00:00He calls himself a builder but he's in fact been a destroyer. He's been a destroyer of democratic institutions and
00:05he's been a destroyer of cultural institutions and he has sought to destroy a free and independent press. He's seeking
00:13to destroy a free and independent judiciary as well. And so he's been mostly a destroyer as opposed to a
00:21builder.
00:34I don't mind being insulted. I've been insulted for many years by the by the fake news. You wouldn't know
00:39that by reading the fake news. Whether you listen to the fake news or not. Only the fake news could
00:44come up with that one. So I he has undermined confidence in the press. It's not that the press was
00:52so popular before. It's not that the public had a lot of confidence in the press. Confidence in the press
00:58has been declining since the
00:591970s. It reached its highest point after Watergate. After the Watergate investigation when the public learned that the reporting of
01:07the Washington Post and other media was true. It validated that we had a president who was abusing his powers
01:15and was committing crimes and the approval of the press was at its highest point. It has been declining steadily
01:22since then and it has accelerated during the Trump administration because every day several times a day
01:29he attacks the press as the fake news and so he has his followers and they believe that. And we
01:37live in a much more polarized society today than we did before because the media environment is so fragmented today.
01:44No matter what the attacks are, whatever pressures he tries to bring, we should just keep doing our work because
01:49I think the thing that Trump fears the most are facts. Opinions? There are plenty of opinions. Opinions are the
01:56cheapest thing in the world. And
01:59Opinions are the cheapest thing in the world. But facts are hard to get. And so I think that we
02:02should dedicate ourselves to discovering what the facts are, what the policies are, what's happening in the administration, how these
02:11policies affect the lives of ordinary people, who influence those policies and with what intent. And I don't think we
02:18should change that at all during this administration and particularly not, we should not do that when the administration is
02:25bringing pressure on us.
02:32The American public has the right to select who they want to be president. I believe in democracy. That's their
02:38choice. I think our job in the press is to give the public the information that they should have, that
02:42they need to have, and then they make the decision.
02:45They made that decision based on a lot of different factors. One of the most important was the state of
02:50the economy. Rising prices for gasoline, rising prices for food, a high level of inflation generally.
02:56Another big issue was immigration. A million people coming across the border every year. Not 20 million, but the number
03:05of people coming across the border every year was enormous. No question about it. And there was not a system
03:10of control.
03:11That is a major factor for why he was elected in 2016 to be president. And during the Biden administration,
03:18they left them open. They left themselves open to attacks based on what was happening on the border.
03:24That was a vulnerability that they should have known about. And they just created that opening for Donald Trump. And
03:32on top of that, Biden was perceived as a very weak president.
03:36Of course, ultimately Kamala Harris became the candidate. That was only a few months before the actual election. She herself
03:44did not have a good image among the American public.
03:47So there were a lot of other reasons. Yes, I think people knew about that. If you look at whether,
03:52if you looked at the polls as to whether people believe that Trump told the truth, people said, no, he
03:57doesn't tell the truth. But they didn't care.
04:00And if you looked at whether they liked aspects of his personality, no, they didn't like aspects of his personality.
04:07But other things were more important to them at the time.
04:20Well, I expected the worst. But the worst is worse than I expected. But I expected him to be very,
04:26very aggressive.
04:27He is a wannabe dictator, but it's actually it's actually worse than that because it really minimizes his ambitions.
04:36He's the wannabe emperor. That is why he talks about taking over Canada, Canada being the next state.
04:42That's why he talks about taking over Greenland. That's why he talks about, well, maybe Venezuela could be the 51st
04:48state state.
04:49That's why he talks about, well, maybe we will control the Gaza Strip.
04:53Everything to him is a representative expansion of American power. And when he looks back at previous presidents, I mean,
05:00he's not a historian.
05:00He doesn't have much of a sense of history. But he looks back at James Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine.
05:09He looks back at Andrew Jackson. Both of those were expansionist presidents.
