Buzzfeed ceo sits down with me for an optimistic view of the few c future. Lets begin with the weeks biggest media story. You cannot understand the trump years without understanding fox news. You cant understand fox these days without understanding trump. The members of his cable news cabinet sometimes have more power than his appointees. The new yorker decided to take a deep dive and tried to wrap it up in a single story. Her story drove much of the media news with the Democratic National committee saying fox will not host a primary debate. Lets get to it. Jane, your story suggests the network has moved from partisanship to propaganda. Did that word keep coming up in your interviews . It did. This is not just with liberal sources. Liberals have been on foxs case from the start. What i was hearing was a number of conservatives who were finding what fox is doing alarming. Were talking about conservatives who maybe have differences with trump. They find that increasingly theres no dissent allowed on foxs prime time shows. There was reporting last year by cnn that you followed up on about the Stormy Daniels story. That fox knew about it 2016 and tried to report about it and was stopped by bosses. She has said shes under a nondisclosure agreement with fox. She has a gag order. What she has said to others is that her story was spiked for political reasons, that she had the story about Stormy Daniels being paid off with hush money by the trump organization. She had it by october 2016 and her editor at the time, the top editor of the website at fox said to her good report kiddo, but Rupert Murdoch wants donald trump to win. So set it aside. Obviously an explosive thing if true. Ken mccourt has claimed that he said in my story that he didnt say that. She had quite a bit of reporting done and there are a lot of ways to check it. Her lawyer at this point is calling for that nda to be lifted by fox so she can defend her herself. One of the other developments is the departure of bill shine from the white house. He describe him in detail in the story. What do you make of his sudden departure . I think he became baggage. As i wrote in the story he was getting millions of dollars still from fox news while he was the director of communication for the white house. Youve got this incestuous relationship already between fox and the white house. It was too much of an issue. Thats what he said when he was talking to colleagues in the white house explaining his departure. He felt he had become a distraction and that it wasnt going to go away. Do you think the president ever worries about these optics . This incredibly cozy inappropriate relationship with fox news . Does he worry about that . Immediately after my story came out, as if to illustrate it, he tweeted yet again something about fox and friends. If hes worried hes not showing it. He needs fox as much as fox needs him. Its a similar bio tick relationship. Trump needs the fox viewers. They are his base. Both fox and trump have the same sort of Business Model which is in order to keep their support in place theyve got to enrage their viewers, enrage the base. Fear based, anger based model. Read the story and you can read quotes from people who worked at fox. When she was at fox she said the number one thing they always said when picking the story, this is going to enrage the viewers. That was the mantra. So this is how they decide its their journalistic load star. You describe the relationship between President Trump and Rupert Murdoch, the boss of all things fox. You say that murdoch Motor Vehicles mocks or criticizes trump behind his back. Ive got this from a number of people. Murdoch got off the phone with trump and called him an expletive deleted idiot. Hes enjoyed regaling stories of trumps short comings to his friends in new york and los angeles. I think he enjoys the relationship. He puts down a lot trump knows it im told by people in the white house. Trump deals with needs murdochs support. He needs murdoch. Others are doing similar reporting. Others are looking at this relation. What other questions do you still have . I started the story taking a look at bill shine and the question i had was does fox program the white house or does Trump Program fox. Is it state return tv or is it a tv run state . I dont think we have a definitive answer on that even though i spent months on the story and interviewed over 75 people. It goes both ways. Its a very unusual situation and particularly for our country. Weve never we dont have state run tv until now. Thanks so much. Great to be with you. So many developments in the days since her story was published. Bill shine stepping down. Members of Congress Looking for information about possible white house interference in the at t deal. Then the former fox reporter demanding a release from her nda. All that fall out. Lets begin with this debate conversation. The Democratic National committee saying fox news wont be considered as a partner or host for a democratic primary debate. Nbc and msnbc have the first. Cnn the second one. Fox not on the list. Joining me now is my panel. Ange angela, what was your reaction to janes story . It tied all these strands together, two years worth of conversation about fox being the propaganda arm of the white house. Why did this matter . Partly because of the story telling and