Additional funding is provided by. Drporate funding is provi by. Michael moore, welcome to iring line. Thank you so much for having me here. Youre an ademy awarwinning filmmaker, and more than that, you created a new genre of documentary films that really drove the National Discourse about key issues in our country, from the iraq war to guns to healthcare. Ewand youve now started a podcast rumble with michael moore. Right. I ont want people to forget thatn 2016, early, you called who was going topr win thidential election. Yeah, sadly. I never wanted to be more wrong, but live in michigan, so i saw what was going on. And so, i dont know it was four or five months before the donald trump is going to be the next president , and hes going to win by winning michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania. And i first said this on the bill maher show, and booed by the audience. Im gonna shothe clip. Aire is exactly when you s it. Lets take a look. Im sorry to have to kind of the buzzkill here so early on, but i think trump is going to win. I im sorry. You know what . Boo if you want. I am glad youre saying it. Dont want to say it. No, no. The enemy is complacency. So, why did you know . Dr cause e on the roads of michigan, and i and i saw no hillans. Ere and just the way people in michigan were so angry about the last 20 or 30 years of losing all the industrial jobs, or most of them, and. Nobody in washgton was listening to them. They didnt so much like trump as a person people had lot of problems with him but they wanted to throw a molotov cocktail into the system that had made their lives so diff o, i dont know if people are listening now, but you have prediction for 2020 . Well, i can just say do you have a prediction r 2020 . I dont know if its so much a prediction, but, again, because im paying attention to where people are at, i think its very possible that trump he lost the popular votery to hily 3 million votes. I think hell lose the popular vote again to whoever the democrat is by 4 million to 5 million votes and could still win the Electoral College and get four more years. Is there anything in the next 10 months that would change this prediction you have . Yes. Fortunately, the numbers are on the side of the democrats the vast majority of americans ree with the democratic platform pick any issue. Majori of americans believe c thmate change is real. They believe the minimum wage is too low. Ou women be paid the same as men. Mass incarceration is off the rails. You go on and on through all the issues, the majority of americans actually agree with the democrats. So then why cant the democrats win . Also, the demographic has changed. 70 of the people who are eligible to vote thisear in the election are either women, people of color, or young adult8 tweend 35, the base bl the Democratic Party. So how could the it this time . And, yet, you still think th might. Yes, i think its possible, because i dont see a real strategy just who the candidate is. Its what the larger plan is to get out the vote, but to give people a reason to vote. Most of the polling, if you look at michigan right now, suggests that trump is not going to win it again, at least at this moment. Yes. In part because of what we did in 18. Bl we reall out the republicans. We removed all of them from lansing, from the state capital. The topfour positions were all republican a couple years ago. Now theyre all democrats, and they are a female governor, a black lieutenant governor,rn a lesbian at general, and a single mom whos the secretary oftate. We removed no offenite guys, but we removed all the white men from power and replaced them with the mority of the country, which, again, female, people of color, young adults. So, no offense to white guys, but youreupporting bernie sanders. Yes, im not a selfhating white guy. I just i dont want wh the men who are watching this, i know its feeling like the women are taking over. You know, its its okay, guys. Were gonna be oka women like us. Moly. But youre supporting bernie sanders. Yes, i am. In 2016, yohad this theory that was the last stand of the angry white m and its one of the reasons that you thought that trump would win. Anyou wrote, from the perspective of an angry white man that. Mu ho of a sense do you have that this is still at play . I think its very much at play. I think especially guys guys i grew up with are like, geez. You ow, weve held this powe for 200plus years. How it that, on our watch, that this could happen . And i think it fghtens people, and they shouldnt be frightened. The country will be a better place with more women in charge, with more women running things. Its just its look arod the world in those countries where women have more power, both political power, corporate power, all kinds of power things are just a little bit better. Theyre a little kinder. You know Elizabeth Warren well. Shes been in your films i mean, you all have sung from the same song sheet for years, as well. Why do you support bernie over her . Because bernie has been the same consistent fighter for equal rights, against war, civil rights since the 1960s. And has she not been consistent . No. Wl, no, shes been a republican. I mean, shes talked about this. So, she was a republican to 1996. So thats the hit against her . Thats why you dont support her now . No, no, no. T but yosaid te hasnt no, she hasnt been consistent since the time she was young. G she was a yonservative republican, which i dont hold that against her. Hillary ran the republican. Ol ater girl. Yeah, she was a goldwater girl. So, no, you have to be you know, i can i ill tell you the truth i actually, as a freshman in high school,ent doortodoor for nixon because he was gonna end the vietnam war. I s so antiwar, there was no way humphrey, he