Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Journalist Jane Mayer has been a thorn in the side
Speaker 1: of three presidents, two Supreme Court justices, and one dubious
Speaker 1: news network. The pieces she writes for The New Yorker
Speaker 1: and the books that dive even deeper, are complete and definitive.
Speaker 1: Her work on torture tarnished the presidency of George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: but she was no gentler while reporting on Obama's whistleblower
Speaker 1: prosecutions or his expanded use of predator drones. The corruption
Speaker 1: in the Trump administration, of course, is proving rich fodder
Speaker 1: as well. Mayor rose to national prominence digging into the
Speaker 1: Anita Hill Clarence Thomas story, a story she entered without
Speaker 1: prejudice and reported straight down the middle. She emerged a
Speaker 1: polarizing national figure, bloodied by the right wing political attack machine.
Speaker 1: Yet she has avoided becoming polarized herself. She still digs
Speaker 1: in whenever she smells something hidden. There is that famous
Speaker 1: line from All the King's Men, that wonder for wonderful
Speaker 1: book about politics, which says, there's something on everybody. For
Speaker 1: the for the record, we're all human and of course,
Speaker 1: people do things they're embarrassed about. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of what interests me is how people deal with that.
Speaker 1: For instance, when I was just covering Kavanaugh recently in
Speaker 1: his confirmation hearings, he was being accused of behaving horribly
Speaker 1: in high school towards women, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: possible that if he had said, yes, I did, and
Speaker 1: I've outgrown it, you know, I now respect women, and
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry I was immature, that the public might
Speaker 1: have cut in the slack. But to me, what was worse,
Speaker 1: almost than what he'd done in the first place, was
Speaker 1: my conviction, by the end of doing all this reporting
Speaker 1: on him, that he was lying under oath to get confirmed.
Speaker 1: Because what kind of adult, this many years later, lies
Speaker 1: under oath to get confirmed someone who you don't want
Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court. There is something on almost everyone.
Speaker 1: But the question is how do we deal with our mistakes?
Speaker 1: Have we learned from them? I think you can convince
Speaker 1: the public, you can get support if you if you're sympathetic,
Speaker 1: empathetic and and and you can try and and self
Speaker 1: critical to some extent. You're still writing about Kavin or
Speaker 1: doing some work involved with Kavanaugh, correct well, there was
Speaker 1: someone who Um, there was another witness and another episode
Speaker 1: involving him and and his treatment towards women that was
Speaker 1: really alarming. And uh Ronan Pharaoh and I were working
Speaker 1: on stories on this and we were unable to get
Speaker 1: somebody on the record to talk about it. But he
Speaker 1: was a very good witness. And UM, I think actually
Speaker 1: they're going to be it's a it's a heat. There's
Speaker 1: several books coming out, and I think some of the
Speaker 1: books are going to out this subject. Um. I may
Speaker 1: do some more work on it myself, but I think
Speaker 1: the public will eventually get more of a story here.
Speaker 1: I mean, in one sense, I guess in terms of
Speaker 1: the work you do, I'm guessing this doesn't really matter ultimately,
Speaker 1: but you know, he's in he's confirmed, he's got that job,
Speaker 1: so further examinations of what he in particular has done
Speaker 1: would result in what I'm glad you asked this question
Speaker 1: because this gets to the mindset of reporters like myself,
Speaker 1: which is we're not driving an agenda to try to
Speaker 1: get Kavanaugh off the court. The whole point of what
Speaker 1: people like me do is get the fact and get
Speaker 1: the truth and get it out in front of the
Speaker 1: public and then we're in a democracy, and I really
Speaker 1: believe if people have good information, then make good choices.
Speaker 1: I don't know what will come of it, but in
Speaker 1: its own right, it's just worth knowing what was true
Speaker 1: and getting the history down. Now, we were doing the
Speaker 1: research and we were talking about how during the period
Speaker 1: with the Kavanaugh book, it was kind of an implication
Speaker 1: in some of what we read that you do this
Speaker 1: with Ronan. It was kind of an arranged marriage. You
Speaker 1: weren't really you hadn't really collaborated with him before, and
Speaker 1: when the time came for you to draw out the women,
Speaker 1: you kind of stepped back and let him do that.
Speaker 1: Just want to say it's true. And we had done
Speaker 1: one story before that was also a me too type story,
Speaker 1: which was the Eric Schneiderman story. I kind of called
Speaker 1: him in for extra help on dealing with the women.
Speaker 1: And the truth is that Ronan is like the me
Speaker 1: too whisperer. I mean, women love to talk to him
Speaker 1: about this subject and he's endlessly good at drawing people out.
