Famed Liberal Susan Estrich Is Glad Newsmax Publishes Her Column

Writing Across the Aisle

By Jaden Satenstein, April 2, 2023

High-profile lawyer, writer and Democratic campaign manager Susan Estrich didn’t know that the popular right-wing news outlet Newsmax was publishing her syndicated column. Then she started getting email from readers calling her a “stupid liberal.”

“I’m used to it because I worked for Fox for 16 years as the house liberal,” Estrich said. “I’m used to having people disagree with me and call me an ignorant slut.”

Estrich writes two articles a week for Creators Syndicate. Those pieces are then picked up by about 100 newspapers across the country, she says. That includes Newsmax, which has published Estrich’s column under the label “Liberal View” since January 2022.

“At Newsmax, we welcome liberal voices, especially ones as smart and thought-provoking as Susan Estrich,” Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy wrote in a statement to The Righting.

After serving as the Harvard Law Review’s first female editor-in-chief, Estrich rose to prominence as the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential run. While often lauded as a “feminist hero,” Estrich is no stranger to controversy. She’s been criticized over the years for taking on cases that seem to contradict her liberal views, such as representing former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, who resigned in 2016 amid sexual harassment allegations from more than a dozen women employees. Estrich was portrayed by actress Allison Janney in the 2019 film about the scandal, “Bombshell.”

Estrich spoke with The Righting’s Jaden Satenstein about her column, our divided country and “the Tip O’Neill rule.” (The interview has been edited for clarity.)

TheRighting: How have Newsmax readers reacted to your column? They’re probably not expecting that kind of content.

Estrich: Well, to me, it seems like it’s important not to just preach to the choir. So, I’m glad that Newsmax carries me. I’m eager to reach out to audiences that disagree with me. I think one of the things that’s unfortunate these days is that we only preach to the choir sometimes and that we only talk to people who agree with us. And I’m old enough to remember the days when we used to talk to people who disagreed with us.

Have you received any positive feedback from Newsmax readers?

Sometimes people will say, ‘I’m surprised to find myself agreeing with you.’ And sometimes I get positive feedback from people who say, you know, ‘I actually respect your opinion.’ I don’t get as many nasty emails as you might expect. The nasty ones I don’t respond to, and the respectful ones I do.

You were a student during the Vietnam War era and Watergate. Still, people say the country has never been more divided than it is today. Do you see it that way? How would you compare our current period to those volatile times?

I think we’re much more divided now. When I first worked in Washington, during the Reagan years, we actually used to have the ‘Tip O’Neill Rule.’ Tip O’Neill was Speaker of the House, and the whole practice was you would fight all day and have a drink at the end of the day. And there was much more collegiality across partisan lines. We got along with the Republicans on the other side, and we would have a drink at the end of the day. And we all had the sense that we were in the same business, we were just on opposite sides. I think that’s gotten lost along the way.

What price do we pay when people won’t engage with the “opposite side?”

I think it makes people feel very isolated and very angry, and you end up with January 6th, and you end up with incitement, and you end up with violence, and you end up with kids feeling isolated and alone. And I think that’s really too bad. I don’t think politics should be a blood sport, and that’s what it’s become.

I think it’s gotten very, very personal and very nasty. And I think it extends to not only the principals, not only the talking heads, but it’s gotten on down to the dinner table. You can go to a dating website and they’ll say ‘No Trumpers’ or ‘liberals.’ We’ve gotten to the point where politics has become a personal hatred, and I think that’s really too bad.

How can we fix that division?

I think to some extent, it’s become entertainment. Cable news now entertains us by fighting. It’s like the cheapest way to entertain us is to have us fight with each other. And to some extent, it’s much more challenging and much more interesting to see if we can agree about something than to see if we can disagree. Disagreeing is easy, and it’s cheap entertainment. Seeing if we can agree and find common ground is a lot more difficult, but also a lot more useful in the long run.

Jaden Satenstein (@jadensat) is a writer,  producer and social media consultant. She has worked for WNYC, FRONTLINE PBS, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Straus News Manhattan.

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