could be elected. And so, i didnt like nixon, but i thought, wellhe has said publicly he has a plan to end the war within six months. No goodh for me. But why bernie, not warren . You know what i think they should do . I think they should go back intd a roomalk again, cause they are friends. Whoever wins the most delegates by t end of the primaries is going to be theandidate, and the otheone gives their delegates to that person, and then one is thpresident ial candidate, who has the most delegates, and the other is the Vice President ial candidate. Let me ask about the Electoral College. Sa yeah. Ive heard yo youre for eliminating it. Absolutely, yes. So, help menderstand then, if we got rid of the Electoral College, how would we be paying any attention to michiga pennsylvania, or wisconsin right now . What youre saying is thatav if we didntthe Electoral College, we would just be americans are so selfish, theyre only going to consider ats good for new york and l. A. And seattle. Or if im a candidate, igonna go campaign in the Population Centers in order to get the most votes. Right now, they dont go even can california or new york, and they never get a visit. That is just wrong. Its just its just not well, thats not true. Every sing candidate comes through new york city every week and twice on sunday. Well, because its the media catal. And its the money capital, so they come here to get money. And they go to Silicon Valley for money, and they go to l. They dont go to schenectady. They dont go to schenectady. Tts true. A they dont go t grass valley, california, so. In i guess the point im m though, is, doesnt the Electoral College, because it lessrepresentedkon with parts of the country. That was not the reason it was set up. But its one of the effects now. I agree. Slave states, so they could count their slaves as 3 5 of a human so they could get larger congressional representation. We have a storied past. You know this. Ff but thet of it now is that its causing us to focus on vers that might otherwise easily be forgotten. Yeah. Wel i can say, from my end of the political spectrum, we dont forget people. Were actually about remembering the people that are forgotteand fighting for them. Well, hillary didnt even go to wisconsin. Well, i dont csider her when i say my side of the fence. I dont i mean she was the democratic nominee i wrote in my book once. Andou voted for her. That bill clinton was the best republican president we ad since abraham lincoln. So, i mean, i think the clintons are the part of the problem in the sense that they have watered down what the Democratic Party, the party of Franklin Roosevel this should be called the fdr party. Thats wt we should be fighting for, the things that he fought for. He was a traitor to his class and stood on the side of the working person. And thats what the democrats should be doing, and if they do it, theyll win elections. Do that stilnt answer my question about the which is whats the question . The question is, should i get rid of it . Yes. I would get rid of it. But if you got rid of it, i an, doesnt it serve a purpose now in forcing us to reckon with voters who are forgotten and left bind . Who are these forgotten voters . Voters that you prd woulds vote for trump. Okay. That hillary and the Democratic Party forgot about. Okay. But people and i know you dont claimat art of the Democratic Party, but there is systemically isnt the Electoral College servg a purpose . Listen, i watch the show, so i know you know that the real forgotten people in this country, the people that ,dont still have the pow that dont have the voice women, people of color, young people these are the forgotten people. These are the people who are struggling on 7. An ho . You know . Whenever they say workingclass, you alwaysof thinhat white, workingclass lunchbucket guy, but the average workingclassfe person now ile. The average person. But is regional, and depends on what part of the country youre in. And africanamerican and latino these are the forgotten people. And you know what . If some white people its not just forgotten people. Ca i mean, soutlina people go to south carolina, where the africanamericanti popu gets a say early in the electoral process. Right . Were gonna agree to disagree on the Electoral College. Yeah, yeah. I want to turn to yourki filmmang. Id like to ask u about your documentary work, which includes 11 featurelength documentary films. All in color. One for which you won anar Academy Bowling for columbine. Yes. And id like to read you a quote about something you said after your breakout 1989 roger me. Okay. You saidno documentary is in linear, chronological order. If you are looking for tt, watch cspan. Right. Ha liberties do you take when youre making a documentare aning a story . What is the difference between mang a documentaryst and telling y and, say, writing a column for a newspaper . Thats a good point, because i always have trieto explain that my documentaries are like an oped. But you caot write an oped for the New York Times and have things in there that are wrong. E you cant acts in your oped that are not correct they will factcheck that. So i make these oped films ere im esenting the facts as they are, but then my opinion the facts are right. My opinion may n be right. I think its right cause its my opinion, but i may not be right. A you have to admit the people who have disputed many of the the facts in yours. Documentar well, people dont like the facts, and so then they dispute them. The fact that the cia trained osama bin laden, for example. That was factchecke yeah, the cia no, the cia funded the actually train osa laden. t big difference. Well, he was one of the leaders of it. And you cant get around that by saying, we gave money tohe mujahideen, which