By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout |
Just how bad are things with Donald Trump in the White House? And
what does having a racist, misogynist, xenophobic and erratic president
who continues to enjoy unquestionable support from his base tell us
about the state of US politics and the dangers to the future of
democracy in the US and in the world on the whole? Noam Chomsky shares
his thoughts on these and other related questions in an exclusive
interview with C. J. Polychroniou for Truthout.
C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, it's been already 14 months into
Donald Trump's turbulent White House tenure, but sometimes we still need
to pinch ourselves to make sure that it's not a nightmare that a
racist, misogynist, homophobic man who apparently cares only about
himself runs the world's most powerful nation. But, really, how bad is
it having Trump in the White House?
Very bad. As Trump began his second year in office, the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists advanced their Doomsday Clock to two minutes to
midnight, citing increasing concerns over nuclear weapons and climate
change. That's the closest it has been to terminal disaster since 1953,
when the US and USSR exploded thermonuclear weapons. That was before the
release of Trump's Nuclear Posture Review, which significantly
increases the dangers by lowering the threshold for nuclear attack and
by developing new weapons that increase the danger of terminal war.
On climate change, Trump is a complete disaster, along with the
entire Republican leadership. Every candidate in the Republican
primaries either denied that what is happening is happening or said ...
we shouldn't do anything about it. And these attitudes infect the
Republican base. Half of Republicans deny that global warming is taking
place, while 70 percent say that whether it is or not, humans are not
responsible. Such figures would be shocking anywhere, but are remarkably
so in a developed country with unparalleled resources and easy access
to information.
It is hard to find words to describe the fact that the most powerful
country in world history is not only withdrawing from global efforts to
address a truly existential threat, but is also dedicating itself to
accelerating the race to disaster, all to put more dollars in
overstuffed pockets. No less astounding is the limited attention paid to
the phenomenon.
When we turn to matters of great though lesser import, the conclusion
is the same: disaster. While Trump's antics occupy the attention of the
media, his associates in Congress have been working intensively to
advance the interests of their actual constituency -- extreme wealth and
corporate power -- while dismantling what is of value to the general
population and future generations. With justice, the Republican
leadership regard the tax bill as their greatest triumph. Joseph
Stiglitz rightly describes
the triumph as "The US Donor Relief Act of 2017," a vast giveaway to
their actual constituency -- and to themselves. As he points out, the
Republican leaders "are stuffing themselves at the trough -- Trump,
Kushner and many others in his administration are among the biggest
winners -- thinking that this may be their last chance at such a feast."
And "Après moi, le deluge" -- literally in this case.
The grand triumph brings an extra advantage. It explodes the deficit
(a trademark of Republicans since Reagan), which means that they can
move on to cut away at entitlements, as the chief architect, Paul Ryan,
announced happily at once. The US already ranks near the bottom of the
[Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries -- the
35 richer and more developed countries -- in social justice measures.
The Republican triumph will sink it even lower. The tax scam is only the
most prominent of the devices being implemented under the cover of
Trump buffoonery to serve wealth and corporate power while harming the
irrelevant population.
Many other policies are simply [unconscionable], such as Trump's
initiative to have the Department of Homeland Security separate
children, even infants, from their mothers in order to discourage
immigration -- 700 families have been split in this fashion since
October, a New York Times investigation found. Many of these families
are fleeing from the murderous consequences of US policies: Honduras has
been the main source of refugee flight since the US, almost alone,
endorsed the military coup that ousted the elected president and the
fraudulent election that followed, initiating a reign of terror.
We also must endure the sight of Trump wailing in terror because a
caravan of victims reached Mexico, most hoping to settle there. Trump's
suggestion that these victims are threatening the security of the US is
reminiscent of Reagan strapping on his cowboy boots and calling a
national emergency because Nicaraguan troops were a two days march from
Texas, and about to overwhelm us. It's amazing that such performances do
not evoke profound national embarrassment.
To the extent that politics is the art of the possible, would
you say that Trump has been consistent so far with the promises he made
to voters during the 2016 campaign?
In some cases, yes. He is fulfilling the wishes of the Evangelicals
who are a large part of his voting base. He is greatly increasing the
military budget, as he promised. ... Most of his promises are about as
close to fulfillment as his commitment to "drain the swamp," which is
now overflowing. [Scott] Pruitt's [Environmental Protection Agency]
alone is a cesspool, though its dismantling of efforts to deal with the
impact of climate change are far more serious than the wholesale
robbery, which seems to be a Pruitt specialty from well before he was
handed the wrecking ball.
On trade, though the policies, insofar as they are coherent, are
generally harmful, the rhetoric is not completely false. Thus it is true
that China is using devices that violate World Trade Organization rules
-- devices that were critical to the growth of the rich societies, from
England to the US and beyond, and are now banned by the investor rights
agreements mislabeled "free trade agreements." This is a textbook
illustration of what economic historians call "kicking away the ladder":
First we climb up, then we kick the ladder away so that you can't
follow.
And Trump is right that the [North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA)] should be revised. Some sensible proposals have been put forth
by the partners in NAFTA. For example, Canada has proposed that the
revised NAFTA should ban harsh US anti-labor laws, like the
right-to-scrounge laws called "right-to-work" in contemporary Newspeak.
These laws are soon to become federal policy, it seems, under the
reactionary Roberts Court, which was made more extreme by [Senate
Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell's shameful parliamentary maneuvers to
prevent even consideration of Obama's nomination, opening the way to the
appointment of Neil Gorsuch -- another gift to the far right.
The Canadian proposal was prominently reported in the major Canadian
press, but, oddly, is missing from the discussions of NAFTA revision
here, which keep to Trump proposals.
Allegations of collusion continue to haunt Donald Trump's
presidency, primarily over his alleged ties to Russia and Putin, and
former FBI Director James Comey said in a recent interview with ABC News
that Trump is "morally unfit" to be president. What's your take on all
this, and what does Trump's disrespect for law and the fact that his
base is refusing to abandon him tell us about the current state of
American democracy and US politics in general?
We don't need Comey to tell us that Trump is morally unfit. He made
that abundantly clear in the primaries, if not before. The fact that the
Oval Office is coming to resemble a schoolyard on a bad day may be
obnoxious, but it doesn't rank high among the misdeeds of the
administration, in my opinion. ... Same with his alleged ties to Russia
and Putin. Much more serious is the clique that now surrounds him. It's a
sad day when one has to hope that General [James] Mattis will keep the
... [rest] in check. The [John] Bolton appointment in particular should
send shivers up the spine of any person.
