Cnn primetime with abby philips starts right now. Objectively american democracy is in perilous condition. The nations politics are poisoned. Truth has become optional. Instead of desired or even required. The republic has of course always faced threats to it even before Rupert Murdoch. But so much of the current state of our democracy can be traced back to the beast of his creation. Good evening everyone. Im abby philip. Rupert murdoch is stepping down as ceo of fox news tonight. His legacy is outrage porn. Partisan red meat. Stoking relentless culture wars. But it all started with what you could argue is a noble vision to create a center right news network to elevate more perspectives that arent based in gotham or in washington. But instead, Stoking Division seemed to become murdochs mission. So did power and so did the money. Fox became a mouth piece for republican administrations, a mouth piece really for donald trump and eventually a vehicle for his baseless conspiracies. It is important to illustrate a small taste of this mission, 25 years in the making. White supremacy. Thats the problem. This is a hoax. We keep marrying other species and othere ethnics. Are you suffering from the dementia right now . Pure genes. The swedes have pure genes. Finland, the finns have a pure society. In america we marry everybody. Asian people are not liberal by nature. Theyre usually more industrious and hard working. You are a muslim. Why did you write a book about the founder of christianity . Say you are a Cocaine Dealer and you kind of look like one a little bit. For you kids watching at home santa is white but this person is just arguing maybe we should also have a black santa. Santa is what he is. What precisely is diversity or strength . I have something in common with obama and i dont know what the big deal is. He is a halfrican anyway. A pound . A Terrorist Fist Jab . You grew up on tacos correct . No i did not. No. Catholics write letters and muslims stab you with letter openers. Not all muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslims. Many americans including this one believe Barack Obamas emotional attachment to the muslim world has hurt the u. S. A. Thfrjs guy should go back to burning the Taxpayer Incense to whatever pagan deity he is worshiping because it is not jesus. Wont remove her from the Foreign Relations committee why . Because she thinks so little of america . Who is she representing . Because it isnt america. Maybe tomorrow he says he is going to transition to a woman. Better yet maybe a black woman. Maybe even better a half black half pacific islander. Something like that. Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government. How did we wind up with a country in which feminists do science . Theres got to be some down side to having a woman president right . Something. Something that may not fit with that office, correct . Hum. Im going to say no, bill i used to think women just shouldnt be able to vote. Now i think at least liberal women should not be able to hold office i am telling you to shut up. But anyway. You shut up. Know your role and shut your mouth. Im sure hell be happy to hear that. Thank you. I saw some evil laughter. Evil. Evil laughter. No. What is evil laughter . Just the way her face contorted. Michelle obama is so, like the duchess when she speaks. Kind of annoying that way. She is. She needs to drop a few. Bill is the Average American here. Im President Obama. This is the way i feel. I feel like President Obama is just saying, you know what . Ive got the 3. 5 trillion budget that were doing. Un . The biggest myth of all time is that sweat shops are bad. Halloween is a liberal holiday. Come on. Were teaching our children to beg for something to free. The War On Christmas is a global struggle. The fact it began spotlighting companies that refused to say the words merry christmas. I am tolerant all for free speech and free right just not on december 25th. As far as torture goes at least in this controlled experiment to me this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and still have them alive and healthy within minutes. Woke m ms have returned. If you want to marry a turtle you can. Clearly nickleodeon is pushing a Global Warming agenda. We asked why there is violence in our schools but systematically removed god from our schools. Should we be so surprised schools would become a place of carnage . If the feds had not stripped us of our natural rights to keep ourselves safe by keeping and bearing arms, 911 would never have happened. Ploesive developments in the murder of dnc staffer, if true could become one of the biggest scandals in American History and could mean rich could have been murdered under very suspicious circumstances. This virus should be compared to the flu because at worst, at worst, worst Case Scenario it could be the flu. This was not and is not a pandemic. We like the fact that there is a lot of cases in low risk populations because that is exactly how well get herd immunity. The mrna covid vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market now. No one should get them. No one should get boosted. Look right there. The same workers who stayed behind and now wheeling out the sues cases that were under that rectangular table there. The footage appears to show poll workers