it validated its a big moment for fox news. Its kicking off advertising season right now. The major story fox news is saying we know our prime time people are out there, our opinion people are out there, but our news is dependable and reliable. This story cut against the narrative. Theyve been emphasizing the news division. They have a news division. Its huge compared to the Opinion Division which has the highest rated shows. Both exist. Its getting uncomfortable for both to exist in the same body. Why would democrats consider going on fox for a did ebate . Democrats want to attract as many people as possible. Thats why it might have been under consideration. Democrats have not been participating or having fox news as a media partner in debates prior to this. It should not be surprising or be controversial that democrats made this decision. Its a rationale decision based on facts and reality. Your view . I think theyre missing a golden opportunity. Lets assume that fox is state tv. If during the cold war we had given him 30 minutes on soviet tv, would he have taken it . This would be a place to call out fox. Second, one of the things thats different democrats have learned who theyre not reaching. Not everyone at fox is a coal aid drinking trumpist. The democrats are already in a little bit of trouble because theyre so anxious to appeal to their base. It has nothing to do with respecting fox as a real news institution. This would have been to their political benefit. Do you think so . The best way to persuade a voter and all the data supports this, is facetoface contact. If democrats want to effectively reach voters who do not share their political views, the best way to do that is to go into those communities. We have access to voter files. We know where registered republicans are, where registered independents are. You can go into communities and have a facetoface conversation. Why would we invest in something . Democrats should invest in things that work in terms of reefing vot reaching voters. A frequent commentator said he left because its a propo gan da outlet. I think its important to speak to people who may not be persuaded. The fox viewer is seeped in this. Every single major narrative, theres a symmetry because whats happening on the news programs. Ed henry one weekend conservative talk show. Theres so much blurring of the lines every day. This is why you have a chance to break through this. If you can reach 3 Million People when john kennedy went to houston in 1960 and then took that exchange, and used it political advertising it helped. I think i worked on a few campaigns myself before i became a virgin journalist. One of the things that was most effect is saying to people you and i may have a disagreement. Heres where i stand. I think it is tactically it doesnt validate fox. Hillary clinton did many interviews with fox news. Not many. She did a few. She did a town hall. And so did barry sanders. Whats the problem doing a debate with three journalists where you say heres why your network is poisoning the conversation . Because of whats in janes piece. It shifted to being something different, more akin to propaganda. Thats why its a more dangerous beast. Hosts of fox have been saying people like me should be standing up for them to host a dnc debate. What if we said a bad doctor who does something terrible, other doctors should stand up for that doctor . Thats a ridiculous argument. Heres what we know about fox. Its a revolving door for talent to come into the trump administration. There are many fox contributors working within the trump administration. Roger ailes was advising President Trump following his departure from fox news. Bill shine was working there. This is dangerous. It doesnt make sense to validate this as normal. Would you have had adrian sokirof go on tv . Would i . Would you have had him had that opportunity emerged would you have had him go on soviet tv for 90 minutes and tell the people this is a dictator regime . Im not going to engage in something that was before i was worn. What i will say is that at the end of the day we know i want to talk about what we know now in the present. What we know here and now about fox news its basically completely aligned with the trump administration. There are other ways to reach voters. Theres podcasts. Theres channels that can be Distribution Channels that can reach voters. Why wouldnt we use those channels . There should be solidarity in certain situations. If a fox News Reporter was blacklisted from the white house, we should all stand up for that fox News Reporter. This is a Democratic National committee issue. Foxs fight is with the dnc, not the media. So many d. C. Reporters were supporting fox about going on fox. There was a kind of i dont know what that was about. If you think it reflected someone in foxs response. They said the dnc is banning Chris Wallace and brett. They made it personable. In that case its not about solidarity. Theyre helping out their friends which i think is understandable. I also think thats part of it. The other thing is theyre not making the separation between its possible to have media solidarity and in this context say i dont have to advocate for fox news to be a debate partner for the dnc. I think its important to make sure as i say, my view of this is tactic tactical. The dnc can pick its