The Daily Beast Podcast - The One Word Fox News Channel Needs to Drop

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik talks about Rupert Murdoch's recent deposition and the possible repercussions it could have for Fox News going forward. Plus, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin talks about the recent happenings in Tunisia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have for you today.

We're going to talk to NPR media correspondent David Fulkenflik about Rupert's recent deposition and the possible repercussions it could have for Fox News going forward. Then we're joined by MSNBC's Aiman Mohildeen to learn about the recent happenings in Tunisia after President Kaya Said's comments targeting African immigrants have seemingly turned the country on its head. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy, it seems that you're a former employer. You had to get that in, didn't you? I did. I did. I really, I want, because I want the people to know that we have the inside track, right?

That you, in fact, used to be a player. In this Fox News Channel, FNC place, I want people to understand that you're in the know. So as it turns out, Rupert Murdoch admitted to under oath, what we all have known, to be true, which is that Fox News are filled with a bunch of fucking liars. And not only are they liars, but they know that they're lying to their 60 million plus viewers day in and day out, but particularly with regard to the 2020 election and the denialism around the fact that Donald Trump, even though we have found out that Rupert Murdoch gave Jared Kushner confidential Biden information and ads and debate prep that he could still lose because that's how big of a

fucking loser Donald Trump is. I digress. So now it seems, dear friends, that Democrats have woken up, or as I love to say, gotten woke to the fact that Fox News is, you know, probably the biggest threat to our democracy ever. And no one has taken on this entity. because of the Dominion lawsuit, they are now in the crosshairs of potentially a loss into the billions of dollars if, in fact, Dominion wins the lawsuit against Fox about their lies, about their voting machines. So now Democrats, feeling kind of gully these days, are writing letters to Rupert Murdoch, one was authored by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries saying,

basically a cease and desist on your bullshit. That's my summary. I'm not a lawyer. But Andy, like, I mean, what has taken these folks so long? I mean, you got hip to this fact. Everybody got hip to this fact. So why are Dems reacting now? And is it already too late, which is what I feel in fear.

But, you know, whatever. Yeah, I think the answer to your first question, why are they reacting now, is something I think we talked about on whose last episode. And that is we've seen them admitting that they're lying and peddling falsehoods. We've seen their own admissions of it in these emails from people like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and from Rupert Murdoch's deposition. We've seen it and heard it from their own selves in their own words. And as I pointed out last time we talked about this,

that is a big difference from just saying, well, we all knew this. And yes, we did. In particular, we all knew it about the election stuff. And we all knew that they were acting as much more of a political operation than a news operation. But now we see it. Regardless of how this trial turns out, regardless of whether there's, you know, an eventual settlement or there is a finding one way or the other, we know the truth. The truth is that Fox News knowingly peddled lies and falsehoods and misinformation in order to appease. its viewership. So I think that's the answer to why now. And I also do think that there is, not across the board, but I think there's a reluctance to go after a news organization from a lot

of people in politics, not so much on the right, but on the left and moderates. And that instinct can be a very good thing. And this country has obviously a long history of press freedom and of government not interfering in the operation of news organizations. And that is, like I said, that that's a good thing. What we know now is that Fox News in its current state is not a news organization. It's a political operation and it exists not to disseminate news to the American people or to its own viewers. It exists to further an agenda. That's a whole new ballgame and they can call themselves Fox News Channel as long as they want. They are not a news organization. And I'm not sure you could have said that 10 years ago. There were plenty, don't get me wrong, there were plenty of

legitimate grievances about Fox News when I worked there. I don't think you could categorically state that it wasn't a news organization. I think you did have journalists there doing good work, not so much in the prime time hours, which has always been a shit show, but, you know, throughout the day and whatever. I just don't think you can say that anymore. I think when we see what happens when journalists do do any kind of work is they get pushback from these anchors, as we saw in these emails from Tucker Carlson and others, who were angry at the Fox News reporter who basically said, nah, this is all bullshit. These are lies to the point where she had to delete a tweet. That's not how a news organization operates. I do think that's the difference now is, to me,

anyway, in my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that it is a misnomer to refer to Fox News as a news organization, as a journalistic enterprise. It simply is. isn't that? Yeah. And I think, you know, to your point, the problem that we have, one, is that, you know, they put in their name news, right? And so it's like we continue to refer to them as Fox News as I, you know, did in the open when we need to just refer to them as Fox. We need to drop the news entity of it because we're reinforcing a lie and we're reinforcing this level of credibility that they have long since lost. I said, you know, I said this the other day that much in the way in the White House press corps that you don't see Netflix or Showtime or any of these entertainment outlets sitting in the press corps, why the

fuck is Fox there? Because they're not there to actually have a conversation. They're not even there to show their viewers what is happening in this country. They're there to put in questions like, is President Biden woke? Like, tell us more about the laptop and disrupt what real work is getting done and real conversations are trying to be had. And look, I get it. When you say that we have a longstanding tradition in this country around freedom of the press, and it was really the Trump administration that decided to turn the press into the enemy of the state. He actually referred to them as the enemy of the state. It was because of that heightened rhetoric and attacks on media that you had places like CNN receive bomb threats and attacks that had to shut down

because his followers were so amped up on this, oh my God, they're spreading all of these lies. We must take action that they were actually putting in bomb threats, that they wanted to take out people from CNN. You saw the day of the insurrection that those that had CNN or MSNBC or their logos on any of their equipment were trashed and thrashed. That comes from that place. And I think that the problem that we have is that if we do not attack dangerous media and then we allow ourselves to kind of sit back as the right turns media into the enemy of the state, we're in an even more dangerous situation because people don't know where they're supposed to be getting their information from.

But if we can reinforce the truth, which is that Fox is just Fox and has nothing to do with news, and that their attacks on the media are actually attacks on our constitutional right to have freedom of speech and freedom of the press, then we can have like these larger conversations and people can start to see what is really at play here. And I think that the Democrats finally deciding to grow a backbone in this space

and take on this propaganda machine that has a death grip on 60 plus million Americans in this country is a significant. move. I just, in my mind, I honestly think it's one that they're just taking a little too late. I hear you, Danielle, and I'm not in disagreement with you. The thing that we have in this country is anyone can call themselves a journalist. Fox can say it's a news channel and Newsmax can put the word news in their name. And it's not like being a doctor, you know, where you actually have to be credentialed and be licensed or anything like that. There's no licensing for journalism in this country.