hes a part of andne of the leaders of, and say, oh, no, we had nothing to do with osama bin laden. Well, i dont know. Er the factchecame back an said that was a stretch. Hes an unintended consequence of the ft that thats closer. Thats closer fact. Before you assassinate the top general of a country, you should pause and thinkab t the unintended nsequences of that. Before you invade iraq, which had nothing to do with 9 11, you know, you should stop and think about that and the consequences of th. And so, naturally, when i put out a film like fahrenheit 9 11, i mean,th re gonna come at me with everything theyve got. But the fact of the matter is, is that people dont want to hear that had something to do with helping to fund the very thing that eventually gave us 9 11. So, i think, getting back to how you choose to tell stories, id like to show you a clip infrom an original firing that aired in 1995 with william f. Buckley jr. Ananother Academy Award winner, Charlton Heston, who also appears in lets take a look. Bine. Okay. Alright. As lenin lenin presciently observed in 1919 very long k it was like he said, the moving picture is the most powerfulever invented to shape the mind of man. Very smart fella. From which you well, not all that smart. [ both laugh ] from which you conclude what . From which i conclude that it can be dangerous. People believe somehow wt they ofe in the moving image, in a curious wayn more than what religious clerics and even politicia tell them. If they see it in a movie, itomehow is true. Mo is thng image the most powerful tool invented to shape mans ideas . I dont know about that, but i think if youve seen Police Academy 3, you know the dangerous impact a movie like that can have on our young people when they watch things like that or transformers or whatever. I mean, im being facetious, but, yes. Of course moes are powerful. Look, eding is part of how you create a documentary, right . Because thats your opportunity to one, right . And to shape the message. Yes. So how do youhink about that editing process as a docentary filmmaker . In the same way youre thinking about it. You are going to edit this conversation in order for it to tell a good story, to make sense, to cut out erthe this or that or what as artists, we all have the opportunityto resent the story in the way that we want to present it. And so when i presentne a film of like, lets say, bowling for columbine. So i have these strong feelings about guns and h we should be dealing with it. And you look into why americ ch a violent culture han why were more violent canada and all this yeah. And even countries like canada, who have guns they inve hunting tons of hu guns in canada, and ey dont shoot each other. And i wanted to exore, why is that . Because the canadians arent better than us. Theyve got the same 23 chromosomes inach of their cells that we have. So why us . Why do we do this . Alright. So, can i give you af the editing and ask you sort of how you made the choices . H, yeah,ure. So lets watch a clip from bowling for columbine, which takes place in littleton, colorado, which is where i went to hh school. You talk about how the nra came after the massacres and lets watch how nra prident Charlton Heston, who we just saw on firing line, is portrayed. Uhhuh. So he shot the girl, and he shot her in the headn front of me. And he shot the black kid because he was black. On i hav five words for you from my cold, dead hands. [ cheers and applause ] just 10 days after the columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to denver and held a large progun rally for the National Rifle association. Good morning. All good morning. And thank you forfor coming supporting your organization. Lright, so, the question there is, how did you make that choice in editing . Because the clip ofn charlton hes saying, over my cold, dead hands, actually came from anll nra a year later, in north carolina. So how do yo yeah, we begin now were gonna begin the Charlton Heston section of the mov. So, we have a generic Charlton Heston thing nothat we know that people cause theyve seen that from my cold, dead hands everyere. Soere gonna set up the fa that were now gonna go to Charlton Heston. Theres your iconic video clip of heston. An,then i say, 10 days lat and then i show the billboard in denver, and n i show him there 10 days later. Do you worry that it leavesth people witimpression that he said, from my cold, dead thnds 10 days later . He always sai. It was in every it just wasnt in the clip ckage that we could get. Except for that he didnt say it 10 days later in colorado, d it leaves you with the impression that he did. Well, i dont think so. I think it because at part of him at the convention is after that. That part, that its hard to explain this you dont so you dont think that it leaves people with the impression that he said that in colorado 10 days after thlu ine shting . It leaves people with the impression that Charlton Heston believed veryst ngly in the Second Amendment and so strongly that that he would always say this from my cold, dead hands. I guess the question that i have for you is, you kw, what about people who arent familiar with Charlton Heston . What abo people who didn know he always said that and they were left with the impression thatd be like sobody who didnt know who santa claus was. Thats not true. You know, itd beike, all of a sudden, if i showed some footage of santa going, ho ho then you say, well, you know,nd you went from there, him on the sleigh, but then, e next sleigh he was on was in idaho. And, you know, people are gonna be confused cause theyre gonna think, on that other sleigh, when he was actually in oregon. Really disagree. Youre trying to split a hair on this. I disagree, because heres why. So many people watch