It is a real pleasure to be joined by somebody I've known for a long time that I have a great deal of admiration for. We live in an era where there has been a profound and I mean profound collapse of trust between the American people and institutions, and that crisis of character is not something that ever caught up to the person I'm real privileged to be able to be with this afternoon. That's Terry Moran, journalist, ABC newsman.
When those words meant something and there were inviolate standards, and we'll talk about some of that today. I've worked with Terry over my political career. I have no idea where Terry's politics ever ever worked. You could hold a gun to my head. Didn't know. He was an objective, fair, straight shooting reporter. It's the work privileged to have him with us. You can find Terry on his sub stack type in Terry Moran. It's growing fast. It's a great, great,
great read, and it's good to see Terry out there. Terry, I just wanted to ask you today that there will be a large, large cohort of this audience that remembers Peter Jennings. Take us inside the room to the best of your ability, imagining Peter Jennings was still with us today.
And you you you watched what unfolded on television with the President of the United States flanked by the Attorney General of the United States, by the by the Defense Secretary of the United States, and you have to get ready for an evening newscast that that's going to try to explicate this to the to the American people. And you know, we're back any day. There are serious people sitting around the table to take their obligations and their
duty very very very seriously. And and and I'm just take us into the room imagining Peter Jennings is just walking into the room as the managing director of World News World News tonight. You guys got to get ready for the broadcast after watching that what what what did we see today? Wow?
That is such a great invitation because I love Peter Jennings. He was kind of he was a mentor to me in many ways, as he was to many people. An interesting man, a curious man. And the thing that he brought to the coverage Steve day after day and he got in trouble for it, good trouble, as they say was values if he felt something was wrong, he didn't stand up and write an editorial about it, but he wanted to tell the truth about what he saw. And I'll give you a very good So I was white rookie.
White House corresponded. When George W. Bush came into office, and you know, we did the nine to eleven happened, the response to the country, and then the administration started planning an invasion of Iraq on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. I talked to people all across the government and outside of our government and other governments, people in the Israeli government, people in the British government and intelligence that people at the UN, former weapons inspectors.
All kinds of people on the hill. There were only two people.
Who said, not Saddam jose and does not have any weapons of mass destruction. One was that guy Scott Ritter, who is the He was a weapons inspector, kind of compromised. He was cozying up to Saddam and Tarikazi's It was a little of the foreigners.
It was a little weird. But the other one was Peter.
Jennings, and I remember I got out of having an editorial meeting with them, and I'd gotten out of a briefing that the White House was giving and I and Peter said, you know, tera Ed, I'm looking at these scientists who are coming out. He'd lived in the Middle East eleven years, covered the region extensively and had a feel for it, right. I don't think they have it that he has any webs the best distrection, I said, Peter, I'm in the White House. I just talked to kind
of these a rice. I just you know, I know what I'm talking about. I'm the reporter here. It was a lesson and one that I a burden that I carry.
In some ways. I could have done a better job.
I understood diplomacy in some ways, and I kept challenging Bush on why are you abandon in our allies? Why are you going it alone? You know, this is a major enterprise. But I didn't have an experience in the classified intelligence kind of stuff.
And it was Peter's feel for it.
And he wasn't afraid to say it, and he made my pieces better than they would have been by injecting that that understanding he had, being unafraid in front of seventy percent of the country was in favor of that invasions. I'm not saying Peter was in favor of it or not. He just had a sense that truth mattered and that you had to bring your own understanding based on your reporting and on your values. That tone, that language is gone today. The network news, you know, corporate news, legacy news,
whatever you want to call it. They they're afraid of that kind of language today. They don't use it. It's become more simplified. There are hardly any verbs anymore. Everybody's always saying today the president talking about, well, it's nighttime. My favorite example of that is when Elizabeth Taylor died, the headline was tonight Elizabeth Taylor died.
I was like, no, she did that already.
So the language has been dumbed down, which is for urgency, urgency, the terror of the past tense I call it.
But then I think the other thing that happened is that.
The retreat from values try to try to try to tell the story one side the other side, and all that without without any sense of the actual truthful value values that are at stake. And I think that's partly the influence of the corporation that doesn't want to rock the boat, and I'm just talking about I'm not talking
about anything internal. I'm talking about obviously what we can all witness, and my understanding in general is from my experience, the corporation certainly doesn't want that, and it also is a moment that is too big for that model. My friends and colleagues, whom I respect tremendously, they still do great work.
I look at ABC News every day. I got no hard feelings.
Genuinely, it's their business, it's their see how they can do what they want.
I crossed the line.
They didn't like whatever, But they aren't meeting the moment. They're one of our many institutions that are failing to tell the truth to themselves in the first instance, or maybe they are behind closed doors about what is happening, what is clearly happening in our country, and that model, which is imposed to some extent by corporate interests, can't tell the truth as in full as it is to the American people. And I think that's one of the reasons why, one of the many reasons why that's a
very difficult business to being. Right now, what's happened today?
What did you witness Trump do today?
