Pivot - Cuomo digs in, Chaos in the skies, and Evictions delayed... perhaps
Episode Date: August 6, 2021Guest host George Conway (and a pack of dogs) join Kara to unpack the results of a special election, new information on Trump's last days in office, and the damning report on Governor Andrew Cuomo. Al...so, could a class action lawsuit make Facebook the new Big Tobacco? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hi everyone, this is Pivot
from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.
Scott Galloway
is off again today because all he does is take vacations. We were lucky to be joined by attorney
and contributing columnist at The Washington Post, George Conway. Hello, George.
Hello.
How you doing?
Thank you for having me, Kara.
No problem. We're trying to like do all these different co-hosts. This week,
we had Stephanie Ruhl. We've got a lot of people coming up. But I wanted to bring you in. There's lots of news to talk about, and you know sort of the idea of the way the show
goes. But I really wanted to talk about legal things with you, obviously, but anything else
you want to talk about. People are surprised me in terms of what they're interested in.
But let's start a little bit about air travel. I just interviewed the head of American Airlines,
Doug Parker, and he was talking about the bailout and all kinds of things. But one
thing that, you know, in flight cancellations, it's a rough summer for the airline industry,
even though it got $56 billion from the federal government because of pandemic disruptions and
because of a wide range of things, including unruly people on the airlines. I just wanted
to get some sense from you. There's all kinds of things going. American and Spirit Airlines
canceled hundreds of flights due to weather and staffing issues.
Not enough people.
The staff are dealing with major passenger incidents.
Frontier Airlines crew duct taped an unruly passenger in a seat in a Miami bound flight after he groped to attendance this past weekend.
A few hours earlier, an American Eagle crew had to break up a brawl between two men.
And the Association of Flight Attendants is calling for criminal penalties for unruly passengers. What do you think about all this? How would you handle it?
Well, lawyer George.
How would I handle it? I don't know how I would handle it in the sense that I don't know there's
anything different to do other than you get the people off the plane and you arrest them and you
prosecute them, particularly that guy. What's his name?
Cuomo? No, no, no. We'll get to Cuomo. Don't worry.
Yeah. The Frontier Airlines guy. Nice, George. Nice, George.
Andrew. Andrew. Yeah. We'll call him Andrew C.
Okay.
In C-28D. No, you just have to get them off. I think the interesting thing to me is
what the F is going on out there with all these people behaving like this. And I just,
I hate to, I don't want to politicize it and say that this is just part of the political realm
that we're in. But I think there's some kind of a crisis going on in this country where people
are no longer adhering to basic social norms or wanting to defy them.
Now, this guy was probably drunk off his ass.
Yes, they've cut, the head of American Airlines told them they don't have liquor on the planes now.
Yeah.
Yeah, they got to cut back on the alcohol.
But there's something going on.
I mean, I think, I don't, obviously, I haven't run the numbers, I'm not a statistician,
but there does seem to be something statistically significant going on here.
And it's some kind of a societal behavioral thing.
And I'd love to hear what a social, some kind of social sciences has to say about this, what kind of sociologists.
So what do you imagine to do anything about it?
The politicization of everything.
I like all the dogs in the background.
We're going to leave them in the thing.
Yeah, they're unruly and they probably had their dog nip for the day. I'm sorry for that,
but it adds a little to the process.
So this is this idea of institutional decline that has been going on for years and years,
helped by the pandemic and people then getting out and then having the pandemic return,
essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's that, but I also think there's just something,
there's just with a lot of people now, it's like, I don't care what anybody says,
I'm going to do what I think and I'm going to live in my own reality and everyone can go,
you know, fuck themselves. And I don't know if that, it's hard for me to say that it doesn't
have something to do with what we've been through the last four years.
Is there a solution? Do you imagine that it would just change?
People will calm down?
I don't know.
I honestly don't.
Is that a permissible answer?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's fine.
I don't know.
I honestly don't know.
I'd love to know.
I'd love to know what it is that's causing all this.
Right.
And, you know, because it is.
It does seem like it's statistically, you can see the uptick.
It's real numbers.
Yeah, they are real numbers.
The FAA reported more than 3,000 cases of unruly behavior by passengers in the first half of 2021.
This included some nearly 2,500 instances where passengers refused to comply with federal face mask mandate.
I think the mask stuff began it, right?
This fight over the mask.
Yeah, but the mask stuff didn't begin with the mask stuff, right?
I mean, the mask stuff is just, if it weren't the masks, it would be something else.
Right, right.
Like vaccination.
It's just, people are just becoming, you know, people are wanting or reverting to behaving
to five-year-old behavior where it's like, oh, you're telling me to do something?
I'm not going to do it.
Yeah.
I don't want to do it.
