Jane Mayer on Thomas, Trump, and Twitter

prosecutions or his expanded use of predator drones. The corruption in the Trump administration, of course, is proving rich fodder as well. Mayor rose to national prominence digging into the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas story, a story she entered without prejudice and reported straight down the middle. She emerged a polarizing national figure, bloodied by the right wing political attack machine. Yet she has avoided becoming polarized herself. She still digs

in whenever she smells something hidden. There is that famous line from All the King's Men, that wonder for wonderful book about politics, which says, there's something on everybody. For the for the record, we're all human and of course, people do things they're embarrassed about. I think a lot of what interests me is how people deal with that.

For instance, when I was just covering Kavanaugh recently in his confirmation hearings, he was being accused of behaving horribly in high school towards women, and I thought it was possible that if he had said, yes, I did, and I've outgrown it, you know, I now respect women, and I'm so sorry I was immature, that the public might

have cut in the slack. But to me, what was worse, almost than what he'd done in the first place, was my conviction, by the end of doing all this reporting on him, that he was lying under oath to get confirmed. Because what kind of adult, this many years later, lies under oath to get confirmed someone who you don't want on the Supreme Court. There is something on almost everyone. But the question is how do we deal with our mistakes?

Have we learned from them? I think you can convince the public, you can get support if you if you're sympathetic, empathetic and and and you can try and and self critical to some extent. You're still writing about Kavin or doing some work involved with Kavanaugh, correct well, there was someone who Um, there was another witness and another episode involving him and and his treatment towards women that was

really alarming. And uh Ronan Pharaoh and I were working on stories on this and we were unable to get somebody on the record to talk about it. But he was a very good witness. And UM, I think actually they're going to be it's a it's a heat. There's several books coming out, and I think some of the books are going to out this subject. Um. I may do some more work on it myself, but I think the public will eventually get more of a story here.

I mean, in one sense, I guess in terms of the work you do, I'm guessing this doesn't really matter ultimately, but you know, he's in he's confirmed, he's got that job, so further examinations of what he in particular has done would result in what I'm glad you asked this question because this gets to the mindset of reporters like myself, which is we're not driving an agenda to try to

get Kavanaugh off the court. The whole point of what people like me do is get the fact and get the truth and get it out in front of the public and then we're in a democracy, and I really believe if people have good information, then make good choices. I don't know what will come of it, but in its own right, it's just worth knowing what was true

and getting the history down. Now, we were doing the research and we were talking about how during the period with the Kavanaugh book, it was kind of an implication in some of what we read that you do this with Ronan. It was kind of an arranged marriage. You weren't really you hadn't really collaborated with him before, and when the time came for you to draw out the women, you kind of stepped back and let him do that.

Just want to say it's true. And we had done one story before that was also a me too type story, which was the Eric Schneiderman story. I kind of called him in for extra help on dealing with the women. And the truth is that Ronan is like the me too whisperer. I mean, women love to talk to him about this subject and he's endlessly good at drawing people out. He is very empathetic. He's a result of this other situation with his family. I have to guess it probably is.

I mean, he's also just a handsome person. Um well he is, you know, he walks into a room and he's there and so. And I was less good at it. I mean, I'm a kind of like an investigative type who's not afraid of anybody, but I'm not the best hand holder. But it this way. In my family, my husband was the one that helped the kid with the homework because I was too tough. I would just say I'd be too critical and say, you know, you want it to be good or do you want me to

just tell you have said that exactly. Ronan is better at dealing with the personal crises that these women were going through, and I was better at sort of seeing the holes in the stories of the liars Kavanaugh. Was there a point you knew he said? Or did you not know? I did not. Now I'm you know, someone said to me that reporters are the last naives. I always think that if people get the information, it will matter,

that the truth really matters. I think maybe in this case people might have a lot of people may have even known the truth here. They may have suspected or even thought that Kavanaugh wasn't telling the truth, and they wanted to confirm them a way he stood for positions that they had. I think it was as much as anything, it was the anti abortion movement that was behind. You could just feel it was like a like a political freight train coming at you. And even and the process,

