Speaker 1: The defining issue of our time.
Speaker 2: The great problem that allowed a demagogue like Donald Trump
Speaker 2: to rise is the complete and total collapse of trust
Speaker 2: between the American people and institutions of government, of civil society,
Speaker 2: of nonprofits, religious institutions, corporations. Everywhere you look, powerful interests,
Speaker 2: powerful people have broken trust. When trust collapses, when it
Speaker 2: is incineric, it gives rise to demagogues, people who believe
Speaker 2: that they can say anything, that if they speak fast enough,
Speaker 2: if they speak loudly enough, if they talk over someone
Speaker 2: persistently enough, that they will be able to lie with precision.
Speaker 2: You can think about it at an individual level, beloved
Speaker 2: entertainers like Bill Cosby disgraced. You can think about it
Speaker 2: at a presidential level. Donald Trump, who lied to the
Speaker 2: American people thirty five thousand times. The Catholic Church, the
Speaker 2: Boy Scouts, en Ron, the mortgage crisis, the list goes
Speaker 2: on and on and on. Everywhere the American people look,
Speaker 2: they see malfeasans. What they see is a rig system,
Speaker 2: one set of rules for people at the top, and
Speaker 2: a different set of rules for everybody else. And remember
Speaker 2: always the everybody else includes forty percent of the American
Speaker 2: population that does not have four hundred dollars cash available
Speaker 2: for an emergency, and sixty percent of the population that
Speaker 2: lives paycheck to paycheck. When trust collapses completely, what it
Speaker 2: produces is a field where demagogues can rise. And of
Speaker 2: course that's what Donald Trump is and was, always has been,
Speaker 2: and always will be. What Trump has spawned is a
Speaker 2: new generation of demagogues, demagogues like vvak Ramaswami. The interview
Speaker 2: that Mehdi Hassan did on MSNBC Peacock with vvk Ramaswami
Speaker 2: is a masterclass in how journalists should interview their subjects.
Speaker 2: Mehdi Hassan is in a league of his own among
Speaker 2: American journalists. There's no reason that there can't be twenty
Speaker 2: five people on American television doing what Mehdi Hassan did.
Speaker 2: Watch vvk Ramaswami's reaction to being held to account, to
Speaker 2: being confronted by reality. What he does is a bad
Speaker 2: Trump imitation. He blusters, he lies, he bullshits, but he's
Speaker 2: not feeling very good at it and he's not very convincing.
Speaker 2: Let's watch him talk over medi Hassan. Let's watch him interrupt,
Speaker 2: Let's watch him try to evade his reality and hit
Speaker 2: his record.
Speaker 1: It is remarkable.
Speaker 3: You say he behaved in downright abhorrent behavior that makes
Speaker 3: him a danger to democ.
Speaker 4: Let's tell me what let's actually be Let's actually be
Speaker 4: really fair to your audience. So on January tenth, twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one thereabouts, days after that incident, I wrote an
Speaker 4: outbed on the Wall Street Journal arguing that censorship was
Speaker 4: the real cause of what happened. On January sixth, when
Speaker 4: asked in response, somebody asked me the question, are you
Speaker 4: that that's that's well, that's what I wrote. I'm giving
Speaker 4: you the facts of.
Speaker 1: What I said.
Speaker 4: That's a harsh fact that was published in the Wall
Speaker 4: Street Journal. When pressed on was that condoning what Trump did?
Speaker 4: My answer was no, there's a difference between a bad judgment.
Speaker 3: And understood, and we were able to tell the difference
Speaker 3: that Trump do your view, that was downright abhorrent. Second time, I.
Speaker 4: Think that the thing that I would have done differently
Speaker 4: if I were in his shoes, declared reelection on January seven,
Speaker 4: that's exactly the thing I would Trump do.
Speaker 3: That was egregious, quote, downright abhorrent and a danger to democracy.
Speaker 3: Can you just explain to our view is your words.
Speaker 4: So so you're you're mixing two differentquoess. But what did
Speaker 4: I think was reprehensible about what happened that day?
Speaker 1: Look?
Speaker 4: I think that the way a true leader should have
Speaker 4: handled that situation should have been to actually say, this
Speaker 4: is me running for re election, not actually litigating what
Speaker 4: is already passed in behind us. And I would have
Speaker 4: done things differently. That is not a crime, though, understand.
Speaker 4: And the reason I have been so vehmic you would
Speaker 4: have done because this is from your mouth.
Speaker 3: No, No, I would feel scared of him. Why wouldn't
Speaker 3: you say I'm horrible.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to let you stitch ditching together three
Speaker 4: things with different places.
Speaker 3: Do you want that Trump didn't want to have a conversation. Yes,
Speaker 3: I want you to answer my question. Trump, it was
Speaker 3: downright abhorrent. It's a simple question. It's your words, it's
Speaker 3: on screen. I think what did he do that was
Speaker 3: downright horrent?