One of the things that's also happening is that Congress is not getting along with
mask mandates or whatever, and there was a big
fight over the CDC
extending its eviction moratorium through
October 3rd, which is a move that might be on
shaky ground. The move only applies to areas
quote, experiencing substantial
and high levels of community transmission
levels. Chuck Schumer claims that's 90%
of the country. In June, Supreme Court
Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned that the CDC's eviction ban was overstepping its authority. And I think
Joe Biden seems to know this, but the White House wants states wants to distribute $46 billion in
emergency rent relief. So far, only $3 billion has been dispersed. An estimated 11 million adults
are behind in their rental payments. It's a really difficult question. And obviously, Representative Cori Bush slept on the steps of the Capitol to call attention to it.
Even if it's illegal, what do you think is going to happen here?
I think it's going to get struck down by the courts. I mean, the problem is, I mean,
I think there was a moratorium that Congress actually enacted into law, which is the right
way to do it. And then that expired,
and now the CDC is relying on its general authority to protect the public health,
which would include lockdowns if necessary, closing the border thing, normal types of things
that historically governments have done to stop pandemics and the spreads of communicable diseases. And an eviction moratorium
does not fall within that. There's nothing to believe that an eviction is more likely to spread
COVID-19 than you going to the supermarket. In fact, it's probably less so because you're not
going into a public place with a lot of people. And this is really just an economic issue. And that's not within the purview of the CDC. The
proper way to do this is, again, to pass a law that says you can't have evictions for a set
period of time because of the pandemic. If they're willing to do that, if Congress is willing to do
that and leaving apart the other substantial policy issues about whether you should do that.
And if you really feel that you need to help renters who are having economic difficulty, the right way to do that, assuming that's what you want to do, is not to place the burden specifically and narrowly on landlords who aren't necessarily, you know, they're not all Jared Kushner.
They could be Kara Swisher renting out her basement.
I am a landlord.
And it's not fair.
It's not fair to, you know, people who own property that they should bear the entire
burden of this.
If there's going to be a burden, it should be borne by all taxpayers.
And that's the idea behind the actual relief, which is the problem.
Which is interesting.
The housing market is also exploding.
I mean, it's.
Yeah.
Which is funny, which is sort of inconsistent with the whole eviction moratorium thing. It means people are moving around. And it's like, well, if you're really serious and you thought it was a public health issue, just don't move.
Don't move, right. Exactly.
Of course, we're not going to do that.
Yeah. What do you think – Biden is just going to do it from a political point of view, and it makes him look good, like trying to help people. It makes him look good. Well, it gets certain people off his back. But the disturbing thing to me as a lawyer is the rule of law aspect of it. The president of
the United States- No matter who he is.
No matter who he is. That's the key point. He is sworn to faithfully execute the laws,
including the constitution. And he shouldn't be doing things
that he thinks are probably not legal, even for political purposes, because that's just,
nobody should be doing that. It doesn't matter whether it's the issue is the freaking wall
where Trump illegally diverted money to it. It doesn't matter whether it's DeSantis in Florida
with his social media bullshit man, which clearly violates the First
Amendment. He's obligated to follow the Constitution and the laws too as a public
official. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether it's for a good purpose or not because
one person's good purpose may not be yours. The good purpose may be
Donald Trump thinking that he should be elected president.
Right, right.
When he wasn't.
Right, right.
It's a slippery slope.
And I don't mean by saying all this to make, you know, an equivalency between this eviction
ban, which is, and the wall, and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But, you know, because that would be a false equivalency for me, for example, to equate the eviction moratorium. So the solution is to pass something.
What Trump did. But the solution is to pass something. But again, the problem is,
if one side does something, the other side will invoke some kind of false equivalency and say,
well, if they could do this, we can do this. Right, right.
And we're off to the races. And it's a very dangerous and bad thing.
And we're on a plane throwing drinks at each other. It's the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's one of the reasons why.
It's one of the reasons why, you know, as a lawyer, I've always been a conservative.
liberals to twist the law and the constitution, in my view, to achieve ends that they sought to achieve, which weren't necessarily consistent with the statute of the constitution. And that's one of
the reasons why that whole rule of law concept is why I think that we have only one party that's
trying to adhere to the rule of law, which is now the Democratic Party. Right. So to see, you know, to see Biden do this, it's like, listen, guys, you got it.
You somebody's got to hold the fort on the rule of law.
So, you know, I really would like them to, you know, just, you know, bite the bullet
and say, look, we can't do this.
Congress absolutely has to act, though, because there are a lot of people struggling.
Yeah, there are a lot of people.
Yeah, there are a lot of people.
And they've shoveled out, you know, I mean, trillions of dollars already.
