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- [00:01]
A
What is social media's role in fueling or even enabling political violence? How do algorithms echo chambers, disinformation loops, encrypted organizing platforms, and the erosion of trust in institutions converge and create real world harm? And what can be done to hold systems and actors accountable before the spiral becomes irreversible? To guide this conversation today on Flipping Tables, I'm so honored to have Timothy J. Hafey with us. His vantage point on this is very rare. He he's been on the front lines of investigations of two of the most consequential episodes of recent American unrest Charlottesville in 2017 with the Unite the Right rally and the January 6, 2021 Capitol siege. And his new book, what January 6 and Charlottesville reveals about rising threats to American democracy. He tells both the stories of how these events unfolded and the deeper dynamics behind them. And before we get into those investigations, it's worth stepping back who is Tim Hafey? I just want to introduce him to you a little bit. Timothy Hafey's path to high stakes investigations is grounded in decades of legal, prosecutorial and public service work, all of which give him both the legal chops and institutional insight. He earned his bachelor's and his law degree from the University of Virginia, completing that degree in 1991. Over approximately 12 years, he served as an Assistant U.S. attorney in D.C. and later in Western District of Virginia, he handling a broad array of Federal Prosecutions. In 2003, he formally joined the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Virginia, then shifted from government to private practice. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated him to be the U.S. attorney for the Western District, and he assumed that post later that year and served until 2014. In his time as a U.S. attorney, he oversaw major federal investigations, including public corruption, financial fraud, sentiment, civil rights, health care fraud, money laundering and national security matters. And after stepping down from that post, he moved back into private practice, continuing as a litigator and investigator. He also served as the University Counsel for uva, advising on legal issues across the university and healthcare system. In 2017, he was commissioned by the City of Charlottesville author to author an independent report handling the Unite the Right rally and the city's response to it and its aftermath. This later became known as the Hafey report. In 2021, the U.S. house of Representatives named Hafi as the Chief Investigative Counsel for the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. In this capacity, he directed the committee's investigative efforts, supervised teams of attorneys and staff, conducted interviews and depositions and helped shape the committee's final report. He has also founded the Fountain Fund, a nonprofit that that provides low interest loans to people who were formerly incarcerated to help with job reentry debt or small business startups. All told, his career blends prosecutorial experience, institutional understanding, academic engagement, and more recently, investigative leadership into two of the most politically and legally consequential probes of our time. In his book Harbingers, Hafey brings that rich background to bear on these two momentous acts of political violence, 2017 Charlottesville rally and the January 6th Capitol attack. And it's not just about rehashing the facts, it's he shows how he built these investigative teams, how he sifted through communication, how he probed decision making failures in law enforcement and government, and how social media and digital networks played a role in planning, mobilizing and escalating these events. In today's episodes, we'll use Harbingers not just as a narrative kind of backbone to the episode, but as a portal into deeper inquiry. How did social media architectures and incentives, content, moderation policies, recommendation systems, coordinated groups and intersect with extremist organizations and violence? Where did institutions, local government, law enforcement, federal agencies fail to anticipate or respond? And why? What are the paths forward for accountability, reform, civic resilience and prevention? How do we as Americans step in to control, save and build our new democracy? All today with Timothy J. Hafey on Flipping Tables. Tim, thank you for coming to the show. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you today.
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B
Thanks so much Monty, for the invitation. I really appreciate it.
- [04:23]
A
And so I've given your introduction with your work and what you've done, but I'd love to hear from you about how you kind of became this reluctant expert on political violence.
- [04:37]
B
Yeah, it's lawyers over the course of their careers get cases either that they ask for or find them. And I happen to live in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was U.S. attorney in that district when August 11th and 12th happened, and I was immediately Monty frustrated with what happened, with the city's obvious inability to really handle the event responsibly. And I wanted to be a part of the solution, part of the learning, part of the healing from it. So fortunately, I was a lawyer in private practice. I'd had these relationships that had been forged over the time that I was U.S. attorney and the city hired me to do an independent review of how the city managed those events. So I was fortunate to have a chance to just piece together what happened and then make some Recommendations about how to learn from it. That then became the basis of my similar work on the attack on the Capitol. I had this reluctant expertise in political violence which kind of led me to manage the January 6th investigation. So I didn't go looking for this as an area of specialty. It just sort of happened that I was fortunate to get a chance to recover from those two events.
- [05:58]
A
And in your book Harbingers, you talk about how leading up to Charlottesville, you had kind of this moment of awakening that the Charlottesville that you were living in, you know, being going there for school, graduate school, and living there with your family was different than other people were seeing and perceiving Charlottesville well before the attack. Can you talk about that moment of realization and what led you there?
- [06:23]
B
Yeah, absolutely. That's sort of one of the biggest lessons that I talk about in the book is, you know, I'm a privileged white male professional in this country and therefore maybe sheltered from a lot of the day to day reality that a lot of people in my community with whom I interacted every day, their reality. And when I was doing the work on Charlottesville, I learned a lot about our community, about all aspects of our community. Not only talking to people like me that saw this place as an idyllic, beautiful, prosperous place where people have ample opportunity and enjoy an amazing quality of life, but people really on the other side of that who feel like the system, the city government, the school system, law enforcement, didn't really work for them, did not protect their interests. So some the people like me, were very surprised about what happened in Charlottesville after the fact, because again, they had this sort of blind faith in the system. Whereas a lot of people I spoke to were not surprised because in their lived experience, law enforcement routinely did not protect and serve city government, was there to protect the affluent and the privileged, not people like them. So it blew the lid off of that for me, Monty, sort of the disparate perceptions of my neighbors in a very small town.
- [07:47]
A
And so, and kind of what I want to do today is we're obviously going to spend some time on Both Charlottesville and January 6th and then really talk about how social media has really, really been the firestorm behind these movements and kind of where we go from here. So for people just to refresh their memory, can you kind of give me a summary of Charlottesville, what happened and then what you discovered in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally?
