Jeff Zucker has resigned as president of CNN, and the network is facing a boatload of questions and criticism. It s linked in part to the debacle related to the Chris Cuomo interviews, and one of the worst kept secrets in the news business: that he had long been involved with a subordinate.
00:00:00.560Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.960Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:14.960We have a lot to get to today, but I want to start with CNN,
00:00:18.780which was at one time known as the most trusted name in news.
00:00:23.160Where has all that trust and integrity gone?
00:00:25.920Today, that network is facing a boatload of questions and criticism following the sudden resignation of its president, Jeff Zucker.
00:00:33.100His demise linked in part to the debacle related to the Cuomos and one of the worst kept secrets in the news business,
00:00:39.860that he had long been involved with a subordinate, much longer than they are claiming now.
00:00:46.000This, as Jeff Zucker's CNN, had turned into a network of smug, moralizing, and sanctimony.
00:00:52.980Yes, under his leadership, he took a bunch of anchors who did have credibility,
00:00:59.360had them activate their opinion side, which was reflective of Jeff Zucker's opinion, we were told by many,
00:01:08.820to lecture America on its morals and with judgments at every turn over the past five years.
00:01:15.380The hypocrisy couldn't be more obvious. Take a look.
00:01:19.140Our task is, quite simply, to keep alive the spirit of American democracy.
00:01:25.100Trump, again, comparing it to the flu. And where did he get that from?
00:01:29.680Fair, balanced, and unafraid to be dangerously ignorant.
00:01:33.700If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported.
00:01:39.520The man he called Little Marco, you know, Mr. Bible Boy.
00:01:44.920You know, he's got a Bible quote for every moment.
00:01:47.160This country needs a trust injection, a trust infusion. And maybe it starts right here.
00:01:53.880All right, here is the official re-entry from the basement, cleared by CDC.
00:02:00.640So we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men.
00:02:08.800And it's stunning. And they're going to go back, you know, to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn that they're staying at in the Garden Marriott.
00:02:16.600And they're going to have some drinks and they're going to talk about the great day that they had in Washington.
00:02:20.860And they really did something and stand up for something. And they stood up for nothing.
00:02:25.180The media must challenge power and the media must stay on the side of the truth.
00:02:29.340Because we should have worn masks more. We should have social distanced more.
00:02:33.760I think we have to stop coddling people when it comes to this and the vaccine saying, oh, you can't shame them.
00:02:40.600You can't call them stupid. You can't call them silly. Yes, they are.
00:02:44.040And they'll say, well, I'm not racist. I just voted for him because, you know, I didn't like Hillary Clinton.
00:02:50.300If you support somebody who does racist things, that makes you racist.
00:02:53.400OK, there you have it. So we need a trust infusion as a country that the media must challenge power and stay on the side of truth.
00:03:06.800Tell it to your own leaders, CNN. Start at home.
00:03:10.800Eric Wemple is one of the few reporters who's been willing to report the truth about CNN for a long, long time.
00:03:16.680He is a media critic at The Washington Post, and he joins me now with the latest on this scandal and its fallout.
00:03:23.860You you are one of the only ones to challenge this notion that they are they are on the side of truth, that they do speak truth to power, that they will challenge power unless it's internal, Eric.
00:03:38.100In which case they will ignore and blame others as they've been doing all along, right up to and including the firing of Chris Cuomo as if he was the only person to blame for what happened in connection with his interviews and his connection to Andrew Cuomo, the then sitting governor of New York.
00:03:57.720Right. So last year, when all this scandal sort of broke, Chris Cuomo was taking 90, 100 percent of the blame for having crossed the line with respect to helping his brother.
00:04:13.760And, you know, I just I know basically how closely all those people work together and I know how closely Jeff Zucker was a hands on boss at CNN.
00:04:25.440And it just didn't make any sense to me that there was that great a gap between what Chris Cuomo was doing and what Jeff Zucker knew.
00:04:36.320So I, you know, I said, you know, this needs to be investigated.
00:04:40.020This needs to be there needs to be some some honesty and some some transparency around this.
00:04:45.160And and so I kept poking around and, you know, it turns out that the original sort of sin, if you will, the original journalistic sin, which was the Cuomo and Cuomo interviews back in the spring of 2020.
00:04:59.220I mean, the top ranks of CNN were very, very much personally involved in getting making that happen.
00:05:06.520And now there's a question of exactly what did Jeff Zucker say to Andrew Cuomo at the time?
00:05:12.200What was Alison Gullist, Jeff Zucker's affair partner?
00:05:15.660What was her role in speaking to Andrew Cuomo?
00:05:18.060What did they say to Andrew Cuomo to secure the interviews?
00:05:21.420What kind of advice did they give to Andrew Cuomo themselves behind the scenes?
00:05:25.540Never mind, Chris Cuomo, they're very quick to point the finger at Chris and what Chris did was wrong.
00:05:31.580But how about these two who are now playing holier than thou?
00:05:35.780You know, now we know that they're playing holier than thou and ultimately wound up turfing Chris Cuomo, all while concealing what they had been doing behind the scenes.
00:05:45.840Well, they weren't forthcoming about this, right?
00:05:47.620I mean, basically what you have is Alison Gullist and I hear Zucker as well, although the CNN denies that he was directly involved in trying to book the former governor.
00:05:59.100But basically calling this guy and saying, please come on our air, please come on Cuomo primetime.
00:06:05.980You know, I would say in most contexts, that's not a huge problem because news networks commonly deploy all kinds of people to get interviews.
00:06:14.420And I think that that can be a healthy and perfectly fine sort of thing.
00:06:19.100But in this case, they were deploying personally their top staffers, their top executives, I should say, to get interviews that were blatantly in contravention of their own journalistic standards.
00:06:32.900So, hey, let me go and really hustle to get this interview that that violates journalistic ethics.
00:06:39.700I mean, and here's what I want to know. Here's what I want to know. What was said?
00:06:43.680What was said by Alison, who worked for Andrew Cuomo and was said to be close to him?
00:06:48.300What was said by Jeff Zucker specifically in any conversations he had with Andrew Cuomo was advice given on how to handle any particular issue.
00:06:59.040Because we already had Donald Trump suggesting that Jeff Zucker had been guiding him or trying to, to the extent anybody can guide Trump, had been guiding him with respect to Trump's interviews.
00:07:09.080Totally inappropriate. So so did Jeff Zucker do that for Andrew Cuomo?
00:07:13.080I mean, how intimately involved was he? Because that would be an ethical stain as well.
00:07:18.060That would be. That would be. I don't I don't have anything reportable on that just yet.
00:07:24.760But obviously there were there was there was talk. Right. There was conversation.
00:07:28.820So and people people chat, blah, blah, blah.
00:07:32.000I do think that your investigative focus there is well played because Lord knows that everybody gets hammered for crossing the line.
00:07:40.620And Chris Cuomo took it on the chin, as you say correctly, for crossing the line in over into helping the executive chamber of Andrew Cuomo or at least providing advice to the executive chamber on how to handle the governor's sexual harassment crisis.
00:07:57.320So I don't think that you can then turn around and have it revealed that that that there was something more than just just straight up journalistic business on these calls.
00:08:07.460So exactly right. And what what of her relationship with him?
00:08:12.600You know, I want to know more about how many times they spoke and how many times she utilized that connection, because if they're going to fire Chris Cuomo for, you know, stepping over that ethical line, then they need to be honest about what ethical lines they may have crossed and just how far over they went.
00:08:31.240That's correct. And that's correct. And a germane fact here is that Alison Gullis did serve for a brief period, I believe, in 2012 as the communications director for Andrew Cuomo.
00:08:42.700And so she had, you know, familiarity with with him and they were they were tight.
00:08:47.920And so and then she went back, she went she was at NBC and then went back with Zucker when Zucker became the boss of CNN in January 2013.
00:08:58.980So so there is that sort of revolving door aspect of this, which I think is always kind of questionable, sleazy, you know, problematic, because, you know, at some point these people lose sort of perspective on what profession they're in.
00:09:15.580You know, are they in politics or are they in journalism?