To everybody. You know, to everybody. Too many, too much, too much. Yeah, there are a lot of people. And they've shoveled out, you know, I mean, trillions of dollars already. To everybody. To everybody.
Too many. Too much. Too much.
Well, some people think so. Some people don't.
OK, so moving on to some politics, two small special elections in Ohio with some bigger implications.
Trump-backed Republican candidate and centrist Democrat won the primary elections in a pair of open seats Tuesday.
Mike Kerry, a political newcomer backed by President Donald Trump, beat a field of experienced Republicans in the Columbus area.
The former president's preferred candidate lost in a special election in Texas last week.
Chantel Brown, a centrist backed by Hillary Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus, beat out a progressive candidate.
Nina Turner, who was backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
So large candidate fields, low voter turnout. We can't read too much into these elections. But what could we say is going on about Trump and his declaration of his kingmaker status? And then the influence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
the Democratic Party just by on the basis of this one off-year special election. I will say this, I mean, I think the Texas race is interesting because it was a single, it was not a primary,
but it was a general election with everybody on the ticket and a general special election with everyone on the ballot.
And that meant the Democrats were voting and moderate or independents were voting and the
Trump, it just shows you that they're going to vote against Donald Trump's candidates. And that's
the problem that the Republicans have is that he may be able to pick in a primary particular candidate.
That doesn't mean they win general elections, except in districts that are unlosable for Republicans.
So it's not necessarily a sign, but it's something to be watched for.
It's something to be watched.
Right.
Do you think he's a kingmaker?
You know, I think he's I think he can ruin somebody more than he's a kingmaker.
Ah, that's interesting.
That's what I think.
His power is the power of destruction.
Which is something you've written about a lot.
Right.
That's what he does.
He doesn't create anything.
He destroys because that's the nature of his personality. And so that's the way
he exerts power in the Republican Party is the threat of destruction because, you know, and he
may destroy himself in the process. And he kind of did do that by losing the House and the Senate
and the presidency, which he could have, if he were actually competent and sane, he could have been
reelected even with the pandemic, I believe. And he engages in destructive conduct, and that is why
they all are terrified of him. Which is why they go along with it.
Which is why they go along, because they just are afraid of what he will do if he defies them,
because he'll take everybody down with him. so when you talk to people behind the scenes
what is what is the what is the attitude we're just going to go along i mean obviously you've
been sort of for shame for doing this you've written a lot well i don't know i mean i don't
really talk to it's hard for me to really make an assessment these days i don't really talk to
people who um you know to people who are you know in the Republican Party who are just kowtowing to
Trump. I just don't have that many people to talk to about that. But I do think that that's just
everybody is taking the path of least resistance. I think that's just the obvious and it's just
this incredibly
short-termist view that they've been taking now for four years. It keeps getting them. It keeps
making things worse and worse and worse. Yeah. They don't make a stand. They don't make any
stand. Well, very few of them do. They can't. And now they're almost, I think they're incapable of
it now. Yeah. Well, now they can't. They can't go back. All right. We're going to get on to our
big story, your favorite one.
Governor Andrew Cuomo is running out of supporters following the report by New York Attorney General Letitia James detailing evidence of sexual harassment and creating a toxic work environment.
President Biden, Nancy Pelosi, New York's entire Democratic congressional delegation said he should
step down. Over 80 New York State Assembly lawmakers said they would support starting
a process of impeachment if Cuomo doesn't resign, which takes a longer amount of time, a couple of
months. Rudy Giuliani does seem to be one prominent defender, which is not great. Giuliani tweeted,
Cuomo may be guilty, but we used to have trials of four convictions, which is a fair point, Rudy.
That's what Cuomo's Democratic allies denied President Trump. He's using it for that. There
would be poetic justice if they did that to Cuomo, but it would be unjust, dangerous, and entirely un-American. So what do you think about
this? And I'll ask various questions about the video Cuomo put out and stuff like that.
Talk from a legal point of view, because Letitia James did not bring legal charges,
although other jurisdictions are looking at that. Let me take a step back here. An unwanted touching is technically criminal.
So he felt up this executive assistant and technically you could charge that.
Do people get charged for things that don't involve like ripping people's clothes off and
stuff I don't really want to talk about? Probably not. Is it necessarily
sexual harassment? It probably is actually, in terms of the civil aspect of it. To me,
the bigger question is, who is this man? And why do you want to have somebody, and I don't,
and I think the answer of the Democrats is that they don't have somebody who is just this abusive and self and narcissistic and a position of authority over people.
And the answer is you don't.
And that's the real problem here. What put him over, I think, sent him over the cliff were the first two accounts in the report.
The one with the executive assistant that he called into the office on the weekend and then made a pass at, to use the 1950s lingo.
And then the state trooper one, which was just gross.
