Transcripts For CSPAN2 Brian Stelter Hoax 20240712

Here is cnns Brian Stelter. Welcome to another virtual wide talk los angeles event. We welcome Brian Stelter to the series and welcome back jeb apatow. All those videos are in our youtube channel. Tonight we discussed brians book hoax donald trump, fox news had a dangerous distortion of truth. Welcome again to both of you. I will let you take it from here, judd. Host thank you. Im so excited. I read the book. Guest have you actually read the book . Guest on michael theres other people that interviewed you, ive read the book and not only that, but i highlighted it. [laughter] ive made notes. This phenomenon doesnt really happen in movies where they dont watch the movie but it happens with books. Debate. People talk about books without reading them. I had a chance to look at it. I just want to be a better journalist than everybody else. I feel like i can do better than rachel matthau. That is my goal is to go deeper than she did. We have more time. Congratulations on the book. I thought it was really great and helped organize a lot of ideas about whats happening at fox news that we wonder about which is how did this happen, how destructive is it and is ever going to get better or is it just a part of our world at this point it is never going to change. I will start out with a question of how you got into journalism which is i got the sense from the book you were a journalism nerd in the same way i was a comedy nerd. I went off an out and interviewd canadians when i was 15, 16. I would hunt down john candy, Jerry Seinfeld because i was obsessed with learning about it and you did a version of the same thing. Host theres only two jobsites wanted in my whole life. When i was 5yearsold i wanted to be a trash man. When he showed up once a week it was a big event. I was so amazed. And ever since then i wanted to be a journalist. I know trolls out there will say that the two johns are the same. I remember calling into the local tv station reporting the amount of snow on the ground and then hearing them say my name on the tv, brian and damascus says theres 10 inches of snow. I thought it was crazy that they didnt know that i was a kid. It could have been faked and even back then. But always addicted to tv and interested in journalism. Of course theres a lot of Television News thats not journalism and theres a lot tht that is and i think i learned from a young age. Host you started writing about the news. Describe what your blog was. This was the tv news version. Like my inspiration was this was my attempt to be over fox and nbc and cnn. This was postiraq war, before katrina, in the bush years when things started to go right and left and a lot of the stories i was telling was about to begin and struggling to know what to do in this news war. Back then compared it to what it is now it was a lot more grounded in the realitybased. It wasnt all politics all the time the way the world is right now. A lot of what the book is about is the evolution of how fox news changed. I kept thinking about the Movie Network when i was reading the book because it talks about corporations buying the networks and basically buying the news and suddenly they were servicing the needs of the giant Global Corporations and there was a famous scene where he listed all of the giant corporations in the world and it was truly terrifying and that seems to be what happened which is these companies own the news and on some level it seems to affect their choice of about 22 present on the news and not in subtle forms. What i found interesting was the slow creep at fox news which you discuss, which is theres 9 11 independent moves a little more to the right, the iraq war, then it moves more to the right. And then with president obama it moves right and its almost like this organic adjustment to the desires of their owner and the audience to suddenly just present this point of view and not to be a challenge in the audience in any way anymore. Every turn they take his return to the right and that was definitely true in the mid20s era was and when obama took office. You think about the rise of the tea party. There was a black president and female speaker of the house and all of a sudden theres rightwing groups saying dont take my money. Fox was promoting that in 2009. That is when they turned to the right but they pale in comparison to what happened starting in 2015 when trump entered the race and fox got on the trump train. That was the ultimate turn. And your point about the owners versus the audience, it is so complicated and i dont know exactly what the right answer to that is. It is partly on the owners and the audience, but i think over time what we have seen at fox is what we have seen in the gop and across the media its become extreme. The rhetoric has gotten more extreme over time. But 15 years ago sean hannity was on fox. He wasnt talking in an extreme way until the obama years and then especially trump years. It reminds me of entertainment in a lot of ways because with movies and television, they chase concepts they think will bring them the most money so in the 70s you might have a this and then theres horrifying crime and csi and law and order and the shows will reflect the desire of the audience. We see that where theres a lot of shows like kids being murdered because of the algorithm for some reason people must want to see crime shows about women and children being victims of violence and suddenly theres an enormous amount of these shows were in the movies studios realize maybe we can make a billion dollars and now they dont want to make small dramatizations anymore because youre not going to make a billion dollars off of a small drama and it seems to be in with fox news they decided the money is returned to the right. And if anyone at fox who is in charge of journalistic standards since two everybody this is wrong. We have created a situation that is making people unsafe. They are not taking the pandemic seriously nationalism, white supremacy. We need to make an adjustment here but on some level maybe they would lose money if they went on the air and said he is lying about masks for instance or vaccine safety, so they dont have it for a financial reason. You are describing something true but i dont know if it is on the mind of the staffers that are doing it. A lot of what happened to fox has no control at this point and as one person said to me so i dont think, and this is based on my interviews with sources, i dont think they individually think of themselves as this company be less profitable if we Fact Check Trump but if what you are saying is true that they do turn on the people at fox and challenged the president s lies and lines, the audience turns away its a remarkable form, for example to 5 p. M. Eastern talkshow on fox news hugely high rated. Then there is a broadcast with more than a Million Viewers that turned the channel when the newscast comes on. I have problems with the newscast. A lot of people think that its right leaning but the viewers dont want to watch it as much as the propaganda and that is true throughout the schedule on fox. When the pandemic started, a lot of the voices of opinion on fox were saying things