00:09:19.380And I think that, you know, if you're a reporter covering this particular story, you want to keep those boundaries in mind and impress these people on precisely what was discussed.
00:09:30.280Can I ask you? So it is it's been widely reported now by many sources that several people within CNN are calling B.S.
00:09:40.140on this claim by Zucker and Gullis that it only started recently, the affair that that it happened, as she claimed, during covid.
00:09:47.760This my my own reporting during covid, yeah, yeah, my own reporting in my sources tell me that's a lie.
00:09:56.180That's 100 percent untrue that this affair has been going on for years.
00:10:01.020Katie Couric alluded to it in her book, suggesting it may have been going on back when her daytime series was being executive produced by Jeff Zucker, which was prior to 2013.
00:10:10.760When he took over CNN, they were both divorced in or around 17 and 18 from their respective spouses.
00:10:17.900This would mean that they were they were cheating on spouses with one another at the office place.
00:10:22.280And it would also suggest that there's a reason why they don't want to admit that if it had been going on for that long, Eric, then it means he promoted her up the ranks several times while he was her boss and sleeping with her.
00:10:36.480That's what it means. What's the reason for saying it only started recently? That's the reason.
00:10:40.820That's that's what I have deduced. The reason you don't want to say it's been going on for years is because they don't want people to know she got promoted time and time again while she was sleeping with the boss.
00:10:50.900If that's true, she needs to go as well.
00:10:55.060Oh, well, that's very heavy. And I've heard a lot of, you know, the discussion of this, that it was common knowledge that it predated that.
00:11:02.980I've also heard a little pushback that, you know, no, this is relatively recent.
00:11:06.980I would say that the statement from Gullis was was was was very carefully couched.
00:11:13.420Right. She said that the relationship changed in the middle of COVID.
00:11:17.900I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I don't think that you're off base in inferring from that statement that it turned romantic at that time.
00:11:28.180So I do think that that maybe they're trying to be lawyerly or technical there.
00:11:33.620Maybe they're trying to say they broke up during COVID because they they have been together for years.
00:11:37.480I mean, for years. And it's been an open secret in the industry and maybe not even a secret, depending on who you ask.
00:11:42.980That's Soledad O'Brien, who used to work at CNN, was tweeting that out the other day.
00:11:46.900I have several sources inside of CNN and connected to CNN.
00:11:49.480And I have some impeccable sources who are telling me that this is the case, that they've been together for years.
00:11:54.400They can deny it. The truth is going to come out.
00:11:56.420It always does. If you get caught in something like this, it's just better to show your cards.
00:12:01.180You know, just don't just try not to dodge because the truth will always come out.
00:12:06.660And if he'd been doing this, then it is a very big deal.
00:12:09.240And that's what I've been trying to say when I see people like Alison Camerata on TV yesterday.
00:12:14.140I mean, almost in open tears watching this guy go down.
00:12:17.760I'll show the audience the clip and the folks at home can listen to it or watch it back on our YouTube channel later.
00:12:22.600But to me, completely insensitive to, for example, other people in the PR shop who may now be wondering why they didn't get promoted over and over and did not wind up executive vice presidents who didn't happen to be sleeping with the boss.
00:12:47.660Jeff is a remarkable person and an incredible leader.
00:12:52.320He has this uncanny ability to make, I think, every one of us feel special and valuable in our own way,
00:13:01.080even though he is managing an international news organization of thousands of people.
00:13:06.220I just know that he had this unique ability to make us feel special.
00:13:11.020And I don't think that that comes around all the time.
00:13:14.160And I think, again, it's an incredible loss.
00:13:16.500And I just think it's so regrettable how it happened.
00:13:20.660If what you're reporting is true, these are two consenting adults who are both executives that they can't have a private relationship feels wrong.
00:13:32.820Except she wasn't always an executive.
00:13:42.700And there's a real question about about whether he did make everyone feel special, including the other people in the PR shop who were passed over for promotions while Allison Golis kept moving up the ranks, Eric.
00:13:57.560Well, I think that, you know, I think you're asking the right questions.
00:14:01.200I do think, you know, if you if you did the rewind on CNN a few years, they would be all talking about power imbalances.
00:14:08.560Right. And the importance of, you know, disclosure and, you know, workplace power imbalances.
00:14:16.420You know, if a boss has a relationship with a subordinate, that's a problem in and of itself.
00:14:41.780But I do think, you know, there may be an argument there that that this is just a perfectly consensual and not a problematic sort of thing.
00:14:51.820But if we are to get to that point, there needs to be a lot more disclosure.
00:14:55.320My sense is that that it is it is problematic and that it's true that he violated these companies standards and practices.
00:15:03.680And he admitted that I think that perhaps the accent should be placed on that.
00:15:09.280There's reason why those disclosure rules are in place.
00:15:12.220And the reason they're in place is for reasons that CNN throughout Me Too has been very, very vocal in broadcasting.
00:15:27.160We're going to get more on their relationship and we're going to get more on the bigger picture, I predict, over the next week.
00:15:32.980But here's what they said when they when they fired Chris Cuomo.
00:15:36.680And you reported this at the time, Chris had come back and said through his representatives, oh, there was there were no secrets between Chris Cuomo and Jeff Zucker about what Chris was doing with respect to Andrew Cuomo.
00:15:49.620And CNN came out and made a statement, quote, Chris has made a number of accusations that are patently false.
00:15:56.800This reinforces why he was terminated for violating our standards and practices, as well as his lack of candor that he was fired for, in part, his lack of candor.
00:16:09.340OK, so let's see whether Jeff Zucker and Alison Gullist in particular will be held to that same standard.
00:16:16.400Your lack of candor gets you canned at CNN, the most trusted name in news.
00:16:21.560You were pointing out during the whole pandemic from the Cuomo brothers show forward that they were violating their own standards and practices and this attempt to blame it all on Chris Cuomo.
00:16:34.400I want to quote you exactly because you really you nailed it, you said.
00:16:38.900And I quote the scale of Chris Cuomo's misdeeds should not be diminished.
00:16:45.500They were certainly lapses on a grand scale.
00:16:48.300But make no mistake, he had accomplices.
00:16:53.980Oh, I do think that I definitely do think that.
00:16:56.900And it's very clear that the more the deeper you get into this, that's true.
00:17:01.820I mean, it's sort of ironic that Chris Cuomo fell in part or mainly because of his his line crossing with his brother, which was basically, you know, enabled, promoted and even executed by his bosses.
00:17:19.480So there's a complete vacuum of authority, of ethical authority here.
00:17:25.480There's a there's there's no ethical authority in the organization at all regarding this particular journalistic principle.
00:17:33.060And so I think that's a huge problem for CNN.
00:17:38.720And, you know, that isn't to excuse what Chris Cuomo did.
00:17:42.940I think Chris Cuomo acted unwisely and unethically.
00:17:47.580And he should have just taken like a leave of absence to help his brother.
00:17:53.800And, you know, as a side note, it's clear from the transcripts in that investigation, in the AG's investigation into Andrew Cuomo, it's clear from all those transcripts that nobody was particularly listening to Chris Cuomo either.
00:18:06.020So he threw his career or at least his job away for almost no impact on this pushback operation.
00:18:16.060Well, let's not forget the other piece of this.
00:18:17.840So when Chris Cuomo's more extensive efforts to help his brother came out, thanks to the attorney general investigation, it wasn't just the on air interviews.
00:18:40.760Well, now this new revelation adds a whole new layer of reasons to question.
00:18:45.280Was it because he he was ethically compromised and he knew it and therefore wasn't in a position to fire Chris Cuomo, who had the goods on him and appears to now be using them?
00:18:56.460Right. Is that why Jeffrey Toobin is still there?
00:18:59.280Is that why Don Lemon never faced any repercussions for the public allegations against him?
00:19:03.960And then in a lawsuit that's going to trial this summer, it it raises real questions about whether Jeff Zucker's been compromised for a long time and making decisions out of self-interest as opposed to protecting the most trusted name in news.
00:19:22.600It sort of requires more knowledge than I have at this point.
