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UNStefano Vaccara: An Italian correspondent’s thoughts on President Donald Trump
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
Living in New York means, without question, living in the center of a news circle. Media outlets as far as you can see, millions of journalists ready to cover every breaking story and, since the 2016 elections the US and thus New York have become an unstoppable, political mostly, re-porting machine.
As an international student myself and an intern at the United Nations, I was interested in interviewing an international correspondent and learn what his thoughts are regard-ing the new political realm the United States has entered, mainly because I wanted a non-American point of view on the matter.
I went to the United Nations last Monday afternoon at 2:00 pm to interview Stefano Vaccara, an Italian correspondent and head in chief of the online newspaper “La Voce di New York”. Mr. Vaccara came to the US in 1991 when he studied at Boston University. Back them he first thought of pursuing a diplomatic career but soon he realized that “ [He is] not good at hid-ing things, [he is] better at making people talk, making them reveal things.” The interview was supposed to take place at my office so I was waiting there for Ms Melanie Randisi, the executive assistant of the United Nations Correspondents Association, to let me know when Mr. Vaccara was ready to talk to me. After 10 minutes she came and told me that Mr. Vaccara wanted me to interview him at his office if possible. I had no problem with that and she took me over to his office, which was nine offices down from mine. I walked in and I saw a 50-55-year-old man standing up right behind his desk, a laptop in front of him with a big smile on his face and a light brown pair of glasses – such an Italian style, something that made me feel welcome and not like another annoying intern who was going to waste his time. He was wearing a light grey blazer with three pockets, two on the sides and one on the upper left side, a white button up shirt un-derneath and a pair of dark blue jeans. We introduced each other, I thanked him for finding the time to talk to me and he responded with his Italian accent, “yes, of course, no problem.” I sat across from him but his black laptop was hiding half of his face so I moved a little to the right to see him better. I put my recorder in front of him and I opened my notebook where I had all my questions written down. I started our discussion by asking him in general about himself.
– “Mr. Vaccara tell me a little bit about yourself. Where from Italy are you from?”
– “Sicily. Have you ever been there?”
“No, I haven’t but my mom has. She loves it. I should go though I’m from Greece, we’re neighbors, it’s so close.”
It turns out that he has been to Greece several times so he told me all the islands he has ever been to in Greece once I told him I am from an island.
I continued by taking the conversation to the current political reality.
– “What do you think about the Trump administration? Where you surprised that Donald Trump was elected?”
– “ What I think is, I even wrote it… the night of the election I wrote an editorial… it was like…what I wrote was
‘Half of the America elected Trump and half of the America is scared’. Then I wrote another editorial when he gave the inauguration speech, where I say… I wrote that he is easily a fascist, a few hours after he gave the speech because it was… when you listen, you know, it’s effecting but then when you go through and read exactly what he said I think the second part of the speech could have been easily be written by, for example, Benito Mussolini, so what I was suspected already before I started to be right “now he is in the White House and he talks like this’. So I have two opinions: one is the man and his advice that I think are dangerous…dangerous for democracy, and another thing is who elected him. I believe that although, yes there is a group of people with very dangerous ideas, racists extrem-ists or whatever you want to call them, I think this is a minority, I think the majority of people who voted for him are people that really wanted a change and he was the only one who…. it is not that they trusted him but he looked like the only candidate that could make a change. They didn’t know what kind of change but they needed a change because of the situation, the economic situation especially. I am talking about a class that is usually in the Middle West, the former workers, the factories that were closed, they (Americans) were not seeing any hope for years because the Democratic Party was not responding to their needs and when Bernie Sand-ers lost the elections for the Democratic Party, they didn’t even have a choice so they went and supported Trump. So I have two opinions: Trump and what he represents and his internal group, I don’t trust them, I think they are dangerous, and I hope that the checking balance of this country will be able to control them. On the other hand is who brought him in the White House and I think it was out of desperation and when they realize that he cannot deliver what they hope, or he can deliver it, but with the cause of certain basic values and freedom, I hope that they will think that he is a dangerous candidate for democracy. When a president goes against the First Amendment or doesn’t respect what the importance of the media is, because of course the media needs to be antagonistic, if the media is not antagonistic of whoever is in power then it should be called Public Relations, we all know that. So the fact that every times Trump does that, he excludes the journalists he doesn’t like, every time he doesn’t give the op-portunity or gives the opportunity only to journalists that will ask him good questions and write positive articles, this is exactly how dangerous he is to democracy.”
