← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Breaking the MAGA spell & a NATO doctrine for journalists? Tina Brown on a turbulent 2025
00:38:00
Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:03]
Tina Brown
This is a Global Player original podcast.
- [00:08]
Christiane Amanpour
She said a whole load of things about Trump that made me suddenly realize that, hang on a second, we're not crazy. We do not have Trump derangement syndrome. His own chief of staff has laid it on the line very honestly about the kind of character he is.
- [00:24]
Tina Brown
I come out into my room, and sitting in my room in a chair was none other than Jeffrey Epstein. And I still to this day don't know how he got in.
- [00:32]
Christiane Amanpour
We should have a NATO doctrine in our heads. It should be war for one and one for all. When one of us is insulted in front of the world on global television, surely all of us should maybe even walk out.
- [00:43]
Tina Brown
All of a sudden, it was like someone went ping with a magic wand and a kind of person emerged who was talking like a normal person. And you think, my God, MAGA is a kind of spell that can be broken.
- [00:57]
Christiane Amanpour
Hello, everyone. It's Christiana Monpour here, and I have an X Files special. So it's me and Tina Brown Week. She is the legendary editor and writer of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Daily Beast, and now she's gone all out, and she's just, like, you know, letting it go on this incredible weekly substack newsletter called Fresh Hell. It's really worth checking out. And her writing is just incomparable. It really is inimitable, and it's funny, while also being absolutely trenchant and absolutely very, very newsworthy. So today we're going to be talking about one year after the Trump inauguration when it comes to the media and what's happened to the media, and by extension, what's happening to, you know, coverage of not only the United States, but for the rest of the world. So without further ado, let us welcome Tina Brown. Tina, good morning to you in New York. Me afternoon in London.
- [01:53]
Tina Brown
Good morning.
- [01:54]
Christiane Amanpour
Are we all exhausted after this year or what?
- [01:57]
Tina Brown
I am a state of. I'm on my hands and knees. I mean, if this wasn't Christiane Amanpour, I would have said, you know, get out of my face. I'm going back to bed. But I'm great. Since it is you. I am always fresh as a daisy for Christiane.
- [02:12]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah, fresh as a daisy. And with a lot of Fresh hell. We'll talk about your sub stack that's now a year. A year old, right? You've done it for that long.
- [02:20]
Tina Brown
Yes.
- [02:20]
Christiane Amanpour
There's a lot to talk about. But can I just say, I know that this has got quite a lot of play. I was away for many days last week, and I missed the actual drop, but I've read about it and I think it's really important. The Susie Wiles Vanity Fair interview. Susie Wiles, of course, course, is the very savvy political operator who is Trump's chief of staff. The first woman to have ever heard held that office. Chris Whipple of Vanity Fair had an 11 month, you know, rolling interview with her about Trump. She said he has the personality of an alcoholic, even though he himself is a known teetotaler, but nonetheless, she was talking about his characteristics and how he behaves. The reason I think it's important is because she said a whole load of things about Trump, about Vance, about Rubio, about Bondi, about all those people that made me suddenly realize that, hang on a second, we're not crazy, we do not have Trump derangement syndrome as he always accuses his critics of having his own insiders. Insider chief of staff has laid it on the line very honestly about the kind of character he is, the impulsiveness, the not always taking advice from his closest friends. So I just want you to reflect on that as well, because I feel people have been bending over backwards to try to, you know, that word sanewash Trump and Trumpism and the Trump administration, when his own chief of staff says, no, you're not crazy. This is actually how it works.
- [03:45]
Tina Brown
Yeah, that was kind of fascinating, I must say. First of all, actually, I was thrilled to see Vanity Fair come roaring back with a really good news story, and not only a good news story, but one which had really strong pictures with it, which in themselves made a lot of news, which I think was really great. So hats off to Margaret who I think has sort of shown, shown that a magazine can be brought back, resurrected as it was in the 80s. And so, you know, thrilled about that. I mean, the Susie Wiles piece was fascinating because it was Susie Wiles saying these things. I mean, the least loose mouthed, if you like, person in the administration. I mean, had it been, you know, Cash Patel saying these things or had it been Pete Hegseth saying these things, we would just say, okay, just another Trump loose cannon. You know, he'll be gone in a few minutes. But she's been this real sphinx throughout the whole administration. So first of all, the question I suppose that everyone wants to know is why did she do it? I mean, it is astonishing how even the most sort of stoic, stalwart, sort of button lip person does have this issue of sort of hankering for gloss. You know, it was because it was Vanity Fair, not some sort of Beltway magazine, but Vanity Fair with its sort of glamour, and she's got that little desire to be in those pages and they all seem to have, because they all posed, which was always, of course, Vanity Fair's great sort of appeal, that, you know, you could get the glamour treatment. I, she was shown, apparently, they all were shown because I thought surely they would never have agreed to those pictures. I certainly wouldn't. But I gather from Mark that actually they were sent the portfolio of this photographer who always does photograph of that style, mostly photographs in that style. Had you shown me those pictures, I would have gone, oh, my God. You know, I'm from the Andy Warhol school, which is retouch, retouch, retouch. I would never have allowed myself to be photographed with a camera sort of half up my nostrils in black and white with like mad staring eyes like, like she did. But, you know, it is the most unflattering array of pictures you could have ever seen.
- [05:39]
Christiane Amanpour
So interesting because, okay, you, you hearken back to the glory days of Vanity Fair. I mean, the 80s, it's when you were the editor in chief and you really coined this whole high low term. You did the really serious substantive journalism as well as some of the froth and of the stuff that people just love to watch as well. And I am interested because they have essentially, what's the right word? They've sort of exiled the mainstream press, right? Even in the White House press room, even in the Pentagon press room. They've sort of got rid of the real legitimate hacks, the beat reporters one by one, and brought in the sort of influencers and pro maga, should I say it? The sycophants, the people who just say, how are you doing? And great week you've had, Mr. President this and that. But I do think it's interesting that they all posed for these pictures in this particular magazine. So what do you think it means? Because we know that Trump loves the New York Times, for instance, whether he hates what they write about him or what. He just loves the idea of the New York Times because it's such a massive and important space. What do you think is really going on in their heads when it comes to news coverage of them?
- [06:48]
Tina Brown
Well, I mean, the truth is, I think there's been this trend and sort of fashion, if you like, for trashing the mainstream media all the time, right? It doesn't mean anything anymore. It's finished, it's dead. Nobody cares. But hey, the biggest scoops of the year all came out of mainstream media. Think about It, I mean, signal gate, when Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic found himself patched into that national security corps was a massive story that was in the gray beard old Atlantic, the Jeffrey Epstein birthday book with the drawing, guess where that was? The Wall Street Journal. Now this Susie Wiles thing, it's, it's, you know, the finished corpse of Vanity Fair. I mean, they can say whatever they like about the mainstream media and so can anybody. But the fact is this is where a lot of the scoops are coming from and they do want that so called respect. I mean, do they want to be in like Reddit with these quotes? No. I mean they want to be in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, you know, Wall Street. So I think it's very, very amusing to me that rather than this coming out of, as it were, Megyn Kelly's podcast or whatever, it's coming out of, out of Vanity Fair. But I mean, in terms of what Susie Wilde said. Yes. I mean, you are absolutely right that it shows that we're not being. I like your expression. I think it's very funny about seam washing and the idea that it's just the vampires of the, of mainstream media who are continually, you know, biting at Trump and that, you know, actually, no, as you say, his own chief of staff calls him an alcoholic personality. And Pete's really a picture of a sort of chaotic White House where she hardly agrees with half the things he does, but gay, you know, she's sort of enabling him along the way. There were some things that she said, however, that I thought might have come with his endorsement and blessing. I mean, as interesting as who was in the pictures, for instance, were those who were not in the pictures, I mean, not included in that lineup of his junkyard dogs, as one of them calls the staff of the White House were Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, was Kash Patel ahead of the FBI. Oh, Pete Hegseth, the so called Secretary of War. They were not chosen to be in those pictures. So they're obviously on the outlets, certainly with Suzy Wilde and she, you know, she trashes Pam Bondi for Epstein. And I think that is what Trump wants to hear, I think, you know, because he can't ever make a mistake. So he is now trying to blame all of that sort of so called, you know, mess up where she said, I've got the Trump files on my desk. Turns out there really was nothing in the Trump files. I mean, from which a great deal of all of this, the Epstein files, the Epstein films. Yes.
- [09:18]
Christiane Amanpour
She also said that J.D. vance, the Vice President is a conspiracy theorist. And also she talks about the conversion of both J.D. vance and Marco Rubio from being against Trump in 1.0 and since to now for them. For J.D. vance, she said it was more political because he clearly has a hope probably to be the successor in the MAGA lane. Not quite sure about, you know, where Marco Rubio stands and why he's gone all in. But again, I do find this super interesting because for me, you know who I've covered the tariffs, I've covered the chaos it's done overseas. The whole retribution angle that Trump has come in with, she basically says several times that we didn't necessarily want these tariffs to suddenly fall like they did. And she was surprised because she said there'd been a lot of conversations in the White House amongst the senior cabinet ministers, but the one morning Trump woke up and decided, I'm gonna announce them all at once. And she doesn't particularly agree with retribution being a motivating principle, but she does also understand the president, and she says, my job is to facilitate what he wants to do. So I think she's really towing a very careful line while also, I think, telling us all that, no, believe your own lying eyes. This is what's going on in the White House. And if I say it's, well, then it is. So let's just quickly go on to Epstein, then, because, you know, that is obviously huge dump this weekend before we. Before we started to record. A lot has been taken down, a lot has been redacted. But you. I know you've said this in previous interviews, and I think it's fascinating because I'd forgotten it when you guys were at the Daily Beast, really on top of, if not breaking the whole Epstein factor. What happened there when you tried to pursue this line of journalistic inquiry? And how many years ago was that?
- [11:14]
Tina Brown
Well, that was actually 2012. It was early. It actually happened because a reporter came in to see me who wasn't really a reporter. She was a campaigner against sex trafficking called Conchita Sanoff. And she said to me, you know, I have been interviewing a sex trafficker in a Mexican sex trafficker in Palm beach, in the Palm beach stockade, who has told me that a lot of the women he. Girls, young girls, underage girls that he brings in are actually given to rich Palm beach guys. And she said, I was really taken aback. And then she remembered that there'd been a small item in a Palm beach paper about how Jeffrey Epstein, a name she knew because she was a social woman and she had actually, in fact once dated Jeffrey Epstein, had been given, had been charged with approaching an underage girl and a prostitute or sex worker and had been, you know, given a kind of slap on the risk sentence for it. But she was tweaked by this comment about the, about by the Mexican. She went to look at the files in the police station and she found her absolute astonishment. There wasn't just one girl who was said, you know, made these charges, there were numerous girls who made these charges. And then in fact it was many, many, many times he'd abused underage girls. And that led her to think, well, why has he just got a slap, slap on the wrist, why? And she tracked it to the fact that the, you know, she, she got this sentence from Acosta, who was the attorney general there at the time. And at that time nobody had heard about it or understood why. So we published this piece in the Daily Beast. She had interviews with victims, she had the, for the first time, the plane manifests which listed that Bill Clinton and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and other major figures had been on these, this plane. So we actually had all of those facts really early. And she published six pieces. But by the time, just before the first piece came out, I got a call from Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer. And I'd met Jeffrey Epstein at the Clinton Global Initiative opening night one year. So he kind of, you know, he would have perhaps remembered that or not, but he knew we, we had some, many mutual friends because he mixed in those sort of circles. And his lawyer said, Mr. Epstein wants to tell you that Conchita Sarnoff is a nutcase. She's pursuing him. She's an absolutely out of control, she's ridiculous, you know, just drop it. And I said, well, you can talk to our lawyers, don't talk to me. And we're proceeding, we're happy with, with what she's got. Next day I come, I was in the art department at the Daily Beast. And I come out into my room and sitting in my room in a chair in this glass surrounded office was none other than Jeffrey Epstein. And I still to this day don't know how Jeffrey Epstein got up past security. No one called me and said, jeffrey Epstein's on his way up. I don't know how he got in there, but there he was sitting in the chair, stone cold. He was very, very cold. And he looked at me and he said, just stop. And he pointed his finger at me. He looks at me with these icy like snake like eyes. And he said, you just Stop. I said, jeffrey, I don't know what you're doing here, but you should call our lawyers and, you know, we're going to go ahead with publication. If you want to talk to our lawyers, you can just stop. He said it again. He's pointing his finger at me. And then he got up, turned on his heels, and he walked up. So I then expected a flurry of lawsuits. I mean, I thought I was going to get a flurry of, you know, paper from his lawyer. Nothing happened after that from Jeffrey. And I think actually when you read the Epstein files, I think that something that was referred to in his correspondence with Michael Wolf was about something, a piece that was going to run or whatever, and he was being advised by Michael to sort of let it lie. Nothing was further was going to happen. He, you know, just try ignoring it, which he did. And it sort of got a little bit of traction. I mean, a few people picked up the fact that what was Bill Clinton doing on the plane? But really not much. Why wasn't it picked up? Well, this was pre me, too. And it wasn't until Julie K. Brown in the Miami Herald and when Trump came in and appointed Acosta that Julie K. Brown really started to dive into that case in the Miami Herald. And she actually did use a great deal of the material that Conte Sanoff had used, but she sort of amplified upon it, and then it kind of broke forth. But it was really an interesting thing to me how pre, me too, sort of young girls, rich guys. It was a kind of considered a sort of a social story, if you like, a page six in the New York Post story. Not a big, big story, as, of course, it turned out to be.
- [15:30]
Christiane Amanpour
Again, Julie Brown really did a phenomenal job because she took the story to the whole next level where it continues to hover. I also found it, therefore, interesting. And you've mentioned Clinton, you know, and he's obviously in a lot of pictures. But Susie Wiles, I think, said in her Vanity Fair interview that actually he may have been in pictures, but there's nothing illegal or anything about Clinton, I think she said. And then she said Trump is also in pictures, but then she defended his presence in those pictures as well.
- [15:59]
Tina Brown
Right. Well, I mean, listen, in the Clinton pictures, which more of them have dumped out, he's in a swimsuit in a swimming pool, he's in a hot tub. I mean, there's nothing he's doing that is actually illegal. And, you know, I think people forget that people were involved with Epstein for all kinds of different reasons. I mean, it's very easy and, and sort of naive, honestly, to think that everyone involved with Epstein was there for underage girls and sex. There were lots of different reasons. People were involved with Epstein a lot. Some were there because money. Genuinely had heard that he was a. A smart money guy. Many were there for the plane. And we should not underestimate, in the case of Bill Clinton, it was the plane. Bill Clinton needed a plane to fly around his various things, you know, his various causes that he had, you know, with his global initiative in places like Haiti and all over the world, he needed a plane. They don't want to fly commercial. They want to fly private. He had a plane. He was willing to give his plane because Epstein wanted Clinton on the plane, because Epstein used Clinton as window dressing for his supposed access into the great world of power. So they're all kind of using each other. Then there were some who were there for the girls, you know, and we know that, but it wasn't all the same mishmash of people. And that's one of the problems you've got with the fact there's never really been a proper investigation. Instead of dumping out all of this unedited material, we're not going to get anything out of that unedited cash. Because what Trump has done is just redact everything. I mean, they've redacted the Justice Party. I mean, redacted, redacted, redacted. Dump out a whole bunch of pictures selectively edited. It's going to be a big nothing burger because, you know, as. As it's been meant to be. Once again, we see the Trump tactic of flooding the zone, as he does with information always works. It's because we're all got a headache. And now people are just saying, oh, enough already. I'm tired of these pictures of people in swimming pools or whatever, like, who cares? And what I also think is in a big pity, actually, is that somehow it suddenly morphed into the Democrats cause, and I think that's a very bad thing for the Democrats. This was a MAGA cause, and it is a MAGA cause. But you're not hearing the MAGA voices as strongly now that Marjorie Taylor Greene has left. Yeah, you know, you're seeing it all now, Democrats, and I think it's a big pity.
- [18:05]
Christiane Amanpour
We're going to take a break in a minute. I want to talk about MAGA turning on each other and the MAGA media sphere and all the rest. But first I just want to end this one. It is your area of expertise as well, as many others. But the Royal family, obviously, Andrew, formerly known as Prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, now has been seriously damaged by what his relationship was in this horrible, horrible case. Where do you think the British royals will be in 2026? I mean, the King has tried to do his best to clean up the mess, but what do you think? And William and Kate and Meghan and Harry, what do you think their stars look like for 26?
- [18:43]
Tina Brown
Well, I think that the King was doing incredibly well with Zelensky and with the foreign stage and the fact that he was the great statesman while the rest of the world seemed to be falling apart. So we had a tremendous sort of first sort of tranche, if you like, of his reign. And as usual, the family comes along, you know, and messes it all up. First of all, he has to ride out Spare, which he did brilliantly. I mean, I think that the Prince Harry stuff, they. They sort of banded together and they wrote it out and it. And it was very.
- [19:10]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, that was Harry's memoir. Spare.
- [19:12]
Tina Brown
That was Harry's memoir. And I think that they did. I think they read that out really well. They just said, you know what, we're just going to keep working, keep going. We're going to ignore all this. And they did the perfect royal job of never complain, never explain. The Andrew mess was something that I, you know, I feel for him in the sense that it's like he did not.
- [19:29]
Christiane Amanpour
You feel for the King?
- [19:30]
Tina Brown
I feel for Charles, yeah. Having to deal with this endless sleaze of his brother and the fact that Andrew so infuriatingly and stubbornly would not move out of that house on the right stone's throw from Windsor Castle, you know, which means that Charles then had to kind of really strip him of everything again and go through all that. So he had a pretty. A real setback with Andrew just at the time when he was feeling, obviously, physically not his best, feeling fragile with his. With his cancer. So you're asking for a quicker answer, and I'll just give you. I think next year they will try for a big reset, which is like, Andrew, buster. Andrew, finito. Like, we're moving ahead. We're going to just show you that we're, you know, the royal band that can stick together.
- [20:11]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, let's take a break, and when we come back, we'll talk about, actually the media writ large, because as we said at the beginning, there has been some unbelievable journalism which has held this administration and all power to account, has really investigated a huge amount, but there is so much momentum and power arrayed against mainstream journalism. So we'll take a break and we'll talk about that in a sec.
- [20:36]
Lowe's Advertiser
Stay cozy, stay home and save big online during Lowe's December deal drops because honestly, why go anywhere when the deals come to you? Check this out. Lowe's is going to give you two free select tools from dewalt, Craftsman or Cobalt when you buy a select battery or combo kit. Yep, two tools free. It's basically a holiday miracle. Plus rewards members get free standard shipping all month long. Yet another reason not to leave your couch. Kick back, click around, let the savings roll in. Shop. New December deal drops on Lowe's.com every week. This month, fresh deals, cozy vibes, zero effort.
- [21:16]
Christiane Amanpour
All right, Tina, back again. We've talked about about bits and bobs of the administration and of the press's role. But the real big issue right now is what we're seeing already. Paramount Ellisons, they are real enthusiasts for President Trump and they have bought up CBS News. So just this week, the show that was meant to air on Sunday on 60 Minutes about Seacot, that famous hellhole of a so called prison in El Salvador has been spiked because Barry Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News now under the Ellison umbrella, said that there wasn't enough reporting done. The correspondent, Sharon Alfonsi, she wrote a full letter to her colleagues and I this is very rare. I mean, you know, that they, they don't believing that this spike was absolutely got nothing to do with the journalism but was political. Barry Weiss came out and said no, it will air but we need more reporting. And of course she said we had no administration officials. And Sharon and the others say, well, this is their tactic. If they want to kill a story, they just won't engage. And then they'll, you know, string the press along and hold them, you know, accountable after the fact. So this doesn't look good, Tina, because Paramount Ellison's were also trying to get our operation, wbd, which owns cnn. And that seems to be off for the moment because David Zaslav, the head of it, has rejected this hostile takeover. But this is really worrying to me. This is conglomeration under an ideological umbrella of huge news organizations, huge film studios, plus social media and TikTok and all the rest of it. Where are we going to go with this? How, how are we going to do it?
- [23:00]
Tina Brown
It's a grotesque development because the media is under enough attack and assault and fragility as it is for numerous reasons. The idea that they're going to get conglomeratized into this, that cbs for instance, being taken into now the Ellison Paramount deal with their closeness to Trump and their business in front of Trump, which is for the merger, is really, really unhealthy. And when they appointed Bari Weiss, who they bought her, I think very lively actually website, the Free Press and paid a massive amount for it and also said she was going to go in to, to CBS. I thought @ the time, you know, if I were Barry Weiss, I would just say buy the Free Press. I'll stay out of cbs. Barry very, you know, successfully and in a very entertaining way, sort of rode the anti woke horse to the top and then sold, sold it for a massive amount of money. I think over $150 million, which is, you know, hats off, hats off to someone who can do such a thing. Okay, but she's now in CBS and that is a different Kevin Fish because CBS News, the gold, you know, the crown jewels of the CBS network, huge legend and cbs, which is really the tops of the tops in terms of news independence. And you know, I thought, well, my thought at the time was what is she going to do the first time that she gets a call from the Trump administration complaining? Is she going to stand firm for 60 minutes? And we've only been there, you know, she's only been in there a few months when this very issue has come up. And unfortunately, you know, she has said that they had to pull the segment. And I mean, this is a segment that had been screened, I think it was five times. It had gone through the standards and things, it had gone through legal, it had gone through revisions and revisions and everything was ready to go and promoted, which is very unusual. It had been promoted to viewers as coming that Sunday and then it suddenly pulled and they're told, no, no, you don't have enough administration quotes. Which as you rightly said, is a complete sort of boyzo. It's an, it's a bamboozle because, you know, you know, she, Barry Weiss has said, you must go and get more quotes from Stephen Miller. Well, I mean, they tried to get quotes from the White House and they all said no. So this is very, very alarming indeed. And I have to say that I think that, that the reporter, Sharon Alfonsi, you know, I admire the fact that she has fought back so.
- [25:13]
Christiane Amanpour
Hard. Me.
- [25:14]
Tina Brown
Too. Because you know, she's not going to be in any kind of good favor going forward if she stays at all. So, you know, Barry Weiss has said, oh, no, no, no, you know, this happens a lot. We just, I just wanted more and it's certainly true. I mean, we all know that. We' writers, editors, whatever told, you know, you haven't got X as a quote. You need that. But not when it's been screened five times, when it's been promoted, when it's, you know, so that this is, this is a very, very sort of scary moment for news, frankly, after a year of terrible, scary moments for.
- [25:40]
Christiane Amanpour
News. I absolutely agree. It is scary. It's very excellent, in my opinion. And where the chips will fall, I don't know. But Sharon was brave to come out and, and, and say it like it is. But it's really awful because we're now all being pitted against each other, right? So, you know, if you just go from the whole sort of shut up, Piggy to you're the worst journalist in the world, or this Oval Office or this official plain harassment of the female correspondence, by the way, mostly. And what worries me, and I made a speech at the Committee to Protect Journalists Gaza this year saying right after this Miss Piggy thing, we should have a NATO doctrine in our heads. It should be all for one and one for all. When one of us is insulted or when one of us, you know, legacy, you know, obviously, you know, quality journalist gets told off like that and humiliated in front of the world on global television, surely all of us should either re. Ask the question that was dismissed or actually maybe even walk out. I don't know. Maybe that's radical. But, you know, we also have the right to a safe working environment to, you know, respect. No CEO could get away with, with dissing employees. And I don't know what you think, but, you know, they have all these sycophants now that they've called in, I'm using the word sycophants. They probably say maga friendly. But, I mean, here's a New York Times quote. So Karen and Levette, instead of having all the beat correspondence, can instead spend her time fielding sycophantic non questions like this one from Cara Castronova, a former professional boxer turned correspondent for Lindell tv. Quote, will you guys also consider releasing the president's fitness plan? He actually looks healthier than ever before. Healthier than even eight years ago. I rest my.
- [27:29]
Tina Brown
Case. Well, I know it's. It's hysterical. I mean, even the words in a former boxer, I don't know. I mean, you just got a gasp. I think it's obscene. I mean, and I actually did feel there was a real lack of collective outrage from colleagues about the reporter who was. Shut up, Piggy. What an offensive thing to say. But what I think is worse almost now than even the director source is the self imposed timidity now that is running across the media. I mean the fact is, and this is where Trump and co are so cunning because they know that they only have to threaten. I mean this year ABC had to pay $15 million for a, a ridiculously winnable lawsuit. But they did it because you know what it's like. They have business in front of the President. They just wanted to shut it down. They paid. It was pure shakedown. Same thing with CBS. Another $15 million fine for a non story of how they'd edited a Kamala Harris tape. But again, no fight. They had this, this, this merger deal happening. Let's just, let's just pay him off. Let's just pay him off. And that's all it is, shutting it down. So what you've now seeing is, is that, you know, less rich outlets of which there are most, I mean, you know, people haven't got 15 million bucks to throw, to throw at Trump. I mean, you know, it like you've got the lawyers crawling all over journalists now saying like, oh, you can't do that, you can't do that. Journalists are feeling more and more and more restrained. And by the way, it's not just in tv, I'm hearing it in book publishing, that people who had book contracts that were about to be signed, suddenly the contract is yanked away and they're saying, you know what, we've thought about it and we don't really want this kind of controversy. You're seeing it in podcasts. I mean, you know, people are saying there's a new phrase, you know, in the podcast world where, you know, a journalist will be told, we just don't have the appetite to take this on. Appetite, which I think is obscene. Journalists feeling very, very exposed. Because, you know, in the end you can only be as brave as you're allowed to be. Right. I mean, if your management has turned into a creepy, crawly, you know, slug like sycophant towards, you know, the administration, what can a journalist do? I mean, they're going to have their stuff, you know, they have to quit or they have to have their stuff.
- [29:37]
Christiane Amanpour
Castrated. Yeah, well, let's talk about that because there are other options. I mean, you didn't quit anywhere but you did go to Substack and a lot of people are doing that kind of independent journalism. But just a quickie on that. I mean, you know, as we say, even under intimidation and anticipatory obedience, journalists in the mainstream are still putting out fantastic and revelatory stuff. But there is you, right? The chilling effect. And I would just say to people like cbs, and this is before the Paramount Skydance acquisition or before the Ellison acquisition, they paid that 15 or 16 million. Now he's coming after them again about this 60 Minutes things that we just talked about. So there's no stopping. And I think owners and journalists have to remember that once you bend and you are seen to be bendable, there's no limit to how much any power monger can come after you. I think that's a very cautionary tale. And even Trump said the new administrative, the new ownership of CBS is even worse than the old leadership. So you can see where this is going. But I want to end by asking you about Fresh Hell because it is a supremely, really, obviously brilliantly written, but hilarious. And you get a lot of correct kudos for your phrasing, your, your boldness. And you're not afraid. And you've had the top, top jobs in certainly print journalism for decades. And I know you're your own person now, maybe you don't have to be afraid, but still operate in this same environment that we all do. Knuckle dragging, CRO Magnons, mephistic. I still don't know what that means. You know, there's just so much that you say that is hilarious and very descriptive and apartment and your last latest one was, you know, a year in Fresh Hell. What have you learned about what we've had to face and how you are going to face it and have been facing.
- [31:28]
Tina Brown
It. But I found it enormously refreshing and restorative to have an outlet, to be honest. I mean, to have a platform which is totally unimpeded by anybody breathing down my neck and saying, should you really be saying those things? I mean, I feel liberated by having that freedom, I have to say. And so I can. I'm old anyway, so I just sort of feel I'm just gonna let rip. What the hell. And it's sort of proving, you know, very, very popular as a result. I mean, I do have a lawyer read it, which actually is something I do for.
- [31:58]
Christiane Amanpour
Myself. Oh.
- [31:59]
Tina Brown
Yes. I mean, I mean, I've had too many decades of legal reads to not always have a legal read. I have, I have a wonderful legal friend who reads it for me. Because actually substack doesn't do. I mean, they are. You are swimming naked. You are totally swimming.
- [32:11]
Christiane Amanpour
Naked.
- [32:11]
Tina Brown
Right. But my lead kind of legal read is the old kind of legal read, which is like, make me able to publish this, not like, tell me not to publish.
- [32:19]
Christiane Amanpour
This.
- [32:19]
Tina Brown
Exactly. I mean, and that's what lawyers used to do for their investigative journalism. They would give them three ways to tell the story so that they weren't going to be sued. That is not what's happening now. Now what's happening is it's like, we don't want to get this guy all riled up. We don't want to be in his sights. We don't want to have, you know, him coming after us. I think the BBC is as an exact example. And I very much hope that the BBC fights tooth and nail over this latest lawsuit. And I'm very concerned because of the lack of leadership there now. I mean, you haven't got a director general who's going to be the one who stands up in a swashbuckling way, in the way that, you know, like Emma Tucker has at the Wall Street Journalism Epstein book, you.
- [32:56]
Christiane Amanpour
Know.
- [32:57]
Tina Brown
Yes. I mean, where are the brave ones who are going to break the spell? It's almost like the spell needs to be broken. And it's really interesting. When Marjorie Taylor Greene left, it was like a kind of. I mean, it was the Christmas miracle, I mean, that all of a sudden it was like someone went ping with a magic wand and a kind of person emerged, you know, who suddenly said. Who was talking like a normal person. And you think, my God, MAGA is a kind of spell that can be.
- [33:22]
Christiane Amanpour
Broken. That's why I think what Susie Wiles said was very important, because it comes from MAGA or somebody, you know, acting as chief of staff for the head of maga. I think that Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, I haven't talked to her, I've never interviewed her. But I also think, which we haven't had time to talk about, but maybe another time that you can see maga, even at the Charlie Kirk annual Turning Points America event this past week, they just turning on themselves now. It's just certainly the media sphere of MAGA are. And I think that's very interesting because that'll also show us which way, you know, the cookie crumbles in 2026. And we should keep an eye on all this and again, remember what we're here for, and that is to tell the truth, to hold power accountable, just to be regular journalists without fear nor favor and not being political, just telling the story and all sides of the.
- [34:14]
Tina Brown
Story. As my great late husband, Sir Harry Evans used to say in the sunny times, just find out what that bloody fact.
- [34:21]
Christiane Amanpour
Exactly. And from all sides. You can't just cover the Palestinians, not the Israelis or just the Israelis. And I mean, the whole thing is upside down right now and we have to spend 20, 26 writing this.
- [34:33]
Tina Brown
Ship. I.
- [34:33]
Christiane Amanpour
Agree. Again, listen, before we go into our next break, and we're going to come back with our recommendations, which is going to be very short and sweet. I. I don't know whether you've heard, but Jimmy Kimmel, who started this major pushback, frankly, is. Has been asked by Channel 4 here in the UK to deliver the alternative to the King's Speech. You know, because you're a Brit, the King does a Christmas speech to the Nation on BBC One, and Channel 4 often does the alternative this year is Jimmy Kimmel. So I think that's going to be super.
