Here is a brief excerpt from an interview of Andrew Sullivan by Jennifer Schuessler for The New York times. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

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Since Andrew Sullivan abruptly closed his blog, The Dish, in early 2015 after nearly 15 years and thousands of posts, he settled into a routine of reading, meditation and exercise along with work on a spiritual memoir about what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century.

“I was happy doing that and was hoping to continue, when this Grendel started stirring in the forest,” Mr. Sullivan said on Friday by telephone from his home in Provincetown, Mass. “You could almost see the coffee vibrate on the table, as this creature came out of the swamp.”

In May, Mr. Sullivan rejoined the political fray with a 7,000-plus-word cover article in New York magazine denouncing Donald Trump not just as a dangerous politician but a threat to democracy itself. The article spurred wide debate and whetted the appetite of fans for a fuller return to the arena.

Mr. Sullivan — a idiosyncratic gay Catholic conservative and unabashed Obamaphile — spent the last two weeks live-blogging the Republican and Democratic conventions for New York, weaving in responses from his loyal if not uncritical crew of “recovering Dishheads,” as he put it. On Friday, Mr. Sullivan spoke about what has changed since he left the online fray. Here are edited excerpts.

Since you left blogging, you haven’t posted anything on social media, but were you lurking?

I got off social media altogether except Instagram, where I have a private account. Last fall I went on a 10-day silent-meditation retreat. I tried to detach myself completely. This spring, when I saw Trump begin to make moves, I started to read the news more regularly again.

What has it been like to jump back into the online fray over the past two weeks?

It reminds me just why I got so tired. But still, it was really great to be back with the gang. The readers all showed up. It’s been kind of big warm bath of nostalgia.

You were also reunited with your old friends the Clintons. You are, as you like to remind people, a Clinton hater of long standing, though you plan to cast your first vote as an American citizen for Hillary. Has anything in the campaign so far made you see her differently?

She hasn’t changed, for good or ill. She’s who she is. She’s the only thing standing between Trump and us. She’ll do.

Your essay for New York, calling Donald Trump’s rise a sign of “the fragility of our way of life and the threat late-stage democracy is beginning to pose to itself,” stirred a lot of conversation. Is there anything you’d revise, based on what has happened since?

I was hoping that piece would be thought of as hyperbolic or overwrought, but sadly not. By not being part of the daily cycle of news, and watching this evolve, I was able not to be co-opted into the narrative Trump creates. When you’re always catching up with him, you can’t summon sufficient outrage each day.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Jennifer Schuessler has been a reporter at The New York Times since 2011 and frequently writers about the creative and performing arts.