And I'm not suggesting there should be. But it does mean that all you have to do basically, well, first of all you have to be rich, but then all you have to do to operate a TV, quote, unquote, news channel is set up a newsroom, again, quote unquote. Just assume every time I say news now, it's in, it's in sker quotes. It's in italics and quotation. Exactly. So you see, set up a newsroom and, you know, you put your news anchors on TV in front of that newsroom. And lo and behold, you're a news channel. And then you apply for White House credentials and you apply for credentials to cover Congress, et cetera, et cetera. And it's really hard to say, well, you don't meet the qualifications for journalism because there's no official qualifications to be a journalist or

to be a news organization. There are things you're supposed to do. And like in Fox's case, Fox has an operation called the brain room. Look, when I was there and, you know, Roger Al's one of history's great monsters. But he was very proud of this brain room. And this brain room was a bunch of people who did research all day. And if you had a question, you would send an email or whatever to the brain room and they would do research and they would provide you with links and information and facts and stuff like that. And Roger Ailes would always talk about the brain room and always with pride. What Fox News has done now is they basically fired, I don't remember if it was like 18 members of the brain room. They fired a large contingent of the brain room basically for telling the truth about

the election and for continuously saying that the election wasn't stolen. So that's where Fox is now. And if you are a journalistic enterprise and you are firing your fact checkers and your researchers because you don't like the facts and research that they are producing because they're true, You are not a news organization. To me, that is a pretty easy bar to clear for a news organization. Like, you don't fire the people who give you the facts and do the research. And once you're doing that, yeah, you're not a news network. You're not a news organization.

It's difficult because you can't say, well, you're not licensed or, you know, you've lost, you can't sue them for malpractice. You can't lose your license to practice journalism in a state the way you can with law. It's murky. And again, I'm not saying. that's a bad thing. I don't think we should have anything similar for journalism the way we do for doctors. But I do think that common sense can prevail here. When a purported news network is firing its researchers and its anchors are admittedly spreading falsehoods and spreading lies, you have

lost the right to call yourself a news network. And I don't care if you say well, but in this hour, fuck off. I don't care what you, first of all, I don't even think it's true anymore. It used to at least be true back in the days of Shep Smith and things like that where you can say, well, there are legitimate news hours at Fox. I don't think that's true anymore. I don't even think Brett Bear used to be held up as the perfect example. And for a long time, he was. I don't know that that's true anymore. I don't know that he has the license to practice journalism at Fox anymore. I just think they have so gutted that organization. This is not saying it was, you know, great back in the day. No, but it clearly has devolved and deteriorated aggressively.

and fueled by a lot of money. Yeah. And a lot of political influence. I think, you know, when you are seeing this kind of rotating, revolving door between who was in the Rose Garden for, I like to refer to her as Amy COVID-Barritt, for her confirmation hearing, it was a who's who of Fox News. The same with Brett Kavanaugh. That was never. That would have never been a thing a decade prior. And so I think that it is true and right to say,

that anyone can slap a badge on themselves and say that they are quote unquote news. And that is how disinformation gets spread. That's how this all happens. If we don't have the fortitude to call bullshit when we see it and then hold people responsible because I've said this, look, if I can pull up any streaming show and before that streaming show comes on, up in the corner, it says nudity, it says violence, it says coarse language. it is giving the viewer a warning for what is to come. Tell me why the fuck we can't have and should not have and should not lobby for

there to be a warning before every show on Fox, that this is for entertainment purposes only. Their own fucking lawyers have said that. Yeah. When they took Tucker Carlson to court, they said, no, I don't know who would believe him. He's just an entertainer. Oh, I don't know.

The 65 fucking million people that listen to him. So if it is only for entertainment, your own lawyers are saying that the CEO is saying that we know that this is all bullshit, then put a warning label on the same way that you do for soda, the same way you do for cigarettes, the same way you do for a whole host of other shows. And speaking of things and people who are not what they claim to be, we had a bit of a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday of Attorney General Merrick Garland, a fan favorite. here at the new abnormal. What it was, and this is absolutely no surprise, is it was a bunch of Republican senators literally playing to the Fox News audience and the Newsmax audience

and is One American News still a thing? I don't even know. Literally playing to those audiences. Like, if you watched any of it, you literally were like, oh, this is you knowing that this clip will be on Tucker Carl. later today. And they sit there and they make shit up. And look, again, we are not the world's

biggest fans of Merrick Garland here. But you have Ted Cruz getting up there and accusing Garland of intentionally leaking stuff about Trump investigations. And I think Merrick Garland is who he is. One thing I don't think he is is a guy who intentionally or probably otherwise leaks shit. he just does not seem to have that sort of vibe to him. I don't know what fucking vibe he has, but it is definitely not that one. Well, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Again, it's all these people are, they're play acting at being senators the way Fox News is play

acting at being a news organization. All they want is to be part of that same ecosystem, the Fox News, News Max, Dailywire, every other garbage, conservative, political, Ecosphere member. That's all that this is about now. It's all grandstanding. And look, I'm not stupid. I know that congressional hearings are mostly grandstanding.

But there's not even a nod at caring about the truth anymore. Like, that is so far gone. Those days are just long gone. And all it is is playing it up because nobody watches these actual hearings. And the senators know that. They know that it's not that. people are sitting at home glued to C-SPAN. What they're going to do is see the little clips that Hannity plays and the little clips that

Laura Ingram plays and the little clips that Tucker Carlson plays. And then, you know, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and those people are going to go on those shows and continue to spread their absolute fucking bullshit. And that's all these hearings are, are a springboard to coverage on Fox News and other places like that. And it's just like there's no other reason for any of these hearings. And we're going to see this a lot in the next few years. years, particularly on the House side, you just have to know that that's all it is.

I mean, my feeling is just one of absolute disgust, but I will pull up another fan favorite, Ted Cruz's quote from the hearing, which was directed at Merrick Garland. Quote, your intention, and I believe it's a political intention, to indict President Trump, became infinitely harder when classified documents were discovered repeatedly at President Biden's multiple residences. And he went on as a quote. according to the New York Times to accuse Garland of intentionally leaking details. And to your point, Andy, we know that that, I don't know what the fuck Merritt Garland's intentions are two years

after an insurrection to do, but to slow walk a possible indictment of Donald Trump. But if Ted Cruz thinks that Donald Trump is only going to be indicted potentially being looked at for leaked fucking documents, that's not the only thing. How about you find me 11,740-some-odd votes, though. I think that what I want Democrats to do in these situations is not walk out of the room, which is what a lot of them did after they did their initial round of questioning, and leave Merrick Garland as a sitting duck to be beaten like a pinata for 20 minutes by Republicans and their lies and their bullshit. They need to use these opportunities as the way to get the clips that they need to show that they are standing up to Republicans and that they are there for truth. They are there for

justice and they're there to work on behalf of the people and show that stark contrast. If they can get the clips in the fundraising, so the fuck can we. And that's how we should be looking at it. Absolutely. That is 100% true. And I think Jamie Raskin kind of was doing a little bit of that. But I agree, it has to be more. It has to be across the board. And look, as you pointed out, Ted Cruz knows damn well that the documents that were discovered at Biden's residences, Biden's people discovered and immediately turned over, regardless of what you think of that. And I'm on record. I think it's bad that he had these documents.

It is nothing in the same realm as what happened with Trump who fought to keep the documents and lawyers lied about having the documents. They're not even in the same ballpark. And Ted Cruz knows that. Ted Cruz, again, Ted Cruz is not stupid. He's just soulless, but he's not stupid. So he knows that. That's up for debate.

Yeah. Okay, I don't think Ted Cruz is stupid. I think Ted Cruz knows exactly what he's doing, and he knows he's lying. He just doesn't give a fuck. If you've been following media news at all, you know that Fox News is in the midst of a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. After the release a few weeks ago of private communications, we learned that Fox News anchors, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, knew many of the claims of election fraud they were peddling on air were false. And earlier this week, Fox Corp Chairman Rupert Murdox seemed to admit under oath that his network

work was knowingly selling lies. Here to tell us where things stand and where they may go for the quote-unquote news channel is NPR's media correspondent, David Folken Flick. David, thank you so much for being here. Andy, pleasure. So I was trying to think of a media scandal this big, this serious, a so-called news organization knowingly lying because it knew its audience wanted to hear those lies. I couldn't come up with any recent ones except maybe, maybe the hacking scandal in England

back in the early 2010s. But you've been in this business for a while, possibly since World War II for all I know. Where do you kind of rank this? Such a good question. I think this is huge. I think this is a defining moment for Fox News. I think it will require revisions of all the tributes and, for that matter, obituaries written after Rupert Murdoch dies. This is a moment where, you know, he can't simply argue that, hey, we're a news organization with perhaps a political orientation,

and our views side that the establishment doesn't like, which is kind of the point that he's hammered home in establishing this juggernaut of a news outlet, right? The other guys aren't listening to you. Right. There's a conservative portion of the country that's just not been served and has been disrespected. We do respect you. We do serve you. And we're taking care of you. But, you know, we believe in the news. And Murdoch does have real journalistic DNA in there. But regardless, which is a weird thing to say, given that we're talking about this 1.6. billion-dollar defamation suit. But you almost have to look at this both as a legal case on its merits and also as a process by which we're having one layer of the onion after another

stripped away so that we're seeing that Fox really has been, at least in recent years, operating as a business enterprise around which is wrapped this sort of partisan political, ideological grievance machine that fuels the profits of this business enterprise, around which is wrapped the kind of facade of a news organization. Right. That's, I think, very damning. For anybody who chooses to look at it, it's not about people like me who can be dismissed. I work for a, you know, a mainstream news outlet at NPR.

They can paint us with whatever partisan stripe or ideological stripe they choose for benefit. You are a weak-kneed backstabbing, sweaty-palmed reporter, I've been told. So I've heard. So I've heard. But in this case, we're learning about this in the words of the producers, executives, stars, and corporate overlords and ultimately controlling owner of the place themselves. And what those exchanges tell us is the contempt in which they held the people they were putting on the air to propound conspiracy theories they knew at the time to be groundless and essentially

lies. And also that they thought their own audiences couldn't handle the truth and that it would be disrespectful to tell them what really they knew to be the case. And I think that's very damning as well. That's aside from the question of whether that legally constitutes defamation. Right. And I agree that it's two separate issues. And I want to actually want to get to that later. But I want to talk a little bit about Murdoch's, the testimony or the depositions that were revealed earlier this week. So under oath, he said that he had the power to stop his anchors or to stop Fox News president, Suzanne Scott, from putting people on the air who were spouting election nonsense, people like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell. But that he, in his own words, he said, I chose not. not to. Do you think he's at all embarrassed about this? You know, it's one of those great questions,

right? When you talk to your kids, do you regret that you did such and such? Or did you regret that you got found out? Exactly. I don't think Murdoch lives in the world of regret. I don't think he inhabits the world of introspection. I don't think he pays taxes in the realm of self-reflection. This is a man for whom introspection is impossible. And you know that, by the way in which he's treated people who have been very close to him, including his own adult children. It's just, it's not what he does. He can adopt that mantle when necessary. And we saw that in the British tabloid scandals. And we can talk a bit about that in a few minutes as well. But I think he's upset that this is something he has to deal with. Like, that's what he's upset about.

Right. You know, this is an incredible interruption. As we saw from his own exchanges as captured by Dominion's attorneys, and we should be fair to point out they're only showing us, you know, they're pointing the spotlight at things they want us to see, right? So we're only seeing part of it. And, you know, Murdoch is one of the few voices internally who's ever raising journalistic elements, as in it's all very well to know behind the scenes that Sean Hannity thinks that Joe Biden won the election, but what is he saying on the air? And he's not asking that question as in he was ignorant. He's asking that question as in, what the hell is he doing about it to the public? I chose not to. He doesn't intercede.

And he doesn't do that because he's convinced by the arguments of Fox News's chief executive, Suzanne Scott and others, that you're going to strip away even more millions of viewers from Fox. You're going to lose that Trump core, which was so important to propelling their audiences during the Trump years, if you tell him that Biden was legitimately elected. And so Murdoch, you know, didn't get involved. He is in some ways hands off and he is in some ways incredibly hands on. And, you know, he delegates everything, but he retains all the – this is going to be a funny analogy. My first beat, I covered higher education for a small paper Durham, North Carolina. And then Senator Terry Sanford had previously been the president of Duke University, which is the primary institution I wrote about for that paper. And one of the things he was told was that when there was this issue that came up in the, I think, the basketball program when Sanford was president, you know, he chewed out his athletic director for not handling it.

And he said, listen, I'm the dean of students. I'm the athletic director. I'm all these things. I choose to delegate all these powers, but don't be confused. I have them all. And that's kind of how I think about Rupert Murdoch. That may or may not be the best model for a college president. But that's how I think about Murdoch.

He's in some ways kind of hands off in that there are times where he doesn't bother people, particularly if they're making him a lot of money. Right. But he likes to play. And he got a taste of that when Roger Ailes was run out of Fox News, the late Roger Ales, in 2016 for being, as it turned out, a complete monster, not just kind of monstrous in how he operated in the public sphere, but truly a monster to women who worked for him. Yes.

