The Bulwark Podcast - The Bulwark Live, with Brian Stelter

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Fox launched the Big Lie based on a random email from a woman in Minnesota who heard voices in the supermarket. And its viewers wanted to be told that Trump was robbed of reelection. Brian Stelter has the receipts, and joins Charlie Sykes for our live show in Washington, D.C. show notes: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Network-of-Lies/Brian-Stelter/9781668046906

Transcriber's Name Reviewer's Name Hey, thank you. Thank you. Thank you Bulwark fans. I know he doesn't need any introduction. Brian Stelter was a media reporter at the New York Times, chief media correspondent at CNN, the anchor of its former Sunday show, Reliable Sources. Currently, he's a special correspondent at Vanity Fair. He's had a very interesting year, by the way. And he's host

of his own podcast, Inside the Hive. He's also a producer on Apple TV's The Morning Show, which if you have not binged, I would recommend. That was inspired by his first book, Top of the Morning. He also wrote Hoax about Fox News. And his new book, his new best-selling book, which we're going to be talking about, Network of Lies. Spoiler alert, the network is Fox. Brian Stelter. Thank you.

Good to see you. Thank you so much. Forget the Network of Lies. This is the Network of the Truth, right? Maybe it's not actually a book title, but it's more important. These are not the crazy ones. That's the important thing. Okay, so we have to start with this review of your book in the New York Times.

In Network of Lies, Brian Stelter builds the case against Fox News. This may be the best book review ever, I just have to say. Can we then tell people the truth? Yeah. Which is that when I wrote Top of the Morning 10 years ago, I had the worst New York Times book review ever. It was so bad. This felt better. The one ten years ago described my

book as like a half over easy breakfast. It wasn't cooked right. And, you know, it was so bad multiple websites wrote about how bad the review was. Okay? So this feels pretty good. Fortunately, you got over that though, right? I guess I did. Well, they described your book as a thrilling account of the conspiracy to steal

the 2020 election, the attack on the Capitol, Tucker Carlson's defenestration and more. And it describes you this way. Stelter, a young fogey who once worked at the New York Times, has a wonkier disposition than another author we're not gonna mention. He uses words like shenanigans. He wrote his book, he says, to help readers feel empowered. He's like a Canadian Mountie who has stumbled upon a gerbil stomping ring. Honestly, the next person to write a book about Fox is Dwight Garner, because

his description of Fox is perfect. Honestly, the next person to write a book about Fox News is Dwight Garner, because his description of Fox is perfect. For a skelter, journalism might be a humble calling, but it is a patriotic and a noble one, and it burns to see its ideals perverted. I just want to read one more paragraph here, because we're going to get, of course, to Tucker Carlson, what the hell happened there, the role of Fox News, how Tucker Carlson and Fox News changed conservatism? But first you want to soften me up.

I get it. Go ahead. Well, your reviewer said they put the wedgie into wedge issues. Which is one of those lines as a writer you wish you'd written. Yes. And then he goes on to talk about the trickle-down effect of Fox News. We live in a stupider, more bellicose world. Democrats are led by the brain, the old saw goes, while Republicans are led by the gut.

This has, by and large, been a healthy balance in America. But what happens when the Republican gut becomes merely colon, rectum, and anus? This book asks. And hot filth pours from it. Reading Stelter, I was reminded of a tweet that made the rounds a few years ago. Quote, Fox News did our parents what they thought video games would do to us.

Would do to us. Yes. Would do to us. Yes. Would do to us. Yes. So, on any given night, how many people watch Fox News? Too many. But I mean... 2.5, 3 million.

Okay, but so how... That's not a big, giant number, is it? Well, it's bigger than my blog. It's bigger than... But the point of Fox is not the average minute viewer. It's the impact over a day, a week, and a month. It's what's called the cumulative rating. CNN, 40, 50 million people tune in a month.

Same for Fox. So over time, it's reaching a lot of folks. And as you know, all those clips are something... Not all of them. Many of them are going viral on social media. So it does punch above its weight. And as long as you have every GOP elected official watching, as long as you have every campaign strategist watching,

as long as they fear your network, then that's most important, more than the ratings. Okay, so I'll tell you what my reaction to your book was. When I first saw it, I thought, okay, stelter on Fox. Got it. Know what he's going to say. Right? Know the story.