As for Trump's base, they are indeed quite loyal. Most Trump voters
were relatively affluent and probably are fairly satisfied with the
ultra-reactionary policies. Another important segment was
non-college-educated whites, a group that voted overwhelmingly for Trump
(a 40 percent advantage).
There is a close analysis of this group in
the current (Spring 2018) issue of the Political Science Quarterly. It
found that racism and sexism were far more significant factors in their
vote than economic issues. If so, this group has little reason to object
to the scene that is unfolding, and the same with the white
Evangelicals who gave Trump 80 percent of their vote. Among justly
angry, white, working-class Trump voters, many apparently enjoy watching
him stick his thumb in the eyes of the hated elites even if he doesn't
fufill his promises to [working-class voters], which many never believed
in the first place.
What all this tells us, yet again, is that the neoliberal programs
that have concentrated wealth in a few hands while the majority stagnate
or decline have also severely undermined functioning democracy by
familiar mechanisms, leading to anger, contempt for the dominant
centrist political forces and institutions, and often anti-social
attitudes and behavior -- alongside of very promising popular reactions,
like the remarkable [Bernie] Sanders phenomenon, [Jeremy] Corbyn in
England and positive developments elsewhere as well.
Ryan, an influential architect of the Republican economic
platform, announced that he is stepping down from Congress. Do you think
his decision was motivated by the fear that a "blue wave" may be coming
in November as a result of a growing backlash against Trump and
Trumpism?
There is much talk about how this "admirable" figure, who bedazzled
the media with fraudulent spreadsheets, wants to spend time with his
family. Much more likely, I think, is that he decided to leave Congress
because he had achieved his long-standing goals, particularly with the
"Donor Relief Act of 2017" and the deficit cuts that open the way to
sharp reduction of entitlements: health, social security, pensions --
whatever matters to the people beyond the very privileged. And perhaps
he prefers to be out of town when it becomes too hard to conceal what's
being done to the general population and someone will have to face the
music.
With regard to foreign affairs, what do you consider to be the most menacing elements of Trump's handling of US foreign policy?
Trump inherited multiple crises. His own policies have been largely
incoherent, but he has been consistent in some areas, primarily the
Middle East. He has provided strong support for the Saudi war in Yemen, a
major catastrophe, and is exulting in the huge arms sales to the
dictatorship. Last December, UN agencies warned that the Saudi blockade
of Yemen could lead to "one of the largest famines in modern times."
Yemen already has the world's worst cholera outbreak, which is not under
control. The Saudi blockade is hindering desperately needed imports of
food, medicine and fuel.
Apart from the human disaster it is creating, the Saudi dictatorship,
always with firm US backing, seems intent on carrying forward the
Taliban and ISIS projects of destroying precious antiquities. Reviewing
the systematic Saudi destruction, the chair of Yemen's Organization of
Antiquities and Museums charges that the attacks on 60 sites are "a
conscious campaign to wreck Yemen's heritage and demoralize its
citizens." Western experts agree that the destruction seems deliberate,
using information provided by the [United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization] on cultural heritage sites to
direct bombing attacks, with no military objective.
The US-led attack on ISIS in Raqqa destroyed the city, and nothing is
being done to reconstruct or help the victims. Under the influence of
[US-UN Ambassador] Nikki Haley, one of the more sinister (and, it seems,
ambitious) figures in the administration, Trump has sharply cut funding
to the [United Nations Relief and Works Agency], which barely keeps
millions of Palestinian refugees alive. In general, "make America great"
means great at destroying, and that's where the greatness ends. It's by
no means entirely new, but is now raised to a higher level and becoming
a matter of principle.
In May, Trump will presumably refuse to renew sanctions relief for
Iran, as required by the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). That does not
constitute formal withdrawal, though that's the likely effect. Even if
the European signers formally persist, the consequences will be severe
because of the central role of the US in the international financial
system -- not to speak of the danger that their persistence might arouse
the ire of the unpredictable Trump, who can do a great deal of damage
if crossed. Effective withdrawal might provide an opening for the new
national security adviser, Bolton, a genuine war criminal who publicly
calls for bombing Iran, presumably in collaboration with Israel and with
tacit Saudi approval. Consequences could be horrendous.
There is much fevered debate as to whether Iran might have violated
the JCPOA, contrary to the firm conclusion of [the International Atomic
Energy Agency] Director General Yukiya Amano on March 5, 2018, that
"Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments." But we hear
virtually nothing about US violations, though these have been clear
enough. Thus the JCPOA commits the signers to support the successful
implementation of the agreement, including in their public statements,
and to refrain from any adverse effect on trade and economic relations
with Iran that conflict with their commitments to successful
implementation of the JCPOA. The US has been in flat violation of all of
these commitments, which have serious consequences.
Unmentionable as always is the obvious way to alleviate whatever
threat Iranian nuclear programs are imagined to pose: establishing a
nuclear weapons-free zone in the region. The way is clear. The proposal
is strongly supported by Iran, the Arab states and the world generally.
But there is an impediment. It has regularly been blocked by the US, for
familiar reasons: Israel's nuclear weapons. Also ignored is that the US
[and] UK have a special commitment to work for this goal, having
committed themselves to it in the UN [Security Council] resolution they
invoked in an effort to find some thread of justification for their
invasion of Iraq.
There is more to say about this troubled region, but there are crises
elsewhere as well. One involves North Korea, and here there might be
some rays of light. Trump has so far accepted the moves of the two
Koreas toward improving relations, and has agreed to negotiations with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that so far look promising. If these
initiatives succeed, they might go as far as the September 2005
agreement in which North Korea pledged to abandon "all nuclear weapons
and existing weapons programs." Unfortunately, the Bush administration
immediately violated all of its commitments under the agreement, and
North Korea proceeded with its nuclear weapons programs. We may hope
that Trump will be willing to accept success in denuclearizing the
peninsula and in further steps toward accommodation. And if he wants to
brag about the achievement as a demonstration of his brilliance as a
deal-maker, just fine.
This by no means exhausts the foreign policy issues that should be seriously addressed -- topics that would carry us far afield.
What's your overall sense about Trumpism? What is it really
all about, and do you think Trumpism is showing us the future of
right-wing politics in the US?
