No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans contend with worst case scenario in Wisconsin

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

Democrats fail to create a carveout in the filibuster for voting rights, but there are some bright spots ahead of midterms. Brian interviews Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler about Ron Johnson’s announcement to run for a third term, his biggest vulnerability, and what the nation’s most important swing state looks like as we head into midterms. And the president & CEO of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, joins to discuss DirecTV dropping OAN and what it might mean for other far-right outlets.Donate to "Don't Be A Mitch" & help support the Wisconsin Democratic Party: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop 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 Democrats failing to create a carve-out in the filibuster for voting rights, but also some bright spots ahead of midterms and what could still turn things around ahead of November. I interview Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wickler about Ron Johnson's announcement to run for a third term, his biggest vulnerability, and what the nation's most important swing state looks like as we head into midterms. And the president and CEO of Media Matters, Angelo Carousone, joins to discuss direct TV dropping OAN and what it might mean for other far-right outlets.

I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to you're listening to to no lie. This week, the culmination of the Democrats' efforts to create a carve-out in the filibuster for voting rights ended, as expected, with cinema and mansion siding with Republicans to keep the filibuster in place. Even as voter suppression laws are passing in states across the country with simple majorities, even as Republican-led state legislatures are reorganizing local elections boards in Georgia, even as half of all new mail ballot applications are being rejected

in Texas, even as states are being gerrymandered to ensure, Republican majorities, even despite all of this happening right under our noses, still Manchin and Sinema decided that the real risk here was the division that might come from changing some arbitrary Senate procedural tool. Yeah, no, that sounds pretty dangerous. And so, look, I understand how infuriating all of this is. And if you listen regularly, you know that this is the principal issue I've been focused on since the minute Democrats took the majority. And we all know the implications of this stuff because, you know, I've spoken about it at length. And if you've spent more than seven minutes on your phone, it's become pretty clear.

But I wanted to take this time to focus instead on some of the wins that we're seeing on this front and some of the solutions here so that it's not just only doom and gloom. So let's start in Ohio. The state Supreme Court struck down a gerrymandered Republican map that was split 12-3 in Republicans' favor, meaning that they would have held 80% of the seats despite winning about 55% of the statewide vote. Democrats were able to challenge this vote thanks to an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that was overwhelmingly passed by the voters in 2018. And even

though the state Supreme Court has split four to three in Republicans' favor, the Republican Chief Justice joined the three Democrats in overturning the maps. So now the legislature has about 30 days to try again. If not, the Ohio redistricting commission gets a go at it. But in either case, this could mean that Democrats

see an additional two to three seats, which could very well be the difference between a Speaker Pelosi and a Speaker McCarthy. So, you know, some really promising news out of a state that none of us would have expected good news from. Another bright spot, North Carolina, Republicans had passed an 11-3 map to replace the current 8-5 map, so a pretty brutal gerrymander in a state that is already known for pretty brutal gerrymanders. That map was challenged in court. Now, so far, a lower court did uphold the map,

but the case will likely end up in a North Carolina Supreme Court, where Democrats have a four-to-three majority. And the courts in North Carolina have been moving quickly on redistricting cases since, you know, in the past, when these cases would drag on, elections were happening with maps that were later found unconstitutional, so that shouldn't be the case here. Moving to Texas, there have been issues around requesting mail ballot applications where voters are required to provide the identification number that they used when they first registered to vote. So that's either their driver's license number or their Social Security number.

But if they give the wrong number, the number that doesn't match what's already on record, they'll automatically get rejected. And so some counties are showing up to 50% rejection rates. Now, it suggested that voters should provide both numbers if they can't remember, but local election officials aren't allowed to tell voters this because that would be considered promoting mail-in voting, which is now illegal under SB1. So that's pretty grim stuff.

The point of the law was to make it harder to vote. It is now working as intended. But Beto O'Rourke's campaign just announced that it's deploying 44,000 volunteers to contact 2 million Texans through door-knocking, phone calls, texts, letters, and that would educate voters on navigating the changes from SB1. I think 44,000 volunteers is a pretty massive group of people and will hopefully have the effect of counteracting the Republican's biggest weapons to suppress the vote in that state.

