David Graham (3:23)

Well, I think it's really bizarre to hear this claim that it's taken out of context. You look at some of these quotes and you wonder what the context is these might have been given, where they would be perhaps less unflattering. I think what jumps out to me from a lot of these quotes is that they are the kinds of things you have heard from pundits outside the White House, critics on left and right saying about the lack of discipline by the president, the lack of understanding and about the attitudes of the people around him. So I think maybe what is most harmful is the sense that people inside the White House are seeing the same thing that people outside are, and that there's no gap. And that's not going to be reassuring to allies who are anti voters who are starting to get a little bit of cold feet maybe about the president in the last couple months.

Bianna Golodryga (4:05)

Yeah. And in response, the president, the entire team around him and cabinet have come to Susie Weil's defense and not surprisingly, have attacked Vanity Fair and the interviewer himself. But you are the Expert on Project 2025 here. Trump entered the Oval Office. As Susie Wiles says, one of the reasons she gave this interview was to show that Trump 2.0 would be much different from Trump 1.0. It looked maybe the first few months that there was a big difference here, that they were much more disciplined, that he did come in with planned policies and advisers that were ideologically aligned with him and that would pursue those policies. That doesn't seem to be the case at the end of the year here, at least his first year. How would you describe and rate this first year?

David Graham (5:01)

So I would say a couple things about that. One, I think the fact that we are paying such close attention to this interview is a sign that they did do some things differently. Trump chewed through chiefs of staff in his first term. Reince Priebus was dispatched quickly. We had the short time of Anthony Scaramucci. And Susie Wiles has stuck around for a long time, I think because she is able to keep Trump moving on his priorities, do the things he want but wants, but she's not trying to get in his way or tell him what to do. And I think that has been a lot of her success. You know, they did have a plan. I think they had been much more effective in this first year than we saw in 2017. I also think that their successes are a little bit of the root of their struggles now. The priorities they pursued, both Trump's and the sorts of things that we saw in Project 2025, are things that a lot of the ideologues in the administration really believe in, but they're not necessarily things that are popular with voters, popular with Congress, and popular going into the midterms. So although they have managed to do a lot of those things, the unpopularity, I think, is starting to catch up with them. And that's what you see in some of these electoral defeats and in Trump's own approval rating falling as well.

Bianna Golodryga (6:06)

Let's talk about this approval rating. It's down 36%, including on the economy. We've got losses at the DOJ, which Susie Wiles also addresses here and don't necessarily necessarily help his case, and even some pushback in red states, most recently Indiana, in terms of the president pursuing redistricting there in that state to follow what we saw in Texas. Is this, in your view, just a bad stretch, or did the administration come in perhaps overly zealous after they saw that there was yet another mandate that they a mandate that they won this term relative and different from what they saw going into the first term?

David Graham (6:52)

Yeah, they took, they, you know, talked a lot about a mandate at the beginning of the administration. And although Trump clearly won the election and not all that closely, it wasn't a huge mandate by historical standards. And I think we see some natural overreach. This happens with every presidency to some extent. You know, political gravity catches up and the pendulum swings back. But I think it's particularly acute here because Trump has pushed so hard on things. And it's interesting to see where we're getting pushback. It's from, you know, judges at the federal courts, and not just people appointed by Democrats. We see Reagan appointees, Bush appointees, pushing back hard. In Indiana, we saw the Indiana state Senate, which is Republican dominated, and again, not by moderate Republicans, by very conservative Republicans, but ones who objected to what Trump was doing and the way he was doing it, pushing back. And I think that is a sign of how, you know, they pushed too hard. They pushed farther than they could get, but they're trying to get as much done as they could. And this was, this was sort of a natural backlash.

Bianna Golodryga (7:51)

And what's unique aboutwell, there are many things that are unique about President Trump relative to his predecessors, is that there's not much room for course correction or self awareness and recognition of when there is a problem in terms of addressing it. Instead, he doubles down and says everyone else is wrong. He is ultimately right. And that's exactly what played out when he was asked in a recent interview about the state of the economy. In his view, here's what he said. I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home. And I wonder what grade you would give a economy.

Brian Winter (8:30)

A plus A plus plus plus plus.

Walter Isaacson (8:32)

Plus the word affordability is a con job. They use the word affordability. It's a Democrat hoax. Affordability is a hoax.

Bianna Golodryga (8:44)

How do those comments play with Trump voters?

David Graham (8:49)

You know, you mentioned how Trump doesn't really course correct. And I think that's part of what Susie Wiles was talking about in this story, talking about his personality. And we see that there. The White House can send Trump out, they can announce big speeches on the economy. They can tell him it's the most important thing. But when he gets in front of a microphone, whether that's at a speech or with a reporter, he tends to get in this kind of defensive crouch. This is the same thing that hurt Joe Biden so badly during his term. Voters were feeling the pinch of inflation. They were feeling insecure themselves. They were feeling precarious. And here the president, his aides were coming out and saying, actually the economy is great. Now we're seeing that play out again from Trump. Even though voters can tell that they're paying more for things and they know they're not feeling good. To have the president saying that things are going great, I think it not only makes the pain, it doesn't alleviate the pain. And it seems like a little bit of an insult telling them they can't, you know, they shouldn't believe their eyes. And I think that's bad for his rating. And it's one reason we see him reaching lows that seem to be cutting into even his own supporters, not just Democrats and independents.

Bianna Golodryga (9:49)

And for Republicans who are now eyeing 20, 26, I mean, in the president, it was interesting parsing through his words. In an interview recently with the Wall Street Journal, he did seem to acknowledge that there may be some Republicans who lose in the midterms next year. And he explained it by saying that that is just the trend. That is what happens in second terms. That is what happens. Ultimately, it's not my fault. It is just where things lie and it's just going to take a little bit of time before my policies actually resonate with voters. How should Republicans who are contested and potentially facing defeat by Democrats next November. How should they be reacting to this? How are they reacting to this?

David Graham (10:43)

You know, Trump is right about the trend. He has this tendency sometimes to sort of approach the news less like a participant and more like a pundit. And I see him. I see him doing that there, but it's not reassuring if you're a Republican who is running for election or reelection next year, and you see the president sort of writing it off, writing off these concerns about affordability. And I think that's one reason why you do see some breaks between Republican members of Congress and the White House. So just today, we saw a few Republicans agreeing on a discharge petition to have a vote on Obamacare subsidies. We saw Republicans breaking with Trump on the Epstein files. We saw Senate Republicans pushing back on his demand and the filibuster. And I think all these signs of daylight between him and Republican members of Congress are notable in part because he's had such a grasp on Republicans in Congress. They have seemed so. To follow his will so closely. So even these little cracks of daylight are a big shift, and I think they are likely to become larger as we get closer to the election and we get more polling.

Bianna Golodryga (11:42)

How politically dangerous is it for Trump going into the midterms, especially without a cohesive health care plan? I mean, we haven't. You remember in his first term, it was just two weeks away. That was years ago. And yet, as you noted, we had a number of Republicans break from Mike Johnson, who had been pressing them not to do so, for a discharge petition here in terms of the ACA tax credits.

David Graham (12:12)

Well, you know, in the first term, Trump promised he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare. He never did have that plan. But now we're not just at the point of that where people are going to start losing coverage. And I think this fits into the same bucket as economic concerns. You know, people may like some of the things Trump does, but if it's hitting their ability to pay for groceries or their ability to get care, that's a real problem. And it's interesting to see how Obamacare, which was once seen as a millstone around Democratic necks, has become so vital that voters across both parties depend on it, and the Republicans in Congress are effectively, you know, voting to. To support it and to keep it going.

Bianna Golodryga (12:51)

Right. So you have Mike Johnson calling it the Unaffordable Care Act. But it does appear, at least by the symbolic measure that we saw today from a number of Republicans, that they have accepted Obamacare, the Affordable Care act, because if for no other reason, there isn't really another alternative. And you're going to have millions of Americans who are just weeks away from seeing their premium skyrocket.

David Graham (13:17)

That's right. And, you know, we saw Republicans warning about this in 2010 when the Affordable Care act was passed. They said, as soon as this becomes something voters are used to, we'll be stuck with it forever. And I think they're right. I also think that this vote reflects the weakness of Mike Johnson, you know, where Trump has said in private that he is the speaker of the House effectively. And I think we see that because Johnson doesn't have a whole lot of sway over his members and is a very thin margin. And when they start getting a little bit uncomfortable with Trump's ideas, there's nowhere for them to go. There's no independent power center. And that's been, you know, that's a problem for the speaker and keeping control of the House as well.

Bianna Golodryga (13:54)

RNC chair has warned also of a midterm disaster, but went on to say that Trump remains the party's best weapon. Is he right?

David Graham (14:04)

It is true that Republicans tend to turn out many more voters when Trump is on the ballot. It's a little bit less clear in midterms. You know, in 2018, we saw Democrats do very well. In 2022, Trump made himself a major story in the midterms, even though he was out of office and Republicans underperformed there. So I think the Republican Party is in an interesting trap here where they really need Trump to turn their voters out, especially these sort of new voters, people who haven't voted Republican or haven't voted frequently. But that doesn't always work in the midterms. He doesn't have the same poll when he is not himself personally on the ballot. So Republicans have to figure out how to get the benefit they can from him while not taking a loss. And I don't think they've solved that yet.

Bianna Golodryga (14:45)

And to start thinking about the future of the party and who that leader is. It was also interesting in this Vanity Fair interview where it's clear the president has his eyes set on two of his cabinet members, J.D. vance, his vice president, and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state. And Marco Rubio in this interview said that if J.D. vance does want to be the nominee, that he won't step in his way. Do you see that as the future of the Republican Party?