Same old, same old. That's not your book, though. Thank you. You relied on... It's better than the Times Review. All of... Just enjoy it while you can. I know, yeah.

But let me just talk about the methodology of all of this, because I think that people think they know the story of the Dominion lawsuit, with all of the discovery, the $787 million settlement. But you, I want to say stumbled on, you knew that there was this giant trove of text messages and emails. So just tell me what's out there that you were able to craft into this book. That's right. There's just so much more than, you know, the daily news coverage had time to digest. And that's not a critique.

I was part of that daily coverage in April when the Dominion Fox case was settled. But Dominion did something really critical earlier that year, earlier this year. February and March, filing these summary judgment briefs, these really giant briefs. The judge said, you can have 40,000 words each, and they could have gone even longer.

They were basically, Dominion was putting all the best emails and texts right into those filings. And then on top of that summer judgment brief, they had to file 600 plus exhibits with the court. All the material that they might use at the trial. All the depositions they might reference. And those materials, although they are technically public, they're hard to find. They're hard to digest. A lot of the quotes in the book, if you Google them up until Tuesday, they're not on the internet.

Because they're just not that accessible. It's like a lot of things Tuesday, they're not on the internet because they're just not that accessible. It's like a lot of things in government, local, state, national. It's just not that accessible. I also used for this book a lot of the January 6th depositions, the testimony, the transcripts of the testimony because what was happening all day long at the Capitol interviewing those witnesses, there was a lot of material in there as well. So this book does not rely on anonymous sources. That's the thing that I love about it.

Yeah, that's the thing I love. I wrote a book about Fox in 2020, and it was mostly anonymously sourced. And look, Sean Hannity's not going to call me on the record and tell me how he really feels about Tucker Carlson. You have to use confidential sources sometimes. But the beauty of this book was that all of my anonymous sources are now on the record.

And that's why I feel like I had to write it. And shout out to my editor, Julia, who's here, who was on board, who said, let's get this out. Let's let the public see what's in these messages. No, I was really struck by the fact that you have this two gigabyte file on your computer with emails and messages from Tucker, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, as well as Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch,

as well as documented conversations with Fox executives and producers, which is, again, what makes this so riveting as you're reading it through. But I want to start with this story for people who think they know where The Big Lie came from and how it started. I have to say the most remarkable thing about your book, and you may have different things that are most amazing.

I want to talk about this random woman in Minnesota named Marlene Bourne and the role that she played. Tell me about Marlene. She is someone who admits her ideas are wackadoodle, who gets her ideas standing in line at the grocery store checkout line overhearing conversations. She says she is internally decapitated. Not sure what that means. She wrote a multi-page long email to Sidney Powell on Saturday, November 7th, 2020, which is the day that Biden was projected to be president-elect. So on the day when people were taking to the streets here in Washington, New York and elsewhere, on a day when even Fox accurately reported that Biden was going to be president,

she sends this conspiracy theory email to Sidney Powell. What's Sidney Powell doing on Sunday morning? She's going on Maria Bartiromo's show. So Sidney Powell, who's working with Trump, although Trump later denied it, right? Sidney Powell forwards it to Maria Bartiromo. Maria Bartiromo forwards it to Eric Trump. So all of a sudden, there's this conspiracy theory-laden email, this wackadoodle email, that's her word, that's inside the Trump family. And this email says it was Dominion's fault. The election was stolen from Trump, and it's Dominion's fault.

The machines were rigged, and it's Dominion's fault. Okay, I want to set this. This is a crazy lady from Minnesota who describes how she has visions and that the wind tells me I'm a ghost. Are you telling me the wind doesn't tell you you're a ghost? It does,

but I generally don't put it in an email. You shouldn't write it down. I don't. Don't write it down. Don't even go to a lawyer. She hears the theory about Dominion where? I think that is a mystery to this day, but this email was critical because... But it wasn't like in a checkout line or something? That's what she said.

