the United States which um had backed his coup, Kissinger and Nixon, they made it possible, right? They lost faith in him and they actually the United States went from taking democracy away to helping it come back.

And so Pinish lost so much power he had to agree to a referendum, an election basically whether he would stay or leave. So he's a case and he lost. And he's a case where the dictator left and didn't want to leave but he left. Um but often if they come in via coup via coup, they leave via coup. um or something happens to them uh they have to resign like Assad and if they're lucky they go into exile somewhere. Um now I I would hope that we would have an electoral outcome uh so that uh Trump would leave office peacefully but the the track record on that is not very good as we saw from January 6th.

Right. Right. He packed his toys up after he threw a giant temper tantrum um that we all saw and then was very fragrantly flagrantly uh pardoned the loyalists

that committed these felonies. And that type of um I describe it as the rules that apply to everybody else don't apply to us

and they it's like a neon sign with these guys and they you see what's going on in Minnesota right now and after um Renee Good was shot after she was murdered by an ICE agent our logic as Americans being part of a civilized country we would think there's going to be an investigation they're going to receive The opposite has happened. Christine Noma said, "We're sending hundreds more in." Now they're in Targets. They're in gas stations. They have accelerated this type of terrorizing the public. They are terrorizing. And I think Minnesota, Minneapolis, Canada. I'm thinking about border protection. I'm thinking, okay, why aren't they in Florida or in Texas or Arizona or on the California border? They're all the way up there. And it doesn't take that much of deduction skills to assume this isn't about immigration. This isn't about the border. This is intentionally to terrorize the citizens and even more

insidiously to prime us to be scared of their power. Mhm. So, um it's the immigration uh has been very important ideologically uh because they do want to create a white um Christian male-dominated ethnostate and that's been ever since Bannon was talking about that in 2015. And um but but immigration has always been an excuse to build an infrastructure of repression. and ICE is like they remind me of like the fascist militia. When Mussolini came in, that was the original stuff I studied for years. Um, which is how I recognized Trump uh in 2016 for what he for what he is. Uh, and and Mussolini came into power and he wasn't sure and he came in through a lot of violence with his black shirts. Um, and he was before Hitler, right? and Hitler learned from him and he didn't really trust the um armed forces of Italy and they were under the command of the of the king. So he created a militia, the fascist militia

and when he became prime minister and then he became dictator later, he put all the thugs, all the black shirts, all the killers um into the militia and then guess what he did? He pardoned them all. Because the authoritarian mentality is why would you have perfectly good killers and bribers and the people who have the criminal skills you need? Why would you have them sitting in prison when they could be useful?

Oh god. And that's why so many authoritarians pardon uh they pardon people. Pinocha pardoned human rights abusers. He even pardoned the concealers, the people who went through the police records and wiped them clean. Everybody has to be pardoned because you need those people. And we're seeing this in the United States now. And so what's h what happened in Minneapolis, I just want to tell people and it's terrifying, but it's it's good to know that um in an authoritarian state for a police state, there is no concept of peaceful assembly. There is no concept of legal observer, which is what Renee Good was doing. And there's no concept of monitoring people. They don't care about evidence about body cams because they are um empowered to act lawlessly. So if you look at this an authoritarian framework they just don't they've they've completely discarded democratic notions of law enforcement of public

space of decorum of everything and that's how they're acting. Do you remember out of Trump.0 all of the people that worked around him that put up guard rails? They came out and said he's a fascist through and through.

And then there was that quote where he had told I can't remember which cabinet member it was that he wishes that he had generals

like Hitler had. And as you're talking about the pardoning of the January 6 writers, for me I thought that's just so flagrant. That's such a a you know snubbing your nose at the rule of law. But to hear from you from an historical perspective there is they're not universally unique. These this MAGA regime they're following a tried andrue failed

playbook that history does not bode very well upon. Which brings me to my next question and you've you have spoken about this and I want you to describe it to our listeners because it's fascinating to me. We're seeing a rapid increase of this flood the zone. They were first um you know killing uh people in we did with no due process in Venezuela. Now we've captured horrible dictator. We've captured Maduro. We have the the ICE agents acting bananas. We have the Supreme Court bending the need. All of these things happening so much. It's so overwhelming and it feels so abusive.