Trumpism is one of many manifestations of the effects of the
neoliberal policies of the past generation. These have led to extreme
concentration of wealth along with stagnation for the majority.
There
have been repeated crashes of the deregulated financial institutions,
each worse than the last. Bursting bubbles have been followed by huge
public bailouts for the perpetrators while the victims have been
abandoned. Globalization has been designed to set working people
throughout the world in competition with one another while private
capital is lavished with benefits. Democratic institutions have eroded.
As already mentioned, all of this has led to anger, bitterness, often
desperation -- one remarkable effect is the increasing mortality among
middle-age whites discovered by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, analyzed
as "deaths of despair," a phenomenon unknown in functioning societies.
While there are variations from place to place, some features are
common. One is the decline of the centrist parties that have long
dominated political life, as we see in election after election. In the
US, in recent years, whenever candidates arose from the base in the
Republican primaries, the established powers were able to crush them and
impose their own choice: Mitt Romney, most recently. In 2016, for the
first time they were unable to do so, but they quickly rallied to the
winning candidate, who proved quite willing to front for the more brutal
wing of the traditional party. The real surprise in the election was
the Sanders campaign, which broke with a long tradition of pretty much
bought elections, and was stopped only by machinations of the
Obama-Clinton party managers. The Democratic Party is now split between
the donor-oriented New Democrat managers and a growing activist social
democratic base.
What all of this portends, worldwide, is far from clear. Though there
are also significant signs of hope, some commentators have -- with good
reason -- been quoting Gramsci's observation from his prison cell: "The
crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new
cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms
appear."
Showing posts with label disappointment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disappointment. Show all posts
Sunday
Welcome to feudalism, America: How the 1 percent is systematically destroying the middle class
As wealth continues to consolidate at an alarming rate, working stiffs are ever more indebted to the rich
The idea of a property-owning democracy has long roots in American political thought. In their book, "The Citizen’s Share," Joseph
R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman and Douglas Kruse argue that the Founding
Fathers wanted everyone (well, everyone who was white and male) to own a
small slice of property. Both Madison and Washington praised the
relatively equal distribution of property in the United States (compared
with Europe). Thomas Jefferson wrote, “It is not too soon to provide by
every possible means that as few as possible be without a little
portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a
state.” Indeed, the concept is still popular today, even on the right.
James Poulos writes, “Without an ownership society, where citizens are prudent stewards of broadly distributed private property, freedom tends to become what it was in revolutionary France — an abstract ideal that can easily arouse destructive political feelings that know no bounds.” But new data suggests America may no longer be such a society, and that has worrying implications for democracy.
James Poulos writes, “Without an ownership society, where citizens are prudent stewards of broadly distributed private property, freedom tends to become what it was in revolutionary France — an abstract ideal that can easily arouse destructive political feelings that know no bounds.” But new data suggests America may no longer be such a society, and that has worrying implications for democracy.
The idea of a property-owning democracy is no longer the reality in the United States. Edward Wolff finds
that the wealthiest 10 percent own 90.9 percent of all stocks and
mutual funds, 94.3 percent of financial securities but only 26.5 percent
of the debt. For the middle class, their home makes up 62.5 percent of
their limited wealth. (The bottom 40 percent have negative wealth.) The
Gini coefficient for net worth has increased from 0.803 in 1962 to 0.871
in 2013. (By way of comparison: A Gini coefficient of 1 means that 1
person owns all of the wealth.) As the chart below shows, financial
instruments and wealth are far more unequally distributed than income.
The United States is no longer more equal than European nations, but actually deeply more unequal. The chart below shows that the United States has the most unequal distribution of the wealth of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member country examined. Across the OECD, the bottom 60 percent own about 13.3 percent of the wealth. (The bottom 40 percent own only 3.3 percent.) In Canada, the bottom 60 percent own 12.5 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 40 percent own 2.2 percent. In France, the respective numbers are 11.6 percent and 1.8 percent. And in Britain, they are 16 percent and 4.7 percent.
As wealth and stock ownership has become more concentrated, good jobs that lead to a middle class lifestyle are increasingly eroded. Unfortunately, not enough people seem to be noticing.
The United States is no longer more equal than European nations, but actually deeply more unequal. The chart below shows that the United States has the most unequal distribution of the wealth of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member country examined. Across the OECD, the bottom 60 percent own about 13.3 percent of the wealth. (The bottom 40 percent own only 3.3 percent.) In Canada, the bottom 60 percent own 12.5 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 40 percent own 2.2 percent. In France, the respective numbers are 11.6 percent and 1.8 percent. And in Britain, they are 16 percent and 4.7 percent.
In the United States, however, the bottom 60 percent own a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth and the bottom 40% own negative 0.4 percent of the wealth.
As wealth and stock ownership has become more concentrated, good jobs that lead to a middle class lifestyle are increasingly eroded. Unfortunately, not enough people seem to be noticing.
Indeed, the Wall Street Journal recently reported
that “apps do your chores” -- but the unfortunate reality is that
workers, not “apps,” are doing those chores. The workers are called
“contractors,” instead of employees, meaning that they don’t get the
protections full-time employees do. And examples of exploitation are
piling up.
A startup called CrowdFlower Inc. -- which, according to WSJ "breaks down digital jobs,
such as data entry, into tiny tasks performed by millions of workers"
-- was recently sued for paying some of those workers between $2 and $3
an hour. Industry leader Uber, meanwhile, has been criticized for
exaggerating the wages of its contractors. This practice is becoming
widespread. A recent study finds
that 53 million Americans are doing some sort of freelancing work. Of
those, 40 percent are full-time independent contractors, meaning they
have no other source of income.
The
rich are driven by two main desires: First, to make sure they have more
money; and, second, that someone else does the work. There is literally no job the rich
are not lazy enough to outsource.
Because they cannot figure out the location of their post office, they need “Shyp.” With “Luxe,” they can get a person to park their car for them. And with “Saucey,” they can save themselves a trip to the liquor store. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Patricia Marx describes some of the more absurd tasks that were included on TaskRabbit, including “Lego sorting,” locating “a reptile handler who is in legal possession of a rattlesnake” and finding a fake wedding ring that looks just like a real one.
