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- [00:00]
Bianna Golodryga
CNN's Comedy Quiz show is back. Have I Got News for you returns tackling the week's top stories, making sense of the mayhem and definitely adding to it. Get ready for a brand new season premiering Saturday, September 6th on CNN.
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Bianna Golodryga
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Bianna Golodryga
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Bianna Golodryga
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- [01:18]
Bianna Golodryga
Hello everyone, and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up. Hey, hey.
- [01:24]
Ho, ho. Donald Trump has got to go.
- [01:27]
Souring on Trump. The president's approval rating plunges after nearly 100 days in office. We'll dive into the numbers and what they mean. And Israel strikes Beirut while Qatar hails a bit of progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza. What is Netanyahu's ultimate goal? And how much influence does Washington really have? I asked former US Mideast envoy Dennis Ross. Then personhood professor Mary Ziegler tells me why she thinks the next frontline in reproductive rights will be fetuses and embryos.
- [02:05]
Mary Ziegler
Plus, how many more children have to die?
- [02:07]
Bianna Golodryga
Pari Srinivasan looks at the dangers of social media with lawyer Matthew Bergman and filmmaker Perry Peltz, the duo behind the new documentary Can't Look Away. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Bianna Godriga in London, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. 41%. That's President Donald Trump's approval rating, according to a new CNN poll, as he nears 100 days in office. It is the lowest number for any newly elected president at this point in a term dating back to at least Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it's a steep drop from Trump's support just before the election. The Poll finds the president underwater and sinking across nearly all major issues he sought to address during his time in. Most notably, perhaps his marks for handling the economy are down 5 points to a career low of 39%. So will these declining ratings spell doom for the rest of the president's term or are they just one more ride on the Trump roller coaster? Susan Glasser is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Welcome back to the program, Susan. So Donald Trump that we've known historically pays close attention to poll numbers. He seems to be taking these poll numbers and not just CNNs. I mean, there have been New York Times board. He is underwater with the majority of Americans on the majority of issues that are most important for them. What do you make of his dismissive and I would just say not very concerned at this point reaction thus far?
- [03:57]
Susan Glasser
Well, the polls that Donald Trump has always cared about the most during this extraordinary nine year ride in public life have been those of his own Republican Party. He's been a president of the United States for the base, as he calls it, for Red America at times has almost defined the enemy as that part of America that opposes him. And so for him, it would be losing support among Republicans and his core voters. That would be the biggest crisis that really hasn't happened yet. We have still seen enormously strong support from Donald Trump. Of course, he also lives in a media ecosphere that is louder than ever among his far right allies and supporters. So he's seen still hearing positive reinforcement there. He hasn't had Republican members of Congress really break with him yet. In fact, they've almost rolled over as he has usurped many of the powers of the Republican dominated Congress. So that's a key moment that hasn't happened yet. But of course Trump cares about the markets. We all know how he crows when the stock market is up. It must pain him that it's going down and down as a result of his economic policies. But I think for Trump, again, it's his own team that he cares the most about.
- [05:13]
Bianna Golodryga
And you're right to point that partisan views of Trump remained broadly very polarized. 86% of Republicans approved thus far, 93% of Democrats are disapproving. But his poll numbers among Republicans, among independents, have gone down. And what should be concerning perhaps to even Republican supporters is that a lot of these policies, from the tariffs to even border issues and immigration, have yet to be fully implemented. Do you think that there is cause for concern within this White House in the months to come, specifically as it relates to the issue of the economy and increasing red blinking lights about a looming recession.
- [05:57]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, I think it's very notable that you're hearing the White House, as it hits the 100 day mark, wanting to talk a lot more about immigration, which they still see as Trump's strongest issue, certainly the most motivating issue for his supporters. They're talking about that in immigration and illegal immigrants and how they're getting rid of them and deporting them from the country more than they want to talk about the uncertainty surrounding the US and the global economy right now as a result of the, quote, unquote, Liberation Day policies. It's very notable, I think, Brianna, that Trump's polls really started to go south as soon as he made that marquis speech on April 2, his, quote, unquote, Liberation Day. And, you know, it's hard to see him really pulling back, given that tariffs are probably one of his only fixed principles for a man who's been very malleable when it comes to almost any other ideological subject.
- [06:55]
Bianna Golodryga
Yeah. And he's been a fan of tariffs going back decades from his time running his family business as well. On the issue, though, of inflation, approval for him is down 9 points to 35%. On tariffs, it's down 4 points to 35%. Even, as we noted, immigration overall, 45% approved now down 6 points from March. Let's turn to something you and I discuss a lot, and that is foreign policy, because even on foreign policy, you have a lot of the majority of respondents here unhappy with his approach to the wars in Ukraine and many closing, the closing of many foreign aid programs. Can I get you to respond to this latest back and forth between Ukraine and. You saw the president meeting with President Zelensky in at the Vatican in Rome over the weekend at the funeral for Pope Francis where he came out and really for the first time suggested maybe, hey, I've been played all along by Vladimir Putin. Maybe he doesn't want this war to come to an end. All of a sudden, you have Vladimir Putin announcing that there's going to be a temporary pause starting next week to the war. Do you think that's in direct response to what we heard from President Trump?
- [08:12]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. I mean, look, what I'm really struck by is that a lot of this process is not what you would really call peace negotiations in any normal sense of the word. But a lot of it has been Donald Trump negotiating with himself and offering Putin unprompted concessions while asking very little or nothing of Russia and putting enormous pressure on Zelensky, our ally all of that remains murky and unclear. 108. In Donald Trump's braggadocious claim that he was going to end the war even before he took office or in 24 hours, obviously what he's seeing is Putin and Zelensky and Ukraine resisting his efforts to do that. I think that we've seen nothing from Putin that indicates that he's willing to accept the concessions that Trump has offered. He seems to still be insisting on all of the main points that he was insisting on, frankly, back in January, before Trump got involved in this in the first place. So right now, hopes for a meaningful peace are dim. And even those efforts at a ceasefire that have been talked about for months have not really come through. I mean, that's the thing. Russia has not given any evidence of goodwill to make even baby steps toward a peace deal at this point.
- [09:33]
Bianna Golodryga
And remember, this is a conflict that President Trump ran on saying that he could bring to an end on day one. And obviously here we are approaching day 100 and the war continues. And just now the President seems to be acknowledging, or at least on one day acknowledged what so many experts, yourself included, have been stating all along, that Vladimir Putin is in no rush to end this war right now, perhaps just buying time for himself. I'd like to play sound from Secretary of State Marco Rubio from over the weekend because for the last two weeks we have heard both the Secretary of State and the Vice President warn that if there isn't a resolution to this war anytime soon, the United States is out. Here's what the Secretary of State said just yesterday.
- [10:17]
This is going to be a very critical week. This week is going to be a really important week in which we have.
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Matthew Bergman
To make a determination about whether this.
- [10:25]
Bianna Golodryga
Is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in, or if it's time to sort of focus on.
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Matthew Bergman
Some other issues that are equally, if.
- [10:32]
Bianna Golodryga
Not more important in some cases. But we want to see it happen.
- [10:35]
Matthew Bergman
There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic, of course, as well. We're close, but we're not close enough.
- [10:42]
Bianna Golodryga
Susan, how do you interpret that statement that this is a very critical week? What makes this week different from the past three plus years of this war?
- [10:54]
Susan Glasser
Nothing. Except Donald Trump is desperate to show that he's made any progress. And I would note that that is a very different tone that we heard there from the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, previously, until he entered the Trump administration. Administration a self proclaimed strong supporter of Ukraine. But that's a very different tone that Rubio struck than Donald Trump, who just a few days ago, before he went to the Vatican, was saying, with no evidence at all that this was true. We have a deal with Russia. I think we have a deal with Russia. It's just Ukraine that's proved more difficult. And so that just tells you there's been a lot of puffery, number one. Number two, that the timeframe that has really been dictating a lot of this is Donald Trump's own political timeline back here in Washington to show some results. And that number three, what I'm curious about is this apparent threat to walk away from the table that you've heard from Rubio, Vance and others. Just who is that a threat to at this point? My guess is that many supporters of Ukraine would be kind of relieved to have Donald Trump with his sort of bullying and bluster, back away a little bit, if that is that the US Continued military and intelligence support, especially for Ukraine, continues. They have not specified what walking away would mean. And so I think for me, that's a big question mark. Does walking away mean walking away but leaving the status quo otherwise untouched, or does it mean actually walking away in a concrete and specific way from Ukraine as well?
- [12:26]
Bianna Golodryga
Yeah, and that is a big question. Are they going to continue to provide intelligence and weapons to Ukraine? We saw them pause both earlier this year, and it's yet to be determined what that actually means. Walking away from what? As you note quickly, something else that Secretary Rubio said in those comments to Meet the Press. He said we could actually walk away for issues and focus on other issues that are equally, if not more important. I would assume that's related to. To foreign policy. We see another round of talks with Iran. Is this sort of the next big issue the president's hoping to resolve within his first few months in office?
- [13:06]
Susan Glasser
Well, I think that Trump opening up these talks with Iran was a bit of a surprise, certainly to some of his more traditionally hawkish Republican supporters. They are very dismayed, frankly, and many of them see this as sort of a betrayal. But, you know, putting my Trumpologist hat on, I would say this is Donald Trump out there in search of a big deal, any big deal. You know, Trump has made no secret of his desire to claim a Nobel Peace Prize for mediating and brokering some deal. So far, he doesn't have any big, beautiful deals to brag about. We remember in his first term in office, he was so eager for a deal back then, he claimed that he had managed to somehow denuclearize North Korea. And it was the biggest most important deal ever. Of course, not only was there no deal, but there was no Nobel Peace Prize forthcoming from that either. So I think the Iran talks, maybe he'll go back to the well between Israel and Hamas. This is he might restart talks with North Korea, by the way.
- [14:08]
Bianna Golodryga
Yeah, there have been reports on that.
- [14:10]
Susan Glasser
Yes, his legacy, exactly.
