Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalist at Comedy Central. It's America's
Speaker 2: only sorts for news. This is the Daily Show with
Speaker 2: your host son. Dude, why do the family show.
Speaker 1: We got one for you tonight. I'm not even praying
Speaker 1: we got one for you tonight. Bill and Day, our
Speaker 1: founder of PolitiFact, he'll be here on the program. But first,
Speaker 1: you may have noticed it's October, the month we name
Speaker 1: for the Roman goddess optimum. Obviously, you may not believe
Speaker 1: it's October because the Mets are still playing basically, God,
Speaker 1: I love them so much. Now an election years, October
Speaker 1: is when everyone's on alert for October surprise. It's what
Speaker 1: they call it when major unexpected news alters the race
Speaker 1: in the home stretch of the campaign, like the Access
Speaker 1: Hollywood tape, which, if you remember, destroyed Trump's chances of
Speaker 1: being president. Whatever happened to him. But here we are
Speaker 1: again in October. So a major port strike could make
Speaker 1: for an October surprise.
Speaker 3: Could the infamous October surprise in this year's election actually
Speaker 3: be coming from overseas.
Speaker 1: Hurricane Helen affecting at least two battleground states. This to
Speaker 1: me might be The October surprise is a spike at.
Speaker 4: The pump, the October surprise that no one wants.
Speaker 1: Why our October surprises always so shitty? Why do we
Speaker 1: never get a good October surprise and October surprise that
Speaker 1: brings our country together? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, no one
Speaker 1: saw this October surprise coming this close to the election.
Speaker 1: But Pesto and MoU Dang are dating who it's an
Speaker 1: October surprise. By the way, that picture is to scale.
Speaker 1: That penguin is the size of a hippopotamus. Not shaming,
Speaker 1: just saying, but it's a period of the campaign went.
Speaker 1: No matter what happens, it's going to be analyzed through
Speaker 1: its effect on the election, no matter how tactless that
Speaker 1: may seem.
Speaker 4: October is now started out very good for Republicans. This debate,
Speaker 4: chaos in the Middle East, the port strike, and of
Speaker 4: course the cleanup in North Carolina. This is something obviously
Speaker 4: in October. If this continues, that's going to bode well
Speaker 4: for Republicans.
Speaker 1: Oh if monkey pox runs amuck, I don't see how
Speaker 1: we lose. What does it actually say about a party
Speaker 1: that a war, a strike, and a natural disaster work
Speaker 1: in their favor sir. The elections close, but if we
Speaker 1: could just get the population shell shocked and desperate, we
Speaker 1: can do it. Of course, most people would say these
Speaker 1: world events happening close to the election are not related
Speaker 1: or intentional. Most people would say that some people what.
Speaker 5: Person Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 6: She posted a map on Acts showing areas affected by
Speaker 6: Hurricane Helene with an overlay of an electoral map, saying
Speaker 6: it shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election. An
Speaker 6: hour later, she posted this, and I quote, yes, they
Speaker 6: can control the weather. It is ridiculous for anyone to
Speaker 6: lie and say it cannot be done.
Speaker 1: Is this the space lazer thing? Again? Jews don't control
Speaker 1: the weather. If we could control the weather, don't you
Speaker 1: think we'd make Florida less humid? We retire there, here's
Speaker 1: your think that you can you do something about. My
Speaker 1: bulls are stuck to my thigh. But there was an
Speaker 1: October surprise this weekend that I did not see coming,
Speaker 1: and that surprises this Elon Musk has ups.
Speaker 2: This rocket company is the only reason we can now
Speaker 2: send American astronauts into state.
Speaker 7: Come here, take over Elide, Yes, take over, but.
Speaker 1: Bye e'xactly like a guy who won a radio contest. No,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I get to beat on the washer driver.
Speaker 1: The world's richest man and one of the most popular
Speaker 1: people on social media. He's got two hundred million followers
Speaker 1: completely organically on his flatfor you know, because of how
Speaker 1: interesting his sweets are, like things like hmmm and interesting
Speaker 1: and FEMA is shutting down airspace to stop people from
Speaker 1: bringing help. Yeah, he tweets that. Anyway, He's October Surprises.
Speaker 1: He's come out Maga Hi everyone.
Speaker 5: As you can see, I'm not just maga.
