Flare. the is and it's very hard to recognize the perspective of somebody who disdains him. But that's both a sense of humor. A kind of alaska atmosphere and oddly joyous nece in his public persona is of bitterness and anger as well but but the is a sense of sort of the fund the joy of challenging the structures that be having one of the things that's missing and his imitators bat. it's sort of all of the nastiness without the sort of joy that he gives his supporters even as he ripe horrifies everybody else his rallies to me you're like you know professional wrestling event and it's not an accident because he comes from that kind of world of entertainment and has participated in a lot of world wrestling events. And so he's the perfect. He'll who fans still adore and that's halt trope in american professional wrestling and another podcast earlier. This year. I said you know there's no amount of pork rinds. That are gonna turn ted cruz. You know who went to princeton and harvard or josh foley who went to stanford and yale into authentic populace they themselves are elitists who are masquerading as populace. So i do think it makes a difference whether trump actually runs again in right. Now it's looking to me like he will run and so a lot will depend on legal system. Does he get indicted. How tied up in litigation as he in defending both criminal and civil cases and you know does that cause him to trim sale somewhat or not but if he runs you know the polling suggests he'll be formidable he'll win the nation wide you think about this prospects in general election and does bad depend on his sons in his appeal or does that depend in part on. The food is opponent with joe biden. Oh somebody else. And how many successes democrats have shown themselves will help me. Mistakes ago to make the news. Yeah what my fear is. Is that by twenty four There might be about inflation that could be very damaging president biden's prospects reelection or cameras man. I think effectively. it's either gonna be biden's harris. I don't think there's much chance at another democrat would emerge. If biden doesn't mind. It would be incredibly hot for anybody to win a primary election against come in the house. I agree and so. I've been having this debate with my son. Actually who's twenty seven and using i. It doesn't matter. And i said no. You only think that because you've never actually lived through a period of inflation and we've had very low inflation in the united states for forty years and it can be extremely corrosive. I think would be very corrosive that i would be very concerned about. Trump's chances right now. His polling nationally doesn't look very good minutes being like sixty six percent saying they don't want him to run again nationally not republicans obviously but a lot can change and when you're governing. You're alienating voters that's just the nature of the beast so my concern is it's not even whether trump could win the popular vote. I think he would almost certainly lose it but the question is by how much in in what states i mean that's one thing we've seen. Republicans ought to be very concerned by the fact that they haven't won the popular vote for president since nineteen eighty eight saved once in two thousand four when george w bush was reelected and then it was still pretty close. Think he went by three million votes. That's remarkable is somehow hadn't folded on the fact that they haven't won the popular would since nineteen eighty. Eight will be exception of two thousand four. That's remarkable about politics. I want to shift a little bit to some of the stakes for democracy. The united states around the world one thing. I'm still struggling to make sense of this. How much damage. Donald trump did ultimately do to democracy around the world. I think his actions were horrifying. The fact that he was clearly on the side of overtime popular psychic all bond in hungary is very close to render promoting india was damaging the certain circumstantial evidence bet democracy has been impacted by now the deepest democratic recession. Twenty twenty was worse than be as before. But i guess how much at this point doesn't matter who. The president of the united states is full. The fate of democracy around the world and how different would was four or five years have looked in countries like hungary like india or for that matter in turkey. We will embassador in the past. If we'd ended up with president clinton in two thousand sixteen so interesting counterfactual. I've not quite sure whether it would or wouldn't have been very different. I mean i think one thing would have been different. Which is there would have been at least somewhat. More of an emphasis on both uman rights violations in places will certainly like turkey but also more support in general for the rule of law and for institutions like central european university. A place like hungary which played an important role not just in hungary but in central europe more. Broadly is i think there would have been certainly some differences whether those differences would have only been marginal or whether they would have amounted to something that changed the trajectory of the democratic recession. As you were saying. I think is a much harder question to answer because i think the democratic recession is rooted in a lot of structural causes that it's not very easy for one president to reverse or change. I be interested in your reaction but to me this global democratic recession. There's some things that you and some of your co-authors of pointed to with regard to the general decline in appreciation globally of the importance of things like free speech and other formal elements of democracy. I'm not quite sure why that is. It may be the success of democracy which then gets taken for granted. I haven't been able to figure out how slain that. But i think there are other factors that run a little bit deeper. There are the unequal distribution of economic gains from globalization which is certainly occurred here in the united states but also in various other societies. It has fueled in some sense some understandable economic resentments. Although i think the economic resentments have not been the real driver of this. It's been more. I think the cultural elements here which have been brought to the fore by things like greater global immigration some of which has been brought about by in the eu different institutional changes were made to facilitate the at but also because of conflicts around the world and climate change which driven waves of immigration from sub saharan africa but also from conflict regions in the middle east from afghanistan all the.