pulling ballots out of suitcases after they told poll monitors to go home. We talked about the dominion software. I know there were voting irregularities. That is where the fraud took place where they were flipping votes in the Computer System or adding votes that did not exist. Dominion voting systems with you have described it with algorithms in which were designed to be inaccurate rather than to be a secure system i can hardly wait to put forth all the evidence we have collected on dominion starting with the fact it was created to produce altered Voting Results in venezuela for hugo chavez. We have a machine, the Dominion Machine that is filled with holes as swiss cheese. And was developed to steal elections. And being used in the states that are involved. That is fox news, 25 years of it. Of course those last few clips are lies and they cost fox more than 700 million. You can cherry pick any outlets blunders, mistakes, embarrassments but the difference here is that what you saw are not anomalies. They are features. Not a bug. One of their tricks of the trade is repetition daily even hourly. If you say the Talking Point consistently enough, americans become addicted to the outrage. In fact, in the case of january 6th people blindly believed those Talking Points. They acted on them and many of those defendants have testified in court before being sent to prison that that was the case. Asked in a recent deposition whether the rationale for allowing the lies to spread on his platform was, quote, not red or blue but green, murdoch replied, correct. Now, in recent years it has been reported murdoch has been tour yous with trump. It makes sense. His network repeated these lies and it hit the king maker in his pocketbook. But Murdoch Sowed that fabric and rewarded the loudest voices in the room and accelerated the idea if someone called out a lie and called it a lie you are a liberal stooge, a hack, not to be trusted. You are woke. Whatever that means. And there is no doubt that its working for his bottom line at least. The question is tonight, at what cost . At what cost to america . And at what cost to all of us . Joining me now is conservative lawyer george conway, cnns political commentator anna navarro and staff writer for the Washington Post sarah ellison. George, what has been the cost of this . The cost is you have a large segment of the population that is detached from reality, detached from facts. If you try to present them with evidence or facts they will turn it off. They will stop listening. They will simply spew the opposite and they are addicted to hearing what they want to hear whether it is true or not. We saw that with foxs experience that led to foxs payment of the settlement where sometimes they would tell the truth on fox and theyd get blow back and realized they couldnt do that so they kept putting on Sidney Powell and Rudy Guiliani even though they knew that as the emails that were produced in discovery showed, they are peddling laws. Is it getting worse . You all are both former republicans and, you know i am still a registered one. Still a republican. I imagine youve been on fox news. Do you think it is getting worse . I have the distinct honor of never having been on fox news, never having been invited and never will i go to fox news. I think it is a cess pool of Conspiracy Theories and lies. What is the cost to america . The cost of our democracy, the cost to civility. It is the cost to truth. And fact. The amount of people in this country who absolutely believe conspiracy series and you talk about the last few clips being true, no. We just saw the baddies and oldies of fox news for six full minutes including Conspiracy Theories against the rich. That cost them money too. Remember the one about obama not being born in this country . That Conspiracy Theory . And what that has done to america . The rise of racism . The promotion of crt as some sort of evil thing going on that was threatening children. The homophobia against lgbtq. Its been, the cost has been more division. More lies. Less facts. Its been a c echl ss pool over and over but successful. For Rupert Murdoch. The measure is financial success. What is your view on that . I mean, as just pointed out it cost them money. The dominion lawsuit cost them money. It may not even be over yet. How does that factor in . I think some of that is the cost of Doing Business when you are in the business of promoting we were talking about what they were saying during the aftermath of the 2020 election what we learned from all of those documents that came out from the dominion lawsuit is that they had to respect their audience. They didnt want to lose their audience. One of their headlines was they were fearful that if they told the truth they would lose their audience. This is an element of Rupert Murdoch sort of creating a viewership that wanted his product and then he had to chase that viewership. And down the 787 million settle. So it did come back to bite him but it sort of is reaping what he sowed. The consequences are so significant for this country. Do any of you have a sense that this Succession Plan the son coming into power is going to change anything for fox . Why would it . He has been training under his father all of these years in the same way Rupert Murdoch trained under his