The Chris Cuomo Project - The Correspondents' Dinner Shooting Changed Nothing

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Chris Cuomo breaks down the aftermath of the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting and why the response says more about the system than the event itself. Cuomo unpacks the Norah O'Donnell 60 Minutes interview where Trump was pressed on the shooter's manifesto, and asks why a network correspondent platformed the writings of a madman in the first place. He argues the violence wasn't just about one person or one moment — it's part of a broader pattern driven by what gets attention, clicks, and political advantage. From media coverage to political rhetoric, he says no one has real high ground, and everyone is incentivized to escalate rather than de-escalate. He examines how both sides react to moments like this, why outrage consistently outperforms reason, and how the algorithms amplify the most extreme voices. Cuomo also explains why he turned off comments on his own social media, and why focusing only on blame misses the bigger issue: a culture that rewards conflict and punishes nuance. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/CUOMO and use promo code CUOMO at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I read the manifesto, you know, as a sick person, but you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I'm not any of those things. Mr. President, these are the gunman's words. Excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes. You're a disgrace. Oh, boy. So, look, that's the clip that's everywhere, okay?

That is how we are encapsulating someone trying to murder people at the White House correspondence, dinner. Listen, I've told you this before, and I hope maybe you're a little bit more open to hearing it now, okay? Several things we have to accept as a reality. One, there will be more violence. I keep telling you this. It's not because of a security lapse. It is inevitable because this is all everyone wants.

I know. No, no, they don't. No one wants that. everybody, yes, they do. And I can prove it to you a million different ways and it's not about throwing shade on people. It's not about being a hater. It's not about any kind of click bait bullshit. Okay? Why is that getting the attention? Because it's the president of the United States doing what we have never heard anyone do the way he does it before, which is attacking a fundamental aspect of our democracy, personalizing it, demonizing it, demonizing.

the media. Now, why did he do it? Well, because he thinks it works. And on this occasion, when he came out after the shooting and said the right thing, what is that? Let me remind you. This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way, it did. Because the The fact that they just unified, I saw a room that was just totally unified. It was in one way, very beautiful, a very beautiful thing to see. Now, that happens to be the right message. What's the problem?

Well, there are two problems. First one is, not his only message, right? Because of what I started with, and what he says all the time about the media, and what he says about anything that's not for him in that moment. But there's also a second reason, isn't there? Isn't there? Look at the comments to this video. Let me make a prediction.

Cuomo has been red pill. Cuomo's down with MAGA. He said a nice thing about Donald Trump. He said Trump was right. What is wrong with you? First of all, how much of a bona fides said do you need from somebody? I'm not known as a critic of this administration. I don't have enough Democrat chops for you people

to think that I'm not set up to be your enemy. I don't have clear eyes on this administration. You sound stupid if you believe anything like that. But just me saying what you should want to hear, which is what? Reasonable. Him saying we were all in that room, right, left, this, media, politics, and everybody was on the same page. Everybody came together because you all faced the same common threat. And that's true.

You know why? Because none of the division is real. It's all manufactured. So when you have reality, it fades. If it were real, there'd be no change no matter what the stimulus is. But me saying that he said the right thing, Cuomo's part of the problem. I say he said the wrong thing. And both sides do the same thing. Why? Because no one has high ground. It matters what provoked him to say that in that moment. The good thing that he said was provoked. by him realizing, wow, this guy wanted to kill everybody here.

What provoked him to target the press? This? The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this, quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this. I'm no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist,

and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? Well, I was waiting for you to read. that because I knew you would because you're you're horrible people horrible people now of course he doesn't like it and you can argue the fact basis of the assertion made by a madman but let's look at that part no one has high ground no one has high ground not 60 minutes not the president no way and I'll tell you why if that manifesto had used the ugly words for Jews blacks, Italians, and a few others.

You think I'd read them? You think I'd say them if they were written by someone we knew was insane? Now, if a U.S. Senator said them, what I say, I don't know, it's getting dicey. Why? Because the standards, it's okay for CBS to have crazy talk from a crazy man read as verbatim fact. Why? Because they like sticking it to Trump. Nora O'Donnell liked the idea of the free shot. Why, all her friends would applaud.

Thank you. Thank you for calling him out for what he is. Well, is it fair? I don't know. I'm going to get clicks. I'm going to get clicks. Nora, oh, I know I lost my job, but now I'm back and now they like me again. You don't think that that's what part of this is? And I'll tell you how I know. One, I've been in this business forever, and I know every,

everyone involved and exactly what goes into the alchemy of what gets asked in an interview like that. I also know this. When he jumped her, what did she do? I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. Oh, you think, do you think he was referring to you? Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. Oh, you think it's about you? What is that? And now people are trying to say, oh, that was so clever. It was so clever. Why was it clever? of course it's about him she was back and off it because she didn't like getting hit why because journalists love to have it both ways love to have it both ways i'm going to ask you really nasty shit but if you