- [35:04]
Tina Brown
Interesting. I love.
- [35:05]
Christiane Amanpour
It. Take a break. We'll be right.
- [35:06]
Lowe's Advertiser
Back. Stay cozy, stay home and save big online during Lowe's December deal drop. Because, honestly, why go anywhere when the deals come to you? Check this out. Lowe's is going to give you two free select tools from dewalt, Craftsman or Cobalt when you buy a select battery or combo kit. Yep, two tools free. It's basically a holiday miracle. Plus, rewards members get free standard shipping all month long. Yet another reason not to leave your couch. Kick back, click around, let the savings roll in shop. New December deal drops on Lowe's.com every week. This month, fresh deals, cozy vibes, zero.
- [35:45]
Christiane Amanpour
Effort. We're back, everybody. Back with Tina Brown of Fresh Hell and previously of the New Yorker, of the Daily Beast, of Vanity Fair. She's been everywhere. Tina, your.
- [36:00]
Tina Brown
Recommendation? My absolute solace is my bed. I'm sorry. Under my duvet, it's called a Buffy. By the way. This duvet I have, it's called a Buffy. I completely recommend it. It's very lightweight in summer and very warm in winter. Under my duvet I go. I love to withdraw into poetry. I read a huge amount of poetry now. And I also can't resist every single new, you know, streamer. And underneath my duvet, I go. And I just. I just shut out the world. And that's where I go. I'm sorry, but I. I can't take it. After about 9pm that's the end of it for me. There, I.
- [36:35]
Christiane Amanpour
Disappear. Good, good. You have to have a cutoff. Buffy is great, and I'm going to look it up and maybe order one. And I advise everybody to as well. So mine also is a little bit of an experience recommendation this time because I've just come back from a lovely trip to the Galapagos and to the Ecuadorian rainforest. It's a bucket list trip for me. But for a whole week I was divorced from the rest of the global nervous breakdown and the horrors overseas and the lack of leadership and the lack of ability to solve these things, the chaos against the press that we've just been talking about. And I highly recommend that, that people do turn off. And it is Christmas time and it is, you know, New Year's and I think people should turn off. Obviously, a bucket list of the Galapagos is not available to everybody right now, but anywhere to the garden, to the forest, to the park, to the woods, to the top of a mountain, to poetry. Yes, poetry. Well, I'm not as much of a poetry lover as you are, but I have been reading books, a lot of books that have got, you know, that are nonfiction or rather fiction rather than nonfiction. So that is my and Tina's recommendations for this, this holiday episode, pre holiday episode. Tina Brown, it's been a real pleasure. I hope you'll come.
- [37:46]
Tina Brown
Back. Thank you.
- [37:46]
Christiane Amanpour
Christine. Because we didn't talk about war and peace yet. We didn't talk about all sorts of things. There's so.
- [37:52]
Tina Brown
Much. I know. But have a wonderful holidays, you and everybody listening because this has been a year when we're all feeling fragile and this is the moment to heal, love our families, see our friends and check.
- [38:04]
Christiane Amanpour
Out. Amen to that. Bye. Bye.
- [38:06]
Tina Brown
Tina.
- [38:06]
Christiane Amanpour
Goodbye. All right, then. I hope you enjoyed that and thank you. Thank you very much for listening. Remember, you can also watch all our episodes on YouTube where you just search for Christiane Amanpour presents the x files on YouTube and you can subscribe to our channel. Of course, you can also listen for free on Global Player, download that from the App Store or go to globalplayer.com so Jamie and I are taking a break for the holidays. We'll be back the first week of January after the new year. I hope you all have a great holiday and a refreshing as Tina and I said, refreshing New year, get ready because I think 2026 is going to be rock and roll as well. And we have a lot to keep our eyes on, not just the world and war and peace and the economy and affordability and everything that's going on in the world, but also, again, the state of our profession and how we can best serve everybody as long as we have the guts to keep doing it. We'll also resume our Q&As in January. This has been a Global Player original.
- [39:10]
Lowe's Advertiser
Production. Stay cozy, Stay home and save big online during Lowe's December deal drops. Because, honestly, why go anywhere when the deals come to you? Check this out. Lowe's is going to give you two free select tools from dewalt, Craftsman or Cobalt when you buy a select battery or combo kit. Yep, two tools free. It's basically a holiday miracle. Plus, rewards members get free standard shipping all month long. Yet another reason not to leave your couch. Kick back, click around. Let the savings roll in. Shop new December deal drops on Lowe's. Com every week this month. Fresh deals, cozy vibes, zero.