How Propaganda Is Destroying Democracy | Breaking The Vote

poisoning the people with propaganda I've told you the whole time this election was fraudulent we got so much proof the only people that can deny it are crack smoking demon-possessed leftists why don't you show us the evidence I don't have to show you the evidence I will when time comes so you must also know that this is exactly what Q Anon says as well right [Music] I'm Todd zwillich and this is breaking the vote our Series where we track the growing assault on voting rights and efforts to undermine Democracy in America we're here to cover how the Democratic process a lot of us take for granted is being attacked and exactly who's doing it now chances are a lot of political is already familiar to you grandstanding exaggeration over-the-top promises the Hard Sell they may be dumb and yeah irritating but they're pretty tired as political tactics the idea that all politicians lie is conic cliche because to an extent of course it's true but at least in our lifetimes we've never seen lies as blatant as Relentless and as organized as the ones we have now a protest over a rigged and stolen election that nobody wants to look at you know if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit propaganda has been recognized and weaponized by some of the world's most notorious dictators by all of them actually here things like the Free Press and government transparency have spared us the kind of propaganda that despots crave until recently why has it become so effective and so Sinister the Democrats are the party of pedophiles the Democrats are the party of of teachers Elementary School teachers trying to trying to transition their Elementary school-aged children and convince them they're a different gender what's different is that the new American propaganda doesn't just attack an argument or challenge a fact it goes for institutions themselves it tries to undermine faith in them and change the nature of the truth this week we'll take you inside the Evangelical movement that's preaching the gospel of Q Anon we hear from a top expert on how democracy killing propaganda can sneak up and make unwitting people participants in destroying institutions and we'll talk to a Fox News veteran who drew the Wrath of the conservative right and 2020 deniers just for making a correct call on Election night two years ago but first Michael Moynihan kicks us off in College Station Texas where he watched genuine conservative opinion mixed with propaganda with very American results with the 2022 midterms looming and fears of a federal government lurching to the left local Republican activists aren't merely licking their wounds are spoiling for the next fight the rooftop Republicans is a group of Maga faithful who meet weekly at a Mexican restaurant in College Station Texas the focus of this group is to is to concentrate on working from the school board up to the presidency and bringing true conservatism to Bear we are hardcore Consultants both coasts with gas is a bunch of Backwoods Creek and we're not he's a retired judge I've got a PhD there are various other people around here who are educated intelligent been a lot of places done a lot of things and we're tired of being laughed at you look at the stuff that comes out of Hollywood and you don't see a central white family or even a minor mixed family there's three queers two lesbians 13 martians I'm missing this film but I'm sure it's on Netflix That's essential idea of who we are so you feel condescended too by the media and just by the culture for you let me do a little experiment here um give me a sentence how you feel the media views you they think we can't think for ourselves and we need to be told what to do and they're laughing all the way to the bank yeah making money off of being condescending to you we're the competition and they have to shut us down through any means possible to promote their agenda what is their agenda do you think communism I want to just be specific on that um not liberalism not social democracy not liberalism with progressivism progression is just another word for communism and that's what's taken over that part of the world like liberalism in the sense of like kennedy-style liberalism versus Swedish style social democracy versus soviet-style communism I mean you but Manifesto with what they're doing it's the same The Communist Manifesto right okay correct is that a pretty uniform view here yeah son is leaning towards liberal how old is he um 20 Basics and when he and I talk about issues and really dive down into them we agree on almost everything you do I'm concerned about the elitists versus the people you see the enemy as the same thing what is it that politically divides you and your son I think that he's listening more to to mainstream media that we are racist you know you're talking about Bernie Sanders we're talking about unions we're talking about Trump you know what is it about him and it's it all boils down to we the people they don't want to be dismissed and they want a say-so in what's going on on the union issue by the way that's a I think one issue where I've seen Republicans uh kind of move a little bit I mean the other day Marco Rubio coming out pretty strongly against Amazon you would never ever in 40 years of being a watching this stuff see a republican come out strongly in favor of a brand new Union forming against a company like Amazon I think it's more about Justice he wants to push that crap on the rest of us but either one in his company Jeff Bezos has politics Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and Marco Rubio is putting the idea about the media and about the elites above a probably typical disdain or distrust of unions it makes the stories not read from the people in those Amazon warehouses it's like working in a Ford factory