Speaker 1: I'm dark, mega dark Maga. I didn't know it came
Speaker 1: in flavors. I wonder if for the holidays they'll come
Speaker 1: out with a peppermint balk maga or pumpkin spice maga.
Speaker 1: I like my maga like I like my coffee filled
Speaker 1: with chemicals that trink Your taste puts into thinking you're
Speaker 1: drinking autumnal food. I don't know what my accent was.
Speaker 1: Now you might think one of the world's richest men
Speaker 1: controlling one of the world's most influential platforms could be
Speaker 1: a recipe for what some may consider election interference. Stupid, stupid,
Speaker 1: people you discussed me. Election interference is what Mark Zuckerberg did.
Speaker 8: Former President Trump alleging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will try
Speaker 8: to unlawfully influence the twenty twenty four election, writing if
Speaker 8: he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the
Speaker 8: rest of his life in prison.
Speaker 1: That's why he'll be in prison, Not for falsely promising
Speaker 1: me a beautiful life in the metaverse, oh JS sixty
Speaker 1: nine four twenty.
Speaker 9: The life we could have led.
Speaker 1: Now. Zuckerberg did give four hundred million dollars to organizations
Speaker 1: for voting infrastructure during the pandemic, and a good portion
Speaker 1: of that money did go to Democratic precincts. And Donald
Speaker 1: Trump did lose the election. So election interference but not illegal.
Speaker 1: And obviously Musk isn't going to do anything like that.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is offering hourly pay to anyone willing to
Speaker 1: encourage people in swing states to register to vote. He
Speaker 1: stayed at quote for every person you refer who is
Speaker 1: a swing state voter, you get forty seven dollars easy money.
Speaker 10: Oh shit, he's giving everybody forty seven million dollars. When
Speaker 10: Trump finds out, when I think of the prison, Donald
Speaker 10: Trump is going to send that sweet jumping bean of
Speaker 10: a genius too.
Speaker 1: It kills me. When Trump finds out about this, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be pretty.
Speaker 10: How good a guy is Elon Musk, right, you sall,
Speaker 10: I'm bless us?
Speaker 1: How good? What the fuck?
Speaker 9: Wait?
Speaker 1: That's not election interference because he's for you? Well, what
Speaker 1: else do you think is election interference?
Speaker 8: The Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice does not always portray Donald.
Speaker 11: Trump in a flattering light, and the Trump campaign threatened
Speaker 11: to sue its filmmakers.
Speaker 10: Calling the film pure fiction and election interference.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, that's election interference. Maybe it's election in afference.
Speaker 1: But you've got to be a little bit flattered that
Speaker 1: you're being played by Sebastian Stan. I may, oh, Sebastian,
Speaker 1: if you are the Winter Soldier, why is it suddenly
Speaker 1: so warm in here? I look like Sebastian Stan. If
Speaker 1: you were to put his face through one of those
Speaker 1: filters on TikTok that show your appearance right before you die,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, you can applaud that. That's fine.
Speaker 12: I'm not.
Speaker 1: I know what I look like. But what about Big
Speaker 1: Tech Donald Trump? Surely they're not sitting this out.
Speaker 11: Critics accused Big Tech of election interference, as Amazon's Alexa
Speaker 11: gave favorable reasons to vote for Kamala Harris but not
Speaker 11: for Donald Trump.
Speaker 9: Alexa, why should I vote for Donald Trump?
Speaker 11: I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party
Speaker 11: or a specific candidate.
Speaker 13: Alexa, why should I vote for Kamala Harris?
Speaker 11: Well, there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 11: The most significant may be that she is a woman
Speaker 11: of color who has overcome numerous obstacles to become a
Speaker 11: leader in her field.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll give you that one.
Speaker 7: That one.
Speaker 1: No, that is tough. That is tough. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: Alexa is really influential enough for it to be considered
Speaker 1: election interference.
Speaker 11: But oh, I don't think I need a lecture from
Speaker 11: mister Monday Nights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair. I was just I was just trying
Speaker 1: to make the point that that's not what people should
Speaker 1: use Alexa for. That's reminds me of Alexa. Could you
Speaker 1: activate the bidet?