it wasn't a serious process. It was a mock trial with a fake FBI investigation where the FBI literally did not call people. I was talking to people who were calling the FBI trying to get their information to the FBI, and the FBI would not call them back. But even though I'm uncertain about how to characterize Comy historically, is there any institution in this country that's more tattered its

reputation than the FBI right now? It's almost unbelievable. Well, it is partly though, also because you know, the President keeps whacking at it because it's been investigating him, so it's gotten it from all sides. Um, you know, I'm with you on the subject of Comy. He's a very confusing character. The FBI had improved itself a lot since the days of j Edgar Hoover, when it really was

practically a criminal organization in its own right. So, um, I mean, what I worry about as much as anything about this is just that President Trump is busy delegitimizing every single kind of organization that could put a check on his power. And part of that is the FBI, and of course part of that is we the enemies of the American people in the press. Um, where were you working and who pulled you into the Anita Hill event? So?

I was at the Wall Street Journal. I was a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal for twelve years. And I want to pau out there and say, before you go further, what was the journal like back then in nineteen um different? It was different, It wasn't owned by Rupert Murdoch. Was actually kind of a funky, cool place in its way. There was, I mean, there was the whole business part of it that covered the business world in a big way, and that was the main

sort of bread and butter of it. But there were also these wonderful, quirky feature writers there and a few really great editors. And I was assigned to the front page at some point, where we just wrote these wonderful front page stories, some of which were very funny, and and we had a pretty good time. We also had an endless budget. We wasted so much money on traffling I do it was it was a lot of fun

um so um. You know, it had a very conservative editorial page, but it had top um level talent the editing staff and and and some of the writers. So so anyway, I was I was posted in Washington for them. I had been covering the Reagan White House, and I um was watching the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings. And Jill Abramson and I had been friends since middle school and we went to the Fieldston School in New York, and we've been wanting to do a book together just

for fun. So I was glued to these hearings. They were just mind blowing, and I called up Jill and I said, come on, this is it. This is our subject. And so we just kind of jumped for it um And then we didn't realize it took us three years, the two of us, to get to the bottom of that very confusing sort of mystery of who did what to whom and what's true and in some of the approach that you developed then was your first book in

that area? Did it carry over on into Kavanaugh? Well, I learned some things from it, because what we found out. I think that the most surprising thing we found out was that Clarence Thomas had a long pattern of behavior so on on issues having to do with sex, people usually have patterns of behavior. And the other thing was that because of that, there were other women, and if the other women had stepped forward, I think people would

have believed in need a hill more. And there were other women who wanted to testify and they didn't get a chance. Well, Joe Biden was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was quite outmaneuvered by the Republicans, even though he was the Democrats were in the majority and he was in charge, but they just wanted that all to go away. He kind of did want it to all go away. He was uncomfortable with the subject.

This was a long time ago and people didn't really even have that much of a grasp of what sexual harassment was and some of the jargon obviously, you know, we don't need to go into it now, but the titles of the films he watched and all that kind of vulgarity, it was really put people off when it was on TV back then. I will ever forget it seemed like something the whole country wanted it to go away. They kind of did. It was it was embarrassing all around.

And um, I have to say it meant that that Jill and I had to become quite expert on the subject of Clarence Thomas's pornographic and we even rented one of his favorite movies, Long Dunk Silver. Uh No, it was bad Mama Jama and uh and we sort of, you know, shoot the kids out of the room. Hours later whenever it ended that the you know, the credits were running above, Jill and I were sound asleep. It

was the most boring porn movie ever. So, but any anyway, Um, it was unusual research, and it was a subject that made people uncomfortable. And I think, um, it's specifically made Biden uncomfortable, and it's something that's going to haunt him because people's views on all these things have really become much more critical and and of of and much less tolerant of that kind of behavior in the office place. And also when you're not answering that question, people are

