The Big Story: Putin’s Plan for the 2020 Election

Vladimir Putin’s mission to interfere in American elections isn’t done yet. What’s at stake?

The 2016 election was just a dry run for Russia. Now, Putin’s government is looking to November, Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer argues in his latest article.

“Events in the United States have unfolded more favorably than any operative in Moscow could have ever dreamed,” Foer writes. “Not only did Russia’s preferred candidate win, but he has spent his first term fulfilling the potential it saw in him, discrediting American institutions, rending the seams of American culture, and isolating a nation that had styled itself as indispensable to the free world. But instead of complacently enjoying its triumph, Russia almost immediately set about replicating it. Boosting the Trump campaign was a tactic; #DemocracyRIP remains the larger objective.”

Foer joined staff writer McKay Coppins for a live conversation about Putin’s mission and what’s at stake for American democracy.