– “You talked about the First Amendment. There are some journalists who believe that Obama undermined press freedom and they consider it ironic that during the 2016 election period he wanted a strong media to stop Trump.
What are your thoughts on that?”
– “I agree. President Obama is perceived like a good president for freedom and everything. Yes, for maybe civil rights but not for the First Amendment. He has been one of the worst presi-dents for freedom of the press and he is even more dangerous in a certain way than Trump. Because at least Trump is open. He attacks openly the press, in his Twitter he calls them ‘ene-my of the people’…everybody knows that he is against the press. But if you ask about Obama, many people don’t know. President Obama did certain things, because actually they couldn’t be done without his authorization… spying on journalists, made the Justice Department enter-ing computers… For example now when president Obama is talking about sources, that the First Amendment shouldn’t protect these sources of journalists…all this kind of talking comes directly from Obama but Obama with facts. I mean there were many journalists under investi-gation, they were questioned by judges and had a lot of troubles. And the United States, the last ranking of freedom of the press is, I think, 47. So if you think about a country that was always on the top 10…with Obama things didn’t go well. So I agree with those who accuse Obama. And I want to finish with this. At least Trump is ignorant about the First Amendment and the Constitution. If you think that President Obama was a constitutional scholar and he taught the First Amendment in college, well then you know that he is practically even worse.
Since we are both working at the U.N, I figured that is was crucial for me to ask him about Nikki Haley, since I had heard a lot of controversial opinions regarding her role as the US ambassador.
– “What do you think about Nikki Haley as the new ambassador appointed by Trump?”
– “I have to tell you, in the beginning I was skeptical, of course, because of her first appear-ance… she would said things that sounded very Trump “we will take notes of the allies…’. She had a way that we felt, at least I felt as a journalist, like “ok here we’re going to have a new way to diplomacy…’ but when I saw Haley in action, especially at the Security Council where she also took questions…I think she is actually doing very well because she is clear and also she explained what she meant when she said ‘taking notice of the ally.’ If I understood it well she is saying practically this: “what i meant is that we will note who tell us that will do something and then doesn’t do it for the country.’ And I agree with that. If some country tells you ‘we are for this’ and then in the moment of vote, of supporting a certain policy goes and betrays you in a way, then, yes, you should take notice of those countries. Those countries are not your allies, these are countries you cannot trust. I like her (laughter) because I noticed an-other thing. After the resignation of Mike Flynn, I think that Trump’s foreign policy team, in-cluded Haley… I think there are two teams. There is Trump in domestic policy, everything that has to do with immigration, the press… this is a very very ideological Trumpism. But now after Mike Flynn, I think we have a much more traditional foreign policy and I think Mike Pence has something to do with it. We saw in Munich when he went to talk about NATO and security, and they probably made Trump understand that ‘we seriously don’t trust Russia the way you do…the people you put in like Mike Flynn’ and the president must have felt that he is playing with fire. So again Haley, the way she spoke in the Security Council I think it makes a lot of difference. The policy is the same but the style has changed.
– “What do you think about Trump’s executive order, regarding the 7 Muslim countries? Some people compare it to Obama’s executive order in 2011. Do you agree with that?”
– The reason why I am against the executive order is because of two things : the executive order if you really go through it and read it, the original one, the one they did that day, was not un-constitutional. You can ban people coming from other country for certain moment for security reasons, so this wasn’t the problem. The problem was, when you go through and read then they say when we have to lift this ban from these countries make sure that you start giving vi-sas again to minority religions of these countries. The minority religions of…we’re talking about Syria, Iraq and so on, are Christians. I understand that Christians, most of them have suffered genocide in certain regions but the point is that this is unconstitutional. You cannot ban people by religion. You cannot say, “ok give preference to the Christians and then the Muslims’. This is what I didn’t like because this is a sign that they don’t respect the Constitu-tion so I am glad that the judges stopped them. As far as the choice of the countries, I know that this was a list prepared by Obama so Obama is to blame too. I don’t understand why we are so afraid of people coming from Syria or Somalia when we know the the terrorists from 9/11 are all coming for Saudi Arabia but those countries are not in the list. That’s what makes the ban not credible. if you think that this was just for security, Saudi Arabia should be on the top of the list. Because the experience we have from US born terrorists… lets remember that after 9/11 all the incidents where people died… I’m talking about Orlando, Saint Bernardino and so on are all terrorists who are born here. They’re not coming from another country. They were Muslims if you want but they were from here. They were not immigrants with visas who were trying to come in the country. And in 9/11 all of the terrorists…most of them came from Saudi Arabia. Of course they are 1% of the population. The 99% of the Saudi are not danger-ous they are trying to come to this country to study, to work…but it is more likely to find ter-rorism connection with Saudi Arabia.