And had to be gotten out. Well, for a while there, Murdoch became the CEO of Fox News. And he's never had felt that he had quite the same touch and mastery of TV that he did of the printed press, right, of newspapers. But he really enjoyed it. And you see him in these exchanges talking about things that are fairly minute. about the operations and the tone of how certain interviews go or which guests should appear and which shouldn't. And Murdoch, by the way, if Murdoch said something needed to happen, I promise you,

it would happen. If he said do this as a directive as opposed to a suggestion, it would happen. It would absolutely be the case. So when Murdoch chooses not to do something, like that is consequential. He did not intervene, but he had the knowledge that this was problematic and he chose not to intervene. Now, he does interweave his, you know, the deposition where he's answering under oath to these lawyers from Dominion. And he makes sure he's like, well, I'm not the chief executive. I'm not the one making the chart Fox News. And he's letting you know that Suzanne Scott ultimately is where the buck stops. Well, a couple of things.

One is, yeah, I don't think I'd want to be Suzanne Scott right now because it feels like if there's going to be a scapegoat here, if someone's going to be placed on the altar and sacrificed, it's going to be her. But also in reading through the deposition, it struck me kind of the pains that Murdoch took to separate FNC, the entity, from some of its biggest stars, almost as if people like Carlson Hannity, Piro, almost like they were independent contractors, like, well, you can't blame this, the network didn't do this, these people did this. And I assume this is for legal reasons, because Dominion has to prove that the network or the corporation knowingly and maliciously lied in order to win its case about defamation.

Yeah, look, I mean, the jury gets to make a verdict and the judge gets to instruct the jury about how to interpret certain things and gets to rule during what presumably will be the trial starting in April, what's in order and what's not. Dominion is simultaneously arguing that Fox and its stars defamed it, not simply the guests they invited on and interrogated, but that, you know, they embraced this. And indeed, Murdoch himself attested and assented to the fact that at least four of his stars did. embrace and, excuse me, I think he used the word endorsed, these election lies or these election conspiracy theories. But Dominion is also arguing that Fox Corp itself was integrally involved in this. Right. We all know, you and I both know, the original sin here is election night itself, right? Fox News is the first major network to call Arizona for Joe Biden, putting the election hopes of Donald Trump all but out of his reach that night. You see reflected in the exchanges between

Rupert and his son, Lachlan, who's the executive chairman of Fox Corp, the parent company, that they could have easily called Biden president, you know, the ensuing, I guess it was Saturday, whenever it was, a lot quicker than they did, but they let everybody else go first on that one. Because they've spent, you know, essentially two and a half years now trying to make it up to Trump voters. Not necessarily to make it up Trump voters by embracing Trump, but by embracing Trump voters and Trumpism and a lot of the lies that the core Trump voter has either embraced or chosen to cheer. The idea that somehow Lou Dobbs is no longer there, but Maria Dyer, to Barteromo, Janine Perro are not part of the fold of Fox. I mean, Janine Perro, far from being

punished, was elevated from being a weekend host to being a host of the five, one of their most popular shows. Right. That doesn't seem to me like the land of consequences has been bad for her as a result of promoting things that her own producers and executives were decrying to one another in private communications. There's so many avenues of conversation here, but just for time purposes, I guess there's basically two possible outcomes of this trial. Either Fox as an entity is found guilty of defaming Dominion or the court rules that Dominion failed to meet the basically incredibly high bar that American law sets for such a finding.

So I want to ask you what you think happens in both cases. First, let's say Dominion suit is successful. What do you think happens to FNC and to Murdoch? Look, we're going to land of speculation, right? Of course. I think cable news is very good at and I'm not perfect at. by a long shot. But let me sketch out what I think past records suggest would be likely possible avenues for this to go. If this goes to trial and a jury finds Fox News to be liable for defamation,

first off, you've got to know there'd be extensive appeals. Of course. And so either a settlement's going to happen right before trial, or it probably happens in that appellate system. And, you know, Fox already has a team of appellate lawyers working on this. And part of their arguments, even in the initial motions, are designed to the question of damage. saying, well, you know, Dominion really can't make the argument to say that they deserve this much money. It's outrageous and it's not supported by. Those are all arguments that you do after he found somebody to be liable for defamation, right? That's not something that you do up front. The damages part is really usually, it's a different part of the sequence. So you can tell Fox is already thinking,

we could well get to that point. So there could be a settlement there. And we can talk about the settlement in a minute. But let's say Fox is found liable by a jury of defamation and it stands. Fox will probably have to pay significant damages, and the fact of the verdict will be such that Dominion will be able to point to this as vindication for everything it said, whether or not that's what the jury intended, you know, by saying they found liable under the law. That will be a huge reputational ding or damage for Fox. And I want to come back to that in about 10 seconds. I don't think it will affect them so much with their core viewers, because I think what Fox has wanted to avoid, Rupert's willing to shell out a certain amount of money to make big headaches go away. And this is a migraine that is almost unparalleled in Fox and Murdoch's history. And he's had a bunch of them. But he's willing to pay to make this stuff go away. What he's not shown willingness to do so far is to have his people come on the air and say, we got it wrong. Murdoch did do that on the eve of January 6th, 2021, where he mused to Suzanne Scott, wouldn't it be great to get Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker, perhaps even together, almost like a Jerry Lewis telethon of stars.

right, to come forward and say to their prime time audiences, guys, let's accept the fact that Joe Biden lost. And to be honest, that would have been kind of a responsible thing to do, given the circumstances. And that was suggested by Rupert and Cisland Scott said, you have to understand, we have to take it easy with these guys and do it gently because our audience really isn't ready to absorb that in that way. And Murdoch went with that. And, you know, that was ultimately what he said some days later to Lachlan to tell an increasingly worried corporate direct. who said, you know, I think we have a corporate obligation to get out there and do this publicly. And he said, we have to do this gently. Okay. So that tells you that he's willing to do that before the lawsuit. Once the lawsuit's filed, he doesn't want to have to have some sort of negotiated statement where he said, we presented information that was untrue. We did knowingly, we shouldn't have done it,

which is the kind of statement dominion wants. They don't want simply to say dominion is fine and they weren't involved in this. They want an acknowledgement that the stuff that was pushed out there to the public was damaging false and that they knew about it at the time or should have known about it at the time. So the question of what the settlement is, you know, I think Murdoch would have been happily settled long before now. My sense is that Dominion has had no interest in that until this time. Right. And now they've been able to play this. You know, my theory about this is a little bit like the Princess Bride where the dread pirate Robert says, no, I'm going to fight you to the pain, not to the death. Certainly, Dominion has fought them to the pain. Every day, every revelation,

every new tranche of exhibits has exacted damage on Fox reputationally. But if Fox doesn't have to acknowledge that to its own audiences, they're going to people who say all the stuff from NBC and NPR and the New York Times and the Washington Post and people covering it from the mainstream media is just more anti-Fox bias. And Fox is not touching it as their own media guy acknowledged finally belatedly, you know, it stirred himself from an almost an ambulance stance on this to say, I disagree with it. They're not letting me cover it is what Howard Kurt said. He said, and I disagree, but there it is. So if they don't present that to Fox, they don't take the ding there. Where they take the ding is among all these folks who have struggled with how to classify Fox. Is this a competitor that's just conservative?