And aside from all of that, it's worth remembering also during Wisconsin's 2020 Supreme Court race, while COVID was surging and we had no vaccine to protect people, Republicans had blocked an effort to send mail ballots to all voters. That, on top of staffing shortages in Milwaukee, left only. five out of 180 polling places open, that led to lines that were as long as four hours long, all of that was a purposeful tactic to sink Democratic chances in the election. And yet, when all was said and done, Democrat Jill Kirovsky won the seat by over 160,000

votes in Wisconsin, a state that's usually decided by 20,000 vote margins. When Republicans try to strip away your voting rights, it doesn't come without backlash. And by the way, a lot can happen in 10 months. Midterms aren't until November. The political environment that we're in now isn't necessarily the political environment that we're going to be in by the time that we're casting ballots. We could still make progress on billback better. We could still make progress on COVID, on the economy, on stabilizing inflation. There is a lot of time for Biden's approval rating to recover, for the pandemic to improve, and to deliver some legislation that will pass muster for both Mansion and Cinema. And I will just reserve comment on Mansion and Cinema beyond that for the sake of my blood pressure and yours.

So look, again, none of this is to say that we have an easy road ahead of us or that these anti-democratic laws in the states won't mean that fewer people can vote or that Democratic voices won't be diluted. I'm sure to some degree that'll be the case. But before you throw your hands up and say, you know, fuck it, what's the point? Why bother showing up? Why bother fighting? Just remember, 96% of Democrats voted in favor of protecting voting rights versus

0% of Republicans. So the answer here isn't to give up and let the Republicans, win. It's not to give the people who are completely against you the victory. It's to keep fighting. We're almost there. We elect two, literally two more senators and hold the House and everything left on the chopping block in 2021 could become a reality again, along with, you know, deeper reforms like a court expansion and codifying row and a federal $15 minimum wage. Republicans want you to feel hopeless because they know how close we are to winning right now. So don't give them the satisfaction. Next step is my interview with Ben Wickler.

Today we have the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wickler. Thanks for coming back on. Great to be back with you, Brian. So the big news out of Wisconsin is that Republican Ron Johnson announced that he'd be running for a third term in the Senate. So I guess my question is, would it have been more surprising if Ron Johnson didn't lie? The answer is yes. This is a guy who promised not to run again in 2016 in her. to get elected that year. He was like, this is my final term. I'm to an out. I'm a

legislator. But the next year, you know, as soon as he was back in the Senate for his next second term, he went to bat, went to the mat, defied Donald Trump, refused to vote for Trump's giant tax giveaway to the ultra rich unless there was an extra tax giveaway piled on top of it that specifically benefited owners of the kind of corporation that Ron Johnson owns and his biggest campaign donors. And, you know, there's two billionaire Wisconsin families that put $20 million into Ron Johnson's 2016 campaign. Those two families walked away with more than $200 million in their first year because of the special Ron Johnson tax giveaway. And Johnson hasn't actually disclosed how much he personally benefited, but we, you know, we know his net worth is doubled

based on his disclosure forms. So he figured out that he could better his own bread and it's not in the slightest a surprise that he's running for another term to try to get more opportunities to do that at the expense of regular Wisconsinites. Now, Johnson's one of the most beatable Republicans in the Senate. So does it actually help that he'll be the nominee versus someone more palatable for swing voters? In Wisconsin, you can never take anything for granted, and we have to expect an incredibly close and hard-fought election. That said, he is extraordinarily toxic. He's repelled, you know, a giant fraction of the electorate already. His approval rating is like 36% in the last public poll. And that's a terrible place to be for someone running for

their third term. So, you know, there's a reason why 12 Democrats signed up to run against him. It's because they could smell the weakness in his political position. And also because they knew that Wisconsin needs, you know, two senators who actually serve the people instead of just one Tammy Baldwin. So, you know, the Republicans have to throw everything they can into defending his seat because they need their seat to have a shot at getting a majority. But he's an albatross that's going to pull down Republicans across the state and galvanized Democrats to turn out in higher numbers. Now, with that said, what's Johnson's biggest vulnerability heading into this election?

What are you going to be focusing on? So it's interesting. It's not what one might expect. There's been so much national attention on Ron Johnson pushing the most extreme COVID conspiracy theories and claiming that, you know, the January 6th insurrection was done by fake Trump protesters and, you know, leftists dressed up as Trumpites. Right. People who dressed up like Trump and waved his flags and voted for him at the polling booth. Yeah. So it's a long-term conspiracy theory. Yeah. This is the long game, clearly, they're playing.