in 1910 they beat the hell out of you tied to the machine and said you're going to drop dead on the spot that's what's happening and that's what they're supporting is the people going back against management saying this thing's out of control we've got to get it back to where we can live here people used to paint Republicans as the parties of the elite of the wealthy of the country club class the bushes now Republicans using the language of the working class of unions and the purpose of them the Republicans are not Donald Trump Donald Trump is Donald Trump I say Republicans that he is the head of the Republican party right now right you sound pretty left-wing sometimes right but if you went back to sort of 2000 when there was the anti-wto protests and 99 in Seattle it's a it's a kind of a populist thing that overlaps between left and right well that's why this isn't about democrat or republican or anything like that it's about the people versus the elites do Republicans care about spending anymore a 1.9 trillion dollar spending Bill the biggest in American history adjusted for inflation does it bother you got I mean is that kind of a two degree I I finally hear a little bit of dissent here yeah well let me see I would say descent he spends money freely and I'm okay with that on the things that matter so defense spending uh infrastructure border control border security and and getting rid of the things that that are sucking sounds so that's what animates you now smaller government less spending lower taxes do you think that there's a likelihood of getting a sort of across the board kind of trump you know Congress of Republicans yes so this is just the beginning of the battle team absolutely who are the elites that need to be knocked off somebody finally named a Democrat Schumer anyone who's been up there for more than 10 years corrupt sometimes you've got to draw that Line in the Sand the Republican link had never drawn that line no we kept going over and the Democrats keep pulling left now's the time that we have people need to stand up for our constitution we're losing our rights so you don't see any room for compromise is about no compromise politics it's an unsurprising sentiment since leaving office Donald Trump is unloaded on fellow Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Liz Cheney with a frequency and ferocity he typically reserves for Democrats but as the battle for the soul of the Republican Party rages the Biden Administration has laid the groundwork for a sweeping Progressive policy agenda leading some Republicans to wonder if the party can stop squabbling long enough to effectively oppose it and Michael Moynihan joins me now here in the studio uh Michael those Diner conversations just one small part of your tour around America talking to conservatives all over the country at a time when people are thinking about conservatives and where their heads are at yeah every focus group needs applicability I guess to the broader world so how much do you think this group in the diner over coffee reflects what conservatives are thinking now postcode well you know I mean this is kind of my endless conservative tour Texas conservatives have a different set of priorities than conservatives say you know in California or in Minnesota I mean they're also pretty significant in Texas they have a governor that they love and you know they have a border that they're constantly concerned about this is the conversation that I have with anybody everybody I talked to that was one of the first things you know it is a bit disconcerting but keep in mind that these are people that get together every week to be conservative so they are like a little bit different than the average Republican voter even in Texas right so you're going to have people that have this idea that you know the media hates me right this is why I'm a republican this is why I watch Fox News this is why I watch Newsmax I watch all these other things because the the media in general Hollywood CNN the New York Times they love people like me Donald Trump was perfect for them because he was the candidate of grievance right he was the man that was getting kicked off Twitter he was the man that was being unfairly maligned by the media so this was the perfect avatar for how they felt or how they thought they should feel about conservative politics in America being the other being The Outsider can conservatives uh can even these people in your focus group control do they want to control the fact that their party is not really conservative it's not really small taxes like they say it's a q Anon adult conspiracy movement in many many ways that is really on the foundation of a leader who lies incessantly and they know it one is that there's no relationship to a conservatism that anybody who paid attention to this stuff in say the 1980s the 1980s on I mean the Reagan Revolution is you know trickle-down economics it's you know art Laffer in the Laffer Curve it is something about smaller government it is something about lower regulations smaller taxes Etc get the government out of our business that was one of the big things that motivated the tea party there were free market types that's gone the problem is if you mix that sort of populism and that sort of economic populism with this kind of Bizarro extremism that you see and the kind of cute on stuff which I think has infiltrated some parts of the party I don't think it's as I think the media sometimes takes the Q Anon stuff pretty far because it's an easy thing to debate right it's they're so crazy and they're so stupid that you know but there's a lot of these polls that are you know can go either way on this stuff the way they kind of formulate it but I don't think the Q Anon thing is is really the problem Michael I'm starting to understand now why the propaganda of grievance in