Speaker 1: He is very empathetic. He's a result of this other
Speaker 1: situation with his family. I have to guess it probably is.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's also just a handsome person. Um well
Speaker 1: he is, you know, he walks into a room and
Speaker 1: he's there and so. And I was less good at it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a kind of like an investigative type
Speaker 1: who's not afraid of anybody, but I'm not the best
Speaker 1: hand holder. But it this way. In my family, my
Speaker 1: husband was the one that helped the kid with the
Speaker 1: homework because I was too tough. I would just say
Speaker 1: I'd be too critical and say, you know, you want
Speaker 1: it to be good or do you want me to
Speaker 1: just tell you have said that exactly. Ronan is better
Speaker 1: at dealing with the personal crises that these women were
Speaker 1: going through, and I was better at sort of seeing
Speaker 1: the holes in the stories of the liars Kavanaugh. Was
Speaker 1: there a point you knew he said? Or did you
Speaker 1: not know? I did not. Now I'm you know, someone
Speaker 1: said to me that reporters are the last naives. I
Speaker 1: always think that if people get the information, it will matter,
Speaker 1: that the truth really matters. I think maybe in this
Speaker 1: case people might have a lot of people may have
Speaker 1: even known the truth here. They may have suspected or
Speaker 1: even thought that Kavanaugh wasn't telling the truth, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to confirm them a way he stood for positions
Speaker 1: that they had. I think it was as much as anything,
Speaker 1: it was the anti abortion movement that was behind. You
Speaker 1: could just feel it was like a like a political
Speaker 1: freight train coming at you. And even and the process,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a serious process. It was a mock trial
Speaker 1: with a fake FBI investigation where the FBI literally did
Speaker 1: not call people. I was talking to people who were
Speaker 1: calling the FBI trying to get their information to the FBI,
Speaker 1: and the FBI would not call them back. But even
Speaker 1: though I'm uncertain about how to characterize Comy historically, is
Speaker 1: there any institution in this country that's more tattered its
Speaker 1: reputation than the FBI right now? It's almost unbelievable. Well,
Speaker 1: it is partly though, also because you know, the President
Speaker 1: keeps whacking at it because it's been investigating him, so
Speaker 1: it's gotten it from all sides. Um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: with you on the subject of Comy. He's a very
Speaker 1: confusing character. The FBI had improved itself a lot since
Speaker 1: the days of j Edgar Hoover, when it really was
Speaker 1: practically a criminal organization in its own right. So, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, what I worry about as much as anything
Speaker 1: about this is just that President Trump is busy delegitimizing
Speaker 1: every single kind of organization that could put a check
Speaker 1: on his power. And part of that is the FBI,
Speaker 1: and of course part of that is we the enemies
Speaker 1: of the American people in the press. Um, where were
Speaker 1: you working and who pulled you into the Anita Hill event? So?
Speaker 1: I was at the Wall Street Journal. I was a
Speaker 1: staff writer for the Wall Street Journal for twelve years.
Speaker 1: And I want to pau out there and say, before
Speaker 1: you go further, what was the journal like back then
Speaker 1: in nineteen um different? It was different, It wasn't owned
Speaker 1: by Rupert Murdoch. Was actually kind of a funky, cool
Speaker 1: place in its way. There was, I mean, there was
Speaker 1: the whole business part of it that covered the business
Speaker 1: world in a big way, and that was the main
Speaker 1: sort of bread and butter of it. But there were
Speaker 1: also these wonderful, quirky feature writers there and a few
Speaker 1: really great editors. And I was assigned to the front
Speaker 1: page at some point, where we just wrote these wonderful
Speaker 1: front page stories, some of which were very funny, and
Speaker 1: and we had a pretty good time. We also had
Speaker 1: an endless budget. We wasted so much money on traffling
Speaker 1: I do it was it was a lot of fun
Speaker 1: um so um. You know, it had a very conservative
Speaker 1: editorial page, but it had top um level talent the
Speaker 1: editing staff and and and some of the writers. So
Speaker 1: so anyway, I was I was posted in Washington for them.
Speaker 1: I had been covering the Reagan White House, and I
Speaker 1: um was watching the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings.
Speaker 1: And Jill Abramson and I had been friends since middle
Speaker 1: school and we went to the Fieldston School in New York,
Speaker 1: and we've been wanting to do a book together just
Speaker 1: for fun. So I was glued to these hearings. They
Speaker 1: were just mind blowing, and I called up Jill and
Speaker 1: I said, come on, this is it. This is our subject.
Speaker 1: And so we just kind of jumped for it um
Speaker 1: And then we didn't realize it took us three years,
Speaker 1: the two of us, to get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: that very confusing sort of mystery of who did what
Speaker 1: to whom and what's true and in some of the
Speaker 1: approach that you developed then was your first book in
Speaker 1: that area? Did it carry over on into Kavanaugh? Well,
Speaker 1: I learned some things from it, because what we found out.
Speaker 1: I think that the most surprising thing we found out
Speaker 1: was that Clarence Thomas had a long pattern of behavior
Speaker 1: so on on issues having to do with sex, people
Speaker 1: usually have patterns of behavior. And the other thing was
Speaker 1: that because of that, there were other women, and if
Speaker 1: the other women had stepped forward, I think people would
Speaker 1: have believed in need a hill more. And there were
Speaker 1: other women who wanted to testify and they didn't get
Speaker 1: a chance. Well, Joe Biden was the chairman of the
Speaker 1: Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was quite outmaneuvered by the Republicans,
Speaker 1: even though he was the Democrats were in the majority
Speaker 1: and he was in charge, but they just wanted that
Speaker 1: all to go away. He kind of did want it
Speaker 1: to all go away. He was uncomfortable with the subject.