Yeah. So this has gotten a ton of headlines. It's gotten a ton of attention. But what's interesting is that his biggest vulnerability is actually the way that he's served himself at the expense of regular people. When you talk to voters who are generally cynical and disgusted with politicians, you know, they know that he says all kinds of like totally off the deep end things. but, you know, whatever, he's just talking. But when they hear that he has ripped them off, that he has given himself giant tax breaks at their expense and then tried to block support for them, did everything he could to block the child tax credit and the stimulus checks from going out

to block the support for small businesses in Wisconsin. You know, he was the one guy at the end of the debate about the American Rescue Plan who did this emergency delay tactic to demand the public reading of this like 600-page bill on the Senate of floor just to stop families from getting their support for a few extra hours. He's just against most people, and he's in it for himself.

And that, making sure everyone knows that as they walk into the voting booth is the thing that will end his political career. So we've started that, we're going to keep doing it all the way through the end of the election. Got it. That's very good to know. Switching gears a little bit,

you know, we're watching as people like Steve Bannon, for example, try to take charge of local election systems. that's obviously a priority for the far right. Are the election systems, as they stand in Wisconsin, secure? And, like, what's at stake in the next election? How vulnerable is Wisconsin to a bunch of lunatics getting elected and then meddling? So Wisconsin is a state where four of the last six presidential elections came down to less than one percentage point.

In 2020, we had 3.28 million voters. The Biden margin of victory was 20,682. I mean, it's a very small number. It's a couple people in every precinct. And what that means is if there are people who don't believe in democracy working in every precinct and they turn away a couple of voters, that can tip a statewide election right there. So this is a very, very serious threat. And it's the reason why we've at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, we've been pouring a ton of time

into recruiting poll workers, into recruiting poll observers, into mapping out all the local elections that will affect election administration. We have a statewide day of local elections on April 5th. There are no statewide races that day, but there are races for mayor, there are races for judge, there are races for city council that set budgets for election administration, the people who appoint and confirm the municipal clerks who actually conduct the election. And those races will matter a ton in the fall for determining whether we have a free and fair election. Now, we have a tradition of, you know, good, clean, well-administered elections. And 2020 went off extremely successfully in really tough conditions, but that could all get messed up. I mean, I'll give one example.

The former Republican County chair in St. Croix County in western Wisconsin is like a full-on stop-the-steel guy. He wore a kind of a Knight's Templar sweatsher, which is a white supremacist symbol, at a public meeting, like on Zoom. And he was posting on their county party Facebook page that people needed to prepare for war and people were responding about how they're going to bring their guns to, you know, political things and he it was such a scandal that he actually had to be kicked out of the party he is now a poll worker in hudson wisconsin he's the the parties submitted poll worker to show up at the bowling place and you know determine whether people have proper identification and you don't want that guy to be alone doing that job so making sure that there are as many pro-democracy i don't care what your politics are but pro-democracy poll workers and people who are

overseeing election administration is critical. Now, is there any check to something like that? Like, there's going to be one of those guys at every polling place. Is there a way to make sure that people wearing Biden shirts aren't just immediately turned back? Like, is there some, is there some check for something like that? Sure. And I should say that you can't actually, in Wisconsin, you can't wear a Biden trip into the polling place. But there are a bunch of different checks. So the first thing is voter intimidation is a felony in Wisconsin. And we have an attorney general, Josh Call, who's running for reelection, and we have to get him reelected, who, you know, before the 2020 election reminded people across the state that it is a felony that our state government

takes very seriously to intimidate voters. So if there's a poll worker, if someone like this guy is intimidating voters who come in, having poll observers there who can flag this to our voter protection team and who can report it to law enforcement, it can put a stop to it. And that's, you know, we can out-organize this attempt by the right to suppress the vote. The second thing is, in hudson wisconsin there was a member of the city council who saw that he had registered and objected and what happened next is interesting because he could be blocked as a poll worker but other conservatives on the city council like overrode the objection and then you know pushed back in and i think that illustrates how having pro-democracy city councils really matters

and you know in small and medium-sized towns all over wisconsin as well as bigger cities so that's when when I look at the kind of slate of local officials and places like Appleton, Wisconsin, there's city council elections coming up on April 5th. It's just critical we do everything we can to elect people to those offices who believe in a system where everyone has an equal right to vote. Now, what are the consequences of failing

to pass the voting rights bill in a state like Wisconsin is gonna have very little impact because we already have Democratic Governor Tony Evers acting as a check to Republican over-overreach, You tweeted about Plan B to Save Democracy. Can you, can you, you know, tell me about those things? Yeah. So I'll first say federal legislation would make a huge difference. One piece of it is it would ban partisan gerrymandering. And boy, do we have partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Our state Supreme Court is about to make final decisions on the electoral districts for the 2020, or I guess the next decade. This is a Republican. This is a Republican control. Exactly. Republican controlled state Supreme Court.