the closed loop um that propaganda is not new but it's way more efficient now I'm starting to understand how important that really is the folks around your table who said to you low taxes small government has nothing to do with what's going on not the administration they support but they're still on the same team because the constant diet of grievance that they have for the elites or the people they say are looking down on them that's the glue so the Republicans being rudderless there are trying to glom on to all of these culture War things now because on economics what are you going to do what what is the difference with these parts they don't want they say lower taxes okay Donald Trump lowered corporate taxes some things on regulation but they spent more than anyone in you know history I mean any Republican Administration I think more than the Obama administration's last I mean it's wild so where is the differentiating factor it's grievance it's culture it's they're out to get you they're out to get you they don't like you I am not a person who is upset in any way about a bifurcated media atmosphere where people who want this stuff go and get it whether it's Newsmax and Fox News I don't think there should be one lock on the media but we do have to understand that it does cause problems in the sense that it makes us very very divided we've always been divided I think it's a myth that we weren't but now when you can live in your own reality and everybody's guilty of this by the way you can live in your own reality well it's true we're we're siled you can live in your own reality and when algorithms are helping push that along for sure that for you then it's a it's a media world that we haven't encountered before I mean it's also a terrible world because the response to that can also be you know add to the problem of saying that there is one objective truth and we need to correct that because what you do is you kick people off of social media Donald Trump for instance and what do you think that does to the Grievous and the grievance industry I mean the grievance industry is now on the Republican side plus 300 points because Donald Trump's been kicked off some of their favorite psycho conspiracy theorists have been kicked off and now they're off on Truth social or whatever the hell it is now gab or I don't know these other platforms but there's the silos when we try to fix the silo problem we create more silos and that's what's Happening Now by booting people off and saying we need to have fact Checkers that tell you what the truth is a lot of these things are complicated some of them aren't there's no Comet Pizza conspiracy that sort of stuff is easy to dismiss but other stuff is quite hard and so I fear for the future of our politics when so much of this is about someone saying there is an objective truth and we have to find it that's not an easy place to come to well Michael Moynihan we appreciate as always your real reporting real conversations out in the world um thanks for bringing them to us thank you for having me is it personal opinion Free Speech or could it be coded language tailored to influence an audience into action up next how well-meaning people are deceived every day into becoming unwinning participants in a political movement outside of their control thank you we're back with breaking the vote propaganda you know when you see it right except that's not necessarily true in a post-january 6th era full of misinformation deep fake videos and leaders who lie so often that it's no longer a big deal to notice I spoke with Yale Professor Jason Stanley he's author of how propaganda Works to explain how sincere well-meaning people it becomes so easily exploited and duped not just into believing the propaganda they hear but into becoming unwitting participants in the creation of that propaganda and it's a phenomenon that should have Defenders of democracy worried Jason thanks for joining me the term propaganda these days sometimes feels like information I don't like from a news outlet that I don't like so what really is propaganda propaganda is an attempt to communicate that bypasses rationality one classic form is to evoke an emotion that's not grounded in reason many emotions are grounded in reason but one goal is to evoke an emotion that isn't grounded on reason and use it to mobilize for some goals say War so Putin says ukrainians are an existential threat to Russia we must invade so another way to bypass reason is just to express raw power like straightforwardly lying and showing you can get away it's not meant to communicate anything it's meant to evoke raw power so you say in your book that well-meaning people can get sucked in essentially to becoming unwitting players in propaganda propagating it themselves how does that work it works in multiple ways uh let me give one example of suppose the president of the United States tells you that the election is stolen the president of the United States is an authority figure Authority is the basis for the trust required for a healthy communication environment when a major authority figure is telling you something and that's the authority figure that you trust the most then then you're going to believe it not because you have additional any other evidence that the election was stolen but because someone in a position of great Authority has told you that now that sounds really important somebody in a position of great Authority has reinforced the idea because one thing you notice in this information environment is efforts all over the place to ridicule and Destroy expertise ridicule and Destroy Authority you even see it in public health Tony fauci doesn't know what he's talking about he's a criminal he's a fascist things like that there's a lot of it seems to me efforts to destroy other locations of authority yeah author ing every