Speaker 9: That's good. That's a good tech, so does don't.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the ship's even too dumb for me. By the way,
Speaker 1: none of the stuff that we're talking about is an
Speaker 1: election interfeppearance. Yet Trump has threatened almost all of them
Speaker 1: with either imprisonment, lawsuits, or censoring, which is why this
Speaker 1: one section of this weekends rally in Pennsylvania was so striking.
Speaker 1: When Elon Musk was discussing why he supports Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.
Speaker 5: You must have free speech in order to have democracy.
Speaker 5: That's why it's the first Amendment, Elon.
Speaker 1: Were you not watching the rest of the show. A
Speaker 1: movie Trump doesn't like is gonna get sued. A tech
Speaker 1: mogul he doesn't like he wants to put in prison.
Speaker 1: It's not free speech if only Trump's admirers get to
Speaker 1: do it without consequence alone. I don't going to go
Speaker 1: that way. I don't see how his support of free
Speaker 1: speech is exposed the belly worthy.
Speaker 13: I just don't.
Speaker 1: But at least the Constitution remains intact and is there
Speaker 1: to ensure that we have the first Amendment.
Speaker 5: The second Amendment is there to ensure that we have
Speaker 5: the first Amendment.
Speaker 1: Guns don't protect our free speech. Our free speech is
Speaker 1: protected by the consent of the governed, laid out through
Speaker 1: the Constitution. It's not based on the threat of violence.
Speaker 1: It's based on elections. Organizing referendums and judicial system. Our
Speaker 1: social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues
Speaker 1: and allows sides to be heard and adjudicated. Guns, from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech
Speaker 1: of the people holding the gun. It's a tool of intimidation,
Speaker 1: and if I may finish, I'm not gone. It is
Speaker 1: a tool intimidation, and one that I think is actually
Speaker 1: being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your
Speaker 1: crowd thought they might have been shadow band by Facebook.
Speaker 1: I mean, for God's sakes, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: The whole reason you're there is because some fucking asshole
Speaker 1: with an AR fifteen tried to permanently litigate his vision
Speaker 1: of this country's free speech. That's why you're there. The
Speaker 1: whole point of a society is guns don't decide it.
Speaker 1: I would prefer at this moment not to trade in
Speaker 1: a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns,
Speaker 1: legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are
Speaker 1: determined by how many militia members agree with me. The
Speaker 1: country ain't perfect, and there's a lot of issues we
Speaker 1: don't agree on. Choice, immigration, shrink flation of snack chips,
Speaker 1: the unholy marriage of penguins and hip books. But honestly, dude,
Speaker 1: a country that can adjudicate these complicated issues there are
Speaker 1: sometimes frustrating, overly bureaucratic constitutional system of checks and balances
Speaker 1: and peaceful transfer of power is the only kind of
Speaker 1: country that I want the children of Pesto and Moudang
Speaker 1: to grow up in.
Speaker 12: When we come back, Bill a dare or go away?
Speaker 1: What about that? Mary Show My Death Tonight is the
Speaker 1: creator of PolitiFact and the Knight Professor of Journalism at
Speaker 1: Duke University. His new book is called Beyond the Big Lie.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the program, bel adare certain.
Speaker 12: There?
Speaker 1: The book is Beyond the Big Lie? Look PolitiFact? When
Speaker 1: did you create PolitiFact.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and seven and so right before the for
Speaker 3: the two thousand and eight election.
Speaker 1: And the idea is it's sort of a repository of
Speaker 1: fact checkers for political speech. How did you decide what
Speaker 1: would be included in what you would decide to check?
Speaker 13: Sure?
Speaker 3: So, the whole idea is to answer people's curiosity. If
Speaker 3: you hear a politician make a statement and you wonder
Speaker 3: is that true? Those are the things that PolitiFact checks,
Speaker 3: I mean, and ultimately that's what journalism is all about.
Speaker 3: To answer people bull's curiosity, if they're wondering what's true
Speaker 3: and what's not.
Speaker 13: That's what PolitiFact fact checks.
Speaker 1: And you had ratings it was true, partly true, false
Speaker 1: or partly false false, and pants on fire.
Speaker 3: And pants on fire and that and that was you know,
Speaker 3: fact checking had been around before PolitiFact, yes, but what
Speaker 3: distinguished PolitiFact was the truth ameter, which rated things, as
Speaker 3: you said, and we did.
