The Gist

Oh, How This Feels Like Moscow

The Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe and BuzzFeed’s Miriam Elder pour out the contents of their reporters’ notebooks from Russia.

President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 and Russian President Vladimir Putin on a separate date at his residence outside Moscow.

Pete Marovich/Bloomberg/Getty Images and Dmitry Astakhov/AFP/Getty Images

Listen to Episode 678 of Slate’s The Gist:

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On The Gist, guest host Julia Ioffe of the Atlantic talks about the similarities and surprising differences between President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin with Miriam Elder, world editor at BuzzFeed. Elder shares her idea of how the two leaders fit into a global story unfolding right now. Plus, Ioffe and Elder explain “whataboutism” and other vocabulary lessons from their time reporting in Moscow.

In the Spiel: The Trump presidency is quickly putting the lie to an old Russian saw.

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