like this is like the flu, and 70,000 people die and many years from the flu and we are not even going to get close to that, so this is a joy and overreaction and democratic hoax to be concerned at this level in the shutdown cities. Now that we are closing in on 200,000 people dying, clearly the numbers are going to go way beyond that. Theres no one on the opinion side of fox says we were really wrong. We need to take this way more seriously. You never get that and i know thats hard to imagine people in a board room saying we cant challenge all these people it will lose money but i think those conversations to happen. I think they have to make a conscious choice after some point to not say to people the information coming out of this network we now know because the people doing the questioning about us take it less seriously and wear masks less often and they dont social distance and that means more people watching fox are guiding them are watching other news services, so as a result of our lack of interest in educating people about the dangers of this, people are dying and it is a conscious choice to not make that an important part of what they present on the network. The history of this obviously i rewrote in the beginning of the book because of what was happening in the spring and the summer. When they use the word hope hoax they said the democrats are making up a hoax. Even the use of the word was still dangerous because it suggested you didnt havissuggeo take this very seriously. It gave permission to kind of tune out the warnings about the virus. At the end of february and beginning of march. So because of the dangerous rhetoric and i made the timeline before they saying on tv, what was trump saying at the white house and it winds up on unfortunately perfectly. Both fox and trump started to change their tune on the same day, the same day in march maybe not a coincidence. But it was too late. It was spreading across the country and so many people have let their guard down because of the rhetoric was on tv. I do want to say though i am not only blaming fox and trump. Its worth being fair some governors made mistakes and mayors but he is the ultimate leader of the country and is out there downplaying the threat. Its kind of like he left the back door open, or the front door open. He closed that door at the front was wide open and that is mostly how the virus entered the u. S. An adjustment has been made because of the timof the becausf disputing the Republican Convention so on and she spoke last night to barely a large crowd. I didnt see almost anyone wearing a mask. Certainly the president wasnt wearing a mask in the middle of the crowd. Im sure he will say we tested everybody. But the signal to the country is that its okay. Everything you see these people not wearing a mask you are telling people maybe you dont have to wear a mask. And i guess the issue is that that will get noticed on other networks. And on fox you will not have a person go if you cut through that crowd they were all wearing masks, puppets of people to wear a mask. It would be a powerful message. Or even if everyone walked up to the podium wearing a mask and they took off to make the speech. I think the idea that nobody at fox news will even point that out is an ownership decision, it is the Rupert Murdoch decision to not create an environment where you are allowed to say that or youll be punished. What i found interesting in the book is the idea that if they work their id say you are one of those contracted tendons, if one day you go against something trump said, that is inaccurate or you disagree, that your bookings started disappearing. Suddenly hannity doesnt have you on, Tucker Carlson doesnt have you on and it creates a conditioning that you challenge the president , you may lose your job and your presence will diminish and then maybe you will loose your half a million a year to be giving your opinion about things. I thought that explained very well because i dont think the audience understand that. The disincentive to speak the truth to power. The incentive structures are what matter the most. My structure that cnn is to be as accurate as possible, because if i am not, i will be held accountable. There is a department and i have boxes that would call me out. Ive tried my best. Ive made a couple of mistakes during my time at cnn. Ive been in the doghouse. There is a moment i will have a tough conversation with my boss and that is the way that it should be. It just doesnt work that way. There isnt a Standard Practice in that department. There isnt the same kind of journalistic. So instead this infrastructure is the opposite. Its too lean into the propaganda, leaned into the nonsense as that is what the audience wants and that is the Management Team wants. Part of the problem though is the lack of leadership. People dont really know what murdoch wants from them so they just keep doing what they are doing but clearly to your point, if they wanted things to be different on the air, things would be different on the air. That is the reality of how this world works and clearly they are okay with whats going on in the network. 2 billion in profits. 2 billion in profit a year and leave prints money in the basement as a joke. The best story about this, the top legal analyst on fox news is one of the most interesting characters there because hes known him for decades. They are old friend that he is a lawyer and understands trump was guilty of crimes. He understood obstruction of justice have been proven. He called it out on the air and for that he was a sean by trump, he talked about him repeatedly. He lost some primetime spots and wasnt getting booked on his shows. One said they would only go timothy talked about no on trumped stories. They talked about trump, people would get too angry and upset and it wouldnt go well. It has come out according to the book he has almost a constant communication with sean hannity and at this point is difficult to know if certain ideas are coming from fox and friends or like sean hannity or the president , hes watching the network and theres a sense that theyre both manipulating each other is also in a way that i dont think the audience understands, the most troubling example of it, you talk about Tucker Carlson talking about how the United States should not attack iran last year and that may have been an important reason why we did not attack iran. Can you talk a little bit about that story. This is when iran struck an american drone and there were questions about how trump would respond, trump himself claimed that the u. S. Missiles were locked and loaded, he had an expression to that fact same retaliation was about to begin when he called it off. What we now know about that, he called Tucker Carlson beforeha beforehand, im not saying tucker was the only person, he was not but he had been on the air, he was advocating against john bolton, carlton was against the strike in iran and what happened that day trump needed to hear it again, it was not enough to watch on the dvr or watch it on tv, he needed to hear from tucker again, he called him up and hes trying to have a position about trump, he is not going to call the white house but at the