Well, this was the theater of authoritarianism and the reality of it. Right, this is the kind of thing that you'd see in South America in the nineteen fifties, or you know, it's the Orbon playbook, the Polish playbook. This is put troops on the streets, even if they aren't really needed. He did that in La. You know, there ryots out of control of La. In LA they kept showing the same one car burning. The police in La are pretty good, they were on top of it. There
were protesters, legit peaceful, some getting out of control. No sign that the local authorities were unable to deal with that. But he wanted the troops on the street. He wanted you to feel that. And I'm talking to friends around here who live in DC. I live out in Frederick, Maryland, and he wants them to feel it. He wants people to feel the exercise of his domination on their streets
and on the streets of somebody else's city. So you don't want to, you know, you don't want to get two out of the lane that you're supposed to be in in your own city.
And don't think that's not working. It is working.
I was in a foreign correspondent for five years. And I was in London one night waiting for the evening news to Peter Jennings News, although he was gone by then, which comes out at twelve thirty in the morning in London.
So there with my producer from Poland to mcroski, great guy, and he was in there were in the throes of that government in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, which did something very similar that from what we're enduring now, and they were just stripped the judiciary of authority, that kind of thing. And I said to Toemik, I said, what's it like to live there? Just what's it like for people are in agreement with the government. And he said something that has come back to me a lot
these days. He said, your life gets smaller. You try not to look around, you try not to stand up, your life gets smaller. That's what Trump wants. What we saw today was a performance of authority backed up now by presidential powers that nobody's going to stop him from using, not Congress, not the courts, in order to dominate dominate opposition. And it's also on an issue. You know that a lot of ordinary Americans are only glancing at the news,
you know a little bit every day. He say, well, okay, yeah, I guess DC's full of crime.
Go get him. He's not stupid. You lost your job at ABC News for offering an assessment about Steven Miller, and you were gone within within forty eight hours. And I have been really looking forward to you talking to you about it, particularly with the with the passage of of some time right out of the out of the moment where I think you can objectively analyze some some of this a little bit better. Do you?
Do you remember exactly what you said about them? I mean not word for word, but I remember writing. I mean I was a sound mind and body, so I certainly remember writing it. And I remember that I thought before I said that, I thought this is pretty hot, this is this is tough. But I looked at it before I sent it, and I thought that's a description. I knew people would not like it within and without ABC News, but I thought, I'm describing something, and I
believe that was describing it accurately and fairly. I do remember I said I called him a world class hater, which he is. I've been thinking about it all day that day, something about the man in which his public persona was just bludgeoning the body politic every day almost with with lies and kind of spitting venom, and and it was it's.
Let me ask, Let me ask this question, right. Would would there have been an objection if you described David Duke as a world class hater? That's a great question.
Probably I might have had a minor reprimand I would not love my job, but I might have had a reprimand.
Is there such a thing as a world class hater? Do you think that that's a fair description, that there are people that, for whatever reason, burn with a deep hatred that just objectively, those those human beings have existed over the over the course of history. Sure. I mean, I'm as a reporter.
I look at the way Stephen Miller addresses the public, the way he fills the airwaves with lies and with this intense almost almost desire to to enrage and to humiliate.
He almost spits out his words. I mean, how would you describe that? That's hatred? Hi Trump too, Morgan. I think about your description and the consequence of it through a very singular appraisal. There's only there's only one person I think about, and in the moment that happened, it was a man named abner Less, and abner Less was a German Jew who became an Israeli police captain, and he was the singular person who interrogated at Off Hikman, which he did for two hundred and seventy five hours,
and he never talked about it. Who lied to his bosses about his family because he wanted the shot to interrogate him and knew he was up for it and wouldn't get it if his bosses in Israel knew that he was a that he was in fact a survivor, you know, and had lost lost his family. So however, however, he obscured that he did. And he's asked about the experience in nineteen eighty once, so twenty years later, and
he said, did you have any takeaways from that? And he says absolutely, he gave me my full faith in democracy because there are Adolf Kamans everywhere. They're all around us. But they're harmless in a democracy, but they but they but they turned deadly in an instant and a dictatorship. And what Stephen or is is a is a little Aikman. And he would have been understood as a little iikeman contemporaneous to when that term was familiarized and popularized in
the in the nineteen sixties. And so if you if you eradicate objectively right as a news organization s right, the ability to describe someone accurate, precisely, surgically, then what you do is remove at a foundational level the keys to understanding someone like a Reinhart Heidrich, someone like a Joseph Goebbels. And you really censor historically by removing from consideration the role that this hatred had, any events that transpired when the personality disorder came into contact with the
men's political power. And so if you can objectively look at, say Pope Francis, and say that this is a person who advocated for love in the world, and also appreciate that there are doctrinal differences in a two thousand year old church if you're covering it through that praism, But objectively, what did he stand for? He stood for these values? And are there antithetical values to that? And I would argue that there are, and are they represented right by vices?
