← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Amy Davidson and George Packer Talk to David Remnick About President-Elect Trump
00:25:32
Amy Davidson and George Packer Talk to David Remnick About President-Elect Trump
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- [00:00]
A
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B
I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorker's David Remnick, George Packer, and Amy Davidson discussed the results of the 2016 presidential election. What can we expect from the Trump administration and the opposition to it?
- [01:34]
C
Well, here we are, and if you're like me, you were profoundly shocked by the results on Tuesday night. Although maybe we shouldn't have been. Donald Trump clearly tapped into a range of currents. A struggling middle class with its sense of deep disconnection, the racial and ethnic divides in the country, and a collapsed media structure that has caused us to live in our own silos of reality. And if Donald Trump's presidency is anything like his campaign, with its sense of insult and wild improvisation, our country is in totally uncharted and dangerous waters. To get a sense of where we're headed, I sat down with George Packer and Amy Davidson, two staff writers at the New Yorker who have been writing about the campaign from the very start and the bombshell results. George, reporting for both the New Yorker and your book the Unwinding, you spent a Lot of time in what we now think of as Trump country. In the south, in the deindustrialized Midwest, the press is often accused of not understanding the Trump voter, of being disconnected from the Trump voter. Please tell us what we missed.
- [02:49]
D
I think there's no single Trump voter. I think there's lots of different motives, almost a roll of the dice, like, let's just see how this guy does it might be kind of interesting, even entertaining, an almost casual vote. But in general, I'd say a resentment, a feeling of having been left behind by this technological global economy that benefited some people, didn't benefit journalists all that much, but we're still part of the elite that they resent, along with bankers and government officials and people in power who don't seem to know much about them or care much about them, who condescend to them as they see it, who feel that they are to blame for their problems. They dropped out of school, they had every chance and blew it. And this was their revenge. This was a revenge vote. It was a middle finger vote, more than a vote for a program or for some hopeful idea. Amy.
- [03:50]
B
Amy, I agree that there's not a single Trump voter. It's interesting to see how Trump himself, who may not have understood his electorate entirely, sought them out in a very old fashioned political way with these rallies after rallies. And he, to give him credit as a technical politician, which he hasn't had much credit for because his campaign, by a lot of definitions, was badly run. He did have a sense of what his crowds responded to and knew how to play that up. And what he found that they most responded to, if you watch rally after rally, is the charge of corruption. And I think that we in the media, who had a sort of more technical definition of corruption, never quite understood what that meant to his crowds and to his voters.
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C
So the technical definition of corruption would be a businessman who rips off his contractors, his investors, who does all the kinds of things that have been portrayed in great detail, in fact, by one Donald Trump.
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B
He stipulated it to them. He said, I did this, I bought off politicians, I took part in it, and now I can lead you through.
- [05:05]
C
It because I know the system better than anybody.
- [05:07]
B
But with the idea that Hillary Clinton always followed the rules and yet she and her family had a relationship with other elites, there was the foundation, there was a sense of benefit. I don't think that we in the press entirely grasped how resonant that charge was, the crooked Hillary idea, and what that meant to people. We were just like, well, she's not a thief. But the leveraging of influence and position has become a definition of corruption for a lot of people in America in a way that I don't think we entirely appreciated. Now, that said, was there misogyny? Certainly. Was there racism and raw bigotry and appeals to both of them? Absolutely. But there were also people who recognized that about Trump and put it aside, which is itself, you know, a problem when you put aside other people's racism because of their fixation with the idea of corruption.
- [06:11]
C
Why is Donald Trump the vehicle for all of this? Here's a guy who is almost a parody of a rich person, but doesn't play the traditional role of a wealthy person in New York, who's on the boards of charitable foundations, who knows that giving back is part of the, not necessarily just the moral behavior of somebody wealthy, but at least it's what's done to make your wealth acceptable. He bucked all of that?
- [06:40]
D
Yeah.
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C
He didn't try to hide his bad behavior or his rude opinions. He flouted them.
- [06:46]
B
A lot of people in New York think Donald Trump is tacky. What do we mean by that? We mean the idea of wealth that people outside of New York have, and that itself is an issue that.
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C
But I'm talking in terms of moral behavior, in terms of generosity to the less advantaged, to the poor, to good works. None of that was, you know, I.
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D
Think, David, that the opposite of that for some people is selfishness and egoism and immorality, for others is authenticity. And Trump conveyed and worked up an aura of authenticity. And the other key phrase, I agree with Amy about corruption, but the other key phrase in his campaign was political corruption correctness, which in polls, a lot of his supporters said that's the most important thing about Trump, is that he's willing to be politically incorrect now.