Because they cannot figure out the location of their post office, they need “Shyp.” With “Luxe,” they can get a person to park their car for them. And with “Saucey,” they can save themselves a trip to the liquor store. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Patricia Marx describes some of the more absurd tasks that were included on TaskRabbit, including “Lego sorting,” locating “a reptile handler who is in legal possession of a rattlesnake” and finding a fake wedding ring that looks just like a real one.
It
is not of insignificant concern that the rich may cease to be capable
of performing the basic tasks necessary in the modern economy. The
result is something like the dystopia described in the recent
science-fiction film "In Time," except that the rich elongate their lives by making the poor do their mundane tasks.
Robert Kuttner writes of TaskRabbit:
To get an assignment, an aspiring Rabbit offers to do the chore for less money than he or she thinks other prospective Rabbits are bidding. That’s what makes it a metaphor for the new economy, a dystopia where regular careers are vanishing, every worker is a freelancer, every labor transaction is a one-night stand, and we collude with one another to cut our wages.
Together
these trends should be worrying: The vast majority of Americans own no
assets, but are instead laden with debt. The social safety net is being
shredded by plutocrats and their political henchmen. Conservatives say
workers should instead get benefits from their (preferably privately
owned) employers. But those companies are supporting workers less and
less: Defined benefit pensions are a thing of the past, and even basic retirement plans are in decline. And that’s just for those who are lucky enough to have jobs with benefits. Many workers are misclassified,
or are never employees to begin with, meaning they must manage for
retirement and health insurance without all the benefits the government
funnels through the employee-employer relationship.
As Matt Bruenig notes, in the United States,
"employers often handle sickness (health insurance, subsidized by federal government), old-age insurance (401k and defined-benefit pensions, subsidized by federal government), survivor's insurance (life insurance, subsidized by federal government), family benefits (paid leave and health insurance for children), unemployment (severance, though more typically rely heavily on public unemployment insurance), on top of providing socially adequate levels of cash income."
That
is, government has funneled important social benefits through
corporations. This not only makes a corporate job more cushy than
otherwise, it also makes freelance work more precarious.
Christopher Mims notes that, “Uber isn’t the Uber for rides — it’s the Uber for low-wage jobs.” A large portion of Americans now have two choices: Become servants to the rich for minimal wages, or starve to death. The idea that low-wage work is merely a short-term part of the rung towards a better life is also largely illusory: Upward mobility has been destroyed.
Christopher Mims notes that, “Uber isn’t the Uber for rides — it’s the Uber for low-wage jobs.” A large portion of Americans now have two choices: Become servants to the rich for minimal wages, or starve to death. The idea that low-wage work is merely a short-term part of the rung towards a better life is also largely illusory: Upward mobility has been destroyed.
America
has fallen into neo-feudalism: A wealthy capital-owning class exists
behind a servile class with no assets, and only a life of drudgery ahead
of them. The master-servant relationship will only further degrade
social trust and civic values. Americans can’t see themselves as equals
in the political sphere when large portions are consigned to wait upon
the whims of new aristocracy. Conservative politics relies on the middle
class making a devil’s bargain, believing they have more in common with
the rich than the poor. It won’t be long before that facade crumbles.
Monday
Trump’s business sought deal on a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for president
While Donald Trump was running for president in late 2015 and early 2016, his company was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow, according to several people familiar with the proposal and new records reviewed by Trump Organization lawyers.
As part of the discussions, a Russian-born real estate developer urged Trump to come to Moscow to tout the proposal and suggested that he could get President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.
The developer, Felix Sater, predicted in a November 2015 email that he and Trump Organization leaders would soon be celebrating — both one of the biggest residential projects in real estate history and Donald Trump’s election as president, according to two of the people with knowledge of the exchange.
Sater wrote to Trump Organization Executive Vice President Michael Cohen, “something to the effect of, ‘Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a president?’ ” said one person briefed on the email exchange. Sater emigrated from what was then the Soviet Union when he was 6 and grew up in Brooklyn.
Trump never went to Moscow as Sater proposed. And although investors and Trump’s company signed a letter of intent, they lacked the land and permits to proceed and the project was abandoned at the end of January 2016, just before the presidential primaries began, several people familiar with the proposal said.
Nevertheless, the details of the deal, which have not previously been disclosed, provide evidence that Trump’s business was actively pursuing significant commercial interests in Russia at the same time he was campaigning to be president — and in a position to determine U.S.-Russia relations. The new details from the emails, which are scheduled to be turned over to congressional investigators soon, also point to the likelihood of additional contacts between Russia-connected individuals and Trump associates during his presidential bid.
White House officials declined to comment for this report. Cohen, a longtime Trump aide who remains Trump’s personal attorney, and his lawyer have also declined to comment.
In recent months, contacts between high-ranking and lower- level Trump aides and Russians have emerged. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a U.S. senator and campaign adviser, twice met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Donald Trump Jr. organized a June 2016 meeting with campaign aide Jared Kushner, campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer after the president’s eldest son was promised that the lawyer would bring damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help the campaign.
Internal emails also show campaign adviser George Papadopoulos repeatedly sought to organize meetings with campaign officials, including Trump, and Putin or other Russians. His efforts were rebuffed.
The negotiations for the Moscow project ended before Trump’s business ties to Russia had become a major issue in the campaign. Trump denied having any business connections to Russia in July 2016, tweeting, “for the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia” and then insisting at a news conference the following day, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”
Discussions about the Moscow project began in earnest in September 2015, according to people briefed on the deal. An unidentified investor planned to build the project and, under a licensing agreement, put Trump’s name on it. Cohen acted as a lead negotiator for the Trump Organization. It is unclear how involved or aware Trump was of the negotiations.
As the talks progressed, Trump voiced numerous supportive comments about Putin, setting himself apart from his Republican rivals for the nomination.
By the end of 2015, Putin began offering praise in return.
“He says that he wants to move to another, closer level of relations. Can we really not welcome that? Of course, we welcome that,” Putin told reporters during his annual end-of-the year news conference. He called Trump a “colorful and talented” person. Trump said afterward that the compliment was an “honor.”
Though Putin’s comments came shortly after Sater suggested that the Russian president would speak favorably about Trump, there is no indication that the two are connected.
There is no public record that Trump has ever spoken about the effort to build a Trump Tower in 2015 and 2016.
Trump’s interests in building in Moscow, however, are long-standing. He had attempted to build a Trump property for three decades, starting with a failed effort in 1987 to partner with the Soviet government on a hotel project.
“Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment,” he said in a 2007 court deposition.