And among those vices, are there such things as bigotry? Are there such things as hatred? Are there such things is cruelty, and there are all of those things, and they are really the singular lessons of the twentieth century. And to watch you lose a pristine journalism career for the precise description of such things six months in to an autocratic travesty was quite a jar and moment in
all of it. But the one thing that no one will ever be able to say about you is that you lost your integrity with so many others along the road over these many years. So good for you, yeah, Steve, thank you on many counts. There.
First, you helped me, help me understand sort of why I did it. I can tell you the feelings, but I think the language was necessary to accurately describe what was in front of me. And the way you just put it is really helpful to understand that we must use the language of values in covering the world, because the world is made up of that of right and wrong, of love and hate. And if you can't, as a journalist describe and perceive those values at work, good and evil,
then you can't. You are really doing your job. You're collecting a paycheck, and it was a pretty good one. But you are really doing your job, and then the other I also thank you for the compliment. It's people sometimes come up to me now and say, oh, thanks for your courage. I'm like, well, I just got fired. I mean, but I do understand sort of what they said. My wife, my dear wife, Johanna, we are ten years married now, it's way closer to twenty years together, but
ten years married. And she said, the night we told the kids I got three kids, she said, often when people get fired.
It's because of something shameful that they did.
And Daddy got fired for telling the truth, and which met a great deal to me that she said that, and that the kids heard it, and it's.
One of the reasons that I am as upbeat.
Look, I have a very daunting personal challenge ahead of me, and God love some tips from you as how how you would more experience in these new media spaces which are exciting, which definitely are the media of tomorrow, that news communities rather than news networks corporate networks. But I'm I'm upbeat about it because I don't think I did anything wrong. And as I said, I know I'm not bitter about it's their companies, their policies.
Fair enough, I am.
Who I am and I remain that way and fair forward that way.
And that's that's what I'm gonna do. When when you when you look at what happened today, what would I see is is a I see a couple of things. The first thing I see is you described it perfectly as the is the autocratic fear. And if you're of a certain age and you grew up in in the place that I grew up with, which northern New Jersey, with with Donald Trump in the in the frontal lobe, right, since since I was since I was nine years old,
everybody knows that person. I was talking about this on a podcast earlier that if you say, hey, we're going to the beach, they're like, yeah, not made sharks, right, Or like, yeah, I'm going on a vacation in Montana, They're like, yeah, I won't go there. Bears right, that they have some right fear right that's completely unnatural, And you can go back forty years. Donald Trump's fear right, that his boogeyman, right is the Central Park five right,
he is afraid of black teenagers. Right to him, this is the lion amidst the savannah grasses. Right, this is the great predator in America. And you can look back forty years to his call for the death penalty of the Central Park five. All the racial animis, all the racial bigotry, never missed an opportunity right to pile on to make a declaration to use force. And so you have this spectacle today like this right, And I don't
know how you detach these two things. Is that the executive action right, which is that we must assert these powers now? And these powers and you can tell me if you think I'm overstating it, but I but I think functionally he rescinded home ruled today, right, which he has he has the authority to do.
Basically, he's going to have to have the prostrate Congress pass the law.
But yeah, right, where that where that path? Right? And so he has taken power from a majority black city, neoner their elected officials, really stripped them as a fundamental right of of citizenship. Has has pointed you're and stigmatized them as as criminals. Right, a city of a city of criminals. He's cleaning up the slums. He's given license to the federal agents to do whatever they want to
whomever they want, to beat anyone they want. He made that clear, and all of the homeless people are going to be shipped away somewhere quote far away. And that's the that's the news conference, that's the announcement. He's got the Attorney General who's covering up the Epstein situation and will be a party to the partning of Gislaine Maxwell,
standing on his left. He's got the Defense Secretary standing on his right, who's saying he's ready to deploy the armed forces into all the American cities where there's where there's where there's disorder and chaos. And it's some hours later, and I don't see really any type of what I would assess as coherent response right from the from the opposition party, right like at a at a at a national at a national level. And so what what what what? Like?
How do you account for the lacks of daisicalness, the lack of urgency, the lack of ability to speak out and denounce this in a way that connects with people across the country. Why, like I saw someone who was incoherent and deranged today, Why why does he have Democrats on their back foot? Yeah, that is that is a great question. Also, I'm glad you went there on the question of race because.
Ause, you know, for a long time in my life, my now long life, if you were a racist, you were shamed to say so, right, And now they're all out in public, they found each other online.
It's it's pretty ridiculous.
The problem now is if you want to call out what is actually factually racism in front of you, you're afraid to do it because you're just you're dragging up the boogeyman of race again. And I think you're absolutely right here the way he talks about slums, this dirty city. Get these guys out of here, get rough, and you can hear the animus in there. As for the Democrats, they lost their working class roots.
You know this better than I.
Right many how many of those leaders actually seem to have a stake in these things and they're getting funded by people who don't if I mean, that's too much, obviously, I think obviously there's some really great democratic emerging leaders,
from Jasmine Crockett to John ass Off. I think AOC remains a compelling figure, but the actual leadership seems still stuck in the nineties almost in terms of their model of rhetoric and how they view the issues and now they're kind of they're kind of trapped by being to tether to the professional classes. You need some kind of brawlers in there. You need people who didn't, you know, go to the right college. They weren't, they weren't in the front row with their hand up getting the A every time.
