2020 American Election: Super Tuesday
Factual America caught up with director and producer Adithya Sambamurthy, who is heading to the US to cover the 2020 American election for The Guardian newspaper. We discuss the upcoming elections and take a look back at President Donald Trump's rise to power.
In 2016 and 2018 Adi spent weeks on the campaign trail filming and producing Anywhere but Washington. He shares his experiences criss-crossing America, where he was able to meet with Trump supporters and observe first hand the changing American political landscape.
We also look at how Trump has been so successful in certain areas that should be considered Democrat territory. Why do these communities reject Democrats and feel more hopeful and optimistic under Trump?
While there is a long way to go until the election in November, Trump has emerged from impeachment looking stronger. His campaign team and strategy have improved immensely since 2016. Conversely, he remains a highly polarizing figure despite his popularity in many parts of America.
Which Democrat will emerge from Super Tuesday the front runner? Do they even stand a chance against President Trump?
We also look at similarities and differences between the US and UK on the political front, in light of Brexit and the rise of Boris Johnson as prime minister.
“A lot of what we’ve seen has been Donald Trump's attempts to run against Washington; he gets to claim outsider status even as he becomes the establishment.” - Adithya Sambamurthi
Time stamps:
01:24 - Today’s topic and who our guest is.
02:38 - The film we are looking at today and what it's about.
06:10 - Watching the first clip – West Virginia in 2016.
10:05 - Why some areas have shifted away from the Democratic Party.
13:28 - Watching the second clip – West Virginia in 2018.
16:15 - Revisiting subjects and seeing how Trump's presidency has changed their lives.
18:52 - What struck Adi the most during his two stints on the campaign trail.
20:28 - The reception for foreign journalists in America.
24:00 - Analyzing the 2020 American election and comparing it with the 2016 election.
26:34 - Taking a look at the different candidates in the Democratic Party.
30:16 - A clip looking at Trump's inauguration.
33:10 - How Trump remains a change candidate even when he is already a part of Washington. 34:07 - Expectations going in as Adi heads to the US.
36:33 - Would the American public ever elect a socialist like Bernie Sanders?
38:08 - Other projects Adi has been working on.
41:18 - Adi’s impressions of the UK.
42:52 - Similarities between what is happening in America and the UK.
44:44 - The need for change that people are expressing across the globe.
45:42 - The surprising amount of people that watched the Anywhere but Washington series.
Resources:
Anywhere but Washington
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Adithya Sambamurthy:
More from Factual America:
Our Great National Parks with Barack Obama on Netflix
11 Insightful Documentaries About Donald Trump
10 Fascinating Documentaries On Ireland
13 Insightful Documentaries About Farming
Best Documentaries About Scotland: Uncovering its Rich History and Culture
Transcript for Factual America Episode 7 - 2020 American Election: Super Tuesday
You’re listening to Factual America, this podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter @AlamoPictures to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals we’re attending and how to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk and now enjoy Factual America with our host Matthew Sherwood.
Matthew: Welcome to Factual America, a podcast that explores the things that make America unique through the lens of documentary filmmaking. I’m your host Matthew Sherwood and every two weeks it is my pleasure to interview documentary filmmakers and experts on the American experience. We’re coming to you from Spiritland Studios here in King’s Cross London, England, it’s our usual home away from home, and today’s topic is, well, quite topical, it’s the 2020 US Presidential Election, a Super Tuesday edition, we’re recording this a couple of weeks ahead of Super Tuesday, we’re gonna turn this around quickly and get it to you ahead of the big day. Our guest today is Adithya Sambamurthy, fellow Texan, producer, director and camera operator, based in London. So welcome to the show.
Adithya: Thanks for having me.
Matthew: Adi has a fifteen year experience working on television, documentary series, numerous independent productions, he’s won a news and documentary Emmy award, so congratulations, you’re a first Emmy award winner to have you on the show.
Adithya: Thank you.
Matthew: You’ve got a Peabody, yeah, so you’ve been nominated for Emmy’s three times, and he has spent 2016 and 2018 on the campaign trail and I gather you’re heading back out there in a few weeks time, isn’t that right?
Adithya: That’s right.
Matthew: Okay, so as we rock and roll here in Factual America, the main thing that we’re doing here, we start things off by asking guests to pick a film, I think you’re keen to show someone else’s work but I wanted to show yours, so we trumped your modesty, no pun intended, and we- we’re gonna look at the series that you’ve worked on, called Anywhere but Washington, 2016 and 2018 I think you even have one, I think there was even another one there with a special election in Georgia, too.
Adithya: That’s correct.
Matthew: Yeah, but it is a series of shorts that you carry from the Guardian newspaper here in Britain, the journalist presenter is Paul Lewis, you are the producer, cameraman, and everything else I gather, Adi, and- [smiling]
Adithya: Yeah.
Matthew: So, well we usually ask why you’ve picked that film, we didn’t give you that option, but what is Anywhere but Washington all about?