She said she found these ideas from lots of different places. Including like... And it gets really detailed. She cites Nancy Pelosi. She cites various politicians. She basically says they're all in on it. Here's what I found that was amazing that was hiding in plain sight.

This is the best thing for a reporter and author. I went back and I watched Maria's show the next day from Sunday to November 8th. I realized Maria's looking down. She's looking off camera. She's reading the email almost word for word. Here it is. This is the whole story. The conspiracy theory gets from a random woman in Minnesota

on to live television on Fox within 24 hours of Biden becoming president-elect. And of course, the email was full of shit. And you look at it and you think to yourself, is anyone at Fox paying attention? I don't expect Maria Bartiromo to seek out the truth anymore, but isn't there anyone who cared about accuracy? And the answer was no.

So they were looking for some way to say that what had just happened did not happen, right? Exactly. They needed something. So basically, again, Donald Trump has lost the election. Even Fox has declared that Joe Biden is the victor. Right. Maria Bartiromo books as her guest, Sidney Powell. Yes.

Who then brings along this crazy email. Is this how it all started? I believe this is exactly how it all started. Of course, Trump, you know, on election night, he went out there at two in the morning and lied and said he had won when he hadn't. But once the projections were made,

then we enter a different phase of the big lie, a different phase of the story, a phase where you need to have a villain. You need to have an evildoer. And so it becomes these voting technology companies, Dominion and Smartmatic. But what I realized when I was working on this was it wasn't Trump that came up with this story. It wasn't born out of the White House. It was born out of Fox.

It was born out of Sidney Powell to Maria Bartiromo saying it on the air. And then within four days, Trump starts to say Dominion. Why? Because his buddy Sean Hannity picks up on Maria's lie and runs with it. Now, this was also happening in the fever swamps of the internet, but it doesn't get mainstream without Fox. It doesn't get into Trump's brain without Fox. Okay, so let's talk about what we know about Fox at this time.

There was pushback internally. Among the more remarkable things that we've learned is that even Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson thought this was bullshit. Some of it, some of the time, yes. How does it go from, okay, this woman's wackadoodle, she's crazy, we shouldn't be doing this. Where does that happen? Okay, so Tucker Carlson's not buying it originally, Laura Ingraham's not buying it, the Murdochs

are not buying it. Some of the hosts who are willing to flirt with the idea, they do it in a more creative way. They're more clever about it. And that's actually my worry for 2024, is that I'm afraid the lesson of Dominion v. Fox for Fox is just be a little more careful when you defame someone. Just don't use their full name.

Just refer to them in a vague way. Don't say the word Dominion, right? Because that's what Sean Hannity was doing. He was saying Dominion repeatedly. But again, this happens within four days. Dominion starts to get the death threat, starts to get the hate. And it was so critical for them to find this email.

Because once they sued, once they went through the discovery process, once they're inside Fox's servers, they type in the word Dominion. They want to figure out what was happening inside Fox before we were smeared for the first time. And this was the crucial point the lawyers made to me. The only email

that said Dominion was this crazy email. It wasn't as if there was some semi-reliable source. I can't say reliable sources anymore. Actually, I'm wearing my reliable sources socks, so I still can say reliable sources. Is that like an NDA thing? Are your socks violating the NDA?

The socks, when we got canceled, one of the producers made them for us. It's our way of all showing solidarity. No, there was no search within Fox for a semi-reliable source. There was no search for a fact checker. It was only this one email. So it wasn't as if...

Anyway, the point is, that strengthened Dominion's case so dramatically. And they realized this was the only source for the lie. So, I mean, some of this we know about. There was Sean Hannity who was basically saying, look, our listeners want to be told that Trump won't, right? We need to respect our listeners. I mean, this is a perfect example of the audience capture.

Yeah. So, what drove this? I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is this was not some conspiracy hatched in the upper reaches of Fox, of the Fox Corporation. That's right. It was not. It was really bottom up. And so it was Sean Hannity who was saying, look, our people want to be told this, so we must serve them. Yes, we must respect this audience, which, of course, was very disrespectful.

If you lie to me every day, you're not respecting me at all. But it's Maria, it's Hannity, it's Jeanine Pirro. And I think there's a couple of revealing quotes that suggest some of them actually believed. I was pulling up this one from Maria Bartiromo. This is November 20th. This was fraud. No one can tell me differently. Can you imagine a real journalist saying that?

