2011. jump in because you guys know so much more about this than i do. when i learned that about the timing it suggested more of a window into culture. there is a tendency to put it on ailes because he s no longer there. that s the story line fox wanted everyone to come out with, they had launched this, gotten to the bottom of it, ailes, it was stunning he left the company he founded. they said we want a transparent, open, safe culture for women. everything is fine. everyone is moving on. we obviously see this is kind of a problem in a workplace that is much harder to eradicate. while they were seeing all these things and putting out those statements and making those sorts of grand pronouncements about the future, they knew that these settlements were there
with bill o reilly and they weren t announcing them. this is a business. they have a business to run and they don t want to sacrifice their biggest star who pulls in half a billion dollars a year over two years. so he s valuable to the company. it makes you look at the investigation a little differently. was that an effort to whitewash the problems or an effort to have a great public relations moment or were they really serious about getting to the bottom of the problem. what we know, too, it s not just roger ailes or bill o reilly who have had accusations made against them. theres a woman where fox news struck a settlement of $2.5 million with. she had made allegations a man sexually assaulted hera fox news executive. now, one of the things that you have to deal with in reporting this, and frankly dealing with it legally, is what is real and what is on
and allies to build this narrative there was this wild surveillance of trump and his associates. there were conversations between fisa targets and other people foreigners or trump associates themselves during which names of trump campaign officials, et cetera, family members, were caught up in this. it s the wide dissemination that is a problem, potentially a crime. susan rice has a credibility problem. devin nunes has a credibility problem. so this is very muddied waters here at this point. but it s important for people to know that what jim points out in his reporting, this is not only legal, like it or not, it s not even unusual, is really that s the fundamental headline here and the bottom line. so then jim, take it one step further for us, what a.b. just raised, do we know how widely susan rice disseminated the name she asked to be unmasked or revealed to her? we don t know that.
about can the genie ever be put back in the bottle. once they uncork this, once everything is about 50 plus one, the history of the senate has been about slowing things down, not looking necessarily for a straight line majority but trying to build up some sort of consensus, get some kind of bipartisan support. that is a thing really of the past. right now it s all about partisan politics, what president s party is in office, which all the members a.b., let s be clear. republicans say, harry reid started it. harry reid in 2013 got rid of the filibuster for lower court nominations and what will happen by doing this for supreme court nominations many fear to it leading to legislation going away as well. i understand jeffrey toobin doesn t have a problem with
there s no way to turn back now. funny way to turn back, keeping the facts straight how you have general issues versus specific ones of concern here, a.b. stoddard how it s done. do you see that reported legitimately and others in the conservative issue. i do think leaking is an issue. leaking is a problem no matter who the administration is, there s a code of conduct and they aren t supposed to be leaking stuff. wide dissemination of leaks is really the problem here. but what people are doing we ve been talking about, confusing and conflating these issues. people at home interested in the truth really need to learn the difference between incidental collection and wiretapping. they are not the same thing. unmasking is not wiretapping. unmasking is not leaking. so it allows trump supporters