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C
And what did that phrase mean?
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D
I think to him it meant being willing to call Mexicans rapists. He used the fact that a lot of his supporters feel as if there's a lot they can't say and a lot about maybe their lives and their views that other people disapprove of and say, let it out. And that's where, in spite of being a plutocrat, if he's an authentic guy who talks about women and about them in authentic ways without mincing words, that appeals.
- [08:09]
C
Amy, it's phenomenal to me that over 40%, almost half the white women in this country voted for Donald Trump no matter what, no matter about access Hollywood tapes or women who came forward claiming that they had been Sexually harassed are much worse. Over 40% of white women voted for Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton.
- [08:32]
B
Before we give up on women and how much they calculate the treatment of women, maybe we need to think about how successful Trump's argument that the Clintons had their own past in this area was. It seems to Hillary Clinton's supporters dreadfully unfair that she should be held in account for things that her husband did. The Trump campaign spin on it was that she had enabled, that she had attacked the women. That also seemed unfair. But hey, you know, it doesn't seem to have been entirely without success. Let's also keep in mind something, you know, George was pointing out in the whole question of political correctness. I think that one thing that political correctness means to a lot of Trump voters is a refusal to talk about class as the actual source of privilege or lack of privilege. You know, they're told how privileged they are and they don't always see it in their own lives. So political correctness seems to be a false analysis of privilege to them. They feel left out of their the analysis.
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C
George?
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B
Yeah.
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D
You know, there's a line in John Dos Passos USA trilogy, all right, we are two nations. He wrote it in the context of the Sacco and Vanzetti execution, but that's what I've been thinking about throughout this campaign and since the results came in. We're two nations in different ways. In terms of class, this election played out along lines of education, which is kind of how we define class now, along lines of geography. The thing that disturbs me profoundly is, yeah, there's always class division, there's always regional and even partisan, and race and sex also in this campaign. But it's the mental world in which Americans live. How is it that people can see the world so fundamentally differently and be so impervious to any counter argument or counter fact that they're just going to move ahead in the same direction? And that in a way that's more of a threat to democracy than any of the other divisions that we've seen open up during this campaign.
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B
I think, though, that it's crucial if we're going to be realistic about this, to recognize that that imperviousness is not all one sided. It's not that the Trump voters were impervious to facts and we absorb them the same way.
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C
What facts does quote, unquote, our side.
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B
Refuse to absorb that some of these economic developments are not good for everybody.
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C
And that globalization, technology, and that the.
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B
Opportunity is limited in a way that we haven't Appreciated. And that there is a critique of the role of money in politics that envelops the Democrats as well as the Republicans.
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C
Now we come to the fact of a Trump presidency. We've discussed some of the factors here. One we've left out, by the way, is the fact that we're following the first African American president. I think that probably goes without saying as one of the factors here. But now Donald Trump is going to be president as of January 20th. Do you have any notion that he will somehow go about modifying his behavior in the way that he did for a very brief speech on the night of winning his election and more seriously, modifying the notion of what he's going to be as a president? Or are we just going to find this kind of radical figure in all his glory, behaving the way we in our darkest imaginings think he might have?
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B
That's going to depend a lot on the Republican Party that nominated him, that supported him throughout this and that never truly rejected him. You know, the morning after the election, Paul Ryan was out there saying, this is great. We can work with him. We're going to, you know, gung ho, full speed ahead. How the party reacts, how it tempers him, how it, you know, pushes through his agenda, how it sees him as its own vehicle. You know, we've heard a lot from Trump supporters about how we have all these checks and balances. You know, he's not going to be one of those checks is Congress, which is in Republican hands right now. And they're going to have a lot of choices. A huge, huge issue is that the Supreme Court only has eight people on it right now. And how solemnly the courts take their responsibility to react to some of the measures that Trump has promised is a huge question for the next four years.
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D
I wonder if he'll have the attention span, the interest, the willingness to get the daily briefings and attend the NSC.
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C
Meetings and plow through briefing books.
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D
Yeah, meet the foreign ambassadors. All the crap that a president has to do that's just a drudgery, but is necessary and important. Will he be able to discipline himself to do that, or will he be essentially not a figurehead, but a bit checked out of the day to day running of an administration and a country.
- [13:47]
C
My sense is that Mike Pence will be a gigantic figure now. After all, when Trump was casting around for vice president, he made the remark to one of his potential candidates that my job will be making America great again. Your job will be foreign and domestic policy.
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B
I think that was one of Trump's Sons who said that about the vice.