Is this a roguish competitor that's conservative? Or are they really in the news business at all? And while they have people performing news tasks, they're not in the news business. That may be what they're telling themselves so that they can tell advertisers that, so they can feel good about the significant cable audiences that are attracted to these shows. But that's not what they're doing. I had written as an exit question. Is there any reason that anyone should treat FNC in its current form as an actual news organization

rather than as a political operation or even or something else, but something else other than a news organization? And that extends to should they get a seat at the White House briefings and everything on down from there? I think people can decide on their own what to do. I mean, people to judge finds value in going on there and addressing their audiences and also taking on, you know, some of their hosts, some of their prickly hosts. and he seems to have a pretty good, he seems to be able to hold his own, right?

So, you know, the question is, who do you want to reach and how do you want to do it? Are you dignifying them in a sense you are? Joe Biden, the president, the White House decided not to when it came to the traditional Super Bowl interview. And, you know, Fox tried to kind of generate that into an issue at the moment, but I don't think it's going to land very strong when you have all of these headlines and revelations about Rupert Murdoch, seemingly the conscience of the organization, raising questions about should we be straight with the viewer, also saying, hey, look, let's focus and make sure we can win these Republican Senate race for the Republicans so we can try to get back control of the Senate, right? Like, it doesn't sound as though

journalistic imperatives or what he's doing even in the news side of what he's doing. He's saying that to the head of his chief news channel. I just don't think those complaints are going to land the same way anymore. You know, will Jake Tapper stand up for, you know, this metaphorically, but stand up for a peer who's working for Fox, who's shut out of a call in the way he did during the Obama years. And I respected what he did at that time. Would he do it now? He might well. But there's no obligation for us to think of Fox or evaluate what they do in the same light as we might from the AP when their own conversations, their own imperatives are so infused with purely profit and ideological imperatives. Even though I do think that it's fair to say almost any major news

organization would be ravaged to find its internal conversations displayed out for public review. 100%. Really, I was talking more in my question about more of the Jake Tapper kind of thing, more of how other journalists and other journalistic organizations should treat Fox. I can understand why a Pete Buttigieg or any elected official would want to go on Fox and reach their viewers. That to me is wholly different, and that has nothing to do with whether Fox is a legitimate news organization. And I was thinking more of, you know, almost like the scene in the Godfather where they closed the door on who's, I forget who's standing outside the door. I think it's K. I think it is K, actually. And they closed the door. And I was thinking more of like, you know, is that what other or what

actual news organizations should maybe start to do? And I assume that would be something that every organization, every individual is going to have to answer for themselves. But it's just unbelievable that that is now a legitimate question, I think. I think if I were the White House reporter for NPR and Tam Keith is ours and I think she's the ascending head of White House Correspondent Association or something and she's much smarter about that than I am. But I think I'm fine with their reporter being in the room, but I don't see any reason to, what can I say? If anybody from Fox News was a journalist was seeking jobs elsewhere, I think you do your best to help them land. I've had this said to me by pretty much every journalist working for Fox. It's a very difficult, difficult position to be in and they're very

very well paid. The on-air people anywhere are very well paid as a result because they're trying to keep that talent there. You know, off-air, you know, might be a different issue for some of the more junior folks. You know, even there, I heard from producers saying they were paid, you know, essentially a slight surplus to get them to stay at Fox because they know internally that the stuff that reporters like me are saying publicly is true. Despite the fact that we're trashed by Fox hosts and stars reporting things like this, we're just reporting what we learn from people on the inside, as well as watching with our own eyes what we're seeing put on the air. And between those two elements, you're getting a pretty good picture.

What these revelations and exhibits and documents show and testimony show is how raw it is. It's how explicit and how blatant it is. This isn't subtle. This isn't code. You don't need some sort of secret translator app to be able to figure out what's being said. It's all out in the open. I wanted to answer your original question. You asked a tough but good question, which was, you know, where does this rank in terms

of journalistic scandals. And there are a couple of them. I think that, you know, I think that Fox's coverage of Seth Rich is one of the true journalistic disgraces of the Trump years. And there were a number of them on a number of sides. But I think that was what they did to, you know, a young dead man's family was, was shameful. Yes. You know, Fox paid them, but Fox never really addressed what they promised to do was keep looking into the story. And the story was they got it deeply wrong and how they deeply wrong and they never squared that with the public and I thought that was shameful. I think that the CBS George W. Bush service record thing and we're going back almost two decades now. Right. You know, truly an epic failure up and down, you know, and it cost Dan Rather all kinds

of things and probably rightly. In that case, Dan Rather believed what he was putting on the air was true. Right. And they thought that the evidence they had was basically borne out, but they didn't nail it down. It was not authoritative. The producer used what she called a preponderance of the facts. You know, it's using kind of a civil law lawsuit. Right. Jury verdict standard rather than a criminal law, beyond a reasonable doubt. That was shameful and wrong, even though their larger truth had already been proven by Walter Robinson of Boston Globe. And that's the most incredible thing about that story, was that was basically right.

But I think it was terrible that CBS did that. And obviously, that completely upended that place. And I think Murdoch's tabloid scandals, the thing there wasn't that they were publishing things that were untrue. It's that they committed crimes to get information. They broke into people's cell phones and voice messages and emails, and they absolutely uprooted their lives. And the amazing thing was, because of the tabloid culture in Britain, the British public basically tolerated it when it was about the royals and about sports stars and about celebrities because they thought, well, these are our headlines. We don't want to look too closely. When it became about crime victims, when it came about a young dead girl, when it became about the war dead, you know, veterans.

The British public said, well, this could be anybody. These guys will do anything to anyone, which was true. And Murdoch had to come to terms with that. And, you know, it cost him this great newspaper. But actually what he did was he took the Sunday tabloid, closed it, and then just added a Sunday edition to his regular day to tabloid the sun. So they didn't miss much of a step in that regard. But what they really lost was the hold on sky, this huge broadcasting property in Britain that they were poised to take over fully. And they had ultimately, when they sold off so much of their entertainment world to Disney to sell that to Comcast, the Roberts family and their competitors in some ways.

And so there was a cost there to Murdoch, and there was a cost in Britain. People still talk about that. But these are these kind of historic scandals. Whatever the legal outcomes, I think the reputational damage here will be tremendous. Should Fox not settle? Should Fox not lose? Should it actually prevail in court? Murdoch will claim vindication.

