Open Letters from Anne Applebaum

Over the past few days, a peculiar argument has emerged on the American right: If Viktor Orbán can lose an election, then he wasn’t really an autocrat. James Kirchik, who eloquently opposed this claim in TheFree Press, sums up their arguments like this: “It seems commonsensical to say that if an ‘autocrat’ loses an election, he wasn’t an autocrat after all,” my friend Mike Pesca wrote in TheFree Press.

In the past several weeks, masked federal agents dressed as military officers have killed two Americans who were peacefully protesting their violent attacks on immigrants and U.S. citizens. Both times their actions were recorded on video cameras. Both times, government spokesmen made false statements, directly contradicting the video evidence.

Nearly a year ago, I heard an American woman tell a large room full of people that the recently inaugurated US president was going to bring about world peace. Implying that she had special links to the new administration, she explained that Trump, Putin and Xi Jin Ping were going to divide the planet into three spheres of influence. The US would control the Western hemisphere, China would control Asia, Russia would control Europe. A pact between the three great powers would then prevent future war.

As promised in my last Substack, I wrote an article for the Atlantic, based on recent reporting from Kyiv. During the trip, I spoke to a range of people who work in the drone industry, especially those making long-range drones. Although I’ve written on this topic before, I still don’t think Americans and Europeans really appreciate the scale of the Ukrainian defense industry, which now includes hundreds of new companies, or the way in which Ukrainian technology has completely transformed the war.

Slowly, and not exactly imperceptibly, the United States of America is changing its geopolitical orientation. The Trump administration has made clear that it can no longer automatically be considered a strategic partner to Ukraine, or a reliable ally to Europe. Perhaps the president is not yet fully aligned with his Russian counterpart, but he is moving in that direction, much faster than many realize. This shift has already had devastating consequences.

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If anyone had been placing bets back in 1989, trying to guess which Warsaw Pact state would emerge most rapidly and successfully from communism, most of the money would have been on Hungary.

Hegseth - Dismissed, court martial and jail (committed perjury) Waltz - Dismissed and jail JD Vance - Dismissed and jail Gabbard - Dismissed (committed perjury at House Intelligence Committee ?) Ratcliffe - Dismissed (committed perjury at House Intelligence Committee ?) Rubio - Dismissed Kent - Dismissed Witkoff - Dismissed Miller - Dismissed Bessent - Dismissed Wiles - Dismissed This is a list of people I feel should suffer some consequences for what happened re the illegal & improper use of...

As readers will doubtless be aware, the Atlantic magazine on Monday published an extraordinary story. It was the result of a mistake: earlier this month, our editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally put into a Signal chat group with the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and several others.

There are many Jewish people who abhor Netanyahu’s treatment of the Palestinian people, that does not mean they support Hammas. This is not antisemitism. Vance has drawn on the antisemitic and racist Great Replacement Theory in numerous instances. Now that’s antisemitism. Musk/Trump/oligarchs want an uneducated populace without the privilege of freedom of speech because they are easier to control. I too have to believe that the opposition to Trump are the seeds of change to build a better union.