David Graham (15:18)

I think many people in the White House see it that way. You know, it's clear that there is a sort of effort to line up behind Vance. I think Vance really represents a lot of important parts of the Republican party of the MAGA coalition. I think he's probably the most Project 2025 candidate in the bunch. And I think it's interesting to see Rubio saying that, well, while Vance joked that he would give the photographer $1,000 if he made Rubio look bad. So you can see Vance has his eye on it, too. The question is sort of whether Vance has the political chops to actually do that, whether he can keep the coalition together in the way that Trump has. Trump has managed to, you know, keep these warring factions that don't agree on a lot of things but agree on him mostly together. Until fairly recently, we haven't seen Vance tested like that. And I think if he stumbles, no matter what Rubio says now, he'd be happy to take it, you know, jump in and fill the role. If Vance proves unable to do it.

Bianna Golodryga (16:11)

Well, I mean, it's still to be tested whether JD Vance can fill rooms and auditoriums the way Trump had for so many years out on the campaign trail as well. David Graham, thank you so much for joining us. Stay with cnn. We'll be right back after the break.

Anderson Cooper (16:31)

Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper. On my podcast All There Is, we explore grief and loss in all its complexities.

David Graham (16:38)

There's some grief you'll never let go of, but there is an obligation to get on with your life.

Anderson Cooper (16:43)

Kelsey Grammer was 20 when his sister Karen was murdered.

David Graham (16:46)

She was 18. When I finally finished the book, I.

Anderson Cooper (16:49)

Suddenly thought, wow, that's it. Kelsey Grammer's new memoir is titled A Brother Remembers. Is there something you've learned in your grief that would help others in theirs?

Brian Winter (17:01)

Allow yourself to spend more time in.

David Graham (17:04)

The life they lived. Let them be remembered.

Anderson Cooper (17:07)

Talking grief, building community. New episodes of All There Is come out Tuesday nights. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Bianna Golodryga (17:21)

Now, another week, another series of US Boat strikes in the Caribbean. This time, eight people were killed in attacks that seem to be becoming a routine part of President Trump's campaign against Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, despite the fact their legality is still being questioned by experts. Now on top of this, Trump has ordered, ordered a quote, total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela. And as Trump tightens his grip on Venezuela, its leader is finding himself with fewer allies in the region, most recently in Chile, which has elected its most right wing president in decades. In a new piece for Foreign Affairs, Brian Winter examines what he calls Latin America's Revolution of the right. And he joins me now from New York. Brian, it's good to see you. A lot to get through in this interview. So let's begin with that. And the president really tightening the grip around Venezuela and Maduro's regime there, ordering a complete blockade of sanctioned tankers. If we go back to news that came out of the Susie Wiles interview with Vanity Fair, when she was asked about what the goal in Venezuela was, she said he President Trump wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. So is that really her admitting that this is all about regime change and not a war on drugs and narcotics smuggling into the United States?

Brian Winter (18:46)

Well, I think what we saw this week with this blockade now of sanctioned Venezuelan oil marks a major escalation by President Trump. But it also suggests that he is trying to engineer a change of government in Venezuela without putting US Boots on the ground. He's limited from doing that in large part because his base, his own base, would not look kindly upon that. Lots of polling suggest that we have 70% of the American public saying that they would not support military action on the ground in Venezuela. So this looks like a measure by the president to try to ratchet up the pressure on Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, without actually taking that next step of either airstrikes, much less some sort of limited invasion.

Bianna Golodryga (19:36)

Yeah, he needed congressional war authorization for that. But at the same time, does the president, as we already noted in the previous interview, already facing pressure from voters if he doesn't follow up on this threat, the largest military presence in the region in decades? If Maduro, who has also survived many attempts for his ouster, if he won't leave, then what?

Brian Winter (20:00)

Well, that's frankly the question that all of us are trying to figure out. And I've wondered in recent weeks if, you know, if President Trump stops short ultimately of forcing Nicolas Maduro out of power, it will probably have more to do with domestic political reasons within the United States than with conditions on the ground in Venezuela. You know, he's coming under all kinds of pressure to focus on the economy, to focus on inflation. I noticed that, you know, today as we record this, US crude oil prices are up about 2%, in part, apparently, because of this announcement of the blockade on sanctioned Venezuelan oil. And so all of these things are connected at a time when President Trump is increasingly under pressure. At the same time, I would note that this buildup in the southern Caribbean has now reached such a crescendo that a lot of people in the national security community say that it would be broadly damaging for the credibility of the United States and its military if President Trump did not follow through on some kind of regime change, or change of government, if you will, in Venezuela. So, you know, quite a decision for the president. And you sense that at some point in the next couple of weeks, he may have to move definitively one way or the other.

Bianna Golodryga (21:18)

And this comes as you write in your recent piece about the revolution of the right in Latin and South America. And you described this moment as potentially a once in a generation type of moment, not what we see from time to time of the pendulum swinging one way to the left and the other election cycle to the what's different about this period?

Brian Winter (21:41)

The biggest difference that we see or the biggest trend we see in Latin America right now today is anger over organized crime. And look, it's true that this is not a new issue for Latin America. This has been a problem in the region for 50 years. But the problem is getting worse. You know, the amount of cocaine being produced in South America has more than tripled in the last 10 years. That's according to estimates by the United Nations. That has filled the pockets of cartels and criminal organizations all across the continent. And virtually no country in Latin America has been left untouched, either, as you know, smuggling or as an important consumer market in themselves, which is something else that we've seen changed over the last 15, 20 years. You know, Brazil, for example, now is the world's number two consumer of cocaine. And so on the one hand, you have these organized crime groups that are getting worse. On the other hand, you have this idea that has spread through a lot of countries, in part because of the experience of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and the success that he has had in terms of reducing homicides by some 90% there over the last seven or eight years. There's a kind of an awareness in Latin America, or at least maybe a belief that they don't have to put up with this problem anymore, that if they can elect the right politician with the right set of policies that are tough on crime, then maybe, you know, they don't have to live with extortion day to day lives. They don't have to live with murders happening right outside their doors. And it's interesting, another break from the past. You see this anger over crime and this desire for change more pronounced among the working class people who used to vote for the left for economic reasons, but are now in many cases voting for some of these right wing leaders because they are the ones who are most affected by violence and crime in their neighborhoods, and they're grasping at anything that might offer a solution.

Bianna Golodryga (23:37)

Right. And you note in the piece, Latin America has 8% of the world's population, roughly 30% of its homicides. And you also highlight the poster leaders of this movement, and that is Nayib Bukele and Javier Milei of Argentina. And as it relates to Argentina, it's not necessarily just or about crime, but about the economy and inflation as well. And another similarity is that President Trump is a big fan of both of these men. Has that helped them?

Brian Winter (24:11)

In some cases, yes. In some cases, not as much. I mean, I think that these are leaders who are clearly sympathetic to President Trump. And in many cases, such as the two that you cited with Xavier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele, who are openly, you know, comparing themselves to him and trying to take maximum leverage of their alliances. I mean, let's remember that Javier Milei was able to use this friendship with President Trump to secure a $20 billion bailout by the United States treasury that ultimately was a hu factor in the victory of his party in legislative elections. That happened back in October. At the same time, though, we're seeing you mentioned the election that happened over the weekend in Chile. Chile is a country where the polling shows that President Trump is not particularly popular. Nevertheless, they elected a leader in Jose Antonio Cast, who is, you know, sympathetic to President Trump, but ultimately is making, you know, promises to be very tough on crime and also to be tough on immigration. Chile is a country that has seen a lot of immigration from Haiti, from Venezuela, because of the economic collapses in those two countries and where there's been a lot of popular frustration as well. So Cast, for example, has said that he will build border barriers that recall in many ways, President Trump's proposals here in the United States.

Bianna Golodryga (25:29)

Yeah, I'd like to read from a quote that Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean American writer, wrote in the New York Times today as it relates to Cast's landslide victory. The piece is called Chile's Election is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right. And here's what Dorfman what drove millions of Chileans to embrace him in this way? Men and women around the country feel that something is obscurely wrong and off balance and that this cries out for a return to the times when a strong leader enforced discipline and security, no matter the cost. This is what Mr. Kast's victory signals, the belief that democracy itself is unable to deliver when it comes to the everyday problems of crime, cost of living and rampant immigration. Is that the feeling that's sweeping through Latin America right now?

Brian Winter (26:16)

Mostly, yes. The only part of that passage that I would take maybe some issue with is the phrase no matter the cost, because, you know, Chile and Argentina are both two of the countries, not just in Latin America, but in the world that have the strongest democracies right now. I mean, that's according to measurements by organizations such as the Economist Intelligence Union Unit and others. It's worth noting, actually. And it was very striking for an American like myself to watch the current president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, make a phone call to Jose Antonio Cast and they are completely on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum on the night of the election to congratulate him for his result and then to watch Cast congratulate his opponent in his speech on election night and even silence people in the audience who were booing when her name was mentioned. So, you know, look, I think that there is a desire to get to the bottom of this security problem, to be tougher when it comes to policing, maybe even use the military in ways that gives people pause who remember dictatorships like the ones that we saw under Augusto Pinochet during the 1970s and 80s. But I'm hopeful, at least in the case of Chile, that countries will find a way to do so that respects democratic institutions.

Bianna Golodryga (27:38)

Yeah. And the recognition of election results, also a key pillar in a functioning democracy. You mentioned Borich and I'd like to play sound from an interview that he gave to Christiane about why he think he thought he won at the time. And he said that it was all about people tiring of inequality and thus that led to the shift to the left. Here's what he said.

Larry Madowo (28:04)

There are two crises in parallel. The COVID and economic crisis that happens since then, but also the the willing of the people of more justice and equality that has not been able to be provided by just the market and just the ideas that right wing parties have in at least in Latin America, that they think that or they tend to think that only if big companies do well, we all can do well. And I think people, it's really tired of that, of seeing the inequality that we have in our country.

Bianna Golodryga (28:43)

And that interview took place in September of 2022. Obviously the world is just coming out of COVID It was three years ago, but seems like a lifetime ago. Was he wrong in terms of diagnosing where conservatives were?

Brian Winter (28:55)

The world has changed so much in the last three years. And you kind of referenced that. And it's striking listening to that clip. How Public priorities have changed not just in Latin America, but throughout so much of the Western world. And yes, while it's true that it was really the agenda of social justice, better health care and better education, progressive priorities essentially were top of mind in many countries, including the United States, during the pandemic and as we were coming out of it, it's certainly true in the case of Latin America that now you see security at the top of the radar. But look, I think there's a warning note here, which is that I personally believe that this shift. Right. Will last for a while because it's about other issues as well. I mean, we see, for example, the growth of evangelical Christianity in many, including Brazil and several Central American countries. That is a factor pushing things to the right. There's been this backlash against immigrants in many countries, which I already mentioned in the context of Chile. And it's also true that there's a lot of this is related to how the left has been discredited in many countries because of the collapse of Venezuela, which, you know, has really fallen apart in a way that Cuba and even some relatively moderate leftist politicians, I would include Gabriel Boric in that group, have seen their prestige and credit in decline because of this collapse that we saw in Venezuela. So, yeah, it's a different world and a different region, but, you know, times can change and shift. And so we'll have to see how all this sounds in two or three years time as well.

Bianna Golodryga (30:32)

And we should know that the left still governs major economies like Colombia, like Brazil, like Mexico. But I think I did see your post on X saying it's amazing how quiet the Lula government has been about US actions in Venezuela and the Caribbean in the 30 seconds or so that we have left. Weigh in on why you think that is.

Brian Winter (30:51)

Well, this speaks to a couple things. It speaks to the fact that few governments, even the traditional sort of old guard on the left, which Lula represents, the democratic left, in Lula's case, they're not willing to confront President Trump directly. Brazil has had its own drama this year with tariffs. But also again, there's polling by Latin by Rometro, a polling group based in Chile and others that show that Nicolas Maduro is the least popular political figure in all of Latin America in country after country. And so no one wants to be seen defending him right now.

Bianna Golodryga (31:21)

Yeah. Also interesting in that poll is that Trump doesn't come in very high either, about 4% out of 10. Right. So that is notable too. Brian Winter, really interesting piece. Thanks so much for the time.

Brian Winter (31:34)

Thank you so much.

Bianna Golodryga (31:36)

And now to East Africa, where a violent opposition crackdown is sweeping Uganda ahead of the country's general election next month. The UN is condemning the authorities tactics as repressive. Correspondent Larry Mado traveled to the capital of Kampala to speak to singer turned politician Bobby Wine, who is once again seeking to remove the current president after 40 years in power. Here is that report.

Larry Madowo (32:03)

This is a man seeking to remove President Museveni from power after 40 years. He has incredible support among the young people. As Bobby Wine arrives, so goes crowd. There is nothing like it. Bobby Wine wants Ugandans to sing A new table. The musician turned politician is running for president for a second time. Nearly twice his age, President Yoweri Museveni is also running for a seventh term. When the former general came to power after a Civil War in 1986, Bobby Wine was just four years old. I believe that General Museveni largely views Uganda as his personal property, as his family property, and he views us as slaves. It is our time to change our future. Bobby Wine accuses security forces of using violence to stop him from campaigning. At the stop in northern Uganda, supporters formed a protective shield around the candidate as military officers whip them. One of his closest aides was wounded. Look at what the police and the.

David Graham (33:19)

Military are doing to us.

Larry Madowo (33:21)

For no crime whatsoever. The electoral commission condemned the incident that is now under investigation. He says more than 450 members of his party and supporters have been imprisoned during the campaign. Others tortured or disappeared. Some people have been shot dead at my rally. And I know the regime has me as the main target. Why won't you be allowed to campaign freely? Well, I believe it is fear. It is fear that General Museveni knows that he has no support. Every time I go out to campaign, I know that somebody is going to be beaten, somebody's going to be killed, run over by the police, shot with live bullets and all that. The UN human rights chief has condemned widespread arbitrary arrest, arrests, detentions, and the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force against the opposition. CNN filmed hundreds of police, military and special forces at Bobby Wine's rallies in the capital, Kampala. They blocked him from using some roads, beat up some supporters and teargassed bystanders. Everywhere Bobby Wine goes, there's dozens of police officers, soldiers. It always ends up in a scuffle. And right now, the walking his way from coming into a rally venue and that's tear gas. Before he's even inside. We're hearing that sound like live shots, tear gas in every direction, tear gas in every direction. It's really become a chaotic scene, and this happens at every Bobby White police told CNN that they were forced to use tear gas here to disperse people and clear a busy intersection. They have repeatedly denied that they're specifically targeting Bobby Wine or his campaign. We all benefit from coming out of this election with the most minimal damage on individuals and property. There are six other candidates running for Uganda's top giant. But January's election is largely a rematch between the president and the pop star. In a free and fair election, can you beat President Museveni? If 2021 was a free and fair election, I would be president already. Will this be a free and fair election? This is not an election to begin with. This is war. Uganda's electoral commission has asked law enforcement agencies to exercise restraint and stick to the law while dealing with candidates. Larry Medowo, cnn, Kampala.

Bianna Golodryga (36:07)

I will be right back after this short break.

David Graham (36:11)

One woman, a lethal lunch. Three people dead. A premeditated murder or horrible accident. The new CNN original series Death the Mushroom Murders, streaming December 19th on the CNN app. Go to CNN.com watch to subscribe or log in with your TV program provider.

Bianna Golodryga (36:26)

In our daily lives, we take a full stomach for granted. The harsh truth is countless kids go to bed hungry. Hunger is predictable, preventable and treatable. Yet 1 in 10 people suffer from hunger.

David Graham (36:39)

And 75% of malnourished children do not.

Bianna Golodryga (36:42)

Have access to the treatment they need to survive. Together, we can end hunger, join action against hunger to save lives, empower communities, and create positive change worldwide. Let's create a world free from hunger for everyone. Donate Now.

Anderson Cooper (37:00)

Chef Elt has invited me to join him and a couple of his friends for a tasting tour of Angolan cuisine. A fusion of bold, spicy flavors, smoky.

David Graham (37:10)

Grilled meats, this food tells a story centuries in the making.

Larry Madowo (37:16)

We think that we know Angola cuisine.

David Graham (37:19)

It's not very easy to know Angola.

Brian Winter (37:21)

Cuisine because it's very common.

David Graham (37:22)

We are very colonized. Rosemary. Rosemary.

Larry Madowo (37:25)

She's the only person that was able to understand my project initiative, Ovina Yeto.

Anderson Cooper (37:31)

Roughly translated, Ovina Yetu means our product, our thing. More than just a project to source new foods from Angolan farmers. They call it from root to plate.

Larry Madowo (37:42)

This is my mission as an Angolan, what I want to pass on to my children.

Walter Isaacson (37:46)

We are people who have roots and.

Larry Madowo (37:49)

That these roots have sampled a little from the Portuguese, the Brazilians, and from neighboring countries.

Bianna Golodryga (38:01)

Next to Australia, where the world's first social media ban for under six teens has taken effect. And not everyone is happy. Tech company Reddit filed a lawsuit against the government on Friday, arguing that the law is threatening free speech. In response, the nation's health minister slammed the company, saying that it's prioritizing profit. Steve Huffman is the CEO and co founder of Reddit, and he tells Walter Isaacson about the purpose of his platform and why he believes Reddit should be exempt from the ban.

Walter Isaacson (38:31)

Thank you. Bianna and Steve Huffman, welcome to the show.

Anderson Cooper (38:35)

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Walter Isaacson (38:37)

You founded Reddit about 20 years ago, just out of college. What did you intend it to be?

Anderson Cooper (38:44)

Look, that's a great question. 20 years ago. It was a long time ago. There were really two things in our head at that time. One was, I think, quite simply, we wanted to build a place that was controlled by users, run by users, where you can find new and interesting things online. So at the time, having a scrollable feed of interesting things that came from users was actually novel. The second was we wanted to create a place where humans were the. The editors, whereas traditional media is controlled by editors or other gatekeepers. We wanted a place where people could talk about what was important to them. But our aspirations back then were truly smaller than they are today. And so it's funny to reflect back on how much things have changed.

Walter Isaacson (39:37)

When I go on the subreddit for New Orleans or for science, the ones I like, tell me, what am I getting?

Anderson Cooper (39:45)

So Reddit today is a vast collection of communities. We call those community subreddits. And communities, just like in the real world, are groups of people that have similar values, maybe a shared vocabulary. There's a really sense of belonging, or sometimes, hey, a sense of I'm not a part of this community. That boundary is really important. Important. So whether in New Orleans, which is a community for people who presumably live in New Orleans, you're going to find a very distinct personality from what you would find in the science community. Where the science community, one of their rules is no jokes. Reddit is a very funny place, but not in the science community.

Walter Isaacson (40:31)

Yeah, we have the opposite rule in the New Orleans.

Anderson Cooper (40:34)

Exactly. And that's really important. And there's also an important part of Reddit which is every community has its own rules in addition to our platform wide rules.

Walter Isaacson (40:44)

It sort of may be confused with social media, but when I'm on it, it doesn't look or feel like social media in the traditional sense. Like a Facebook or an X.

Anderson Cooper (40:56)

That's right. And so Reddit, we actually predate social media, both the words, social media, and the platforms themselves. And so we've grown up in our own image. And so. So social media is organized around what I call the Fs, friends, followers, family, famous people, whereas Reddit is organized around community. So you may be on the platform with your friends, but you don't know who your friends are. And so the incentives are completely different. On social media, people try to get credit for what they're saying, and it causes people to say things that are either potentially embellished or just simply not true. And on Reddit, Reddit, no matter how popular you are on Reddit, you can't take it with you. It doesn't make you more popular in real life. And so the incentives are actually more natural. People are helpful, they're funny, they're interesting. And I think that it's actually a better reflection of how people are. If you look at social media, I think it's easy to have a negative view of the world. And one of my sadnesses is I don't think that's actually true. And when I look at Reddit, and I think one of the great things that I'm so thankful for in life is I've had a front row seat to see how people behave when nobody's watching.

Walter Isaacson (42:14)

Sometimes people refer to you as, you know, for free speech, but you've said you're not exactly a bastion of free speech. Contrast that with something like 4chan or 8chan or other services.

Anderson Cooper (42:26)

Well, there's some nuance here. Here we believe in free speech, and I think it's an essential law in our country. In the United States, where we're based, it's literally the first law. It's the first Amendment. But Reddit is not a country. We're a very, very large community. And one of the defining qualities of any community, big or small, is a boundary. This is allowed. This is not allowed. And so we start from that position of if it's not not allowed, it is allowed. But that evolves over time. And so I mentioned the things like violence, hate, harassment, bullying, those are not allowed on Reddit. And of course, there's a lot of nuance to those rules. But at the end of the day, we're building a community where people have to want to be and people don't want to be in a place that makes them feel unsafe. But again, there are viewpoints represented on Reddit that you may not like, that I don't like. But if they present those viewpoints in harmony with our rules, then everything's allowed. From that point of view.

Walter Isaacson (43:40)

I was surprised to realize that almost half the population of the United states, I think 190 million people every week, go to red. And you do it without an algorithm serving up what's good. How do you make it that way without using an algorithm to keep people engaged?

Anderson Cooper (44:01)

It's all through the voting, and so the users vote up what they think is interesting. And I think the funny thing about Reddit is we have this joke, but it's not a joke. We call it come for the cats, stay for the community. So at first glance, Reddit, it's funny, it's got some posts, it's a scrolling feed like you've seen a hundred other times online. But if you go just a little bit deeper and start to read the comments on these posts, eventually users have sometimes profound experiences. But if you want to know what people really think, and it's not all super deep, like, what should I watch tonight? What game should I play next? Let's gossip about sports or pop culture. Reddit's take on all of these things I think is funnier and more interesting and also often surprisingly deep. And so there's a richness there, but that just comes from people.

Walter Isaacson (45:04)

Do you think that you have to worry about things like AI slop?

Anderson Cooper (45:08)

Oh, of course. There's a paradox here. Reddit's content was used to create every LLM you've heard of, and then in turn those LLMs, which are very powerful and of course we use top to bottom in our business as well, are also used to create just lousy content, AI slot.

Walter Isaacson (45:34)

And so you talk about artificial intelligence companies, large language models, scraping the Reddit content to train their models. What do you do about that?

Anderson Cooper (45:47)

To some extent, there's no avoiding it. And so we've done agreements with Google and OpenAI to put guardrails on that content. Here's what you can use it for, here's what you can't use it for. Because we want to uphold our privacy commitments to our user base. And look, Reddit is the most human place on the Internet. In the world of AI, our positioning is, no matter how useful the AI tools become, people will always want to talk to other people. And so that's what our product is. But that also creates a lot of value, which is if the AI wants to know something, well, it kind of has to get it from Reddit because that's where people talk about what they know. And so balancing this has become very important and it's very important for our platform to be for humans. Now I can Give you example of good uses of AI translation, translating our content into other languages, helping non native speakers speak better in another language. All of these things are very powerful. But for a long time, long before AI existed as we know it, we've worked to ensure the integrity of Reddit systems and particularly the voting systems. So we want the viewpoints on Reddit to be represented by actual humans. So there'll be a lot of change along the way, but that part is sacred to us.

Walter Isaacson (47:20)

And so AI companies training on your content, or for that matter, our content, because we're all Reddit users, or any other content, should the AI companies be paying for that right to train on the data?

Anderson Cooper (47:34)

I think there's a lot of nuance there depending on where the data is coming from and how it's used. But broadly, yes, our view at Reddit is commercial use requires commercial terms. At the same time, we give our data away to universities, to researchers. So we try to be, I think, reasonable and permissive. But if the data is being used commercially, then yes, I do think commercial agreements are important.

Walter Isaacson (48:06)

What about this backlash against social media in general, which may or may not include Reddit, but say in Australia they're saying 16 year olds should not be allowed to be on things like that. What do you feel about that movement?