father. You have to look at what Rupert Murdoch has done. We talk about this country. It is also the united kingdom, also australia. This is a guy who took a small little paper in australia and has turned it into a worldwide News Conglomerate including not just fox, right . But a bastian like the Wall Street Journal which is supposed to be held to a different standard lets say than fox news. I think when it comes to counting dollars and correspondence the amount that they pay to dominion that is chump change to what they earned and why would they change it . Murdoch in his own words doesnt even like trump. But theyre so in bed with this he almost cant get out of the bed hes made for himself. Right. Essentially they were like selling drugs. The drugs were lies. They addicted an audience to it and they cant stop. That is the interesting question. I was an m a lawyer in a prior life, litigator, and one of the things, it is family controlled, Public Company because of the dual shared stock structure. The murdochs have a disproportionate share of the voting control. Which the patriarch of such a family passes on or passes the baton there is often a Management Vacuum and some of the members of the family want to sell and the company could get sold. The question is who is going to buy it . The problem is whoever buys it is going to want a return on their investment. And even they are not going to want to destroy the franchise. They are going to have economic incentives to keep it going. The thing that might stop them, the media environment is changing, how news is distributed. And, also, the fox population, the viewership is kind of aging out. He is 92 but seems to be in full control of his faculties and i suspect what are your views on that . I think that one thing that is very clear is that Rupert Murdochs sons, now lockland is the one involved. The one not as conservative has already left the company. Lockland already said we are not going to change the Market Position of fox news because he does not want to drive his Fathers Company into the ground. I think there is a real risk in changing the political position of fox. He doesnt want to do that politically or a business perspective. I think the other lawsuits out there, smartmatic still has a lawsuit against fox. The points weve been making which is that no one is really running fox. The audience is running fox. Thats an interesting point. Before we go this is in murdochs letter to his staff. He says most of the media is in cahoots with the Yeates Peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth. Very rich. There are some things that have to stick in our craw particularly those of us who were not born with silver spoons in our mouth like donald trump and Rupert Murdoch when they turn around and call other people the elite. Psychological projection. The highest form. Thank you all so much for joining us tonight. Coming up next for us the government is about to shut down in a week and congress is believe it or not going home. They are taking an early weekend even. Well speak to a republican in the middle of all of this chaos. Plus the ukrainian president gets a Cold Shoulder from some on capitol hill as he pleads for more money. This as he learns that one of his nato allies is pulling arms. , will it help lower my glucose . With t the freestyle libre 2 system, you can knowow where your Glucose Level is and where its headed without fingersticks. Know what activities work for you. Manage your diabetes with more confidence and lower your a1c. 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The people who are responsible have decided to go home. Keep this in mind. Everyone knew this deadline was coming. And yet they left washington for six whole weeks and spent the last two weeks back here bickering, fighting and name calling, while facing a shutdown that will close agencies and American Service members wont get paid. Last night when we came on the air Kevin Mccarthy outlined a plan that met some of the hardliners demand from his caucus. A plan that would extend the deadline another month. But tonight there is still no progr progressment. Only this. This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. Joining me now is republican Congressman Ken Buck of colorado. Congressman buck, we got a week left before a potential government shutdown. There is no shortterm deal in sight. Why on earth are you and your colleagues going home . First of all, abby, i am here in washington, d. C. And i will be here all weekend. I will be working with others to try to reach that agreement that will keep the government open. I dont believe the government will shut down in eight days. I think we will have a plan. We will pass a bill without any democrat support. We will move forward to make sure americans have confidence in government and understand we are keeping this government open and funded. Earlier this week so folks understand you voted again with the Defense Spending Bill which is a part of the process but today you did switch your vote to a yes. You seem to have been satisfied with what the speaker put on the table but your colleagues are not. At this point why not reach across the aisle to democrats to make a deal . A deal by the way that would pass the house and maybe pass the senate as well. So the bill that w