Opinion

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Former President Donald J. Trump sat down this month for an interview with New York Times political reporters and best-selling fiction writers, Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker, for an interview that covered a wide range of topics. Haberman and Baker were exceedingly careful not to push back too much on Trump’s insane and dangerous claims, but also did what little they could to make sure they didn't completely surrender to the racist who attacked our country, watched it burn for three hours, and is currently facing 91 felony counts for a slew of crimes. The following is a transcript of what this interview most certainly sounded like.)

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Thanks a million for being here, Mr. Former President Donald J. Trump.

Congressman Jim Jordan wanted revenge on behalf of Donald Trump against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for charging Trump with election interference in Manhattan.

He threatened Bragg with “oversight”: dragging him before his committee, threatening him with contempt of Congress; putting a rightwing target on Bragg’s back by publicizing him to draw sharpshooters from as far away as Wyoming or Idaho; and facing the possibility of going to jail if he didn’t answer Jordan’s questions right. Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil — three chairmen of three different committees — wrote to Bragg:

We are a polarized nation, no doubt about it.

There are two enormous groups of people inhabiting this great but roiling land of ours, and they view things through two, completely different lenses. Hell, we might as well be living in two different worlds.

From 1960 to today a series of leaders within the Republican Party have abandoned the democracy that American soldiers fought the Revolutionary War to secure, the Civil War to defend here at home, and World War II in Europe and the Pacific to defend around the world.

This has brought us a series of criminal Republican presidents and corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, who’ve legalized political bribery while devastating voting and civil rights.

Vladimir Putin understands better than Democrats and Democratic donors how to seize control of a nation. And Democrats damn well better learn the lesson, and fast. Forget about the economy and even abortion: it’s the media, stupid!

When Putin wanted the Central African Republic (CAR) to give him multiple gold and mineral mines in that resource-rich country, the first thing his agent, Yevgeny Prigozhin, did was to buy a radio station and start running propaganda about the benefits of the CAR creating closer ties to Russia.

I don’t get it and I’m hoping you can help me figure it out. Why do Republicans oppose President Biden’s efforts to cancel student debt?

This Tuesday, seven states, led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General, sued the Biden administration to stop his most recent attempt to reduce student debt. In a separate lawsuit, ten other Republican-controlled states filed a separate lawsuit to try to block the same Biden effort.

Last week, I told you about a pattern of rightwing malice that, once citizens see it and recognize it for what it is, they can make choices without also getting trapped by the very same pattern of malice.

That pattern of malice is this: when bad things happen, rightwingers, who already hate people who exist on the margins of society, find a way to blame them for those bad things. In this case, it was the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. It fell because a freightliner weighing scores of thousands of tons ran into it. Rightwingers, who already hate Black people, found ways to blame it on “diversity.”

The Republicans are taking a cue from Donald Trump by behaving as if the president’s stutter was some kind of character flaw. That’s why they’re asking for the audio files of the special counsel’s interviews with Joe Biden. They’re looking for content with which to smear him.

Liberal and Democratic allies are reasonably defensive. Whenever a Republican gets on television to suggest that there’s something not quite right with Biden, they leap at the chance to point out when his accusers stumble over their own words. Such hypocrisy-hunting was on display last night when California Congressman Eric Swalwell, commenting on House Republican Darrell Issa’s remarks on the US Department of Justice’s refusal to release the audio files, said: “Issa literally stutters as he takes a cheap shot against Biden’s stutter.”

Rural white voters have, in many cases, far more political power than suburban or urban voters, and they’re using that outsized power to push our nation toward disaster. While they’re only 20 percent of the country, for example, because of gerrymandering they control fully 42 percent of seats in the House of Representatives.

The authors of new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy point out that rural whites are measurably more bigoted and xenophobic than suburban or urban voters, 13 points more likely to hate on queer people, 15 points more likely to support Trump’s Muslim ban.