And you talk about in your Substack Lucid about the autocratic gamble. Walk us through what that is.

So the it's like a push and pull with autocrats. And normally things, as I said, happen uh a bit more slowly. But when autocrats feel they're getting um becoming less popular, there's blowback. Maybe they're um the elites they depend on are starting to um be disaffected. That is when they do these um reckless moves. And political scientists call this gambling for resurrection. And so Mussolini did this. Um things were so bad because people hated his uh Italians hated his alliance with Hitler that in 1939 when he was doing um like public speaking, they had to bus in people who they paid to create a crowd for the news reels. And so rather than retrench, what does the autocrat do? He doubles down.

So he goes into World War II on the side of Hitler and we know the rest. He ended up executed, hanging from a gas station. Hitler killed himself. So, it doesn't have to be that dramatic, but um Putin was in the same uh kind of mentality. He the economy was not doing well after the pandemic. There were lots of polls coming out in Russia where young people uh were opposing him, wanted a different ruler. And I saw him sitting in Geneva in the summer of 21. I saw him sitting there and I was covering it uh doing live coverage with M uh NBC and something about him. He was sitting there twitching as he sat there with Biden and I went home and I wrote that night in Lucid that he might do something reckless and that was the invasion of Ukraine because that was his gamble for resurrection. So Trump is kind of in the same thing where this Venezuela thing which took everybody by surprise. It was perfectly planned operationally. It had

been months in the making. But it came as a kind of uh reckless gamble to say I I have all the power. I am omnipotent. I can even depose a dictator. Um that kind of thing. And so that's the gamble. And the more they feel their backs are against the wall, the more they do reckless things and they double down. That's the key for us. We have to be prepared. They never retrench. They never say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I have been to extremists." They become more more and more. And so does this impulsivity, this lack of impulse control where they escalate and does it backfire versus if they really wanted a long-term ruling um white Christian nationalist regime.

It's like a frog in water. You know, you incrementally slowly get everybody adjusted to the temperature of it. And right now we all have whiplash and horrified and

terrified which is the result they want. So does their impulsiv impulsivity and does their acceleration backfire on them because they have no impulse control? I believe in this case um the Trump administration has acted so recklessly on every front so quickly that there will be this um process I call autocratic backfire. We see this in the rising numbers of people protesting. You know, in Minneapolis, even as people are being terrorized, there's an uptick in people registering for um non-violent action training. And that's kind of a microcosm of what is going on in the country. Protest has risen and risen as they have become more repressive. Um because ordinary people from all walks of life are realizing also that that Trump is not doing what he promised. It's not America first, it's Trump first.

um it's Trump and cronies first and and that that is a recipe for blowback. So he ran on this um uber nationalist uh nivist America first and in flyover states where people are isolated from diversity and their main sense of culture, their main avenues of culture or church and their main identity is being an American and there we have this, you know, really fantastic military that has done these heroic things that we see in movies. So they attach a lot of their identity to that. But since he has taken over Trump 2.0, we see $40 billion to Argentina, Venezuela. Um apparently he's asked his generals to draw up plans for Greenland, whispers of Cuba, whispers of Colombia.

Uh he has even, you posted this, that he even posted he was the acting president of Venezuela. Lindsey Graham was on Fox News with Make Iran Great Again. And our heart goes out to everybody in Iran right now. But it seems that there seems to be a complete global realignment with this where we used to have kind of a competition and cooperation within democracies and I feel like we're moving towards a competition of autocracies.

