2025-06-09
23 分钟This is The Opinions,
a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion.
You've heard the news.
Here's what to make of it.
I'm David Leonhardt, the director of the New York Times editorial board.
Every week, I'm having conversations to help shape the board's opinions.
And today, I'm talking with my colleague, columnist Masha Gessen.
Masha is one of the country's sharpest thinkers on the threat that President Trump poses and on the best ways to resist him.
Masha recently wrote about shock exhaustion,
a feeling they know well from Vladimir Putin's rule in Russia.
Under Putin,
so many awful things happened in such close succession that the shock eventually faded and the crimes that Putin committed became routine.
Masha is worried that we're entering a similar phase in the United States.
So today, we're going to talk through this together.
The shock of Trump's first months in office, the defiance that does exist,
and how all of us can refrain from becoming numb.
Masha, welcome.
Great to be here.
So I want to start with this feeling of shock exhaustion that you described so well.
Can you give us some sense of what that looked like from your time in Putin's Russia?