Historian and author Anne Applebaum said during a podcast interview on Thursday that President Donald Trump's planned renovations at the Internal Revenue Service resemble the way Russian President Vladimir Putin rose to power in the early 2000s.
Applebaum joined Tim Miller on "The Bulwark Podcast" on Thursday, where the two discussed the state of American democracy under Trump. Applebaum noted that Trump's plan to install loyalists in the IRS and relax rules that allow the agency to go after left-leaning groups were similar to the tactics used by Putin to silence dissent in Russia.
"I don't always like these direct comparisons, but that's really reminiscent of the beginning of Putinism," Applebaum said. "That was how Putin would get rid of his rivals. He would launch tax investigations of companies, and this was in a year in Russia when a lot of people had violated all kinds of laws."
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published a report outlining Trump's planned changes at the IRS. Part of the plan involves gutting parts of the agency that manage criminal investigations and installing loyalists in key positions overseeing legal compliance.
Miller called the report "really shocking."
"I don't want to give people this feeling of hopelessness, but this is an absolutely textbook way of abusing the arms and the powers of the state that were set up by all of us to benefit all of us," Applebaum said.