05:14And that's what he has in mind. And so it's more than just seeking to have authoritarian powers,
05:21but it's seeking to actually expand American power.
05:25The word fascist or fascism is used lightly?
05:30Probably used too lightly. It's not one I would use. I mean, I do think he's authoritarian.
05:35He's a wannabe autocrat. And he wants those powers. He's always admired autocrats.
05:43The people he's spoken most positively about are Putin, Xi Jinping, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.
05:54Those are the people he admires. He's talked about how he likes strongmen.
05:58And so he has envied the kinds of powers that they have.
06:03And he sought to accumulate those kinds of powers. And for him, power exists in order to abuse it.
06:11And he has abused his powers. And we see that every day. We see that with regard to the press.
06:16We see that with regard to what he's done to attack law firms who are representing opponents of his.
06:24We see that in his attacks on universities. We see that in his attacks on scientists.
06:31For simply for doing their research and commenting on their conclusions and explaining what their conclusions are.
06:37He doesn't want anybody to be an independent arbiter of fact.
06:42He wants to be the sole, like most leaders with authoritarian impulses and authoritarian powers.
06:49He wants to be the sole owner of the truth. Or be seen as the sole owner of the truth.
06:55Or at least not allow anybody else to lay claim to the truth.
06:58But fascism, I don't know, it's, you know, obviously it recalls the time of Nazi Germany.
07:08And we're not Nazi Germany. So, and Trump isn't Hitler. So, there's a difference there.
07:14And have you received any information, beyond the videos we've seen publicly, about this individual for a specific matter?
07:25I think there's a future for local journalism. I wouldn't call them newspapers necessarily.
07:32But, I mean, some are. I mean, I think some are doing a good job.
07:35And I think that it's interesting, I'm not sure about this, but I think in the era of AI, I
07:41mean, things may switch.
07:43There may be a pendulum shift, because there are not a lot of sources of information about what's happening in
07:50communities.
07:50So, for AI to pick that up, and if they have a blocker, people may not be able to get
07:57that information from a chat bot,
07:59about what's happening in their community. Whereas with national news, or international news, there are so many different sources.
08:06And so, it's easier for AI to pick up that information. It'll scrape all that information.
08:12And so, people can get their information from a chat bot. And so, that may be a level of protection
08:20for local journalism that they didn't necessarily have before.
08:26So, I still think it's a big challenge. You don't have the advertising that you did before. And they're never
08:33going to get that advertising back.
08:35And you have to persuade members of a city or a community, or a town, that they should pay for
08:42it.
08:42And that's always difficult to persuade people that they should pay for information.
08:48And finally, you know, I just, I think there's a reservoir of confidence, actually, believe it or not, in the
08:59press.
08:59And I, the reason I say that is because whenever there's a natural disaster, people don't go to influencers to
09:07find out what they need to do.
09:09They go to the traditional press. I can guarantee, I think I can say that when, you know, you had
09:15the floods in Valencia,
09:17that people didn't go to the influencers to find out what was going on.
09:20They went to the traditional press to find out what was happening, and what they needed to do, and what
09:25kind of help they might get.
09:26I think every citizen has a responsibility to do their homework.
09:31Obviously, there are a lot of sources of information, and some people don't know quite what to believe these days.
09:36And they don't trust any particular source, so they tend to trust the person they see as representing them,
09:42speaking for them, and for many Americans, that is Donald Trump.
09:46And we have a very tribal society today, a very polarized and very tribal society.
09:52And so, but I do think every citizen has a responsibility to find out what the truth is, to do
09:58their homework.
09:59And if part of that is shutting out Donald Trump from time to time, that's okay.
10:05I think that's an option.
10:06The fact is that there are a lot of doctors who are dealing with patients who are suffering from anxiety,
10:13and one of the first things they recommend is that they avoid the news.
10:16That's not something that I would like to recommend.
10:19It certainly doesn't serve our commercial interests, but it might be necessary for some people to just shut them out
10:26sometimes.
10:33And here's the crunch.
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