My mind is so closed that no one can tell me differently, that this must have been stolen from Trump. But what that indicated was some of these folks actually believed. People like Hannity are more interesting because they're all over the place. He's going through all these different emotions every day. But Hannity never was named really in the Dominion lawsuit. Why? Because they only picked out the most egregious examples of the most nutty lies that were easiest to win on. So I think it's important to recognize there were 20 claims of defamation, but it happened for weeks on lots of shows.

And guys like Hannity, maybe they were a little more subtle. Maybe they didn't say, Hugo Chavez did it, right? But they were still advancing the smear. Yeah, I'm guessing that the words Hannity and subtle don't appear in many sentences. So this is sad.

That's what's so sad, though. He had a producer emailing him or texting him that weekend, the weekend of the election, saying, let's be careful about this. You know, when we're talking about undermining democracy, like, there were warning signs flashing at the time. So this always comes back to this nagging question, this age-old question.

So, knaves or fools? Do they actually believe this? Maria Bartiromo appears to believe these things. What about the others? Within Fox, did any of them convince themselves? Because the process of rationalization is very, very powerful. Did they convince themselves that they were asking legitimate journalistic questions? What story were they telling themselves?

That's what Bartiromo still says to this day. When she was deposed earlier this year, she says, I still don't know what happened in the 2020 election. Well, I'm sure that's true. Maybe she shouldn't be able to cover the next one then, okay? But for the others, you know, I think a lot of it, I think Tucker Carlson embodies this. I think it's true for others as well. I think he talked himself into believing. Okay. I don't think he started out this way. I knew him 20 years ago. You might have crossed paths. I'm sure you've crossed paths.

He wasn't always this way in his heart, but his heart has been darkened. I think he said so much, shouted so much, he started to believe what he was saying. And I think that's true for a lot of these figures who get radicalized. So let's fast forward to January 6th, the consequences of the big lie,

which had really been promoted on Fox Air. Right. Trump was pretty close to being drummed out of the party. I think we can all remember what the world looked like on January 7th, what the Republican Party looked like, what Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy thought the Republican Party was going to look like. Brit Hume on Fox said Trump was dead duck politically. There's no coming back. That's one of my favorite quotes, yeah.

Yeah? Brit Hume. Tucker Carlson says Trump is elderly and retiring. Retiring. Rupert Murdoch called him a non-person. Yes. We're going to make him a non-person. So what, I was struck by what you said about Fox changing its mind about Trump again, because if Trump, if they'd gone that way, that could have been it. Once the GOP... I'm just quoting you. Once the GOP base gravitated to conspiracy theories that exonerated Trump for the riot, he regained control of the party and eventually of Fox.

Yes. Isn't that true? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Because this is... When I spent months reliving this, I realized, wait a second, there's something happened here. Something happened. Trump was deplatformed. It is not a conspiracy theory that Trump believes that Fox was out to get him. Fox was out to get him. It was a real conspiracy. Rupert Murdoch said,

we're pivoting away from Trump. Suzanne Scott, the head of Fox News, emails Rupert and says, don't worry, Sean Hannity is leading the 75 million away from Trump. Sean Hannity, the shadow chief of staff, was cutting ties with Trump, right? But my gosh, Hannity was so freaked out before January 6th, he was texting Mark Meadows saying, I'm really worried about the next 48 hours. Hannity's texting afterwards saying, we've got to land this plane. He was acting like he was actually the responsible one. So there was a real conspiracy. And it went on for months. It went on for the better part of a year. I think the difference maker was the Tucker Carlson false flag conspiracy theory.

The difference maker was the Patriot Purge of it all. Really? The difference maker was... The Patriot Purge was the little documentary that... That documentary he made, but it summarized his view and Trump's view, this impression that was given to the base that it wasn't Trump's fault, that it wasn't your fault, that it absolves you of all these sins because it was actually the feds, right? You've all heard this.

