No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Legacy media gives Trump exactly what he wants

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

One by one, the media falls into Trump’s grasp. Brian interviews Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau about Trump backtracking on his biggest campaign promise and whether political gravity still exists. And newly-elected North Carolina Supreme Court justice Allison Riggs joins to discuss Republicans’ efforts to undo her win in the November election.Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about how so many members of the media are falling one by one into Trump's grasps. And I interview PodSafe America's John Favreau about Trump backtracking on his biggest campaign promise and whether political gravity still exists. And I'm joined by the newly elected North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Alison Riggs to discuss Republicans' efforts to undo her win in the November election. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. You might have caught this clip from Donald Trump just a few days ago. But the media has tamed down a little bit. They're liking us much better now, I think. If they don't, we'll have to just take them on again, and we don't want to do that.

The media is tamed down a little bit. They're liking us much better now, I think. If they don't, then we'll have to just take them on again, and we don't want to do that. So usually Trump is full of shit. He's not here. Here, he's telling the truth, because what we've seen from so much of legacy media in the last few weeks has been as swift as it is disappointing. You've heard the phrase obeying in advance. They are putting on a clinic in doing exactly that.

It started when Jeff Bezos blocked Washington Post from endorsing Kamala over Trump ahead of the election. The L.A. Times billionaire owner did the same thing. Joe and Mika on MSNBC's Morning Joe announced that they'd gone down to Marlago for some face-time with the president-elect after he won. CNN has made Trump appendage Scott Jennings the face of their network. Mark Zuckerberg donated a million bucks to Trump's inauguration fund, which was followed shortly thereafter by Amazon, announcing that they're doing the same. And of course, you know, the New York Times has trafficked so deeply in both sidesism over the last few years that it's almost become a parody of itself. Then this weekend, news broke that ABC News and George Stephanopoulos reached a settlement with Trump in his defamation suit against the host, wherein ABC is now going to pay $15 million to Trump's presidential foundation.

Now, that suit was brought over George Stephanopoul saying that a jury found that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll. it's worth noting here that the judge in this case, who presided over this case, concluded that the claim that Trump raped Carol was, quote, substantially true. So he wrote, quote, the finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was raped within the meaning of the New York penal law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her as so many people commonly understand the word rape, adding, indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that. That is a direct quote from Judge Lewis Kaplan. So here's the thing about a defamation case against a public figure, which George Stephanopoulos is. Trump would have had to prove actual malice, meaning that Stephanopoulos knew that the statement was false or acted with reckless regard for the truth. Stephanopoulos saying that the jury found him liable for rape comports with what the judge presiding over the case wrote. In fact, there's also the fact that Trump would have had to prove damages, meaning prove that

Stephanopoulos' comments caused Trump reputational harm and caused him financial hardship and that money needs to be repaid to restore what he lost, whether from lost business or emotional distress. Does anybody think that George Stephanopoulos actually caused Trump financial or reputational harm? Is there some massive subset of ABC News's Sunday audience that suddenly swung away from Trump? Did Trump lose his ability to raise money?

Like, the notion that Trump suffered damages here is a joke. In other words, Trump would have had a miserable time trying to prove that Stephanopoulos intended Trump harm, and Trump would have had a miserable time trying to prove that he suffered as the result of it. But still, that didn't stop ABC News from settling for $15 million. Why? Well, there's actually two reasons that I would imagine they did it. First, they get the benefit of being able to donate $15 million to a guy who is very much expecting everybody

to pay their way back into his good graces. Again, Zuckerberg did it. Bezos did it. Donald Trump is expecting payments from these people. And second, ABC News actually gets the benefit that their payment still has an error of plausible deniability. This wasn't just us giving cash to Trump. No, definitely not. This is money that we were forced to give him because of the defamation case and so we had no choice but to settle.

