Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist with an intimate knowledge of both countries, and her latest book, The Future is History, is a gripping look at the toxic legacy of the Soviet era.

She sat down with Michel Martin to discuss the release of the Mueller report and Putin's endgame.

Masha Gissin, thank you so much for talking with us.

Thank you for having me.

Now, you occupy this very unique position in journalism, both having a deep background in Russian journalism and then of deep background in American media.

But you were skeptical of the Mueller report.

At least you were skeptical that it would demonstrate some.

I don't know what words you would want to use, some sort of smoking gun.

So the first question I wanted to ask you is why were you skeptical?

I was skeptical for a couple of reasons.

One is that and I think we knew this now it's very difficult to demonstrate any kind of impact on the outcome of the election.

It's probably impossible.

And I think we knew that going in.

But there was a little bit of magical thinking that somehow it was that the whole election is going to be exposed as a fraud because of Russian interference.

But the other the bigger reason I was skeptical.

And I think it has been borne out is that I just know how haphazard and incompetent and decentralized and how much of a hustle the Russian government is.

And I read the volume one of the Mueller report as a story of swindlers and hustlers and conmen who don't have a conspiracy because they don't actually have a common goal.

Each one of them is out for himself.

Mostly it's men, with one exception.

I think each one has his own con.

Each one has his own agenda.

And each one is trying to con everybody else.

So in a sense, it's the opposite of a conspiracy.

It is not what we want in government.

And I think it certainly does not make Trump look good.

And I wouldn't call it an exoneration.

I think people who find Trump not only unfit, but unimaginable.

Right.

We're hoping that the report would say he you know, he came from outer space or at least from Russia.

But he is not a president elected by by Americans in some definitive way.

That didn't happen.

There isn't a story that can be neatly tied up like that.

So what did what did you find in the Mueller report?

What do you think the Mueller report shows?

Well, I spent most of my time reading Volume One, which is the Russia part of the story.

Right.

It's not the obstruction of justice part, which which is much more straightforward and I think definitive.

Right.

The Russia part is fascinating to me because because it is a story of cuts.

And I think that this actually, you know, this is why I think that the story of the Mueller report is actually part and parcel of The New York Times report that just came out on Trump's taxes.

Right.

There's a swindler, a con man who has conned the country into making him president.

And that's how I read the Mueller report.

So, you know, one of the things the other things that has fascinated me about your reporting is that you have suggested that the American media have maybe.

Is it the media or is it the American public or some segments of the American public are completely overreacting to to to Putin or that to to Russia, that they kind of that this that Russia just looms too large in the American consciousness right now.

Could you just talk a little bit more about why you've been saying that as well?

It's a tricky position for me to find myself in because not that many years ago, I wrote a biography of Putin in which I portray him as a very dangerous, very scary man.

And his he absolutely is.

He's a tyrant.

He's a dictator.

He murders and jails his opponents his as dangerous as those kinds of men are.

He's also a small time dictator in Not a very intelligent man, one who doesn't have a master plan, one who is a different kind of con man.

But he has somehow managed to con his way into the American imagination as the mastermind behind everything.

And there is no master anything there.

Right.

There is a lot of news.

There's a lot of scrap There are some good instincts, good power instincts, but there isn't what Americans imagined.

You know, the master plan, the the the that the concerted attack on American democracy.

You remind me of something that former President Obama said.

He said this is a small regional power with nuclear weapons and a dwindling supply of oil.

Right.

That's what he said.

I think that is an accurate assessment.

It has bigger ambition than that.

But that's an accurate assessment of Russia's stuff.

So so what is Putin's goal?

Putin's goal is to reestablish Russia as a superpower.

He will use anything that he can get his hands on to do that.

He has very successfully, for example, used Syria to reestablish Russia as a superpower.

Right.

Syria in some ways was Putin's at a certain moment, it looked like Putin's downfall at a certain moment.

That was his the height of his strength.

Putin swooped in and basically hijacked Syria.

This is summer September of 2013, which culminates with a Putin op ed in The New York Times in which he uses American language to call out American exceptionalism.

He promised that he would disarm Bashar al-Assad and get rid of the chemical weapons.

Well, six years later, we know that that doesn't happen.

We know that, in fact, Putin helped Assad win the war and and chemical weapons have been used over the course.

So his goal is to make Russia a superpower.

To what end?

Because I think Americans have a really hard time visualizing like, what is the goal of this power?

Because any American imagination.

Yes, it's true that American has an expansionist past.

But I think if you would stop most Americans on the street right now, they don't see themselves as wanting to conquer the world just to just just to do it to deter.

And that's just my point.

Russia is an empire.

Never stop being an empire.

It briefly considered not being an empire and decided that that wasn't such a great idea.

So Russia wants to reclaim its greatness.

There is this there's a great sense of nostalgic bitterness in Russia after 91 that Putin has weaponized.

So that's that's part of it.

Another part is and it's related.

There's a sense of humiliation, a sense of resentment that Putin has also weaponized very well.

So being a superpower is an end in itself.

Being a superpower, it doesn't necessarily mean annexing other countries.

That's sort of the imperial impulse thing.

A superpower just means having other countries scared of you and having the United States know that it can't take a step without consulting Russia.

How do you understand Putin's recent moves and, say, North Korea and Venezuela?

Well, of course we talked about Syria, but how do you understand those recent moves?

Well, Putin doesn't have long term plans He is a quintessential opportunist.

So when he sees an opportunity open up, he always used the opportunity with North Korea as quite obvious It talks with the United States broke down.

So this there's a space there that he could step into, which he immediately did.

Venezuela is a little bit more interesting in a sense, because I think that he has a way of identifying with dictators who are facing mass protests and foreign intervention.

Right.

So I think that he identifies with the leader of Venezuela and fears that if he is removed, then that means that something like that could happen.

To Putin as well.

Tell me about the Trump Putin relationship.

How do you read it?

Well, yeah.

I mean, one of the things that gets lost in talking about Russia and how cozy some Americans imagine Trump to be with Russia is just how terrible the Russian-American relationship is at the moment.

It it's at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

We are this close to having no diplomatic relations at all.

There are consulates in Saint Petersburg, and there was a Russian consulate in San Francisco in a Tit-for-tat attack.

These these were shut down but also the embassy in Moscow has been decimated.

So many diplomats were expelled that cultural programs and education programs have been targeted.

And what that means is that there's such a thin diplomatic relationship right now between the United States and Russia.

That's a very dangerous situation.

Right.

When we read histories of the Cold War, at least I'm always struck by moments of crisis when relationships between diplomats on the ground made the difference between, you know, total annihilation of the world as we know it and some kind of bad peace.

We don't have that anymore.

And that's a deterioration that has happened, particularly in the last couple of years.

What could this given that scenario, could then the perceived closeness between President Trump and President Putin be to the benefit of the world?

I mean, I'm noting, as you and I are speaking now, that the two presidents had an hour long conversation, which was outrageous to many American political leaders from the opposition, from the Democratic side.

They thought, you know, this is outrageous that you're having this hour long conversation with him.

And you never mentioned Russian meddling, at least according to the accounting of both sides.

But is there a way in which their personal relationship for whatever motivates it could be to the benefit of the world?

Well, you know, I do find it cold comfort to think that the fate of the world depends on Putin and Trump being able to get on the phone So I would really much rather imagine that it's in the hands of more intelligent, less temperamental diplomats but also because and this, I think, is very important.

Right.

When we talk about diplomatic relations, we talk about national interests We talk about normal countries where institutions exist to promote national interest as it is generally understood Right.

Putin runs a mafia state.

There is no such thing in Russia as a national interest that is distinct from Putin's personal accrual of power and money.

That's different from any kind of any other kind of dictatorship or tyranny.

A mafia state is a distinct phenomenon.

And we have Trump who I think would have a mafia state if he could get away with it.

And that's certainly what he's been trying to build.

So so what's your worst case scenario?

You know, given all that, I think the operating theory, you know, I'll just articulate it.

I'm not endorsing it.

I'm just articulating it that I think the operating theory on behalf of the people who are opposed to Trump is that he has some sort of financial relationship with the Russians, that he's beholden to them in some way.

That is one reason why there is such a deep interest in his personal finance And however disturbing that may and corrupt that may be, the argument, I think then becomes that there is that both parties have an investment in maintaining a cordial relations because both their financial interests would be jeopardized.

I think that misunderstands the nature of the beast.

Right.

It misunderstands the mafia state because it's there's an assumption, I think, inherent which is said that Putin is represents Russia in some sort of national way.

Right.

And not just himself, that Trump would represent the United States in some sort of national way and not just his own financial interests.

I also you know, I don't subscribe to that theory that Trump is financially beholden to Putin for a couple of reasons.

One of which is that we just don't have enough evidence to support it.

And I don't like theories that are entirely connecting the dots.

Mm hmm.

But also because it's an unnecessary and necessary explanation for his admiration for Putin.

He admires all dictators.

You know, he admires people who perform and exercise raw power.

That's what he wants to be.

But he doesn't need to be financially beholden to any of them in order to admire them.

You said, look, I don't like theories that are based on speculation and not about facts.

More broadly.

Does that concern you?

I mean, do you think that the American media have veered too far in the direction of speculating about this president and his his behavior?

There's a kind of mentality that I think suggests that journalists job is to expose secrets.

And I think that exposing secrets is great.

But focusing on truth is actually much more important.

And the distinction between truth and secrets is that truth can be observed.

We can observe reality together.

And that's another way of building connections, political connections between journalists and other members of the public.

But where secrets have to be revealed.

And I think that we would all be much better off analyzing together what we can observe together.

There is enough that Trump is giving us about the way his talks the the things that he says are important.

The way he talks about Russia, but also the way he talks about the media, the way he talks about politics, the way he talks about protests, the way he talks.

He talks about his opponents.

There's enough there to not have to hypothesize that he is beholden to Putin and still be distracted and actually still have valuable observations about his relationship to Russia and to other dictators.

Forget to what we talked about at the beginning I mean, you have a deep background, both working in Russia as a journalist and then many, many years working here in the United States.

And I'm wondering how you think that experience may inform how have you look at this?

You know, what actually I think informs me more is that I got my start in in community publishing.

I started out in the gay press in the eighties I worked in the gay press also during the AIDS crisis.

Right.

So I really knew from the time I was a teenager, which was when I started working there, that getting information to people was a political act that had made the difference between life and death for some people.

You could you could go and write about drug trials and you could go and write about act up on act up came on the scene and that you just writing was political and just writing was activism.

How does this address the current problem where the president is explicitly identify by the mainstream media except for his preferred conservative outlet as the enemy of the people?

And there's nothing to take comfort from in the Russian example.

I mean, the reason the president identifies the media as the enemy of the people and not only gets away with it, but gets gets points for it is that there's a crisis of trust in the media.

It is that there's a huge constituency in this country that feels justly not represented by the media.

And I think that the way that we address that crisis.

Right, not the crisis that is reflected presented by the president, but the crisis of of of trust is by representing better by securing ourselves, situating ourselves in communities and by being more transparent, which is something that inherently leads to more trust.

Masha Gessen, thank you so much for talking to us.

Thank you for having me.