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