of the land throughout the land. we should be honest. we have this holiday, juneteenth, where people think it was the end of sleigh very -- slavery. it was not the end of slavery. it was the end of slavery in the seceded states. if we are going to be honest about black life, be honest and put all the cards on the table and talk about places where we made steaks. e in black america was very different in jim crow era than it is today. not specific to jim crow. it was a horrible timeblack history. my dad grew up in jim crow law. but our families were in tact.

four african-americans especially those on the left, to not even allow us to have those discussions is disingenuous. host: guyland. please go ahead with your question or comment for star parker. caller: good morning. i think i can get most of what i want to say under two minutes. it is always the narrative isn't it? ms. parker is running two narratives. the first is a certain truth has an absolute truth to it african-americans are better off now than we were in the history of the united states. then there is the narrative that what constitutes the right these days has an answer for black america or the rest of america and it is absolute nonsense. i'm sure ms. parker heard some of the first segment.

i see suffering from what many of the people in the first segment were suffering from. either -- or they don't know history. donald trump -- host: arey you there? caller: i'm still here. donald trump was raised by his father and grandfather, two white supremacists. how does ms. about -- host: we will have two leave it there and we will movereaction to what he had to say? guest: i think what he is pointing out is the two realities in black life -- there is a part of us that wants to mature and grow up, but there is also a part of us that will not allow that to happen. i heard it from al sharpton.

when you go about donald trump, which is what made people want to talk about, because he is the alternative with the joe harris administration policies is what people a vote. our comfort is not what people vote our concern. people are very concerned about the economy, about the border, about inflation. whether you're black white, or other, you are concerned about certain elements of policies. under the donald trump administration, policies were different, and people's lives were better, regardless of your ethnicity. so i understand a little bit of what he is saying. but he has to also allow for people especially african-american people, to be individuals in their voting patterns. i vote pro-life, and i am going to vote this election based on my pro-life position. it's donald trump or unfettered abortion, and i am just not going to accept that. 20 million black babies dead since roe v. wade is too many

for me. therefore, people will make different policy decisions, and that means presidential elections. host: you mentioned earlier senator tim scott. what if donald trump? difference to you? guest: i think it will make a difference to me -- when you say make a difference to me, you are asking me, because i am black would it matter, would i be enthusiastic about an african american vice president? of course i would. this is an exciting time. let me ask lane the difference between the enterprise zone that jack kemp, who showed earlier, and the opportunity initiative. when you thing about the enterprise initiative of the 1980's, we were talking about government intervention programs. how do we fix what broke down because of slavery in jim crow? when you look at the opportunity initiative, it is built in money movement to this is about capital gain tax and getting released from that tax. donald trump's philosophy was we

need to get money back from china. how do you do that in an environment where a whole lot of money goes there for cheap re-think, when you have any cities right here, if you can channel capital to those broken zip codes all 8700 of them, you will see growth. what senator tim scott did -- and senator cory booker, i will not leave him out even though he moved away from it a bit -- he got that in the tax bill. in that focus where energy and moneys from business corporations going into our hardest zip codes was a fascinating idea, and it worked can and it will work again under this next administration if trump wins. to your question of tim scott, it is not just his ethnicity while it will make someone like me very pleased, it is also his ideas on how to fix the weakest links. that is our work at c.u.r.e. we want to strengthen the weakest link. that is why the tome, "the state

of black progress." we are looking at health policies. they are not irking everybody. education policies, they are not working for everybody. housing policies are not working for everyone. cies. what we see the calmest denominator for our weakest neighborhoods is why they are not working is they are controlled by government. we want to get government out of the way. host: in "the state of black progress," who are some of the people that we can read? guest: we have some incredible mines. we have dr. allen who wrote the curriculum for florida when they were making the changes to their black history curricula. we have judge janice rogers brown, talking about some of the things that happened in the courts and when government moved away from its real role in our court systems. we have steve moore on what it is import force to have personal

accounts for those who have left . ian rowe on education policy. i am very excited about this particular tome. we started this idea of compiling ideas on the state of black progress -- we had to rename it "the state of black progress," because the urban league puts out "the state of black america" every year. they sent us a cease-and-desist from using the name, so we changed it to "the state of black progress." it is about time there are alternative ideas from what we keep hearing from the hard left, the progressive left, that america does not work, that we are a bunch of victims, and the answer is the same, big government. it does not work. look at just the war on poverty alone. we still have very weak zip codes. the last demonstration and tim scott is trying to fix what is broken down in those zip codes, which is big government to remove those barriers so people

can live free. host: next call for star parker comes from abraham in maryland. go ahead. caller: good morning r. there is a saying -- the more i listen to you, the more i ask myself, everything you complain about is under the campaign of donald trump. lame immigrants. blame the government. the border is the problem. no accountability. you keep saying donald trump four years were so good. you forget the years of barack obama? to bring black america up to donald trump? there are too many dead people that they do not have anywhere to put them up your that was the economy. the gas was $1, because there was no one outside buying gas.

they had nowhere to go. that was the economy. is that where you want to go back to? host: star parker. guest: i think what people are looking for is growth. anything about the obama years we did see growth. growth of government. we did see growth, growth of abortion. we did see growth, growth standing in the way for people to get a quality education because of this constant narrative that we need to fix the public schools as to let parents decide where they want to send their children to school. we are talking philosophy and policies, not individual people and personalities. when i hear people say you should not support donald trump, what i hear them say is i should buy ideas that do not work for the weakest in our society, and i am just not going to do that. host: you ran for office. what was that experience like, and what percentage of the put -- of the vote you get in the l.a. area? guest: i got a larger percentage than i thought i was. the challenge for me, it was

2010 when we thought we had the red wave, the tea party wave. i was talked into going back to the los angeles area to run for office. so i ran in a district i did not live in. lesson number one, politics is still very local. lesson number two is to be able to identify what it is you believe and why, then try to committee k that with the voters. i was able to make a difference, even though the neighborhood was very solidly blue. five months was not enough to turn around 50 years of indoctrination from the left. host: what is the experience like, running for office? guest: you spend most of your time raising money and others decisions for you. you learn the rules of politics which is the 17 second rule. if you do not learn what to say, spend 15 seconds repeating the question and then whatever you can get away with. and then if you are not --

host: on "meet the press," it i would rather what we do with -- caller: i just want to thank you. only c-span would give me an opportunity to talk to star parker. i was thinking, when you're re two or three you missed. bob woodson, tony evans. those are good -- i've gotte to fox news and cnn. i go towards my christian people to give me a christian perspective on world news. my biggest concern is they are

changing the meaning of our words. abortion is called health care. reproductive rights are not about reproduction but killing babies. pro-life is now called antiabortion. you very seldom hear it called pro-life anymore. they are mutilating our children and calling it gender affirming. we have gottention. we have got to take the ownership of our words back. i am totally like you. i am pro-life. thank you so much for everything you do. guest: you are welcome. i've been to enterprise down in alabama and many of our other unique immunities that are starting to flourish as a result of good policy plans. to the question of christian worldviews, a lot of people feel like it is getting very lost in our society and under attack and it is. it is no use pretending it is not. when you have these two conflicting worldviews if there is anything president biden that

