David Remnick: "America has been an imperfect democracy since it was founded"

David Remnick, editor of 'The New Yorker' magazine since 1998. Hindustan Times /

The night Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the editor of the prestigious magazine

wrote an impulsive column that went viral in seconds.

"The election of Donald Trump to the presidency is a tragedy for the American republic," he wrote. "It is a triumph for the forces, internal and external, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism .... Fascism does not it's our future - it can't be, we can't let it be - but this is the way fascism can start. ”

Four years later, David Remnick would not change a comma.

Born in New Jersey 61 years ago and editor of the magazine since 1998, Remnick is a chronicler of international power.

His book

, on the fall of the Soviet Union, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Since then he has written multiple books and profiles on the most powerful men in world politics, such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Benjamin Netanyahu. .

During the last four years, Remnick wrote dozens of columns on the authoritarian personality of the current president of the United States.

“If Trump had a soul, a shred of conscience or character, he would resign the presidency.

He is not going to resign the presidency, ”he wrote in one of the last ones.

Remnick speaks to El PAÍS from his apartment in Manhattan, days before the magazine openly decided to support Joe Biden's candidacy.

The United States has "institutions threatened, but not yet defeated," the editorial says.

Question.

Four years ago, journalists did not know how to see that Trump was going to win the presidency.

What lessons did that moment bring to journalism?

Answer.

I was never under the illusion that

worked as a pollster, but, of course, I admit that we were very surprised by the result, despite knowing that surprises happen repeatedly in US elections.

On election night, our web team had little to nothing prepared in the event of a Trump victory.

We had, yes, many things prepared about the first female president.

Items that were ready and you just had to press a button.

I went to a party to see the results, and I imagined that they would be ready around 10 at night.

Hillary would take the lead, we would push the button, and so far our work.

But no.

We began to see, with great disbelief, some patterns.

The most telling was that Trump was winning in Republican areas by a much larger margin than we expected, places like rural Pennsylvania or non-urban Florida.

Around 10 o'clock at night I had made the mistake of having just one drink, too healthy.

I don't normally carry my computer with me, but in this case I did, and I headed to the apartment kitchen to write a short article called

.

He basically wanted to be a good team player, so we would have an item for the next day.

It was a rage-filled article, predicting a terrible period in American history.

So yes, the polls were wrong, surprises happen, but the deep question remains: why did that happen?

I think we are still trying to find out.

I don't think there is a single answer.

Clearly, the previous one was a black president, Barack Obama, and there was a reaction to that.

It's very true when it is said that ignoring Donald Trump's racism was a huge factor.

Was it the only factor?

I don `t believe.

I don't think there was a single explanation.

But it was important.

Q.

How to avoid an equal omission?

R.

I think we have been more cautious about the polls.

Right now, they have Joe Biden ahead with six, or seven, or eight points, nationally, which is a lot.

He also has a significant lead in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, where Trump previously won.

But do I think Donald Trump can still be re-elected?

Absolutely.

I'd be an idiot if not.

The definition of an idiot is a person who does not learn from experience.

I think part of this tragedy is the deep division in our society.

From my point of view, it is the inability of thousands of people to recognize that we have a president with an undemocratic, authoritarian instinct, who plays with racism so openly, and whose greatest trace of personality is contempt.

Contempt for Hispanics, blacks, democratic institutions or science.

He did not invent these trends in American life, but he has only highlighted them.

Q.

Right after Trump won the election, you interviewed Barack Obama and he told you: “Trump understands the new ecosystem, in which truth and facts do not matter.

He attracts attention, moves emotions, and moves on. "

Obama was very charismatic, and Trump is also charismatic to his followers.

Is Trump still winning in this ecosystem?

R.

Trump has, as a demagogue, many talents.

It may be funny, in a demonic way, but it has an element that comes from an obvious source: its past in the television industry.

He has a past in the entertainment world.

He is tuned in.