00:19:27.180But what I would say is that it may be difficult to it may be difficult to distinguish between whether he was compromised and how close he was with those with his talent.
00:19:42.240He was known for being extremely close to all of his producers and his hosts.
00:19:50.440And they you know, the sentiment that Alison Camerata expressed yesterday on CNN was by no means a minority position, at least among the top ranks.
00:19:59.840You know, Zucker did a tremendously diligent job of keeping in touch with them, texting them constantly, you know, sort of heating their emotional and and their and their intellectual needs and so on and so forth.
00:20:12.800He was very, very well, that was obvious when you looked at Brian Stelter's reporting.
00:20:18.280I mean, can I just ask you before I let you go?
00:20:21.880I mean, he's been reporting on this all along more like he is their press secretary.
00:20:25.460Right. Like he he's like their stenographer as opposed to their in-house media watchdog.
00:20:32.260And what of him and his apparent unwillingness to stay on what's happening within his own shop?
00:20:40.060Well, I mean, I have a little bit of a different viewpoint on that.
00:20:43.160For the most part, I think that Stelter and his people in the media operation there have, at least for the expectations of people in-house, have done pretty good in covering CNN controversies on this particular thing.
00:21:00.120I have dinged Stelter a couple of times because I do feel that he fell prey to that problem that you just cited, which is becoming a sort of an in-house propagandist for CIA and maybe not propagandist, but excuse maker.
00:21:14.220Like when of course, when when all this stuff flared last year, Brian said, I believe on air that there's no guidebook for a situation like this.
00:21:22.340You know, there's no page, no page in the ethics handbook for Chris's behavior.
00:21:26.320That was absurd. That was outrageous. And Brian, I think, really went off the rails there.
00:21:31.500As I say, I usually think that he does a pretty good job of holding his people to account.
00:21:37.380Well, but here's the other thing, Eric, if this really was an open secret within the halls of CNN, that you've got the CEO of the company having an affair with an executive vice president whose promotions he oversaw and whose employment he oversaw at a minimum.
00:21:49.940There will be questions about whether Brian Stelter should have been more interested in reporting on that because he certainly has reported on other intra-office affairs, liaisons, potential harassment situations.
00:22:03.980Who knows? Right. Who knows? Especially in any scenario, she was under Jeff Zucker in any scenario.
00:22:08.620I agree with your analysis, but I would also say that those same questions need to fall on people like me and anybody else who covers the media because we had heard it, too.
00:22:20.560Maybe he was a little closer to it, but I think that I should be held accountable for that just as much as he does.
00:22:26.420And all of us who are in the media covering industry or niche, I should say, because I feel that, you know, it's a ball that I appear to have dropped or obviously dropped.
00:22:36.840Well, but you've already proven your independence. I will say that you've already proven your independence.
00:22:41.720And what's happened in this industry is too many people want to be on CNN and other channels like it, and they don't want to cross somebody like Jeff Zucker.
00:22:50.240Thankfully, you've never been one of those people. You've fired, you know, off barbs against Fox, against even me, against CNN.
00:22:58.640And I appreciate it. While it's never pleasant to be on the receiving end of it, I appreciate the fact that you will report on anybody without fear or favor, as they say.
00:23:08.280Eric, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for for having me on.
00:23:12.320Yeah, you bet. Before we move on to the tease, I've got to tell the audience something.
00:23:15.980Um, the guys at Ruthless, you know, we love them. They're hilarious. So I listen to their podcast whenever I can. And this morning I opened it up and I hear these three guys, you know, we love them.
00:23:27.120And do you know how they opened their podcast? They opened their podcast, but this is them singing. Okay, listen to it.
00:23:35.980One floor below me. You don't even know me. I love you.
00:24:28.060Oh, twice on the pipe. Means you ain't gonna show.
00:24:35.120You gotta appreciate a little little moment to laugh in the midst of this crazy scandal because, you know, of course, the reporting is that she lived one floor above him with her husband and her three kids or however many kids.
00:24:50.560And he was married at the time and she was married at the time and he had four kids.
00:24:54.620And weirdly, they wound up living in the very same building together, one floor away at a time in which my sources tell me they were very much having an affair.
00:25:04.360Okay, guys at Ruthless, thank you for the morning smile and for giving us a chance to laugh in the midst of all this aggravation.
00:25:12.120Up next, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is here.
00:25:16.560Very excited to talk to him about COVID crime as Joe Biden finally makes it to New York.
00:25:21.800Oh, one day after the funeral of the fallen cops and much, much more.
00:25:56.420Act and arrest of a bad guy who's also dead now, thanks to the bullet of a third rookie cop who was with them, 22-year-old and 27-year-old cops.
00:26:04.640The streets of New York filled with police in a way I've never seen before.
00:26:37.080You tell me what is what is he saying?
00:26:39.200How could he say that on the heels of what just happened here?
00:26:42.340And of course, 2021 was the deadliest year for law enforcement ever.
00:26:46.840And New York is facing record crime rates right now.
00:26:49.620Yeah, Megan, it's, you know, Joe Biden.
00:26:52.700The president sounds like Johnny Cun lately on this.
00:26:55.500Um, we saw in 2021, uh, the Democratic Party spent most of the year talking about defund the police, uh, and the consequences of the defund the police sort of idea or vision or mindset, uh, is what you're seeing play out all across this country, a rampant increase, uh, in violent crime.
00:27:16.360And it's so disappointing to have leadership in the Democratic Party, uh, that talks about defunding the police.
00:27:23.340Again, they are now, Johnny, come lately to the party of wanting to highlight, uh, violent crime, but your viewers, your listeners, folks all across America recognize and have recognized that this is an issue.
00:27:36.540Uh, and so, uh, the president is slow to address it.
00:27:40.200I know there's been, uh, Republican leadership and, and men and women of law enforcement that have been craving the attention and the help.
00:27:48.400Um, you know, a lot of folks, again, I've talked about defunding the police.
00:27:54.720And I think the view of a lot of common sense Americans and folks, again, that are listening and watching it, that we need to take every opportunity to, uh, encourage, uh, to, to speak encouragement into our law enforcement community, but also put money where our mouth is and help support them.
00:28:12.680Um, however we can, and again, I think it's disappointing, uh, that the president and a lot of his party, uh, have been Johnny come lately's on this.
00:28:21.120You know, that their main focus is guns.
00:28:25.200That's, that's the only thing that they are focused on guns, guns, guns, gun violence.
00:28:29.920They don't, they're not actually focused on fighting crime.
00:28:32.460They're focused on just getting guns off the street, which I mean, okay, but there are over 400 million guns in America and they're not going to get the guns off the street, even if they could do it.
00:28:44.240Right. And so now you've got a situation where, um, they're saying, okay, we'll do, we'll do gun reform.
00:28:50.080And even Al Sharpton is out there saying, all right, we'll work on crime just as long as it's, it's about guns.
00:29:16.200Well, I'll say here, uh, in Kentucky, our largest city in Louisville, um, saw a record number of homicides last year in 2021, but that was preceded by a record high number in 2020.
00:29:27.560Last year we had over 180, uh, homicides, uh, in Louisville.
00:29:32.060And so we are seeing a lot of, uh, bad guys, violent criminals emboldened, uh, by this view that it can be open season on our law enforcement community and open season on a lot of, uh, members in our community are just trying to go about there every day and provide for their families and come home and be safe.
00:29:52.740Uh, so it, again, uh, the only way that something is going to change, uh, albeit, or with related to this administration is if we change the administration, uh, that is in the current, in the white house right now, because, uh, I think they feel hamstrung and, and are not willing to say what the problem is, which is there are bad people out here.
00:30:14.140Uh, we've got to make sure that our law enforcement community feels emboldened to go after those folks, um, and, and fight crime the way it needs to be fought.
00:30:23.460And it's also true that while I think there's a strong contingent of center lefties who don't want these soft on crime policies, they, they, they're not in favor of this.
00:30:31.440Um, there is a definite contingent on the left, the sort of established capital at left that doesn't like cops, that doesn't feel particularly sympathetic when the cops get shot.