Speaker 1: This was a long time ago and people didn't really
Speaker 1: even have that much of a grasp of what sexual
Speaker 1: harassment was and some of the jargon obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't need to go into it now, but the
Speaker 1: titles of the films he watched and all that kind
Speaker 1: of vulgarity, it was really put people off when it
Speaker 1: was on TV back then. I will ever forget it
Speaker 1: seemed like something the whole country wanted it to go away.
Speaker 1: They kind of did. It was it was embarrassing all around.
Speaker 1: And um, I have to say it meant that that
Speaker 1: Jill and I had to become quite expert on the
Speaker 1: subject of Clarence Thomas's pornographic and we even rented one
Speaker 1: of his favorite movies, Long Dunk Silver. Uh No, it
Speaker 1: was bad Mama Jama and uh and we sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, shoot the kids out of the room. Hours
Speaker 1: later whenever it ended that the you know, the credits
Speaker 1: were running above, Jill and I were sound asleep. It
Speaker 1: was the most boring porn movie ever. So, but any anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: it was unusual research, and it was a subject that
Speaker 1: made people uncomfortable. And I think, um, it's specifically made
Speaker 1: Biden uncomfortable, and it's something that's going to haunt him
Speaker 1: because people's views on all these things have really become
Speaker 1: much more critical and and of of and much less
Speaker 1: tolerant of that kind of behavior in the office place.
Speaker 1: And also when you're not answering that question, people are
Speaker 1: assuming that you are covering something up. For Biden, that's
Speaker 1: an example of something people want an answer from him.
Speaker 1: What responsibility do you bear You were the chairman of
Speaker 1: the Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas herrings. Do you
Speaker 1: think the truth was unearthed with the truth made bear
Speaker 1: on that committee? And if not, why, what responsibility do
Speaker 1: you bear if everybody feels like, especially if there's like
Speaker 1: sedimentary layers in the media that's gone by. Oh that
Speaker 1: was so long though, we don't need to answer to
Speaker 1: that now we asked an answered, And I want to
Speaker 1: go with Biden. I want to go not really not
Speaker 1: really know. And his statement on it where he said
Speaker 1: I wished I could have done more, well, I have
Speaker 1: to say, as someone who really looked closely at the record,
Speaker 1: then he absolutely could have done more. No one stopped
Speaker 1: him but himself. Do you think that what happened with
Speaker 1: Thomas is responsible for his kind of uh seething with
Speaker 1: bitterness even think he's very bitter. Yeah, I do. And
Speaker 1: I think that that he's filled with resentment towards the
Speaker 1: people who questioned him. And uh, you know, so, yes,
Speaker 1: I do as an asterisk. And he's bitter about it,
Speaker 1: and I think that and and he doesn't speak about it,
Speaker 1: but sometimes his wife does, you know, she becomes the
Speaker 1: voice of it. She keeps a list, she keeps well
Speaker 1: and and she literally called Anita Hill at some point
Speaker 1: and said, you know, isn't it time for you to
Speaker 1: come forward and confess? It's ever present in his mind.
Speaker 1: It seems like, um, you did that during the time
Speaker 1: you were at the journal. I took a leave. I
Speaker 1: think Jill somehow managed to keep doing her job while
Speaker 1: she well, liking a paycheck. I was sort of meanwhile,
Speaker 1: she was at the times that now she was at
Speaker 1: the journal to at that point. Yeah, and um, so
Speaker 1: it took us, as I said, three years, and I
Speaker 1: almost went back to the journal. I had a baby
Speaker 1: during that period, so there were a few distractions. Um,
Speaker 1: but I wound up going to the New Yorker instead,
Speaker 1: never went back to the journal. How did your work
Speaker 1: as a journalist changed during that period? Did you change
Speaker 1: during the any Dail experience? I think I became more
Speaker 1: and more committed to this idea of of total rigor
Speaker 1: just talking to everybody you possibly can, chasing like every
Speaker 1: little scrap I became. It was, Yeah, it was, And
Speaker 1: I love I love Carol. Someone asked him he was
Speaker 1: speaking up at Harvard at some function about how do
Speaker 1: you get the stories you get, I mean, and he said,
Speaker 1: there's only one ingredient, really, and it's time. It takes
Speaker 1: time to get people to talk to you. They often
Speaker 1: don't tell you everything the first time you meet them,
Speaker 1: and you have to go back and back and back,
Speaker 1: and eventually most people really do want to tell you
Speaker 1: what's what they really know, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: tell to you. They wore a board themselves, maybe, but
Speaker 1: but we're not getting that kind of reporting a lot
Speaker 1: of the time because we're getting tweets that take less
Speaker 1: than a second. Practically, that's responsible. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you know what the big change in journalism is. It's
Speaker 1: moving faster and faster from the time when I started,
Speaker 1: when you would write long stories for the front page
Speaker 1: of the Wall Street Journal and take weeks on them,
Speaker 1: and then long books. You know that the pressure is
Speaker 1: to file many many times a day, and and and
Speaker 1: you can't possibly talk to all the people or even
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of anything. You just sort of
Speaker 1: throw it up against the wall and see what sticks.
