Jess Walter on the Election
In Conversation with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan on Fiction/Non/Fiction
In the lead-up to the presidential election, novelist Jess Walter returns to the show to revisit his previous comments about former president Donald Trump. Walter joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss Trump’s dangerous decisions and inflammatory rhetoric, as well as how reactions to him have changed since 2016. Walter talks about former Trump cronies who have abandoned the candidate and endorsed Kamala Harris, and reflects on the inaction that has made it possible for Trump, a felon, to run for the presidency once more. He hazards a prediction about the election results and reads from his short story “Town and Country,” which appeared in his recent story collection Angel of Rome.
Check out video excerpts from our interviews at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
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From the episode:
V.V. Ganeshananthan: We’ve loved having you on the show, and you’ve talked about Trump at these crucial times in his political career. I find it really interesting and helpful in the maelstrom and chaos of this current election to go back and see what we were all thinking in November of 2020, right after he lost in that glorious moment. The one thing I noticed was that none of us even discussed the concept that he might run again. So were you surprised when he did?
Jess Walter: You know, I probably shouldn’t have been, but I guess I’m less surprised by him… I mean, the desperation with which he’s running to not be prosecuted and thrown in prison is totally on brand for him and in his character. The thing that shocks me is that so much of the world is going along with him. I can get cynical about politics, but I think at this point this feels more like human nature, like the greed of billionaires and the sad, irrelevance of the media all of a sudden, and the haplessness of the courts. I suppose as novelists, we all should have seen this all coming. I consider it a failure of our craft, that I didn’t.
I’m reading pages for a novel, it’s called So Far Gone, and it begins there, with this fed up environmental writer who goes off the grid and in 2016 and he comes back out in 2024 shocked to find the world is not only unchanged, but maybe a little worse. I was writing it throughout the spring and last fall to kind of deal with this sense of dread that I think is really building in me to the sharpest point right now. I find myself wanting to do that every once in a while, as a novelist, like stick my head out the window and describe the car as it’s going off the road. I wrote a novel about the financial crisis of 2008 in a similar way, and they’re the closest thing to the way I used to practice journalism, that immediacy. But, in this case, I think I’m reacting as, in many ways, the very thing you’re talking about, the idea that we didn’t know, you know, that this snuck up on all of us.
Whitney Terrell: I remember watching the insurrection on January 6, 2020, which was after the episode that we taped. I know this is a wrong thing to think because you should be concerned about the people in the capitol, and I was, of course, but really what I thought was: Oh, thank God. Then this guy’s done. We’re done with him. I really thought that. I thought there’s no way.
JW: Yeah. I mean, how could you, how could you not?
WT: Well, that’s what we’re gonna try and process here, like, what are the forces that have led him to be able to recover from that. Do you have any theories? I mean, we’ll talk, we have some questions lined up, but maybe you’d like to posit what you thought about why he was able to come back from that.
JW: To me the failure of Congress and the failure of the Republican Party. Mitch McConnell had a new biography come out this week in which he admits that that was an entirely impeachable offense and has terrible things to say about Trump’s character. You know, those kinds of mea culpas now are just kind of sickening, honestly, because we all watched it, and every one of them, they all got up and gave speeches that day. Mitch McConnell, a month later, got up and gave a speech blaming Trump for the insurrection.
And so to find ourselves here, we’re going to focus for the next week or 10 days on the failure of the presidency, of putting a lunatic back in office. But there was a real failure in whatever Congress’s role was here. They were the ones attacked. Every one of them seemed completely taken by the idea that this guy couldn’t, shouldn’t, be allowed to be president anymore, and yet, when they had the chance to act, to impeach him and find him guilty in a trial, they didn’t. That would have eliminated this thing that we have coming now. So I look at that moment as the moment when weakness and failure began, and then it just has crept throughout the entire two-party political, Republican party system, until we find ourselves here again.
VVG: It’s amazing to me that it feels to me like the insurrection was yesterday. And now we’ve just had a vice presidential debate where the Republican vice presidential candidate was unable to really say, like, “Trump lost the election.” He couldn’t stomach saying it. I also remember I had a pal in there. Thinking about all of the journalists who were and Capitol Hill staff, etcetera… All of those people, the workings of government and its symbols… It really does feel to me like surely we can still do this, but of course, the clock has been ticking.
In our very first episode talking about Trump’s similarity to a mob boss, we speculated on the possibility that his political enablers in the Republican Party, like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, would abandon him once he lost power, like rats scurrying from a sinking ship. I believe that is the phrase.
In 2020 you said it looked like these characters had gone back to the Lido deck of the USS Trump and were playing shuffleboard. And I wonder what you think the situation is now, because Harris is campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney texted me like yesterday, and maybe also the day before, you know, also the day before that, like “Hey, Sugi, it’s Liz.” There’s a fairly large Republicans against Trump group. Just recently, John Kelly also has been going around saying in interviews that he thinks Trump is a fascist. What was he waiting for? He’s Trump’s longest serving chief of staff. How is all of this working? Should there have been more defections? Why were there not more?
JW: I will draw the line if Dick Cheney starts texting me. I mean, I’m all for bringing as many Republicans in as possible, but that’ll give me the creeps. But yeah, what are we at, 24 now, of his closest, most important aides. And it’s not like we’re talking about the deputy minister of the interior for lawn chairs or something. I mean, we’re talking about your vice president, your chief of staff, your attorney general, secretary of state, two defense secretaries, and Liz and Dick Cheney. I mean, this should have been disqualifying, but the disqualifying things have to get in line behind his incredible racism and fascism and sexual predation and Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.
There are so many things that should have disqualified him from the presidency at this point, and so there’s something else going on here. There’s something about human nature and about people embracing maybe his apocalyptic views. The Republican Party itself has not turned against him. That’s the thing, the greed that the multi-billion dollar industry that is that political party. The people who are doing it there, I applaud them. I wish they’d come out sooner, maybe more forcefully. But, you know, the party itself still needs something from him, and that’s the most depressing thing for me.
Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O’Hara.
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The Angel of Rome and Other Stories • The Cold Millions • Beautiful Ruins
Others:
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1 Episode 6: “All the President’s Shakespeare: Jess Walter and Kiki Petrosino” • Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4 Episode 4: “Life After Trump: Jess Walter and Jerald Walker on the Aftermath of Election 2020” • Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 8 Episode 2: “Jeff Sharlet on ‘Sanewashing’ and Fascism” • Anderson Cooper interviews Kamala Harris | CNN | October 24, 2024 • The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party by Michael Tackett • Liz Cheney • Lindsey Graham • Shark Tank • Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg • Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7 Episode 50: “Thomas Frank on How the Harris-Walz Ticket Can Win Red State Voters” • Veep