The World According To Trump
A Talk with Nora Guthrie about Lies, Truth and Turf
“Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first? (…) I’ve known you many years, but this is the first time you’ve asked for help. I can’t remember the last time you invited me for a cup of coffee. Even though my wife is godmother to your only child. You never wanted my friendship. And you were afraid to be in my debt. (…) You had paradise in America. You made a good living, had police protection and there were courts of law. But now you come to me and say ‘Don Corleone, give me justice’. But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather. (…) What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully. If you’d come in friendship, the scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if an honest man like you should make enemies, they’d be my enemies. And they would fear you.” (Don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part One”)
This sermon introduces the character of Don Vito Corleone and his very role in the community that he rules as The Godfather. He is the one who always should be asked first. Bonasera wants to ask him for justice, because his daughter was raped and beaten, she will never be as beautiful as she was, he says, but the perpetrators went free. He wants them to be dead. Bonasera wants Don Vito to help him, but he fails and Don Vito holds a long sermon to show him who he is and how people should behave if asking for a favor. It is not money what counts, but friendship and respect. You do a favor to me? I will do a favor to you.
Michael Kleff and Nora Guthrie. Foto: Richard Limbert. In the background a poster of Pete Seeger performing in Tschechow-Theatre on Crimea in 1964, organized by Ukrainian Ministery of Culture.
I remembered this sermon while talking with Nora Guthrie about the world according to Trump. Nora Lee Guthrie lives in Mount Kisco (New York). She is one of the founders of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and president of Woody Guthrie Publications. For thirty years she organized many exhibitions, published books about her father’s legacy, and produced many new recordings of her father’s previously unpublished lyrics. In 2024, her daughter Anna Canoni took over. Nora is married to the German music journalist Michael Kleff.
Nora grew up in New York in the same surroundings that Donald Trump did. She says, she knows his type and how he thinks about his turf. There seems to be a kind of mystical communion between Donald Trump and the people who support him. He seems to be the tough one who will save them, who will fix everything they think that should be fixed. He continues repeating his lies until a lot of people believe that they are the truth. Nora sees an alternative to his lying, according to her father Woody, who wrote on his guitar: “This machine kills fascists.” It is not important, if anybody like Trump sees himself as a fascist, but he behaves like one repeating his lies again and again and again. But Nora tells us that there are other lines which should be repeated again and again and again and that should us give hope.
The Backlash started in 2009, January 20th
Norbert Reichel: In the documentary “Old Man Trump”, published by Süddeutsche Zeitung some days before the elections on 2024, November 5th, you talked with Christian Zaschke and Boris Hermann about the moment, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen were singing “This Land is Your Land” at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. You said this was the moment when the backlash began. Why?
Nora Guthrie: It’s just my own gut feeling. I am not a historian nor a scholar. It just seems as everything started to fall apart after Obama’s election. You know, first there was a small group, the Freedom Party or whatever they were called. There were just a little group that started to get together. I don’t know if they think of themselves as being racist or not. I really don’t know. I just noticed that things started to happen after his election. On both sides. On the Democratic side there was a huge excitement and joy. When you look on the photographs of the inauguration, the films, they are so beautiful, there are so many people, of different colors, of different sizes, having such a kind of catharsis in a way. This line: “Join us, unite us all.” There was his famous line: “We are the United States of America.”
And then things started to get kind of difficult after that. There was a huge backlash against his ideas for national health care, universal health care and it dwindled down to the Affordable Care Act just a lot of resistance in the Congress, resistance to a lot of his policies. OK, I could not understand for what reason not everyone in America wants health care. I do not know why. But there were small groups apart, out of Congress, the little Freedom Party. So it is just my gut feeling that things started to become a backlash. It seemed to me that something about him being elected triggered a lot of different things, not nice things.
Norbert Reichel: For me as a European, it is difficult to understand that people who want to establish health care for everyone are called communists or socialists.
Nora Guthrie: There is a big anti-socialist language going around now. This is my own personal observation and feelings. They are not documented, I don’t look at the polls. These words have been exploited. Maybe, this is part of the reaction to Obama’s “United States of America”. For “United” is socialism to some people. These are words also that start creeping in, creeping back to our national conservatism we thought that kind of ended with the McCarthy period. It is so ridiculous to me, they use words like communism, socialism in the same breath as if it were the same thing. You really don’t know what you are talking about! These are just words being thrown around. I had to laugh – in a horrible sense – when Trump says: “The Democrats are a bunch of Fascists, Communists, Socialists.” Like he doesn’t understand at all about history, knowing that fascism was against communism, he got it all mixed up. To me, these are simple meanings. There are not a lot of educated people using terms like that. There are no reasonable terms, no reasonable arguments.
