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Politico
2 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Vodka Toasts With the Dictator of Belarus: How Diplomacy Gets Done in Trump 2.0
A bus carrying 14 political prisoners with bags over their heads hurtled through the lush Belarusian countryside one morning last month, its destination unknown. Five years after President Alexander Lukashenko launched an unsparing crackdown on dissent in the former Soviet nation, some of the captives feared they were about to be executed. Among the group was the prominent dissident Siarhei Tsikhanouski whose wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, became the face of the Belarusian opposition movement after his arrest in 2020. As the bus approached its destination, their minders from the Belarusian security services — which still goes by its Soviet name the KGB — removed the bags from their heads but told them to keep their eyes fixed on the floor. 'We kept looking ahead all the same,' said Ihar Karnei, a Belarusian journalist who was among the group and had been imprisoned for two years. 'We were interested: Where were they taking us?' The bus pulled up to a field not far from Belarus' border with Lithuania. The door of the van flew open, and they received a surprising greeting: 'President Trump sent me to take you home.' The man speaking to the bewildered prisoners was John Coale, one of President Donald Trump's lawyers and now a deputy special envoy to Ukraine. It took a moment for the reality of what was happening to sink in. 'They were terrified,' Coale recalled in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. 'Opening that door and getting them to realize that 'You are free' was quite a moment.' The prisoner release, a goodwill gesture by the Belarusian leader, marked the continuation of a cautious diplomatic opening between the United States and Belarus. The fraught relationship between the two countries came to a standstill in 2020 when protests against rigged elections were met with mass arrests and thousands of people were swept into the country's vast prison system. But the release also wouldn't have happened without Coale's efforts to forge a relationship with Lukashenko, including over a long lunch with vodka toasts. 'I did two shots, didn't throw up, but did not do a third one,' said Coale. The episode offers a window into the highly personalistic way in which foreign policy gets done during Trump's second term in office, as the president has tapped a slew of close friends and allies to serve as his envoys and implement his agenda abroad. Critics have balked at their lack of experience; after all, they smirk, can real estate magnate Steve Witkoff really lead negotiations to conclude Russia's war on Ukraine, tackle Iran's nuclear program and end Israel's war in Gaza? But the envoys bring the prospect of a direct line to the president and the chance to bypass State Department bureaucracy. They are also free to say and do things that traditional U.S. diplomats might not be able to. 'It's sort of easier to have an eye-to-eye conversation with the president's right hand,' said Artyom Shraibman, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dispatching the national security advisor or secretary of State (currently Marco Rubio in both cases), could be seen as a full legitimization of Belarus' isolated president, said Franak Viacorka, chief of staff to Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition leader. 'But if we speak about envoys — an envoy's task is to make deals, to solve crises,' he said. Coale's adventures in Belarus began with a call from the State Department in late April with a special request. Was he willing to go to Minsk to meet with Lukashenko, a man often described as Europe's last dictator? 'Fine,' said Coale. Could he fly out the next day? 'Not fine,' he replied. 'But I did it anyway.' The 78-year-old Coale is a plainspoken, veteran litigator perhaps best known for helping to broker a $386 billion settlement from Big Tobacco in the late 1990s. He's also had a winding political life; a longtime Democrat, Coale endorsed John McCain in 2008 and befriended Sarah Palin, before backing Democrat Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential bid. In 2021, he led Trump's longshot lawsuit against social media companies, accusing them of censorship. 'The woke stuff has moved me to the right,' he said in one interview. He first met Trump some 20 years ago through his wife Greta Van Susteren, the former Fox News host who has interviewed the president on numerous occasions. Days after the call, Coale and a handful of U.S. diplomats crossed the border from Lithuania into Belarus, stopping on a country road to swap out the diplomatic license plates on their vehicles so as not to attract attention. They arrived at Independence Palace, Lukashenko's residence in central Minsk which, with its glass facade and swooping metal roof, is the size of a small airport terminal. 'It's so big that Tom Brady couldn't throw a pass from one end of the lobby to the other,' Coale said. The imposing complex on the capital's Victory Avenue was built as a symbol of the country's independence, according to the website of the Belarusian president. That sovereignty was always tenuous. One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest allies, Lukashenko has long relied on subsidies from Moscow to prop up his ailing economy. In 2022, Belarus was used as a staging ground for Russian troops in their full-scale assault on Ukraine which further cemented his alienation from the West. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994, preserving many of the institutions and habits of the country's Soviet past. He has proven skilled at playing Russia and the West off against each other, flirting with Washington and Brussels to get Putin's attention or secure relief from economic sanctions imposed on the country. Political prisoners have often been used as a bargaining chip. In 2015, Lukashenko released all those deemed wrongfully detained, prompting Europe and America to lift some sanctions. The reprieve was to be short-lived. Over 5,000 people have been convicted of politically motivated charges over the past five years, according to the Belarusian human rights organization Vyasna, and some 1,150 remain in prison. Trump has made freeing wrongfully detained Americans a priority of his foreign policy, creating an opening for authoritarian leaders like Lukashenko to get his attention. Within a week of Trump's inauguration in January, Belarus unilaterally released U.S. citizen Anastasia Nuhfer from prison. 'Lukashenko is afraid of Trump,' said Viacorka. '[He] knows very well how to deal with ordinary politicians, but he doesn't have a clue how to deal with these strong and unpredictable leaders like Trump.' Three more political prisoners were released in February, after Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Chris Smith quietly travelled to Belarus, becoming the most senior U.S. official to visit the country in over five years. By April, they were on the cusp of getting another American citizen released and dispatched Coale in a bid to seal the deal. Over a long lunch in the palace, Coale was tasked with getting to know the garrulous Belarusian leader. 'They told me to charm him. To yuck it up with him, so I did that,' he said. '[Lukashenko] brought up stuff about the State Department and I said, 'Yeah all they want to do is blah blah blah,' so he loved that.' Lukashenko struck Coale as smart, savvy. 'He does want better relations with the United States,' Coale said, adding that the Belarusian leader seemed keen to play a role in negotiations regarding the war in Ukraine. At some point vodka — Lukashenko's own personal brand — was brought out and the toasts commenced. The Belarusian president offered a toast to Trump. Smith, the State Department official, nudged Coale to reciprocate, as is customary in the region. Coale followed suit with his own toast to Lukashenko, and soon, he began to worry about his stomach. As the afternoon wore on there were more toasts, and while there was little talk of politics, the two men got to know each other. A relationship was developing. 'It was all fun,' Coale said. Lukashenko seems to have agreed. Hours later, the American delegation got what they had come for as the Belarusian authorities handed over Youras Ziankovich, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was arrested in Moscow in 2021 and accused of plotting a coup against Lukashenko. The U.S. government deemed him wrongfully detained earlier this year. Discussions continued behind the scenes into the summer and by June, another prisoner release was set in motion. When she awoke on the morning of Saturday June 21, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya had little idea that she was about to be reunited with her husband, Siarhei. A popular YouTube blogger, he was swiftly arrested after attempting to run against Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential elections. Tsikhanouskaya, a soft-spoken former teacher, took up her husband's mantle after his arrest and was herself quickly forced into exile in Lithuania, becoming the most recognizable face of the Belarusian opposition. For five years she has shuttled between global capitals to raise awareness about her country's political prisoners, often carrying a folder bearing a photograph of her husband. On the morning her husband was released, Tsikhanouskaya was flying back from Poland to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. She knew that Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, had been in Belarus the night before with Coale and that negotiations about a prisoner release were underway. She speculated with her chief of staff, Viacorka, who might be released but didn't dare expect her husband would be included. Having been held without access to anyone on the outside for over two years, Siarhei was on a shortlist of some 200 prisoners deemed a priority for release by Belarusian human rights defenders on humanitarian grounds. The majority of the 14 people who were about to be released were citizens of other countries who had been swept up in the crackdown, or, had some kind of affiliation with the West. It wasn't until the morning of the release that Coale learned the final details of the prisoners to be freed. As Tsikhanouskaya made her way back to Vilnius, the bus carrying her husband and 13 other political prisoners made its way to the Belarusian border with Lithuania, after the KGB handed them over to Coale and representatives from the State Department. By the time the now-former prisoners made it to the border, it was hours since they had been fed. Many were gaunt after years of meager prison rations. Siarhei, once a bear of man, emerged from prison unrecognizable with hollow cheeks. 