white house calls him, he will answer, thats only way he differentiates from hannity, hes more proactive, he takes the calls and they come in. The president calls carlton and he says what to do, he says it be crazy to bomb iran in carlton later told friends i think trump needed a reminder of what he believes, reminder of who he is, is not one of the voters elect elected, i have a guy at fox telling me i guess im glad tucker is running the country and not sean hannity, its a ludicrous thing to say in a little grain of truth in that and thought he was at trump any given time and the other person who influenced trump that day was a general the fox military name general jack king, he was on the air talk about that time in the 80s when america accidentally shot down an iranian plane killing scores of innocent people, trump may not have heard that story before because when he heard it live on fox it really impacted him. Im taking to myself, were in a situation where the president doesnt know basic history but he is at least hearing some on tv and the only thing worse is if he is never heard on tv at all. But the number of examples of the president getting the information from fox couldve filled an entire second book, i had to cut some of the examples because theres literally thousands of times when hes been influenced. You would think the people who work at fox would be terrified that this relationship is involved like that, if i was locked when burn off and i was aware that my host had direct lines to the president which he said he does not have that relationship with the president that it would be a position that you want to have like an owner of a network giving out information from a pandemic for my soul would want a feel like a save lives and like i communicated properly and how it can be right winging and want to do regulator and lower taxes, when to really getting to the place where youre covering for a president who doesnt seem mentally equipped to handle pandemic in your creating space with Bad Information which are supporting which leads to people dying it really requires a level of greed or disassociation to not be horrified that Tucker Carlton is apparently in the book and went maralago to talk to trump because he was concerned trump was not taking the pandemic seriously. The white house aid asked him to go, this is remarkable, in the white house he did not get it or understand the gravity of the situation in carlton was the exception to the rule it comes to the pandemic in january and february, he was raising alarms on his show, he was probably raising alarms because he has antichina view and in the area against china but he was raising alarms so he was asked by the white house aid in carlton without his home on the golf and asked to drive maralago, go see trump and toxins into the president , thats what carlton did, he walked straight into the middle of a birthday party, fox news reunion but carlton was get someone on one time with trump and even that did not work, right away because a couple days later trump is still out there engaging in ridiculous rhetoric and downplay the threat of the virus. It wasnt until the end of marce middle of march when fox news and trump started to change their tone and even that only have limited impact, for example the fox and friends pull you have to have a doctor on the air every day so were not can have much medical misinformation. I do want to give them a little bit of credit, they did make some changes that improve the tone the tone, within two weeks we have a host on fox with them saying we need to figure out how to reopen america, the cure could not be worse in our later trump says on twitter cannot be worse than the problem, remember this was back when trump said we should real person by easter and the pew should be reopened by easter in his crazy and impossible but our entire country wasted four days on that idea. And i write in the book no one can ever know for sure how many people died and who otherwise would not have died for irresponsible News Coverage or not president ial rhetoric, we will never know, i know staffers at the network are embarrassed, they say what we were doing was hazardous to our butte interviewers in a Senior Executive said it was outlandi outlandish, there are people who see it and they recognize what went wrong but i dont think theres been a lot of soul searching institutionally meaning up the corporate level, the murdoch level you are talking about, i dont think theres been that kind of reflection. Out what part of the book that i thought was fascinating is Large Business deals that the murdochs are occasionally making and how it affects the coverage on fox news, when they were working on this guy tv deal, that was the moment when bill oreilly was getting in trouble for the Sexual Harassment cases and possibly one of the motivations for getting rid of him is it was a distraction to them getting the tv deal closed and then you talked about the deal to have the movie studio and other businesses acquired by disney and at that moment it was an adjustment in the news because they were trying to get federal approval for the merger and what was a new story at that time. First is really interesting because hes over in the uk and thats where the deal is anyones to take over the empire and hes worried that American Network he has is going to embarrass him, a source said he wanted to get rid of stench of the Sexual Harassment and it was when he was let go and murdoch to find a new contract, they knew about the skeletons, but the stench became too discussing as analogy and they were worried about their business. We also saw i mentioned joseph paul at tonto, he went on the air and claim that obama had attacked trumps phone via the British Government and the dch pew and they denied that and trump said go west napolitano, go asked the judge, trying to blame fox for that mistake, at the time the murdochs were concerned because they did not want to piss off the British Government, you have these cases where you have American Network making trouble for the rest of the global media and thats a wild thing to see, when it comes to the disney deal is really revealing that rupert decides to sell but he keeps fox sports in the news addition and its what he cares about the most and in the book i actually were cnn where i work where rupert is calling ahead of at t trying to buy cnn offering to buy cnn, there is some speculation out there that maybe he was doing that in concert with trump in other words, this is a theory, is not proven or disproven, the theory goes like this, trump, murdoch he had an alliance of sort and beneficial relationships, murdoch insulted him in private and causing crazy member beneficial relationship, the theory goes like this, did trump and murdoch try to get at t to sell cnn as a condition of the federal government approving at t take over of the rest of time warner, that is the theory that folks do believe in corporate symbols. At t said no we are not selling to cnn but the timing of his phone calls to at t is very curious, i laid out in the book, you look at the timing and you wonder if murdoch is working with trump. The government did try to prevent at t from taking over