Adithya: Sure, so the series really started up- the idea for the series actually started here in UK, the Guardian has a very- a long running and very popular series called Anywhere but Westminster, which is run by, you know, fronted by John Harris, one of their columnists and with a video producer, journalist, doing the production side of things, John Donald Coss, and they’ve been doing this for a well over a decade now, and it’s- has a cult following, very interesting work, and when I came on board to the Guardian in the US, there was already an idea floating to make a similar kind of series or conceptually in a way similar kind of series in America. Now of course we, America is America, the UK is the UK, different places, you know there’s a lot of differences. Our series is not that similar to the Anywhere but Westminster series, but what we wanted to do was tell stories of places and tell stories of people, and get away from, the sort of minutia of the campaign trail. So, the other thing we wanted to do was make a series that was topical, that we could turn around quickly and that could be, you know that was episodic, quick turnaround, nimble, that we can react to things that were happening, and so you know, typically we would produce an episode we would shoot in four days and edit about a week, so these are very, very fast produced and you know, the turnaround is pretty quick.
Matthew: And are you going back this year?
Adithya: Yes, so, this is hopefully, gonna be, you know, a much, a longer running project, this would be the third election that we’ll be doing so far, so the idea is to go back and make more episodes ahead of the general.
Matthew: And is Paul Lewis presenting as well?
Adithya: Yes, yes.
Matthew: Okay, very good, I think what would be great now is to jump straight to a clip, and the clip we’ve chosen is from your 2016, when you were on a campaign trail 2016, you went to a place called McDowell County, poorest county, one of the poorest states in the Union, in West Virginia, and it’s called why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Donald Trump. Maybe set the scene for us-
Adithya: Sure, yeah, so McDowell County is in coal country, you know, on the West Virginia side on the Appalachian trail, and it’s a place that’s been largely forgotten I think, you know over the last thirty years, more than thirty years, really. Really an unusual place to go because it is, you know, I don’t think it is a microcosm of America by any stretch, it is its own place. The reason we went there is because
Matthew: Yeah, okay, let’s- little bit more of McDowell County, but let’s go to the clip first and then we’ll talk a bit more about it then.
Paul Lewis: During the primaries a higher percentage of people here voted for Donald Trump than anywhere else in America. It’s also the poorest county in one of the poorest states in the country.
Ed Sheppard: I live in an apartment building across the street, I get up every morning, come over here at eight, make me some coffee, read my paper and kill time.
Paul Lewis: Ed Sheppard is 92, his gas station stopped pumping in 1995.
Ed Sheppard: Up this main street, we would be in an empty building that didn’t have a prosperous business in it. But little by little they’ve began to close one after the other. And now is down to a ghost town, a ghost county, really.
Paul Lewis: When was the last time someone stopped and asked you for some help or -?
Ed Sheppard: Oh, I don’t know. Four or five days ago, I don’t remember exactly. Occasionally somebody will pull in the driveway, asking for directions, or they were looking for something else in the county, all the good activity is gone and we’re just seating here now.
Paul Lewis: I want to find more people who are still clinging on McDowell, I asked for a tour from Sabrina Schrader, an anti-poverty campaigner, up for re-election for the house of delegates in the next door County. Born and raised in McDowell, she introduces me to people from her childhood, Alma McNeely used to have a good factory job, now she recycles cans for extra money.
Alma: There was plenty of jobs. You got timber, coal mines and people will fill in places at the stations working on cars and stuff, coal fields are gone, they go for everything else- everybody gone.
Paul Lewis: Where do you pick up cans from?
Alma: Road. Maybe worse, I think it’s 45 cents now.
Speaker 1: You got to give a lot to get 45 cents, it’s a lot of work.
Alma: Yeah, I always got start at the bottom-
Speaker 1: Well you don’t, we sorted out the bottom, so that’s where we got to start at, rich people, most of them didn’t start out at the bottom.
Alma: No, they’ve started at the top and stayed at the top [smiling]
Speaker 1: Um-hum.
Alma: I would say it’s impossible for them to have our perspective and understand what to do to help and support people. When they have man for themselves that can’t say that’s gonna help us.
Paul Lewis: What is the appeal of Donald Trump?
Sabrina: People are desperate for help. Trump says, I’m gonna make America great again. And they want to believe in something good, they would do just about anything for a job, cause they want to feed their families, so they’re getting tricked, they’re getting manipulated, and they believe things are different, not what they are.
Matthew: Okay, I think that’s a great clip, as you’ve already eluded to, I mean, I think it’s mentioned in the film, you know, Factual America have done a little researches, it’s lowest life expectancy in the US, McDowell it’s declining actually, 3.2 years for men and 4.1 years for women between 1985 and 2013, highest rate of drug induced death in US out of all the three thousand something counties. Its population has declined by 82 percent between 1950 and- okay I don’t want to throw stats but I think what’s interesting too, I’ve had discovered, it’s a- we talked about Obama, Trump counties and districts, maybe we’ll talk about that later in the show, but it’s an Obama Romney Trump county, which is very interesting. But my question is, shouldn’t this be Democrat territory?
