Łukasz Grzegorczyk: Let's play a small game. delight state 1 thing you can commend Donald Trump for.
Michał Choiński: A bit of a perverse task.
Let's effort it.
I think what Donald Trump and his administration are doing now, in terms of reinforcement of Ukraine. For example, the question of handing over Tomahawk missiles. It may be a deal breaker erstwhile it comes to the war in Ukraine, but I stress, at the moment. At the beginning of the year we had this tragic gathering of Trump with Volodymyr Zelenski, which ended in a diplomatic disaster.
We expected then that the dynamics of American engagement in this war would be much worse and disappointing. We thought Trump was trying to play in Putin's favor. Now, that's hard to say, so here the decision-making of the American president is definitely visible.
Trump was expected to end this war in 24 hours, although it was hard to take it seriously. Then he developed a red carpet in front of Putin in Alaska.
Donald Trump is and is simply a force in American politics that combines unpredictability on the 1 hand, on the another hand a shoe, with 3rd circumstantial energy and bravado. Many elements of the United States political scenery function on the basis of customs, unwritten contracts. By the way, it's the weakness of the American political and social system.
Trump's taking advantage of that weakness. He breaks those customs and breaks them to pieces. He says quite a few things and the division between reality and what he repeats is an essential part of how he acted and functioned in politics and business from the beginning.
Volatility is our key word. The moods of Donald Trump, and the title of your book on "New Yorker", or the writing that changed America. Or possibly the election last year has changed America so much that we don't admit it today?
It's hard to talk about 1 component that truly changed America. In November 2016, David Remnick, editor-in-chief of the weekly "The fresh Yorker", published a celebrated text "The American Tragedy", in which he said that Donald Trump's election as president was a triumph of the forces of nativism, authoritarianism, misogynism and racism. Trump's first 2016 election wins were a surprise for many, but this is the consequence of complex processes that have lasted for a long time.
We must besides remember the context of those choices. After all, this is the UK's exit from the European Union, which occurred 5 months earlier. In addition, the business of Crimea by Russia 2 years earlier. It is worth noting a broader perspective, which even involves the 9/11 bombings, the Iraq War and Barack Obama elections. surely Trump's presidency, especially the latter, is an crucial component in the change in dynamics. possibly for years.
Does Make America large Again have any more power today?
He is simply a plagiarism from Ronald Reagan's 1980 password. It is conquered by nostalgia, and onstalgia is simply a intellectual trap in which we effort to return to the past, and in fact we go back to certain myths about the past. Most of it is back to the 1950s and 1960s. The story of America, which is supposedly stable, and which is expected to be a land of prosperity. In fact, it is simply a patriarchal society with various problems during this period.
From the position of many Trump voters, it was a golden time.
That's why this slogan has so much power due to the fact that it's mobilizing people. It is besides an illusion, a dream of nonexistent power. Dreams and dangerous nostalgia. He's associated with something good, but elusive. On the another hand, there is an component of causality, meaning “Make America”. Let's make America our nonexistent idea. present is political fuel. It keeps us chasing the bunny all the time and we can't catch up with him.
"The fresh Yorker" was formed at a time erstwhile belief in the American dream was strong. What's it like now?
At the time, it truly was part of the economical and social-political topography of the United States. The weekbook "New Yorker" was founded by people outside fresh York. Harold Ross was a Colorado writer who was said to be close to the cowboy stereotype. He was an outsider.
Adam Gopnik, current essayist of "New Yorker", a very crucial figure – is Canadian, Françoise Mouly, who deals with the covers, is from France. "New Yorker" is mostly made up of people outside fresh York. There is an aspirational component in this, crucial to the American dream.
Trump cleverly plays this story about "American dream".
In a calculated way, he puts sex or race in the American dream. I mean, he thinks the American dream is mostly white. And for the elite, of course. He loses entirely his foundation, which was about the strength of the American image as a country in the early 20th century.
Many writers, from F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Big Gatsby" tried to show how much the American dream is in its own way bankrupt. This is very interestingly intertwined with the character Donald Trump and his approach to migration. After all, his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, is besides a migrant. quite a few hypocrisy on his part. Migration for many decades was a key component of the American economy.
Trump's on evidence today. Since its inauguration, more than 2 million immigrants have left the United States without permission. 527,000 people were deported and 1.6 million benefited from the voluntary deportation programme.
Except it's a small bit of a megalomania of numbers, due to the fact that Trump started himself a certain number of deportations and detentions. The services that are subject to his administration are seeking to produce statistics, generating arrests artificially. We have late learned that Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian writer, the first African Nobel Prize laureate, has been stripped of his visa to the United States. Soyinka has always been critical of Trump.
It seems to be individual decision-making on who can and cannot enter the United States. This besides involves the mythology of American dream and MEGA movement.
Let's go back to "New Yorker" and the phenomenon of this magazine. I think it's crucial that it was created in the 1920s. If individual came up with a akin thought today, wouldn't they have had a chance?
