Paul Manafort and Russia

The Public Sphere

Rafael Khatchaturian joins the podcast again.

Today, we are talking about the bizarre circle that took Paul Manafort from the apex of K-Street to post-Soviet Eastern Europe and back. Mantefort was briefly the campaign manager of the Trump campaign and now is a major target of Robert Mueller's investigation.

Franklin Foer, now a national correspondant with The Atlantic, describes Manafort's rise as an influential Washington lobbyist to his work on behalf of an international rogues gallery including former Ukranian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. In this way, Manafort's career mirrors the arc of history since 1980: the rise of neoliberal, Reaganite conservatism in 1980, the exportation of US style democracy and campaigning to Europe after 1991, and the dubious rewards that both the US and Europe are now reaping.

One programming note: You can hear my cat, Imogen, on both this and our last episode.

• Rafael's breakdown of an anti-soviet cartoon.
• Sean Guillory - Sean's Russian Blog.
• Franklin Foer, "The Plot Against America," The Atlantic (March 2018).
• Masha Gessen, "The New Politics of Conspiracy," New York Review of Books (November 2nd, 2016).