Adithya: Yes, I think if you were to think about, the people, so the people that we spoke with, many of them have been long life Democrats these are folks who, or at least grew up in families that have been Democrat because these were- this is coal mining country, unions used to be very strong here, these are Blue Collar Democrats, or were Blue Collar Democrats. I think the shift, you know, away from the Democratic Party has been long coming there, this is not a Donald Trump phenomenon necessarily, this is something that’s been going on for a long time. However I think the consensus of- you know, I would say since the late eighties, the sort of the consensus, the political consensus that was reached has largely, people feel sidelined by the political consensus that America, or the American, let’s say the establishment sort of embraced. And so people were looking for changes, so I’m actually not that surprised that this is a county that went from Barack Obama and then for Romney and then for Donald Trump, because they were looking for change candidates, while Romney may have not necessarily campaigned as a change candidate, he was a change from Barack Obama.
Matthew: Right, and I guess in this particular case maybe, I’m sure the Obama administration wasn’t necessarily known as coal friendly, so I think that turned a lot of people off as well.
Adithya: That’s exactly right.
Matthew: But as you say this is a trend that’s been long coming, I’m old enough to remember when West Virginia was, you could- you know it was always assumed as to be on the Democratic side of things, has been Democratic for many elections now and I think, the McDowell county was sort of lagging behind the rest of the States in some ways. But where are the Democrats getting wrong, you think?
Adithya: Hmm, you know, I would defer to the people that were sort of on the ground there. So we’ve spent time with a young lady who was running for the State legislator there, Sabrina Schrader-
Matthew: Who we just saw on the clip actually.
Adithya: Exactly. And you know when you speak to folks who are from there I think generally speaking, I would say that the Democratic party is, I think the Republican party has done a good job painting the Democratic party as out of touch with average people, and I think there are- you know, people who have been voting for Democrats and haven’t seen any improvements in their lives or very open to the idea and view the Democratic party with a lot of skepticism now.
Matthew: And whether the things have been taking out of context now, I mean, let’s face it, these people, they are turning- called fly over the country and Hillary Clinton called them the Deplorables if you will, you know, I mean, I think this is actually a good point to look at the second clip, because then you went back to McDowell County, in 2018, and you’ve got a short that I highly recommend, it is called How a Democrat can win in Trump land, this is very a propos to where we’ve gotten in the conversation, so let’s take a look at that clip now.
Paul Lewis: How is the economy doing around here?
Interviewee 1: It has gotten much better.
Interviewee 2: Mines are starting to come back.
Interviewee 3: There’s more people going to work.
Paul Lewis: You think that the presidency did much difference?
Interviewee 4: Absolutely as far as I’m concerned.
Interviewee 5: He’s giving our jobs back.
Interviewee 6: He’s done an amazing work for our country.
Paul Lewis: West Virginia’s third congressional district, where Trump won with 73% of the voting in 2016 and few people seem to have any regrets. So what kind of Democrat could win here? Meet Richard Ojeda, retired army major, Democrat and former Trump voter.
Richard: Republicans are calling it Trump county, it’s not Trump county it isn’t, believe me, when a person is filthy rich and says things like, people need to learn to live within their means, they have no concept of what life is like for a single parent trying to put a food on the table. We have a lot of politicians out there that claim that to be with the people, but they don’t show up. I show up.
Paul Lewis: A meeting of the United Mine Workers of America, and a chance to learn more about Ojeda’s politics.
Richard: When we get to the point, all we have is a filthy rich and a dirt poor, the dirt poor would eat the filthy rich.
Richard: The majority of the people across America are not the elite, far more of the working class there are anything else.
Paul Lewis: Do you think, sort of millionaires and billionaires across America know how people-
Richard: They don’t, they cannot relate. Look, I got nothing against a person that’s wealthy, but, you know, the people that are in power, they can’t relate to these people.
Interviewee: You’re a pro-coal, what does that mean, in terms of policy terms?
Interviewee: I’m pro-coal miner, okay, I believe that there still is a need for coal but in terms of energy, we need to stop lying to people and tell them that, oh, coal’s gonna be king again, it’s not.
Paul Lewis: Ojeda’s honesty is maybe admirable, but it’s also risky. When I last came here in 2016, Trump was promising to bring life into a dying coal industry. Two years on, more coal trains are running but the long term outlet for the industry is still bleak, heading into midterms with a stronger economy and lower employment.