What are your thoughts on that? So we are in a moment where autocracies are working closer together. Um Russ, you know, people don't realize that Russia is economically dependent on China now. And Russia is not doing well. It's a failed state. It's a kleptocracy. And they had to call, that's why they had to call North Korean troops in to help them. That's not a good sign of a well-run military. Everything, all the all the institutions are are hollowed out, ravaged by corruption. So they're working together uh more closely because they're weaker individually many of them. That's the thing we have to realize. Um now the Trump administration marauding around the world um is really significant and and awful because we have this thing where parallel to destroying the rule of law at home. The goal has always been to um advance is very important in this to destroy any um adherence and allegiance to democratic

internationalism to visions of international relations where diplomacy is diplomacy not like shakedowns and thuggish moves. And Marco Rubio has made himself the agent of this thuggishness. And so the instability um you see is hugely increased by the United States um acting in this lawless fashion. And um a lot of this is economically oriented. They want to plunder. I have a quote in strongman from 2019 and Trump this thing about buying Greenland or getting Greenland is old and Trump started talking in 2019 about getting Greenland and Mike Pompeo this is the quote in my book as climate change uh proceeds that precious minerals of which Greenland has many will be liberated and so that's why they want Greenland and we saw also in Venezuela they got rid Maduro in exchange for supposedly being able to exploit Venezuelan oil and it's all about the oil companies. And so there's a history of this also in Iraq under

more democratic leaderships. But right now the plunder aspect is is really important because that's what they do. That's what the axis uh in World War II was about. It was about uh plundering as well as uh the Holocaust. And we always have to think about plunder and self-enrichment and and that's why they're doing so many deals with other autocrats all of them lawless including Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah. Um is it a part of the personality type for these strong men? they, you know, Hitler came in, uh, Germany had economic problems and, um, he they were, they felt ashamed for World War I and he, um, ignited this nationalism, but then he just couldn't help it. And then he had his sights on all you know on conquering

and Trump America and even uh Steven Miller you know during that Madison Square Garden rally that they had leading up to uh the 2024 election a lot of uh America first America only type language and then immediately we start expanding to they're abandoning and I think what you say intentionally weakening the population

and is that a personality trait? of this megalomania where it's just they get it's like a shark in the water. They get a little taste of it. And I when Trump I saw him on Fox News, Ruth after the Venezuela thing and you could tell he was like Pavlovian's dog. He was just or Pavlov's dog. He was salivating on Fox and he said, "I watched it

and it was like watching a movie. Our military was so fast and violent. It was incredible." And I thought, "Oh, God, now he's gotten a taste of this and he's going to be off of his decorating projects

and now he's going to be turned on by the by this military might and because he seems like he has a short attention span to me, Trump." And now he seems to be advancing, you know, globally everywhere. Well, yes. And this is when they make unforced errors because there's this whole process where first they surround themselves with sophants and loyalists and they get rid of anybody who's going to tell them anything objective. And so they start over time and in again in our case it's just happening real quickly. They start to believe their own propaganda. They start to believe in their own genius. And then their megalumania is just totally out of control right now. But you know what's interesting is the Venezuela thing is actually connected to the ballroom because in fact when Trump had a recent um uh meeting with oil executives and uh somebody from Exxon spoke out uh in a very he was very disturbed because Trump

was meandering and wandering and he interrupted the meeting which was supposed to be about Venezuelan oil to wander to a window and start talking about his ballroom because the ballroom is about donors and more money coming in to him and his ego and so it's actually all connected. It makes sense from the demented very particular autocratic mentality that he would interrupt a meeting about um plundering the oil of Venezuela to he feels so powerful because it did go off beautifully in terms of military operations. It was perfect and it was well rehearsed. It was, you know, like a perfect I've studied military coups and stuff like that. It was really well done. But he feels puffed up because of it. And so, of course, he's going to wander to the window and start talking about his ballroom. Uh, which made the executive of Exxon very uncomfortable.

And now Trump is saying, "Well, Exxon's not going to be involved." So, it's a whole cycle. Yes. And then then he he's very upset that somebody pointed out that, you know, he's maybe uh not as focused, shall we say, as he could be, and now they're going to be uh he has to take revenge on them. Regarding the ballroom, he always says something super interesting. He says, "It's going to be great. We're going to have the inauguration in there."

Mhm. And we will have drone proof ceiling and bulletproof glass. And he keeps projecting

Yes. to the inauguration and and that's so um I have some quote in strong men somewhere that they're what mo what what motivates strong men is fear. They're always worried about they know people hate them and they always are worried about people who are going to go after them and that's why they build these palaces. They build these bunkers and the White House has become Trump's bunker. It's become his world. Um, and that's why he wants to expand it and redo it and put his own name on it. And so it's very telling that when he's projecting something which is illegal because it would he can't have a third term um that he would be talking about making it drone proof and bulletproof and fear dictates almost everything the autocrats do. Um usually again this fear builds slowly because they've been doing this incrementally.