00:30:44.860Um, and they, they're not, when, when crime rises, they see it as some sort of a social statement, uh, about how bad America is and not as something to be targeted with more cops or laws or prison time.
00:30:57.360Susan Sarandon might be an example of that.
00:30:59.660You and I look at the, the swaths of police officers covering the sidewalks in Manhattan, uh, yesterday.
00:31:06.000And then earlier last week on the, in the first funeral of the first fallen officer and think, oh my gosh, I mean, any normal human is moved by that.
00:31:14.700She tweeted something out saying, this is what fascism looks like fascism.
00:31:20.540And then she added, um, in her own captions.
00:31:23.180So if all these cops weren't needed for crime that day, doesn't that mean they aren't needed any day?
00:31:28.040How does the president deal with that contingent of the left and how do the rest of us deal with them?
00:31:34.660Because so far a lot of cities have been kowtowing to them.
00:31:37.880Um, well, I think that's what I was alluding to earlier is that in, in large part, I don't know if the president will.
00:31:43.680I think, um, he's in many ways hamstrung by, uh, that faction of the left of his party that, um, is adamantly opposed, uh, to, to law and order, to the law enforcement community and makes, uh, just disparaging comments like that.
00:31:59.280And I, again, Megan, to your point, you see those images out of New York and just know how powerful those images are, uh, and how somber that day was.
00:32:08.700I know here in Kentucky recently, we had an officer that was ambushed, um, and, and killed.
00:32:14.600Uh, these are, uh, trying and, and unbelievable, unbelievably difficult times, uh, for our law enforcement community all across the country.
00:32:24.580And I think as leaders, uh, particularly on, on my side of the aisle, we have to be able to speak empowerment into our law enforcement community.
00:32:34.920And again, to your point, there are a lot of folks that perhaps are not center right or not, uh, but our center left that know and see what is happening in this country and, and recognize the importance of having a law enforcement community that feels empowered to do their jobs, uh, to make sure that, you know,
00:32:54.520all of us can, uh, exist and live safely in our homes.
00:32:59.520You see that we put up a picture of, uh, officer Morris grieving mom, receiving the flag.
00:33:04.960His family pointed out that he, even in death, he saved people.
00:34:13.200I mean, it is frustrating that, you know, a lot of times that the narrative in, in the media or the narrative in the national conversation revolves around the idea that there are a lot of bad cops out of here that don't like folks of color.
00:34:33.820Uh, that is, uh, disappointing to say the least, uh, about this national narrative, because there are a lot of, uh, folks within the black community.
00:34:43.140I dare say the majority of the folks in the black community.
00:34:45.760And I think there's some polling on this, that the idea or the notion that we would defund the police, the police that are trying to make sure that our communities are kept safe, uh, is anathema to a lot of, uh, black Americans who, uh, just want to make sure that they're able to provide for their families and be safe in their homes and in their communities.
00:35:07.320Uh, and unfortunately you have comments made like, uh, that of Mr. Randon who, uh, again, disparage, uh, the idea of law enforcement, disparage the idea of law and order, but that image that you, you showed of, uh, uh, uh, again, New York and, um, just the outpouring of support there.
00:35:28.520And again, I, I think that, um, after an entire year spent by the democratic party of talking about defunding the police, um, I think they are seeing the ramifications of that, the consequences of that.
00:35:43.860Um, and it's going to take, again, I, to my, to the point I was making earlier, it's going to take, uh, you, me, uh, a lot of, uh, folks of goodwill speaking, uh, truth and power, uh, into our law enforcement.
00:35:56.460The community and talking about the good things they do to protect all our communities across this country.
00:36:03.300The rhetoric from groups like black lives matter, uh, hasn't helped.
00:36:15.480She came after you, uh, as just to remind our audience, uh, you were in charge of, uh, of the investigation into what cops, if any, would be charged in connection with the Breonna Taylor death.
00:36:25.020Breonna Taylor was shot, uh, and killed by police officers who went into her house and they had announced themselves, but her boyfriend drew a gun and shot one cop in the femur and they returned fire, killing Breonna.
00:36:39.920And you declined to, well, you brought to a grand jury, but you didn't recommend charges against those cops because they, they were shooting in self-defense, except for one guy who's actually about to go on trial this week for just randomly shooting into a bunch of apartments.
00:36:54.520Uh, so Alicia Garza came after you as did so many within the black lives matter movement and connected to it saying, um, basically comparing you to bull Connor, um, you know, ripped on you for being a black man who wasn't as she thought loyal enough to your skin color, as opposed to the need for justice.
00:37:12.120And now we find out that black lives matter is in a whole host of legal trouble of its own.
00:37:19.320Um, there is a report today, uh, and yesterday, a couple of them from the daily mail, Indiana attorney general slamming BLM as a falling house of cards, uh, before the activist group shut down all of its fundraising websites.
00:37:32.680Late, late Wednesday, they've been forbidden from collecting donations in California and Washington due to their lack of financial transparency, but reportedly they continue to do so.
00:37:42.680The Indiana attorney general, um, that who I mentioned, he compared them to an illegal enterprise following a pattern of financial scheming.
00:37:51.520And then today it came out that more about the California letter threatening to hold the founders and the leaders personally liable if they failed to disclose the financial records about their 60 million in donations within the next two months, um, saying you may not be a charity at all.
00:38:09.220If you can't produce the facts about where this money went, you as an attorney general in the state of Kentucky, what do you make of it?
00:38:14.920Well, um, you know, I've had, um, my concerns about the, the black lives matter movement organization itself, uh, simply because I think a lot of what they preach or espouse is the breakdown of, uh, the, the family, uh, in the destruction of the core of our society, which is, uh, a mother and a father and children.
00:38:39.820I, I know as, uh, uh, uh, uh, a dad now who, uh, uh, has a son, how important it is for that nuclear family.
00:38:47.780And so a lot of what black lives matters, the organization espouses is, uh, the breakdown of, uh, our traditional values here, uh, in the country.
00:38:58.640And a lot of what I think is being, um, articulated, whether it be, uh, Todd Rokita, the attorney general in Indiana, or some of the information that is coming out.
00:39:09.600And some of the allegations that are being made is that a lot of this is a ruse that the financial or the funds that have been given to this organization are not for any beneficial purpose other than to line the pockets of some of the leadership of that organization.
00:39:27.180So that's obviously disappointing to hear those allegations. But again, to my primary point, the Black Lives Matter organization is about the destruction of the American family and some of the views that, again, they espouse related to something that looks different from and not at all related to the democracy that we have enjoyed here and that was put forth at our founding.
00:39:57.560They seek to destroy what is, again, the traditional values of this country. And that's why I've been concerned about the organization. And obviously, some of these things that we are hearing now shine a better light on on just some of the behind the scenes dealings that are happening with that organization.
00:40:17.320Yeah, they're in a whole host of legal trouble of their own right now. All right. You heard General Cameron mention his new little baby, only a couple of weeks old now, Theodore.
00:40:29.240We're going to get into what fatherhood is like. And he also used to work for Mitch McConnell, who's being attacked now for not having any female black staffers.
00:40:38.080I don't know what's happening, Daniel, but more with Daniel Cameron on all of that right after this break.
00:40:44.000Let's start with Mitch McConnell. It's kind of a cool story. You did you do like an internship like you were you had a connection to him when you were young, like a scholarship or something.
00:41:01.680And then you went back and worked for him. That's right. I was what's called a McConnell scholar at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky.
00:41:09.640It's a program that he established with the help of a few other folks a long time ago to keep keep Kentuckians in Kentucky and give them a sort of a world class education at the University of Louisville.
00:41:21.240I got to know him through that program. Of course, I think some of your viewers know this.
00:41:27.000I I played football at UofL. Now, that's generous to say I played. I was on the bench a lot, but he's an avid he's an avid UofL football fan.
00:41:34.980And so we we struck up a friendship based on that and realized that our political philosophies were aligned.
00:41:41.080And so I had an interest in interning for him and actually did that while I was in undergrad and then did it again while I was in law school.
00:41:49.280I clerked or interned for his then legal counsel. And then I said, you know, I don't know if I want to go back to D.C. necessarily, but if I get an opportunity to do that job, I will.
00:42:00.320And of course, I was fortunate to be his legal counsel for a period of time before coming back to Kentucky and working at a firm and running for attorney general.
00:42:11.080Well, he got put in the crosshairs. The question of, you know, Joe Biden saying, I'm going to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court has been bounced around on both sides.
00:42:19.680And he got the question put to him this week by Latino rebels correspondent Pablo Menriquez as follows. Take a listen.
00:42:29.660How many black women do you have on staff and how are they informing your decision to move forward with this latest nomination?
00:42:35.760Yeah, actually, I haven't checked. We don't have a racial quota in my office.
00:42:41.080But I've had a number of African-American employees, both male and female, over the years in all kinds of different positions, including speechwriter.
00:42:51.160What do you make of it? They're clearly trying to paint him as, you know, not not committed to diversity.
00:42:56.860And thus, who is he to criticize Joe Biden's pick?
00:42:59.720Yeah, it's a it's a it's an absurd notion, making, you know, that The New York Times a few years ago did a whole profile on Mitch McConnell's commitment to civil rights.
00:43:11.640And like most things that occur from the Democratic Party, it's a matter of political expediency.
00:43:19.400And so they're trying to make him into something that he's not.
00:43:24.540His comment about having hired folks that that look like me is is very true.
00:43:29.400His speechwriter was a gentleman named Justin Jones.
00:43:32.420Alex Jenkins is somebody that's working in the office currently.
00:43:36.560I've obviously worked there. This is, again, something that the left is trying to do to sort of paint a picture that is simply not true.
00:43:49.060And so it disappoints me to see the left try to use this.
00:43:54.240But this is this is how they this is a lot of times how they operate is try to dive into identity politics.
00:44:01.880And if you don't agree with them, you're you're either a racist or a bigot.
00:44:07.320And so it's it's not an uncommon playbook.
00:44:10.880I've obviously, as you noted, had things of this guilt happened to me here in Kentucky from sort of the liberal side of of the aisle.
00:44:20.480But you just put your head down and you keep doing the work.
00:44:23.760And Mitch McConnell, in all the years that I've known him, just keeps doing the work and keeps getting the job done for the men, women, children here in the Commonwealth and then for the nation.
00:44:34.520And I think a lot of that has been seen with the Supreme Court and the the folks that are on the judiciary in our federal system, but also in being helpful in legislation that has been passed in his time there in Washington.
00:44:50.980But this is a nothing story. The left will continue to try to gin this up over the course of of this nomination process.
00:44:59.460Absolutely. I mean, once he actually selects the black woman, any criticism going her way will be blamed on sexism or racism or what have you.
00:45:08.420So you're going to have to have, you know, steely spine to see this through.
00:45:12.840And of course, the non sexist, non racist thing to do is to criticize whoever the nominee is just the same way as you would anybody else and not treat.
00:45:20.680I can speak for women, at least us like we need to be coddled like we can't take, you know, it's like that it's so absurd the place to which we've gotten.
00:45:29.460I want to shift gears to something happier. Now you have become a father and you tell me whether that has me because last time I was really encouraging you to run for president.
00:45:38.560You tell me whether this has encouraged you at all. I know maybe you'll go for Kentucky governor at some point.
00:45:44.860But, you know, we could use great talent. You're now of legal age.
00:45:48.340You just have to be thirty five to aspire toward bigger office to make his life an even better place.
00:45:56.460Well, look, he is the joy of of our hearts and our in our eyes.
00:46:05.360You know, it changes your perspective.
00:46:07.140You know, I obviously I talk a lot about the pro-life movement and how important that is to me, but you become keenly, keenly invested in the pro-life values.
00:46:22.060When you have your own son or own daughter, you hear that ultrasound or hear that heartbeat for the first time.
00:46:29.640You see those ultrasound images becomes all the more real for you.
00:46:33.260So, you know, well, Mackenzie and I will have a conversation about, you know, the what our future looks like in terms of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
00:46:41.740But right now we're just trying to get to get Theodore on a routine or a schedule.
00:46:48.620And, you know, we've you know, it's it's one thing to sort of watch the videos and listen to and read the books.
00:46:57.300It's another thing to have a child in your home, a newborn.
00:47:01.460I've often told people that, you know, as attorney general, a lot of my problems stop at midnight with Theodore.
00:47:07.060Or he's just getting started. So you're welcome to Parenthood.
00:47:10.700Oh, look, I'm so happy for for both of you. Congrats on it.
00:47:14.100By the way, congrats on your big win in challenging the vaccine mandate handed down by the Biden administration, too.
00:47:19.620You did that one and look forward to continuing the discussion another time.
00:47:23.560All the best. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Megan.
00:47:26.260Coming up. Why does it seem there are so many bad decisions being authored or being made these days?
00:47:30.360One author has dug into the science and he's next.
00:47:37.060We've talked a lot on this episode about bad decisions made by a variety of people.
00:47:42.540But what is it that drives bad decision making?
00:47:47.060Bestselling author Todd Rose has done the research and his new book, Collective Illusions,
00:47:53.100Conformity, Complicity and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions is out this week.
00:48:00.740I'm great. First of all, can you just give us the thumbnail on your background?
00:48:03.800Because it's fascinating. You went to Harvard and taught at Harvard, but it didn't begin like that.
00:48:11.040No, it really didn't. Yeah. So I I I actually was a high school dropout and it's actually worse than that.
00:48:17.320I filled out with a 0.9 GPA, which I think you have to work really hard to do that poorly.
00:48:23.180And not too long after getting kicked out, my girlfriend, who's still my wife today, found out she was pregnant.
00:48:31.260So we started our adult lives without a high school diploma, ended up on welfare, did a bunch of men waves jobs and then had to claw our way back.
00:48:40.480But ended up being able to live the American dream.
00:48:43.240It's amazing. It's like how did you get into Harvard with a 0.9?
00:48:47.240Well, I, you know, I I ended up going, got my GED and went to night school at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, open enrollment, $800 a term and found myself there and figured out who I was and ended up graduating with a 397 in pre-med and psychology and then went to Harvard.
00:49:07.380OK, but this would be a great boon to you, these beginnings, because you would look at Harvard, at academia, at the criteria that we use to admit people and decide who's going to be a success and who's not with a much more skeptical eye than probably most people who go there and teach there or other institutions like it.
00:49:27.400And one of the things that jumped out at me was you left Harvard because you felt like it's it's a lie.
00:49:32.520Like, I'm not living my values. I don't agree with the way they're doing this. What do you mean?
00:49:39.000Well, look, I mean, I really enjoyed my time there and just wonderful people.
00:49:44.480Just I enjoyed it. But the structure of higher education in general, you know, I believe that everyone has something to contribute.
00:49:51.740And we're all better off when we're betting on everyone in America to pursue a good life and make a contribution.
00:49:57.400And any system that is about false scarcity, right, where quality equals how few people you can actually educate, seemed counter to my values.
00:50:07.740And so while I love the people, I felt like the longer I stayed in that institution, the more of a hypocrite I would be.
00:50:14.580And so me and my co-founder left Harvard and we started our own think tank, Populous, and it's been just wonderful.
00:50:20.200Hmm. All right. So now before we get on to a collective illusions, which are basically social lies and it's fascinating, I want to ask you about because I'm now in this and I have three kids and they're still little.
00:50:30.960But I hear the parents of teenagers obsessing, obsessive over college and where where's junior going to go?
00:50:38.680And, you know, junior is going to get rejected from most of the colleges because that's just the way the acceptance rates work.
00:50:43.920So what do you want those parents to know about junior and his chances for success when he gets rejected from every Ivy League school?
00:50:52.340Look, I actually spent a lot of time studying this and looking at success and how people achieve it.
00:50:58.920And what we know for sure is that this idea that we all have to go to one of, you know, 10 schools like privately in America, the overwhelming majority of people don't believe that.
00:51:10.800But back to these collective illusions, they are absolutely convinced that everybody else agrees this is the only path to success.
00:51:17.620And so when push comes to shove, they end up taking their child and instead of cultivating their unique gifts and helping them make a great contribution to society, we funnel them into this standard path and end up having them compete to be just like everybody else.
00:51:31.960And my my my the thing I would say to these parents is there's really not a future in that.
00:51:36.840Like if you want to do right by your kid, you teach them good values.
00:51:40.360You teach them to know who they are, figure out what they're passionate about and what they're good at and help turn that into a contribution.
00:51:47.220And there are a thousand schools that are phenomenally good at doing this at a good price point.
00:51:53.000You don't have to break the bank. And the cachet that comes with that elite brand isn't really all it's cracked up to be.
00:51:58.760I promise you, you know, it's particularly good if you can figure out what city you want your kid wants to be in or generally because if you go to a great institution in or around the city or the state that you want to wind up in, they'll respect that university, maybe even more than a Harvard or Yale, etc.
00:52:15.420Okay, so let's talk about collective illusions or social lies.
00:52:23.500I know in the book you talk about the 1930s Elm Hollow slash Mrs. Salt academic study.
00:52:28.940What is that and how does it help us understand why collective illusions are a problem?
00:52:33.300Yeah, well, let me let me let me tell you what they are. And then let's we can circle back to Elm Hollow.
00:52:38.240So like, like, simply collective illusions, you said are social lies, and they happen in situations where a majority of people in a group end up going along with something that they don't privately agree with, only because they incorrectly believe that most other people in the group actually agree with the idea.
00:52:56.180Right. And as a result, an entire group can end up doing things that almost nobody really wants.
00:53:01.480And like, you know what I mean, right? Like, we've all had those moments where we thought we're the only ones in the room who hold a certain view.
00:53:09.180Right. And so rather than speak up, we just say nothing. Right. We go silent and we're not alone.
00:53:15.080You know, research shows that right now in America, two thirds of all Americans admit to self silencing.
00:53:22.260And you can see the problem here, right? If most people self silence and then the loud fringe is the only voice that people hear and the results of collective illusion.
00:53:31.660And that's exactly what's going on in America today.
00:53:34.300So what does this study prove to us? Just that it's a phenomenon, that it is a thing?
00:53:38.540Well, here's the thing, like you would imagine that that kind of like rampant misunderstanding would be rare, but it turns out it's not like not today.
00:53:47.840We've known about collective illusions in research for about 100 years, all the way back to this Elm Hollow we can talk about.
00:53:54.340What's different today is how easy social media allows us to create them and scale them.
00:54:00.840And so what we're seeing now is rather than a one off phenomenon, basically, you name anything that matters in society today and it's a coin toss whether you're wrong about the group or not.
00:54:12.300We're very bad at figuring out how other people actually feel, but we think we're very good at it.
00:54:18.180Yeah. Well, this is the heart of collective illusions, right?
00:54:20.980People think, well, maybe it requires like a bad actor or biased media or something to create that misunderstanding.
00:54:27.480But it's actually just part of how our brains are wired.
00:55:42.760And I can't remember whether it was Reagan or whether it was the Russians.
00:55:46.740My facts are sort of melding, but it was a story about how somebody wanted to win over the crowd and didn't have enough supporters in the crowd and therefore placed like three.
00:55:57.400They only had like three supporters and placed them at strategic locations in the crowd and just made sure that they clapped the loudest and yelled the loudest and effectively convinced the crowd that the crowd was on said person's side.
00:56:14.360And I talk about this in the book about ways that we can get duped into just blindly conforming to what we think is the majority when it's like a fringe.
00:56:25.840And it was actually invented all the way back in Rome with Nero, who, you know, besides being a crazy emperor, thought he was like really great actor and musician.
00:57:19.500I feel like it's a little bit of a sad commentary on how needy we are for approval and to feel like we belong to the group, that we're not really forming our own opinions, that we go into a room or we turn on a show or we go on the Internet.
00:57:31.140And we're so easily manipulated by the fringes and then get swept up in the need to belong that at the end of the day, do we even know?
00:57:40.040Do most of us even know what we really believe?
00:57:43.340Well, what's so interesting is that, you know, we do a lot of private opinion research at my think tank, Populous, which is get around the effects of social pressure, get at what people privately value.
00:57:53.620And it turns out people have a reasonably good sense for what they care about and prioritize.
00:57:58.880But to your point, because we're hardwired to be a social species, that sense of belonging can override our own values if we're not careful.
00:58:07.320I mean, it's remarkable in the neuroscience research that I've done in the past and others have done.
00:58:13.320You put someone in a scanner and you ask them questions about something as subjective as like whether you think someone's good looking.
00:58:20.240Seriously, someone got paid to do that kind of research.
00:58:22.060But when when I tell you that your subjective opinion is the same as the group, you get a reward, a dopamine reward response, the same kind of response that hard drugs create.
00:58:35.060So we are wired to be part of a group that that does not mean blind conformity.
00:58:39.680It just means, right, it's better together.
00:58:42.100But what we've lost right now as a society is that sense of independence, that sense of ability to hold our own judgment.
00:58:51.500And all that's left are these large, like national groups like our politics that we're clinging to rather than actually holding a sense of who we are and what really matters to us.
00:59:01.100You know, it's fascinating as I was just talking to somebody, a friend of mine, and she was saying she she was never really political before Trump, but she went to a Trump rally and it was like the greatest thing she'd ever done.
00:59:16.260She felt like she was doing something that mattered.
00:59:18.220And I was getting it, you know, I was understanding the affinity she instantly developed for sort of the MAGA crowd, not not not even just Trump, just like the MAGA crowd and being part of something she felt mattered.
00:59:36.160And one of the things we've lost in society and, you know, the scholar Robert Putnam talks about this and in bowling alone, we used to be a society that had a nice middle layer of civic organizations.
00:59:47.520We belong to a lot of things, our churches.
01:01:07.780No, you cannot shame me out of my belief that women are the only ones who can get pregnant and give birth to a baby.
01:01:16.000And you can shame me about language all you want, but no, I know what I believe, even if I'm standing in a room of collectively the Internet that's telling me I'm a bad person for holding on to this thing that we all believe forever up until about a year ago.
01:01:28.200So you're seeing more and more people push back on it.
01:01:32.400Well, look, I think we're starting to feel the consequences of the betrayal of our own values.
01:01:39.120And, look, we know every time we act incongruently, right, when our public selves are different than our private selves, it takes an enormous toll on our mental health, our well-being, and our sense of purpose in life.
01:01:50.980And so we're rightly reacting to that.
01:01:53.500What I will say is what we all have to recognize is it's less about whether I'm right or you're right.
01:02:00.740A free society needs healthy conversation.
01:02:04.060And the funny thing about the fringe, right, is sometimes they're right.
01:02:08.140Sometimes it actually helps the group improve.
01:02:11.400But you never convince someone by silencing them.
01:02:14.440And so any attempt to socially sanction, you know, get someone to lose their job or whatever, just because we disagree with them, it doesn't just hurt them, it hurts everyone, right?
01:02:25.360And to me, like, there is one way out of this problem of collective illusions because it is leading to false polarization.
01:02:31.880It is leading to and it will become real.
01:02:34.840We have to find the moral courage to be honest with each other about what we think.
01:02:39.660And we've got to have the civic courage to make it safe for other people to do so as well.
01:03:22.060Because you write in the book about how we're even worse on this problem when it comes to doctors, academics.
01:03:32.260And we've seen some of that, too, in COVID.
01:03:34.560There's an example in your book about doctors and nurses from a 1966 incident that sort of illustrates how deferential we are to authority.
01:03:44.000Yeah, so look, part of being human is you never quite know whether your private knowledge is correct.
01:03:50.860And so our brains are designed to take in social information.
01:03:54.660And sometimes the rest of the group does know more than you.
01:03:58.040I promise you if I'm in some faraway land and I don't know what berries are poisonous, I'm going to look to what the locals are doing.
01:04:04.640And it doesn't matter if red berries are fine here.
01:04:07.140If they're not eating them, I'm not eating them, right?
01:04:09.320So the problem is that we tend to not realize that we defer not just to the crowd, but to people we think are in authority in part because we think they know better, right?
01:04:20.840And we will do crazy things just because, like the study you're referencing, I mean, just having a doctor that they never met say to nurses that they needed to give almost lethal doses of a drug.
01:04:34.200Like a shocking percentage of the majority of them actually went along and did it.
01:04:39.500And the thing is, is we just assume these people must know something we don't.
01:04:43.840And my argument in the book is we shouldn't ignore proper authority.
01:04:49.500We shouldn't ignore other people's wisdom, but we cannot ever allow that to displace our own judgment, right?
01:04:58.140We have to take our own values, our own experience, and then make a decision ourself.
01:05:01.520And every time we abandon our own judgment, bad things happen, not just for us, but for everybody.
01:05:07.940So what kind of a person, you know, because we do have contrarians, even before the social media phenomena or different viewpoints are being cracked down upon.
01:05:18.100We've always had contrarians who don't do this, who do not need approval of the crowd, who will jump up and down with a different point of view,
01:05:26.380no matter what the crowd says, who may kind of enjoy being on the other side.
01:05:31.040So are their brains wired differently?
01:06:35.400And what I think is really fascinating, and you alluded to this, everyone's afraid right now that everyone else is so sensitive and that if I offend them, like the two-thirds of Americans who are self-silencing, the number one reason that they are doing it is out of decency, not out of fear.
01:06:53.400They just, they don't want to hurt people's feelings.
01:06:55.760But what we find in our private opinion research is the overwhelming majority of Americans are like, listen, everybody else is way too sensitive.
01:07:05.900Like when you actually are honest about your views, it's pretty remarkable the kind of respect that that engenders, you know?
01:07:12.160And so getting back to our core value.
01:07:14.140I'm laughing, Todd, because I've had a lot of situations in which, you know, I'm somebody who's more center-right, who has immersed herself for my 50-plus years in mostly liberal, considerably liberal circles.
01:07:27.460So I'm more used to espousing my views and seeing this, like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
01:07:33.540And then I just keep blathering and blathering because I don't really care.
01:07:43.940Now think about everyday folks sitting around our kitchen table.
01:07:48.420We've been through two years of isolation where we're not meant to be this isolated, where most of our social interactions are really happening online, which, again, is this fun house of mirrors.
01:08:00.240It is a guaranteed distortion of what the majority really believes, the way it's structured.
01:08:06.080And as we're coming out of this, like, we have to remember that we can't trust our brains anymore to tell us what our groups think, and we can't allow social media to dictate the ways that we treat each other in real life.
01:08:18.580The thing I would tell every listener and viewer, like, listen, have the conversations, because right now we are so convinced as an American public that we are being torn apart by division and polarization and that the other side, whatever that is, doesn't share our values.
01:08:35.980I promise you it is not true by and large, but because we believe it is, it becomes true.
01:08:44.600So you won't be hashtag part of the problem.
01:08:46.180OK, and there are other real tips in Todd's book that will help you not be manipulated so easily, whether it's online or in your real life or just in general as an American.
01:08:58.840And we're going to get to some of those right after this.
01:09:44.100We know, for example, research from Clemson shows that both Russia and China are use these bots and they go into, say, conservative Twitter and liberal Twitter.
01:09:53.900And rather than spread lies, what they do is they identify the most fringe views and they retweet the hell out of them, just amplify them.
01:10:02.400And then suddenly, if I say I identify as a Republican, I'm like, wait, is this what we believe?
01:10:07.840And meanwhile, they're doing the same thing on the left.
01:10:10.900And what happens is, is the groups start to go to the fringe, right?
01:10:47.460You even get insights that end up getting fed back into you, whether you're following people or not, or other people retweet things that you don't realize.
01:10:57.520It's, it's one of those things where it would be so, it was, it's clever if it weren't so damaging that, that these foreign adversaries have recognized that they can do more damage to our country this way by understanding collective illusions on the cheap, allow us to destroy ourselves from the inside out.
01:11:16.160And that's for me is why, quite honestly, why I wrote the book is I feel like if the American public doesn't understand this phenomenon, we're not going to solve this and it's going to destroy us.
01:11:25.040And I want to say a word to my audience because we've, we've realized that the Russiagate, Russiagate, you know, nonsense that was peddled by the mainstream media and by the left during Trump's presidency was nonsense.
01:11:35.740But that does not mean Russia is not trying to sow discord in America.
01:11:41.460And I learned this firsthand when I was getting ready to go over and interview Putin one of the times that we had officials from the highest levels of government former come in to prep me.
01:11:51.740And they showed me, they showed me the actual graphs of how a tweet would be sent out and the bots and where they're located across the world and how they could see the amplification that the bots automatically would do on said tweets because, and they don't care.
01:12:04.840They take the pro BLM side, they take the anti BLM side, they pick your issue.
01:12:09.820They take both sides and they amplify the craziest voices over because their mission is to sow discord.
01:12:16.060And you can times that by 10 for the Chinese, you are being manipulated when you go online.
01:12:21.800Yes, by big tech, which loves to, to stir up anger and to keep you just focused on the screen for as long as possible.
01:12:28.480So they amplify too, but by the underlying actors, which are taking the craziest stuff and trying to get it in your face to make you think it's mainstream.
01:12:36.520And now, and now, and now, you know, like, given that this isn't just about willpower or intelligence, our brains use this shortcut to estimate group consensus.
01:12:46.640So you will intellectually think you're like, Oh, I know this isn't everybody, but you will feel like it is.
01:13:07.920What we have to recognize is now more than ever, we have to commit to those founding American ideals, including protecting free speech and seeing it as a civic obligation to ensure that we have healthy conversations in this country.
01:13:22.780What do you make of what's happened this week to Joe Rogan?
01:14:01.140We've known since the founding of this country that silencing someone, even when you know they're wrong, actually does more damage to society than having healthy, open, honest conversations.
01:14:13.060So let's just pretend that Joe Rogan is wrong on everything.
01:14:17.580He platforming him doesn't solve any problem.
01:14:21.140All it is is a head on a pike that tells everybody else.
01:14:24.260Wow, if Joe Rogan can't share his view, even if he's wrong, I better not say anything.
01:14:30.440And that is the ultimate weapon of a fringe that knows they're a fringe, right, is get everyone to shut up.
01:14:36.540And we'll do all the heavy lifting for him.
01:14:39.040So for me, like, even when I disagree with Joe Rogan, I still want to hear from him.
01:15:58.460But now that you understand about collective illusions and you realize that by removing your voice from the conversation, you have doubled the sound of the fringe, right?
01:16:09.420And if enough of us do that, it distorts the view of consensus for everybody, and the entire country can end up doing things that almost nobody really wants.
01:16:19.600You've doubled the size of the fringe.
01:16:21.160You've doubled the voice of your adversary or the person with whom you disagree by remaining silent.
01:16:26.520And you write in the book, I wrote it down, quote, compromising personal integrity for the sake of belonging wears away at one's self-esteem.
01:16:34.700So not only are there consequences to you and your worldviews in you remaining silent, like you might lose the argument, your own sense of self is being eroded by doing that.
01:16:48.780You know, it's one of the best predictors of low self-esteem, which is I behave in public in ways that are different than I am in private.
01:16:56.740So I talk about in the book that the term congruence, like we have to commit to this.
01:17:01.900We have to recognize that being true to ourselves and true about ourselves to other people isn't just good for us.
01:17:34.100Yeah, look, it's so interesting, right?
01:17:36.920We've gotten to a place in society in part because of things like cancel culture and in part just because we're decent people in this country.
01:17:55.900I'll talk to my close family, maybe my best friends.
01:17:59.260But now there's no real conversation, no healthy debate in the public.
01:18:03.240And what's worse, again, is that it is distorting what we think most Americans believe in, right?
01:18:09.700And so what happens under those collective illusions and why it's such an urgent issue for me is we now live in a country that like probably the most common thing I've heard from people from my libertarian friend to my progressive friends is some version of this.
01:18:24.900Am I crazy or did the entire country go crazy almost overnight?
01:18:29.380Like it just they can't there's like what is going on?
01:18:32.120And like people are like, I thought we shared some basic values.
01:18:35.220I know we disagree on some things, but it feels like we don't.
01:18:46.300But now we have the added problem with big corporations and sports and so many industries sort of going along with the most hysterical when it comes to speech.
01:18:56.360You know, like you can't say certain things.
01:19:01.500They have most Americans thinking, well, I feel differently, but I'm not going to say anything because I've seen this one get fired and I've seen that one get fired and I need my job.
01:19:09.820And, you know, it's all great for you, Todd Rose and Megyn Kelly to tell me I need to speak up.
01:19:14.600But no, you're not going to employ me if I get fired.
01:19:16.980Yeah, this has been the place where I've been the most disappointed is a failure of leadership, right?
01:19:22.600Because, you know, most people, okay, share your views with each other, right?
01:19:27.900Most people don't have a lot of control over other people's lives.
01:19:31.060But the reality is, is that CEOs control the incentives for hundreds and thousands and millions of people, right?
01:19:37.600And what's interesting is that they are under the same illusions as everybody else.
01:19:43.200So they may think rather than pushing their own agenda, they're just responding.
01:19:47.460And I promise you, I've talked to plenty of CEOs about this.
01:19:50.240And they say, look, I don't really believe this, but I'm trying to respond to the public, giving them what they want.
01:19:55.240So I take a stand on something that I don't even agree with, because I think it's what everybody thinks, same, under a collective illusion.
01:20:01.300The problem is, is then everybody below you is like, well, got it, right?
01:20:05.300Because I don't want to get fired, or at least I don't want to get overlooked for a promotion.
01:20:09.100And so we all fall into line, and then it just makes the illusions even stronger.
01:20:13.380I will tell you, we did one of the largest private opinion studies recently on what people want out of work.
01:20:25.240One of the biggest illusions that we found there is that the vast majority of people across all demographics, any way you cut the data, want leaders of companies to stop going public on every social issue.
01:20:38.740But they are convinced that most Americans want them to be public, right?
01:20:42.940So if we're under that kind of illusion, CEOs will continue to behave this way.
01:20:46.740It will create perverse incentives for us to self-silence, and we will be mired in these illusions until they harm us for good.
01:20:53.760What about – one of the points you made in the book resonated with me before we went to Christmas break.
01:21:01.320My last episode had a little bit about, you know, just remember the humanity of, quote, the other side.
01:21:06.480Don't demonize everyone just because they don't share your political views.
01:21:09.680And in particular, remember, as we fight on all these issues – and for me, it can be COVID masks or what have you – there are allies on the other side.
01:21:19.460There are people who share your goals and your views.
01:21:22.240And it's really kind of pointless to demonize an entire half of the country as useless or stupid because that's not really true.
01:21:30.080I have enough friends in my life on both sides of the aisle that I know what's real.
01:21:34.660I know there's reason, right, on both sides.
01:21:37.740And there's craziness on both sides, too.
01:21:40.300But – and I want to get to that because one of your solutions, I know, is increase your identity complexity, which we'll get to.
01:21:44.520But can you just speak before we get to that about the, like, the importance of the truth, which is that we agree more than we disagree and that when you really press people, you know, to sort of prioritize their values, they wind up having more unity than disunity.
01:22:03.780Yeah, listen, and I'm not trying to find good news.
01:22:07.500Like, if we were really this divided, it's important that we say so, right, because we've got to find good solutions.
01:22:13.300But I'm telling you, like, let me give you one example.
01:22:15.980We did – we spent a year doing this survey of people's private views for the future of America.
01:22:22.840What are the tradeoff priorities you want most for this country?
01:22:26.380And before we gave thousands and thousands of people this instrument, we just asked them, okay, are we more divided or united as a country?
01:22:35.680And not surprisingly, 82% said we're more divided.
01:22:39.480Half of those people said we are extremely divided.
01:22:41.720And when you cut it by who you voted for in the last election, a majority of both sides said the other side no longer shares their values for the country, right?
01:22:53.960And then we gave those exact same people this private opinion instrument that you can't fake, that makes you make tradeoff decisions for the country.
01:23:03.000And what emerges is shocking amounts of common ground.
01:23:13.740But what was most interesting to me, and I think will be heartening for your listeners, is what it is we agree on.
01:23:20.700Like, across all demographics, like by race, gender, even the kind of job you do, where you live, the things that we care about most are nothing less than core American values.
01:23:31.260The ones that feel like they're slipping away, but they're not.
01:23:33.860For example, people care a lot about individual rights on both sides of the aisle.
01:23:37.720It doesn't seem like it sometimes, but they do.
01:24:28.960We think the other side doesn't share our values.
01:24:31.880And so we think that they're going away.
01:24:33.680And we think we have to fight to preserve them.
01:24:35.960And I'm telling you, it is an illusion.
01:24:38.000And the way out of an illusion is not fighting.
01:24:40.380It is being honest with each other and making the space for other people, treating them with the respect that they deserve to be able to voice their own opinion.
01:24:49.220If we do that, I promise you, we will reveal our shared values.
01:24:52.680We will build back social trust and we will get somewhere better together.
01:24:56.860What about the fact that, you know, you take polling, let's take free speech, for example.
01:25:01.680You do polling of the American people on free speech.
01:25:03.960And the young people, the young people don't feel the way we do.
01:25:07.740You know, the kids in their 20s, 18, whatever, they're like, hate speech is unconstitutional.
01:25:12.580And yes, I do want to see people silenced to say offensive things.
01:25:15.480And I want them to get in trouble and I want them to lose their jobs.
01:25:17.620That is a real divide between the young and the old.
01:25:31.860So number one, you're partially right there, right?
01:25:33.700So there is an age difference where people are more willing to pile on and say someone should lose their job for who they voted for even or they have the wrong thing, right?
01:25:42.380There's a little bit of the Marxist stuff that's emerging there that I think is a little dangerous for society.
01:25:47.380But here's what's the most interesting.
01:25:49.760The illusions around free speech are the strongest with young people because they spend the most time online.
01:25:58.140So I believe most of that behavior, that willingness to jump in and try to cancel people and silence them is less driven by personal ideology and more driven by the fact that they believe this is what they're supposed to do, right?
01:26:12.240So I believe you start with the illusions, you shatter them, and then we'll deal with folks that still think it's okay to go ahead and ruin people's lives because you disagree with them.
01:26:22.580And the way we'll deal with them is not by ruining their lives, but by treating them the way that they're unwilling to treat other people with respect and listening to their views.
01:26:30.320You could have called your book Deluded.
01:26:32.900That could have been an alternate title.
01:26:34.540All right, now I only have a couple minutes left and I want to get to this solution of increasing your identity complexity.
01:26:43.380I was so interested in terms of neuroscience of conformity and looking at ways that like, how do we reduce the pressure groups can put on us?
01:26:52.020And it turns out in the book, I actually study, I talk about cults a little bit and how they, how they work to get complete control over you.
01:26:59.420Well, there's been some really great research on identity complexities of the call, which is if you only have one group that you belong to, it has cult-like power of you.
01:27:09.480I don't care how much you like that group.
01:27:11.260You are going to be very unwilling to go against what you think the consensus is.
01:27:15.480But it turns out that if what you do is have at least three groups that matter to you, and they don't have to be huge.
01:27:22.120So let's say you're a diehard Republican.
01:27:25.140It can be a church group, which is pretty big, but it can literally be like a football fan, like a team, right?
01:27:32.020As long as it matters to you, it turns out that when you have those different groups that matter, if you feel pressure from one, all you have to do is literally in your head, think about your identity as tied to the other group.
01:27:43.880And it reduces your brain's response to conformity.
01:28:07.800And given that it's a coin toss, whether you're wrong about the group anyway, this is how it allows you to still speak up when you can and make sure that these illusions don't end up destroying the group that actually matters to you.