It was actually government agents that incited the riot and instigated the rioters. And I think by telling that story over and over again in a hundred different little ways or big ways, it created a permission structure, an environment for Trump to be welcomed back to center stage, for Trump to be not the insider of the riot, not the insurrectionist in chief, not the coup plotter, but this guy who was wronged by the deep state once again. Well, that was also a key moment, because I recall some Fox contributors resigned as a result of Tucker Carlson putting that out, Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg from the dispatch. That was not actually aired on Fox News, though, was it?

The actual documentary was not. But Tucker was promoting it on Fox and Friends, promoting it on his own show, and honestly he was taking advantage of all the free publicity that was gaining, you know, people reacting to it as well, but Patriot Purge is just one slice of what he was saying on there about it for months. You know, there's even a writer, there's a guy who pled guilty named Rally

Runner, he named it, actually runs around St. Louis Cardinals games, and he was a Tucker fan. He was a Trump fan. He loved Tucker's show. He posted about it on Facebook. And then he gets caught up at the Capitol in connection with January 6. Tucker goes on the show and says, this guy, Rally Runner, he's clearly a plant. You know, he had a guest on the air saying that. This guy, he can't be really a Trump supporter. He must be a Fed. He must be working with the deep state. And this poor

guy, I can't say poor guy, this guy in Missouri is watching Tucker being like, you're lying about me. You're my guy. And it's so interesting. I think that's so revealing that time and time again, even the folks that really trust Fox get burned by it, that they get lied about on the air. All right, so let's talk about Tucker Carlson. I should try to interview that guy, actually. That's interesting. So I think you and I actually spoke, we did the podcast the day after Tucker Carlson. I should try to interview that guy, actually. That's interesting. So I think you and I actually spoke. We did the podcast the day after Tucker Carlson. After Tucker was, did you say defenestrated?

Defenestrated. That was the New York Times term. They used a lot of other terms as well. But the firing of Tucker Carlson came as a genuine shock. I mean, it came after the Dominion settlement. And of course, he had not been a major player in that case. There were some text messages that came out. I think everybody was shocked. You were shocked at the time? I was shocked.

So a lot of speculation about this, that he called certain executives the C-word, or that he engaged in certain personal misconduct. All of the above. So what happened to Tucker Carlson? Why did Fox fire its biggest star?

First, can I just say what didn't happen? Yeah. This is how Fox screwed up. And maybe they had to do this for legal reasons, but they kept quiet. They kept the clouds shut. They didn't explain why he was fired. And they allowed conspiracy theories to form. Anytime there's an information vacuum, there's these theories that are born.

And of course, Tucker was the one giving birth to them, encouraging people to believe that he was fired because of Dominion, encouraging people to believe that he was fired because of Dominion, encouraging people to believe that he was fired because of his view about Russia and Ukraine, encouraging people to believe that for some reason Rupert had a new girlfriend and he got engaged to her and she was a big Tucker fan, but then he dumped her so he wanted to piss off the ex-fiance, so he fired Tucker to stick it to the ex-fiance. I couldn't follow it. Some of these were good, though.

They were. They were good. They were really rich. And by the way, I think the answer to the question is all of the above. Really? Maybe he was trying to take all of the ex-fiance. All of these contain

an element of truth. It comes down to sitting in a dark corner of his penthouse. You know, Rupert Murdoch is sitting there and he goes, fuck that guy. I've had enough.

Right? I believe the direct quote is, he got too big for his boots. He got too big for his boots. And that's very true. So I have a whole bullet-pointed list. You'll all see it in the book. All the reasons why Tucker was ousted. Give me the top three.

I think top three. Big, big weight, knowing that there's others. He was a lot less profitable for Fox than he could have been and should have been because too many advertisers were repelled. Why were they repelled? The lies, hate, and conspiracy theories. And that's the second piece. Even Loplin Murdoch was uncomfortable with some of the conspiracy theories.

And I think number three, his intolerability behind the scenes, the way he treated staffers, the way he talked about executives, the messages that came out. And that is why Dominion is an interesting factor. Dominion did not insist on firing Tucker. That's nuts. That's what Tucker wants people to think. It makes no sense. I've walked all the way around this story.