location is an enormous to an authoritarian leader but the kind of fascist authoritarianism far right Cult of the leader authoritarianism where it's all about what this guy says that kind of authoritarianism is deeply threatened by science it's deeply threatened by reality and science is the descriptor of reality authoritarianism is all about replacing epistemic Authority that is scientific Authority uh the authority based on knowledge by charismatic authority authority that is based on a person what are the best conditions then for propaganda it sounds like from what you're describing feeling of threat a feeling of enemies at the gates a feeling of losing something that's dear to you whether it's your social status your race so what sets the conditions to make propaganda the most effective what about us makes it the most fertile you can create the conditions a good propaganda is create the conditions so the anti-crt moral Panic was sort of parasitic what happened in the schools with covet parents were very upset and very anxious and angry at Public Schools critical race Theory did nothing to do with the reason that they were upset was a way to mobilize them against a phantom Target the conditions don't have to be at all related to the Target of propaganda Germany was the least anti-semitic European country in 1931 and the most anti-Semitic by 1939. so you can create the conditions yourself and a good propagandist knows that so you can't take anything they say or do as at face value if they presuppose something however innocuous you must reject it not just reject it but forcibly reject it because the only reason they want to believe it is to destroy you and your way of life by the churches where the fire and brimstone sounds a whole lot like Q Anon we're with the Evangelical pastors pushing conservative America into some troubling territory I've told you the whole time this election was fraudulent we got so much proof the only people that can deny it are crack smoking demons possess leftists welcome back to Breaking the vote I'm Todd zwillik the church has been one of the centers of political life for Generations especially for republicans and the Evangelical Church specifically fair or not has become almost synonymous with the word Republican in fact while the number of those identifying a secular in the United States has reached its highest level in history within the Evangelical movement followers are entrenching themselves even more one major study found that there was quote no Mass departure of white Americans from Evangelical protestantism from 2016 to 2020. that's astounding and yet maybe not that surprising given who was president at the time the Evangelical Church has been the home of the Republican Party base for years but now it's pulling it in a new some might say dangerous Direction where some pastors are preaching a tainted conspiratorial worldview melding religion and politics in new ways Vegas Tennille takes us inside one church that sounds like it's espousing more q-anon than Holy Scripture evangelicals have been a powerful force in GOP politics for years but faced with a changing Nation the church is finding itself older and wider than the rest of the country fearing diminished influence many pastors are grasping for answers and finding them in conspiracy theories people like do you honestly believe that the military uncovered tunnels beneath the capital build him and beneath the White House and in The five-fingered Lakes do you really believe that they found kids yeah both loved ones and dead ones and if you try to keep that on the DL you're just as complicit as Hunter Biden and a bunch of crack smoking perverts wow Locke is a masterful preacher Bruce grenzer is a former Evangelical Pastor turned atheist who lives in rural Ohio he says that the spread of conspiracy theories like Q Anon in the Evangelical Church has been a long time coming there was this increasing uh adoption of national white nationalistic thinking starting with you know Jerry Falwell and Paul Wyrick back in the I guess the late 70s with the Moral Majority for example and you know so they birthed this baby that you know in Trump uh you know it it came of age they realized that the weight of power was to politics I was in one Church in Southeast Ohio for 11 years I preached a certain Viewpoint it was certainly a you know we were a Christian Nation Bruce preached fundamental evangelicalism and conservative values for almost three decades but by the late 1990s his religious and political beliefs had softened and eventually left him completely but even though he moved away from the church conspiracy theories still found a way to his family none of them are evangelicals except for my third oldest son great kid what was very non-political his whole life never voted and then in January of 2020 it was something changed he has gone to a Southern Baptist Church he's told me that my pastor believes a lot of the same things I believe he sees this otherworldly element working within the government now when Biden got elected all of a sudden you know Satan was sitting in the Oval Office do you feel like your son has been LED astray it's hard to say bye when someone espouses those things and there's really nothing you can do about it Bruce's son didn't want to be interviewed and didn't respond to our emails they don't see each other as much as they used to I want to hope that there's going to come a point where he wakes up one day and says this is not the path I want to be on but my fear is he's going to become more deeply involved in these things he's not only an awesome son but you know he's the father of my to my grandchildren and they mean the world to me you better know that America may fall one day but it will not fall to Joe Biden he will not fall to Nancy Pelosi he sure ain't gonna follow he's not gonna