- [14:14]
Bianna Golodryga
Susan Glasser, not even 100 days in and a lot to cover. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you and stay with cnn. We'll be right back after a break. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, how to choose the right vpn, whether to trust public WI fi, what to do with those annoying cookie pop ups, and more. To help me answer these rapid fire questions, I've invited Rachel Toback back to the show. You may remember her from our episode about setting and managing your passwords. Rachel is an ethical hacker and the CEO of Social Proof Security where she helps people and companies keep their data Safe. Listen to CNN's terms of service with me, Claire Duffy, wherever you get your podcast. Israel struck a residential neighborhood in southern Beirut on Sunday, saying that it was targeting Hezbollah. It's another crack in the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, which has largely held since November. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Qatar says that there has been a bit of progress towards a ceasefire there, but nothing decisive. And the UN Says it has run out of food in Gaza due to Israel's ongoing blockade. But what is Prime Minister Netanyahu's ultimate strategic goal and what influence can the US Exert? Ambassador Dennis Ross served for years as a top diplomat at the State Department, working closely on the peace process and on wider regional issues. His most recent book is Statecraft 2.0, which explores the ways America has often failed to align its foreign policy goals and actions. Ambassador Ross, welcome back to the program. It is good to see you. We'll get to your book in just a moment, but I'm sure you were able to listen to my conversation there with Susan Glasser and we were talking about foreign policy where the president seems to be quick to make some sort of deal in resolving a number of these conflicts going on around the world. He seems to now be questioning Vladimir Putin's long term intent. And on the issue of Israel, he hasn't spent much time discussing the war in Gaza. He came into this administration in this term demanding that all the hostages be released and that this war come to an end. Here we are 100 days in. The hostages still remain in Gaza. The blockade continues. Where do you see this president in terms of any leverage that he is putting on Prime Minister Netanyahu specifically to get this resolved one way or the other?
- [17:30]
I think it's a really interesting question because you could also say, just as you were in your interview with Susan, Susan was making the point that you haven't seen the president exert any real leverage on Putin. We also haven't seen him exert any real leverage on Prime Minister Netanyahu in the service of an objective that the president himself said he wanted, which was to bring this war quickly to an end. The question I think becomeswill he we had a kind of interesting indicator of how President Trump approaches Prime Minister Netanyahu. On the one hand, it is very supportive rhetorically. On the other hand, he has him in the Oval Office ostensibly to talk about tariffs, although clearly the real reason was to talk about Iran. He surprises the prime Minister in that meeting by announcing he's going to have direct talks with Iran the following Saturday when the issue of tariffs comes up. He makes it clear that he's not doing anything in that regard. And he reminds everyone that we provide Israel $4 billion a year, a not so subtle signal that suggests we're doing plenty for you. Don't expect us to give you a break on this. So here he is signaling that he'll do what he wants to do. He's not necessarily applying overt political pressure, but there's a subtle message, there's that implies pressure. And I would even say if you look at his interview in Time magazine, the president's interview with Time magazine, he says about Iran that, you know, I didn't make them comfortable, meaning I didn't make the Israelis comfortable. I didn't wave off their strike, but I didn't make them comfortable. So these are all indications that in fact, he might be prepared to exercise leverage. But to the essence of your question, we haven't seen it yet. We certainly haven't seen it on Gaza, although even in that meeting with Netanyahu, he said he expected the war to end soon, and then he said in the not too distant future. So that implies something could be coming. We just haven't seen it yet.
- [19:37]
Right. And this previous, the most recent meeting in the Oval Office between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the president objectively was viewed as quite an embarrassment for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now counter that to their meeting prior, where it appeared from reporting that President Trump had just moments before addressing reporters, stated that it was the U.S. s intent of taking over Gaza and rebuilding it, perhaps even displacing Palestinians there in Gaza. As we know, as we reported, this war continues, the blockade continues as well. And President Trump was just asked about conditions there over the weekend, and here's what he said.
- [20:21]
Gaza came up and I said, we've got to be good to Gaza. Those people are suffering. We've got to be good to Gaza. We're going to take care of that. There's a very big need for medicine, food and medicine, and we're taking care of it.
- [20:38]
It's understandable why people may be puzzled to hear two very different points from the president as it relates to Gaza. You're still plugged in with many in the Israeli government. How are they interpreting this?
- [20:51]
I think that they're interpreting it as they have to do something as it relates to the humanitarian assistance. It's interesting that had not been the case up until now because the administration had not been suggesting that Israel had to do anything differently. The Israeli military has actually prepared a kind of contingency plan for how it would provide security, not for the distribution of assistance, but for the security of areas where the assistance might be going and where third country groups, presumably some kinds of security contractors, would be responsible for actually distributing the assistance. There is a lot of resistance to that within the far right wing of the current Israeli coalition, the current Israeli government. But it's pretty clear to me that Prime Minister Netanyahu will not say no to President Trump. When President Trump says, we're going to be taking care of that in terms of the food and the water, it means to me, Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to have to come up with answer and he's going to have to basically justify it with people like Ministers Ben GVIR and Smotrich that, look, this is what President Trump requires. We can't say no to him on this because he gives us so much backing on so much else. It'll be his use of President Trump as his excuse for why he's now going to do something that he has prevented since the resumption, since the end of the ceasefire, the resumption of Israel fighting and the denial of any humanitarian assistance going in. The explanation will be what President Trump is putting, the pressure he's putting on him to explain why now they will be providing food and assistance. Food and water.
