The New Yorker’s David Remnick has been highly openly critical of how absolutely terrible Donald Trump is. This weekend he was on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN as one of the people discussing the 2016 election results. After having to listen to another right-wing fraud and criminal, Conrad Black, try to explain how Donald Trump was a justifiable vote, Zakaria asked Remnick to respond. Remnick pointed out that Hillary Clinton had flaws, including her acceptance of a lot of money from Wall Street. But, criticisms of Clinton will not change the hard reality that Donald Trump is horrendous, and campaigned on the worst fears of the most basest forms of bigotry and anger.
When I listen to Conrad Black describe Donald Trump, I think I'm hallucinating. When I hear him described as not a sexist, not a racist, not playing on white fears, not arousing hate, when he's described in a kind of normalized way as someone in absolute possession of policy knowledge, as someone who somehow is in the acceptable range of rhetoric, I think I'm hallucinating. And I fear for our country and I don't think it's unreasonable to to do so. And of course I accept the results of the election. Of course I do. At the same time, I also know that Vladimir Putin played a distinct role in this election, and that's outrageous. And we've normalized it already. Less than a week after the election is over, suddenly Washington is going about its business talking about who's going to get what jobs. You would think that Mitt Romney had won. It’s a hallucination, but I don’t think we can indulge that. And I think that if you are serious about serious opposition in this country, or serious journalism, or whatever your role is to play, the time is now.
Yes. Now.