Adithya: Yeah, so we decided to go back, actually this was Paul’s idea, Paul Lewis, the correspondent, and we’ve visited with some of the folks that we’ve met in 2016 to see what is changed now that Donald Trump is the president and they believed in him early on. And, I think as you can see from the clip, you know, there is a perception that things are better, and, you know, it’s hard to put a number to people’s beliefs and hopes and aspirations, so in 2016 Sabrina Schrader says, you know, they’re looking for some- they’re looking for hope. They are hopeful now, he’s the president, and they believe that things are getting better. So, you know, I think that, the pervasive feeling that we found, talking to people at county fairs, you know, at shift change from the local coal mining, the local coal miners that were coming off of their shift, was that of sense of hope and optimism. And that- you know, the memorable line that we were told was that, you know, the local coal miners were calling the coal trains, “Trump trains”. And I think that says a lot about the perception of how things are changed.
Matthew: Now you’re going back to McDowell County, do you know yet?
Adithya: That’s the plan so we wanna go back, so unfortunately and really sadly, Papa, who is the elderly gentleman who we met twice, who is Sabrina’s grandfather passed away, and, but we still hope to go and spend time in the community.
Matthew: You know, it was very tempting to maybe show some of the clips of Papa over there but you can’t understand anything he says, so, unless you’re watching this and not listening to our podcast, you would not get anything out of the segments I think [smiling] but I’m sad to hear that actually. By the way the ninety-two year old in the first one, is he- do you know if he’s still around?
Adithya: That’s a good question, we’ve tried to locate him but we couldn’t, I’m not sure.
Matthew: Okay, I thought he was a very compelling character, great interview.
Adithya: Absolutely.
Matthew: So you’ve been 2016, we’ve mentioned special elections 2017, you’ve gone 2018, you’ve been on the campaign trail all across US not just West Virginia, what struck you most?
Adithya: I think in 2016 the thing that I was surprised by was the anger that was there and I guess you know, you know, I lived in Texas, I’ve worked and lived in the South for a long time. I thought that I had good sense of, you know, just general perception, political perceptions, but I was surprised by how angry people were in 2016.
Matthew: So, even angrier than, you know the Tea Party Movement that we saw sort of ten years ago.
Adithya: I think a lot of that same kind of anger, I think that’s carried over, but you know, to me, at least, the tea party was, you know, it was in my opinion, was very much a segment, a fringe of the population if you will, I’m talking about just regular people, you know.
Matthew: We’re not showing the clip actually, but, the one you did on the border wall. So you went to Arizona, the desert and you also went to Sun City made mostly of retirement community and you interviewed, you talked to a lot of people there. It’s the Republican party I think meeting and what struck me was the anger there. And, Paul even says something to the effect that, you know, he feels a little bit threatened even, especially when he meets Trump voters I should say. But, what was your reception, cause you were talking to me earlier about how actually being now based here and representing a British newspaper and you got a different perception that you might’ve had otherwise, you can say a little bit about that.
Adithya: Yeah, so I do believe that coming from- so the way this tends to work for the series is that I’m usually the first point of contact for us, in terms of reaching out to people that we- we do a fair amount of pre-production that is called, that is to say, I just make a lot of phone calls at the time, trying to figure out where we might want to be. Of course we pivot depending on what is happening, once we get somewhere but there was sort of an infrastructure in the place. So the thing that I find, I’ve been, you know, I think is different from working for an American news organization is that, a lot of Americans are very skeptical of, a lot of Republicans I should say, are very skeptical of mainstream news organizations in America, if not downright hostile, and that is very different when you’re coming from the UK. So a lot of people, in 2016, not that many people had really heard of the Guardian, didn’t know really much about the organization. We were able to get in the rooms and have candid interviews with people that I don’t think we would’ve been able to get if we had come from an established mainstream American outlet.
Matthew: Yeah, interesting.
Adithya: That’s started to change in 2018, I think people started to look at the series-
Matthew: [smiling]
Adithya: To background us more-
Matthew: Yeah, yeah.
Adithya: And there was more hesitancy, but I’d like to think that at the end of the day we’d tried to be fair even hand it to people and even people that- we’ve had emails and responses to people who we interviewed who said, you know what, like, I didn’t appreciate everything but I thought that I came off fairly, which is like a, that’s all we can hope for.
Matthew: Yeah and I think that’s very interesting, I’m a pretty middle in the road kind of guy and I think that was well done and, you know I think the Guardian probably learned its lessons as well, remember in 2004 when all in and tried to influence the election in Ohio and every county in the district the Guardian went into, the result went off more other way that it had in the 2000. So I think the Guardian has learned its lesson, I think that it is fair and it’s almost as a very American, I think you’ll typical American, I think the people outside the US don’t see you as a typical American and I think this is showing more your average American, I think that is the known reaction, people would look at it, and they’ll think, yeah, that’s me, that’s honest, you know a lot of like exactly what I’ve said but that’s a fair representation. I think that’s a quite an actually- quite a big stand of approval for the series. So, hold these thoughts, I think we’ll gonna get now to the 2020 elections, but we just need to take a break for our listeners.
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Matthew: Welcome back to Factual America, just talking to Adi here about his experiences on the campaign trail and now, now let’s look ahead, because I think your bags are nearly packed you’ve got your tickets nearly booked, you’re heading to the US in a few week time, the 2020 primaries and we’ve got a big day coming up, 3rd of March, is what’s called Super Tuesday, the biggest Super Tuesday ever, mainly because California has brought his primary forward, Texas is participating so, a good bulk of the delegates that are up for grabs, good third of the delegates that are up for grabs will be decided on that day. So, maybe you could talk about, what are you seeing in this race, seating here in London you’ve got an interesting perspective now. What are you seeing, similarities between 2016, 2018 and the differences, so what are the similarities you’re seeing?
Adithya: Um, I mean, I think a lot of the same- I’ll start with the differences actually cause I think that the differences are really striking.
Matthew: Okay.
Adithya: I do think that the Trump campaign from what I saw in 2016 and what I’m seeing right now, you know, I haven’t really been on the ground yet, but hopefully I’ll have a better sense of it when I start to do that. I think that Trump campaign is much more organized than they were in 2016, I think they’re much more professional, I think they have a very, you know, they’re much savvier and much slicker than they were.
Matthew: You know I’m not the expert, I’ve not spent much time on campaign trails but it has startled me too, little things that are going on, in terms of how they’re able to dominate the news cycle, or even use the news cycle to their advantage even though it should be serving the Democrats. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it but they did this whole “get out and vote” campaign in New Hampshire so Donald Trump doubled the vote of any seating iadn Republican president, he’s doubled the votes. This is a primary that no one should be bothering going to, it’s a forgone conclusion, he is the candidate. And it does seem, like, yes, there’s something here. I think they’re gonna be quite a jogger knot in the coming November.
Adithya: Absolutely, I think, whether you’re looking at the metrics or you’re looking at other positioning themselves, to certain segments of the population, I think that’s quite sophisticated actually. You know, whether it’s fundraising or whether it’s- I was looking at their Latino outreach operation, for example, if you compare that to 2016 it’s a world of a difference.
Matthew: And so what about- with that in mind, what about the Democrats, I mean, famously Will Rogers, the American humor, described, he said, I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a member of an organized political party, I’m a Democrat. I mean, I think we see a little bit of that this time around, what are your impressions?
Adithya: You know- yeah- [smiling] I think that’s a good way to put it, but, well, I think it’s expected right. Donald Trump is, he is the Republican party for all purposes, the Democrats are trying to find their voice and trying to find who is gonna be, you know, well, who can be around basically, and that’s gonna take some time.
Matthew: Yeah, and I think we’ve got, I mean, everyone thought is gonna be- I’ve been here before, I’ve been in- well, been in the UK for a long time, so obviously been here before, been in the studio before, but, I think, in looking at elections, you know, you see this all the time, everyone- in 2008, everyone was just presuming Hilary will get the nomination and then Obama got it. Joe Biden was the presumed winner just a few months ago, not he’s really struggling. And you’ve got Michael Bloomberg extended the race, you’ve got Bernie Sanders, what are you seeing in terms of the candidates and you know, where things stand right now?
Adithya: Well, I mean, in my opinion, you know, regardless of political affiliation, I think, if you’re not running as an encumbent and you’re running to challenge an incumbent the campaigns that have been most successful have been changing candidates, it’s by and large and so that, to me is not surprising that Bernie Sanders will do as well, he’s just as in hindsight, it shouldn’t be that surprising that Donald Trump do as he did, and Barack Obama before. And on and on, and Bill Clinton and George Bush, you pick- so I mean, what am I seeing, I mean, do you think, you know, there is a real hunger for a change in candidate in the Democratic Party, what we’re seeing right now is that Joe Biden is probably not that person. So, beyond that I really don’t know. I’m very interested in being there and sort of seeing it unfold and observing.
Matthew: Well I think, you’re talking about change candidates and obviously Trump run against Washington establishment, it’s all about draining the swamp, and doing all kinds of other things, I think that takes us- it’s a good point to go to another clip of yours, not from McDowell County this time, actually, even though it’s Anywhere but Washington you’ve actually went to Washington, in 2016, and looking at how Donald Trump is gonna- cause there is an excellent piece showed his supporters showing, these aren’t your typical Washingtonians that you come across, whatever your political strike I’ve been living there myself, so this third clip, I hope against hypocrisy of Donald Trump joins the swamp and this one is interview with Sally Quinn, so you want to set that up for us-
Adithya: Sure, so, we- well, the series is called Anywhere but Washington so the idea is to do stories that were not in Washington, however, we couldn’t pass out the opportunity to attend Trump’s inauguration and get a sense of how the incoming administration and how Trump’s people were basically set to change the nature of Washington society so to speak. So we thought well who else can better speak of Washington society than someone who is very firmly, very senior of that society, let’s say Sally Quinn.