- [08:14]
B
Yeah. So Charlottesville, again, the community where I've lived Now for over 20 years, we were going through a Public discussion about Civil War memorials. We had these two very prominent parks in Charlottesville. One had a statue of Robert E. Lee, one had a statue of Stonewall Jackson. And there was a public discussion about whether that made sense anymore or whether those statues were sort of vestiges of racism and should be removed. And it was in the midst of that public discussion that these two UVA graduates, University of Virginia located in Charlottesville, decided to sort of use the statue controversy to pull together this constellation of far right, alt right, white nationalist groups. It was billed exclusively as this Unite the Right rally, that these different groups that all had sort of slightly different perspectives, but shared a view that today's institutions were sort of moving away from protecting their historic privilege. They all came together in Charlottesville ostensibly to protest this removal of the statutes, but it really became a broader forum for anger and at the city government, at institutions. And the report that we spent time developing and ultimately issued was very critical of the city. Now when these events come to public forums like a city park, the city has simultaneously to protect public speech, protect public safety and free speech. Yeah, you can't make content based decisions about, well, this speech we like and we're going to allow it, we're going to give it a permit. This speech we don't like, so we're going to deny it. Right. The First Amendment fundamental concept of American government is the government does not make content based decisions. So the city was duty bound, constitutionally required to accommodate this hate speech. The only way it could shut it down is if it were directly threatening to an identifiable group, if it incited imminent lawless action. The speech itself, not the reaction to the speech. There's a very high standard for prior restraint. But at the same time that they had to accommodate speech, they had to protect public safety. And that's very difficult when protected speech is so incendiary, so objectionable, so, so loathsome and hateful. So it was an admittedly hard situation. But our report found, Monty, that the city accomplished neither goal. Right. The speech never occurred. It was shut down as an unlawful assembly before any speech was made. So the city failed to protect the speech, however noxious it was. It also didn't protect public safety. There were people brawling on the streets in plain view of law enforcement who sort of stood back.
- [10:53]
A
Well, you mention in the book that the police chief said, let them fight like officers are there, officers are watching this and just letting it happen.
- [11:02]
B
Yeah. The strategy, effectively, as sort of horrifying as this sounds, was to let some low levels of violence Occur to create the predicate to declare the assembly unlawful and, and disperse the crowd. So that's what happened. The officers were standing behind bike racks in shirt sleeves, right? No, no riot gear, despite the intelligence clearly suggesting that there would be violence. And they were instructed, hey, unless someone is, is seriously getting, you know, getting seriously injured, stand back, allow some of that violence to occur. That will then make it clear that this is a predicate for unlawful assembly and we can send everybody home. So that's what happened. Violence occurred, the unlawful assembly was declared and all these white nationalists who'd assembled in the park were sort of pushed right back into the crowd of counter protesters, of anti racist counter protesters. And there are a lot of antifa and Black Lives Matter and people from all over the country that had come to resist the hate speech and that just created more violence, including the horrific vehicular homicide of Heather Heyer, the anti racist counter protester, who was, who was run over by a vehicle driven by James Field, one of the people that had come to the rally on the alt right. So it was just a horribly misconceived plan. And our report lays that out in graphic detail.
- [12:25]
A
And because, and you mentioned that how this was all really promoted and assembled on social media, there was not a shortage of information that they were going to be there. There was posts about basically being prepared for violence, you know, because a lot of times the goal is to instigate violence because what you're doing is so deplorable. And then when someone reacts to you, you get to say, oh, it's self defense. Because they started it.
- [12:52]
B
Precisely right, Monty. That is exactly what the plan was. The organizers of this event, the these two UVA grads and the attendant others who were helping organize their plan, was provocation, right? To come to Charlottesville marching through a liberal college town in helmets and with shields, preparing for battle and chanting really obnoxious racist things like Jews shall not replace us, blood and soil. You know, these historic references to the Third Reich. And predictably, they knew that there would be a large group of counter, I hate to call them counter protesters because they weren't really protesting anything. They were just there to counter the hate speech. But they knew that that would provoke a violent reaction and they wanted to sort of claim this mantle of self defense. We're just here to exercise our free speech rights. We were attacked. We were just acting in self defense. And that playbook, which was articulated in social media posts in advance, was exactly what happened. So despite planning it in plain sight, the authorities in Charlottesville, their operational plan didn't meet the moment, didn't incorporate that intelligence, and it was. Was horribly ineffective.
- [14:01]
A
And so looking at this from a bird's eye view and being really the expert, I mean, it is the HAFI report. What would you. What do you think that the city should have done differently? How could they have handled this? In a way, because they are constitutionally oblig to honor free speech, as awful as it is. I mean, in Nashville last summer, we had eight Nazi marches over the course of the summer. And it's one of those things where they have the right to do that. But how would you recommend the city protect free speech but also protect everyone else? Because it did. From these instances in Charlottesville, they had the earlier incidents of releasing tear gas on a crowd. It really did come off as law enforcement was protecting the white supremacists and not everyone else.
- [14:47]
B
Yeah, exactly right. So the first thing that city officials need to do, not just law enforcement, but elected officials, is to tell the truth and help people understand what the rules are. So there was a lot of advance opposition to this. Business owners and community organizations and faith leaders were pressuring the city to find a way to prevent this from happening. And instead of articulating the core concepts of the First Amendment, we cannot shut this down. We must provide this permit. But here are the ways in which we are going to protect the safety of all participants, the permit holders and people that are coming to oppose the speech. Instead of trying to find a way to capitulate to that pressure, the city, literally the week before August 12, tried to move the event to a. A group of baseball fields outside of town, claiming this intelligence suggested violence that violated the free speech rights of the protesters, the permit holders, who said the statue was sort of part of the message of the rally. And the intelligence suggested, again, they were prepared to defend themselves, but not to initiate violence. So there was really no factual basis to create this prior restraint of speech. So they predictably lost On Friday night. Friday night, the night before the rally, the judge, the alt right guys, were represented by the ACLU of Virginia because.
- [16:13]
A
It is a civil liberties issue.
- [16:15]
B
Liberties issue. Predictably, the ACLU won, and the judge said, no, you can't move it. It has to take place at the park. So citizens, Monty, just were uncertain what to expect. So instead of saying, this is awful, but we're prepared for it, here is how we are going to take steps to ensure the safety of all participants. They tried to move it, and therefore people were confused. And then in the real time Instead of this misguided notion that this was just a large free speech event, they should have been much more prepared for violence. We suggest in the report that the best way to handle this is to create kind of a stadium effect where you have sort of hardened barriers with either vehicles or bollards or actual police and riot gear. And then you create secure entries into an interior proportion and you try to separate people with contrasting views from each other, different pens, that's, that's not foolproof. And there could be people that don't accept those restrictions, but at least it gives you a chance to control the event. And you need officers in riot gear on the perimeter. Then you need officers interacting with people in the crowd to deescalate as it happens. Sort of a mixed approach of hard and soft power brought to bear. We articulate that in the report as a sort of a template in future. There also was multiple agencies that all had their own plan. Shockingly, there was very little advanced coordination between the Charlottesville police and the Virginia State Police and the other departments and the federal authorities. They really need these, these events really need to be cohesively planned and prepared for and trained. None of that happened in Charlottesville. All of which led to again, the horrific violence that we experienced.