“We will be in Moscow at some point,” he promised in the deposition.
Sater was involved in at least one of those previous efforts. In 2005, the Trump Organization gave his development company, the Bayrock Group, an exclusive one-year deal to attempt to build a Moscow Trump Tower. Sater located a site for the project — an abandoned pencil factory — and worked closely with Trump on the deal, which did not come to fruition.
In an unrelated court case in 2008, Sater said in a deposition that he would personally provide Trump “verbal updates” on the deal.
“When I’d come back, pop my head into Mr. Trump’s office and tell him, you know, ‘Moving forward on the Moscow deal.’ And he would say, ‘All right,’ ” Sater said.
In the same testimony, Sater described traveling with Trump’s children, including joining Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. on a trip to Moscow at their father’s request.
“They were on their way by themselves, and he was all concerned,” Sater said. “He asked if I wouldn’t mind joining them and looking after them while they were in Moscow.”
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told The Washington Post last year that Sater happened to be in Moscow at the same time as Trump’s two adult children. “There was no accompanying them to Moscow,” he said.
Neither Sater nor his attorney responded to requests for comment.
Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from Sater, who served time in jail after assaulting a man with the stem of a broken margarita glass during a 1991 bar fight and then pleaded guilty in 1998 to his role in an organized- crime-linked stock fraud. Sater’s sentencing was delayed for years while he cooperated with the federal government on a series of criminal and national security-related investigations, federal officials have said.
During that time, Sater worked as an executive with Bayrock, whose offices were in Trump Tower, and brokered deals to license Trump’s name for developments in multiple U.S. and foreign cities. In 2010, Trump allowed Sater to briefly work out of Trump Organization office space and use a business card that identified him as a “senior adviser to Donald Trump.”
Still, when asked about Sater in 2013 court deposition, Trump said: “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like.” He added that he had spoken with Sater “not many” times.
Friday
Trump Will Be a 'Severe Disappointment To Millions'
SPIEGEL speaks to the editor of the New Yorker about the
dangers of fascism under Donald Trump, international leaders' reactions
to the election and the role of the press in reporting on the next
administration.
by Holger Stark
SPIEGEL: On the night of the election, you published a stunning warning that the election's outcome was "surely the way fascism can begin." It's been three weeks now. Has fascism begun?
Remnick: No it has not and I want to be clear about what I wrote. The whole sentence, the complete thought is this: I don't think there will be fascism in America, but we have to do everything we can to fight against it. As the Germans know better than we do, disaster can take a nation by surprise, slowly, and then all at once. My deep sense of alarm has to do with his seeming lack of fealty to constitutionalism. He seems to think it is within his rights to trample the First Amendment, to disdain the press, to punish protesters or flag-burners, to ban ethnic categories of immigrants, and so on. He has myriad conflicts of interest. He appoints people of low quality, to say the least. He lies with astonishing frequency and in stunning volume. His temperament and character is precisely what you would hate to see in your children, much less your president. We can wish all these things will magically change once he is in office, but will they?
I've lived through terrible presidents, we all have. I lived through the Nixon administration, which prolonged a horrific war for years and ran a criminal operation out of the White House, and I lived through the years with George W. Bush. And I lived for years in the Soviet Union and have seen the promise of democratic development turn, with Putin, into an authoritarian state. So yes, I think we should be alarmed, watchful, and, as journalists, rigorous and fearless. I think we should be alert.
SPIEGEL: Similar developments have taken place in other countries as well.
Remnick: Trump's election is part of an international trend that's no less alarming, in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Austria. Vladimir Putin wanted to see this outcome no less than he would like to see nationalists and anti-Europeanists win in France. He wants to become the de facto head of an illiberal, xenophobic, hypernationalist trend in world politics. He wants practical things, like the end of economic sanctions, but he also wants far greater sway in Europe and in the overall ideological trends of the world. So Trump's rise is troubling not just on an American level but on an international level.
SPIEGEL: Donald Trump sends mixed messages. He claims to want to unite the country but he appointed a person like Steve Bannon, a white supremacist, as his chief strategist. What does all this mean in terms of the direction the Trump administration might take?
Remnick: There are inconsistencies in his ideology. It's worth remembering that this is very different than the Reagan experience. Ronald Reagan came to office and had already been an experienced politician as governor of California, whose ideology and ideas, no matter how simplistic or no matter how much you may disagree with them, were fairly well-developed and fairly consistent. Donald Trump is a real-estate branding operator and a reality-show television star whose entrance into big-time politics, as a victor, as someone who will now wield tremendous power, was as shocking to him as it was to everybody else. I think that he got into the race thinking that it would be good for his brand, that he would surprise some people by doing better than expected, and then lose, and then come out of it with a certain amount of embellishment of his celebrity and, therefore, his business. He expected to gain, both financially and in prestige, by losing. But now he has won.
Suddenly, he finds himself president of the United States. Suddenly,
he's not only wrestling with whatever competing ideas exist in his head,
but also with the shock of the responsibility itself. Again, we can
hope that the responsibilities and realities will weigh on him and he
will not be the president we fear, but rather something more stable.
SPIEGEL: Trump put the economy at the center of his campaign and promised to bring jobs back to the United States. What's wrong with that?
Remnick: There's nothing wrong with creating jobs. What's wrong is to seed the illusion that you will magically bring back the economy of 1970, that you will reopen coal mines. The notion that somehow through a trade war or protectionism or magical thinking that we're going to return to a romanticized economic past is, in the end, going to be an illusion. And a severe disappointment to millions of decent, hard-working people.
SPIEGEL: He combines antidemocratic policies with unconventional proposals. Reaching out to Putin might open new opportunities in foreign policy ...
Remnick: ... and maybe Santa Claus is real. Here's the problem: reality. I would love to have a stable, productive relationship with Russia. I would also like to see Russia not interfere in our elections. I would like to see Russia not invade Ukraine or put pressure on and threaten Baltic states. But we live in the real and existing world. And now, despite the long election campaign, Donald Trump is going to have to live in the real world in which Vladimir Putin is exactly who he presents himself to be, and Putin is extremely skilled. He's not going to make it very easy for the United States or Germany. And he's going to test Trump.
SPIEGEL: Who knows how they will handle each other. Maybe Putin will find his match in Donald Trump.