But they're right.
But they're right. They're right about things, and they know it and they live it. And you have some people like that. But it is it is dismaying that the Democratic Party seems unable to find that voice. You know, Corey Booker speaking for twenty five hours or whatever it was, I don't remember it. You know, it is a nice try, but in order to do what, in order to do what now, they don't have power and the Republicans aren't
going to give them power. But I think this is going to be something that I think this is the set piece for a longer display of force in the cities, and I expect that to come around the mid terms. I think we're going to get accustomed to seeing troops on the streets of our cities. He'll cook up some emergency around the election and there will be troops monitoring the election. I think that's the worst case scenario, but I don't think it's out of out of the possibility. Democrats,
how are they going to stand up to that? When they march, They'll they'll get marked, They'll they'll be confronted with another emergency order that will bring the authoritarian heal down even harder on them. I think the model for resistance for me right now is what we're seeing that's really changing hearts and minds on the immigration authoritarianism. Right They're the ripping of children from school rooms and women from their from their kids, out of their cars and
all the rest of it. And that's citizen journalism. And I'm looking at my phone, So it's people doing that, confronting the authorities and putting it out instantly into the world where it gets picked up. And you hear people like Joe Rogan, You hear neighbors of mine. I live in kind of a purple district who didn't really sign up for that level of brutality.
Dairy farmers.
I'm open go to out and talk to dairy farmers who certainly voted for Trump in big numbers but now are without without workers. It is it is connecting with people like that and more than anything standing up, not in a protest necessarily.
Protests are fine.
They raise awareness, they forge solidarity, but at the end of the day, they don't do much. You put pictures out you we go to where the where the where the troops are or whatever. We put our bodies out there with our own cameras and record what's happening.
There's a better chance.
Of mobilizing the great muddled middle of America, which is still there. It's important to remember what we saw on the Oval Office today is not really what most Americans voted for. I'm convinced of that. You know, Trump is underwater still because most Americans want what they've always wanted, a pragmatic way of making life better, not a theater of authoritarianism, not boots on the ground to terrorize black people. They want problems fixed, and crime is a problem in
many places. I don't think democrats should understan under sell that. But it's more affordability, and he's making that worse. And there's openings for democrats I don't see him taking because it doesn't feel like they're connected to to normal people, ordinary people as much as they used to be.
Maybe maybe I'm wrong about that, but it feels like.
They're they're at one remove and like they're reading a script as how to connect with you rather than connecting with you. I mean, look, Gavin Newsom, who I talk to, is you know, is I think on the page?
Uh?
And is trying really hard to shed some of the slick politic politician that he does so well and find himself and find solidarity with other people.
Is that gonna be enough? I don't know.
I think there's some really good Democrats out there are the in Congress, some of them, but not that many.
That's my own.
You you're much more astute political minds than I am. What is wrong with the Democrats?
I don't know. But like the most obvious thing in the world to me is something we'd all talk about at all, which is Zurhamndami and Trump beat the same guys. Huh as well. Yeah, and you know, the American people have made made a judgment and they're not You're not seeing any elasticity in the numbers right with with the Democratic Party, right, So at some level you're witnessing a
game of chicken, right. And I have a I have a republic I have a Republican friend in New York and you know he's he's like Zorhan, Right, He's like, I'm voting for his or He's like, he's like, you give me the choice, right Andrew Cmo and Eric Adams, and he goes, I got Zorhan. He is into the fucking ground. He's like, I'm just sick of it. Right. So he's like in a category of voters that the Democratic establishment place checking with, right, that they that they say, well,
you're gonna abide in Eric Adams, You're gonna tolerate a Clomo. Right, We're gonna we're gonna let you you know, we're gonna tell you that. Right. It's either you know these guys, or there's gonna be a crisis. Right, democracy is gonna be in trouble or this or whatever whatever. And people are just sick of it, right, calling call him bullshit out of it. And I and I think the Chuck Schumer thing is a is a big deal. Like you know, you talked about kind of common sense. Right, you know
you're in a crisis, You're in trouble. Right, we're in a proverbial plane crash in the middle of the Alaskan bush. Right, we got a we got to hike out of the wilderness, and we had to hike out of the wilderness. Right on what planet is the guy at the front of the column, Chuck Schumer? Right? And I think that's a
huge issue for for the Democratic senators. And he's running for reelection, you know, he's running for reelection as the as the Senate, as the Senate leader, and there has to be fresh faces forward who can go out and I think talk about some of the some of the uh, the federal comments. I mean, I think you know, I
just saw one of the comments there stop vilifying Democrats. Right, there's a there is a culture a fan boy and fangirlism, right where you have two reciprocal cults right where you know, no half field will dare speak badly about a half field to know McCoy about McCoy. And the problem with it for Democrats, right is that they're the weaker party, right in the weaker party never loses to the stronger party, right, And so what what the Democratic Party has to become
