put out by facebook fake and they re fake. what can be more fake than cbs and nbc and cnn. when you look at some of these stories and you look at the level of approval of media, of general media. if you look at it from the day i started running to now, i m so proud that i have been able to convince people how fake it is, because it has taken a nosedive. freedom of the press, established by our founding father s, as a key pillar of american democracy. what happens when the nation s leader encourages disbelief in a fundamental american institution of the let s talk it over with yale history professor timothy snierd. the author of the book on tyranny. 20 lessons from the 20th century. you say you see signs of authoritarianism in the president s attacks on the media. it s interesting in the words that he just used he actually provided us with fake news because the idea of fake news
idea of the president either pardoning people who may be indicted and or even firing the special counsel. what do you make of this? this is one more reason why it s very important we have a free press. when you re facing a constitutional crisis with unprecedented problems, it s a very good thing we re free to discuss it. one unprecedented problem is that a foreign nation interfered in our elections, interfered directly in our sovereignty. we re still getting used to that. we need the press to be able to talk about that. second unprecedented problem, the notion of a president pardoning himself, which is a little bit like borrowing money from yourself. it doesn t make that much sense to me. but it s clearly the first step towards a constitutional crisis and without the press and without the lawyers talking in the free press, we ll have no idea how to deal with that. timothy snierd, thank you so much for joining us. really appreciate it. coming up, the president and the first lady are
welcome back to our friday night broadcast. let s agree for the sake of the next conversation that donald trump uses the most colorful language of any president at least in the modern era and says some of the most questionable things and that is where our next guest comes in. john mcwho are terr is a linguist. he teaches at columbia and he has written extensively and he too is colorful when talking about donald trump and specifically how this president talks. that s why we talked about it with john mcwho are terr. professor, thank you for joining us. thank you, brian. i ve been wanting to ask you, what is your linguist iks definition of this president? donald trump linguisticel is
there s a politics to this. we don t need a state of exception. we need a leader who takes care of the problem ask we need to take care of our own rights. i have a very good friend wo is the son much two survivors. his mother still lives. a piece of her leg is missing because of manning la s dog. she of course has a tattoo on her wrist. and i wonder in her 90s how she views these pictures coming out of places like charlottesville, what a time we re in. in 15 seconds, how do you put the chance of tyranny? the chance is ours to take. this is a challenge for us. we can learn very quickly that things that we need to learn. if each of us does a little thing that we see as our civic duty, we re going to be okay, but it s not a matter of waiting and seeing of the it s a matter of doing. the book is an owners manual in effect. professor timothy snierd. thank you very much for coming. my great pleasure.
may be the modern day record holder in terms of writing the smallest book on the biggest, most important topic. yale university professor timothy snierd was a marshall scholar, educated in the ivy league and at oxford, specializing, though, in europe and the holocaust. he has written a book called on tyranny, 20 lessons from the twentieth century. a pleasure to have you. let me ask first off, what did you see or hear that told you there was a need for this book? well, the book is an encounter of 25 years of thinking about history with a particular moment, because i work on the issues you talk about, the holocaust and the war i know the it in it can happen here can happen because my teachers were people who lived through the holocaust and through communionism. i know it can happen to people like us. and because my students and younger friends in eastern europe are living through it now, i know it can happen now. the experience the moment which