Lastly I was curious to know what he believes about Europe’s point of view towards President Trump’s administration and since I was talking to an Italian correspondent I asked him specifically about Italy. Knowing the perspective of my country it was very interesting to see if my neighbors think like the Greeks or not.
– “What do Italians think about Trump and his travel ban? Do they fear that maybe some day, during his presidency, he will ban countries from Europe as well?”
– “You know there is a part of the country that likes Trump and this is because they feel that the current politicians in Italy have been too weak on the issue of immigrants so they’re kind of saying, “ahh, this is what you have to do, like Trump,” meaning that you have to be very strong. You can’t build a wall in the Mediterranean anyway but the point it that they want this kind of strong policy against immigrants. There are other people who understand that this is… of course the problems in Italy are different than the problems in the United States but I don’t think that Trump is well understood. In the beginning in Italy people believed… and I noticed it while I was writing my articles because most of my readership is in Italy, that some of them were saying that “Trump being a fascist” is an exaggeration, this is too much. Now that they see him…look at Berlusconi and the problems we had with women, he is a billionaire and so on, now they have been thinking that there is kind of the same situation. I mean Berlusconi was dangerous in other ways but not for democracy. I think, because I have been here for a long time, I am an American citizen, my family is American, I can tell you that the Italians and the Europeans in general maybe they are waking up now because the understand how danger-ous Trumpism is not only for the United States but also for the entire world.
– “In conclusion what advice would you give me as a prospective journalist?”
– “ (laughter) First of all, it is a tough moment to go into journalist but I think it’s the right mo-ment. If you asked me this question three months ago (I interviewed him at the end of Febru-ary) before Trump was president, and let’s say Hillary Clinton was president, I would try to discourage you to become a journalist and the reason is because I think that journalism was going to die. Especially journalism in the hands of a big corporation it was just the spinning for certain interest. They were asking you practically not to be a real journalist because somehow they would direct you to a story instead of checking on power… they would make you someone who would represent the nice face of power. Now with Trump in office all of a sudden the pro-fession became relevant like during the Pentagon papers, the Watergate, and so on. So it could be a very exciting time. So you entering this profession now and for the next 4 years, unless he is impeached before, looks like something that was dying and it was almost dead has been resusci-tate (laughter) and so I think is an opportunity for you, if you want to be a real journalist. If you want to be this kind of people that dress like journalists and ask questions sometimes on press conferences but are really PR people, if you want to work in this kind of media, that (Trump) does not affect you. But if you want to be a real journalist. the way that this country has been in the front zone – forget about the last ranking that is so bad – I think that it (the US) can come back again to become on top of journalism, the golden days of journalism that were protected by the First Amendment and journalism can become the guardian of this democracy and an example for every other country and I think for a young person like you for entering journalism this mo-ment Trump and Trumpism resuscitated us. It would be a challenge for you if you decide to go back to Greece too. Trump’s election is waking up Europe and the European Union. After Brexit, after all this, the thought of the United States being always there to protect Europe and to be, you know, the godfather of Europe, a Europe that can be lazy and united only by the currency and not by policy and values…in Greece, for example, with all the problems that it’s fac-ing…Greece staying in Europe at this point is not anymore a case of money but it is a case of values. What are we? Are we all European or not? So for you as a young journalist if you decide to go back to Greece it will be very interesting to see if Europe will last or will die.
I thanked him once again for his time and his willingness to talk to me. He had that big smile on his face while he was shaking my hand goodbye. It was my first real interview as a jour-nalism student, the first time I felt this type of anxiety but at the same time the excitement of reaching out to a person I had never met before. He was the only international correspondent who happily wanted to talk to me and only one of the few people who motivated me to follow the path of journalism in this strange time we live in.
Maria M. Andriotis
United Nations Media Intern
Master of Arts in Public Media – Journalism Concentration
Fordham University – Graduate School of Arts and Science