time warner and maybe was hard to do when they had instant approval exactly it did not make any sense that you would stop the other one you been such an outspoken in hollywood thats why was so interested hearing your take on the book, why do you think more people dont speak out against the Media Company . I think people are concerned about their own careers and own money and for the same reasons why journalist will speak out against trump and on the Progressive Side that ultimately will still do business because that is supreme for the rent. That lack of courage to stand up and say i feel this is wrong exist on both of the political spectrum and obviously shameless in their willingness to cozy up to people think you are doing very unethical and criminal acts, we see this in saudi arabia and with the murdochs and even when the president is caging children and fox news is providing cover for that and not fighting hard against it, you will still see the murdoch that all the parties and they are not shunned for any of this. Even now with the pandemic and you can say fox news clearly caused a lot of people their lives by not helping provide the best possible information in a vigorous way, you will still see them everywhere and i think when you look at people like Colin Kaepernick who made a choice to sacrifice his career, he thought it was worth it to make the statement he wanted to make and stand up for civil rights, theres very few people who do that. I wish murdoch would come on with you and tell you why youre wrong, i say that because you never hear from these executives in public, youre right they show up on the pretimber dammic party. When has he given a real interview about fox news. The ceo Fox News Media has given a handful of interviews over and shes never fully addressed what she knew about abuse. They know is indefensible because i think for many of them, they made a choice which is to believe something very simple, if they did not say it on our network they would say on another network, its a rationalization for having all these opinions out there, they say it on the radio, they say it elsewhere, people make a choice about what to put out into the world, we all decided we want to be a good person or bad person, they decided they want to sell out or not sell out. A lot of people are very comfortable to not care, you would hope that they are tortured at home, theyre not, theres a lot of kooks out there that we put them on our network and will make a lot of money and a lot of networks are going to be on another network. Theres kooks on the left to and people on the other side do. Absolutely, i think thats a rationalization that maybe you can be okay with until the pandemic, until kids are in cages. You mention kids in cages, one of the things the journalists who do decide to leave and why do they decide to leave and a lot of these stories have not been told before because when people leave fox news they dont say why, Shepard Smith got a lot of attention, he did not talk about why he was setup and a lot of journalist who were not well heard of also commentators, Abby Huntsman is one who comes to life, she was on the view but fox and friends we can at the start of the term presidency. And her final straw was a family separation policy and that will open to International News and she found it to be so heartbreaking to sit on that couch on the morning show and listen to her colleagues defend him and have to tiptoe around the trumps of administration mistaken she decided to leave, she was talking about abc about going to the view in that tempter over, the other story in the book is that i cannot take it anymore, it raises the question about why do others stay and you can justify it by saying it is free speech in her opinion and theres kooks everywhere, i find the other reasons include money, obviously we talked about money and how much money people were making, power, try not to influence a president and also lots of other options and this is a legit answer or not, people say i dont know if i would get hired anywhere else. You said the extension of working that you will not get another job if you were really seeing as a phase of fox news. I try to think about how many people gone to fox to another network, megyn kelly tried and i argue in the book shes the first example of somebody in the trump age saying i cannot stay with fox anymore, its not going to work with me and im not going to produce the propaganda, she went to nbc and that did not work out, there have been a few who have left successfully the cnn anchor, catherine a cbs reporter the bosses here the not strong leaders they dont really want news, its programming it in the entertainment world, the bosses dont want news, they want programming, i am out and theres a lot of the folks, that is one of my themes, the other reason people are mostly engaged in some of them certainly say they want to make change from the inside and they can make a difference and make the content better but the biggest reason that people brought up money and power and fox does feel like a family and they take care of their people and when bret baier was injured in a skiing accident she offered a plane right away, those things are not just private plane or super bowl ticket or the fact that they design their own offices and built their own closets, it was a family from working with your colleagues, do you think that is all bs or is that a real emotion for people. Certainly when you give people a nicelooking office and redo the carpeting every once in a while people will get sucked into thinking that theyre being treated well. A lot that you talk about in the book is how wellpaid the biggest stars there are, i thought what was interesting is the competition between. Let me talk about that that is interesting. You are talking about bill oreilly and how popular he was when he disappeared they move hannity up, suddenly theres a competition between Tucker Carlson and hannity and laura ingrid can you explain those. Sean hannity, oreilly was number one by far on cable news, hannity was second banana in that relationship was not really a relationship at all, they did not like each other but they studied each others ratings very carefully, interestingly when oreilly was going overboard in 2017, hannity felt sorry and invited him back on fox which really angered a lot of staffers, why are you allowing a guy with allegations against him back into her building. He was fired why was he allowed back inside. That goes to show the lack of strong leadership. And the fact that hannity is the boss. Some people when they ask sean hannity who is in charge of fox he says i am, is not entirely a joke, he is now not second banana, he is number one, he is occasionally losing to Tucker Carlton and the tension between tucker and shawn between the rating, hannity became power in the trump years and wielded the power. Whether its through Conspiracy Theory, feeding the present about information, that program was the core of fox identity and i know some host slip rating reports for the president in order to say come on my show, not their show, theres an internal competition to be with trump, thats a short relevance of rating. Thats one of the