← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
The "Blue Bubble Wrap" Blinding Dominant Media from Truth, Plus Harmeet Dhillon on Remaking the DOJ
01:20:27
Mark kicks off today’s show with a new reported monologue on the shakeup at The Washington Post. He reviews the record of the paper’s most notorious anti-Trump propagandists masquerading as news reporters and explains why their recent departures have yet to boost credibility or alter its biased reporting. Mark explains that Donald Trump is not the main cause of the Dominant Media’s troubles, and why his leaving office at the end of his term won’t be the change that restores public faith in the press. Plus, an update on the overwhelming reaction to Mark’s buzzy sit-down with former Post fact checker Glenn Kessler. Then, Steve Krakauer and Drew Holden join the show to discuss how the media lost credibility over many years and why employing far-left media critics like Brian Stelter has only helped networks alienate half the country. The three offer their thoughts on how to rebuild faith in once-trusted legacy media institutions — or whether or not they can be fixed at all. Finally, ...
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- [00:02]
Mark Halperin
Are you ready to get spicy?
- [00:04]
Glenn Kessler
These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy.
- [00:08]
Harmeet Dhillon
Sriracha sounds pretty spicy to me.
- [00:12]
Mark Halperin
Um, a little spicy, but also tangy and sweet.
- [00:16]
Harmeet Dhillon
Maybe it's time to turn up the.
- [00:18]
Mark Halperin
Heat or turn it down. It's time for something that's not too spicy. Try Doritos Golden Sriracha, spicy but not.
- [00:28]
Steve Krakow
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- [01:03]
Mark Halperin
Welcome to next up up. If I look familiar, that's because I'm the host of this program. My name is Mark Halpert. I'm the editor in chief of the live interactive video platform two way, and as always this week and forevermore, your guide to everything that's next up in politics, media and beyond. Thank you for joining. You know, I said last episode, I don't want this show to be about media criticism. It's just I'm more interested in covering America and government and politics and the new Taylor Swift album. Plenty of things I'm interested in. But I feel compelled again to talk about the media today in part because because of the reaction we got. Very, very big reaction and kindly, very favorable reaction to the interview I did with Glenn Kessler. You'll recall he was, until a few days ago, the fabled fact checker, the dispenser of Pinocchios from the Washington Post. And he had written in his substack that the Washington Post, and I'm paraphrasing here, but I think fairly was addicted to its liberal readers and therefore couldn't risk producing content that was conservative or even fair for worry that more of its consumers would leave the paper and the digital subscriptions because they want a paper that is hostile to Donald Trump. And I wanted to talk to him about that because it's an extraordinary thing for a guy who worked decades in the Washington Post newsroom who was their fact checker, one of the most important jobs at the paper to try to hold all powerful interests accountable to the public interest, fairly and accurately, not hold Donald Trump accountable. Unfairly, I thought. What would he say? How would he explain that? A guy who cast himself as fair acknowledging that the Post was addicted to its liberal supporters? I really didn't know what to expect the reaction from you all on X and elsewhere. Emails that you sent in were pretty uniform. I don't recall seeing a single tweet or getting a single email from somebody saying you were unfair to Kessler or the Post isn't liberally biased. Here's some of the reaction on Twitter. A one from somebody named Matt Mark Halpern pushed Washington Post fact checker Kessler to admit cheap fake error. We talked a lot in the interview about how he fact checked a video showing Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline and suggested in his fact check that no, it was a misleading video. And this person Matt on Twitter wrote, if you think buying oceanfront property in Louisiana is a good idea, then you'll believe most fact checkers. If they can't obfuscate, they lie. That's their defense. Again, I have mixed feelings about fact checking in general, but this was a point of view a lot of you expressed that that it's just not on the up and up. And that's unfortunate because if the Washington Post and other organizations are going to try to hold powerful interests accountable by fact checking them, people need to have confidence that it's being done in a fair way. Here's another one. A2 this is another reaction to the interview that was pretty common. This is a painful listen and it amplifies how closed off to alternative perceptions Glenn Kessler was and still is. He seemed incapable of admitting and taking responsibility for something being wrong. Below human Again, this is a mystery to me about Glenn Kessler and about others of his ilk, which is how do they not see the bias when for so many of us, certainly for a lot of Republicans, but also for me, someone who loves the Washington Post as an institution, who loves and values the importance of media in our society. That's there. Just they don't seem to see it. Here's another one. A3 this is along the same lines another tweet from Dennis o'. Brien. Kessler seems very sincere in his belief that the Washington Post is totally objective. This explains a lot. If a preponderance of journalists and dominant media share this judgment, Halperin says parenthetically, and they do, the problem of bias in