But what we've learned is terribly damning from a journalistic and moral standpoint already. David, thank you so much for being here and lending us your expertise. This has been illuminated. and insightful, at least on my end. Well, you've been very illuminating and insightful. So at least the listeners get that, yes. Yes, yes, that's what I meant by my end. And honestly, that's all I can ask of an interview

is that I come across looking good. Always do. David Folkenflick from NPR, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. You bet. Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Feber Dreams is a Daily Beast podcast,

taking you inside the rights push to retake power. from the Maga Acolytes to the straight-up grifters. They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast.pub slash fever dreams to check it out. Folks, I am really excited and happy to welcome colleague and friend and just all around badass on MSNBC, Amin Mohedin, who hosts Aiman on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

You can see him on Peacock. You should be following him on Instagram, on Twitter, on all of the socials. Amen, so excited to have you. Thank you for having me. I want to jump right in because like I said before we actually got started that, I mean, I follow you for a whole host of reasons because your content is just so real, but you provide me with an insight into what is happening globally in areas that are largely overlooked in mainstream media who don't get the coverage because frankly their GDP is not as big. because of the complexion of their citizens.

So we don't really care or point cameras in the direction. But you always make it a point to really lift up stories that offer us greater perspective into what's happening in the United States and around the globe. And one of the stories that I was following on your page and then thankfully because of you was able to dig into is what has recently been happening in Tunisia. And the president, Kaias,

Saeed's recent comments have kind of turned the country in a way upside down for African immigrants. And I want to give you the opportunity to kind of give us the bigger picture of what happened, and then we can unpack it. Yeah, and I think it's important. I'm glad that you're highlighting this because Tunisia was the birthplace of the Arab Spring. And regardless of what you feel about the last 10 years or 12 years of the Arab Spring, there was at one moment, and for a long time, a hope that when some of these Arab countries overthrew their dictators and their autocrats, that they would bring in leaders that were more responsive to the population, more tolerant, more democratic, more pro-human rights. And certainly even as these countries and specifically Tunisia went about some of these challenges of trying to establish a full functioning democracy, they certainly hope that the rhetoric of their leaders was.

was not going to be divisive and hateful and racist. And what has made the case of Kais Saeed so interesting and disappointing, quite frankly, is that his rise to power and his most recent comments really signify and exemplify a transformation of a person who came in with a lot of hope, and certainly for Tunisians, with a lot of promise that he was going to cut corruption, was going to be a staunch secularist, was going to be a constitutionalist because his background was. a constitutional lawyer. So there was hope that he was really going to bring in this era of democracy, democratic reform, anti-corruption. What we've seen is the opposite. What we've seen is this

crackdown on civil society, on journalism, on free expression, on political opposition. And now, fueled with it, is this racist rhetoric against African migrants. And by the way, there's a sizable population of Tunisians who are black Tunisians. These are not immigrants. They're not migrants. These are actually black Tunisians. But when you fuel the rhetoric, this kind of racist rhetoric, and what the president said was basically the notion that the presence of African migrants in Tunisia was destabilizing the country, changing the demographic characteristics of the country because Tunisia is an Arab Muslim country. And with the presence of many African migrants, he felt that the demographics were going to change. It is the same tired racist playbook that we hear in our own country when those on the far right try to blame. the problems and challenges we face in our society on the so-called great replacement theory

that somehow the presence of non-white people is going to fundamentally change and alter the characteristics of America. And what we saw this past week or a couple of days ago was Kai Saeed using the exact playbook of saying the society is changing and it's changing in large part because of the presence of so-called illegal immigrants coming in from Africa. And we must put an end to that. And we have to start cracking down. And they began arresting migrants and African migrants that are in Tunisia one way or the other. And in a story that I read at an outlet called DW, they were going through what has happened over the past a couple of weeks. And people have been evicted from their homes. They've been

fired from work. They have been harassed, beaten on the streets. And all of this coming, stemming from this speech. And I think that what gets me, Amen, is here in America, we are watching and have been watching over the last seven to ten years. I will go back so far as the beginning of the Obama administration, where the majority of America saw great promise in how far we had come, that the descendant of slaves could rise to become president of the United States. But at that same time that we...

we're applauding and patting ourselves on the back, there is another movement that is building. It began as the Tea Party. Then it morphed into birtherism, which is what produced Donald Trump. So we have Donald Trump who then uses the same type of racism, uses the same rhetoric that this president is using. What did he call African nations? Shithole countries. Why can't we have immigrants that are coming from places like, He said, Finland and Sweden, which we, what do we know about the demographics of those countries? Then you have him using the coronavirus as a way to amp up anti-Asian hate, which we saw as a direct result of the rhetoric around calling the virus anything but coronavirus to incite anti-Asian hate. So the thing that I want to say is, how is it that it's so obvious, amen?

It's so obvious what is happening around the globe. What is happening in the United States is not unique to the United States. And so how is it that we're not, I guess, in our mainstream media, being able to connect the dots to this greater existential threat that progress and democracy are facing? I'm so glad you brought that up because this is one of the biggest challenges of our time. And I want to make the point here because you can, kind of look at a two ways. Does what happens outside of the United States come to the United States or does what happens inside the United States spread to the rest of the world? And you can

kind of be two schools of thought of this. I'm particularly of the school of thought that what happens in American politics, the rhetoric that is normalized in America, the way that the American government carries itself spreads to other parts of the world. That doesn't mean that American politicians are not influenced by what happens overseas. But I tend to think that America, because of its position on the world stage and its influence in a lot of these countries and the fact that it medals in so many internal politics, internal issues of other countries, I believe that when you get a president, like Donald Trump, who normalizes hateful rhetoric and starts saying the language of we need to build a wall or fake news or the election was stolen, it is only amplified by the very nature of the American president being one of the most, if not the most, powerful person in the world. So what happens is when you get a politician in a country like Tunisia, very, I would say, barely on the radar of most global news media outlets, he's looking at a Donald Trump and says, hey, he's saying it. He's the president of a free country. He's the president of

a democratic society. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it to the fake news media. I'm going to start saying that immigration is changing our country. We need to put an end to it, build the wall, so to speak. And then you start seeing that kind of hateful rhetoric that America, that a politician like Donald Trump espouses, starting to pop up in the language of world leaders otherware. By the way, you can almost kind of go to a handful of other countries in the Middle East, and you will see that kind of reaction. So my point to you on this is that at the end of the day, this is the problem that we're dealing with. The American rhetoric is so dangerous when you are dealing with this kind of hateful language because it spreads around the world.

You know, and here's the thing. We've watched this now. We watched what? Another insurrection happened in Brazil. A couple of months ago, we watched as the Bolsonaro supporters stormed the capital. And funny enough, unlike in the United States, they actually have police officers that arrest people on site. I had no idea that could happen. Yes, exactly.