Matthew: So let’s go to that clip now.
Paul Lewis: This is Donald Trump’s America, and it feels like business as usual. My next meeting was with a longtime member of Washington’s establishment. Sally Quinn is a writer, socialite and a gatekeeper of the political elite.
Sally: People run against Washington, they have to run against Washington.
Paul Lewis: As outsiders -?
Sally: Yes, you can’t possibly get elected unless you trash Washington. But once you get here, you are the swamp, you run the show, you are Washington. You are everything that you ran against. You represent everything that you say you hate and that people in the country say they hate. And so that poses a real problem.
Paul Lewis: Trump obviously was elected on a promise of transforming Washington, of cleaning it out. You think this is gonna happen?
Sally: Ain’t gonna happen, I think that some of the people he’s brought in, and there are a lot of millionaires and billionaires and I think they’ll be entertaining and I think they’ll be a whole new, sort of Republican group, but generally Washington kind of goes about it, business and that’s been true since I really thing the next administration.
Paul Lewis: The end of the inauguration day, and the start of a night of hobnobbing. Inauguration balls have been a feature of Washington for two centuries. Some people say presidents come and go but Washington never really changes. Access to the establishment doesn’t really come cheap, corporate owners have been spending millions of dollars for tickets to events like these. The other side of town, and a very different kind of party. But Deplorables inaugural ball was an unofficial ball for Trump supporters. They take in over one of the most prestigious venue.
Matthew: So I think that’s a great clip, as someone who lived in Washington in the nineties, I think Sally Quinn is so typical of what you find in parts of Washington. And surely that piece, you went to Ben’s chilly ball which I was happy to see cause I used to live around the corner from there, that was my local, place of, café of choice, but I think, you know, she is, she’s so, she’s got this view that Washington just gonna eat Donald Trump and spit him out, or if he doesn’t adapt and become firmly Washingtonian. And then you go straight from there and you go to this Deplorables inaugural ball, I have been to an inaugural ball and that’s not like any inaugural ball that I’ve ever seen [smiling] I thought quite a contrast there. Now, how does Trump pull this off, he’s no longer the change candidate, is he? Or how is he gonna keep running against Washington when he is firmly in Washington?
Adithya: That’s a- it’s a really good question. I think that everything that we’ve seen, a lot of what we’ve seen in the last, you know, well since he has been elected, has been his or his people’s attempts to run against Washington, so whether it’s red in the deep state, the various, you know, pushing back against the various scandals, you know, the impeachment process etc. they are fighting Washington all the way, and I’ll think they’ll continue to do that. In some ways, in terms of campaign strategy and PR, his impeachment is, all of that is working in his favor. He get to claim that outsider status even though he is- becomes the establishment and he is the establishment.
Matthew: So, what are you expecting to find when you, you know, when you land on the ground in a few week time, from the campaign trail, I mean, I don’t want to prejudice yourself, you want to let the camera just roll and see what you’ll find but, what are your expectations going out there this time?
Adithya: You know, I really, you know at this stage, I have sort of general ideas around storylines that I’m interested in, and lines of questioning that I’m interested in, but I don’t really have any expectations, I should say, I also- I haven’t- it’s been interesting you know. Living in the US and covering the US politics when you’re in- like, it is in your bloodstream, you can’t avoid it, especially the Trump era, you just cannot get around it any which way, and you don’t have to be a journalist, you could be any, just a person who’s living and breathing. I think living here, you know, it is a bit different, and I don’t wanna go with any assumptions, I guess.
Matthew: And so, are you gonna ask the Ronald Reagan question, are you gonna ask the people, are they better off now than they were four years ago?
Adithya: Absolutely. Yeah, but I think as we saw in West Virginia, it is a question of perception and perception is a very powerful, more powerful motivator.
Matthew: Alright so it wouldn’t be a- we couldn’t have a special edition, Super Tuesday episode of the podcast if I didn’t ask you for some predictions, not for the November, I’m not gonna put you on the spot, cause I’m hoping to have you back if we haven’t scared you off, after you come back from the States, but, I mean, Super Tuesday, what do you think?
Adithya: Well, hmm, I- you know, there are a lot of people that make a much better living than I do making predictions, that’s not something that I really-
Matthew: And they’re usually wrong [smiling]
Adithya: They’re usually wrong and I’m sure I will be wrong as well, I mean, I do think, yeah, I think, right now what I’m seeing is that change candidates are gonna do very well, so I do think that people, candidates like Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, you know, I think are going to surprise people and do better than- I think the establishment candidates are gonna not do that well.
Matthew: And I didn’t even have it down in the notes, but, do you think America would consider a socialist? Can a socialist even get the Democratic nomination in that’s Bernie Sanders obviously?
