Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Donald Trump said he'll deport protesters. Yes,
Speaker 1: mass deportations, go aheads what everybody wants. We have such
Speaker 1: a great show for you today. Deputy editor for Balls
Speaker 1: and Strikes, Medeeba Danny joins us to talk about her
Speaker 1: new book, The Originalism Trap, how extremist stole the Constitution
Speaker 1: and how we the people can take it back. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Newsguards founder Steve Brill about his new book,
Speaker 1: The Death of Truth. How social media and the Internet
Speaker 1: gave snake oil salesman and demagogues the weapons they need
Speaker 1: to destroy trust and popolarize the world, and what we
Speaker 1: can do. But first we have former Senator and host
Speaker 1: of the Al Franken podcast, The One the Only Al Franken.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Al Franken.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mollie. Great to be back.
Speaker 1: Always a delight to have you. Dick Durbin is he
Speaker 1: a friend of yours?
Speaker 2: Let's yeah.
Speaker 1: Are you and Dick Durbin buddies?
Speaker 2: I don't know for buddies, but you we're friends?
Speaker 1: Sure, Dick Durbin is the chair of Judiciary Samuel Alito.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you've heard of him. Yes, he recently got a
Speaker 1: Trump Truth, which is Trump's version of Twitter, and Trump untruthed.
Speaker 1: Let's just say untruth because he's it.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's the biased I think that's biased.
Speaker 1: But yes, fiaus, Trump untruthed about how happy he was
Speaker 1: that Alito was not going to recuse and how good
Speaker 1: it was that he had Justice Alito on his team.
Speaker 1: Is that how the Supreme Court is supposed to work?
Speaker 2: No? Now, I was on the Judiciary Committee and we
Speaker 2: had we had rules about how it was supposed to work,
Speaker 2: and that wasn't one of them. He didn't even nominate Alito.
Speaker 1: Right, what is the solve for this? Like, doesn't the
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee have more power than just a strongly worded letter.
Speaker 2: I suppose they could subpoena him. The committee could, and
Speaker 2: then I don't know what happens, right.
Speaker 1: I mean they could subpoena him, They could hold hearings.
Speaker 2: Hearings are easy to do. I mean you could do
Speaker 2: that because they're in the majority, and they have majority
Speaker 2: on the committee, right, right, So yeah, they could have
Speaker 2: hearings on this and I don't know if the Republicans
Speaker 2: would show up or not, but so what right?
Speaker 1: So why do you think they're not holding hearings on this,
Speaker 1: because like if Ruth Bader Ginsburg was flying an Antifa
Speaker 1: Forever flag in her house and Nantucket, I think that
Speaker 1: Republicans would be upset, and Republicans controlled the Senate. I
Speaker 1: think Ted Cruz would march her in.
Speaker 2: I don't know that Antifa flag. I haven't. I haven't
Speaker 2: seen it.
Speaker 1: It's tied.
Speaker 2: I oh, okay, was it flown in Portland when.
Speaker 1: Ruth bader Ginsburg big Antifa person? I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this very into spray painting things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they can't call her little known fact. They
Speaker 2: can't call her in. These are all good questions. I
Speaker 2: don't know if Sheldon, if you were the chairman, would
Speaker 2: be doing something different than than Durbin. Is Sheldon White House?
Speaker 2: Of course?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah? I mean, don't you think you'd be pushing harder?
Speaker 2: I do. I don't know why Dick isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like, so here's a question for you.
Speaker 1: It feels like we maybe, look, we don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in November. I continue to be a
Speaker 1: cock eyed optimist. But if Democrats have a moment here
Speaker 1: to protect democracy, shouldn't they be doing that?
Speaker 2: Yes? And no, I don't know what they do. Frankly,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the committee can do because all
Speaker 2: I would happen is is that Alito wouldn't show up, right.
Speaker 1: But I mean even that, like, don't you think the
Speaker 1: more they can protect norms the better?
Speaker 2: What are the norms? The norms are not to fly
Speaker 2: a flag upside down, I mean.
Speaker 1: Well, ruling on cases and then to have another flag
Speaker 1: at your beach house. Your beach house flag is a
Speaker 1: Christo fascisty flag. Yeah, it's a Christian Christian fundamentalist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also favored by the Speaker of the House, Donald Trump's favorite,
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson.
Speaker 2: Well, that legitimizes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me feel much.
Speaker 2: I mean it goes like, hey, the Speaker of the
Speaker 2: House has it in front of his office. Isn't that
Speaker 2: where he has it?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: But these were flags that both the upside down American
Speaker 2: flag and what's it the heaven?
Speaker 1: It's the appeal to have in flag capital letters above
Speaker 1: the tree. The pine tree is a symbolization is the
Speaker 1: symbol of New York's of New England. The phrase appeal
Speaker 1: to have it appears in John Locke's second Treatis on Government.
Speaker 2: So originally it wasn't the fascist flag.
Speaker 1: Where it is used to describe the right of evolution.
Speaker 1: Stemmed from the belief that God would deliver the colonists
Speaker 1: from tyranny.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, that's where the religion comes in.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it gets kind of dark in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, at first you're like, oh, it's a little green tree,
Speaker 1: New England Bucolic, and then they're like, God free us.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, some of the founders evoked God, right
Speaker 2: or invoked God, and God we trust is on our money,
Speaker 2: and so we're.
Speaker 1: Back to this textureless thing, right.
Speaker 2: Alito is always a what's the word dick? I know,
Speaker 2: I mean so, And of course he when Barack Obama
Speaker 2: spoke out against Citizens United, remember, right, he mouthed not true.
Speaker 2: And then he hasn't come to ah. I don't think
Speaker 2: he's come to a State of the Union address. Sense.
Speaker 1: I heard when I was in DC this weekend, I
Speaker 1: heard lots of like bad stories people complaining about Alito.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's the trips and the money and
Speaker 2: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he didn't get an RV, so it's
Speaker 1: not the RV. What I do think is interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: you have two justices and this is like not a
Speaker 1: left leaning court at all, but you have two justices
Speaker 1: who are like expressly in the tank for Trump, right,
Speaker 1: Alito and Thomas are basically like you know, and then
Speaker 1: you have Thomas writing things.
Speaker 2: Thomas has his wife that's very involved in trying to write.
Speaker 1: The wife who was involved and yeah, trying to overturn
Speaker 1: the election. Then you have Alito, who is the wife
Speaker 1: who's flying the upside down flag. So clearly the real
Speaker 1: housewives of the Supreme Court are not.
Speaker 2: Okay, I would like to see that series.
Speaker 1: You would not. Can you imagine? It's like it's like
Speaker 1: missus Alito drinking and fighting with her neighbor.