Cats and dogs and RFK
Norbert Reichel: That is the Republican part of the backlash, but where is the backlash on the side of the Democrats? Democrats seem to be weaker than ever.
Nora Guthrie: I heard a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks, quotes about what went wrong, what they did wrong. I am not sure if I agree with all that analysis again. I am a person on the street and not a political scholar. I think there are two things, why the Democrats lost. First thing were all the lies that were put out by Trump and his people. They eat the cats, I don’t know if you heard about that?
Norbert Reichel: I heard about that. You could read about that in nearly all German newspapers and hear about it all over in radio and television. It is the same thing everywhere. It is not important if migrant people eat cats and dogs, it seems to be enough that it could be possible, plausible that they could do that. You have no chance to argue against it.
Nora Guthrie: The media still underestimates the power of lies and fraud. All the stuff that was going around. I heard some interviews with Trump supporters saying: “We are against eating the pets.” O my God, really, that is why you are voting Trump? Lies and anger are working very, very well.
The second thing that I think happened with the election is that Trump is a very savvy sly fox, a very savvy salesman. I know a lot of young people who voted for Trump because of RFK, bringing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into the picture, and Musk! And these are two kind of idols for a lot of young people. For different reasons. There are a lot of people who are concerned with health care, a healthy way of life, what RFK represents, vegetarians, vegans, people like that. Trump got a lot of votes from that perspective. He got a lot of young men votes because of Musk. I know some of them who think Musk is the greatest thing on earth because he goes to space with his satellites and rocket ships. He is very attractive for young men.
Even the abortion issue was important for a lot of Spanish and black voters!
Norbert Reichel: Many Spanish people are catholics who are strictly against abortion, religious black People, too. Why did the Democrats fail?
Nora Guthrie: I am not convinced the Democrats did a terrible job. I am not ready to say the Democrats did a bad job but the Republicans did a great job of lies panicking people, scaring a lot of people, scaring white young men, scaring black young men. This worked. Trump is so sly that for all the reasons that he picked RFK even if he will fire him after a few weeks in office. He is known to do that. He’ll play the card and then as soon as he wins, he’ll drop it. He’s dropped so many people as they were his pets. He uses them. RFK’s position is not a guarantee at all. The votes, that is all he needed. Look at all the people he fired during his first term. He can turn on a dime in a minute. So I think there is a lot of trickery going on. And he is really good at it.
On the other hand I hear even people around the middle and the left saying, let’s see how bad it is going to be, we don’t think it is going that bad, and maybe, Congress will be able to hold him, things like that. They haven’t done anything much to hold him in his last term. Who knows what he will do this time. I really don’t know what is going on this time.
Back to where we started?
Norbert Reichel: What about civil society organizations?
Nora Guthrie: There are so many organizations that are involved in all issues, in immigration, climate, voting rights, women’s rights, this rights, that rights, so many. I am probably member of a lot of them. Too many. In a way you wonder if these small organizations are sometimes larger organizations, having a connection to the political system. I wonder if the Democratic party listens to “Doctors without borders”, listens to “Amnesty International”, listens to “Greenpeace”, listens to “Oceana”, listens to “ACLU”, listens to all these organizations who do a terrific work. I am not convinced that the political parties are connected to any of these movements. They don’t kind of reflect the policies. Pete Seeger once had a great line, he said: “Think globally, act locally”: I am kind of retreating after the election because we thought we had such a big movement. I was totally convinced that Kamala Harris would win. We were all so engaged, we really thought that would be a turning point for this country.
And after this discouraging news, I think a lot of us are retreating back into a more local position. We don’t see a happy impact on the larger political scale. I said, I don’t know if the Democratic party is listening to all these wonderful movements. So all we can do to keep going, for my personal perspective, is kind of to go back to where we started, to support “Doctors without borders”, “Amnesty International”, “Greenpeace”, “Oceana”, “ACLU”. There are so many organizations doing positive things on the ground.
The Democratic party doesn’t seem to be on the ground that way. For some reason, I don’t know why, but that is not going happening. So we all are going back to our original positions, helping out in our communities. There is a wonderful community in our neighborhood called “Neighbors Link”. They work with immigrants, with teaching language and help, housing, integrating them into our community here. They do a fantastic job. And everyone in the community is very positive about it and feels good about it. I don’t know why this is not happening on a national level. Everybody is playing politics in Congress! It is so biased. You know they had an immigration plan that was written by the Republicans and the Democrats together and Trump calls up and said, don’t pass it! Because I want it to be an election issue. I don’t want immigration problems to be solved, I want them to stay alive and a hot political topic. How disgusting is that? And that the Republican party would go along with something like that. So I think we are all kind of saying I do not know how the upper tier of politics is going to be cleansed or saved in some ways.