witness like that the Christmas aside the genius and insidiousness of Q is that anyone can be a part of it and you don't even need to call yourself a Believer people can regurgitate Q tropes until the cows come home while still claiming with a straight face that they have no idea what Q Anon is even Trump did that well I don't know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much which I appreciate [Applause] [Music] [Music] what I'm saying people call me a q Anon conspiracy I ain't no cute okay I'm not in all that nonsense I'm a truth seeker and a truth teller and I'm very calculated with what I say and so I'm very aware very self-aware of I don't say things that I couldn't fight for if they sued me I say things that I have verifiable evidence or eyewitness testimony or pictures or a background and a narrative too I'm a little smarter than a lot of people give me credit for so you have evidence of of Biden being a pedophile and Kamal Harris being I can promise you that I say it from that platform just like when I said Tom Hanks is a pedophile it does not matter to me if people say Tom Hanks is going to sue you I wish he would why don't you show us the evidence I don't have to show you the evidence I will when time comes so you must also know that this is exactly what Q Anon says as well right uh it doesn't matter to me what Q Anon says everybody wants to paint you in a corner and say that you're a conspiracy theorist the problem is the only difference between truth and conspiracy lately has been about six weeks yeah because now we need some new ones because they all happen to be coming to pass do you believe that the left is evil absolutely one thousand percent anyone involved anybody that believes what the left believes is absolutely on the side of evil and you say that to your congregation absolutely does it not concern you that when you're telling people that a large group of people are evil that they might take it upon themselves to to act on those two things number one Jesus did the same thing and number two there's no seat belts in that tent they can leave anytime they want to nobody's keeping them there what is keeping them there is that lock is not only validating extreme ideas he's anointing them giving them biblical truth [Music] could it be that you're wrong no absolutely not not in this issue now have I been wrong before about things yeah I have apologize yes but in these massive issues to me they're like fundamental Staples and there's no way I'm wrong about them [Music] but I can take care of myself when we come back the evolution of propaganda from Word of Mouth conjecture and tidbits in Daily periodicals and the foreign against War Billboards and posters during World War II to the full-blown cable news disinformation of the 80s 90s and early 2000s to Tick-Tock Reddit and more Alexis Johnson joins to tell us how we arrived at this current iteration of propaganda that's putting many In Harm's Way and democracy in the crosshairs foreign used to be a tool of the elites but now it's well within all our reach which might not be a good thing here's Alexis Johnson the term propaganda has got kind of an old school ring to it it makes you think of War posters secret spot transmissions and general Mayhem but propaganda has actually evolved and is still steering our country today in the 1940s Edward Bernays the so-called father of public relations wrote about the expansion of communication technology saying quote the United States has become a small room in which a single whisper is magnified thousands of times and for anyone who's ever had a tweet go uncomfortably viral that last line hit a little too hard pretty much all of the ideas about communication and propaganda that Bernays laid out are still very relevant in the same essay he called this communication Network a potent Force for social good or possible evil and it sure seems like now it's being used mostly for evil the fake news they want you to be discouraged there has been something that has been going on in terms of trafficking over the border to change demographics of this country for a long time I'm going to call out every single Hospital and they're gonna have to answer for why they are chopping off the the genitals and the breasts of healthy kids we've basically been trying to manipulate each other since people started communicating initially propaganda was a tool only used by the powerful to control the masses of Regular People Tales of Brave strong soldiers helped motivate troops during ancient Wars government and religious leaders were said to be descended from Gods to cement their power all propaganda and with the dawn of methods of mass communication it became even easier to spread these messages and to hit people over the head with them during the Civil War both Union and Southern States use propaganda even letters came wrapped in political messaging when you imagine Santa Claus you're probably thinking of a piece of Civil War propaganda this drawing of Santa handing out gifts to Union Soldiers became the blueprint that modern Santa drawings were based on the war's end brought about a whole new crop of evil propaganda in the Reconstruction South Jim Crow spread and was popularized in newspaper stories drawings and even the country's first big Blockbuster movie Birth of a Nation and racist Southerners one of the only ones to clock the power of film as propaganda during World War II the Nazis were Infamous for their propaganda machine Hitler employed skilled filmmakers to make movies glorifying the Third Reich and the Aryan race and to spread lies about Jews political messaging became even more unavoidable as people brought TVs into their homes Vietnam saw a battle at home between Pro and anti-war messaging and years of Cold War made the Soviet Union the villain in countless movies books and news