say something about me i don't want that i don't want to be targeted and i'm telling you i'm telling you nora wants to shine she does not want the smoke okay she doesn't want it she's not set up for that she's not built for that and i'm not talking about her as an individual i'm talking about her as an individual i'm about her as a species, okay? The network correspondent, they're not from my world. They're just getting introduced to it, the world of cable, the world of digital. All right, I've been in it for over a decade. I know what you sign up for. I know what comes with it. She's now ready for that. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo project. Thank you for being here with me, because look, let's have clear eyes on it, all right? What happened at the White House Correspondents

dinner is nothing. It changed nothing. Everybody is running their agenda. Everybody's blaming somebody for it. Why? Nobody has high ground. Nobody wants high ground. They just want advantage over the other side. The left is all about political violence. It's all them. Yeah, because you have the right in power. So who's getting most freaked out? The fringe, the mentally ill who are being triggered, and have, you know, mentally ill people aren't monsters, you know. Some can be. Most of them, in general, are statistically more likely to be victims of violence than assailants or perpetrators of it. But if you have mental illness or emotional problems or both and you're getting triggered by righty fringe and a righty bomb thrower, there's the violence. We are violent.

Our culture is violence. We have more guns than anybody and you want to, to pretend that that means, no, we're more safety-oriented. We're more into hunting. Look, I'm a gun owner. Do you know why I have the gun? I have it for two reasons. One, shoot skee with my son in the backyard. Dig it. Have a couple just for that. It's great. He's great at it. I'm terrible. But I'll tell you what I can do. Put a big asshole in your chest if you come into my house to threaten my family. That's why I have it. That's why it's a shotgun. That's why it's ready to go. okay now you can say whatever you want to say about what that means to you i welcome it i signed up for it by putting it out there but it's my right you may not think it's right you don't have to i accept and i

respect you're not thinking it's right and i'd love to have a discussion with you about it tell you what i won't do is call you an asshole i'll tell you what i won't do is disparage you why because that's not a conversation or a debate where i'm going to show my idea is better that's a trick that's a parlor game. That's bullshit. And that's why we had the shooting. And that's why we're going to have the next one. And that's why we had the one before it. And no one has high ground. You can point at Trump. Absolutely. And say, man, the tone he sets, the way he is, I see him as a symptom. And he's a bad symptom. You know, he's like, I don't know, the assney of symptoms that can come with this kind of disease. You know, he's some kind of festering boil of what we have bubbling up to the surface of our

diseased political corpus. Fine. But everybody's in on it. Everybody's in on it. When's the last time, except for what the president said after this event, which I started by saying was the right thing. It's just that it's not the only thing that he says. Well, what is he or anybody on the right preaching as a form of unity? What? What? What? What are they collaborating on? What are they saying? Tell me, what's the left doing? Despite all of the high ground available,

the opportunity, available, affordability is huge. The populist sentiment that's galvanizing in this country right now is palpable. Where is their obsession with better ideas for what to be due? Just give us the power. Just give us the power. No, they're saying we're going to impeach his ass. We're going to investigate. And there are those who want that in this country.

I get it, but it's not the many. The many are pissed off, but look, it's all about how you want to do it. Okay? That's what you have to decide. What do you want to be about? Because this is what you've decided you want your politics to be about because this is what gets rewarded. This is what gets the clicks. You allow the algorithms to be designed to deliver you the most provocative, the rage bait, the outrage.

you know this they do it by design and then you want to blame people for taking advantage of it it's it's it's to me it's not rational well you go after me you go after megan kelly you go after people on the left and the right for doing it i do but i don't i don't hate the players they're making choices please please don't believe don't understand me to mean don't think i come at this with any degree of arrogance. I am not saying I'm better than anyone. I'm just explaining their choices. I got to tell you, you want a clear-eyed analysis? My choices are kind of stupid, kind of stupid. And I'll tell you why. Am I doing this shit for free? Do I really want to just keep spending my own money to like keep talking to you and giving you food for thought? Because that's what this business model is.

I'm making about half what I used to make at CNN. And that's not. not because I picked aside when I was at CNN. I'm not relitigating that shit. You can believe whatever you want about CNN. I'm telling you I've done the same job the same way for a lot of years. I've gotten better at it. And I've changed my focus, whether I was doing set pieces or documentaries or breaking news or all of it now, based on what I think matters in that moment. I think what we need has changed. I haven't changed. I mean, I've been changed by life, but my approach to the job isn't different. I haven't been red pill, the blue pill, the gray pill, the black pill, any pill. I mean, I take a lot of pills, but not for any of the things that you're suggesting from that metaphor.

And what we see is that if you make the choice to pick a side and attack the other side and to be obnoxious and use profanity and be over the top, you will succeed. You have to do those things to succeed. You can point out no one who succeeds who does not do those things, present company included. Why am I scraping 600,000 followers, subscribers? I should have 6 million. I should have 10 million. Why don't I? Because I'm not picking the side.

I'm not attacking the other side. And there are many of you who will say, well, that's what you should do, because Trump is just evil, or that's what you should do. The left is just evil. I don't agree with you. I don't agree in demonizing who I disagree with.