Speaker 2: And of course you know one of the liberal justices
Speaker 2: have wives.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, none of them have wives, and now
Speaker 1: others mark against them no wives, but it would be
Speaker 1: funny to have the spouses. But yeah, I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you do with the problem like the Supreme Court?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know what I would do if Biden
Speaker 1: wins again, which all he wants is to not have
Speaker 1: to do this, but he's going to have to fucking
Speaker 1: put in term limits in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: First of all, he won't be able to unless we
Speaker 2: have And this is what the importance of the election is.
Speaker 2: One he has to win and two we have to
Speaker 2: hold fifty in the Senate and we have to win
Speaker 2: the House. That's all we have to do.
Speaker 1: It should be no big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right now things are looking great.
Speaker 1: And this is the laugh to knock hery thing.
Speaker 2: The thing is about invoking term limits. First of all,
Speaker 2: if you can do that, if you're the one who
Speaker 2: can do that, it's because you have both the House
Speaker 2: and the Senate and the White House. And if you
Speaker 2: have both the Senate and the White House, then you
Speaker 2: presumably have may have an appointment if either Thomas or
Speaker 2: Alito retire, which they won't with a Democratic president, but
Speaker 2: if they were to, you know, if Biden wins, that
Speaker 2: means he's president for the next four years. And those
Speaker 2: guys hang on and Biden waits until he gets an appointment,
Speaker 2: which he won't get unless one of those guys passes on.
Speaker 1: But the whole thing with in my mind is like
Speaker 1: they have to try, right, The American people have put
Speaker 1: these these guys in office to try and whether or
Speaker 1: not it works. I mean, like you'll say, say one
Speaker 1: thing about Republicans, they have this insane base, but they
Speaker 1: serve their fucking base, right, Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Green,
Speaker 1: you know, has been trying to impeach Joe Biden for
Speaker 1: fifty five million years, right, I mean she basically is like,
Speaker 1: I mean, these people will do anything for their base. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you have Democrats who are like, their base is writing
Speaker 1: little postcards. They're begging them, they're saying please, And Democrats
Speaker 1: are like, you know, I mean, it is kind of
Speaker 1: amazing how little.
Speaker 2: Wait a minut who's begging whom to write postcards.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, the Democratic base does all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: Democratic electeds are sort of like, yeah, well it might
Speaker 1: not work. I mean, like, I think they should try.
Speaker 1: I think the base would be pleased to see. And
Speaker 1: it's not even about pleasing them, it's about keeping American
Speaker 1: democracy going, which strikes me as a good cause.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that Biden and a Democratic Senate and
Speaker 2: a Democratic House should pass term limits, even though Biden
Speaker 2: might be the one that get the first apployment.
Speaker 1: Yes, aps of fucking lily. And I'm saying that, like,
Speaker 1: even though Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 2: So, isn't that us shooting ourselves in the foot in
Speaker 2: a sense, because then our guy who we get in
Speaker 2: or our woman who we get in will be the
Speaker 2: first one to have an eighteen year term limit.
Speaker 1: No, make everybody be like, this is it? You know
Speaker 1: we're going to start them now? I mean, here are
Speaker 1: the choices, right you expand the court, you put in
Speaker 1: term limits. I mean, there are just not a ton
Speaker 1: of great choices at least term limits. And even if
Speaker 1: you expand them five years for everyone, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: you give eighteen years to everyone on the court right now,
Speaker 1: or you do.
Speaker 3: What I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I just think that there's no reason to I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: You know who would have to maybe test the constitutionality
Speaker 2: of that who the Supreme Court? Yes, that would be
Speaker 2: very interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that trying that it's important to try.
Speaker 2: I can just see, like, only Democrats with the President
Speaker 2: and with the Senate and a chance to appoint someone
Speaker 2: if Thomas or if Alido retires or passes on, only
Speaker 2: Democrats to be the one to be able to choose
Speaker 2: a justice and make that the first justice to have
Speaker 2: an eighteen year limit, right, No, I know, and then
Speaker 2: it'd be like, way to go, Democrats. You get a
Speaker 2: gun and you shoot yourself in the foot.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying here is that the Democrats have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to behave more like Republicans, and they should take it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I understand you're saying play hardball, and
Speaker 2: I understand that, yes, and that is a Sheldon white
Speaker 2: House proposal, And a lot of people have proposed this,
Speaker 2: the eighteen year thing, and that makes sense that and
Speaker 2: starting with the first time you do it, then every
Speaker 2: president gets I guess to a term.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that Democrats should be obstreperous and
Speaker 1: they should do whatever they can do to save American
Speaker 1: democracy whatever that looks like.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I'm saying the irony would be to save
Speaker 2: democracy the first you know, the.
Speaker 1: First, right, But I'm I think you're getting too stuck
Speaker 1: on this idea of what of the like specifics of
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I'm saying that they should hold hearings
Speaker 1: and make a rackus and do the kind of things
Speaker 1: that people like Ted Cruz do, right, except do it
Speaker 1: for the good Democrats continually they bring a stuffed animal
Speaker 1: to a fucking knife fight every time. You know, Dick
Speaker 1: Durbin has a strongly worded letter, the guy is like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is like, Alito, I'm so glad I have
Speaker 1: you on my team, Like a strongly worded letter versus Alito,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're on my team. Like this is
Speaker 1: where American democracy dies. It's like one side is collegial
Speaker 1: and the other side is like, I'm really glad we
Speaker 1: have this all wrapped up.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you when you said write letters.
Speaker 1: You have these democratic base they write postcards to get
Speaker 1: people to isolate, and that's good. I mean they kill themselves,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Well I would encourage people to do that and also
Speaker 2: encourage people to door knock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but their fucking representatives should be killing themselves too, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're working so hard to get these people elected,
Speaker 1: they should be.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 1: The thing about Marjorie Taylor Green is that she's a
Speaker 1: complete lunatic and not very smart. But imagine if we
Speaker 1: had someone on the left, if we had Democrats who
Speaker 1: were doing things like that, who were pushing so hard
Speaker 1: and filing resolutions and you know, holding hearings and doing
Speaker 1: all of those things. But for American democracy.
Speaker 2: Well, I do think that if Sheldon white House were
Speaker 2: the chairman, that you would be having hearings right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you know, let Republicans not show up. You know,
Speaker 1: that says as much as anything. I mean, look, the
Speaker 1: one thing that Donald Trump has done that has been
Speaker 1: I don't want to say brilliant because it's going to
Speaker 1: destroy American democracy ultimately very likely, is that he has
Speaker 1: not acted within the kind fines of the American government.
Speaker 1: Right every He's taken his situation to his base. So
Speaker 1: he said, you know, they're trying to impeach me, but
Speaker 1: they're really trying to impeach you. Everyone thought, oh, it's
Speaker 1: too stupid to work, but in fact his people are like,
Speaker 1: they're trying to impeach us. So obviously it has worked
Speaker 1: not to get too obstreperous.