Speaker 1: And and magazines that like my friends of mine whore like,
Speaker 1: how do you find time to read The New Yorker?
Speaker 1: And I mean, I said, well, I have a stack
Speaker 1: of them, and I read them on a plane for
Speaker 1: like four hours. When I fly at l It's good
Speaker 1: you fly because I hear the main reason people um
Speaker 1: kill their subscriptions to The New Yorker is guilt. The
Speaker 1: old issues are piling up and they feel so guilty.
Speaker 1: So you need those long translat home right now. And
Speaker 1: so with Hill, it made you more um. The book
Speaker 1: came out when soon after that to Tina Brown contact you,
Speaker 1: she I'm trying to think she actually talked to me
Speaker 1: a little before it came out, because I wound up
Speaker 1: doing a review of another book about the Clarence Thomas story, Rock,
Speaker 1: David Brock's book. Yeah, and that's that caught her attention
Speaker 1: and described what happened with Bro's book and your own words, Well,
Speaker 1: Brock came out. This is David Brock, who used to
Speaker 1: be a right wing um journalist and kind of a
Speaker 1: hitman in his own words, and he came out with
Speaker 1: the book claiming that Anita Hill was, as he put it,
Speaker 1: a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty, and
Speaker 1: that she was a NATO maniac who had made up
Speaker 1: these things and it was defending Clarence Thomas. What proof
Speaker 1: did he offer, Well, Um, he twisted a bunch of things,
Speaker 1: and um. The reason I wound up reviewing his book.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to originally because it's kind of unethical
Speaker 1: feeling in some ways to review a competitor's book. So
Speaker 1: I first said no, But then I realized that people
Speaker 1: were beginning to believe him, and that I was one
Speaker 1: of the only people who knew that what he was
Speaker 1: saying was a lie because I'd done the same reporting,
Speaker 1: and so I felt some sort of responsibility to say,
Speaker 1: whoa watch out, this is not true. And so we
Speaker 1: So Jill and I did this review together for The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, and we we basically busted David Brock, and
Speaker 1: it was my first encounter with the right wing. Really
Speaker 1: they did that. David Brock wrote a cover story on
Speaker 1: Jill and myself and it was an eight thousand words
Speaker 1: story in The American Spectator that described us as complete
Speaker 1: frauds and liars. Who funds them? Uh? Yes, it gets
Speaker 1: you back in the end of the day to a
Speaker 1: handful of huge funders of right wing politics, and he
Speaker 1: was kind of their handmaiden. It was very It's become
Speaker 1: an incredibly weird story because he changed his whole politics,
Speaker 1: that is, David Brock did and turned around and admitted
Speaker 1: years later that he was wrong, that he had lied,
Speaker 1: that Anita Hill did tell the truth that Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: he believes did not, and he actually came out and
Speaker 1: apologized to both Um Jill Abramson and myself and to
Speaker 1: Anita Hill. So it was really an unusual situation. You
Speaker 1: never get an apology in life. It was really crazy.
Speaker 1: Did you run into him since his reformation? I have
Speaker 1: seen him. You see him in Washington all the time.
Speaker 1: It's a little town. Are you pals? I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: we're pal, but but his former boy friend always comps
Speaker 1: me at his restaurant. I think they still feel a
Speaker 1: little guilty. Yeah. Um, it's a weird story. Part of
Speaker 1: getting older, one of the great things is you live
Speaker 1: to see these plot twists. You couldn't believe. That's so so.
Speaker 1: Tina comes ringing while you're doing the Brock review, which
Speaker 1: is a feather in your cap. Obviously, people were very
Speaker 1: very taken that you did that. She was very excited
Speaker 1: about it and ut to come out. My book hadn't
Speaker 1: yet come out, but I immediately, um, I mean the
Speaker 1: minute she showed any interest. I was out living in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica at that point. I got on a plane
Speaker 1: and zoomed into New York to have an interview with
Speaker 1: her and try to get My husband was the West
Speaker 1: Coast bureau chief for the Washington Post and covering out
Speaker 1: there please, I'll say, Holly, what I'm gonna throw up? Quakes,
Speaker 1: all of that kind of I was there. I'm standing
Speaker 1: there in my driveway in my underwear, really, and I'm
Speaker 1: in my driveway and as I look out in the hills.
Speaker 1: I live in the valley with my ex wife, and
Speaker 1: we look out over the valley and you see the
Speaker 1: flames like gas pipes that erupted and flames are shooting
Speaker 1: up almost volcanically into the air. It's dawn, it's still dark,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I hear a voice behind
Speaker 1: my go go hey. And I turned as a man
Speaker 1: with an enormous wrench in his hand and a bathrobe,
Speaker 1: and I just just the image was like kind of
Speaker 1: a like a like a like a Freddy Krueger movie.