Speaker 4: I believe that failing to unite this country falls short
Speaker 4: of what a true leader ought to do. That is
Speaker 4: why I'm in this race, is to do things differently
Speaker 4: than any prior president has done them. That's the hard truth, Okay,
Speaker 4: And that's what the media and well, the reality is
Speaker 4: none of that is a crime. And the reason I
Speaker 4: have been so vocal, the reason I have been so vocal,
Speaker 4: is because when somebody actually prosecutes somebody for a bad judgment,
Speaker 4: and I've been cleared, I understand the judgment. They get
Speaker 4: their judgments.
Speaker 2: It's easy to look at Vivek Ramaswami and dismiss him
Speaker 2: as a very rich googball. But he's dangerous. Why is
Speaker 2: he dangerous? He's dangerous because of the message, his message,
Speaker 2: his placards. And I'm in the state of New Hampshire
Speaker 2: as we speak. They're all over the place, and what
Speaker 2: they say on them is truth. When someone comes to
Speaker 2: you running for president of the United States with a
Speaker 2: banner that says truth above them, and they lie, and
Speaker 2: they lie, and they lie some more, and when they
Speaker 2: get caught in the lie, they double down and they
Speaker 2: lie again, and then they lie and lie some more,
Speaker 2: and double down and lie some more. That person, at
Speaker 2: a moral level is unfit for public trust. And the
Speaker 2: unfitness of an accumulation of enough people has brought America
Speaker 2: to the edge of the greatest crisis it has faced
Speaker 2: since the American Civil War, when the Union was merely
Speaker 2: divided and the country nearly ended. The American system, American society,
Speaker 2: and the American way of life is built around elections,
Speaker 2: a radical concept that we get to choose, and when
Speaker 2: we pick our leaders, we give them power, limited power,
Speaker 2: constrained by the Constitution, and they have no right whatsoever
Speaker 2: to interfere in our rights. These rights are threatened by
Speaker 2: dishonest demagogues who disregard the outcomes of elections. The lying
Speaker 2: is a feature of every authoritarian movement there has ever been,
Speaker 2: and everywhere in the world where people live burdened by
Speaker 2: a government that can impose its will on them, they
Speaker 2: live in.
Speaker 1: A culture of lies.
Speaker 2: And that culture of lies is dangerous because it is
Speaker 2: a cancer on a democracy. At the moment it becomes
Speaker 2: impossible to distinguish what is real and what is not,
Speaker 2: what is bullshit and what is not. Democracy is imperiled
Speaker 2: when you cannot distinguish between the lie and the truth.
Speaker 2: Because they stand equally in the town square, society stands
Speaker 2: on the edge of the abyss. This is important and
Speaker 2: fundamental to understand. This is the role the journalists should
Speaker 2: play in a society, and it is the role that
Speaker 2: journalists largely have abandoned during the Trump era. They've abandoned
Speaker 2: it to go into business with Donald Trump in a
Speaker 2: vast Trump industrial complex. We're outraged, and clicks and anger
Speaker 2: sell and get more cliques and more anger and more rage,
Speaker 2: and on and on it goes. What's the antidote to it?
Speaker 2: The antidote is.
Speaker 1: The transparency that comes from.
Speaker 2: Reality, being able to confront the lie in real time,
Speaker 2: in playview, masterfully done and constructed the way that Mehdi
Speaker 2: Hassan did it. That is how democracy is protected by journalism,
Speaker 2: not by batal slogans like on the masthead of the
Speaker 2: Washington Post that declare democracy dies in darkness, when in
Speaker 2: fact it's dying in the plane light of day. Over
Speaker 2: seven years in this country and in the full view
Speaker 2: of every editor and every politician in the United States,
Speaker 2: Mehdi Hassan is in a league of his own because
Speaker 2: no one else seems to play out the interviews, setting
Speaker 2: up one question after another, leading their subjects into a
Speaker 2: box canyon where they get to expose for all of
Speaker 2: us to see their character. That's what Mehdi Hassan did
Speaker 2: with VVK Ramaswami, and he did a great service to
Speaker 2: the country because he exposed the young demagogue who wants
Speaker 2: to strip the right to vote for millions of Americans
Speaker 2: between eighteen and twenty five years old. Vvek Ramaswami is
Speaker 2: a professional bullshitter and obviously he's done very well for
Speaker 2: himself with that. But let's be clear about something. Vvk
Speaker 2: Ramaswami is a liar. He can't be trusted, certainly not
Speaker 2: with your family's future. He doesn't care.
Speaker 1: About it at all. What he cares about his attention,
Speaker 1: fame and more money. You know how you know that?
Speaker 1: Watch Mehdi Hassan's interview.
Speaker 2: Fevak Ramaswami told you all you ever need to know
Speaker 2: about him. Another Republican magic candidate, completely unfit to ever
Speaker 2: serve the American people in any public capacity that requires trust.