is a strong party. And the way it becomes the strong parties by being the American party against an non American party. Right, that's the that's the identity that the Democratic Party has to espouse is an American identity right, and to say that the American identity is open to all people. We believe in a quality for all people right, and that whether you're a black, brown, white, whatever, is an American right. We believe in a creed, and that
creed is that we're all created equally. And this is what we have to be able to put into competition against an idea that holds that Donald Trump is the law. Donald Trump decides who's above the law, who's below the law, who gets to make money, who doesn't get to make money, who gets to have an opinion, who doesn't get to
have an opinion? And I would just say that any time you see a person like the nutty pastor of Pete Hegseth go out and start doing CNN interviews, you gotta think, like, why is now the time to start surfacing right my belief that women should lose their right to vote, and that slavery was a good thing and the black people enjoyed it, and the white slave master was benevolent and kind, and the patriarchy worked and so on and so forth, and Churchill was the villain and
Hitler was mis understood, and and and and so on and so forth. And you know, look, you know, all of these things are connected, and all of these things are worrying, and all of these things demand people to be really alert and to wake up, right. And you know when when when people kind of reflexibly say, you know, they say, this this institution that lost an election to Donald Trump, Right, that's how fucked up it is. Right,
it lost two elects to Donald Trump. I lost an election, you know for a guy in a Barack Obama, right, big difference, right, But but you lose two elections to to Donald Trump. And we we face a political position in the country now where Trump is growing more unpopular by the day but more powerful by the hour. And and and that has to be arrested. It has to be challenged in the and John Kennedy spoke to this.
He said, you know, what is the purpose of a political party if it's not to serve a national purpose? The purpose of the Democratic Party can't be the vehicle for the power of like Amy klobach Or and Chuck Schumer. Right. And I'm not trying to disparage him in any way other than to say the purpose of the Democratic party isn't a vehicle for individual and bitching. It must be the vehicle for the defense of the country against the
fascist cause. And and and that is the essential challenge for Democrats right now to rise up, put the country in an American identity for four square at the center of the party's brand. And I think that'll work. But they're not there yet.
They're not there by a long shot. And I think you're exactly right. This is a this is a moment where I kind of in your description of Schumer and Klobashar, two things occurred to me. First, the next Democratic Party is going to be the people that rebel against this Democratic Party. They got to take sure. Yeah, they have to throw it. They have to like like mum, done
right there. They're gonna have to overthrow the establishment. And the second thing is because that establishment, the way you describe it, it reminds me of ABC News and of the other network news media that I was part of for so long. And in this way, that language, that way of doing business doesn't work.
The times have changed.
You're not meeting the moment because you you aren't able to given the the preconceptions that the idea, given how you do business.
It's not going to work. It's not going to work.
The world has changed, change with it, and I think that's what people want to see from the Democrats. I do think they have a a great heritage and a great message, the patriotic one that you just that you just outlined. The Democrats have, my entire life stood for the people, all of the people, without embarrassment. And second, I think the other thing is that they have lying on the table there, you know, the populist economic message that I think people still want seen put into action.
Donald Trump is cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in America, and he's cutting healthcare for the people who need it most. If you can't win an election based on it, you know what the matter is. And there's this incredible concentration of wealth at the top, which everybody knows is a huge problem, and the Democrats have a solution on the table. In some ways, it is what Elizabeth Warren calls the ultra millionaire's tax.
She's got to get with the era of Trump.
It's the filthy rich people tax, right, I mean, a wealth tax might be complicated, might be unconstitutional. Well, one hundred and some years ago we rose up as one people when there was an illegitimate concentration of wealth crushing the hopes of so many people, and passed the constitutional modment together. And if you put that kind of thing before the American people or policies in that direction, Bernie
Sanders shows it. You know, Trump was more prey to Bernie Sanders exide from the socialist level label, than he was of anybody else because he he understands that's where the votes are.
People want change.
They want change to make life better for them, to make the opportunities real.
And to bring the high and mighty down a bit. This is America.
We don't have some tech oligarchy. We shouldn't at any rate who kind of pay to play. Look at the deal and Vidia just made, you know, the distorting our democracy with the United States, and people should be able to rise and not be blocked by people who have illegitimate power that they're basically purchasing now from the federal government. And I think that's you know, that's the next Democratic Party.
Whether they like it or not, they're going to find people who do that and they're going to win.