assuming that you are covering something up. For Biden, that's an example of something people want an answer from him. What responsibility do you bear You were the chairman of the Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas herrings. Do you think the truth was unearthed with the truth made bear on that committee? And if not, why, what responsibility do you bear if everybody feels like, especially if there's like

sedimentary layers in the media that's gone by. Oh that was so long though, we don't need to answer to that now we asked an answered, And I want to go with Biden. I want to go not really not really know. And his statement on it where he said I wished I could have done more, well, I have to say, as someone who really looked closely at the record, then he absolutely could have done more. No one stopped

him but himself. Do you think that what happened with Thomas is responsible for his kind of uh seething with bitterness even think he's very bitter. Yeah, I do. And I think that that he's filled with resentment towards the people who questioned him. And uh, you know, so, yes, I do as an asterisk. And he's bitter about it, and I think that and and he doesn't speak about it, but sometimes his wife does, you know, she becomes the

voice of it. She keeps a list, she keeps well and and she literally called Anita Hill at some point and said, you know, isn't it time for you to come forward and confess? It's ever present in his mind. It seems like, um, you did that during the time you were at the journal. I took a leave. I think Jill somehow managed to keep doing her job while she well, liking a paycheck. I was sort of meanwhile, she was at the times that now she was at

the journal to at that point. Yeah, and um, so it took us, as I said, three years, and I almost went back to the journal. I had a baby during that period, so there were a few distractions. Um, but I wound up going to the New Yorker instead, never went back to the journal. How did your work as a journalist changed during that period? Did you change

during the any Dail experience? I think I became more and more committed to this idea of of total rigor just talking to everybody you possibly can, chasing like every little scrap I became. It was, Yeah, it was, And I love I love Carol. Someone asked him he was speaking up at Harvard at some function about how do you get the stories you get, I mean, and he said, there's only one ingredient, really, and it's time. It takes

time to get people to talk to you. They often don't tell you everything the first time you meet them, and you have to go back and back and back, and eventually most people really do want to tell you what's what they really know, but they're not going to tell to you. They wore a board themselves, maybe, but but we're not getting that kind of reporting a lot of the time because we're getting tweets that take less than a second. Practically, that's responsible. I mean, I think

you know what the big change in journalism is. It's moving faster and faster from the time when I started, when you would write long stories for the front page of the Wall Street Journal and take weeks on them, and then long books. You know that the pressure is to file many many times a day, and and and you can't possibly talk to all the people or even get to the bottom of anything. You just sort of throw it up against the wall and see what sticks.

And and magazines that like my friends of mine whore like, how do you find time to read The New Yorker? And I mean, I said, well, I have a stack of them, and I read them on a plane for like four hours. When I fly at l It's good you fly because I hear the main reason people um kill their subscriptions to The New Yorker is guilt. The old issues are piling up and they feel so guilty. So you need those long translat home right now. And

so with Hill, it made you more um. The book came out when soon after that to Tina Brown contact you, she I'm trying to think she actually talked to me a little before it came out, because I wound up doing a review of another book about the Clarence Thomas story, Rock, David Brock's book. Yeah, and that's that caught her attention and described what happened with Bro's book and your own words, Well,

Brock came out. This is David Brock, who used to be a right wing um journalist and kind of a hitman in his own words, and he came out with the book claiming that Anita Hill was, as he put it, a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty, and that she was a NATO maniac who had made up these things and it was defending Clarence Thomas. What proof did he offer, Well, Um, he twisted a bunch of things, and um. The reason I wound up reviewing his book.