- [17:54]
A
And why do you think it is, because you mentioned this in Your book about January 6th as well, is that there was not interagency communication. Why do you think that that communication doesn't seem to be consistent and cohesive in incidences like this.
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B
Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem that, you know, after 9, 11, we created the Department of Homeland Security. And the Department of Homeland Security was, was tasked with exactly this, finding ways for interagency coordination on issues involving protection of the homeland. Every federal judicial district has what's called a fusion center, which is supposed to be a place where, where local authorities, state officials, federal authorities all can come together to talk about emerging threats. The problem is that these agencies don't always participate in those events. There's a lot of ego and territorialness. Sometimes agencies are worried about their human sources and don't want to share information that might expose who those sources are. And some of it is just old fashioned competition, right? Instead of the FBI and ATF or the state police and the local police getting shoulder to shoulder in a room and talking about things. They're competitive. They hire from each other's agencies or they compete for budgetary funding. So we have to fix this in America, Monty, if we're going to be more effective. We spend so much money on core protective services. But that money unfortunately isn't efficiently used because of this failure to share information.
- [19:23]
A
And especially with the technology we have. You know, I'm a true crime fan. So you look back, you know, in the 70s and 80s when serial killers were just seemed to be so prevalent, and it makes sense that they're. They didn't have, have databases, they didn't have the Internet. Now we have all this technology that should make this very easy to do as long as there's a structure.
- [19:42]
B
You are exactly right. But again, the technology is an opportunity, but it also creates potential abuse. So right now, in Charlottesville, where I live, the city has decided not to participate in this system, the peregrine system that actually gathers license plate data and shares it out through a broad database because they don't want to cooperate with federal immigration, immigration enforcement. So they're worried that if they plug in those cameras and start surveilling license tags in Charlottesville that will be available to ice, who will come and conduct enforcement activity that the local officials in Charlottesville do not want to facilitate. So technology is extremely useful and valuable, but it also can lead to outcomes that not everyone shares. So it's blessing and a curse. You got to get about it and use it to be more effective. But there are costs, privacy and other costs that come with it.
- [20:33]
A
And, and so as we move into January 6, which I remember that day and you know, a lot of Trump really showed up on the scene during my very formative years developing political opinions as an adult, because I grew up very far alt right, very Christian nationalist, and was until my mid-20s, really, until Trump showed up. And I decided I didn't want anything to do with that. But what I loved in your book. Cuz I wasn't aware of this when you became the lead investigator for January 6, which was just something I never thought I would see in the. I remember turning on the TV and thinking, what country am I living in? Can you, can you, for my listeners, talk about how you became the lead investigator and specifically how you put together teams that were even color coded to make sure that you covered everything possible to investigate how January 6th came to be?
- [21:25]
B
Yeah, so, you know, I had done the Charlottesville report. I was working as the general counsel of UVA in Charlottesville, sitting in my office just like you, Monty, watching what was happening at the Capitol, shocked, horrified. But I immediately felt that, hey, this looks very similar to what we saw a few years ago in Charlottesville. Officers in shirt sleeves standing behind bike racks, getting overrun, uncontrolled levels of violence for which we seemingly weren't prepared. So I immediately started thinking about maybe there's going to be some kind of attempt to piece together an investigation. I would love to be involved in that. And the Speaker, Speaker Pelosi, once the select committee was authorized by vote of Congress, started putting a staff together. And my experience in Charlottesville came to light as someone who had done something similar. And I'd been a U.S. attorney, and I'd done criminal investigations for many years. So I was hired as the chief investigative counsel. And then the first task was any lawyer first task is, what's the scope of the question we're trying to answer? Is it simply what happened on either side of those bike racks at the Capitol, or is it a really broad survey of white nationalism? Or Stop the steal activity? You don't want to be too narrow, but you don't want to take on too much that is beyond the sort of capacity of an investigative team on a limited time clock to tackle. So we came up with a scope that we felt was somewhere between those two extremes that divided the work into these five teams. Very simply, we had to. The Blue team, which was focused on law enforcement and military preparation. How much intelligence was there in advance? How did they manage the event in real time? The Red Team was focused on the other side of the fence, the rioters, how they came together, how organized were they? How much coordination might there have been between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys? Red because of the sort of MAGA hats everywhere.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Then out from the Capitol, we zoomed out a bit to the Gold Team and the Purple Team. The Gold Team was focused on all these election issues. Right. Primary motivation was this mistaken belief that the election had been stolen. So the Gold team developed all of the information about the fake elector certificates, the efforts to pressure various officials to not certify the election, all that sort of the white collar part of the case. And then purple was focused more on domestic violent extremism writ large. You can't understand the Capitol without plugging it into a series of other events. There were occupations of state capitals over the course of. Of 2020 in advance of January 6th. So purple was focused on that broad movement. And then the Green team was focused on. On funding streams like we wanted to try to develop who was paying for a lot of this activity. And that's what the Green team did. And each team had a team leader and several lawyers or investigators. And my job was to sort of coordinate the work to make sure everyone was aware of what Others were doing that. We were working on an appropriate pace because we knew we were going to expire at the end of the Congress. Like Cinderella, we were going to midnight turn into a pumpkin, and we had to, therefore move quickly and expeditiously through it. And I had a lot of interaction with the members of the committee, so I was sort of managing the investigators and then frequently briefing the nine members of the Select Committee and bringing their thoughts and suggestions back to the staff. So it was an incredibly intense period of time, but I'm frankly, really proud of the work that we produced, and.
- [24:52]
A
It was so thorough. And I was listening and had followed the investigation as it was unfolded, as these hearings were happening. So, growing up, my. My family was also Republican politicians. I met Dick Cheney when I was 10. Like, my family knows the Cheney. So I was really proud of Liz for doing what she did at the cost of her seat. She knew that by. By standing in that space that she was. She was going to be ostracized. What were some of the most surprising things that you discovered throughout that investigation leading to January six? Were there things that showed up that. That kind of shocked you, even in light of Charlottesville?
- [25:28]
B
Yeah, you know, the. I've been asked that question before, and what I always say is how close it came to working.
- [25:34]
A
Yeah.
- [25:34]
B
You know, I sort of came into this even after Charlottesville, thinking that our, you know, democracy is durable and there are guardrails and protections. We're going to continue to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power in America. I sort of took that for granted. But it almost worked, Monty. Like, literally, but for a few courageous people that were willing to stand up and do the right thing, it could have worked. Democracy could have been subverted. Right. The bravery of the men and women in law enforcement. Right. They're just doing their job. That was incredible. Like, it could have been much worse in terms of physical violence had they not been so. So brave. But I'm talking about people like Mike Pence. Right? Yeah, I was. I was a Democrat, and I disagree with Vice President Pence on lots of issues. But at a critical moment, he acted in support of the Constitution, even though it was against his political interests, and in the face of tremendous pressure from.
- [26:29]
A
And violence towards him.
- [26:31]
B
Violence towards him and threats to him. And there was Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State in Georgia, who said, we've counted the votes three times, sir. You lost directly to the president, to William Barr, the Attorney general, who said, we're going to look at these allegations. We looked at them and there's just no substance to any of them. So there were good people that stood up for this, the truth and the principles of democracy, even if it meant that they personally lost their job or had to move on. And again, it just shows me, Monty, that democracy comes down to people. It is some outside force that has been dropped on us as a blanket that protects us. It is us internally doing what's right in a civilized democracy to do our part to perpetuate it. It comes down to real people making decisions day to day. That was the huge surprise to me. Right? It is. You can't take it for granted. You have to do your part to protect it.
- [27:29]
A
And with it, you know, it really coming down to being so close to having the transfer of power stopped. I mean, Pence could have stopped it if he had, if he had decided that he wasn't going to stand on the Constitution. And my concern in the world that we're living in now, in the second Trump administration, he is surrounded by yes men. And if he doesn't get the jobs report he wants or if he doesn't get this number that he wants, he fires people until he finds someone that will say yes. How do you see that problem in light of what you just said of, like, if we don't have people who are acting as. As bastions to put a stop to it, you know, and even. Even the people that are resigning in protest concerns me because I'm like, we need people that are fighting back, not leaving because he will find someone who will tell him yes. How do we, as Americans, as a normal person, like, assist in helping put a stop to this?
- [28:26]
B
Yeah. So two parts of that question. You're exactly right that this Trump term is different from the first in that the credential that has gotten people hired as Attorney General or as vice president is loyalty, not competence.
- [28:41]
A
Yeah, right.
- [28:43]
B
In order to get a cabinet position or to get a presidential appointment, there has become a test of, you have to be prepared to do what the president wants. There's a control over the entire executive branch that was there in the first term. But there were people who were willing to say, sir, no, we can't do that, or that doesn't have a legal basis. I don't think those people are there in the executive branch. I do think, though our constitutional system creates checks and balances here, they become crucial. Right. Judges, even judges appointed by President Trump have been ruling against some of the executive overreach, stripping of grant funding from universities or executive orders that require various actions that go beyond the bounds of law. So there are other branches of government. I'm not that confident in Congress as a check on the President. They seem to abdicate their spending authority and so many things that have been entrusted to Congress through the years. At least the Republicans in Congress seem to be willing to abdicate for their own political self interest. But I have confidence in the courts as a guardrail. What should we do? Right. Your question was what should regular Americans do? Run toward the fire? Right. Like when I got the January 6th committee job, I read the 911 Commission report because I sort of looked at the 911 Commission as the gold standard of what these things should be. Credible, nonpartisan, gather the facts and tell the story. And there's a vignette in the 911 Commission report about a New York City firefighter who says, we run up the stairs right when there's a burning building. Our train said we go at it. We don't go the other way. We go at it. And I think all Americans now need to run toward the fire. It's hard, you know this Monte, you live in this world. It's hard every day to care, to keep the faith, worry that apathy sets in, that because of how intimidating it is, a lot of people just kind of tune out and they go to work and they take care of their kids, but they don't engage, they don't participate. We got to run toward the fire. And that means engagement and participation, shared experience, learning from and listening to each other, ensuring that we're seeing all angles and not we can talk about social media, not just getting sucked down these rabbit holes of misinformation. We got to be engaged participants in a democracy, all of us, if we're going to preserve democracy.
- [31:06]
A
And what is, in your opinion, you know, the danger of apathy? Because I do see, I think people, things have gotten so extreme with ICE raids, violation of human rights that people are waking up and this kind of blanket of apathy that America has been under largely. But what is the danger of apathy in a situation like this?
- [31:28]
B
You know, about 66% of registered voters voted in the fall 2024 election. So fully a third of the people who cared enough about this to register did not cast a ballot that doesn't even touch the tens of millions of Americans who are voting age who don't register. So when people don't engage, the most basic way to engage in democracy is to cast your ballot, is to care enough about who is going to be elected to in our representative government to pull the lever one Way or another, you give outsize authority to people that don't necessarily have everybody's best interest in mind, but have very niche special interests. And that's true on the right and the left. So the fact that so many people don't vote, it really troubles me. That's one of the dangers of apathy. I believe that if everybody in America votes, if everybody in America pays attention, tries to educate themselves so that they're getting balanced perspectives, talks and interacts with their neighbors, I think we're fine. I think, I believe in the fundamental goodness of people across the political spectrum. Right and left, we share more than separates us, but we get into these tribes and silos because we have so many sort of outsized minority perspectives across the political spectrum. Because too many of the people that are sort of down the middle, that are just common sense, are apathetic and don't participate. That is a bigger evil to me than anger.
- [33:00]
A
That's so true. And what I also wanna kind of shift into is that social media really has been the medium that I think especially, you know, neo Nazi rhetoric, this heavily misogynist white supremacist rhetoric has been able to metastasize in a large way because this is not things that most people would feel comfortable talking about at the local bar. You know, these are, until recently. And social media doesn't have any guardrails the way that traditional media does. And you talk about that extensively in your book, that traditional media sources, love them or hate them, have legal responsibilities to not lie to the public. It's the reason that Fox News got fined almost $800 million. So what? First, my first question is, what. What have you seen in, in this rise of political violence? What is the role of social media here? Because you even interviewed January Sixers who said, I wasn't really even politically minded, really, until I got on Facebook. And it led me down this rabbit hole. Can you expound on that?
- [34:01]
B
Yeah, I'm happy to. This is another light bulb moment for me in both of these investigations. I grew up in a media ecosystem in which there were three television networks and a daily newspaper, right? And you didn't have this ubiquitous list of potential sources of information, each of which had a slightly different perspective. Now, most people in this country, and this is what I didn't realize, are not watching television networks or reading their hometown newspaper. They are only getting information, Monty, if it pops up on their curated algorithm driven social media feed. And this is people across the political spectrum at all different levels of sort of socioeconomic success. You get to a New York Times article only if it pops up on your. Your feed on X, or you're only going to get to see a piece from MSNBC if it happens to be linked on your, you know, your. Your YouTube account or. Or your X feed. I didn't appreciate that. Because what that does is it reinforces your original perspective. You know this. The way those algorithms work, the business model, is to get you onto a platform and then hold your attention. And the way they do that is to continue to send you or highlight for you things that roughly correspond to what you've read before. And increasingly provocative, because emotion is what motivates people. So if you're getting led down more and more outrageous content, then you're more likely to stay. The best example of this is a man named Stephen Ayers. Stephen was a witness at one of our J6 hearings. He was a convicted January 6th rioter. He was a carpenter in Erie, Pennsylvania, working every day for 20 years at the same job. Had just gotten married and had a kid. And he was a Trump supporter. And he was surprised when President Trump was declared to have lost the 2020 election. So he started reading about the election on Facebook. That was his social media platform of choice. And because he clicked on some things that sort of Stop the Steal content, he got increasingly fed content about all of these fake theories of election fraud that were not substantiated. Because the other thing about social media, nobody is there verifying it.
- [36:16]
A
Yes.
- [36:18]
B
Legal responsibility to ensure accuracy, because they don't have the legal standards of the New York Times or of CBS News. They're bulletin boards that are free speech zones, and everything goes. So he just kept reading about Stop the Steal, became convinced that these false theories of election fraud were true. Then he got connected through an affinity group to other people. So the other thing that Facebook does is it connects you. Why don't you join the Stop the Steal group? And he said yes. He then met some people that way that said, hey, there's this big rally in Washington January 6th. Why don't you come? So he went to Washington with people that he'd met online to go to this Trump rally. And before he knows it, he's walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and he goes in. Now, I don't mean to suggest that Steven Ayers is a victim, because he's not. He chose to only consume that information.
- [37:07]
A
He made a choice to go to D.C. and he made a choice to walk down the road. There was a lot of decisions made. Yeah, absolutely.
- [37:12]
B
But. But it's instructive because it shows how many people in this country. And again, this is not just a problem on the right. The same thing happens on the left where people get exclusively fed certain perspectives. That's the ecosystem in which we live and that creates that the, the tribes, the division and the silos in which we live. Or we don't even agree on the same facts. Like I talk to. So in the January 6th investigation that sincerely believed that the election had been stolen and no matter how much I would confront them. Well, what about the 62 lawsuits that were dismissed and Bill Barr and the FBI investigating this? And Trump's own campaign lawyers couldn't find evidence. Well, they were skeptical of each of those processes. Right. Those messengers.
- [37:56]
A
Yeah.
- [37:56]
B
So we don't agree on basic facts in this country and that makes this exacerbates the division and is harder for us to cut through to agree on those not only common values, but, but common baselines of fact.
- [38:10]
A
Well, and, and I, and with the Trump administration and even in his campaigns is there's been this habit of even if something is, is verified as false, just keep repeating it and keep repeating it and keep repeating it double down until it's accepted as true. There really has become, and as someone who I work in social media, like that is my job. And so there has become this thing where you're trying to have conversations with people who are not accepting fact. Because for me, as, as far as, you know, if there were allegations in the election in 2020, I was like, okay, well what are the allegations? What's the evidence? These lawyers go to these court cases and they're saying under oath, well, this isn't a fraud case. Well, that tells me all I need to know like that these are not credible. But I have relatives who were convinced that there were suitcases of ballots being rolled in and out. And how do, how do we combat that information when we're creating a system where people aren't trusting fact we can actually prove?
- [39:12]
B
Yeah, Well, I do think it's horribly irresponsible for elected officials, regardless of their perspective, to try to maximize on this for their political benefit. And I think unfortunately that happens. We do have politicians who perpetuate falsity knowingly that know better. I think the answer here is not a supply one, it's a demand one. I, I think that we're going to change the, the standards that give social media companies the immunity from defamation case. I, I don't think we're gonna, they're businesses and they're just maximizing value for shareholders. That's what happens in a democracy. I think the answer has to be on the demand side, which is creating social media literacy and helping particularly young people navigate this ecosystem, understand how information reaches them, encourage them to think critically, try to help people figure out how to ensure that they are getting a balanced perspective, that they are truly educating themselves, are not just drinking the Kool Aid or accepting what's coming exclusively through one small silo. Right? It's creating more media literacy in this country because again, I don't think that the conditions are going to change, but we can change how people navigate that system. Social media isn't inherently bad or wrong at all. It can be a wonderful thing and it can connect people, but it has dangers and it has manifestations that we need to make sure everyone understands and knows how to navigate. So in the book, I talk a lot about how we teach in this country, right? Instead of just teaching and conveying facts to young people, we got to be teaching democracy skills. How do you become an educated person by challenging your own orthodoxy? How do you constructively disagree with someone? Right. Like, those are democracy skills that in addition to the facts of history and mathematics, we ought to be teaching people how to sift information and learn on an ongoing basis. So that is a huge, huge demand side imperative.
- [41:13]
A
And I think that one of the things, even growing up very far to the right, my dad was very adamant about critical thinking skills, like forcing me to problem solve as a very young kid, saying, I'm not gonna give you the answer, but I'm gonna help you think your way through it. And I have a young niece who is trying to learn this, and she's in the space of. I don't. I'm struggling to know what's true, what's real, what's. And one of the things that we've done is I've sat down with her with two articles with different headlines saying, I want you to read this headline. Tell me what the writer wants you to focus on. Because if you can know that, and that's an instinct that you have, you can read the article knowing I already know. This writer wants me to think xyz. And since we're not likely to change social media laws, right, because they are protect, it's protected free speech. It's the same kind of circle we end up in. How do we as consumers prevent the, like, metastasization of, like, these white supremacy ideas? And we see toxic misogyny. And because they gain reactions, they become more popular, they get more followers. Especially, you know, I I see young men who are trying to figure out what being a man looks like for them. Everyone wants a sense of belonging. It's easy to get sucked into these vacuums. How do we as consumers offset that?
