Isaac Chotiner Sums Up Politics in 2025

0:06Hey, Isaac. Hey, Tyler. How are you? Good. Thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. I guess I wonder like what you kind of see your goal is, you know, when you're seeking out interviews, like if it's to provide people with context or maybe like a different take on an issue that they're probably already following closely. Or is it to like introduce them to information that they never would have encountered otherwise? Yeah, I think sometimes it's to kind of narrow down and focus on something that I myself have having trouble understanding and really want to try and laser in on. I did a lot of interviews about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, especially when Israel cut off aid.

0:44And I think the reason that I was interested in that was because I really kind of wanted to understand the mechanism of how the aid shutoff was working. And then the sort of basically half-hearted attempts to increase food in the months after the total aid shutoff. And so that was an area where I just thought if I could do multiple interviews on it, I could try and understand and hopefully explain to readers exactly what was going on and the intentions of the principal parties, in this case, Israel and the United States. So that's definitely one thing. It's sometimes trying to understand kind of breaking news.

1:18It's sometimes trying to kind of laser focus on an issue and do a bunch of things on it to try and get a sort of broader understanding of it. And sometimes it's to try and highlight something that I don't think is getting much attention. And I think hopefully sometimes it's to do interviews that are, you know, somewhat lighter and dare I say even fun or interesting to readers in a lighthearted manner. Those are kind of the different goals that I have with the interviews. So it sort of depends. That's Isaac Chotner, a staff writer at The New Yorker, who conducts interviews with high-profile figures and experts in politics, media, and public life.

1:56Over the past year, Isaac spoke with a range of people trying to make sense of a volatile era in both U.S. and global politics. Those entries in the magazine's Q &A series included discussions about the rise of political violence and polarization in the U.S., debates over how to understand Donald Trump's second term, including his use of tariffs and economic power, and interviews that pressed prominent figures to explain their assumptions and understanding of recent political history. I wanted to talk with Isaac about some of his biggest conversations from 2025, from political violence to Trump's governing style and autocratic tendencies, to two high-profile interviews with Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary under Joe Biden, and Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar and author.

2:39This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

2:47I want to start off by talking about one of the major themes of the year, which has been political violence. I mean, the year literally started off with a bombing of a cyber truck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, which was carried out by a U.S. Army veteran who, in a letter, framed the act as a wake-up call against what he described as corrupt political and military leadership. Although we should be clear, it didn't seem to be done in protest of Donald Trump himself. But we also have big, high-profile incidents like the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September. And after the murder of Charlie Kirk, you spoke with Liliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins who studies polarization and political violence.

3:28So I'm wondering how that conversation helped you understand the broader pattern of political violence this year, from the June attacks on Democratic Minnesota state lawmakers and their families to the murder of Charlie Kirk in the fall. Yeah, I mean, you know, political violence is not a subject I'm an expert on, but it was good to talk to her and do some interviews around this. And one of the points she made was just sort of looking at survey data of language and how people view people in the other party and using terms like animals to describe people in the other party. And I think what she was sort of saying was not that all political violence is expressly partisan.

4:07We know that much of it is not. And often when these, you know, shooters or bombers or whoever else are revealed, it's, you know, they're not political partisans in the way we normally expect. but that, broadly speaking, there is increasing dislike among the parties and people who follow the parties. And beyond that, just there's a climate which may sort of broadly, a climate so much rage that may broadly contribute to political violence. So that was some of the stuff she was talking about. But I think one frustration I have with some of the conversations about political violence is that it's absolutely something to be incredibly concerned about.

4:45But when people tend to talk about political violence in the context of the United States, my feeling is usually that what's truly scary, I think, is someone using the power of the state to crack down and using political violence, in a sense, become state violence. You know, the amount of violence that we've seen this year, again, is completely horrific. But I don't think of it as a fundamental threat to the United States in any broad way. I know people like to talk about civil war in America or something else, which always seemed pretty ridiculous to me, or at least the idea that you sort of have two tribes of red and blue attacking each other, going after each other in some way.

5:22What seems truly scary, though, is that someone could use the power of the state to crack down on their enemies. And that, I think, for obvious reasons, is what's frightening about our current moment. Going back to political violence in the sense of, you know, someone kind of taking aim at a high-profile political figure, what is your sense of how prevalent it actually is in the U.S. as compared to in decades past? I do think that we are seeing some degree of more political violence now than we've seen in a while, and I think that that's generally seen as the consensus. But, you know, one of the things that's very complicated about this subject is exactly how you define political violence and what counts as political violence.

