the following is a cnn special report. >> george washington, in his farewell address, he told us beware of political parties. they could bring us and these are his words, to riot and insurrection. we can't say he didn't warn us. the great american divide

exposed. >> it felt like an invasion. >> they were climbing the walls, breaking windows, breaking into doors. >> how did it get this bad? >> they legitimately believe the election was a fraud. >> it is a sense of broken trust. >> no one is helping us. >> a president plays the divider in chief. >> this is a con game being played by the democrats. >> he's a man of resentments and his voters have resentments. >> we will not take it any more. >> true believers become a radical mob. >> we're taking this country back. >> they're jihadists. >> they don't get to steal it from us. >> television and the internet

tear us apart. >> social media is a brainwashing machine. >> we cannot agree on what is true. >> the people in charge rigged the game. >> but it all began long before donald trump. >> they will do anything to stop us. >> he built up his own army. >> they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull -- lipstick. >> as a new day begins, will we find some way -- to breach the great divide. >> this perennial struggle between our worst impulses and what lincoln called our better angels. good evening. i'm fareed zakaria. we, the people, those first three words of the constitution

are the definition of american democracy. but not now. not in 2021. it is us versus them. the vast and bitter divide between democrats and republicans just keeps getting worse. how bad is it now? even after the storming of the capitol, after joe biden's inauguration, 75% of republicans still believe that donald trump actually won last november's election. and republican leaders will still not say what they know to be true, that this claim is simply false, a lie. we don't face a clash over political differences, we're watching something much deeper. a cultural divide that is turning partisans into radicals, and radicals into insurgents. the divisions in this country have been growing deeper and uglier for decades. but we simply ignored the

flashing red lights. we just kept going. now, it is crucial that we stop and try to understand how we got here. a defeated president. >> your sworn to uphold our constitution. >> a president who lost an election. unwilling to leave office, donald trump contacts fantasies instead. >> tens of thousands of votes that came in duffle bags. where the hell did they come from. >> this is his final chance to sell the big lie. >> it is so crazy. that people don't even believe it. it can't be true. [ crowd chanting ] >> stunningly, millions do believe it. and now many of the faithful have an ominous plan to save

their president. >> let's take the capitol. >> take the capitol. >> take the capitol right now. >> at the other end of pennsylvania avenue, a bizarre debate questioning the validity of an election already certified by all 50 states. >> americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election. >> what does it say to nearly half of the country that believe this is election was rigged? >> what message will we send today? to the world that has so looked up to us for centuries. >> few in congress realize that at that very moment the president is putting a target on them. >> after this, we're going to walk down, and i'll be there with you, we're going to walk down to the capitol. you'll never take back our

country with weakness. you have to show strength and you have to be strong. >> the order is clear. the crowd begins to move. inside of the capitol, anger is rising. >> you cannot change the rules of an election while it is underway and expect the american people to trust it. >> it has never been our place to over turn an election. and if we hope to remain a democracy, it never will be. [ sirens ] >> outside, the trump army is now at the gates. >> we're seeing protesters over come the police. the police are now running back into the capitol building.

this is incredible. >> thousands of rioters are storming the capitol building. these people are convinced that trump's big lie is the truth. they think they have no option but to act using any means necessary. >> i don't want to say that what we're doing is right. i'm probably going to lose my job as a poastor after this, bu what is it going to take? >> we respect the law. we were good people. the government did this to us. we were normal, good, law-abiding citizens and you guys did this to us. we want our country back. >> some members run for their lives. others are still inside of the house chamber. terrified, hiding behind any barrier they could find.