Speaker 1: With the technological advance of the exactly and we did
Speaker 1: win a Pulitzer Prize really for when It's on fire.
Speaker 3: It sounds funny when you put it that way, but
Speaker 3: but the reason is that there's solid journalism behind it, right,
Speaker 3: and it's so important. And I think that people realized
Speaker 3: that even back then, politics was getting complicated and people
Speaker 3: were really beginning to wonder what was true, and PolitiFact
Speaker 3: and other fact checkers filled that void in an important way.
Speaker 1: Now, this is all in some ways you might look
Speaker 1: back on it and think, oh, how quaint. We went
Speaker 1: through an analog and we would talk about whether it
Speaker 1: was partly true or true, and we created a truthometer.
Speaker 1: And then social media comes along and it turns into
Speaker 1: this digital misinformation age where they talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: a lie travels eight times faster than the truth. How
Speaker 1: have you adapted and what do you think is the
Speaker 1: kind of fact checking mechanism if you think it's it's
Speaker 1: important in that way that can adapt to that moment.
Speaker 3: Well, I think what you're alluding to is the original
Speaker 3: truth ameter used vacuum tubes and that.
Speaker 1: That was a way truth of meter for those of
Speaker 1: you who at home that is copyright. Don't think you
Speaker 1: can just put up You can't just put up your
Speaker 1: own truth ameter or truthometer as I incorrectly called it earlier.
Speaker 13: You know, but you're very right. I mean, the.
Speaker 3: Fact checking has struggled to keep up with the many
Speaker 3: ways that politicians and others spread lies. And I and
Speaker 3: in the book what I talk about is and the
Speaker 3: point of the book is to explore how and why
Speaker 3: politicians lie. And one of the things that I get
Speaker 3: at is that they're doing it in lots of different
Speaker 3: places that fact checkers are struggling to keep up with.
Speaker 3: And they're doing it with these huge megaphones that fact
Speaker 3: checkers can't with their current staffing adapt to.
Speaker 13: So so and.
Speaker 1: With malice of forethought. As they might say on Court TV,
Speaker 1: this isn't happen since misinformation has been weaponized as to
Speaker 1: a large extent in this digital age.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and you know we're seeing it in North Carolina
Speaker 3: with the hurricane as you alluded to earlier. But fact
Speaker 3: checkers have to get more assertive in how they respond
Speaker 3: and think more digitally.
Speaker 13: So one of the things that does.
Speaker 1: That mean AI, Like when you say things more digitally?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about taking this making it less bespoke
Speaker 1: and creating kind of AI context overlays for these types
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 13: So that's one way.
Speaker 3: So I think the the atomic unit of fact checking
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 13: Will be for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: A creating your own metric system over there.
Speaker 3: The atomic unit of fact checking, I think humans will
Speaker 3: will be needed to create fact checks. We hear what's wrong,
Speaker 3: we need to research it, we need to respond to it.
Speaker 3: But yes, AI can be used to spread it more
Speaker 3: efficiently to broader audiences, to be more responsive. So two
Speaker 3: ways that we've done that at Duke we helped we
Speaker 3: worked with the Duke Duke University.
Speaker 1: I've heard it's a safety school. I've heard very very
Speaker 1: very poor.
Speaker 3: Things So two things we've done with our team that
Speaker 3: Duke is to We worked with the tech companies to
Speaker 3: create a standard so that fact checkers could label their
Speaker 3: fact checks. It's called claim review, and it allows them
Speaker 3: when they publish something to put this tag on so
Speaker 3: that tech companies, search engines, social media platforms can.
Speaker 1: Funding the housekeeping seal to some extent of.
Speaker 3: It's really what it is is like a street sign
Speaker 3: that says this is a fact check on this person,
Speaker 3: on this claim, and claim review helps helps find that fact.
Speaker 13: Check if you're simple, so that Google.
Speaker 3: Can then say, oh, here's a fact check and could
Speaker 3: use it in powerful ways.
Speaker 13: So that's why.
Speaker 1: Keeps thee information from being let's say, laundered throughout the internet,
Speaker 1: which is oftentimes what happens people lose attribution potentially.
Speaker 3: I can't speak for Google, but that's something they could do.
Speaker 3: But now here's an other way that we're excited about.
Speaker 3: We call it half baked pizza. So the idea, so
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna send it right here.
