Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

At least one way out of the tweet trap and the fact-check trap has emerged, and it came into existence even before the election. This solution lies in covering Trumpism not as news but as a system. Two examples of this approach are the podcasts Trumpcast, which then-head of the Slate Group, Jacob Weisberg, launched in 2016, and Trump, Inc., a joint production of ProPublica and WNYC, the New York Public Radio station. These podcasts treat Trumpism as a phenomenon that is distinct from both our experience and our expectations of politics. They avoid using the old familiar vocabulary of government and policy to cover Trump. Instead, they practice what the Russian literary scholar Viktor Shklovsky called “estrangement.” Trump, Inc. calls itself “an open investigation”—it examines Trump’s and the Trump Organization’s business practices, which include his and his family’s profiting from the presidency. Trumpcast is more like an anthropological inquiry: scholars, journalists, writers, politicians, and former administration officials discuss the nature of Trump and Trumpism. Both shows make ample use of Trump’s tweets and lies, but they treat them as symptoms and clues rather than news in themselves.