Does Trump make that difficult sometimes? Yeah. Do his people make it difficult sometimes? guys like Stephen Miller make it hard make it hard to be about ideas and be about policies when they're just such trash you're right I get it I deal with it all the time and you've never heard me say that I think the two sides are equal and by the way even though I get savaged by the left as much or more than I do the right I still say that I don't think they're equal and I think I've never seen a party overtaken by its fringe the way I have seen with Republicans now

right now in this moment a lot of righties are going to say oh that's rich you just had a crazy lefty try to kill people at the correspondence dinner and you're saying that the left is less diseased by his fringe and the right yeah i am i am i think the level of rhetoric that comes out of the left is of course hostile antagonistic increasingly so and yet i still think it's more tied to reality than what i see on the right because i'm not going to have a benny johnson or some pod bro, Tim Poole, or Tucker Carlson, or Dan Bongino, or any of these guys pretend to have high ground. All you do is lie, defy, and deny for profit. Why do you think the Russians sought you out for what you do normally? I mean, you know, you guys never got the genius of that story. The Russians, it's not fair to say these guys, Rubin and Poole and Johnson or whoever else. I'm not saying anybody changed their content for the Russians. I'm not even saying they knew where the money came from. I'm saying that the Russians knew that what these guys do already was good for their cause.

What does that tell you? You imagine that? You imagine if you find out, like, you're in this business. This is what you do, all right? And, well, I'll put it in whatever you do. Your big competitor. The people who want to see you fail coming to you and say, hey, we'd like to help your business because we really think.

that what you do and how you do it is going to really help us succeed and destroy your industry. Would you be like, oh, that's good. I'm glad somebody appreciates it. No, you'd be disgusted with yourself, not these guys. They played the victim, took the money. And it was for what they do already. Why? Because we're killing ourselves for clicks. Support for the first Cuomo project comes from Delete Me, Delete Me, makes it quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable, right? We got the people who want to protect us saying that they're in favor of warrantless searches. This is a time to protect yourself,

my brothers and systems. And with Delete Me, you can do exactly that. You can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from being doxed or hacked or used or marketed. Okay? Now, I believe in this. I get people coming at me all the time. Everything that I can do to make it harder for people to expose what I don't want them to have access to, the better. And right now, you can take control of your data, keep your private life private, and you can sign up for Delete Me easily. All right? And right now, at a special discount for my Quomunity. You'll get 20% off your delete me plan. When you go to Join Delete, me.com. Join delete me.com slash Cuomo. Use the promo code Cuomo at checkout. The only way to get 20% off

is to go to join delete me.com slash Cuomo and enter the code Cuomo at checkout. Where? Deleteme.com slash Cuomo code Cuomo. Now I'll say something. You want controversy? You want clickbait? Okay, here's what it is. It's something to consider. if this, God forbid, it actually played out. And when I say it, I mean it, because I know bad things are going to happen. They're going to be bad and we're going to be regretful and I hate it. And I don't want to see it. I want to be wrong.

I don't want to live it. I don't want to cover it. You kill 50-60 of the people in that room and you get a good distribution. Some big writing names you've heard. Some people in power. I'm not even going to make suggestions. Why? I'm not superstitious, but I don't even like.

playing with it as an idea. But a bunch of big names, you know, get like me if I caught a little lead in the head, maybe we would have had a moment. Maybe. If you had enough of the different players bleed, maybe.

Enough dead moms, dead dads, dead sons and daughters from the left, from the right, from the media, from the punitry, from the digital denizens. Maybe. Maybe. But we didn't, thank God. So we're going to have to do it the hard way, let's call it.

I would call that way the hard way. But I'm saying we're going to have to do it without a crisis that makes everybody drop the facade. Because it is fake. You were right to be pissed off that Trump was gay. President Trump. The guy says that you suck at your job. The guy says that you're the problem with our democracy. The guy demonizes you.

He debases you. And by the way, you ask for it. But now you're going to welcome him. There's no way I was going to. going down there. I don't go anyway, to be honest. I don't like the clubbiness of it. I don't like them taking themselves so seriously. The media is supposed to be your agents. You are the ones they're supposed to be celebrating, not themselves. They've always been in my business too desperate to be celebrities. Way too much. We're not celebrities. We're not actors. We're not singers.

We don't have talent in that way. We don't deserve that. We're proxies. We're an extension of our societies kind of monitoring and checks and balances of our government and our culture and our institutions and our people and our players. It's a beautiful thing what we have. And I just don't think that's the way to celebrate. So that's my choice. And I was going to make a video, which I'm glad I didn't, where I was going to show you that I was in a tie in a jacket and a shirt. And I was saying to you, I'm very proud tonight. that I got dressed up and I'm going to spend time with a group that I am very, very flattered to be a part of, real privilege, really proud, a group that has a really important mission

in our society. And they don't let what they're about, their principles get compromised by anything. They have their disagreements. They have their problems. But when it comes to doing the job for you, they are there. And then I was going to open up the aperture and you were going to see that for the first time, I was wearing my Class A firefighter's uniform. And that's why I wasn't at the White House Correspondents dinner. I was with the brothers and sisters. And I would have been telling you the truth about why I am so blown away to be in their presence. I love first responders.

I always have. I've always covered them that way. But I have an appreciation for them now. You can't have unless you do it. and I thought it was an important message. Now, I didn't make it why? Because I didn't want to have the brothers and sisters have to own what's coming out of my face. I don't talk about firefighting except to just tell you how amazing they are, right?

But I don't wear it as any kind of badge of honor for me. It's not what it's about. Anybody can volunteer. You can do exactly what I do. And may be better, actually. But I just wanted to help. And that's all it is for me. And I'm not going to do anything with it otherwise.

But I was going to make that point because I thought it was a really good instruction that that's what we should be celebrating. But I'm glad I didn't because then there was a horrible thing that happened at the White House Correspondents dinner. And what you see in the response to it is why it happened in the first place. Blame the media. Blame Trump. Blame the left. Everybody's playing it to their advantage. Why?

Because that's all that. That fucking matters. See the game. You have a place where a guy who hates the media is showing up to berate the media and the media that's supposedly pushing back against him because they're not going to be intimidated and they're not going to let him ruin our democracy

and blah, blah, blah. They welcome him, they applaud him. They're taking pictures with people supposedly they're at odds with, right? The story that would have been, and I wish it had been because the shooting, that poor Secret Service agent, thank God, he had a vest on, and just all that drama and trauma that wound up not really getting anybody to kind of think straight after it. Everybody wouldn't write into their silos.

We had this irony that you have a room filled with reporters and all the reporting on the shooting was wrong. They had the wrong picture. They said he was dead. Ironic. Anyway, the story would have been that Acosta, who's clearly a lefty and Michael Tracy, who's clearly a righty, We're going to have a fist fight. Rule number one, grown-ass men don't have a Twitter war about meeting for a fist fight, okay? You know you're going to be in the same place. You have something you want to do. Go do it. You're willing to pay the price. Go do it. Now, do I think you should? Depends. Should my answer be no? Violence is always wrong? Yeah, that should be my answer. But personally, it's not my answer. And that's why I don't want to be a leader. And I'm not asking for your vote ever in my life. And I don't know how often I will vote. life, to be honest. I vote more in local things than I do more. Why? Well, one, I live in New York States, so you only have so much impact. And two, it's hard, it's hard to maintain the connection.

Everybody looks at me when I vote. They try to figure out who I vote. They actually ask me who I voted for when they go there. But that's not really what it is. I'm as upset by what's going on as anybody. I'm just more hopeful than most. But I was embarrassed by those two guys. And I'm not saying I disrespect them as journalists. I think both of them add to the stew, to be honest. I knew Jim Acosta for a long time. Always been a nice guy. Love his Cuban-American roots. I love what he's about. Do I think he's a lefty? Yeah, I think he's a lefty. That doesn't make me see him any differently. I think his work has had a lot of integrity to it. Michael Tracy, I think the guy does a lot of interesting and often deep diving, the hardest kind of reporting,

investigative reporting. But they're going to have a fist fight? They'll talk about it. Just do it. Second of all, what are you being jackasses for? You grown-ass men or not? Now, do I live by that standard? No, not all the time. That's why I didn't go crazy calling them out about it, because one, then got nothing happened, and then two, unfortunately, this much worse thing happened. But this is where we are. I'm surprised there's not more violence. It's all we're asking for. We reward nothing else. So this is what I want you to do. See it for what it is. See it for what it is. Okay? Don't be surprised. You shouldn't be. Doesn't matter that the guy's brown, doesn't matter that he's a teacher, doesn't matter that he's a lefty.

When the left gets in power, we're going to keep seeing violence. And guess what? Probably won't be from lefties. And guess what? If you look at the statistics, there's a reason it's skewed to the right. Why? Because until Trump, we have had overweighted right-wing extremism in this country. And we don't even have the Islamists yet in any real way. Of course, we had 9-11. But I'm saying it wasn't a natural outgrowth of a domestic population. We don't even have that problem here yet. We're just making our own. You see. And that's why I don't like that Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit.

And I don't buy what's in that indictment. And I don't think they're going to be able to prove it. Because I think there's something fishy about wanting to defend that we don't have a right-wing extremism problem, a Christian nationalism and Nazi problem in this country. That's weird that you want to pretend the Southern Poverty Law Center created that. It's weird. It's weird because not only is it not true, but what are you trying to do exactly? Why are you trying to give these guys any kind of cover?

I see the rise of extremism. I see the degradation of our democracy. I see it. It is real and it is being promoted because it's being rewarded. You keep voting for people on the basis of how pissed off they are at the other side. You keep clicking on things that are people telling other people to fuck off and I'll beat your ass and you're a piece of shit and you should die and you should this and you should that. If these are the people that are being are celebrated, right? What do you think you're going to get more of?

Why do you think when you look at all these little desperate influencers, do you see any of them that are, you? Unifiers? No, they're all little flame throwers. Why? Because it works. I'm not judging them as people. I'm judging the process. I'm judging the reward system. I'm judging the algorithms. I am pro-marketplace of ideas. I would rather be flooded with bullshit than censor anything. However, there is a standard for everything except what has the most power in our media does that make sense radio standard broadcast tv standard cable tv standard standard software softer standard but standard digital media no standard and they have this really weird unevenness okay we couldn't start this video with the word pedophile. Can't have that out there. It'll get flagged. They won't monetize it.

Oh, okay. But as long as you play the game and use words like unalive, you can be negative and nasty and reductive and vulgar any way you see fit. It is a bullshit standard. They are pennywise and pound foolish by design on social media. Oh, don't say the word. pedophile. I don't want to... Yeah, but you'll talk Epstein and take everything out of context and lie about things to promote whatever your stupid agenda is that he was murdered, that he wasn't murdered, that he's not really a pedophile, they're actually teenagers, so it's a little different. Yeah, right, that's a real meaningful distinction to any parent. Let me tell you something. I found out that a guy was 40 years old once to date my daughter, who's 23. I don't know what kind of medication I would have

to be on around the guy. I don't. I don't know how I would control myself. And I'm not saying I'm definitely going to just go beat the shit. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there's certain things that are just wrong. It doesn't matter if it's illegal. Felony or fine. You shouldn't be what guides your dating life. But these are the standards. This is what we reward. Why are you surprised? Oh, well, it was a security lapse. How are you going to keep them out? The ballroom? and then you care that he's saying it's about the ballroom? Oh, well, I think they may have set it up. I read something somewhere where they may have set this up.

Oh, really? You really think Trump is capable of figuring out how to pull off, having a black guy come in as a shooter, a Latino guy, whatever he is, like, I don't give a, what kind of guy is, come running in with a gun so that he could get his ballroom built? He's getting it built anyway. What?

What kind of stupidity is that? Do I like that he's building the ballroom? No slash, I don't really care. Why? I care about tariffs. I care about ice or nice, as we're going to call him now. Are you serious? That is way more appalling to me.

You won't change how they do what they do. You won't make them respect the Constitution. You won't make them respect citizens. You won't make them respect decency. You know they're hurting law enforcement all over the country. but you're going to just change their name? You fund them in the middle of the night because you don't want to change anything

because you're so afraid of your right fringe. That pisses me off. That's what matters. The tariffs and what they did, the small businesses, ignoring the mandate of fixing America first, the affordability crises, people using their credit cards that have to pay off medical debt.

That's what pisses me off. Not the ballroom. Oh, well, they're private donors and they're going to have access because of it. Welcome to the Trump administration. The guy does it right in your face. I don't need to find secondary or third order effects of what he's doing and how it helps people.

I got first order effects. He gave a pardon to somebody who was an admitted felon working for the Chinese who gave his sons a business that was funded by the UAE. I mean, what else do you need? His sons are in the military contracting business all the sudden. I mean, his son-in-law is dealing as a U.S. emissary with the same countries he's tapping for money that he doesn't deserve. I don't need to search.

I also don't need to say he should be killed. I also don't need to wish violence on him. I would never do that. Why? That's not what I'm about and that's not what we're about. I don't want to kill my enemies. I want to be better than my enemies. I want to have power over them and instead of them

so that I can make this society what I think it's supposed to be through the election process, not through killing my opponents. Do you know how many people on the left would be okay if Trump were killed? And by the way, a little bit of you should be saying, well, what does that say about him and about his level of rhetoric. I mean, because these are not people

who wanted anyone else to die. Why him? It's not because he's some great man. It's not because he does too much. It's because he is provoking and inspiring extreme thinking. That's why.

In a way that we haven't seen before. Oh, Cuomo's only blaming Trump. Look. everybody's going to take out of this what they want to that works for them. Because that's what we do. We take things out of context, and everybody relies on the fact that you are not going to go through the rigor of looking to see whether what you're taking in is accurate.

We now know that people willfully, if not wantonly, are seeing things that they know are AI, but they like where it's headed, what it's trying to do, and then they circulate it. So you know it's not really me saying this thing, but you would like it if I had said it because it makes me look bad

or make somebody else or something else look bad. And so you spread it around. That's a problem. That's as scary to me as the violence problem. Why? We've got a much bigger scale. You can do a lot more damage. You kill 10 people. You've got 10 people. That's terrible. Those families will never be the same.

This shit that we're spreading, maybe influencing a thousand people to do terrible things. This is all reward. It's all we reward. Look at who's succeeding in digital media. What is it? 15, 20% are doing anything but flame throwing in the top 50 podcasts. I mean, if you weed out the sex, the true crime, what, you know, I mean, let's just see

those as neutral, which tells you something. But just weed those out. When it comes to politics, who are the unifiers? Where are they? They're not there. Why? It doesn't sell. And even if it did sell with you, the system that you're in puts it at a disadvantage.

It's not clickbait. I had to start this video with something that wouldn't get rejected by the algorithm and would get picked up by the algorithm. How pathetic is that? If you change what you reward, you will change what you see. You don't think if Donald Trump said at a press conference, look, I want to take down the tone, everybody bleeds the same way when they're shot. We got to do more to keep less people from wanting to be violent. And I'm holding a meeting and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

And his numbers went up. You don't think he'd follow up on it. You don't think that they're key in all this off their feel for what's working for them. You don't think if Hakeem Jeffries came out and said, I have a three-point plan for purchasing power and how we're going to reset the tax laws to incentivize companies to pay people more as a function of what tax rate they're going to get. How would that work? I don't know.

But you could do it. And let's say his numbers jump 10 points. Media starts talking. His numbers jump 10 points. You don't think he'd do more of it. You don't think other Democrats would start offering their ideas also? You don't think Republicans would start offering? If they saw that kind of jump in the poll numbers?

I mean, it's hard to argue. You could say, well, you're being hypothetical. How much of a stretch is that? If they gave you three good ideas of how to get us closer to the time when companies used to pay their workers when they had upticks and productivity instead of just giving it to the investors and the C-sweets. Is that really that far-fetched? That somebody could have ideas that maybe it'd be a good thing

to go back to where our workers are valued that way? Here are three ways that we're going to deal with the fact that for every five artisans who retire, they're replaced by two. And we have more and more college debt, less and less return on investment of going to college, less and less is it unless you're a STEM kid connected to what you're going to do to be able to make the money to pay off the debt to go, if they had ideas for that, is it really that crazy that the majority of American people would say, hey, I like that, I like this person for doing it.

What if we rewarded that? The way we reward someone on the left for how they take down Trump or someone on the right for how they say the left is all about cutting off, you know, penises or whatever. bullshit absurdity is ruling the moment. What does it tell you that when you come out of a shooting that targeted everybody who's a player in the system and they all came out of it talking about who was to blame for it? And then in the irony of ironies, the one person who comes out saying what you thought should have been obvious, right?

All these accounts, you know, I looked over on the right and I saw this guy I hate from this other news outlet, and we were both sitting there under the table, and we kind of looked at each other and both said, it's going to be okay. And it made me remember, man, you know, this is not my identity. My disagreements with him are not what I'm about.

And, you know, we both have kids. We both wanted to get home. Not too much of that coming out of this. And then the irony of ironies is who says that? Trump! Trump says it. And why can't you say that's a good thing? I did say it's a good thing.

And people will hate me for saying it's a good thing. and I don't give a rats patootie. But it's not the only thing he said. If that's all he kept saying, if he had said to Nora O'Donnell, you know, Nora, I don't think that you would have read stuff like this, that you know is coming from a madman

if you didn't agree with it. Do you agree with it? Oh, no, Mr. President. That's not how we do this. I'm just reading what the man said, yeah, but I don't think, I think if he had gone on this long screed as an obviously mentally ill person

about how he wanted to kill nothing but Muslims in that room, I don't think you would have given the detail attention. If he had said, I don't want to do anything but target Jews in that room, I think you would have said he's anti-Semitic. I don't think you'd read it verbatim. And you know what? I think that's true. I think that's right.

I think that she had an ease in saying this kind of shit about Trump. Maybe because she believes it. Maybe because it's true. Maybe because it's provocative. Maybe because she was told to. I don't know. She can tell you all that. But I don't think they would.

I think it's a different standard. Now, you can say, yeah, but it's true. whether it's true or not is not the point. We have changed, oh, now we don't tell the truth. No, that's not what it is. It's a choice of what you highlight. I'm telling you, we both know that if you go back and look, we do not spend a lot of time studying the manifestos of insane people who kill people.

We don't. Even Luigi Mangione, he had a pretty exhaustive thing, too, that he wrote. We don't really dip into it. We just give you the general gist of what. what it was. Why? Because they're not well. And a lot of this is a bunch of ideas that may not deserve the hearing. Now, did he go too far? Of course. That's all he does. I don't think he's ever underdone anything as a public person. Not that I've seen. Is he to blame for the tone and tenor of our politics? 100%. Is the media? 100%. As much as him? No.

Why? Because he's the leader. The politicians? No. Why? They're the leaders. They are elected. Okay? That's here. You know, they did the estates. First estate, second estate, third estate, fourth estate. We don't live that way. You don't even know what they are. But there's a reason that they're ordered that way. And the media is the fourth estate. And it matters. But we are a repeater. We are a mirror. We are a reflector. We are a. We are a. We are a reflector. We don't set the tone. We don't set the agenda. Do we have power, of course? Should we use it differently? Of course. But why would people do it differently when you don't reward it? So you got to make a choice.

Do you want to see less political violence? Now, don't just say yes, of course. Don't just say it. Because I don't know that you want to do what you have to do for that to be the case. And it has nothing to do with gun laws. We're not going to have gun laws. maybe you'll get background checks won't really matter why

because you have so many guns with such ease of access and so many already have them or in the home or where it's easy to get and so few people secure them the right way and we never see those cases really being made because the people who didn't secure it the right way usually paid the biggest price

like it was their kid who winds up being the shooter or they get shot or someone gets killed you know what I mean but for whatever reason we don't make those cases so no that's not the fix The fix is everything. The fix is everything. It's what you reward. It's what you allow in digital media. I'm telling you, Section 230 of the Internet Act from the 90s has passed its usefulness. These people are publishers. They control what you see more than any other media outlet.

They are not just building the arena. They are controlling who sits and where and how the game is seen from your perspective. within that stadium. They're doing all of it, and they're doing it for the worst reasons. And it should be regulated. And this is said as someone who is anti-censorship, pro-marketplace of ideas, and tolerating what I hate to hear. And I'll tell you, I think the policy with the tariffs was wrong and misguided. I think they lied about it.

I think what's happening with ICE is wrong. I think it's bad for the country. I think it's bad for our economy. I think what's happening in Iran was done the wrong way, and we don't have an exit strategy of how to get out. And none of that is inspiring violence against the president. Why? Because I don't need to use cheap language and add hominums

and just try to enrage you about the person. Because what I care about are the ideas and the policies. That's what matters to me. That's where I want to win. That's why I don't get in these Twitter spats very often with these professional provocateurs. Why? Because they don't give a shit. These people, go look at what they're doing right now.

Look at the state of play on this. Oh, I don't know why he's saying that it's this when they are just the same. And that guy better look at this. And he better remember that he said this. And she better think twice because of that. It's all got you all the time. Why? Click, click, click.

Click. That's why. That's why. It's all that's being reversed. I'm telling you, Donald Trump had a plan for Jared Kushner to run when he was first elected called DJT 100. And you know what it was? 100% approval rate. He wanted to please everybody.

Then he gets in there. He starts getting smacked around. He realized that what got him there was the only thing that was going to keep him there. Being a divider, being a demagogue, letting people believe that you're the agent. a group of people who were right about what was wrong to a large degree, certainly about our economy and how our system as a two-tier justice system, they were just wrong about him being able to set it right. And now you have the people who are on the other side wanting them to admit that they were wrong to do what they did. But don't you understand? They'll never come to your side that way.

First of all, people don't like to admit mistakes. Second of all, it wasn't really a mistake. if they were being authentic about what they believe is wrong. And a lot of what they believe is wrong is wrong. They just pick the wrong guy. So just agree on what is wrong. Create a big coalition and then say to the politicians, if you don't deal with what is wrong, you are not getting access to this populist movement.

That's the fix. Don't let them keep pointing the finger at one another so you're just obviously picking a choice of the lesser of two evils. Reward them by dealing with what matters. That is not such a crazy thing to say. It's not impossible. It's not saying, just tell everybody to love. Just tell everybody to be kind.

That's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. What could we keep it going for? Three days after a crisis, you kill a school full of kids. You get what, 48 hours? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not asking for kindness.

I'm not. I'm asking for reasonableness. I'm asking for you to remember that it's supposed to be about you and all you're doing is helping them. It's the only thing that gets benefited by this negativity, by this insanity, this absurdity, this oppositional dynamic, this manufactured division, are the two parties and the players. and the corporate interests that fund them. It's not about you. It's not for you. You're not winning. You're not winning.

When Trump wins, he's winning. You're not winning. Yeah, you fixed immigration. Okay. Your life's better now, huh? And the way he's doing it with ICE, you like that. That's what you signed up for, huh? Really?

Okay, good to know about you. Because let me tell you, there's nothing to be proud of. Oh yeah, it's law and order. No way. No. He's using them as a brute squad. I have no problem with enforcing the laws in this country. Why have them if you're not going to enforce them?

But how you enforce them matters. Okay? When they stop you for speeding, they don't grab you by the collar and yank you out of the car and shake you. Why? Because you're speeding. You didn't just punch an old lady. Right?

You're supposed to prioritize. things that matter and how it matters. You're going to grab some lady off the street, punch through her window, go through her bag, which miraculously contains her passport, like who has their passport in their back, and then realize she's a citizen, which she told you, despite her having an accent, and throw it on the ground and then just walk away after separating her shoulder. That's law and order. Oh, it's just one case. Oh, really? Really. Now one is not one too many, the way it is. when some illegal hurts someone who's a citizen, kills someone who's a citizen, then one is too many.

See what I'm saying? It's all bullshit. It's all what's rewarded. What came out of the White House Correspondents dinner is exactly what went into it. A farce. A play to advantage. A spectacle. Okay?

They're there to celebrate the free press, and they're celebrating a man who demonizes the free press? and then there's violence. They get the reporting wrong on the violence. They come out and they all blame who's to blame. After they're all hiding under tables, as they should have been. People running, you're grabbing screen. Look at him.

He's running and he's not helping her. He's a bad guy. Look at her. She's doing this. How dare you? What would you do if you were in a room and you heard gunshots? What would you do, Captain America? Come on.

people say they would do things let me tell you you know what you usually do you freeze you know how i know because i've had bullets whizzed by me and guess what i do i freeze okay and i've been to war and i've been to civil strife and i've been to gunfights and i've been in fires and you know what you do you fucking freeze and then you try to figure out how to survive you try to do you best and if you're lucky enough to have it you rely on your training but we're not trained for this maybe that's what's next. Them saying the president may have to wear a bulletproof vest when he goes to public events, that makes you proud?