Speaker 1: And I turned and went ah and and he said,
Speaker 1: you want me to turn off your gas? And he
Speaker 1: was going down the block and turning off the gas
Speaker 1: of everybody's houses before their houses blew up. It was
Speaker 1: really scary for East and you're an East Coast person
Speaker 1: originally too, I have it's a horror movie to have
Speaker 1: the earth suddenly splitting open beneath your feet. New Yorker
Speaker 1: writer Jane Mayor has seen her share of horror early
Speaker 1: in her career. She was reporting in Beirut for The
Speaker 1: Walls Street Journal when Hezbollah killed three people near where
Speaker 1: she was staying. She says that witnessing the aftermath of
Speaker 1: that attack will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: Talking with great journalists about their early careers as one
Speaker 1: of my favorite pastimes. My friend on the media host
Speaker 1: Bob Garfield, has an unfailing moral compass, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: born with it. I didn't go to Jay school. I
Speaker 1: was an English majorum, but happily blundered into journalism. Knew
Speaker 1: literally from the first morning that that's just what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. But I wasn't even trained in basic
Speaker 1: journalism ethics. So on the one hand that hurt you.
Speaker 1: I did some things as a young journalist that we're
Speaker 1: firing offenses, encouraged by my own newspaper. Give me any example,
Speaker 1: you know, I would need to tires from my car
Speaker 1: in my city. Editor who was corrupt sent me to
Speaker 1: the rest of that conversation can be found in our
Speaker 1: archives at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you were listening to Here's the Thing today. Jane
Speaker 1: Mayer's name is synonymous with the deep, investigative journalism of
Speaker 1: the New Yorker, But in when the new editor in chief,
Speaker 1: Tina Brown called her mayor couldn't believe her luck. I
Speaker 1: got my resume together like in ten seconds, and um,
Speaker 1: when she offered me a job, it was it was
Speaker 1: sort of kind of dream come true to go to
Speaker 1: the New Yorker. She was just putting her team together.
Speaker 1: It was relatively new and there was some controversation when
Speaker 1: she took over designing, though no I thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be fantastic. I've never I don't think i'd
Speaker 1: had a female boss before. Um. She was very, very
Speaker 1: very cool, bringing in all kinds of super bright. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually really enjoyed working for Tina Brown. She was
Speaker 1: she was kind of like, um, a producer as much
Speaker 1: as anything. She would sort of say, think of a
Speaker 1: subject and then decide which talent she wanted to get
Speaker 1: on that particular story. I mean there were you know.
Speaker 1: She also would fact you at three in the morning,
Speaker 1: so it was she was up at three in the morning.
Speaker 1: And it might be too they're both reading at three
Speaker 1: in the morning. Undoubtedly, How has it changed over the years,
Speaker 1: and now you're in the Remnick period? Obviously, how did
Speaker 1: it change? Oh god, it's gone so fast. Um, the
Speaker 1: places you know? Remnick is also I gotta say, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of different bosses in my life
Speaker 1: before this, I've landed in a good spot with Remnick
Speaker 1: is also a great boss. The thing about the New
Speaker 1: Yorker is these are very very smart people on the
Speaker 1: s and it's well, so it's like playing tennis with
Speaker 1: somebody who's better than you. You wind up looking really good,
Speaker 1: and so it's good that you get better. They make
Speaker 1: you look better, right, I'm convinced to from the typeface
Speaker 1: at the place, it looks elegant. So you can write
Speaker 1: something that's really not so special, but it looks really good.
Speaker 1: That Remnick, as you can tell, he deeply cares, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, And and and and that caring and
Speaker 1: that commitment to that, to keeping that place at that level.
Speaker 1: Some of the never ebbs, I will read pieces, My god,
Speaker 1: what did it take like eighteen months to write this thing?
Speaker 1: They do sometimes, I mean they go through hundreds of drafts,
Speaker 1: literally hundreds of them, and I think, I mean, I
Speaker 1: suppose the reason that we take Umberge being called fake
Speaker 1: news is just if anybody had any idea how much
Speaker 1: effort goes into trying to get everything right. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not claiming that we always do, but I don't
Speaker 1: think you could try any harder these I mean, we
Speaker 1: have fact checkers who speak multiple languages, who call up
Speaker 1: every source that we've interviewed and go over everything with them.
Speaker 1: Yet again, um, there are you know, there are anonymous sources.
Speaker 1: They're not made up sources because their sources who the
Speaker 1: fact checkers have spoken with, the editors know who they are.