See, they get to have their cake and eat it too. And their gift to Trump isn't just a million bucks like Bezos and Zuckerberg. They gave a cool $15 million, all into the guise of being forced to pay because of a defamation case that was effectively unwinnable for Trump had they actually pursued this thing. All of which is to say, these hosts and outlets are falling over themselves to curry favor with the guy, whether by kissing the ring in person at the buffet line in Mar-a-Lago or by writing hefty checks, they are making sure that he knows he's got them. I know that, you know, the Washington Post's motto has become a punching bag, but it really

is something that the first instant democracy dies in darkness was challenged. these people all rolled over for Trump and gave him exactly what he wanted. Democracy, in fact, is perfectly capable of dying in broad daylight. So, look, not to get to meta here, but as we head toward this Trump administration, the second Trump term, this is yet another reason why it is so important for big D Democrats and little D democracy to bolster independent media. The reality is that the left has relied forever on legacy media to act as its spokespeople and more recently to take up the work of protecting democracy.

But those people are broadcasting that they are not willing to do it. Why? Because they're businesses, they're corporate entities, and they're beholden to some billionaire higher up the food chain who doesn't want to ruffle feathers with Trump. The democracy dies in darkness stuff is all well and good, but apparently integrity doesn't pay as well as favor with Donald Trump does. So if the Democrats want any hope of succeeding in the future, they have got to embrace a media ecosystem that doesn't put currying favor with a despot

over fighting back against one. Next up are my interviews with John Favreau and Alison Riggs. No lie is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. If politics didn't already make me feel old enough, there is also the fact that when I drink, I do not bounce back the next day like I used to, until I found pre-alcohol. So here's the deal.

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Favreau, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, man. So I want to start off with some news that we have as far as Donald Trump is concerned. He ran this whole campaign predicated on this idea that he was going to be the guy to bring prices down. Obviously, inflation plagued, not just Democrats in this country, but incumbent governments across the entire world. While he was speaking with Time Magazine, he said that it will be hard to bring down grocery prices. So does it feel like after this whole campaign of telling his supporters one thing that he kind of pulled the wool over their eyes here? I think that it's going to be important for Democrats to sort of watch what happens here and tell a story about what's happening with Donald Trump and how he is betraying his promise to anyone who voted for him.

So he gets time person of the year. He sits down for this time interview. He talks about how grocery prices may not. It's tough to get prices down. I'm going to try, but it's tough to get them down once they're up. And the day it comes out, he goes to the stock exchange, rings the bell. The CEO of Time Magazine is next to him, chanting USA with him for some weird reason. And then he tells everyone on Wall Street, we're going to get your corporate taxes down.

I got them down from 35% to 20%, 21%, and now I'm going to try to get corporate taxes down from 21% to 15%. This is like the top 10 richest companies, most profitable companies in the country, would get like $25 billion tax cut. They've been more profitable than ever. Five largest grocery stores that have been profitable, they'd get a couple billion-dollar tax cut. I think they're going to pass that on to the people who are shopping and worried that they can't afford their groceries and have been for several years now. I don't know. But, I mean, he was so certain when he's making these promises to the corporate CEOs. But, I mean, is there going to be some sense among his base?

Do you think there's going to be some sense among his base that, okay, what he promised them? that he's more reticent to be able to deliver now, even though he's very bullish on the idea that he's going to be able to bring the corporate tax rate down. I don't think, I think his base is, who knows what they're going to think? Yeah. But I think the people we need to focus on are voters who, maybe they voted for Biden in 2020, and then they switched to Trump.

Maybe they're new Trump voters. Maybe they hadn't voted for him before. They don't necessarily, they're not necessarily Trump fans. Some of them actually don't like Trump. some of them just had a like gauzy memory of his presidency and liked that things felt cheaper when he was president so four years go by and they don't see prices down two years go by forget four years get to the midterms two years go by and they look at the republican congress and the republican president that they elected and they see that they passed a huge tax cut

that sent billions of dollars to companies that are hugely profitable and have jacked up prices over the last several years, but they don't see any relief and they're still dealing with, struggling with costs, whether it's groceries, whether it's housing, whether it's cars, then yeah, I think when you get to 2026 and you get to the midterms, people are going to be pretty pissed. And then, you know, if you go in other four years, then, you know, when there's an open primary on the Republican side and the Democratic side, then, yeah, I think voters will be pissed that the Republican control that they voted for in Washington didn't do shit to make their lives easier.