That's the country you want to have? That's what you want us to be about? Then think about what you reward. Not what you call out, what you call for. Calling out is easy. I mean, Trump is like a piñata at a kid's birthday party, you know? Blindfolded, you're going to smack the candy out of him. He's saying obnoxious things all the time.

why it gets rewarded reward something else you'll get something else these people are panders you've just allowed them to give you the easiest thing they can which is the other one sucks worse you don't even know what aOC was saying to bobby kennedy junior in that moment where she seems like this and he seems like this but it looks like they're in confrontation so you see it everywhere more of this energy. You don't even know what they're talking about. You don't even know. And I got a hint for you. It's not what you thought it was. It was not a bombastic moment. How do I know? People on both sides. Change what you reward or just stop being shocked that you're going to see more. Stop. I don't want to hear that the left doesn't want to own that it's a. That's because the right is in power. And when the left is in power,

It'll probably return to what we've seen as the legacy of hate in this country, which is what? It is disproportionately coming from the right. And does that make it right? Does that matter? How absurd a basis of comparison? You have more terrorists than we do. It's close, but you're worse. Change what you reward.

What media do you consume? What do you allow the allegations? to feed you? How do you, how do you counter that? What politicians do you resonate off of? What comments do you send? Why did I turn off the comments on my social media? Because too many of you were using it as a forum to gratuitously attack where I work. And I'm not going to tolerate that. You're not going to use my post to go on and comment and attack other people at News Nation. I'm not saying it's warranted or unwarranted. It's not my point. I don't. run news nation i have limited control over what i do from eight to nine and that's what i signed up for

i'm an employee i'm not saying you know news nation when i say news nation i'm talking about what i do at news nation that's all i control okay but i'm not going to have you shit talk people on my comments thread and use my platform to badmouth a place where i work and then you're going to tell me yeah but that's my first amendment right not on my fucking page it isn't that's my right Okay? And my right is I get to decide what is right on my page. Just like you. But you're a journalist. That doesn't mean that I don't have to give a shit about what you say about me and where I work and the people who work there. The fuck are you thinking?

So that's why I turned off the comments. See, if you don't know how to use it and you're just going to come and mob me with these pools of people who shit talks someone that I don't even know, I'm going to cut it off. It doesn't really change my reach anyway. of you share this stuff because you can't comment. I'd rather have you commenting, sure. But that's my choice of what I reward. I'm not going to reward you for being an asshole on my comment page. You should do the same thing. I'm not saying shut off comments. I'm saying think about what you comment on. Think about what you reward. Think about what the algorithm is giving you and why.

Think about what you're allowing to be the state of play between these politicians. You cannot tell me what they are for except destroying the other side. You cannot tell me what people's ideas are. Oh, well, the Democrats aren't in power. So they should have no ideas about what they will do with power. The midterms right now is what? Trump sucks. Epstein.

We're going to impeach him. Really? Does that get it done? Maybe. But should it? I want to see a change in the state of play also. But I want it to be based on attacking how we fix America first. How do we deal with what's going on in this economy?

How do we deal with the despair? charities. What do we reward? That's what you should be thinking about after this. Not why it happened and who's to blame. No one has high ground, but there is nothing but high ground to be seized. What do you want to reward? And don't tell me, because my comments are off anyway, but show me through what you validate and what you invalidate. That's what I saw when I watch. the reports along with you. I went from being with a group of men and women who were celebrating, putting themselves on the line for their community, for giving back, for caring about one another, and a lot of disagreement in the room, by the way, when it comes to politics. But every one of them would risk their lives to save mine. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that worth rewarding? It was to me, that's why I was there. Then I turned and I watched the cover. And everybody's blaming everybody else and everybody's dramatizing what it is and, you know, what it was and this and then getting it wrong about who it was and blaming him.

And then he says a good thing and everybody ignores it. And then he says a bad thing and everybody jumps on it. Why isn't his quote about how everybody had come together in that room in that moment and it made us all realize at least for one moment? And by all of us, he means him, that everybody is the same in terms of how it's going to affect you when it's terrible. Why isn't that making the rounds? It's not what gets rewarded. Be honest. There is a part of you that doesn't want Trump to say and do the right things.

Because you're set up to want to hate him and he's given you reason. But where is it getting us? And what comes next? Do you really think things get better when he's gone? When all that gets rewarded is making things worse? I don't. I see the guy as a symptom. I don't give him the power that you do.

That's how I see it. think about what you reward think about what has to change that or or just get ready for more i'm chris quomo thank you for subscribing and following thank you for realizing you can be different you can be a free agent that's why i want you to wear your independence you need the parties to participate it should not be your identity it shouldn't be be a critical thinker okay be about right and wrong That is all. You don't need to be about right and left. I'll see you, Sirius XM in the morning. I'll be talking about this. I'll see you on this podcast twice a week. I'll be talking about this. I'll see you on News Nation every weekday night. I'll be talking about this. Let's get after.