The NPR Politics Podcast - Latino GOP Voters Embrace Culture War & New AI Makes Disinfo Easy

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely Republican presidential primary candidate, once strugged to win the vote of conservative Latinos in South Florida — but lately, many of those voters have really embraced his message.And the tools to create artificial video, audio, and text have become far more powerful and much easier to use in the last few years. The technology is poised to reshape much of modern life — including, perhaps, the prevalence of disinformation.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and disinformation correspondent Shannon Bond.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Julie in Vienna, Virginia. I've just released three pounds of honeybees into their new hive and I'm having a great time watching them settle into their new home. This podcast was recorded at 12.06 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, March 24th of 2023. So things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be busy as a, well, you know. I will say we're not far from Virginia, but just hearing that ambient sound out there, it sounded so much warmer where she was than this drizzly rain we have here. What a great thing, right as we're coming into allergy season, people don't realize, but local honey can help your allergies. I didn't know that. Well, there you go, Domenico, with the useful news you can use.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to begin with some reporting from Florida and the state's Republican governor, who has become a leading culture warrior for the GOP. This week, there was news that Ron DeSantis' administration is planning to forbid any classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity all the way up through senior year of high school. This would expand upon the controversial law the

governor signed last year that banned such instruction from kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis is expected to run for president. And Claudia, you have just returned from a reporting trip to Florida. So before we dive into specific questions, I'm just very curious what you heard from voters about him. Yes, it's really interesting. I spoke to a lot of Latino conservative voters in South Florida, in Miami-Dade County, and they have a lot of excitement, a lot of energy for Governor DeSantis. In particular, they're excited about his approach to a lot of these culture wars. They really related to a lot of that. It was interesting.

Some would say that they were former supporters of ex-President Trump. But now they're moving on to the Florida governor because they see Trump is weakened, whether it's by Democrats or by Trump's own hand. And they see the Florida governor as a stronger figure. And he's bringing that same message, they say, of I alone can fix this. And so that ability to stand up that reminded them of the kind of forceful kind of language they would like to see used by a president against a lot of these regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, or other Latin American countries. Along those same lines, I spoke to a professor at Florida International University, Professor Eduardo Gamara, and he was telling me

how popular this Florida governor has become among these Latino voters in particular. You didn't see that kind of influence when he first ran for governor, but you could see that in the re-election. You know, Colombians had shifted way to the right, the Venezuelans not as far, the Cubans had shifted right, and that what unified them all was this enormous support for DeSantis. And so what he's talking about is findings from a poll they conducted more than a year ago, talking to different Latinos about how they felt that the Florida governor was doing in terms of different issues. And he said a lot of them would repeat a lot of the same lines from the governor, clearly showing they're aligned and on the same page with him.

That's so interesting because it sounds almost like they moved to the right because of DeSantis' persona, because of who he has been as governor. I mean, is that what you're hearing from voters? You know, I think that they're meeting together at the right place at the right time. I mean, there was depressed voter turnout. We should note that in Miami-Dade, especially when we talk about Democrats. But these conservative Latino voters, what I heard a lot from them is they felt abandoned by Democrats. They felt like Republicans were doing a better job, especially paying attention to the issues in Latin America and some of these regimes that they're really worried about. One of those voters I talked to was Mario Sanchez.

He was telling me what a big fan he is of the Florida governor. And so what he's saying there is that Democrats spend a lot of time talking about things that do not exist, like racism. He doesn't believe that that is an issue in this country. Rather, this is a Cuban-American who is talking about focusing on patriotism, on how to unite the country, and how to keep us all Americans on the same page rather than focusing on the differences. And that's what's made him such a big fan of Governor DeSantis. I think it's really indicative of the line that DeSantis has been trying to walk. And it's going to be a really interesting hurdle for him in the

2024 presidential election if he does decide to get in, because, you know, we're seeing that there's something like half of the Republican Party base is open to someone other than Trump. He's sort of running in the same lane as Trump, making an appeal with this culture warrior tactics to voters who don't have college degrees, who make less money, when really he needs to also be able to pull over enough of those white collar Republicans who do have college degrees and make more money. I'm struck hearing you say that there's this fine line DeSantis has to walk on some of these culture war issues because it seems like broadly, the Republican Party seems to think that this is a winnable issue for them. I mean, you look at what happened in Congress today, House Republicans just a bit ago passed this legislation dubbed a Parents' Bill of Rights that would, among other things, inform parents if their kids changed pronouns in school, what books, for example, are held in school libraries, et cetera. And it seems like they think that this is a potentially really popular issue for them.