Do you think that that's going to matter in a messaging environment like the one that we have right now? Because so much of – I feel like the most frustrating part for somebody like me was you can hammer away what Democrats did the last four years versus what Donald Trump did. I mean, he came into office in 2016 with this whole populist appeal. And yet he didn't pass an infrastructure bill. He didn't pass a middle class tax cut. He didn't preside over a jobs boom. What he did with his political capital was give a tax cut to millionaires and billionaires, 83 percent of the benefits. fits went to the top echelon of people in this country. Meanwhile, you have the Democrats who

did come in past an infrastructure bill. The American Rescue Plan Inflation Reduction Act, brought health care, capped health care costs at $2,000, you know, eliminated junk fees at banks, automatic refunds for airlines. They did all of the dirty work of really making sure to deliver for the working class. It didn't matter at the end of the day, in large part because Republicans have the messaging apparatus that they have, and they're able to, you know, in a way, create the reality that they want to see for themselves and manipulate a lot of people who are watching, in good faith, by the way, into believing that reality. And so I guess how do you overcome that obstacle where, yes, we're going to have to watch what happens with the prices

of everything moving forward. And clearly the prices are, you know, are not going to come down. If Donald Trump's already hedging right now before he's even coming to office, I think it's clear that he's not going to, you know, deliver some major populist agenda for people, but rather that he's going to focus on what he's promised to focus on, which is bringing the corporate tax rate down. And so how do you overcome the obstacle of the media here, where they're going to try to paint a picture of what Trump's presidency is like, kind of irrespective of the actual facts that are right in front of us? I would say two things. One, the three moments in Donald Trump's presidency, where he had the

lowest approval ratings into the high 30s, low 40s, I believe, I think high 30s, were January Joe Biden's like what I would give. Right. Exactly. January 6, obviously, after January 6th. But then the other two, and he was tied for the January 6th approval ratings with these other two moments when he tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and when he passed the Trump tax cuts, the two most unpopular moments of his presidency.

So political gravity still exists. Still exists. And, you know, your points about the meaty machine they have well taken, they do. But then I think conversely, when Joe Biden was president, did he do a lot of great things? Did he pass a lot of really helpful legislation? Some of the most progressive legislation aimed at helping working people? Yeah, absolutely. But if you talk to most people in the country, they still feel like they're struggling to pay the rent, pay for groceries.

And you know, unless you got a job because of the infrastructure bill or the Chips Act, which a number of people did, unless you notice. that you know, you need your insulin and your insulin was capped at $35, which a bunch of people did. Or you were one of the people who got your loan forgiven, student loaner forgiven, right? Which is, you know, a lot of people, but not everyone. If you're not one of those people, then you don't think that Joe Biden did a lot for you. And I think that's unfair because there's only so much you can do about inflation, right? And he did dig us out of recession, and he, you know, created a ton of jobs. And right now the economy's in pretty good shape. But inflation is inflation. We haven't dealt with us since the 70s. And it is a very, it's a very

sensitive political problem in that even when we dealt with the Great Recession, that was a jobs issue, right? Primarily. And a lot of people lost their jobs. But when there's inflation, it hits just about every single person in America. And whether you're watching the news or not, whether the news is telling you bullshit or not, like, you still feel it. And And so I actually think it's, I think political gravity is real. And I think people's reality and their financial reality is even more powerful than whatever they're seeing on the news. And that's what we heard from voters for the last couple of years. I had read some reporting recently about Joe Biden having kind of regretted not taking credit for putting his name on the stimulus checks.

And people remember when Donald Trump gave the stimulus checks out, I believe it was part of the CARES Act. Is that correct? part of the CARES Act and sent this extra letter. I think it was Steve Medici who signed the checks, and then Donald Trump sent a letter alongside those checks, giving himself full credit for it. And Joe Biden's administration had like some unknown figure within the administration signed the checks,

and it was kind of a continuation of Democrats' inability to take credit for what they've done. I mean, you know, we saw that in the Obama administration where there's this historic health care plan, massive achievement and that would ultimately, you know, right now gave 50 million more Americans health care, wasn't able to take credit for those successes. We're seeing it again now where Joe Biden had a really accomplished presidency, didn't take credit for those successes. What do you think Democrats should do moving forward to be able to better take credit for the wins,

while at the same time sounding that you can't relate to people because, you know, that you're celebrating while people might still be hurting out there? Couple things. One, you've got to pass programs and benefits and policies that are going to improve people's lives immediately. This is hard. The policy people will tell you it's hard. People in government will tell you it's hard. One of the reasons Affordable Care Act didn't become popular until years later is because we passed the bill and nothing happened.

