Wajahat Ali

A fire hose of chaos but with exquisite pop references

Hello and welcome to What’s Left? where each week, I interview someone interesting from somewhere on the left. This week is particularly exciting as not only do I have a totally ideal guest, but we recorded our conversation in a video first for the newsletter! If you’d like to watch rather than/in addition to reading our conversation — be sure to check out the video here!

Now let’s meet my guest this week…

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Wajahat Ali is an author, commentator, recovering attorney, former TV host and tired dad. His essays, interviews and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian and New York Review of Books and he’s the author of the book, ‘Go Back To Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American.’ Wajahat writes his own newsletter, The Left Hook which I’m a subscriber and huge fan of. He also co-hosts the podcast, democracy-ish and has a new show called America Unhinged on Zateo. We were connected by our mutual friend — shout out to Lauren! — and talked just three days after Trump’s inauguration.

Hello and welcome to What’s Left?, Wajahat! Now, if there was a version of the political spectrum where 0 is the complete center, -100 is you're an absolute fascist and +100 is you're as far left as you could go, where would you put yourself?

So zero is the center?

Yes.

And I can't even dip a toe in fascism?!

Ha. I didn't say you couldn't! I just asked whether or not you did.

So what would a 50 be?

50 would be middle-left?

Then based on your breakdown, I would be a 70.

Okay, you're pretty far left.

So this was interesting, a couple of years ago, the New York Times, for whatever reason had a poll where they plot you on a similar graph based on your answers to questions about 20 major policy issues. I took the poll and tried to be as honest as possible and I thought I'd be center-left but they had me as a progressive.

Well, it's a New York Times, so the standards about what’s left are a bit different.

I think you could call me a progressive but I'm also a pragmatist. I'll give you an example.

Great.

Some of the people on the hard left — the ‘burn the system down, don't Vote for Kamala’ left — called me a sellout. Because I was saying, ‘Folks, the lesser of two evils is exactly that: less evil. And even though it's not perfect, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, with all their faults, are infinitely better than Donald Trump and the Republican Party.’ And so I got some heat from the left.

But you’re so right. Sometimes you need to take a deep breath and vote for the least bad option. Not that it actually worked.

We tried.

But basically, my politics are progressive because I am against fascists. I'm against a criminal justice system that punishes people of colour and the poor. I want women to have rights and I want everyone to raise their family with peace and security. I don't need people to suffer to feel great again.

‘Need people to suffer to feel great again’ sounds like the motto of the new Trump administration.

I believe that for MAGA, the cruelty is the point. They would rather destroy themselves like Khan from Wrath of Khan and see us suffer. I don't know if you've seen Star Trek 2?

I understood the point, but I didn’t get the reference and I hoped you wouldn't ask!

You see, Khan is so vengeful and so enraged that he needs Captain Kirk to die. And even in the end — spoiler alert — as Khan is dying, he quotes Shakespeare, ‘From hell's heart, I stab at thee’. [NB! This is actually a Moby Dick quote. If I didn’t have this dang new video accompaniment, I could have made myself look great by writing in my correction as though I caught it in real-time. As it happens, I discovered it was Melville via Google just now].

Look at what's happening with Trump right now: in the interview he just did with Hannity on Fox, Hannity tried maybe five times to get him back on track: ‘But the economy, but the economy. Can you please stop talking about Biden and talk about the economy?’ And Trump goes, ‘I don't care.’ The cruelty is the point. They want us to suffer to feel great again.

Something I noticed after the election was that the American right didn’t necessarily calm down having just got won. Some of them carried on trolling because that’s what they need most, even above seeing the policies that matter to them enacted.

That's exactly right. It's vengeance, it's retribution. And this is all part and parcel of white supremacy. White supremacy is ultimately violent and self-destructive. All these initiatives that took place this week — the DEI initiatives — they're all going after women and people of colour. By ending the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC, they’re rolling back on civil rights. It's so naked and shameless: this rage that they have that they have to compete with the rest of us and tolerate the rest of us as equals. It reminds me, have you ever seen the movie Avengers?

Ok, you’re going to need to start making references that I get. Do you do Gilmore Girls for instance? I’m half-joking.

You don't know Avengers, Amy? Okay. Do you know Incredible Hulk?

I have heard of these things.

So there's this great scene in Avengers where Captain America tells his human form, Bruce Banner to ‘get angry’. And Bruce turns around and says, ‘I'm always angry.’ That's MAGA. They're always angry.

