I won't buy into her statement as her change of heart will likely be a commercial succes. I can see the similarity with the Barry Goldwater girl that lost the race in 2008 and for president against Trump in 2016.

Me on @anneapplebaum:s quite brilliant insider account of how her former friends on the Right brought Brexit, Trump and the one-party states of Eastern Europe.https://t.co/UEfJXWtWkK

— Nick Cohen (@NickCohen4) July 12, 2020

It was a Millennium Eve housewarming for a manor house in the western Poland they had helped rebuild from ruins. The company of Poles, Brits, Americans and Russians could say that they had rebuilt a ruined world. Unlike the bulk of the left of the age, they had stood up against the Soviet empire and played a part in the fall of a cruel and suffocating tyranny. They had supported free markets, free elections, the rule of law and democracies sticking together in the EU and Nato, because these causes - surely - were the best ways for nations to help their people lead better lives as they faced Russian and Chinese power, Islamism and climate change.

...
Her husband knew Boris Johnson. They were both members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford. She assumed that he was as much a liberal internationalist as Sikorski was. When the couple met Johnson for dinner in 2014, she noted his laziness and "all-consuming narcissism", as well as the undoubted charisma that was to seduce and then ruin his country. In those days, Johnson appeared friendly. He was alarmed by the global challenge to democracy, he told them, and wanted to defend "the culture of freedom and openness and tolerance".

Applebaum nearly became Poland's First Lady hand in hand with Radek Sikorski, former CIA agent and British citizen.

Anne Applebaum @BooMan

Khodorkovsky - The Interpreter - Henry Jackson Society (UK)

The Applebaum and Sikorski Show

'Sapere aude'