- [22:26]
Yeah. And of course, we've been reporting also that the families of the hostages that remain in Gaza are also wanting to exert continued pressure on President Trump for this to be at the top of his mind, an agenda to get this resolved as well, because they have long given up, or majority of them have given up on this being a priority for Prime Minister Netanyahu at this point. And not to mention, you know, the blame lying with Hamas, who hasn't budged either. Let me turn to the Time magazine with President Trump, where he also said in talking about the Middle east that he is pretty confident of Saudi normalization imminently. How do you read that? Especially given the fact that Saudi has said as a prerequisite that the war in Gaza has to be resolved before.
- [23:13]
There'S any talk of a normalization from the Saudi standpoint. I'll tell you, the issue of normalization is not on the table. And as you said, it's not on the table, at least until the war in Gaza is over and the Israeli military is out of Gaza. What it says to me is that the president still has this as an objective. He still has a very ambitious desire. This notion of his wanting the Nobel Peace Prize. It's not going to come from Russia, Ukraine, at least the way it looks now. It's not going to come, I don't think, from Iran. There may be a deal with Iran, but it will be a framework deal. It won't be a comprehensive deal. The comprehensive deal will have to come somewhere down the line. So it brings him back to Saudi normalization. The expansion of the Abraham Accords here again brings us, I think, to what you were raising about Gaza. We may be seeing the president moving towards a point where he will exercise much more leverage on the prime minister to end the war. For a long time, the Israeli military's attitude has been we can end the war so that hostagesall the hostages come out. That should happen. There is no way that Hamas will live up to any deal that's negotiated. They will violate it at some point. We'll then we'll be able to deal with them. I think, again, we're going to see that not happening until the president decides that he needs it to happen for his larger objective of wanting Saudi normalization with Israel, which, as I said, is probably his one real pathway to a Nobel Prize.
- [24:49]
Yeah. And between that and finding it all so difficult, as everyone had warned, to get the war in Ukraine resolved justly, you have reporting, as you noted, and we're now four meetings into any sort of talks with Iran over a renewed deal. And the pressure on President Trump is to make this deal much stronger and tougher than the one he tore apart. 2015 JCPOA, which he spent years ridiculing President Obama for. And now there's reporting from Axios that he's wanting to restart talking talks with North Korea. All of this brings me to your book, because those who defend President Trump's approach say, listen, the conventional way has not worked. Look at what happened even in Gaza when he had the king of Jordan come and offer to sit with the Arab League and come up with their own proposals that he's a disruptor. And having someone like Steve Witkoff, who's not a longtime diplomat, all of this gets people moving and working towards a solution. Walk us through your thoughts on that and how it relates to what drove you to write your book.
- [25:58]
Now, look, the key to good statecraft is you marry objectives and means. It seems obvious. Why wouldn't you adopt a policy where you marry objectives and means? The reason we frequently don't is because we don't think through our objectives in a way that we need to. We don't ask the right questions about the objectives. Either our stakes don't justify the kind of means that would be required, or there's political pressures that it gets us to adopt certain objectives, or we simply don't understand the situation. When you look at what President Trump is doing, he stakes out very ambitious objectives. Now, staking out those ambitious objectives can create pressure on others. But if you don't have the means to achieve those objectives, sooner or later your leverage begins to dissipate. Leverage is a key in good statecraft. It's not just that you're marrying objectives. It means it. You are able to develop increasing leverage or influence on others because of the means you have on your own or the means you can mobilize from others. Others embrace your objectives because of your soft power. Others embrace your objectives because you take the initiative and you frame issues in a way that others can accept and follow. The president does a number of things, but he doesn't tend to follow through on creating a kind of marriage of his means with the objectives. He doesn't use the soft power we have, which is to attract others. He doesn't tend to rely on alliances because he sees them as more of a burden than in addition to our strength. So it's not that he can't disrupt and it's not that he can't get others to begin to respond to them, to him, but they won't respond to him over time unless they see that he actually delivers on what he says. So when you open up a very big gap between what you're saying, what you're laying out as your objectives, what you're framing as your objectives, and what you're actually able to deliver, what that will do over time is increasingly diminish. The leverage he has, it'll make others less responsive to him. One of the reasons he legitimately needs some successes, not just for political reasons here, but to create credibility about the objectives he stakes out. If he can show he's able to achieve some of them, then he's more likely to create responsiveness, then he's likely to build on the means he has, then he's likely to draw others in. Right now he needs a success for that. And right now he doesn't have that.
- [28:21]
Yeah. Seems to be fleeting at this point. Thank you so much, Ambassador Dennis Ross. Appreciate the time.
- [28:27]
My pleasure.
- [28:29]
Well, next to reproductive rights in America, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade In 2022, the national picture of access to abortion and reproductive care became a lot more complicated. In Missouri, for instance, voters approved a ballot initiative last year that enshrined reproductive rights in the state constitution, only for Republican lawmakers to now attempt to undo that result. In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear vetoed a GOP bill on abortion, only for lawmakers to override his veto. Amidst all of this, there could be a new fight brewing. In her new book, Personhood, abortion law expert Mary Ziegler argues that the next front line in reproductive rights will be centered on fetuses and embryos. She joins me live to explain. Mary, good to see you again. So walk us through what had been perhaps the wrong narrative and takeaway from what we've seen happen in very conservative state legislatures. And that is the assessment that Republicans had finally caught up with the car and they didn't know what to do with it. They overplayed their hand. And now you had a strong issue for Democrats to run on and embolden a lot of their voters. We're not even seeing abortion rights and reproductive rights as one of the dominant issues now that Americans care most about. What do you make of that?
- [29:51]
Mary Ziegler
Well, I think that that's due to a couple of different things. Primarily, I think Americans since the overruling of Roe v. Wade have been under the impression that that there are ways to circumvent abortion bans. Right. And also to some extent that the anti abortion movement got what it wanted. So the status quo in the United States, which is one in which people can travel to a different state to get an abortion or order abortion pills online, I think many Americans believe that will be the status quo forever. And so if that is the reality and someone cares about access to abortion as an issue or access to in vitro fertilization is an issue, there's no need really to prioritize it. But I think that mistakes both what the anti abortion movement in the United States is doing and the pressure it can exert on the Republican Party. And also I think to some extent misses the possibilities even in a Trump administration that the status quo could change pretty dramatically.
- [30:44]
Bianna Golodryga
What do you make though, as we noted, Missouri enacting in your total ban of abortions in 2022, 2024, voters enshrined reproductive rights in the state constitution. And the fact that I mentioned in the intro there that Republicans lawmakers are now pushing for a new constitutional amendment to overturn that result. Why do they think they can be victorious here?
- [31:05]
Mary Ziegler
Well, I think Republicans in Missouri are essentially playing with house money. They don't think they have anything to lose. Missouri, like many states in the United States, is under single party control. There is no meaningful partisan competition in the state legislature for the governor's mansion, at least in those state races. So Republicans essentially know that if they force voters to confront this issue again, one of two things will happen. Either Republicans will get their way and voters will roll back abortion rights because they've either been given abortion exceptions now or because they won't understand what the new amendment does, but that even if voters reject Republicans play, they don't think Republicans that they'll lose their jobs. So essentially they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from catering to social conservative donors and activists who expect this of them, even if Missourians have already rejected it.
- [31:59]
Bianna Golodryga
And to your point, you wrote a piece in Missouri in an op ed on the GOP move there specific to Missouri, and you said it presents itself as a sensible step to the center when it closely resembles the nation's most sweeping criminal abortion laws. Walk us through what that means.
- [32:17]
Mary Ziegler
Well, so the Missouri law essentially asks voters to say yes to specific exceptions to abortions. So for example says do you think that abortion should be available in cases of sexual assault and incest in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy? It doesn't say. And oh, by the way, are you okay if we ban all of the other abortions that are not on this list, which is more or less what the Missouri proposal either would do itself or authorize the legislature to do. The exceptions that the law carves out are very narrow. So I think it would be quite possible for a voter who's not really paying that much attention to politics in an off cycle election to think that they're actually voting to expand exceptions to an existing ban rather than realizing that they're in effect authorizing a ban.
- [33:03]
Bianna Golodryga
So Republicans, and from the president on down, don't necessarily think then that they overplayed their hand. Am I reading that correctly?
- [33:10]
Mary Ziegler
I think that's right. I think Republicans believe that they still have a motivated base of social conservatives who want more. Right. Who are not comfortable with an America where access to abortion depends on your geography and your zip code. And on the other hand, I think they believe that other voters don't really care about this issue. Again, I think that could be a miscalculation because voters not caring is contingent on where we are in the United States. Now. If, for example, Donald Trump were to start using the Comstock act and obscenity law to start prosecuting doctors or people who are receiving abortion pills in New York, I don't think the reaction would be one of indifference. So I don't know if Republicans are misreading the moment, but I do think that there's a pretty deep conviction now among conservatives that they can push further. And that's of course driven by the fact that the anti abortion movement itself was never really just about getting rid of Roe v. Wade.
- [34:07]
Bianna Golodryga
Yeah. And if Roe v. Wade and doing away with it, the reversal was a watershed moment. You're actually saying, wait a minute, there's more here. And this is part of the theme of your book, Parent Personhood, the New Civil War Over Reproduction. And you argue that the reversal of Roe was never the US Anti abortion movement's ultimate goal. From its inception in the 1960s, it has always been a fetal personhood movement. You go on to say we fail to understand conflicts over reproduction in the United States if we dismiss the anti abortion movement's personhood arguments as nothing but a strategic ploy, or see personhood as nothing more than an argument for banning abortion. Why is that?
- [34:51]
Mary Ziegler
Well, I think one of the things to understand is that fetal personhood is something that has mobilized a lot of conservatives for more than a half century, even when it wasn't going anywhere. Right. The other thing really to understand about fetal personhood is what does it mean? Right. So it could mean a lot of things. Listeners probably are aware some of them are in Europe Some of them may be in Asia. They may have constitutions that say life begins at conception or that fetuses have rights that don't criminalize abortion. But the way it's been conceptualized by the US Anti abortion movement is that fetuses have and embryos have constitutional rights that would override voters ability to protect abortion. And not just abortion, but anything else that could implicate the rights of fetuses or embryos, like in vitro fertilization. So this is a much bigger movement in that sense. It's also a much bigger movement in the sense that to get to this argument of rights for fetuses and embryos, you have to rethink in a bigger picture way what liberty and equality mean in the United States for everyone. Right. So this is a pretty ambitious constitutional project that conservatives are pursuing that would have implications for people who don't see themselves as abortion seekers who would never pursue an abortion, and not just for people who are pregnant either.
- [36:03]
Bianna Golodryga
And could this prevail in your view in the court today, specifically the Supreme Court?
- [36:09]
Mary Ziegler
It's not likely to prevail today, but it's going to be a very familiar movie for people who followed the demise of Roe v. Wade.
- [36:17]
Bianna Golodryga
Right.
- [36:17]
Mary Ziegler
Of course, Roe v. Wade wasn't overturned three or four years after its decision. It was overturned half a century later. And that's the playbook that anti abortion activists are reading from here. They believe that they have to establish fetal rights in a very stepwise way in state laws about things like child support or wrongful death in state supreme courts, as they tried to do in, or they are trying to do after Alabama issued a ruling on IVF in 2024. And they're trying to build a case, an originalist case, using the doctrines that conservative lawyers in the United States often turn to, that they can eventually bring to a conservative Supreme Court. This is not something we're expecting to see happen overnight, but it's kind of the next Roe v. Wade, if you will. The next Roe v. Wade is conservatives trying to take the decision out of voters hands and place it in the hands of the conservative super majority on the U.S. supreme Court.
- [37:08]
Bianna Golodryga
And that is fetal personhood that you're talking about. Let me ask you finally to weigh in on the pronatalist movement and the rhetoric that we're seeing from some elements of the right. Elon Musk continues to say that an existential threat in the world is not is underpopulation and not having enough children. This has sort of been picked up now by JD Vance and some of his supporters. Do you see this gaining traction?
- [37:35]
Mary Ziegler
Possibly. I mean, I think one of the lessons we've seen from other countries with declining fertility rates is that it's very hard to tackle the issue or to be pronatalist in an effective way if you are simultaneously making it less appealing for people to have children. Right. So we've seen this in any number of countries. And, and as the Trump administration is pursuing a pronatalist agenda, it's also either considering or co signing state laws that are making it more dangerous to be pregnant, making it much harder to get treatment for miscarriage, making it, I think, much harder to get access to certain forms of obstetric and gynecological care, and potentially threatening the health of an economy that would make it harder for people to have the resources to bear a child. So I think whether it's a good thing to have a pronatalist agenda or not, we can disagree on. But I think we can agree that if you want people to have more children and you make it infinitely harder to raise a child, you're not going to see the results that someone like J.D. vance would want.
- [38:38]
Bianna Golodryga
Mary Ziegler, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much for the time.
- [38:42]
Mary Ziegler
Thanks for having me.
- [38:43]
Bianna Golodryga
We'll be right back after a short break. Now, with every new digital advancement comes a new way to impact the lives of children. The latest Meta's AI Digital Companions founder Mark Zuckerberg says it's the future of social media. But now a new documentary, can't Look Away, exposes the real life consequences of these kinds of technologies. Filmmaker Perry Peltz and lawyer Matthew Bergman join Hari Sreenivasan to explain.
- [39:17]
Hari Sreenivasan
Bianna, thanks. Perry Peltz, Matthew Bergman, thank you both for joining us. Perry, let me start with you. This is a documentary called Can't Look Away. You're the director of this film. Why did you want to make it?
- [39:28]
Perry Peltz
It's a great question because when the topic first was proposed to us, I think like so many people, you think you sort of know that social media is bad for kids. And what we learned through the discovery process before we started filming is that this is much more than that. These are platforms, social media platforms, big tech platforms that know what they are doing and they are designing these platforms to keep our kids on as much as possible. And in the process, they are really exploiting our kids and they're doing it with intent so that our kids stay on. And we felt that was a documentary that needed to be told.
- [40:07]
Mary Ziegler
How many More children have to die because Snapchat chooses profits over safety.
- [40:14]
Matthew Bergman
I found my son's lifeless body due to fentanyl poisoning.
- [40:17]
Bianna Golodryga
They have the best distribution system in.
- [40:19]
The world, and nobody has stopped. Our children are the casualties we need.
- [40:23]
Susan Glasser
To take back the power in these countries.
- [40:26]
Matthew Bergman
They know the levels of addiction. They know the levels of suicide. They're not showing our kids what they want to see. They're showing you what they can't look away from.
- [40:37]
Hari Sreenivasan
Matt, you started the Social Media Victims Law Center. What's the mission of your company?
- [40:43]
Matthew Bergman
The mission is to hold social media companies legally accountable for the carnage that their platforms are inflicting on young people, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. They have designed platforms that they know are addictive to young people. They have prioritized engagement over safety. And the children and the families that you see in the documentary are the victims of these deliberate design decisions. And we aim to hold them accountable and get them to change their behavior and become more responsible corporate citizens.
- [41:12]
Hari Sreenivasan
Perry, while Matt might work with thousands of families, you really focus in on a few to tell the kind of stories on the types of harm that are happening. One of the stories that you talk about is a young boy named Jordan Demay. Can you summarize a little bit of what that story's about for our audience?
- [41:29]
Perry Peltz
Yes, absolutely. Jordan Demay was a high school junior in Michigan and the captain of the football team. He was the homecoming king, and he had dropped his girlfriend off at home one evening, came home, was on Instagram, sort of swiping through, and was DMed by what appeared to be a young girl, probably 9th, 10th grade. And eventually they were sharing explicit photos. And very soon thereafter, what appeared to be this young girl said to him, direct in a DM, you've got three hours to produce $1,000. And he panicked full on, didn't understand what was going on. I'll jump through the story, but eventually what happened is he came back with $300, and she sent that picture out. You know, she threatened to send that picture out to the football team, to the coach, to the parents, to the girlfriend. And he was dead. An hour later, he found a gun and he killed himself. And this is. It turns out it wasn't a young girl. It was. It was two men who had taken this, created this profile. And this is what's happened, fortunately, on Instagram. And Meta is aware of this, aware of what's happening. And there's just not enough that's being done to prevent this from being happening from happening. But he was dead within hours of this happening.
- [42:55]
Hari Sreenivasan
Matt, given that you have seen these different types of patterns from so many different families, how have you been able to kind of figure out how it is that social media companies are serving up this content, what is preferenced, so to speak, in the algorithm to decide to allow either direct messages suggest the types of individuals that should be able to be followed, et cetera, to teens?
- [43:21]
Matthew Bergman
Well, they do that because their profit model is based on maximizing engagement. The more time that a child spends online, the more advertising they can put in front of their face. So they focus on showing kids not what they want to see, but what they can't look away from. That's why the documentary is titled that. And from a standpoint of neuropsychology, content that is psychologically disturbing is more attractive than content that is benign. The other thing that they do is they take advantage of the social psychology of young people, adolescents who crave the adulation of their friends. And so through this gamification, through the like feature or through snapstreaks, they create a situation so that kids measure their self esteem based on how many likes they get on a posting or based on what their snap score is or how long their snap streaks are. And again, this is not an accident or coincidence. This is a deliberate design decision that takes advantage of the undeveloped nature of the adolescent brain and the immature nature of the adolescent psyche. And as a consequence, kids are in the midst of the worst psychological crisis that we've seen in many years.
- [44:43]
Hari Sreenivasan
In response to the film, a Meta spokesperson and Meta is the company that's in charge of Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp says Meta said we know parents are worried about their teens having unsafe or inappropriate experiences online. And that's why we're significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new teen accounts. These accounts provide teens with built in protections to automatically limit who's contacting them and the content they're seeing. And teens under 16 need a parent's permission to change those settings. We're also giving parents more oversight over their teens use of Instagram with ways to see who their teens are chatting with and block them from using the app for more than 15 minutes a day or for certain periods of time, like during school or at night. Matt, does that work?
- [45:29]
Matthew Bergman
It's a start. And I will say the only reason they made these changes was because we've been going after them for two and a half years in courts of law. This really is evidence to me of why the Civil justice system is essential. I'd say it's a step in the right direction, but it's still a baby step. As long as kids are able to self identify based on what their age is, it doesn't do any good. Meta and the other platforms have the technology to be able to use estimated age, whatever the self reported age is, and yet they are unwilling to do that. So to some extent they're kind of turning a blind eye and using. It's a fig leaf. To another extent, these are some significant changes. I don't want to demean anything that makes these platforms safer, even if it's a small step, is a step in the right direction.
- [46:23]
Bianna Golodryga
Matt.
- [46:23]
Hari Sreenivasan
The other critique that the social media companies will come back with is, look, we are not legally liable. There's the law on the books, the 26 words that kind of define the Internet called Section 230. It's been on the books since the mid-90s. Right. And they've been shielded, I guess, for our audience. What does Section 230 say? Where do you think the line should be drawn?
- [46:47]
Matthew Bergman
Well, Section 230 was drafted in 1996 when Netscape was the largest platform, social media didn't exist, Google didn't exist, and Mark Zuckerberg was in junior high school. Unfortunately, the Internet was in its infancy. What it essentially does is shield companies from liability for posting third party content on their platforms, which back then were bulletin boards. Unfortunately, it's been broadly interpreted until we started doing our work to shield social media companies from any kind of liability. In other words, every other company in America has a duty of reasonable care. And our position is that social media companies should have the same duty that any other company basically follow the golden rule. So what we have been doing is focusing on the design of the platform, not the third party content and showing that these products are dangerous by design. And thus far these arguments have permitted us to move forward and commence discovery and get these cases ready for trial. But the argument is that every other company in America, and we're pro business, we're pro capitalist, we just want social media companies to follow the same rule that every other company does. And if a company, if an auto manufacturer can save $50 million a year by putting bad brakes on the cars, they're not going to do that even if they're not a socially responsible company because they're going to be subjected to liability. We want social media companies to have the same calculus. We could have an endless stream scrolling mechanism, yeah, we would make more money, but we would Addict more kids and incur liabilities. So we better not do that. We just want that same feedback loop that every other responsible company has to apply to social media.
- [48:50]
Hari Sreenivasan
Perry, one of the characters in your film is a woman named Amy Neville, whose son Alexander died of an overdose after taking a pill he allegedly bought on Snapchat. Can you tell me a little bit about her and what her mission is now?
- [49:06]
Perry Peltz
You know, as. As you know so well, our stories are only. Can only be brought to life by the. By the people who have experienced these terrible harms and are willing and brave enough to share their stories. And Amy Neville is certainly one of those people. Her mission now, or just in short, her son Alexander bought a pill online and it was laced with fentanyl and he overdosed. So many people have said when they watch the film, well, you know, kids shouldn't buy drugs online. And we all hope that our kids aren't going to buy drugs online. But there are also kids and they experiment. And the question that I always like to raise is, do they deserve to die because they made a mistake and bought drugs online?
- [49:57]
Bianna Golodryga
We had all these safeguards in place and yet we still ended up here. Some things I want to point out, there's this, you know, we think kids are partying and taking drugs and that's where these things are happening. But Alex died right down the hallway from me. You know, it was supposed to be that, you know, you say goodnight and you think your kids are safe and it's just not the times that we're living in anymore. We give our kids these smartphones, we let them have these apps, and that is the equivalent of dropping them off in the worst neighborhood in our area and saying, good luck tonight, I'll see you later.
- [50:25]
Perry Peltz
And what Amy is trying to do, and in my opinion so bravely, is really point out that this is not the fault of these kids and that parents need to be aware of what is happening on these platforms, that drug dealers are really coming out and seeking kids in a way that we are not used to. It gets back to the title of the film, Can't Look Away. It's not that they're necessarily asking for this, it is what is being served up to them.
- [50:57]
Hari Sreenivasan
The global head of platform safety at Snap had in part this to say, we're deeply committed to the fight against the fentanyl epidemic and our hearts go out to the families who've suffered unimaginable losses. We have invested in dedicated safety teams and advanced technology to detect and remove illicit drug related content, work extensively with law enforcement to help bring dealers to justice and continue to raise awareness and evolve our services to help keep our community safe. Criminals have no place on Snapchat. Matt, you are suing Snapchat for a fentanyl overdose purchased on the platform. And a judge ruled that that case can move towards discovery. What does that mean? Why is it important?
- [51:35]
Matthew Bergman
Well, it's important because the statement that you just read was false. And Snapchat has known about the fentanyl epidemic arising from use of its platform for almost five years, for over five years and has done little if anything about it. Snapchat has thwarted law enforcement. Snapchat has failed to crack down on drug dealers that it knows are selling fentanyl on its platform. To the point where one of our clients reported a drug dealer who had sold her son a fatal dose of fentanyl contaminated drugs. Eight months later, that same drug dealer sold another child a contaminated fentanyl drug and that child also died. So what the court ruling allows us to do is to do our work as lawyers and investigators and show that Snapchat has allowed its platform to be used as an open air drug market and done little, if anything, meaningful to curtail that.
- [52:39]
Hari Sreenivasan
What do you want, Perry, for parents to know what to do about this?
- [52:44]
Perry Peltz
That's a really difficult question and I wish that there was a better answer to that question. But really what we see is that parents need to be aware of what's happening so that they can have more engaged conversations with their children and make sure their children understand that if something goes wrong that they can come to their parents. So if it's a sextortion case, that the embarrassment doesn't matter. They need to come talk to their parents or a trusted adult. Conversation is really, really important. And additionally that there be as much control over devices as you can possibly have. There's a big push right now, the wait till 8 and even trying to delay it, even more than that getting schools to really control and keep these devices out of the school system. There's not a tremendous amount that parents can really do other than have conversations and control their kids use of these devices. But the best thing that we can say is it has to be regulated. That's ultimately where the answer lies.
- [53:53]
Hari Sreenivasan
Matt Bergman, lawyer for the Social Media Victims Law center and director Perry Peltz. The documentary is called Can't Look Away. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [54:02]
Matthew Bergman
Thank you.
- [54:03]
Perry Peltz
Thank you very much.
- [54:07]
Bianna Golodryga
And finally, it was a day of sweat, tears and smiles at the London Marathon yesterday as a record breaking 56,000 people crossed the finish line. Many supporters turned out to cheer on the runners, with some wearing quite extraordinary costumes, despite it being one of the hottest marathons on record for London. Meanwhile, Ethiopian athlete Tejist Asefa shattered the women's only world record, winning the elite women's race at just under 22 hours, 16 minutes. Full disclosure, I was actually amongst the crowd of runners in London. I can confirm it was certainly hot. And I came in way over an hour after Tagese did, and I did not look as happy. That's a fake smile you're seeing right there. I was in tons of pain at that moment, but it was fun. I loved running through New York, and the crowds were incredible. And there's my husband at the finish line. I've been sitting here for three hours. We'll see if I can stand up after that race yesterday. But for now, that is it for the show. Thank you so much for watching and goodbye from London. This week on the Assignment with me, Audie Cornish. My guest is Larry Wilmore. He's a writer and producer who's worked on some of the most successful shows of the century. In Living Color, the Bernie Mac show, the Daily Show, Blackish, Insecure. We're just naming a few. But in his heart, he's still a comedian. I'm getting back into doing standup again, which I really haven't done full time in a while. So. What? Wait a second. Like, you're going. You're doing open mics?
- [55:42]
No, I'm going up Saturday night.
- [55:44]
I'm gonna start working on a new hour.
- [55:46]
Hari Sreenivasan
Yeah.
- [55:46]
Bianna Golodryga
So it's a little scary.
- [55:48]
Audie, don't get me wrong.
- [55:49]
I can imagine. What do you think is pulling at your chest here? I feel like I have to say something.
- [55:56]
Perry Peltz
I can't stay silent anymore about just.
- [55:58]
Bianna Golodryga
The world that I'm in. Listen to the Assignment with me, Audie Cornish. Streaming now on your favorite podcast, apparently.