The defining issue of our time.
The great problem that allowed a demagogue like Donald Trump to rise is the complete and total collapse of trust between the American people and institutions of government, of civil society, of nonprofits, religious institutions, corporations. Everywhere you look, powerful interests,
powerful people have broken trust. When trust collapses, when it is incineric, it gives rise to demagogues, people who believe that they can say anything, that if they speak fast enough, if they speak loudly enough, if they talk over someone persistently enough, that they will be able to lie with precision. You can think about it at an individual level, beloved entertainers like Bill Cosby disgraced. You can think about it at a presidential level. Donald Trump, who lied to the
American people thirty five thousand times. The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, en Ron, the mortgage crisis, the list goes on and on and on. Everywhere the American people look, they see malfeasans. What they see is a rig system, one set of rules for people at the top, and
a different set of rules for everybody else. And remember always the everybody else includes forty percent of the American population that does not have four hundred dollars cash available for an emergency, and sixty percent of the population that lives paycheck to paycheck. When trust collapses completely, what it produces is a field where demagogues can rise. And of course that's what Donald Trump is and was, always has been, and always will be. What Trump has spawned is a
new generation of demagogues, demagogues like vvak Ramaswami. The interview that Mehdi Hassan did on MSNBC Peacock with vvk Ramaswami is a masterclass in how journalists should interview their subjects. Mehdi Hassan is in a league of his own among American journalists. There's no reason that there can't be twenty five people on American television doing what Mehdi Hassan did. Watch vvk Ramaswami's reaction to being held to account, to being confronted by reality. What he does is a bad
Trump imitation. He blusters, he lies, he bullshits, but he's not feeling very good at it and he's not very convincing. Let's watch him talk over medi Hassan. Let's watch him interrupt, Let's watch him try to evade his reality and hit his record.
It is remarkable.
You say he behaved in downright abhorrent behavior that makes him a danger to democ.
Let's tell me what let's actually be Let's actually be really fair to your audience. So on January tenth, twenty twenty one thereabouts, days after that incident, I wrote an outbed on the Wall Street Journal arguing that censorship was the real cause of what happened. On January sixth, when asked in response, somebody asked me the question, are you that that's that's well, that's what I wrote. I'm giving you the facts of.
What I said.
That's a harsh fact that was published in the Wall Street Journal. When pressed on was that condoning what Trump did? My answer was no, there's a difference between a bad judgment.
And understood, and we were able to tell the difference that Trump do your view, that was downright abhorrent. Second time, I.
Think that the thing that I would have done differently if I were in his shoes, declared reelection on January seven, that's exactly the thing I would Trump do.
That was egregious, quote, downright abhorrent and a danger to democracy. Can you just explain to our view is your words.
So so you're you're mixing two differentquoess. But what did I think was reprehensible about what happened that day?
Look?
I think that the way a true leader should have handled that situation should have been to actually say, this is me running for re election, not actually litigating what is already passed in behind us. And I would have done things differently. That is not a crime, though, understand. And the reason I have been so vehmic you would have done because this is from your mouth.
No, No, I would feel scared of him. Why wouldn't you say I'm horrible.
I'm not going to let you stitch ditching together three things with different places.
Do you want that Trump didn't want to have a conversation. Yes, I want you to answer my question. Trump, it was downright abhorrent. It's a simple question. It's your words, it's on screen. I think what did he do that was downright horrent?
I believe that failing to unite this country falls short of what a true leader ought to do. That is why I'm in this race, is to do things differently than any prior president has done them. That's the hard truth, Okay, And that's what the media and well, the reality is none of that is a crime. And the reason I have been so vocal, the reason I have been so vocal, is because when somebody actually prosecutes somebody for a bad judgment,
and I've been cleared, I understand the judgment. They get their judgments.
It's easy to look at Vivek Ramaswami and dismiss him as a very rich googball. But he's dangerous. Why is he dangerous? He's dangerous because of the message, his message, his placards. And I'm in the state of New Hampshire as we speak. They're all over the place, and what
they say on them is truth. When someone comes to you running for president of the United States with a banner that says truth above them, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie some more, and when they get caught in the lie, they double down and they lie again, and then they lie and lie some more, and double down and lie some more. That person, at
a moral level is unfit for public trust. And the unfitness of an accumulation of enough people has brought America to the edge of the greatest crisis it has faced since the American Civil War, when the Union was merely
divided and the country nearly ended. The American system, American society, and the American way of life is built around elections, a radical concept that we get to choose, and when we pick our leaders, we give them power, limited power, constrained by the Constitution, and they have no right whatsoever to interfere in our rights. These rights are threatened by
dishonest demagogues who disregard the outcomes of elections. The lying is a feature of every authoritarian movement there has ever been, and everywhere in the world where people live burdened by a government that can impose its will on them, they live in.
A culture of lies.
And that culture of lies is dangerous because it is a cancer on a democracy. At the moment it becomes impossible to distinguish what is real and what is not, what is bullshit and what is not. Democracy is imperiled when you cannot distinguish between the lie and the truth. Because they stand equally in the town square, society stands on the edge of the abyss. This is important and fundamental to understand. This is the role the journalists should play in a society, and it is the role that
journalists largely have abandoned during the Trump era. They've abandoned it to go into business with Donald Trump in a vast Trump industrial complex. We're outraged, and clicks and anger sell and get more cliques and more anger and more rage, and on and on it goes. What's the antidote to it? The antidote is.
The transparency that comes from.
Reality, being able to confront the lie in real time, in playview, masterfully done and constructed the way that Mehdi Hassan did it. That is how democracy is protected by journalism, not by batal slogans like on the masthead of the Washington Post that declare democracy dies in darkness, when in
fact it's dying in the plane light of day. Over seven years in this country and in the full view of every editor and every politician in the United States, Mehdi Hassan is in a league of his own because no one else seems to play out the interviews, setting up one question after another, leading their subjects into a box canyon where they get to expose for all of
us to see their character. That's what Mehdi Hassan did with VVK Ramaswami, and he did a great service to the country because he exposed the young demagogue who wants to strip the right to vote for millions of Americans between eighteen and twenty five years old. Vvek Ramaswami is a professional bullshitter and obviously he's done very well for himself with that. But let's be clear about something. Vvk Ramaswami is a liar. He can't be trusted, certainly not
with your family's future. He doesn't care.
About it at all. What he cares about his attention, fame and more money. You know how you know that? Watch Mehdi Hassan's interview.
Fevak Ramaswami told you all you ever need to know about him. Another Republican magic candidate, completely unfit to ever serve the American people in any public capacity that requires trust.