They definitely see this as a wedge issue, as a way for them to get in on being able to split or divide Democrats and try to win over some independents. And I think as Claudia is talking about with a lot of the Latinos in South Florida, you know, this really does appeal to some of them because they're more culturally conservative. And that message has been really pushed by Republicans. And they have some polling on their side. I mean, if you look at the 2020 midterm elections, the exit polls there, they asked our society's values on gender identity and sexual orientation, changing for the worse, changing for the better or not getting better or worse. And, you know, half said that they're changing for the worse. Twenty six percent said they're changing for the better. That included

about 20 percent of Democrats who said that they're changing for the worse. Clearly a big split there and divide. Was this nationwide exit polling? That was nationwide exit polling overall. Now, when you drill down to what they're doing in Florida specifically, in Florida itself, there was a Siena poll last year that showed that more than two thirds of Republicans were in favor of the bill that DeSantis had pushed for in limiting the kind of discussions about gender and sexual orientation in schools. About a fifth of Democrats were in favor of that. When you look more broadly though nationally, it's more split. You have 51 percent of Americans supporting banning teachers teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity from K to three. Now, if that goes further, which it looks like DeSantis certainly thinks one of those culture issues that Republicans have decided to really try and home in on. Now,

the difficulty for them is, does it play in a general election in the same way it will in a primary? All right. Well, Claudia, thank you so much for all this reporting. We'll talk to you in a bit for Can't Let It Go. Great. Thanks. And we'll be back in a moment. Time for a quick break. And we're back and we're joined now by Shannon Bond, who covers disinformation here at the network. Shannon, hey, it's good to have you with us. Glad to be here. And you've been looking at how easy and accessible the tools have become to create fake synthesized audio and video of real people. You know, so for instance, fake videos, for example,

of President Biden announcing a military draft. That's right. I mean, I think anybody who's been, you know, vaguely following the news probably knows there's been just these like crazy developments in AI and artificial intelligence that we've been seeing rolling out. And so there's just there's all kinds of ways now to make essentially artificial content. And a really striking example was this fake video of Biden. It's what's known as a deep fake. And it was made by the right-wing activist Jack Posobiec. He's known for promoting, probably best for promoting, the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, right? And so he created this video, this fake video. It looks like Biden speaking, and it really sounds

like Biden, you know, use this technology to basically to clone its voice. I have received guidance from General Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that the recommended way forward will be to invoke the Selective Service Act, as is my authority as president. The first to be called in a sequence determined by national lottery will be... Yeah to be clear, like this is fake. Joe Biden did not say this. You know, there is not going to be a draft. But I think it shows you just how persuasive this can sound. So it's interesting as someone who spends hours listening to Biden, I can tell a differentiation. I can see how, though, if you're clicking through on social media, right, and you don't really spend hours listening to Biden in a given week, it could fool you.

Well, and without the video, right? I mean, it's just different. I mean, hearing him, it clearly doesn't sound the way Biden sounds now, but it's pretty close. And I could see how that could, you know, really throw a lot of people off seeing it just come through your feeds. Right. Sort of for the casual listener, if you don't. And I think that's the kind of that's where the technology is now. It's not perfect, but exactly. Thinking about this stuff sort of appearing in your feed, right?