stories over 100 million people tuned in to watch the made for TV movie the day after which showed an end time situation where the cold war finally became hot nuclear bombs rained across the country then after 9 11 we were served as steady diet of Freedom fries America's mayor American flag lapel pins wmds and God bless the USA it's no wonder that when we invaded Iraq most Americans were totally down with it thanks to propaganda of course but even as recent as the 2000s you had to be someone with a huge audience to get a message like that out now anyone can be a master propagandist can you slap some big white text over a picture of a politician that you don't like in hit tweet can you film a 15 second rant against someone you're not a fan of and posted on Tick Tock hi my name is catanji brown Jackson I gave pedophiles lighter synthesis because I'm black all black people should vote for me or if you don't vote for me you're a racist well congratulations you've joined the long long history of propaganda now the messaging isn't coming just from the powerful to control the general population it's being created by everyone even the smallest truth Social account can get an audience whipped up into a frenzy with a well hand post a single tweet can start a massive misinformation wave on covid Election fraud conspiracies and more in the 21st century we're now feeling exactly how democratized propaganda has become just in time for it to possibly undo our entire democratic system call the State of Arizona for Biden on Election night in 2020. that accurate call touched off a firestorm from enraged Fox News viewers and right after that he was fired from his job only to find himself testifying before the January 6 committee months later former Fox political editor Chris starwalt joins me to talk about the problems plaguing cable news how it's hammering away at the foundations of American democracy and what we can do to stop it this is breaking the vote it was election night 2020 and the first major news Outlet called the key State of Arizona for Joe Biden this is a big development the Fox News decision desk is calling Arizona for Joe Biden that is a big get we now know it was the former president's favorite Network FOX News that made that dramatic call and it was a stunning early decision that infuriated Trump and his allies we're getting a lot of incoming here and we need you to answer some questions I'm sorry the president is not going to be able to take over and win enough votes to eliminate that seven point lead that naked truth reportedly sent team Trump into an election Night Frenzy lobbying fox head Rupert Murdoch for a retraction they didn't get one and months later the Fox News journalist in charge of making that call was let go Fox had his decision to terminate Chris starwalt was part of a restructuring starwalt says he was fired starwalt went on to testify in front of the January 6th hearings where he said a journalistic drive to be factual in first was the only thing that drove that consequential Arizona call by the time we found out how much everybody was freaking out and losing their minds over this call we were already trying to call the next state that moment of hard facts from the former president's favorite propaganda network is surprising but what does it say about the information environment that channels like Fox have created and what could happen the next time there's a full-blown effort to obfuscate the results and there aren't enough Chris starwalts to push back starwalt describes the propaganda plaguing cable news in his latest book broken news I talked to him about that and about the pro Maga megaphone that is Fox News [Music] Chris starwalt formerly with Fox News is here with me now in the studio Chris great to see you thanks for being here well Chris you were of course right in your famous call Arizona election night 2020 but you've written you've spoken about all of the murderous Fury that you got as blowback from the public probably from with inside Fox News 2 and I want to talk about that but what was the blowback in the fury like for you for that very accurate early call well a call can't be early if it's right uh if once the polls are closed you can make the call and it wasn't my call it was a great team we had the best team uh at Fox News and there was a time when the network was very proud to tout how good our team was and that we were the best in the business the problem is that telling the truth to viewers during an election cycle if their preferred team is losing is not good for the bottom line it doesn't help to tell people what's really going on if they're not going to like what they have to hear and in the run-up to the election opinion show host and a lot of folks who are coming on Fox news we're telling people that Donald Trump was going to win again uh they were reinforcing Trump's narrative that the only way that he could lose would be by fraud uh or if it was stolen from him Joe Biden was doing way better Donald Trump did about the same in 2020 as he did in 2016. but Joe Biden did way better than Hillary Clinton and by not telling viewers that over the course of the election cycle they were shocked when we swung the hammer and told him the truth they were not prepared for it they responded accordingly uh and that is the fault of the network that did not prepare viewers appropriately to understand what was going to happen intimidation or murderous Fury or murderous rages you describe it has it has a purpose when it's directed at election workers or elected officials or journalists too it's not just to vent anger it's to get you to do something different right it's terrorism a big thing is political violence is it became a credible threat right uh Donald Trump demons traded that he could make political violence real physical harm a possibility every