Just look at how cable TV dominated in 2016. Why?

Because it raised the ratings.

Now we see CNN as a critical channel, but CNN gave him hours and hours of free air time because the ratings went up when he spoke.

The problem is that there is an ecosystem that appears to be impenetrable.

If you live in an ecosystem that you create on the social media, psychically or technologically, from Fox News, and Breibart, and InfoWars, and QAnon, you can create a universe of information for yourself.

When I was young, there were only three television channels, you read a newspaper, and the ideological margin was very narrow.

Now, the margin is much wider, and you can inherit only one side or the other.

Roger Ailes invented something brilliant when Fox News was invented.

That spoke to a lot of people, despite him being unscrupulous in the way he did, for his obvious disregard for facts.

I believe that it is possible to have a conservative view of the world without living off the facts.

But technology changed this equation a lot.

P.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, lacks the charisma of Barack Obama or Trump.

How can you win despite this?

R.

Obama was an exception.

Most politicians do not have the skills that Obama had, it is very unusual.

Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon didn't have that.

John Kennedy, obviously, yes.

Joe Biden has something different, something more.

And maybe it's a good time for this that he has.

One of Trump's great deficits is his lack of empathy.

It is very clear that he does not give a shit.

Nobody but himself, and maybe a few people.

It's very obvious.

He also despises the people he claims to love.

The idea of ​​him as a leader of the working class is absurd, in public policy and in character.

But he's a fantastic demagogue.

The quality of Joe Biden may seem corny to you, and not intellectual, but I think that when people listen to him they have the impression of seeing very genuine emotions.

Come honestly.

He talks about the tragedies that have befallen him in his personal life, the death of his wife and young son many years ago, and then the death of his adult son more recently.

I think people see that as genuine.

It is the polar opposite of Trump's lack of empathy.

Right now, why is Biden winning?

It is not for financial reasons.

It's because the pandemic has highlighted not only what a terrible manager Donald Trump is, but also that he doesn't really care about people.

Today it was announced that 200,000 Americans have died.

I don't think Donald Trump invented the virus, he is not responsible for that.

But you are judged on how you respond to this, and you have responded with immense cynicism and incompetence.

There are many people who have died in other countries, but the United States has done much worse than other places despite the advances in medicine in this country.

Q.

And despite all this, Trump still has the support of the Republican Party.

You have covered this game for several decades, how has it changed in the last four years?

R.

I think that cynicism is at the root there.

Since the 1930s we have seen, in a very general way, two epic periods in American history.

The New Deal period, characterized by Roosevelt's democratic policies, which is related to Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act.

Then comes Ronald Reagan's rise to power, elected in 1980, and he influences not only his party but also the Democrats.

It was a Democratic president who said "the era of Big Government is over."

It was Bill Clinton.

Some people call that neoliberalism.

There are critics of Obama who say, although it does not seem fair to me, that some of his policies are also influenced by what Reaganism left behind.

Now in the Democratic Party there is a debate between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders against the more central side.

But what is horrible about the Republican Party is that, in addition to what one might object ideologically, there is a component of immense cynicism.

The fact, for example, that someone like [Republican Senator] Lindsey Graham, in 2016, during the campaign, called Trump a fanatic and a xenophobe, but now they are best friends and are going to play golf together.

And it's not the only one.

[Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell wants two things in life, ideologically: lower taxes, and more right-wing judges on every corner of America.

I don't think she likes Donald Trump, but she sees him as a useful jerk.

In 2016, Mitch McConnell blocked Barack Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court from Merrick Garland, even though the latter was nominated eight months before the presidential election.

McConnell made up the reason that the presidential campaign had already started.

Lindsey Graham said that if that happened again, they would stick to the same principle.

Well, shit.

Lindsey Graham now seeks to rationalize otherwise.

The level of cynicism is difficult to understand.

And this, in the world of politics, where cynicism is normal.

So to be distinguished by the high level of cynicism in politics is an "achievement."

Q.

You were a correspondent in the Soviet Union when it imploded.

Now, outside the United States, there is a lot of debate whether Trump implies the end of the hegemonic power of this country, if he is going to implode as well.

What do you think of these debates?

R.

Russia was an authoritarian country for thousands of years, communism was an episode of some seventy years, and now it is authoritarian again.

The illusion that lasted from 1989 until the mid-1990s, in which Russia was to be transformed into a constitutional democracy, ended.

America has been an imperfect democracy since it was founded: it was tainted, from the beginning, by eliminating nearly the entire Indian population, by slavery, and then by Jim Crown.

But there has always also been a United States that is trying to achieve its democratic ideals, to achieve a constitutional democracy, despite all its flaws.

What we've seen, since election night in 2016, is pressure against that flawed democracy.

We have always had pressure, but never in such a deep way and coming from its commander in chief.

That is the danger now.

In foreign policy, for example, it matters what the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State thinks, but in the end it is a single person who decides.

His power is immense, and unfortunately so is his malevolence and incompetence.

That is the drama.

How much more of this pressure can we take?

Q.

So, you are concerned that the re-election of Donald Trump will be too deep a wound for the democratic institutions of the United States

A.

Of course it worries me.

The attorney general has shown that he can, repeatedly, violate the meaning of the law.

When I hear him say the word "sedition" to describe the protests, which are protected under the first amendment to the Constitution, or when I see the president describe the press as enemies of the people - which is a phrase the Jacobins used after the French Revolution, and then Stalin - well, of course I have a deep concern.

Even if Biden is elected, we still have a crisis ahead of us that makes the pandemic look like child's play.

There is no vaccine against climate change.

The degree of transformation - economic, public policy, international cooperation - that is needed on the issue of climate change, so that large parts of the world are not soon in absolute ruin, is enormous.

But how can that advance if the current president believes the climate change issue is a China lie?

It can not.

I don't think the United States is the only troubled country in the world.

Autocracy has taken various places in ways I never would have imagined.

In 1989 it was the first time that climate change was spoken seriously.

Democracies seemed to flourish in many parts of the world, in Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, in Latin America.

But what a very short period of time demonstrated is how fragile these things are.

The United States has the advantage of playing the game of constitutional democracy for more than two centuries.

That matters.

But things are fragile, institutions are fragile, and publications are fragile.

P.

Despite these dangers to democracy, civil society has been more awake than ever in the last four years: protests at airports over the new migration policies or, more recently, the Black Lives Matter protests.

What role do these movements play at this moment?

R.

I think we should be very inspired by them.

What was most encouraging about the Black Lives Matter protests, which persist to this day, was not just the scale of the protests.

It was not just a protest on the streets of Washington, Minneapolis or New York.

This was everywhere, even in small towns upstate New York, which were often without black people.

Also that the protests were incredibly diverse.

They included white, black, brown, Asian people.

In the end, what was very encouraging in the polls - although we know we need to be careful with the polls - is that they showed that the majority of people in America, people who would probably never go out on the streets, were in favor of this. movement.

That is encouraging.

Look at a person like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is a very young and talented politician.

But one person with their policies is not necessarily going to win in every district in this country.

She is from New York, and New York is generally much further to the left than a place like Kansas, or like rural Missouri.

That is why seeing a moment like this, so wide, was very encouraging.

So there is some hope even though 87-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg just passed away.

Or [African-American activist and congressman] John Lewis, whom I knew very well.

They lived long and good lives.

We can honor their memory, learn from them, appreciate what they accomplished.

I'm not a man who prays, but if there's one thing I know about the Bible, it's that the only unforgivable sin is hopelessness.

I know that people have anxiety, that they are low in morale.

But much of what I have seen also gives me a lot of hope about the resilience and courage of many people, and the determination not only that things return to normal, but that this country surpasses itself.

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