'For some reason, in one of our cars was a whole basket of little Tootsie Rolls,' said Coale, which they passed around the group. As they waited to be processed into the country, Coale and the other diplomats passed their cellphones around so people could call their loved ones and let them know that they had been released. 'Nobody had any idea this was happening,' he said. In the Vilnius airport, Tsikhanouskaya received a call from her husband, with whom she hadn't had any contact in over two years. 'When I heard the voice of my husband on the phone, it was a huge surprise,' she said. He told her: 'My dear, I am free.' While Trump's efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine have run headlong into Putin's intransigence, Tsikhanouskaya hopes that her country could offer the diplomatic victory that Trump craves so dearly. 'Belarus can be a success story for President Trump,' she said. '[A] free, independent Belarus is in the interest of the USA as well.' Lukashenko also senses an opportunity to return to relevance as the U.S. president seeks to strike a deal between Russia and Ukraine, said Shraibman of the Carnegie Endowment. 'He wants to be relevant to the peace process. He wants to speak to the big guys. This is a prize in itself.' But Belarus isn't Switzerland. 'Lukashenko is so, so deeply dependent on Putin and Russia these days that it is simply beyond the power of the United States, no matter how hard it tries, to decouple these two countries,' Shraibman said. Coale isn't too preoccupied with Lukashenko's diplomatic dance. 'That's for Rubio to worry about.' 'I look at the thing of, can I free some more people,' he told me. 'And if it plays into my purpose and what I'm trying to do, I don't care.'
Politico
3 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Joe Rogan's Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue
The hottest interview a politician can land these days is, obviously, on Joe Rogan's podcast. But for James Talarico, it fell in his lap — and couldn't come at a better time. The Democratic Texas state representative may not yet be a household name nationally but he is weighing a dark horse bid for the U.S. Senate, and the appearance on Rogan's show released Friday can only boost his cred as a rising star for a party desperate to connect with young men and other disaffected voters. At one point, Rogan told him, 'James Talarico, you need to run for president.' In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Talarico discussed what it was like to go on Rogan's show and why he thinks the podcaster who endorsed Donald Trump in 2024 is still up for grabs for Democrats going forward. 'He speaks for a lot of people who don't feel like they belong in either political party, and are rightly suspicious of a corrupt political system,' Talarico said. The 36-year-old Talarico is not your average Democratic politician; he's an aspiring preacher who studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and has gained nearly 1 million followers on TikTok by publishing videos that frequently center on the intersection of his Christian faith and politics. And that's how Rogan found him. Rogan invited Talarico on the podcast after seeing one of his viral videos explaining his opposition to posting the Ten Commandments in public schools. As he was leaving Rogan's Austin, Texas-area studio, he talked about how his party could win over more white Evangelicals, what national Democrats get wrong about Texas and how the party could win the state in 2026 and beyond. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What's it like to sit down with Joe Rogan for three hours? Take us into his studio, the moments before and after you record. When we got the email invitation, I originally thought it was a phishing scam. But we called them and realized it was legit, and it was a surprise — just given that I'm a state rep. — to get invited on such a big national platform. He said he had seen some of my videos and wanted to talk. So we jumped at the opportunity. I didn't know what topics he wanted to cover. Really had no specifics beyond that first email. I was kind of going in blind. He and his team are very unassuming. You wouldn't know you were walking into the biggest podcast in the world from their kind of humble setup. They were just very genuine and very, very chill. He said it was a comedian friend who had come across me on social media and told Joe he should listen to me. And so Joe went back and watched some of the videos, and that's where the invitation came from. Rogan in recent weeks has aired some confusion, surprise and even grievance with Trump over some of the administration's early moves: He has called Trump's feud with Canada stupid and called some of Trump's sweeping deportations 'horrific.' Do you get the sense Rogan is a winnable quantity for Democrats ahead of 2026 and 2028? After sitting with him for two and a half hours, I have a clearer understanding of where he's coming from on a lot of this stuff. I just got the overwhelming impression that Joe Rogan is not loyal to either political party, and is deeply skeptical of our political system as a whole. I think that skepticism also applies to Donald Trump, just like it did to Joe Biden last year. I got the impression the reason Joe Rogan has the most popular podcast in the country is because he speaks for a lot of people who don't feel like they belong in either political party, and are rightly suspicious of a corrupt political system. Part of my nerves going in was coming on as an elected official, but I think I was able to shed some light on why the system is broken, at least at the state level, and why it's not working for people — and possible solutions for how to change it. What would you say to your fellow Democrats who are wary of Rogan's influence and the idea that the party should court him or that people like you should go on his show? I think regardless of what people feel about Joe Rogan — or any media figure — we as elected officials, at the very minimum, should have respect for his listeners and take the time to speak to them directly and honestly. I find what Joe Rogan is doing to be refreshing. The fact that he has these longform conversations with people from very different political backgrounds; the fact that he had Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the same chair and had long, thorough conversations with both of them; people actually trying to understand each other is a lot healthier than cable news networks or the algorithmic social media that we're all stuck in. I think what Joe Rogan is doing is maybe how we can fix this democracy. If we actually sat down and listened to each other and loved our enemies: That, I think, is the way out of all this. He was eager to talk about the religious content of your videos. How did you approach that? I would say the conversation was probably equal parts politics and faith. And so we talked a lot about spirituality, about the spiritual crisis in this country, particularly among young people, which is something I care a lot about, [and] is something he cares a lot about. It was a wide-ranging conversation that wasn't limited to policy and politics, although there was plenty of that too. That's also why people are attracted to his show: He kind of moves between these topics in a very natural and fluid way. Whereas if you get booked on a traditional news network, you're given your topic that you can talk about for five minutes, and then you're off. In this format, he's pursuing whatever he's interested in. You are a seminary student when you're not politicking. Do you think Democrats are a party that can ever win over more white evangelicals in 2028 when Trump is not on the ballot? I do. I absolutely think we can do that. It's going to require some changes in our party before we're able to expand our coalition and build a bigger tent. What changes? I think we need to start listening to Democrats who are in red and purple areas. There is something about living in a red state that makes you different from a national Democrat who lives in a blue city on the coast. I think we learn how to talk with people outside of our party in a more effective way, because it's a matter of political survival out here. I can't pass anything in the Texas Legislature without getting Republican support, so I've had to find ways