Historian Timothy Snyder: Trump running US foreign policy 'as though he were an organized criminal'

As Americans head to the polls for the midterm elections, François Picard welcomes historian Timothy Snyder, professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, for a conversation about the future of American democracy, the growing political influence of technology billionaires and the dangers of a new Gilded Age. Who really holds power in Donald Trump's America: the president or the billionaires surrounding him? Drawing parallels with the robber barons of nineteenth-century America, Snyder argues that the extraordinary wealth and influence of today's technology magnates risk turning democratic institutions into instruments of private power. But unlike the original Gilded Age, which eventually gave way to antitrust legislation and progressive reforms, there is no guarantee that history will repeat itself. For Snyder, author of On Tyranny and On Freedom, the stakes of the midterms extend far beyond the political fortunes of Trump and the Republican Party. The election, he warns, is largely about "whether the faltering president, Donald Trump, will become a transition to more or less open rule by some of our tech oligarchs." Snyder draws a striking contrast betwee...