Even though the physical contact there was brief, the whole context of it was just, you know, it's just abusive.
And I think the two, the combination of those two more so than some of the others,
which everybody already knew about, I think that just put him over the edge politically. Although,
you know, some of the others were pretty bad too. But legally he is not in jeopardy criminally,
correct? I don't think so. I think you could technically, you could bring a charge.
But prosecutors don't do that, right?
They don't generally don't do that.
Right.
I generally don't do that.
And, you know, I mean, sexual harassment, you know, to me, it's like it's a multi, to measure how bad it is, is a multidimensional thing.
You have the degree of the physical, you know, aspect of it. You have the degree of the physical aspect of it. You have the degree of the verbal aspect of
it. And you have also sort of the number of times it's repeated with one person and others. And
also the credibility aspect of contemporaneous corroboration. Did the victim tell people at the time or relatively soon after?
And here, okay, the physical aspect of it was, you know, it wasn't rape.
It wasn't sexual assault.
This is a legal person thinking about this.
And it was, yeah, I'm just making an assessment of how bad it is in terms of like, do you give somebody the employment death penalty?
Right.
Do you fire them?
Do you kick them out of their job?
Or you just tell them, you know, cut the shit.
Right.
And, you know, if there had just been like one or two of these incidents leaving apart the groping, you might be able to say in an employment context, cut the shit.
Although they don't really tolerate much of that these days.
Right.
He'd be fired out of any, you know, if he were CEO of a major corporation, he'd be gone.
And to me, because of the fact he did it with so many people and it's clear that he disregards –
It's 11 women claiming harassment.
It's 11 women, you know, and not all of them were hugely – again, not all of them were just like hugely awful.
But when you put it all together, it's awful.
Right. Not all of them were just like hugely awful. But when you put it all together, it's awful. And it just shows you his mentality and his perception of a droit de seigneur.
Is that how you say it?
Yes.
That's exactly how you say it.
And it's exactly how you say it.
And you just don't want somebody – it's a bad example.
And to me, the thing about it is if you wouldn't permit this in the private sector, you shouldn't, you absolutely should not permit it in the public sector.
And that was always one of the points I like to make about Trump was if he were in any other job.
He would be fired.
He'd have been gone.
Yeah.
He would have been gone.
Yeah.
He would have never been.
So when you look at how Letitia James handled this, and obviously there's rumors she's going to run for governor, right?
That seems likely in this case.
A lot of AGs have jumped from there to the governor's seat or tried to.
How do you think she handled it?
She put it in an outside firm.
Yeah, I think that was absolutely the right approach.
That was absolutely the right approach.
It insulated her from the political aspect of it.
These are two professionals who have professional reputations and who are doing this, you know, being brought in
especially for this.
And remember,
guess who asked for this?
He did.
Cuomo asked for this.
Okay, here you are.
Here it is.
So, you know,
he's got no business complaining
about it.
Well, he did.
He said it was political
in his video.
What do you mean?
I know, but he's got
no business complaining about it.
And the facts are the facts.
They released, you know,
they released,
they described the testimony in excruciating detail
and released tons and tons of exhibits.
And you don't have to read very far to come to the conclusion that, okay, if one half
of this is true, he should go.
Right, right.
So you thought she handled it well, the way she, from a legal point of view.
Yeah, I think she handled it.
I think she handled it very, very well.
And he obviously did not.
You see that huge controversy of them trying to trash Lindsay Boylan.
Oh, Lindsay Boylan, yes.
Yeah, they did that.
They continued.
Yeah, which is – I can see where they were going because at that point, it was really just her.
And she did leave the office, their office, on bad terms.
And apparently, there are people there who didn't like her.
Yeah, but that's how they do it.
That's how they do those things.
But anytime you attack a victim, particularly when you don't have the facts on your side in terms of the Sexual Harassment Act, you're just going to blow yourself up.
the alleged perpetrator without knowing all the facts. You just have to assume that with some of these guys, there's so much under the waterline that you can't see at first.
Which was what happened here.
Which it was so true here because these guys who do this shit,
it's usually they're recidivistic. We now know that.
Yeah.
All right? It's not just one thing like he just sort of
was enamored of this one woman.
Typically, when they engage in this kind of conduct,
it's like they just think they can get away with it.
Which amazes me in
2021 that you could ever think that.
I think he's brazening it out, but I think
he's doing a trauma. Everyone's talked about that.
The video. This guy's
a narcissist. He's a
world-class narcissist. narcissist right but what do you
think of this video i did i do it with everyone black and white young and old straight and lgbtq
powerful people friends strangers people who i meet on the street i was like you're a creep with
everybody or what he was what do you think about that it's a bad faith false equivalency right yes
what would you do if you were his lawyer i think think the only argument you can make is maybe it's not a high crime or misdemeanor. I don't know what the standard is
for impeachment under the New York State Constitution. I think he's got to go full
contrition mode. I think it's a little late for that. And basically say these are not grounds
for removal of a governor, but also engage in full contrition mode. The problem is he can't really engage in full contrition mode because some of the allegations are so bad.