most disturbing details in the book, people would kiss the president to ass in the interview would elevate them and fox news which becomes a disincentive to ever speak out against the president. We will challenge him in the interviews and asking hard questions, i got some stuff from multiple staffers, multiple friends of hannity that say he called the president crazy, he describes the phone calls of the president and they are so stressful, the reason about hannity he became number one at fox and at the top of the ratings in the biggest star, i thought this was a huge wonderful time in his life but no its been pretty stressful. Could you imagine have donald trump call you every other day to talk to extended period of time to get your advice and then he takes her advice, that is every persons worst nightmare, i was at a play and with a friend and we bumped into robert kroft the owner of the new England Patriots and my friend really confronted him about his friendship with the president but what we got out of this brief ten minute is the all these very wealthy people are connected, they all basically are buying with phone time with the president and very aware that the last thing that they say may affect something that donald trump does that day or the next day, he is certainly surrounded by fans with agendas. If youre advising the president , you need to help them and not not hurt them. One of my arguments and host, when hannity tries to help trump he often hurts trump. Liberals might be saying good, keep doing this but heres my perspective on this, hannity has tried to do trump a service by doing a disservice. And by focusing on cultural war stories, feeding him disinformation, he actually hurts the trump presidency. I think its a thought experiment to wonder what if the president hadnt visited fox, what became into the office and was surrounded by people and turned off the tv and took away his twitter account to help him focus. Would it have gone different lee . Anything that might be impossible never wouldve happened, the addiction of thoughts really hurt the president over and over again and for example during the pandemic during the beginning and march trump was calling hannity, how are my ratings, how are the readings of the briefings, he wanted to know how he was rating which is disgraceful the president was focused on that metric and interested in that metric, a good friend what is said to President Trump stop, do not tweet about your ratings and do not ask about your ratings again, focus on saving lives, is that relationship that trump does not seem to have, he has the fox news vans who are buying is resurrection and trying to put them on tv but actually hurting him. Relating that the president is not as intelligent as we hope you would be any has a Mental Health issue which we all debate. Youre not allowed to say that in bringing up mental fitness. Youre not allowed to talk about that. Which is fascinating so clearly what were learning from marianne trumps sister is that is Common Knowledge in the family what is wrong with him as a person and you said they want to call joe biden and say he is slipping but clearly when you get to me and camera television, youre aware that something is happening and i think we all believe that the president does not really have the ability to read to understand complex facts and when Something Like the pandemic happens where he really needs to understand science, he cannot get there, theres no way for him to get there, if someone said if everyone in the country wore a mask, he could open up faster than the economy would do better and maybe we should give businesses some help opening up but with masks and social distancing so he can support opening up but really safely, he will not do it because someone got to him that it does not look cool to wear a mask, you dont look tough or we lose our freedom if we wear a mask. He cant even make the simple rational choices which help him. I always think about a student desk, fees on the way to help people with their college debt, the amount of people that would vote for him would be ridiculous, he could probably get reelected off of the issue but he will not consider it due to business interest in his ear about it, thats what we realize there is something wrong with him because he wont do the easy things that would help him. I will tell you i got in the book from 2017 when the executives and other prominent figures in the network were saying he is not well, this is especially in charlottesville with the National Wakeup Call about the president , these are folks who were in touch with trump and they are saying he is not well and theyre seeing it in the same concern like you talk about a grandfather where grandfather is sick and the whole family suffers, i do wonder will look back at the trump years and say is that what happened, is that what was going on and again, im taking them from conversations and folks at fox because theyre more in touch than anyone at cnn and any other network, he has merged his operation of the white house with fox that they have the same interest, look whats going to happen in his acceptance speech on the south lawn and a special place to anchor the program, thats example of special treatment that weve seen throughout the term presidency and it makes it difficult to imagine a scenario where he was in any serious way. One issue talk about is how this feedback loops between the president and fox news led to training the audience to not believe any fax that doesnt come from the president and even if they dont believe the president , they dont believe the other side, and all situations you dont trust information in a very way, how did that evolve. This is fundamentally whats broken about our information ecosystem, is not just fox or trump the broken, it wouldve been decades of messaging from rightwing outlets and saying you cannot trust the biased, but rebels and the campaign insane fake news in january 2017 insane enemy of the people and folks and he gets unseen once a month to once a day, its like hes trying to shock us in with antimedia its like he has to shouted louder and louder to get anyone to listen, the good news most people dont listen, most people see through it, most people know its just another hoax. When youre saying the word hoax, he says fake news, it could be interpreted as a mistake and they switched everything the hoax which met there was a maliciousness to the choice to do something. It is coming from hocuspoc hocuspocus, the word hoax mean somebody is trying to trick you or fool you or hurt you, there is a nastiness to the word and he uses it once a day on average so far this year end then the fox repeat it, this is why the Feedback Group is so loose, trouble pickup on it and fox will run it free days and in the air it on fox, the dishonesty to that when they get it wrong and then trump gets the facts wrong and then cnn points out that trump get the facts wrong. We need to point out the part of this, guess what you were saying earlier about being a producer or an anchor of the shows and the responsibility and the pressure you would feel if you were the owner the anchor or the producer to get it right into be careful and precise