I think that a huge part of the future message is about confronting power and taking it away from the accumulation of some of the most powerful interests in American history. And that means very specifically from the office of president. It means re establishing the coequality of the congers, means re establishing the checks and balances. It means putting a
check on the tech companies. But the accumulation of power through big institutions, all of it starts, I think with an embrace of fundamental ethics reform, campaign finance reform, and some big structural reforms that the Democratic Party should should embrace at a at a return to roots level, so we can go out and talk about the type of serfdom that too many people live under. Forty percent of
the country is four hundred dollars cash available. And you know, these are the people that are dealing with thirty percent credit card rates. They like their life and opportunity is defined by an invisible algorithm, a credit score. Right. You know, every every major bank is bailed out there in debt up to their eyeballs. We have loaded the young people up with debt. Their degrees are meaningless, so we have
not created the conditions of opportunity. And I say this the candidates all the time, you know, I talk about you know that, you know, talk about a race to them. You know, when people call and I make the point, I say, have you ever had have you ever been on a ladder? And and they and every every person I've ever asked that question says yes. And I said, well, when you're climbing the ladder, what what direction are you looking? And you know, they they they, you know, everyone pauses
and they say up. And I go, well, when when when you stop climbing the ladder right? You know where people start looking? They start they start looking down right, And and if they're if you're stuck on the middle of that ladder and you're no longer looking up and you're looking down, will you become concerned about is someone trying to pull you down off that ladder right coming
up from behind you? And that is that is that is fundamentally the story of American immigration is that when we have declining opportunity, uh you have rising at any immigration sentiment and the accumulation of a lot of different factors have created the opportunities for the demogragory we've seen. But when you look at the fact that ice is the fifteenth largest military in the world. Now we got
mask guys running around the country. That that with the bonuses, every whack job deputy sheriff and bad cop is gonna is going to wind up being a federal agent. Right, They're going to be shed from their police forces. Right, every loser and every police force is going to get the pat on the back. It'd be like you make a great ice agent talk, right, you know, that's just human nature. Get them, get them off right the force
and get these eyes. Get these guys over over there, and the and the if you had a bet on it, like the American people, right, they're they're going to tolerate it, right, the the you know, the mass guys in the militarized cities. Where does this? Where's that gut?
I don't think that's that's us? And uh, I don't think we've changed. Yeah, I think there is a mass movement like none I've seen in my lifetime. I don't think there's been one in the country's history. Tens of millions of Americans will follow this authoritarian personality.
To the ends of the earth. Uh.
And they get a kick out of it. The trolls are delighted This isn't it. This is a government of trolls with power to impose uh, their their hatreds, and their inadequacies on the country. But most people are still normal. I believe this truly the best kept secret in American life. Most people are still normal. They are not for cruelty. They don't get giddy and gleeful at some woman being dragged away.
From her children. Nobody like nobody. We're decent people.
Americans are still a middle of the road, middle class, middle temperament people. We are not zealous, we are not ideologues. We like what works. Still, they have been persuaded by hucksterism and by the lack of an effective democratic response that Trump is going to make things better pragmatically.
Now his base, which is.
Tens of millions strong, they'll follow him to his program of authoritarianism, no question about it.
But if it results in.
Wrecking opportunity, in restagflation, in the kind of economic misery that that could well come because of what he's doing, and the weakening of America around the world.
Then they won't win.
They won't win, and I don't think they win on the national character either. We don't like to think of ourselves as the bad guys. We don't we yes, we fail at living up to our ideals, but they're still our ideals, and I think trashing them.
He makes a big point of kissing the flag and all that. It's all bs.
What is real is that we're decent people and as his government makes us different in the eyes of the world and increasingly in the eyes of Americans.
I don't think they're going to win.
That's why I don't think he wants to face true in fair elections, because it's not a majority.
How much how much rope do you think he has? How much how much time right that do you that the did the American people indulge us? Well?
I saw that the price of some grocer's go to go up forty percent under these tariffs because.
We get so much food for overseas. I think that'll that'll do it. I think the inflation, the decline, the job numbers are terrible.
I think the economy people people want, they want a better life, and he's giving them a worse one. They aren't quite feeling it yet, and then they're going to go around with this cartoon dime store fascism that that is on display I think that everything will look differently if he is seen as I believe he is, to be incompetent when it comes to the economy.
You know, he's.
He's a businessman really only in a reality TV and I think that is going to be his downfall. What he's doing to the budget, what he's doing to the to the economy, was doing the world economy, was doing the American reputation in the world. I mean, they're buying a drop of bourbon in Canada, right that is you see a the world, other nations making other arrangements.
I was in a lcbo in uh Toronto yesterday and there there is not a drop of fucking American liquor in it, not a drop. They're angry.
They're angry, yes they are, and more than angry, they're doing something that will take a toll four years to come. They're making different arrangements right now, after forty years, Trump is drawing down the reservoir of goodwill and good trade
with the world that the world counted on. And so countries around the world embedded themselves with the American economy, understanding that there might be a little bit of change of direction this way, and that way, but he's vandalizing the entire system and it's damaging them to their core, and they are not going to be so dependent on the American condomy again. Brazil is now buying all its oil and Chinese currency. Now they're trying to d dollar
their economy as much as they can. That's going to be happening around the world. Canada even is deciding to make closer trade arrangements with Europe than with the United States. He's got a few years of that he made, you know, not last that long, just given the actuarial tables. But he's definitely these policies are going to make Americans poor and unhappier. And I know that because I covered Brexit.
