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- [00:07]
Tyler Foggatt
Hey, Isaac.
- [00:08]
Isaac Chotiner
Hey, Tyler. How are you?
- [00:09]
Heidi Blake
Good.
- [00:09]
Tyler Foggatt
Thanks so much for being here.
- [00:11]
Isaac Chotiner
My pleasure.
- [00:12]
Tyler Foggatt
I guess I wonder like, what you kind of see your goal is, you know, when you're seeking out interviews, like if it's to provide people with context or maybe like a different take on an issue that they're probably already following closely, or is it to like in introduce them to information that they never would have encountered otherwise?
- [00:30]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah, I think sometimes it's to kind of narrow down and focus on something that I myself have having trouble understanding and really want to try and laser in on. I did a lot of interviews about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, especially when Israel cut off aid. And I think the reason that I was interested in that was because I really kind of wanted to understand the mechanism of how the aid shutoff was working and then the sort of basically half hearted attempts to increase food in the months after the total aid shutoff. And so that was an area where I just thought if I could do multiple interviews on it, I could try and understand and hopefully explain to readers exactly what was going on and the intentions of the principal parties, in this case Israel and the United States. So that's definitely one thing. It's sometimes trying to understand kind of breaking news. It's sometimes trying to kind of laser focus on an issue and do a bunch of things on it to try and get a sort of broader understanding of it. And sometimes it's to try and highlight some something that I don't think is getting much attention and I think hopefully sometimes is to do interviews that are somewhat lighter and dare I say, even fun or interesting to readers in a lighthearted manner. Those are kind of the different goals that I have with the interview. So it sort of depends.
- [01:47]
Tyler Foggatt
That's Isaac Chotiner, a staff writer at the New Yorker who conducts interviews with high profile figures and experts in politics, media and public life. Over the past year, Isaac spoke with a range of people trying to make sense of a volatile era in both US and global politics. Those entries in the magazine's Q and A series included discussions about the rise of political violence and polarization in the U.S. debates over how to understand Donald Trump's second term, including his use of tariffs and economic power, and interviews that pressed prominent figures to explain their assumptions and understanding of recent political history. I wanted to talk with Isaac about some of his biggest conversations from 2020, from political violence to Trump's governing style and autocratic tendencies, to two high profile interviews with Karine Jean Pierre, the former White House press secretary under Joe Biden. And Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar and author, this is the Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt and I'm a senior editor at the New Yorker. I want to start off by talking about one of the major themes of the year, which has been political violence. I mean, the year literally started off with a bombing of a cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, which was carried out by a US army veteran who in a letter framed the act as a wake up call against what he described as corrupt political and military leadership. Although we should be clear it didn't seem to be done in protest of Donald Trump himself. But we also have big, high profile incidents like the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September. And after the murderer Charlie Kirk, you spoke with Liliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins who studies polarization and political violence. So I'm wondering how that conversation helped you understand the broader pattern of political violence this year, from the June attacks on Democratic Minnesota state lawmakers and their families to the murder of Charlie Kirk in the fall.
- [03:42]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah, I mean, you know, political violence is not a subject I'm an expert on, but it was, it was good to talk to her and do some interviews around this. And one of the points she made was just sort of looking at survey data of language and how people view people in the other party and using terms like animals to describe people in the other party. And I think what she was sort of saying was not that all political violence is expressly partisan. We, we know that much of it is not. And often when these, you know, shooters or bombers or whoever else are revealed, it's, you know, they're not, they're not political partisans in the way we normally expect. But that, broadly speaking, there is increasing dislike among the parties and people who follow the parties. And beyond that, just, there's a climate which may sort of broadly, a climate so much rage that may broadly contribute to political violence. So that was some of the stuff she was talking about. But I think one frustration I have with some of the conversations about political violence is that it's absolutely something to be incredibly concerned about. But when people tend to talk about political violence in the context of the United States, my feeling is usually that what's truly scary, I think, is someone using the power of the state to crack down and using political violence, in a sense, become state violence. You know, the, the amount of violence that we've seen this year, again, is completely horrific. But I don't think of it as a fundamental threat to the United States in any broad way. I Know, people like to talk about civil war in America or something else, which always seemed pretty ridiculous to me, or at least the idea that you sort of have two tribes of red and blue attacking each other, going after each other in some way. What seems trul. Scary though, is that someone could use the power of the state to crack down on their enemies. And that I think for obvious reasons is. Is what's frightening about our current moment.