>> they broke the glass. everybody stay down. get down. >> we're coming for you, nancy. >> trump's followers are hunting down the most powerful democrat in america. >> a protest actually in the office of house speaker nancy pelosi. >> at the end of all of this horror. >> where is the president of the united states? where is donald trump? >> we were left with just one question. how -- how could this happen in the united states of america? >> when the president of the united states says again and again and again the election was fraudulent, they're stealing it from you, we know how it happened. >> you're a traitor. >> the divide between red and

blue didn't start with donald trump. but now it is an existential crisis. >> i will die for my country. >> reporter: >> because a swath of republicans have become radicals, even insurgents. >> there is a clean right and a dirty right and they're not the same. the dirty right traffics in conspiracy theory, white nationalism and as you could see even violence. >> i don't even think it is the republican party any more. just call it the patriot party, the trump party. >> are you the fake news. they lie to us. >> the trump party. how large is it? remember, 75% of republicans say trump won the election. >> we're taking back our country and it is going to be biblical. >> they're jihadist. >> said john meacham, like isis or al qaeda. >> it is a total war where your whole identity, your whole

fortune, your whole way of life is under perpetual assault. >> reality now comes in two colors, red and blue. >> when we cannot agree on what is true, when we cannot agree on the basic facts that politics should be about, you cannot have a functioning democracy. >> the two different worlds we live extend to the news we watch and read. on fox news the capitol rioters were just a few troublemakers. >> an overwhelming majority of them, more than 99% had to be -- were peaceful because of a small contingent of loons, these patriots have been unfairly maligned. >> on planet far right, the storming of the capitol was actually the work of antifa and black people. >> gas, gas, gas! >> we've seen antifa and black

lives matter, we've seen leftive groups that have tried to stir up violence. >> black lives matter. even though the mob was overwhelmingly white. race has been a key flash point in the trump era. but, in fact, it has been the strongest force driving polarization for decades. it is what got us here. >> the tip of the spear, the edge of the blade is racial division, racial rhetoric and sometimes muted and sometimed loud, but always there. >> to understand the role of race, we need to go back to the middle of the 20th century. 1950. post world ii america, bursting with optimism. >> the past is only an inkling in the future. >> factories were humming. the middle class were surging.

>>le realization of the american dream. >> into thisoy dealic picture came word of a hidden crisis. scholars warned there was too much unity in american politics. >> we're not polarized enough. that stark enough choices were not being presented to the country. >> they conduct their business in about the same manner. and quite truthfully a lot of the speeches sound very much alick. >> the problem, it sounds bizarre now, but the parties were too mixed up. there were too many liberals in the republican party and too many conservatives in the democratic party. >> the democratic party was an alliance of new england liberals and southern democrats. >> the southern democrats were called dixie-crates. manim were unabashed racists. >> i say segregation now and

tomorrow and forever. >> these democratic conservatives made up a powerful voting block in the senate. >> if you want to work with anybody on anything and get your bills done, you have to be in good relationships with the southern block of the democratic party. >> the republicans had their own uneasy alliance. the liberal new yorker nelson rockefeller coexisting with the far right western barry goldwater. it all worked. but then came the first stirrings of the civil rights movement. >> you're not a texan if you're not for segregation. >> in 1954 the supreme court ruled that segregating schools was unconstitutional. >> the white children went to school and we stood outside. >> for the next ten years, there was a new civil war in the south. to bring black children into lilly white schools. then came an earthquake.

the civil rights act of 1964. just months after john kennedy's assassination, the new democratic president lyndon johnson famous for bending congress to his will, got the bill through. >> the civil rights act of 1964 is signed at the white house by president johnson. >> and when he signed it, he said to an aide, i just handed the south, the republicans, for a generation. johnson was wrong about that. it is been about three. you begin to have a democratic party that was in the main more liberal and a republican party that was in the main far more reactionary. >> it would indeed be several generations. until it seemed the two parties might finally heal the rift of race. >> this is an incredible moment in american history. >> when barack obama became america's first black president,

we saw an explosion of national pride. black and white, democratic and republican, but it turned out that the country began to have a deeply divided reaction to its young new president and his family. >> it seemed to bring out a sense of jealousy or resentment or fear of loss of status. hold on a second, i've been working my butt off and i look around and here is this black guy so far ahead of me he's in the white house. >> one man understood this unease with obama better than many republican leaders. he found a way to tap into it with his birther conspiracy theory. >> if he wasn't born in this country, he shouldn't be the president of the united states. >> where is his birth certificate. shut it down and prove it. >> when scholars spent time with tea party activists, they found behind the talk of taxes and big

government were people mostly motivated by fears about race and immigration. >> people who have been most radicalized by the trump years believe that diversity was an idea, not a vivid reality. >> in 1950, the you're our political parties were said to be too similar, the country was about 90% white. now, in 2021, as we face an existential crisis of political division, america is about 59% white. >> we are living in the most vivid manifestation of the politics of fear in our history. that's where we are now. i leave the entirety of my estate.