Speaker 1: This is Duke University. Well this isn't just like Duke's
Speaker 1: fact checking lab and pet repository like, well, it's half
Speaker 1: baked Pizza.
Speaker 3: Index it's a safety school, Faro. So, but let me
Speaker 3: tell you about half big pizza. So what we want
Speaker 3: to do? So fact checkers have a problem in the
Speaker 3: United States. There are not enough fact checkers in many,
Speaker 3: many states. We studied this and we found huge what
Speaker 3: we call fact deserts, places where governors, members of Congress
Speaker 3: are never fact checked. They can see anything they want,
Speaker 3: and they're never held responsible.
Speaker 1: Right, those are the twenty four hour cable news networks.
Speaker 3: So how can we hold them responsible? So often they
Speaker 3: repeat the same talking points in Arizona that are being
Speaker 3: fact check in Florida. So can we use AI to
Speaker 3: monitor what they're saying in Arizona and duplicate a fact
Speaker 3: check from Florida using genitive AI, but adapt it to
Speaker 3: the claim in Florida. So we've been experimenting with that.
Speaker 3: Why do we call it half baked pizza?
Speaker 1: Please? I was going to act.
Speaker 3: The idea is that if you have a claim that's
Speaker 3: been done, say by PolitiFact, you need to review it
Speaker 3: by a human editor. So I think of that like
Speaker 3: half baked pizza. The chef looks at that pizza that's
Speaker 3: not quite ready to go in the oven and says, yep,
Speaker 3: the pepperonis are in the right place. There's enough cheese. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's got enough sauce. Okay, the half baked pizza is
Speaker 3: ready to go in the oven. So that's our product.
Speaker 3: We're trying to get funding for it. We think it
Speaker 3: could be the answer.
Speaker 1: Your question when you came up with this, had you
Speaker 1: had lunch that day? But this gets us all right,
Speaker 1: So this gets us to the larger point. All right,
Speaker 1: So we've got this idea of fact checking, but I
Speaker 1: think the public solid fact checking, objective FactCheck that has
Speaker 1: to be an earned trust with an audience, right, because
Speaker 1: we really aren't a balance of it's misinformation. But then
Speaker 1: it's also the First Amendment and censorship. You know, the
Speaker 1: government for instance, and you tell this story in the
Speaker 1: book Nina Jankowitz, who was hired by the Department of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security to run a kind of operation within the
Speaker 1: government that can examine misinformation generally coming from foreign sources
Speaker 1: and other things. They ended up calling it, what did
Speaker 1: they call it?
Speaker 3: The Disinformation Governance Board? The worst name any government agency
Speaker 3: has ever been given.
Speaker 1: So it does the name itself conjures up Orwellian bureaucratic standards.
Speaker 1: The right gets a hold of that, tweets it out.
Speaker 1: Forty eight hours later, the whole thing is blown to shreds.
Speaker 1: So it shows how difficult it is for even this
Speaker 1: idea of creating that mechanism to take hold in a
Speaker 1: country where misinformation is weaponized. Four partisan purposes.
Speaker 3: Sure, so how do you balance them? So let's be
Speaker 3: clear about so. I focus on Nina Jankowitz for several reasons. One,
Speaker 3: I wanted to show someone who is victimized by lying.
Speaker 3: Here's someone whose life was turned upside down because of
Speaker 3: these lives who face death threats, who had trouble getting
Speaker 3: work afterward.
Speaker 1: And the speed of which it went from Twitter or
Speaker 1: somebody tweeted it out to the right wing mainstream media
Speaker 1: thing and people were brutal to her.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now it's important to point out this organization was
Speaker 3: an internal working group that was designed to coordinate what
Speaker 3: the Department of Homeland Security agencies did to combat disinformation.
Speaker 3: It was not out to do the things that the
Speaker 3: liar said about it, so.
Speaker 1: It was not there. The purpose was not to then
Speaker 1: contact Facebook and Twitter and say you must remove this,
Speaker 1: we don't agree with.
Speaker 13: It, correct.