Because they need to set up the insurance exchanges and everything else. And so it wasn't for a couple years that people really started feeling the effects of the Affordable Care Act. And it was a bumpy rollout. So really, it wasn't until 14, 15, 16, it started becoming popular. So now, I don't know that we could have done it any faster, but you want to pass benefits that people feel immediately. The stimulus checks were a good example of that. When you do that, you want to take credit for it. You want to take credit for it over and over.

But I think that the key to taking credit for these things is, so for example, the drug companies, right? Joe Biden and the administration and Democrats in Congress, they took on the drug companies for the first time in decades. Democrats have been talking about doing this. and they finally won, and they lowered the price of insulin, they lowered the price of people prescriptions. And what they could have done is said, we went after those drug companies, no one thought we were going to be able to do it,

we took them on, we won, and now we're going to keep going. Because you know what, insulin is $35 capped now, but there's a whole bunch of other drugs and prescriptions that you're paying too much for. So I'm not done yet. We're going back after the prescription drug companies. And so you make it like it's in process, and you're telling a story.

And I think that to your earlier question about like what Democrats can do messaging wise around the Trump tax cuts this time, I think it's not enough to just be like, he gave a big tax cut to this people and this percent. You throw around all the statistics and, you know, I just threw around like a couple billion dollars here and there. You're going to tell the story of who's benefiting and who's not benefiting every single day. And you've got to be creative. Talk about the companies that are getting the tax cuts. Talk about what their CEOs make. Talk about what their workers make. Talk about what consumers are paying for their products.

like bring these stories to life and make it a mission every day and also like really focus on that like we we sometimes swing at every pitch we certainly did in the first trump term yeah and there was good reason for that he was throwing a lot at the wall and there was a lot of emergencies to respond to and we had to i think this time around we have to be more focused in how we go after him what we go after and the story we're telling me right i think i think we're already coming into this with a sense of exhaustion as it was i mean having gone through this whole we're eight years into the to the to the to trump being in in politics right now. And I think people kind of expected their break to be when Kamala Harris won this election and said we're already like head first back into the bullshit. And so I do think to your exact point that we have to be more deliberate about the battles that we choose. And if everything feels like a five alarm fire, then nothing is going to feel like a five alarm fire. And if that means that some things that would have been disqualifying the first time around skate by because some, because in service of some bigger focus, then I think that that's what's going to have to happen. Whether or not we're successful,

what you're saying, though, is going to depend in large part on the messengers that we have and the communicators that we have in the Democratic Party. And to this point, thus far, we have seen something of a generational shift happening in real time. So Jamie Raskin has effectively unseated Jerry Nadler as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Right now, AOC is kind of vying for the top spot on the Oversight Committee with Jerry Connolly. and I think he's 74 years old. AOC's in her 30s. So this does seem like it's like Democrats finally starting to understand that this is not about them.

It's not about, okay, you've earned your spot, you know, as an octogenarian and now come on in. Like, you can have the ranking membership spot. It's more about being able to effectively communicate with people who are watching. I mean, that's the whole ball game right now. And yet at the same time, we are seeing Nancy Pelosi go to bat for Connolly as opposed to AOC. So what do you make of that and why doesn't it seem like everybody is understanding the importance that messaging and communicators are going to play in the Democratic Party moving forward? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, look, I think this is less about, or it should be less about age and more about new ideas.

Yeah. I mean, you know, Raskin is not 30 years old. He's, I believe, 60 or 61, but one of the best communicators in the party and a fighter unlike anybody else. I think Bernie Sanders is still a great messenger, right? And then I think there's a lot of young Democrats who aren't great messengers. So I think you need people who can perform in this media environment. That is just an unfortunate reality that we live in and we don't do it enough. And, you know, AOC is one of the best messengers out there, especially on economic issues.