And you're sort of scrolling by, you're hearing it like you're not sort of maybe in the most like analytical mindset. You might buy it. And to be clear, when Posobiec created this video and presented it, he said this was created by AI. What was his point of doing it? Well, so what he said is, you know, we created this, we scripted this, and then we used AI to create it as a, what he called it, a sneak preview, coming attractions, a glimpse into the world beyond. You know, he basically said, this hasn't happened, but it could happen. It's going to happen.

And I do think there is something that's very visceral, right? Especially when you see this as a video, even if you are told that it is fake, there's something really like disconcerting. There's so many risks, though, I feel to that, right? Like, I mean, if this is a sneak preview, that makes me think of like the 2024 election around the corner and how much people were already just getting their news through Facebook feeds and, you know, different social media channels. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of people I met who when I would ask what

their news source is, especially in, you know, 2016 would tell me it was it was Facebook. Well, and that's what that's this is what's happening here is like, I think the risk here is that this stuff becomes decontextualized, right? So like this video was presented as this is not real, but tons of people went on to share it on Twitter without saying this is not real, you know, saying like, look, how terrifying is this? Biden is declaring the draft. We saw a similar thing happen just this past week where actually an open source investigations researcher, you know, everyone was waiting around this week waiting to see if Trump was going to get indicted, right? And, you know, this open source investigations researcher was like, you know, everyone was waiting around this week waiting to see if Trump was going to get indicted, right?

And, you know, this open source investigations researcher was like, you know, I'm going to use one of these new tools. It's called MidJourney. It's an image creator. You can put in just like a couple words and it'll create, you know, often a pretty realistic looking photo. And so he created a bunch of fake images imagining Donald Trump getting arrested. Then he kind of went down a whole path, like Donald Trump in jail. And, you know, immediately these got spread just well, you know, well out of his control and without any, again, without any context that this was not real. And so that's, I mean, I think we worried for a long time about the idea of these deep fakes,

right? It's something people have been warning about. But this technology is getting better. It's more available. And we're starting to see adversarial uses of this kind of technology. There was an investigation late last year by the research company Grafica. They found a set of pro-China bots on Twitter and Facebook that were posting these fake news videos that used AI generated anchors. Now, that campaign was pretty small and it didn't seem to have much of an effect, but I think it just shows you the door is open to how this can be abused.

Yeah. I mean, I was going to say, we've been talking about AI generated potential deep fakes for at least the last five years. You know, this isn't 100% new. It's just sort of the technology that's become new. Because I remember in the 2008 campaign, there was a video from someone on the Clinton campaign that was doctored that got spread around very quickly. We actually had to go to the actual hard video cassette tape to like go and see what the actual thing that had been said. And people had to correct a lot of stories. So it's a cautionary tale for us, but we're less the filter now and a lot of people are going to be getting this information straight to their social media feeds and those companies

are going to need to be responsible. We've seen Congress totally unable to be able to get them to create any guardrails around this sort of thing. One of the questions I have for you, Shannon, is, you know, you talk about kind of like the widespread use of this now. Is it that making these is easier now than it has been in the past? Like, I don't have to be an expert. I can just sort of use very basic tools to create a fake image. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, so first of all, the technology has just improved a lot. Like, it's a lot better even, I mean, you know, think about when Midjourney and Dali, that's the open AI, like, image generator kind of, you know, first started to go viral last year. You know, a lot of the earlier versions, like, if you were making a person, they were

really bad at making hands, right? Like, you would have, like, 10 fingers or, like, weird hot dog fingers. And that's, like like that's already improving, right? They're getting better so that so they can make more realistic images. And which is also true for things like audio and video and text, which we'll get to in a moment. But it's also the other really important point, like Domenico's point of like we've been worried about this for years now. What feels different now is these things have become consumer products. Like there are just apps you can get now, you know, easily on your smartphone that can clone a voice that can create realistic pictures and videos and text. And so that, you know, it's kind of