Adithya: Yeah, you know, it’s a good question, I think that it is possible, but I also think that it’s gonna be a difficult general election if Bernie Sanders would be the nominee. I just think there is a lot of opposition research that’s not even out there yet, and I think that there’s gonna be, it’s not gonna be hard for the Republicans to paint him as an extremist. So I think it’s gonna be difficult.
Matthew: I guess you’re gonna be probably a funny all kinds of archive footage from what his younger days-
Adithya: Yeah, a lot of this stuff is already out there and it’s easy to find, I can find it, you can find it, anyone can find and we don’t really know- I know that there is a lot of stuff out there that might have come out.
Matthew: Yeah, I mean, somebody has been fairly- I’ve seen stuff, even the Pete Buttigieg people put it out Bernie saying he didn’t like either in the sixty election cause that’s how old Bernie is, a 1960 elections and Nixon JFK that h- that’s the election that turned for him, you know, he- and he sort of opposed JFK cause he saw him as part of the family, part of this establishment. I mean that’s mild, compared to the some of the stuff that’s gonna be to dig out. Well let’s- I mean, I think it’s gonna be very interesting, we’re gonna see how well this podcast states in terms of the result in a couple of week time, but maybe you tell us a little bit more about yourself and projects you’ve got on the go, so you’re obviously gonna be doing this for the Guardian, but where you’ve been doing, since you’ve moved to the UK you were telling you’ve been working on this script, I think-
Adithya: Yeah, so, you know, it’s been interesting experience, I’ve been here almost two years now, and have worked a little bit here in the UK, but a lot of my work has taking me back to the US and that’s not gonna make any different this year, I’ve got another couple of projects in the pipeline, we are finishing an hour documentary that is actually re-versioning of another series that I’ve made for PVS that actually focuses- it’s also politics, somehow I keep coming back to politics, but I was interested in ethnic minorities who are Republicans and who are Trump supporters, who got pushed in to become Trump supporters for various reasons. Now he’s curious to find how they were doing during the Trump era so we, my producing partner and I made a series of PVS about that and now we’re re-versioning it for international distribution.
Matthew: Okay, there’s Emmy that you won, the one for News Hour 2016 Deadly oil, what was that all about?
Adithya: It was about workers safety in the industry in North Dakota, so, essentially this was at a time when oil prices were starting to tank in a way, in part because of the fracking bum, and what we were finding was that, the contracting relationships, just like, you know, the nature of modern business is, you know, sort of like, labor and structures of contracting arrangement and, which, sort of outsources risk, really, on to the operators that are sort of, the middle operators and the lower down the contracting system you go. And so we found that there were a number of loopholes there that are essentially insolated companies for accountability for pretty greedy safety lapses and there was some really, there was a really horrific case that we’ve followed that, there was a lethal explosion that led to, you know, really horrific death.
Matthew: And, was that a series or was just a -?
Adithya: No it was an investigation so we really- I at the time was working for a non-profit called Center for Investigative Reporting we were making a public radio program, that’s on, I think hundreds of MPR stations now, but so we were doing a radio version, a version that our PVI partnership with, as well as text stories and sort of print outlets.
Matthew: So, Adi, you’ve got this keen eye for what’s going on in the US, for stories and I think everyday people, and it’s really less- I would say that these series are less- some ways less about politics and more about people and Americans and I think that’s why I’ve really enjoyed watching the several clips that I’ve watched now, I think it’s excellent, I think it’s very human, I think it’s- these are human stories and I think that’s what documentary filmmaking is at its best. So you’ve got this keen eye, now you’ve got the keen eye even outsider who’s been here for a couple of years. What are your impressions of the UK now that you’ve been here?
Adithya: Yeah, so, I’m still getting to know this place, I had a chance to work as a camera operator on the Guardian’s general election coverage for the- just the UK general election that just happened, which got me out of London and got me sort of out to Scotland, Northern Ireland, you know, Midlands etc. Southeast, and you know I, as someone who grew up in, I would say not a metropolis and lived and worked in the south of, southern United States and you know, spent a good chunk of my formative experience there, I- it’s very different moving to London and then, sort of exploring the rest of the country from someone who still lives here, because I still feel like a- you know, I’m starting to learn about what’s actually going on.
Matthew: Well, as somebody who’ve lived in London for many years, sixteen or seventeen, I’ve now moved up north so it’s been an interesting, it does give you an interesting perspective that you don’t get when you’re seating in London. It’s almost like, people thinking probably of people who’ve spent their whole lives in Washington DC or even New York City or LA, but as you said you’ve covered a little bit the general election, are you seeing similarities, because a lot of people are trying to draw parallels between what happened with Brexit, what’s happened to the Labor Party, breaking through the red wall, here in the UK, and what’s been going on in the US, what do you think?
Adithya: In my opinion, it’s very tempting to make these comparisons but I think they’re quite superficial, I think America is a vastly more diverse and complicated, it’s just a bigger place with a lot more people, and its own complexities and so I think these comparisons, they sort of level off, you know, at a point. I mean, I get it, I was, just the other day I was watching James I don’t know if you saw that but essentially talking about how a Bernie Saunders nomination, Bernie Saunders to be a candidate he would tank the way the corporate candidate you know sort of tank in this country. I’d be very careful in making those kinds of comparisons, so I think it’s a very different scenario.
