>> democracy. it is not just an idea, it is a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest officers -- offices. it is where debate unfolds, decisions are made, and the nation's courses charted. democracy in real-time. this is your government at work. this is c-span, giving you your democracy unfiltered. >> now journalist charis swisher and comedian larry gilmer -- wilmer talk about the role technology has played in political polarization in the united states. this is about 45 minutes. >> kara, larry, welcome. kara: hi.

larry: hello. >> i will start off the conversation the same way mark lawrence started off with carl and bob come and that is to ask you how you got into your chosen professions. kara, how did you can into reporting? larry: before kara goes, can i think woodward and bernstein for opening for us? i thought that was nice. wasn't that nice? i thought that was nice. they did a good job. kara: they have some promise. larry: i think so. i will keep an eye on those two. kara: how i get started -- got started as a reporter, i was the yearbook at her, which is a job of immense were in high school, but i was not in newspapers. i did not work for newspapers. i really wanted to be a spy. i am gay, as is obvious. it is true. come on. let's stop. larry: you said it. kara: no questions here.

wanted to be in the military and college. my dad was in the military. it was pre don't ask, don't tell. everyone had a terrible history of doing this so i could not be in the military without telling essentially, so i didn't. i was going to do some other public service, but it was really hard at the time. at that time, people don't member that, but it is true. so i got into reporting, which was similar, adjacent to analysis because i was going to be an analyst essentially. like on "homeland" but 100% less rocky. i could not do what i wanted to do, to serve the country.

i would have been a fantastic admiral at this point, had a big boat and things like that. but anyway, that was lost to me and the whole country. so sorry. so i got into reporting and started writing for the school newspaper. i wrote columns and all kinds of things. i freshman year, i won the journalism award which was usually won by a senior. because i was frankly better than them. i was. let's be clear. i started working for the washington post early. i was a news aid and all kinds of small level things. i was a stringer from georgetown university, which i got the job because they wrote a story i wrote for the college newspaper. and i called them and told them they sucked. they told me come down here and say that our face, and i did. they hired me. it is come apparently. >> larry, how did you get into

the world of comedy? larry: i also wanted to be a gay spy. i actually wanted to be an astronaut. kara: i wonder what i was if i was a cia agent right now. larry: you could. kara: what if i was? larry: that is the doublespeak of a spy. man, so good. i was always funny. i come from a funny family. my parents are not consciously funny. they were just funny. like they don't know that they are funny. my brother and i to always make fun of them. i did not think it was a possibility to be in showbiz until i realized it was the only thing i really wanted to do. at first i was a theater major in college. started as a standup comic. and i was kind of trying to do acting and comedy at the same time. but i realized during that time in hollywood, they did not quite know what to do with me. i was a black comic. i did political humor, satire,

stuff like that. at that time, they were really casting -- robert did a good take on this. if you are from the ghetto and you had a certain type of feel, that is what hollywood wanted. i felt like i needed to carve out a space for myself which is why i started writing and producing and went behind the scenes and wrote for shows like in the pink color, fresh prince, things like that. started making shows. when the daily show came around, i was back to performing they wanted to create a space for myself, and that is how the daily show came about, me coming back to performing, doing a standup routine. kind of done all types of things in showbiz, producing, writing, performing, that type of thing. i like being before an audience. it is probably the most fun. >> obviously, the theme of this conference is the news ecosystem. kara: yeah. >> very complicated and

fragmented media system we find ourselves in today, which compromises our democracy in some ways. i want to go, larry, to a quote from "the guardian" in which you said, "i think the term fair reporting is overused when it comes to journalism. i think saying they want to report evenly is more accurate." what do you mean by even reporting? larry: i am like, when did i say this? i must have been talking about cnn because i was always slamming them. everything was always breaking news on cnn. at some point, you are actually going to break the news. a lot of news organizations like to use these slogans like they are turned to gaslight us into how they are covering the news rather than covering it. at the time, that phrase was being used a lot that we are covering this fairly, which in my mind they were really making an effort to cover it evenly. by that, they were trying to appease the audience to show

that they were covering both sides of something, which in their mind was fair. no, that is even. fair is covering the story in the way in which it should be covered. that would be fair reporting in my mind. so, evenly, when you are covering something evenly, you are catering to the audience. when you are covering something fairly, you are catering to the story. who cares if you agree with something or disagree? i disagree with myself constantly. you know, i may have an opinion, but the facts change my opinion about something. news should be as surprising by the people who deliver it. i should not be able to predict what a journalist is going to say. kara: interesting you said that about cnn though. i think the best quote recently has been christiane amanpour, which is truthful, not neutral, which i think kind of says that a little better. there has been this way that -- i don't do it.