A lot of people keep talking over and over again in the last year about the problem of the Electoral College System which does not represent the electoral popular vote. I think there is another lie that is being perpetrated by the parties. And that is that we were a democracy. But we were not. That is a big problem, too.
Norbert Reichel: But now Trump got the majority of votes. It was the first time. He won his first term in 2016 with the majority in the Electoral College but Hillary Clinton received some million votes more on the national level.
Nora Guthrie: His style works. Back to my rationale. There are a lot of people who say, why don’t the Democrats lie and cheat and create anger and stimulate voters that way. But for me personally, it is that I can’t do that, because others want you to do that. It is not in me. It is not in my soul to play that game. But that is a real issue, a real problem. How to play that game. I can imagine all the lies and stuff that the Democrats or any politician could lie against Trump. I listened to a news report, months ago, that there is nothing illegal about lying. Wow! Wow! Take that in! There is nothing illegal for a politician to lie. They say it is only illegal to lie in court. Wow! So you have to get a politician to court to hear the truth! Obviously that is very hard, because now he is elected with a Supreme Court decision that you can’t indict a sitting President.
I have to hoarse when I say that. It is not illegal to lie! It’s okay to lie! That’s what we learnt. Trump can say anything he wants. He can say, Mexico will pay for the border wall, and he can campaign on it, and then it doesn’t happen and he just says, they did not put up the money. He can just make up anything, any politician can do that and they are never held to account. I think, in the world everyone’s learnt that telling lies and fomenting anger works really well.
Poster of Pussy Riot’s exhibition „Velvet Terrorism“ in „Haus der Kunst“, Munich (Germany).
I worked with Pussy Riot a couple of years ago. They did a concert in Oklahoma that I helped arrange. One of the things they told the audience: they said it took fifteen years basically for Putin to get to where he is now, it was a slow fifteen years movement of his to catch the authoritarianism that he had. They looked at us, I swear to God, they said to us, you are seven years into it also. Seven years. You have seven more years to figure it out.
Norbert Reichel: Do you think they are right? Do you think it would be possible to establish an authoritarian system like in Russia in the USA?
Nora Guthrie: That is what they said. What do I know? I am a kid on the street. What do I know? My husband who is German often says to me, that’s how Hitler got into power. They said, he’ll never do that, he’ll never take the next step, he won’t do that. He did, he took the next step. Is it conceivable? Pussy Riot says it is. Americans are loathed to believe it. You know we are like everybody in the world. You can’t believe it will be happening to you. So I have no idea.
It is about turf
Norbert Reichel: Nobody will have any idea. Not for America nor for Europe.
Nora Guthrie: I have an analogy. I don’t know if this is right. But being a New Yorker, and Trump is a New Yorker born and raised in the same area.
Norbert Reichel: You lived two years in a house owned by Trump’s father Fred.
Nora Guthrie: He was the landlord of the building where we lived in. He denied Black families apartments. Which we didn’t know, we found out later. I was a baby. We grew up in Brooklyn and Queens in different areas. I know his type. From the streets. New York has a big mafia story, connected to the mafia and a little bit its idolatry of the mafia, of these big powerful street guys who were coming in and taking over. It’s like the television show “The Sopranos”, very popular, “The Godfather” films. A lot of people identify, particularly immigrant groups identify with the mafia because that started the immigrant groups to protect them. Anyway, the mafia had agreements that they each had a section of the town or a section of the country. There was the Chicago group, the Reno-Nevada group, the Florida group, the New York group, basically it was called “The Five Families”.
John Gotti being booked by the FBI New York Offices on December 11, 1990, Foto: FBI New York. Wikimedia Commons.
I swear to God, you know, growing up with this information, I also grew up where John Gotti – he was the godfather of New York / East Coast – lived. I could see him every day. This history, this mafia culture, I think Trump grew up with it also and he was very impressed with. His lawyer, Ron Cohen, was the lawyer who worked with the mafia a lot. So he learned a lot of the tricks, the skills, how to take over, how to control, etcetera. I have this picture – it’s almost like a bad cartoon – in my mind that Trump sees the world like the mafia does. America will be his turf, Putin will have his turf, China will have its turf and they are going to divide the world into the five families. I think that is how his child mind sees the world and which is why NATO doesn’t work, because mafia families don’t protect each other from other mafia families. You leave me alone, I leave you alone. He says to Putin, says to China: You leave me alone, I leave you alone. I swear to God, in my New York brain, that is how I imagine how Trump sees the world. And he wants to be a godfather of America.
Norbert Reichel: And the European Union is too small a family to him?