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D
President to John Kasich when he got.
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C
But fair enough, but that's an amazing notion of how the presidency works.
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B
Sure. But have you watched Mike Pence's speeches during this campaign at rallies?
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C
Sure.
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B
He has set new standards for sycophancy. You know, a word that I don't know how to pronounce.
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D
Sounds right.
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C
You nailed it.
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B
You know, he has. Mike Pence has been portrayed as establishment, institutional Republican compared to Donald Trump, but within what we've traditionally understood the Republican Party to be. He's an ideologue and at a pretty far end. One of his central issues is the whole idea that all the Democrats are corrupt. So there's not a lot of promise so far of collaboration, of restraint. I mean, his particular views on things like choice and LGBT rights are retrograde.
- [15:04]
D
Yeah. So I think, in a way, Trump's administration might get away from him. He did represent a new disruptive force in the ideology of the Republican Party, one that appealed to its working class base much more than to business interests and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But will he have the intellectual coherence, the discipline to carry that out, or will the traditional right wing in Congress and in his own administration start running the agenda in spite of Trump?
- [15:36]
B
I think it's also crucially important to say that whatever his rhetoric, his actual proposals do not benefit the white working class or any working class in America. His tax policies don't. So the idea of whether he can deliver for them, he doesn't even want to deliver for them. In terms of his actual policies, what that's setting us up for is a few years in which when those benefits don't accrue to people, that Trump responds by saying, it's the enemies, it's the conspiracies, somebody is to blame.
- [16:09]
C
Look, it's a horrible thing to say.
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B
Exactly.
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C
It's a horrible thing to say. But the promises, the banal promises that he made. I'm going to bring your jobs back from China. I'm going to bring back your jobs from China, Mexico. There's going to be more steel mills here in Pennsylvania. We're going to be making things again in Youngstown, Ohio. This is, in large measure, a fantasy.
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B
On election night, the way he summed it up was Americans will never again have to settle for anything less than the best.
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D
And the question is, how long will it take before those working class rust bell voters who made him president become disenchanted? Right now, there's almost a direct line between him and them. At some point, I think you're right, they will find that nothing that he's doing is benefiting them and there's gonna be a crash. But it could take quite a long time. Cuz they feel so invested in him right now. He is their demagogue.
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B
And where do you turn after the demagogue?
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C
Did the FBI director bear some responsibility for this loss?
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B
Look, I may have an outlier view on that, but you know, Comey, I think was in a tough spot. One that was set up, by the way. The Republican Party very methodically had brought him in for hearings. You know, set it up so that if there was a development, he almost, you know, it probably made some difference. But it's also the case, I think, that if one looks back at it, the Clinton campaign did not respond to that as productively as they could.
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C
I think that's the, that's the understatement of the year.
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B
By emphasizing like it's always been the practice not to bring these things up. It's been the tradition. What I think people heard was, we've always been protected. Why aren't we protected now? The more the Clinton campaign told people what we're doing is how things have always been done, the more that fueled the impetus towards rejection.
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C
You know, 2020 hindsight is a very, very low form of journalism. Almost as bad as predictive journalism, as we've now discover again. But was maybe the most decisive day in this whole campaign. The day Joe Biden decided not to run for president.
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B
You know, you can play it 10 different ways in your head. Yeah, I think Joe Biden would have beaten Donald Trump. You know, maybe not. We don't know. God knows, Bernie Sanders might have beaten.
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D
Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren might have beaten Donald Trump.
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B
But you know what? Hillary Clinton might have beaten Donald Trump. This was a close election and she didn't. She went in with a lot of handicaps that, yes, Joe Biden didn't have. Bernie Sanders would have gone in with handicaps that Hillary Clinton didn't have the.
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C
Word socialism being branded across his board.
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D
This was one of those elections that was both an earthquake. Like we suddenly heard from a whole large group of people who we had not really seen as a coherent voice before. And also a squeaker.
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C
She won the popular vote.
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D
She won the popular vote. So it's hard to say. I don't think Comey is the reason. I think it's much bigger than these little tactical things that happen down the stretch. But I think the other thing we need to ask ourselves going forward is what checks will there be on his power? He has shown himself to be not just willing, but almost eager to abuse power, to use the office of the presidency to settle scores, to muzzle the press, to put people in jail. So what checks do you think he's.
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C
Going to try to put Hillary Clinton in jail? Do you think he'll try to muzzle the likes of the institution we work for?