And I saw when she said that she was going to run for oversight. You know, there's a way to use oversight committee like the Republicans did over the last four years as, you know, we're just weaponization of government and just investigation. year and there and the other thing just to tie up Democrats. And AOC, she didn't say she wanted to run to like hold Republicans to account. She said she wanted to run because the oversight committee can be a powerful force in taking on people who are perpetuating economic inequality in this country. Right. And so she's already focused on winning back working class voters. And I would love to, you know, they're not going to have subpoena power because Democrats aren't going to have subpoena power because Republicans control the committee. But

maybe in 26, if we take back the House, you could imagine her. just sort of hauling in CEOs of drug companies, insurance companies, oil companies, whatever it may be, any company that airlines, anyone that's ripping people off and using those oversight hearings, not just to go after Republicans, which is important, but for most people who are just tuning into the news or casually consuming the news, they don't care as much of some random Republican gets their ass kicked on a committee hearing. They do care if they see an airline executive or an insurance executive or a drug company executive getting questioned, and they're like, yeah, I feel ripped off by those people. So I think she's going to be good at that.

I think for Pelosi's thing, look, I give Pelosi credit and Clyburn and Steny Hoyer for stepping aside so that they allowed a new generation of Democratic leadership in the House. I think that, like, Nancy Pelosi is close to Jerry Connolly, and I think that her and AOC have not always seen eye to eye. But I don't think it's going to work because, at least from what I've read, I think AOC has most of the votes locked out, and so I don't know that Pelosi's last-minute gambit here is going to prevail, but no, I think AOC will be fantastic. I hope she gets it. Well, speaking of Jim Clyburn, what do you make of him coming out and saying that Joe Biden

should pardon Donald Trump? Are you on board with that? Did Clyburn say that? Clyburn came out on... I saw that Federman said it. Fetterman said it. Clyburn was on MSNBC and said that he thinks, He's not sure the country would be able to handle it if this kind of thing perpetuates. Like if we stay on the track that we're on now. Oh, boy. I mean, I don't think it's going to happen. I don't necessarily think it should happen.

I don't think Donald Trump has done anything to show that he's remorseful. No, you don't buy Susan Collins. I haven't caught that vibe from him. Not the Susan Collins. He's learned his lesson. You're not in that camp. In a world where you could be sure that pardoning Donald Trump would spare everyone else from politically motivated investigations from a second Trump administration, I would say it's something that's on the table, right? Because I do think, wouldn't it be great for the country?

Like, Donald Trump's going to be president for four years and then he's fucking old. Let's just let it go. But the worst thing that could happen, the worst thing is Joe Biden pardoning Donald Trump and then Donald Trump turning around in. investigating, like everyone who was in Joe Biden's administration and in Congress who held Donald Trump accountable. And there's nothing to suggest that he wouldn't do that. Democrats constantly confer all of this goodwill onto Republicans in hopes that they'll finally be bipartisan in hopes that they'll finally embrace compromise and unity. And constantly, it never happens. Look at what Merrick Garland did by virtue of waiting two years to not give the optics of politicization to open

investigation into Donald Trump after the January 6th insurrection waited two years so that it would not look like the DOJ was being weaponized. And what do Republicans do? They started a weaponization of government subcommittee in Congress where they basically blame them for the exact thing they refused to do. So again, giving this goodwill to Republicans in hopes that it will be reciprocated in hopes of this elusive reciprocation is such a fool's errand. And the only thing worse than that happening is Democrats' inability to recognize the reality right and front of us. Okay, so we're coming to an end of this year. I had spoken a little bit about the exhaustion that kind of I think everybody is feeling right now. How are you dealing with

this period? And what are you doing to kind of relax as we had into 2025? I'm not doing anything to relax. I have two kids at home and I'm still recording too many pods and I'm still just getting in too many Twitter fights. But I'm handling it okay, not because I am not deeply concerned about what will happen over the next four years, but because I have taken me 43 years to figure this out, but I was like, you know what? Constantly dooming about what's going to happen in the future is not going to prevent it from happening. And I think all we can do is take one day at a time here and try every day to figure out how to retake power, how to connect with people in this country, people that we've lost, people that we've lost, people that