Speaker 3: But the reason that there's so much misunderstanding about this
Speaker 3: group is that the government, the Biden administration, did a
Speaker 3: terrible job explaining what it was supposed to do, and
Speaker 3: so this story they hung her out to draw they did,
Speaker 3: and the story of Nina is the story is really
Speaker 3: a really depressing story, although it has moments of humor
Speaker 3: in it about how Washington works and doesn't work. So
Speaker 3: it's sort of the backbone of the book because I
Speaker 3: felt like I got so caught up in Nina's story
Speaker 3: because it reveals so many things about lying and how
Speaker 3: Washington works.
Speaker 1: Now does it show the limits of fact checking? Because
Speaker 1: in the story, look the warmin homeland securities that don't
Speaker 1: say anything, and so they let this thing go until
Speaker 1: it built up a kind of you know, event horizon situation,
Speaker 1: and it was all blown up. But when Maria Ressa
Speaker 1: says something like a lie travels eight times faster than
Speaker 1: the truth, doesn't that mean the truth has to work
Speaker 1: nine or ten times harder. Doesn't this mean that to
Speaker 1: battle misinformation you have to do it in a way
Speaker 1: with a tenacity and a clarity of you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a moral foundation that is kind of unyielding. And
Speaker 1: they're not. They don't do that at all because let's
Speaker 1: face facts. The government often bends the truth for their
Speaker 1: benefit and their own propaganda.
Speaker 3: So in this case, there were no fact checks done
Speaker 3: or there was one, right, I do think, you know,
Speaker 3: the government is a culprit here in this case, and
Speaker 3: it's it's very sad to watch how the government doesn't
Speaker 3: do anything. But I think in combating misinformation and disinformation,
Speaker 3: the government needs to step up and be upfront about facts.
Speaker 3: And this is something you know. I've been an aviation
Speaker 3: reporter in the past. I've been a political reporter in
Speaker 3: the past. I've seen plenty of instances when government does
Speaker 3: a good job telling its story, when it's honest, when
Speaker 3: it's transparent, and one of the best things that government
Speaker 3: can do is tell us when it does not know something,
Speaker 3: be honest with us.
Speaker 1: Boy do they not do that? Well, I wonder, what
Speaker 1: do you think you know? COVID is a great example.
Speaker 1: So as we play this all out, we talk about
Speaker 1: misinformation and trying to counter it and the weaponization of it.
Speaker 1: But when the government, as you said, doesn't know something,
Speaker 1: but come out with certainty, one hundred percent say and effective.
Speaker 1: If you don't do that, you know, everybody dies. And
Speaker 1: when that is shown when the misinformation that they say
Speaker 1: is misinformation turns out to be maybe not misinformation, maybe information.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying in every case, how badly? Does that
Speaker 1: damage their ability to make any case vociferously? And does
Speaker 1: that make it impossible for the government to have that
Speaker 1: responsibility at all? Isn't that kind of the crux of
Speaker 1: why they can put up maybe some guardrails, But can
Speaker 1: they really be adjudicators of misinformation?
Speaker 3: Well, one, I don't think they should be an adjudicator
Speaker 3: of misinformation. I think they should just tell us what
Speaker 3: they know and what they don't know. And often it
Speaker 3: takes courage for people and entities to say we're not sure.
Speaker 3: And a classic example this week is the hurricane like
Speaker 3: for the National Hurricane Center to say, well, here's where
Speaker 3: we think it's gonna go, but you know, we were
Speaker 3: not positive. You know, that's always been built into hurricane predictions.
Speaker 3: And I think that's that same uncertainty should be reflected
Speaker 3: in other things the government does. And I think they
Speaker 3: have either gone silent on us with things, or they
Speaker 3: have just fail or they have shown certainty when they're
Speaker 3: really not, and I think that really harms their credibility
Speaker 3: and as a fact checker. There's nothing worse than you know,
Speaker 3: getting information you later from the government you later find
Speaker 3: is not accurate.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and that and and that can take the
Speaker 1: whole thing. So when we when we look at the
Speaker 1: big lie and how it's been weaponized so effectively, you right,
Speaker 1: more by the right than by the left. You know,
Speaker 1: you've taken criticism because you fact check more people on
Speaker 1: the right, or you say they lie more, Yes, and better.
Speaker 13: They're very good at it.
Speaker 1: Yes, but you've done it. I mean it's in here.
Speaker 1: There's a statistical annalysis.
Speaker 12: Yes.