Trump has done everything so fast that and he knows perfectly well what people think of him and that's why he is is conjuring the idea of his own safety his own safety and self-preservation motivates autocrats more than anything they will even prolong wars um Netanyahu is has always everything he has done is motivated by self-preservation if they have um if they so I'll give you an example a regular politician if they are under investigation, they they don't want to run for office because the journalists will start poking around,

right? If you're an autocrat, you feel compelled to run for office. So, you can get into power and shut down the investigation. And a list of people who were under investigation when they ran for office, beer several times, Trump three times, Putin and Netanyahu, and I'm sure there are others. So this is because of their fear and they watch what happens to other autocrats. And it's really interesting a Russian analyst said that Putin watched in in in 2011 12 when he had a lot of protests going on against him. He kept watching the tape of what happened to Gaddafi who ended up in a hole in the ground and then he was executed because he had a 42-year long dictatorship and Putin kept watching this this footage and he was like very and then he did a crackdown on on Russians. So they watch what happens to others what they get away with but also when it doesn't go well because they're motivated by fear. Did you see

this week? You know, I think it's safe to say that Trump lives in a literal bubble and a virtual bubble. I mean, he is always around sick of fans. He's great. Everything's Trump branded. And he goes um off the reservation to tour a Ford plant. And a Ford worker, not all heroes wear capes, screamed at the sitting president of the United States, you're a pedophile protector. And Trump, you can see he says, "Fuck you."

And then he flips the guy off and now this guy has been Mhm. suspended from his job because I'm sure Trump pitched a fit. But what can you say about the the the fragile ego and the feardriven um autocrat when he's faced and heckled by somebody who in his mind he would think, "Oh, this is just a mere peasant." What type of humiliation and exposure and how damaging is something that I would think if you're going to be a big boy and you're running for president, you better have thick skin because everybody's going to say everything about you. Like Barack Obama, people called him the n-word, hard r all the time. And he never showed any sort of ruffled feathers. But here we have this thin skinned

man. What do you suspect studying all of these types of strong men? How did that episode impact him?

Oh, it's huge. He probably thought about it for hours afterwards because the more they surround themselves with sick fans and the more um they create these bubbles around themselves also with real estate, the less um they're prepared to have any kind of um narcissistic ego injury. And the whole Nobel Prize thing is part of that, too. He's still obsessed with the with with the not getting the Nobel Pri.

So what I didn't say in the the when I told the story of Putin in 2021, he was in the Geneva summit with Biden

and he was exposed to American journalists, some of whom asked him really hard questions and that I could see him like being extremely rattled by this because nobody would do that in Russia. You can't, right? He's killed. He's had journalists killed. He doesn't have open press conferences. And that's why he sat there afterward and he looked really rattled. You can't tell, but I've studied him for years. And that's why I wrote that night that I think he could do something reckless because any kind of confrontation is a narcissistic ego injury. And what is the response to that? It is repression.

God, that's absolutely terrifying. So, the strong man, you know, during Trump 1.0, he had energy. Um, he has a non-stop uh type of personality like an inj Energizer bunny. You know, he campaigned non-stop. It seemed like he just had oodles and oodles of injury. I mean, energy. Now there is reporting that his staff have told him to look less sleepy

in meetings and there are cracks in this machisimo facade. The strong man from my v sides of it. He has physical manifestations of aging um on his hands that he's covering up with makeup and he has these cankles falling asleep in public. Um, I've observed, and I'm not a medical doctor, just an armchair stroke expert, if you will, but I've noticed his lip, and it seems like the strong man is becoming frail and weak. Historically, what happens when the strong man is not so macho and strong and alpha any longer?