just weren't with us from the first from the beginning people who have been with us to make sure that they're still with us and figure out how to you know build a coalition that can take back power in the midterms and then in 2028 and in the meantime do what we can pick our fights like we just talked about um do what we can to lessen the harm that don't trump's going to do that's all i know how to do right and i think that's all the power we do have right now right like we just have to be honest with ourselves that we're not going to have that much power to stop don't right he can he has more powerful power right now in Washington and in the judiciary because he's shaped the Supreme Court. He's

got majorities in both houses of Congress. And we just have to be honest with ourselves that we don't have that much power to stop it. But the silver lining to that is they own it. They own it. Yep. They own it. People put them in charge. They are in charge of everything. And so, you know, if the next four years are the greatest four years America's ever had, then, you know, they're going to succeed. But where there are problems, They're going to be at fault for those. But not automatically. We have to step up and make sure people know who's at fault.

And we have to make sure that we have a message and an agenda that is appealing to a majority of people in this country, a majority of people in the states that we need to win the presidency and the Senate. We need to make sure that the agenda is appealing to those people, that we have candidates who can deliver a compelling message to those people. And so what I'm spending a lot of time doing in addition to sort of covering. the day by day what's happening in Trump world is just starting to have conversations with people and people have heard some of these conversations on Pod Save America, on offline, on various crooked pods, people from, you know, the far left to the center right about how to move forward, how to move forward together, how we can have like debates and disagreements and arguments about how to move forward, but still do it in a respectful and productive way because I think

that's sort of the work that we have to do. And yeah, that's kind of, be my focus and hopefully I can take a break someday. Yeah. Well, I completely echo all of that. Like that, that is the exact right thing to do now. I've been trying to do the same thing on my channel where I'm trying to talk to people, even within different corners of the Democratic Party. I think more broadly within the left of center ecosystem, I think it's incumbent upon people, even when we all hear things that we don't agree with to be more willing to listen to and embrace other ideas, because right now it really doesn't matter. I mean, this is just like, we have nothing to lose by virtue of hearing from people who are far left or, you know,

within the Democratic Party, who are much more moderate within the Democratic Party. Not everybody's going to agree with everything, but I think it's incumbent upon everybody to at least hear what people have to say in a moment where we have nothing to lose just by virtue of listening to some of these opinions. With that said, for people watching right now, if you want to hear and see more from John, make sure to subscribe to Pod Save America's YouTube channel and, of course, Pot Save America as the audio podcast as well. Favs, thanks so much for joining. Thanks for having me.

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This race isn't as cut and dry as it seems. Now the Republicans are trying to block your assent onto the Supreme Court here. They're challenging over 60,000 votes in a race that you won by just a few hundred here. Can you give a state of the race as it stands right now? Yeah, I'm happy to. I want folks to understand that what the post-election processes recounts have shown is that I did win this race. I won by 734 votes, which out of 5.6 million is a small margin. North Carolina is a very hotly contested state, but not only did I win by 734, the first machine

recount came up, produced the exact same margin, 734 out of 5.6 million votes cast. So the machine recount is done. It has confirmed our win in our margin. And we are about 98% done with the hand recount sample, which again is just confirming the incredible accuracy and diligence of our election officials in North Carolina, that it is working as intended and that I did win this race. And what is not, recounts are great. Normal post-election processes inspire confidence. Post-election protests that challenge the validity of our elections and the validity of tens of thousands of ballots. That's what's not normal and what I want folks to understand. And so can you give some lay of the land of what they're seeking to do and what their

justification for trying to do it is? Yeah. So groups like the Republican National Committee here in North Carolina and other battleground states engaged in a fair amount of pre-election litigation challenging ballots cast overseas by overseas citizens and military voters. So they're called Yuacava ballots. They challenged those in pre-election litigation. They challenged registrations where there might have been a piece of data missing in a voter's registration file, like a Social Security number or a driver's license number. The Help America Vote Act, which we've had for decades in this country, was about ensuring that those people still got their vote counted, even if there was a data issue, that they