but instead heed the use trumps attention. I had producers tell me when they were leaving the show that the boss said you get influencer president. He tweets what do you say, you dont want to lose that power do you. The one case that was so scary is the rich story on fox and how they never took responsibility for it and it revealed a new level of cruelty in the attempt to make the president look good, either the story about a young man who was murdered, being used as a way to create a Conspiracy Theory which would be the reason for the hacking incident, can you discuss and explain how that happened. When you zoom out this is an attempt to say it was not russia, trump needs to stop focusing on russia, this is what its about, at the moment when james comey has been fired and trump brought russians into the oval office, now theres all the attention in the country about his ties to russia and what the hell is going on and fox airs the Murder Mystery Program where they say maybe Seth Richards death when he was shot to death one night in washington, maybe its because he was the real wiki leak leaker, maybe he broke into the d c and leaked all the emails which then said it was not russia, its a way to say this was an american inside job, it was not russia, dont blame russia and lets move on from the trump russia stuff, that was a narrative on fox based on a lie and there was a little bit a nation to the white house because we know the folks that were behind this had a meeting at the white house in this narrative, the mystery narrative went on fox for week and we had seth richs family asking hannity to stop talking about it and take my dead brothers name, take my dead childs name out of your mouth sean and finally after a week hannity went on the air and said im not going to talk about it for now, i will keep investigating i have respect for the family, i will stop talking about it for now, hes such a pathetic example of fox pushing a narrative, conspiracy narrative that had no connection to the truth. I had to say in all the years since its been three years, it is still probably the single most shocking example over lack of standard and bedding of the network which is why i read a whole chapter on it because you got to understand that it shows the lack of leadership on the channel on a day like that. In the level of cruelty that shows their interest in protecting the president has now led them into really dark places and one might say that was the beginning of the idea of Conspiracy Theory and peoples interest being used to distract from what is actually happening. That such an important word. So much of what goes on is just about distracting from his scandals, his lies, his crises, i would say its more antidemocratic than it is post trump, when in doubt they attacked joe biden, not that there depending trump but the trying to destroy the other guy. Doesnt that lead to the potential for violence we know the conspiracies lead to violence sometimes and now its being mainstreamed, the president was asked about it the other day and he treated it like it was any other political idea and he did not locked like it was dangerous for the fbi said its been investigated because of something that can lead to people getting hurt and has in the past. On the fox news show, im going to interrupt you this is fox news, what about the democrat violence, thats how it goes every time, what about it on every story, the soviets, it is a fame so the entrance of the where they make you think everybody insult everybody and everybody is bad and wrong, thats what fox programming has evolved into and you are correct that we know the fbi field officers have warned about that and we know the mail bomber, the guy who sent the mail bombs to cnn and Hillary Clinton and others, we know the fox news as well as a huge trump fan, we have examples of stream is him, radicalization having realworld consequences. When there is not a strong push back by the president or republican politician, it is the dog whistle and the wink that might be true so you get a couple of people who stand up but its always shocking how few republican standup basically other than mitt romney at this point that there really are not politicians who are willing to put their jobs at risk to standup for their belief. Think about romney and what he did when he cast his impeachment vote, he knew he was going to get savaged by fox, he did one tv interview and gave it to fox and Chris Wallace, he did that in part because he wanted them to hear his argument in here out his view, sure enough on the night trump was acquitted by the senate, you think would be a call for celebration by the rightwing media, instead the programming was all about mitt romney, they were focused on china excommunicated with romney and celebrating his acquittal, there is such a negativity and its like hitting a range over and over again trying to keep people angry and its one of the most cynical aspects involved in by the way i admit theres other elements to cable news and engagement as well but fox seems to be the best at it. I dont think the audience understands as an economic echo system with all the jobs and if youre accepted by the republican or Democratic Community and youre in good standing, there is books in singing engagements and invited to the parties and i still think the politicians think that if they standup is not the main job theyre going to get its all the connections and all the stuff around it and that trump is basically said im going to hit you as hard as i hit you and there is operative moment when the republican said we are more powerful than you actually, it was interesting, we sought with fox when he started running for president , they did not taken very seriously and theres a lot of people who work for the president who were really hard on him, Kayleigh Mcenany and Kellyanne Conway, they were antitrump and the network was not pro trump and then slowly they just gave over to it. There was a quote in the book from somebody saying the untold story of fox and trump is one by one all of them decided to get on the trump train and they looked around and saw the incentive and the opportunity even hannity for example, his show was getting pretty stale, there was conversations back in the day of what we should do with hannity and give him the cohost again to show more interest in trump comes along is a most interesting thing in the world, if you think about that, hannity cell trump as a way to gain relevance and that happened all across rightwing media pitching to trump was a way to succeed personally and professionally. There does not seem to be a space on any of the network for a real assessment of the ideas of the other party and you never see something on msnbc about does the regulation actually help the economy, does lower taxes help the economy, its a deep exploration of conservative ideas on the Progressive Network and vice versa, it doesnt ever seem to happen, you will not see on fox news is there a way to deal with immigration problem without caging children, lets explore what else could be done, isnt that the saddest part, there is not enough time spent exploring solutions. You and i should have assured together and cable