- [05:33]
Tyler Foggatt
Going back to political violence in the sense of, you know, someone kind of taking aim at a high profile political figure. What is your sense of how prevalent it actually is in the US as compared to in decades past?
- [05:47]
Isaac Chotiner
I do think that we are seeing some degree of more political violence now than we've seen in a while. And I think that that's generally seen as the consensus. But, you know, one of the things that' very complicated about the subject is exactly how you define political violence and what counts as political violence. And, you know, there are all kinds of different events that can happen and that, you know, tend to get tabulated in different ways. But I think one of the things just to go back to the kind of what's. What can be frustrating about this conversation is that fundamentally nothing is really going to happen with guns in America, which is obviously how so much of political violence manifests itself. So I think that because of that, there tends to be kind of an over focus on. On the heated rhetoric, which I think is important, as I said early on. But it often seems like, you know, we talk about it and we say political violence is increasing and we say the rhetoric is getting out of control. And I think that that's true, obviously. But it also seems to me that fundamentally that you know, calming down the rhetoric is not going to change that much. And it makes me think that the sort of actual solutions, which I think in this case would be some sort of, you know, less access to guns. And it's hard to see anything really changing for the foreseeable future.
- [07:01]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, I mean, on the gun control front, I mean, just look at Australia where there was, you know, this horrible anti Semitic attack over the weekend. I think at least 15 people were killed and less than 48 hours later, they announced strict new gun laws, which is just like something that would never happen in the U.S. yeah, I mean.
- [07:21]
Isaac Chotiner
It'S almost like a waste of time even discussing it here just because it's so far from reality or plausibility.
- [07:27]
Tyler Foggatt
In your interview with Mason, you press her on this central dilemma, which is that political violence is often fueled by seeing the other side as an existential threat. But sometimes that belief isn't entirely imagined. So how do experts distinguish between fear and anger rooted in just like straight up conspiracy and hysteria, and then like fear that's grounded in actual Democratic danger?
- [07:51]
Isaac Chotiner
I don't think that people should be using violence right now in the United States to achieve their political ends, whether they're Democrats or Republicans or liberals or conservatives. But I do have incredible frustration with the way this data is talked about. This is not about Liliana Mason per se, but it's about, you know, you see these polls and you, you know, you'll see something like what percentage of people think the other party would not respect the results of the next election. And you have, you know, I can't remember the exact figures, but you have something like 75 to 80% of both parties saying the other side will not respect the results of the next election. And then you have sort of social scientists or journalists bemoan that this is the case. And to me, what's worth bemoaning is that 80% of Republicans think that Democrats will not respect the results of the next election. Because I think fundamentally, as has been shown, that the Democratic Party, for whatever its myriad flaws, tends to respect the results of elections, and the Republican Party in its current incarnation does not. And so my perspective would be that Democrats saying that to a pollster reflects their understanding of reality, and Republicans saying that to a pollster reflects a distortion of reality. And I feel like frequently when I'm sort of reading about this that that sort of fundamental reality is not sort of talked about enough. I mean, there are other issues where the part, you know, I'm sure Democrats are also at fault, but in this case, questions like that, I've been frustrated by the way they're kind of translated and talked about.
- [09:18]
Tyler Foggatt
We're going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, I'd like to talk to you about Donald Trump. This is the political scene from the New York.