But you seem relaxed, Wajahat. I've spoken to quite a few Americans this week who are really distressed and you’ve got a very different energy. How do you feel?

This is only day four of the Trump administration and it's already a fire hose of chaos. Don't assume that just because I appear more relaxed than most people, I don't worry about it. I think about it all the time. But I realise that we're in a long walk and if you exhaust yourself by day four, you're no good to yourself, to your family, to your community and to those marginalized people that you want to help.

We have to pace ourselves because they're counting on us to be exhausted. One of the goals of fascism is exhaustion and distraction, it’s a deliberate strategy of Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon. They said, ‘Flood the zone. Overwhelm them with so much that they tap out and give up.’

But I worked in late-night TV during Trump's first presidency and no one was happy about this, but there was so much material. Flooding the zone also creates a lot more content for people to watch and others to make money from.

I don't know if you saw SNL this past week. They had a good opener where they had an MSNBC panel who all said, ‘We will not fall for every emergency alert!’ But then it’s, ‘Emergency, alert! Emergency alert!” and they were just like the dogs from the movie ‘Up’.

Okay, listen, I haven't seen that one either, sorry.

These are exquisite pop culture references, Amy.

Ok, the dog from ‘Up’ gets easily distracted each time he sees a squirrel. He'll be talking to you and there'll be a squirrel and he just loses a train of thought. So that's the trick. They're hitting us with so much and each one is important. They’re eliminating the existence of transgender people, all DEI initiatives, they’re encouraging federal employees to snitch, they’re attacking immigrants and they just released 1600 violent insurrectionists.

Not to mention all the environmental ones as well.

The Paris Accord. And now we're the only country not part of the World Health Organization. At any other time, that news alone would be leading news. Apparently, we also don't like vaccines, so polio and measles are going to come back in America. California's on fire and he's mocking California.

But for MAGA, the cruelty is the point. So on Twitter, they’re like, ‘Cry harder, Lib.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not crying. He is going to screw you.’ Shit will hit the fan and in six months they're all going to find out.

Everyone's going to suffer.

Are you In the U.K. right now?

Yes. We'll suffer here too.

You had your Brexit moment, so we learned from you.

But what did you learn? Because it seemed like you didn't learn at all! It seemed like you guys watched us make a bad decision and then you made it yourselves, twice.

With Brexit, it was like warning your friend who’s drinking alcohol in a Mustang going 80 miles an hour at a brick wall that they're gonna die. And your friend says, ‘I'll be fine’ as they pour alcohol on themselves and light a fire. That was Brexit. Then America's like, ‘Why don't we ride a flaming dumpster fire attached to that car and then torpedo ourselves as we careen through the brick wall off a cliff?’

Thank you for illustrating a point without referencing another movie I’ve not seen! Though that was a very cinematic scene you described. Now during the election last year, the Democrats moved further right to appeal to Republicans and they still didn’t win. I'm interested in whether you think that the Dems should stay where they are or become more progressive.

I'm so glad you mentioned it. Harris never talked about they/them pronouns, she never said ‘Latinx’ or ‘Defund the police.’ And then she decided, somewhere midway in the campaign, to bear hug Liz Cheney. And it's always good to have a big tent. Big tent, more votes, great. But bear hugging Republicans to the expense of the base? Did that help? No, it did not.

I'll give you one example. During the 2024 Democratic National Convention, there's a war in Gaza that Amnesty calls a genocide. And it’s a very unpopular war: according to all the polls, most Americans want the war to end. The Democratic Party, especially the base, is openly saying, ‘Please stop the war’. So then they have this beautiful speech by a Jewish American mother of an Israeli hostage who unfortunately was later killed. Everyone thinks it’s a lovely, empathetic, decent speech that recognizes the humanity of everyone. But did they also have a Palestinian-American speaker? No. They even had a Palestinian-American Democratic elected official who submitted a beautiful three-minute speech with nothing controversial in it at all and they rejected her.

I can tell you that after that rejection, so many people in our community said, ‘I'm done. I can't do it.’

It was such a baffling decision.

If you don't motivate and inspire the base, if you throw them under the bus and you bear hug Liz Cheney, can you blame them for not showing up?

So what do you think the party needs to do next?

The party is torn right now. For the Oversight Committee, they had a choice between AOC, who’s one of the most effective communicators with about 4 million followers on social media —

She's prolific.

— and 74-year-old Jerry Connolly. And they choose Connolly. To be director of communications! Then for chair of the DPCC [the House Democrats' main messaging committee], they rejected Jasmine Crockett, a young Black Democrat who’s everywhere and was recently in her seat on a plane about to take off doing a live bit on MSNBC. They went for 71-year-old Debbie Dingell.