And he's locked himself in testimonially.
Yeah, right.
Right?
He's not, he's, you know, if he basically all of a sudden says, yes, I'm sorry, I did all this stuff.
He can't do that with the stuff he's denied because then he's basically admitting to perjury, which is a crime.
Right, right. And actually, that could be, I guess maybe that would be one aspect you could throw in
in an impeachment trial is that he may have perjured himself.
Right.
If he's denying the grope and he's denying the touching of the state trooper and so on
and so forth.
Lastly, what happens with the civil cases here?
Obviously, there's other cases being looked at in Manhattan, I think, in Albany.
What happens now from a legal point of view with him?
Or are these just civil cases that he will have to do?
I mean, these individuals, if they choose to, could sue him.
And the law is pretty hard.
At least the federal law is pretty tough on sexual harassment claims because you have
to show that there's this pervasive problem that really alters the conditions of employment in such
a fashion that it's different for one person of one gender and different for another. But if you
read the stories of these women,
you go into the office every day and you dread it. I guess his best defense, weirdly, would be he's such an asshole that everybody was miserable there for different reasons, perhaps, but everybody
was different there. And that's something that the report actually talks about. He was a screamer
and a yeller and just a psychological abuser. So oddly, that would be his best defense is that he mistreated both men and women, although frankly, he mistreated women in a way that was a bit different because of the sexual aspect of it than men.
So do you think he's going to be impeached?
That's probably where it's going.
Yes, I think he's going to be impeached or removed.
Removed. Okay. All right, George, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
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Okay, George, we're back with another big story.
The latest revelations coming out of the investigations into the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
ABC News got a hold of, reviewed a collection,
Justice Department documents turned over
to the House and Senate committees.
First off, there were some emails
at the end of December, 2020,
where the former acting head of the DOJ Civil Division wandering out of his area, Jeffrey Clark, circulating a draft letter asking Georgia's governor and state lawmakers to investigate claims of voter fraud in the state.
He was trying to get Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donahue to sign off on this letter.
They refuse. Then there was the draft of an unsent resignation letter that Rosen's chief of staff wrote in case Rosen got fired during the January 6th meeting with Trump.
He didn't, but the letter detailed his intent to resign over what he said were former president's
direct instructions to use the department to support a false election fraud claims. Rosen
and Donoghue later thwarted an attempt by Clark to have Trump appoint him acting attorney general.
So, wow, the Justice
Department is quite a place. Tell us about your insights into what was going on here from a legal
point of view and also a political point of view in a place that's not supposed to be that.
I mean, I think both legal and politically. I mean, basically what was happening here was
Donald Trump was trying to politicize the Justice Department, to use the Justice Department in an illegal fashion to perpetuate himself in office. And he was doing it in a manner that
reflected the fact that he didn't really care whether there was proof of the fraud that he was
claiming had been perpetrated upon him. I mean, he told Rosen and Donahue,
basically, don't worry about the facts. Just say that there
was fraud and we'll take care of the rest. There was this note in Donahue's notes that basically
said, I and Trump and the Republicans in the House will take care of it. So to me, those documents
show, they really show as much as anything else his criminal intent.
Right.
Yeah.
You tweeted that.
You tweeted that.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Because they just show that he absolutely was – he didn't care about the legal aspects of it.
He didn't actually want the Justice Department to do something that would argue – that might be within its purview, which would be to enforce the law. He didn't
actually care. He just wanted them to make a statement that he could use politically.
And under the criminal provision of the Hatch Act, you cannot force or try to coerce anybody.
That includes the President of the United States can't do this, can't try to coerce anybody into engaging into political activity.
And this was purely political, precisely because they were basically telling him there's nothing
legally that we can do because the facts aren't there and that's not really our role.
And he's just saying, so what?
You know, make this statement and make this statement in effect for his own political
benefit.
So what happens then?
This has happened time and again.
and in effect for his own political benefit. So what happens then?
This has happened time and again.
Well, again, I wish, I mean, I wish the Justice Department now would engage in the enforcement
of the criminal law against Donald Trump, because this is a pretty clear violation right
here.
You could argue that some other statutes were violated.
And in terms of other things that
Trump did, the fact that he just didn't care about what the facts were and just blew past the facts,
and the fact that he told the Georgia Secretary of State that he just needed to find 10,000 X
number of votes, just shows basically that he was attempting to steal the election himself.
He was attempting to do what he was accusing everybody else of doing.
