Club Lunch: Trump, the Media, and the Battle for Democracy in America

Donald Trump entered the White House last year as a novelty, underestimated in office just as he was on the campaign trail. But as he becomes more comfortable as president, Prof. Wilentz argues, he is moving further to the right and embracing authoritarian tendencies that could have repercussions for American democracy far beyond his administration. Even with his party’s midterm election losses and the looming results of the Robert Mueller investigation, the president’s cult of personality is still going strong, buoyed by social media and his uncanny ability to use Twitter. How far down this path will Trump go, and can anything stop him?

Amy Wilentz is a contributing editor at The Nation, a weekly magazine featuring progressive news, opinion and analysis, where she is a frequent guest on the podcast “Start Making Sense.” She is also a professor in the literary journalism program at the University of California, Irvine. She has written two books on Haiti and is a former Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker.