As election day approached, everywhere I looked I saw evidence that America was a country tearing itself apart. There was nowhere else I wanted to be | KnottMatthew
by posing as an interpreter. Jaivet Ealom had never told the story of his ingenious and risky escape publicly before and I’m thankful he put his trust in me to help him do so.The experience was vastly different from my time as a reporter in the Canberra press gallery. There it was in the interest of members of the Australian political class to speak to me, given I was writing for a substantial domestic readership.
Near the entrance to the arena, a man was holding a giant cardboard sign in the shape of a Q. At this time QAnon was still a new and largely obscure conspiracy theory; as I waited in line, I had to Google it to remind myself what it was all about. It was an early glimpse of just how rapidly the “paranoid style in American politics” – as famously described by political scientist Richard Hofstadter in 1964 – was moving from the fringes to the mainstream of American life. By no means was everyone in the crowd that day a QAnon believer. Conservative voters had many rational reasons to support Trump, including his opposition to abortion and belief in low taxes.
In analysing Trump, I tried to maintain a sense of proportion without sanitising his at times outlandish behaviour. No honest journalist, including me, would say they struck the balance perfectly every time. Separating out what really mattered from the bluster was a constant challenge.A group of former Canberra colleagues experienced this during Scott Morrison’s first visit to the White House in September 2019.