An interview between La Stamp and Viet Thanh Nguyen
Do you think that a part of Trump’s electorate is starting to regret it?
Some part of Trump’s electorate is regretting some part of what he is doing. He certainly has a low overall approval rating, with 40% approving and 55% disapproving of his performance. There is significant disapproval, in order, of his handling of inflation, foreign policy, jobs and the economy, and immigration. What this suggests is that the core issues for many voters will remain economic, but even on foreign policy there is major concern. Democrats, of course, hate him. Republicans still overwhelmingly favor him, but their support is dipping to a low, so far, of a 16% disapproval rating and 82% approval rating. Still high, but noticeably lower than a month ago. The economy can hurt him. Blowback from war could hurt him. And, lastly, perhaps Americans have enough of a conscience so that the spectacle of masked, armored, unidentified paramilitary police taking away people who have mostly not committed a crime that their approval of his immigration policies will also decline.
He promised to end two wars in the first days of his presidency: does it not seem like he has started a third one?
By anyone’s definition except the state doing it, dropping bombs on another country is an act of war. The United States habitually drops bombs or fires drone missiles into other countries without regarding that as war, even if the reverse would absolutely be seen by the United States as war. So, technically, from Trump’s perspective, he has not started a war. From another perspective, the United States is almost always at war, so a president’s promises in this regard are generally only about whether the United States will participate in low level war (that will always happen) or high level war (with troops on the ground engaged in combat). That is rarer and usually disastrous, and by that American standard, he has not started a war.
Foreign workers in the United States, including university professors, Michelin-starred chefs, intellectuals and artists, are starting to worry about their stay in the country: are they right? Do you think that this widespread fear will also affect the arrival of foreign tourists?
They are right. I’m a naturalized US citizen, born in Viet Nam, and I am worried about my own status. I was in Italy in the spring, and the thought of returning to the US and going through border inspection filled me with dread. I cannot imagine what it is like for someone with less legal protection than I have. The threats from Trump and his government make it clear that legal protections for the most vulnerable—undocumented migrants and brown people, and their intersection, brown people with residency or citizenship—are under very serious attack. We would be naive to think that the erosion of rights at this level would not be extended to naturalized citizens, which is where his administration’s attack on birthright citizenship is extremely frightening.
If I were a foreign tourist, I would go somewhere else. There is not a widespread attack on foreign tourists by border officials so far as the media is reporting, but there have been some notorious incidents. Why play the lottery at the US border? There are many more welcoming and beautiful countries to visit. I appreciate Canada’s boycott of the US—we need to be boycotted.
The United States were founded on giving hope and dreams to those who came in search of freedom and opportunity from all over the world. Is Trump’s policy and ostentation against foreigners a betrayal of the very idea of America?
Yes and no. Yes, because he is engaged in a culture war, dividing the United States against itself. The enemies are immigrants, refugees, minorities, students, intellectuals, trans people, disobedient women, liberals, leftists, and this cynically expanded category of the antisemite, which is defined as anyone who dares criticize Israel, and anyone who is Palestinian or their supporter. The American Dream, as illusory as it was, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, has been replaced by Make America Great Again and the red hat. No more do we signal that we we welcome the poor, the wretched, and the oppressed. That is a betrayal of an important American mythology.
But we should understand that it is a mythology. Many of the things being done today—for example, deportation, incarceration, being attacked by armed men who might be law officers or who might be vigilantes or give the appearance of them—have been done before in American history to nonwhite people. The forced removal of indigenous peoples to reservations in the 19th century, the deportation of two million Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s, the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, the use of plantations as forced labor concentration and torture camps for enslaved Black people. These are all betrayals of American principles. But now some white Americans fear that some of these things could be done to them as well as to people of color. This is what’s new, along with the deliberate attack on constitutional principles.
What continues to fascinate about Trump who seems to maintain the support of a large part of his electorate?
They have a nearly messianic belief in his personality. They are customers eager for his sales pitch. They are fervent participants in his culture war. They have a great deal of resentment towards the various populations mentioned above that they see as threatening their vision of American culture. They have a nostalgic longing for a mythological United States of the 19th century, where the United States could throw around its weight at will and where white people, especially straight white men, could seemingly do whatever they wanted. They yearn for power without legal restriction or the notion of rights. All of this is cloaked in the language of unquestioning obedience to power, authority, and nationalism. Trump offers a bargain—that his voters will get everything they can dream of if they just let him do whatever he wants.
Why do you think Trump’s six bankruptcies, his discussed career in finance, his closeness to Epstein, the various accusations of sexual abuse seem to have no influence on the judgment that many Americans have of him?
I will quote myself from my novel The Sympathizer: “Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.”
What does the ostentation of Trump’s entourage of public prayer and constant references to religion and having God on their side make you think?
There is some element of the United States where the pious belief in God is wrapped up with the worship of the dollar and a cultural conservatism around gender roles. Although this is often tied in with a belief in the supremacy of whiteness, there are also many nonwhite people who have some or all of these values. These values are rooted in how the country was made through settler colonialism, a force of violent capitalism that justified itself through a belief in the divine mandate of conquest and the racist idea that white Europeans were more human than anyone they encountered. Somewhere along the way there also emerged a love of spectacle, entertainment, and showmanship, whether that came from religious leaders or politicians or actual entertainers. All good politicians understand the power of spectacle and showmanship, but Trump understands it more than most, and he also knows that he has to entertain. The ostentation is part of the entertainment.
Have you ever thought about having to leave the United States one day?
I think about it every day.
Some are critical of the weak opposition of the Democratic Party to Trump government. What should Democrats do?
The victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City in the Democratic Party primary for the mayor is an important sign. He still has a long way to go to actually win the mayoral election. But he himself and his victory demonstrate what the left and the youth in the Democratic Party and outside of it on the more progressive side have been arguing—the Party is vacuous and interested only in maintaining power through holding what it sees as the center. That center, however, has shifted right over the decades, both due to Republican pressure as the Republican Party has become ever more radically conservative, and due to the Democratic Party’s willingness to shift rightwards in response, especially on issues of economics and war. Mamdani is young, vocal, focused on an economic approach that is more socialist than capitalist, which is terrifying not only to Republicans but to many conservative Democrats. This left economic populism comes along with an embrace of diversity (which is something the Democrats are good about), a willingness to defend Palestine and critique Israel, and a commitment to confrontation with the Republican Party (as Mamdani demonstrated by confronting Tom Homan, the belligerent director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is also very young at thirty three. The Democratic Party needs all of this—youth, energy, populism, diversity, economic populism, and courage, symbolized not only by attacking Trump and Republicans but by refusing the authority of Democratic centrism and refusing to be silenced or to be apologetic about defending Palestinians.
Do you believe there is a part of Republicans hostile to Trump and that they are capable of reorganizing themselves to propose an alternative?
No. The faction that is anti-Trump is very small and usually not very vocal. They have no hope of saving the Republican Party, because the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party believes in Trump and what he does, even if some say that don’t always like how he says things. All that means is that some faction wants a more polite version of Trumpism, but Trumpism is here to stay.