this democratization of these tools. And now they're kind of in the hands of anybody. And again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but like you can pretty quickly create one of these and like slap it online. So I talked to a man named Ethan Malik. He's a professor at Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania's business school. And, you know, he's been playing around with these tools a lot. He teaches entrepreneurship and, you know, he sees AI as a really important tool that his students are going to have to learn to live with. But he's also, you know, he himself has been wondering about, like, what are the downsides? And so as an experiment, he used the chatbot chat GPT. He used an app that can clone your voice. And then he used another app that takes a photo and turns it into a video. And he was able to make a deep, thick video of himself. Just took him just a few minutes. It cost him $11. And I think that just that sort of demonstrates just how easy this is. And again, he's an enthusiast about AI, but he also told me

he's worried. I think people aren't worried enough about this, actually. And I'm somebody who's actually pretty pro this technology in a lot of ways. But I also think that we're not ready for the social implications of being able to spoof people at scale. We've thought about this for like celebrities and newscasts, but the idea that you could do this for anyone is sort of a new phenomenon. So Shannon, earlier you mentioned text. Is text kind of the easiest form of AI content right now for folks to kind of dupe other people over? I mean, there's a lot of concerns. When it comes specifically to how this could be abused by bad actors, the folks I've talked to are really concerned about this basically driving down the cost of creating persuasive propaganda of, you know, conducting influence campaigns.

You know, it could mean you say you have a troll farm, you know, of bots that you want to be pushing out messages, you know, targeting specific groups of Americans. We saw this in 2016, right, with Internet Research Agency, you know, targeting black Americans saying, you know, neither party has your best interests in mind. You should just not vote. You know, back in 2016, the Internet Research Agency had a reported budget of like over a million dollars a month, you know, employing people writing these posts and putting stuff out there. With AI generated content, you could imagine you don't need to employ that many people. You know, that kind of widespread campaign could be in reach for somebody who is not a state-sponsored actor, right? And so you just kind of

imagine that this just becomes more available. We're going to see more of it. And it's going to be very hard to determine if something you are reading online, you know, is written by a computer program. We kind of touched on 2024 earlier, but it seems like all of what you're describing, Shannon, is likely to be an enduring force in our politics. And one of the questions I have is, you know, from a political vantage point, Domenico, is how campaigns are thinking about this, how they can even navigate this space? Are they even prepared to deal with all of this? Well, I don't think they can control a lot of it. I mean, this is, you know, a kind of new era, they're not able to really kind of filter a lot of things, just like the way we're not able to filter a lot of this kind of information. And we don't know what kind of bad actors there will be who are politically motivated,

politically related, whether they're, you know, sanctioned by a campaign or not sanctioned by a campaign. We've seen plenty of dirty tricks through the years. And I think that's going to become a huge scandal and, you know, kind of almost inevitable that we're going to see something where somebody tries to play a dirty trick and make something stick to someone, whether it's to embarrass them or to embarrass the media or whatever. But this is a whole new landscape that I think we're all going to have to be on guard about. And I imagine it'll make our jobs a lot tougher as journalists, too, to navigate ahead of 2024. But all right, Shannon Bob, thank you very much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate it. Always happy to talk to you guys. And we're gonna take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

And we're back. And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. That's a part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise. And Claudia, you're back. So hey there. Good to have you back. Hey there. So guys, I will say before we wrap today's show, I'm going to end on a somber note. And I just want to give some love to our colleagues across NPR. It has been a really, really tough week here at our network. And for those of you listeners who may not know, we had 10% of our colleagues who were laid off this week. And that includes the cancellation

of four podcasts. I will say it was really disheartening news. I think it's disheartening for us here. And I know it is also for some of you all who listen. So I just wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts here. I think there's a lot of people who listen to our shows who think about entering the world of journalism, who think about entering the world of audio journalism in particular and wonder, like, is there still room for me at this place? Is there still room for me here broadly in this type of work? Is there room for me to have a seat at this very table?

