A Mafia State Within a Totalitarian Society
It is a skill, actually, to make someone feel as though they are drowning in words. If you’ve ever read a transcript of a Donald Trump interview, you know what the experience is like. Next-level incoherence is disorienting—and can be oddly powerful.
The American-Russian journalist Masha Gessen has thought a lot about Trump’s rambling and disjointed way of speaking—in part because it reminds her so much of Vladimir Putin’s style. In Russia, Putin uses words yet means their opposites. At times, he seems to render words meaningless.
“He just keeps talking,” Gessen says. “And throwing numbers out there. Most of them wrong.”
Then there’s Trump: “He talks and you don’t even know where the punctuation marks fall. And the more you try to engage with those words, the less they mean.”
In the latest episode of The Atlantic Interview, Gessen speaks with The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, about the similarities between Putin and Trump, the way intergenerational trauma can shape a political movement, and why the United States is marching away from democracy.
An edited and condensed transcript of their conversation is below.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you think Donald Trump was brought to power by Russians or by Americans?
Masha Gessen: I think Donald Trump was brought to power by Americans. They voted for him.
Do you think we are overemphasizing Russia’s nefarious—either intent or actual—actions in this moment?
