press. this sunday alternative facts. the assault on truth >> charged by our press secretary gave alternative facts to that, but the point -- >> wait a minute, alternative facts? look, alternative facts are not fact, they're falsehoods we're leving in an era where we can't gain twheed the facts are. >> truth is truth. i don't mean -- >> no, it isn't truth. truth isn't the truth. >> who the truth tellers are >> just remember what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening. >> or even the meaning of the simplest ideas

>> it depends on the meaning of the word is. >> this morning we look at the truth society and a changing media landscape creates chaos out of order i will talk to the top editors of the "new york times" and "the washington post" on the assault on truth from social media, russian actors and government officials. we'll look at the anatomy of a lie. how a story with a kern el of truth can metastasize into a conspiracy, russian techniques with confusing the public with countless versions of the truth. and we'll discuss with panel of experts on media and welcome to sunday, a special edition of "meet the press. >>. >> announcer: this the a special edition of "meet the press" with chuck todd >> good sunday morning

i hope you are very a merry christmas happy hanukkah and are enjoying this week you probably never heard of a town in macedonia malestk. buzzfeed found was a farm written for americans not to help elect trump the candidate but simply to make money on facebook well, since then, the idea of fake news has become a growth industry, morphing from simply a get rich quick scheme in a former yogoslav republic to a political weapon the terms alternative facts and truth isn't the truth debuted here on "meet the press" over the last couple of years these ideas are not new. russian's government disoriented the populist with so many version of the truchlt one russian tv producer called the fog of unknowability this morning we will hear from

top players in dip ploem nasa, and dip moment macy's and ho-- d diplomacy. we reject news we simply don't like the danger we become lost in that fog of unknowability if truth is pushed into a wood chipper, leaving us to say, i don't know what to believe, then alternative facts have just -- haven't just fought truth to a draw, alternative facts may have already won. >> sean spicer our press secretary gave alternative facts to that. but the point is - >> what do you mean, alternative facts are not facts. they're falsehoods. >> reporter: on the first full day of the trump administration, the president directed his aides to sit on a disprovable lie

about his inaugural crowd size, a touch point in an era when facts are under attack of course, twisting the fact there is nothing new in politics >> it depends on what the meaning of the word is >> that sound a lot like this. >> the truth is truth. i don't mean -- >> no, it isn't truth. truth isn't truth. >> but the scale is new. as of december 10th, the president made 15,413 false or misleading claims in office, that according to washington post what's also new the scale of the campaign against the press. >> just remember, what you are seeing and what you will reading is not what's happening. >> in a puig survey this year, 30% of republicans had a great deal or fair amount of confidence that journalists will act in the best interests of the public, compared with 76% of democrats, a 46 point gap. >> if you just listen to the main stream media, it's pretty much slanted left.

>> facebook is the number one network for disinformation in the u.s., facebook users shared the top 100 false political stories over 2.3 million times in the first ten months of this year. among them, trump's grandfather was a pimp and a tax evadeer, his father a member of the kkk and nancy pelosi was diverting social security money for the impeachment inquiry, clearly both false. >> we don't stop people from posting on their page something that's wrong. >> reporter: mr. trump is leveraging the polarized political climate. >> there are full things actors do if they want to attack their enemies or defend themselves against criticism. you can think of them as the four ds. >> number one, dismiss, invalidate the facts >> the fact that there is fake news. >> fake news. >> i think one of the greatest of all terms i've come up with

is fake. >> mr. trump used the word fake on twitter more than 800 times number 2, distort. if the fact are against you, make up your own facts >> there are many places like california, the same person votes many times, not a conspiracy theory, folks millions and millions of people. >> number 3, distract, without i'm rubber you're glue defense, if are you accused of something, accuse someone else of the same thing. >> the phone call was perfect. the word that weren't perfect were joe biden with respect to his son. >> number four, dismakers threats and intimidation. >> we are going to tike a strong look at our country's libel laws >> one fear, if both sides normalize this as a political tactic in fact, in the 2017 alabama senate race, a group of democrats did use online disinformation in the campaign against roy moore, circulating