Speaker 2: It worked that the last one was the one that
Speaker 2: is the tragedy that McConnell took the position he took,
Speaker 2: which was he did one of those speeches where the
Speaker 2: keyword was butt, you know, because it was like, there's
Speaker 2: no doubt that you know that Donald Trump is responsible
Speaker 2: for what happened on January sex and then blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: But and that's the most important word. I think Howard
Speaker 2: Feynman taught me that that's the most important word in
Speaker 2: the speech is but. And then, of course he completely
Speaker 2: negated the argument on immunity by saying, you know, this
Speaker 2: can be adjudicated in court. And now, of course they
Speaker 2: were trying to get Alito to recuse himself on this
Speaker 2: immunity thing, and of course he won't.
Speaker 1: Right, It's shocking that Alito won't do the right thing
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he has got every point. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you listen to those oral arguments, like you know,
Speaker 1: both oral abortion arguments, you immediately have Alito and Thomas
Speaker 1: and they're being like, well, what about the section three
Speaker 1: four seven six the Comstock Act, which hasn't been has
Speaker 1: been dormant since eighteen sixty four. What about that? Because
Speaker 1: people have fucking plans and designs on American democracy and
Speaker 1: we're writing strongly worded letters.
Speaker 2: Yep, Well, let's talk about something more optimistic. How about
Speaker 2: you know, I've been following the trial, and I know
Speaker 2: that there's been a lot, a lot of coverage of
Speaker 2: this on MSNBC, and yet as much as I watch,
Speaker 2: I've still confused about like what the original crime was,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But I think he's going to be convicted.
Speaker 2: Shocked if he was acquitted, but there could be hung.
Speaker 1: Jury or mix split charges.
Speaker 2: But let's say he does get convicted. I asked my
Speaker 2: wife this, asked Franny, what would you sentence him to
Speaker 2: if you were the judge? And my wife said five years,
Speaker 2: which one the maximum is four years in this But
Speaker 2: so this is what I said, thirty days.
Speaker 1: Thirty days, Okay.
Speaker 2: The reason for that is I think he has to
Speaker 2: go to jail. Now, not everyone who gets convicted of
Speaker 2: this crime evidently goes to prison, and in fact most don't,
Speaker 2: but I feel like he should go. But I think
Speaker 2: that anything maybe beyond ninety days or something like that
Speaker 2: is just seems punitive and political. So I thought thirty days,
Speaker 2: which I can imagine he could do without going crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's not going to jail, that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no way.
Speaker 2: So that there's no sentence of this.
Speaker 1: This is Look, why it's good it is because you
Speaker 1: do crimes, you should be treated like other people who
Speaker 1: do crimes. We don't have special justice for affluent white guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, we actually do, but we shouldn't.
Speaker 2: It's always in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's just not going to jail. It's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. I think there's a scenario where he loses reelection,
Speaker 1: and you know, remember he is running for reelection basically
Speaker 1: to stay out of jail. That's not me saying that.
Speaker 1: That's well heard. So what I think I think a
Speaker 1: likely scenario. And by the way, this is not some
Speaker 1: contrary thought. I mean pretty much everyone. You know he
Speaker 1: announced in the hopes of not getting indicted, and if
Speaker 1: the Justice Department had moved a little faster, none of
Speaker 1: us would be here right now. You know, Biden would
Speaker 1: be running against Nikki Haley. And you know, while a
Speaker 1: lot of us don't like Nikki Haley, she is not
Speaker 1: going to end American democracy, not in those heels. So,
Speaker 1: by the way, one last thing about Nikki Haley. She's
Speaker 1: always like underestimate me. That you know, there are all
Speaker 1: these like Nikki Haley tweets that are like underestimate me.
Speaker 1: That'll be fun. I'm like, I actually thought you had
Speaker 1: a spine. And now I know you don't, so that's
Speaker 1: not underestimated. That's like overestimating.
Speaker 2: I don't know why she endures Trump other than she maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, speaking circus, she.
Speaker 1: Wants to be HUD secretary.
Speaker 2: Really, no fucking with you.
Speaker 1: We got away over time. But yes, but you're fun.
Speaker 1: We're fun. We're all fun.
Speaker 2: You're fun. I'm not.
Speaker 5: We're depressed. We're pretty depressed. What's there to be depressed about?
Speaker 5: Really nothing. We got a good six months left on
Speaker 5: American democracy.
Speaker 2: We didn't even get into Gaza, so yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 2: we go. So there's nothing.
Speaker 1: Nothing to be depressed about. Alf Franken, thank you. Spring
Speaker 1: is here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable,
Speaker 1: so why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast
Speaker 1: Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all
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Speaker 1: Medeeba Denny is deputy editor for Balls and Strikes and
Speaker 1: author of The Originalism Trap. How extremists Stole the Constitution
Speaker 1: and how we the people can take it back.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Fast Politics. Medeeba its Hello there.
Speaker 1: Very excited to have you one of the things when
Speaker 1: you listen to this Supreme Court, this insane Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: is that you hear a lot of the time that
Speaker 1: the conservative justices, but especially Alito and Thomas, have embraced
Speaker 1: this very insane the school of thought which is called originalism.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about this book and explain to
Speaker 1: us what originalism is if you can, please sure well.
Speaker 6: Originalism, like you said, is the idea that the conservative
Speaker 6: legal movement has really embraced to justify all of said
Speaker 6: bad decision making. The idea of originalism is that the
Speaker 6: meaning of the Constitution is fixed in time. It's frozen
Speaker 6: at the moment of enactment. And most originalists will say
Speaker 6: that the way we understand the Constitution today has to
Speaker 6: be how the public would have originally understood it when
Speaker 6: the Constitution was ratified.
Speaker 1: Tell us what America looked like when the Constitution is ratified.
Speaker 6: Not great, molly. It was not a good time for
Speaker 6: the majority of the population. Political and economic and social
Speaker 6: power was really concentrated in the hands of a elite
Speaker 6: class of wealthy white men who were landowners, right, Yeah,
Speaker 6: that's where the wealth came from, and everyone else had
Speaker 6: little to no rights to speak of and so when
Speaker 6: you are linking the upper bounds of constitutional interpretation to
Speaker 6: those historically low standards, it basically sets most of the
Speaker 6: country up for failure because they're not going to be
Speaker 6: able to exercise equal rights.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us how originalism got going and
Speaker 1: how it sort of became the thing that Thomas and
Speaker 1: Alito pretty much hitting their hats on for everything.
Speaker 6: Sure, well, the idea that you can use history and
Speaker 6: tradition or what we think might be the original public meaning.