could show up with an ID, proof of residence, and vote. But the Republican National Committee, and now my opponent has taken the baton on this, are challenging registrations as being somehow incomplete and then jumping to the conclusion that they're invalid. So here in North Carolina, they're saying 60,000 voters are ineligible to be registered and voting. Two of those are my parents. So I know a little bit about their experience. My father is a 30-year military veteran. He went to register and vote with his military ID, which doesn't have a social security number

or obviously a driver's license number on it. It's a legitimate kind of identification, and it's a solid documentation. So they want people, families like mine, military families, to have their votes discounted. And for someone whose job it is to enforce, the precious constitutional rights of North Carolina citizens, I want folks to know that the way we conduct ourselves after an election speaks to our decency and our entitlement to sit in

that office. And the way I'm proceeding through these post-election processes is on my values, valuing the fundamental right to vote and defending those rights, even when it's politically challenging or politically less than desirable. I mean, that's who you should want on the bench. It's who North Carolina voters pit. They picked me. Right. At the end of the day, I mean, it shouldn't even be a matter of you making your case right now because the fact is that more North Carolinians voted for you. And so that's the end of it. To that point, then, who's going to be the final arbiter of these claims that are being put forward by Republicans? What is the actual process that we're in right now and who's going to be the ultimate decider?

Yeah, I think some of the stuff we're still going to be figuring out. Right now, these protests are scheduled to be heard in front of the State Board of Elections on Wednesday. So we anticipate that that administrative agency will make the first pass. And then there are questions of federal law and pending federal lawsuits that I think could resolve these questions. I mean, truthfully, these arguments have already been rejected by state and federal courts, by bipartisan votes of our state board of elections. I mean, these are zombie legal arguments resurrected from dead. Don't carry any merit or weight. But it seems clear to me that this will end up in a courtroom, state or federal.

There are certainly questions of federal law, but the first thing that will happen is the state board of elections will rule this week. on the protests. What does it say that for these Republican officials, this is a party that's largely predicated its identity on its purported support for the military, just to name one group in particular. And so what does it say right now that they're seeking to disenfranchise the votes

of North Carolinians who may have been serving in the military or are living overseas as the result of that from actually having their voices heard in this election just because they weren't happy with the ultimate outcome? Yeah. It should be troubling. It's troubling to me. I think it should be troubling to anyone watching this. I come from a military family. My dad's been deployed in war zones. My brother has when families are separated because of military deployment, that is one of the most challenging times in a family's life.

And to create extra burdens on them to have their voice heard in a political process, that should be very troubling. And it's certainly inconsistent with, you know, how the party has held themselves out to be. At core, it's just a reminder that when you have judicial elections, you can elect people who recognize that democracy doesn't defend itself and that it only works when people of strong constitutional convictions sit on the bench and are willing to protect these rights because if these rights are so flimsy that they can be disregarded because of disappointment in an election result, then those rights aren't very protective. And so we need people who believe, I will defend your right to vote and decide who gets to sit in this seat, even if I don't like it.

And when someone won't say that and won't do that and their words don't match their actions, we should take note of that and remember it for future elections. The voters have spoken this election and they have honored me with the opportunity to continue serving them. but it should be deeply troubling for future political election cycles for this unwillingness to concede a loss or to cast aspersions on the integrity of our election system rather than accept a loss. That's very, very troubling for our democracy. Well, more broadly, that is like the crux of the problem that we're contending with in politics right now. It's that, it's that, you know, for the Republicans, stating back to 2020, a refusal to accept the election results when they lose and an embrace of the election results when they win.

So, like, what does it say that right now, even in a political environment where Donald Trump will accept the election results from the same entities, the same federal, the same state and local entities that showed that he lost the election results in 2020, he's perfectly content to accept those now. But in an event where you win your election against the Republican, that they'll cherry pick that out and say that actually this isn't okay because we're not going to accept any election results where we're not the victors. Yeah, I mean, I don't understand how folks can say former President Trump won North Carolina and those results are correct and right and then point to another race and suggest differently. I mean, North Carolina voters. With the same voters that they're

challenging in your race that were, that they were perfectly content to accept those election results when they voted for Trump? I can't explain it because it doesn't make sense to me, but what I can do is commit to making sure that people understand that folks who have platforms like me, candidates running for statewide election, we have platforms where we can either affirm our institutions, protect our institutions that secure the way of life that we enjoy and value, or we can be. petty, petulant political beasts. And I think this is a moment of a character.