Right? I didn't know. Imagine, imagine that. Imagine, imagine the people tasked with securing the parliament or the legislative branch of government doing their job and stopping it and arresting the people by the hundred. I mean, this shit was wild. I was like, look at them in handcuffs. And so we saw that happen. Then another story that you lifted up were, again, African migrants whose ship was wrecked, overturned, caught in a storm. comes up on the shore of Italy. We know who has been elected in Italy is basically like a female Mussolini. And again, these are people who have taken their notes

and are doing a hat tip to Trumpism. And so, like, for people, again, who are listening to this and say, I couldn't even point out Tunisia on a map. I have dreams of going to Italy, but I don't even have a passport because most Americans don't. How do we in media make people understand that what is happening on their front step is also as important as what is happening tens of thousands of miles away?

You know, I talk about this a lot because I say to Americans all the time, if Americans experienced what American foreign policy was overseas, we would be so pissed and so angry about it. And you're talking exactly about that, which is, yeah, I want to go to. to Italy, but also Italy is going through a shift to the far right where they are becoming anti-immigration, if you want to use that language, becoming less tolerant, perhaps even more racist as a society. And part of the problem is what we're seeing in places like Tunisia. Why? And I'm going to connect the dots here. When you have a president come out and use the language that he did, the way that Kaisa'ai did, what does that do? It is to dehumanize people. It is to make you feel afraid of the other.

It is to make you feel threatened by the presence of somebody who is not you or somebody who is different from you. And why? Because they want a better life, because they're willing to risk their life to get a better opportunity for them and their kids and their families back home. And then what happens? They take these unnecessary risks, these crazy risks of getting on these boats that are exploited by traffickers and middlemen who want to bring these people, into your bringing African migrants and migrants from Afghanistan and refugees and people seeking to escape violence in the region. They want to bring them to Europe on the promise of a better life and a better future. So the entire system is connected. It's connected by the rhetoric of hate,

but it's also exploited by the merchants of the people who are trying to traffic these people to Europe. And then you get the Georgia Maloney, the prime ministers of Italy who use this and weaponize this to their own advantage politically, to say no more immigrants, we are going to not help these people. We're not going to have more patrol boats on the coastline to make sure that we can bring these people to refuge. If they drown, they drown type of rhetoric. We don't want these people in our midst. And you just create a toxic cycle where people are dehumanized and they ultimately end up dying. And that was the purpose of the post that I made. It's not to say that what happened in Italy was a direct result of what Kai Saeed was saying in that moment. But the atmosphere that is being

created around migrants and refugees and people escaping to better places is all connected. And we see that here, whether you have Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis engaging in these dehumanizing stunts of taking migrants on buses and dumping them off in the cold weather in places like New York and elsewhere and say, hey, you deal with them. That kind of. of imagery, that kind of language, that kind of behavior, that's the toxic, racist rhetoric that spreads to elsewhere in the world and says, hey, if America is doing it, and America is the country that is supposed to be the beacon, the light on the shining hill for the rest of the world, if they're doing it, and that's what they feel, then we can do it and we should be doing it as well.

The dangerous thing, and this is what is something we need to be mindful of, is for now, at least, we have a free media in this country. We have an opposition party. We have people, we have a, we have a vibrant civil society that is fighting back. We still are going to the election. I keep saying the word still because these things can change, but I'm saying we still have this and we are doing the best that we can and we need to do more to fight against this rhetoric and to fight against this kind of behavior. I'm not sure other countries, certainly a country like Tunisia has that. They don't have a long democratic tradition. They don't have a vibrant civil society. They certainly don't have a vibrant free press to try to hold somebody like Kai Saida-Kathekata. They're trying to do

their best. Don't get me wrong. They have been protests. People have been calling him out. People have been demonstrating. But what is he doing? He's cracking down. He's jailing journalists. He's jailing opposition figures. We're not at that point here in America, but that's what's happening in Tunisia.

So his ability to quash that dissent, to quash that opposition is much more likely than what we're seeing here. And that's what scares me. Yeah. What scares me as well, I appreciate you just painting this picture so that people really understand and connect the dots and see these obscene. parallels that are a warning. This is warning. It's a foreshadowing that we are seeing here. And I look at Florida, Amen, and I look at what DeSantis is doing, for instance, with Disney, a private company, where he is now appointed an oversight board filled with white evangelical religious zealots

to decide what kind of content a private company should put out. And if they don't follow his whims and his ideological preferences, then he's going to use his power as governor to weaponize taxes against this private entity. Because he is using Disney as a model. I look at what just happened in Arkansas recently. Arkansas meat processing plant was in violation of child labor laws. Why? Because there is an influx of undocumented immigrant children that are crossing the border alone. And what these states are doing, who are around and in the range of the influx of undocumented immigrants, they want to change their labor laws for children so that these young, vulnerable kids that are fleeing unthinkable and unimaginable violence and deprivation

are now walking into the arms of largely white adults in. In these places, CEOs who decide that they want to change labor laws to employ immigrant children. It's happening in Indiana. It's happening. They want to do it in Iowa. It's happening in Arkansas. And so when I see these things, I don't look at them as one-offs. I look at them as part and parcel of a larger hate wave that is gripping this nation in a fever.

It is happening on an incremental basis. It is happening slowly. And the example that I like to tell people who are right now blasé about it and say, oh, this is a random politician in Florida. Oh, this is a small company in Arkansas. Oh, this is a BS thing. I don't know where. I give you the example of the way the Republican Party and the conservative movement in this country overturned Roe versus Wade.

Come on. 50 years. 50 years, they systematically chipped away at the right of women to have an abortion in this country. 50 years, they waited and began to stack the courts and brought one bill after the other and changed legislators one after the other and slowly began to constrain and began to challenge and began to fight and begin to redefine and began to create their own media outlets to push their narrative. And what did they do after 50 years? They eroded the right of women to have abortions in this country.

a fact and it may be even more so in the next couple of days. So for anyone who's sitting here and telling me, oh, America has a long tradition of democracy, America's 50 states, America is not going to go down the path of totalitarian or authoritarian rule because we're such a vibrant democracy. I say to you and I call BS because we have politicians in this country where fascism is slowly creeping into their platform, slowly creeping into their rhetoric. They want to ban opposition parties. they want to silence journalists, they want to restrict the rights of minorities to vote and making it harder to vote. There are forces that are hell-bent on making this country anti-democratic. And if we don't remain vigilant and we don't try to fight it at every single step of the way

and not get preoccupied with smaller, inconsequential discussions that they want to distract us with, we are going to very much, whether in 20, 30, 40, or 50 years from now, wake up and find that we have a full-blown fascistic movement on our hand that we may not be able to reverse. Yes, people looked at Donald Trump and said, hey, that guy is crazy. The next version of Donald Trump is probably going to be smarter and less bombastic, but probably just as maniacal, perhaps just as evil. So you get somebody who is anti-democratic, probably a little bit smarter on Twitter, probably not as dumb in the kind of constant like social media tweets that he's putting out there

that is distracting everyone and not being brushed aside. You're going to get a Marjorie Tellegrine. You're going to get a Matt Gates. You're going to get a Ron DeSantis. You're going to get forces of people like a Steve Bannon behind the scenes backed by wealthy people who are saying, you know what? We need to keep doing this. And they will do it until they achieve what they're setting out to achieve. And that, for me, is what I see right now happening.

