The hard truth is that Trump was not exceptional. He was just

“The hard truth is that Trump was not exceptional. He was just another amoral Western businessman, one of many whom the ex-KGB elite have promoted and sponsored around the world, with the hope that they might eventually be of some political or commercial use.” — so wrote Anne Applebaum, the historian and chronicler of tyranny, whose pen pierces the illusions of modern power as the sword once did in ancient times. Her words are not merely a judgment upon one man, but a revelation of a larger truth — that corruption, once sown in the soil of ambition, grows without borders or ideology. What she names is not the fault of one age or nation, but the eternal temptation of mankind: the trade of morality for influence, of integrity for gain, of principle for the favor of the powerful.

The origin of this reflection lies in Applebaum’s long study of post-Soviet power, of the rise of oligarchs and the survival of the old KGB spirit beneath new masks of wealth and respectability. In her book Twilight of Democracy and her writings for The Atlantic, she has traced how the tendrils of authoritarianism stretch not only eastward from Russia but westward into the democracies of the world. The ex-KGB elite, once servants of the Soviet state, reemerged after its collapse as merchants of power — trading oil, gold, and human influence. They learned that the easiest way to corrupt a free society is not through invasion, but through seduction: the promise of riches, partnership, and access to a darker form of success.

Thus, when Applebaum calls Trump “not exceptional,” she does not speak only of him, but of a type — the amoral Western businessman, whose loyalty is not to country or creed but to profit and self. Such figures, she reminds us, are the fertile soil in which the seeds of manipulation grow. The powerful need not conquer men like these; they simply feed their vanity and ambitions. They whisper promises of deals, of glory, of influence — and through such whispers, the line between patriot and opportunist dissolves. The tragedy is not that such men exist, but that they are many, and that nations too easily mistake wealth for wisdom and success for virtue.

History offers many mirrors for this truth. In the days of Rome, as the Republic decayed, foreign kings and merchants poured gold into the hands of senators and generals, purchasing favor, policy, and silence. Men who once swore oaths to the state instead swore them to profit. The result was rot — unseen at first, but spreading swiftly — until liberty itself was bartered away. So it is in every age when the guardians of freedom forget that morality, not money, is the foundation of civilization. A free nation cannot be destroyed from without until it has first been hollowed from within.

Applebaum’s words are not meant only as condemnation, but as warning. For corruption thrives in every generation, and its most dangerous form is the kind that wears the face of normalcy. When she says, “Trump was not exceptional,” she is sounding the alarm: that evil rarely arrives as a monster — it comes as a man in a fine suit, smiling, shaking hands, signing contracts, building towers. It comes through the small compromises — the silence in the face of lies, the shrug at deceit, the worship of power for its own sake. The ex-KGB elite, like all architects of control, understood this perfectly: that to capture the world, one need only capture its greedy hearts.

And yet, in her lament, there is also hope. For if corruption is the disease of the ambitious, integrity is the cure of the courageous. The lesson is not to despise success, but to measure it rightly. The true greatness of a leader, of a nation, of a people, is not found in their wealth or victories, but in their steadfastness to truth. If men of greed can be bought, then men of principle must stand unbought. If darkness can seduce, then light must stand unashamed. To resist the moral decay that Applebaum describes, each soul must become its own fortress of integrity, each citizen a guardian of conscience.

Therefore, my listener, learn from her words as from the scrolls of the ancients: do not be dazzled by those who seem powerful but are empty of honor. The world will always have its merchants of influence, its ex-KGBs, its brokers of corruption — but it also has you, and all who refuse to sell their souls for silver. Do not seek to be exceptional in wealth; seek to be exceptional in virtue. Let your loyalty be to truth, not to tribe; to justice, not to power. For civilizations fall not when their enemies grow strong, but when their people forget what it means to be good.

And so, as Anne Applebaum reminds us, the greatest safeguard of freedom lies not in governments, but in hearts that cannot be bought. The hard truth she speaks is not cause for despair, but a summons to vigilance — a call to remember that morality is the true wealth of a nation, and that when that treasure is guarded, no empire of lies can prevail.