to build relationships and build bridges across partisan divides as a Texas Democrat. So that's one. Two I think is generational. I really do think that we need a new generation of leaders in this party to step up and take the reins. All due respect to our more senior members and their wisdom and their experience, that's helpful and valuable, but at a certain point you've got to let fresh faces take over. I just think millennials and Gen Z, especially, even elected officials within my generation, are just more open to going into these kinds of spaces and having these more open conversations that aren't scripted, that aren't controlled by consultants. And it's another reason why we need that generational shift in the party. Do you think Chuck Schumer is the right person to lead Senate Democrats during Trump 2.0? Part of why some people have been asking me to look at the Senate race is because I am very, very disconnected from Washington, D.C., and and I've never worked there, never served there, have not spent much time there in my life, and so I'm not even up to date on the the D.C. drama between these different factions of the party. All I know is what Republican extremism has done in red states like Texas. And I feel that we have a moral imperative to win, and that is my primary focus and anyone and everyone who wants to help us do that is going to be welcome in my mind. Colin Allred has announced his candidacy for Senate, and other Democrats like Beto O'Rourke and Joaquin Castro are mulling it. Are you going to jump in, and have you talked with other potential candidates about who should run? I haven't made a decision yet, but I am seriously considering it. Politics is all about timing, and you just walked into a perfectly timed opportunity in this Rogan podcast — in terms of scoring eyeballs and, perhaps, a national network of small-dollar donors. Does the timing here make you more or less likely to run? It's not the biggest factor in my decision. The decision to run for statewide office, especially in a state as big as Texas, that's not just a political or career decision, that's a life decision. That's where my mind is — not really about the political opportunity and more about: Is this the right fit for me given where I am in my life right now. What advice would you give to fellow Democrats who are trying to connect with the audience that you just connected with on the Rogan show? I want to think it requires courage — because going into a two-and-a-half hour conversation that is unscripted, uncontrolled, with someone who doesn't share all of your political views, I mean, that is a scary situation for anyone to be in, especially to talk about politics and religion. Being a little fearless and being able to get outside of your consultant staff bubble, and getting out of these tightly controlled environments, and going into places that are maybe a little unfriendly, a little less predictable — that kind of risk-taking is necessary. Trying to script everything and control everything is just not going to cut it in 2025 or 2026. If you do run, how will you distinguish yourself from Allred and other contenders? Is there enough room for you? I would only run if I felt like I have something unique to offer the party and, more importantly, the state. And so yes, I would hope that if I did this, it would be because I have something different to say and something different to provide to voters in the primary. If we're going to put up someone against Ken Paxton, you've got to have a nominee who can reach people where they're at and and move them to change the politics of the state. Sen. John Cornyn, the incumbent, is running, too. But part of the bet Democrats weighing a Senate bid in Texas are making is that Paxton is going to be the nominee, prevailing over Cornyn in the primary. What would a matchup with Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House by you and your GOP colleagues, look like? You mentioned that some folks see this as an opportunity. I think a lot of us see this as a threat. The fact that Ken Paxton, the most corrupt politician in the state of Texas, could be our next U.S. senator, is terrifying for a lot of us who have seen him up close and seen the way he abuses his power and enriches his friends at the expense of the public. I've seen firsthand the damage he's done as attorney general, and I can't imagine what he could do with the office of U.S. senator. But I do want to say that this can't be just about Ken Paxton as a person and as a corrupt political figure. It also needs to be about what Ken Paxton represents. And in my mind, as someone who has watched Ken Paxton up close, who was a part of the impeachment, Ken Paxton represents everything that is wrong with our political system — the corruption, the extremism, the cruelty. And I think in this race, we have an opportunity to prosecute the case, not just against Ken Paxton the man, but Ken Paxton as the symbol for everything that's wrong with politics today. That, to me, is an exciting opportunity, because I do really feel that that people, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, are just sick and disgusted with how politics feels, that it tears apart families and friendships, the fact that elected officials seem to change once they get power, and they seem to only enrich themselves and their megadonors. It sounds like you're making a pretty good case to yourself about why you should run. I'm making a case of why Ken Paxton shouldn't be the next U.S. senator from Texas. If you had to predict, when do you think Texas goes blue in a presidential year? 2028, 2032, or beyond? In a presidential year? I mean, I think Texas can go blue in 2026. I think it's possible in 2028, too. Donald Trump won this state by only five points in his first reelection when he was an incumbent. He won by more when he was not an incumbent, but when he's in office, Texans typically are not happy with what they see. That was true in 2018, when Beto O'Rourke came within two and a half points of beating Ted Cruz. And it was true in 2020 when Joe Biden came within five points of winning Texas, which I think people forget. I think the recent data suggests that Texans across the spectrum are deeply dissatisfied with what they've seen so far from the Trump administration — even if some of them had high hopes for what he may be able to do and he may be able to shake up. I don't think those hopes have been realized among Texans. What do national Democrats and pundits get wrong about Texas? Oftentimes national Democrats come here to fundraise, and then they don't spend a penny of that money in our state. I think Texas Democrats are kind of fed up with how national Democrats have treated our state. I think the biggest disconnect is a willingness to fight. Texas Democrats, whether it was LBJ and the Great Society, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, even Beto O'Rourke and Wendy Davis more recently — all of them have shown that they can use every tool in the toolbox to fight for the people that we represent and stand up to bullies. That I feel like is what Texas Democrats have been known for throughout our history — this fighting spirit. I think the national party could benefit a lot from adopting some of what we do here in Texas: how we can fight for people even when we're a deep minority. We've shown people that we can be scrappy and use every tool at our disposal to make progress for people. And I think that's what folks around the country are desperate for from either political party right now.
Politico
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
‘My Dear Wife, I'm Free'
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, an opposition leader in Belarus, hadn't heard from her husband Siarhei in more than two years. Not since Belarusian authorities placed him in 'incommunicado' detention, in full isolation. And then he called her. 'My dear wife,' he said. 'I'm free.' He had been released from prison after negotiations between authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko and Trump administration officials, and was at the border between Belarus and Lithuania. He and 13 other political prisoners were heading to the American embassy in Vilnius. Tsikhanouskaya and Siarhei have since reintroduced him to their children, traveled to a solidarity rally in Poland and done interviews with major news outlets. But both Tsikhanouskaya and her husband, a blogger and political activist who was preparing to challenge Lukashenko in Belarus' 2020 election when he was imprisoned, are grappling with the opposition's role in what comes next. In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Tsikhanouskaya described the joy of finally reuniting her family even as she said there was far more work to be done. She also made clear that a certain peace-seeking president could help her cause. 'We ask President Trump, go further, free them all,' she said. 'Use your influence again. We believe that you can do this, and Belarusians will never forget it.' The administration's efforts in Belarus come as Trump continues to search for an end to Russia's war on Ukraine, and as Lukashenko looks for a means to end the political isolation his relationship with Vladimir Putin has wrought. Along with freeing more political prisoners, Tsikhanouskaya is desperate to make sure Belarus isn't pulled further into Russia's orbit as part of negotiations to end Putin's war. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. When did you know that your husband Siarhei would be freed? The moment when I understood that he was free was when he called me from the border, just a direct call, and I heard his voice, and he told me, 'My dear wife, I'm free.' I could hardly believe this, because I was sure that he would be one of the last who would be released from prison, but who understands the logic of this regime? We had several lists of people to be released, humanitarian lists where people who were about to die were there and people who were incommunicado, some others. They chose Siarhei, I don't know why. A lot has been made of the term 'incommunicado.' What exactly does that mean in the context of Belarus? Incommunicado means that a person is kept in full isolation. Since March 2023, more than two years, we lost full connection with Siarhei. A lawyer wasn't able to attend to him. Letters were not received from my husband. Nothing. Just forced disappearance. And we have eight people at the moment on this list, and I wasn't sure if he was alive, what prison he's kept in, what state he's in. The regime is doing this to blackmail relatives, put a burden on the shoulders of their relatives. This knowing nothing about people is, of course, very, very painful. Can you speak to what it was like to see Siarhei for the first time post-prison sentence? It was, it is now, shocking to see him in such a state. He lost half of his weight. He says that for the last couple of months, they even gave him additional portions of butter, cottage cheese. When he got out of the minivan, I knew that he would be there, but if I had seen him somewhere else, I wouldn't have recognized him. And when he returned home, our young daughter didn't recognize him at all. I said, 'Dear, look who came?' And she just said, 'Hello, who are you?' And when he started talking, she just recognized his voice. Of course, there were oceans of tears, hugs, but prison changes people a lot. It's like gray face, like very skinny people. It's difficult to see, but the physical state, maybe it's possible to improve somehow. But all those memories from prison, the emotional trauma, psychological trauma, it will not be able to be softened. Has it set in that he's back? How has it been to have him back in the movement? The release of Siarhei, it's brought a boost of energy to the Belarusian people, first of all. It was such news for people. And he's full of energy. For five years, he was thinking about new ideas, new projects, how to change the situation in Belarus. And now we have to use this momentum to direct more attention to the topic of Belarus, to the topic of political prisoners and the country's political disaster. So, on the one hand, as a wife, I want to take care of him, I want him to relax a little bit. But on the other hand, I understand that he has to jump into the agenda. He's given so many interviews now, so many people want to meet him, to see him, and we have to use that momentum. And he's still realizing what has happened in the democratic movement. But, for sure he will join this movement as a strong speaker, as a leader, just to try to mobilize the energy of Belarusians. Five years [since an anti-Lukashenko protest movement was violently quashed and Siarhei was first jailed], and people are exhausted. You know, people continue to fight. We are working on different projects in coordination with the people on the ground, but somehow people are losing, step by step, the energy. And he's a driver who can really, really attract attention. So Siarhei will focus on building new channels of communication with the workers, rural communities, entrepreneurs, officials. His voice is powerful and he speaks the language of people. Many Belarusians watched his first press conference, it gave maybe people inside the country new hope. Many people who believed in 2020, and were silent for five years, are active again. Switching gears to politics — are you worried at all that the Trump White House might be legitimizing Lukashenko by negotiating with him on the release of political prisoners? So first of all, President Trump really made a difference. His team — Gen. Keith Kellogg, John Cole, Chris Smith — took real action and it worked. Trump has shown that diplomacy and pressure can bring results. He has leverage in the situation of Belarus and he used it. Now, we must maintain pressure on the regime. We have seen that the pressure works, and it is the most effective tool. I think that actually Belarus can be President Trump's foreign policy success story — a place where American leadership ends a crisis without war. It can be a victory that the world will notice. And we ask President Trump, go further, free them all. Use your influence again. We believe that you can do this, and Belarusians will never forget it. It was American diplomacy and mission that rescued this group of people. But for sure, without the strong and principled and firm position of the European Union as well, it wouldn't have brought this result. So again, President Trump can solve the crisis in Belarus, which lasts 30 years already, and it must be easier to bring changes to Belarus than to Russia. Of course, there is gossip that this visit of Gen. Kellogg might look like legitimization of the regime, but I trust that our American partners know who they're dealing with. And it was President Trump, actually in 2020, who didn't recognize the legitimacy of Lukashenko. They understand that Lukashenko is a criminal, he committed crimes against Belarusians, he is a war criminal. And he has to be brought to accountability for all the crimes. But nevertheless, for Lukashenko this meeting is more important than it is for the Americans, because he's seeking legitimacy. He's seeking to show the world that 'Look Americans themselves listen to me, I'm important.' But Americans understand that he's playing on the side of Putin in this game, that he is not an independent player. What would you like to see President Trump do in Belarus? We understand that President Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine and this is why Belarus might be a topic for negotiation as well. For us, it's very important that the peace in Ukraine that President Trump wants to achieve must be lasting and just. It must be on the conditions of Ukraine. We can't reward the aggressor. There cannot be peace without justice, and the Belarusian topic is existential here because if Lukashenko stays in power in Belarus, there will no longer be a possibility to secure peace in the whole region. So we want President Trump to continue first of all releases, but also continue this communication through the State Department with the Belarusian Democratic Forces, and bring changes in Belarus that will actually change the security architecture of the whole region. So, continue this humanitarian track and also push Lukashenko and his regime on their path of national dialogue with Belarusians. America can play this very strong mediation role between the Belarusians and the regime. Because again, I want to underline that Lukashenko wants negotiations with the USA or with the West, possibly with the European Union, but we need systematic changes. We want Belarusian people to return to Belarus, where they will not be prosecuted. We want to write our constitution so that it works for Belarusian people. The aim is much broader than the release of political prisoners, though that is our priority. Are you worried that the Trump administration may be giving Putin and Lukashenko too much credit in its bid to end the war? Is it too transactional? Of course, you know President Trump's politics, we see it is rather transactional. But maybe it's not about credit, it's about giving a chance to Putin, maybe to Lukashenko, to change the situation that will meet the demands of Ukrainians and Belarusians. We already saw that President Trump met President Zelenskyy during the NATO Summit and it was a very pleasant conversation. And I think that there was disappointment in Trump's administration that Putin doesn't want to make any concessions. What advice do you have for the Trump administration as it embarks on negotiations and attempts to improve relationships with Minsk? We must not normalize the trafficking of political prisoners, when people are released for some concessions from your side, softening of sanctions or publicity. And then new political prisoners are taken. Lukashenko has to be punished, not rewarded. What is a realistic path forward for getting Belarus' political prisoners freed with American coordination? There's a big chance to release all people from prison. But the issue is what the regime wants in return for this. We always say that sanctions are the leverage to release people, but we have to use this leverage smartly. If we don't see any signs that repressions are stopped, this instrument cannot be used. Because 14 people have been released but [in June], 28 were detained. When we see a change of policy by Lukashenko, that he's ready to stop these repressions and make steps forward toward the Belarusian people, it might be a signal that you can talk about lifting of sanctions. But again, don't, forget that we have more leverage with European sanctions. Of course, the actions have to be coordinated. And there should be no pressure, for example, from the American side to the European side. The main message is that sanctions as instruments have to be used smartly. We can't even speak about softening sanctions now, while repressions continue and with more than 1,000 behind bars. The first condition — ending repression — must be met. And I am sure President Trump, with all his power, can achieve it. Like the release of my husband — it happened without lifting any sanctions.