6:01And, you know, there are all kinds of different events that can happen and that, you know, tend to get tabulated in different ways. But I think one of the things, just to go back to the kind of what can be frustrating about this conversation, is that fundamentally nothing is really going to happen with guns in America, which is obviously how so much of political violence manifests itself. So I think that because of that, there tends to be kind of an overfocus on the heated rhetoric, which I think is important, as I said early on. But it often seems like, you know, we talk about it and we say political violence is increasing and we say the rhetoric is getting out of control.

6:39And I think that that's true, obviously. But it also seems to me that fundamentally that, you know, calming down the rhetoric is not going to change that much. And it makes me think that the sort of actual solutions, which I think in this case would be some sort of, you know, less access to guns. And it's hard to see anything really changing for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I mean, on the gun control front, I mean, just look at Australia, where there was, you know, this horrible anti-Semitic attack over the weekend. I think at least 15 people were killed. And less than 48 hours later, they announced strict new gun laws, which is just like something that would never happen in the U.S.

7:20Yeah, I mean, it's almost like a waste of time even discussing it here just because it's so far from reality or plausibility. In your interview with Mason, you press her on this central dilemma, which is that political violence is often fueled by seeing the other side as an existential threat. But sometimes that belief isn't entirely imagined. So how do experts distinguish between fear and anger rooted in just like straight up conspiracy and hysteria and and then like fear that's grounded in actual democratic danger? I don't think that people should be using violence right now in the United States to achieve their political ends, whether they're Democrats or Republicans or liberals or conservatives.

7:59But I do have incredible frustration with the way this data is talked about. This is not about Liliana Mason per se, but it's about, you know, you see these polls and you, you know, you'll see something like what percentage of people think the other party would not respect the results of the next election. And you have, you know, I can't remember the exact figures, but you have something like 75 to 80 % of both parties saying the other side will not respect the results of the next election. And then you have sort of social scientists or journalists bemoaning that this is the case. And to me, what's worth bemoaning is that 80 % of Republicans think that Democrats will not respect the results of the next election because I think fundamentally, as has been shown, that the Democratic Party, for whatever its myriad flaws, tends to respect the results of elections and the Republican Party in its current incarnation does not.

8:47And so my perspective would be that Democrats saying that to a pollster reflects their understanding of reality. And Republicans saying that to a pollster reflects a distortion of reality. And I feel like frequently when I'm sort of reading about this, that that sort of fundamental reality is not sort of talked about enough. I mean, there are other issues where the part, you know, I'm sure Democrats are also at fault. But in this case, questions like that, I've been frustrated by the way they're kind of translated and talked about. We're going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, I'd like to talk to you about Donald Trump.

9:22This is The Political Scene from The New Yorker.

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10:27So you spoke to a lot of people this year about Trump and his policies and their larger effects. And in particular, I wanted to focus on a conversation you had that centered on tariffs, just because they seem to touch on so many defining features of Trump's presidency, from like the protectionism aspect to his unilateral decision making and just the use of American economic power as leverage. So back in April, you interviewed John Werner Mueller, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively about right wing populism. So how did he understand Trump's tariffs as fitting into the broader story of Trump's second term?

11:05I want to talk about the international implications, but first I want to start with like the domestic framing of it. Well, you know, I think that one of the things that he was trying to get across and one thing I think that's been an increasing challenge for reporters is trying to talk about Trump's policies without talking about him having some conception, him being Donald Trump, having some conception of the national interest that he's trying to pursue. Because I think the sense among people in the past with whatever your politics and whatever you thought of Joe Biden or George W. Bush or, you know, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, that they were pursuing some version of the national interest, whether that was good or bad or criminal or inspiring or whatever else.

11:50And I think that with things like tariffs, I think a lot of the coverage in the media focused on Trump having sincere views about tariffs and economic policy and trade deficits and so on and so forth. And whether that is a small part of Trump's thinking, I couldn't say. But I think broadly speaking, tariffs are a way of him taking more power in economic decisions and in negotiations with other countries, which I think as we've seen in the last year or so, year, almost year, has allowed him to get his finger in the pie of many different companies and to take more control of the economy in ways that may benefit him personally.