And that should be criminal under under federal and state law.
And I just don't you know, I understand the hesitance of the Justice Department to get into this because it's it's because he will politicize.
It's politically fraught.
But I don't I don't know how you can let this pass.
Yeah, but they seem like they're going to.
Because now Rosen and Donoghue are expected to provide interviews in coming days.
This is why Donald Trump doesn't like lawyers.
They take notes.
They take notes, right.
I know there's this famous passage in the Mueller report where he was trashing-
Lawyers.
McGahn for taking notes.
And McGahn says, no, no, no, no, good lawyers take notes.
And then Trump said, oh, no, no, I had great lawyers like Roy Cohn, and they never took notes.
But yeah, I think you're going to hear, I mean, the story was basically they knew the election
wasn't stolen. They knew this was all bullshit. Barr knew it, which is why he basically quit,
because he told Trump that, and Trump had had enough with him. And I think the rest of them who were left after Barr left were basically trying to run out the clock to January 20th to the point, but also there was this point on January 3rd where Trump was ready to fire Rosen and replace
him with this guy you mentioned, Jeffrey Clark, who was the Assistant Attorney General in terms
of the Environmental and National Resources Division and then had become acting head of the civil division and who basically was all in on
the stop the steal and was doing all sorts of crazy stuff and was having conversations directly
with Trump and triangling to be the replacement. So what happens to him? What happens to him? A
lot of people are talking about disbarring him. I don't know. I think I'd have to know more facts about what he did because
when you get disbarred for something, usually it's for, you'd have to do something. He had
filed something in court that was dishonest. If he had made a public statement in connection with
a case like Rudy Giuliani did, you could get suspended or disbarred, which is what happened to Giuliani. You know, here he was just doing, he was engaging in bad conduct within the confines of the
government, although really not acting on behalf of the government.
I don't think he ended up actually doing anything.
Maybe you could get him on conspiracy to-
But that's difficult.
Engage in, you know, yeah, it's difficult.
I just don't see, you know, because he was thwarted, I don't think there are necessarily going to be any ramifications for him other than, I don't know if he'll ever get a job again.
Or, you know, you did tweet it.
This is a criminal intent, but you think this is going nowhere.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right.
What about the committee calling McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, and Jordan?
This is another proceeding.
It's a political proceeding, but it's also a legal proceeding to find an investigator.
I think they have to.
I think particularly McCarthy, because we already know that there was some kind of conversation or conversations that day between McCarthy and Trump.
And we know pieces of those conversations.
We need to have, I think, testimony from basically everybody who spoke with Trump that day,
because that's one of the big sort of the gaps in our knowledge. We have these books that are
coming out where people are unloading their stories about how they tried to tell the president,
or they tried to tell somebody who told the president that,
oh, this is terrible. You have to go on TV. You have to tell these people to stop and go home and so on and so forth. And then he basically dragged his feet for many hours. Well, what was
he saying? These books written by these great reporters like Bender and Carol Lennig and Phil
Rucker, they don't actually have that much on what Trump
was actually doing. I mean, there was more reporting actually in the days immediately
following January 6th about what Trump was doing. And there was a Washington Post story that said,
basically, had some White House person saying that Trump was an absolute monster that day,
not for attribution. And you have some reporting from the New York Times that's saying that Trump was an absolute monster that day, not for attribution. And you have some
reporting from the New York Times that's saying that somebody had said that he had lost it.
And there was some reporting from I don't know which newspaper about how Cipollone was essentially
saying you could be criminally or civilly or criminally liable for this. We don't have a lot
of detail on that. And we don't have a lot of detail on what Trump was doing right in the Bender book
or I don't know which book it was
they all meld into each other
they all meld together
they kept having to bring
Meadows kept bringing Ivanka down
to calm Trump
according to a source close to Ivanka Trump
and if they were any
closer they'd be on the other side of them
but go ahead
they might be on the other side of them. But go ahead. Right, right. They might be
right. That's the source with blonde hair
and tall and blonde hair and whatever.
And what
was the response? We don't hear about
like, oh, well, he screamed back or he said
I know you're right, you're right. I'm just
so shocked that this
I can't go on television. So they
need to be. They had to find out what he said.
What did he say and do?
What was he watching?
He was watching TV all afternoon.
All right.
Final question here.
Will they do that?
Will they do that?
Yeah.
They're going to, I mean, do what?
Call people to testify?
Absolutely.
They absolutely have a moral and ethical and legal and constitutional obligation to do all that.
Kinzinger has said that they're going to do that.
They're going to do, they're going to do that. They're going to definitely
call. They have to call McCarthy. Jordan seems to be hiding something. If you've seen his statements
on television, when they ask him, did you talk to Trump? He's like, oh, I had ice cream on Thursday.