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B
That's a great question. With regard to what happens to this pursuit of Hillary Clinton and the foundation and all of that, does it become the convenient distraction of the Trump administration every time something goes wrong with them, they put out some new news about that? Maybe. But I think George is absolutely right. Every time Trump talked about his concept of what presidents get to do, it was troubling. I mean, he had a whole scenario that he would tell the crowds that the reason that Hillary Clinton spoke well of Barack Obama was because if not, he could put her in jail. As if any president can just kind of lock people.
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D
It's the Putinesque version of the presidency. And I think the real fear is the institutions that ordinarily would be able to apply some counter pressure, the press, the courts, Congress, public opinion, they just don't seem as strong as they used to be. I've been thinking about Watergate and how Nixon had tremendous power coming out of the 72 landslide election, but within six months, he was back on his heels because all those institutions were doing what they're supposed to do, and they still functioned in a kind of a healthy way.
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C
Well, what's our job in the time ahead?
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B
Well, I think just one thing that George said was really important. There's a lot ofand there's going to be more criticism from the Hillary Clinton side that the press was too hard on her, that there was a double standard, that, you know, there's an argument also that it wasn't hard enough at the primary stage, and some of of these flaws weren't. But the truth is that all the press can do is maintain its integrity. If we have a sense that we're holding back on either side, that justyou know, that strengthens people like Donald Trump.
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C
That'S gasoline for the fire.
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D
Yeah. I mean, we have to do what we got into this business to do, which is to hold power accountable, and that means, to some degree, by criticism, but I think more importantly, by gathering facts and putting those facts into a compelling form. We don't know yet what the Trump presidency is going to look like, but I think it's going to give journalists a lot to do.
- [22:19]
C
Amy And, George, it's no secret to you, because you see it all around you, that there are a lot of people who are not in the press, who are not in government, who are confused. They don't know what to do. They feel bereft. There are people who are part of groups and ethnicities that have been radically insulted by the new president, and they feel powerless. They feel attacked directly in some way that they would not have felt with Mitt Romney or John McCain or any number of other politicians had they won. What can people do? I know you're not the head of a social movement, but what can a citizen do? How do they go about viewing the future?
- [23:04]
B
I think there are two things. One is, and it's going to sound very, you know, but to be good neighbors, to be decent neighbors, to recognize the fears next door and the isolation that a neighbor who maybe isn't the same member of the same group that you are might feel, and to stand up for your neighbors, that's a very abstract thing, maybe, but also very practical, small thing. And it's something like, you know, it happens on buses, it happens on subways. It just happens when you're walking down the street. The other thing is, one hopes that people will continue to see politics as a respectable profession and enter it and enter it. And even if they don't enter it, to not despise it. The whole culture of distrust of anybody who touches politics is. It's not healthy.
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C
Which is an entirely healthy answer. But I can almost hear the answer coming back to me is, well, it's fine if I'm a good neighbor and I'm nice to other people on the bus and across fences and whether it's metaphorical or real. But we're talking about the concern about somebody with the nuclear codes. We're talking about a person who is commander in chief of armed forces, who has the ability to sign bills and promote and appoint Supreme Court justice, who. There's a deep concern, there has to.
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B
Be enormous, enormous pressure to confirm another Supreme Court justice and a decent one. And, you know, the ACLU tweeted out the morning after Election Day, if, you know President Trump wants to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we'll see him in court and to push on all the fronts where we can, in civil society, push and not give up on those mechanisms, because we've got some pretty great constitutional mechanisms. We've developed them over 200 years. We. This is not the moment to give up on them.
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C
And it's not Russia and it's not Turkey. George Yeah.
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D
I think that disconsolate liberals should look at the history of the modern conservative movement. They came out of the 60s when they were a laughingstock, when Goldwater had been destroyed, when Phyllis Schlafly was the seemingly ridiculous voice of the heartland. Right. And within a dozen years, they'd elected a president after their own heart. But more importantly, created a grassroots structure that, that won local elections and school board elections and congressional elections. And sometimes I think Democrats pay a lot of attention every four years and forget that in between this tremendous amount of boring and unglamorous organizing that needs to be done, local movements that are trying to reform corruption and other problems locally continue. No matter who's president.
- [26:15]
B
Democracy pervades our society. We're not one of those societies that has one or not yet. One strong man and one vote every four years. We have so many moments and so many, so many small tools for democratic participation, and it's just a matter of making use of them. That was Amy Davidson, George Packer, and David Ray.
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D
Nick.
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E
What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global Editorial Director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
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D
I want a shark that.
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E
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I.
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B
Try to be an antidote to the.
- [27:23]
E
Unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now, in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [27:59]
B
From.
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D
Prx.