- [09:32]
David Remnick
Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlamagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [10:09]
Tyler Foggatt
So you spoke to a lot of people this year about Trump and his policies and their larger effects. And in particular, I wanted to focus on a conversation you had that centered on tariffs, just because they seem to touch on so many defining features of Trump's presidency, from, like, the protectionism aspect to his unilateral decision making and just the use of American economic power as leverage. So back in April, you interviewed John Werner Mueller, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively about right wing populism. So how did he understand Trump's tariffs as fitting into the broader story of Trump's second term? Like, I want to talk about the international implications, but first, I want to start with, like, the domestic framing of it.
- [10:52]
Isaac Chotiner
Well, you know, I think that one of the things that he was trying to get across, and one thing I think that's been an increasing challenge for reporters is trying to talk about Trump's policies without talking about him having some conception, him being Donald Trump, having some conception of the national interest that he's trying to pursue. Because I think the sense among people in the past with whatever your politics and whatever you thought of Joe Biden or George W. Bush or, you know, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, that they were pursuing some version of the national interest, whether that was good or bad or criminal or inspiring or whatever else. And I think that with things like tariffs, I think a lot of the coverage in the media focused on Trump having sincere views about, you know, tariffs and economic policy and trade deficits and so on and so forth. And whether that is a small part of Trump's thinking, I couldn't say. But I think, broadly speaking, tariffs are a way of him seeking more power in economic decisions and in negotiations with other countries, which I think, as we've seen in the last year or so, year, almost year, has allowed him to get his finger in the pie of many different companies and to take more control of the economy in ways that may benefit him personally. And I think this is really hard because you don't want to speculate about things that you don't know, but at the same time, you do not want to seem naive about what's going on. I'll just tell you a brief story, which is that I was doing an interview this year about the Trump administration's policies with regard to India and Pakistan, where Trump has been very pro Pakistan and very critical and annoyed with Narendra Modi and his government in India, which has been very surprising because Modi and Trump had this kind of closest relationship in the first term. And Pakistan has never been, like, particularly valued or liked by American administrations for a Whole myriad reasons. And I was listening to a former Biden official talk about this, and this is a person who's, you know, pretty, pretty buttoned up, who said, essentially, oh, well, that's because the Pakistanis are paying off Trump. And there have been some reports that Pakistan is getting involved in crypto businesses which may be close to the president's family. And I think this is a really hard thing for journalists, right, because this stuff is really hard to report on. It's really complex. It's really hard to know what's going on. And you don't want to. You talk to your audience to say, you know, basically peddle conspiracy theories about what the president is profiting from or not profiting from at another level. You do not want to seem naive. And I did not want to conduct an interview about Trump's policies in South Asia pretending that, you know, Trump is sitting by a map with some chess or chessboard thinking about, you know, various ideas for how to make South Asia more secure and stable and what that would mean for the long term relationship with the United States and India and Pakistan. I mean, it's almost ridiculous to bring these things up. So it's just been. I think it's a very hard thing for journalists to talk about all of these international issues. And I think a lot of the questions around tariffs fit into that, too.
- [13:54]
Tyler Foggatt
I mean, there must just be a difference between, like, the way that academics talk about Trump's tariffs and like, the context of, you know, larger economic policy and theory versus people who are actually in politics or people who actually have kind of knowledge of what it is that Trump's doing. And I would imagine that people who've spent like, their entire lives studying economics or studying something that kind of overlaps with a policy that Trump is doing, that it must be. I can see them almost, like, kind of wanting to fall back to always trying to take these ideas, like, actually kind of serious and to assess them on the terms that you would assess normal political ideas, when there always is this other element of, like, is he just doing this because he, like, hates Venezuela? Is he just doing this because he is corrupt and is making money off of this somehow? And so I wonder how that desire to speculate or the refusal to speculate, if you're, like an academic who cares a lot about these issues and kind of refuses to play that game, how that colors the interviews you do, like, if there's just this, like, elephant in the room that, you know, they may or may not touch.
- [14:52]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I sometimes feel this, even just reading the newspaper. And this is not because I think that, like, people who write kind of reports from Washington, sort of straight news reports for the major newspapers, it's not because I think that they're, like, necessarily naive or that they're in the tank for Trump or anything like that. It just often seems that the tone of those stories is still sort of acting as if things are more normal than they are. And again, that doesn't mean, like, call Trump a liar, which. Or something like that in the headline, which I think too much of our. The criticism of the media in the last 10 years is focused on. It's more just that, you know, and again, I understand that because you don't want to speculate about things you don't know. But. But, you know, I'll frequently be reading the newspaper and there will be sort of mentions of Trump's strategy for, you know, the Far east or whatever else, and it just. It just feels laughable to me. I don't. It just seems completely disconnected from reality. The only reason I brought that up was I think it's a, you know, it's an issue for all of us just because this is. This is so unprecedented in that sense, not just, you know, people who are further away from politics.
- [15:55]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, no, I kind of feel like we're, like, simultaneously taking Trump too seriously and, like, not seriously enough. I find myself, like, both concerned by the way in which we, you know, take things that just kind of seem like they're driven by whim and treat them as, like, normal policies that we should kind of, like, understand or maybe even try to justify, like, in the way that, you know, early on in the tariffs, there were a lot of people who were like, hey, maybe this is actually gonna work. And then also, you know, I feel like there's like, also kind of, like, a quick dismissal of some aspects of Trump, whether it be, like, you know, even just his claim that, like, he's gonna be able to, you know, make deals, you know, and help bring about a ceasefire between Israel and Ha. I don't know, it does seem like there are times where you start wondering, like, oh, is, like, Steve Witkoff, like, actually pretty good at his job? Like, I don't know if you feel the same way, but I was definitely.
- [16:50]
Isaac Chotiner
Surprised by the fact that he pushed Netanyahu in a short term timeframe as hard as he did to get to a ceasefire. I mean, I think, you know, the context of that was after this kind of starvation campaign and after things had gotten significantly worse in Gaza than they had under the Biden administration, which I don't think Netanyahu necessarily would have even quite tried during the Biden administration, I don't think, I think would have come with more serious consequences, even though the Biden administration was obviously very forgiving of the Netanyahu government for, you know, a year and a half. But I, I agree. I was surprised in the short term that when Trump really put his mind to it, he's capable of exerting real pressure in ways that you may not expect in most cases, though. And I think that this would be the case with Netanyahu and I think a version of will, a case with Putin. Just since you brought up Witkoff, who's trying to negotiate with Jared Kushner a peace deal in Russia and Ukraine. I think that even if in a very short term, he can put his mind to something and in the short term accomplish something that maybe you thought he wouldn't do or wouldn't be capable of doing, I think the follow through in those cases is usually not there. And so you're unlikely to see sort of the long term results that you hope to get. But I agree, if he has in his mind that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize, he's certainly capable of calling Netanyahu and telling him to knock it off. And, you know, the motives for that may be unclear, but absolutely. I just don't know how in the larger arc of history, how important that part of Trump is going to seem.
- [18:27]
Tyler Foggatt
More with Isaac Chotiner after the break. This is the political scene from the New Yorker.
- [18:39]
Katie Drummond
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.
- [19:06]
Isaac Chotiner
I want a shark that, that eats.
- [19:08]
Katie Drummond
The Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [19:12]
Isaac Chotiner
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [19:20]
Katie Drummond
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.
- [19:57]
Tyler Foggatt
So, Isaac, there were a couple of interviews you did this year that just went super viral online, and one of those was your interview with Karine Jean Pierre, who served as White House press secretary for much of the Biden presidency. You spoke with her during the rollout of her memoir and after her decision to leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent. Just right off the bat, what explanation did she give for that decision to leave the party?
- [20:22]
Isaac Chotiner
Well, it was essentially that the Democratic Party had been too mean to her former boss, Joe Biden.
- [20:28]
Tyler Foggatt
And, you know, just reading the interview, it feels like you guys were kind of operating from different premises very early on, and I guess that was one of the premises that you were just not really in agreement about. But I guess what happens in an interview like that where someone says something like that and you're kind of just like, the Democratic Party treated Joe Biden unfairly.
- [20:46]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah. I mean, it was funny because, you know, when, when I'd heard that she'd left the Democratic Party, which was before I'd read her, I, you know, normally when someone leaves a party, it's, you sort of hear the typical story, right? Like the party had moved too far to the left or too far to the right. And this person is kind of a bold centrist who, you know, is going to speak common sense and explain why they're now political independent. This was not really that. In fact, I would say her views are pretty far left, and she was leaving the party because of how it treated Joe Biden. So I should say, you know, I'd written a couple pieces last year saying essentially that Biden should step aside. So I should say that my perspective on this is not something I would keep secret. That it felt to me that Biden was clearly too old to be president through 2029. And so when I, when I'd heard that she was writing this book and that she was taking such a bold step of leaving the Democratic Party, which I should say, sitting side by side in this book with her, her feeling that the Democratic Party need to be deserted was her feeling that Donald Trump was a huge threat to democracy and so on and so forth, and must be resisted. And so I just thought that that was kind of a funny confluence of things and thought it would be interesting to talk to her.
- [21:58]
Tyler Foggatt
Another interesting moment in that interview is when you guys are talking about Jean Pierre's views on Kamala Harris and her electability. Could you remind us sort of what that part of the conversation was like? Like what you asked, and then how she responded and how confusing it was?
- [22:12]
Isaac Chotiner
Well, yeah, I mean, she. She seemed to be saying that after Biden did step aside, she was someone who thought that the party should turn to Kamala Harris rather than have some sort of open primary, which didn't happen, but was sort of dec. Discussed as a possibility. And she was not pleased, if I remember correctly, with people who felt that Kamala Harris was not electable or, you know, perhaps not electable enough and, you know, that there should be an open primary and there should be a chance for other candidates to be the nominee last year in 2024. So she was very annoyed, irritated by this perspective and felt that it was unfair to Kamala Harris. She also said it is a different time in the book, that she never thought Kamala could win. So I found that, as I was reading the book, just very confusing and wanted to ask her about it.
- [22:59]
Tyler Foggatt
I think one thing that's so striking about this interview is that it's not uncommon for you to speak with someone whose, you know, kind of thoughts are a little muddled or where they're not, you know, necessarily super clear about their arguments. I feel like, you know, we do that every day when we're reporting, and, you know, you often see it in quotes, and it's typical with, you know, just sort of like the normal people that you interview, like, on the street. But this is like a White House press secretary, and I feel like a lot of the answers were just kind of, like, hard to parse, I guess, like, maybe one. Are you often wary when you're going into an interview with someone who is, like, a professional press person, like, ostensibly very skilled in PR and is sort of like a spin master? How do you kind of approach those interviews to begin with? And then how did Karine Jean Pierre's performance during that interview compare with people in similar roles who you've spoken to before?
- [23:51]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah, I mean, this one was, you know, that's a good question. I mean, I'm not sure about different preparations, but, you know, generally political professionals are pretty quick on their feet. What was confusing about this, just going into it, was that she'd written this book. I mean, I'm assuming she wrote it. I know sometimes people have ghostwriters, but, you know, I assume she knew it was in the book, and there were just obvious contradictions in the book. I think that one of the things I wanted to get across with doing this interview. And one thing that has struck me, and I don't know is if so much about a logical contradiction as just where a bunch of people are is the people, and I'm speaking broadly, the people that have been vocal working who worked for Joe Biden. Many of them have seemed to be still quite angry and irritated with the way he was treated. And that has been something that I thought would have sort of disappeared by now. I sort of thought everyone could kind of agree that the Biden presidency went off the rails a bit in the last year and that the way his debate and his eventual decision not to seek a second term was handled was a disaster. And I'm just surprised that among some people who work for Biden, I don't want to say all at all because I've also had conversations with people who work for Biden who feel that it was a disaster. But I've just been very surprised by how many people are still sticking with this line. It's like the last fighter on Iwo Jima type of thing, which is a little strange.
- [25:14]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, it's fascinating because I read the interview with Jean Pierre and I'm thinking like it's kind of shocking just that she would take that approach. But then you're right that it is like weirdly representative, at least of like a segment of like the Biden coalition, that they felt that he was mistreated and that things shouldn't have gone down like that. And it's like they shouldn't have gone down like that. Cuz he shouldn't have, you know, run in the first place, but.
- [25:37]
Isaac Chotiner
Right, exactly. And you know, I think also what was shocking to me talking to her more than any sort of logical contradiction or whatever else, was that she was so focused on what was offensive to Joe Biden. And it always surprises me when people analyze politics from that perspective. I mean, maybe that's heartless in some way. This came up a lot about people pushing Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire, which was a very heated thing over a decade ago where some people would suggest that Ginsburg should have retired while Obama was still president. And whatever you think about that argument, the response was frequently like, well, that is disrespectful to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as if like the sort of personal feelings of Ruth Bader Ginsburg are in some sense equivalent or on the same sort of level of importance as which president appoints the next Supreme Court justice. Anyway, I felt that the sort of Ginsburg issue was magnified by 10 with talking to Karine Jean Pierre about Biden, where the centrality of his feelings to what was being discussed and how people were not respectful to him loomed so large in a way that felt, frankly, bizarre to me.
- [26:48]
Tyler Foggatt
So lastly, I want to ask you about your interview with Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar and author of the 2008 book Nudge following the publication of his new book on liberalism. So you described his conception of liberalism as quite capacious. What did you mean by that? And how did that breath show up in the conversation that you had with him?
- [27:07]
Isaac Chotiner
You know, I'll speculate a little bit here. Cause he doesn't actually say this in the book. But my sense was that Sunstein, who's kind of a, I don't want to say classical liberal, although in some ways he is that. But Sunstein is sort of, I mean, he's an expert on many things, very smart guy, and clearly wanted to sort of talk about liberalism in the year 2025 as something that brought everyone into the tent except, broadly speaking, Donald Trump type figures. That's what I understood him wanting to say was that, you know, broadly speaking, we are a liberal country. We respect each other. We have some appreciation for various freedoms, for the market as well, and that this is not true of Donald Trump. But broadly speaking, everyone else is in the tent. And so in that tent, he included a lot of conservative figures from the 20th century, economists, politicians who are not generally considered liberals, even sometimes small l liberals. And what I thought was interesting about that was not that he's wrong per se, but that so much of the current Republican Party and the Republican Party of the last several decades, so many of those figures ended up supporting Donald Trump. And not only that, but the party itself was able to be taken over by a person like Donald Trump. And so I thought it was interesting to examine these figures in such a way that we could perhaps ask ourselves, well, if they were so truly liberal, how did it sort of get to this, both in their, some, in some cases, their eventual support for Trump, but also just in the broad question of how conservatism in the United States, if these were the kind of intellectual godfathers of conservatism in the United States, how this is where we ended up. So that's what I was kind of interested in pressing him on.
- [28:52]
Tyler Foggatt
One exchange that generated a lot of attention in that interview was your discussion of Sunstein's friendship with Henry Kissinger. What prompted you to raise that relationship and how did he explain it or defend it?
- [29:04]
Isaac Chotiner
Well, I mean, I guess I should say I brought it up because I'm kind of obsessed with this subject. I shouldn't pretend otherwise. Just Kissinger as a figure always, has always fascinated me, and the kind of establishment's warmth towards him has always fascinated me. And so I think one problem that some people on the left critique about liberalism, which I always found the most convincing critique of liberalism, some of the critiques of liberalism from the left I don't find convincing, but one that I broadly have found convincing is that there's a standard about liberalism in the United States that liberal politicians too often do not extend outside of the United States, and that typically has taken the form of being in support of imperialism, especially in the second half of the 20th century. So Kissinger feels like a very good example of that, of someone who had no respect for people in other countries and pursued policies that treated them as less than worthless and frankly got a lot of people killed. And so because I think he's a good representative of this critique of liberalism that I happen to find convincing, I thought just I would sort of ask him why he was friends with this guy who pursued these policies that I would hope that anyone who calls themselves a liberal would find abhorrent. So I thought his answers on that were revealing.
- [30:22]
Tyler Foggatt
What were they again? Would you. Could you remind the listeners who haven't read the interview, although we will point them to the interviews.
- [30:28]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah. No, I mean, he mentioned that Kissinger was a good friend and had come to his book party about a book he wrote about Star Wars, I think was what he said. And to me, maybe this gets back to our conversation about Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in some way. I think that friendship is important, and I think you can have friends with different political views than yourself, but I don't really think you should be friends with someone who, you know, illegally bombed Cambodia and so on. And I just thought he was prioritizing friendship or, you know, Kissinger saying some nice things about his Star wars book over these larger questions which happen to have more importance.
- [31:06]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, there's kind of. That whole exchange is so the best word to describe it is just funny where, you know, he kind of explains the Star wars thing and then you say, well, the next time someone brings up a terrible anecdote about Cambodia or Vietnam, I will definitely drink the Star wars story to show that people have two sides. Yeah. Which is a great rejoinder. Do you find that your subjects in interviews that end up being kind of contentious and it's kind of clear that you are prodding the subject and they're not doing that well during the prodding. Do you ever get the sense that the subject knows they're bombing and does that then change the dynamic for the rest of the interview? Cause I feel like it's just so different when you're reporting a story versus, like, we are sitting down and we are doing a Q and A now. And, like, once they're in it, it's hard to go out of it. Although I know you have had the experience of, like, someone just kind of, like, ending an interview short.
- [32:01]
Isaac Chotiner
Yeah, that's incredibly rare. And I don't think that very often people think an interview is not going well for them. I would just point out, you know, a couple things. One is that some people have very different points of view than I do, and maybe very different points of view than the readers of the New Yorker. This maybe doesn't go for Karine Jean Pierre, but just generally speaking. And so sometimes I'll hear so and so came across horribly in your interview. And they may not think so. And the people who think like them may not think so. They may think I came across horribly or that I was asking rude questions or something else. So I think it's always good to keep in mind that people just have really different perspectives. And in an interview can read very differently depending on what your perspective is, which is totally, you know, is totally fine. That's the first thing I would say. The second thing is. No, I mean, one thing I would like to pride myself on or try to pride myself on is keeping conversations relatively light and fun. And I made a couple jokes to Sunstein in part because I think even if your jokes are somewhat sarcastic, you can kind of develop a human rapport with someone. And I don't think people are usually upset about the interview or angry about an interview. That happens very, very rarely. I think Sunstein was not pleased about the Kissinger part of the interview, but I don't think that's because, like, he thought he, like, quote, unquote, did poorly. I think he just felt awkward about being asked about it. As for Jean Pierre, I don't know. You know, I don't know her, and I didn't. I didn't hear from her after the interview. So I'm not. I'm not sure. But. But generally speaking, I. I don't get the sense that people feel that the interviews went badly. Most people like to talk and they like to express their points of view. And I think that usually after an interview, that's how they feel that they were able to do that. I hope they feel like they were able to do that, that.
- [33:50]
Tyler Foggatt
Well. Thank you so much for your time, Isaac. It's always so, so fun to have you on the show.
- [33:54]
Isaac Chotiner
Great to talk to Tyler. Thank you.
- [33:58]
Tyler Foggatt
Isaac Totner is a staff writer for the New Yorker. You can find his latest Q and A in the wake of Australia's Hanukkah beach massacre@new yorker.com this has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Tyler Foggit. This episode was produced by John Lamay with mixing by Mike Kutchman and engineering by Pran Bandy. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday for a conversation about artificial intelligence recorded live at the New Yorker Festival. See you then.
- [34:42]
Heidi Blake
It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.
- [34:55]
Isaac Chotiner
I know there's going to be a.
- [34:56]
Tyler Foggatt
Twist one day, a massive twist at.
- [34:58]
Isaac Chotiner
Every level of the criminal justice system. There's been a couple cover up in this case.
- [35:02]
Heidi Blake
I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from in the Dark and the New Yorker. Find it now in the in the Dark podcast feed.