He's just avoiding it. What about Trump himself?
All these people. What about Trump himself?
Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't call him in a live hearing unless I were having him cross-examined by a guy like Barry Burke. I think what I would do first before with basically almost all these people is take their depositions, have good lawyers go down there and make these people sit in a room for five hours and take their depositions under penalty of purging.
All right.
And that's what I would do with Trump.
We'll see.
And Trump, you know, Trump,
all the things that he has done over the last few years,
he hasn't even had his deposition taken on any of them.
It's just shocking.
The civil cases, the criminal cases,
he's managed to avoid even having an answer.
You know, and he can't answer questions.
Yeah, so that's the problem.
Truthfully under oath, which is one, you know,
that's why his lawyers fought so hard
not to have him even interviewed by the Mueller people. Well, people, exactly. you know, that's why his lawyers fought so hard not to have him
even interviewed by the people. Exactly. So we likely is not. He will probably not be. All right,
George, we have to pivot to a listener question. Roll tape. You've got you've got I can't believe
I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Katie here from Madison, Wisconsin. My question for you
is, do you think social media companies like Facebook will face
the risk in the next five to 10 years of major class action lawsuits? We've seen this with
tobacco companies and most recently with the opioid crisis. And with all the discussion you
talk around its effects of depression and other mental illnesses, was just curious what your
thoughts are on this.
What do you think, George? What's going to happen with lawsuits with these companies?
Possible, or is it going to be- I don't think they're going to go anywhere.
I mean, in terms of the specific disinformation, I think that Section 230 protects them,
and I think generally the First Amendment protects them. And I don't know how you would put together a claim that says that going on Facebook causes depression. I don't think the causation,
you know, I think there may be a correlation, but I don't think you could show the kind of causation
that would be necessary to establish a legal claim. And I just don't see how you would hold these companies liable for this sort of thing.
I just don't see it.
So what legal challenges do they face?
Is it more just federal laws around antitrust and things like that?
I don't even think the antitrust things pan out because –
Explain, explain.
You know, Facebook is, you can't define, I mean, one of the things that government
sometimes does in antitrust cases is define the actual, you have to show in an antitrust case
that somebody is engaging in monopolistic conduct or in controlling the market in a defined product.
All right? If you define the product as Facebook, yeah,
Facebook has a monopoly of Facebook. But there are so many... Facebook competes with so many
other avenues of communication and miscommunication, whether it be Twitter,
whether it be just the message boards and so on and so forth, that you can't really define a market in a manner that would allow you, I think, to bring an antitrust case against Facebook for controlling, I guess, information flow.
I don't, you know, I just don't see that.
So where does it go?
Does it have to look at, this has to be sort of a legislative to they remove like liability protections and most people think that should not happen because it would be disastrous
from a business point of view but um yeah but how do you look at if something like that this this
law protects them on all it's sort of a get out of jail free card for everything correct i mean
is that yeah and i think you basically you couldn't have you know you couldn't have anything
you couldn't have twitter you couldn't have anything. You couldn't have Twitter.
You couldn't have Facebook if you didn't have essentially Section 230 because you can't – either of us could go on Twitter in 10 seconds and libel somebody, and then Twitter would be held liable for that, and they basically would shut down pretty quickly.
Right.
So, you know, I just don't know how you deal. I don't know what the happy medium is between allowing this sort of unrestricted free speech and shutting it down altogether in a manner that's consistent. I don't know how you do it, frankly, consistent with the First Amendment, but I don't know what the solution is to this. I honestly don't know. Well, I think more. More sites. That's my argument is more sites.
Yeah, I think that's, well, more sites. I got more sites though, but what if all the sites are
like, you know, Getter? How do you pronounce that?
Yeah, Getter. I'm on Getter.
You're on Getter, right? You and ISIS, I gather now, is on Getter.
And porn, and porn. Let's not leave out the porn.
I tried to get on Getter.
Did they let you on?
No.
What?
I don't know how I tried.
I tried, but for some reason it kept rejecting me.
Oh, you might be in their blacklist.
I think I'm on a blacklist, right?
Because basically you're supposed to enter your Twitter handle.
Yes, right.
Oh, you must be on a blacklist.
Okay, I did that, and I think I'm on a blacklist.
Oh, my God.
I can talk to Jason Miller for you if you want. Just offer.
Yeah, I was going to get A.J. Delgado to do it for me.
We're not going to explain that reference at all. So are there any legal implications for these companies? You're right. The First Amendment does when people what's really interesting is someone like Trump who's demanding to be back on these platforms saying it's his first amendment right but the first amendment rights lie with these companies not with Trump correct correct
and he's right and he's not going to get back on and his claims are bullshit because they're not
the state um I don't know I mean first of all what are you trying to do with these that's step
one we have to ask well what do you want these companies to do that they're not doing? And I think ideally you would want them to filter out the misinformation
better. But if you start trying to force them to do that in some manner, you're, you know,
you're almost, you're coercing speech or you're coercing. And I don't know how you can do that with the First Amendment. It's a
very dangerous path to go on because what if the next Trump administration, you know, coerces
a company not to allow criticism of MAGA or whatever? That's the problem. That's why we
have a First Amendment. And, you know, I don't think the framers really understood what could be possible, you know, in their era of people cranking primitive printing presses and pamphleteering.
I think judges will knock this down. That's where it's going to go.
No, judges will never tolerate it because we have a very firm and strong First Amendment tradition that basically says that you cannot engage in regulation that is not content neutral.
And even trying to fend off disinformation, that's not content neutral.
Although, I mean, false speech is actually protected by the First Amendment.
Right, but these companies can make those rules.
These companies are-
These companies have every ability can make those rules. These companies are- These companies have every ability
to make these rules.
I think the question is,
are they willing to do that
in a manner,
do they think they can do that
in a manner that doesn't hurt
their business model?
And the second manner is,
can they do it-
Effectively.
How effectively can they do it?
Because they're so large.
So are there any legal avenues
for people who are having problems
with this from your perspective
if you were trying to fight- No. No, no, I don't. I would agree with you,
George. I have to say that. All right, George, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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Okay, George, each week we like to make a prediction.
It can be about anything.
Give us one of yours.
I think Giuliani is going to get indicted soon.
Tell, explain. think that you know because of his recent interview he gave an interview to a w i guess it was wnbc tv news reporter in manhattan who was interviewing him for the 20th anniversary of 9-11 and they
were down at the 9-11 site at the memorial and he just starts spouting off about how unfairly he's
being treated by the government. I mean, I'm more than willing to go to jail if they want to put me
in jail. And if they do, they're going to suffer the consequences in heaven. I'm not. I didn't do
anything wrong. Why are you willing to go to jail if you feel that you're innocent? Because they
lie. I mean, these are not the words of somebody who thinks they're not going to be indicted okay um so you think he will he's that's one of the next
shoes that's going to and be disbarred correct he has yeah i don't think yeah i don't think he's
i don't think he's going to have a have a a leg to stand on when they actually have a disciplinary
hearing that to confirm whether or not he should be suspended. And, you know, and he says,
well, the problem reportedly, according to Maggie Haberman of the Times,
is he's basically broke at this point.
Yes, yes.
So I don't know how he defends himself from all this stuff.
Yeah, so what a fall.
It's actually kind of sad.
It is. Think about it.
20 years hence, right?
And he could have just, you know, he had a nice sinecure.
He could have just stuck to that.
And it's just inexplicable.
Well, he just can't quit him.
That's how, you know, he just can't.
He can't do it.
You can see it.
You can see it.
It's just self-destructing.
It is.
It's a lot of things going on there, I think.
Oh, that's an excellent prediction.
All right.
How soon?
How soon do you suspect?
Soon.
I'm not going to hazard that, but it'll happen this year, probably in the fall.
It's just my wild-ass guess based on no specific information.
So, I disclaim it as a wild-ass guess, but you just can't.
It's a prediction.
It's a prediction.
All right, George.
Thank you so much.
This is really helpful.
These are really good.
That's a really good prediction.
I think you're absolutely correct, though.
And I think you're correct about these Facebooks and others.
I don't think there is an avenue.
I think laws, if they want to pass new laws around them, around privacy and data and things like that, that's the avenue to go in because then you... Yeah, and moral suasion.
Yeah, yeah. Moral suasion. Well, yeah, but I mean, if you just pass data and privacy laws that makes
their business not quite as, you know, interested in creating rage and anger, that would help a lot.
Just basic rules around data privacy, and those are certainly completely legal to do.
just basic rules around data privacy. And those are certainly completely legal to do.
And you mean, and that would be basically
so that you can't use data on what people are looking at
to encourage to dump more of that same shit on them.
Yes, exactly.
There's all kinds of business.
Which is the problem, that feedback problem,
that's the intentional feedback.
Yeah, there's all kinds of things they can do
to make these businesses.
And then also encourage innovation so that there's more.
You may not like Getter, and I'm sorry, you can't get on it, but it's more like that is
great.
I don't care what they are.
The more, the better.
And the more innovation there is, the better.
Anyway, I really appreciate you coming on.
Thank you very much.
Have a great rest of the summer.
Thank you for having me.
Don't forget if there's a story in the news and you're curious about and want to hear
more our opinion on, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the show. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman and Evan Engel. Ernie Enderdot engineered
this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, or if you're an Android user,
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