hello, new york. thank you for joining us live at town hall in new york city for this very, very special edition of why is this happening. he is incisive, he is big hearted, he is very, very, very smart. and admitted, he s taller than you expected. please give a warm welcome to my friend, my beloved colleague, msnbc s chris hayes. thank you. hey. oh, stop. stop it. how are you? good. thank you. thank you, thank you, thank you. thank you. sit down, sit down. thank you. that s extremely kind. i hate attention and positive feedback. that was a really hard 20 seconds for me. thank you for cutting it short. it s amazing to be here in my hometown of new york city. i got some family here. so tonight, we re going to talk about democracy. and that word, we probably talk more about democracy in the last four, five years than i had in all of my time before that. like, even that as a topic seems weird. we all know, america is a democracy. there s a certain kind of history you re taught
well, not necessarily. my guest is the renowned colombian novelistjuan gabriel vasquez, who weaves powerful stories out of fact and fiction. is there anything magical about colombia s current reality? juan gabriel vasquez, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it s a pleasure to have you. now you inhabit two different intellectual worlds. you are a political commentator. it is yourjob to have instant, strong opinions for newspapers. on the other hand, you re also a novelist who writes complex, nuanced novels that are sort of riddled with doubt and uncertainty. which of these two mental attitudes comes more naturally to you? well, i m first and foremost a novelist. iwas. i began writing fiction at a very young age, and it was always my ideal to write the kind of novels that i had grown up with. but in south america, a novelist is also a citizen. and so you develop very quickly the need, the compulsion sometimes, the feeling of obligation to comment on the political rea
my guest is the renowned colombian novelist juan gabriel vasquez, who weaves powerful stories out of fact and fiction. is there anything magical about colombia s current reality? juan gabriel vasquez, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it s a pleasure to have you. now you inhabit two different intellectual worlds. you are a political commentator. it is yourjob to have instant, strong opinions for newspapers. on the other hand, you re also a novelist who writes complex, nuanced novels that are sort of riddled with doubt and uncertainty. which of these two mental attitudes comes more naturally to you? well, i m first and foremost a novelist. iwas. i began writing fiction at a very young age, and it was always my ideal to write the kind of novels that i had grown up with. but in south america, a novelist is also a citizen. and so you develop very quickly the need, the compulsion sometimes, the feeling of obligation to comment on the political reality. so in a sense, t
donald trump not only has shown no remorse, he s saying, right, i m going to do it again and the republican party is saying we re okay with this. i agreed with everything that has been said on the panel. could i make one cautionary note here? watch for this flex, that donald trump, you know, is a very effective populist demagogue and understands that he can use the language of democracy to undermine democracy. and one of the things i ve been talking to a lot of voters in my home state of wisconsin, a swing state, and a lot of people say, we re not for authoritarianism, we re for democracy, we believe the lie about the election, and if in fact donald trump is kicked off these ballots because he s an insurrectionist, we think that that is antidemocratic. i disagree with all of that. but i have to say that one of the things that donald trump has done has been to co-opt the language of his opponents, to
upside. growth is higher than expected, inflation is dropping faster than predicted and employment numbers continue to be very strong. and yet despite that the country has lost his aaa rating from one of the major credit rating agencies when pointed to high debt, and even higher political dysfunction. the problem for america is not its economic fundamentals which remain very strong. it is that there is a second shock that america has been reeling from. the trump shock. the united states has seen the rise of a populist demagogue who threaten tos destroy all institutions that stand in his way and he has a following like none i ve ever seen that is devoted to him no matter what he does or said. he has captured the republican party and many of those that stood up to trump there 2020