I've talked to all the people in the room, basically, and it makes no sense. But what does make sense is that when people who you are cursing about and slurring are forced to read your messages during a deposition, it's a little different. It's one thing to know, yeah, Tucker doesn't like you. Tucker sometimes badmouths you at the bar. Sorry, he doesn't drink anymore. Tucker, he badmouths you at breakfast. It's very different when you're reading those messages. Tucker's telling you the C word. And I think what it did is it forced the reality of Tucker into Fox's orbit, into Fox's face. And we do know that the weekend before he was ousted, one week before he was ousted, the Fox board hired an outside law firm to go through all the other messages and see what

else he was saying. So I do think that was a contributing factor as well. Yeah, if we had more time, I'd get into the Fox board and the role that my good friend Paul Ryan played in all of that, because he and I had a very vigorous conversation about his role on the Fox board. I remember. For the shareholders. And he threw Tucker under the bus pretty aggressively. That's true. But one of the questions that, we were talking about Marita Bartiromo and how she

had changed. And one thing that we wrestle with, I think, at The Bulwark is how people change. Believe it or not, and I know you're going to be skeptical about this, there was once a time when Tucker Carlson was a mainstream conservative who would not have been out of place at an event like this. He wrote for the Weekly Standard, thoughtful guy, well respected in journalism circles as a good writer. You know, fast forward.

I went back and watched Crossfire 20 years ago. It's incredible. It's amazing, isn't it? It's like we can actually have conversations about politics and not hate each other at the end. Like, wait a second, we can have fun? I guess that's what this is. So we could spend the whole night psychoanalyzing this, like what happened. But you had an interesting, I thought, point in the book where you talk

about how isolated he became. He'd become a star, he'd probably become addicted to the celebrity and sort of feeling like, what can I get away with? How can I keep pushing the envelope, pushing the envelope? But then he moved out, he moved to a house in Maine, moved to Florida. He moved out of DC. Who would ever want to do that? So what happened? Isolated. I think he became isolated in every sense of the word.

I think he became unglued. And look, he can do a show from anywhere, of course. And he would say that he was in a more diverse environment in his wealthy enclaves on his islands. But I think the reality is that he wasn't going into the office. He wasn't seeing his staff in person. It's kind of an extreme version of what some of us went through during COVID. He became, you know, he was truly, literally walled off in gated communities. He was

literally on islands. And I think that did have an impact. Okay. So what's going to happen to him now? There was a lot of people saying, well, he's going to become bigger than ever, hanging out with Donald Trump. He's got a YouTube show out here. He apparently. Look, I think right now his stature is so far down, so far fallen. But I'm not counting him out. I think he's young enough, smart enough, and he has enough wealthy backers that he can build something. And I think he is building something.

But it's very hard for anyone to reclaim the level of fame he had at Fox. Let's move to the current day. Rupert Murdoch passing the baton this week to his son, Lachlan. Yes. What does that mean? Rupert's in New York. He was at a news corps yesterday having their annual meeting. He was walking the halls as if he still, well, let me put it this way.

I feel like his stature is diminished like Tucker's. He is not the swashbuckling leader, the media mogul that people imagine from a couple of decades ago. At least that's what he claims himself. That's what comes through in his Dominion deposition. I write about it in the book in detail because it's like the only time he's been interviewed in a decade, right?

He never opens himself up to scrutiny or interviews. But he comes across as a guy who either is dumb or is playing dumb. And I think either versions of that's a problem. Okay, so what does it mean, though? What does it mean for Fox? Has Fox learned its lesson from the Dominion lawsuit? Will it change? How will they behave in 2024? What is Lachlan going to bring to this? I'm going out on a limb, but I think a little bit, Fox is a little bit on autopilot, which is okay as long as there's not like fall or lightning storm or mountains in the distance,

right? Like it's on autopilot, but it did basically crash in 2020. And there is a danger of it crashing again. I think with Lachlan Murdoch, you're getting a guy who is a justice conservative or more conservative than his dad. It says all the same things about censorship and the culture wars, but he's just not into politics the same way his dad is. He's not into journalism and politics. He cares a lot more about campaign ads spending at his stations than he does about the anti-democratic conduct of the candidates. Some of his allies bristle when I say that, but it's the truth. If he wanted to come out and tell the truth about Trump and denounce what's going on in