false everyday that russian twitter bots were working to elect moore. >> my big concern when it comes to disinformation is that we are going to see more and more people trying to do the same thing that the russians did in 2016 >> joining me now is the executive editor of the washington post mark baron and the executive editor of the "new york times," dean mackay, gentleman, welcome to "meet the press. >> thank you for having me >> peter baker wrote recently, there are days in washington lately when it feels like the truth, itself, is on trial well, help us make sense of that >> i mean, it's true of course, it's ridiculous to say that truth isn't truth of course, that's a ridiculous construct. i mean, our job and it's a hardobut our job and i think our newsrooms have been considered rebuilt to do this is to very aggressively start out fact from fiction and to very aggressively

work to make sure that people trust us and understand that that's our job i mean, marty has a very extensive fact check operation as do we and those things didn't exist three or four years ago and they're an acknowledgment that one of the jobs as a news media is to sort through all of the bs, if i can say that, and come to some -- and come -- do the deep reporting that we all grew up doing, to come so some sort of understanding of what's actually happening in the world. i think that's one of our largest new jobs. >> marty, you actually tweeted a quote from a column with a question that i actually think crystallizes the challenge you divide this tweet about a year ago -- you did this tweet about a year ago how do you tell someone i'm trying to treat your fears seriously but your facts don't exist. how as an individual and how as a country. >> this the a challenge, it

reminds me of shariah law, there is shariah law coming. it's not there is no facts here to support it. >> well, look, we live in an environment where people are able to spread crazy conspiracy theories and absolute falsehoods and lies that's made possible by the internet and social media, feel are drawn to sources of information, so-called information that confirms their pre-existing points of view. that what's contributing to this environment that we have today >> dean pointed this out about the increase in fact checking that both of you as news organizations, we have been doing more of it but you chronicled over 15,000 false or misleading claims just by the president why do you believe that's important and are you concerned at some point 15,000, aren't people numb to it? >> well, they might be numb to it that's concerning. we still have the responsible for first determining what's

true and what's false and in particular holding our government officials accountable for what they say and selling people whether they're telling the truth or not telling the truth. that's fundamental to the responsibilities that we have as a journalistic institution >> all right, here's a challenge to you, marty first then dean. i want to put up this poll number when folks are asked in a cbs poll, where do they go among information? they cited the president, himself, 91% of trump supporters say that's where they go for accurate information fact checks be damned here. >> well, that's true i think that's the way the president would like to have it. he has described under the circumstances as the opposition party. >> that goes back to the presidential campaign. he wants us perceived as the opposition party so people will dismiss anything we have to say. he wants to disqualify the main stream media as an arbiter of facts and truth. he wants to disqualify others, the courts, the historians

he wants to disqualify scientists, any independent source of information. >> dean, do we have to market the truth? what i mean is he's out there a lot essentially delegitimizing our campaign we don't fight back like a campaign, we haveto say no, here's howfacts work, here's what skwlournallists are, by the way if i utter a fact on tv i get fired. >> journalists took for granted and believed people pleevtd everything we said they believed if i filed this story from afghanistan that we were there we believe that everybody thought we were in war zones and we believe that people trusted us and we went through generations of just assuming everybody believed us. what i think we're going to have to get very aggressive at is to be very transparent to assume nothing and to make sure people

know where we are, how we do our work, to show our work more aggressively that's a different muscle for us. >> yes, it is. >> to my mind that's a form of marketing our journalism when the "post" did their great project i guess last week about the buildup to the war in afghanistan and the lies they put their documents online. they put them online so that i could read 'em, readers could read 'em and could see it wasn't just three reporters or i guess in this case one reporter sitting in a room making stuff up the stuff was there. >> that is not something that we knew how to do ten years ago we did the same thing when we broke the story of trump's taxes a year ago we show you the stuff. i think that's a form of marketing our journalism i think that's a form as well as doing what we are doing now, which is to be out for marty in the world talking about what we do and very aggressively defending our institution, defending the truth and our important role in democracy.

>> marty, you go out of your way. i believe you any time one of your journalists are name checked publicly in a demeaning way, you always publicly go out there and defend them and it seems as if you don't want to miss anybody that happens to why? why is that important? >> well, i think 23 have a responsibility to -- we have a responsibility to stand up for our journalists. when they're unfairly attacked, when a particularly powerful person the president uses foul language it's something we have to fight against and i want to do that. >> i want to read you guys a letter to the editor we found in the lexington herald leader. it was a fascinating attempt to kind of explain why some people support president trump. why do good people support trump? it's because people have been trained to believe in fairy tales, set their minds up that makes them feel good the more fairy tale, the better

they feel. show me a person that believes in noah's arc, i will show you a trump voter. voters want to be lied to sometimes. they don't always love being told hard truths >> you know, i'm not quite sure i buy that i mean, politicians historically have lied to people. i don't want to keep knocking marty's terrific afghanistan story. but that was about a generation of political leaders who lied in the most egregious way, which was to say a war that was failing and leading to marine deaths was actually succeeding i don't, i'm not convinced people want to be lied to. i think people want to be comforted and i think bad politician sometimes say comforting things to them. and our job is to jump into the breach and to jump into those conversations to do the deep reporting to say, look, i'm

sorry, what i have to say may be uncomfortable. but that thing you just heard that made you feel good is a lie. and i think that's our job >> coal jobs comes into my head. we're going to bring coal jobs back, it's not going to happen >> we have to be careful, i don't want to be dismissive of people that support our president. they're owed our respect they certainly have mine they feel the so-called elites in washington have not paid attention to them. they don't understand their laws nay don't understand their concerns and they're not being heard and they feel that the president is actually listening to them and addressing their concerns and so they tend to believe him they're deeply suspicious of so-called elites like us, at least the people who are described as elites and so they turn to him. >> you know, dean, this is something frankly my late father was one of those folks

those new yorkers they think they're better than us he would say that every once in a while. do you feel that as the "new york times" that because a lot of people don't listen to the "new york times" reporting simply because they say you don't understand my life so why should i believe what you report do you think you have to culturally get the "new york times" as in touch with manhattan and brooklyn as they are in raleigh, missouri >> i have to say it's odd for me to be called the elite i grew up in a poor neighborhood in new orleans, louisiana and had never been outside of louisiana, mississippi until i was 17-years-old whenever i go home my family teases me i'm now considered one of the great leaders of the elite. i do think, however, we have to do a much better job, i agree with marty said understanding the forces of people in america that maybe are not as powerful in new york or los angeles

we have to do a better job covering religion. we have to do a better job understanding why some people support donald trump i agree with marty, we can't dismiss everybody that supports donald trump. i think we have to get out in america much more than we do and talk to people and sort of figure out ways other than the traditional diner story where people just -- >> yes. >> i think we need to go deeper. both our institutions, have gotten better at this just to stew in and let people talk. i often talk about religion because i grew up in a very religious family i think look, people in new york and los angeles the places i've lived in, not everybody, but people in the worlds we travel don't always see religion as the powerful force that it is, i think we have to do a better job understanding that i think we cannot dismiss everybody whose supported donald trump and everybody and we just cannot dismiss them first off, that's not

journalistically moral it's journalistically moral to reach out, understand the world and to be read that's our job. >> marty, what itself correct frame when we describe what our journalism is? is it objective? is it fair you hear the word balance thrown out whetherr there what do you think is the correct framing to describe what our journalism is i guess in these main stream news organizations >> i think we should be fair, i think we should be open minded we should be listeners more than talkers and we should be willing to listen to everyone. i also think we need to be fair to the public, which means when we've done our reporting, our jobs, when it's been thorough, then we need to tell people what we have found. we can't disguise it, muddy it up we are need to be direct and straight forward and tell people what we have learned i believe being fair in the sense of being open minded,

being fair with the public at the end, once we've done our jobs, tell them what they found. >> i'd like to say simply -- >> i was going add, too, empathetic i think great journalists are empathetic which means they listen and they try to understand. that's not pandering then i think the most powerful word for me is independent independent which means independent of everybody, by the way, except our principles and our readers. >> all good word there i use a phrase these days around here, don't round the edges, simply say what you see. marty baron, dean mackay, thank you both much appreciate it have a freight new year. >> thank you >> thanks, to both of you. when we come back in anatomy of a lie, how a story can quickly gain currency in our news media

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welcome back when president trump spoke to president zelensky in the infamous july 25th phone call, one of the favors included crowd strike crowd strike was to look into the 2016 server. and determined that russia is responsible. all in the service of claiming that it was ukraine not russia that interfered in the 2016 election the claim, itself, has no places if fact. clint lock fe is a security analyst and author of "messing with the enemy" and will help us understand how unfounded allegations spread we are calling this anatomy of a

lie. all successful lies begin with simply crowd strike hired to investigate dnc server hack. quickly, why crowd strike not the fbi? >> crowd strike is a cyber security, one of the best in the world and for america. they routinely work for groups like the dnc andmany large united states companies and even international companies and they have great cyber forensics and determine attribution. they're also a resource for our defense, our u.s. community department of defense. they would all rely on a company like this. >> this was taken for fact got it by the spring of '17, this is the first time that the president started to question crowd strike an ap supporter asked, crowd strike, that's what i heard, it's earned by a very rich ukrainian. this is not true but how do we get to the seeds of doubt here? >> we saw in the first part, you

take a fact to propel the lie. this is essentially how you make that falsefood move to where you want it to be. the answer, the story they want out there is ukraine meddled in the election there is also entities that want that story, too, russia, where crowd strike is one of the biggest measures >> take a look at this date. april of 2017. let's go to the next slide we have here. thisis president trumplast month in november on fox and friends where essentially he starts to put it altogether. the democrats, they gave the serve tore crowd strike. it's a very wealthy ukrainian, a ukrainian company. two-an-a-half years later he's still perpetuating this. they ask, there is not a lot of truth to this. he says it anyway. >> as to if you want to propel your lie, keep issuing falsehoods the truth has one voice. lies are infinite. you can continue to make more

lies which wears out people trying to rebut them. >> the president says these things it gets covered donald trump ten years ago it doesn't get covered you have can do this on social media, the thing that powers it the most is when an influential real human beingulesed those narratives anded a advances them. >> it's not just human being, it's news organizations, we can put news in quotes here, i want to single out two in particular, rt and sputnik, they seem to be the launching pad for this specific consponsor race. >> that's right. there are four attributes you look for in terms of spreading some sort of propaganda, one first, two repeated over and over and over again, the human mind actually can't resist repetition three, it's got to come from a trusted source, audiences. then block out all rebuttals so if you can narrow people in, you can say these are phase news, these are not.

you can put people in an information, cocoon. >> if you push back you don't have the facts then you can do this, let's go do the next slide. simply ask questions what is going on in we're not sure what the deal is, maybe where are those servers, clint you know i've never seen them. why aren't they looking at that? why didn't the dnc go into the officers, here we are. >> you can make lies faster, if you are a propagandaist, you can ask questions, the russia motto is exhaust the audiences with so many possibilities you can't know the truth and the audience will walk away. >> two facts, i want to make sure we get out here, fact number one, as of november the nrcc the republican campaign arm for house races used crowd strike to protect its constant contract you said this is a russian effort to smear crowd strike specifically, why? >> if russia can disable crowd

strike, take away the customer base or people say you don't believe what crowd strike is doing and saying or providing evidence for,er that actually taking away one of their opponents and using the american audience to do that. >> clint watts, this is amazing the world we have to live in now and figure out thank you for helping us >> thanks for having me. coming back, the art of spreading disinformation in putin's russia and its echoes right here in good old usa hi, i'm dave. i supply 100% farm-fresh milk for lactaid. it's real milk, just without the lactose, so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. delicious. now, i've heard people say lactaid isn't real milk. ok, well, if it isn't real then, i guess those things over there can't actually be cows. must be some kind of really big dogs, then.

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it nourishes and strengthens my joints for the long term. osteo bi-flex - now in triple strength plus magnesium. welcome back we just seen how a russia propaganda technique can be used to get into the blood stream it's one of many models of putin's russia that got into the american system. recently i sat down with two experts on propaganda. author of the future of history, thousand totalitarianism regained russia. and michael mcfaul is the author of from cold war to putin's ambassador currently a professor

at stanford university and a fellow at a youth. i asked him recently about a technique. let me put up here the rand university think tanks in america wrote about the russia propaganda model i want you to explain how this is implemented they disseminate emergent events that appears to best favor their themes and objectives. if one falsehood or misrepresentation is exposed, the propagandaists will discard it the high volume and multi-channel and messaging makes russian themes familiar to their audiences. it's almost done in real time. give us an example how you experienced it >> i think the biggest thing to understand about it it's less about what you would expect which is pushing some one interpretation, one line it's more about creating a c

caucauphony, you are supposed to come out there is no such truth. >> that's the point sometimes. >> i think we are experiencing first hand here. that's you know and that's, trump has a very good instinctual feel for it. sometimes he says things that are the opposite of the facts in front of us. sometimes he kind of goes, yeah, whatever sometimes he says maybe that or maybe this right. in the end we feel like all of these versions of i hesitate to call it reality are equal equestion distant from the truth. there is nothing to latch on to, everything is mush. >> i want to bring up two examples of in russia i think it was there both of these with soldiers without insignature fiia seized control of crimea in 2014 putin denied they were russian a

year later he started to boast they were there, there was the malaysian airline shot down over i crane and the various explanations in country that the russian government did explain how effective it was internally >> well, internally i think they've done very well in terms of masters disinformation. i agree completely with what masha just said the goal is not necessarily to present one argument versus the other all the time it's just to say there are no truths, there are no facts, it's all relative i've heard vladimir putin say that directly when he met with president barack obama one time. secondly, however, when there are facts it's to put out arguments to say those are the wrong facts. so the two examples you just used are the illustration of that second tactic i would call that also related to that another tactic what aboutism to change the channel to say well, you did that there, well, what about this over here? and that is another tactic that

they used to confuse the terrain and to make people to be confused about the facts that there are no facts and that there are no truths in the world. >> i want to add something, though, to the crimea story. i think eighth really great example so when he started boasting yes, there were russians on the ground he wasn't admitting something that everybody knew. he was saying i assert my right to say whatever i want whenever i want to. sometimes it will be true. sometimes it won't be, but i'm king of reality and what are you going to do about it it's a power move when he lies and it's a power move when he tells the truth. only he choose when he does what as for the media, yes, he, russia has a not a you know incredibly healthy in terms of the media but had some independent media when he became president and the first thing he did was he moved to take control of broadcast television. he moved on to national broadcast television and local

television and the newspapers and now 20 years later we have no independent media >> mike you know this a lot about putin. here's a quote that was attributed to him that he thinks says the following within he was asked about how he thinks the press works. putin said, here's an owner, they have their own politics and for them it's an instrument. the government also is an owner and the media that long to the government must carry out our instruction. and media that belong to a private businessman, they follow their orders >> well, that's his view certainly his view that's why one of the first things he did in the year 2000 was to seize control of two of the national television networks so that they were completely controlled by the government he understands the power of media. he has begun to export his ideas through multiple channels both digital media and television. >> there is a phrase that i was reading in research that really struck me and it's called toxic

cynicism that that is -- that that is what is in russia right now and that is what he hopes to export to the west >> and i think we have a lot of it here, native born i think we have it in the white house. >> we don't need help. now he did that in an accelerant >> i think that's it an accelerant or an amplifyer. i think he and trump share a basic sense of the world their sense of the world is nothing is level everything is for seam and that money is, you know, money equals power and power equals money and it's unitary. there can be no checks and balances, there can be no systems. any kind of formal relationship is always a lie. >> mike mcfaul, what, you were involved, you've met ba lot of dissidents that are actively trying to deal with putin in russia what breaks him, if he breaks? >> well, i think an effective

thing is just to keep revealing facts especially about corruption, people want to know about the facts and i would say the same thing about our country, too, i think sometimes there is a kind of on the one hand, on the other hand that we present with various political debate in the united states. and here now i want to put on my professorial hat, all hypotheses are not equal to treat them as equal is distorting to the truth. if you have one set of hypotheses that has everyday to support it and another hypothesis with no everyday to support it reporting on those two hi hypotheses in and of themselves is a distortion of the facts i think russians have learned that they go back to the facts as their best weapon. i think we as a society need to do that. you don't get your own facts, you can have your own arguments

opinions, two plus two need to equal four for democrats and republicans every day, not just mondays wednesdays and fridays. >> by the way, you can see my entire conversation open our website meet the press.com coming up, choosing the news you use, depending on your political beliefs. as a principal i can tell you this. when one student gets left behind, we all get left behind. this is a problem that affects each and every one of us. together with ibm, we created a whole new kind of school called p-tech. within six years, students can graduate with a high school diploma, a college degree, and a pathway to a competitive job. you know what's going up today? my poster. today, there are more than a hundred thousand p-tech students around the world. it's a game changer. p-tech students around the world. but in my mind i'm still 25. that's why i take osteo bi-flex,

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> . welcome back as the country has become more divide politically it's divided in its sources of news 63% of democratic leaning voters say journalists have high ethics 36% say the opposite 79% of republicans say they think journalists have low ethical standard, voters are choosing news from sources that reflect their own political views n. 2004, 48% of democrats described themselves as cnn viewers. by 2thatber had gone fewerepuans h cn span bsix tes.46 viewersescr they've droppoins fox ws, thaquar describethemes y viewershent 4 points among republicans to 58% this sideling of news sources helps explain why democrats and republicans have become divided. it's been vulcanized >> that goes for news, to. when we come back. we will digest all of what we heard this morning with a tremendous panel of experts. i'll get that later. dylan! but the one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with homeowners insurance. what? switching and saving was really easy! i love you! what? sweetie! hands off the glass. ugh!! call geico and see how easy saving on homeowners

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. welcome back our panel is here. joshua johnson former host and nbc contributor and a bigger part of the nbc news family. karen switzer, tech news and analysis website also the author of "a growingly popular column in the "new york times"" susan staffer, and resident fellow at the american institute good to have you all kara, i want to start in your world of tech as the one thing we haven't touched on as much as sort of social media, we talked about it on the sides, but sort of the role social media is playing in this misinformation campaign mark zuckerberg and jack dorsey are kind of having a debate.

first let me play a clip from mark zuckerberg at george town. >> i certainly worry about an erosion of truth i don't think most people want to live in a world you can post things that a tech company is judged to be 100% true. >> jack dorsey had a twitter, this isn't about free expression this is about paying for reach and increasing the political speech has specific ramification that today's democratic infrastructure may not be able handle. >> the that's the two sides and google sits in the middle trying to figure out a way between them mark's idea is conflating freed speech with paid speech. it's purposely confusing to people anybody can say anything open their platforms on twitter, for example. donald trump continues to tweet as you notice this week programs, but his campaign doesn't get to do paid advertising. that's a very different thing. what's interesting is it's been around forever, you look at