It shows your character. And it's important to me to use my platform to say, this is wrong. This is not right. We cannot let it become normalized. Because if we do, when I was a voting rights attorney, before I joined the bench, this was a pretty new phenomenon in 2020.

Obviously, there had been election disputes. But this idea of if you lost, election. It was then okay to defame people and say that there were massive irregularities with no basis for doing so. That's a newer trend that was troubling to me as a practitioner in 2020. Now I sit as a jurist, not an advocate, but as someone who cares deeply about our courts, having independent courts, and knows how hard our election officials work in the face of low pay in nuts hours like just really overwhelming hours and now attacks from the public that aren't based on anything other than fearmongering and rumors and I think it's important that people

with platforms like mine are willing to say I'm not just going to sit back and let this debate happen without working to bring awareness that we should we should learn information put out good information for people to understand that, hey, when a recount produces the exact same number as the initial count, that is indicative of something is really working well here. And let's raise that and lift that up and celebrate it rather than figure out some other way to engineer the political outcome you prefer. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. I think for anybody on the right who had spent the last four years, if they were acting

in good faith by saying that they were concerned about the election result, If the same thing, if they were truly concerned about what they saw in 2020, for which, by the way, there was no basis to dispute those election results, to look now and see that not only did you win your race, not only has it been reaffirmed by the recount here, but now to watch Republicans try to, to your exact point, engineer some victory out of a loss, that should draw the ire of every single person who had spent the last few years sounding the alarm about what they view. as Trump's election results being undermined. And yet their silence, I think, to this point, is deafening. So, which I guess brings us to right now as it stands, where should we expect things to go from here? What's the immediate next step here? Yeah, so we're encouraging voters in North Carolina

who are on this list of 60,000 voters to, you know, if you go to my social media, you'll see a walkthrough that explains how to see if your name is on it. Because with 60,000 people, your friends, your family, your neighbors, they're on that list, just like my parents are. And so we're encouraging them to look into that, to find out if they're there or to see if they know people, to share their stories. I mean, we're meeting people who have been voting for 20, 30 years, who are members of

the military. We have a lot of military bases here in North Carolina, clergy members, local elected leaders. Just there are folks from every walk of life. And we want people to share their stories because, you know, we think sunlight is a good disinfectant. And you want people to understand that these aren't numbers on a piece of paper. They are real North Carolina voters who did everything right and don't deserve this kind of information. I encourage folks to follow me on social media generally because we're giving daily updates. It's important to me to put out good information to counter any.

bad information. And so go to trusted sources. The folks who, you know, listen to your podcast and watch it, they go to you because they know they get good information. I want to make sure that we're doing the same thing. We'll include updates about the legal proceedings, whether it's in front of the state board, state courts, or federal courts. And just for folks to know that there's going to be a lot of developments, I think, in the next two weeks. Just for posterity here, what are your, where are you posting on social media and what your handle? So on Instagram and Facebook, it's at

Riggs for Our Courts. On X, it is Alison J. Riggs. And on TikTok, it is Justice Allison Riggs. But we're encouraging people, you know, it doesn't have to come through me. If you use hashtag count, don't count, don't cancel. We're trying to get people to share their

stories that way so folks can see. like, look, it's not coming from a political campaign. This is people are frustrated by this kind of shenanigans five weeks after an election. Like, folks should move on. And what I'll do is I'll put in the post description of this video, I'll put a link to make sure that you can find out if you are in North Carolina, if your vote's been counted. I'll also embed the link right here on the screen on the YouTube video. Justice Riggs, congratulations on your win. and we'll be following this race closely.

And, you know, if there's anything else we can do to elevate anything that's happening right now, please let me know. Thank you so much, Brian. I really appreciate you. Thanks again to Favs and Justice Riggs. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week.

You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels,

or you can go to bryentlercoen.com to learn more.