this country, he would, and he doesn't. He is contentious about that. If he thought that was a good business decision, would he do it? I mean, it's one thing to say he's not interested in democracy, not interested in politics, but is he going to be driven again by what the audience wants, what the revenue, what the ratings numbers tell him to do? I think the answer is yes. If he viewed this threat to democracy, if he wanted to pivot in order to be part of the solution, be one of the good guys, if that was a good business call, he would do it. He is trying to prove himself to his family and to his skeptics. And that's the interesting part about this. Public pressure still counts

for something. Reactions, criticism, scrutiny, the protesters outside News Corp headquarters, all of it still counts for something. There's an effort right now to petition the FCC to hold Fox's local stations accountable for the wrongdoing of Fox News. Those efforts really do matter. None of them are immediate solutions, but Lachlan Murdoch does care what people say about him. He does want to be seen as this business leader, someone who can get through the decline of cable to the streaming age and all of that. Okay, let's pull back from Fox just for a second because you're a media critic and you're a media critic, and you're a young fogey, and I'm an old fogey, and we come from the schools of journalism where certain models existed,

and those models seem to be badly broken. So I guess one of the questions, and I think you and I have spoken about this, Donald Trump in many ways broke the model of journalism. Yes. And mainstream media, generally, we're going to generalize here, has struggled to figure out how to deal with him.

And I know you dealt with that every single day for many years. But talk to me about it. Why do I have any hair? Is there any indication that the mainstream media has figured out how to cover Donald Trump? Because I'll be honest with you, I don't see it yet.

I think individual reporters, some do a much better job than others. I think institutionally, this is a riddle, and it's a struggle, and it continues to be a struggle. And I feel like it's a little bit like a video game. Again, since I'm the young fogey. It's like a video game where in order to defeat the bad guy, you have to punch him in that one spot, that one soft spot where you win.

I thought that's what Trump did to the media by immediately saying the real people are fake and the fake people are real. And he did that, of course, as you all know, even before he was inaugurated. Why was that the soft spot? That was the soft spot because of all the things you can say about the press, of all the things that Nixon and others said about the press, despite a decades-long campaign to discredit the media, nobody ever went that hard at that one spot against credibility, against really the existence of reality, right?

When he said CNN was fake, that's about the existence of reality, right? Okay, but this has been a theme on the right for many, many years. I mean, Spiro Agnew built his, until he crashed and burned, built his entire career in attacking the media. You go back into the 50s and the 60s, and this was a constant theme about media bias. So what was different? Well, one thing that was different, Agnew was doing it on the networks, right? He was giving press conference in front of the big network cameras. Trump was mostly able just to do it on Fox and Twitter and barely see any other scrutiny.

I think that's one of the big differences. I think another is the ground was softened. The environment was softened. The people were softened for his claims. And I think right now, many in this country, except everyone in this room and listening to this podcast, have experienced memory loss. We are going through a severe memory loss in this country.

People do not remember what happened to us four years ago and three years ago. Four weeks ago. Well, and that too. Because if they did, there would not be such a casual sort of approach to what Trump is saying and doing now. And I'm hopeful actually that when the primaries actually begin, when there's voting happening, that we are gonna see more scrutiny, that we are gonna see not just more fact-checking but reality-checking. Okay this is gonna sound like a personal question but it's

not a personal question. Okay. No. Okay. So you're watching Donald Trump lie on a regular basis, a fire hose of disinformation and invective. He is an authoritarian who has tried to overturn the government, is undemocratic. The media tries to figure out, do we use the word lie? Do we not use the word lie? How do we cover this? I can't believe we spent a year on that.

We spent a year on, should we say it the word lie? How do we cover this? I can't believe we spent a year on that. We spent a year on, should we say it's a lie? Okay. And then there's this guy named Brian Stelter who says, okay, we should call it a lie. This guy is a danger. This guy is a menace to democracy. And people say, Brian, you suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. And the message is that if you say those kinds of things yeah you're going to end up on the bulwark podcasts on your book right so uh right so i mean i guess there's what i suffer from in

the trump years weight gain it was like every 10 years like every like every year was 10 pounds i feel like every month he put a pound on me because of stress eating. I really do. I do. So when I'm talking about, you know, how to handle them, I mean, I don't know. What do you do? I mean, other than going to work out at the gym, what do you do? I think part of the answer is that you've got to be louder than the liars. You have to come up with creative ways to be louder than the liars. But there's pressure in the media. Why I said it wasn't a personal question.

