Craig Unger, author of House of Trump, House of Putin and American Kompromat, joins me from Dallas. Before getting to Trump, he goes back to 1968: the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the solid South, Anna Chennault and Nixon's sabotage of Vietnam peace talks, and how Watergate grew out of that first scandal, then the 1980 hostage crisis and Reagan campaign manager Bill Casey. We also cover the 1886 Santa Clara railroad case, Citizens United and the Roberts court.
On Trump, Unger starts in 1980 with the Grand Hyatt and the TVs bought from Joy-Lud Electronics, owned by Semyon Kislin, and lays out two threads he says led to Trump: the KGB and the Russian mafia. He cites Yuri Shvets, Sergei Tretyakov, a study of $1.5 billion in Russian money through Trump real estate, Felix Sater and Bayrock, and Paul Manafort's work for Yanukovych.
We finish on the 2026 midterms and ICE at polling places, Masha Drokova and Russian names in the Epstein files, and how independent journalists keep reaching readers while platforms throttle them.
Chapters
0:00 Live from Kyiv, waiting for Craig
4:39 Platform throttling and the Epstein posts
7:55 Technical problems
11:05 Welcome Craig Unger: a Texas night
12:34 1968: civil rights and the solid South
14:28 Anna Chennault and Nixon's sabotage of peace talks
16:56 How Watergate grew out of 1968
18:22 The 1980 hostage crisis, Bill Casey and the Church Committee
21:46 Cheney Watch and eroding checks and balances
23:00 1886, Santa Clara and corporate personhood
25:26 The Roberts court and presidential power
26:45 Why accountability was abandoned
28:22 When did the alarms go off on Trump and Russia?
30:29 1980: the Grand Hyatt and Semyon Kislin
33:36 KGB history, Armand Hammer and recruiting Trump
38:04 Two threads: the KGB and the Russian mafia
39:32 Trump Tower Moscow and the Dubinins
41:26 Yuri Shvets and the active measures cable
42:04 Sergei Tretyakov and Comrade J
43:03 Sunny Isles and $1.5 billion in Russian money
44:28 Felix Sater, Bayrock and the franchised towers
45:16 2016: WikiLeaks, Roger Stone and the GRU
46:24 Manafort, Yanukovych and Trump
47:10 What I saw arriving in Ukraine
48:32 The midterms: ICE and voter intimidation
50:25 A Trump problem or a MAGA party problem?
52:06 Epstein, cognitive warfare and the files
53:44 Masha Drokova, Nashi and Putin's AI ambitions
55:25 Searching three million pages
57:18 Independent journalism and the fourth estate
58:50 Lessons from Daniel Ellsberg
1:00:08 Shadow banning and building a following
1:04:54 Who controls the government now
1:07:52 Thank you, Craig
1:08:44 Getting out of the bubble and sharing good reporting
1:13:45 Talking to disaffected Republicans
1:15:22 Sign off
Watch on YouTube: Craig Unger: Kompromat to Capitulation, Putin's Long Game Against American Democracy