news. Thats why were here, and audition and i think i nailed it. Lets take a question from ted. We have audience question that were submitted and you feel that the criticism of cnn is also opinionated or has gotten opinionated. You agree. How do you feel that cnn. I think the biggest change or see on cnn as a viewer as well as an anchor and as an anchor theyre doing an essay, usually the start of the show, the end of the show, it feels like sometimes there are four or five overtures every day where the anchors are talking straight to the camera and trying to see was going on and often times about trump and i know some viewers are opinionated, i think there are ways to break down the war on truth and try to win it basically. Sometimes best way to fact back check is straight to camera monologue approach, fox is doing a long time ago, i get that there are a lot more and i been doing a lot more these days and i think its a most effective way to respond to some of the attacks and lies. I think what im trying to say is not partisan to standup for fact indecency and democracy and what i feel a lot on cnn and msnbc is people trying to do that, in the context of trump claiming is a fox news and it can come across as antitrump. Theres no way not to seem partisan when the president lies 10 15000 times and if you could say he life, people think you are partisan. I love the part of the day where he says in the book he comes forth and says, days after taking office 3 5000000 people have voted illegally, if you dont speak out against the crazy comment that i think you are part of the problem. That is the dynamic we are in, its a different colt dynamic for journalist, we are intrinsically deep down in our course not comfortable speaking out, let me put it this way we are much more comfortable according to one side or the other side and having intimate and having an argument, that is much more comfortable for a tv producer or for many writers, its not the way to tell the truth. Both parties will have curated and produced around chosen connections in the next stage to present the candidates will be the debate, the question is what is taking place about who gets to be the moderator, that question is saying to the parties have some say in who the moderators are or does the Debate Commission in charge. The Debate Commission is in charge is a Bipartisan Commission that has been around for decades and its almost like an earlier era for republican and democrats Work Together on some things in the commission and then tell now most candidates agreed to show up and we will see what trump and biden do but trump has committed to attending, the question is who will moderate. I have been involved in the network in certain individuals, i would imagine tv agents and others would also be looking for certain individuals to be considered, i do think it will be more complicated than usual this year because trump has so many objections about so many different tv anchors and the commission has said that they go through the commission not through trump. He also would not want somebody like Chris Wallace, it seems like anybody was asked him a direct, not even a difficult question but a real question. I dont know, Chris Wallace would be an obvious option an obvious candidate for Something Like that and i wonder if trump like that question from Chris Wallace, there was a reporting that he could handle tough questions but if you listen to the answers, the answers are troubling. How troubling was the interview when he started taking out his graphs, the graphs had three bars on it, its like they made the graphs for a 5yearold, it was the least complicated bit of information, what do you think the aftermath of that is with the people around trump when he doesnt interview with the real journalist that follows up and i call him out on misinformation, do you think that window closes for anybody else and does not work for fox news . Italy interesting if he does any of that on his interviews between now and november into expect that he will want to go on fox frequently, he can go on the Major Networks between now and november and he hasnt been on 60 minutes and abc, he has never given cnn and interview since inauguration day, if i were him and i wanted to show that i was bold in tough and willing to handle tough questions, i would go on cnn it would be a hell of an event but i would be surprised if the happen between now and november. Next question the gentleman says i feel the media left out and give away too much with the daily Pandemic Press conference. By in some cases misinformation. How do you feel about that and how cannot have been done better. And continues to be a tugofwar where theres definitely discussion and debate in the newsroom about that, not actual newsrooms but virtual newsrooms, theres definitely different opinions about that, i think there is one side that says if the president is making an announcement it should be broadcasting people should know what hes saying and when it should be analyzed in fact checked, is definitely another one that says he is such a record of disinformation and misinforming that he should not have credibility to get airtime, you see cnn read the needle sometimes taken a press Conference Live and sometimes this is interesting, this is roughly new if he is given a speech at the beginning we dont always show that lie but winnies taking questions we will show the life because that way journalist are able to push back or followup, that is an interesting middle ground where the question and answer will be televised. Its disappeared in the press conferences, it started out in trump was undecided and he would poke and and slowly found she disappeared and it becomes a campaign speech. Keep in mind even if cnn, abc news and cns were allowed to stop caring trump lies, fox would almost run it anyways. So he will still have the direct connection and i actually have an argument in favor broadcasting live, interrupting when something truly outrageous happens, Fact Checking aggressively into ignore his life events is also risky. Dont you think on some level hes gotten boring, america loves to build people up and tear them down with any type of celebrity at some point we just get tired of it and it feels like were tired and exhausted and its not as funny or as interesting the world has really suffered, i get a real sense for the margin of 10 that you need to turn on the president to elect joe biden, people see all his moves, psych when you watch Kellyanne Conway and understand how she evades questions, someone will ask a question about the pandemic and she will grab a word and say speaking about pandemic what about the pandemic of violence across the country and she doesnt answer the question, i feel like weve learned what their approach to all of the bs is in were kind of over it. It is interesting ive heard from the two leaders who said they were surprised when i wrote in the book in the early chapter is that trump is not a rating magnet anymore but he is not ive looked at it extensively, he does not booster ratings automatically when he is speaking, its true that he used to, no denying in 2016 people were on the trump show in the readings with spike, it does not