and they announced that the basis for how they would consider proposed maps is they would look for the maps with the least changes to the previous maps. But we were also gerrymandered. Also gerrymandered, exactly. So a federal law that would change that would be a huge gift to democracy in our state and states across the country. The other thing is that voting rights legislation that would involve, for example, a government kind of preclearance on any rule that would make it harder for people to vote

and a review about the impact of it, we provide a failsafe in the event that Republicans get the governorship because right now, our Democratic governor vetoes all the bills that Republicans are passing, and boy, they're passing a lot of them that would make it harder for people to vote. But if we didn't have the governorship, it would be the federal government that we'd need. So, you know, that kind of means that if they find some other way to pass voting rights legislation over the course of this year, it'd be great. But if that doesn't happen, we have to re-elect our governor. And, you know, Tony Evers, our Democratic governor, is rock-solid on this.

It's just totally unwavering that a Republican running for governor, Rebecca Clayfish, has promised to sign all the bills that the legislature has sent and wants them to send more of them. And she was asked point blank if she would sign a law that allowed state legislators to overturn presidential election results. And she said it would be premature to comment. So, you know, the threat is real. And winning these governor's races in Wisconsin and other states, the secretary of state race, is also incredibly important. This is plan B and we have to move all our chips onto it because time is short. Now we look at a state like Virginia where Democrats made a ton of progress in the last

decade, past popular legislation, you know, that's also a purple state like Wisconsin. And yet we saw Republicans win out there. How is Wisconsin different? Like what are you doing at the state party to make sure that your state isn't a repeat of Virginia in the midterms? When I've talked to folks in Virginia, I think there's two big differences. One is a lot of folks will say they wish that they had ramped up the organizing earlier. And what we've done in Wisconsin is we never stopped doing it. So we've been running a continuous statewide organizing program since the spring of 2017. And we had a bigger organizing team at the end of last year in 2021 than we did in the fall of 2018. So we've been,

we're at a hiring wave right now, folks who want to join our organizing team to go to Wisdoms that org slash jobs. If you want to fund us to help hire more organizers, go to the don't be a mission campaign and support us through that. But it makes a big difference to have a year-round program because you don't lose touch with the voters and with the volunteers who you need all the way through. The second piece is that in that race, you know, I think there was a way that Glenn Youngkin kind of got control of the narrative and the conversation, especially around education. Wisconsin has a Democratic governor who was a lifelong educator. He was a huge. He was a teacher, a principal, a school superintendent, he was the superintendent of public instruction

statewide. Under his leadership, our school system has gotten back in the top 10 public schools in the country after slipping significantly into the Scott Walker and Rebecca Clayfish. That issue is not going to fall into the hands of Republicans here. And in 2021, we had a statewide election for the superintendent of public instruction. And Betsy DeVos's super PAC started running ads all over the state, like the right went at it with messages like we saw in Virginia. But as the candidate endorsed by the Democrats, won by 16 percentage points. And so you can see in the numbers that the way those issues are playing out here is different. The last thing I'll say is an opportunity, which will only make a difference if we take advantage of it.

And we are working to do that. And folks, you know, tuning into this right now can help with that. In Wisconsin, you can request an absentee ballot for the entire year starting January 1st, which means that right now, you can call voters in Wisconsin and tell them about this, and they can go on and click the buttons on the website and get their ballots locked in to be sent to them all the way through November. Great. And in 19, excuse me, in 2020, we had such a successful operation between the independent

groups and the party to follow up with people who requested absentee ballots that 98% of them wound up voting. So, you know, if you get on the list, like, we're pretty confident that you're going I cast a ballot. So that's the project. And that's something that there's never been a year in Wisconsin where so many people had already gotten into the system for absentee ballots the way that it happened in 2020. We can do essentially get out the vote like you'd normally do in the final two weeks of the campaign for 10 months. And that's a giant opportunity that we want to make full advantage of and Republicans keep being against absentee ballots for no other reason than, you know, Trump was