I'm certain it'd be harder. David Remnick in 1 of the interviews I conducted for the book, said that if he now had the thought to set up a weekly without pictures that he would print poems, he would be directed towards journalism with a free metabolism, where texts appear for tens of thousands of characters, if he went to a millionaire, as Harold Ross did and went to Raoul Fleischmann then asking him for money to start an investment, he would be kicked out of the door.
To put it mildly.
No 1 would agree to that. But remember, "New Yorker" is not the only title that has specified a strong brand and its own story. We have the Atlantic from the mid-19th century. In fact, "New Yorker" has a "new-worldness" written in DNA.
And what stands out today?
Looking at the power of the hands, which for the current chief David Remnick is the basis of the journalistic motto. He took it out of the "Washington Post" while working with Ben Bradlee, the celebrated editor liable for revealing the "Watergate" scandal. "New Yorker" became a writing little related to the late 1920s, literature, art or skyscrapers in Manhattan, and more focused on politics and global affairs.
It was said that erstwhile it was a Hollywood form of journalism. And now a small lifestyle?
"New York Times" has even more circulation. In the case of "New Yorker", this is 1.2 million printed copies. There's a website, there's a festival where thousands of people come to fresh York. Plus a series of podcasts and short documentary films awarded Oscars. It's an extended brand.
The transformation of this brand was the main reason to compose a book?
I wondered how "New Yorker" fit into modern times. It's a reality that poses immense challenges erstwhile it comes to journalism.
People don't trust media and journalists today.
According to Gallup's survey 2 years ago, 40 percent of Americans don't believe the media. The marketplace for press titles is shrinking, especially the smaller ones. This is simply a very dangerous moment. Michael Luo, editor-in-chief of the “New Yorker” website, pointed out the risks of artificial intelligence.
It's not just fresh Yorker.
Long and free journalism "New Yorker" costs a lot. Their lyrics are made for months, sometimes even years. It has to make powerful spending. Artificial intelligence tools let seemingly cost-free content generation. After all, we have a immense cost to the environment or the intellectual condition of society. If there's a theoretically cost-free solution, it's another challenge and danger to titles like "New Yorker."
This weekly consciously builds elements of its brand on fact checking, on circumstantial visual identification. He has so far adapted to the challenges of the fresh reality. He's been with us for 100 years, and it's most likely gonna take a while.
The fact checking squad in "New Yorker" is simply a completely different league. I feel like they predicted today's fake news problems 100 years ago.
"New Yorker" grew up to be a religion of facts and it's in the DNA of this writing. Of course, there are publications that depart from this way of thinking, but part of the journalism process is that erstwhile we give the text we gotta meet people working in the fact checking department.
How does it look?
This is entering text on very many levels and checking each own name or given numbers. They start from the inside, talk to all the sources. Confirms the data match. They review the photos of the site data to verify if there is an appropriate description.
Fergus McIntosh, for example, worked on the fact checking of Ronan Farrow's celebrated text on sexual assaults that Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer, did. It was a text that played an crucial function in the improvement of the #MeToo movement. The stakes of fact checking were the stableness of the full journalism process, as Weinstein hired a detective agency consisting of erstwhile Mossad agents and attempted to torpedo the journalism investigation at all stage. He utilized an army of lawyers. That text must have been bulletproof. I besides experienced meetings with fact checkers from the another side.
What do you mean?
Adam Gopnik's text was late published, in which he talks about his visit to Krakow. There is besides a mention to my book on the past of "New Yorker". They contacted me and asked me if I truly wrote specified a book. They confirmed the name of whether I truly taught American literature at the Jagiellonian University.
It's hard to believe it inactive works that way with them.
They spend a immense amount of resources on it. I'll be honest with you, there's something anachronistic and romanticist about it, but it's an crucial part of their brand, inscribed in the founding story of the weekly. This is how they stand out against the American press.
By the way, it became highly hard and problematic in Donald Trump's context, due to the fact that Trump utilized the phrase "fake news" 2 1000 times for the first 2 years of his presidency. The war that goes on with the media is simply a war that the fresh Yorker is fighting with lies or half-truth.
Besides, Trump and fresh Yorker is simply a communicative of any conflict.
Mark vocalist published a text on Trump in 1997. He introduced him as a fresh York tycoon who allegedly denied allegations that he was on the brink of bankruptcy. vocalist spent respective months with Trump, accompanied him in meetings. He wanted to find out what was under Trump's mask. His long article said there was absolutely nothing.
Trump got pissed off, wrote to the editors with grievances, called vocalist a loser. The writer then utilized Trump's letter to advance his book, which greatly increased its sales. He sent Trump a letter with an ironic thank you for the ad and a gift in the form of a check for $37.12. That's precisely how much Trump paid vocalist as a form of reimbursement for a telephone call.
Trump's actions are just proof that fact checking "New Yorker" makes sense and is not anachronistic. It's fundamentally must have these days.
Absolutely. My usage of the word anachronism had no negative dimension. The point is that specified an approach to factography may seem out of date, due to the fact that the modernity dictated by social media algorithms, through statistic related to clickability and advertising gains, aims at abbreviation, simplification of reality, which is highly complex. Here, too, in the context of Trump and that his administration frequently misses the truth.
A simple example is building a ballroom at the White House. Trump said this investment would not change the current structure of the building. Turns out they had to teardrop down 1 part. At the same time, Trump said he'd pay for it himself. That's besides not true, due to the fact that yet the construction of the ballroom is sponsored by large companies, including Apple, Google and Meta.
It besides shows how far Trump is now from these "normal" Americans.
It departs from the story of American dream, which was closely related to the mediate class in the United States. The direction of his presidency is, for example, marked by 'Big Beautiful Bill', a package of laws passed in May 2025. Among another things, it was about lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans and deregulation controlling large business.
Zohran Mamdami had already been a candidate for mayor of fresh York, alerting as the cost of surviving in this city increased. How life in the realities of American capitalism becomes difficult, for example, for fresh York taxi drivers or fresh York's iconic hot dogs vendors. wellness care is mostly private in the US. Donald Trump's reality is the planet of rich people.
How much does fresh York tell us about America? People inactive dream of going there. That magic inactive works.
New York isn't America. This place where certain reasoning is accumulated is simply a very specific, diverse urban tissue. 30% of people in fresh York don't talk English at home. fresh York has always been and will be a colorful city of highly intense migrants.
It has nothing to do with the reality of the American South, to small-town Georgia or Alabama. The contrast is very strong. Donald Trump left his fresh York past behind, although his celebrated Trump Tower grew up close Central Park. This is simply a projection of possible wealth from the point of view of a individual who is left alone in a tiny town in the south of the United States. fresh York is very distant for her.
The fresh York mentality is in the context of Donald Trump's mentality. Trump America is increasingly "closed".
The United States is closing down even in the context of tourism, due to the fact that the number of people arriving there is falling. The second, much more crucial closure of America, involves human suffering. This is the experience of people who bounce distant from a metaphorical and physical wall that is being removed from United States territory by government agents active in migration.
Make America large Again, but only for the chosen and the rich?
Yes, in this respect it is surely the closing of America, which is to become "great" again for white and wealthy. Another issue is the economical decisions of the Trump administration. This will have a long-term impact, despite even the question of who will be the next president of the United States.
In theory, it can't be Donald Trump due to the fact that it's blocked by the American constitution. But he's late been asked for a 3rd term...
There are soft attempts to survey to what degree it would be possible to even think of continuing power here. He mentioned the thought many times in jokes. The question is how much it will become a determinant for a more serious political discussion. surely the evolution of the Republican organization scenery under Trump is something that will leave behind for years. Whether or not he's reasoning about moving again.
The question is besides what the Americans will think of Trump himself. At the start of this term, half the citizens before 30 were supported. Now he's only affirmative about all fifth. Something's truly stuck.
Trump himself remains the motor of his movement, but is besides carried by that movement. This is simply a departure from a policy focused on diversity, does not want a change to improve the life of the mediate class in the United States. The Democratic organization has adopted a passive strategy for now.
What was interesting, though, was Trump's fresh matrimony to Elon Musk. He needed it imagely, due to the fact that Trump's wealth power raised from the 1990s is already a bit of a mouse. Musk mostly helped him rejuvenate his image.
The paper 'El Pais' writes about Trump on abroad policy issues that diplomatic mechanisms have been replaced by "a changing egocentric mood". Did they hit a point?
I'm afraid so. Donald Trump's entry on the political phase for the second time provoked him to think about the function of the US on the global stage. His political sympathy turns towards politicians and politicians who have authoritarian ambitions. Trump policy is characterized by a very strong focus on what he likes.
Stories are celebrated about how leaders effort to negociate with Trump that you gotta give him praise and act on ego. That's what's causing any kind of communication channel to open. In his view, this is an affirmation of force, and in fact it is an beginning of space to anti-democratic processes. You can see the unhealthy fascination of Trump with power – financial and political.
I found a comparison that we made Trump's presidency the end of the world. How much does she tell the fact about American emotions and politics in the United States today? Or deeper, American democracy?
American democracy is linked to a constitution that is already anachronistic. This affects many areas of life – wellness protection, strong presence of large business in political life or lobby connected for example with access to weapons. This is simply a very circumstantial scenery which for many citizens is simply a origin of frustration and anger for the way the state operates.
The litmus paper was the execution of Brian Thompson, the medical president of the UnitedHealthcare giant in fresh York City in December 2024. It has caused very ambivalent reactions, has become a origin for expressing frustration over the functioning of the wellness strategy in the United States and large insurance companies that challenge claims for reimbursement of treatment costs. Americans are overwhelmed by the reality of late capitalism. The current president has perfectly kidnapped this social unrest and utilized it for his purposes.
Especially Trump's second word expresses frustration in American society. There's a desire and a request for change. Trump, however, is not a individual who would be willing to make the essential changes to improve the situation in the United States.
Michał Choiński – American, Fulbright Fellowship at Yale University, prof. at the Jagiellonian University. He published, among others, in "The Common Week", the monthly magazine "Mark", "Time of Literature" and "Los Angeles Review of Books". Author of the book "New Yorker. A biography of the writing that changed America" for which he interviewed more than 50 editors of "New Yorker".