Speaker 6: I'm saying we think might be because there's a lot
Speaker 6: who knows, yes, that idea has been pretty long standing
Speaker 6: that you could look to these things. It's a very
Speaker 6: modern recent innovation that the only way you can say
Speaker 6: what the Constitution means is by looking at the purported
Speaker 6: original public meeting. That's something that didn't really develop until
Speaker 6: as a backlash the Civil rights movement, we saw that
Speaker 6: the Ronald Wakens Justice Department was really pushing back and
Speaker 6: working to formalize this new idea of originalism. It didn't
Speaker 6: even really have a name back then. It was in
Speaker 6: the seventies and eighties that they began using the term
Speaker 6: originalism and the express goal of it basically was to
Speaker 6: push back against the perceived excesses of the Warren Court era,
Speaker 6: which gave us some of the major decisions like Brown
Speaker 6: view Board that we cherished today, or at least that
Speaker 6: most of us shariesh today.
Speaker 1: Right, I shouldn't laugh because this is like when I
Speaker 1: laugh when I'm so depressed, and not because it's funny,
Speaker 1: because it's not funny. And will you just explain for
Speaker 1: our listeners why brownby board is back in the vernacular.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there are a couple different reasons why. But most recently,
Speaker 6: in a decision the Supreme Court handed down a few
Speaker 6: days ago where the Court is effectively blessed racial jerrymandering.
Speaker 6: Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in that case where
Speaker 6: he said that he doesn't think that the Court has
Speaker 6: any role admunicating cases about racial jerrymandering, and he said
Speaker 6: that this sort of remedy that the Court was using
Speaker 6: really stems out of brownview Board, and that that type
Speaker 6: of grand equitable relief that the Court at the Court
Speaker 6: had used then, and his wording it was something to
Speaker 6: the effect of this may have been necessary then, but
Speaker 6: it is not necessary now. So, first of all, the
Speaker 6: idea that it may have been like like, he's unsure
Speaker 6: about whether or not Brownvie Board was above board, so
Speaker 6: to speak. And then the second part of that is
Speaker 6: saying even if it was necessary, then it's not necessary now.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, this is part and parcel of the
Speaker 6: Court's work to de faying all of the teeth that
Speaker 6: the civil rights movement had and take away all of
Speaker 6: the whether constitutional or statutory protections for marginalized people that
Speaker 6: folks have fought for over the last few hundred years.
Speaker 1: And we recently learned that just as Sodomaya goes to
Speaker 1: her office to cry after some decisions, which yeah.
Speaker 6: She is not the only one.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could explain to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about so sort of there have been a
Speaker 1: number of truly insane decisions out of this court. Their
Speaker 1: decision that racial jurymandering is a okay with them overturning Row.
Speaker 1: Now they're looking at bringing back the Comstock Act. I mean,
Speaker 1: explain to us where originalism fits in with this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, originalism by its own terms is like focused
Speaker 6: on this idea of history based on resetting our understanding
Speaker 6: of the Constitution. To however, conservatives say basically it was
Speaker 6: understood two hundred years ago. It's a jurisprudence of rolling
Speaker 6: back the clock. That's been the through line of all
Speaker 6: of these sorts of cases that you mentioned, whether undoing
Speaker 6: voting rights protections, or taking away the constitutional right to abortion,
Speaker 6: or reinvigorating the Undead Comstock Act. The idea here with
Speaker 6: all of these is putting things as we think they
Speaker 6: once were are sort of idealized, nostalgic version of the past,
Speaker 6: where the hierarchies that they care about, hierarchies of patriarchy
Speaker 6: and racism and capitalism, where all of these structures were
Speaker 6: more enforced, and where the government didn't have, or rather
Speaker 6: unless say they didn't have, didn't utilize tools to address these.
Speaker 6: I think that's a really cool part, is that there
Speaker 6: are tools that we can use. The reconstruction and men exist.
Speaker 6: The whole purpose of the post Civil War and members
Speaker 6: to the Constitution was to rid the country of its
Speaker 6: government sanctioned and mandated subordination and creating an inclusive democracy
Speaker 6: for the first time that worked for everybody. That was
Speaker 6: the whole point. And so I would argue that we
Speaker 6: have these tools there, and the conservative legal movement is
Speaker 6: desperately trying to ensure that we don't use them and
Speaker 6: that they cut off access to those tools.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I think trump Ism is this last
Speaker 1: gasp against a multi racial democracy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, we're on the cost of it,
Speaker 1: and trump Ism is like, oh no, what your talking
Speaker 1: about is so important and it really does speak to reconstruction.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about where reconstruction figures into this a
Speaker 1: little more?
Speaker 6: Yeah, to briefly review what their reconstruction amendments were.
Speaker 1: Yes, please, And you could even if you want to
Speaker 1: give even a little more backstory on sort of the
Speaker 1: detail on reconstruction and exactly how it influenced the law. Right.
Speaker 6: So the idea like reconstruct is in the name, right, like,
Speaker 6: we had to rebuild the nation in the wake of
Speaker 6: the Civil War and construct a new foundation for law
Speaker 6: that would apply equally across the country, regardless of race,
Speaker 6: no longer the explicit subjugation that had existed before. And
Speaker 6: so you had the thirteenth Amendment, which finally formally abolished slavery,
Speaker 6: with the notable exception as for punishment for a crime.
Speaker 6: You got the Fourteenth Amendment, which created birthright citizenship. It
Speaker 6: established equal protection under law, do process under law. You
Speaker 6: have the fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.
Speaker 6: Like all of these things came together to create a
Speaker 6: new multi racial democracy, like to actually establish that for
Speaker 6: the first time in the nation's charter. And they should
Speaker 6: be viewed as reframing and recontextualizing the whole Constitution. We've
Speaker 6: been seeing this really chipped away in the past month actually,
Speaker 6: as we say, the past several decades, but really as
Speaker 6: soon as they were made, folks tried to undercut them.
Speaker 6: They just had a lot of successes recently. Reconstruction is
Speaker 6: important because those amendments are at the heart of so
Speaker 6: many of the major civil rights victories that folks care about,
Speaker 6: Like brownree Board was a fourteenth Amendment decision. Roby Wade
Speaker 6: was a fourteenth Amendment decision. Oberga Felipe Holdgius was a
Speaker 6: fourteenth Amendment decision. So all of these things have their
Speaker 6: source in the liberatory mission of the Reconstruction Amendments, and
Speaker 6: that's why there is such a resistance to them and
Speaker 6: an unwillingness to apply them as they should. I think
Speaker 6: Sherilyn Eiffel, the former director BET and WAZP Legal Defense Fund,
Speaker 6: I think She described this someone recently as a fear
Speaker 6: of the fourteenth Amendment. That people are afraid of how
Speaker 6: radical and how good the amendments are, which is why
Speaker 6: we haven't seen them apply it as they should be.