against them. So it gives us a kind of a potential edge over the GOP. Yeah. And that's a great point. So anybody listening from Wisconsin go and request that absentee ballot now. Make sure you get yourself on that list because I'm sure the Republicans would love nothing more than for November to roll around and that not to be able to work out. So as you mentioned, you know, the state party Wisconsin Democrats is one of the beneficiaries of the Don't Be a Mitch Fund. It's also the only state party in the fund. And so I think that's a testament to, you know, your leadership and how effective you and the rest of the organization have been since since you took. took over. So whether people donate as part of Don't Be a Mitch or if they donate directly to Wistems.org, and I'll put that link in the post description as well. What are these donations support? What are they doing right now? Where does their money go to? The biggest part of our budget is organizing. And that means direct, you know, organizing staff from our statewide organizing director to deputies to regional organizing directors, to field organizers, to pay to organizing interns. We pay all our interns. It also means the operation staff to make sure,

that those folks all have, you know, laptops and health benefits. But that's, you know, the lion's chair of our overall, but it's a majority of where all our funds go. And it's the area where we can expand the most by hiring folks earlier or hiring more people. So that's a huge piece. We also, and something we've never done in a midterm before, we have organizers on our voter protection staff. So the voter protection team is doing phone banks in English and Spanish to recruit poll workers. And that has had the effective radically. Like we recruited more poll workers last year for the 2022 election cycle than we did in the previous five years put together. And that operation has to succeed given what Republicans are trying to do. Right. It's the most important

thing right now. Exactly. It's getting out the vote and protecting the vote so that, you know, people cast their ballots and the ballots aren't thrown out. Well, Ben, thank you and to everybody you work with for for what you're doing. Keep kicking ass in Wisconsin because you guys have the luxury or the or not the luxury depending on how you look at it of being, you know, on the knife's edge of all of these elections. So Wisconsin is always ground zero. Couldn't ask for somebody better to be running the show there. So thanks. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Today we have the president and CEO of Media Matters, Angelo Carrizo. Thanks so much for coming back on. Thanks for having me. So let's start off with some good news for a change.

Can you talk about DirecTV's move with regard to far-right fringe network, O-A-N? Sure. So it was they just announced, DirecTV, that they're not going to be renewing One American News. And it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's actually huge. It's so significant. And it's significant for a couple of reasons. Number one, DirecTV basically is the single biggest source of revenue for all of One American News. So without them, they wouldn't have existed, and they certainly wouldn't be able to survive.

So it's going to open up a lot of questions about what One American News's future is. And then there's a second effect of it, which is that One American News, by virtue of being a viable competitor in the last year or so to Fox News, was actually making Fox News and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber more extreme. Because they were trying to compete with this sort of emerging threat from One American News. So it actually, in a weird way, prevents Fox News from getting worse. And the third is that it's really the first time that this sort of new conversation that's been happening in this space about what is the role that cable providers have in not just subsidizing these sort of extreme right-wing channels, but in sort of resetting the clock. And that's a big open question with Fox News. It's something that we've talked about as well. And it does demonstrate that they can sort of make these decisions based in part because of the toxicity that these channels represent.

Now, a lot of this coverage was framed as this being a pretty fatal blow to OAN. So will OAN survive without DirecTV subsidizing it? Well, it's an open question. I mean, one thing we know for sure is that they're going to immediately turn around to the cable providers. And in particular, that's DISH Network. And, you know, they're going to try to get these other providers to pick them up. And the reason why that matters is because if you're on a basic cable package, even if you don't

have any viewers. You make a lot of money. You get paid by virtue of having, by getting pickup. That's a source of revenue. And for One American News, they weren't just getting revenue from DirecTV. They were probably getting about six to seven times with their market values. So they weren't just paying One American News. Direct TV was overpaying for One American News. So is it a fatal blow? It depends. If they're able to get another provider to pick them up, and I actually don't think they will, and that's partly because consumers have been out there really, pressing this issue with cable companies, then what will end up happening is they'll become, you know, maybe retreat to something that's more small and online in streaming, but they won't

