Right before Trump’s inauguration, Full Frontal aired a fantastic segment where Samantha Bee sat down with author, journalist, and Russian dissident Masha Gessen, who fled her home country and now lives in the States. During the interview, Gessen offered some helpful advice for how to effectively resist Trump and his ideologies, but it’s her breakdown of what, exactly, a “rock bottom” for the Trump presidency might look like that’s become prophetic since the interview originally aired in January.
Maybe for some viewers, Gessen saying her biggest worries were that Trump would cause “irreparable damage to the environment,” promote a “citizen-against-citizen” culture when it comes to immigrants, and start a “nuclear holocaust” seemed drastic at the time (note the big laugh her “nuclear holocaust” comment got), but since then Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement, pushed the Muslim ban and Mexico border wall, and just today, announced on Twitter that the US is now “locked and loaded” when it comes to the escalating tensions with North Korea.
If you missed Bee’s interview with Gessen the first time, it’s definitely worth the watch. And if you’ve already seen it, it’s also worth the rewatch – though, be warned, it gets progressively more terrifying each time, and that includes Gessen’s advice: “The thing I think to do, and this is my recipe, is actually to continue panicking — to continue to be sort of the hysteric in the room and to keep saying ‘This is not normal.’ Keep doing that, and just remember why you’re panicking. Write a note to yourself about what you would never do, and when you come to the line, don’t cross it.”