forum. Tactic cli, i think theyre blowing it. Well find out after the election. Quick break here and then more on some of the fall out from the new yorker article. Well talking to the congressman who wants records about possible interference from the doj. Thats coming up after a quick break. Pardon the interruption but this is big now with tmobile get the Samsung Galaxy s10e included with unlimited data for just 40 a month. You wouldnt accept an incomplete job from any one else. Why accept it from your allergy pills . Most pills dont finish the job because they dont relieve nasal congestion. Flonase sensimist is different. It relieves all your worst symptoms, including nasal congestion, which most pills dont. Its more complete allergy relief. And all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. Flonase sensimist helps block six key inflammatory substances. Most pills only block one. 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Org has President Trump been using the department of justice to attack Media Outlets he doesnt like . Thats been a question since the first day of his presidency. Given to his opposition of at t to buy time warner. In new reporting its said that gary cohn was in the room when trump railed against the deal and gary cohn had to sue at t block the deal. The government did sue. The doj denied there was political interference at all. The deal did go through. Because of the reporting, there are new questions about whether trump tried to interfere and abused his power. Democrats in the house and senate say theyre inve investigating. They want to get ahold of records from the white house and doj about contacts that may have happened. Lets talk more about it with the congressman joining me now. Great to see you. Thank you for being here. What are you requesting, what documents you want to attain . Good morning. When this was first reported, i asked attorney general sessions directly whether the white house or anyone on the president s behalf reached out to him in connection with the at t time warner proposed merger. He refused to answer my question. The chairman refused to require him to tdo that. We made requests for documents from the administration with request for documents. We have renewed that request. Again asking for any documents that relate to any conversations between the white house, the administration and the department of justice with respect to this. This is very disturbing. Antitrust enforcement is law enforcement. In the same way it would be completely inappropriate for the administration to interfere in a criminal prosecution to charge someone or not charge someone and urging the department of justice to do that. Executives at cnn and at t suspected this for a long time. They suspected trump was interfering. Suspicions are not enough. There has to be evidence. Do you believe youll be able to find a smoking gun email or text message or something . We certainly have a responsibility to look at it. I raised my own concerns about the merger. Setting aside the merits, its clear the president cannot interfere or attempt to interfere to reward his friends or punish his enemies. This is reminiscent of the nixon days with the itt case. We have a responsibility to call in witnesses, to get at the truth. We need to protect the rule of law and make sure people have confidence its being done in the appropriate way and not free from any political interference. We requested documents. If were compelled to, well issue subpoenas and bring witnesses in. Well get to the bottom of this and make sure we can ensure the American People were not permitting political interference by the president to punish people he perceives as enemies. Its inappropriate. He thinks the Washington Post is an enemy. He criticized are you looking into his attacks on amazon . This was a proposed merger. Theres been a persistent attack on the rule of law, on the free press. Were going to look at all these issues. Congressman, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Coming up former fox news executive and white house aid bill shine is out of the white house. Can anyone be communication director for President Trump . My mind off it all. Maybe you could relieve some stress by calling geico for help with our Homeowners Insurance. Geico helps with Homeowners Insurance . They sure do. And they could save us a bundle of money too. Im calling geico right now. Cell phone . Its ringing. Get to know geico and see how much you could save on homeowners and condo insurance. But im more than a number. When im not sharing ideas with my colleagues im defending my kingdom. My essilor lenses offer more than vision correction with three Innovative Technologies for my ultimate in vision clarity and protection together in a single lens the essilor ultimate lens package. 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Most americans believe trump committed crimes before he took office. Not only that, most americans recognize the president is not trustworthy and most people think that most minds are made up about the president. Most people arent going to change their opinions no matter what information comes out. If youre the person tasked with improving trumps image, maybe youre not doing such a great job. Either way im guessing the job bill shine had is going to remain vacant for a while.