Uriel Epshtein is executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative, created three years ago by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov to combat populism, promote core constitutional values and offer a home to political centrists. He came to the job after stints at the Boston Consulting Group, DoorDash and Uber. As a Yale undergraduate, he founded and continues to chair the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative, which promotes campus college dialogues on policy in the Middle East. That experience had a profound influence on him, he says, as he began to see increasing similarity between polarized partisan U.S. politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
RDI produces content with the goal of empowering the American public to understand and prioritize core constitutional principles.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
In high school I founded the Pascack Hills Political Club and eventually ended up chairing the New Jersey Teenage Republicans. Politics was my version of a team sport. I was confident my team was right and all we had to do was "defeat" the other guys. It's incredible to think how much has changed since then. I keep wondering what percentage of that change is external and what has come from shifts in my own perspective.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
Transitioning RDI from a one-man team to a more established start-up with a recognizable voice on democratic issues. Now we have published a book, put on two significant conferences and started multiple creative projects — all with the goal of empowering the public to prioritize core American values.
And your most disappointing setback?
We are in a moment of profound national uncertainty, and sometimes I allow myself to get caught up in that when I should simply focus on the task at hand.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
My parents were raised in the former Soviet Union. My dad was an anti-communist, Zionist dissident born under Joseph Stalin in 1936 and my mom was born at a time of overwhelming anti-Semitism in Kiev. Their experiences living in a totalitarian society, dominated by group-think and without freedom to so much as utter a dissenting thought, has made me forever skeptical of ideologies that allow for no disagreement or debate. Today, as each American political side becomes increasingly inflexible, branding anybody willing to compromise as a traitor, I'm beginning to hear echoes of parts of my family's experience. This is what our work at RDI seeks to address. I understand the appeal of sticking with one's own tribe, but I fear that if we're unwilling to experience the discomfort of engaging those with whom we disagree, we may become increasingly willing to sacrifice the principles underpinning our republic to avoid doing so.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Something my rabbi said to me in college, which I really started to understand only in the last few years: We should not necessarily identify with our emotions. We never know when a crisis might turn out to be a blessing in disguise or, if we find ourselves at a low point, we have no way of knowing what's waiting around the corner. We just have to keep pushing through.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
Fondue Democracy: Red, white and blue sprinkles swirled together with chocolate fondant.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
"The Americans" on FX was a terrific and nuanced show. I was particularly impressed that they hired actual Russian speakers to play the Russian characters.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Check the news — although I'm trying to break the habit.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
I have a pretty debilitating fear of spiders. At one point, I was with friends wandering through a children's section at the zoo. We sat down for a few minutes and, while flipping through a National Geographic magazine, I stumbled across a full-page image of a tarantula. I fell out of my seat.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.