Journalist discusses the ripple effects of extremism on a small American town

By — Amna Nawaz Amna Nawaz By — Sam Lane Sam Lane Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/journalist-discusses-the-ripple-effects-of-extremism-on-a-small-american-town Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Journalist Michael Edison Hayden has spent years tracking extremism in America. His new book, “Strange People on the Hill,” follows what happened when a far-right group moved its headquarters to a small town in rural West Virginia. Amna Nawaz spoke with Hayden about his book and the sharp divisions in American politics right now for our “Settle In” podcast. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: Journalist Michael Edison Hayden has spent years tracking extremism in America. His new book, "Strange People on the Hill," tracks what happened when a far right group moved its headquarters to a small town in rural West Virginia. Amna Nawaz talked with Hayden for our PBS News podcast "Settle In." And they spoke about his book and the sharp divisions in American politics right now. Here's an excerpt of that conversation. Michael Edison Hayden: I mean, this is real life, as you mentioned. And there is a story and there's a reason why we choose it. And I think that the most important thing is like as a -- I mean, do we really -- do we really want to live like this? I think it... Amna Nawaz: It's hard for you to talk about. Michael Edison Hayden: Yes. Unexpected. Yes, it's like, do you really want to live like this? I don't know. My friend -- my friend growing up, he's a Republican. And, like, he's my Mets-Jets type friend and stuff like that. I spent an entire year not talking to him, because he was -- he supported Trump in the first election. And I was going through all those threats. And I was like: "I can't even talk to you, man. I don't even want to talk to you." And he said it was -- sorry. Amna Nawaz: That's OK. Take a minute. Michael Edison Hayden: All right. He said it was like the toughest year of his life. Amna Nawaz: That you weren't talking. Michael Edison Hayden: Yes, that I wouldn't talk to him. And he also said another thing to me which I thought was really interesting, because he's really like -- I mean, he's just a -- he got into Republican -- he's a business guy. You know what I mean? He's not like -- he's not thinking about this stuff like that. So I forced him to think about it in a totally different way. And he's like, when I was a kid -- when we were kids basically, we used to play little league together some places. Like, the president was just a guy on TV. And that was true. We didn't care. We didn't have to care. I didn't -- I just -- I knew there were two parties, and that was it. And I was just like -- sort of questions, like, do we really want to live like this? Do we want to have every day like we wake up and there's like a new