Speaker 1: It really is this fear of giving everyone the same right. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. We are in this insane Supreme
Speaker 1: Court season. It is almost June, which is like the
Speaker 1: month I dread the most because time of the year,
Speaker 1: you know they're going to just do insane stuff. I
Speaker 1: do feel like sometimes I'll have one decision come out
Speaker 1: and you'll be like, this isn't so bad, and then
Speaker 1: you know the next one is going to be like
Speaker 1: just shockingly bad.
Speaker 6: Don't you feel like that's kind of what happened. Oh, definitely,
Speaker 6: if I'm remembering correctly, I think that one of the
Speaker 6: positive gay rights decisions a decade and change ago came
Speaker 6: out like right around the same time as one of
Speaker 6: the worst voting rest decisions, and I really felt like
Speaker 6: the Court was sitting in chambers and was like, all right,
Speaker 6: you know, we'll get them a little on this one,
Speaker 6: but we'll hold this one back, like we'll do a
Speaker 6: little tradz ease and hopefully we can keep things calm
Speaker 6: if they have one ruling. We have Flaggate for Alito.
Speaker 1: We have January six Gate for Thomas and his wife's involvement,
Speaker 1: and stop this deal. These are two pretty large things.
Speaker 1: They have been asked to recuse. Neither will recuse.
Speaker 6: I mean, were you a u United States senator, what
Speaker 6: would you do here? M It's an interesting question. I mean,
Speaker 6: if I were a United States Senator, I would have
Speaker 6: them hauled to Congress. Yeah, I think I would be Yeah,
Speaker 6: I would be holding hearings. And if they refuse to
Speaker 6: be hauled to Congress, I would show up at their door.
Speaker 6: That's all I would play it. It's very clear that
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court, particularly the far right members of the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court, think that they're untouchable, of which there are
Speaker 6: five right, but there are two who are old. Yes,
Speaker 6: there's a super majority of them, and two in particular
Speaker 6: who are just wildin ow at a class of their own.
Speaker 6: And I think that the reason why they do that
Speaker 6: is because they believe they can. They believe nothing is
Speaker 6: going to happen to them, They're not going to face
Speaker 6: any consequences, and so it's incumbent on the other branches
Speaker 6: of government to impose consequences and to exercise its powers
Speaker 6: to perform the court and also exercise basic accountability and oversight.
Speaker 1: Let's just play pretend here. Let's say that Joe Biden wins,
Speaker 1: they keep the Senate, and they flip the House.
Speaker 6: Okay, say there's a trifecta. Yes, go along with me.
Speaker 1: What should Joe Biden do about the Supreme Court? And
Speaker 1: by the way, he's not going to want to, But
Speaker 1: what would you if you were there? What would you
Speaker 1: tell him to do? And how would you solve a
Speaker 1: problem like the Supreme Court?
Speaker 6: In an ideal world, if you had all of those
Speaker 6: tools available, like you said, both Chambers of Congress and
Speaker 6: have the White House a clear chance you have to
Speaker 6: take to implement structural reforms. That's where you can do
Speaker 6: things like expanding the court, establishing term limits, implementing an actual,
Speaker 6: binding and forcible code of ethics. That's a chance you
Speaker 6: could be reconsidering what kinds of cases the Court easie
Speaker 6: has jurisdiction over. I would also add, and this is
Speaker 6: what I really talk about in my book, that in
Speaker 6: addition to changing, I'm talking about like what the court
Speaker 6: looks like, what the core is capable of doing, and
Speaker 6: in the book I lean into how the Court should
Speaker 6: do what it does, because we talked a little about
Speaker 6: originalism earlier as being this nonsensical way the Court uses
Speaker 6: to justify as decisions. But even if the Court did
Speaker 6: have three more, four more, shoot five more and justic
Speaker 6: sys tomorrow, they would still need guidance on what to
Speaker 6: do beyond not that. Something I try to do in
Speaker 6: the book is l out this vision of what courts
Speaker 6: should be doing a different model of interpretation, and also
Speaker 6: calling on the public to be a part of that
Speaker 6: as well. In the same way that we saw jurisprudence
Speaker 6: shift so rapidly in all of these types of issues
Speaker 6: that we care about. It's extremely demoralizing on one hand,
Speaker 6: but I think on the other hand, it should be
Speaker 6: a reminder that change is possible and that people make
Speaker 6: change possible. These are things that we should be very
Speaker 6: attuned to and demand that the Court interpret the Constitution
Speaker 6: in a different way. And I think that's something that
Speaker 6: the elected branches like Congress and the Executive, if they
Speaker 6: can make a point of that as well. They too
Speaker 6: have a role in saying what they think the Constitution
Speaker 6: means and what they think the right way of interpreting
Speaker 6: the Constitution is. It wouldn't be the first time that
Speaker 6: Congress or the President did that, and I'm sure it
Speaker 6: won't be the last either. But we've seen recently the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court accumulate more and more power and acting as
Speaker 6: if it has this exclusive domain to have any say
Speaker 6: over what the law means. And I think that the
Speaker 6: public and elected officials all need to say that. I'll
Speaker 6: have to say not so and put forth a different
Speaker 6: idea of thinking about the Constitution instead. So interesting, so important.
Speaker 1: Just to really appreciate you and the work you're doing
Speaker 1: at the Brennan Center.
Speaker 6: So thanks for coming on. Thank you. Yeah, I was
Speaker 6: at the Brennan Center in a previous list. I'm currently
Speaker 6: the deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Balls and Strikes. We love Balls and Strikes.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: Steve Brell is the founder of NewsGuard and author of
Speaker 1: the Death of Truth. How social media in the Internet
Speaker 1: gave snake oil salesmen and demigogs the weapons they needed
Speaker 1: to destroy trust and polarize the world, and what we
Speaker 1: can do. Welcome ast politics.
Speaker 3: Steve Brell, thank you, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to have you because you have such
Speaker 1: an interesting story and you have done so many cool things.
Speaker 1: Can we do a minute or two on Court TV?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we absolutely should, because I'll tell you,
Speaker 3: it drives me nuts that there aren't cameras in the
Speaker 3: Trump corporate.
Speaker 1: Explain to us how you started Court TV. How that happened.
Speaker 1: I'm quite interested.
Speaker 3: Well, I was running a legal publication that I had
Speaker 3: started years before, called The American Lawyer, which was for lawyers,
Speaker 3: and it was quite successful, and a bunch of publishers
Speaker 3: Conde Nassharst, the New York Times had come to me
Speaker 3: and said, why don't you start a consumer magazine about law?