I didn't want to originally because it's kind of unethical feeling in some ways to review a competitor's book. So I first said no, But then I realized that people were beginning to believe him, and that I was one of the only people who knew that what he was saying was a lie because I'd done the same reporting, and so I felt some sort of responsibility to say,

whoa watch out, this is not true. And so we So Jill and I did this review together for The New Yorker, and we we basically busted David Brock, and it was my first encounter with the right wing. Really they did that. David Brock wrote a cover story on Jill and myself and it was an eight thousand words story in The American Spectator that described us as complete

frauds and liars. Who funds them? Uh? Yes, it gets you back in the end of the day to a handful of huge funders of right wing politics, and he

was kind of their handmaiden. It was very It's become an incredibly weird story because he changed his whole politics, that is, David Brock did and turned around and admitted years later that he was wrong, that he had lied, that Anita Hill did tell the truth that Clarence Thomas he believes did not, and he actually came out and apologized to both Um Jill Abramson and myself and to Anita Hill. So it was really an unusual situation. You never get an apology in life. It was really crazy.

Did you run into him since his reformation? I have seen him. You see him in Washington all the time. It's a little town. Are you pals? I wouldn't say we're pal, but but his former boy friend always comps me at his restaurant. I think they still feel a little guilty. Yeah. Um, it's a weird story. Part of getting older, one of the great things is you live to see these plot twists. You couldn't believe. That's so so. Tina comes ringing while you're doing the Brock review, which

is a feather in your cap. Obviously, people were very very taken that you did that. She was very excited about it and ut to come out. My book hadn't yet come out, but I immediately, um, I mean the minute she showed any interest. I was out living in Santa Monica at that point. I got on a plane and zoomed into New York to have an interview with her and try to get My husband was the West Coast bureau chief for the Washington Post and covering out

there please, I'll say, Holly, what I'm gonna throw up? Quakes, all of that kind of I was there. I'm standing there in my driveway in my underwear, really, and I'm in my driveway and as I look out in the hills. I live in the valley with my ex wife, and we look out over the valley and you see the flames like gas pipes that erupted and flames are shooting up almost volcanically into the air. It's dawn, it's still dark, and all of a sudden, I hear a voice behind

my go go hey. And I turned as a man with an enormous wrench in his hand and a bathrobe, and I just just the image was like kind of a like a like a like a Freddy Krueger movie. And I turned and went ah and and he said, you want me to turn off your gas? And he was going down the block and turning off the gas of everybody's houses before their houses blew up. It was really scary for East and you're an East Coast person originally too, I have it's a horror movie to have

the earth suddenly splitting open beneath your feet. New Yorker writer Jane Mayor has seen her share of horror early in her career. She was reporting in Beirut for The Walls Street Journal when Hezbollah killed three people near where she was staying. She says that witnessing the aftermath of that attack will haunt her for the rest of her life. Talking with great journalists about their early careers as one

of my favorite pastimes. My friend on the media host Bob Garfield, has an unfailing moral compass, but he wasn't born with it. I didn't go to Jay school. I was an English majorum, but happily blundered into journalism. Knew literally from the first morning that that's just what I wanted to do. But I wasn't even trained in basic journalism ethics. So on the one hand that hurt you. I did some things as a young journalist that we're

firing offenses, encouraged by my own newspaper. Give me any example, you know, I would need to tires from my car in my city. Editor who was corrupt sent me to the rest of that conversation can be found in our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing today. Jane Mayer's name is synonymous with the deep, investigative journalism of the New Yorker, But in when the new editor in chief,

Tina Brown called her mayor couldn't believe her luck. I got my resume together like in ten seconds, and um, when she offered me a job, it was it was sort of kind of dream come true to go to the New Yorker. She was just putting her team together. It was relatively new and there was some controversation when she took over designing, though no I thought it was going to be fantastic. I've never I don't think i'd had a female boss before. Um. She was very, very

very cool, bringing in all kinds of super bright. Yeah. I actually really enjoyed working for Tina Brown. She was she was kind of like, um, a producer as much as anything. She would sort of say, think of a subject and then decide which talent she wanted to get on that particular story. I mean there were you know. She also would fact you at three in the morning, so it was she was up at three in the morning. And it might be too they're both reading at three

in the morning. Undoubtedly, How has it changed over the years, and now you're in the Remnick period? Obviously, how did it change? Oh god, it's gone so fast. Um, the places you know? Remnick is also I gotta say, I mean, I've had a lot of different bosses in my life before this, I've landed in a good spot with Remnick is also a great boss. The thing about the New Yorker is these are very very smart people on the s and it's well, so it's like playing tennis with

somebody who's better than you. You wind up looking really good, and so it's good that you get better. They make you look better, right, I'm convinced to from the typeface at the place, it looks elegant. So you can write something that's really not so special, but it looks really good. That Remnick, as you can tell, he deeply cares, you know what I mean, And and and and that caring and that commitment to that, to keeping that place at that level.

Some of the never ebbs, I will read pieces, My god, what did it take like eighteen months to write this thing? They do sometimes, I mean they go through hundreds of drafts, literally hundreds of them, and I think, I mean, I suppose the reason that we take Umberge being called fake news is just if anybody had any idea how much

effort goes into trying to get everything right. You know, I'm not claiming that we always do, but I don't think you could try any harder these I mean, we have fact checkers who speak multiple languages, who call up every source that we've interviewed and go over everything with them. Yet again, um, there are you know, there are anonymous sources. They're not made up sources because their sources who the fact checkers have spoken with, the editors know who they are.

It's all so careful. It's we have fantastic players. We have we have an in house grammarian who goes through the grammar of every sentence, and so I mean, it's it's excruciating to close these pieces. You I often get sick right afterwards, and I'm not the only one. A lot of the writers do. It's a really high stressed thing you do kind of because it's so exhausting. Um and then and then so so this idea that, um, we've got a president who's who's claiming it's all made

up and it's full of lies. I hope that the truth speaks for itself the modern GOP. I mean, back during the Nixon scandals, Republicans were required to vote for impeachment. And did you know what happens now is Republicans are now renouncing that and saying we're gonna tell the truth of it's gonna get us where we want to go, telling the truth that they're not going to get Thomas on the court. They're not gonna get Capital on the court.

They're not gonna they're not gonna get Trump elected. President Trump is there and he's gonna run and people actually believe he's this crack business executive. And as all this acument about business thanks to Mark Burnett and the TV show and when when The Apprentice was on and my brother was on the Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, I never

once watched the apprent never once. I never watched that TV show And who who the hell would watch that, and in America they think, you know, that's who he is, smart, decisive, commanding all these things, which everybody who knows knows he's the opposite of that. But it's what we missed though, the Apprentice part, because just like you didn't watch it, most of the political press court didn't watch it either. We just you know that that was just a gigantic

failing on our part. Well we should have if we should have watched it, And I did finally watch it, and just even the opening of it, where it's got the money money, you know song, and you've got him coming in on a helicopter and a limousine is meeting him and some beautiful girl gets out of it with a clipboard for him. It's like money pornography. It's like a fantasy of what riches. So I didn't see I did not see it coming. I mean, the closest it was.

I interviewed um that one of the stories I loved the most was interviewing Tony Schwartz, who wrote the Art of the Deal, and he said, people think there's more to Trump and that there's another Trump, and when he gets elected, he's going to be different. He said, there is no one Trump. It's all like, you know, a centimeter deep. This is a very sophomore question. But you're all these insights of yours into Hill and Kavanaugh, and you've made a lot of your career, not all of it,

about these kinds of things. Why Why does Spitzer go down and Schneiderman goes down, and and uh and Franken goes down and and was to this day, to this day, Trump evades justice on the subject of sexual assault. What's your opinion about that? I think you've just got a

completely different standard in the two parties. I mean, and that the problem is that the Democrats they take these issues seriously, which means that the mails and the party are very vulnerable to these kinds of attacks and um and and that on the Republican side they just plane, you know, Stonewall right through it. I mean, Trump has said, you know that he could be he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. He's he's so solidified as base behind him on all sorts of things.

Eric Snearderman resigned under three hours after the story in The New Yorker came out. That's how seriously the Democrats take it. And I think you have to be proud that the Democratic Party does care about it. It does matter, and it's trying to send a message to women that you know, we respect you, and um, we're not going to tolerate abuses, sexual abuse from powerful men. I and so I think that Schneiderman's case, like Franken's or like Kavanos,

I should say rather it's worth exploring further. Meaning Sneiderman still contends of one of those women is lying, you know, having done the reporting, I don't think so. I don't think he's got a chance of trying to convince people otherwise. There are too many, too many women who had uncanny how close their experiences were. The phrases are the same. These women have not spoken to each other, and they're describing almost exactly the same thing. It's it's kind of

creepy almost Now. You wrote recently your article about Fox News, and I have some friends of mine in New York and some of them have unswervingly liberal credentials and democratic credentials. Are they're certainly not Republicans, They're certainly not Fox News people who defend Murdoch and admire Murdoch. Do you think that Rupert Mardoch really is, in his d in a political conservative to the to the degree that's reflected by

his on air talent at Fox. No, I don't. In fact, one of the questions I had about him was how does he managed to live with himself knowing better than a lot of the stuff that Fox puts up on the air. And I knew because I've been doing the reading and talking to people and interviewing people and seeing even his own tweets that, for instance, he has a completely different position on immigration than Trump. Um, he considers Trump an fffing idiot, as he said to many people

on the subject of immigration. Yet every night on Fox you can see Sean Hannity taking Trump's position on immigration and just terrorizing viewers about the idea that these immigrants are hordes of unwashed, dirty people coming to take your jobs in caravans. And you know, it's it's it's you know, rapists,

it's the whole thing. And and and I know that Rupert Murdoch doesn't believe that he's an immigrant himself, and he's he's spoken about it, and he's tweeted about it, and he used to call Trump an idiot about it, and so how does he balance those two things? This is one of the questions I had the same thing with global warming. Who did you pose that question too?

I talked of his people who really know him well, and I talked to people who had worked at Fox, you know people, and one of them is quoted in there. It's it's Greta Ancester and who used to be Fox host herself, and she's known Murdoch pretty well over the years. And I said, you know, like, so like, how does he you know, how does he sleep at night doing this? And she said, don't kid yourself, It's about the money. Um. And you know again, as I said, the reporters are

the last nightives. I think people believe in stuff, but apparently he's the ultimate cynic. It's the bottom line his view. He can make money doing this. He's going to keep making money doing this. He knows and has written and spoken about climate change. He knows it's real, he knows that humankind is causing it, and that things can be done to turn his former country to a pizza of a n anything he will. But he's but because and if you watch Fox, and unfortunately I had to watch

tons of it to do that story. You will see they do nothing but mock the idea of climate change. It's just a big joke to them on air, the University of climate denial. It is and and and the thing is he knows that that's that It's an incredibly harmful position to take. Now, when you watched all those hours and hours a Fox, were there some surprises for you there when you watch what did you see anything? They have variations among them, so, um, Brian Kilmeade and

Fox and Friends will ask questions sometimes. It's sort of prickly and uncomfortable about various things that Trump is saying, usually from the right. But he but he's a little a little bit more independent. Um, and you know each Smith, Chep Smith. You know, yes, he's made him turn. Do you think I don't want to? You know, he's to become their one. He's like Alan Colmes now practically, you know he is kind of I mean, I think he's

he's very useful to Fox. It's become important for Fox to try to look like it has some legitimacy on its news side, so they need people like Shepherd Smith. It's occasionally break with the political line that comes down from the hosts at Night. I don't know why he's still there. I have to say, given what's going on all around him. For those people who don't understand the James Murdoch Laughlin Murdoch personality index, there, explain why was

Laughlin anointed and not James. For those who don't understand that, I'm sure it's really complicated, but this was an incredible dynastic struggle within the Murdoch family. James wanted the job. I think James wanted to be the favorite son, and and and and at lease play a huge part in his father's media empire, and it was Lachlin who won out and and and took over. And for what I'm told, James is the favorite son, but not the one to

run the company. I've interviewed a lot of people around them, including their friends, and some suggests that, you know, there's really quite a break between James and his father, and that they're not very cozy these days. So it's hard to tell, you know, you're on the outside. It's there's all the sibling rivalry and jockeying, and in the end of the day, Lachlin is now the rising power in the Murdoch empire, and if you look at what he did in Australia, as The Times describes it, it doesn't

give you a lot of hope for fixing fun. That's what the store of the intellectual and therefore that just qualifies him to run the company. And he's married to a woman who's an environmentalist. So it James and his wife, Catherine, who convinced Rupert Murdoch that climate change was real and he needed to try to do something about it. And Murdoch promised at one point a few years ago that he was going to incorporate it into all the programming they did in all the Murdoch held media um entities

all around the world, and it never happened. So I was curious when I started this piece about so how does this guy um justify knowing better but putting these lines up on the air. They're going to really hurt sort of the planet and humankind because he has so much influence. And at the end of the day, I hate to say it, but I think the answer was pretty simple. I mean, and it is as as as great event Sustern said. He's making money off of it and and it works for that, I think he is conservative.

I don't think he's like a flaming liberal who's trying to, you know, fight his instincts. But there are issues where he disagrees with Trump, and it's a faustine bargain. This is a non secretive but it's something I've been thinking a lot about, you know, in the world of mass incarceration, and we're saying that we want, you know, we realized that it's prison incorporated and all these people are being sent to prison. And do you think that Lorie Laughlin

and Felicity Huffman deserved to go to prison? Okay, So I'm a mother of someone who applied to all those colleges and we did. We did not bribe anyone. And if prison is good enough for for blue collar criminals, it's good enough for white collar criminals. And I would be even happier if they were putting fewer people away of all kinds. I think our criminal justice system is draconian a lot of this time. I think Felicity Hufman should be sentenced to teach acting for five years for

free at cal State Northridge. But I think, to myself, to put them in prison, what does that gain society other than just to punish them. It's only to make an example of them. It's kind of like Martha Stewart or some of these other things. But you know, to get back to where we started, you said there's something on everyone, and I said, yes, And what we want to know is how did they deal with it? What

do they learn from it? I was reading stuff lately where they said, oh, we thought we're gonna get a slap on the wrist, and boy do we miscalculate, and boy are they sorry? Now. I was reading it, but it sounds like they're sorry only because they might go to prisons because they're sorry they get caught. That's kind of not good enough. So I guess in my little psychodrama here in the war, dear of the jury, you're dismissed.

You dismissed jury. You might leave now, thank you. And my last question for you is everywhere you go, this administration is doing horrible things and evading responsibility for all of it. Really worried about it? Yes, I do. I mean I should. I'd be lying if I said I didn't. Usually have to figure pretty optimistic generally that if the public gets information, it'll make a difference in that public pressure is a very powerful thing in a democracy, so

you can push back. But I'm really worried about it. I think this next election is like the ultimate stress test for this country. And I just don't know if the press can make the difference here, if the truth makes the difference here, I don't know. I only know how to do what I do, which is like get the story, gets what's right, get it out there. And I always think, well then people will care. And I just don't know if it's going to make the difference anymore.

I can't tell, because things are. It's we're in a we're in a really dangerous spot. Who do you attribute this kind of backbone you have in this grit you have to do that. This work requires your mother your father are both probably I mean, my father was a musician, he was a composer, um, and my mom's family is very Midwestern and kind of lost b I think they have that kind of puritanical do good in the world mission.

That's probably where I got it from. I hate to tell you, but Jane Mayer had second thoughts about attributing all a reporting rigor to a Protestant work ethic, which one of your family was was in the banking business. They were my great great grandfather. And on the Jewish side, my father's, my father's side, they were that they were. They were rich, funny Jews going through the family fortune. And the other side were like, you know, I'm like

so melting pot. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer. Her book on Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas is Strange Justice, written with Jill Abramson. Her recent work on Fox News is called the Making of the Fox News White House, and it appeared in the March eleven, two th nineteen issue of The New Yorker. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing to Be four