Nora Guthrie: It is not even a family. They are going to fight over who takes over which part. Like they did in New York. Take over the Bronx, take over Brooklyn, take over Queens. There are small groups who have little turf, little areas. I can’t get this image out of my head. Maybe, it is my problem. And nothing matters, he will play his game and Putin will play his. Everyone has their own turf. You remember, in the movie “The Godfather”, they discuss drugs, prostitution, all these different aspects of crime and who is going to control what. You take the drugs, I take the prostitution, dividing up the sins of the world. Who’s going to make money of which scene. It is all about money. That is a ridiculous movie I have made for you. I tried to see it through his eyes.
It is not even political, it has nothing to do with policies and all this stuff, it is not about that, it is about turf. How can I make money on this turf? When he was in Washington: Who can I make money using this turf, I’ll get a hotel in Washington where everybody has to stay when they want to talk to me. It should be a political television show, how can I make money off my turf. My turf, my steel, my oil.
Sing it again and again and again
Norbert Reichel: I talked with your husband Michael about music and politics. In the sixties and in the seventies, there was a great movement, they had a political message which was heard by a lot of people. Many musicians joined together for freedom, democracy, human rights, peace, for the rights of workers in the factories, but nowadays – he told me, there is no movement, not any more. These great times of solidarity are over. Do you agree?
Nora Guthrie: It’s hard for me to give a truthful answer because I do not know what is going on in music. I don’t know what Taylor Swift is singing about. I try to be honest. I have no honest answer. You have to be a music scholar to do that. I can only say what I have heard and what I have listened to.
I am always surprised that there is not more support from musicians. I remember when American auto workers were on strike in 2023, only one or two musicians showed up on the picket lines. Or how about a concert like the concert for Bangladesh about to feed the hungry people or the concert to free Nelson Mandela? Maybe, they’re organizing something like that and I didn’t get the email. I am not on TikTok, or I missed it.
Recently, I saw the wonderful movie about the making of “We Are the World” with Quincey Jones, Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson. They managed 40 of the world greatest musicians to come together. It was for feeding people. I watched the film and at the very end of the film, there is a scene of Diana Ross from the Supremes, it is all over and she is crying. They ask: Why are you crying? She says: “I don’t want this to end. This feeling of community. We are using our talents for something really good.” Her soul was being fed by that. Wow! She wanted it to go on, all these people staying together and keep singing together. It was broadcasted all over the world at the same time and so many people heard it.
There doesn’t seem to be that kind of organizing now. And there are so many things all around the world people could share, whether it’s climate change or pollution, whether it’s autocracy and politics, there are so many things we’re all understanding. We all live on the same planet. Why is there not someone doing stuff like that?
Tom Morello singing at Occupy Wall Street in New York City, 2011. Foto: David Shankbone. Wikimedia Commons.
There is a small version of singing at the picket line. I worked with Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine. He was there on the picket line, some other musicians whom I know, but not on this massive scale. Again Pete Seeger: “Think globally, act locally!” But we could also do both, as artists and musicians, who could work globally and locally. Take the technology, put together a concert in a day, with the top 20 artists of the world, write that song about climate change, or whatever, could happening. Don’t ask me why it is not happening. I haven’t any answer for that.
I guess I saw it happen so many times, on a smaller level. All my parent’s friends were involved in labor’s rights, in working men’s rights, in poverty and things like that. I recently heard an interview with an old friend of my dad’s. She was describing in the conservation where the word “hootenanny” came from and how hootenannies started in the 1940s in their apartment in a New York apartment. It was this woman, it was my father, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, and others. One of the sentences she says, everyone came to the hootenanny, all the union people and then she said, everyone were union people in New York, janitors, taxi drivers, teachers, doormen, people who worked in grocery stores. Can you imagine, that shocked me, when she said, the idea of janitors, taxi drivers, doormen in buildings, people working in grocery stores coming to a hootenanny to sing union songs, organizing labor songs, it is exact 180 degrees from the election we just had. Wow!
Can you imagine? I even hate it to say it out loud. There were so many of those people who voted for Trump. Because we didn’t have a hootenanny! Because we haven’t this big concert where everybody could join and sing and learn about it. My father said, when you write a song, it is about educating people, when people sing it and sing it again and again and again, they learn the words. So when they sang the song “Union Maid” and the chorus “Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union, / I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union. / Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union, / I’m sticking to the union ‚til the day I die.” And you sing it over and over and over for ten or twenty years, people learn about labor rights. And that is what we are missing, where are the songs about climate, labor rights, the sing-along songs, the easy songs to learn?
My father always said, the songs have to be easy enough so that people could learn the words. So you can sing along. We were talking about repeating lies. When you repeat them again and again and again, people begin to think it is the truth. But it is the same thing with the truth. When you sing it again and again and again, they learn something else. The truth.
(Annotations: Published the first time in December 2024, internet links approved on November 23rd, 2024. Titelbild: Woody Guthrie Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Foto: Garnup de Besanez. Wikimedia Commons.)