2025-10-26
37 分钟Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet.
I'm producer Mia Sorrenti.
Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and political commentator Ann Applebaum.
Applebaum joined us at the Royal Geographical Society in London for the final installment of our Age of the Strongman series,
Understanding Trump.
The morning after Donald Trump's victory over Kamala Harris in the US presidential election,
the New York Times front page declared America hires a strong man.
But is Trump really a strong man?
And is it fair to put him in the same category as leaders such as Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?
Almost a year on, from Trump's second electoral victory,
Applebaum joined Chief Foreign Affairs commentator for the FT,
Gideon Rackman,
to explore whether Trump truly fits the mould of a strongman leader and how far his authoritarian instincts could go.
Let's join our host, Gideon Rackman, now with more.
Thanks Conor and thanks to Intelligent Square and to you
for arranging this whole series of four on the aid of the strongman I think we we started with Putin and then we moved on to Xi Jinping and then Netanyahu and For the finale Donald Trump I don't know whether it's a tribute to Anne or to Trump,
but we've had to hire a much bigger hall So it's great to have you and joining us to discuss Trump before we get right into it.
I should just maybe for those who haven't seen it being too old for just give a broad idea of the theme I actually wrote a book a while back called age of the strongman and what I was trying to do was to track the rise of a series of Leaders who seem to have some similarities in particular style of leadership and that kind of forced me to try to think well,
what is strongman leadership and is it legitimate to say that Ashish and Ping,
who's obviously operating in a pure autocracy,