Matthew: Well I’ve heard another podcast, I do listen to other podcasts besides our own [smiling] another one had Andrew Sullivan on, British by birth and raised here in the south of London, but now firmly in the US, and a political commentator. It was interesting, he actually- they were trying to get him to tell that Boris Johnson was Trump character and he actually said Corbin was more of a Trump character, which was an interesting point because he was saying, someone who ran against his own party, taking over his own party, you know, in that sense, he felt that Corbin was a little bit more like Trump. It’s an interesting perspective but I think that it points out the danger zones of drawing too many parallels. But, do you think there is a commonality in that, there is this hunger for change and there is this, wanting to give one finger or two fingers in the UK, some people still use this gesture, to the establishment. You know, people up north, long time Labor voters were just, we’re gonna vote whichever way we know the establishment doesn’t want us to vote. Do you think there is some commonality there?
Adithya: Yeah, I think at that level I do agree and I think that that is something that we’re seeing in many matured democracies and also democracies that don’t have the kind of history that this country or the United States for that matter have, you know, that kind of populism is a feature of our age, you know, right now. So whether it’s Brazil or India, or many countries in Eastern Europe, I mean, I’m seeing some of that everywhere, yeah.
Matthew: I think that’s a very good point. Alright, I think my producer is whispering in my ear, we’re gonna have to be wrapping up pretty soon here, but one last question about the series, Anywhere but Washington, I mean, it’s gotten, I think millions of views, some of the episodes, did you expect that sort of response and who are the- who is the audience and, you know, maybe you could tell us a little bit more about, did it surprise you that it’s so popular?
Adithya: It’s definitely been a surprise, so the series roughly twenty million views to date and I would say, I mean, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen some of the metrics but I think something like 70% of the audiences is not from the US, so the Guardian has growing audience in the US, however you know, it has really a global reach, so if you look at where the views are coming from, they’re from all over the place, a lot of them, I mean, majority not in the US. Was I surprised, absolutely, I think there is an interest in topical- like, I think the reason it works is because it is topical and it’s able to react- it’s very nimble, we’re putting things out, when it’s in the conversation so to speak, a lot of filmmaking takes a lot of time, it is, you know- our series are not that polished, we literally, we just like, you know, hitting the ground, we’re doing what we can and we’re heading out there and I think that, you know, I think that’s a very successful way to, well it turns out that it’s quite a successful way to start series from scratch.
Matthew: Do you think that an outsider’s perspective helps?
Adithya: Absolutely, absolutely.
Matthew: And it’s very interesting, this metrics that you’re talking about, because I remember a time when, as I’ve looked at this many times on the future of newspapers and lack of thereof and certainly, the Guardian, when they were building their audience outside the UK was all US, primarily, I mean, it makes sense, the commonality of the English language and all that. But, it is very interesting that so much of that now is become a global audience.
Adithya: Absolutely and I wouldn’t underestimate the fact the Trump phenomena for better or for worse, is- people are just, you know, fascinated and curious, and so, you know, and people outside the US are also fascinated and curious, and so, you know, that’s- I think that’s reflected in our viewership.
Matthew: Well like US comedians and talk show hosts always saying about a certain political candidate they say- they do hope to get reelected cause they- it’s just farther from their material [smiling] so, yeah, I think you have benefited you’ve been sort of at the right place at the right time, with this, and also have done a great job in turning these things around so quickly. I just wanna thank you Adi for coming on the show, it’s been a pleasure having you on, Adi Sambamurthy, we’ve been talking all morning about Anywhere but Washington, which- where is the best way to, is it still YouTube or Guardian’s site, or what is the best way to -?
Adithya: Yeah, I think, you know, if you would’ve just simply googled Anywhere but Washington and Guardian, you’ll find it.
Matthew: We’ll put something in the show notes, that will be on the podcast, and where can we follow you, what’s the best way to kind of keep track of your -?
Adithya: I’m around, I’m on Twitter, I’m on- you know, my website is adisamba.com yeah.
Matthew: Okay, again, we’ll try to- we’ll put that in the show notes as well, so those of you listening, just click on there and it takes you to Adi’s website, well I just want to say, thank you everyone for listening, I want to give a shutout to a Spiritland here for their hospitality, yet again, and just to remind you to, please like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcast. And if you haven’t any comments, feedback, we’re always looking for our listeners to get back in touch with us, even ideas for future shows, guest, please again, in the show notes there is link to us, there’s a way to reaching me or the show, and, yeah, I think that’s a wrap and this is Factual America, signing off
You’ve been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audience. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today’s episode, our guest and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter @AlamoPictures to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals we’re attending and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk