The Tucker Carlson Show

00:00:00.000 welcome to the tucker carlson show we bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else

00:00:16.360 and they're not censored of course because we're not gatekeepers we are honest brokers

00:00:20.860 here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly check out all of our content

00:00:26.300 at tucker carlson.com here's the episode i'm so glad you're back here i'm so glad to see you you

00:00:32.320 are not far away it's not too far away we work together we live near each other it's all in

00:00:37.720 many places um amazing how are you enjoying your new life pretty well it's uh good it's been an

00:00:45.120 adjustment i've had an energetic few months i knew you would i knew you would um okay so i just have

00:00:50.820 to ask you because you're i was in television a long time also but you were in the the news side

00:00:57.300 of television preparing interviews and packages and every day for decades and given your extensive

00:01:04.840 knowledge of that i'm just a little bit confused by how the media people in our business former

00:01:10.120 business could look at the last debate with biden and trump and say i just can't believe that there's

00:01:14.680 something wrong with him that he's neurologically compromised or ill or senile or whatever that he's

00:01:19.000 not operating the way that he used to how could this be news to people who've interviewed him

00:01:23.020 before well i think this is a real opportunity to gather more data and to take an investigative lens

00:01:29.280 and look at this issue of president biden and his decision to seek re-election we've got some data

00:01:35.660 points already we have the debate yeah that you've just referenced that people were so surprised

00:01:40.440 his demeanor and we now have this abc interview and the full transcript i think it's a moment where

00:01:46.720 other media organizations who've done interviews with the president over the last couple of years

00:01:52.040 could release the full transcripts from those interviews i think it makes sense because we'd have

00:01:58.620 broader data points to assess was this a one-off as the white house says or were there indications

00:02:05.000 of decline earlier on were they obvious and apparent or were they subtle and missed and and if they were

00:02:12.400 obvious why was it that they seemed to end up on the cutting room floor um i think that having this

00:02:19.280 broader data set for an independent review would really inform the public discussion about the

00:02:26.040 president's decision to stay in the race and there's a lot of data to look at i mean i've known biden

00:02:30.920 watch biden been around biden a lot for over 30 years and i remember my reaction in 2019 when he

00:02:38.420 decided to run um once again for president for the fourth time i think uh i thought that's not the

00:02:44.020 guy i know i mean he's just completely different and then his sister told a friend of mine actually

00:02:50.120 we're very upset because he's in cognitive decline he's got some neurological illness and we don't want

00:02:55.800 him to run for president so i immediately said that on fox news so you reported that at the time

00:02:59.940 absolutely yeah and then i showed the tape like look at this guy and was attacked of course and

00:03:05.700 ignored so that was five years ago um i wasn't shocked by his performance the debate especially

00:03:12.040 but then other journalists were they seem to be were they pretending or like what i don't understand

00:03:18.120 how someone who did an interview with him like two years ago wouldn't have been aware that there

00:03:23.360 was something wrong well i think it's an opportunity to provide this broader data set so there can be

00:03:28.420 this independent review by the public what would that data look like well let's look at what the

00:03:33.480 transcripts show do they show someone who is um you know very consistent very focused uh very deliberate

00:03:40.640 in their answering of questions or does it show someone who's maybe struggling to stay on track or is

00:03:46.180 lacking do we have focus um well media outlets who've conducted interviews with the president should

00:03:51.300 have those transcripts i mean it's it's not standard to release video outtakes from an interview but you

00:03:56.920 could release the transcript and i say that as someone who released a transcript of my interview with

00:04:02.700 president trump back in 2020 releasing a transcript i think is about transparency so you can have a

00:04:11.120 broad overview of the interview i think it makes sense because there are other headlines in the

00:04:17.500 interview that maybe you your news organization is not going to look at per se you know just sort of

00:04:23.440 separately i think you have a tremendous responsibility when you sit down with the president of the united

00:04:27.620 states probably the ultimate newsmaker to ask questions that are of interest to your news

00:04:32.360 organization but also to others right and then finally i think a transcript uh allows you to stand

00:04:38.300 behind the edit that you either post online or that you broadcast right because then the public can see

00:04:45.060 the sections of the interview that you you know condensed or you made edits for clarification right so i know

00:04:53.000 that in um i haven't thought about this enough but i know that in 2015 or 2016 the new york times

00:04:59.480 editorial board sat down with trump and they released a full apparently unedited transcript which was

00:05:05.680 chaotic his speaking style tends to be a little discursive um that's a great word discursive yeah it is

00:05:12.040 non-linear um but you know that's that's well known uh i think he's much better on camera than he is

00:05:19.100 you know in transcripts but but whatever you think of it that they put that out there

00:05:23.160 i don't remember in the last four years any news organization interviewed biden and there have been

00:05:28.340 some releasing a transcript of the interview do you i you know i i don't i can't recall but i don't really

00:05:35.020 i haven't gone back and looked at all of them but so like what would be the so i guess what bothers

00:05:39.640 me is that everyone acts like this is a shock it was not a shock to me i have no special

00:05:46.120 knowledge i'm quite some special knowledge but i which i revealed immediately but it was like

00:05:50.700 super obvious every time i saw him there's something wrong with that guy how could the

00:05:55.160 journalists be shocked well why don't they just release immediately well they could that's that's

00:06:00.320 what i think makes a lot of sense right now to do that that's ultimately up to them but i think it

00:06:05.860 just goes to transparency i think it goes to informing the public discussion right now about the

00:06:11.660 president's fitness for office and to seek re-election and i think it's also about standing

00:06:16.180 behind your work right like you decided to make edits in the process um for for clarity for time

00:06:23.920 you know whatever the issue is and so you can really you can really stand behind that i think

00:06:28.440 that's that's important but so again you were in this business for so long and me too and at a time

00:06:35.280 you know pre-internet pre-streaming where you have a very small chunk of time three five six

00:06:41.580 minutes for the long ones and then you just can't use the rest but now news organizations should just

00:06:48.260 put the whole thing i mean that's what we do i do this interview is not edited in any way

00:06:52.600 and if you know we'll just let viewers decide what they think of katherine harris or me or whatever

00:06:58.200 you know but so what would be the excuse that say nbc or cbs or abc or fox or anybody would have

00:07:07.620 to not put the full thing online now i mean i can't speak to what their rationale would be i just

00:07:13.240 don't in my case i felt it was important to to release a transcript to allow people to see the

00:07:17.820 work and to also i mean it's hard to look at your own transcript because you you look at it and you

00:07:23.080 say oh that question could have been more focused or i should have followed up more or i missed that

00:07:28.580 little piece of news i should have drilled down a little further or i interrupted there when i really

00:07:33.080 shouldn't have i mean it's really kind of warts and all process that you're looking at but it's

00:07:37.280 it's about sort of the raw integrity of the interview you know when you make edits in an

00:07:42.680 interview you do it for clarity sometimes you do it because you have to condense things because you

00:07:48.200 only have a certain amount of time on a broadcast but it's a real fine line and a balancing act and you

00:07:54.940 don't want you know seeking clarity and brevity or condensing it to cross the line into you know a

00:08:02.600 clean up on aisle seven well that's what it feels like though it does feel like

00:08:06.640 you know i don't want to be too judgy i was telling you at breakfast this morning i edited something out

00:08:11.780 of an interview once with somebody i can't remember ever doing that before since but and i would not

00:08:17.040 do that now but several years ago someone said something so bizarre in an interview that i didn't

00:08:21.380 want to follow up on it because i didn't want to i mean what the hell are you even talking about

00:08:24.920 and so i asked the editors to take that out just because i didn't think it was relevant to the

00:08:29.780 conversation it was weird um so whatever i did that i'll say that i did that but if you're

00:08:37.280 interviewing someone and he seems like bizarre through the whole interview and you find yourself

00:08:42.160 trying to cover that up then maybe you're a liar do you think well i think the i think the instinct

00:08:49.560 when you sit down with the president of the united states is this is your president you want them to

00:08:53.460 look their best i mean i understand i understand that but if there were indicators and i don't know

00:08:58.740 there were but if there were indicators that he was in decline or he was really struggling to answer

00:09:03.940 a series of questions i mean that's news right i mean that's a news headline well and the opposite

00:09:09.800 of news is of course you know censorship and deception so if you're hiding that then you're

00:09:16.160 committing well a moral crime but you're also committing an offense against the profession that you

00:09:19.900 chose whose purpose is to inform the public of what reality is right and you're hiding things rather

00:09:26.280 than exposing them and that i mean that that's pretty clear violation isn't it yeah i again i think

00:09:31.980 it's an opportunity to build the data set to better understand what's happened over the last couple of

00:09:37.340 years and you know really apply that investigative lens you know i find it so hard to take off my like

00:09:42.160 investigative reporter but that's that's sort of how i see it right now i'm curious i'm genuinely

00:09:47.240 curious to see what those transcripts may reflect well in 2016 um you know nbc went and back into its

00:09:57.860 archives and found an outtake of donald trump saying something vulgar to billy bush the host

00:10:03.940 about women and grabbing them and all this stuff and then they leaked it to david fahrenheit i think

00:10:10.140 i'm remembering this correctly i can't remember that exactly but it came out if i said if i've gotten

00:10:13.980 that wrong pardon me but they leaked it to washington post reporter who had been a college friend of

00:10:18.720 an nbc executive and then it became this huge thing that you know almost derailed trump's campaign

00:10:25.340 and that's why they did it of course so there's precedent for showing us the outtakes

00:10:31.040 do they have an excuse not to show it to the biden outtakes i mean i i can't really speak for them i'm

00:10:37.380 sorry to sort of be a little evasive about that i just i just would advocate for it i think that

00:10:41.260 it's an issue of such import to the country and it really informs the discussion and the discourse

00:10:47.240 surrounding this this issue and it goes to accountability with the white house was it

00:10:52.240 really a bad night or was was there a broader trend that had been developing yeah i mean i'm i feel

00:10:59.360 totally qualified to pass judgment on that over to you well i knew the guy that's not biden like

00:11:07.160 that's not the guy i remember who and i mean this i always i never agreed with him but i'm a shallow

00:11:13.320 person so is he so i always kind of liked him because he's throw you know irish guy throw his

00:11:18.800 arm around you how you doing buddy you know rub your chest maybe sniff maybe sniffed me i don't care

00:11:24.020 i like sniffing um and that's just not the guy on tv at all like at all i mean if i was a conspiracy

00:11:32.480 not i would think he was a body double because it's that different so anyway all right in your

00:11:38.220 long and varied career working in a bunch of different big media the biggest media outlets

00:11:42.460 in the country um did you see people's political or social agendas shape news coverage a lot

00:11:49.900 i i the short answer is is is yes um i think it's difficult for people to step back and

00:11:58.160 do what i like to say i do is which is balls and strikes right people have their own personal

00:12:04.740 lens through which they see stories uh but i think you have to really park that at the front door

00:12:09.760 when you go to work because i think that's when you have the most transparent credible authentic

00:12:14.800 journalism i agree with that do you feel like the composition of newsrooms has changed from when you

00:12:20.800 started in the business it feels like there was a greater like actual diversity of life experience

00:12:26.620 back then 30 years ago hard to say i started my career at abc in london yeah and that was uh an

00:12:33.720 extremely rarefied atmosphere yes that's right these are very very experienced people a lot of the

00:12:38.720 correspondents came out of vietnam yes you know very very deep experience and i was very fortunate to

00:12:43.260 learn in that environment i haven't this is when jennings was still a force there jennings had just

00:12:48.600 left london by the time i had arrived and um i i wanted to be a foreign correspondent you know

00:12:56.280 when you're that young you have ideas like i just like it looks so exciting to me totally and some of

00:13:01.900 the correspondents in the office really took me under their wing and taught me how to write a story

00:13:06.500 by looking at the interviews the strongest elements of the interview the sound bites and then

00:13:11.700 they trained me to really sit down and look at the video and identify the strongest video and then

00:13:16.420 the natural sound which really can be such an important technique not sound that's right when you're

00:13:21.900 editing a piece together because it's really like this mosaic the strongest sound the best video

00:13:26.440 and the natural sound so this was a really rarefied environment have i been in a newsroom like that

00:13:32.640 since i don't think so what was the difference was smarter more serious i i just felt with with that

00:13:41.200 cohort of reporters they're just it was all about accountability journalism i mean to me if that's

00:13:47.320 part of my dna it's it's what does that mean accountability journalism is when you're you're

00:13:52.420 curious and you seek the facts and then you try and figure out where the buck stops right and it's

00:13:59.100 not a question of well it's this party or that party it's whatever entity is responsible right and

00:14:05.240 accountability journalism is you know like they say speaking truth to power on both sides of

00:14:10.080 of the aisle to power is the key though i mean accountability doesn't necessarily mean

00:14:14.700 you know hassling poor rural whites with diabetes you know the weakest most despised people in our

00:14:19.860 society it means like you know asking questions about black rock and the national security council

00:14:25.740 and the people who actually have all the power it it felt to me 30 years ago like that was

00:14:31.080 implied like everyone sort of thought that your job was to hold the powerful accountable not the

00:14:36.080 weakest i still feel that way i do too yeah we have that in common

00:14:40.760 um did you see that change um boy you know i i used to say to people that um you know technology

00:14:50.600 was supposed to really improve our ability to do journalism but i sometimes felt that the

00:14:55.540 technology has never been better but the reporting's never been worse and and i don't

00:15:00.100 know why that is except is there a connection i've never thought of i think sometimes what we're

00:15:04.440 missing is that boots on the ground person to person contact in reporting um years ago when i did a

00:15:12.560 journalism degree at columbia i had this professor dick blood that was his name dick blood and he was

00:15:19.100 sort of a legend in new york city newsrooms and he used to always say to me detail matters in good

00:15:24.380 reporting you know if you go to a crime scene you want to count how many bullet holes there are on the

00:15:28.760 windshield so i think there's that kind of on the ground sort of real traditional investigative

00:15:34.020 feel sometimes that's that's missing in that person-to-person contact yes well i agree with

00:15:39.920 that i remember going to a murder scene and looking down there was blood all over my shoes

00:15:44.380 i didn't put that in the story but i remember thinking wow you know that actually is shoe leather

00:15:49.380 reporting you get a real sense of things when you can smell them you know when you think back to

00:15:54.500 major events i i was in new york on 9 11 and um we were down near um the world trade center in the

00:16:03.940 days right afterwards and i i saw someone who was collecting um ash off the top of the cars and at

00:16:10.000 that point we'd realized that all of the abandoned cars in downtown manhattan belonged to people who

00:16:14.560 had been killed in the towers and i stopped this woman and i asked her what she was doing and she

00:16:19.380 said my sister was wasn't uh the the windows on the world at the top of the world trade center

00:16:25.440 she didn't survive and i want to have something to bury for my family so the ash is what i'm

00:16:31.600 collecting and that was the moment that i realized that so much of the ash that was spread around the

00:16:36.580 city was really people people and the buildings and that kind of tactile feel to the reporting

00:16:43.540 is the kind of reporting that really impacts people and stays and stays with them and i don't

00:16:49.280 know whether it's the technology or whether it's sort of the immediacy of all these deadlines but the

00:16:54.380 ability to do that um is much harder now than it used to be no i and i think that's really smart and

00:17:02.060 technology gives you the illusion that all the information is on google or a text away when actually

00:17:08.600 talking to people makes all the difference huh so one phenomenon that i noticed or that i actually

00:17:16.560 didn't notice until i was in middle age but came you're in middle age i mean well that's what they

00:17:22.140 claim okay actually way past middle age i'm not going to live to i'm not good at math 110 so i guess

00:17:29.040 i'm in late life now um but there are beat reporters people who've you know covering federal agencies

00:17:37.560 particularly in washington who become captive to those agencies to their sources you know not in

00:17:44.540 a literal sense are not held in the basement in chains but they're i mean they are sort of puppets

00:17:48.820 of the people they cover like i really noticed that i'm thinking of one specific person i'm not going

00:17:55.340 to name but i would just say a female national security reporter in washington who and i would watch

00:17:59.420 these you know stories come out i'd be like that well that that's a lie you know it's a lie and you're

00:18:05.100 doing it on behalf of the people who feed you these lies have you seen a lot of that i think that the

00:18:10.940 danger is that people become sort of so friendly with the the press offices that work in in these

00:18:17.260 big um agencies that they they find it hard over time to really challenge them that was never a

00:18:24.140 problem for you i noticed i should say we work together for people who don't know gather marriage

00:18:29.840 one thing i've always loved about you i don't even know who you vote for and i mean that

00:18:32.920 but i did notice that a lot of the flax didn't like you so i always thought that was a good sign

00:18:37.620 you want to you want to have the ability to really operate outside the ring i used i used to say that

00:18:42.620 um one of the advantages to doing reporting as long as i've done it is that you start to build a

00:18:48.380 network of contacts so that that's really where your your stories are coming from right and that

00:18:52.760 the public affairs office and a major government entity is really the last stop for you right that's

00:18:57.740 where you're trying to get some response and i really believe in in giving these offices ample

00:19:02.640 time to respond i did a story recently where we engaged with uh the department of the army and the

00:19:08.100 national guard for two weeks i mean we really gave them time because we wanted to understand

00:19:12.900 their position and what had happened in a particular case um but sometimes the danger is that people

00:19:18.380 become too close that's why i think it makes sense in in some cases to really rotate reporters

00:19:23.440 so that you don't spend so long on a certain beat that you start to lose your contacts of outside of

00:19:29.060 that circle that's exactly or you become a tool of of lies which some uh pentagon reporters have

00:19:36.880 become i would say one in particular but what's the mechanism for for pulling that person back and

00:19:42.300 putting that person on another beat or for fixing that i can i i listen i've never been a manager but

00:19:48.460 it just seems to me um when i worked overseas i saw this with some of the british news

00:19:52.700 organizations um that they would rotate people into the united states for a few years and then

00:19:58.800 they would take them back to britain so they would be there through an election cycle that say they'd be

00:20:03.360 there long enough to build contacts and then they would go back overseas and someone else would come

00:20:07.320 in so you'd have a fresh set of eyes and ears yes on and i think that that makes a lot of sense

00:20:12.200 it can be a little frustrating for a reporter because on some beats it takes you a decade or more to

00:20:17.060 really start to build the contacts and the reputation with individuals um but i do think

00:20:22.920 that you have to check yourself you have to ask yourself um am i really checking it out to the

00:20:29.120 degree um that i need to be as professor blood would say just because your mother says she loves you

00:20:34.060 doesn't mean you should not check it out that's right that's right i learned that firsthand yeah

00:20:38.700 that's a that's a different conversation i'm totally kidding that's so dark but it is funny

00:20:44.540 so if you're paying any attention at all to what's going on in the world you probably asked yourself

00:20:49.640 what would i do not just for myself but for the people who love me and i'm responsible for my family

00:20:54.040 what would i do if things really went south either for a short period or a longer period if there was

00:20:58.820 an emergency how would i respond of course you need food and water you need security some way to

00:21:03.780 protect yourself and your loved ones you probably have taken care of all of that

00:21:07.140 but one problem you may not have addressed is what do you do about medicine if there's a medical

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00:22:48.340 tucker says it best the credit card companies are ripping americans off and enough is enough

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00:23:58.700 i wonder since you spent you know you're at abc fox news cbs um you just left cbs pretty recently

00:24:09.160 the spring maybe february okay um like you spent your whole life and i have to at these huge news

00:24:16.900 organizations at and toward the end you know independent journalism digital journalism is on the

00:24:23.940 rise like what was the view of that from inside the big news organization well i think within uh big

00:24:29.840 corporate media uh there was still a sense that they were sort of the the final word on things

00:24:36.140 really yeah or you know sort of maybe it's not the best phrase gatekeepers um for information but

00:24:42.300 after i lost my job in february i took a couple of months to really educate myself about the marketplace

00:24:48.360 and i was surprised at how much the media landscape had really changed just crazy that you wouldn't know

00:24:54.140 that i didn't know it either i mean i'm not criticizing you i mean i but isn't it weird that

00:24:58.140 you can work i'm in the news business but you really don't know what the news business is i think

00:25:02.260 you're very focused on what you're doing day to day and you're not sort of looking at the bigger

00:25:06.020 picture but i took some time to to try and understand how the landscape had really shifted and i was

00:25:12.040 surprised at how much it had really evolved in the four and a half years that i was at cbs news

00:25:16.700 and i say this as someone who spent my entire career working with big corporations and i was and

00:25:24.860 i was grateful for those jobs i don't want to minimize that but what i see now is that those

00:25:30.920 entities are really shrinking and contracting and the audiences are getting older and the real explosive

00:25:38.220 growth is with smaller independent operations and smaller independent newsrooms

00:25:45.040 why do you think that is though i mean if you're someone like matt taibbi who also worked you know

00:25:52.560 for rolling stone you know big work for a big company but then went out completely on his own he

00:25:57.240 is a sub stack and then he creates his own news organization but it's just one guy and if you look at

00:26:03.960 his growth and revenue it's so much higher than like people with the backing of these huge corporations

00:26:11.860 like why how could matt taibbi get a bigger audience than nor o'donnell or whoever's hosting

00:26:18.900 these shows i don't even know who's hosting them anymore but like how did that happen i think i think

00:26:22.760 the public is really hungry for credible reliable information so i don't think it's more uh complicated

00:26:30.140 i agree with you than that and i'm not here to sort of take shots at my old employers but i i just that's

00:26:35.300 what i came away from but what's so interesting is like if you have like if you're you know general

00:26:41.540 motors and you have a sort of monopoly on your on your area and all of a sudden some guy starts

00:26:48.360 building cars in his garage and like they're more popular than you it's kind of an indictment of you

00:26:55.020 isn't it i think the speed at which things have have evolved has really surprised people i mean

00:27:02.280 when you start to look at the i think we're at an inflection point for sure you start to look at

00:27:06.820 um the numbers you know for example you did some interviews that related to the biden investigation

00:27:12.020 and these were you know 90 million views or you know sometimes higher but these are these are big

00:27:18.020 numbers and when you compare that to what an evening news broadcast is you know 4 million 7 million 6

00:27:24.640 million i mean you're just reaching a broader larger global audience yes and i would argue and i

00:27:32.180 don't have the benefit of all the data but it's also a younger audience and it may be an audience

00:27:36.980 that's really engaged in gathering information because if they're on these platforms they're

00:27:42.660 checking multiple times a day for for headlines for new video for new content so these are real

00:27:49.300 voracious consumers of information i think that's all absolutely true but it leaves that answer the

00:27:57.580 question how did this happen how did you know penniless upstarts beat you know the entrenched

00:28:03.020 monopolies and i just know in my own life the only moments of growth that have ever occurred for me

00:28:08.840 the pivot points of my life have all been those moments from like wow i really suck

00:28:12.920 like i really made bad no for real you know i drink too much or i got caught lying or i'm just kind

00:28:19.580 of a rotten person i have to change and i got fired once for basically i was just lazy and not

00:28:25.460 taking my job seriously i stopped being lazy i started taking my job you know it's like really

00:28:29.560 important to realize how much you suck well there's a forcing function yes that's what it is long-winded

00:28:36.080 question do you see that process playing out at in corporate media i can i can speak for myself

00:28:41.840 right now if uh you know i lost my job in february um you just lost it like you forgot where you put

00:28:48.340 it no i i didn't actually lose my job i i had a few drinks and lost my job along with my car keys

00:28:56.620 myself looking around for it um you know my job was terminated that was a very public thing

00:29:01.840 i'm not i was fired too um i lost my company health insurance that was a very big deal for us because we

00:29:09.900 have a son who's a transplant patient he's a chronic medical condition and then i had my record seized

00:29:15.400 by my employer which was a red line i thought should never have been crossed and then i was

00:29:21.400 held in contempt of court so february was a very very big month for me um but i made a decision once

00:29:27.900 i'd educated myself about the marketplace which i would never have done if there hadn't been that

00:29:32.140 forcing function that for now i was going to go independent i'd had some opportunities from

00:29:38.140 generous opportunities to sort of go back to a large corporate media outlet but i decided that i would

00:29:45.060 go independent and i would tell the stories that i couldn't tell before because i was at a point in

00:29:49.800 my career where i had built up a network of contacts and i felt now is the time if it's not now then then

00:29:58.960 when amen i couldn't agree more so since you um brought up and i'm and i'm sorry i didn't mean to

00:30:04.000 make fun i know it's it is traumatic to have your life turned upside down in a day um i just think

00:30:09.460 you're going to be so much happier uh but let's talk about that like so you get hired you were at

00:30:15.600 fox news where we work together and i really enjoyed that thank you i enjoyed it too i thought

00:30:21.120 you were really you're very well behaved honest i felt like i was a good moderating influence

00:30:26.400 when we sat down together i loved it but then you left and went um to cbs news which is a you know

00:30:33.780 a huge channel with a storied past in decline in decline this is my assessment because they

00:30:39.480 weren't doing what they're supposed to do which is like tell you interesting stuff that you didn't

00:30:42.920 know and be honest and brave you are honest and brave and you specialize in interesting stories

00:30:47.880 so i thought wow this is so this is great i mean cbs a little smarter than i thought they were

00:30:52.320 and you did break a bunch of stories and you were the most memorable person on their air the one doing

00:30:58.160 the fiercest journalism this is again my assessment and then they have cutbacks because their business

00:31:03.940 is failing and they fire you i'm like wait what did you see that coming uh i didn't see it coming

00:31:12.380 yeah i didn't um it wasn't a performance issue i i'm so proud of the work that we did there

00:31:19.020 especially the work with veterans i mean we really helped be a catalyst for legislation that impacted

00:31:25.520 a million veterans and civilians for for the better yes i mean i feel very proud of that um

00:31:31.760 but uh that's that's their choice uh whether i work there or not it's not my company of course but

00:31:38.060 the the seizing of the records was uh a terrible red line if you don't mind i know this has been

00:31:45.580 written about but i just want to get a record on video of what exactly happened so how how did this

00:31:50.840 unfold like what kind of warning did you have and what happened well i testified to

00:31:55.360 congress uh about this as well um i was uh laid off laid off on a zoom call i was told my job was

00:32:02.240 terminated and explain why uh no not beyond saying that they were they were making cuts and um i was

00:32:11.240 locked out of my email and locked out of the office and um a couple of days later a courier came to the

00:32:18.420 house with just a couple of boxes of clothing and um some books and you know a few awards and i said

00:32:25.620 where are all my investigative files and my research and my reporting notes and she said you're just going

00:32:31.320 to have to talk to human resources about that and i got the union involved sag after i'm not going to go

00:32:37.860 into all the details but there was a very vigorous back and forth about returning the records um what were

00:32:44.640 the records like interview notes um you know what i would say is that there were interview notes uh

00:32:50.100 research reporter notes contact information and um when i had left other major organizations abc and fox

00:32:58.400 um it was completely different um there was an understanding that you would go through your

00:33:03.160 materials you would take with you what was essentially your reporting materials and you would leave

00:33:07.660 what belonged to the company and i knew from people at cbs that that what was happening to me was not

00:33:12.800 standard uh one person in particular said that uh when their office was cleaned out they put in

00:33:18.680 dirty coffee cups and post-it notes i mean everything came back to them yeah um i think if the union

00:33:24.640 hadn't gotten involved and there hadn't been a public outcry i would never have seen those records again

00:33:29.580 the union really stood up for journalism and i i testified that when the network of walter

00:33:35.480 cronkite seizes your reporting information and including confidential source information it's an attack

00:33:41.020 on investigative journalism and i heard from contacts that i've worked with over the years

00:33:46.760 um who helped me to expose government wrongdoing and corruption that they were very concerned that

00:33:53.040 they would be identified so you i mean again i i doubt you will agree with this i don't know what

00:33:59.940 you really think but from my perspective super obvious they're taking you out before the election

00:34:03.900 because you're reporting on hunter biden's laptop and that was that's my take on it i was shocked that

00:34:09.340 they fired you then when i reflected for a moment i was not shocked at all you know they took out the

00:34:15.120 drudge report before the 2020 election they you know whatever lots of people who are in the way

00:34:21.280 have been taken out before elections so um what you know do you think there were do you think your

00:34:27.560 notes were um did they go through your notes during the time they had them i really can't answer that

00:34:33.860 because you don't know or i just don't want to really answer that okay well i think that's okay

00:34:38.580 no of course i think yeah i think people can draw their own conclusions um tell us about the reporting

00:34:43.600 you did publicly they said they haven't but um anyway i'll leave it at that yeah we'll be kind of

00:34:50.060 tempting to go through your interview notes i'd like to i mean why would they seize your personal

00:34:56.520 report uh reporting product you know it was a very sad episode for me just professionally and

00:35:03.500 personally because i thought that we had done some really tremendous work um on not only uh the the

00:35:10.540 laptop um but also um the irs whistleblowers i mean this was a major story for cbs news i

00:35:17.840 did an interview along with one of my colleagues and i think that really changed the public discussion

00:35:22.620 of the hunter biden investigation and this question of whether there was a double standard applied in that

00:35:27.600 so for those of us who missed the cbs report tell us what the the tax investigation into hunter biden

00:35:35.240 so hunter biden in the end got convicted of a completely ridiculous gun this is my personal editorializing

00:35:42.140 but a ridiculous gun charge like who cares actually um but there are other potential crimes

00:35:48.860 tell us about the tax well you have to say i would think about the hunter biden case as having

00:35:53.320 two buckets the first was the gun charges and then the second is this tax case i've always felt the

00:35:58.540 tax case is a much more serious case and has the greatest legal jeopardy for himself and members of

00:36:04.460 his of his family um it i'd encourage people just to look at the indictment which is in california and

00:36:11.000 it's uh my memory is that it's on the first page or the second page they refer to him as a lobbyist

00:36:16.060 and that to me is an indicator that the special counsel is exploring whether there were violations of

00:36:21.920 pharaoh which is the foreign agents registration act and that in simple terms means that if you're

00:36:26.900 working on behalf of the interests of a foreign government you need to be clear with the u.s

00:36:31.460 government to register that's right um and seated throughout that document is information about

00:36:37.780 his businesses with ukraine with china with with others so to me it leaves the door open to a

00:36:45.320 superseding indictment i'm not saying that's going to happen but it certainly to me was an indicator

00:36:49.500 or a flag that that was possible so um but the tax charges specifically what what do they amount to

00:36:56.860 um these are felony tax charges um they're pretty significant and a tax case the challenge for any

00:37:03.580 defendant is that these are paper driven cases they're not really witness driven cases um what did

00:37:08.540 you attest to when you sign the forms um what did your accountant attest to and um i think one of the

00:37:15.960 important elements in the cases how much of this happened after he was sober right because there's

00:37:24.200 a whole window with the taxes where he's really a heavy user and drug addict but as he told the

00:37:30.420 delaware court last year when the plea deal fell apart there was a period of time where he became clean

00:37:35.960 so how many of these alleged bad acts happened during that period versus when he was an addict

00:37:40.600 and that's relevant because sober people have no excuse well it just goes to your state of mind

00:37:48.440 right i think i think a jury mistakes yeah i think i think any jury wants to understand someone who's

00:37:54.480 come through addiction um they they want to understand that they're they're sympathetic to

00:37:59.380 that because that's like a daily challenge for individuals and i think that knowing when they were

00:38:04.620 able to get themselves clean i think helps inform um their view on the evidence and what actions

00:38:10.440 i think that's i think that's right so what's the status of those charges uh uh last i haven't

00:38:15.960 been following it as closely um but in the fall i think that goes to trial it was just kind of

00:38:21.380 interesting i mean this is relevant now and i don't think it's often referred to in daily reporting on

00:38:26.420 what joe biden is going through right now so 10 days ago ish there was the debate people were shocked

00:38:33.240 democratic donors appear shocked some i talked to one of them who really was shocked didn't know

00:38:38.300 that biden was impaired and there was a push pretty sizable push for members of congress for biden to

00:38:43.980 step aside and he's now issued this letter which seems to me is written by his son hunter saying i'm

00:38:50.540 staying in and hunter it's been reported widely is in the white house he's his father's chief advisor

00:38:56.160 on this and you're sort of wondering like what is this and you're saying well hunter biden is facing

00:39:00.680 this trial yeah it's probably better to have your dad be president when you you know i i really can't

00:39:07.980 right no but i'm just saying you don't have to connect those dots um but that's not an irrelevant

00:39:14.040 fact that he's facing these charges no it's not it's not it's not an irrelevant fact and i i i guess

00:39:21.580 what has my attention is that over the last couple of years there has been such an effort by the white

00:39:26.660 house to distance the president from his son especially in terms of business affairs yes right

00:39:32.160 but now they're they're really sort of joined joined at the hip apparently i don't know that

00:39:36.160 independently but you know they're very they just um did their relationship really suddenly change in

00:39:41.600 that moment or not or maybe it's always been like that i don't know the answer to that most of us well

00:39:46.860 actually all of us go through our daily lives using all sorts of quote free technology without paying

00:39:52.920 attention to why it's quote free who's paying for this and how think about it from it think about

00:39:59.220 your free email account the free messenger system used to chat with your friends the free other

00:40:05.120 weather app or game app you open up and never think about it's all free but is it no it's not free

00:40:12.840 these companies aren't developing expensive products and just giving them to you because they

00:40:17.760 love you they're doing it because their programs take all your information they hoover up your data

00:40:23.860 private personal data and sell it to data brokers and the government and all of those people who are

00:40:31.420 not your friends are very interested in manipulating you and your personal political and financial

00:40:36.980 decisions it's scary as hell and it's happening out in the open without anybody saying anything about it

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00:42:29.060 the greeks invented philosophy so if you like philosophy you're greek if you've ever taken a

00:42:39.180 philosophy class you're greek if you've ever skipped a philosophy class then failed that philosophy class

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00:43:04.080 well my impression knowing hunter biden pretty well as i did um i think he was always close to his dad

00:43:12.700 he revered his father i know there's a difference um to being close and then being in business with

00:43:17.300 somebody of course there is i revere my dad not in business with him um but i do think it's i know

00:43:22.480 for a fact that he was always close to his dad always loved his dad um it's one of the things i

00:43:27.840 liked about him actually uh but you know it's all these are very different circumstances from when i

00:43:34.340 knew him and so he's facing and you know these are charges that carry potentially jail time correct

00:43:39.860 yes the gun and the taxes the gun right um interesting so why do you think there's been

00:43:49.420 that seems like kind of a big deal it doesn't seem like there's been a you reported on it but there

00:43:53.260 hasn't been a ton of reporting on that um um i guess what i would say is that um i felt very proud

00:44:02.840 at cbs news of the of the of the investigative journalism that we did whether it was with the

00:44:07.700 whistleblowers or whether it was um with a laptop and i went to a lot of effort to get um data from

00:44:15.240 that laptop which had a very clean chain of custody yeah uh that um i learned through my reporting was

00:44:21.900 mirrored what was given to the fbi and i felt that was important to understand the integrity of of the

00:44:27.900 data um given that that laptop had been described by a bunch of retired intel officials as russian

00:44:36.540 proper as fake right and we went to a lot of effort to um have it um forensically analyzed

00:44:43.920 by a very reputable group and a group that was um with sort of no political attachments that was

00:44:50.900 outside the beltway a group out um out west and really a stand-up group great group they did a

00:44:58.140 terrific forensic scrub of it and and they concluded that there nothing had been altered or changed on the

00:45:04.440 of the copy of the data that we had um other journalists uh got their data through third

00:45:10.480 parties and i think that that probably contaminated the data in some way but i felt extremely confident

00:45:16.140 um about our data i um i guess what i would we did that story in uh late 2022 and you know my

00:45:25.460 reputation is for moving quickly and efficiently through complex investigations um the idea that

00:45:32.660 it took me two years to authenticate that data is just not believable what does that mean uh i i think

00:45:41.800 that um and i i want to be respectful of my former employer i think that there was an opportunity to lead

00:45:48.960 earlier on that story i guess i would leave it at that well i authenticated it day one because there

00:45:53.920 was emails from me on there and no one knew i knew hunter biden so i knew it was real because no one

00:45:59.420 would ever do you know no one would ever fake all your typos also like i i had lived near hunter

00:46:05.380 biden that's how i knew him and so um just live in washington as you did so it's not that weird if

00:46:12.560 you live in washington it's like a small city everyone knows everybody else but i knew that nobody

00:46:16.240 knew that i knew hunter biden so like if you're assembling a fake laptop you wouldn't put emails from

00:46:20.160 like the fox news host on there because that's too weird so i instantly knew it was real and um

00:46:25.800 i'm just a little bit surprised

00:46:29.360 that it took you that long so you're saying it didn't actually take you that long there were

00:46:35.980 roadblocks i just think my reputation is for moving quickly and officially through complex

00:46:40.460 investigation um yeah did so but it took two two years for that story to make air and i'm glad it did

00:46:48.600 yeah because i think it really changed the conversation for sure um interesting did you feel

00:46:57.060 could you feel it at the company that like people didn't want you to do this

00:47:01.140 you know i i've always tried to be respectful of my former employers and i testified to congress that

00:47:08.840 i mean there was tension over uh the biden reporting

00:47:12.820 especially when i sort of turned my lens on to president biden oh i didn't like that huh

00:47:18.900 i'm sorry that's it's i'll say it you don't need to i'm not even speaking of cbs

00:47:26.200 specifically it's so corrupt i mean it's just absolutely ridiculous because it's not a reporter's

00:47:31.100 job to cover for a politician right i'm just checking well i you know i i like to think that i call

00:47:37.060 balls and strikes people like to talk about the hunter biden reporting at cbs but i was also the

00:47:42.860 reporter who obtained the audio tape of president trump apparently bragging about these iran documents

00:47:48.220 at mar-a-lago right but they don't talk about that well you should i mean you should but i'm just saying

00:47:53.580 you know i'm kind of equal opportunity when it comes to the accountability were there any well i know

00:47:59.020 that which is i'm what i'm saying is that your supervisors whoever they were and you're being very

00:48:04.360 polite i would say um but they should have the same fair-minded attitude and you know allow

00:48:11.300 reporters to tell the truth period no matter who it's about i think don't you i think that's what

00:48:17.000 the public's looking for and because they're not delivering that matt taibbi is more influential in

00:48:22.280 cbs news that's all i'm saying like it finds its own level people need credible information they need

00:48:27.720 to there's such a hunger for it yes that's that's uh we just uh did our first investigation

00:48:33.540 on x and we looked at uh the defense department specifically the army and the national guards

00:48:39.940 failure to look after a soldier who had a debilitating heart condition that they blamed

00:48:45.840 on the covid vaccine this was someone who had no heart issues before they entered the military and

00:48:51.440 we did an independent review of their medical records and the symptoms appeared almost immediately after

00:48:57.380 um being vaccinated and they're really amplified after they had that that second dose and um can you

00:49:04.960 fill out some of the details like how old is this she's 24 years old her name is carolina stancic

00:49:10.840 she was um a soldier in the army national guard and she was on active duty orders when she was diagnosed

00:49:19.040 with this debilitating heart condition called pots which is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome

00:49:24.520 and what it means is that there's kind of a disconnect between the way your heart is working

00:49:28.760 and your blood pressure people can have blackouts puts a lot of stress on your heart and she's had

00:49:34.740 multiple heart attacks she's had a mini stroke at 24 and we sat down with her i just days before she

00:49:41.620 got a pacemaker at 24 and this story um appealed to me for months because she had paperwork um we learned

00:49:52.460 from the army um or rather there was army paperwork that um showed that they conceded over time that

00:50:00.580 um her heart condition was in the line of duty and it was especially important and uh when we launched

00:50:07.120 that investigation i felt along with the team that x was probably the only platform that we could have

00:50:13.040 such an authentic and candid and open conversation about the failure of the u.s military to take care of

00:50:19.700 its people but i just find that crazy i mean i have a 24 year old daughter so it makes me emotional

00:50:24.220 thinking about it but a 25 year old child this girl has a peacemaker because she followed orders

00:50:30.260 so or it seems that's what she says and that's certainly a credible claim given that's happened to

00:50:35.080 a lot of people and everyone knows that so why would x which is not was not designed as really a news

00:50:41.580 platform like why are they the last outlet that would run something like that i just i i didn't really

00:50:47.740 fully appreciate this until i started working independently but we felt that x was the platform

00:50:54.060 where we could really have an open candid conversation and we could put out the records so people could

00:51:00.400 analyze them in fact check them for themselves to understand the issue and make up their own minds

00:51:05.980 as to whether the army and the national guard had really let this soldier down right we just put it

00:51:11.860 all out there for scrutiny and i say this um because what i heard anecdotally from from colleagues is

00:51:20.080 that other platforms um that story even though it was a story about a failure to take care of uh of

00:51:26.520 soldiers um could be de-amplified on other platforms or or or labeled something that but why is nbc news

00:51:34.800 leading with that i mean i thought i can't i can't really answer for those outlets but we both know they

00:51:39.700 would never run that i don't know if they would never run it but i i just felt that it was a

00:51:44.260 completely legitimate story of course it was um it was a story about accountability a failure of the

00:51:51.060 government to look out for its own people um and then in her particular case it took her 19 months

00:51:58.380 to get the acknowledgement that this heart condition was in the line of duty and what that means is that

00:52:03.340 she's eligible for different benefits and and medical care but because there was such a delay

00:52:09.360 to get medical care because there was such a delay to get mental health care she told us at one point

00:52:15.580 she considered suicide 24 and um anyway i we heard from other people who believe that they have similar

00:52:25.900 circumstances and i and i say this with some humility that's what good journalism does

00:52:31.200 well obviously there's no other point to it like what's the point i mean either you're

00:52:36.440 carrying water for people who are paying you to do that which is just the definition of dishonesty

00:52:41.680 or you're doing what you're supposed to do the reason we have first man protections in the first

00:52:45.860 place which is tell the public what their government is doing what the powerful people who

00:52:48.940 control their lives are doing i mean i don't and and to the credit of the army and the national

00:52:54.520 guard we engaged with them over two weeks i felt it was very important to give them a lot of time

00:53:00.100 to respond to the charges because they were such serious charges and they engaged with us um which

00:53:07.040 i thought was a very positive thing because i'm now working independently right i'm not working for a

00:53:12.440 big corporation and it it said to me that they understood sort of the power and the impact of what

00:53:18.360 we were doing you know three million people watch that video or touch that video it's a lot of people

00:53:23.800 and you know global and young people and probably a lot of service members as well so i i want to give

00:53:30.040 them credit for that they they engage they try to answer our questions folks who are watching this can

00:53:35.920 decide whether their answers you know pass the sniff test but that's that's part of what you've got a

00:53:42.580 very generous spirit and you're trying to give people credit where it's due i will say i've always

00:53:47.320 thought just watching you from a distance that one of your main kind of advantages over everybody else

00:53:53.720 is you cared less about you know what the prevailing view of the group was and it didn't bother you to

00:54:03.040 go in a direction that you felt was the right direction or to tell the truth even when it was

00:54:08.100 unpopular why it does it feel to you like a lot of journalists are you know it's a big deal to them

00:54:14.980 what their colleagues think back in the newsroom do you know what i'm saying i guess it it doesn't

00:54:21.320 matter to me as much i can tell i i i don't really have any other sort of um explanation for it i i would

00:54:31.660 say without getting sort of too personal because i'd like to keep the conversation professional

00:54:36.320 well it's just interesting it's like why you i just i just uh if there's anything i hate more it's

00:54:42.660 injustice i hate injustice right when i see it and um i just think throughout my career i've taken on

00:54:49.360 a lot of stories which are about the little guy well they should be fighting the big bureaucracy

00:54:54.440 or the person who says wait a minute it's not you know it's not adding up and um so it's that's

00:55:02.420 really what drives me in the end is that sense of there's injustice and there's an opportunity in

00:55:06.820 the case of this 24 year old i think that we've seen some incremental uh improvements to her

00:55:14.400 situation i hope that her records issue with the military is resolved quickly because at 24 she's

00:55:22.100 really given up everything i mean she's she's given up her health to serve this she and a lot of other

00:55:27.080 people i mean i know somebody died from the facts dead um but it's not the story was the story was not

00:55:34.000 a moratorium on the vaccine right or the mandate the story was always about the alleged failure

00:55:40.440 of the military to take care of its people because that's that's the sacred pledge that you leave no

00:55:46.260 one behind well i agree but i would say that pledge applies to the entire country the government exists

00:55:51.000 only to serve us that's its only it's its only job we pay for it we own it this is a democracy and um

00:55:58.420 so if they're hurting people and don't care and that's the the gravest crime they could commit

00:56:04.080 that's my personal opinion i thought that was everybody's opinion apparently it's not apparently

00:56:08.340 not yeah apparently not right i'm not in the military and i'm never going to be in the military

00:56:12.460 but an american citizen and if my government hurts me i think it's just obvious that they should apologize

00:56:19.980 and try to make it better but um but they don't so you're saying well we've had such a similar

00:56:28.620 experience you like you're in this little world which you think is a much bigger world than it

00:56:32.260 actually is i'll speak for myself and then you get ejected from that world and you're like shocked

00:56:37.920 but then you thank god for it because wow there's fresh air and sunlight and then you look around and you

00:56:42.880 realize that all these smaller organizations or individuals are having like a huge effect and you

00:56:49.100 didn't even know that it's amazing but one and i just love the whole thing but one of the problems is

00:56:55.420 it's pretty easy it's pretty hard to take down like a big news organization because they have like a

00:57:01.640 well-staffed legal department pretty easy to take down an individual with lawfare

00:57:06.200 i mean right this is a concern yeah one of the things i i'd like to talk about is this the press act

00:57:15.860 the press act is a piece of legislation uh that's in the senate right now it passed unanimously

00:57:21.140 um in the house and the press act is a federal shield law for reporters it would allow them to

00:57:28.700 protect confidential sources um and there are just very few exceptions what i would call common sense

00:57:35.720 exceptions for imminent violence or threats to critical infrastructure and i've said that i think the

00:57:44.680 protection of confidential sources is the hill to die on because if if you don't have that ability

00:57:50.740 a credible assurance that you're going to protect your source uh as an investigative reporter your

00:57:56.680 toolbox is empty i mean you really have nothing to offer and you know and others i can't say a lot

00:58:03.540 about it but i'm in the middle of a major case where i was asked to disclose confidential source

00:58:08.800 information i refused to disclose who asked you to disclose it um it was it's part of a privacy act

00:58:15.380 lawsuit um i'm a witness in the case and um so this is a private entity there's a plaintiff uh they're

00:58:23.840 suing uh government agencies including the fbi and they want to understand uh the source of sources

00:58:29.940 for my reporting a series of stories national security stories in 2017 and this is all public so just

00:58:38.020 remind me who's suing um a chinese american uh scientist and she's suing the fbi the justice

00:58:43.660 department defense department i believe homeland security is as well they're like four or five

00:58:47.540 different agencies and um the the plaintiff wants to understand how i got information uh about her and

00:58:55.020 her so you're not being sued no i'm not i'm just a witness it's just the same thing happened to me

00:59:00.080 they grabbed all my text messages uh i was not named in the suit but a judge said i had to divulge

00:59:06.820 so they're trying to violate among other things your privacy but also the they're trying to violate

00:59:13.160 the the protection that we all assumed was real um that confidential sources had

00:59:19.180 look i don't want to let i want to be very careful because i don't want to litigate uh you know the

00:59:25.340 case the case here um but the issue is uh the the forced disclosure of confidential source

00:59:31.860 information and so that means you as a reporter talk to people they tell you stuff on the condition

00:59:38.100 of anonymity i'm not going to tell anybody that we spoke but tell me the truth about what you know

00:59:42.740 correct right and this is something that journalists deal with constantly if you don't have that

00:59:49.960 credible pledge of confidentiality as an investigative journalist you really have very

00:59:54.080 little to offer yeah i've done it like three times today already wow no but that's just that's

00:59:58.880 your life you know you're talking to people constantly about stuff and but everyone knows

01:00:04.060 you're not going to rat them out right the question it's in the appellate court right now in washington

01:00:10.400 and uh the question is when when the need for that information overrides the first amendment

01:00:15.640 and um the reporter's uh privilege um i haven't lost a night's sleep over my decision to protect

01:00:24.860 confidential sources but that doesn't mean i don't feel a tremendous burden and responsibility with

01:00:31.220 this case tell us about the burden well it's it's so much bigger than just my individual case it's it's

01:00:36.880 not just about me it's not about just a single series of stories it's not about one media outlet

01:00:42.120 whatever the courts decide and and i have respect for the legal process and what's unfolding whatever

01:00:48.580 they decide is going to impact every working journalist in the united states and the public

01:00:53.240 yeah and the public and for the next generation and that's why you know the press act is an opportunity

01:00:59.880 to really strengthen press freedom and press protections at a time as as you mentioned that

01:01:07.340 there's this explosion of smaller and independent outlets and they can't you know they can't withstand

01:01:13.080 the legal and financial pressure tell us about the financial pressures like what does that well right

01:01:19.500 well right now um i'm uh facing fines of eight hundred dollars a day for refusing to disclose that has

01:01:26.240 been uh put on hold and i'm grateful for that pending the appeal um in in the court in washington

01:01:33.300 um but then there's the cost of litigating a case like this um this is not an inexpensive thing to do

01:01:39.860 i've been fortunate to have uh fox news which has mounted a very vigorous defense an excellent legal team

01:01:47.060 because you worked at fox at the time that's correct i worked at fox at the time um but not every

01:01:52.760 outlet can afford to do that and so having the press act would prevent them from sort of being sort of

01:02:00.460 legally strangled in the future and and losing that pledge of confidentiality and if you believe

01:02:06.140 as i do that an informed electorate and an engaged um reporting core is fundamental to democracy

01:02:14.000 you're going to want to see this opportunity seized and and really realized if you think the public has

01:02:20.320 a right to know what its government is doing which is kind of the bottom line as far as i'm concerned

01:02:25.000 and i think the public does the public has no idea what the government's doing i can say that factually

01:02:29.160 no clue they should know and um then you need to make sure the mechanisms exist for them to get

01:02:36.380 that information correct i mean yeah it's i i testified to congress about this earlier in the year and

01:02:42.140 um i just feel like we're at an inflection point there's just this incredible shift in the media

01:02:50.360 landscape there's this sort of exciting diverse group of new voices doing some really tremendous

01:02:56.980 journalism so this is the moment to me where you want to offer these kinds of protections

01:03:01.840 for confidential source protection at the federal level so that it's consistent with what existed in

01:03:07.840 almost every state in this country and i think it's an acknowledgement of the role that journalism

01:03:13.820 should play and can play in the democratic process yeah it can't you know if you make it too expensive to

01:03:19.820 tell the truth nobody will and that's kind of a rear i mean you can take people out with lawsuits if

01:03:26.800 you're some well-funded political group particularly on the left they've been doing this at scale you just

01:03:35.000 you shut people up by bankrupting them well one of our kids uh as we were really um wrestling with

01:03:42.900 the subpoena and how that was all going to unfold and there's a certain amount of um you know you

01:03:49.080 can't keep your kids off their phones right so they're seeing sort of some of this play out and

01:03:53.380 one of our sons asked me um mom are you going to go to jail are we going to lose the house are we

01:04:00.680 going to lose everything that you've worked for and i wanted to tell him that in this country where we

01:04:06.460 say we value i could get a little choked up when i think about it but you know in this country where

01:04:10.520 we say we value democracy and we value a vigorous press that it was impossible but i couldn't

01:04:15.800 offer him that assurance and um the best part of the story is how he ended it he said mom

01:04:22.620 do what it takes i've got your back and i thought if a teenager understands the importance of this pledge

01:04:31.040 of confidentiality and understands the importance that journalism plays in a democracy then certainly

01:04:37.920 congress can get this legislation passed right now it's in the senate um chuck schumer has said he

01:04:44.760 would like to get it to the president's desk um this year and i hope there'll be movement before

01:04:50.460 the august recess social media are great they're important they're the main way we communicate with

01:04:55.520 each other they're where politics happen in this country but one of the problems with social media is

01:05:00.360 that the rules change the people in charge don't want you to say something they don't tell you that

01:05:04.880 and the next thing you know you're without a platform well now you have an option parlor it's

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01:07:11.000 who's against it

01:07:25.920 well you know um i think there are some republican members who have hesitations uh about it um what

01:07:35.140 i would say is that well because they hate the media i i can't speak to the their well i hate the

01:07:40.760 media because they're liars so you want to protect the truth tellers i guess that would be my view of

01:07:45.380 it i mean i think the important thing to understand is that this is legislation that would do so much to

01:07:52.020 protect these smaller independent outlets where you have this diversity of voices period on both sides

01:07:58.040 of the aisle left and on the right and it's a moment when we can codify those protections and it's a

01:08:04.140 moment when we can say you know we talk about the importance of the first amendment we talk about the

01:08:08.980 importance of press freedom and now we can actually really do something concrete to protect it yeah

01:08:14.980 i think you're right and i i do think the one thing that we can do is just not obey i mean i was told to

01:08:21.900 give up my text messages i never should have done that i knew i shouldn't have done it i should have

01:08:25.840 just still they're gonna throw you one jail go ahead now come to my house try it and i never should

01:08:30.400 have done that and in a weak moment i did it i i mean clearly you're facing this right now i caved

01:08:36.600 you haven't you haven't bless you but i mean what are you going to do if they if they command you to

01:08:42.720 do it i mean i just have to cross that bridge when when we get to that um in in the meantime um

01:08:50.340 i've been so encouraged by how many media outlets have really filed briefs in support of of our position

01:08:58.380 that they understand that it's a case that's going to impact everyone who's working today

01:09:03.280 and um that's encouraging does it ever strike you how small our world has become i mean so you

01:09:10.760 you work for 30 years or whatever more to become it is more i'm not i i actually know how long it is

01:09:16.680 but i i'm not gonna a long time and you become you know the most arguably famous investigative

01:09:22.980 journalist in the united states i don't know about that well i i would say that's true or certainly

01:09:27.100 your top two or three i mean well you are okay but you it's like you you'd think that every news

01:09:35.820 organization be like oh my gosh katherine harwich is free let's hire her but you're independent on x like

01:09:40.780 what does that say about the landscape it's just it's amazing well it was a personal choice i know that

01:09:46.060 yeah yeah but but really i mean nbc in a normal world would be like hey we don't pay you three million

01:09:52.760 dollars a year to do what you do but they didn't so like is that a little strange i think it's an

01:10:00.580 indicator of how the marketplace has really shifted yeah i i think it's i think that's the biggest

01:10:04.980 indicator to me i didn't really understand how much sort of the earth had moved moved beneath me

01:10:09.560 in the last four and a half years and when you start to look at the numbers you see that um these

01:10:15.680 big corporate out outlets are not uh essentially the the gatekeepers on the information anymore yeah that

01:10:21.640 it's that it's much larger on these on these platforms and i i really believe in my heart

01:10:27.940 that there is a place for investigative journalism on platforms like x and and other platforms people

01:10:33.840 are just hungry for it and that's the investigation we did um it's like as i said about three million

01:10:40.960 people i mean that's a that's a good healthy number do you you don't seem angry though no i don't i

01:10:48.160 don't i don't feel angry really there's not a smoldering ball of rage inside toward your old

01:10:53.980 employers no i i um look if they don't want me to work there they don't want me to work there i know

01:10:59.880 the work was it was not a performance issue i heard from many of my colleagues who were very very sad

01:11:05.640 that i know i heard from them too yeah um but that's but that's not my call uh in the end but the

01:11:12.680 seizing of the records was a completely different thing that was something that i was going to go

01:11:16.360 to the mat because i felt so strongly uh about explain why they stole your stuff well in a letter

01:11:23.460 to congress they argued that they had not seized the materials i think the language they used was that

01:11:29.080 they had tried to secure and protect them um which i left me a little uh speechless um because it was

01:11:39.480 diminishing reporter materials to work product and to say that what had happened was an effort to seize

01:11:47.220 or protect my materials was i mean it just showed that some executives had a very difficult relationship

01:11:54.640 with the facts that's kind of a problem for news executives though right i don't think it's a good

01:12:00.040 place to be to be sitting that's a very restrained way to put it i am restrained but if you have liars

01:12:08.600 in charge of it you know the truth-telling business that's a problem well i'm not saying i'm not saying

01:12:13.680 that i'm just saying that oh i am saying that okay all right i'm saying that i mean that's just a you

01:12:17.740 know i don't know there's certain businesses you sort of expect that you know timeshare sales or

01:12:23.420 whatever use cars but like if your job is to tell the truth and the people in charge are just like

01:12:28.260 live for fun it was fair i said this before it was very sad very very disappointing um to see that

01:12:34.660 see that happen and i heard from people i used to work with and they were really saddened by it as

01:12:39.620 well did any of them say i gotta get the hell out of here i can't work for these people anymore

01:12:42.740 i don't want to go into the conversations but do you feel like people who remain at in corporate

01:12:47.960 media jobs are desperate to get out is that your sense in general i think there's a lot of anxiety

01:12:53.400 yeah i i think people are starting to feel the sort of the earth move beneath them you just have

01:12:59.020 to look at the the ratings and the numbers to understand sort of the the for lack of a better

01:13:05.500 term the old order has has kind of disappeared that's for sure how long can they keep going do

01:13:10.760 you think i don't know actually i think this election cycle will be um pivotal if these town

01:13:16.940 halls go ahead on x i think it's the partnership with news nation i think that the the numbers on

01:13:23.180 those town halls are going to be just mind-blowing in in the true sense of of the word and it's going

01:13:29.140 to be global and uh i forget i think elon musk or uh linda yakarino posted on x what the numbers were

01:13:37.940 with the presidential debate and i mean when you looked at how many people watched it on you know

01:13:43.300 traditional outlets versus the kind of um volume and engagement on on that platform is i mean it

01:13:49.320 was many multiple times larger well the entire political conversation the united states plays out

01:13:55.000 on x period i mean i i can't speak for you know sports entertainment culture i mean there are many

01:14:00.800 different verticals in any civilization but the political conversation takes place on x period

01:14:05.600 does not take place on any tv channel or in any newspaper you think that's fair i do i think it's and i

01:14:11.640 think it's exciting too actually to to see it um a little bit unleashed it's not always pleasant it's

01:14:20.060 not always easy but it's um it's sort of unleashed and evolving and engaging and it's bringing in

01:14:29.140 different points of view and i think that's what civil discourse uh is about did you read it before

01:14:34.840 i did but i i when i was uh when i worked at fox i was i was not on what was uh twitter at that time

01:14:43.060 um and then when i went to cbs i i joined because i thought it would be a good way for people to find

01:14:48.160 me um what role do you think x is playing in the media landscape right now oh wow you're asking me

01:14:57.940 that's a big uh a big question yeah i don't know that i know the answer by the way i from my own

01:15:03.240 experience um when i had an investigation that i thought was a sensitive topic i felt very confident

01:15:10.120 that i could put it on x and there could be a really engaging candid authentic discussion about it

01:15:16.880 and i thought that was important because it seemed to be an undercover issue this is the the soldier

01:15:22.000 story yeah and um i was really grateful for that and i i would commend elon musk in in that way i i

01:15:29.040 kind of understood it and then when i actually went to do it i had a different and sort of larger

01:15:34.240 appreciation for it that people could have that conversation and the the comments that we received

01:15:41.500 were you know this happened to me or can you look into this and i mean it was a very organic

01:15:45.680 thing and i think that you can't look into every case you can't follow up on everything

01:15:50.620 that's for sure um but i think there's something very positive about people sharing their experiences

01:15:56.220 and not feeling so isolated on a subject that's so sensitive and i i think that's a really commendable

01:16:03.300 well yeah and there's no someone who thinks she's sincerely believes she's been injured

01:16:10.320 because she followed an order has nothing to be ashamed of and she does have a right to tell her

01:16:17.980 story in public i i mean the whole thing is so nuts did anyone to prevent a 24 year old girl who

01:16:23.500 thinks she's been injured by following an order from talking in public is just like you're not on

01:16:28.100 the right side if you're preventing that don't you think i think it was the right thing to do i i i first

01:16:34.360 heard about her story last october and it's always been in the back of my mind as a story that should

01:16:39.800 be done and so when i decided to launch the first investigation it just seemed like a natural to me

01:16:46.040 so when i i'm thinking back when i got into this business when i left college in 1991

01:16:53.000 um you've been in it for i think a couple years maybe before no not long but yeah no 87 87 87

01:17:00.620 um so in 1987 you work for abc news in london in the very the starter job of all starter jobs that's

01:17:09.540 crazy yeah it's hard to convey now to younger people the prestige that attached to that job

01:17:13.980 um and you had you know all the all the credentials necessary to get that and he went to harvard and

01:17:21.540 columbia well the joke with my father was did you really go to harvard to make coffee and fax documents

01:17:28.540 and photocopy i said absolutely yeah and i make i i make the i do the best job photocopying and

01:17:35.140 faxing of anyone i know but it's about pride in your work of course but it was such a different

01:17:41.500 world like that was a really rich company then i mean they had like catering and you know executives

01:17:48.480 who first class you go wherever you wanted and i mean do you ever look back on that and think boy

01:17:53.540 that was just such a different time it was i was um uh in touch recently with there was sort of a

01:17:58.920 little core group of us that were starting out at that time between the news desk and um what they

01:18:03.640 called the production control room and there were maybe 12 of us between maybe 22 23 and 27 and um

01:18:13.380 we look back on that period as kind of like a like a golden window in television news the the quality

01:18:20.640 of the correspondence many had come out of vietnam or had come out of washington and then got a foreign

01:18:27.260 assignment the crews were incredibly experienced yeah you know if you had a cameraman take your stand up

01:18:33.080 you know he probably had been in beirut during the barracks bombing and the editors were so

01:18:39.540 experienced i mean you learn so much from from all of them oh i i grew up around that stuff yeah those

01:18:44.140 guys were impressive i mean this was an incredible opportunity for me and very formative yeah and now

01:18:51.980 yeah it's just it's i remember filling out my tax return in 1991 my first job i worked at a gas

01:18:57.960 station on a factory but i never like had a real job and i remember you know occupation journalist i was

01:19:03.900 like i'm a journalist now it's like uh i mean i don't even know what i would put on there if you

01:19:11.720 know i don't know armed robber would be less embarrassing but it was you know it seemed like

01:19:18.880 a pretty honorable profession i guess that's what i'm saying i i you know i i hear what you're saying

01:19:23.500 and you're going to accuse me of being so sort of deferential but i just have always tried to stay

01:19:30.520 focused on my own work like i have to answer to myself that's not deferential that's the opposite

01:19:35.560 of deferential and ask kissy that's like that's integrity i just i just am like is this the story

01:19:40.900 i you know there's stories in front of me which is the one that i should really be doing where can i

01:19:44.640 make the most impact what's the story that hasn't been told that i can actually so that's that's it

01:19:50.100 right there that i agree with you 100 it's like it's not that hard to tell the truth i don't think

01:19:55.620 it's pretty easy actually it's easier than lying what's hard is figuring out what you should be

01:20:00.920 focused on and i think you're really good at that what are the stories that should be told that