both sidesism is not for everything. that is why we use it. i think the press was scared to not be reflective of another side. you end up going to the diner and asking unqualified people unqualified questions. the diner, what do they know? talking to some normal people. larry: is it a waffle house or a denny's? that makes a difference. kara: one of the things you get a lot when you are in the press, why don't you talk to real people? i go, i am a real person. you are not a real person. i am a real person. why do you come to where i was living in san francisco and visit my neighborhood? why do we have to go to your neighborhood? i think the press gets nervous about that. i think something i have done and a lot of people have done lately is not do that anymore. larry: yeah. kara: when i worked for "the wall street journal," they call it a to be sure statement, which drove me crazy. say i was writing and i did all the reporting and i do it was a

disaster, and so i would right is going to be a disaster and here is why. get someone to say that, which i think is false reporting as far as i'm concerned. and then put in the to be sure statement. "to be sure, some people think this is going to be a success." i wrote and said, to be sure, some people think it is going to be a success. they are all idiots. and they took it out. but they are. >> are journalists in mass vehicles? is it better than when you started 30 or 35 years ago? kara: what is a mass vehicle? >> "the washington post. " kara: i am not at those places. >> but as a reader, consumer? kara: no. it has changed drastically. the business is in distress.

>> the journalistic processes, are they more responsible? kara: if it is not a good business, you are not going to survive unless you are at the behest of billionaires right now, and several billionaires own publications. that is an unusual thing to have to deal with because you never know if they are ok. maybe their kids are not. you never know when they are going to, say, lose their minds over a social network, for example. not necessarily. if you don't have a good business to me don't have journalism. that is it. that is the whole enchilada whether you realize it or not. it is a news business like show business. larry: there was a time when the news was not part of the profit center of the networks. it was considered a different part of the network. there was a news division separate from the entertainment division. i think when they combined those, now the news had to get ratings. it had to perform.

broadcast news too. god, you look at network, it is amazing. it is amazing. and he was writing about the past. that is what is fascinating. he was writing about what he observed, not what he predicted of the future. >> can we talk about comics? there is a record number of news avoidance today. people think news is depressing. they tune it out. i assume people go to comedy shows and many people are getting their news from comedy shows. do you feel responsibility when you relate the news in your comedy? do you feel the responsibility of getting it right? larry: of course not. [laughter] no. i never thought about getting it right. for me, it is always, what is the truth here? what is my point of view? do i have something to say about this that is worth saying?

that i am not reporting on something. i have an observation on something, which is different. that to me is what the company is. i don't know if people get their news from the company the way they used to get it from jon stewart or something like that. i think they get their opinions confirmed by the shows more than anything else. i think jon stewart or i should say john oliver just delivers this grand soliloquy to confirm what people are suspicious of in the first place. yes. puts it together in a beautiful way. does a lot of research about things. gets people a nice meal of something they are already suspicious of. but i don't think it changes people's minds about things, which people sometimes think. or they want company to do that. it rarely does that. it is not a needle over a net. i think occasionally, and by the way, i will also say this, i think funding goes farther than

serious because i funny commentary -- quasi funny commentary. when people talk about thinking about jon stewart or john oliver will change people's minds, not as much as tina fey doing sarah palin would. because that is just pure funny. just the ridicule of that, just people go, oh, she might be president? kara: because she got the essential truth. that is why. larry: it is funny. it is infectious. the same thing with al gore in 2000. "saturday night live." the 2000 election was "in the saturday night live's best. will ferrell's bush was so funny and just completely took the

piss out of him also. but through laughing at that, people had a different appreciation. kara: insights. larry: but no one remembers the commentary, the funny commentary. that is what i mean. kara: i would push back. i have a lot more kids than you do i think. how many kids do you have? larry: i have two. kara: i have four. try to keep up with the lesbians. try to keep up. larry: i have been trying. there is a lesbian inside of me trying to get out. kara: it is a good life. it is a good life. now i've forgotten what i was going to say. i'm thinking of something else. larry: once i said there is a lesbian, she got all flustered. kara: my kids do get their cues from it. they get their thinking moments. i think thinking together is systemic. they love john oliver. they are 18 and 21.