Speaker 1: It's all so careful. It's we have fantastic players. We
Speaker 1: have we have an in house grammarian who goes through
Speaker 1: the grammar of every sentence, and so I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's excruciating to close these pieces. You I often get
Speaker 1: sick right afterwards, and I'm not the only one. A
Speaker 1: lot of the writers do. It's a really high stressed
Speaker 1: thing you do kind of because it's so exhausting. Um
Speaker 1: and then and then so so this idea that, um,
Speaker 1: we've got a president who's who's claiming it's all made
Speaker 1: up and it's full of lies. I hope that the
Speaker 1: truth speaks for itself the modern GOP. I mean, back
Speaker 1: during the Nixon scandals, Republicans were required to vote for impeachment.
Speaker 1: And did you know what happens now is Republicans are
Speaker 1: now renouncing that and saying we're gonna tell the truth
Speaker 1: of it's gonna get us where we want to go,
Speaker 1: telling the truth that they're not going to get Thomas
Speaker 1: on the court. They're not gonna get Capital on the court.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna they're not gonna get Trump elected. President
Speaker 1: Trump is there and he's gonna run and people actually
Speaker 1: believe he's this crack business executive. And as all this
Speaker 1: acument about business thanks to Mark Burnett and the TV
Speaker 1: show and when when The Apprentice was on and my
Speaker 1: brother was on the Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, I never
Speaker 1: once watched the apprent never once. I never watched that
Speaker 1: TV show And who who the hell would watch that,
Speaker 1: and in America they think, you know, that's who he is, smart, decisive,
Speaker 1: commanding all these things, which everybody who knows knows he's
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. But it's what we missed though,
Speaker 1: the Apprentice part, because just like you didn't watch it,
Speaker 1: most of the political press court didn't watch it either.
Speaker 1: We just you know that that was just a gigantic
Speaker 1: failing on our part. Well we should have if we
Speaker 1: should have watched it, And I did finally watch it,
Speaker 1: and just even the opening of it, where it's got
Speaker 1: the money money, you know song, and you've got him
Speaker 1: coming in on a helicopter and a limousine is meeting
Speaker 1: him and some beautiful girl gets out of it with
Speaker 1: a clipboard for him. It's like money pornography. It's like
Speaker 1: a fantasy of what riches. So I didn't see I
Speaker 1: did not see it coming. I mean, the closest it was.
Speaker 1: I interviewed um that one of the stories I loved
Speaker 1: the most was interviewing Tony Schwartz, who wrote the Art
Speaker 1: of the Deal, and he said, people think there's more
Speaker 1: to Trump and that there's another Trump, and when he
Speaker 1: gets elected, he's going to be different. He said, there
Speaker 1: is no one Trump. It's all like, you know, a
Speaker 1: centimeter deep. This is a very sophomore question. But you're
Speaker 1: all these insights of yours into Hill and Kavanaugh, and
Speaker 1: you've made a lot of your career, not all of it,
Speaker 1: about these kinds of things. Why Why does Spitzer go
Speaker 1: down and Schneiderman goes down, and and uh and Franken
Speaker 1: goes down and and was to this day, to this day,
Speaker 1: Trump evades justice on the subject of sexual assault. What's
Speaker 1: your opinion about that? I think you've just got a
Speaker 1: completely different standard in the two parties. I mean, and
Speaker 1: that the problem is that the Democrats they take these
Speaker 1: issues seriously, which means that the mails and the party
Speaker 1: are very vulnerable to these kinds of attacks and um
Speaker 1: and and that on the Republican side they just plane,
Speaker 1: you know, Stonewall right through it. I mean, Trump has said,
Speaker 1: you know that he could be he could shoot someone
Speaker 1: on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. He's he's
Speaker 1: so solidified as base behind him on all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Eric Snearderman resigned under three hours after the story in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker came out. That's how seriously the Democrats
Speaker 1: take it. And I think you have to be proud
Speaker 1: that the Democratic Party does care about it. It does matter,
Speaker 1: and it's trying to send a message to women that
Speaker 1: you know, we respect you, and um, we're not going
Speaker 1: to tolerate abuses, sexual abuse from powerful men. I and
Speaker 1: so I think that Schneiderman's case, like Franken's or like Kavanos,
Speaker 1: I should say rather it's worth exploring further. Meaning Sneiderman
Speaker 1: still contends of one of those women is lying, you know,
Speaker 1: having done the reporting, I don't think so. I don't
Speaker 1: think he's got a chance of trying to convince people otherwise.
Speaker 1: There are too many, too many women who had uncanny
Speaker 1: how close their experiences were. The phrases are the same.
Speaker 1: These women have not spoken to each other, and they're
Speaker 1: describing almost exactly the same thing. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: creepy almost Now. You wrote recently your article about Fox News,
Speaker 1: and I have some friends of mine in New York
Speaker 1: and some of them have unswervingly liberal credentials and democratic credentials.