Debbie Dingell doesn’t sound like a real name. Is she definitely a real person?

She's a real human person. Have you not heard of her?

No, I hadn't. And with a name like that, I would definitely remember.

They've decided to give the leadership to these old — I'm not using ‘old’ as a pejorative — but old, wealthy white folks. Meanwhile, the base is becoming more and more progressive. I think right now the party's in flux and you need fighters. Whoever reflects the passion and righteous anger that will grow in the next six months will be the next leader of the Democratic Party.

Something interesting is that a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump also voted for AOC.

It’s a demographic that wants change, isn’t it?

A lot of people in 2016 who voted for Trump were also Bernie supporters, like Joe Rogan. They think the entire establishment sucks, that the institutions are broken, that the 1% is screwing us. And they don't want restoration, they want reform.

Maybe AOC just needs to wait until she's 70-something and then they'll reward her.

Become 70 years old, blonde, put on a lot of ‘Fair and Lovely’ makeup and change her name.

A caucasian Debbie Dingell. Okay, Wajahat, do you have any optimism for the future?

Yes. I have three kids and I know you have one. Our kids deserve a better future and so we have to be optimistic and hopeful. I believe hope is optimism with a plan, it's proactive. Hope means you have to act and do things.

So can you recommend some action for us then?

Think about what you can do at a local level. As we resist fascism across the globe, local communities are the bulwark. It starts in your home, on your street, your school board. You can run for office, fund your roads, build coalitions and come together. This is how you create grassroots movements and make your home and your community a model for the type of country you want.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, I'm trying to get lefties to be a little more silly and take the piss of themselves. Can you make up a marginalized community which you belong to and want justice for?

I belong to the most marginalized community in the world, left-handers. I have been oppressed by right-handed oppression, by right-hand supremacy.

Haha. Have you ever dated or slept with a conservative, to your knowledge?

Wait, let me think about it. Okay. Nope. For sure. No. 100%.

Impressive!

It would be really tough. Today's conservatives ain't the conservatives that I grew up with.

They’ve definitely become more extreme. Is there anything else you want to tell us about your left-wing politics?

I don't know if you saw what happened with the bishop during the inauguration. She said, ‘People are scared, please take care of the immigrants, please take care of transgender people, they just need your help, President.’ And she’s been excoriated for the past few days. Could you imagine what they would do to Jesus?

If Jesus were to come back, he would probably align himself with a lot of progressive policies. Helping the poor and the marginalized, free health care, feeding children, healing the sick and telling the 1% it's harder for a rich person to go to heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. So for those lefties and liberals out there who get attacked by the right wing because we're apparently godless and heathens, ask the right wing what they would do to Jesus if he came back. Would he be wearing a three-piece suit and a red tie and sitting in the front row with the bro-ligarchy at Trump's inauguration?

Do you think Jesus would be a better communicator than Debbie Dingell?

I think Jesus would crush it on TikTok.

He would do so well.

If he could do tight TikTok sermons, he would probably get more followers in one day than Debbie Dingell.

Especially if you could help him with the lighting, as you helped me. It's been so good to talk to you, Wajahat. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for tolerating my antiquated America-centric pop culture references. I promise you that they were on point.

I've got a lot of films to catch up on now!

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I’ve no doubt you guys will want to hear more from Wajahat after that, and you’re in luck because this guy works HARD. I would start with his own Substack, The Left Hook and podcast, democracy-ish. Then progress to his book and make sure to watch America Unhinged on Zateo! He can also be found on the usuals: Twitter/X, Bluesky and Instagram.

If you’d also like a little more Amy — and why not? I’m allowed to promote myself on my own newsletter!!!!! — I would suggest two things:

1. Catch up on past interviews about American left-wing politics, such as with journalist Carol Schaeffer and comedian Mohanad Elshieky.

2. Check out my own sweet pod!! In FeMANism Podcast, my friend, fellow comedian Samantha Martin and I play two shitty dudes mansplaining feminism. They’re brothers-in-law recording from a garden shed in Chippenham, England and it’s exactly as silly as it sounds. We release new episodes with videos every Monday, so definitely visit our own Substack if you’re not a massive misogynist!

And if you’re only swayed by reviews, below is a seriously cute voice note my friend Fiona sent me when she started listening to the podcast recently. I don’t think we could make a better ad for ourselves. 💕

Thanks for reading everyone! See you next week. Amy xo