Kurt Andersen and Lawrence O’Donnell

[Music] thank you I I want to begin on a note of uh well apology hyphen explanation which is that uh my energy cycle is designed to Peak exactly 12 hours from now at 1 p.m. and I have to live a life every day of my life that is designed to Peak at 10 p.m. so this is the first time I've ever spoken into a microphone at this hour so we don't know what's going to happen uh and I and just a it's it's such a thrill and an honor to be here with Kurt Anderson and this is just a biographical parenthesis that I want to insert in here uh for the record and this is true every good thing that has happened to me in my work life is a direct result of having met Kurt Anderson in college where he became a crucial connector to my future so I just want that stated at the outset thank you so of course we all began uh well the shock had to wear off so it was probably some hours after we learned that the Electoral College had given the president presidency to Donald Trump we began to wonder how did this happen and my my original spot was working backwards and and as Kurt and I have discussed I I landed on Sarah Palin and I went oh yeah so so that break in the wall of sanity and presidential tickets allowed for this and then I just kept going and and I and I found there were a bunch of accidents that I think contributed to a various tears in the fabric of the culture that allowed for this including you know the Bill Clinton monac winsky Madness which softened up the political landscape for you know Donald Trump's Access Hollywood Video and all that and I I found myself going all the way back uh through the culture uh network television Executives 100% of whom are liberal sitting around thinking of how do we do this cheaper than scripted drama and scripted comedy and they come up with what they call reality show which originally were singing contests right American Idol but then they they they wanted to keep doing it and so Donald Trump ends up in one of these shows which becomes a platform for who he is to become and this fake character that he's going to play and he's going to play all the way into the presidency and and I and at each one of these points I'm feeling you know because he won by just a hair in the Electoral College if you take out any one of them you don't have Donald Trump as president it does doesn't happen and and I actually found myself going all the way back uh to I think it was 1963 thereabouts when then Cashes Clay said I am the greatest after he beat Sunny Lon and before he changed his name to Muhammad Ali and what people of a certain age understand about sports and about Public Presentation of Self uh in those days is that modesty was absolutely key to uh to all athletic achievement uh to the point where uh Ted Williams who was the greatest baseball hitter when I was a kid in the Boston Red Soxs would not ever acknowledge when he hit a home run the crowds Roar including his very last time at bat in Fenway Park where he hit a home run in the early 1960s uh and he's rounding third base and he finally just touches touches the cap of like that to indicate a MC ack knowledging that you're acknowledging me and the reason he was afraid to ever do more than that is that you'd think he was boastful and cut to Muhammad Ali I am the greatest and so boasting became from that point forward slowly eventually a kind of publicly accepted concept to the point where Donald Trump stands up there and says I'm very smart I'm very rich all of those things and so most of what I'm talking about is completely accidental and seemed utterly harmless at the time I am the greatest seemed fun when when he said it uh and and then I turn to Kurt who actually traces this back much farther than I ever could uh even into colonial times this American inclination to the acceptance of fantasy in fantasy land which is crucial to the Trump thing because the Trump thing is first foremost and always a fantasy and so I just want to I take us through your beginning of this story well thank you for all of your generous words um I was also before Trump ever came along well on the one hand I started this magazine called spy magazine in 1980s in which we spent a lot of time covering uh real estate charlott and Donald Trump in New York and and so I was already on that case but and we made fun of his Ambitions at the time in 1988 of becoming president one day and then 1992 of becoming and so there there he was already on obviously on my radar can we we we need to pause here because there's a Exquisite phrase that uh entered the culture through Kurt at spy magazine which is the descriptor that they used for Donald Trump every time they referred to him in the magazine azine and that was short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump um yes that's my leg Legacy ladies and gentlemen um but so but so I began wondering about how we got into this place before Donald Trump ever existed I I was been thinking about this book and about truthiness and about the the nature of extreme religion in the United States that didn't exist when I was a child growing up in Nebraska and and how that came about and I started then I started writing this book in 2014 as I was finishing this book here comes Donald Trump actually apparently having a chance to get the nomination so he he appeared I hesitate to say providentially but like providentially to be my poster boy for this this strange 500e history that I that I'd written about all of the various elements of of of American credulity which is includes the fact that the first waves of settlers were people who fell for this giant fantasy of of America the new world being a place where they could find gold and get rich overnight and and uh and all the rest um to the the kind of everything is about selling the the the the salesmanship that is at the heart and core of the national character from early on are particular kinds of extreme protestantism which makes whatever I feel in my heart is true I don't need priests I don't need I just need the Bible in my own heart in my own belief the kind of anti-intellectualism that was always present and and and the short form in My Telling of this history is that it was always in balance with an establishment with for instance the founders who you know un and and and their heirs in terms of being have educated people who were in charge and the the the the people would would believe what they want to believe and and and my favorite my favorite quote of Thomas Jefferson's from from before after the doation of Independence during the Revolutionary War but before we had a constitution was that and it was this idea of Tolerance which is my neighbor can believe in 20 gods or zero Gods it's all fine with me I'm paraphrasing a little bit it's all fine with me as long as he doesn't pick my pocket or break my legs and and that's my view and and was my view of tolerate any kind of Madness craziness things I don't believe are true things I disagree whatever as long effectively that it doesn't become part of the Public's fear breaking your leg or picking your pocket in that way so you know we became a nation of show business as well as just business and everything when Americans effectively event invented show business in the 19th century from PT baram and Buffalo Bill on and and and it and and it not only did we invent these new forms but they they they became part of every business over time every business virtually religion and and to the degree that it was a business or not was also show business in America as it was nowhere else anyway that's that's that's the story of how we got then to the 1960s which was also as with Lawrence a pivotal moment in in my history of what happened um all the things he says and and in in politics specifically television had obviously started in the late four or become a thing in network television in the late 40s by the early 60s everyone had television and television had achieved its power over the American mind and experience and and and the 1960 Kennedy Nixon debates when we were both little little boys um uh was was the moment that you know both in history and and the idea but truly that began wow the guy who's good on television did great the guy who's isn't good on television like Dwight Eisen wasn't good on tele like PE like presidents didn't have to be until the 1960s the and and then of course we and we got to 1968 which is the subject uh the politics of 1968 is a subject of a great book by Lawrence o Donald Jr uh called playing with fire and and uh that that's when many things as we know in retrospect kind of went conf in the Confluence of them went to boil and boil over including for instance as Lawrence reminded me the other day when we were talking about this not not a not a debate because who remembers the Humphrey Nixon debates but a debate between personalities yeah it it was uh 1968 was the uh the the first really contested uh convention in the way that it was contested and that uh it was also the last time the last time that you could get uh a democratic nominee for president who did not run in the primaries 196 8 they had primaries but they were just you know they were functionally focused groups it was just a way for a candidate to say hey look the voters of California like me uh it was that was never enough to get you enough delegates to actually win the nomination so cubert Humphrey ended up with the nomination uh and then that was corrected everyone thought in 1972 uh and from that point forward these nominees are chosen by the voters and that's a crucial change that we all thought was great and it was great and it gave you Donald Trump because he was chosen by the voters and that's what I mean by this series of inadvertent change in inadvertent events in the sense that they are inadvertent to causation of trump but without them you don't have Trump and many of them are things we advocated at the time and would continue to Advocate like voter selection of of nominees uh and so we are living with this series of of kind of accidental outcomes to many good ideas and then some strange adjustments in social behavior like now you can boast and you know when you score a touchdown now you do some big demonstration of of bragging about yourself in the end zone which used to be Unthinkable and that's very much a part of Trump's ability to become this boastful madman at microphones well and the other thing that primaries did and have done of course in this in this Showbiz ification of politics and especially presidential politics it it it made each each the primaries became an episode in this show yeah right and and and it made the horse race the thing that political journalism covered Above All Above Beyond this the the the stakes of the election as has been obviously the issue of the last three this and the last two elections especially but it's like oh who's ahead who's behind how are the polls doing well next week we have super Tuesday the the most exciting episode in this show um that was was a new thing I mean another thing again that Lawrence is writing a book that I can't wait to read about uh FDR in the 1944 election and uh we were talking about uh how in the late 60s again as a good thing journalism became much more routinely adversarial than it had been but this this the the the television performance of adversarialism as just the absolute default in presidential press conferences you know okay I we get why people did that with Richard Nixon or or Lyon Johnson during the Vietnam war but as a thing that's just how they do it has some downsides and again Lawrence was describing to me a couple weeks ago one night about how press conferences as such as they were took place during the war during FDR's time in office I mean I find it fascinating yeah so the the president who did the most press conferences in history over 900 as president uh was Franklin Roosevelt function of time in office but also because he he would do them twice a week and he would do them in the Oval Office he'd be sitting at his desk and the theory the the practice of the press conference was everything's off the Record but but if you really want to use something you could ask Steve early the press secretary can we use that and Steve Steve would say you know yes you can but you can't quote it you have to paraphrase it and you can attribute it to you know a White House official or something like that um and by the way and the and and this is the The Forum in which FDR announced uh the single most brilliant idea I'm aware of in vented entirely in the mind of a president with no advice uh and that was Lend Lease uh which he conceived of uh when he was on a a Navy ship in the Caribbean just sitting alone on the deck and so he describes this entire lend leas idea of how to support the British with uh Munitions and and War equipment and at the very end of it all one of the reporters says to him says um how do we attribute this and FDR said oh you can attribute it to me and that was the moment when they realized oh this is huge news and so it was a huge you know front page thing the next day and what you see in the transcripts of those press conferences is the job of the White House correspondent they believe is to illuminate to readers in Kansas City and San Francisco and Boston and Atlanta what this White House is doing what this presidency is doing it was their the job they believe was to illuminate there was very little there was nothing of what you'd call confrontational um for example in that press conference FDR Begins by saying now this is legally complex and the lawyers are going to have to work on this so don't don't ask me about that about the legal stuff and the third third or fourth question question is is a lawyer question it's it's a legal question and FDR says I told you not to ask me about the lawyer stuff and and everyone gets it they in other words and and he would very often say I don't know his answer to questions would very commonly be I don't know and if you go to today's world if a president is standing there in a press conference environment and says I don't know that would be the glaring headline of the next day of how in in effect incompetent um this President is because the Nixon presidency changed all of this you know you can look at the the JFK press conferences on video now online and it's the same Spirit you know they think they think this President uh is you know faithful to the job and doesn't have to be prosecuted when he stands up there and you can see a kind of understanding between the president and the Press Corps and there's laughing and there's you know there's question questions that press him and that he tries to evade and they they get it and then you get to Nixon and it becomes prosecutorial quite legitimately you know and Woodward and Bernstein are outside of the White House Press Corp which was very important it was very very important by the way that Watergate was not cracked by the White House Press Corp they have never cracked anything and so so so Bernstein are doing this work that's informing what's going on in the White House Press court and they become prosecutorial and they have remained prosecutorial and that means they every single president that appears in front of them as a defendant and every one of them is to be treated exactly the same way with exactly the same emphasis whenever we can possibly catch them at something and so so and this is hugely enabling of trump hugely and and it explains a great deal of how Trump got to where he got this is a White House Press court now that treats Joe Biden saying the word Mexico when he meant the word Egypt in an in an otherwise completely cogent description of an extremely complex crisis in the Middle East that word substitution that incorrect retrieval as neurologists call it of the word you were looking for is treated exactly the same as Donald Trump in the midst of the covid pandemic when there's no vaccine suggesting to people you might want to drink some bleach or you might want to take some home cleaner and inject it in into your body those two things had about exactly the same uh excitement reaction and gcha reaction uh from the White House Press Corps one of them deserved it and one of them didn't and that is a crucial uh element of the kind of you know just the wallpaper of of that that environment of um of the way politicians and presidents especially and presidential candidates are dealt with uh by the Press courp and they have never ever ever had a meeting at any one of these news organizations or the White House Press Corps which has its own organization they've never had a meeting to say hey this Trump thing is different what do we do I mean this is this is really different how do we how do we cover this um and the other thing that's been lost obviously in this particular prosecutorial uh White House Press Court mode is an utter disability on the evaluation of a job well done you know the White House Press Court during World War II uh knew when FDR was doing the job well because you could you could you could get the real results of what happened on D-Day no one was no one was lying to you about what happened on D-Day and and that was very much you know his conception under Direction uh of how to do that um they don't we don't know how to say a job well done Sports does you know if you look at if you look at sports coverage they know they know how to say the job is well done I it's much easier I get it it's much easier um and by the way I think this is a a bias of my own I I think one of the gigantic faults of political coverage is the lack and governmental cover coverage which is totally different in politics ICS is one thing government is another thing and then there's a third subject which is the politics of governing which is the most complex of all but the only experience uh reporters generally have is covering political campaigns and and they think that's that's what it's all about um the if you if you watch you know Sports at all if you watch basketball games or football games when they cut to the basketball pundits or the football pundits at half half time every single one of them is a quarterback who won a Super Bowl they actually know what they're talking about they actually did it you know and unfortunately for the reporters they live outside the actual thing they're trying to cover you know the governing takes place in a room with the door closed and then you know they get to cover the speeches it would be as if you covered the Super Bowl by having all the players everybody come to New Orleans or wherever you're having the Super Bowl and when it's time for the game we close the door we don't let any reporters in we don't let any family members in We don't let any observers in at all and the way you find out the way you decide who's good at this is when the players come out of the stadium they make speeches and then you decide who's good at this that's really what you're watching in coverage of government anyway the the uh before go to your questions in a few minutes but um I want to touch back on this this kind of Wellspring moment of the late 60s that we were talking we've been talking about I mean you look at 1968 again subject of Lauren one of Lawrence of Lawrence one of Lawrence's books um as a time when this turned in in a kind of phase Chang change way when presidential politics became entertainment became a show several things I could go on more than several but for instance uh you have um in September of that year show which had started earlier in the year was the number one hit was this amazing transformative show laughing Rowan and Martin's laughing what happens the the the former vice president now running for president Richard Nixon running for president again Richard Nixon goes on and and and and and does a funny bit which is him saying the Laughing catchphrase socket to me in this ridiculous Richard nixonian socket to me way and it was funny and it show wow this guy is not just a stiff he he's got a sense of humor about himself now is that why he won didn't hurt and but again it was like an unthinkable thing that this hip liberal Hollywood show that Richard Nixon would go on and do well and help himself uh uh in the campaign as you could point to 70 odd years later and or 50 odd years later and and Donald Trump going on Saturday Night Live or Sarah Palin going on Saturday Night Live and doing uh not dissimilar things but again back to 1968 Lawrence reminded me the other day of of this of what we've talked about in the past this this William F Buckley gor vdal uh debate again that is they've made documentaries about that they have not made documentaries about the Nixon Humphrey debates of 1968 because it was this extraordinary thing of these two unapologetically conservative left-wing people going at it with each other as entertainment around the election um H it was it was extraordinary television it was incredibly entertaining and I don't know not particularly Illuminating but man G Al versus William Buckley was really entertaining um uh and then of course you had in in Chicago at the at the disastrous Democratic Convention the yippies Abby Hoffman who saw himself as a revolutionary Entertainer effectively he understood oh TV is going to be covering this we we're going to take full advantage of that in a way that I think was was groundbreaking and and and and and world changing now the other thing again uh the that we look at or I looked at in my book fantasy land about the the late' 60s is this again this this thing that had been a chronic part of the American character in my view which is this subjectivity and this I know the truth uh enough with you what you professors say or you establish when people say I feel and I know the truth became a a and and this anti-establishment ISM that was at the you know you know for better much for better but also for Worse was at the heart of the American founding idea these things became kind of floridly newly uh uh you know erupting in the late 1960s in a new way um as as as did this extreme in many ways unchristian Christianity that had that that was part of our founding an aspect of our founding Christianity in this country too so this also became extreme and and and culturally important in a way it hadn't been certainly during you know uh for really in most for most Americans for most of the 20th century starting in the late 60s and early 70s as well as the academic idea that there is no empirical reality again a cultural left idea that there you know that it's all about the Observer and and and the people who believe in this Fantastical version of of of the world instead of science have as much right to that as anybody else well fine as far as it went but all of those things you you fast forward through the invention of the internet again and talk radio and cable TV news all the things that Lawrence was talking about enabling uh trumpism in maganga that that set of cultural ideas out of that came out of the born and and and erupting as they did in the late 60s who does that ultimately enable it did not enable the Socialist Revolution such as it was that people wanted in 1970 it has enabled MAA that I can believe whatever I want and political violence is sometimes necessary and the whole rest so again it's back to what lren said about like yeah primaries great idea but be careful what you wish for because there are intended consequences right uh so there's 13 minutes and 57 seconds left in this discussion um and I guess there's a microphone here so if people want to line up for questions you know I was I was hoping we could leave cable news out of this uh cable news as We Know It uh was invented in 1996 uh MSNBC went on the air July 15th 19 96 at 9:00 a.m. wasn't there CNN for few no no no that's the point this is very important CNN left alone would be a very different environment uh there was once one gas station on this corner and now there's three and that changes the corner uh so uh so n July 15th 1996 at 9:00 a.m. MSNBC goes on the air and I think I make my first comments as a pundit at about 9:20 a.m. that that day um Fox comes on a few months later in 1996 and no one no cable operator wants Fox News they have absolutely no way of penetrating the cable system NBC already owned a cable channel uh that they basically renamed so that they had instant access to Cable Systems so rert Murdoch had to pay cable systems had to pay them to carry Fox News and now Cable Systems pay Fox News more than any other network to carry Fox News that's that's how successful it became and so without this uh diversity of cable news that ended up giving you a Republican Channel a completely pro- Republican channel uh there could be no Trump uh so it's a crucial part of it obviously without the internet there could be no Trump without social media there could be no Trump success that's those are all parts of the 21st century uh components of this discussion that I think you're all even more familiar with uh than we need to be labor here um and a a final a point just before we go to a question here that I I want to make this is a measurement it's a scientific measurement of how far off the news media that we kind of grew up relying on has been from the ability to cover Trump the first time I called Trump a liar and used the word lie in describing what he was saying was on my show in 2011 When Donald Trump began talking about Barack Obama's birth certificate and he was doing that on the Today Show and all sorts of shows without any real uh resistance um and so I called him a liar about that and no one knew you could do that uh no one at my network knew you could do that no one said anything to me about it but no one else did you know that that that word didn't appear in your news coverage of politicians at any point since you know Nixon had to leave the White House the New York Times first used the word lie to describe something Donald Trump said exactly five years later it was September of 2016 and by the time the New York Times used the word lie Donald Trump was the Republican nominee for president and what was it that the New York Times was deciding we can break our mold finally and call this a lie it was what Donald Trump said about Barack Obama's birth certificate that took five years so that's that's the media system that has failed to figure out how to deal with this phenomenon let me just say right away if I were running the New York Times I do not know how to do it I don't know how but I would have meetings I would struggle I would try to figure it out uh but it's something that they that and I am using the New York Times to to represent the entire kind of media that works by those rules and they they have not figured out how to do this please go ahead um I am a psychoanalyst by training and credential I'm saying that because the next question is going to be come from that background have you considered Mr Anderson that you have actually understated the case when you call this Fantasy Land I would suggest it's delusional land I I couldn't agree with you more and I used that word uh repeatedly in the book and at one point had a large chapter trying to synthesize my month spent studying your field to try to apply that but then I thought it was I could pretend to be an economist I can pretend to be an historian but I wasn't going to pretend to be a a psycho you know a psychoanalytical diagnostician but 100% 100% And and it's on on this Mass level you know uh and I make some unkind conclusions in my book about the fact that a a certain kind of uh religious the theological extremism and supernaturalism it wasn't hard to un to see how that became a a a place that could also uh that where where what I regard as a certain kind of credulity could uh transfer over to to political the political sphere so yes absolutely delusion is a perfectly fine word so let me follow up then with the second point of my question what you have been talking about from my point of view is a culture of narcissism it's not the first time that's been used and the question then becomes first are we all delusional my answer yes the question is how delusional and in what ways and the second piece of that is are we all narcissistic and my answer to that is yes but in what ways and how because that's what you have been describing both of you a narcissistic cult culture a culture of the eye for sure um enough said write the book thank you uh but and as you know all or the the latest idea about about um uh in in Psychology and and psychological pathology is that everything is on a spectrum right it's everything is non-binary you're not crazy or saying you're somewhere on the Spectrum and now we have a political party that is indulging people on that end of the spectrum anyway thank you thank you so um the tighter your question the Kinder you are being to the questioner behind you who will get a chance to ask a question I'll be brief uh so in the 60s the conventions had at least on the Democratic side had a big influence on the campaign uh even in 72 uh and adjusted to unforeseen circumstances uh do you have any opinions on on whether that's uh could possibly happen in either party this year uh I there's a possibility of messy conventions but they're so far they've both been designed this year to be as smooth as possible with highly predictable nominees go ahead do you think now that more reporters are now becoming Stars themselves and not really covering the news they just want to be a star so some of the political candidate just try to help them become Stars yeah it's a big problem that's kind of what the gotcha question is about it's that if you ask the question that creates the pops online or on television then you have enhanced your reputation and attention to you and so there's an there's a perverse incentive now in the White House Press Corps kind of created again inadvertently by Sam Donaldson if you can remember how combative he could be you know during the Nixon presidency in the white house uh press briefing room and that made Sam Donaldson a star and that created an infection that that core lives with to this day did they do that with the new paper back back back way long ago with new paper they had two different sides yeah it it's a similar phenomenon let's go to the next question thanks when I think about the impact of the 1968 election I think about race I think about the southern strategy of Nixon uh appealing to whites in the South and it's the moment when the South starts to turn from Republican to Democrat and then you move forward to Willie Horton helping to elect buwan and then the backlash to the first black president so if you could talk about how race uh relates to this uh movement sure uh you're absolutely correct but that would take not only the next four minutes and 14 seconds but another hour but absolutely I mean substantively speaking beyond the the the the coverage uh things we're talking about or or treating it as a show obviously yes the the and and I'm going to have a conversation about this with various historians this afternoon I believe and it's clear that um the race race and the backlash to it and the manipulated backlash to it is is is the other part of the story of here we are with this authoritarian uh Maga moment great next question um yes I wanted to ask um because you have not put this in there is that um Trump whether disingenuously or not has appealed to a lot of people who feel that they have not been heard for a very very long time and then you have the Press coming in and almost attacking that which has almost created a fervor against them you know for mass media because they take little sound bites and they you know they just and and so those people who are very supportive of him feel attacked so how does that really blend you know I'm not saying he's genuine in what he's saying about supporting them but they believe it so how does that blend in with what the media is doing in the Press core and so forth I'm going to give that to the neutral Observer of of the media I mean uh obviously this sense of persecution which again has a 500e history from the pilgrims feeling persecuted and these extreme Puritans feeling persecuted in England and the Netherlands coming here uh is a thing that starting with civil rights uh the right and the Republicans have used effectively and there's no way around it I mean you know you can send reporters again and again into diners to talk to Trump voters and find out how they think and and oh yes they have a point they feel left behind they feel ill used and they are and they have been but using uh that once you have an organization devoted to whipping that keeping that Perse sense of persecution and a television network in Fox News I mean at some point it's not up to us to be the no let's keep trying to understand thank you thank you I've been thinking a lot about the last episode of the West Wing when President Bartlett was on his way out of Washington not sure what his successor was going to be up to and he was asked what are you thinking about and he said tomorrow I desperately want there to be a tomorrow for democracy in this country and we seem to have a whole array of forces aligned to destroy democracy to destroy what we have lived with in this country since its beginning um so my question is I see a shift in the way media has been covering democracy uh covering the campaigns the the primaries what do you think the media can do in the time that's left before the election to focus on getting the facts out there getting the truth out there and what can we do as people who want there to be tomorrow for democracy do to change the conversation to get to present the truth when there's so much aligned against it thank you you know this is the worst thing that can happen on television which is the most important point is made when there are zero seconds left on the clock and I have to go to a commercial from This brilliant thing that someone has just said uh literally it's zero time on the clock so the only thing I'll say to that we can all ponder it is that John Wells wrote that last episode of the westwing a beautiful piece of work there wouldn't have been a westwing TV show without John Wells he was The crucial executive producer who got it on the air who hired all of us uh as writers I think I wrote the third from the last or second from the last episode of the show um and I would suggest if you're looking for Hope and you don't find it in cable news find those episodes of the westwing thank you thank you thank [Applause] you