← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"Is he unwell?"
00:42:48
Nicolle Wallace on Trump's rambling speech to military brass, with his low energy demeanor raising questions about his wellbeing.
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- [00:00]
Dr. Horton Sales Announcer
Now is your time to get into a new Dr. Horton home by taking advantage of its national Red Tag Sales event this Saturday, October 4th through October 19th. Stop by any of its participating communities and find select red tag homes at Incredible Pricing. So whether you're buying your first home or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the Red Tag sales event. Starting this Saturday, discover the Dr. Horton Difference at DrHorton.com Dr. Horton America's Builder and Equal Housing Opportunity Builder hey everybody.
- [00:31]
Rob Lowe
It'S Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe and basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday, so subscribe please and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:08]
Unidentified Commentator 1
I don't know if you noticed how.
- [01:10]
Nicole Wallace
He was walking there, but that shamble up to the mic was about as high as his energy got for the whole day. The President is so anti woke, he's barely conscious. Hi again everybody. It's five o' clock in New York, partially shadowed by Donald Trump's outrageous statements to Several hundred generals from all over the world gathered in Washington yesterday that he wanted to use US Cities as training grounds. His words for the military was his striking low energy and rambling during his hour plus speech from from the New York Times reporting on yesterday's address. Quote, for a 79 year old, he's often shown a great deal of energy, but he seemed a bit sapped Tuesday as his remarks went on and on. His voice took on a more monotonous quality a day earlier when he spoke at the White House while standing beside Mr. Netanyahu. Trump sounded out of breath at times, end quote and from the Washington Post quote, Trump, who draws energy from instantaneous feedback, appeared to speak more slowly than usual and in a monotone, seemingly affected by a largely mum audience, end quote. It is true the generals were a different type of audience than a raucous maga Trump fest. Military brass are not supposed to react to political speeches. They are supposed to remain apolitical. And they did. But Trump's demeanor has led to different questions, to questions about whether or not Donald Trump is unwell. Yesterday at this hour, as we were coming on the air in this hour, we started with Democratic Congresswoman Madeleine Dean. She joined us to talk about the government shutdown, but literally seconds before she came on the air, as we saw her getting ready in the shot on the wall, we saw a confrontation take place between the congresswoman and Speaker Mike Johnson. And she confronted him about a lot of things, frankly. All the things you want to see Democrats fighting for her and saying to Republicans, she said and did. And one of them was Donald Trump's fitness. Watch what our cameras caught and note how his immediate response is not to say she's wrong about any of it. The president is unhinged. He is unwell.
- [03:30]
Rob Lowe
What are you doing on your side?
- [03:31]
Unidentified Commentator 1
Are, too.
- [03:32]
Nicole Wallace
I don't control. Oh, my God, please. That performance in front of the generals, that. I didn't see it. So dangerous. You know, I serve on foreign affairs and appropriations. It's a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. I just left. You have a president who is. You have a president who is unwell. A lot of folks on your side are, too. Are also. Are also unwell. Okay. The speaker said he missed the speech. We know a lot of folks on that side tend to catch the program. So we put together a little highlight reel.
- [04:10]
Unidentified Commentator 1
I've never walked into a room so silent before. That's enough to buy a lot of battleships, Admiral, to use an old term. I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships. By the way, you know, when I walk downstairs, like, I'm on stairs, like these stairs, I'm very. I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn't work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen, and it became a part of their legacy. And it was really a stupid person that works for him mentioned the word nuclear. We can't let people throw around that word. I call it the N word. There are two N words, and you can't use either of them. But the firemen go up on ladders, and you have people shooting at them while they're up in ladders. I don't even know if anybody heard that, but. And I said, don't talk about it much, but I think you have to. Our firemen are incredible.
- [05:10]
Nicole Wallace
But I defunded them anyway. One of our next guests, Tom Nichols, echoes what Congresswoman Dean brought up with the speaker writing this in the Atlantic. That Trump quote, is not okay, quote. In 1973, an Air Force nuclear missile officer named Harold Herring asked a simple question during a training session. How can I know that an order I received to launch my missiles came from a sane president? The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders not to question them. But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Herring's question? The question is where we start the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. Staff writer at the Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter, Tom Nichols is here. Also joining us, retired US Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling is here. Also joining us at the table, former Assistant U.S. attorney and President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Maya Wiley is here. Tom, I'm sure you heard from all sorts of your own sources. I heard from a couple of mine and I was interested in the fact that this was the first issue they raised. I mean, of course, there's the objectionable line about our cities being training grounds. There was the whole Hegseth debacle, if you will. But the first thing my sources raised was how Trump seemed. And I wonder if that's what you heard and that's what inspired the piece.
- [06:46]
Tom Nichols
What inspired the piece was Trump that as I was watching it in real time and I was looking at the audience and I've sat with and lectured to military audience audiences for most of my adult life, I just had to wonder what they were thinking because, you know, military officers don't go to MAGA rallies. Senior officers don't have a lot of time to sit and watch footage on cable news. And I think for most of them, this was the first time they'd really gotten a, a major helping of 180 proof undiluted Donald Trump and just had to sit there for almost an hour and just watch him. And I assume you know that and I did hear afterwards that you know, a lot of folks, right, he doesn't, he just doesn't seem well. He's not okay. I'm not a doctor. I'm not making a diagnosis. I'm saying as a layperson and a man of advancing years myself, that I looked at the president and I thought he's not okay. That it's not just his physical demeanor. I mean, I think for too long we haven't been willing to talk about the weird rambling the president tries to call it, the weave. It's not the weave. It is some kind of emotional disordered condition where he just can't hold a thought in his head. And I think when you're lecturing, speaking to 800 Admirals and Generals, that audience is going to notice It a lot more than the MAGA audiences at rallies who are looking at their phone or laughing or not really paying attention. And it just disturbed me, and I thought it was time to say something about it.
- [08:33]
Nicole Wallace
General Hertling, your thoughts?
- [08:36]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah, Tom's right. I heard from quite a few of the folks that I used to serve with who were in the audience last night or yesterday and heard some of the same thing that it was. Meandering was the word that came up with one. And it seemed to be disconnected thoughts. And I'd agree completely with Tom. When, you know you're going into an audience of that kind of folk, the people who are the generals and admirals and their senior enlisted advisors, you know, you got to be on your game. You got to talk straight. You really got to be precise in your language. In fact, that's one of the things I learned at the War College from a guy like, like Tom, saying precise language is critical and communication is important when you get to the strategic ranks, because what you say is what people act on. One of the individuals that I talked to yesterday, last night said that, and I know this guy. He likes to take very meticulous notes. And he was saying he gave up taking notes halfway through the speech because none of them were connecting and were not something he could take back to his troops. And that's sort of a sad thing to say when you're talking about the Commander in Chief.
- [09:59]
Nicole Wallace
Maya, let me just put out everything that's in the public record on this topic because I think that's helpful in 2017. Then Republican Senator Bob Corker tweeted this quote, it is a shame that the White House has become an adult daycare center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning. Bob Corker went on to introduce legislation to try to minimize or take away some of an American president's nuclear authorities as the senator. The measure failed in 2018. Then writing is anonymous, but we've since learned that it was Miles Taylor wrote this. Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the Cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the President. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until one way or another, it's over. From 2017 until it ended, every reporter covering the White House had signal and WhatsApp on their phone because people inside the White House leaked all the time about the things that were happening. That is where the body of information came from. People inside the House. And I would say after the January 6th, after the insurrection, we heard Kevin McCarthy's voice on tape from two journalists who I think at the time were at Politico talking about the 25th Amendment a second time. So I'd never heard it being discussed by senior people ever. For Trump, the first time around, there were two instances that became public where Republican allies talked about removing him from office using the 25th Amendment.
- [11:40]
Maya Wiley
Well, I think this is one of the things that's so frustrating for many of us in this moment, which is we had a presidential election. We had that whole record that you just shared, Nicole. And then we had a presidential election where so much attention was being given to Joe Biden's age without what felt like equal time and attention to the capabilities of Donald Trump. That was very frustrating, just as a matter of reporting, and that seemed very unbalanced. But I also want to go one step deeper because we're talking about a level, and we heard the word earlier, unhinged, not just unwell, unhinged. And so it's both about what does it mean to have a president who has the capacity, the mental and other capacity to be a commander in chief. But we're also watching this unhinged, unwell person doing what I would consider to be an attempt at a propaganda walk in front and using the nation's military leaders as a prop in that propaganda for a discussion that included things that were outwardly racist, that were suggesting that our war was with, quote, unquote, inner cities as we're watching Crossing the Red Line. And something that is disturbing to many in the military about how we're even seeing them. So in addition to the nuclear codes, it's actually the way in which this is becoming propaganda to wage war on, quote, unquote, enemies within, on us, on a man who just talked about the N word not being able to use. I'm sorry, he's someone who has reportedly used the N word, but has an administration now and a secretary who sees it as in their mission to make us the enemy. And that is more than unwell.
- [13:43]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah. I mean, Tom, it's the two halves of it, though, right? I mean, these are. These are orders and utterances to describe. And it was the first time that Trump has melded the concept of an invasion, which in his second term, a court, he used it as his rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act. A judge did not buy that, that there is no invasion and the enemy within. What Maya is talking about, what Trump talked about on the campaign trail you take that sort of powder keg of rhetoric for a democracy and you marry it with your analysis in your piece about whether or not he's all right. And it brings into sharp relief the people around him. What do you see there?
- [14:33]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, yeah, that is a great question, because in the first Trump term.
- [14:40]
Nicole Wallace
I.
- [14:40]
Tom Nichols
Think Donald Trump's been unstable, and Maya's right, unhinged for a long time. But in the first Trump term, there were people who, and we heard reports of this, people who kind of made a pact to say, look, none of us are going to let this guy go unsupervised. It's a dangerous world. We can't, you know, afford the kind of thing that could happen if he flies off the handle and there's nobody there to stop him. The people around him now don't care. They're either true believers who think that Donald Trump is, you know, on some kind of mission to save America from its own citizens, or they're opportunists, you know, just soulless opportunists who just don't care. And that is really the scariest part of all of it. Because, you know, the two things, when I, as I watch that meeting, I had to think that there were people sitting there saying at this moment, and by the way, right now, at this moment, Nicole, as we speak, if the president is doing what he's supposed to be doing, he's carrying a little card about the size of a playing card that carries the codes to 1600 strategic nuclear weapons. The President in the next 20 minutes, could kill hundreds of millions of people if nobody could stop him. And we never had to worry much about that until he started talking about the N word and moving submarines around and things that I don't think he really understands. But the other is that when he says to these generals and admirals, the enemy from within, he may think that's a great rally speech at some MAGA gathering, but to those generals and admirals, what he's saying is, your fellow citizens, the people you are sworn to defend and protect. And I think he just doesn't understand that. And I think that. That yesterday was a really appalling day. But I'm kind of glad. I mean, it's going to sound strange and I don't, it's going to sound weird to say it, but I'm almost glad it happened. I'm glad that this happened in front of a military audience so that, you know, everybody involved has to see what's going on.
- [16:46]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I mean, these were the sort of packs that have been reported by journalists. General John Kelly and Don McGahn had sort of an unofficial pact that I'll stick it out as long as you stick it out. Kelly would go on to describe Donald Trump as, quote, the most damaged human being he'd ever known and issued a very rare public warning to the country that he wanted to be a dictator. Mattis stayed until he couldn't and resigned for cause, stayed at the Pentagon and I think left when he felt that some of the policy making, I believe it was in Syria, was against US national security. Esper and Milley had a pact to confront Stephen Miller together over the use of the Insurrection act, over deploying troops to the streets of American cities, over shooting people. I think there was a conversation reported in one of the books written about the first term, and Barr and Ray sort of had a pact. Bill Barr writes about how he was protecting Chris Wray, both of them lifelong Republicans, but people tapped to run the national security agencies. Every person I just named is now in one way or another, an enemy or perceived enemy of Donald Trump. And I wonder, General, what you think that means about who's steering US national security in our defenses?
- [18:23]
General Mark Hertling
That's a great question. I'm going to follow on with what Tom just said, Nicole, because when I read Tom's article last night, a couple of things stuck with me. The first one was the example of the individual that said, can I feel trust in obeying the orders of the president? We have had presidents that have had problems. We have had presidents who have been levels of dysfunctional or believed in themselves or their ego took over. But when we're talking about this particular president, you not only have to look at the individual, but it gets to what you just said. You have to look at the people around him. I'm not going to talk about the first Trump administration because there was some quality people that used logic and reason. And I can't case. When you look at this administration, there are some folks who are out there and they're not consolidated and corroborating and coordinating their actions. There are a lot of independent actors, it seems to me. And I'm going to go to the trust issue again with the soldiers in the field. What I think individuals took away from that session yesterday is can we trust him and can we trust the people around him? That's the factor that concerns me. You know, in the first Trump administration, you had Mattis, like you just said, and Kelly, some really logical, pragmatic people who knew government Secretary Hegseth was followed by Trump yesterday. And I think the men and women in that room yesterday saw both edges of that. And then they look around at the rest of the administration and you see a bunch of people who are out for power as opposed to improving the state of America and caring for its citizens. And you also have that in the Congress and the Senate of the United States. So all of that combines to be very troubling for a soldier like me that's out in the field now that says, are the orders I'm to going going to ask to execute, first of all, are they legal? And then do they make sense and do they contribute to the national security of the nation, or are they some fever dream of people who are in power?
- [20:43]
Nicole Wallace
I want to press all of you on these questions that just seem so central to things that in the past, no one really had to worry about the fitness of the commander in chief. I also want to ask all of you about something everyone said during the first term, that we could survive four years of Trump, but eight? No way. Looks like we're in for all eight. Also ahead for us, the power of us, the American consumer, the American voter, the American people. Regular people, not office holders, not news hosts, not people with public platforms to stand up against businesses who capitulate to Trump and make a real and immediate and massive impact. We're learning just how strong the pushback from consumers against Disney has been and how many subscribers they actually lost in those days in the aftermath of Jimmy Kimmel suspension, why that could be a model to save the country that the pro democracy movement could employ. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere today.
- [21:48]
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- [22:17]
Rob Lowe
Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe. And basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday, so Subscribe, please and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [22:52]
Nicole Wallace
Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving. Even scarier, those who text are more.
- [22:57]
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- [23:24]
Nicole Wallace
We are back with Tom Nichols, General Hurling and Maya Wiley. Let me read you this in Politico. This is some reporting about what the generals thought numerous defense officials who watch senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan state speech from Trump and a return to old school military standards by Hegseth. We're left wondering why the event occurred at all. The meeting took place hours before a likely government shutdown and struck some officials as a distraction that threatens to shift the military's focus away from foreign threats toward an unprecedented domestic role. Not quite a loyalty test, but on the spectrum of loyalty to ideology, said a second defense official. Total waste of money. If only we'd been warned that this is what Trump planned to do. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris warned of this. So did General John Kelly and others. In reporting by Bob Woodward, we heard that Jim Mattis and Mark Milley believed that Donald Trump was fascistic to the core, kelly said. He was the very definition of a dictator. And again, the Democrats who ran against Donald Trump made these arguments. What do you think it about the warnings from generals and the arguments from Democrats that people didn't believe?
- [24:41]
Maya Wiley
Well, actually, I think a lot of people believed it. And one of the things that was so clear in this last cycle, it was less about whether there were a lot of people motivated and motivated to vote because of their concerns about things like this. But there were also a lot of people who were just concerned about their daily lives. And this was something you and I talked about a lot about during the election cycle and who wanted something very different from government on domestic policy, on what's happening right here at home. And a lot of people sat home. We forget that about this election. It's not that there was some landslide for Donald Trump. In fact, the biggest lesson from the election, from my vantage point and from a lot of people I work with and talk to, particularly in communities of color, but in the civil rights community more broadly, is all the people who felt like we actually need something radically different from government. We don't want status quo in business as usual. And so the motivation to even turn out was about what's going to happen to our lives. But I think this is the moment and this is. And I actually agree with Tom and including all the complexity about saying this, but good this happened because it's a reminder as we're watching the scenes of ICE Agents like you showed with my friend Brad Lander throwing a mother to the ground, by the way, with a child watching father being ripped from the family that we're watching literally and hearing from courts raising the alarm bells about seeing National Guard engaged in local law enforcement and now a Supreme Court that says, by the way, you have permission now to just pull people aside and violate their rights because of the way they look or where they work. Things that are so fundamental to what even were happening at home. And you know, I just because retired Major General Eaton actually from Vote Vets posted something that I thought was actually important also to name here is he posted a scathing statement about what we've been talking about. But one of the things he said is veterans families are struggling. Families of people who are in service are struggling with inflation. And you do this and spend all this money to do this in front of our generals, making us less safe at a time when our people have more need. And I think that is the inflection point that we actually have to understand this, representing that not only are we less safe internationally, not only are we less safe in terms of what our military is supposed to be doing, we're actually distracting our military into serving a war on us. That's what's happening in D.C. that's what's happening in Los Angeles. That's what's happening in Chicago. That's what's. I mean, we're watching this play out and promises to play it out more. And it is from a playbook from people who are, to General Hertling's point, not the folks who are willing to say there is a red line line and we won't cross it and we're going to stay inside to hold that line. But from people who are happy to hop over it, showing it, making it plain, having it out there in public is better than it being hidden behind rhetoric.
- [28:05]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, to Maya's point, Tom, this is before the shutdown, but after all the Doge cuts which indiscriminately Hurt veterans and veterans services or the CDC cuts, which disproportionately impacted veterans healthcare and veterans, cancer research, veterans scientific advances. What do you make of this decidedly anti veteran administration?
- [28:30]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, the Trump administration is not just anti veteran. It really does kind of hate its own voters in a way that it's always remarkable to me that they kind of don't notice it, that most of the policies, with the exception of the kind of thing Maya is talking about with going after immigrants and putting the military in cities, but the day to day impact of a lot of what's happened over the past eight months really falls on people that supported Donald Trump's return to office. And it's remarkable that when Trump or Vance or others go out, they say things on this assumption that the people listening to them are just too stupid to get how big the lie is. And I think that's really unfortunate. I mean, to Maya's point about how many people, people sat home, I think part of the problem is that people just don't draw a tight enough connection between what happens in politics and then the terrible things that happen in their lives. They kind of react with sort of electoral irritation if prices are high, but they have a hard time following all the steps to a hospital closing because of a decision somebody made three months earlier. I found this going back to the this meeting. You know, I found this when I was writing about how the President has sole authority to use nuclear weapons. And you'd be surprised how many people contacted me, people that I spoke to, you know, in public venues, saying that they just hadn't known this, that they hadn't really thought about this, that the President can, you know, as Richard Nixon once said, can walk out of the room and 15 minutes later, 100 million people are dead. And I think, you know, there's been this disengagement from politics that has really worked to Trump's advantage and allowed him to hurt the people that support him without them even realizing it.
- [30:18]
Nicole Wallace
So interesting. And certainly a thought will stay on top of profound, really. Tom Nichols, General Mark Ertling, thank you both so much for starting us off and having this conversation with us. Maya sticks around when we come back. It just might be a template for how to take on everything we see and don't like, as well as authoritarianism and corporations, politicians that seem to be bowing by the hour, by the day to Donald Trump's whims, how consumers forced Disney to reverse course and quickly and reinstate Jimmy Kimmel, what it says about the power of us to push back that's next.
- [31:00]
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- [31:30]
Rob Lowe
Everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe and basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday, so subscribe, please and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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- [32:36]
Nicole Wallace
From the very, very beginning, the first breaths of this story. Up until right now, before we came on the air, it has been a story about power. The power of a president to pressure a late night host off the air, to literally run him off the air. The power of a TV network to acquiesce to that president in the face of profound First Amendment concerns. And finally, perhaps most importantly and instructive, the power of us regular people. Not just to recognize and be pissed off about it, about government overreach, about going on TV and taunting the company. Corporate cowardice. Something we as Americans feel like is becoming the new normal from law firms and media companies and universities to take back our power and our agency and act and have an impact. Disney hasn't said officially just how many of its subscribers canceled in the time period between Kimmel's show being taken off the air, quote, indefinitely. But sources told journalist Marissa Kabus that number could be more than 1.7 million. Taking into account Disney, Disney, Hulu and ESPN, Julia Alexander of Puck suggests that while the variables factoring into the decision to reinstate Kimmel are many. Quote, there is little question that an uptick in streaming cancellations, which Kimmel winked at during his first night back, also played a role. Online boycotts like this usually don't amount to much, especially in the long term. But certainly moments can gain traction. As one financial analyst told her, Iger undoubtedly wanted to minimize the subscriber exodus just as the company's fourth fiscal quarter ended, end quote. Joining our conversation, the executive editor@deadline.com, dominic Patton, is here. Also joining us at the table, Oliver Darcy. He's the author of the newsletter Status, which covers all things media and is must read these days. Maya is still here. Take me inside your reporting arc on this story.
- [34:45]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, I think Disney made a decision, I guess it was two weeks and a go. And that set off a huge chain of reaction inside Disney. There was a tremendous pressure, I think immediately to bring Kimmel back on the air, to find a path for him back. And I think, as the journalist you mentioned noted, there was a lot of subscribers deciding to cancel there. I mean, you saw anecdotally on social media, you saw Howard Stern come out saying he was unsubscribing from Disney. These are businesses. At the end of the day, someone like Bob Iger does not want to fuel a subscriber exodus. I'm sure they were looking at those numbers as well as the public pressure, the PR disaster that they were facing when they were moving to bring him back. He saw Disney actually, which I thought was interesting, bring back Kimmel even though they didn't actually have the stations on board with that at the moment. They brought him back on Tuesday night. It took until Friday for nexstar and Sinclair to put him on the air. But I think they were facing tremendous pressure, both from the press and also from their own customers who were fleeing them in droves.
- [35:48]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Dominic, we talk a lot about some of the other heavyweights who have largely stayed out of the ring. You mentioned former President Obama and former President Clinton in a lot of these conversations. But I think that this sort of consumer revolt was a quick and relatively low cost. You know, they can't come out and find every one of us, that or every, every person that canceled their subscriptions. And it had the same and almost an immediate impact. What do you think of this? As a model?
- [36:24]
Dominic Patton
As a model, Nicole? I think it's, I think it's highly effective. Look, I mean, I grew up in the, in the 1980s during the years of the anti apartheid boycotts and what have you Boycotts do matter. We saw some of the boycotts against the likes of Target earlier in the year when they suddenly announced that they were marching in step with the Trump landers and going, getting rid of so called DEI programs and what have you. They work. I think what was here though, as was mentioned, I believe in Julia's Puck article and others, I think there was a number of factors here. I do think as Oliver and I grant you, Oliver and I buy our suits in the same place. I think that Oliver's mention of Howard Stern, that was a big name to drop this out. I know this because Howard quoted me from your show talking about him doing that. But I think also too there was the $4 billion in stock value loss that Disney had. I think there was the tremendous amount of phone calls, emails and letters that were sent to the Sinclair and nexstar affiliates all throughout the country that weren't showing Kimmel and said they weren't going to show him when Disney brought him back. I think there were the over 400 big name celebrities who joined with the ACLU. I think there were things like what we still see the ongoing looming threat of a potential shareholder lawsuit against Disney if they don't hand over documents to see what really happened behind the scenes during this decision by Bob Iger and Dana Walden. So I think all these factors matter because I think always to use another line I know you've heard me use too many times, there's a reason they call it show business and not show friends. And if you want to get real action, if you want to get real results, you can go to the ballot box. You can hope to President Obama or Bill Clinton show up to stop the march towards authoritarianism that's happening in this country. Or you can vote with your dollars and you know what? Money talks.
- [38:05]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean this is the other thing Oliver that I think is amazing is that everyone who is folded to Trump like cheap tense to basically social media deals. That's what they get for their acquiescence. They don't get some legally binding contract hammered out by an elegant attorney. They don't even get anyone from Trump's DOJs. They get a social media post on his platform. The bet is that the damage to the brand for acquiescing is worth it. I think what the Kimmel piece shows is that being weak and capitulating is a crappy brand.
- [38:42]
Oliver Darcy
Yeah, it's a terrible business strategy. That's the thing that is perplexing to me when you see a lot of news organizations Bend the knee or soften their coverage on Donald Trump. It's not good for their actual bottom line. Look at what happened when Jeff Bezos blocked the Kamala Harris endorsement. They saw a subscriber exodus. Patrick Sun Chiang, when he got involved with the Los Angeles Times and pushed in a more Trump direction, they saw subscribers flee. You've seen this continually, obviously, with Kimmel and Disney. You've seen this over and over again. If these business executives, if these billionaire owners actually care about these businesses that they oversee, they shouldn't be bowing to Donald Trump. It's not good for their core bottom line. Their customers don't like that. But I think that just maybe thinking about other things outside their news portfolio when they make these decisions. And that's what's actually driving, like mergers.
- [39:37]
Nicole Wallace
And that kind of thing.
- [39:38]
Oliver Darcy
Exactly. Much bigger deals that they want to get done. And also, you think about someone like Jeff Bezos in the Washington Post. He's got blue origin.
- [39:45]
Nicole Wallace
He's got Amazon rockets for his wife went on. That's his big thing.
- [39:51]
Oliver Darcy
Yes, rockets.
- [39:51]
Nicole Wallace
Forget about the First Amendment. Democracy can die in broad daylight. But we're going to send up our rockets.
- [39:56]
Oliver Darcy
That's his pet baby these days, his blue origin. So maybe he's okay with the Washington Post taking a little bit of a hit from subscribers. I think that there's a much bigger context these decisions are made in. But still, at the end of the day, they want these businesses to succeed. And so when you see Disney get maybe over a million cancellations, maybe more, and it's growing, they have to act.
- [40:20]
Nicole Wallace
It's amazing. All right, everyone sticks around. I want to show you guys what happened when Jimmy Kimmel went on Stephen Colbert last night. That's next, as promised. Here is Jimmy Kimble. Last night on Colbert.
- [40:37]
Jimmy Kimmel
It was about 3 o'.
- [40:38]
Nicole Wallace
Clock.
- [40:38]
Jimmy Kimmel
We tape our show at 4:30. I'm in my office just typing away as I usually do. I get a phone call. It's abc. They say they want to talk to me. This is unusual. As far as I knew, they didn't even know I was doing a show previous to this. So I have a lot of people. I have like five people who work in my office with me. So the only private place to go is the bathroom. So I go into the bathroom and I'm on the phone with the ABC executives. And they say, listen, we want to take the temperature down. We're concerned about what you're gonna say tonight. And we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air tonight. That's what I said. I started booing. I said, I don't think that's a good idea. And they said, well, we think it's a good idea. And then there was a vote, and I lost the vote. And so I had, I, I put my pants back on and I walked out to my office and I called in some of the executive producers, and there were about nine people in there. And I said, they're pulling the show off there. And I was. My wife said I was white. I was whiter than Jim Gaffigan when I came out of it.
- [41:57]
Nicole Wallace
So, Maya, I know we have a lot of conversations. A lot of people have a lot of angst, like, where are the Democrats? Leaders are emerging every day. And Zelenskyy was a comedian. And I'm not saying that either one of these men should feel compelled to run for president and save the democracy. But there are leading lights. And I feel like both of these men have seized this moment in a way that is really modeling strength and fearlessness and some levity and some connection.
- [42:26]
Maya Wiley
All of the above. I couldn't agree with you more, Nicole. And it's been a lift to all of us and so many people who have been looking for ways to feel like they can have an impact. I mean, one of the things I hear all the time, whether I'm walking down the street or whether I'm at this grocery store, is what can we do? And I'm like, everything. But this really showed something very direct. Everybody can do no matter what, even if you don't have time, even if, like, you can participate in a boycott. This is where I want to make it more complicated, though. We talked about Karen Attia from the Washington Post the last time we discussed this and how she still out of a job for saying some factual truths and important as an opinion columnist. Mario Guevara is a journalist who is actually in ICE detention because he was a journalist running and covering ICE mass deportation actions in Georgia. And there are all these lights who, some of whom are actually also names, some of whom are not names, or Reverend Jamal Bryant, who helped lead the target boycott. But here's my point. When we think about when we really made progress on democracy in this country, like the black civil rights movement, like the Montgomery bus boycott, which was led by black local black leaders. No one knew who Martin Luther King was at the time. He wasn't a big national leader. That these are the lights that actually not only shone a light, but actually form fomented major change. And we need those lights.
- [44:04]
Nicole Wallace
I just Interviewed Joan Baez, Dominic, and she talked about being there with the music and the culture and standing next to, she said, Martin, obviously Martin Luther King Jr. And the leaders. And I wonder if you see any ground shifting there where people in the entertainment industry get out of their defensive crouch and feel more courage.
- [44:28]
Dominic Patton
I think that's a hard one to call. Nicole. Look, I think if this was 10 years ago and we were looking at the landscape, I think someone like a Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart, the kind of reach and scope they had then was so great that maybe, I mean, there was even a Robin Williams film that was clearly based on the idea of Jon Stewart running for president that came out several years ago. I think that maybe that might have been that. But I think, you know, there's a lot of discussion about this so called crisis of masculinity in America. And you see people like Secretary Bril Cream over at the Department of Boar like, going on and on about what it is to be a warrior, a guy who looks like he could be knocked over by a good wind. And then there's the President of the United States, who clearly will not be passing any military fitness tests anytime soon, mentally or physically. But I will say this, I will say, I think that I don't know if we need to look to that. You know, Vice President Harris, who's been doing her book tour for her bestseller memoir, 107 Days, she talked about how she wasn't surprised by what Trump and the maggot guys were doing. They wrote it all down in a book, by the way, that we all could have read last year. But she was surprised at how quickly people capitulated titans of industry, the media, what have you. You know, you and I have talked about the kind of irony of Rupert Murdoch being one of the few people who's actually fighting back, you know, But I think there's another element to this. And this is sometimes something that as Americans, we should think about when we talk about, not ABC, but Disney, when we talk about Amazon, when we talk about Netflix, when we talk about a lot of these companies and both in the entertainment industry. Otherwise, they're not just American companies, they're global companies. And I think around the world you can have this reaction. And clearly we know around the world the reaction to what's happening in this country is not a thumbs up outside of Moscow. So I feel like that is a place where we can also, to use Maya's word, we can find our lights. And we have a lot of lights here. I just wish that. I wish that they would turn it up a little and get a little louder.
- [46:25]
Nicole Wallace
Amen. I'm going to put all of you on the spot to keep this going. I feel like when we find something that works, we shouldn't move on to the next shiny object. Dominic Patton, Oliver, Darcy, thanks so much for being here. Maya, thank you for spending the whole hour with me. One more break. We'll be right back. Just a quick reminder, my interview with Rosie o' Donnell for the Best People podcast is now available on YouTube. You can scan the QR code on your screen to listen to this week's episode or download it wherever you get your podcasts. Another break for us. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.
- [47:04]
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