And what I will say is that I have been at this network for a while. It is by no means perfect, but it is better because of the very people who keep pushing it to do better work. And so if this is the type of work you want to do, I just say, please don't give up. Journalism is an ever-changing, frustrating industry, but we need you. and I would say we need you to keep pushing us, pushing the institutions to be better. And we know that there's layoffs all over the country. We know we're hearing of them in the thousands at tech companies and elsewhere, so we know folks are dealing with it. And so, as you said, Asma,

it has been a tough week, which kind of goes into my can't let it go. So I've needed a really heavy duty distraction to get me out of the funk of thinking about what's been going on this weekend in PR in terms of these cuts. And so what I needed, the answer, my solution was one Vanderpump rules. Are you folks familiar with this? I was hearing a little bit about this from our reality watching TV watching core earlier but I don't know 100% about it. Yeah, so it's a reality show. Seems like it's been on forever.

I've watched it since the beginning. I was super obsessed. So where do I go at times like this? A very trashy low television place. Is it good or is it just like addictive? I think it's so think it's is it so bad it's good maybe and i was gonna say this is it's like a sociology lesson is it good yes it's like sometimes i ask myself that question too but i got obsessed with this

from the very beginning to the point where a girlfriend and I, in the first few seasons, flew out to L.A. We went to the restaurant that's featured a lot in the series, Sir, and it's run by Lisa Vanderpump and her husband. We ate there. So I dropped the show. Like, it's been on forever because, like, several cast members got fired because of some racially driven comments they made or concerns about that.

I was like, I'm out of here. I'm not watching this trash anymore. But just in the last few weeks, I came back because one of the mainstay cast member or couples on the show, we learned that one of the cast members, Tom Sandoval, had cheated on his longtime girlfriend on the show, Ariana Maddox, with another cast member, Raquel, but they were able to hide it from the show for several months until recently. They just filmed the reunion. Raquel, I guess, maybe was able to film with them

because she wanted to do some sort of restraining order against another cast member, who she claimed alleged there was a physical assault because of the quote unquote affair. So yeah, that's where I've been. Is that radical? So much drama. Back to Vanderpump Rules. It is so much drama. I can't believe people get paid for this. Like honestly. Yeah. How do they get paid? Like what is the salaries? What is happening? But yeah, this is where I go. And when times are tough, I go to things like this, Vanderpump Rules.

I hear you. I am a reality TV show watcher myself. You are? Not that one in particular. I don't think I knew that. What's your favorite reality TV show? You know, there's a lot of bad stuff that I love to hate, like The Bachelor and Love is Blind and all of that kind of stuff. I was a big fan back in the day. My old roommate got me into America's Next Top Model.

You know, with Tyra Banks. Oh, yes. Tyra Banks was great on that. I loved a good one. I loved that show. Yeah. Very good. Very good. So what about you, Domenico? Well, I guess staying with a little bit of a kind of pop culture, media, movies and stuff, there's this new movie called Air, and it's about Nike's struggles to try to get Michael Jordan to be their spokesperson in the 1980s. And it's kind of another buddy flick reunion with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

You know, they created Good Will Hunting and they're back on screen. And then this is kind of before there were really influencers or where, you know, people were really made to be the star to sell a brand. And it was, you know, kind of difficult to actually get Nike totally on board with doing this. But the thing that I'm more can't let go of is not so much that, but the casting. Ben Affleck was at South by Southwest and talked about the fact that he asked Michael Jordan what he wanted out of this movie. And Michael Jordan mentioned that his mom was a really key figure in his life and none of it would have happened without his mom, Dolores. And Ben Affleck

said, well, OK, well, who do you want to play your mom? And Michael Jordan drops Viola Davis. So that's who they cast, right? Ben Affleck's heart just kind of sunk because he'd only written like one line for Jordan's mom. And he's like, I can't give Viola Davis one line. And not to mention, I have to get Viola Davis to even do this role. So he talks a little bit about like his effort then to have to get Viola Davis to do the part and to write in a whole lot more lines so that she's a more significant character. But got it done.

Point is, Michael Jordan wants, Michael Jordan gets, I guess. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Elena Moore and Casey Morrell. Research and fact-checking by our intern, Devin Speak. Thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimer and Lexi Shapiro. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Gr Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.