Speaker 1: Are they're certainly not Republicans, They're certainly not Fox News
Speaker 1: people who defend Murdoch and admire Murdoch. Do you think
Speaker 1: that Rupert Mardoch really is, in his d in a
Speaker 1: political conservative to the to the degree that's reflected by
Speaker 1: his on air talent at Fox. No, I don't. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the questions I had about him was how
Speaker 1: does he managed to live with himself knowing better than
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that Fox puts up on
Speaker 1: the air. And I knew because I've been doing the
Speaker 1: reading and talking to people and interviewing people and seeing
Speaker 1: even his own tweets that, for instance, he has a
Speaker 1: completely different position on immigration than Trump. Um, he considers
Speaker 1: Trump an fffing idiot, as he said to many people
Speaker 1: on the subject of immigration. Yet every night on Fox
Speaker 1: you can see Sean Hannity taking Trump's position on immigration
Speaker 1: and just terrorizing viewers about the idea that these immigrants
Speaker 1: are hordes of unwashed, dirty people coming to take your
Speaker 1: jobs in caravans. And you know, it's it's it's you know, rapists,
Speaker 1: it's the whole thing. And and and I know that
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch doesn't believe that he's an immigrant himself, and
Speaker 1: he's he's spoken about it, and he's tweeted about it,
Speaker 1: and he used to call Trump an idiot about it,
Speaker 1: and so how does he balance those two things? This
Speaker 1: is one of the questions I had the same thing
Speaker 1: with global warming. Who did you pose that question too?
Speaker 1: I talked of his people who really know him well,
Speaker 1: and I talked to people who had worked at Fox,
Speaker 1: you know people, and one of them is quoted in there.
Speaker 1: It's it's Greta Ancester and who used to be Fox
Speaker 1: host herself, and she's known Murdoch pretty well over the years.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, like, so like, how does
Speaker 1: he you know, how does he sleep at night doing this?
Speaker 1: And she said, don't kid yourself, It's about the money. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know again, as I said, the reporters are
Speaker 1: the last nightives. I think people believe in stuff, but
Speaker 1: apparently he's the ultimate cynic. It's the bottom line his view.
Speaker 1: He can make money doing this. He's going to keep
Speaker 1: making money doing this. He knows and has written and
Speaker 1: spoken about climate change. He knows it's real, he knows
Speaker 1: that humankind is causing it, and that things can be
Speaker 1: done to turn his former country to a pizza of
Speaker 1: a n anything he will. But he's but because and
Speaker 1: if you watch Fox, and unfortunately I had to watch
Speaker 1: tons of it to do that story. You will see
Speaker 1: they do nothing but mock the idea of climate change.
Speaker 1: It's just a big joke to them on air, the
Speaker 1: University of climate denial. It is and and and the
Speaker 1: thing is he knows that that's that It's an incredibly
Speaker 1: harmful position to take. Now, when you watched all those
Speaker 1: hours and hours a Fox, were there some surprises for
Speaker 1: you there when you watch what did you see anything?
Speaker 1: They have variations among them, so, um, Brian Kilmeade and
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends will ask questions sometimes. It's sort of
Speaker 1: prickly and uncomfortable about various things that Trump is saying,
Speaker 1: usually from the right. But he but he's a little
Speaker 1: a little bit more independent. Um, and you know each Smith,
Speaker 1: Chep Smith. You know, yes, he's made him turn. Do
Speaker 1: you think I don't want to? You know, he's to
Speaker 1: become their one. He's like Alan Colmes now practically, you
Speaker 1: know he is kind of I mean, I think he's
Speaker 1: he's very useful to Fox. It's become important for Fox
Speaker 1: to try to look like it has some legitimacy on
Speaker 1: its news side, so they need people like Shepherd Smith.
Speaker 1: It's occasionally break with the political line that comes down
Speaker 1: from the hosts at Night. I don't know why he's
Speaker 1: still there. I have to say, given what's going on
Speaker 1: all around him. For those people who don't understand the
Speaker 1: James Murdoch Laughlin Murdoch personality index, there, explain why was
Speaker 1: Laughlin anointed and not James. For those who don't understand that,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's really complicated, but this was an incredible
Speaker 1: dynastic struggle within the Murdoch family. James wanted the job.