they get their news from a lot of places and a lot more substantive than young people. young people only watch the news or tiktok things or dances or makeup tutorials. i tell this story a lot of my son who was doing an interview for "frontline." they were doing a twitter one and i like "frontline." i don't do a ton of those. my son asked what i was doing and i said i was doing an interview for "frontline." he liked it and he every show that was on "frontline" over the past year. i was like, well done. i put it on because of all these people. a live 21-year-old loves your content. here he is. it is a lie that young people don't like substantive things. he describes the show. i love this. this was interesting. i did not know this about chile, or some thing like that. i said, gosh, i did not know you

watched pbs. and he said, i don't watch pbs. and i said, but you do. he said, i watch youtube. because where he got all this, and that is how he related to it, through the distribution and the content and no longer the brand. so it is just a different way of receiving information but it is no less substantive. i don't buy that about young people. i don't. >> i want to talk about social media. i want to go back to comedy. you said one of the reasons "saturday night live" did so well into thousand is they did both gore and bush. do you feel response ability if you are doing a joke about biden to do one about trump? do you feel like you have to be evenhanded in the comedy? larry: no, not in the sense. not the evenhanded nature. for me personally come i have to make the point that is relevant. when i was covering hillary and trump, some people were calling him to be saying she lied, and

some people were saying trump was a liar. both of these people are liars. the difference is in the relies like a politician. ok. the way the politician lies, she is very good. the problem is trump lies like a crackhead. [laughter] i mean, he rambles, right? is he trying to sell me my own vcr? what is going on? you know? i don't know whether he is sleeping with whores on the street. there is all of this crackhead behavior. kara: that was a yes. larry: so to me, i am not both sides-ing that. i am using both comparisons to tell you my real observation of this guide is a crackhead and is acting like that. that is why i am giving you both examples today. but not to do it for its own sake, you know, i don't feel there is a possibility of that i should say. >> let me quote you from your excellent memoir "burn book,

tech story," which by the way kara is signing after. if you have not bought her book, you have a chance to do so, and kara swisher will sign it. but you write in social media's new paradigm commit engagement equals in-rage-ment. regardless of the potential damage of danger. and, oh yeah, we paid for all of it by funding the creation of the internet with taxpayer dollars and then with our own data. they owe us. when the violence actually does harm, the companies respond with nothing but apologies and persistent insistence that they will do better. kara: yes. >> why aren't social media companies held responsible for the content? kara: because our government has a beginner to its responsibility

to do its basic job with the most important industry in history. it is astonishing. these are the richest people in the history of the world. they are trillion dollar companies, multi trillion dollar companies. they have unlimited power. they are in everything. they are ubiquitous in our lives, work, social life, our kids' lives, our own lives. it is addictive like cigarettes. you have to use it. you have to be on it or else you can't work come you can't communicate. there is not a choice necessarily unless you go full, and people don't do that. they just don't forget here they are with all of the advantages. and our government and they are making all of this money based on the technology that we created, that the government created for lots of different reasons, and taking advantage of it but not paying their fair

share of the damage it causes. it is a similar story to opiates. it is a similar story to cigarettes. and i use this example because it is the best one right now. alaska airlines, they blow a single door. there are several lawsuits. there will be dozens of lawsuits. the ceo was fired. there is congressional investigations. there is state investigations. there is so much liability attached. meanwhile, there is all of this evidence of problems with kids, for example. you can pick any one thing they may have done or been part of. a good example, the sari thing was mark zuckerberg was on the hill again where they again performative leak deal with him and never do anything, never actually pass anything, and josh hawley, one of my least favorite senators, who should know better, who happens to be very smart, said apologize to these parents. there are payments there whose kids suffered doing the social

media stuff. they all had pictures of their kids up facing mark zuckerberg, which is something else to see. josh hawley said, turn around and apologize to them. like that. i personally said, you need to apologize to them for not doing anything. who in this room could do something about it? you, sir. stop with your performative stuff. and then you put it online on facebook to raise money. it was cynical. mark zuckerberg said instead of apologizing, and of course josh hawley said nothing about this, he said, i am sorry for what happened to you. what is that? i am sorry for what happened to you. i am sorry that the weather in austin is warm. it is not my fault. that is what it is saying. it is not an apology. how did this thing happen? you are at the scene of the crime and you are one of the perpetrators. to be, it is our government. we are about to pass the first privacy bill in 25 years.

senator cantwell used to be a tech executive is doing it. i am not sure it is going to pass. this is the first one in 25 years. it is the only law we passed in 25 years. >> larry talked about tv news when it was in its nation stage. there were a 15 minute broadcast but the time, radio was the prominent one and it was in the best interest to do so. even though they would not make money. they would later make money, but why is internet considered a public trust? why was it not in its nascent days in the 1990's considered a public trust? kara: i don't know. that is a good question. you know what it did instead? it brought immunity. by the way, the right thing to do is the opposite. they protect it. donald trump got sued and lost. rupert murdoch got sued and lost. paid close to $1 billion. he is facing another lawsuit. these guys get a law that says

you cannot sue them. that we are not going to pass any laws. also, we cannot sue you. also, you have total preview over our lives and make decisions for a small group of people in silicon valley who are very homogeneous by the way, making these decisions about everybody's lives that affects them. by the way, you can't get off of this stuff. you can't leave either. i have no idea. i am waiting for an antitrust bill. i am waiting for an algorithmic transparency bill. there are dozens of bills we can have. hiking disclosures. larry: one of the distinctions is the nature of the media itself. whether it was film or television or radio, you had gatekeepers in those mediums who presented something to the public. you know, mostly they were southern soap, as i call it. we have sponsors who are also responsible for delivering something to the public. those people were accountable to the people as entities of

delivering something, product. when the internet and these things came on, they presented themselves as a town square, you know, as information that was crossing, you know, for one person to another, from people. it was not looked at as broadcasting. it was part of differently. people thought this is democracy. we can say whatever we want. kara: it is all private. larry: why should the government get involved in these types of things? so i think they stayed away from that type of thing. that is what it feels like to me. not realizing but there are actually gatekeepers here. someone is presenting this. kara: modern media companies. there was a debate about tiktok. all of them are modern media companies, and they should be governed the way modern media is governed. you can soothe them. there is a lot of protections with libel laws, which is appropriate, and they deserve similar protections. the argument they make, elon did

this recently on a don lemon interview, talking about where he said a newspaper has 20 articles a day. i am mike, no, it has hundreds, but fine, we will go with your number, sir. larry: he is breaking news. kara: that is right. now you got me off again. so he said we only have 20 come and we have 500 million or 5 million coming through in a day. my answer to that, don did not come back, why did you build it that way? it is worth all you have a system that is so toxic that it spews toxic waste out on an alarming rate -- out at an alarming rate that he does not make money off of it but others do. twitter has never made money, by the way, at all. it is allowed to spew toxic waste and do nothing about it. why? why do they get to do that? and then they get to make money off of your data. what they do is they take in a platform you paid for. you then give them your data.

they take it, eat it, vomit it out to you, and charge you, and say, please say "you're welcome." i don't get it. we are cheap dates to these people. we are cheap dates. larry: why do they want to ban tiktok? facebook is doing what tiktok is doing? kara: in this case, facebook wants to sell you socks on instagram. the chinese company, we don't know. larry: i will take a slight disagreement. kara: they are not a foreign adversary? larry: no. the phone you are looking at tiktok on is already made in china. kara: yes. larry: china is already in your hands following you around. you can get rid of tiktok what you are still being followed around. kara: allegedly. larry: yes, exactly. >> on black on the air with

taylor lorenz about tiktok. what i did not realize, and realized during the course of the interview, is meta has a lobbying campaign against tiktok. kara: yes, for years. >> for years. sort of demonizing it. what should we think of tiktok? bare-bones it. obviously, they are owned by the chinese. kara: it is a chinese company. >> chinese company. but we know what that means in china. kara: that tends to mean that. let me give you two examples real quick and then larry can get into what that means. every company that is in china has involvement with the chinese communist party. it is the way it is in that country. for example, jack ma, one of the greatest entrepreneurs who started ali baba, he disappeared at one point for a while. it is like in this country suddenly jeff bezos disappearing and being quiet. he is not quiet these days, but just disappearing these people.

i think we will put steve jobs in the cooler for a while. that happens in china. larry: the governor of south carolina disappeared. kara: right. [laughter] kara: so that is one of the issues. the other one is that, mark, absolutely, in an interview with me, he put out this xi ora media argument. we are the national champions. the chinese have run it. which is true. he said that to me and i go, i don't like the choice. i will take you up easily but it is like a bad date. i have to take the bad or worse. in the case of facebook, they are. they are information thieves. that is what they are. it is in a different interest from what is happening in china. i am concerned that we allow a foreign government -- the could not by cnn, cbs, the washington

post, or anything else, so why should they be able to have -- larry: started showing cats playing the piano, i would be concerned the chinese government would be interested in buying that. kara: we don't know what they are going to do. larry: what is the worst thing they could do with tiktok? kara: what are you talking -- everything. larry: what would be the worst thing? kara: what they have been doing on social media for forever, buying ads, creating discord. for years on facebook, i believe russia did this, but they had ads on there that hillary clinton was a lizard. and it worked. larry: wait, you are saying she is not a lizard? kara: she is not a lizard. i am to to scratch her face and it did not work. secret service intervened. larry: i have seen a lot of dead skin. kara: fine. i actually called them and said other clinton is not a lizard, why is this showing up on your part for? everyone has a right.

rush about this. they were paying in rubles at this point and trying to create an information war. we have won the classic war against russia, but they have been able to more cheaply attack our democracy at its roots bipartisanship. it happens domestically too. larry: i feel like we are better at that still. we are better at dividing ourselves. we have been at it a lot longer. kara: yes, but it has been fueled by this ability to part. the use of bots by these countries, and not just other countries, it is domestic too. it is domestic, now being used by domestic. these bots are now creating rage that creates engagement and creates more rage. larry: right, but those bots are on x. kara: not just x. larry: no, but x is not the chinese. kara: we don't know. the problem is you cannot trace it. larry: but i mean it is on that platform. kara: yes. larry: the things you are saying can happen on facebook, on x. kara: but why let them have

their own company we do not have insight into? the other part of that equation is we cannot be in china. no u.s. company can be in china. and the reason why we cannot be in china, because we spy on them. that is why, and they know that. so if we don't have reciprocity, why are they allowed here? larry: i would argue we are already spying on china. kara: not via social network being used by 107 million people. larry: because the chinese are already doing it to themselves. kara: that is true. >> kara, why did elon musk buy twitter? some talked about the decline of twitter as being cultural vandalism. clearly, it has deteriorated under his -- kara: it was such a fine product before. >> but it has changed discernibly. kara: yes. it is now a right-wing bar. >> what did he want to do? what was his intention? did he want to weaken it? kara: it is the part from "star

wars," the cantina. why didn't you buy twitter? larry: for me, it feels like just an ego move. you know, a lot of these billionaires are in bubbles, right? part of being in a bubble is people will kiss your ass all the time and that type of stuff. this is the ultimate type of bubble to be in where you just get to be, i mean, the 1000 pound gorilla. like nobody's business. you talk about controlling the narrative from this standpoint, had to have been the order of the beast. not just wanting free speech. because he would not be doing all that tweeting by himself.i think he wants to be the object of the attention on x. so to me it was self-serving. that is what it looks like to become a more than any kind of altruistic thing. by the way, i am a huge fan of spacex. i have looked at a lot of the things spacex has tried to do. we talked about this before. when tesla came out, they had

some really great ideas. what his mission was when you heard elon talking about some of his green ideas and things like that, some really good ideas behind him. but something happened where he just turned and there is this attention grab that just became this narcissism, this narcissistic thing, and he chose to side in it as well. a lot of that side he chose i think is an ugly side. so it is just not very appealing. kara: you are right. this is someone who that was about 5% to 10% of his personality, the memes, jokes, the hateful stuff was about 10%, and the rest was really interesting for a long time. and i have known him for a long time. the stuff he did at tesla was groundbreaking, no question. although they are in very much more trouble now because they have not shipped out products and he is ruining the brand through his antics on twitter. so that is an issue. spacex, another groundbreaking company. let me just say he did not do it

alone. that is an executive -- there is an executive who runs spacex. she does not get any attention. she is the reason it is doing so. very few women are in that sector so i would like to call attention to her. there are others. start link was very smart. but what happened, i think as you get that rich and you are surrounded by enablers and yes people who lick you up and down all day and you are always right -- larry: wait, i have to get that image out of my head. kara: some of them like that. larry: it is that elon on the yacht image. you know that. you have seen it. kara: i have seen that picture. i have. he does not like it. you have all of these people doing this all day, and then you get a sense of your own -- he already had those tendencies. in the beginning of the book, i talked about i can change trump's mind. thank you, jesus, but you are not going to. this is a man who has been a lifelong racist at all kinds of things.

i can do it. he had that kind of mentality. a lot of tech people do. i think covid -- something happened to him during covid. he suddenly started talking. the pedophile stuff started to pop up, which was odd. larry: what was the switch? you think he made a switch? kara: i think it was covid. they wanted to close down one of his companies. he is very much like, i am my own man, a man of the people, even though he is the richest man in the world, which is funny. he started to get this complex that a lot of these people get. i call it grievance industrial complex. they love to be agreed. they are blessed which is astonishing. i think covid did it.we " his partying -- we read in "the wall street journal" about his partying. that had an effect on him. this part of his personality just took on. you have met people who have been radicalized, right, in different ways.

larry: what do you mean by radicalized? kara: suddenly -- why mom is a good example. she hated trump and fox news every day, she loves trump. and then she hated him for a while and now loves him. that was not social media. that was the persistent repetition of hate and misinformation. larry: yeah. kara: and i think he got pulled into that. larry: that is interesting. kara: a lot of them are like that. he is not alone. >> let me quote you from a new york times editorial you did six years ago. facebook, you wrote, as well as twitter and google and the rest have become the digital arms dealers of the modern age. they have weaponized the first amendment. they have weaponized civics discourse. and they have weaponized most of all politics. kara: yeah. >> i want to ask you both. larry, i will start with you. if you could reform social media, if you could put regulations in place, what would you do? larry: that is a tough one.

i may have to go second on this because i have to think about it. because i don't think in those terms. but i am the opposite of that. i and more for year -- freer in terms of speech and that type of thing and how i view things. kara: it is a business model problem is what it is. we tend to focus on it as a speech problem and they use it as a fig leaf because they don't know at all. i have been in speeches. mark gave a speech in georgetown or he was misconstruing the persimmon so badly i wanted to rush the stage and hand him a copy. it is real short. it is versed. it is easy to understand. government shall make the law, not mark zuckerberg. you can make any law you want, and you do often. yes, when it pleases him. when it doesn't, he says first amendment, which is interesting. but it has nothing to do with any of these companies at all in many ways. and so it is a business model problem. it is an advertising business

model that enrichment equal engagement. they win by taking our data, so why not attack the business model issues, and the ways they capture our attention is not free speech. the model made it so you could -- let me give you an example. go. google. not as many people do search. when you search, you do not linger there. you are essentially searching for something. it provides speed, context, and accuracy. that is the architecture of google search. uber, call the car, it comes. that is the architecture. the architecture of social media is virology, engagement, and speed. guess what that ends up in. range. it just goes right to rage. their business model is rage. started to pass laws about data privacy, the business model itself, where it would tax the business model and the need

to create that and hold them liable. have those parents be allowed to sue them. they might lose, but why can't those parents sue those companies and get disclosure on what is happening inside those companies? [applause] larry: i do think rage gets a lot of the headlines but it is only part of it. you know? that is the part that concerns people because a lot of bad things come out of that. but there is so much more. here is an aspect of it people don't realize because i am in this business. people broadcast themselves. there is a cost to broadcasting yourself. people don't realize what happens as a result of that. you have made a public profile of yourself, putting yourself out there. now you have created this avatar that is not quite you, representative of you, but especially young kids don't realize they are blooming the line between who they are and

what this representative of them is. that broadcast is representative of you, not you. and so when young people especially children are watching representatives or people -- of people because it is unreal, they are getting a confusing sense of who they should be. this is not an area of misinformation but in the area of identity, which is really a subject that, you know, like i don't know how to govern this type of thing. how do you govern it? this is a problem. i think as soon as -- i think suicide is at its highest right now. kara: especially for men. larry: this is especially a man problem. not that i am a doctor in this. but you know, as a boy who grew up to be a man come identity is very important to boys becoming

men. who am i? what is my place? all of these things. we put a lot of stock in identity. it is very self-centered and self-serving. when that is built on shallow ground, you know, and built on these false images, you are setting yourself up for some really bad stuff. but i think the girl problem is probably even worse because the presentations of women primarily as sex objects in a way that you could have never seen coming, you know. where they are doing this willfully. this is not the exploitation of the early days of pouring and that kind of stuff. it is presenting yourself in these kinds of ways that a lot of the gen z generation are not having sex as much because there is so much of this over stimulus that is happening. kara: there is fake point. larry: which is another thing.

kara: i think of the things i think about a lot, you have "the washington post" motto that democracy dies in darkness, which is very dramatic. i think democracy dies in the light of day. larry: i agree with you 1000%. kara: we see it in real time. let me pay them a component. the greatest troll is donald trump her but he knows how to use these things. every time the press goes can you believe he said that, i go, i believe it. he is just doing it as a trick. it is a trick. he has not become the character he played on tv. larry: right. kara: now i think he really thinks it. he moved into some cognitive situation. larry: he can pass lie detector tests easily. kara: like full crackhead. he is full crackhead. he was just playing one before. i think the way he used social media is similar to the way jfk

used television and fdr used radio or hitler used radio. there is a great interview i did with tim rybak who talks about hitler before he took over, and the use of media is similar. they are very similar ways to use it. when that happens to mucus signals from people who never before could give you signals in the same way and it affects you drastically because you are not doing meeting in person, you are not doing bars, you are not doing church groups, whatever happens in the community, and i think all of us are at a loss because there is a lack of face-to-face contact. bringing it back to covid, everyone had to rely and live online in that period so everything was accelerating including the values. facebook has never been more valuable. apple has never been more valuable. all of them, microsoft, every single one of them. during covid, and accelerated

trends that were already happening, but now we are hooked, all of us. >> presidents almost enough to be have fractious relationships with the press. but larry, you participated. there was one day of the year when the arms are laid down, and that is the white house correspondents dinner. you with the host of the white house correspondents dinner for what was barack obama's last appearance in 2016. what was that like? larry: their arms are down but their middle fingers are up, let's just say. [laughter] it was a very surreal -- kara: you should do comedy. larry: i should. it is like you are at a family reunion but you are not the family. it is just very bizarre. there is not an audience is there to see comedy unless it is the president, who is very funny by the way. and i even told him it is not fair he is that funny before me. you don't see me going around

president everywhere, stepping on his toes, right? no. so stop doing that. very surreal. i treated it as a roast. and i found out that when you are -- and i found out that many of the journalists are prickly. when you go directly in question of some of the things i am doing it in a roasting way, did not go over well. actually, don leman, who i called an alleged journalist -- kara: i am sure he liked that. larry: gave me the finger of course, but he gave me a nice friendly finger, where is wolf blitzer i think wanted my children killed. he was not happy with what i said about him. he was not very happy. that is ok. i don't do it for the affection or for them to say "i like you."

if we disagree, there is no problem with that but i think we should say this right now. mark: kara swisher will sign your book. you can hear larry wilmore on "black on the air." it has been our delight to have you tonight. kara swisher, larry wilmore thank you so much. pleasure. thank you. [applause] >> c-span's "washington journal", our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public policy from washington and across the country. coming up tuesday morning, the president of the alliance for american manufacturing explains trump administration trade and tariff policies and how they might impact the manufacturing

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