Remnick: I don't know that Donald Trump is anything more to Putin than what Lenin called a poleznye durak, a useful idiot. I want to make something clear. By the laws of the United States, Trump won the election. And unless some sensational story is discovered about manipulation or vote counts, we're going to have to live with that. And I know, too, that millions and millions of people voted for Trump not because they are cartoon racists, but because they did not like Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons, because they had real economic and social grievances. I think the hacking of the DNC, the FBI's behavior, and, above all, the idea of Russian interference, are outrageous, but there is the law. And I think the Electoral College is an absurd 18th-century construct. But that is the law. Yet I say all these critical things not out of a sense of anti-patriotism but out of a sense of patriotism, out of a sense of alarmed and informed concern for my country.
SPIEGEL: It's remarkable how many people suddenly made their peace with Trump following the election. Why is that?
Remnick: A lot of it is opportunism as well as reflex and resignation.
SPIEGEL: Even President Obama offered him more assistance and advice than usual. Why is he doing that?
Remnick: I don't think President Obama gave him more advice and assistance than usual. He gave him precisely the amount of advice and assistance that is required for the peaceful transition of power in the United States. His hope, at least until January 20th, is that he can impress upon Trump the gravity of his position, convince him that things are not so simplistic or not simplistic at all. Obama called him "uniquely unqualified" and "temperamentally unfit," and you can be sure he thinks that today, just as he thought it before November 8th. I know from my conversations with people in the administration that every world leader that Obama met in Berlin, in Peru, in Athens was extremely alarmed by Trump's election. That very much includes Angela Merkel.
SPIEGEL: Let's talk about the mistakes on the left. We learned from the hacked emails that the DNC supported Hillary Clinton at a very early stage and wanted her to be the party's nominee. Was it wrong to get behind Clinton so wholeheartedly?
Remnick: Do I think that everybody on the Clinton side had a proper understanding of the resentments aimed at them? No, I don't. Do I think they made mistakes in places where they could have campaigned and they didn't campaign enough? Yes, I do. Michigan, Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Hindsight is always 20/20.
SPIEGEL: But again: Was Clinton the wrong candidate?
Remnick: In hindsight. The person that most obviously had strengths where she had weaknesses was Joe Biden.
SPIEGEL: The Clintons made it clear to him at an early stage that he should stay out of her way.
Remnick: Joe Biden had a relationship with places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio and the white working class that Hillary Clinton didn't. The one thing I'm quite critical of her for, and it obviously hurt her, is that at some level, the Clintons had to know that she was going to run for president. Why did they feel it necessary to make tens of millions of dollars with speaking engagements? They must have known that it would look grotesque. The word for it is "buckraking." It's beyond me. I don't understand it.
SPIEGEL: Maybe they are so entangled in their own world of private email servers and million-dollar incomes. Maybe they live in a different universe.
Remnick: The private email server was a mistake, a serious mistake, and she should have apologized for it months earlier, but she kept making lawyerly excuses. The buckraking seemed to me to have an ethical and moral dimension that was just inexcusable.
SPIEGEL: There is currently a heated debate taking place on the left about how to integrate the various interests of different social groups under one tent. Was it a mistake to have relied on minorities in the electorate?
Remnick: The Democratic vote consists of minorities and educated whites. And the minority vote is growing, which is part of the alarm of so many Republicans and why Trump constantly whipped up their alarm with his racist statements. But it's also important to remember that a huge constituency, such as Hispanics, is not 100 percent Democratic. It's more complex than that.
SPIEGEL: But would you agree with people like Bernie Sanders who claim that the political left should focus more on the white working class?
Remnick: To some degree, sure. There are real grievances there that must be addressed not just rhetorically but in policy. But you have to understand that a lot of the working class is not white too.
SPIEGEL: But many people's job-losses and fears are real.
Remnick: Of course. Although it is worth pointing out that unemployment was heading toward catastrophic levels in 2009 and is now under 5 percent. The question for so many is the quality of work, the future of work under globalism and de-industrialization. A typical example is a person who had a good factory job making 80,000 dollars, with health insurance, who was able to send his kids possibly to college and then he or she suddenly loses that job because the factory closed down. And now that same person is bagging groceries at Walmart and making $35,000. That person has lost a huge amount of income and a sense of pride, and, unfortunately, with a demagogue like Trump, there is the danger that this same person will be encouraged to believe that he or she lost their job and status because all the goodies are being given by politicians to darker people, to undocumented immigrants. And resentments bloom.
It's a classic case of pitting one group against another for political gain. You are losing because of Jewish bankers. You are losing because blacks are getting their civil rights in the cities. You are losing out because Mexican rapists are taking your job. There are two forms of populism, left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism requires the denigration of an "Other." Left-wing populism tends to be about the haves and have-nots.
SPIEGEL: There was one person during the campaign who seemed to outshine the others: Michelle Obama. Will we see her on the national stage at one point, maybe to challenge Trump?
Remnick: I doubt it very seriously. I've never encountered someone in public life who has less desire to hold office than Michelle Obama, though she is incredibly gifted at retail politics.
SPIEGEL: This election presented an unprecedented challenge to journalists. Trump himself concocted hundreds of lies without consequences and false news spread like a virus, almost always in Trump's favor.
Remnick: Trump didn't have to come up with them. They were provided for him by all kinds of fake news outlets that sometimes had their origins in places like Macedonia or Georgia or… anywhere.
SPIEGEL: What are the implications for democracy?
Remnick: It corrodes public discourse, it undermines our collective knowledge of reality. It makes democracy more complicated. I don't want to romanticize the world in which everybody watched three networks and the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were incredibly dominant. That time has passed. And the internet is very democratizing in some ways, but it also has other effects. So that on Facebook, a lie can seem as convincing to some as an article from SPIEGEL or the Washington Post. That's a problem. I can then like it and like it again and start creating my own media universe, both for me and for my friends, and so we become more and more fenced off from one another. We begin to inhabit oppositional and rarely intersecting mental universes having to do with ideology and fact and non-fact and news and non-news. We've seen these tendencies before in previous elections, but now it's just incredibly powerful.
SPIEGEL: What are the lessons for the media?
Remnick: It means we have to do our jobs better, more tirelessly and stop whining about it. As journalists, we need to find every avenue to distribute our work, and try to be so good that we become increasingly more influential than before. We should put pressure on power and write the truth and write relentlessly and fearlessly. That's the job.
SPIEGEL: As a result of the efforts of Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, a recount is taking place in Wisconsin, maybe also in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In response, Trump claimed that the election had been fraudulent. What does it say about the status of American democracy that the outcome is being questioned by people in both parties?
Remnick: I live in a country where, at least by my sense of arithmetic and justice, Al Gore should have been president, not George W. Bush. To this day, John Kerry probably thinks he won Ohio in 2004 because he had suspicions about the vote in Ohio. And, by the way, Richard Nixon had suspicions in 1960 about the vote in Chicago when he lost to JFK. Democratic institutions, even in the oldest operating democracy in the world, are anything but perfect.
SPIEGEL: So even if there are irregularities, the outcome won't change?
Remnick: I just don't know. Prediction is a low form of journalism.
SPIEGEL: Looking forward four years from now, are you sure that we won't look back and say, well, maybe Trump was indeed a second Reagan?
Remnick: It's not as if I wish that he becomes a catastrophically
terrible president. I want to hope for the best. But I am an adult;
deliberately naïve, dewy-eyed optimism is not the proper posture for a
responsible adult, is it? As a citizen and as a journalist, it's my job
to exert as much pressure on power to help that not become the case.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Remnick, we thank you for this interview.
About David Remnick
by Holger Stark
SPIEGEL: On the night of the election, you published a stunning warning that the election's outcome was "surely the way fascism can begin." It's been three weeks now. Has fascism begun?
Remnick: No it has not and I want to be clear about what I wrote. The whole sentence, the complete thought is this: I don't think there will be fascism in America, but we have to do everything we can to fight against it. As the Germans know better than we do, disaster can take a nation by surprise, slowly, and then all at once. My deep sense of alarm has to do with his seeming lack of fealty to constitutionalism. He seems to think it is within his rights to trample the First Amendment, to disdain the press, to punish protesters or flag-burners, to ban ethnic categories of immigrants, and so on. He has myriad conflicts of interest. He appoints people of low quality, to say the least. He lies with astonishing frequency and in stunning volume. His temperament and character is precisely what you would hate to see in your children, much less your president. We can wish all these things will magically change once he is in office, but will they?
I've lived through terrible presidents, we all have. I lived through the Nixon administration, which prolonged a horrific war for years and ran a criminal operation out of the White House, and I lived through the years with George W. Bush. And I lived for years in the Soviet Union and have seen the promise of democratic development turn, with Putin, into an authoritarian state. So yes, I think we should be alarmed, watchful, and, as journalists, rigorous and fearless. I think we should be alert.
SPIEGEL: Similar developments have taken place in other countries as well.
Remnick: Trump's election is part of an international trend that's no less alarming, in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Austria. Vladimir Putin wanted to see this outcome no less than he would like to see nationalists and anti-Europeanists win in France. He wants to become the de facto head of an illiberal, xenophobic, hypernationalist trend in world politics. He wants practical things, like the end of economic sanctions, but he also wants far greater sway in Europe and in the overall ideological trends of the world. So Trump's rise is troubling not just on an American level but on an international level.
SPIEGEL: Donald Trump sends mixed messages. He claims to want to unite the country but he appointed a person like Steve Bannon, a white supremacist, as his chief strategist. What does all this mean in terms of the direction the Trump administration might take?
Remnick: There are inconsistencies in his ideology. It's worth remembering that this is very different than the Reagan experience. Ronald Reagan came to office and had already been an experienced politician as governor of California, whose ideology and ideas, no matter how simplistic or no matter how much you may disagree with them, were fairly well-developed and fairly consistent. Donald Trump is a real-estate branding operator and a reality-show television star whose entrance into big-time politics, as a victor, as someone who will now wield tremendous power, was as shocking to him as it was to everybody else. I think that he got into the race thinking that it would be good for his brand, that he would surprise some people by doing better than expected, and then lose, and then come out of it with a certain amount of embellishment of his celebrity and, therefore, his business. He expected to gain, both financially and in prestige, by losing. But now he has won.
SPIEGEL: Trump put the economy at the center of his campaign and promised to bring jobs back to the United States. What's wrong with that?
Remnick: There's nothing wrong with creating jobs. What's wrong is to seed the illusion that you will magically bring back the economy of 1970, that you will reopen coal mines. The notion that somehow through a trade war or protectionism or magical thinking that we're going to return to a romanticized economic past is, in the end, going to be an illusion. And a severe disappointment to millions of decent, hard-working people.
SPIEGEL: He combines antidemocratic policies with unconventional proposals. Reaching out to Putin might open new opportunities in foreign policy ...
Remnick: ... and maybe Santa Claus is real. Here's the problem: reality. I would love to have a stable, productive relationship with Russia. I would also like to see Russia not interfere in our elections. I would like to see Russia not invade Ukraine or put pressure on and threaten Baltic states. But we live in the real and existing world. And now, despite the long election campaign, Donald Trump is going to have to live in the real world in which Vladimir Putin is exactly who he presents himself to be, and Putin is extremely skilled. He's not going to make it very easy for the United States or Germany. And he's going to test Trump.
SPIEGEL: Who knows how they will handle each other. Maybe Putin will find his match in Donald Trump.
Remnick: I don't know that Donald Trump is anything more to Putin than what Lenin called a poleznye durak, a useful idiot. I want to make something clear. By the laws of the United States, Trump won the election. And unless some sensational story is discovered about manipulation or vote counts, we're going to have to live with that. And I know, too, that millions and millions of people voted for Trump not because they are cartoon racists, but because they did not like Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons, because they had real economic and social grievances. I think the hacking of the DNC, the FBI's behavior, and, above all, the idea of Russian interference, are outrageous, but there is the law. And I think the Electoral College is an absurd 18th-century construct. But that is the law. Yet I say all these critical things not out of a sense of anti-patriotism but out of a sense of patriotism, out of a sense of alarmed and informed concern for my country.
SPIEGEL: It's remarkable how many people suddenly made their peace with Trump following the election. Why is that?
Remnick: A lot of it is opportunism as well as reflex and resignation.
SPIEGEL: Even President Obama offered him more assistance and advice than usual. Why is he doing that?
Remnick: I don't think President Obama gave him more advice and assistance than usual. He gave him precisely the amount of advice and assistance that is required for the peaceful transition of power in the United States. His hope, at least until January 20th, is that he can impress upon Trump the gravity of his position, convince him that things are not so simplistic or not simplistic at all. Obama called him "uniquely unqualified" and "temperamentally unfit," and you can be sure he thinks that today, just as he thought it before November 8th. I know from my conversations with people in the administration that every world leader that Obama met in Berlin, in Peru, in Athens was extremely alarmed by Trump's election. That very much includes Angela Merkel.