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in an alternate universe -- >> trump people were not scaling the wall. >> trump supporters don't do that. we're not liberals. >> where the [ bleep ] are they. >> a pro-trump mob could have never stormed the capitol. >> they were antifa folks. >> it is a virus, like the flu. >> if i get it, i'll beat it. >> and donald trump won the election. >> this is a decisive victory for trump. >> in a landslide. >> this election has been stolen from the american people. >> millions of americans are being brain washed. >> this is a plan. >> on the airwaves and online. >> they stole it. they're thieves. >> they live in a completely different reality. that is the greatest threat to our democracy. >> we're not alone. >> you have every right to be

suspicious. it is your birth right as americans. >> how did what we read, what we watch, and what we share become a dispopia of disinformation. >> direct from our newsroom in new york -- >> at the dawn of the television age. >> the first daily half hour news program. >> things were a lot simpler. >> this is the huntly-brinkley report. >> on abc you get the news fast and you get it straight. >> the united states is serious about its commitments. >> everything is a-okay. >> everything will tell us a similar middle of the road story. >> the confrontation in washington. >> but for many on the right, a growing minority is raising its voice in protest. >> the mainstream media leaned liberal. >> president nixon heard today the voice of the campus. >> it became an animating theme

for a lot of conservatives. >> like them or not, these are -- >> few republicans hated the networks more than richard nixon. >> one could only be angry with those he respects. >> he hired a kindred spirit to help with his 1968 campaign. >> roger ales was that producer. >> the future founder of fox news, roger ailes. >> they bring him on to the team. >> the candidates need no introduction. >> for his famously awkwardly candidate. >> mr. nixon, would you like to comment on that statement. >> i have no comment. >> a miraculous makeover. producing highly staged town halls. >> this is a great country. >> it was a brilliant end run around the press. >> the next president of the united states, richard nixon. >> and it helped nixon win the

presidency. but there was nothing ailes could do to stop watergate. >> espionage unparalegaled in american history. >> he felt they didn't treat nix won why enough respect. >> i shall resign effective at noon tomorrow. >> he wanted to create a media vehicle that protection for the next nixon. >> ailes became the go-to right-wing media strategist of the 1980s. infamous for his vicious attacks. >> as governor michael dukakis gave freedom to first-degree murderers. >> in 1986, ailes found his destiny. when billionaire rupert murdoch

came calling. the right-wing's favorite hatchet man. >> we do not believe that it is up to the media to make up the public's mind. >> was now creating a new news network. >> these days people think tv news is about as unbiased as the commercials. >> on cable. every channel needs to find its own slice of the audience. >> dedicated to getting the story right. >> ailes turned his channel into a right-wing bull horn. >> the terrorists. >> cutting like never before. >> you're watching fox news channel. >> big ratings and profits soon followed. >> the power of fox news channel. >> ailes reshaped his competitors. as anchors on the other side of the aisle -- >> the battle for truth and the battle for justice. >> -- delivered their own partisan jabs.

>> you are a liar, mr. bush. shut the hell up. >> but no one did things quite like fox. >> you are part of a loud group of people. >> there is big money in polarization. >> you are clueless -- >> if you could stir people up you could keep them watching and when you have their eyeballs, you've got their pocket books. >> after the cable revelation, into the digital revelation. facebook began with lofty intentions. >> facebook's 1.1 billion users. >> between 75 and $100 billion. >> but as the company doubled down on growth, it kept creating masterful algorithms. >> people who join say it could be addictive. >> designed so keep people engaged, clicking and scrolling. >> it is a world that you get

sucked into. >> algorithms encouraged content that was sensational and extreme. >> polarization was the key to the model. this idea of appealing to people's lower level emotions, things like fear and anger to create greater engagement. >> the largest ipo in history. >> it was a successful business strategy. but it produced political disaster. algorithms kept providing content that was more and more outrageous and often untrue. >> he didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake. >> this guy either has a birth certificate or he doesn't. >> meanwhile on cable. >> do you think he was born in this country. >> i am concerned. >> egged on by trump. >> ballots are missing. there is fraud. >> fox news peddled its own

conspiracy theories. and new channels. >> this is the oan evening news. >> that were more extreme. >> some are questioning the nature of the virus. >> trying to outdo fox at its own game. >> america first or america. >> chasing the profits of polarization. >> this is about government control. >> joe biden is not the president-elect. >> it was a massive lie. on january 6th, america's dystopia of disinformation came alive for all to see. now conspiracy theorists weren't living on the fringes of society. they were in the united states

capitol. >> this is our house. >> january 6th is like the internet come alive. it is surreal. >> chilling proof that our nations cancer of lies is spreading fast and that no one in america is immune. >> guess what, america showed up. e my focus. lavender baths always calmed him. so we turned bath time into a business. ♪ there was a dream ♪ and building it with my son has been my dream job. ♪ ♪ at northwestern mutual, our version of financial planning helps you live your dreams today. find a northwestern mutual advisor at nm.com we look up to our heroes. idolizing them. mimicking their every move.

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about one of the driving issues at the heart of america's divide. something americans find difficult to talk about. class and social status. >> we the people, not you the elitist. >> i think we should have yanked our senators out by the hair of the head and drove them out. >> at the root of this anger is a deep resentment toward the country's elite class. >> no one is helping us. only us could help us. >> once politics becomes that enveloped, you are battling these existential foes of your way of life. >> for many, their way of life, their very identity is under attack. their beliefs and values -- >> prolife. god first. >> it is all part of a new class war. but class is now defined in complicated ways. it is not simply about economics

any more. a battle between the rich and working class. the new war in america is about a way of life. kinds of work, social values, cultural choices, sometimes called identity politics. >> we all have identities. we have tons of them. and this just goes all the way down the line. what kind of tv we like. what kind of places we shop. >> to better understand how the country has become so polarized, so divided by class, we need only to look at this map. in the 2020 presidential election the counties that voted for joe biden taking up a small part of the country's geography were responsible for 71% of the nation's economy. that vast sea of red, the counties that donald trump won, contributed a meager 29% of the

american gdp. it illustrates that the united states may be one country, but two very different worlds. divided by two things above all. where you live, and whether you went to college. >> people call it the diploma divide. more educated americans are overwhelmingly becoming democratic and less educated americans moving into the republican column. this is particularly true among white voters. >> just look at the breakdown. blue america is mostly urban, densely populated, diverse with a large share of college-educated workers in professional and creative jobs. >> when people talk about the degree divide, that is really the class divide. having a college degree, that is actually the strongest proxy for who is in the professional managerial elite. >> but red america is home to the country's beautiful heartlands and vast farms to feed most americans. it is not nearly as crowded.

it is whiter. with more americans that work with their hands. fewer here attend college and they don't like the urban professional elite. this divide has only been sharpened by the pandemic. according to the bureau of labor statistics, college educated workers were far more likely to telework and maintain their standard of living than those without education. >> i think people who didn't go through the four years see the rules being broken all of the time. by bankers, by economic elites and they feel like, hey, if somebody is going to break the rules on be on my side as a rule-breaker, i'll accept that. >> i love the poorly educated. >> for many white working class voters, donald trump seemed a messiah. >> the forgotten men and women of the united states are forgotten no more.

you work hard, you pay your taxes, you do all of these things and you were forgotten. they forgot about you. >> and trump did nothing for them. but he knew how to exploit them. >> the elite, the elite. >> trump used resentment of elites and hammered home cultural issues, immigration. >> this is an invasion. >> god -- >> in america we don't worship government, we worship god. >> guns -- >> the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is say good guy with a gun. >> abortion. >> unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the white house. >> white working class politics is cultural now. it's become an identity politics. >> donald trump had a role model for his exploitation of the class divide.

sarah palin, who did it first. when america's hockey mom became john mccain's running mate in 2008. >> they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, lipstick. >> she leaned heavily on identity politics, on american values and culture to rile up her base. >> i'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. >> her brand of america -- >> sarah is totally awesome. she speaks to the people like a regular person. you got to love her. >> talking about the real america, saying i'm one of you was the precursor of the war on elites. >> i think sarah palin was john the baptist for trump. she's the one that came first. >> governor sarah palin.

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it's tempting to say that donald trump is the reason for america's great divide. >> we're going to walk down to

the capitol. >> fight for trump! >> but before there was a donald trump, there was a republican pioneer who paved way for the trump brand of politics. >> they are the genuine reactionaries, we're going to change their world. >> this is the story of newt gingrich, the man who wrote the playbook for the modern conservative movement. >> newt gingrich, a republican, is taking over a congressional seat that has been a democratic strong hold for a kwaernt of a century. >> in 1979, when gingrich arrived in washington, he a singular goal. to blow up the political establishment, including the republican party. democrats had been in control of congress for so long it was called a permanent democratic majority. it was a very different time in politics. when civility and compromise

mattered. bob michael was known as mr. nice guy. imagine that. >> newt gingrich comes in with a buzz saw. >> we're living through a fundamental civil struggle, a civil car fought in public speeches rather than with armies. >> the gingrich philosophy, the only way for republicans to win back power was to be nasty. really nasty. >> for the democrats to say we're going to rape you and you have to pay for the hotel room is too much. >> the enemy. >> newt gingrich saw politics like war. >> at first, the republican old guard shunned him. they thought his tactics were toxic. >> he was a nobody. he wasn't a great legislator. but what he had was a knack for stirring controversy and getting attention. >> long before trump used twitter and fox to get around

media filters, gingrich had c-span. >> i'm going to speak this evening on the loony left, the machine which controls the u.s. house of representatives. >> late at night, gingrich and his allies would head to the house floor to let america know that radical democrats were a dangerous threat. >> the radical wing of the democratic party is taken over the foreign policy of that party. >> a view of the modern world that is rigid, unyielding and screwed. >> what the c-span cameras didn't show is that the house chamber was almost empty. >> you deliberately stood in that well before an empty house and challenged these people and you challenged their americanism and it is the lowest thing that i've ever seen in my 32 years in congress. >> it was exactly what newt gingrich wants.

he made national news and damaged the democrats' reputation. >> they elevated him and it made him a serious player in the eyes of republicans. >> i was a college teacher. >> gingrich has the greatest impact by teaching other republicans how to use his partisan tactics. he took over go-pac, a fledging grassroots group in 1986 and turned it into a power house. >> we have a car salesman and football coaches and he spent a lot of time educating them through satellite television and audio cassettes and he built up his own army. >> they were taught how to campaign and use extreme rhetoric to attack opponents. it was called newt speech. >> they have to use words like sick and traitorous and corrupt to get their message across. >> these are sick people. >> sound familiar? >> by the 1990s, newt gingrich

catapulted from the fringes of the gop to a position of power in the party. >> this is a war between the political class of the left and the rest of the nation. >> gingrich built a republican coalition made of up christian conservatives and anti-big government and anti-tax voters. >> they could all agree on thetheir enemies. >> in 1994 gingrich's campaign to radicalize the republican party finally paid off. republicans took the house, senate, and the majority of governors' races. >> good evening, there is a seismic shift to the right in the political land scape of america tonight. >> this is a wildly historic night. >> gingrich was hailed as a visionary and elected as speaker of the house. >> i end 40 years of democratic rule of this house.

>> as speaker, gingrich weaponized the government shutdown. give us what we want or we're closing you down. >> it is deeply wrong to shut the government down while we negotiate. >> gingrich also led the house republican campaign to impeach president clinton. >> these allegations are false. >> for lying under oath about his affair with monica lewinski. it backfired. most americans thought impeachment was an overreach and republicans lost seats in the 1998 elections. facing plunging popularity and his own ethics problems, newt gingrich decided to resign. his legacy has been both dark and far-reaching. a permanent state of war between the parties.