have enough revenue to maintain even their current operations. Yeah. Now, I know that Republicans, of course, are claiming that this is just more conservative censorship, but why actually did this happen? Why did AT&T, who owns DirecTV? Why did they make this move? So a big part of the reason why they made this move was it's a business decision. I know that it seems like a political decision for them, but it really was a business decision. And it gets back to something I referenced before. When one American news was started, AT&T had a big hand in that because back in 2010, they basically promised One American News that not only would they pick them up, but that they would pay them this really inflated rate. And that meant that if you were going to start a TV channel

tomorrow. And I promised to give you more revenue than you needed to operate, you automatically become profitable, even if no one watches your channel. That's what they gave them. They gave them a blank check to be created. And so that was the start of this. And it wasn't a political decision now because what ended up happening is that it's two things. One, they were continuing to overpay. Direct. One American News was never able to convince other cable providers to do the same thing. So, you know, that that meant that they really did rely heavily on DirecTV and they couldn't sort of demonstrate that they have this market value. And the other thing is, and this is where the business side comes in, more people complained not just about DirecTV carrying one

American news, but carrying it at such a high price and forcing everybody to pay that it affected what these cable companies have that's called the demand score. It's actually a metric that they used to assess whether or not they include channels in certain packages and how much they're going to pay for that channel. And so when you just look at the business of it, not the politics, not the larger considerations, they were overpaying for something and consumers made it known over the course of a really intense four months starting last summer and into the fall. And when they looked at the data, the data was there, that this was not going to be a safe bet. And it doesn't hurt that One American News is being sued for a billion plus dollars, just like

Foxes or from Dominion and that there's some looming litigation around what their role is in intensifying the pandemic. Now, obviously, this has everyone looking at similar networks, like Newsmax, for example. Yeah. Is this a watershed moment for these other far right fledgling outlets where their futures might be uncertain? It does. It is probably as strangely more significant for Fox business than anyone else. So here's why. More people watch on American News than watch Fox business and yet fox business is getting three times what one american news did not just from direct tv but from everybody so if you just do the same formula that you did for direct tv and you're a cable company why would you take less money for shareholder dividends or more profit for your own

company and give it to fox for something that is just as toxic um and higher price than one american news is so fox is actually first um it's less significant in a weird way for for Newsmax. And here's why. Unlike Fox News and One American News, which rely heavily on cable providers, Newsmax is a unique creature in the space. They don't. They don't ask cable companies to pay them. They pay cable companies. They say, we want to pay you to pick us up. We will actually invest our own money into our distribution. And so their calculus is a lot different. They don't rely on these cable companies in order to exist. They rely in part on advertisers. and in part on ideological backers that helped sort of pump money into the system and online ads.

They built a really profitable online advertising sort of mechanism that they then used to fund their distribution on cable. But Fox business is probably the one that's the most directly affected by that, in part because it had less viewers than what American News did. Now, couldn't Fox just turn around and use the leverage of the parent network to kind of bully these cable providers into not touching Fox business, for example? They could, and then in the past they have, because if you're, you know, prior to 2017, 2018, Fox owned not just Fox News, but also a whole suite of entertainment channels.

Now they just have Fox News and Fox Sports. And that's what they've done in the past. They'll threaten to turn off access to football. In 2020, they turned off access to the Super Bowl during a contract fight over Fox News. They said, if you won't pay us for Fox News, no Super Bowl for you, Hulu. And, you know, that's, that's their leverage. One big thing happened last year, and that's what that when the NFL was, you know, resigning their distribution rights with these different companies, including Fox,

the NAACP led by Derek Johnson, and a bunch of players had actually put pressure on the NFL owners and the negotiators to make sure that Fox was not able to leverage the NFL as they had been historically. So to your question, the answer is yes, they have leverage. On the other hand, people got smart. And the NAACP's leadership there, I think, was really significant. Now, the question is, can they hold them to account? And I believe they will.

But they really won't be able to leverage Fox Sports in the way they have historically. And that is going to be a make or break thing. And it does show how these things really do have a long time mark. If they didn't fight that fight a year ago, then they really would just very easily be able to leverage Fox Sports in a way that now they're going to have a real tough time being able to do. Yeah. Wow. That's, I had no idea. That's great news, though.