Brexit was the same kind of spasm of emotional vengeance wreaked upon those front row kids right that had taken over their government and rendered them, you know, irrelevant to their own self governance in Britain, and they are making themselves poorer and they are making themselves The food is going to be worse because only the thing, the only reason that made British food better was joining the EU and getting all that Spanish cheese and Italian ingredients without
tariffs without without any impediment. As a result, Britain is feeling smaller in the world today and the regret, the regret in Britain about Brexit is huge, is huge, and was pretty early on. I think we're going to have much more regret when we see that people will not want to engage in trade with US at the same level for the foreseeable future, and that will make our lives poor.
How do you process the stories that are accumulating at a frightful pace about human rights abuses by US government personnel in these private prisons and these detention facilities, where through arrogance or stupidity, you have a group of people who've decided apparently they can do whatever it is they wish to do to other human beings without having to worry about accountability, which is definitely not going to be
the be the case. But when you read about uh people drinking out of toilets, children sleeping on on concrete floors, why why is there? Why is what? What? How do you account for the lack of meaningful what I would describe as as as meaningful denunciation in the in the in the public square at full volume. Is it that the media has an allergy to to covering it vividly. Is it that elite institutions are intimidated? Is it that there's a collapse of moral authority generally in civil society?
What's the where where? How do you account for that? Or is it is it simply the case that the issue isn't severe enough yet. Yeah, that's a good push that it's not. It's that it's not it's not hot enough yet. Maybe I think it is.
And what I flashed to once again, Look, I had a great career at ABC News. The people were there doing good work as under difficult conditions as best they can. That said, they are failing there and across legacy media, which still has such a big influence, it's hard to get these stories right. Actually it's not that hard. You're
seeing people with cell phones getting them every day. So but getting into Alligator Alcatraz or getting to the site in Pennsylvania that they're building, you know, I kind of this is when I missed the resources of a major corporate news network. You should be down there getting arrested right or whatever, for at least make a noise like this is happening in your name. You might not know about it, but there are these terrible conditions people coming out,
talk to the lawyers, all the rest of it. And I think you also need Congress. The institution is failing us. Even a little bit of oversight would help on that. But I do think that there's a reluctance. People have seen too much of it. Right, The news is always new, and so I was looking for the next bright, shiny thing, and yet this is a huge story, and I believe we are failing to cover it, we all of us.
If I can get down there, I would.
And you know, I think that getting in trouble, getting in good trouble might be necessary. And I think there's an allergy to that, right the lawyers. I can't tell you any specifics, right because it's whatever, But though it had over the course of my career, and I think across the networks, the lawyers, the corporate lawyers, went from defending journalism to make journalism much more difficult to do that.
The bottom line became, not get this story out as best you can, but stop this story from hurting the corporation. And I absolutely am convinced that that is a general statement. As these corporations saw the disadvantages of owning news networks, and I do think at the end of the day, they won't. Trump has made it very difficult for them. They don't want to, you know, heuse He's a tiny,
tiny part at Disney. Did they want to have to worry about some schmuck like me giving them a headache With the president of the United States, they do not want to worry about that.
So, you know, although I think what it might have been a.
Better play for them was to stand up and say no, you can't, and then they'd get a lot of good publicity and all the rest of it. But their bottom line is what matters. So I don't think the lawyers are going to let you go get that story. I don't know that as any kind of confidential information. But my hunch is that the media is failing us. The established media is failing to cover this story in a way that grabs the attention to the American people and awakens their conscience.
You know, if I was trying to do anything, maybe I was trying to do that too.
And that's uh, that's that values based journalism we were talking about that is so difficult to do in this moment, and that I think that the corporate corporations that run the legacy news media are reluctant to engage with They don't want them to language of values to be part of the journalism.
Yeah, it's a it's a astonishing moment. It It truly is. UH as we watch all of this, as we watch all of this unfold, when you look out at at Democrats, who who do you see that you regard as that person has presidential temper, that that person is, that that person is is rigged for this moment in uh, in the next that they that they're going to be able to play at that level.
Well, there's no question that Gavin Newsom wants it. And that's that's a necessary thing to have. You got to want the job. And as you know, that's you got to have the hunger in your belly does and I do see this shift in his you can almost see it dawning on him. I need to be with the people in this way, not the way I have been right. That kind of slick looks like he was born slick
and he's trying to unslick himself. Can he I don't know, but he certainly is somebody who is reaching for the moment. I don't know that that, you know, being governor of California, is that Is that something that's going to appeal to a lot of people. I don't know aside from him, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, I'm not sure he's in fact, I don't think he's presidential timber.
But I'm very intrigued by the tone and the seriousness and the power and strength of John Ossoff, a very quiet way that he that he has confronted Trump administration officials with surgical cross examination that backs them down. I'd like that that's not a presidential thing. Look there, the bench turns out to be deep. There are a lot of people on it, most of them governors. I'd like to see what Gretchen Whitmer is made of right out there.
You never know until they start clashing. This is Biden's great, great sin, right, is that at Thanksgiving in twenty twenty three, somebody in his family didn't tell him, Hey, you know, you've done your best.
