Suzanne Nossel headshot

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Every Friday, we discuss tricky questions about free speech and expression with our CEO Suzanne Nossel, author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, in our weekly PEN Pod segment “Tough Questions.” In this week’s episode, we talk about Trump’s decision to walk away from the upcoming presidential debate, the obfuscation of his coronavirus diagnosis, and the chilling effect of his executive order on race and bias training. Check out the full episode below (our interview with Suzanne begins at the 18:05 mark).

We got word Thursday morning that President Trump has decided not to participate in the next debate, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. His campaign manager said they’d hold a rally instead. This is an institution of the U.S. presidential election, and for a candidate to walk away from a debate—what does this say about the free exchange of ideas in a campaign season in the United States?
It’s unfortunate. Doing a virtual debate would not be unprecedented—Kennedy and Nixon had a debate where they were not in the same room. So, there’s nothing inherently wrong about this. One wonders, with so much business—the UN General Assembly, the congressional hearings—happening in a virtual format, why he would walk away from this. Politically, as of today, you’ve got to believe that holding more debates helps President Trump more than it does Vice President Joe Biden, just in terms of where the polls stand. So, I wonder if this decision will hold. I think President Trump has a great incentive to change the narrative. I do think, for the American people, it’s hard to say we’re losing out if we don’t get to see a spectacle like last week’s debate between Trump and Biden again.


“This is an administration that, from the beginning, has denigrated the role of the press, has called the press the enemy of the American people, and has decried any unfavorable coverage as fake news. We are suing the president, and our lawsuit continues to move forward, challenging his threats and acts of retaliation against the press.”


On the other hand, this week, we saw Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence debating, and that was a substantive exchange. There were some interruptions, but it didn’t really get nasty, and they talked about a lot of issues, and one got some insight into their character. If there are any undecided voters out there, I think an exchange like that could make a difference. It’s part of modeling civil discourse, which I think we have really lost sight of. What we witnessed in the Congress is so vitriolic and stalemated. So, actually being able to see the president come back after the fiery exchange of last week and demonstrate that he’s capable of a substantive give-and-take, and of exhibiting the kind of decorum that you would expect in a discussion among presidential hopefuls—I think that would be powerful for the country. I don’t know that that’s what we’re going to get.

Of course, he could always change his mind. Turning to the president himself, we had his COVID diagnosis followed by a weekend of misleading and confusing briefings from his medical team. It seems like we’re—at least at this stage—no closer to knowing exactly how serious his condition was or might be. Why does the public have a right to know about the medical condition of a president? And what does it say about the credibility of the White House that we don’t know whom or what to believe?
Look, the president of the United States, with the power that the individual holds—you’re talking about whether the nuclear codes in the suitcase went with him to Walter Reed, which I think we assume, or we know that they did—is a matter of grave and pressing interest to the public. That’s why the president has a press pool that follows him wherever he goes. Yet, we’re seeing those principles being flouted. This is an administration that, from the beginning, has denigrated the role of the press, has called the press the enemy of the American people, and has decried any unfavorable coverage as fake news. We are suing the president, and our lawsuit continues to move forward, challenging his threats and acts of retaliation against the press.


“What won’t fall away, and has also been obscured, is the wider situation in relation to this outbreak that is now affecting so many in the White House, in the Congress, and in the U.S. military. We don’t know the extent of that, we don’t know how badly people are suffering. There was a report last night that there are maybe ten or a dozen more cases than had previously been disclosed. That cover-up, the implications, and the potential for more serious consequences for people who get truly and lastingly ill—that remains.”


What you saw this weekend is just a complete flouting of those norms—when he took that spin around Walter Reed in an SUV, the press corps was not even notified, so they weren’t able to cover that. You had competing statements from the White House doctors and staff about his condition, and we still don’t know when the president took his last negative COVID test. When was he last tested before he was diagnosed and tested positive? They won’t tell it to the press or the American people. It’s part of a pattern of obfuscation. I think his efforts to discredit the press, in a sense, have been made and intended to lay groundwork for a moment like this, when he really is out to bamboozle. We see it in relation to the election as well—all of these false claims about mail-in ballots that are discredited time and time again. Yet, for his base, because they have been taught to discredit the discreditors, those claims still stand.

I think it’s the same thing in relation to his health. Let’s face it, he is seemingly back to work, on his feet, and it doesn’t look for now like he’s suffering terribly from this virus, and perhaps that’s a temporary effect—he’s just at a certain stage of going through a disease that we know can be a roller-coaster ride. But, I do think if he remains on that trajectory, some of these questions are going to fall away. What won’t fall away, and has also been obscured, is the wider situation in relation to this outbreak that is now affecting so many in the White House, in the Congress, and in the U.S. military. We don’t know the extent of that, we don’t know how badly people are suffering. There was a report last night that there are maybe ten or a dozen more cases than had previously been disclosed. That cover-up, the implications, and the potential for more serious consequences for people who get truly and lastingly ill—that remains.


“We are dealing with this resurgent reckoning on systemic racism, and rightful demands for transformation and education. This is a time when campuses need to be doubling down on these kinds of discussions. Yes, they should exercise judgment in doing so, but to have to follow the dictates of a new executive order that has struck fear in the hearts of administrators and made them worry that with one misstep they may lose all of their federal funding—that’s very dangerous and chilling.”


Just to cover an executive order, and I know this president obviously issues executive orders quite regularly, but there was actually new attention on one that he had signed last month that was on “combating sex and race discrimination.” It’s since had this ripple effect for race and bias training. Even on campuses, there was a dust-up about a group being reticent to screen the film Malcolm X on a military academy campus. What exactly is going on with this executive order, and why is it causing this sort of scramble?
I think what they’re trying to get at is some training and discussion groups going on in the federal government that are ideologically misaligned with this presidency. That can be somewhat of a legitimate issue in certain contexts—there is a whole range of ways to talk about issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and some may include a historic critique of everything about American history, the founding fathers, the flaws of the constitution, and our system of government. You could see why, in a federal agency, that might not be the tack to take, if people are left with the conclusion that all of the principles that they swear allegiance to when they go into government really are full of holes and hollow. So, I can see why there may be scope for some oversight of the messaging of such training and sessions.

But this EO is outrageous, it really is. It’s censorious, it’s a violation of the First Amendment rights of not just government employees, but everybody who is touched by the expression of institutions that rely on government funding. It is an effort to dictate to them what ideas can and can’t be taught, and critical race theory is excluded from discussion. This is a clear viewpoint-based discrimination, which is the foremost category of speech that the First Amendment protects, and a type of government intervention in the landscape of speech that the First Amendment absolutely rejects. These universities now scramble to consider how they need to reconfigure training that happens on campus, particularly in a moment when we are dealing with this resurgent reckoning on systemic racism, and rightful demands for transformation and education. This is a time when campuses need to be doubling down on these kinds of discussions. Yes, they should exercise judgment in doing so, but to have to follow the dictates of a new executive order that has struck fear in the hearts of administrators and made them worry that with one misstep they may lose all of their federal funding—that’s very dangerous and chilling. If the president remains in office and this goes forward, I think we’ll absolutely be subject to legal challenges, and it will be very important for officials and university leaders to stand up to some of its worst potential effects.