Four powerful women on the stage at DLD Munich 18: Kara Swisher (ReCode) moderated a passionate and intelligent debate between Miriam Meckel (Wirtschaftswoche), Hilary Rosen (CNN) and journalist Megan Murphy. One year ago, they also discussed the United States presidential election and social media. This year Swisher wanted to know if change is happening or not? What will be the impact of what is happening today? And how to deal with Trump’s presidency?
Megan Murphy says the biggest challenge in the USA is the inability of the bottom third to advance because we don’t enable them to reskill in the fields of AI, robotics and automation. Murphy is sad about the new racism in American politics. She asks: “When do people reclaim their democracy? When do people stand up and shout: I’m not accepting this? When will media take responsibility?” Miriam Meckel says that ignoring Donald Trump is no possibility: “Not covering Trump means you ignore the way the president does his job. You cannot do that as a journalist.”
Hilary Rosen thinks that media will bitterly regret the day they have started treating Trump as a “normal politician.” In her point of view there is already an activism in the U.S.: “The people who haven’t risen up are the Republicans”. Miriam Meckel is skeptical about this: “I hope you are right that the awareness and perception about Trump is changing in the U.S. But I doubt that a bit.” She says that we do not have just one elephant in the room – Donald Trump – we have two elephants in the room. “The other elephant is our denial that this man is still in his position.” Meckel says he is not losing his support and she has the feeling that for most people Trump and his policy look like a game, a bad version of a TV series.
Swisher asked for a prediction 2018 and Megan Murphy sums up “It’s up to us and it’s a long-term game. We need to take back our government and have to take back our personal responsibility!”