Republican politician who is thinking about should I do the right thing should I tell the truth should I stand up for the Constitution and the American system should I stand up for this process in the back of their minds they're thinking about the fact that there are people who are willing to commit serious crimes and commit real violence if you're a republican lawmaker uh most of them are just trying to keep their seeds but some of them have to think at a certain level you know how how much does Liz Cheney have to think about the safety of herself and her family how much do these other people have to think about it January 6 was evidence uh that Trump was a credible threat that his supporters could it's like violence on his behalf so talk a little bit more about the expectation that fox had set for its audience on that night versus the reality that you were reporting as an election analyst and a journalist you you talked about it a little bit but talk a little bit more about the disconnect between the objective truth of the election on that night and the message that Fox's audience not only wanted to hear but were prepared to believe if it didn't go their way so after Trump won in 2016 people said to me and people like me aha you said Hillary Clinton was probably going to win if Donald Trump won therefore all of your Hocus Pocus and crack chicken bones at the bottom of the pot are all illegitimated and Trump will win and it doesn't matter what the poll said the news division shows at Fox or what we used to call the news division uh shows like Fox News Sunday and special report and others uh offered a realistic perspective of the election which is that it would have been much harder for Donald Trump to beat Joe Biden than it would have Hillary Clinton I don't know whether Trump was trying to steal the election whether he was laying down a predicate to steal the election at the time by talking about fraud and discouraging people from voting or if he actually believes that stuff but uh psychoanalyzing Donald Trump is uh is a loser's bargain Chris you testified in front of the January 6 committee about how election night was going to go in terms of tabulating the votes I want you to take a listen to Steve Bannon here talking to some supporters way back on October 31st of 2020. the Democrats more of our people vote early that count there's voted mail and so they're going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump's going to take advantage of that's our strategy this is going to clear himself a winner so when you wake up Wednesday morning it's going to be a firestorm and Trump's going to be sitting there mocking tweeting out you lose I'm the winner I'm the king also if Trump is if Trump is losing by 10 11 o'clock at night it's going to be even crazier directing the Attorney General to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states it's going to be no he's not going out easy Trump if Biden's winning Trump is going to do some crazy I want to get your reaction to What Steve Bannon is describing there because he seems to know exactly how election night and the false claims of Victory from Donald Trump are going to go well I mean the thing that Trump and what makes the whole thing so disconcerting for the health of the Republic is he did it in the open right this stuff happened openly we all knew what they were going to try to do as we were getting ready for the elections we knew that Trump would assert Victory uh it was in the paper Donald Trump with all uh not with all but with many of the of the greatest uh crimes that you have seen in political history Trump just does this one right out in front you see it laying out and he's working his way up to it he's laying down the predicate with his supporters some of them probably believed him uh some of them I think like uh Bannon were cynical and played along like oh this is this will be that this was a Gambit that they didn't believe it but the people I really feel the worst for are the people who believed it the people who uh were duped and fell for it what was shocking to me were the number of what I thought were normal republicans in Congress particularly who went along uh with this sort of self-coo that Trump was trying to engage in when I saw Kevin McCarthy and Steve scalise sign on to the effort to steal Pennsylvania's electoral votes I thought what you know where are we now and I assume again that they did this stuff because they knew it wouldn't work and they wanted to placate Trump and please him but that was the scary moment for me when I saw how just how many in the Republican Party were willing to play along uh for their own personal advancement Chris starwalt author of broken news formerly of the fox decision desk famously Arizona on Election night 2020 Chris thanks so much you bet that does it for this edition of breaking the vote when we're back hungary's Victor Orban pays a visit to America and continues his authoritarian love affair with the American right plus we speak to the definitive voice on the rise and followed the strong man to see if this country's democracy is resilient enough to withstand the threats make sure to sign up for our weekly breaking the vote newsletter that's at vice.com breaking the vote and we'll see you next time I'm Michael larimuth editor-in-chief of Vice news too often traditional news outlets shy away from the real stories and experiences of those living through Global conflicts not Vice news our reporters are on the ground fearlessly covering the human stories that shape our world you and millions of others can continue 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Channel: VICE News

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Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2022

Id: dQJNflbciYU

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022