The Historian Timothy Garton Ash on the World After Trump

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Giddy Democrats are celebrating historic victories in the midterm elections, but “in Europe we have to keep our heads on, because actually it doesn’t make such a big difference for us,” Timothy Garton Ash, a British historian, says. For the next two years, Trump “is still in charge of foreign policy. He’s going to be the largest and angriest lame duck in the history of the world.” The Oxford professor, who covered the fall of Communist autocracies in Eastern Europe and has written nearly a dozen books on Europe, talks with David Remnick about the challenges facing a possible Democratic successor, and whether a future Administration can regain America’s place in a world where illiberal regimes are ascendant.