Speaker 3: What what I did for the book was look at
Speaker 3: fact checks by politifacted by the Washington Post fact checker,
Speaker 3: and then talk to I think the most revealing thing
Speaker 3: was when I talked to Republican politicians and said why
Speaker 3: does your party lie more?
Speaker 13: And it was really revealing the answers.
Speaker 1: I just said like, hey, why do you guys lie more?
Speaker 1: And they're like, good question, Yeah, there's something deeply wrong
Speaker 1: with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, these are for the most for the most part,
Speaker 3: people who have left the Republican Party and who will
Speaker 3: acknowledge this truth.
Speaker 13: But you know, they have a partisan.
Speaker 3: Media that not only looks the other way when they lie,
Speaker 3: but but echoes their lies and often has a business
Speaker 3: model built upon their lives.
Speaker 13: And so you begin with that.
Speaker 3: Then you have a culture in the Republican Party that
Speaker 3: many people told me goes back to many people put
Speaker 3: it with Newt Gingrich is sort of the turning point really,
Speaker 3: that that nude Gingrich sort of changed the culture of
Speaker 3: the Republican Party and and changed it into a sort
Speaker 3: of anything goes Hey, if if we're gonna win, let's
Speaker 3: you know you can you can change the fact.
Speaker 1: By any means necessary.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, And that culture took hold. Now some people
Speaker 3: dated earlier, and Roger and er and I was just
Speaker 3: gonna say, and Roger Al's and.
Speaker 1: Maybe money is not even the point. You know. Roger
Speaker 1: Ail's who was the founder of Fox News, very famously
Speaker 1: said during Watergate, I'm going to create an apparatus so
Speaker 1: that what the left did to Nixon, they viewed any
Speaker 1: sort of press as the left. What they did to
Speaker 1: Nixon you can never again do to another Republican candidate
Speaker 1: or president. And quite frankly, I think has been successful.
Speaker 3: And you know, combine all those things, you have a
Speaker 3: recipe for lying and support for lying. That has just
Speaker 3: become a culture.
Speaker 1: Now, are you suggesting the left doesn't lie or doesn't
Speaker 1: weaponize it to the point where it's as effective.
Speaker 13: I am there's there's.
Speaker 3: Definitely a substantial amount of lying from the left, sure,
Speaker 3: but nowhere near as much as from the right.
Speaker 1: I've gotten, if I may, I've gotten a couple of
Speaker 1: pants on fires from you over the years, like literal
Speaker 1: pants on fires, like not even like slightly untrue. Like
Speaker 1: there was one where I think the tagline is there's
Speaker 1: mother lying. I think it's that on it. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible situation of it. I went home that night shamed.
Speaker 13: But see, okay, there's the difference.
Speaker 1: And I would have accepted that from an Ivy League school.
Speaker 9: But from Duke, from Dukes.
Speaker 1: At long last, beyond the big line, it's a fascinating
Speaker 1: look on misifotion.
Speaker 11: You's got it.
Speaker 1: October fifty, The Veriti, the Order, Villa There, Ridicular Grace.
Speaker 6: That's our show.
Speaker 1: But tonight, but before we.
Speaker 14: Go, we are gonna check in with your host for
Speaker 14: the rest of the week, Jordan Conference Nation.
Speaker 2: I'm come on, come on, come on, Jordan, do it Corn,
Speaker 2: come on listen?
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, well yes, so excited her, very
Speaker 9: excited about.
Speaker 8: Uh, very excited about hosting this week.
Speaker 13: Hippie.
Speaker 1: We talked about this, Jordan. You gotta do the jumping.
Speaker 5: Come on, John, John is comparracy.
Speaker 6: I'm thinking for you.
Speaker 11: I don't.
Speaker 10: I'm science serious, serious.
Speaker 1: Come don John.
Speaker 2: This week, Michael, I'm going along in the crap done.
Speaker 1: Hollo.
Speaker 9: Hello, Hello, held it a.
Speaker 1: Moment in time. I don't like flies.
Speaker 9: Get out of here flying.
Speaker 1: Never been a big fan of flies.
Speaker 13: You don't mind my bringing that up, do you?
Speaker 9: Anyway?
Speaker 1: This is a very aggressive sucker, that is this one.
Speaker 5: This run in particular is very aggressive, like I'm going
Speaker 5: to be aggressive for our country, you can probably say.
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Speaker 7: searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
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