Epshtein is the chief executive officer of the Renew Democracy Initiative and chairs the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative.
From our brief interaction, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny probably thought I was — generously speaking — naive.
I met Navalny in 2010 when he was a Yale World Fellow and I was an undergraduate. Over coffee, I asked him if I could work for him in Russia over the summer. Influenced by my Soviet-born, anti-communist parents, and shielded from harm by my American hubris and passport, I had grown up with the romantic notion of a swashbuckling life combating dictatorship.
Navalny patiently, perhaps with some amusement, informed me that what he was doing was illegal and not particularly conducive to a summer internship for an American college student. His underlying point was more direct: If you take a vacation from democracy, you might not return. Russia isn’t the sort of place where an 18-year-old American kid could just drop in for eight weeks, agitate against the leader, have some kvass and then come back stateside for the fall semester.
Now I’m safely writing from Virginia with a cup of coffee in my hand and Navalny is dead in an Arctic penal colony, murdered by Vladimir Putin. The Russian state will not even allow his mother to conduct a proper burial.
Perhaps most tragically of all, Putin had help, not only from his cronies in the Kremlin but from useful idiots, tankies, and cynical self-promoters in the West who offered him the legitimacy and impunity he needed to silence the press, invade his neighbors, and kill one of his most prominent opponents. Every handshake with a Western leader, every call for Ukraine to offer concessions, every cynical justification offered for Putin’s actions was another nail in Navalny’s coffin. The actions (and inaction) of Western leaders have real consequences for those living under the heel of authoritarianism.
Change in countries like Russia can only come from within but it can be supported (or thwarted) from without. When Western leaders treat Putin as a respected peer, they legitimize him in front of his own people. Justifying his actions and claiming that they are no worse than perceived U.S. misdeeds undermines the Russian dictator’s domestic opponents by overshadowing their harrowing and true tales of oppression. It may well be no accident that Navalny’s death followed so closely on the heels of Tucker Carlson and Putin’s puppet show earlier this month. After all, if a “leading American voice” is willing to come to Moscow and meekly submit to Putin over the course of a two-hour “interview” at the same time that the speaker of the House reflexively dismisses support to one of our closest allies in Eastern Europe, then is it such a stretch for Putin to conclude that free societies are too divided to actually hold him accountable?
How many times over the last century have we learned that dictators never stop – that they are stopped? Sensing the West’s weakness, division and lack of resolve, Putin saw an opportunity and he took it. At a panel in Dubai, Carlson was asked why he didn’t bring up the plight of Navalny and the other regime critics Putin had already assassinated.
“Every leader kills people,” Carlson blithely retorted. “Leadership requires killing people.”
It could very well have been a preemptive justification for an action Tucker intuited Putin might take soon. His callous and cynical response offers an incredible contrast in style, substance and spirit to the bravery that Alexei Navalny demonstrated. Nearly three years ago, Navalny was in Berlin having narrowly survived a poisoning attempt by Putin. He could have remained there, ensconced in the relative (but not foolproof) security that distance and democracy provide. Yet he chose to return to Russia, hoping that his example might spark a movement of people fed up with Putin’s dictatorship. And thousands of people did take to the streets, but they were mercilessly suppressed by Putin’s thugs. While Tucker was welcomed with open arms on his pilgrimage to Moscow to pay tribute to his political idol in the Kremlin, Navalny was arrested and imprisoned immediately upon his arrival.
And he isn’t the only one. There are countless people filling dictators’ prisons and body bags who refused to back down – who took upon themselves the incredible risk that comes with fighting for a better future for their children while living in a dictatorship. Considering how many people in the free world abuse their freedom to carry water for dictators, it’s worth asking what motivates the incredible individuals who put everything on the line to confront them.
My friend and Renew Democracy Initiative colleague Evan Mawarire faced a similar dilemma to Navalny’s back in 2017. Evan, a pastor, had launched a protest movement against Zimbabwe’s strongman ruler, Robert Mugabe, and was imprisoned shortly thereafter. He was forced to flee — but ultimately chose to go back to Zimbabwe, consigning himself to more time in a maximum security prison, to more hours being tortured by a dictator's goons.
After Navalny famously stepped off the plane in Moscow, Evan reflected on the reasoning behind his own decision to return: “To send a message simultaneously to both dictator Mugabe and the people of our nation, that a new generation of freedom seekers was no longer prepared to run from the regime.” For those living under the yoke of dictatorship, fighting for freedom is not only a full-time job, but one for which you may have to be willing to give your last full measure of devotion. Navalny refused to ask a naive American college kid to take that risk, but he didn’t hesitate to take it himself.
That is why he went home.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.