-- has said that is coherent, he told us this election is about the soul of america. it is very solid it demonstrated in our town yesterday. i saw it very vividly, because not only after the so-called parade and the protest we saw a lot of violence. i come out today there is graffiti all over the building i state in here, because people are trying to express themselves, if you will. in a free society that has a rule of law, we express ourselves in the voting booth. we do not stress ourselves on other people's property. yes, we are in a dilemma as a society, and this election is about the soul of america. do we want to be free, which means you have rules that govern you, you have a cohesiveness and society, or do we really want what we are seeing in thewhat i saw just yesterday, not just with the programs are protesters and the lgbt parade, but then i came to another community, right here, during that same time, where they had

the valet company expressing themselves. every ethnicity was there everyone was in unity to that is the real heart and soul of america, to say we can put down these grievances sometimes. we certainly should not have them involved in the way we have our political discourse. host: from "the state of black progress: confronting government and judicial obstacles," in the 1960's, black america was promised a quality but was frequently exploited. racial discrimination played a role that, in the preceding decades, the normalization of victimhood rhetoric has proved even more disastrous. star parker, here is an ad put out by the biting campaign. [video clip] >> i am joe biden, and i approve this message. >> of course i hate these people. >> donald trump disrespecting blacks nothing new pa few was sued for refusing to rent his apartment out to black

people. it is wide trump warned of a bloodbath fuses his next election. and, if that was to be a dictator who hates his enemies. guest: i think that it's going to get worse over the next five months. one, the democrats see young black voters leaving them and their rhetoric. the ads are going to become much more visceral and we will have violence in the summer because people are changing. not only are they changing the way that they see america affecting policies in their own lives, but they are changing how they look at race and race matters. someone tried to say earlier that there is not a problem. everyone is concerned about what is happening at the border right now went donald trump personal views, wherever they got that particular tape have nothing to

do with the policies that he had in place that control that border and the chaos we are seeing today. when you have gypsies in town and the type of uncertainty around them, nothing is working in our cities anymore. people are afraid. and when they are afraid they are not going to restaurants or stores. the only ones that are hiring our security. it's a difficult time. one of the advantages that the republicans out that the democrats don't have when it comes to ads like this is that truth is on the side of the republicans. we are a very diverse society we are a very diverse party and we are starting to see that and so are others. the internet is getting the truth out unprecedented with these ads at the left will be running and i'm not surprised at this one and i think they're going to have a whole lot more in store to try to put fear into people as they get ready to go to the voting booths. but we have to remember the voting booth -- voting booth is private and you have to vote

your values and your concerns, not this fear that they are going to interject from the left. host: do you think that donald trump is a racist? guest: i don't think that donald trump is a racist and frankly i don't care because he is not personal friendship. i even have people in my personal friendships that i question some of the times some of the things that i say. but yes i was apprenticed to the california civil rights committee. there were openings there and that she was leaving in 2020 he made sure that many of his spots all across the country i found it intriguing to join the committee which has been an incredible eye-opener how entrenched progressivism is in all of our institutions. but they lie about even the emphasis on civil rights and what the ideas are for the right when it comes to civil rights concerns.

but they try to do, many of them on the left, they try to be dismissive of anyone that has an alternative outlook on some of the same topics that they may want to reduce down to just race. but everybody has problems. some are more unique and challenging than others, but the principles towards truth are the same in each of us as individuals grasp at those principles to implement in our own lives. so i don't mind that it was dull truffle pointed me to this committee because it is an important committee for our country. host: and the black conservative federation in south carolina. >> flat conservatives understand better than most some of the greatest evils in our nation history have come from corrupt systems that try to target and subjugate others to deny than their free demand to deny them their rights. i think that's why black people

are so much on my side now because they see what is happening to me happens to them. does that make sense? i've heard that. when i did the mugshot in atlanta, that mugshot is number one. elvis presley's number two and frank sinatra. they had frank sinatra for fighting and they had elvis for something at a gas station, i don't know. so elvis is number two, but he was always number one. we've all seen the mugshot. they know who embraced it more than anybody else. the black population. you see black people walking around with my mugshot. they do shirts and they sell them for $19 apiece. pretty amazing. millions of these things have been sold, so i don't know if i'm prbut anytime you can beat elvis, that's ok right? host: star parker? guest: we did teach our grandchildren not to say everything they are thinking but

i think it would be a roller coaster ride if donald t that being said, we will get this opportunity to talk about things that need to be said. t-shirts being sold because they agree with him or not, i know otherwise that many of them -- at the end of the day, we are talking about someone who has a gut reality. the productive narcissist talked about these types of personalities. donald trump didn't make that book, but he was talking about the characteristics and someone who is a productive narcissist, and i think that many in our society appreciate that. they know what they want, they are going to try to get it. and now politically, the reason he is so popular with so many different groups is because he's honest and brutally honest to say something is broken down and i'm going to find out what it is people want that.

half of the country was doing the right thing. they would get up and go to church sunday morning, go to work on monday, tell the kids to behave, and then they look at the reality over time of what has happened to our country because of the progressive left. and they said what has happened to my country? i want my country back. and now they are angry and they want it fixed. including the problems of black america. don't worry about any of the circumstances or problems in your life, we will take care of you by taking from somebody else. that philosophy doesn't work. a lot of african-americans are finding that they don't like paying these excessive taxes that don't work. frankly, freedom is pretty popular. so it's going to be interesting.