Anderson Cooper (48:22)

So I get the spirit of the movement, which is we need to do a better job, I think, protecting kids online and be more intentional about it. Now, I don't think that particular law is going to accomplish its goals and I'm not sure Reddit should be included in it at all. And I think we're inadvertently preventing emerging adults from being able to be online. And so I think there are better solutions. And so at the end of the day, like, we always advocate for Internet rights. We've long been a bold advocate of child safety online. Like Reddit's not for kids. At the end of the day, we call them emerging adults. So the kind of the tail end of high school into college is where we start to pick people up. But I think there are better solutions using the phone os, using browsers, having much more nuance in kind of where people are online.

Walter Isaacson (49:24)

President Trump's administration has been talking about making visitors to the United States, or maybe people who want visas, whatever it may be, show their social media. For the past five years, the media on Reddit's Anonymous. Would you ever cooperate with the government and so they could look at people's postings?

Anderson Cooper (49:47)

Well, that's kind of the point of the way we do things at Reddit is. It's anonymous. I want people to be able to be themselves on Reddit and know that if, if we were to get hacked or their account were to be taken over or, you know, we get a subpoena, that there's just only so much information we can share. And that's kind of the point of Red Reddit is to let people be free, to be themselves. And I say selves in a plural sense because we all have different selves. I'm me as the CEO of Reddit. I'm me as a father on Reddit. I'm me as a video game player and sports fan and tool enthusiast. All these different Personas are important. And I've gone through medical things here or there on Reddit, like that will stay that way private. And I think that's important. That privacy promise is really important. And so, yes, we would take issue with that, both directly and I think more philosophically on people's ability to have private lives.

Walter Isaacson (51:01)

Section 230 prevents platforms from being held fully accountable or liable for what people post on them and from all different sides of the spectrum. I remember President Trump a while back tweeted out, Repeal 230. And now Senator Sheldon Whitehouse this week has called Section 230 a vessel of evil. Explain whether you think Section 230 should continue to protect your company from things that people post that may be libelous or threatening or fraudulent.

Anderson Cooper (51:40)

So let me clear up a few things about Section 230. So it's known as the law that created the Internet. And it was created because a platform prodigy was actually punished for making a moderation decision. They removed some bad content, some harassing content, and then they were punished for that. And it was bipartisan legislation to say this platform was actually trying to do the right thing thing, and we should allow platforms to do the right thing. That was the creation of the law. And section 230 doesn't prevent companies or protect companies from civil liability. So if somebody is wronged and feel they're wronged, they can sue us. Now, what it does is it protects us from frivolous lawsuits. So people go on Reddit and let's say they say something like, they don't like a product product, they don't like a restaurant. What happens with AL 230, and we see these cases all the time, is instead of suing the speaker, it doesn't protect the speaker from libelous or slanderous behavior. Instead of suing the speaker, they sue the company. And what Section230 says is we can create a platform for people to speak their minds and we are protected from are users who speak their minds in a way that somebody doesn't like. I will point out that both Democrats and Republicans have come after section 230 and every couple of years their reasoning switches. I forget where it is right now, but somebody says we censor too much and somebody says we censor too little. Then in a year they switch sides because the other side is in power. It's always about they want us to censor more or censor less. And section 230 gives us the ability to try to do a reasonable job in the middle. And I think we've done a very good job at that.

Walter Isaacson (53:34)

Steve Huffman, thank you so much for joining us.

Anderson Cooper (53:37)

Thank you, Walter. It was really my pleasure.

Bianna Golodryga (53:40)

And finally for us, Mourners gather to lay flowers at Sydney's Bondi BEACH Honoring the 15 victims and those injured during Sunday's mass shooting, the worst Australia has seen in almost 30 years. With the makeshift memorial taking place during Hanukkah Menorah candles were also lit to pay tribute at St. Mary's Cathedral. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke at a multi faith service praising the selflessness of everyday Australia as they grieve for the light and laughter that so many have lost.

David Graham (54:26)

The courage, decency, compassion and kindness of Australians that is central to the character of who we are. Our nation is stronger than the cowards who seek to divide us.

Bianna Golodryga (54:44)

May all of those who lost their lives, may their memories be a blessing. And that is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. Remember, you can always catch us online on our website and all over social media. Thanks so much for watching and goodbye from New York.

David Graham (55:07)

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Bianna Golodryga (55:28)

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David Graham (55:31)

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Bianna Golodryga (55:33)

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Brian Winter (55:35)

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Bianna Golodryga (55:36)

See mintmobile.com Bring in the new year.

Walter Isaacson (55:38)

With Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.

Anderson Cooper (55:40)

Welcome to Times Square. We have a great show planned tonight. I thought you would have been fired by now.

Walter Isaacson (55:45)

Eff it up, everybody.

Anderson Cooper (55:46)

It's New Year's Eve.

Walter Isaacson (55:48)

Live coverage starts at 8 on CNN. And watch on the CNN app.