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i've been taking prevagen on a regular basis for at least eight years. for me, the greatest benefit over the years has been that prevagen seems to help me recall things and also think more clearly. and i enthusiastically recommend prevagen. it has helped me an awful lot. if you're 55 and up, healthier brain. better life. t- mobile has plans built just for you. switch today and get 2 lines of unlimited and 2 free smartphones. plus you'll now get netflix on us. all this for up to 50% off vs. verizon. it's all included. 2 lines of unlimited for only $70 bucks. and this rate is fixed. you'll pay exactly $70 bucks total. this month and every month. only at t-mobile. (judith) at fisher investments, we do things differently and other money managers don't understand why. (money manager) because our way works great for us! (judith) but not for your clients.

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buildings and what could be the reasons for their radicalization? i discovered that they were almost all people who believed or had been made to believe that the world was being destroyed been ever growing westernization. to them their way of life, their values were under siege as america and its ideas and interests swept the globe. osama bin laden and other radicals preached to them that their job was to fight and resist this broad trend. and to help usher in a return to the better, older ways when the muslim world was governed byin own values and traditions. it was a call to make islam great again. let me be clear, i'm not equating those who stormed the capitol with al qaeda and isis. there are vast differences and there is a huge gulf between

those who believe certain ideas vaguely and the small bands of fanatics who act on these ideas, willing to use violence to a accomplish their mission. but the radicalization is often the same. it centers on fear. fear of losing what you have. fear of an ongoing march of history that is changing your country. fear of the replacement of your people and their way of life. that fear makes the stakes seem high enough for you to support anyone on your side, oppose anyone on the other side, and look at politics as war. >> america may have a mild version of middle eastern polarization but it does have the disease. politics in america has become deeply rooted in identity. we may talk about budgets and programs, but they're really

just the outward manifestations of a much deeper divide, rooted in geography, class and culture. one of the earliest writers to recognize this was bill bishop, who in a 2008 book "the big sort" pointed out that republicans were increasingly living amongst republicans and democrats among democrats. one simple measure, in 1976, only a quarter of americans lived in a county that went for one presidential candidate or another in a landslide. the other three quarters lived in counties that were less overwhelmingly partisan. by 2020, 58% of americans lived in landslide counties. therein might lie a set of extreme problems with polarization. at the ohio state university, i believe that a program of national service in which young americans from all over the country could spend a year working together in the army or

in schools or parks or homeless shelters could create a shared experience that would bind us closer to together. above all, government needs to show that it could work for people. a generation of polarization has also produced a generation of gridlock. government so divided that it is unable to act. we have to find a way to free government from this death grip. politics has to function. those who win must be allowed to act and translate their idea into the policy. if the public likes it, they have the power to vote. but constant paralysis is that it is to be mocked an despised. we talk about plans and policies but this is a personal challenge to imagine ourselves in other people's shoes, to see the world for a moment through those different lens and above all to

remember that ancient piece of wisdom contained in the bible and so many other books, to treat others as we would like them to treat us. it won't end polarization tomorrow but it could begin to heal some of the wounds we see all around us. there is, however, another personal challenge. it is for all of us, but cle -- but cleavely for our leaders. please lead. republicans for years have been silent as extreme and intolerant voices have grown in their midst. they've catered to their base no matter where it took them. they must once again become leaders and not panderers. and for them and for all of us, finally, we must stand up for the truth and against lies. no matter who tells them. he with not repair our broken politics if we all cannot agree that reason is better than unreason, fact, privileged over

fantasy and truth superior to lies. no healing can happen without that simple, unyielding commitment. thank you for taking the time to hear me out on this crucial subject. i'm fareed zakaria. good night. his future became my focus. lavender baths always calmed him. so we turned bath time into a business. ♪ there was a dream ♪ and building it with my son has been my dream job. ♪ ♪ at northwestern mutual, our version of financial planning helps you live your dreams today. find a northwestern mutual advisor at nm.com you're strong. you power through chronic migraine - 15 or more headache days a month, ...each lasting 4 hours or more. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. so, if you haven't tried botox®

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eye brian stelter live in new york and this is "reliable sources" where we examine the story behind the story. and we try to figure out what is reliable these days. this hour we're going to dissect trump's post presidential media blitz. and those hugging and kissing comments. why is he calling into all of these shows and sanjay gupta a new study that finds bias in covid-19 coverage and the murdock fall, one of the lawyers that filed the dominion lawsuit against fox news. a lot of questions for him. oliver darcy and others are coming up in a few minutes.