Let's let's spend some time together now.
And instead he robbed the Democrats of having a primary where you would have had Newsome, Whitmer, Pritzker, Basher you know, right across the board, slugging it out. And that's when you really when you really see what people are made of who at the beginning of the Republican primaries, obviously Trump quickly dominated, But of the other mooks up there, who would have said at the beginning the class of that field was turned out to be Nicki Haley. She she was the one who actually had you have to
see them kind of an action. The last thing I'll say is I covered the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge and and the and the recovery of the bodies and the rebuilding of it for weeks, and I got to know Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland, pretty well. I was I was there four in the morning the morning after it collapsed, and stayed there for a while. He is a very impressive man. He is a he is
a getter things doner. And I think one thing that you can never forget is the American people understand the presidency. It is an executive office. They want people who can have a vision, can set an agenda, can marshal the resources of the country to execute on it.
And he's that guy. Saw him do it with compassion and smarts and firmness.
To to get that thing cleared out and get the channel open to poor to Baltimore open, to do so with heart and and to start uh at work on a on a new bridge. I did see presidential timber in that way. He's a very impressive guy.
What about uh, what about a what do you see in a Pritzker?
What do you see in uh? In a bashir Well? I kind of love Pritzker's game. He's game for a for a rhetorical fight, and he's good at it. He's really good at it. There was a I first kind of tweaked out how good he was at that graduation speech he gave which kind of went viral where he says, if you don't don't follow idiots, right, that's that That's one rule of life that he was giving the graduates. And he says, how do you know an idiot? Look for the cruel person in the room. That's the idiot.
And I kind of loved that whole kind of brawling.
Ham fisted Illinois politician I grew up in outside of Chicago, you know, and uh, and kind of I like him and I think he's you know, he's ready for a fight now. He's also a billionaire. He's very liberal on social issues in some ways, to the left of Americans. But he's a skilled order and can self fund, I guess, which is also important. But I kind of like the fact that he's a happy warrior in the fight, you know, and I think people appreciate that that happy warrior. I
describe myself as a Hubert Humphrey Democrat. I'm quite sure what that means except that I'm old. But he was a hero in my family. My mom remembered the nineteen forty eight Democratic Convention and the young mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey, calling for civil rights plank in the platform, and she loved him. And he was a happy warrior. He hit the campaign trail with the same upbeat energy
without backing Dawn down. Could fight for his people, could fight for his positions with with cheer, good cheer, and bravery, and I think people respond to that. Pritzker has a little bit of that.
What about Bashir another another young governor, young governor? Obviously he leads with his heart.
It seems to me moderate, maybe too moderate for where the country is, Like we're in a fight.
I don't like it.
I'm a mod' I'm a I like to I am a member of the most despised tribe in American politics. I'm a proud centrist. But right now this administration is giving you the opportunity to be moderate. You have got to stand up and say what is there factually in front of us, which is an attempt at authoritarian takeover of our system of government and a degrading of democratic opportunity within it. And if you can't say that, then I don't think you're going to win a democratic primary.
And Basher, I think while appeals to a lot of those people in the great muddled middle that that still runs the country.
I believe the people that will go back and forth.
And I'm not talking about the people are it self declared independence. I'm talking about the people who steer the ship of state ultimately with their instincts. I think they want to see They will want to see someone stand up to trump Ism with a stronger alternative than I feel from Bashir. Right now, people want to fight their right to want to fight. This needs to be fought against. We're a perfect place to leave it there. Veteran ABC news man Terry Moran and I use that designation, uh,
with with a lot of with a lot of intent. Yeah, that was you know, whether it's Frank Reynolds, whether it's a Peter Channing's, you know, the intiger of that institution, World News, World News Tonight, and you honored and met it all the days.
That you work there. And I know that is a long time watcher. And I mean fifty four, I was watching ABC World News Tonight from age six, right all the way all the way through, and you met the you met the moment. You filled the highest ethical standards of a worthy and noble profession and necessary one in a democracy. And you're doing great stuff in an independent media role, particularly when you're out there, you know, traveling around the country meeting people. And I hope you'll keep
doing more of that. And what i'd say to everybody, you know, the almost three thousand people you know, we're with us this afternoon. You know, again, this is a very serious moment in this country's history. This is a very real crisis. What what Donald Trump was talking about today is without precedent in the modern history of the country. And it's right to be alarmed about it. Uh, it is right to be disturbed about it. It's right to be talking about it tonight at the at the kitchen table.
And it's also right, uh to say to your neighbor and to your friend, that I'm an American and I'm not going to stand for it, and I'm going to do something about it, and to get engaged, get involved. Your rights do not come from MAGA, they do not come from Trump. They come from a higher place and a higher power. And uh, never forget that. But with that, you would find Terry Moran on substack. I urge you to do so. Subscribe to him there, follow him there.
I'm Steve Schmid at the Warning. Thanks for joining this afternoon for another conversation. I appreciate it very much. Thanks. Take care. I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the Warning.
I invite you to join this community where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel and on substack.
Thank you,