Speaker 3: And every time I thought about it, I thought it
Speaker 3: was really a stupid idea because the only thing you
Speaker 3: would do would be you cover true crime stuff, which
Speaker 3: I thought would just get really sleazy, or you would
Speaker 3: do things like what to do when You're arrested for
Speaker 3: drunk driving and going to buy a magazine about what
Speaker 3: to do when you're arrested for drunk driving except at
Speaker 3: two or three in the morning on a Saturday night,
Speaker 3: when you get pulled up a cop and there is
Speaker 3: in a magazine store open. But I did think because
Speaker 3: I had spent a lot of time over the years
Speaker 3: interviewing jurors in important, high profile cases, and jurors always
Speaker 3: came away with one thing in common, which is they
Speaker 3: were fascinated by the system of the legal system and
Speaker 3: had more confidence in the legal system as a result
Speaker 3: of having served on a jury. They thought it really worked,
Speaker 3: interesting and fascinating, even if the trial itself had its long,
Speaker 3: boring moments. So I'm sitting in the back of a
Speaker 3: cab one day and the cab driver has this radio
Speaker 3: on and it's playing a sound clip from a trial
Speaker 3: because the courts in New York had just allowed trials
Speaker 3: to have, you know, audio, And I said to myself,
Speaker 3: that's the idea, That's what I should do. And I
Speaker 3: went to Steve Ross, who was the chairing of Want
Speaker 3: of Communications at the time, was someone that I knew,
Speaker 3: and I said, I have this really crazy idea to
Speaker 3: a combination of c span and tabloid journalism. And he said, oh,
Speaker 3: you want to start a cable channel with cameras. In
Speaker 3: the course, I said, well, how'd you know that? Anyway,
Speaker 3: long story short, that's what we started, and the whole
Speaker 3: idea was to show people at home what jurors were seeing.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of spin, you know, not defendants or
Speaker 3: lawyers you know, coming out of the courtroom and talking
Speaker 3: about how great the day was for them or how
Speaker 3: outrageous the judge was, but what the jury was actually
Speaker 3: seeing in the court room, which takes us to you know,
Speaker 3: the week we've all been experiencing where it's a major
Speaker 3: trial going on in case you didn't know, and nobody
Speaker 3: seeing what's happening in the courtroom. What they're seeing is
Speaker 3: the spin that the defending is putting on what's happening courtroom.
Speaker 3: And my belief is that no matter what the verdict is,
Speaker 3: we're all going to be debating it, you know, from
Speaker 3: now until forever. Whereas that debate would be different if
Speaker 3: people were debating from the same set of facts, which
Speaker 3: is what did the jury see and hear in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: And the world that I now live in, which is
Speaker 3: NewsGuard where we rate the reliability of the news and
Speaker 3: information online, is the opposite world. It's a world where
Speaker 3: you know, social media platforms, you have no idea what
Speaker 3: the credentials are of the people who are to tell
Speaker 3: you these things. It's all rumor, it's hearsay, it's made up.
Speaker 3: Whereas in a courtroom, the witnesses are carefully screened by
Speaker 3: the judge, they're challenged by the opposite side, you know,
Speaker 3: what their credentials are. The evidence that's put into play
Speaker 3: is vetted first. It's the total opposite of what you
Speaker 3: see online. So that's why I'm really frustrated that the
Speaker 3: world hasn't been able to see what happened in the courtroom,
Speaker 3: and it's just going to debate it, you know, endlessly,
Speaker 3: without having seen it, and without having seen what the
Speaker 3: jury saw when they made their decisions.
Speaker 1: I could not agree with you more. And in fact,
Speaker 1: every time I talk to anyone who's in that courtroom,
Speaker 1: I always say, like, you know, people say, well, I
Speaker 1: was in the overflow room, I wasn't in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I think being able to see
Speaker 1: the jury, I mean, like, how are they responding to
Speaker 1: the witnesses Like that seems so relevant to me.
Speaker 3: Well, even more so than the jury, the witnesses themselves.
Speaker 3: I mean, the whole constitutional idea of being able to
Speaker 3: confront your accuser is that the defendant, and the public
Speaker 3: has a right to see what happens in a court.
Speaker 3: One hundred years ago, courtrooms were built with giant places
Speaker 3: for the audience. You know, it used to be the
Speaker 3: courtroom was the center of town and people would go
Speaker 3: to town and go in to the courtroom and watch the trial.
Speaker 3: So a camera there is simply a substitute for that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: You don't have to have lights and noise or anything.
Speaker 3: It's just one unobtrusive camera. In fact, that courtroom, if
Speaker 3: it's like most other courtrooms in the United States, has
Speaker 3: a security camera there already. You woudn't even have to
Speaker 3: put a camera there, it's already there. But anyway, it's
Speaker 3: the it's the opposite of the world that I now
Speaker 3: live in. And that world you know, as you know,
Speaker 3: is captured in the book that I've written, which is
Speaker 3: The Death of Truth. And the Death of Truth is
Speaker 3: really about the fact that people debate opinions and they
Speaker 3: don't work from the same set of facts.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this is something that I am obsessed with.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I noticed is where this
Speaker 1: enormous country, three hundred and thirty three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people, maybe twenty million people read the newspaper, maybe
Speaker 1: last where and you know some percentage, watch cable news,
Speaker 1: watch local. Where are the three hundred million other people
Speaker 1: getting their news?
Speaker 3: TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, all the places you arguably would not
Speaker 3: want people to get news, and on those platforms. Everything
Speaker 3: is a matter of opinion. Everything is debated. My book
Speaker 3: opens with a story from thirty years ago when our
Speaker 3: daughter was in the sixth or seventh grade at a
Speaker 3: private school in Manhattan, and it was a parent's visiting day,
Speaker 3: and we're staying in the back of the room and
Speaker 3: the teacher asked one of the kids, luckily not my daughter,
Speaker 3: how much is six times seven? And the kid says
Speaker 3: it's forty one, And the teacher says, I disagree. Disagreeable. Well,
Speaker 3: that is the state of the world today. We disagree
Speaker 3: over who got the most votes. We disagree over whether
Speaker 3: the COVID vaccine is killing people or not killing people.
Speaker 3: Fifty one percent of all the people in the United
Speaker 3: States who refused to get vaccinated for COVID fifty one percent,
Speaker 3: saying up those people in them were high percentage. It
Speaker 3: was something like twenty five percent of adults refused to
Speaker 3: get vaccine. More than half of them believed that Bill
Speaker 3: Gates had planned it a microchip in the vaccine in
Speaker 3: order to control their minds. Fifty one percent. Just as
Speaker 3: you know, a very high percentage of Republicans and in
Speaker 3: fact the country don't believe that Trump lost the last election.
