Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel beat the UKs major news networks in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday.
A not unreasonable question for a congresswoman who is openly entertaining talk of being Trumps vice-presidential running mate.
Why dont you f*** off?
Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel at the 2023 BAFTA TV AwardsGetty
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“Emily, you’re a conspiracy theorist… We like the truth.
“Why did Marjorie Taylor Greene tell@maitlisto fuck off?
Coming to@GlobalPlayerpic.twitter.com/Ye6momF7Jx
The exchange blew up on social media almost instantly.
Emily Maitlis interviews Prince Andrew for Newsnight,BBC/Mark Harrison
For many, it symbolized Team MAGAs disdain for journalism and the coarsening of American political rhetoric.
For Maitlis, she recalls simply trying to keep her cool.
Thanks, thank you very much, she told Greene, turning to the camera with half a smile.
It was a deeply British response to an expletive-laden order to leave the building.
If access to Mar-a-Lago was hard-won, Maitlis jokes that they might not get in again.
Both presenters have had memorable encounters with Trump.
Sopel was on the sharp end of a Trump-lashing during a White House press conference in 2017.
Heres another beauty, Trump withered after learning Sopel worked for the BBC.
That sense of outrage the whole time is rather wearying for an audience.
Weve been able to offer a format which is a bit more generous.
It gives you more time, its more talky.
On their list of dream interviews are Mitch McConnell and Melania Trump.
Maitlis knows a thing or two about the power of an interview.
I wouldnt say its futile because you always get aspects of character or understanding.
Any good interview hopefully illuminates in some way.
But if youre talking about accountability, no, she adds.
Maitlis believes that everything Trump says must be seen through the prism of his lies about the 2020 vote.
The question everyone is asking about 2023 is: what happens if Trump wins?
The bigger question is: what happens if he loses?
Weve seen what he looks like when he loses, and its not pretty.
Were not talking about a normal candidate.
He witnessed the Trump and Biden regimes up close and says they could not have been more different.
I bumped into this European diplomat just after Biden had taken over.
I asked: How is it?
I said: Great, whats the downside?
He said: Theres process, theres a chain of command, and theres a way of doing things.
You realize the extent to which the Trump era was the wild West.
The company just said: were going to trust you on this one, she explains.
It genuinely informed my understanding of America in a way that reading an autocue outside Congress wouldnt have done.
Sopel is less certain that leaving the BBC has allowed him to express his views more forthrightly.
I never felt the constraints over covering U.S. politics [like] you do when youre covering UK politics.
And so thats a huge difference.
The commercial world has its own expectations, not least brutal metrics around attracting audience and advertising.
Responding with grace to being told to f*** off is perhaps just one measure of this.
