No U.S. state knows Donald Trump better than New York State, so I’d like to shine a light on actual New Yorker’s opinions and firsthand experiences with ‘The Donald’. I want to focus on how the massive number of New Yorkers who can’t stand Donald Trump have been coping with watching him ‘sell snake oil’ to the nation as he lies, exaggerates, and over-promises to never before seen extremes in his bid for the United States presidency. I’ll have two main parts to the podcast: random New Yorkers on the street; and then a firsthand Trump encounter story.
My podcast will start with random New York voices on the street responding to the simple question of “What do you think of Trump?” This will only go on for about a minute as a way of setting the tone for the main portion of the interview where I’ll ask the listener, ‘where do these feelings of animosity towards Trump come from? Wouldn’t a New Yorker typically want to support a candidate from their home city?’. Then, in order to answer that question and demonstrate a firsthand experience I’ll turn the focus of the podcast to a story which has become a sort of legend to me and my friends and family. The story is about what happened when my (non-biological) uncle encountered Trump at a New York Knick’s game here in the city.
The story goes something like this: My uncle had great court-side (front row) seats at the game. He’s not a man of great wealth, but he has good friends, so he scored some amazing tickets. He walks away from his seat for one reason or another (maybe to visit the bathroom or grab a hotdog) and when he comes back, Donald Trump, flanked by a couple body guards, is there and has stolen his seat. He walks up to Trump, but before he has a chance to speak Trump says something along the lines of “Hi, I’m Donald Trump…” with a sort of menacing expression that communicates ‘I stole your seat, I’m Donald Trump, and so there’s really nothing you can do about it…’. And there really was nothing my uncle could do about it. My uncle is not a timid or shy guy by any means. He’s actually a pretty tough guy. He’s lived in the East Village since the 70’s when it was a dangerous place. But he’s smart enough to know when he can win a fight, and when a fight is not worth fighting. This was one of those fights.
After my uncle tells the story I’d like to get his take on the Trump presidential run and if he feels there’s any justice in it. I want to ask him what he thinks about the fact that Trump didn’t seem to do any investigative research on himself, like all experienced politicians do on themselves, and now seems to be hurting Trump seriously in the polls. Does this make him feel like Trump might finally be getting the negative attention that so many New Yorkers, who actually know him, feel is only fair?
Regarding logistics, I’ve only heard the story secondhand from my best friend (who is my nonbiological uncle’s actual nephew) so what I’d like to do is tell my version of the story first, then interview my friend, and get his take on it, and then finally, interview his uncle and get the story firsthand. My friend’s uncle actually lives in Los Angeles so I’ve been trying to think of a workaround in order to get a good recording of the audio, but I think I came up with a good solution. He’s a musician so he shouldn’t have any problem getting the equipment to work. Hopefully he’ll have an actual high-quality microphone, but even if he doesn’t we can just talk on the phone (on another phone line) and then he can use iPhone Voice Memos close to his mouth, and send me the audio file after the interview. I’ve never done this before but it sounds like a good way to get clear audio from across the country.
When it comes to ‘on-the-street interviews’ that will take up the first small portion of the podcast, I think it would make sense to get interviews around Madison Square Garden where the Knicks game was. With these interviews I’m not too concerned about background audio. After the first audio recordings we did, I realized that you simply have to hold the microphone close to someone’s mouth, then the background noise is actually kind of fitting. In this case it will be the sound of cars honking and every other noise that you hear on the sidewalks of New York. But I think that will be appropriate and set up a nice contrast to when my uncle and friend is talking in relative silence.