As these things happen, when (now former) Washington Post columnist Jen Rubin decided the time had come for her to make a move, she had a conversation with her longtime friend Norm Eisen. Like so many, she was disappointed by developments at The Post, including the failure to run both the Editorial Board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and Ann Telnaes’ evocative cartoon, and Jeff Bezos’ million dollar contribution to Trump’s inaugural fund via Amazon.
Norm was a White House ethics advisor during the Obama administration, and later, ambassador to the Czech Republic. An early and outspoken critic of Donald Trump during his first administration and co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, he shared Rubin’s desire to speak truth to power in a critical moment, and they’d been working together on pro-democracy ventures for some time.
Eisen and Rubin join us as tonight’s guests for Five Questions. I’ll let them tell you the story of how they hatched a plan to create a new media company called The Contrarian and what they hope to achieve. It’s a compelling story of how, through community and support for fellow pro-democratic voices, we’re going to make it through Trump 2.0 and come out strong on the other side. You can subscribe to The Contrarian here.
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