Speaker 3: One of the seats in my book that I just
Speaker 3: keep coming back to is I wrote a story just
Speaker 3: before the twenty sixteen election about Trump University. Remember Trump University,
Speaker 3: You know it was a total fraud. For thirty five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, you were going to learn the secrets of
Speaker 3: Trump's real estate genius. And everybody who enrolled. There are
Speaker 3: lots of people who envolved decided the thirty five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars later they had learned nothing and the whole thing
Speaker 3: was a scam, and they sued they were about to
Speaker 3: win when Trump was settled by basically giving them all.
Speaker 2: Their money back.
Speaker 3: This is just before the election. Well, I found two
Speaker 3: of the plainers. These are people who swore out the complaint,
Speaker 3: who said they would defrauded, and they were a retired
Speaker 3: couple who had spent their last thirty five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: us on university. And I'm talking to them, and they're
Speaker 3: telling you about how awful this was. And then sort
Speaker 3: of just as an afterthought, this is just before the election.
Speaker 3: I said, well, you know, I guess you're not going
Speaker 3: to vote for Trump and they said, oh no, we're
Speaker 3: voting for it. I said, what are you talking about.
Speaker 3: You know, you swore in a document that he defrauded you.
Speaker 3: And they said, yeah, well we since you know, we've
Speaker 3: learned on social media. And he said he really didn't
Speaker 3: have anything to do with that university. He lent his
Speaker 3: name into it, but you know, he really wasn't part
Speaker 3: of it, and he's a good guy and he's really
Speaker 3: going to fight for us. These are people who were
Speaker 3: swindled by it, who were voting for it. And the
Speaker 3: other incident like that, which I think demonstrates that there
Speaker 3: is the death of truth, is there's a patient in
Speaker 3: a hospital who's on a respirator. He's breathing his last
Speaker 3: breaths because he has COVID, and just as he's about
Speaker 3: to die, he takes the respirator off and says to
Speaker 3: his doctor, this COVID thing is all bullshit. Now Here's
Speaker 3: doesn't even believe his own lungs. He thinks that COVID
Speaker 3: is a matter of opinion. You think there's COVID. I
Speaker 3: don't think there's COVID. There's no fact, there's no shared
Speaker 3: set of facts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean it's just such an
Speaker 1: insane moment in American life. So what do you think
Speaker 1: this solve is for this?
Speaker 3: There are a couple of solves in different areas. On
Speaker 3: the technology front. The two biggest inventions were advances in
Speaker 3: technology that have to do with information. First of the
Speaker 3: social media platforms, which were given an exemption from any
Speaker 3: liability before they were social media platforms. This was a
Speaker 3: law passed in called Section two thirty, which was part
Speaker 3: of a massive telecommunications reform law in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: and it was really aimed at giving what were then
Speaker 3: America Online and Prodigy and Compuser, which are three companies
Speaker 3: you may not have ever heard of.
Speaker 1: We're actually compuserved years all with Jesse and I.
Speaker 3: They got exempted from liability if someone went into one
Speaker 3: of their chat rooms related to finance or sports or
Speaker 3: you know whatever and said something, you know, defamatory. So
Speaker 3: the idea was to protect them from that kind of liability,
Speaker 3: but had nothing to do with the social media platforms
Speaker 3: as we now know them, who are exempt from any liability.
Speaker 3: But it turns out, as I explained in the book,
Speaker 3: you don't have to amend the Walk. Congress doesn't have
Speaker 3: to do anything because right now, Molly, when we get
Speaker 3: off this conversation, you go to your Facebook account or
Speaker 3: your Twitter account and look at the terms of service.
Speaker 3: The terms of service say that Facebook will not tolerate
Speaker 3: harmful misinformation or disinformation or other harmful speech, bullying, hates, etc.
Speaker 3: They say, we will not tolerate it. That's a term
Speaker 3: of service. That's a contract. They are not living up
Speaker 3: to their contract. The FTC or you as an individual,
Speaker 3: but the FTC on behalf of you and everybody else
Speaker 3: today could sue them for violating their terms of service.
Speaker 3: The terms of service don't say, well, we don't like
Speaker 3: misinformation and disinformation, we don't like hate speech, but you
Speaker 3: know so many people post online to us that we
Speaker 3: really can't. You know, we don't want to cut into
Speaker 3: our profit margins by limiting people can post or by
Speaker 3: hiring more people to screen it. So it's just going
Speaker 3: to get through. The terms of service doesn't say that.
Speaker 3: It says we don't tolerate it, and that's a promise
Speaker 3: they are not keeping, and that promise is a contract.
Speaker 3: So that's one thing you could do. The second thing
Speaker 3: has to do with another technological advance, which is programmatic advertise.
Speaker 3: Advertising today is placed by algorithm. It's not you know
Speaker 3: the days of mad Men where people go out to
Speaker 3: lunch and to side. Do I want to advertise on
Speaker 3: you know, Vanity Fair or Wired, or would I want
Speaker 3: to be on NBC or CBS. It's all done by
Speaker 3: algorithm with no regard for the content where the head appears,
Speaker 3: and that has ended up financing the worst kinds of
Speaker 3: misinformation and disinformation without the advertisers even knowing it. That's
Speaker 3: probably the most eye opening chapter in the book, which
Speaker 3: opens with the following, which is a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: Guess who the biggest single advertiser was on Spotnik, which
Speaker 3: is the Russian uh, you know aganda hand. Guess to
Speaker 3: the biggest advertizments Warren Buffett. Now it's not like Warren
Speaker 3: Buffett wakes up every morning and says, how do I
Speaker 3: send more money to Vladimir Putin? It He owns Geico,
Speaker 3: and Geico does a programmatic advertising and a lot of
Speaker 3: it ends up on spot Neck, it ends up on
Speaker 3: stop the Steel sites, it ends up on COVID misinformation sites,
Speaker 3: it ends up sites that say that the October seventh
Speaker 3: attack was a false flag by Israel. So billions of
Speaker 3: dollars is going to support the misinformation and disinformation that
Speaker 3: I really outlined the look. So that's the second tech
Speaker 3: great advance that is booberrang Dogs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it sounds like some of the problem here
Speaker 1: is that we just have a social media ecosystem that
Speaker 1: has no content moderation, right.
Speaker 3: And I'm not talking about content censorship, you know, far
Speaker 3: from it. I'm talking about content moderation in the sense
Speaker 3: that what NewsGuard does is we assess the reliability and
Speaker 3: credibility of online sources, so if something is owned by
Speaker 3: the Russians. I mean, we just did a report this
Speaker 3: week that identified a Russian disinformation operative in Moscow who
Speaker 3: used to be a sheriff in Florida but fled after
Speaker 3: he was tided. This guy has set up one hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty seven one hundred and sixty seven fake local
Speaker 3: news sites in the United States that he has set up.
