Lawrence O'Donnell, Sen. Doug Jones & David Folkenflik

But first we have the host of the Laurence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's Laurence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Laurence O'Donnell. Oh, great to be back with my new microphone that I'm so proud of that I bought Jeff for this conversation. Yes, we love that. Very excited. I want to talk to you first about the dominion filing because this is not your first rodeo and you have been in this business, the business of politics and then the business of media.

I think a lot of us suspected that this was happening, but were you just shocked that there were like actual text messages documenting these things. No, I would have been shocked if there was a shred of evidence of a shred of decency there, including in the you know, Brett Bayer department, which has always been corrupt. But you know, the news media has never wanted to believe that there's this impostor. It's not a cancer on the business. It's

just an imposter. You know. It's like the Wrestling Channel said, he called itself Wrestling News, and the news media just all it's news. It's been a fraud from the first day. I remember before they opened their doors. I remember walking down sixth Avenue and hearing from someone that, oh, you know, Rupert Murdock's going to start a Republican TV channel. I, because I'm brilliant about these things, said, well, no one's

gonna watch that. And you know, because Republican TV channel to me sounded like more boring than c SPAN at the time, because the Republican Party was Bob Dole and you know that stuff. But you know, here we are. It's always been what it is, and it's and the It just horrifies me that people keep using the word that Rupert Murdoch ordered them to use when he filled

out the corporate papers titling the business Fox News. That is a classic case of what the Senator I worked for, Daniel Patrick moynahan, would call semantic infiltration, and that is infiltrating your language to force you to say what I want you to say. And so there are these attempts to do that in politics in various ways, with phrases like pro life. I'm going to call myself pro life, therefore you have to and the news business obeys those commands.

But I mean, I have not put the word news after the word Fox in many years because it's just a lie and the whole thing is a fraud, and everybody working there, there's not a single person working there is in the news business. There never has been. Yeah, No, I mean, I think that's right. And I just want to get back to what you said about Brett Bair, because they had this distinction that there was a news side and an entertainment side. But what's very clear from

this is that's not true. Yeah, I know Brett Bair was horrified that Fox called Arizona first, and he was horrified that they lost viewers because of it. That's never happened in any of the real news divisions around there. I can confess to you this may come as a shock if I pull back the curtain a little bit, but I personally, I won't speak for others at MSNBC, but I personally was deeply disappointed when we realized Donald

Trump was going to win the Electoral College. And I realized that about a half an hour before other people, because I was sitting there with Steve Schmidt and James Carville. We had our own little studio and we would do our own little cut in and for twenty minutes at a time, we were not on TV, and those two guys were doing way more than the decision desk does. They were texting and calling people they know in such

and such a county in North Carolina. And I would hear James Carville talking to someone in North Carolina and say, well, if we lose that, then we're going to lose Wisconsin. And he's and all he's getting is a report from one particular district in North Carolina that he knows mirrors Wisconsin and all that. So so I kind of knew the tragedy unfolding about a half an hour before everybody else, And there wasn't a moment where it crossed my mind, well, we can't as a network go out there and say

Donald Trump won. We can't do that. You know, It's like, no, sorry, never crossed my mind. I think that's a really good point, is that there they tried to shape the news to fit the narrative. But I'm curious. It seems like the larger problem that Fox ends up having, and you see in these filings, is that they have given their listeners viewers so much of what they want that they have sort of been unable to shape reality to what these

people needed to hear. And so there is this sort of almost I mean, I feel like it's like something from a sci fi novel where they realize that they can no longer shape reality to meet the demand. They are continuing to deliver exactly what they believe that audience wants. Here's the funny thing about it. You know when they talk about, oh, we watched our ratings collapse that week. Yeah, it was a rough week for Fox. But here's the

way it goes. And everybody knows this, and everyone knew this ahead of time, and it would have been true in two thousand and four, you know, with George w Bush, and it was true in two thousand and eight, you know one Obama won. So if the Republican wins the presidency, the MSNBC ratings are going to drop because there's going to be a depression in a majority of that audience. Okay, then they don't want to they don't want to consume

this stuff anymore. And if the Democrats win the presidency, there was always a drop, always, every time, a drop in the Fox ratings that week, okay, And it didn't mean Fox wasn't going to make billions of dollars. It meant there was this kind of moment, you know, the super Bowl is over and the fans are not watching football the next week. That's just the way it works. And so their panic about losing audience is just so despicable on every level, including the money level, because they

were all all going to remain very, very rich. Fox was going to continue to make billions, and they are panicking over this relatively slight and totally predictable and temporary drop in ratings. It's so interesting though, because they sort of can't ride with it. But I also do think it ended up being What I think is pretty interesting is that they ended up this choice they made, which they clearly made a choice. They knew what they were doing.

Clear they knew that the twenty twenty election was free and fair. They did it because they just didn't have a hold on the market. They did it because they thought it was their job. It's a Republican party operation and the doctrine of the Republican party in the twenty first century, and this was not always the case, but by the twenty first century what it became, Republicanism simply

became we hate liberals. Right, It's nothing else. There's no policy, there's no balance the budget, there's no eliminate the deficit. There's there's no policy at all except tax cuts. And we hate liberals. And we get our tax cuts by convincing people who are not rich, who also hate liberals, to vote for us. And that's the entire scheme. And that's Murdoch's entire scheme. He has no other objective except, you know, the demonization of liberals, and so that's the game.

So they're going to do that, and they're going to do whatever is necessary to do that, and they're absolutely you know, limits, and I promise you there have never been limits There's never been a day at Fox, never a day where they had any kind of moral or ethical limit on what they might do or say. Yeah, and all you're seeing if you see a difference between Sean Hannity nineteen ninety seven and Sean Hannity twenty seventeen, and there is it is simply what is acceptable? What

are the bounds of acceptability? And so those things change in every sphere of life. You know, over time, over a twenty year period, you know, what's acceptable to say contracts and expands in different kinds of ways. And so they're just playing within the zone that is now acceptable. And what's acceptable now in Republicanism is literally anything. It

takes any anything to beat and destroy Liberals. So one of the things that I've been continually having a argument with even very smart Republicans but tend to be Republicans, is this idea that DeSantis is somehow less dangerous than Trump. Can you just debunk this? I mean, this just blows my mind, this idea that somehow someone who is much better at doing this is less dangerous than Trump. Yeah, I don't think there's any real evidence for that case

that de Santis is less dangerous than Trump. I always when I was watching Trump, I was always thanking the luck of the draw every day. Just how lucky we are that he's an imbecile. We are so lucky that he is as deeply, profoundly and permanently stupid as he is, because he was just a couple of nachees smarter. You know, the things that he was trying to do could be done with better premeditation, like even for example, I'm going

to need an attorney general. Well when re election comes, who's going to do anything for me in the Justice Department? He had, because he's stupid, reason to believe that Barr was that guy. And Barr was disgraceful, and Bar disgraced himself beyond what anyone who knew him could have imagined. But still there were going to be limits, you know for somebody who grew up in the law like Bill Barr. And Trump found those limits in November, you know, of

twenty twenty. If he had planned a year ahead of time, who is the idiot, the hack, the moral I want as attorney general? For that moment, he could have basically told Bill bar to quit right because you don't have to get this guy confirmed. You don't have to get him confirmed. As we saw with the crazy, you know lawyer from the Justice Department who he temporarily for a

few hours made acting Attorney General. He could have gotten a guy like that in in a smoother way, and DeSantis would get that guy in in a smoother way. He would have premeditated it. Trump is this imbecile who is late with his homework every single time, right and so, and we're lucky, you know, we're very lucky because of that. DeSantis is the most premeditated of his kind I've ever seen. Like he's way beyond, way beyond Trump and all of that. Yeah,

that's what I think too. I mean, the book banning the education stuff. I mean, let me just add one difference to DeSantis that could be a civilizing factor. Because Donald Trump did something that has never been done before in the history of the presidency. Every single person except Franklin Roosevelt in our recent time who won the presidency immediately tried to figure out, how do I get the

voters who didn't vote for me? And the reason I say except Franklin Roosevelt is because his first election was a landslide and his second election was even bigger right and so, but everybody else is, you know, kind of squeaking in there. You know. JFK won the presidency by less than one percent of the vote. Eight years later, Richard Nixon wins the presidency by less than one percent of the vote. Both of them wanted to sound appealing to people who didn't vote for them. Everybody has done that.

Ronald Reagan did that. Ronald Reagan won forty nine states in the electoral college in his reelection because after he got elected, and after he built a career as a right winger, the most extreme right winger in the party, every day of his presidency he was trying to appeal to what came to be called the Reagan Democrat. Trump gets elected, he doesn't. And all I did, I'm telling you, when he was elected, all I did was sit there and listen for what did he say today to the

people who didn't vote for him? And there literally was not a sentence, not one day of the entire time. And that is why he didn't get reelected. If he wanted to get it to its most simplest point, that's why he didn't get reelected. The guy who came in second in the vote but got the electoral College. Anyway, that guy didn't try to convert any voters. Guess what's going to happen to him next time? He's gonna come

in second again. And so to say this, I suspect I suspect may if he if he were to win the White House, he might spend four years trying to appeal to people who didn't vote for him and go from forty eight percent of the vote up to fifty one percent of the vote. Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. I also think and by the way, and the way a Republican appeals to people who didn't vote for him is obviously not with Republican ideas. It

is to soften the edges of Republican notions. You know, it's the compassionate conservative stuff that the Bushes would talk about, right well, and I also think it's sort of faking it, right It depends. I mean, you know, George H. W. Bush wasn't faking it in the sense that he did reach legislative compromises with Democrats in Congress, and that some of which were significant, you know, and he was condemned for it by Republicans. By Pat Buchanan, you know, by

the lunatics. George W. Bush was very much concerned with what you thought of him, very much, and he was very much concerned about that, even if you didn't vote for him, And that is a civilizing influence on politicians. Trump has none of it, and in Florida, DeSantis has none of it. We'll see what would happen if he goes national. I wanted to stroll down on this for a minute. Don't you get the sense that DeSantis he

lost a debate to Charlie Chris. I mean, don't you think there's a lot riding on someone who no one has ever really seen? No? I think, I actually think he's had a great deal of exposure for a presidential candidate, you know, way more than Jimmy Carter had as a governor. I mean, when Jimmy Carter announced that he was running for president, everybody outside of Georgia said, who no one, No one knew that name. The same thing with Bill Clinton,

people didn't know who that guy was. DeSantis's visibility as a governor is as high as I've ever seen for a governor who was not already a presidential candidate. You know, Michael Ducacus nobody knew how to say that word outside of Massachuset. It's you know, when he announced as a governor, and so he's gotten a tremendous amount of visibility. And you know, we're at the stage where debates have declined

dramatically in how much they matter. If they mattered, Donald Trump, you know, would have gotten twenty percent of the vote. That's an old notion that we all used to have about how is this you know, candidate going to stand up in the debates? You know, in presidential debates, it's like, wow, it doesn't matter very much. The biggest clown in the history of presidential debating, you know one the Republican nomination in twenty sixteen, and then you know went on from there. Yeah,

it seemed to make no difference. Do you think that Biden, this is an anxiety I have that taking New Hampshire out of the lineup is going to hurt him in the general election. Not in the least. That's just a you know, it's a fetishistic thing that not a single voter in a single state cares about. You have to remember that most voters in America do not get a chance ever to participate in a presidential primary that has

any impact whatsoever on the presidential election. That's the truth for most American voters, and their spirit as voters is not affected by it. I mean, I'd want someone to find me the voter in New Hampshire, you know, in November who says, yeah, I mean, I was gonna I'm gonna vote for Biden. But then you know when they just I mean, now, now, I've been to New Hampshire. I've been to New Hampshire every year of the New Hampshire primary for the last i don't know, way too

long a time. They're not exactly thrilled to see you. You know, the people of New Hampshire, you know, the political fans of New Hampshire love it. They line up around the blocks to get into high school gymnasiums to see Barack Obama. And it's and it is quite exciting if you care about that. But you've got to understand you're looking at less than one percent of the population of New Hampshire, who ever bother to leave their sofas to go see one of these presential candidates. Yeah, it

is a good point. Okay, here's my last prediction question. I'm sorry to do this to you. What can we just deal with all of your anxieties because I'm here, as we know, to help you through your anxieties. So that's we didentitely dealt with you New Hampshire. Ani, Well I have another one, so we're in good shape. Okay, and again, but I don't want to be wrong that

the dominion court case will go. Do you think that they'll settle or you think they're gonna I mean, because if it goes, I mean, this is going to be a pretty big blockbuster. No, so the time to settle has passed. The reason you settle these lawsuits is that you don't want the damage to come out publicly. And so that's why Fox settled every bill O'Reilly lawsuit. You know, they settle all these things. Can you settle a lawsuit before Rupert Murdoch has to sit down and testify under oath?

They didn't do it. Now, there's what people are neglecting to remember about a settlement is that both sides have to agree to it. So what we do not yet no, and we might someday know, is that Fox made an offer to Dominion and Dominion said no. And if your dominion I personally believe my legal approach to the case. Assuming they have twenty million dollars to spend on legal fees, which I guess they do, my approach would be do not settle under any circumstances, because winning the case in

court is not important to Dominion's viability as a business. Well, they've already won what they needed to do to be viable as a business. They have proven in all this undergrowth testimony by Rupert and everybody else exactly the scope and shape of the lies told about Dominion by Fox. So Dominion as a business can go forward in the world, you know, marketing its services anywhere, and no one will ever have to say to them. But wait, you know,

Fox said you guys are criminals, Like that's never gonna happen. Ever, as of today, that's all over. So the important thing is Dominion has won. It has won its reputation, and it has destroyed Fox's reputation. And the only way they could do that is get to this point where we're reading Rupert Murdoch's Undergrowth testimony on TV. And if they had settled, you know, six months ago for one hundred million dollars or three hundred million or five hundred million.

We would know none of this, and so Dominion has had zero incentive to settle. That's the part people don't understand when they talk about settlement. I'm sure Fox would have loved to settle this a year ago for some number that they thought was reasonable, or even for a number they thought was unreasonable. But the jury verdict is tricky, and it may well be that, you know, Dominion doesn't quote win the case in court in the end, and I personally, if I'm on the dominion end of it,

I don't care. I don't care. I already won. And if the jury and if the judge you know, make rulings that say, you know, this stuff lives within First Amendment protections, or if you know, Fox establish it gets a win like that from the Supreme Court that they sort of own in their way, I don't care. It doesn't change anything about what we know the facts to be. So my strong suspicion about the inside of this is if there was a settlement attempt by Fox, it was

refused by Dominion. Yeah. So interesting. Thank you so much, Lawrence. I hope you'll come back a pleasure. Thank you. David folken Flick is a media correspondent at MPR. Welcome to Fast Politics, David. Thanks glad to join you. It's very thrilled to have you. I just want to talk to you about this continual drip, drip drip of the Fox News dominion filing. You will have been a media reporter for a while. You've written about the Murdochs, You've written

books about the Murdochs. I mean, what is your hot take here? I wouldn't call it a drip drip so much as a sort of a series of avalanches, you know, in recent days. I think what is notable for somebody who's covered it closely? Z I have for coming up on twenty three years. You know the media and Fox has been a big and growing part of that. You know, it's really all part of covering media and politics as well.

Right is how dark it is, how blunt it is, how blatant it is, and it is the degree to which decisions are made by business imperatives, and those business imperatives are ineluctably entangled in politics. And it's not just hey, we've got a pander to a right wing or a left wing audience. It's hey, we've got a tamper with what we present to our folks's reality. It's not just that we're Mother Jones and a left of center outfit that does some reporting, or the Washington Free Beacon or whatever.

It's literally withholding the facts that you know to be true because you know that this is a money gusher and you don't want to turn off this bigot. In fact, this bigot has been drawing up a bit. Right after election night twenty twenty, and the original sin of Fox calling Arizona for Joe Biden on that night before any

other broadcast network or cable network had done so. Trump voters who had been tuned into Fox to hope that they could celebrate, were like, not only celebrating, they're like, oh, screw you guys, with the guys bringing us this news. You guys are the ones doing this. And for days other news outlets did not, And you see intimations from people inside Fox saying, well, they're just doing that to

hose us by leaving us hanging out there. But they were using different numbers because Fox, joined by the AP had bailed after the twenty sixteen presidential call was so problematic. That is, the polling data and everything else really just didn't capture what was happening in some of these key

swing states. And so Fox kept telling reporters like me, oh, we've come up with better math, We've come up with a better way to do this, and they felt that they had had some success in the off elections of twenty eighteen, and then they went all in. Now, that turned out to be a very close call, and in retrospect, one wouldn't have begrudged them not making the call, given

how close it turned out to be. It was a razor thin you know, there's an interesting statistical argument to make about whether or not they were taking a little bit of a leap of faith with their new numbers. But they made the call and they trusted those their projections, and then you see Fox people. A civil war erupted within Fox as a result of that. So it was I surprised. No, So much of this is based on pairing what you see happen on the air with what

people from inside Fox are telling you. As a result, I'm not really surprised. It's just so blatant. There's no code words, there's no sleight of hand happening, and you know, it really only occurred to me in recent days. How much of this, probably this incredibly rich documentary record that dominion is drawing on. We can talk about the merits of the case in a set, but how much of it's influenced by the fact that it's ocurring in the age of COVID and so people aren't having these conversations

in person all that much. They're emailing and texting each other more than they probably would have, not that they you know, it's not like Tucker and Sean and Laura are always going out to drinks at night. You know, they can text if they want to text. It's not that I think they particularly like each other, but they have common interests in common grievances. And man, after that election, they are on it. They think that Fox hates them.

They think that the news side hates them. They hate the reporters who work for them for pointing out false claims that are made on their shows on Fox and more publicly, it is absolutely civil war happening internally at that network. And it's it's a sight to behold and to lift up under the rock and see how things behave. And Molly, let's acknowledge that if NPR or the New York Times or CBS or CNN or anybody had all of its Somebody described this as being like an X ray.

You know, this is more like three dMRI of all the organs at all the bones, a the muscles, right like, this is everything pretty much. It's really ugly. Yeah, I think it's kind of shocking. Were you surprised that Tucker hated Trump so much or that he'd sent that text messager? Now? I mean, if he was thinking hard, given how often Dominion was sending notes saying the stuff isn't true, he might have thought, Wow, there might be a lawsuit in

my future, and let's let's keep this. You know, let me not express this, but Tucker, it is very hard not to conclude that Tucker is a pretty cynical person. Does Tucker actually believed there was no violence on January six,

twenty one the US Capital? Does Tucker actually think these were just a pleasant, peaceful protesters ambling perhaps a little too far past a velvet rope that they shouldn't have the fact that you can find people not committing violence at given moments of course the day, does that prove that? Sworn testimony, videotape convictions confessions, all these things that have happened from people who participated in those bloody events, that

we will just have that a race from our minds. No, he's providing an hour where he can talk to the audience, to them what they want to hear. And there's a lot of misdirection. You know, he lows Trump. So what he does is he goes after Trump's enemies rather than having to go after you defend trumpet you know, Fox during the second Bush term in office, a second George W. Bush term obviously was kind of depressing to watch. It was not fun. They had to defend things like the

war in a Rock which got increasingly ugly. They had defend Katrina, they had defend the collapse of the global like. There was a lot to defend, right, a lot more fun going after Obama. And so the thing about Trump was they kind of would have been happy to have Hillary to go after for another four years, right, That would have been fun for them. They could have replayed all the hits of the Clinton years, and instead they've

got to defend Trump. But it turns out Trump is artificially stirring the passions of their audiences to keep watching because nobody knows what he's going to do next, and he keeps calling into Fox, and he keeps choosing them, and they just go along for the ride and hold on as best as they can. So that's what you know. Tucker is doing Tucker's counter programming. It's a TV thing and and they're letting him do it because they have

no control. Right, he's too valuable. And also at this point, the hosts are running the asylum, right, I mean, if you're going to go to that analogy, I think you know, the common wisdom is that in some ways the inmates are running the asylum, that the viewers are that for a long time, Trump kind of was, you know, with his kitchen cabinet of Sean Hannity and Janine Perrow and lou Dobbs bar Romo and others right where he's literally pulling people into the administration off Fox from watching them

do things. Pete Hedgesith was up for I'm not mistaken the Veterans Administration Secretary on the basis of what he says on Fox and Friends. That's a guy who doesn't wash his hands, right, that is true. He said that. I mean credit to his co host who was like, yeah, that's probably something I don't want to know. But there, I mean, it's such an incredible situation to be and do you think that, I mean, who do you? You know?

Lou Dobbs is now out right, and it seemed like he was kind of under the bus there by Rupert who said he never watches him. That was kind of great when he said he doesn't watch Fox Business Network, although he called it a channel. You know, it was like, you know, I can't imagine working for that network and feeling very great about that. But you know, there are a lot of them are in recent money to do,

so so what are you going to do? Right? Dobbs was thrown over when not Dominion Voting Systems, but Smartmatic, an election software company that essentially had almost no involvement in the twenty twenty elections, filed suit on its own where Dobbs was out the next day and Fox is like, well, no, this is all previously a scheduled reshuffling and reconstruction and Dobbs basically was out in his ear and at the time it seemed implausible, too untrue, And now it just

is very clear what occurred. And my experience in covering the Murdoch and various scandals over the years, of which there have been a decent number. They'll throw people over the back of the sled of the wolves at as low a level as possible, but as high a level as needed, and then if that doesn't go, they'll go up the ladder a little bit. And right now I think they're going to do anything because Fox has maintained and Murdoch said in his speaking under oath to lawyers

that he saw no need to apologize. They were reporting, and this is an integral part of Fox's legal defense, they were reporting inherently newsworthy claims, Hey, the presidential elections were rigged by an inherently newsworthy person, Hey, the sitting president of the the United States, and people speaking on his behalf, and that if you were to cut that off, then the Washington Post, an MSNBC and everybody else will pay

a real price journalistically as well. What, of course, Dominion says, and a lot of media lawyers I talked to say, is there isn't that analogy, because what Fox did is so egregious, and because we have not only the clarity which is legally needed that key folks knew that what they were putting on the air was untrue, and that the people presenting it weren't credible either, but also that they had a motive, which is, we have to win

back these Trump voters as our viewers. And you don't actually need a motive proven in that way to win defamation in a lot of states. But my goodness, you certainly seem to have declared, and you know there's back and forth. We can talk about the legal merits, but as a supposed news operation, this is a business enterprise.

Talking about the brand promise and the politics are a key element of it, and the journalism, although rupert of all people occasionally waves the flag in these private correspondences, is not just like a distant third, but like thirteenth out of three. So interesting? Do you think that they will go to trial? And also I have a question

for you. This is because it's in Delaware, they can claim more damages right in the civil My understanding in this case from following it so far is that they are applying New York state law in terms of defamation, but they're applying Delaware state law in terms of the administration of the case and the flow of the case,

and that gets into some pretty picking un areas. And I am not a member of the bar in either state or any state, and not playing one on TV or on this podcast, but I would say that, you know, the judge hasn't laughed these damages out of court. Fox has made a fairly muscular or at least rhetorically muscular

argument that the extent of these damages. Dominion voting systems is asking for one point six billion dollars, but that's sort of a notional figure that they're clearly inflated in BS and Dominion is arguing, though, that we have reason to say this, and there's, you know, the question of reputational harm, there's the question of actual harm, and there's the question of punitive damages. So they feel that it all does that. So that's one world have to see.

But you know, it's interesting that Fox is stressing all this stuff. It makes sense in the sense that they're saying, you have to prove you or hurt, and one way to prove reputational harm is financial harm, right, But that's really an appellate question. That's the kind of thing you're like, well we lost, now we've got to fight over how much we actually have to pay and then you appeal it. This is not uncommon. I don't want to be unfair

to Fox. They already have a very strong appellet team in place, that is the people who will argue the appeals, which says to you that they don't have Iron Clan confidence they're going to win this thing. But when you have as much money as the Murdocks do and as Foxcorp does, you know you hire those people as a routine anyway, I mean, does Fox eventually say like this is too expensive or I mean Dominion clearly is going for blood. Right, There's clearly some ideological like you can't

ruin USh ruin us kind of thing. I mean right, So Dominion wants to come out of this with a ton of money and preferably with some sort of prominent retraction and apology. The Murdochs want to come out of this without having to tell their audiences that they were not only that they were misled, but that they were intentionally misled and deceived and lied to. The Murdochs have

shown in previous scandals I've covered. There was the tabloid scandals in Britain, and I started stopped counting after they exceeded I think it was two hundred million dollars in various things attached to that. It wasn't that they paid that out as illegal fee for the people they wronged exactly, but those were like a series of costs associated if I'm remembering it correctly to that, and it's been a while.

They definitely paid more than two hundred million in the Fox sexual harassment scandal that largely but not entirely focused

on Roger Ales, you know who they tossed out. Really the week basically that Donald Trump got the Republican national nomination for president in twenty sixteen, I was in Cleveland at the RNC intending to write a bunch of stories, and it was all Roger all the time, because these allocations came out, and it was just it was the biggest story on the floor, to be honest, beyond Trump. And they paid, you know, many hundreds of millions of dollars.

You could argue close to a billion dollars for these various settlements and payoffs that involved this completely unsexy part of what's called News Corp, which is a Murdoch's publishing side and used to be all unified under the same umbrella. I think it's called something like News America, which was basically a supermarket marketing thing that back in the day made a ton of money where they placed ads and

coupons and supermarkets. When you go through the aisles, you could pull off fifty cents here, and they have decals on the floor or whatever. And it turned out they did all kinds of things to basically run their competitors into the ground that probably violated the law, and so they paid hundreds of millions dollar there. So you know, if Murdoch could cut a check tomorrow and pay two hundred million dollars and just make this go away, I imagine that would be a tough but fine deal for

them to strike. And I don't think that's what Dominion wants. I think they want to play to a higher pain threshold, both in terms of money and to make him confront what he did and the less that the Murdocks are willing to acknowledge the higher dollar figure I would imagine a settlement would take. But so far, you know, what I'm told is that there are no signs of any settlement talks happening, and that, to be honest, I think that's almost entirely on the dominion side, that the Fox

Court would at least entertain the conversations. It's so interesting, even though they acknowledged doing nothing wrong so far, amazeing too soon to count Newsmax and OA n out de fine counting them out. They've been dropped by cable company as those two are sort of you know, they had this moment and it's and it's sort of been now kind of they've kind of fallen out of aber. I mean, do you think there's a world in which Fox loses those viewers and they go to Newsmax and o an.

I mean, if you look at this completely stripped of morality, I think the biggest damage Fox could do to its business model is to reveal to its viewers the contempt in which they hold them. That is, they don't respect them truth. You can't handle the truth, right. That's their

biggest damage outside of the question of their ratings. I think they're going to you know, it's almost like a seesaw where there's an inverse relationship between their reputation outside and the reputation with their audience, where they're going to just take a huge hit with establishment Washington, mainstream institutions, the news part of Fox, which is really shriveled and withered and lost some of its biggest figures. Chep Smith, Karl Cameron, their long time guy, walked away saying it

was too much for him. Chris Wallace saying that the fever fantasies of January sixth by Tucker Carlson was a step too far for him. You know, these are a thing you're seeing. There are very few figures other than Brett Baer. You know Eric Shawn, you know as a reporter and some time anchor, but you know he has a quiet profile there. Right. They're just there's a diminishment. They got rid of Chris Stirewald and Bill Salmon, who

were defenders of the decision desk and other things. They just they've really widowed down the muscle that they have on that side of things. And you can take issue with those guys too, but at least they were there, right. So, it seems to me that Newsmax and o N are unlikely to be major challengers to Fox unless it somehow breaks that brand promise that Ray Shaw and CEO Fox

News CEO Suzanne Scott were so focused on. In the documents, that have been released and start backing away from this kind of culture grievance coverage and attending to the needs and the and the sensibilities and the fears of the Trump voter. Even if they're not pro Trump, which they aren't at the moment, they're really very run to santistish at the moment. So that's what I think the real issue is. I also think that their audience, if it fractures, will probably go to things that may not be as

conventional TV. You know, you can go to whatever the newest bripe part is, you can go to the Daily Wire, you can go to other people who are going to mainline the stuff into your veins if you want, without the need to have any journalistic sensibilities at all. Thank you so much, David. That was really depressing. I do my best every little bit I can do to bring

you down allies. You know, look, there are people inside Fox who think, hey, this is going to be a wake up call, and after we emerge from it, you know, Fox is going to have to revitalize its news coverage and what have you. But at the moment they're not saying anything like that because they're not able probably legally or willing from a moral standpoint to say what we did was wrong, and Dominion in its latest filings has

made a point of that. To say, Fox has basically conceded the point because they haven't done anything to defend an affirmative argument for why any of this stuff had any validity or credibility to it. And that's just a very different way of looking at what Fox did. Ah, thank you so much, Thank thanks, Molly. Doug Jones is the former junior Senator from the state of Alabama. Welcome to Fast Politics, Senator Doug Jones. Thank you, Molly. It's

great to be with you. I really appreciate the opportunity here. First, I think we should talk about this weekend in Selma. Bloody Sunday weekend in Selma is always a very very special commemoration and that's the best way to put this as a commemoration. They have been doing this. The folks, the organizers down there, have done a wonderful job of having a jubilee every year on the first weekend in March that culminates in a recreation of the walk across

the edmon Fettis Bridge. This year, President Biden came down gave a fabulous speech at the foot of the bridge.

There was a great crowd, enthusiastic crowd. Molly. I think it's so important that we continue those types of recognitions and commemorations because you know, we have come so far and turn so many pages on the Jim Crow South, but we seem to be flipping some of those pages back right now with voter suppression and so many other laws that discriminate and make it more difficult for minority communities to really get the full benefit of this country.

It's so important to remember where we've been so that we try to make sure we don't go there in the future. It's a fabulous weekend. It's quite a big deal for Biden to come down for that. Can you talk to us a little bit about his thinking. It is a big deal. It's a big deal for any president. The president's usually come when it is a signature commemoration like the fiftieth or the forty fifth. President Obama was there, President Clinton came, when President Obama came, even former President

George W. Bush came. But for this president to be there at the fifty eighth, which is not a signature event but just a commemoration. I think says a lot about him and where his heart is and where he

wants to be and wants the country to be. He sees and understands troubably be as good as any president we've had, including President Obama, of where things are in this country right now, and that is why he has been appointing so many people of color, particularly women, black women, to the federal bench, why his administration is perhaps the

most diverse of any administration in history. He sees that the country is becoming more diverse every day, and he is the president of that country, and he wants to celebrate that. But again, he also sees that there are proud boys out there, and there are oath keepers out there, and there are those who commit mass murders in Buffalo and other places around this country because of hate speech

and race. He's got the bully pulpit. He's the leader of this country, and he wants people to understand the significance of what happened, but also the significance of where we are today as a country and where we need to be and going forward as a country. So I think his thinking is that this is Selma is the time and the place to be right now, probably before he kicks off his his presidential campaign, to showcase the countries and his commitment to diversity, to equity, to inclusion.

You have sort of been very central to try to move the South out of you know, the sort of terrifying Jim Crow in apartheid. I mean, this is exactly called it like it is. That's what it was. That's what it was, and that's what it is. And how do you feel right now with America being where it is and also just the sort of larger landscape. Well, look, you know you have to qualify everything by saying America is not the Jim Crow days that I grew up

in the fifties and sixties. Alabama is not the Jim Crow time Alabama to the South, the country is not the kind of country where lynchings take place as off and as they did a century ago. And we have come such a long way, however, we still have miles to go before we sleep. And I think people should recognize that and see that because if you look demographically at the country and where things are moving, we are becoming a more diverse country, and we've been becoming a

more diverse country Moley every since we were founded. I mean, this country was always meant to be a multi culture, multiracial society, even though some people did not want to accept that. And so we're becoming more diverse from the

moment that we declared our independence from Great Britain. As we move forward, though, while we're seeing so many people fighting these culture wars and playing on the fears of people across this country, and you see groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, and you see politicians like Donald Trump and others kind of whipping that into a frenzy. And it's not just Trump, by the way.

This whole anti woke movement that you see going on in the magnifaction of the Republican Party really is troubling. It's really frightening. Do you think it's really anti woke or do you think it's really a kind of a bait and switch way of getting back into the sort

of racism of the past. I'm not sure that it's that, except for this, If getting into the racism of the past helps the political future of people who want to run for president, want to run for the Senate, who want to run for governors, if that's what it takes. Then there are people that will damn sure do that. And that's what's frightening to me. They will take the

country backwards for their own political purposes. I don't think that so many of those folks deep down are the racist, not the kind of racist like I grew up with, but they haven't their own form if they're doing things that perpetuate those racist kind of issues for their own political power. And I've said this for a long time. These are not people who are going to lynch folks. But there were people that Dangsher would put folks in the back of the bus if they thought that that

would help their political career. And that's what we're seeing. That is what we're seeing across the board. Something happened in Alabama just recently, and this is I think typical of where we are in this I say typical, I don't know if it's typical or not, but we recently had a group of high school students in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that wanted to have a Black History Month program and the school administrators said, fine, you can do that. We're happy for you to do that, as long as you

don't discuss anything that happened before nineteen seventy. I wish I was kidding about it, but I'm not. So these students walked out. Nothing happened before nineteen seventies, So that makes sense. No, of course, not everything started when I was sixteen years old in nineteen seven. Those students walked out, they were landed a little bit. But that's the kind

of thing that we're having face across the country. So I don't think we're in a good place right now, and I think we've got to work through do that, and we've got to have some very serious conversations and dialogues about it. Dialogues and not monologues. Yes, for sure,

quite interesting. So let me ask you, now, where do you feel, and you have this long time experience with civil rights and a long time experience of the Biden administration, what do you think the Biden administration should be doing next for voting rights, for civil rights, for the South in general. You know, I think the administration has done what they could do in terms of using the presidency and the bully pulpit to try to get certain changes

to the voting rights bill across the finish line. We couldn't do that for a number of reasons in the last Congress. I think it will be more difficult in this Congress. And by the way, I think the Justice Department, in the Civil Rights Division and the folks like that are also taking very careful looks, you know, where we are with voting rights, and they're taking a very serious look at how to protect the rights of people with

the laws that we have on the books. I'm hoping that going into twenty twenty four, they're also going to do an analysis of the Voting Rights Act and determine that they can also perhaps use the Voting Rights Act to potentially investigate and potentially prosecute people who refuse to certify duly constituted elections. I think the Voting Rights Act, and we've done some research my law firm on this, I think the Voting Rights Act can be used to make sure that free and fair votes are counted and

that they're certified by the appropriate officials. I talked to some folks this weekend down in Selma about that. I think, given the dynamics that we have in the Congress right now, I think that the protection of the vote needs to be very strategic. It needs to be more of a rifle shot than a shotgun, and not a wish list. It needs to be the things that have I believe, and I believed this for some time, the possibility of

passing right now. For so long, people Republicans especially bought at doing anything to establish standards for mail in voting, for early voting, that every state should be required to have some form of minimum standards and require the states

to do something on early votes and mail in votes. Well, all of a sudden, after the last election, you know, many Republicans were saying, you know, maybe this early voting is not so bad because they were losing elections because their folks weren't utilizing what they had any states, Well, let's take this opportunity to say, great, why don't two join us, and let's establish these minimum stand Instead of having a hodgepodge of laws across fifty states, let's require

all states to do some form of early voting, some form of mail in voting, and have the uniform standards that can be enforced across the states. And as part of that, Molly and a lot of people, I know, a lot of your listeners probably don't want to hear this, but as part of that you're going to probably have

to also do some form of national voter ID. But the key to that, in my opinion, has always been being able to require folks to be able to get those voters and the states to provide those voters, not just have one van like they've got in Alabama that you can call for and go to, but really make it an effort to get voter IDs out there that the state will do, and give a broad range of

ideas that can be done. I think if we can be really strategic, that's what I would like to see the administration and my friends in the Senate and the House do, And let's get something pass to protect the right to vote, because at the end of the day, we still there are still states and we still have trouble getting people to the vault. Wow, you really think a voter idea is the way to go on that? I think it has to be in order to get something packed. I think you've got to do something to

get this pass. She gives them Republicans exactly everything about our democracy right now is a divided government. A form of national voter ID was part of the Freedom to Vote Act, and I know a lot of the civil Rights group, and a lot of my friends didn't particularly like that. They kind of bit their tongue, but it was there. It was necessary to even have that build

to have a chance. I think we're going to have to look at that, and quite frankly, if you couple that with resources and requirements that would require the states to be able to get those voter IDs out there to people, the biggest issue in my view, Molly, what I've seen, the biggest issue is not the idea itself, it's getting the ID. And that's a real problem in Alabama.

You know, when we have passed that voter ID, the photo ID, thing, first thing that a former governor did was shut down some of the DMBs in our black Belt area and they had Justice Department had to come in and ensum to get those things open back up its access to the ID. And if we can get resources and requirements that were to require the state to get those voter IDs out there, then the idea itself would be so much less of a problem, right I guess,

I mean, I don't know. I feel like voter ID is just a way to make it harder to vote. People have said that, and I agree with that, but If you've got access to an ID, it is not hard to pull it out at a poll. The problem that we've got with voter ID is not the idea itself in my view, except for access to it. Access to photo IDs is a problem, and I agree with that.

That's why you've got to get folks and resources. In Alabama, for instance, now in order to vote absentee, you have to make a photo copy of your photo ID to mail in with your absentee ballot application. Now, not everybody in Alabama's got a damn printer, okay, and they're not going to go down the street to the local Tinkos or whatever the thing and make a copy of that. It's the barriers that keep put up around those photoids that are a huge problem, and access barriers of getting

the photo IDs and the kind of photoids. Now, Alabama high school students that are state schools can't use their high school issued student ID card for some reason. I don't know why. It's a state Id's a state school, they can't use that. If we expand what is out there and the ability of states and requires states to provide those upon requests, then I think that the voter ID issue would not be as big a concern as it seems to be, and it is a concern, make

no mistake. I don't want anybody out there to think that I'm not concerned about the voter ID issues. I think there's ways to solve it, and if we can work with people, I think we can solve that particular issue and give access to more people and get them out to the police. Very interesting, Doug Jones. I sort of disagree with you about the voter ID but I understand where you're coming from. I also just don't think of Republicans as being good faith negotiators. Well, that is

a problem these days. I think there is some problem on both sides of the aisle of that, but I particularly when it comes to voting rights. I think that is especially true with folks on the other side of the aisle. Senator McConnell has made it very clear he does not want to see any kind of voting the rights legislation or whether it's the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or any others, the Freedom to Vote Act, He's made that very clear. So there's got to be an

element of good faith. That doesn't mean we don't try. I think we've got to try, and I think we've got to continue to talk about it and how people like you and I talk about it. I just am curious, like there's a lot of stuff that Biden could just do unilaterally. Do you think he should do more of that, like through executive order? And I'm not sure what he

can do unilaterally about voting right now. I mean, we've got the Voting Rights Act, and I think the Justice Department is there, but they're in lawsuits all over the place. They've got the Alabama Voting Rights Act case that's pending right now that I'm very worried about because we've got a Supreme Court that does not seem the Voting Rights Act.

So I think that the president's hands are somewhat tied when it comes to voting since historically the federal government has conceeded most of that authority to the states, and it is only through the Voting Rights Act. And there may be some mothers I'm not a complete legal scholar even normal lawyer, that there may be some potential things that they can do, but I think it's limited as

to what the president can do himself. And that's why he has done as much as he could do at every opportunity to use the bully pulpit of the presidency and get people engaged because this is a state issue. Unfortunately, I think it needs to be a little bit more of a federal issue because we've got federal elections every two years. And by the way, you know, there's a lot of misinformation out there that he would think listening to people that the Constitution gives the states the sole

right to manage elections. That's not the case. It does give states the right to do that, but then there's a qualifier to it that says that the Congress of the United States can step in and modify those and take some control. That's what the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five did. Dub Jones, thank you so much, senitor. I hope you'll join us again. Would love to do it sometimes. Molly, thanks so much for having me. It's

great to talk to you, Molly. Junk Fast, Jesse Cannon, Oh, anytime you have to see Matt taiebe in a public forum these days, it's just so depressing. It goes so bad. I think that Elon should have to buy him a horse after that performance. I'm just telling you, like, I understand that to hebe thought, this is gonna do something

for him, But it's really embarrassing. It would take a lot to get me up in one of those hearings for a political party, but it would take a really a lot to get me about those hearings for someone as dumb as jacket list Jim Jordan. Magic. With the way Jim Jordan's been leading these things going, I think it's a good idea for me to show up, stay and not fake scurvy or something. Well, you know, these

are all optional. I mean, these aren't even subpoena. I mean, these are like, you know, you have the honor of testifying. I mean, I don't know what to say about Matt Tihebi. He's clearly I don't know. You know, it's really depressing to see someone like this, who has done some good work, amazing journalism for decades before this right turn into a complete whatever that is, but a sycophat to a billionaire's bidding. He is our moment of fuckery today, and I think

it's pretty well deserved. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to your 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.