12:29And I think this is really hard because you don't want to speculate about things that you don't know, but at the same time, you do not want to seem naive about what's going on. I'll just tell you a brief story, which is that I was doing an interview this year about the Trump administration's policies with regard to India and Pakistan, where Trump has been very pro-Pakistan and very critical and annoyed with Narendra Modi and his government in India, which has been very surprising because Modi and Trump had this kind of closest relationship in the first term. And Pakistan has never been like particularly valued or liked by American administrations for whole myriad reasons.

13:07And I was listening to a former Biden official talk about this. And this is a person who's, you know, pretty buttoned up, who said essentially, oh, well, that's because the Pakistanis are paying off Trump. And there have been some reports that Pakistan is getting involved in crypto businesses, which may be close to the president's family. And I think this is a really hard thing for journalists, right? Because this stuff is really hard to report on. It's really complex. It's really hard to know what's going on. And you don't want to talk to your audience to say, you know, basically peddle conspiracy theories about what the president is profiting from or not profiting from.

13:42At another level, you do not want to seem naive. And I did not want to conduct an interview about Trump's policies in South Asia, pretending that Trump is sitting by a map or chessboard, thinking about various ideas for how to make South Asia more secure and stable and what that would mean for the long-term relationship with the United States and India and Pakistan. I mean, it's almost ridiculous to bring these things up. So it's just been – I think it's a very hard thing for journalists to talk about all of these international issues. And I think a lot of the questions around tariffs fit into that too.

14:12I mean, there must just be a difference between like the way that academics talk about Trump's tariffs and like the context of, you know, larger economic policy and theory versus people who are actually in politics or people who actually have kind of knowledge of what it is that Trump's doing. And I would imagine that people who've spent like their entire lives studying economics or studying something that kind of overlaps with a policy that Trump is doing that it must be. I can see them almost like kind of wanting to fall back to always trying to take these ideas like actually kind of serious and to assess them on the terms that you would assess normal political ideas when there always is this other element of like, is he just doing this because he like hates Venezuela?

14:52Is he just doing this because he is corrupt and is making money off of this somehow? And so I wonder how that desire to speculate or the refusal to speculate if you're like an academic who cares a lot about these issues and kind of refuses to play that game, how that covers the interviews you do. Like if there's just this like elephant in the room that, you know, they may or may not touch. Yeah, that's an interesting question. I sometimes feel this even just reading the newspaper. And this is not because I think that like people who write kind of reports from Washington, sort of straight news reports for the major newspapers.

15:22it's not because I think that they're like necessarily naive or that they're in the tank for Trump or anything like that it just often seems that the tone of those stories is still sort of acting as if things are more normal than they are and again that doesn't mean like call Trump a liar which or something like that in the headline which I think too much of our the criticism of the media in the last 10 years is focused on it's more just that you know and again I understand that because you don't want to speculate about things you don't know but but you know, I'll frequently be reading the newspaper and there will be sort of mentions of Trump's strategy for, you know, the Far East or whatever else.

15:58And it just it just feels laughable to me. I don't it just seems completely disconnected from reality. The only reason I brought that up was I think it's a you know, it's an issue for all of us just because this is this is so unprecedented in that sense, not just, you know, people who are further away from politics. Yeah, no, I kind of feel like we're like simultaneously taking Trump too seriously and like not seriously enough. I find myself like both concerned by the way in which we, you know, take things that just kind of seem like they're driven by whim and treat them as like normal policies that we should kind of like understand or maybe even try to justify like in the way that, you know, early on in the tariffs, there were a lot of people who were like, hey, maybe this is actually going to work.

16:41And then also, you know, I feel like there's like also kind of like a quick dismissal of some aspects of Trump, whether it be like, you know, even just his claim that like he's going to be able to, you know, make deals, you know, and help bring about a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Like, I don't know. It does seem like there are times where you start wondering like, oh, is like Steve Wyckoff like actually pretty good at his job? Like, I don't if you feel the same way, but. I was definitely surprised by the fact that he pushed Netanyahu in a short-term timeframe as hard as he did to get to a ceasefire.

17:19I mean, I think, you know, the context of that was after this kind of starvation campaign and after things had gotten significantly worse in Gaza than they had under the Biden administration, which I don't think Netanyahu necessarily would have even quite tried during the Biden administration. I don't think, I think would have come with more serious consequences, even though the Biden administration was obviously very forgiving of the Netanyahu government for a year and a half. But I agree. I was surprised in the short term that when Trump really put his mind to it, he's capable of exerting real pressure in ways that you may not expect.

17:54In most cases, though, and I think that this would be the case with Netanyahu, and I think a version of will be a case with Putin, just since you brought up Whitcoff, who's trying to negotiate with Jared Kushner, a peace deal in Russia and Ukraine. I think that even if in a very short term, he can put his mind to something and in the short term accomplish something that maybe you thought he wouldn't do or wouldn't be capable of doing, I think the follow through in those cases is usually not there. And so you're unlikely to see sort of the long term results that you hope to get. But I agree, you know, if he has in his mind that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize, he's certainly capable of calling Netanyahu and telling him to knock it off.

18:32And, you know, the motives for that may be unclear, but absolutely. I just don't know how, in the larger arc of history, how important that part of Trump is going to seem.

18:46More with Isaac Chotner after the break. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

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19:57So, Isaac, there were a couple of interviews you did this year that just went super viral online. And one of those was your interview with Corrine Jean-Pierre, who served as White House press secretary for much of the Biden presidency. You spoke with her during the rollout of her memoir and after her decision to leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent. Just right off the bat, what explanation did she give for that decision to leave the party? Well, it was essentially that the Democratic Party had been too mean to her former boss, Joe Biden. And, you know, just reading the interview, it feels like you guys were kind of operating from different premises very early on.

20:35And I guess that was one of the premises that you were just not really in agreement about. But I guess what happens in an interview like that where someone says something like that and you're kind of just like the Democratic Party treated Joe Biden unfairly? Yeah, I mean, it was funny because, you know, when I'd heard that she'd left the Democratic Party, which is before I'd read her book, you know, normally when someone leaves a party, it's you sort of hear the typical story, right? Like the party had moved too far to the left or too far to the right. And this person is kind of a bold centrist who, you know, is going to speak common sense and explain why they're now political independent.

21:10it. This was not really that. In fact, I would say her views are pretty far left. And she was leaving the party because of how it treated Joe Biden. So I should say, you know, I'd written a couple pieces last year, saying essentially that Biden should step aside. So I should say that my perspective on this is not something I would keep secret that it felt to me that Biden was clearly too old to be president through 2029. And so when I when I'd heard that she was writing this book, and that she was taking such a bold step of leaving the Democratic Party, which I should say, sitting side by side in this book with her feeling that the Democratic Party need to be deserted was her feeling that Donald Trump was a huge threat to democracy and so on and so forth and must be resisted.

21:52And so I just thought that that was kind of a funny confluence of things and thought it would be interesting to talk to her. Another interesting moment in that interview is when you guys are talking about Jean-Pierre's views on Kamala Harris and her electability. Could you remind us sort of what that part of the conversation was like, like what you asked and then how she responded and how confusing it was? Well, yeah. I mean, she seemed to be saying that after Biden did step aside, she was someone who thought that the party should turn to Kamala Harris rather than have some sort of open primary, which didn't happen but was sort of discussed as a possibility.

22:28And she was not pleased, if I remember correctly, with people who felt that Kamala Harris was not electable or, you know, perhaps not electable enough and, you know, that there should be an open primary and there should be a chance for other candidates to be the nominee last year in 2024. So she was very annoyed, irritated by this perspective and felt that it was unfair to Kamala Harris. She also said it is a different time in the book that she never thought Kamala could win. So I found that as I was reading the book just very confusing and wanted to ask her about it. I think one thing that's so striking about this interview is that it's not uncommon for you to speak with someone whose, you know, kind of thoughts are a little muddled or where they're not, you know, necessarily super clear about their arguments.

23:12I feel like, you know, we do that every day when we're reporting. And, you know, you often see it in quotes, and it's typical with, you know, just sort of like the normal people that you, you know, interview like on the street. But this is like a White House press secretary. And I feel like a lot of the answers were just kind of like hard to parse. I guess like maybe one, are you often wary when you're going into an interview with someone who is like a professional press person, like ostensibly very skilled in PR and is sort of like a spin master? How do you kind of approach those interviews to begin with?