Politico
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
The Trump era, phase two
Presented by With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Ali Bianco On today's Playbook Podcast, Zack Stanton and Megan Messerly talk about the new phase of Donald Trump's presidency and what we can tell from the very public fights he picks. Happy Friday. Zack Stanton here as another whirlwind work week draws to a close. Get in touch. YOUR FRIDAY LONGREAD: 'The Devil on Mike Lee's Shoulder,' by Samuel Benson for POLITICO Magazine: 'The Utah senator's online persona has further damaged his already frayed relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.' FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Your Friday watch: In a new clip from an interview with Playbook's Dasha Burns for 'The Conversation,' border czar Tom Homan revealed that he is unsure of the status of eight men deported to South Sudan — including their treatment and whether or not they're being detained there. Watch the clip on YouTube Homan defended the Trump administration's decision to deport migrants to nations including South Sudan and El Salvador — despite those countries' history of human rights abuses, and despite the migrants' lack of connections to those places — saying that the arrangements are crucial to the president's mass deportation agenda. The full episode drops on Sunday. Read more from POLITICO's Myah Ward and Kyle Cheney In today's Playbook … — The page turns to a new chapter of Trump's presidency. — Texas' status as a high-stakes gamble for Republicans deepens. — How Trump continues to run as an outsider despite being elected president. DRIVING THE DAY PHASE TWO BEGINS: The start of any presidency begins with an acknowledgement that the clock is already running. Every new administration enjoys a window of time during which it can pursue one or two signature legislative wins before Washington, as if driven by mainspring, turns its gaze to the coming midterm elections. What happens in that window are the sort of household-name accomplishments each administration can boast. For Joe Biden, it was Build Back Better, which passed in fall 2021. For first-term Trump, it was the 2017 tax cuts he signed in December of that year. For Barack Obama, it was the Recovery Act and then — because he came into office with such large Democratic majorities in both houses — the Affordable Care Act, which spilled over into 2010. For second-term Trump, it is the One Big, Beautiful Bill. And that's that. The window has closed. 'The White House won't push for another big legislative package between now and next November,' The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire, Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker report, citing 'five White House aides and outside advisers.' The White House vibe shift: 'It really does feel like we're at this inflection point in the administration,' POLITICO White House reporter Megan Messerly tells me on this morning's Playbook Podcast. 'Especially this week, I feel it in my conversations moreso than I did before — the looming midterm elections just hanging over us and pressing down in a way that it really hasn't because we've just been so focused on this 'big, beautiful bill.'' Subtly but unmistakably, we have entered a new phase of the Trump presidency. That does not mean they've thrown in the proverbial towel on their policy agenda. We are in the midst of a MAGA makeover of Washington (more on that in a bit), and the president's trade and immigration agenda will be front-and-center in the administration's messaging (more on that, too, shortly). But it does mean that the midterms are occupying increasing mental bandwidth at 1600 Penn. Today, the president visits Texas to tour flood-ravaged Kerrville (12:20 p.m.) and meet with the first responders (2:10 p.m.) whose heroism has been a spark of hope in an otherwise grim week of news there. But as Trump visits, the midterms won't be far from his mind — especially as the state is playing an increasingly vital role in his designs to hold a 2027 congressional majority. In the House: This week, Trump has reportedly upped the pressure on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to further gerrymander the Lone Star State in an attempt to eke out a few more GOP seats and help the party cling to its origami-thin House majority. Abbott, responding to this, has teed up the issue for a central role in a coming special session of the state legislature — even as a number of Republican incumbents privately hate the idea and worry it could backfire. That push is risky. 'The 2021 map was drawn for incumbent protection in a wave year, which could also be the case next year if historical trends hold up,' writes Puck's Abby Livingston, who knows Texas politics better than just about anyone in D.C. 'To pick up new seats, Republican voters will need to be pulled from safe Republican seats to redden currently Democratic districts.' The math: 'If Republicans go after three seats this way, the changes can probably be made with little fanfare and concentrate mostly on South Texas, which is trending toward the G.O.P. anyway,' Livingston writes. 'But if they go big — aiming for, say, five seats — the lines could make reelection much more difficult for Republican incumbents in Houston and Dallas.' (As the saying goes: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.) And then there's the Senate, where Dems' hopes to retake the chamber seemed like little more than a pipe dream until recent days — and where a spate of news over the last 24 hours has prompted very real questions about just how confident Republicans should feel about their majority. Senate Majority Leader John Thune tells the National Review's Audrey Fahlberg that he and the president spoke on Wednesday about how Trump can 'be a difference maker' in key Senate campaigns. In the sitdown with NR, Thune made mention of 'some interesting situations, like Texas' — which is perhaps a polite phrase for the position Republicans are in as incumbent Sen. John Cornyn trails primary challenger AG Ken Paxton in polls. Washington Republicans, of course, fear that Paxton may be the uniquely perfect candidate to oust Cornyn in the primary and then lose to a Democrat in the general. Paxton bombshell: Yesterday, Republican state Sen. Angela Paxton, Ken's wife, announced that 'after 38 years of marriage,' she has 'filed for divorce on biblical grounds.' 'I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,' she wrote in a statement. 'But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.' (For his part, AG Paxton made it sound more amicable in his own statement: 'After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives,' he wrote.) What exactly happened? The senator alleged in her divorce filing that her husband had committed adultery and said they haven't lived together in over a year, per the Texas Tribune. But it sure seems like another shoe may be about to drop, given the speed with which Washington Republicans have moved to condemn Paxton. 'What Ken Paxton has put his family through is truly repulsive and disgusting,' NRSC comms director Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement. 'No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has, and we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family.' … Senate Leadership Fund executive director Alex Latcham posted simply, 'Ezekiel 16:33,' a reference to a Bible passage about 'harlots' or 'whores,' depending on your translation. Could this doom Paxton's Senate bid? Perhaps. But if we're talking simply about an affair between consenting adults, the Texas primary electorate of Trump's Republican Party has a very different attitude about these types of issues than the kinder, gentler GOP of the Bush era. But the GOP's woes don't stop at Texas. There's growing concern that Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) might call it quits, as POLITICO's Jordain Carney and Rachael Bade report. '[T]hree people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said there is rising concern among fellow Senate Republicans that Ernst will retire rather than run for reelection, giving Republicans another seat to defend next fall.' (That said, if she does bow out, there's a strong Republican waiting in the wings: Rep. Ashley Hinson.) None of which is to say that Democrats' path to a Senate majority is easy. But a plausible-if-unlikely path exists: If Roy Cooper flips the North Carolina seat getting vacated by Thom Tillis and if Paxton beats Cornyn then loses to a Democrat and if Ernst bows out and Dems flip the seat and then make one other shoot-the-moon pickup (Maine? Ohio?) … it could happen. And then there's this: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tells NYT's Annie Karni that Trump's megabill has boosted Democratic odds — though, honestly, what else is he going to say? — and offered a preview of the message he'll be hammering into his Senate recruits: 'The three issues we're going to most campaign on: costs, jobs, and health care.' But for our money, the most insightful quote in that article came not from Schumer, but from Jesse Stinebring, chief executive of Blue Rose Research, who puts a finer point on the longer-term political liability for Republicans, which has been glossed over in some of the coverage of the Medicaid cuts in the reconciliation package. 'What Republicans have forgotten is that the trifecta they have right now is a result of gains they have made with lower-income individuals, many of the same people who are Medicaid recipients,' Stinebring said. 'Their coalition has become much more working-class, and they are still operating under this model where these types of actions wouldn't have political consequences for them — and they absolutely will have consequences for them.' All of which means that this next phase of the Trump era is going to be vital for Democrats, too: They need to litigate the megabill and hope to make Trump's signature legislative accomplishment a political albatross. Historical trends may be on their side; it's unclear yet if voters will be. THE MAGA REVOLUTION THE CONFLICT IS THE POINT: In an era with low trust in institutions, widespread frustration with politics and deep cynicism about Washington, how do you continue to win when you're the party already in power? By continuing to brand yourself as the outsiders — and picking fights that try to underscore that. More than most politicians, Trump innately grasps a reality that drives our modern moment: Attention means power, and conflict generally means attention. Trump's ongoing MAGA revolution in Washington has concrete policy goals, but it has an overarching political one, too: driving a message that frames their actions time and again as those of outsiders going to war against the status quo. That's the throughline that connects a seemingly disparate array of stories right now. VS. federal workers: As soon as today, the State Department will begin firing hundreds of employees, CNN's Jennifer Hansler reports. … Meanwhile, the Justice Department is 'firing and pushing out employees … often with no explanation or warning,' contributing to a climate of fear across the department, per WaPo's Perry Stein. … And the FBI 'has significantly stepped up the use of' polygraph tests, NYT's Adam Goldman reports, including deploying them to ask 'senior employees whether they have said anything negative about' Director Kash Patel. The Times writes that it's part of a 'broader crackdown on news leaks, reflecting, to a degree, Mr. Patel's acute awareness of how he is publicly portrayed.' VS. undocumented immigrants: Federal immigration agents 'carried out immigration sweeps at two Southern California cannabis farms,' the LA Times reports, 'prompting a heated standoff between authorities and several hundred protesters at a Ventura County site that resulted in several arrests and injuries.' During the raid, federal forces deployed tear gas against the demonstrators, per KTLA. (More of these types of confrontations could come in the months ahead, given the funding bump for immigration enforcement in the megabill.) … The administration also announced new efforts to cut off undocumented immigrants from being able to participate in Head Start, the federally funded preschool program, AP's Annie Ma reports. VS. medical professionals: 'The Justice Department has issued subpoenas demanding confidential patient information from more than 20 doctors and hospitals that provide gender-related treatments to minors,' report NYT's Azeen Ghorayshi and Glenn Thrush. 'Most of the subpoenas … attempt to pierce powerful federal confidentiality protections for patients and their medical providers.' VS. states run by Democrats: The DOJ 'announced Thursday that its Civil Rights Division is investigating the state of Minnesota for possible hiring discrimination' for policies aimed at boosting the hiring of underrepresented minority populations, POLITICO's Jacob Wendler reports. (Minnesota's governor is, of course, 2024 Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz.) VS. anyone connected to Jan. 6 prosecutions: This week, the DOJ fired Patty Hartman, a 17-year veteran of the department and the 'fourth person connected to the agency's work on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots to be terminated in the past month,' per CBS' Scott MacFarlane. Notably, Hartman is not a prosecutor: she 'worked on the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney's Office public affairs team that distributed news releases about the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 criminal prosecutions.' THE DOGE DAYS ARE OVER: Less than six months into the Trump era, and the once-feared DOGE crew is now 'shell of its former self, owing to departures, lawsuits, bureaucratic roadblocks and, crucially, the loss of its chainsawer-in-chief: [Elon] Musk,' POLITICO's Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman report. Among the departures: Steve Davis, who operationally led DOGE; Nicole Hollander, who led the effort to shrink the government's footprint; Brad Smith, who led the DOGE team at HHS; Chris Stanley, a Musk aide who helped install Starlink satellites on the roof of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building; Katie Miller, DOGE's comms director; Amanda Scales, former chief of staff at OPM; DOGE's chief counsel James Burnham, and Tom Krause, who served as fiscal assistant secretary of the Treasury. BEST OF THE REST A FIRST FOR TRUMP: In a momentous shift, Trump will send weapons to Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority — a power frequently invoked by Biden but which Trump has not yet employed in his presidency, Reuters' Mike Stone reports. Though a decision on the exact equipment that will be sent has yet to be made, it could include 'defensive Patriot missiles and offensive medium-range rockets.' ELBOWS UP: The U.S. will impose a 35 percent tariff on Canadian goods starting next month, Trump said yesterday in an announcement that 'came in the midst of active trade negotiations between the two countries,' notes POLITICO's Seb Starcevic. Goods compliant with the USMCA trade deal will be exempt — at least for now, WSJ reports. In explaining the move, Trump said Canada has failed to adequately stanch the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. In response, Canadian PM Mark Carney said in a statement that Canada 'has made vital progress to stop the scourge of fentanyl in North America,' and reiterated his commitment to work with the U.S. to 'save lives.' ABOUT THAT 'OBLITERATION': 'Some of Iran's Enriched Uranium Survived Attacks, Israeli Official Says,' by NYT's David Sanger: 'Israel has concluded that some of Iran's underground stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium survived American and Israeli attacks last month and may be accessible to Iranian nuclear engineers.' But 'any attempts by Iran to recover it would almost certainly be detected — and there would be time to attack the facilities again.' FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Cash dash: Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) raised $1.1 million and ended the second quarter with $5.9 million cash on hand, Playbook's Adam Wren reports. Young is not up for reelection until 2028. SEE YOU IN COURT: Mahmoud Khalil, the prominent Palestinian activist and former Columbia grad student, is suing the Trump administration for $20 million in damages, alleging he was 'falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an antisemite as the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests,' AP's Jake Offenhartz reports. SHOT: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said of Zohran Mamdani: 'I'm not a voter in New York City, so I have no dog in that fight. And everything that I've read on him, I don't really agree with virtually any of it, politically. So that's just where I'm at as a Democrat. So he's not even a Democrat, honestly.' Watch the clip Chaser: 'Fetterman and Mamdani used the same ad firm, started by Bernie vets,' Semafor's David Weigel notes. THE WEEKEND AHEAD TV TONIGHT — PBS' 'Washington Week': Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Ashley Parker, Tarini Parti and Nancy Youssef. SUNDAY SO FAR … POLITICO 'The Conversation with Dasha Burns': Tom Homan. Fox News 'Sunday Morning Futures': Speaker Mike Johnson … Kevin Warsh … Carter Page … retired Gen. Jack Keane … Kevin McCarthy. NBC 'Meet the Press': DHS Secretary Kristi Noem … Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Panel: Adrienne Elrod, Sahil Kapur, Tyler Pager and Marc Short. FOX 'Fox News Sunday': Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) … DHS Secretary Kristi Noem … Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Legal panel: Tom Dupree and Andy McCarthy. Panel: Marc Thiessen, Francesca Chambers, Josh Kraushaar and Juan Williams. NewsNation 'The Hill Sunday': Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) … Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.). Panel: George Will, David Weigel, Julie Mason and Julia Manchester. CBS 'Face the Nation': Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) … Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.). MSNBC 'The Weekend': Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) … Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.). CNN 'State of the Union': Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas). Panel: David Urban, Faiz Shakir, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Kristen Soltis Anderson. ABC 'This Week': Pete Gaynor and Deanne Criswell. Panel: Donna Brazile, Reince Priebus, Sarah Isgur and Neera Tanden. TALK OF THE TOWN Elon Musk unfollowed the X accounts of Katie Miller, Mike Lee and Karoline Leavitt. Nick Adams, a self-described 'alpha male' personality on X, is Trump's pick to serve as ambassador to Malaysia. 'Tiger King' Joe Exotic is seeking a pardon from Trump. IN MEMORIAM — 'Stan Baker, Who Played a Key Role in Bringing the First Civil Unions to the U.S., Dies at 79,' by WSJ's Chris Kornelis PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION — The 'Queer Eye' remake has begun production on its final season — and it's in D.C., Netflix announced. Let us know who you think needs a makeover. BOOK CLUB — Abby Phillip is releasing her first book, 'A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power' ($30.99), on Oct. 28. It examines Jackson, his two presidential campaigns and their impact. OUT AND ABOUT — NobleReach, a nonprofit that helps to place recent graduates at federal, state and local agencies, held a graduation ceremony for its inaugural class of scholars yesterday at the Meridian International Center. SPOTTED: Brynt Parmeter, Justin Fanelli, Bert Kaufman and Ben Schwartz. — Center Forward hosted its annual 'Off the Record' reception with House and Senate comms staffers at the Wharf last night SPOTTED: Cori Kramer, Riley Kilburg, Kaily Grabemann, Josh Sorbe, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Marianna Sotomayor, Kristen Hawn, Stacey Daniels, Mason Devers, Mary Ellen McIntire, Dylan Jones, Louie Kahn, Devin Dwyer, Justin Gomez, Niels Lesniewski, Stephen DeLeo, Sam Sweeney, Eric Fejer, Perry Mains, Elizabeth St. Onge, Rosie Wilson and Renata Miller. MEDIA MOVES — WaPo is adding Tara Copp as a Pentagon correspondent and Noah Robertson to cover congressional national security committees. Copp most recently has been a national security reporter at the AP. Robertson most recently has been a Pentagon correspondent at Defense News. TRANSITIONS — Evan Wolff is now a partner at Akin and co-head of its cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice. He previously was a partner at Crowell & Moring. … Sam Mayper is joining M&T Bank as SVP of federal government relations. He previously was VP at the Independent Community Bankers of America. … Nick Weinstein is joining Cygnal as a pollster and principal. He previously was political director at the Republican Attorneys General Association and is a Daniel Cameron and Tom Reed alum. ENGAGED — Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) proposed to Brooke Singman, a political correspondent and reporter for Fox News Digital, during a picnic in Central Park on June 22. That was followed by afternoon tea at The Plaza and a dinner later at her favorite restaurant, Balthazar. They met the day Trump made his campaign stop at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania, and reconnected in January at Bistrot du Coin: She brought her laptop, thinking it could become an interview opportunity, but instead it turned into their first date. Pic … Another pic — Ashley Forrester, director of strategic comms for Samsung Electronics America, and David Jones, co-founder of Capitol Counsel, got engaged Wednesday at Lake Como, Italy. They met at a mutual friend's birthday party several years ago. Pic — Erin Drummy, a policy adviser for the Senate Steering Committee, and Mike Hardy, a software engineer for Systems Planning Analysis, got engaged on July 3. Hardy popped the question in his hometown Warren, New Jersey, after the megabill delayed things by a week. The couple met through mutual friends in D.C. Pic WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Caroline Welles, executive director of the First Ask, and Harrison Hart, an associate at DC Advisory, this week welcomed Hugo Edward Welles-Hart. Pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) … Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Mich.) … Scott Graves … former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona (5-0) … Garrett Graff … Chris Maloney of Black Rock Group … Sandy Marks … Josh Wachs of Wachs Strategies … Emily Benavides … Matt Lahr of Sen. Todd Young's (R-Ind.) office … Nora Connors … Michael Wong of the Bank Policy Institute … KayAnn Schoeneman … Paige Rusher of Seven Letter … Anne Sokolov … Ishmael Abuabara of Rep. Joaquin Castro's (D-Texas) office … Joe Wall … Chris Vaeth … Ali Schmitz of PBS NewsHour … Stephen Hostelley … Jamie Stiehm … Bailey Hansen of the Herald Group … POLITICO's Sophie Read and Faith Mitchell … Katie Sokolov … Tom Pinkh of Sole Strategies … Urmila Venugopalan of the MPA … Page Gardner Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@ or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn't happen without our editor Zack Stanton, deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
Politico
10-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
‘Incredibly Orwellian': An AI Expert on Grok's Hitler Debacle
On Friday, Elon Musk announced on X that changes were coming to Grok, the platform's AI. 'We have improved @Grok significantly,' he posted. 'You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.' The internet certainly did notice a difference on Tuesday, when Grok posted antisemitic comments, associated Jewish-sounding surnames with 'anti-white hate' and wrote that Adolf Hitler would 'spot the pattern' and 'handle it decisively, every damn time.' For good measure, it also called itself 'MechaHitler.' Following the controversy, Musk posted that the AI had been 'too compliant to user prompts.' In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Gary Marcus, who has co-founded multiple AI companies, said he was both 'appalled and unsurprised.' The emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University has emerged as a critic of unregulated large language models like Grok. He's written books with titles like Taming Silicon Valley and Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust. He has also testified before the Senate alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and IBM's Christina Montgomery, and he writes about AI on his Substack. I reached out to Marcus to find out what lawmakers — and everyone else — should make of the Grok episode. He said that a failure to regulate AI would be comparable to the failure to regulate social media, something many elected officials now recognize as a mistake because of its detrimental impact on the mental health of kids and the explosion of misinformation online, among other issues. Marcus also warned about a future in which powerful tech titans with biased AIs use them to exercise outsized influence over the public. 'I don't think we want a world where a few oligarchs can influence our beliefs very heavily, including in subtle ways by shaping what their social media sites do,' he said. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. We've heard Grok say some pretty bizarre things in the past, but what was your initial reaction to it all of a sudden invoking Hitler? Somewhere between appalled and unsurprised. These systems are not very well controlled. It's pretty clear that Elon is monkeying about, trying to see how much he can influence it. But it's not like a traditional piece of software, where you turn a dial and you know what you're going to get. LLMs are a function of all their training data, and then all of the weird tricks people do in post training, and we're seeing a lot of evidence that weird stuff happens. We know that he probably wants to make it more politically right, although he would say it's more truthful. But we know that his truth, so to speak, is toward the right. We know that that's just not a smooth process, so I'm appalled by it, but I'm not surprised. We don't have inside knowledge of what's going on at They say that they post their system prompts publicly on GitHub, and The Verge reported the other day that they had updated Grok to 'not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect.' Can you give me any sense of what exactly happens when they update an AI? What does someone do to get this outcome? The companies are not transparent about what they're doing. LLMs are what we call black boxes. That means we don't really know what's on the inside. And then what people do is, they try to steer those black boxes in one direction or another. But because we don't really know what's on the inside, we don't really know what's going to come out on the outside. And what tends to happen is, people do a bunch of tests and they're like, 'OK, I got what I want.' But there's always more than just the things they tested on. You might have seen this Apple paper a few weeks ago on reasoning — it was all over the news. It's called 'The Illusion of Thinking' or something like that. Tower of Hanoi is this little children's game. You have three pegs. You have to move the rings from the left peg to the right peg and can never have a bigger one on top of a smaller one. It's a children's game, and it's been around, I don't know, for centuries or whatever, millennia. And what they showed was, among other things, that [AI models like Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI o3] could perfectly solve the puzzle with three rings, four rings, five rings and so forth. But it would just break down at eight rings. This would be like if you had a calculator work with two-digit numbers and three-digit numbers, you'd assume that it's going to work with eight-digit numbers, but it turns out it doesn't. Now, that doesn't happen with a calculator because it's not an LLM. It's actually an interpretable white box where we understand all of the engineering that's gone into it, and we can make formal proofs about how it's going to work. LLMs are not like that. We can never make formal proofs, and so people are putting Band-Aids on them, trying to steer them in one way or another. But the steering doesn't always yield what they want. On Grok, one hypothesis is they actually wanted the system to champion Hitler. That's probably not true. I mean, even Elon Musk, who's probably warmer to Hitler than I am, doesn't really want his LLM to say stuff like this. He might want to tilt it to the right but he doesn't want to tilt it to explicitly supporting the Nazis. And so I presume that what happened was not deliberate, but it was the consequence of something that was deliberate, and it's something that was not really predictable. And so the whole thing is a mess. You posted on X, 'How many disgusting incidents like these do we need to see before we decide LLMs are wild, untameable beasts and not the AI we are looking for?' Do you think that lawmakers might take notice of this most recent Grok episode? What we see from the lawmakers is, they make shows, but they don't do that much. So for example, it's been very difficult to get lawmakers in the U.S. to change Section 230 [of the Communications Act of 1934], even though I think almost every lawmaker would agree that Section 230 is problematic, because it allows all sorts of garbage on social media without liability. Section 230 says the social media platforms are shielded from liability for what they post. The thinking was it's kind of like the phone company shouldn't be sued because you say something terrible on the telephone line. But what has happened is it's allowed social media companies to do things like aggregate your media such that really nasty things are posted and so forth and get riled up, and some of those things aren't true. When I testified in front of the Senate, everybody in the room seemed to be opposed to Section 230. The takeaway from that meeting was, 'This is really awful, and we need to change Section 230.' Well, that was like a year ago. And you know, we might well get some senators saying, 'Oh, this is really bad, this shouldn't happen,' but whether they actually do anything about it is an entirely different matter. And you know, they should do something about it. They should hold companies liable for the misinformation, defamation, hate speech, etc. that their systems produce. If you were advising a congressperson, what kinds of reforms would you advocate? What's at the top of your list on AI regulation? I would start by saying companies that make large language models need to be held responsible in some way for the things those systems say, which includes defamation, hate speech, etc. And right now, legally, they're not. It's not really clear that the companies are responsible for what those systems do. Also, it's not clear that it's responsible if those systems plagiarize — that piece of the law is very much open right now. I don't think we want a world where a few oligarchs can influence our beliefs very heavily, including in subtle ways by shaping what their social media sites do, where they can plagiarize anything without consequence, where they can defame anybody without consequence. We don't allow that with people. With people, we say, 'Well, you're infringing on this person's copyright, you're defaming them, this is hate speech.' And yet, because machines aren't clearly people, and because the laws were designed before machines like this were widespread, there are a lot of holes in the current legal structure that basically let the companies get away with anything they want. Every effort to hold them liable, whether for smaller things — like defaming an individual — or larger things — like conceivably giving rise to some cyber-attack that takes out the infrastructure for the entire United States for five days or whatever. They have resisted having any liability whatsoever. A California bill, SB-1047, was an effort to make the companies have some liability to give some support for whistleblowers and things like that. And the companies leaned on the governor, and the governor didn't sign it. When I testified in Congress, Sam Altman was sitting next to me. Everybody in the room said, yeah, we've got to do something here. Well, the only thing they've done anything about is deep fake porn. Everything else, basically they have let go. They acknowledge the problem. They said we want to do better than we did with social media. But this is in fact looking like a worse version of social media. There was a provision in Trump's domestic policy bill that would have essentially banned states from regulating AI, but it was removed. Do you think that's a cause for optimism? I mean, it's a sign. Here's a public prediction I have made, which is that 2028 will be the first national general election in the United States in which AI is actually a major issue. In the last general election, AI was barely mentioned. But in 2028, it's going to come up for a lot of reasons. In general, the public is worried about AI. The government is really not doing anything about it. The public is worried, rightly, about the effects on employment. They should be worried about things like discrimination. They should be worried about what happens to artists, because if artists are screwed, then probably everybody's going to be screwed if no intellectual property is protected here. We may see more accidents with driverless cars and so forth. Maybe the failure of that stupid moratorium is a reflection that some of the senators are recognizing that they can't just do nothing here, that their constituents don't want that. I mean, 3/4 or something of the American public does want serious regulation around AI. The United States does not have that. And so, what we're doing is not really what the public wants. And we're starting to see a backlash to some extent around AI. Another thing that's going to happen is that many domestic services are now going to be run by AI rather than people. You remember a few years ago when you'd have these voicemail jails, we would call them, where you call some system and it would be incredibly frustrating. You'd start screaming, 'I want a person!' Well, now imagine that you have that experience, but it's squared with getting your Social Security check. Some people are going to be pretty upset about that. They're going to say, you know, life is just harder than it used to be, because now I have to deal with these stupid AI systems, and they're making everything harder, and there's going to be pushback. What are the things you worry about the most with government using AI? One class of things is quality of services. Another class of things is, it appears that these systems are going to be used in military decision-making. There's a serious possibility that people will be accidentally killed. Another class of worries is if these things are put into safety-critical situations and they're not really ready for that. I'll give you one more related [issue], which is, these things are increasingly being used to write code, and the code is insecure. These systems don't really understand security that well. Also, the code that they write is hard to maintain. Not that a lot of government code is written very well in the first place. But there's also a risk that, with certain kinds of infrastructure-related things, we'll see more hacks and stuff like that. Now, a lot of that's already going on. It's not very well reported to the public. And so, whether we get good data about how much worse it's gotten, I don't know. It may be difficult to verify, but I anticipate that we will see even more cyber-attacks that are effective because the code isn't well written. Is that documented, that the government has used AI for military decision-making or writing code? I don't know how well it's publicly documented, but they're making deals with companies like Palantir and Anduril and OpenAI where that's pretty clearly the intention. So many different large language models have hallucinated or turned up misinformation. Is it possible to make one that's more reliably accurate? And do you think companies are incentivized to do that? I first warned about hallucinations in my 2001 book, and I said that it was inherent to the way that these systems work. I have not seen a lick of evidence in the subsequent quarter century that neural network-based solutions as we know them today can solve this problem. And in fact, [OpenAI's] o3 hallucinates more than o1. It's not clear we've made progress there. I'll take a step back. There's a kind of belief out there that all of this stuff gets better all the time. But the reality is, it's gotten better in some ways and not others. So, for example, the video generation software looks much more lifelike than it did two years ago. But hallucinations, that's been a much harder problem to solve. There are all kinds of techniques people have tried. It's not as if people are unaware of the problem, but I think it's inherent to LLMs. At the end of your tweet from before, you said this is 'not the AI we are looking for.' What's the AI we're looking for? I think we should be looking for an AI that does the things that we were always promised, which is to help us with science, technology, medicine and so forth, but in a reliable way. If you look back at our dreams of AI from, say, the '60s on Star Trek, the Star Trek computer — nobody imagined that they were going to absurdly apologize after making stupid mistakes and then make those stupid mistakes again. That was not part of the picture. And it shouldn't be part of the picture. AI shouldn't work that way. We should figure out how to make it trustworthy. I ask my calculator something, I know it's going to get the right answer. We should be trying to make AI that we know gives us the right answers. It turns out that building it on black boxes, which is what large language models are, where you can't understand exactly what they're going to do on any given occasion, and it's all a crapshoot based on how similar your query is to what it happened to have been trained on. It's just the wrong paradigm. That doesn't mean we can't invent a better one, but what we're doing now is not quite what we need. I think that what Musk ultimately wants to do is quite Orwellian. He wants to shift the models so that they basically behave like him, to give his perspective. I'm not saying that endorsing Hitler is what he specifically wants to do. But he does want the systems to speak his truth — not the truth of randomly assembled people on the Internet, but what he believes to be true. Consider another study, done by a guy named Mor Naaman, who's at Cornell. What that study showed is that what LLMs tell you can subtly influence your beliefs. Combine that with people who are trying to build devices that monitor you 24/7. The OpenAI collaboration with Johnny Ive, I think, is to try to build a device that basically feeds everything you say into an LLM, maybe with a camera. And so we're headed towards a world that is straight out of 1984, but more technologically advanced, so you're constantly monitored. And you talk to these systems, and whoever owns those systems gets to decide, do they tilt left? Do they tilt right? Do they tilt authoritarian, against authoritarian? How candid are they or not? I think Elon is exploring the space of, how much I can manipulate the model and what happens? I think he's trying to see how much he can shape what Grok says, and he's also already experimenting with having Grok be part of the conversation. It's now part of the texture of X, and he's trying to control what its politics will be like. That is going to influence people. I find that to be incredibly Orwellian. And who decides all of that stuff? Elon does.