george washington, all those day, that was a very partisan crowds on every bit of media the issue is when you get it into the social media space it becomes three things, weaponized, amplified and anonymous, they create enrainment, do it again, lather, rinse, repeat. that's what goes on. >> this to me is not new lyndon johnson is always credited with saying i don't know if it's true or not say it, make them deny it. the social media just makes it where the space between what's first reported and the fake part almost just gotten reversed. >> it's faster, amplified and weaponization of it. it repeats itself. it's fought controllable in a different way. >> i do think that social media what you described about engagement and enragement which is very true exposes a part of the problem and the solution to

for those of us that consider ourselves journalists. one of the issues with the way we're fighting back against this is we're fighting back with information. journalists are not in the information business we are in the truth business trust is an emotion. you compete head-to-head you connect heart-to-heart and the enragement speaks to the fact people are seeing information that provokes an emotional response, trust is emotional, too it's like love, you don't remember when you fell in love or decided to trust journalism, necessarily. >> that journalism is birthed and part of what we have to do is ac knowledge there is a heart part of this people trust these lies and misinformation and a lot of them are just dam lies but they work. they give you comfort. they make you feel like the world hasn't changed in ways you don't understand it doesn't mean we affirm the lie, we don't speak the truth. if we are ignoring the human

part none of it will work. >> he's getting what i wanted to you tease out here almost it's the cultural connection that the right has decided it doesn't have with main stream media, so it doesn't matter what we report. you don't understand my life so why should i care? >> that cultural disconnect is decades old. this alt truth is a few things, one you have a technological change kara mentioned. the other is you have an institutional breakdown you showed earlier, confidence in the big institutions is -- >> thank god for congress. >> and it makes it, then you have president trump right. who kind of plugs into benefits from both of those changes but also uses it to amplify his message. sho what you end up with is a place where no one can really agree on the very basic material governing our democracy. >> i think the important thing, though, to recognize this didn't organically happen this also comes in the context of a war on the institution of independent

journalism a war on the notion of truth that has served the political interests of institutions in the country. i think fox news has waged a purposeful campaign over decades to convince people that other people's news wasn't the correct news, in fact, that they were the only -- correct information. >> this goes back to alexander hamilton sort of discrediting publishers. >> we have the president of the united states the media is the enemy of the people. i'm not familiar with any president who has spoken in this way who has waged as marty pointed out in your first interview importantly so, this was a political strategy, there is a calculated campaign going on that the results of it is here now, there is also if you tools and you know a whole human nature element of this, but it's very important not to let people off the hook 3 3 partially we're seeing russia propaganda, they made that a

focus. >> they lost the cold war. they've won this one i get the emotion part. >> you are in past tense. >> they continue to do it. it's not a battle. we're not fighting in a proper way. the ukraine thing, it's ridiculous it's very clear, this is a lie, crowd strike is in california. i have been there, trust me, there are americans running it >> now have you the president of the united states amplifying that. >> it's algorithmic. i get the hard part. are you being targeted this paid advertising is targeted so they can whisper a thousand different lies in a million different years. so it condition hard, because they am mr. ify algorithmically technically get it so you can't find the truth >> i will address what i think is a ecosystem problem on the right. one of my colleagues put here, a bit of an ecosystem. something starts, the subread it

of trump the main stream pundit say what is this about? it gets to drublg, might have a pro vok tiver headline limpblth rush might say it in his fun little way and it makes it to fox news and of course your facebook feed. how do you create more accountability in the conservative ecosystem for basically the dealing with propaganda >> it's hard work. i think it begins by constructing yuck coung cannons journal allegism it's longstanding among conservatives led many of them no one can believe you need everyday in order to forward a fact or they don't believe in certain verified sources, credentialed sources of evidence or information they don't trust any of it one other change i think makes all this more difficult, it used to be, you can go to the supermarket, you see the

tabloids and weekly world news and the alien predict who'd is going to be president. you move past it maybe some get a chuckle maybe some believe it. it's a minority of the population today you can't ignore it because it's everywhere, the second you go on one of these platforms, social media, in particular, you are confronted by it >> i hear new terms of the distrust among conservatives in institutions, you are right about that i do know a lot of conservatives are god fearing people and remember the bible says it's better to tie a mill stone around your neck than lead my little one a away, they know that bible verse, you know the truth and the truth shall set you free, they read the first two proverbs and it's about truth and wisdom i this i in conservative there is a part that speaks to to truth and necessity of personal responsibility i think it is crazy that there are people who say, oh, it's just too hard, there is so much going on out there there is so much information

we want a world war against the nazis, we planted a new bomb and put women in factories you mean to tell me you won't subscribe to your local paper? really is it to hard >> what is the responsibility of the citizens here. >> don't be gullible >> it's impossible to fight it it's addictive it's repetitive. it is propaganda and it is in ways they don't even have to -- >> i feel i'm watching the head and the heart debate >> no, but -- absolutely strong, it is doing things in ways that has never been able in a newspaper. nobody is reading newspapers and shouldn't be, there is great to be able to get this information on your phone. with contev e servetives, there is a great book anti-social that show the chain it's just rudy guiliani saying you know they actually lie like they're kennedy, it's just a lie. there is no bother >> no penalty.

>> straight to it. >> and no penalty there is actually an incentive. this ecosystem is so well embedded now in how one party is communicating with its core of people that it's a chain that works that i agree with kara, i think not only a can you not break it, but their design, their goal is to get people to say i don't care, not to say i believe this lie their goal is not necessarily to persuade the unpersuadable that ukraine intervened in the 2016 election their goal is to get people to say i don't know, i can't figure it out i think when you think about the 2020 election. we are talking at the very end of 2019, this is going to be the major driver really in politics when you think about persuading people who tilted this last election 2016. a handful of people arguably who might have voted for barack obama and somehow also for donald trump people who aren't necessarily

living in the information world that we are. and i fear that group of voters is a group of voters who are saying i can't possibly think of objective truth. >> this is also a political tactic we are now aware that there are some politicians who want to come on this show because they're hoping to get a viral moment to use for fundraising. and i'm like, the minute i got, we caught wind of that, we won't put those folks on it's sort of like, yeah, it's fun to get chastised by the main stream media this has a lot to do in the change of the nature of institutions who used to join in the institutions to be molded by it to be a part of this kind of history that preceded you and will antedate you or rather go after you. now, institutions are platforms for individuals. this is what makes this is the reason why the platforms are the locus of so much attention, whether it's media attention, cultural attention or government

attention. they're the new sites of government and regulatory battles. they are the guardrails. the social media knocked down all the other guard rails. now the platforms, themselves, are the guard rails. they will be the part of our politics for the next decade >> the shortest libertarian society, we are seeing the perils of it, joshua >> i will say there are few things that give me hope, young people they are savvy, they decided southern social media they can truth than others. the others i have to say the one thing that's never failed is telling our audience if you let this conversation devolve into stupidity, the nation will turn you off. there is nothing i can do to bring you back >> there is nothing wrong with that that is all we have for today's special brad cast. thank you for watching, thank you for watching all year, all of us at ""meet the press"" wish you a safe new year. we will be next week, which is

also next year, 2020, because if it's sunday, it's ""meet the press."" [ electrical buzzing ] [ dramatic music ] ahhhh! -ahhhh! elliott. you came back!

authors, and ceos, along a look with our team of reporterste from reuters and "the new york times," dow jones, "mit technology review," and cnet. this week on "press:here." ♪ scott: good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. christmas has wrapped up. hanukkah is still going, kwanzaa too. however it is that you celebrate with your family, you're likely still doing it. and we have a new year right around the corner. we are also with our families and this morning we're offering you a "best of" show. this allows us to do two things: one, give everyone the day off