Building on exactly that. You've been engaged in the unfox my cable box campaign with Media Matters for a while. Is there any movement on the effort for cable providers to stop subsidizing Fox with those carriage fees that really render them unaccountable to advertiser pressure? You know, I think, you know, funny enough, just like the Fox business is the one that's most affected by DirecTV's decision here. On the other hand, One American News is probably the one that was most affected by the conversations that started about two years ago related to unfox my cable box. Because what at the time, Fox News was it was going to go through this big sprint to renew all their cable contracts. And because of the pandemic, which they extended and made worse through lies and misinformation, they actually paused all of their renewals. So all the renewals are supposed to happen in late 2020 and 2021, they actually pushed to this year.

But that didn't stop the discussions with big cable executives about what they need to start to think about as it relates to this calculus around Fox News and the demand score. And so, funny enough, One American News is really the first test of whether or not, when it came time to renew, can these providers actually, and can you actually get enough consumer pressure to force these cable companies to recalibrate how they do it? And so one movement would be there. The second, I would say, is that, you know, we're seeing that pressure with Verizon right now. Now, Verizon is first up for Fox News renewal. it is going to be a pretty dicey situation. And one of the things that I always look at is not just what the cable companies are doing, but what is Fox doing in order to anticipate this?

And one of the things that they're doing is this spring usually do these really big events where they have all these cable executives, advertisers come and they showcase all their talent for Fox News. They're not doing that this year. Instead, they're doing a series of small private events. And I think a big part of that is not to create a single target because when you have that target, it actually raises that question in a big way for what does this mean about Fox? And I think they're trying to avoid having that very conversation right now. So the movement we'll see is what's

going to happen over the next few months with Verizon. And I think Fox Business will be the one that really suffers the most. And that's why I lean on it, not that I don't think Fox News will experience consequences too, but I think that Fox Business will end up being the real calculus. And that's some of the discussions I've already heard from cable companies is, you know, we may not give them the rate they want for Fox News, but we are reevaluating our Fox business deal. Now, Chris Wallace recently left Fox. The argument was that Chris Wallace lent Fox, this veneer of legitimacy that Fox had always points to people like him, and he'd counterbalance the lunatics who are actually synonymous with that network like Hannity, Tucker, Laura Ingraham.

Do you think that they just gave up because why bother pretending anymore? Like, do you think it's worth it for them to even pretend to be a legitimate news outlet when it's so clear, that it's just, you know, the Tucker show, the Laura Ingram show, that it's just the MAGA network, really. They really did give up. And it's so, it is so, it's hard to really emphasize just how much One American News and Fox News is, all these things were intertwined. They was a moment where they made that decision to fully give up. And it was right after the 2020 election calls when Fox's audience was mad at them. One American News and Trump were basically pushing people to One American News. Fox News immediately did this incredible. switch, where in just a two-week period in November, after their audience was already mad at them, they started to undermine and attack the election 774 individual instances, and just a two-week

period. But immediately after- They fired the guy who correctly called the election. That's right. And like so, but right at, right in that moment, they started to scramble. And one of the big things was to expand Tucker Carlson's footprint, give him a series of additional production team so that he can make documentaries and content for the channel and for their streaming services. And that was it. They made not just one choice, but actually an entire

business wrapper around what was going to be appealing to a viewership that was increasingly part of the fringes and the fever swamps, because that was going to be where they got, where they made their base. So they did make that business decision. And Chris Wallace wasn't as essential to that anymore because I think what they thought they could do is strong arm providers by having this incredibly engaged and really big numbers and big ratings, and, you know, the rest were sort of fall in line for them. And it just became less significant. Jen Saki will have made an appearance on Fox News this weekend. We're recording this before her appearance, so we won't be able to speak on specifics. But you have some pretty strong feelings

about why she shouldn't appear on Fox. I do. I think this is a mistake. And I understand why it's important to speak to people that disagree with you. And I think it's important to, and especially if you are in a public proficient. You have to go to a range of programs. I really believe that. So I'm not saying, oh, you should never go on non-aligned programming. Like, that's not what I'm making argument about. The argument is this. And enough people will say it, including Fox, if you're not a news operation, if you're functioning like a political operation at this point, and not just a political operation, but one that is really peddling medical misinformation and white supremacy. I mean, this is like, it's not just like, you know, this is pretty intense stuff. If you're

going to say that, then you have to act accordingly. And when people like Jansaki and other leaders go on Fox News, it's a bad decision for them because I actually, we watched the coverage, we study it. It actually always ends up boomeranguing background. Fox uses that appearance, manipulates it and triples down on the attacks afterwards so that it erases any hope you have of reaching to that audience. And worse, they take those clips. And I've been there when they've done it. They go to decision makers, advertisers, cable executives, and they say, see, the things. about us cannot be true because if they were they would never be on our show yeah and that it's so hard to it basically erases all of the consensus building that we make around the dangers of fox