Well, that's when this whole process of their fear and being more repressive kicks in. it kicks into goes into overdrive because and especially somebody like Trump who is really so skilled at creating images,

right? He's a skilled propagandist and he knows the stakes of him not um appearing omnipotent anymore, all powerful and they're all remember the fear thing. They're always worried that somebody's going to come and get them. Strong men don't like talk about successors because that implies they're not going to be there forever. And they never appoint anybody around them who has any charisma. And so um that's why you know JD Vance who's there as a proxy for Peter Peter Theal and all the the technofascists but he has no charisma.

He's he's not very wellliked outside the the hardcore base. And that's by design. Um because as they age, as they become more vulnerable and he knows perfectly well that his body is is he's a certain age and and but that they want to grasp on to power all the more and so I don't think he can people can his his adviserss can tell him not to fall asleep but I don't think he can pro he can help it,

right? Um, so it's a recipe for grabbing everything you can while you still can.

Have you heard anything about this? Um, you know, the there's leaks that come out of the administration that he intentionally plays J. D. Vance and Marco against each other.

Yes. Purposely. This is called divide and rule. Okay. Like literally everything. It's so crazy. I've been studying this stuff for decades and it's like check check check check everything they're doing. So divide and rule is when the autocrat pits people against each other, cabinet officials um whoever it is so that they won't conspire against him. And here we go back to the the fear that somebody will there'll be like a palace coup. Um, and remember when you're in authoritarian territory, things that seemed unthinkable in a regular democracy, they're not they're not democrats. Like he's not a Democrat. He thinks in terms of authoritarian and somebody getting him. So that's why um he pits them against each other. And that's the other the other thing that autocrats do. It's um which happened a lot in the first uh administration with Trump. It's like a revolving door. um cabinet officials and people come and go

partly because they're never loyal enough, but also everybody has to be humiliated and be made to seem that they're dispensable, that only the leader matters. And so if they start getting too much power, um and autocrats love to fire people in public or in humiliating ways. Um, so Rex Tillerson, who was briefly Secretary of State, and he was put there because he's a friend of Russia and he, uh, is in the oil sector, he learned that he'd been fired while he was scrolling through Twitter in the bathroom. Um, uh, other real like dictators like Mabu and Pino would fire people on television, they fire people in public. And so you're standing there with at some rally and he tells you that you're fired just to humiliate you. and and Trump is an expert in this kind of ritual humiliation.

Yeah. So his um administration since the uh murder of Renee Good, they have we t spoke about this earlier, but they seem to be doubling and tripping down and tripling down. Now they are using straight up Nazi propaganda translated from German to English and it feels very intentional. It feels like they are taking a victory lap on all of this. And is it intentional? Is this type of use of propaganda to terrorize the public and link it back to does this backfire in a country this big and this diverse?

It is intentional. Um they, you know, government agencies don't uh message without knowing what they're doing,

right? Um, Trump campaigned on this. He There's a very interesting uh c campaign video he released in 2024. I wrote about it also for CNN that was done in the style of 1930s news reels and it there was a frame of it and it came back twice uh saying that he would be creating a quote unified Reich with the R capitalized. Um, and again it depicted him as a kind of little bit Church Hill but mostly a Hitlerian figure, somebody who would make America strong again. Um, and all there's a whole we all know the Nick Fuentes the kind of normalizing um fascist style rhetoric dehumanizing people. this was a feature of the campaign. Um and and so now they feel uh empowered that they're actually um you know doing social media messaging based on um Nazi style and fascist style rhetoric

and it's all part of so propaganda um isn't just about getting people to believe this or that lie, even a big lie like Trump won the 2020 election, right? It's really about changing the way people feel about themselves and others and the world. So, it's inculcating, educating for a world view. And the Trump administration and Trump going back 10, we've been 10 years into this now where he's been trying to put forth a worldview where violence is acceptable way of settling differences. He's definitely built a leader cult. That's been going on. and he's been recycling he and his associates have been recycling uh fascist worldviews and Steven Miller is really important in this and he's like the the um the kind of brains behind it and he and the ideological fanaticism and he's very he's a very smart guy he's very versed in the fascist playbook and if you listen to what he says a lot of about