01:20:07.340 aren't being covered our our next project is going to look at um the issue of uh immigration and and

01:20:14.360 borders and i don't want to give it all away but um we've got a lot of good data about how uh

01:20:20.940 homeland security is in violation of federal law and regulations on a on a daily basis and creating

01:20:27.520 i think a significant security risk for many american citizens um and i think that that really

01:20:34.260 deserves a deep dive yeah um and it's a story that i can really tell now that might have been hard

01:20:42.040 to tell before so i can't even get um and i have tried like a clear number on how many people

01:20:49.160 have come into this country illegally over the last four years i mean it ranges from 5 million to 30

01:20:54.220 million and i can't and those are all kind of credible estimates and i have no idea which one is

01:20:59.940 correct but why can't we get even a real number on that i i i think the the simple answer may be and i

01:21:06.900 don't know but my my assessment would be that it's just the volume that that we're talking about i

01:21:12.880 think it's the volume so but there's not but to your point i don't think there's great transparency

01:21:19.500 on this issue i hope to bring a little bit more transparency to it um so in your judgment that's a

01:21:28.340 big deal story oh 100 i yeah i and it's not just i'm looking at what the the polling shows about the

01:21:38.280 top issues for american you know american voters in this election cycle i'm asking myself i have

01:21:45.220 information i think they're violations of federal law and federal regulations every day uh at the

01:21:51.160 border i need to find out if that's really if that's really true and if it is true why is it true

01:21:56.140 and who is really losing in that equation is is is the country less safe as a result or or not i don't

01:22:02.980 know the answer to all of that yet but that's that's a very legitimate story to pursue and also how does

01:22:07.480 a bankrupt country which ours is pay for all these services i don't yeah there are many questions i

01:22:12.940 totally agree but so you're focused on the question is the federal government violating its own laws

01:22:18.380 federal employees yes and to the extent that you've reported it out are you closer to

01:22:26.080 an answer uh i i i think based on our reporting so far that it's it really uh tips that way it does

01:22:34.720 appear that way and so my question is where's you know who's been disciplined who's been suspended

01:22:41.020 who's been fired who's been demoted and i'm not sure the answer is really anyone except the people who

01:22:50.440 blew the whistle on it really don't make me give the story away i don't i want to stop you right now

01:22:57.700 like i'm like so shocked i mean you know but i think but that's the kind of uh to me that's the

01:23:02.920 kind of story you want to be doing right i i just think it's um the thing that has always encouraged me

01:23:10.200 about um the the consumers of news in this in this country is that they really understand this idea

01:23:16.700 of accountability they they they want to see it they expect it they demand it and and when you do

01:23:24.000 it i think it can be very gratifying to you know to kind of shine a light it sounds like so old

01:23:30.760 fashioned but to shine a light on an issue that really is worthy of that and is sort of screaming

01:23:35.960 out for coverage how do you i've had many people ask me this over the years but you know one channel

01:23:42.980 will do a story or one newspaper will do a story and then every other outlet will do exactly the

01:23:47.480 same story and sometimes it's like a really boutique story you know it's a story of limited

01:23:53.460 obvious importance but everyone does the same story how do these like who decides that where how does

01:23:58.820 you know where does that come from i mean i mean this comes from the executives or the show producers

01:24:04.500 but have you noticed that you know i don't know how many news organizations are in the united states

01:24:08.940 in a country of 350 million people there they're a lot they all do you know in a given week they do

01:24:15.220 a suite of maybe 20 stories themes you know variations on the right perhaps but but i i mean

01:24:23.440 why you'd think that i really i i wish i could answer that question but you've noticed this right

01:24:28.260 i mean when you look at the rundowns let's say for an evening news broadcast you'll see a lot of

01:24:32.420 the same stories now that may be a function of the fact that they have such limited time

01:24:35.980 to tell the story was it 18 or 19 minutes or 20 for sure or 20 minutes but it's the the topics are

01:24:41.420 the same it's just interesting i'm not suggesting coordination um but i i do think it's a i don't

01:24:48.700 know what it is it's i think it's a conspiracy of like-minded temperament they all are kind of the

01:24:52.800 same people i i just i don't know huh but you'll concede there are a lot of stories that they could

01:24:59.140 be doing that they're not yeah i i think so that's that's the appeal of being independent

01:25:05.160 is that you can tell some of the stories that maybe you couldn't tell before is it weird not

01:25:09.520 to have a boss uh yeah it's a big change after nearly four decades of working um for major media

01:25:18.540 outlets it's a it's a huge change i've had a lot of change in the last four months five months

01:25:23.260 a lot do you miss being scolded um i miss the structure i'm very used to the structure

01:25:33.480 um and uh you know structure that you know has resources that you didn't realize that you needed

01:25:40.540 until you went to do it yourself i'm sure you understand that in there yeah you've been there

01:25:45.200 right um but i i really like working with a small team and as a group deciding what is it that we're

01:25:54.760 going to pursue next and how can we structure this story that it has an impact and what kind of

01:26:00.800 reporting do we need to be doing and at what point do we engage with government agencies and how do we

01:26:08.360 keep moving the story forward after after we do it i i just find that just kind of exhilarating

01:26:15.100 and refreshing all at all at the same time and in a marketplace that's really just exploding where

01:26:23.980 you're setting your own boundaries and your own rules right you're saying okay i've got almost four

01:26:31.120 decades of experience this is what i believe journalism is this is how i'm going to execute it

01:26:36.240 these are my standards these are my expectations and i'm going to be true to those i'm i'm going to

01:26:42.240 follow it through that's the exciting part of it and then having a public that responds to it which

01:26:48.460 i'm you know so grateful for people like honesty in a world full of lies i think do you feel that

01:26:55.720 people are looking for credible reliable information in a way that i never may be seen in my lifetime

01:27:03.520 working as a journalist oh so maybe what you're saying is that as a business journalism is like

01:27:10.980 more discredited than it's ever been and more disliked but individual journalists who decided

01:27:15.260 to tell the truth are i don't know i don't know if i i don't know if i would go that far i'm not sure

01:27:20.420 how comfortable i am really commenting on the whole you know profession that way how's that um

01:27:27.160 i i just sort of come back to my you know i come back to my own you know my my own work i i wrote

01:27:33.440 something recently for the free press which is really an amazing operation it's barry weiss has really

01:27:39.700 built it into this sort of you know engaging driving thing you know it's like it's like a

01:27:47.220 great source for information i wrote something on on the press act and you know that it's the protection

01:27:53.500 of sources is the hill to die on and it was such a great experience to work with them and to see the

01:28:00.720 reach of that story and to take an issue that i felt needed to kind of you know poke up through

01:28:06.520 the noise and get some attention because all of our our futures our careers rest on that basic

01:28:14.660 principle so to me that's an example of you know an independent media outlet which is really has a lot

01:28:20.060 of impact and made a difference how of the people that you worked with 30 years ago were any still

01:28:25.800 around in the business oh i'm trying to think um a lot of them are retired now i went to a reunion

01:28:33.840 an abc london reunion i want to say it was maybe seven years ago seven six or seven it was before i

01:28:41.020 just before i went to cbs and a lot of people were retired a lot of people had um passed a lot of them

01:28:48.440 were already gone is that weird yeah it's sad but um i learned so much from them and i think that

01:28:55.600 not to sound um too sentimental but i think you carry that on i think one of the greatest things

01:29:02.820 you can do at a certain point in your career is to share your experience and to share the skill set

01:29:09.080 that you that you have and i really enjoy doing that especially with younger journalists how are you

01:29:15.340 going to do it oh you know we i talk about this with our kids how long am i going to do this and

01:29:22.900 when will i retire and you know they all have the same verdict which is like oh mom like you need to

01:29:28.400 keep working as long as you can work because you're like if we had you loosen the house all the time it

01:29:33.940 would just be crazy and you love i mean i just love it i feel fortunate to have found something i feel

01:29:39.980 so passionate about maybe you feel oh of course maybe you feel this the the same way of course and

01:29:45.720 i i can't sort of i'm surprised even by the evolution of where i am um today and i'm surprised

01:29:55.200 that i'm fighting in the courts to be protecting confidential sources but if if there's something

01:30:02.860 that folks who are listening and watching this can take away is that you know i came out of february

01:30:09.720 so it was a tough time there's no question about it but i had a lot of clarity and sometimes crisis

01:30:17.340 gives you clarity oh yeah and the idea of a free press and free speech these really became my north

01:30:25.000 star they really became the driving force of what i'm going to do in this next chapter

01:30:30.200 yeah i couldn't agree more and it's weird to wake up and see things you took for granted under threat

01:30:37.220 did you ever think that free speech in the united states would be open to question no i i wouldn't

01:30:44.600 have anticipated the situation that i'm in now that's that's for sure well we're rooting for you

01:30:50.320 fervently thank you katherine harich thank you very much it's so good to see you thanks great to see you

01:30:55.080 thanks for listening to tucker carlson show if you enjoyed it you can go to tucker carlson.com

01:31:01.340 to see everything that we have made the complete library tucker carlson.com

Catherine Herridge： Being Fired From CBS, the Trump v. Biden Debate, and Hunter’s Laptop

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