and you know this the same is true of of this past this past week when joe biden called on not only peter deucey which we you know we we expect from that press conference but even newsmax reporters and it just kind of does the exact same thing it lends legitimacy like giving these people time during a rare press conference when these networks exist to push medical disinformation, the big lie, whatever it is, any effort to undermine our democracy to hurt people, and they get just as much legitimacy as CBS and NBC and ABC. It's totally right. And I think that doesn't mean that, you know, you have to go, they can have their opinions and their perspectives, but the second you start to validate

and legitimize them in the way that you would, an operation that appeals to journalistic, that it hears the journalistic best practices, what it does is it actually eliminates any chance for meaningful accountability, or at least erodes it. And it doesn't give them an incentive to change either. You know, there was a moment when Democrats back in 2011 refused to go on Fox News for a while. They just could, I mean, across the board, it was a thing that happened because of the really absurd, intense attacks from Glenn Beck and others. And one of the things that Roger Ells did at the time was announce a course correction.

And it only lasted for a while, but his point was, we can't get any guess. We can't get people to come on our show. We don't have what we have. And that was not because it was being good, but because. because he was responding to the pressure. And I think rewarding them in that way, treating them that they're just another news operation instead of a political operation, it really does do a disservice to the harms that they make and any chance of changing their behavior.

I do think that we are operating in a bit of a different media environment more broadly than we were in 2011. And I think that most of these right-wing figures do want to only exist in their echo chambers because then they don't have to confront the same facts that the rest of us are. confronting. And so as long as they can kind of separate themselves, they have a vested interest in separating themselves because then they don't have to be confronted with the reality behind the big lie. They don't have to be confronted with the fact that, you know, while you're pushing vaccine skepticism, the vast majority of people who are dying or unvaccinated, they don't have to

confront them to be confronted with any of those things. I do want to play dead ball's advocate for a second. Yeah. And ask how you would reconcile that, that idea of not going on to Fox, not validating Fox, was someone like Pete Buttigieg, who did go on Fox quite a bit, relatively speaking, arguing that you got to meet people where they are and that wouldn't we rather want a chance to make our case to people without letting Republicans on those networks do it for us? I think that's right. I think you have to make a case to people that would be in that Fox, in that Fox orbit. That said, it's just a question of how to best utilize those resources and reach those people. There are, Fox has three million viewers. It's true, about three million

viewers, if you're going to the Fox audience directly, that is the most hard core, unmovable audience you're going to find because they're consuming Fox misinformation and that narrative day-to-day. Now, that doesn't mean you ignore conservatives. You can certainly reach people that are in the Fox Online way to do it. And it's harder work and it's not as sexy and you don't get the great headlines because you don't get to own the Fox host, which everybody likes. But that doesn't move people. You'd have to go to the audiences where they are, which is local media, right? Or other programming, their radio, which would have a big effect in some of the online podcast. and things that they listened to. That would work. That would be very different. When he went

on Fox and we did the studies on this, every appearance that he made on Fox News had a negative effect on the very thing that he was talking about, meaning immediately afterwards Fox News intensified the misinformation around the subject matter of the appearance that he did. And so I'd rather than not have an incentive to lie about a thing if they're trying to clean up a good appearance and have him out there reaching persuadables than to be on Fox News so that he's not only not reaching that audience, but worse, he's actually empowering Fox News to then take those clips and say, see, we're too powerful to ignore. If our critics can't ignore us, then you as an advertiser or you as a cable company can't ignore us

either. And that's what I would say. It's not, I don't think you shouldn't try to reach people, but I think those are, start with maybe the ones that are a little more movable first and then work backwards. How can we, how can we help over with the work that you do at Media Matters? The easiest thing to do, the shortest things, if you have cable, if your parents do, family members, tell them to call their cable companies and complain about Fox right now. They log it.

I promise they log it. It all affects the score. That's how we did the One American News thing. That's it. That's the simple thing. And if not, you can just go to unfox, my cablebox.com and sign up. You'll get updates or you go to meetamatters. Great.

Angelo, thank you so much for the work you do and for taking the time to talk today. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks again to Angelo. 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, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.