Speaker 1: I think James wanted to be the favorite son, and
Speaker 1: and and and at lease play a huge part in
Speaker 1: his father's media empire, and it was Lachlin who won
Speaker 1: out and and and took over. And for what I'm told,
Speaker 1: James is the favorite son, but not the one to
Speaker 1: run the company. I've interviewed a lot of people around them,
Speaker 1: including their friends, and some suggests that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: really quite a break between James and his father, and
Speaker 1: that they're not very cozy these days. So it's hard
Speaker 1: to tell, you know, you're on the outside. It's there's
Speaker 1: all the sibling rivalry and jockeying, and in the end
Speaker 1: of the day, Lachlin is now the rising power in
Speaker 1: the Murdoch empire, and if you look at what he
Speaker 1: did in Australia, as The Times describes it, it doesn't
Speaker 1: give you a lot of hope for fixing fun. That's
Speaker 1: what the store of the intellectual and therefore that just
Speaker 1: qualifies him to run the company. And he's married to
Speaker 1: a woman who's an environmentalist. So it James and his wife, Catherine,
Speaker 1: who convinced Rupert Murdoch that climate change was real and
Speaker 1: he needed to try to do something about it. And
Speaker 1: Murdoch promised at one point a few years ago that
Speaker 1: he was going to incorporate it into all the programming
Speaker 1: they did in all the Murdoch held media um entities
Speaker 1: all around the world, and it never happened. So I
Speaker 1: was curious when I started this piece about so how
Speaker 1: does this guy um justify knowing better but putting these
Speaker 1: lines up on the air. They're going to really hurt
Speaker 1: sort of the planet and humankind because he has so
Speaker 1: much influence. And at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but I think the answer was
Speaker 1: pretty simple. I mean, and it is as as as
Speaker 1: great event Sustern said. He's making money off of it
Speaker 1: and and it works for that, I think he is conservative.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's like a flaming liberal who's trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, fight his instincts. But there are issues where
Speaker 1: he disagrees with Trump, and it's a faustine bargain. This
Speaker 1: is a non secretive but it's something I've been thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about, you know, in the world of mass incarceration,
Speaker 1: and we're saying that we want, you know, we realized
Speaker 1: that it's prison incorporated and all these people are being
Speaker 1: sent to prison. And do you think that Lorie Laughlin
Speaker 1: and Felicity Huffman deserved to go to prison? Okay, So
Speaker 1: I'm a mother of someone who applied to all those
Speaker 1: colleges and we did. We did not bribe anyone. And
Speaker 1: if prison is good enough for for blue collar criminals,
Speaker 1: it's good enough for white collar criminals. And I would
Speaker 1: be even happier if they were putting fewer people away
Speaker 1: of all kinds. I think our criminal justice system is
Speaker 1: draconian a lot of this time. I think Felicity Hufman
Speaker 1: should be sentenced to teach acting for five years for
Speaker 1: free at cal State Northridge. But I think, to myself,
Speaker 1: to put them in prison, what does that gain society
Speaker 1: other than just to punish them. It's only to make
Speaker 1: an example of them. It's kind of like Martha Stewart
Speaker 1: or some of these other things. But you know, to
Speaker 1: get back to where we started, you said there's something
Speaker 1: on everyone, and I said, yes, And what we want
Speaker 1: to know is how did they deal with it? What
Speaker 1: do they learn from it? I was reading stuff lately
Speaker 1: where they said, oh, we thought we're gonna get a
Speaker 1: slap on the wrist, and boy do we miscalculate, and
Speaker 1: boy are they sorry? Now. I was reading it, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like they're sorry only because they might go
Speaker 1: to prisons because they're sorry they get caught. That's kind
Speaker 1: of not good enough. So I guess in my little
Speaker 1: psychodrama here in the war, dear of the jury, you're dismissed.
Speaker 1: You dismissed jury. You might leave now, thank you. And
Speaker 1: my last question for you is everywhere you go, this
Speaker 1: administration is doing horrible things and evading responsibility for all
Speaker 1: of it. Really worried about it? Yes, I do. I
Speaker 1: mean I should. I'd be lying if I said I didn't.
Speaker 1: Usually have to figure pretty optimistic generally that if the
Speaker 1: public gets information, it'll make a difference in that public
Speaker 1: pressure is a very powerful thing in a democracy, so
Speaker 1: you can push back. But I'm really worried about it.
Speaker 1: I think this next election is like the ultimate stress
Speaker 1: test for this country. And I just don't know if
Speaker 1: the press can make the difference here, if the truth
Speaker 1: makes the difference here, I don't know. I only know
Speaker 1: how to do what I do, which is like get
Speaker 1: the story, gets what's right, get it out there. And
Speaker 1: I always think, well then people will care. And I
Speaker 1: just don't know if it's going to make the difference anymore.
Speaker 1: I can't tell, because things are. It's we're in a
Speaker 1: we're in a really dangerous spot. Who do you attribute
Speaker 1: this kind of backbone you have in this grit you
Speaker 1: have to do that. This work requires your mother your
Speaker 1: father are both probably I mean, my father was a musician,
Speaker 1: he was a composer, um, and my mom's family is
Speaker 1: very Midwestern and kind of lost b I think they
Speaker 1: have that kind of puritanical do good in the world mission.
Speaker 1: That's probably where I got it from. I hate to
Speaker 1: tell you, but Jane Mayer had second thoughts about attributing
Speaker 1: all a reporting rigor to a Protestant work ethic, which
Speaker 1: one of your family was was in the banking business.
Speaker 1: They were my great great grandfather. And on the Jewish side,
Speaker 1: my father's, my father's side, they were that they were.
Speaker 1: They were rich, funny Jews going through the family fortune.
Speaker 1: And the other side were like, you know, I'm like
Speaker 1: so melting pot. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer. Her book on
Speaker 1: Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas is Strange Justice, written with
Speaker 1: Jill Abramson. Her recent work on Fox News is called
Speaker 1: the Making of the Fox News White House, and it
Speaker 1: appeared in the March eleven, two th nineteen issue of
Speaker 1: The New Yorker. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing to Be four