There's pressure in the media not to say those things. So as a result, we have, and we've had a series of town hall meetings and interviews in which Trump is treated more or less like a normal candidate. Right. I think it comes from this desire among media institutions to seem above it all, to seem above the fray, to seem like, well, institutions, right?

To seem like they can handle all of this and we don't need to come up with a unique approach to a unique situation. Look, I think CNN's an example for this. We've seen a lot of different reactions by CNN, my former home, to Trump in the last year. And so we almost see a network working it out in real time, for better and for worse,

and maybe I think eventually for the better. So looking ahead, are you optimistic about the state of journalism? And the reason I'm asking that is, I was reading a report today that something like one third of newspapers in America have disappeared. We know that Fox has played such a crucial role in the creation of these alternative reality silos.

Do you ever wonder whether there is still a market, a future, for that traditional kind of old, foggy journalism that you talk about in this book? Everybody says we want fact-based journalism, but when the people vote with their clicks, that you talk about in this book. Everybody says we want fact-based journalism, but when the people vote with their clicks, they're voting for the people that tell them what they want to hear.

They're into fan service. And I'm talking about on the right and on the left. People want safe spaces. What gives me hope, what makes me optimistic, number one, we're sitting in front of a sold-out audience. And I know that this kind of audience is also paying for their local news, paying for their local media. I think there are...

Look, there are... If we were to divide up the American people and their news consumption, their news choices, you clearly have a minority, a sliver of the society that's... They've opted out. They don't want anything to do with real news. They'd rather live in Magaland. They'd rather believe what Newsmax tells them. They're not coming back to ABC. That's the reality. But then, I think you also have a decent number of center-right or right-wing listeners and viewers who are

still reading their local paper. And then, beyond that, I think you have a lot of people in the middle, on the left, and a lot of people who are casual news consumers or are not watching or reading at all. In other words, I think there's a lot of folks who might not feel as well represented, who don't hear their voices necessarily when they're being shouted about on Fox, but who are invested in the future of this country. The most average, ordinary news consumer just wants to know what is real in the world. They don't want to be spun. I really believe that. They don't want to be spun by noise and

logic. What's that? Do people really want the truth? Do they really want the truth? Can they handle the truth? Here's why I believe it. I believe it because when there's a severe weather event in your community, even some Trump flag-waving guy

still turns on the local meteorologist to find out if they're in danger. People actually do still trust the media. They just all trust some different form of media. But, Charlie, do you really think that this country, that the average American, wants to slide into autocracy? I don't think so.

I don't think the average American voter, even the average American Republican voter, actually wants this country to become an autocracy. Well, we will find out. Do you? No, I don't think so. I don't think the average American voter, even the average American Republican voter, actually wants this country to become an autocracy. Well, we will find out. Do you? No, I don't think so. I don't see it. I don't see it when I look at the voting patterns a week or two ago. I don't see it. I see a lot of people who are confused, some of whom are afraid, some of whom don't know what to think, but they want to know what's real. They don't want to be lied to every day. Yeah, they might want their emotions managed by Sean Hannity. They might want the news delivered in a pretty gentle fashion by Laura Ingraham. But at the end of the day, they actually do want to know what is

true in the world. And at least that's what I'm going to keep believing, because the alternative is to give up. And I don't think we should give up. I don't think we should tune out. I don't think we should drop out. I think that's what the tune out. I don't think we should drop out. I think that's what the disinformation peddlers want. I think that's what Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson want. They want us to give up.

They want us to shut up. Brian Stelter, from your... I'm getting fired up now. From your lips to God's ear, the book is Network of Lies. Thank you. I'm going to take a selfie with all of you.

There we go. Got it. Thank you. I'm going to take a selfie with all of you. There we go. Got it. Thank you so much.