SPIEGEL: Let's talk about the mistakes on the left. We learned from the hacked emails that the DNC supported Hillary Clinton at a very early stage and wanted her to be the party's nominee. Was it wrong to get behind Clinton so wholeheartedly?
Remnick: Do I think that everybody on the Clinton side had a proper understanding of the resentments aimed at them? No, I don't. Do I think they made mistakes in places where they could have campaigned and they didn't campaign enough? Yes, I do. Michigan, Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Hindsight is always 20/20.
SPIEGEL: But again: Was Clinton the wrong candidate?
Remnick: In hindsight. The person that most obviously had strengths where she had weaknesses was Joe Biden.
SPIEGEL: The Clintons made it clear to him at an early stage that he should stay out of her way.
Remnick: Joe Biden had a relationship with places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio and the white working class that Hillary Clinton didn't. The one thing I'm quite critical of her for, and it obviously hurt her, is that at some level, the Clintons had to know that she was going to run for president. Why did they feel it necessary to make tens of millions of dollars with speaking engagements? They must have known that it would look grotesque. The word for it is "buckraking." It's beyond me. I don't understand it.
SPIEGEL: Maybe they are so entangled in their own world of private email servers and million-dollar incomes. Maybe they live in a different universe.
Remnick: The private email server was a mistake, a serious mistake, and she should have apologized for it months earlier, but she kept making lawyerly excuses. The buckraking seemed to me to have an ethical and moral dimension that was just inexcusable.
SPIEGEL: There is currently a heated debate taking place on the left about how to integrate the various interests of different social groups under one tent. Was it a mistake to have relied on minorities in the electorate?
Remnick: The Democratic vote consists of minorities and educated whites. And the minority vote is growing, which is part of the alarm of so many Republicans and why Trump constantly whipped up their alarm with his racist statements. But it's also important to remember that a huge constituency, such as Hispanics, is not 100 percent Democratic. It's more complex than that.
SPIEGEL: But would you agree with people like Bernie Sanders who claim that the political left should focus more on the white working class?
Remnick: To some degree, sure. There are real grievances there that must be addressed not just rhetorically but in policy. But you have to understand that a lot of the working class is not white too.
SPIEGEL: But many people's job-losses and fears are real.
Remnick: Of course. Although it is worth pointing out that unemployment was heading toward catastrophic levels in 2009 and is now under 5 percent. The question for so many is the quality of work, the future of work under globalism and de-industrialization. A typical example is a person who had a good factory job making 80,000 dollars, with health insurance, who was able to send his kids possibly to college and then he or she suddenly loses that job because the factory closed down. And now that same person is bagging groceries at Walmart and making $35,000. That person has lost a huge amount of income and a sense of pride, and, unfortunately, with a demagogue like Trump, there is the danger that this same person will be encouraged to believe that he or she lost their job and status because all the goodies are being given by politicians to darker people, to undocumented immigrants. And resentments bloom.
It's a classic case of pitting one group against another for political gain. You are losing because of Jewish bankers. You are losing because blacks are getting their civil rights in the cities. You are losing out because Mexican rapists are taking your job. There are two forms of populism, left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism requires the denigration of an "Other." Left-wing populism tends to be about the haves and have-nots.
SPIEGEL: There was one person during the campaign who seemed to outshine the others: Michelle Obama. Will we see her on the national stage at one point, maybe to challenge Trump?
Remnick: I doubt it very seriously. I've never encountered someone in public life who has less desire to hold office than Michelle Obama, though she is incredibly gifted at retail politics.
SPIEGEL: This election presented an unprecedented challenge to journalists. Trump himself concocted hundreds of lies without consequences and false news spread like a virus, almost always in Trump's favor.
Remnick: Trump didn't have to come up with them. They were provided for him by all kinds of fake news outlets that sometimes had their origins in places like Macedonia or Georgia or… anywhere.
SPIEGEL: What are the implications for democracy?
Remnick: It corrodes public discourse, it undermines our collective knowledge of reality. It makes democracy more complicated. I don't want to romanticize the world in which everybody watched three networks and the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were incredibly dominant. That time has passed. And the internet is very democratizing in some ways, but it also has other effects. So that on Facebook, a lie can seem as convincing to some as an article from SPIEGEL or the Washington Post. That's a problem. I can then like it and like it again and start creating my own media universe, both for me and for my friends, and so we become more and more fenced off from one another. We begin to inhabit oppositional and rarely intersecting mental universes having to do with ideology and fact and non-fact and news and non-news. We've seen these tendencies before in previous elections, but now it's just incredibly powerful.
SPIEGEL: What are the lessons for the media?
Remnick: It means we have to do our jobs better, more tirelessly and stop whining about it. As journalists, we need to find every avenue to distribute our work, and try to be so good that we become increasingly more influential than before. We should put pressure on power and write the truth and write relentlessly and fearlessly. That's the job.
SPIEGEL: As a result of the efforts of Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, a recount is taking place in Wisconsin, maybe also in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In response, Trump claimed that the election had been fraudulent. What does it say about the status of American democracy that the outcome is being questioned by people in both parties?
Remnick: I live in a country where, at least by my sense of arithmetic and justice, Al Gore should have been president, not George W. Bush. To this day, John Kerry probably thinks he won Ohio in 2004 because he had suspicions about the vote in Ohio. And, by the way, Richard Nixon had suspicions in 1960 about the vote in Chicago when he lost to JFK. Democratic institutions, even in the oldest operating democracy in the world, are anything but perfect.
SPIEGEL: So even if there are irregularities, the outcome won't change?
Remnick: I just don't know. Prediction is a low form of journalism.
SPIEGEL: Looking forward four years from now, are you sure that we won't look back and say, well, maybe Trump was indeed a second Reagan?
SPIEGEL: Mr. Remnick, we thank you for this interview.
About David Remnick
- Pulitzer Prize-winner David Remnick, 58, has been the editor in chief of The New Yorker since 1998. He is also the author of a widely praised biography of Barack Obama and has privileged access to the current president. He conducted several interviews with Obama after the election
Brigitte Lacombe/ The New Yorker
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