And I see that happening here in this country because I see the same forces that play overseas. I see countries overseas that, you know, under the guise of being democratic, under the guise of we need to have more stability under the guise of we are pro-democracy, but we also want to make sure that we are a country of rules and laws begin to inject this rhetoric into their body polity. And I can see that happening overseas like the way I'm seeing it here. And that's one of the things that the journalist I need to call out and be vigilant about. Yeah.

I tell you, Amen, I just appreciate you so much. I appreciate your work, your voice and the way that you continue to. utilize the platforms that you have because I think that you on your show on MSNBC Amen 8 p.m. on Saturdays 9 p.m. on Sundays that you're having the conversations that we need to be having every day all day. Thank you. And I just really appreciate you taking the time to join me on the new abnormal. I mean, we have to have you back. I am always here. I'm always ready for you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. We all got to do our part. Absolutely.

Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, I know, I know that the trough is wide and deep and big. Who is your fuck that guy today? My FTG is MTG. Bravo. Thank you. Thank you very much.

So there was a congressional hearing earlier this week. Marjorie Taylor Green told an entire story of these two brothers, Caleb and Kyler Kiesling or Kessling, One was 20 years old, one was 18 years old, and they died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl. Marjorie Taylor Green told this story and blamed the whole thing on Joe Biden's border policies. These Joe Biden's border policies were responsible for their deaths. It was later pointed out that there's a bit of a problem with her story, and that is that these two brothers died on July 29th, 2020. Oh, interesting. Wait, hold on. Let me try and do the math. Do you want to do the math?

Do you want to do the math? Let me, it's carry the one and then, oh, Biden wasn't president. Go ahead. There you go. So these same people who don't even think Biden is president now are now trying to claim he was president in July of 2020 and is at fault for the death of these two brothers who obviously died under the Trump administration. So this was pointed out to put a capper on this story, Daniel Dale from CNN contacted her office to get comment on the fact that Biden wasn't president back then. He tweeted that the response he got from Nick Dyer in Marjutela Green's office was that lots of people have died from drugs under Biden. And do you think they give a fuck about your bullshit fact checking? So that is where we stand here. And as Daniel, you have pointed out many times, why do I bother with facts? They don't care about facts.

And there's your proof of that right there as if we need it anymore. Nobody cares about your bullshit fact checking that the people who died while Trump was in office didn't really die when Biden was in office, as Marjorie Taylor Green said. So I agree with you that no. cares about fact-checking. Look, I agree with, you know, unfortunately, I agree with Marjorie Taylor-Green's office that nobody gives a shit about fact-checking. But fact-checking still has to be done. And it still has to be pointed out that Marjorie Taylor-Green is both stupid and a liar.

A dangerous combo. Yes. And she also doesn't care that she's a liar. For this week, that is why Marjorie Taylor-Green is my fuck-that-gal. And I just love to point out the fact that I'm so glad that the people that work in her office are just as classy as she is. Oh, yeah. I know. Only the best fucking people there.

In case you for a second ever felt, oh, God, I feel sorry for the people who have to work for her. Yeah, don't. They're not hostages. No, exactly. They are also being paid to lie. Who's your fuck that guy? Well, sometimes it's important to continue to point out hypocrisy to your earlier fuck that guy. Andy, and I'm going to go ahead and stay in that same theme.

Let me just preface this all by saying that while the country is being ravished by mass shootings, while climate change is costing billions of dollars that we don't have, while white supremac groups are growing by the day and number according to the FBI and CIA, there is nothing, nothing more important and dangerous. in the eyes of a Republican outside of an M&M and a fucking gas stove and a toaster, then drag queens. And so Tennessee Governor Bill Lee found himself saying that he is going to sign a recently past bill criminalizing drag performances in public and in front of children. Because again, there is nothing absolutely more dangerous than imagination and people getting free.

Because that is what drag queen performances are about. They are about imagination. They are about freeing your mind from the constructs of gender binaries. But to Republicans, that kind of freedom is dangerous. What would kids do if they didn't have to pick pink or blue? What would they do if they could think for themselves? My God, how fucking frightening. Let's ban everything.

Except, as one would find out, there isn't just one. one drag queen within the Republican Party looking at you, Katara. There is another one. As it turns out, Governor Bill Lee himself found himself in a wig and pearls and apparent makeup in a 1977 yearbook photo. So I guess drag queens can't be all that bad. And I'm sure the Republican Party either will say nothing or just say that's good old locker room fun as they like to make everything a joke.

The reality here is that we know that all of these pieces of legislation are meant to target the LGBTQ plus community. They are meant to distract from the real policy issues that Republicans refuse to address at all. And then poison the minds of people into believing that, oh, the freedom that young people that Generation Z and others are exhibiting around pushing back against constructs that should have never been put in the place and were really only put in the place in order. for white men to stand in power and hold on to that power, that there are more important things that are going on. And so don't get caught up in their bullshit. Or get caught up like the governor did, Bill Lee, getting caught up talking out of both sides of his mouth.

And I wonder what we should name her, his high school version of himself. Maybe Katara Light, maybe Katara Jr., because they're so good at this, all of their bullshit. So for that, Bill Lee, Tennessee, you are my fuck that guy. Yeah, and I love how they try to contextualize this. And it was Lee's press secretary as reported by NBC News, said that any attempt to conflate this serious issue, which is, you know, the bill that Governor Lee is about to sign,

with lighthearted school traditions is dishonest and disrespectful to Tennessee families. And it's like, why don't you just say that, it's okay when a straight guy dresses up as a woman for entertainment purposes, but when a gay person does it, it's somehow now a national threat. Because that's what you mean, basically. What they don't understand or what they refuse to admit is, Governor Lee dressing up like this in 1977, first of all, is fine in a perfect world who gives a shit. But also that he obviously wasn't doing this to try. try to groom anyone or force an agenda down anyone's throat. But they will turn around and when it's someone else doing it,

suddenly those people are trying to groom young people and trying to shove some sort of political agenda down those people's throat. But in their minds, that's not a double standard. And in reality, it is a double standard. And so, yeah, fuck that guy. Fuck all of them. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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