at the end of the day in november we are going to make a decision what kind of country we want. we want a free country where we start to pull away from all of our force us to debate one against another including areas like social security, or do we get to the place where we can respect each other's views but not be dependent on that person for our reality or our prosperity? host: you've been coming on c-span for 20, 25 years or so. who is one of your political heroes? guest: i heard he just retired and i like him because i like c-span. and i'm hoping i can keep it coming. i have a lot of heroes. i read a proverb a day and i

find that with that type of wisdom, you can go wrong. there are many that are here in washington, and on my show i try to showcase not just the organizations that are here doing the fine work, that everything is broken down. i actually appreciate lobbyists. all the special interest groups, you've got to have lobbyists because you will go out of business if your interests against these groups. but i wouldn't even want to start a name. one of your callers started naming my heroes and the private sector. these are not my personnel. i have quite a long list of people who really appreciate. he's a good man doing incredible work. i think that's important as

well. host: nancy, democrat, thanks for holding. guest: -- caller: i am a person from the progressive left and they want to challenge your conservative views. in my strong opinion there is one thing wrong with america these days, and it is that people are working four jobs, 40 hours a week and they are not being paid enough money to afford childcare, to afford college education, and to afford so many other things that they need. i see absolutely nothing coming from the conservative movement to solve this problem. however, i do hear joe biden and

the democrats talk about this problem, and there is a workable solution that does not involve government, and that workable solution that does not involve government's unions. and i want to know your position on are youantiunion? host: thank you, nancy. guest: i think that if someone wants to join a union, they should have that choice but if someone doesn't want to join a union, they should have that choice. i think that if a business wants to unionize and have union employees, they should have that choice and i think that if a business does not want unions, they should have that choice. saying nothing work for the red team, that is not even true. first of all, you have a whole lot of red states that are not only working well, but thriving. we have governors implementing conservative ideas at every single level of government and

intervention, if you will, with the pele of their state and they are doing very well. virginia alone is turning red because of the leadership of the governor in virginia. the state list as long as well. people who are now governing states that are making their states better. making their states stronger. so i would disagree with the caller when it comes to the role of federal government trying to fix the problem that she articulated and the states that are working the best our right to work states. union is in trouble as an entity because what they did is they overpriced and now they can under deliver. our country has collapsed when it comes to people. the 69 million missing through abortion has upside down that pyramid. you now have fewer people

whereas they have over promised all these retirees, so they're trying to force their ideas through public policy. give up that plan because you've hurt black people, you've heard poor people. unions are low-wage people. unions are like a country club and therefore there are certain people that cannot get into that club and they are excluded accordingly. they also inflate wages and that is the reason people have been displaced and don't have that entry-level work anymore because there is a computer that can do it better. a machine that check ourselves out at grocery stores and all the other places that we used to have people like those jobs. there is a difference in philosophy when it comes to how we see the wore world and how we think government were union should be involved. host: mike from phoenix.

caller: i'd like to ask three questions of miss parker. the first question is i'd like to know what macro improvements in this country has been made by working-class, by women that did not involve government action. the second question i would like to ask her is we are still willing under the trump tax cut we are still living under that. why isn't the condition for the working class and the poor much better since we are still living under those tax cuts? and the last thing i'd like her to do is please define for me what she means by liberals and woke. host: mike, give us a sense of your politics, please.

caller: i don't agree with her politics however i think that there should be people on both sides who are looking to improve the status of lax and all people in this country on both sides of the politics. guest: i will go third first because i didn't mention liberal or woke so i have nothing to say about that one. the tax cuts, when you release business to flourish, people flourish. when you over regulate business, people don't get hired. on the macro improvements, this is a discussion that we need to have. the start talking about where we got off track. one of the areas were a scholar at aai has contributed, he's looking at education and what

happen when government took over and started this discussion with the countryrather than do what dr. king said which was desegregation, we were going to start forcing immigration. and if we got onto this track of forced immigration and all these other race-based initiatives we started seeing life in black america not flourish as well. when you think about the business interest, the educational. and after that decision, how many black schools went out of business bause of this idea of forced immigration? there were many areas other than just education. we look at the barriers that would put in place when it comes to how we spend our money in particular on our retirement force people, especially low income people into a one-size-fits-all social security where you are not even

going to get a decent return but you are taking money from their check and their bosses check and putting it in a system that you don't own hurts progress. because now you can't transfer wealth. so for the african-american community, there's a little bit extra. there's a little bit more of disposable income. so what we want is an opportunity to plant that money where it should go, which is into our future in the future of our children. so there are a lot of places that we should look at and reconsider if we've gone the right way. not only because of economic disincentive to say we've got a one-size-fits-all pot and everything will be due housing policy, education policy, or economic policy, but also what is done in the cohesiveness of our society. when the government gets to pick winners and losers, the government gets to say was on first, in association with

people that we do not want to be in association with, we cohesive society. you want to remove barriers so people can live free. this is where the debates are now. this is why glenn youngkin is the governor of virginia and why there have been very progressive debates right now about how they are going to learn. this is what happens in florida. you have curriculums in this one-size-fits-all that conflict with other interests. so the best way to move forward in my opinion is not more government, but remove government so that we can all identify with hearing a play, going to a restaurant, having cohesiveness. but when i or my kid on my grandkids are forced into an environment that i don't agree with, we are going to have conflict that spills into our political. host: you write your autobiography? >> i did, years ago.

they were dismissive even about my title. it is my story. i'm a military brat. we were called brats. but that's another reason i am not a progressive. there's just no fun in progressive. which grievance group are you going to be in today? i should have brought a big camera but then someone probably would have chased me out of there. the gay groups in the palestine groups with their flags together , there is its economy here that i am just not sure i understand. the challenge is now, the grievance group has become an enemy and they think that the enemies are donald trump and anyone that supports anything that he does. and that is a big challenge for all of us trying to live peaceful lives in our society.

host: walter, republican lie, thanks for holding. you're on with star parker whose most recent book is "the state of black progress." caller: thank you for having me. i'd like to comment on our previous topic. every election is important. every election is important. thank you very much for speaking the truth and giving the key on how to succeed in life. thank you very much. guest: thank you. during the summer of love and the peaceful protest of 2020 when people really expressing the grievances reacting to the murder of george floyd, my organization ransomed billboards because we felt that that one narrative that america would never work for you and this is your destiny was not fair to young african-americans.

we have more afghan american young men in college than we do in jail. this is a lie of the left that they keep perpetuating that the country doesn't work for any young black male. so we ran billboards and a few communities. tired of poverty? we had a beautiful black woman a beautiful black male and adjusted tired of poverty? finish school, take any job, get married, save and invest get back to your community. and then it had a website on it. blm demanded those boards be taken down. we ran them in neighborhoods where nothing is working. the schools, the communities the crime, the families are broken down. we have some in our country that you don't see often. we see it every now and then because it is where did this come from? how did they concentrate poverty

to the degree that it looks so third world in our own country? one of the reasons is because government did that. the concentrated poverty so we thought this just run these billboards because they are really that concerned that this may be their destiny because of the circumstances they were born into that they have no other option's but to end up dead or in the street, maybe we should tell them if they save and invest married people do fare a lot better than single people in our society. they will cease in peace and prosperity. so the worldview, part of this whole philosophy of the hard left that nothing in america works for anybody of color needed to be challenged and rather than take the challenge they demanded the company take the billboards down.