saving you know western civilization it's the same stuff that Muslim ini said, Mussolini was saying this stuff before Hitler got into power that Mussolini I have stuff in my book about this that Mussolini said um the entire white race um is the white civilization is being submerged by and at the time he said uh brown, yellow and black people. And so this he was constantly talking about whites being overcome uh being extinguished. So it's great replacement theory,

right? and the administration is has made great use of that. And so now um delivering these coded messages, meaning all neo-Nazis and fanatics will know that they're taken from Nazi rhetoric is part of this. Um now the last question, you've studied all of these authoritarians, dictators, if you will, and a lot of their countries are smaller. um they don't have the u expansive territory that the United States of America has. They never have had as much diversity

as this country has had. And our diversity has really been woven into our culture. If you think about the Statue of Liberty, you think about I mean I remember grade school, we're a melting pot. And how difficult is this ambition of theirs?

Like Mussolini had the ambition, Hitler had the ambition with everybody being so spread out and then you have 50 different states and then after that all of these localized governments just you and I are in New York City right now. You walk down the street and it is a mult beautiful multicultural experience walking two blocks where you might hear three or four languages and you see every shade of skin imaginable

and you might see somebody walking around in go- go boots and nobody cares. It's no big deal.

How big of a swing is this? Yeah. for them with this style of country. From your expert opinion, when you think about how small Germany is in comparison, Chile is in comparison, Italy is in comparison.

Yeah, I'm one of my maxims is never underestimate the American people. And I am an optimist. I think that it will not be possible to dominate and transform America into a white Christian ethnostate. It's not who we are. And the reason they're working so hard right now also all the anti-Dei stuff is because uh we were on a trajectory to be a world example. We were already a world example of a successful multiffaith and multi-racial democracy. And that's why they have to work so hard to take it down. But they will not succeed. In fact, you know, the 2022 midterms, we elected more and more people who were firsts to be, you know, the first black governors of certain states, the first this and that. And we were on a trajectory, which is also what Kla Harris represented um in her person.

Yeah. A multiffaith, multi-racial democracy. And I believe that we will prevail. It may get worse before it gets better, but I believe that we will prevail because you can't erase all of that. And indeed, we are far more complex, far bigger. Now, that poses um organizational problems to having a unified pro-democracy movement. And today, often protest um and it it's been like this in the United States is decentralized. You know, in other countries, you see everybody descending on the capital.

Um Budapest recently, yes. and Georgia, it we we may have marches on Washington, but um it it's decentralized. It's community up and that is actually very effective and you we we you simply can't take away um for hundreds of millions of people this identity uh who they are and a politics that expresses that. So I believe that um they will not be successful ultimately in transforming us into some kind of fascist state. All right, Ruth, thank you so much. I know for me it is so disturbing watching the government abuse my fellow Americans and um it's cathartic to know that these guys are not originalists, that they are playing a failed

playbook, that they're incompetent in executing it. And I think it helps all of us stay engaged so that we don't descend in denialism and that we like you said really prompt everybody for voter registration and we have to have such a turnout that it is too big to rig. So I thank you so much for joining me. I always enjoy it and uh please check out Ruth's um Substack. It's called Lucid. It will be very therapeutic for all of you guys and intellectually intoxicating. I promise. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "IHIP Next: Trump RAMPS UP Fascism as He Grows WEAK; Expert Breaks Down Why HE WILL FAIL!"?

Ruth Ben Ghiat (Guest), Unknown Host (Host).

What is "IHIP Next: Trump RAMPS UP Fascism as He Grows WEAK; Expert Breaks Down Why HE WILL FAIL!" about?

The discussion highlights the alarming trend of authoritarianism in the United States under the Trump administration, with historian Ruth Ben Ghiat explaining how weakening governmental structures can serve to consolidate power and suppress dissent. She asserts that this approach reflects a disdain for democracy and the populace, suggesting that such tactics are ultimately self-destructive and…

What is mentioned in this I've Had It episode?

20 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including United States (states), Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Benito Mussolini, Fascism, autocratic gamble, electoral autocracy. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "IHIP Next: Trump RAMPS UP Fascism as He Grows WEAK; Expert Breaks Down Why HE WILL FAIL!"?

The episode runs 44 min; the transcript is about 6,809 words in 77 timestamped sections.

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About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.