Speaker 3: He's a Russian disinformation operative. Jesus and those local news
Speaker 3: sites are feeding all kinds of Russian propaganda, pro Trump
Speaker 3: propaganda on sites throughout the United States that are posing
Speaker 3: as legitimate local news, so that disorients everybody. No one
Speaker 3: knows what to believe anymore, because it's just you know,
Speaker 3: it's a cesspool of you know, chaos and misinformation. If
Speaker 3: the platforms had to identify who owns various sites, who
Speaker 3: owns them, just.
Speaker 1: That little fix might solve, right, because if you could
Speaker 1: see something was owned by a company in Russia, right,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that solve a lot of problems?
Speaker 3: It would sure help, And wouldn't you like to know that?
Speaker 1: Listen, all I do is think about why, you know,
Speaker 1: our percentage of the country doesn't seem to be interfacing
Speaker 1: with normal news and wondering where they've gone.
Speaker 3: Well, just think of that couple that retired eighty year
Speaker 3: old plus couple in New Jersey who enrolled in Trump
Speaker 3: University and got swindled and are still voting for you.
Speaker 2: Think about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, just that is the state of you know,
Speaker 3: the chaos of the information ecosystem. They're voting for him
Speaker 3: because they heard online that he really wasn't responsible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's so nuts. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I've been struck by is that it feels like
Speaker 1: the government really fell down on regulation. You clearly have
Speaker 1: thought about this more than I have.
Speaker 3: No I think it's more the private sector. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want the government regulating speech, but
Speaker 3: I want the government to regulate in a content neutral
Speaker 3: way what people know about speech, the informat what they
Speaker 3: know about their sources of information. And I want the
Speaker 3: government to regulate the way they typically do when when
Speaker 3: a private company, you know, promises that you're going to
Speaker 3: have a safe experience with their product, that they keep
Speaker 3: that promise. I mean, Elon Musk right now, would not
Speaker 3: be allowed to say that so many people want to
Speaker 3: buy a Tesla that he has to step up production.
Speaker 3: And stepping up production, he's not going to have time
Speaker 3: to mess around with pesky things like air bags and
Speaker 3: seat belts, because you know that slows down production and
Speaker 3: costs more money. They would never let him do that.
Speaker 3: But look at what they let him do on his
Speaker 3: social media pledge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's no government regulation right.
Speaker 3: Right, there's no government regulation, And in the case of
Speaker 3: advertisers who are supporting it, they have done nothing, almost
Speaker 3: nothing but to worry about where their ads appear, and
Speaker 3: all of that has happened in a world in which
Speaker 3: where if you have you know, partisan gerrymandering. I know
Speaker 3: I'm coming off the subject, but if you have partisan
Speaker 3: gerrymandering and a primary system in most states where the
Speaker 3: Republicans you know, fire to be the furthest right Republican
Speaker 3: and the Democrats by to be the furthest left Democrat,
Speaker 3: you have a polarized electorate. And that is a formula
Speaker 3: for what we have today, which is again, you know,
Speaker 3: the death of truth. No one is signing on to
Speaker 3: believe in a common set of facts or to believe
Speaker 3: in you know, institutions and people. We used to believe it.
Speaker 3: We used to believe in as a country that you know,
Speaker 3: people you know working on election day at polling centers
Speaker 3: were honest people, They were honest referees. Now a certain
Speaker 3: segment of the population thinks these people are you know,
Speaker 3: crooks or hustlers. We used to believe in doctors. Now
Speaker 3: more people get their medical information online than they get
Speaker 3: from you know, real doctors. We used to believe in judges.
Speaker 3: Now you know, people being told that every judge is
Speaker 3: on the take, is biased, is on one side of
Speaker 3: the other. So it has undermine our belief in the
Speaker 3: you know, in basic American institutions, whether it's medicine or elections,
Speaker 3: everything is a matter of opinion. Who got the most votes.
Speaker 3: That's your opinion versus someone else's. It never used to
Speaker 3: be that way. It shouldn't be that one.
Speaker 1: Steve Brill, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Happy to do it.
Speaker 2: No moment, we.
Speaker 1: Have a special surprise appearance from the one, the only,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson. He has come for a moment of fuckery
Speaker 1: because everything old is new again when it comes to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and racial slurs. Let's get going.
Speaker 4: We have heard this story for a decade now that
Speaker 4: somewhere in the bowels of Mark Burnett's media empire are
Speaker 4: the outtakes of Donald Trump saying the inWORD. Now, anyone
Speaker 4: who doesn't think that the guy who took two weeks
Speaker 4: denounced David Duke might not have said the inWORD. I
Speaker 4: have many bridges to sell you. But what has happened
Speaker 4: now is a producer who was on the team. His
Speaker 4: NDA has expired, and because his NDIA has expired, he
Speaker 4: is now saying, why, yes, he did say the inWORD
Speaker 4: it's on tape. Now Mark Burnett, who is a major winger,
Speaker 4: and his wife who was a major winger, she's a
Speaker 4: queen Trumper. All this has added up to this really
Speaker 4: ugly moment where the guy saying the inWORD on tape
Speaker 4: has now had somebody, another eyewitness who was verifiably on
Speaker 4: the show come out and say, yep, I heard it.
Speaker 2: I heard it. He said it.
Speaker 1: And one of the things about this particular moment of
Speaker 1: fuck ray is that Rick and I talked to Tom
Speaker 1: Arnold in the first season of Trump Ruining America twenty
Speaker 1: twenty during a pandemic Trump Ruins America Season one pandemic pandemic,
Speaker 1: and Tom Arnold told us that there was a tape
Speaker 1: of Trump saying the N word. We were unable to
Speaker 1: have enough sources to back that up.
Speaker 2: We couldn't go with it because.
Speaker 1: We weren't able to track it down. But Donald Trump
Speaker 1: saying the N word and all of America non finding
Speaker 1: out about it for eight years is our moment of fuckery.
Speaker 4: That's down to you, Mark Burnett. Your moment of fuckery
Speaker 4: has arrived. But then again, what do we know about
Speaker 4: people in the MAGA right now? None of that stuff matters.
Speaker 4: Only winning matters to them. I mean, Donald Trump could
Speaker 4: say things one hundred times worse because he allegedly said
Speaker 4: on the tape, how will America feel about the inward
Speaker 4: winning or a inward winning? I mean, I don't care.
Speaker 4: I promise you they will go through the normal phases
Speaker 4: of trump Ism. It's a lie by the mainstream media. No,
Speaker 4: it never happened. No, he never said that. No, Joe
Speaker 4: Biden's the one who actually said that they're going to
Speaker 4: do the whole thing they always do. And of course
Speaker 4: we'll end up getting headlines in the Times in places
Speaker 4: like both Trump and Biden have faced racial issues.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, thanks anytime. That's it for this episode of
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to
Speaker 1: hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all
Speaker 1: this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
Speaker 1: it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening.