Chatting Up A Storm - Claudia Cragg

This is an early repost of a recent interview for which no apologies are made. As the 45th incumbent burns out the last days of his Presidency in a downward spiral of self-destruction and bad behavior, this conversation for @KGNU by @claudiacragg with @RuthBenGhiat holds even more resonance. The central challenge of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s “” is revealed early, in the book’s introduction, when the author lays out her expansive cast of characters. “I focus on Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Muammar Gaddafi, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Mobutu Sese Seko, Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, with Idi Amin, Mohamed Siad Barre, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Nahrendra Modi, Viktor Orban, and others making cameo appearances,” Ben-Ghiat writes. This is an overwhelming dramatis personae — one that spans not just the globe but a number of ideologies, types of government and two centuries. Ben-Ghiat makes a convincing argument for including Trump in these les