that is the world we are in in terms of culture and is expressed in the voting booth and i think this election is going to be expressed in the voting booth and i've heard people say that the red team is probably going to win very handily. host: what was clear channel's response to your billboards? guest: i think they stayed neutral but when you hear somebody like blm in their so-called peaceful protest say take them down or we will burn them down, they would rather deal with me. they wrote their contracts to demand that they put them back up. they had to make some choices like many people. people were asking why did they give up $1 billion? the shakedown industry of al sharpton and the rest of them has been going on for quite a long time. it is the perception of the racism industry and it isthat one group, the funding arm of all this hard core left $1

billion a year they are raising to give away so that at the push of a button they could show up in protest for everything from whether they want to support hamas to whether they are going to take people for abortion clinics? we are in a cultural war. this just hope that what happens is that we can keep calm enough to battle and that voting booth. host: angela, independent line, go ahead with your question or comment. caller: thank you for taking myi've heard a lot you but i've never met you and here's my question to you. in south central l.a., the black community has gone. my mother is the only black left on her block. they tried to force her out which used to be a 90% black community is now 90%

mexican-american. and my husband is mexican-american. i want you to explain to me what happened in that community in the last 20 years that everybody missed because the black is no longer the predominant. i was on welfare and i live in a gated community. so i want somebody to explain to me how everybody missed this. guest: i don't know that it was a miss. and housing policy there are two things that go on.ook at some of our communities, is the government to control all housing policy so they try to force their ideas which then traps people in certain communities. but the other side of the coin is people have freedom of flexibility move. daughter is in the sixth grade.

there are many people that move for a variety of different reasons. people who live in california it doesn't work for them anymore. the crime rates alone are driving people away from where they may have grown up. sometimes it's just for a better community. i lived in l.a. for years. i found out that i am a beach girl. i just really love that kind of life down in the water, and i couldn't afford the water in los angeles because cities are much more expensive in the suburbs which is another't afford to live in cities, but they make it sound like the suburbs are not only racist but they are also more expensive. the displacement goes on in our community are because people grow often and then some choose to stay. we should be very concerned about housing policy.

in fact, the book "the poor side of town and why we need it," what he looked at is when we change housing policies because a bunch of liberal progressive thought that it's not fair that people live in poor communities so we had better tear down the poor communities and build all these high-rises that didn't work. so now it is time for us to say what kind of housing policies make it comfortable for people to live free and have better choices for where they want to live? one of the challenges we are looking at, people moving to new communities is in property tax. if property taxes are not controlled across this country based on what county you live in you will run into major new challenges when it comes to housing supplies.

because the property tax in a particular community that is now revitalizing, to this taxes go up, people can no longer stay there. i don't think that is the issue. california under proposition 13 locked into its property tax. it is a state flat property tax. your original value is what you are taxed on so it goes up millions of dollars, it doesn't matter. this is something that other states should consider and start considering very rapidly as their states are changing because of the influx of others that are leaving. we got a couple of guys were on that particular initiative.

host: let's see if we can fit in one or two more calls. georgia, republican. helps if i push the button. caller: good morning. i'm glad to have you this morning and you are doing a very good job at being a voice for the young people. al sharpton is getting up in age and we need to not be so hard and look upon him on everything he says because i do believe that trump is for all people and i certainly have to vote for him because i am pro-life and i have always voted pro-life, and i just want you all to continue to be a voice for the younger

people because they are going to need this kind of talk. byron and tim scott are doing a very good job. as sharpton is getting older and other another generation, byron may not agree with everything. i want to get your opinion. guest: i think i am older than al sharpton. people think i am younger than i am. i do agree with the caller that we have to allow the transition in black america to mature. have to allow the younger generation the further they get from the civil rights movement, the more opportunity they have two go into the future of america and be very flourishing in america. i think one of the reasons donald trump is so attractive to young black men is because they

are entrepreneurial. notice the types following him. most are in the entertainment industry. they have a lot of money in their pocket and want to keep it that way. people talking about the advantages of taxation, people of all ethnicities do not agree because the more money they have the more they what to keep it in their pocket, in particularot agree with. i agree that we have to allow room for younger african americans with a different point of view to have their expression and they will decide in the voting booth. but they have people like al sharpton constantly go after one little word someone may have said like byron whole era as if it was positive. every african american knows what it means to live black in this country. we all have the burden of race. but we have to decide what we will do with the burden of race. wewill we put everyone on

notice that we have a disadvantage or just live free and express ourselves in whatever lot we have in our lives? host: for 25 years at least star parker has been a guest on c-span over the years. you can go to c-span.org and search "star parker." you can see a lot of her past appearances, some of her books as well that we have interviewed her on. i am glad you reminded me. i could not remember when we first met. guest: i think it was "uncle sam's plantation," my bestseller. it was the first one because you were also thinking about the title, "where did you come up with that title?" host: "the state of black progress" is the latest book.

star parker. i really messed that up. it was nice to see you again. come back. guest: thank you, i will. host: next "the death of truth" with steven brill. he is the editor-in-chief of "newsguard" and this is his latest book. >> ♪ >> tonight on "q&a," the actor and author recounts the day he and his family were removed from their home and sent to an internment camp following the japanese attack on pearl harbor in 1941. >> my father answered the door and one of the soldiers pointed his bayonet at our father. henry and i were petrified. the other soldier said, "get

your family out of this house." we followed them out, stood on the driveway, waiting for our mother to come out. when she finally came out escorted by the soldier that pointed his bayonet at us, when she came out she had our baby sister in one, a huge duffle bag in the other, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. that memory is seared into my brain. >> actor and author george takei tonight on "q&a." you can listen on our free c-span now app. >> ♪ >> weekends bring you booktv featuring leading autthe daily mailreporter discusses kamala harris' path.

reporterks at what impact the 2020 two supreme court ade is having on patients seshe is interviewed by chief washington -- the chief washington correspondent. watch booktv every weekend and find a full schedule in your program guide or watch online anytime. >> [applause] >> get ready to cheer on your favorite team in this year's annual congressional baseball team where republicans face-off against democrats. pay by play coverage from washington nationals park on wednesday at 7:00 eastern on c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. >> here is a ball hit deep into

left field and bouncing up into the bullpen! >> "washington journal" continues. host: on your screen is steven brill. he is the co-ceo of a group called "newsguard." he is the author of this new book, "the death of the truth: how social media and the internet gave snake oil salesman and demagogues the weapons they needed to destroy trust and polarize the world and what we can do about it." you write in this book that facts have lost their power and different versions of truth exist. please explain. guest: wl, i think what we have seen with the onslaught of social media becoming the chief source of information for so many people, including so many young people, that everybody has an opinion.

as a result of that, there is no consensus around basic facts. was barack obama born in the united states? will the covid vaccine kill you? who got the most votes in the presidential election? just a whole range is volodymyr zelenskyy a nazi? did the united states give him $100 million to buy king charles' estate? these are all things that large percentages of people believe in this country. what i have tried to do in this book is explain how we got there, the forces that put us there, and also what we can do about it. host: does this all tieback to social in your view? guest: it ties back to two things. first of all, social media enabled everybody to publish to everybody else. the good news about the internet is that anybody can reach

billions of people in the world. there are no filters, no barriers. the bad news about the internet is that anybody can reach billions of people in the world. anybody can be a publisher. someone who has a crazy opinion about the covid vaccine can reach as many peoples dr. fauci can. i think what we need to face in this world is there are experts. there is someone who is an expert who put me onto the show this morning by having the technical skills to set up a satellite feed. you could not just walk off the street and do that. there are experts. there are experts in health care, in law, in all kinds of fields. there are referees who count ballots, and they count those

not with an agenda, but they are honest referees. i think we have lost that basic trust. host: words, we have lost some gatekeepers. guest: right. gatekeepers sounds negative, and in many respects, it is negative. but in many respects, it is positive. i think we want someone to be a gatekeeper when people decidethey would like to practice medicine, for example. if i go to a doctor, i would like for some gatekeeper to have decided this dr. pastor medical boards and went to a medical school and knows what she is talking about and does not just have an opinion about the best cure for cancer. and yet, if you go online, and this is what the book is about the most popular websites and associated social media platforms dealing with cancer for example, will tell you april cockpits will cure cancer and

that your oncologist is just trying to rip you off. host: how do you determine credibility and trustworthiness especially when it comes to social media sites? guest: well, historically, going way back and up to the present we have come to rely on people we trust who we think no more than we do about certain things -- know more than we do about certain things. that is something that has been lost. the idea everyone can have an opinion about who won the election as opposed to people counting the ballots, i think that is a dangerous idea. the idea you and i can have the same opinion and exposure in talking about a complicated health care issue that a doctor can, i think that is a dangerous thing.

i know lots of people do not agree with that because they have been so seduced by the demagogues in the world to have basically told them that you cannot trust anything or anyone. there is a poll i report about in "the death of the truth." the poll was taken by "the economist" last year. "the economist" asked people one of two questions. do you think the world is mostly a good place with good people trying to help you live a good life? i am paraphrasing, but that was the first question. alternatively, do you think the world is full of evil people threatening you and trying to fool you and take away your way of life? those two answers. the country split about half-and-half on those two answers. something like 82-18 of people who supported president trump in

the last election answered with the negative answer. that does not make them bad people. what it means to a large respect is tt the system has stopped working for them. something has made them be more cynical. one of the other really interesting public opinion polls i came across, and we all keep coming across this is this is the first generation of americans when asked if their children will be more prosperous than they are our answering in the negative. host: brill, there has got to be something that makes some people believe things that are not mainstream ideas correct? there has to an im guest: there is, but the impetus is enabled by social media. one of the things i recount in

the book is that beginning in about the mid-2010's more people got their health care information online than from a doctor if you go online and you look up something related to cancer, there is more engagement online with a site called cancer. news than forert site of the american cancer society. cancer.news has all sorts of unreliable i there something pushing people to not believe facts established by experts debate. that is one of the problems.

it is a problem as i explain in the book exacerbated by the fact that something called programmatic advertising has replaced the usual decision-making by and advertisers so that all advertising is done by auction. the more eyeballs you get, the more ad revenue you get. therefore, there is a financial incentive to create bogus, inflammatory websites and associated social media posts because those get more eyeballs. host: there is a role, in a sense, for greed and misinformation. guest: there are two major forces, the onslaught of social media and the onslaught of programmatic advertising which not too many people pay attention to. i will give you an example. you remember when nancy pelosi's husband was brutally attacked at

their home. that night, a story ran in something called "the santa monica observer" that he was actually the victim of a gay prostitute, a totally made up hoax story. "newsguard" identified that as a site posing as a local news site running all sorts of crazy stories in order to get more eyeballs via the social media it made when it posted these stories. it had run a story, for example that said hillary clinton died in 2015 and a body double had substituted for her in the presidential debates. that is the "santa monica observer." when the hoax story ran about the attack on nancy pelosi's husband, elon musk retweeted it,

don jr. retweeted it, and the "santa monica observer" cut thousands of visitors to the website who clicked on the social media post to read what was on the website. that resulted in millions of dollars in advertising, and brand names we all respect. hurts rentacar appeared with their advertising under that story. hertz advertising did not appear on the website of the "san francisco chronicle" which actually pays reporters to write the real story of what happened to mr. pelosi , so there is definitely a financial incentive. programmatic advertising, which i guarantee 95% of your viewers have never heard of, is the money machine behind that. host: we are talking to steven

brill about his new book, "the death of the truth." we will put the numbers up on the screen in just a moment so you can dial in and participate in our conversation. i want to read. cycle is just -- snake oil is not just a tool of one side. they have secretly financed websites posing as independent new startups. organizers piously claimed to have created the sites to fill the news desert caused by the decline of legacy local news papers. instead, they publish articles that support democratic candidates while attacking opponents. with generative ai, they have a new weapon thatreach to present alternative

versions of the truth. it is another insidious step at undermining institutions. guest: exactly right. another one of the referees we should be able to trust in the world are people who publish local news, especially local news because that has traditionally been the source of the trust that we rely on. i'm glad you mentioned that. i am also glad that you mentioned this is not a partisan issue. the left is worse and certainly more self-righteous about it tha n the ght. for example, the political action groups that finance these pink sites on the left people like the woman who also owns "the atlantic." one would think someone

responsible for reviving what i think is now the best magazine in the country would be a little more careful about the other stuff that she finances, but apparently, she is not. as i talk to you this morning, we are actually reaching a milestone. as of this week in the united states of america, there are more pink slime sites posing as local news and undermining trust then there are websites in the united states run by legitimate local newspapers. think about that for a second. if you are looking at what you think is a local newspaper, the odds are now bet that you are looking at a fraud. host: i want to read 27 words to you and see if it has any impact on what we are talking about. information provided by another information content provider, section 230.

guest: right, you read section 230, which was a short amendment paassed and inserted into a multi-hundred-page massive telecommunications reform bill in 1996. it was innocently conceived. at that time you will recall there were three dial-up services that you could pay to join. compuserve, prodigy, and aol read there were legal scuffles because people would go into the very small not terribly populated chat rooms that were started by these services. they would go on to a finance chat board and say something defamatory about somebody else, and they would get sued. so, one of the dial-up services said we are going to try to screen our content.

we are going to be good guys. we are going to screen our content and keep harmful content off. the other one said we do not screen anything. we are just like the phone company. you can comment on as much as you want about anything you want. the one that said we docontent, was not held liable in a lawsuit because it said we don't even try where is the one who said we screen content was held liable. long story short, congress thought that was sort of a perverse result. why should you penalize the good guys, the good samaritans, which is what this amendment was called "the good samaritan act," so let's say nobody is responsible for any content published in what became a social media platforms. there were not social media platforms then. the amount of content in these chat rooms is like one billionth of theontent we see every day

online in social media platforms. at age 11, mark zuckerberg became a good samaritan who had no liability when he founded facebook for moving fast and breaking things which was the watchword for facebook when it was founded. what that means today is elon musk owns a car company and if he does something that makes the car unsafe, if he were to decide that so many people want my car that i have to make them so quickly that i cannot mess around with seatbelts or airbags or worry about the software that will cause the car to drive off of a cliff, if you does that, regulators will come down hard on him -- if he does that regulators will come down hard on him and works will come down hard on him let's look at the other consumer products he owns x.

when it comes to check, he has no responsibility for the safety of the product. -- when it comes to x he has no response ability for the safety of the product. if someone induces someone to take a mix of chemicals that will kill them, he is not responsible for screening that. that is the unforeseen consequence of section 230. host: let's take some call for steven brill. "the death of truth" is the name of the book. jim is on the republican line. caller: good morning. i watch "washington journal" every morning. so far this morning, i have gotten so upset about the fact that people call in and talk about lies, basic lies.

the gentleman before said over one million people died while trump was president because he to bleach. i went back and looked in on reuters they showed hhad 400,000 people die when he was president. the day he left office, 400,000. right now, we have 1.2 million. the other 800,000 have died while biden has been president. biden took office with a vaccine that trump through operation warp speed got produced, not bleach. from the "washington journal." these people call in and lie because they are seen the lies and misinformation on social media and hearing it on television. this morning, you showed anything -- a thing about

representative daniels and al sharpton. al sharpton should not be believed since the data want to broadly -- tawana brawley came on tv. al sharpton stood behind her and swore a policeman raped her. it was lies. we have that on social media now. host: we are going to leave it there, thank you for your point of view. mr. brill, what is your comment? guest: i do not think i disagree with anything he said. i have not had a chance to check the numbers. will add one other number to the equation which is 225,000 people. that is how many extra people died because of all of the myths about the covid vaccine. that is not a trump issue or a biden issue. there are all kinds of disinformation out there and it

comes from both sides. it has real harm. the reason i mention the 225,000 it isis it is not simply a statistic of how many people died under the trump presidency versus the biden presidency. that is how many people died because of misinformation. to this day, whenever any celebrity dies,eople go online and get millions of followers millions of views, saying that celebrity, whether it was matthew perry or colin powell or hank aaron, you name it, that they died from a covid vaccine. there is no way that any social media platforms should be free just to publish that stuff and get the associated advertising revenue that comes with that. host: mr. brill, didn't used

to call those social media theories prior to social media? guest: they are conspiracy theories just like there is a conspiracy theory that these two poll workers in atlanta were passing computer chips full of votes around to steer the election in favor of president biden. there are all kinds of conspiracy theories. this book is about how those theories have become so much more important, so much more pervasive, and so much more destructive and responsible for the chaos and polarization we have in our world today. there is so much chaos and polarization that i was thinking of someone who used to run the court tv cable channel that i would make a suggestion to c-span that maybe instead of

doing the republican line and democratic line there would be a way to split the lin between people who actually believe in reality and people who do not. host: mark in fort lauderdale, florida, democrat, please go ahead with your question or comment for steven brill. caller: good morning. thank you for this very interesting discussion. that mention a second ago of how to delineate the lines into c-span, i would like to see all of the people self identify and self identify correctly because as mr. brill has pointed out there is a lot of misinformation and i think a lot of it is people. the guy that called before, i love the way mr. brill answered him when he said it was not trump, it was biden that caused

all of the deaths from covid. you came up with a statistic. that same coloaller complained about the way the hosts on c-span allow democratic liars to continue. ne call up on c-span every single day who says we have high gas prices because biden shut down the pipeline but you know it can be proved wrong and there are facts showing we are producing more oil and gas than ever. someone will call in and say crime is rampant which is not true because we have the statistics to disprove it. host: mark, a lot of mr. brill's book is about the news m and the fact that there are these alternative websites for news. how do you get your news? caller: i try to use a variety.

i get all of the big tv channels. i cruise the internet. i do not seek anything out. i let things come to me because that is how i get a variety. host: mr. brill mark lets information come to him. is that a good idea? guest: umm, yeah, assuming he picks his sources and tries hard, as i do, to pick a variety of sources, not just go to one echo chamber or little corner of the internet versus another. let me add one thing. i suggested c-span set up divide the phone lines between people who believe in reality and people who do not. now that i have said that, i realize that is totally wrong because the real problem is nobody will concede that they do

not believe in reality. they have been sucked into believing a different reality. there is a guy that i profile in my book who was working in the pest control business in ohio. he had gone to ohio state, never had a single brush with the law grew up in a middle-class home, perfectly average, law-abiding person. he gets laid off at the beginning of the covid pandemik , has a lot of time at home, goes down the internet rabbit hole and by january 6, he is in the vest and wielding a coach rack as a weapon to attack the police. he really believed trump had won the election pretty he had gone to sleep the night before and trump is ahead. he did not quite understand and certainly did not get the

understanding from listening to the president that night that there were more boats to be counted. he woke up the next day believing in the conspiracy that the election had been stolen. a perfectly decent guy lead down a path because he had been misinformed, and also because the system had stopped working for him. he had been unemployed for the first time in his life and things stopped working. that made him more vulnerable to believing conspiracy theories. host: steven brill, going back to the previous caller from florida who said he allows the news to come to him. he checks websites but he allows the news to come to him. wouldn't the algorithm feed him what he wanted or had looked at in the past rather than a larger product? guest: you are exactly right. thank you for intending that. there is a woman i profile.

in 2013, she is a in silicon valley and has just had her first baby. she does not know that many people out there of that age of babies so she goes online innocently just to get basic ation about what should my look like for might newborn baby and she starts to find on facebook and twitter this vehement over something as benign as a measles vaccine for a baby. she cannot believe it, but she keeps reading it, as a result of looking at it repeatedly, the algorithm starts to feed her more conspiracy theories. she texts a couple of her friends that work at these platforms and says, what is up with your recommendation algorithm? i'm getting all this stuff. they basically tell her, that is how it works. she is now an advocate for

reform of the social media platforms. she runs a group at stanford university that does research in advocacy. she was really surprised in 2013. by 2018 and 2019, none of us were surprised because we had heard from whistleblowers, we had seen what happened in the 2016 elections. and yet, the social media platforms via martyr got changed what they do. they just go apologize to congress every six months and say we are really sorry. we are trying really hard. we promise to do better, but they have not done a thing. host: don in columbia, maryland, please go ahead with your question or comment for steven brill. caller: thank you. interesting topic. i think the two issues i

recognize going on is access to professional services. the one example i will say is medical doctors. the average individual do notdoctor. they do not. where did they go, they go online. if they truly want professional access -- guest: you are exactly right. caller: six weeks, it will taprofessional services people do not have so they rely on the internet. if we pull forward to the media companies, i think the media companies have lost innovation and creativity and keeping pace with what is providing a professional service. right now, a lot of media companies rely on pundits and entertainment versus what is happening on the ground locally. i think you are correct.

there is no access to local newspapers or local reporters. i think if an individual goes out with a camera and films a video and post it online instantly, the average american is going to listen to that person rather than listening to a pundit sitting in a studio somewhere. i think media companies need to be more creative, including c-span. do on site location studies. go where people are living their lives every day. i think media companies have stopped doing that. host: we got the point. let's hear from steven brill. guest: i think you are exactly right. i think the first point you made about access to health care is something i touch on in the book . as some of your viewers may know, i wrote a whole book about

the american health care system. your point is exactly right. you have a pain in your stomach or in your knee or a headache or something, and you try to make an appointment with the doctor. it might be six weeks, it might be eight weeks, it might be never, depending on what kind of insurance you have and can afford, but you can go online. if you have been told you might have some kind of disease but you cannot see the doctor, or when you see the doctor the doctor is owned by a medical practice who has told the doctor you can spend 11.5 minutes with each patient so just talfast do you do not understand what the doctor is saying. when you get your insurance bill, you have no idea what the explanation of benefitsand yet online, on social media there are people who are prepared to explain it to you really simply and clearly.

the only problem is they are prepared to explain it to you really simply, clearly, and wrong. instead, they will sell you a packet of fruit pins to carrier indigestion. you are right. the failure of the health care system has created a vulnerability. when we started "newsguard," we were stunned to find we had rated 15,000 or 16,000 news sites and the largest category of the 4000 or 5000 we rated unreliable, the largest category relate to health care. we were stunned by that. we thought it would be politics. it is much more healthcare act because of what you have pointed out about lack of access to the system, and it is complicated and there is also a ton of money involved in creating a wte of

phony cures for health care problems. host: nebraska, republican, please go ahead with your question or comment. caller: mr. brill, i am 67 years old, white guy. my roommate in college, a black guy, right there in maryland. weatch "washington journal" everyday in contact each other whatever the subject may be. we are absolutely convinced that because of the media, our country cannot rely on the media any longer. they are broke. not only are they broke, they are corrupt. if you look at what happened the last five years, the only people that went down to the border was fox. now everybody in the world is going to be putting all this crop out about the border and none of them went down there except fox.

look at all the corrupt things that happened that was recorded with the russians and the 50 expert security guys. it was all bull. host: we got the point. steven brill what about so-called gatekeeper media? i know you are a co-founder of "newsguard." guest: if you think about it all media is gatekeeping media because the definition of media is it mediates between people in the news, news issues, and people who want to consume the news so there is an element of gatekeeperism, whether it is fox, msnbc or the decisions c-span makes about what guess it will have. there probably 100,000 books

being published this year. you will have one or two books a week. the question is whether you do it fairly and honestly. i think you can do it fairly and honestly and have a conservative agenda or a liberal agenda as long as you tell people what that agenda is. if you do not have a conservative or liberal agenda or democratic or republican agenda and you say we do not have an agenda, then, like c-span, you have to keep that honest too. c-span does. i am not sure i agree with every aspect ofritique of coverage on the border. let's remember fox also did all kinds of video reports about the caravans that were coming which never existed. that is just one example. host: from your book, "the death of the truth," from 2003 to 2020

newspaper advertising and circulation revenue fell to $20 billion. as a result, about 2200 newspapers and their websites went out of business between 2005 and 2021. between 2008 and 2021, 40,000 newsroom jobs were lost at those newspapers and the survivors had to continue cutting back staff. the next call is judy from arizona, democrat, go ahead. caller: oh, yeah, hi. i guess my point is everybody keeps complaining about the algorithm, but i have never seen a single piece of legislation that talks about let's regulate the algorithms that are allowed. guest: there have been multiple pieces of legislation introduced.

every year since probably 2018, lots of legislation introduced. none of it even makes it out of the committees. that is because of something we know which is lobbying. in this case, the lobbyists can make arguments on the liberal side and on the conservative side. the conservatives argue the social media platforms veer to the left when in fact all of the data i have ever seen says they seem to favorg voices more than left-wing voices. you can certainly make that argument would twitter right now if you look at it. there has been all kinds of legislation. the core legislation basically says, if you go back to my explanation of section 230, the

core of the legislation argument is the algorithms do constitute editing. that is interfering with the process by which people post on social media. it is ordering what is presented to you on the basis of an algorithm. in this case what has been discovered is the algorithm goes for the most inflammatory stuff to send to you because that will keep you there. a lot of the legislation proposed has said if you use an algorithm, you lose your section 230 immunity. but it never gets out of committee. we live in a world where congress cannot name a post office, let alone do something this logical. host: one of the arguments in washington and around the country is whether tiktok should be banned. is that something you have an opinion on?

guest: rather than ban it, there was a law passed in the 1930's that said if anything was produced by hitler's germany or by the soviet union and sent into the united states it had to have a label that said this comes from nazi journey, this comes from the soviet union. therefore, people were warned it might be propaganda. the internet has none of that. rt and sputnik the two major russian propaganda sites online or on youtube "newsguard" has identified another 500 that are not as blatant about branding themselves as being russian propaganda but they are. there is no warning given that this is russian propaganda. you could definitely make the

argument that it should be. by the same token, i think anything that comes from a media entity controlled by communist china, and it is controlled, let's not beat around the bush about this, it is controlled by the chinese government, it should be labeled as such. and then, people might take it with more of a grain of salt. there is a certain irony that tiktok has proven to be just as destructive of our society, just as responsible for misinformation and disinformation and polarization as facebook and youtube and twitter, and yet we do nothing to lean on, regulate our own american citizens who run those countries, and yet we are focused on the fact a chinese company is doing the same thing. i will just add that if you

think about this from the perspective of europe, asia, or any western democracy, think about what they think about the fact that these dominant american companies have so polluted their information ecosystem and have so disoriented their democracies and their elections, all of what i call america's most shameful export. host: the next call for steven brill, bill in the florida keys, independent line. caller: good morning. i am sure mr. bri is a lovely fellow. but i hate to say, these are nefarious ideas. there is no such thing as misinformation. there is information. people are absolutely convinced the world was flat. the experts believed it was

flat. in many cases in human history when the vast majority of people thought one way, it turned out wrong. he brought up dr. fauci and cobra. much of what was put out as certified information from the government turned out to be untrue, about masks, about social distancing, about the benefits of th vaccine in terms of transmission rather than protection of the individual. there was the declaration written by a lot of physicians who had concerns which was suppressed. more information is good. to say that you will allow the experts to decide what is good is not a good idea.

host: how do you find yourself discerning what you consider real information? caller: the more information i have or consult, looking at other people who believe things, i think it is very helpful for people who have cancer and go online and seetives of what is out there. there is a website where you can see every article in the medical literature. more information is good. but to call anything misinformation is not a good idea and it is not a good idea to allow people who are "experts" to be deciding what is misinformation that is my point. host: that is built in the florida keys. steven brill, your response? guest: i agree with much of what you said. i will point out the declaration you are referring to which

exalted the benefits of herd immunity which everybody now laughs at, was not really suppressed. it was out there. you know that, i know that, it was written about, it is just dead wrong. i do not believe any information should be suppressed. i just think, and this is why we founded "newsguard," i think people should have more information about the people feeding them information. we do not suppress anything. the word "misinformation," i take it you would probably agree that if someone wrote an essay today about the world being flat, you would say that is not quite as reliable and accurate as someone writing an essay about the world being round. there are stages at which things

become clearly inaccurate. at the beginning of covid, you are right. one of the things we all heard about is if you have an amazon package, leave it outside for two days because if you bring it in and touch it, you might get covid. there were health experts that said that. the good news is the same experts quickly said we were wrong about that. the information we had has now changed. so, i think misinformation and certainly disinformation has to do with motivation. someone who is putting out a story that says that the two poll workers in georgia were hustlers and drug dealers, they have no reason to know that. it is not that they are misinformed about whether

keeping a package on your porch that come from amazon for two days is good or bad, that is deliberate. someone who says hank aaron died from a covid vaccine and they have no idea how hank aaron died , and the medical examiner says he did not die from the covid vaccine, that is a different order of misinformation and disinformation than what you are talking about. but having a full debate with no suppression of everything is what i am in favor of also. host: steven brill, that brings up this article in "the new york times." "why covid probably started in a lab" is the title and it is written by a molecular biologist at the broad institute of mit and harvard. there was a lot of misinformation and disinformation about covid throughout this.

now, this is appearing in "the new york times." does it give it more legitimacy? guest: i think it is totthere were three alternatives about the origins of covid. one was it was started in the wuhan meat market, or whatever the market was. the second has to do with the lab in wuhan. the two alternatives are that it was deliberately created as a weapon of mass destruction in the lab. the second alternative is it was being researched in the lab and leaked out. at "newsguard," we have settled on the idea there is still a debate over whether it leaked out of the lab or came from some other place like the market. we have followed most of the

experts. experts but we rely on most of the experts who generally agree it was not deliberately created by the chinese in the lab as a. host: that goes to our point, bill's point, that was more information. during the covid pandemic, a lot of information about the lab was pooh-poohed or said it was not possible. guest: that is a debate. that is not an attack on the media to say some people believe something, some people doubted something. that is what happens with everything, especially something new and unknown and mysterious at the time. the caller said the declaration about herd immunity which was totally bogus, the notion that

was suppressed, it was not suppressed. people looked at it and said that is just bogus, and that is even before we know what we know now which is if we know anything about covid now, there is no such thing as herd immunity because most of us have gotten it and can get it again. host: louk in georgia republican line, please go ahead. caller: good morning. was biden russian misinformation? our president was elected because of alive. thank you. guest: i did not hear the question. host: it was about hunter biden's laptop and when it was called russian disinformation by 50 members of the intelligence community. caller: let's be a little more precise. members of the intelligence

community wrote an op-ed, and i probably would not have signed on to it but they did not say it was russian disinformation, they said it had all the telltale signs of russian disinformation. the only position newsguardi ever took on the issue was that the websites that immediately said the laptop was a hoax with a plant for the russians, we criticized those websites and lowered their scores. having said that, the whole incident is one incident where i really screwed up. not "newsguard," but i was on csnbc the morning it happened and i basically said what the intelligence experts said which is it sounds to me like it could be russiani then added my opinion

does not matter. what matters are the facts and "newsguard is not going to go with my opinion, which newsguard did not. i think there is a misconception that the intelligence experts did not declare this is misinformation. r thing i will add is the more we talk about this what was on the hunter biden laptop that if verified or not verified would have or should have affected anyone's decision about whether to vote for hunter biden's father? ill's book is "the death of the truth." you write this bookory of the four core forces that have combined to create the death of trust in the ensuing instability and chaos. first, there are the sociasecond,

there is the development and dominance of programmatic advertising technology that supports misinformation and disinformation. the other two core forces are authoritarians and charlatans promoting bonusgus health care and funny products. then there are the abused and those distrustful and vulnerable enough to buy into what the bad actors are selng. that is the core of this book "the death of the truth: how social media gave snake on salesman and demagogues the weapons they needed." thanks for being on c-span. guest: you are welcome. it was a pleasure. host:yone f this afternoon, live coverage of the donald trump rally in vegas.

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