really happen anymore, it happens winnies on fox and friends but if hes given a press conference, the cnn rating do not jump up dramatically winnies on the air and sometimes a ratings decline. It is true, the data backs it up and many people are tired of it and the Biden Campaign is leaning into that and to make america boring again and it seems to be working. A question about journalism what do you think is the future about journalism, newspapers are being severely impacted, the pages are reduced, the depth is not there, what is the future of journalism. All of the above, more of everything and what i mean by that there is a future, its a diminished future but there will always be some segment of the public with a magazine or newspaper and thats going to be a shrieking group but it will be a luxury product that will still exist but increasingly be supported by the way it has been in more of everything we will have more outlets and more sources and more devices and more apps, it continues to get more confusing to know what to trust and in that environment where everything is a source and everything is a Media Company, im a Media Company in your Media Company and we all have instagram pages, in this environment that is so chaotic i think we will see the return trusted brands and brands have been around for a while and the peak slime local news sites, there really from part of the activist with the political operation but their disguise to the local news and i think in an environment where theres not that much true greed and chaos going on, its important to go to the brand that you know thats been there for 20 years in the New York Times is doing so well in the Los Angeles Times is doing so well, thats the direction that i see but i think for Young Journalist its incredible time to have the ability to reach virtually individually, thats what makes a hopeful, its easier than ever to start something and start a new brand and gain trust and try to be entrusted something new if youre not looking at a place that is old and established, the future is more of everything, all the above is the answer. Final question, twopart question from the same person who says in the event the president loses the election, what do you think he will do . Could he be a big talkshow host . I want to read a page of the book that i think has an answer, judge what do you think . I think that a lot of times in our country people dont want to prosecute someone like donald trump because they feel like it creates more division and is not worth it, i am certainly of the school that it trains people that they can commit crimes if they want somebody else not to be held accountable, we saw that after the big bang after 2008 when people were not held accountable, and i think that is probably in for a flight of legal problems, it seems the issues having to do with inflating the value of property in deflating them to make you more money in these situations its something that he clearly will get prosecuted for and found guilty because its in the paperwork and he has a property and wants alone and its worth 100 million if its for tax purposes hope leads for 5 million and he did it over and over again for decades ended so clearly against the law and addition to the other things that we talk about. I think for tax purposes unless the state of new york decides we do not want the trouble of this, he is going to spend the rest of his life in court. On that scenario we will still be talking a lot about donald trump. And virtually. We think about if that is to happen there is to be criminal action against him in his postpresidency, we will need another four tv channels, we will need more channels to cover it all. It all comes out eventually, ultimately every Single Person around him will write a book, a fair amount will write the tellall and we will be surprised, i know there is a melania book coming out soon that has been wrote about her and then the Michael Cohen book comes out in a few weeks, are you hearing any tidbits from those books that we should know about. I am glad the hoax came out before then. The reason i wanted to pull out the book is a have a quote toward the end of the book which polarizes the whole situation and what might happen next. It comes from one of foxs stars and they said trump is like fox frankenstein, they help make him and now hes out of control and no one knows what will happen once he is gone, i think that is true for fox, i dont think its true if trump loses the election and peacefully leaves the white house, will he launch his own television network, try to get a show on some channel, i dont see him going to fox, i think you would be thinking bigger than that, trump tv live from maralago would maybe be the idea. There is some concern but more than that there is a view that the network is bigger than he is now and it will come along with or without and thats going to be a test in 2021 if he is not reelected but i think the one thing we know for sure people will be talking about trump no matter what next year. Are final question, we have not heard much about an ominous, the insider in the administration who wrote the oped, any idea of who that may be into do you think it is. I dont have a guess, i am glad even though they were an ominous and criticism, im glad the person shared with a shared, i agree what you just said, there will be so much that comes out if this is a one term president , there will be so much that comes out, so many books and so many tellalls we will probably come away thinking that we did not know half of it when he was still in office. I cannot imagine how many people took notes of every insane thing that he said for the last four years, can you imagine the private conversations on all of these issues, russia and ukraine in the pandemic, at some point we will hear how he thinks in his inability to think clearly in addition to the corruption and the person that explained covid to him, being frustrated that he does not understand how this spreads and where this can go and at some point all those people will tell us how he resisted doing logical things which could have helped people. Maybe sean hannity will write a tellall. He does not need to he owns a lot of rental properties. That is true i like that when we found out that Michael Cohen had two clients, donald trump and sean hannity, and said a lot. Can i tell people this book was great i really enjoyed it, i learned a lot, i cannot say ive been able to read a lot during the pandemic due to my level of anxiety, mainly what do i read, i read books like life, people hurt, i read entering rewriter your anxious brain, im not reading that much for pleasure, i mainly reading to not lose my sanity but the book is fantastic everybody out there, they bought it so they could watch this and tell people it is very helpful to understand. You can go to buy hoax. Com, find a book, sometimes we want to write a book and we just want to do it, it was more of i need to write this because all the resources swing want to have the chance to. Thank you again gentlemen and thank you for joining us ryans book is hoax, donald trump, fox news and the dangerous distortion and its available wherever books are sold. Thank you