that film, it won an acemy award, and they were familiar themselves with the issues and the details of columbine. They may not havknown that he said that. Frankly, i grew up in a republican family, was a member of the nra when i was 12nd id never seen him say that. You never heard Charlton Heston say, from my cold, dead hands . That was his slogan. I hadnt. What would be wrong in thatis f i showed him holding up that gun and then dubbed in from you know, so you didnt see s lips moving, i love this gun so much, i sleep with it every night. You know, obviously, that would be wrong. So youre saying he said it,d and snt matter that you said he said it all the time. The bad thing would be i you put something in there that he didnt say. Ats what he said all the time. You made some headlines cently because you tweet an apology to irans supreme leaderol ayh khamenei for the u. S. Strike against general qasem soleimani. Mmhmm. You wrote, i deeply reet this is according to a google translation, because you wrote it in farsi. I deeply regret the violence on behalf of a man that most americans never voted for. Avoid power. Sincere man, michael moore, american citizen. Why did you feel the need toe apolog Ayatollah Khamenei . Because i do not want the assassination of a human being done in my name, with my tax dollars. I want them to know in iran that we americans do not do that. We are not at war with iran. We have made life so miserablee for anian people since 1953, when our cia and the british mi6 overthrew and helped to stage the democratically elected Prime Minister of iran. Ot we are good player here. To be upset. E every right that doesnt justify anything the ayatollahs done. I have friends have film i have a filmmaker friend whos under house arrest. Right. And hes pbably lucky to be under house arrest and not actually in jail. Yeah, only because i and other members of the academy here, in this cotry, have organized support around him is he probably not in thats why hes not inn. No, no. This is iran, just like a whole lot of other countries, do not do well by their people. No itthat you think that Ayatollah Khamenei is a good leader or is just to his citize or was democratically elected himself, or. No. They do have democratic elections. Ha they d a well, no, now you gave a look like, oh, no, come on. They do. They do have democratic elections. Ey ave opposition parties. The year i was born the ayatollahs not elected,u. The the year and neither is trump. But trump came toowerti through a cotional process that weve all agreeupon, which is differentrom Ayatollah Khamenei. I never agreed to provision in the constitution. Im against it and i will work to get rid of okay. I want to end on one fun thing. I should mention somethingis that sur me when was watching another pbs program by Henry Louis Gates jr. Skip gates, who interviewed you and conducted a thorough study of your genealogy. And what he discovered, michael moore, was that. Lets take a look at what discovered. Okay. Weve been told that were 100 irish. 100 irish. D i starth michael moore. Moving back on his pernal line, we came to susanan henry hoover. Theyre michaels third greatgrandparen. We found them in indiana in 10 listed in the minutes of a group known as the whitewater friends. Henry hoover, as it turns out, is related to my greatgrandfather rbert hoover. No were no serious genealogists at firing line, but it appears that you and ico are sixtins once removed. Yes. So now people right now at home are trying to adjust their screen caustheyre trying to figure out what happened here. I know. Let me just say, obviously, your branch of the family ended up okay. Ours was there was probably too much moonshine. Well, theyre all quakers. I dont know if any of themdr k. Actually, thats true. Is that we our ancestors past are quakers. They were pacifists. Is pac. They were abolitionists. They were abolitionists. And when he told me i was related to one of the 45 president s, i wa like, thinking, oh, you know, kennedy or, y, maybebama. You know, hes got the irish wing. So, heres what you tweeted when youound out it was Herbert Hoover. You said. Okay. I will say this, that since i wrote that twe, ive done a little more research on my fourth cousin, president hoover, and what have you learned about Herbert Hoover . Ive learned that he was s lest say he was the maybe the right guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, wn it comes to the Great Depression yes, im talking about the Great Depression, because there were so many oer things about him and i was talking to you before the show, and you really know the history of our family. He great humanitarian wh kept 1 3 of europes population alive between 1914 and923. Yeah. This is an extraordinary story of somebody who pioneered International Humanitarian food lief. Right. Heres my question to you. How come i havent been invited to any of the reunions . Youre coming now. Youre coming now. Im gonna make all sorts ofs relatirn over in their graves. Yes. Its something. St at lext thanksgiving. It should be a very interesting that would be fic. Us hoovers. That would be fantastic. I hope youll come back, michael moore. And its an nor to be on this show. I watched as a kid when buckley was the host, and i i always thought it was important to hear the other side. Fantastic. Michael moore, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Firing line with Margaret Hoover is made possible by. Additional funding is provided Corporate Funding is provided by. Youre watching pbs. The people who gave the money erto make mister r neighborhood are the people of this and other. And. Its a Beautiful Day in this neighborhood a Beautiful Day for a neighbor w ld you be mine . Could you be mine . Its a neighborly day in this beauty wood