- [42:38]
B
Yeah.
- [42:38]
A
Or even someone for me who is a social media personality, how do I make sure I'm using my platform in a way that doesn't further that?
- [42:46]
B
Yeah. I would give you two answers. One, what you do as an individual in terms of your own exposure and then two, what do you do as a member of a community when you're engaging with others for yourself? Everybody needs, as I said, to be aware of how information is reaching them and to be critical of what they are receiving. Be aware that my feed is only going to send me one side of this and maybe there's another side that I should at least consider before I form an opinion. Right. We just have to help people, themselves, in their own heads, be better consumers. And then as a community, Monty, I think too often, and I fall into this myself, we make a lot of assumptions about people in the other silo or people who are different from us. Right. I don't talk to the neighbor who has a Trump side in her yard because I make a lot of assumptions about her.
- [43:39]
A
Yeah.
- [43:40]
B
I use in my book Michelle Obama's story about not being able to hate up close. She says that she and her husband, when he was president, went to lots of different rooms around the country where there was immediate skepticism about them, people that didn't vote for them or weren't inclined to like them. And that over the course of a meal they talked about their kids school and they talked about the weather and they talked about basic things that they shared and that barriers broke down. We don't have enough opportunities in this country for people to pull up close, for people who are different from each other to actually spend time together, to have a common, a common endeavor. I grew up as an athlete, as a team sport athlete, when played football with kids that grew up in a very different neighborhood from me. And what was important was our shared goal of winning a game or winning a championship that was so much more powerful and so much more unifying than where they slept at night versus where I did. We just need more things in this country that pull us closer together. I'm very supportive, for example, of some sort of national service program where if we created a very strong incentive, I wouldn't make it mandatory. But if we said to 2020 to 25 year olds, hey, if you give us two years to go build trails in Colorado or work at a nursing home in New York State, or go to military service. We're gonna. You're not gonna pay federal taxes for five years.
- [45:04]
A
That's amazing.
- [45:05]
B
People would come together, right? The rich kid from the boarding school and the poor kid from an inner city area would be building those trails together. And that kind of shared experience is where those barriers break down. Because again, Monty, we're more alike as people in this country across the world than we are different. We just need to find ways to emphasize our sameness instead of getting trapped in assumptions about our difference, because we don't have that interaction.
- [45:32]
A
And that's, I think, so true. When I was looking into, like, the Russia involvement, Russia interference in 2016, and there's kind of a conversation on the left that their involvement was pushing for Trump to win. And it wasn't that. The goal was polarization. The goal was to get left versus right more geared up, destabilization. Because it really isn't. It's not an issue of left and right. It really is a top and bottom issue at this point. And I, and I love the idea of having this service program because we have options. Things don't have to stay the same. One of the things I've always thought about as far as education affordability is why doesn't each state look and say, what are the top five jobs or trades we need right now? And then say, if you go to school for this trade and you work in the state for five years, we will pay for your school we have. And then you. You solve the problem, you solve the issue of tuition, you solve the job crisis of whatever field you need. We have options. And there seems to be this resistance to do anything new.
- [46:36]
B
Yeah, education is a great opportunity. You're exactly right. Education. Higher education ought to be a place where people who are different come together, where conservatives and liberals can, over a beer at a table or in their dorm room late at night, listen to each other and learn from each other. And I don't think that always happens in higher ed. I do think we have a problem sometimes with conservative voices being somewhat stifled and not encouraged to speak up. And I think we need to fix that. Right. Again, we need to find ways for people to learn from each other, to spend time together and learn from each other. And policies like what you're describing with respect to education, that do that, that break those barriers down, that incentivize people who are coming from different perspectives to actually drop the difference and all join together in a common effort would make.
- [47:23]
A
A ton of sense and especially in like one of the. And again saying this as someone who makes my living in social media, it has this way of convincing us we're connected while separating us further. Because now that I work full time in media, I find myself, I, I just want to sit and have dinner with someone, I want to hug someone, I want to be face to face. I mean I don't text as much anymore. I'm making phone calls because I want, it's, it's made me so hyper aware of wanting real human contact.
- [47:53]
B
Yeah, I totally agree. Like I so often counsel young lawyers that work for me who are ready to fire off an or ready to put something on, like just pick up the phone or walk down the hall. Like, like tone and good intent doesn't convey always on a screen. So we do again need to find ways to teach this. Monty, we ought to be talking about this in schools. Like your niece is lucky that she has someone like you to help her with this. Every kid in America needs to have a teacher or a parent or family member or a mentor who's helping them figure this out. Right. Those are core skills that will translate in so many different ways in the workplace, in school, in neighborhoods across. Will ripple. Right? That's what I mean. These democracy solutions are organic, but they have the potential to sort of ripple across our country and protect what we're doing. Instead of waiting for some external savior, some next election that's going to fix this, we ought to be focused on these organic bottom up solutions like what you're doing with your niece.
- [48:56]
A
And one of the questions I do have as well, so we, there really is overwhelmingly, we have so much more in common than we have. Indifference. Absolutely. We also have or we're reckoning like as of this recording, you know, the Supreme Court is revisiting and possibly gutting the Voting Rights act. And we do have systemic racism that has permeated the country. And even in the book you talk about how there was this assumption from law enforcement that there was less of an assumption of violence from a white group than there would be for an African American group or from Black Lives Matter. There was an assumption of violence from those groups that overall didn't occur and kind of a downplaying of the potential for violence. And as of this week, there was a batch of text messages released from the Young Republicans saying things like I love Hitler, threatening to rape and kill their opponents, bringing back gas chambers. Very violent rhetoric already being downplayed by J.D. vance, the GOP. So how do we in these instances where these particular groups have shown that they are willing to incite violence, they're willing to participate it, and often it's the goal. How do we navigate holding that accountable and correcting that standard while also still trying to rebuild our communities for people that are not part of these groups but might be inclined to get reeled in, like the members you interviewed for January 6th. How do we balance truth and accountability with restoring being a community?
- [50:31]
B
Yeah, you're. It's a. It's another insightful question. We are not, unfortunately yet a sort of post racial society.
- [50:39]
A
Not. We're not.
- [50:40]
B
Not there yet. Right. I hope we are someday. But there's this. I get a sense sometimes that there's this false sense on the right that we no longer have to remedy past discrimination or patterns that have been demonstrated. We should just now say everybody's equal and we're not going to consider race. It's actually a violation of the Constitution to consider race in any way. And that affirmative action and racial preferences and contracting and all of those things might have had purpose for a short time to correct, but now we don't need that anymore because.
- [51:10]
A
Because everything's fine.
- [51:12]
B
I just disagree. I don't think we're yet at the point where it's an equal opportunity society. And what I saw with respect to law enforcement, assessment of danger is one of many manifestations of that. Right. The essence of policing is the assessment of danger, whether it's an officer making a decision to stop someone on the street or an agency assessing intelligence overall. And that's infused with subjective bias. And too often, and it's implicit, I didn't talk to any officer who was explicitly sympathetic to the alt right in Charlottesville or wanted the rioters at the Capitol to break through. Right. They wanted to do their job. But their assessment of danger, angry black men, man, they're dangerous. And you gotta have riot gear and heavy vehicles. Like the summer of 2020 and the George Floyd protests, right.
- [52:03]
A
National Guard.
- [52:04]
B
National Guard. Very different level of preparation and response because it's angry people of color. Whereas in Charlottesville on January 6, these are angry middle aged white guys who generally we don't think are gonna be violent. That's a subjective assessment. That made our passivity, that infused our passivity. And again, we need to acknowledge that and talk about that, not just in policing, but across the board. If we're gonna fix it, it. So you can't throw open the doors and say, hey, everything's equal now. Because that doesn't acknowledge that this implicit and sometimes explicit bias like the ones that have played out in these text messages that you cited is still with us, unfortunately. We just, unless we talk about it, we're not going to fix it. We have to do better again, at pulling together. Sometimes these silos are racial or gender based or of nationality. This demonization of immigrants is another thing that baffles me because we want hardworking people to be in this country that add real value.
- [53:08]
A
And if you're not Native American, you're an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants. It's such a strange hypocrisy to me.
- [53:16]
B
Yeah, I agree.
- [53:17]
A
And with that, it's just these separations and these kind of funnels that we've created. What is your kind of fear moving forward in this climate we're in if we can't start to solve some of these problems?
- [53:33]
B
Yeah, we descend into tribalism. We descend into everyone hoarding their own and being wary of their neighbors. And that is the fraying of democracy. We have, unfortunately, sometimes elected officials that perpetuate that and too many, our social media ecosystem that sort of keeps people isolated. Right. The fundamental division in this country, in my view, it's no longer right versus left, left. It's people that generally trust institutions, those who are invested in institutions and those who think those institutions are broken. And the more and more people that think they're broken, then they're willing to do all kinds of things that are really dangerous. And we live in an ordered society that requires institutions to protect us, to protect everyone, not just some. And as faith in those institutions erodes, I worry that we start to. Those guardrails start to erode and we slip toward, toward autocracy. And that's why everybody, himself or herself, Monty, has to get engaged, has to care, has to run toward that fire.
- [54:34]
A
And what I find interesting about this kind of inherent distrust in institutions that's really building. I was very much raised with a inherent distrust of higher education. That was something that was. Because again, it was liberal bastions. And I see the rollback of DEI and I see women who look like me supporting it, not understanding that the biggest beneficiaries of DEI was white women.
- [54:58]
B
Women.
- [54:58]
A
Yeah. And it's, it's. I find that those conversations are very hard to have because there's this idea that equality or equal footing is somehow oppressive to particularly white Christians. How do, how do we have that particular discussion? Because there's really this attack on affirmative action, dei, equal opportunity, equal voting rights.
- [55:19]
B
Rights.
- [55:20]
A
And like you said, there's this idea of, well, we don't need anything. We don't need any more racial protections anymore when that's just not the case. We had a recent study that showed if you have a white sounding name, you're 50% more likely to get a call back from a job.
- [55:33]
B
Yeah.
- [55:34]
A
How do we wrestle with that?
- [55:35]
B
It's a good question. So I'm involved with an organization in Charlottesville, where I live, called the Fountain Fund. We give low interest loans to formerly incarcerated men and women. And when I raise money for the Fountain Fund, my argument to wealthy donors who could give their philanthropy to lots of different places is you should contribute to the Fountain Fund because it's making our community stronger. Right. I don't want you to give because you feel sorry for people coming out of prison who are trying to get on their feet. You have a shared interest in seeing that person succeed. It makes all of us stronger in Charlottesville and across the country, when everyone in the community has an opportunity to succeed, that's more tax revenue, more safety, that's a stronger community that benefits you. So you're giving this money, but you personally benefit from a stronger community. You know, Dr. King's famous quote is, you know, we're tied together in a mutual garment of destiny. I cannot be all I can be unless every person in this community can be all that she can be. Right. Like, it's this sense of our sharedness again, of. Of how we all benefit from everybody having the opportunity to thrive. We need articulate spokespeople that make that case. Right. It's in your interest. You're not threatened by affirmative action or immigration. We want our communities to be full of people that want to do the right thing, that makes safer, and that makes all of us more productive and wealthier.
- [57:03]
A
Because wealth is a big appeal for a lot of people. It makes us all richer.
- [57:08]
B
Absolutely. So how do we convince people of that, Monty? Some of it's leadership. Some of it is shared experience. Right. It's harder for people to be okay with mass deportations if they have somebody that they work with or somebody that they know in their neighborhood who's affected by that. Again, a lot of this comes down to increasing connectivity in our communities. And it comes down to leadership. It comes down to people that are willing to make this case that we're better off when we're linked together as opposed to separated in these silos.
- [57:37]
A
And kind of, as I. As I kind of start to head towards wrapping up. Where do you think a lot of these? Because a lot of this ties into conspiracy theory, which has become really, really popular. And there's 4chan and the gripers and like all the entire ecosystems built around this. And I recently did a podcast episode on the Satanic Panic, how it just took America by storm. Baseless accusations, you know, sometimes year long investigations, Nobody was charged because there was no evidence. And we see that kind of transition into QAnon, Pizzagate, and now where we are now where there's just this conspiratorial disbelief in institutions or belief in things that have been proven wrong objectively and again metastasizes on social media. But how do we start. This started before the Internet that really rose to prominence. How do we start to deal with these kind of idea patterns that have really developed, really since the seventies?
- [58:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. Look, it's a question of degree. I think there will always be disaffected people in any culture, in any community who are susceptible to these kinds of crazy theories. There always happen and there always will be. As long as it is as a small fringe, minority perspective, it doesn't bother me so much. It bothers me when it starts to creep more into mainstream American life. And that comes down to teaching people to be responsible consumers of information and frankly, putting in place the antidote to that. The antidote to that is positive ways to belong. Right. If we have organizations and communities that are taking people in and are, and are making people feel wanted, they're gonna be less susceptible to something that they read on the Internet that gives them some fascination or some sense of belonging. I spent a lot of time as a, as a federal prosecutor and I worked on gang cases where I would interview these young men that join these criminal gangs. And they're charismatic and they have incredible business acumen, but they got sucked into these criminal enterprises. And the reason was because they just wanted to belong. They just wanted an identity. So if we give people more positive identities through strong communities, through churches or schools or recreational or whatever it is. Right. Whatever it is, families, then people are going to be less susceptible to going down those rabbit holes of QAnon or Pizzagate or satanic whatever it is. Right? Like just, just old fashioned, creating strength in communities that people can rely upon. They won't be as susceptible to that.
- [60:21]
A
Yeah. I've made the comment in the past that when people are loved and well fed, it's really hard to appe. Like to appeal to them with hatred and fear.
- [60:30]
B
I completely agree with that.
- [60:31]
A
And so in this space and even especially today, this has been a brutal week. And I try to be working and resisting all the Time. And today was a particular day where I was just like, I feel like everything's collapsing around me. I'm exhausted. I felt pretty hopeless this morning. And so you having this incredible insider perspective on not just political violence, but the human condition that leads to it, what is your hope in this moment? What is keeping you hopeful as we move forward into the next chapter of what America can be?
- [61:08]
B
Yeah, I really am ultimately hopeful. My sincere hope in the short term is that so much of what we're seeing in this country that's disconcerting prompts participation and gets more people motivated to engage. Right. I do believe that, you know, the arc of history bends towards justice, but you got to push it, and it might be jagged, so that every time there's an overreach or there's something horrific that happens, ideally that prompts a more powerful backlash. Like, we've seen it repeatedly in recent history. You see these awful sexual harassment scandals that lead to the MeToo movement and women finally speaking up as victims and saying, this is not okay, and repeated instance of gun violence in our schools. And you have these kids from Parkland saying, enough is enough. Right. So sometimes in the wake of tragedy, there is created a more powerful response. So, again, my hope, and this could be naive, is that as things degrade, that is an impetus for people to do what the kinds of things we're talking about. Monty, on this over the last hour. Care, read, educate yourself, listen, engage, vote, and participate. If everybody in America does that, even if it takes something horrific to get them motivated, then we're going to be fine. Maybe in three and a half years from now, we have a more engaged society, and that leads us to a better place.
- [62:33]
A
Yeah. And where can. Obviously, your book, Harbingers, really covers this in depth. It was just amazing work and amazing effort that you've not only put into the book, but into these investigations. How can. What, like, what are you working on now? Are there ways that people can support. Give me the. The group that you work with, the charity that helps with loans.
- [62:54]
B
Yeah, it's called the Fountain Fund.
- [62:56]
A
Fountain Fund.
- [62:59]
B
It's based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yes.
- [63:01]
A
Yeah. So how else can people support the work you're doing, make their communities better, find you on social media, all the places.
- [63:09]
B
Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm a lawyer in private practice, and part of why I love what I do is that I have a tool that can be used to do justice. You know, I represent a couple of school districts in Northern Virginia who are suing the federal government over their facilities, access Policy that federal funding is being threatened because they allow students to use restrooms according to gender identity. That gives me an outlet to do something that I, I feel is not only the right answer on the law, but is also just and righteous. And everybody has to find that for himself or herself, right? Whatever your thing is, maybe it's just reading and educating yourself or having a conversation with your neighbor who you may not agree with. I also, to me, when I get intimidated by big issues, I go micro, like the Fountain Fund. I love it because we are helping real people who are coming out of prison with these onerous loads of debt just get on the starting line and launch their creativity. We've given over $5 million in loans to people in Virginia and in Boston and in Philadelphia and in New Orleans. And our aspiration is to build that across the country. So I get a lot of satisfaction out of that sort of retail helping individual people. But everybody answers this question differently. The key is to ask yourself, what am I doing right? What is my little thing, my micro thing that I can do in my community to contribute? Because again, democracy is us. Democracy comes down to all the people that are watching and listening to you every day. They got to figure out their own way to show up and engage. If they do, we're all good.
- [64:45]
A
That's. Yeah, I needed that today. It's been a hard day. And my last question, I love especially people who are so highly educated. If you were to recommend five books that you think everybody should read, what would those books be?
- [65:00]
B
Man, what a good question. There's so much good stuff now. The latest issue of the Atlantic magazine is all about democracy 250 years in and it's got essay after essay from David Brooks to Anne Applebaum about their assessment. So I'm a real voracious consumer of long format journalism. There's a lot of good stuff. I also return to basics like, like Kahil Gibran's the Prophet. Right? Like, like books that talk about timeless values, things that always matter. Again, when there's noise out there, whatever it is, that's, that's sort of your moral core or your purpose. Go toward your. Go toward that, right? Revert to first principles and whatever that is for you. For some people it's the Bible. For some people it's a religious basis. Whatever works.
- [65:50]
A
Every December, I read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
- [65:55]
B
Perfect. There's for you, Monty. That makes a ton of sense. And returning to it also, like rereading things, I don't do that enough. I should more but that's really powerful because maybe you're at a different place in your life than you were the last time you were exposed to something and it resonates in a way that it wouldn't before.
- [66:11]
A
That's amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Tim, thank you for being so willing as soon as I reached out to you to come on and have this conversation. Thank you for the work you've done on.
- [66:21]
B
I'm lucky to be able to contribute to the discussion. Monty, thanks for what you're doing to raise awareness of these issues and I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
- [66:28]
A
And hopefully the next time I talk to you we'll have we'll have a bit better news.
- [66:31]
B
I hope so too.
- [66:33]
A
For everyone listening, please do read Harbingers by Timothy Hay. It's such an important like explanation of a lot of the things that led to the situation we're in now. And I will see you next week on Flipping Tables. Sa.