the news industry is far worse than if they were intentionally skewing their reporting. I agree with that point of view. I'd almost prefer that they be Doing it on purpose. But if it is, and again, I'm a decent reader of human beings. Glenn Kessler seemed to be saying he didn't think the Post was liberally biased. And I agree with that person who sent the tweet. Just how could it be? And how Insidious. All right, a 4:1 more tweet reaction. When you see your readers as a base, Kessler's term, much like a political party, then there is your problem. If you have a base, you're not journalism, you're a political party. You're a mouthpiece for a movement. Pathetic. And again, the reason I wanted Glenn Kessler to come on is he wrote his paper, his former home, his professional home for so long was addicted to and is addicted to its left wing audience. How do you, how do you change that? As I said, I don't know what I expected Kessler to say. I definitely, I definitely was interested to see if he would admit anything about the paper. And occasionally over the years, I've talked to colleagues in liberal newsrooms and they've admitted it. They've shown a little weakness. Yeah, maybe sometimes some of our reporters. Instead, Kessler just dug in. He said, we have a liberal audience because we're based in Washington, D.C. we have a liberal audience because people look at our op ed page and think we're liberal. And conservatives don't like us because they think our op ed page is liberal. But it's got nothing to do, nothing to do with bias. A lot of the reaction that I got through emails and on Twitter was mocking, mocking of Glenn Kessler, mocking of the Washington Post, mocking of big media, dominant media in general. I don't want to mock them. I really don't. I want it to be fixed. That's what separates me from a lot of the people, particularly people on the right. The right makes a fortune off of liberal media. They make a fortune off of it by mocking it and using it as content. And they make a fortune off of it because the left has opened the door to market share going to the right that they're not even competing for. So I don't, I don't really want this to be about criticizing these places except in service of making them better, having them do different, do things differently. And I know from talking to media executives that some of the places, those of you who see liberal media bias would consider to be the worst offenders. I know from talking to people there that there is a movement afoot in almost every one of these places to try to figure this out, how to stay in business without losing their current audience in droves, but to find new people and not just people on the right. Glenn Kessler wrote about how his boss said to him, how do we appeal to Fox News viewers? I want Fox News viewers to be looking and reading and watching and listening everywhere. Not just places that appeal to them directly, but also people in the middle. There's so many people in this country, whether they've got a political affiliation or not, who are delighted to just get the facts. Part of why I think this program and Two Way are doing pretty well as new enterprises is because we're providing all perspectives and we're providing facts under one roof. And that's not available, that's not on offer, all that many places. And what I want is for big places to be fair. Why do we need big media places? Because big media places can do things that small places can't. You know, the next step budget does not allow me, at least currently, to go cover the Putin Trump summit, filing Freedom of Information act requests, and then if the government denies that request, hiring a lawyer or having a lawyer who can file a lawsuit to try to get documents unsealed that are in the public interest, having bureaus around the world to cover international news, sending reporters out to try to investigate wrongdoing, alleged wrongdoing, and then coming up empty and saying there's no story here, even though we just put a reporter in Chattanooga, Tennessee for two months to interview people and to look through documents. Don't minimize those things. If you want, if you believe that a democracy must have, as the founders did, strong news organizations to hold powerful interests accountable. You have to have some scale, right? There's some economies of scale involved in doing the things I just listed. And as valuable as podcasts are and blogging is and social media, social media influencers, they don't, they don't have the, the, the same infrastructure, the same scale that these big places do. And I don't want big places that are biased with those powers, those capabilities. I want big places that are fair with those capabilities. And that's what, that's where we are right now. There aren't very many places. In fact, I'd argue there are really none that are truly fair, that have those capabilities. And that's what we need. And it's hard to start new ones. I've been saying this for about 20 years, as I've really, at last, 20 years or so, have really dug into this question of liberal media bias and simultaneous the decline because of the rise of digital, the Decline of the legacy news organizations, the major networks, the Associated Press, the big newspapers, to say nothing of Newsweek and Time. They're nothing like as powerful as they were when my career began. And no one has started anything new that has reached that level of scale. Foreign bureaus, Freedom of Information act requests, lawsuits, investigative reporting. Bloomberg is a place relatively new that I would say has aspired to some of those things. But there's, but that's funded by one of the richest people in the world. So if we're not going to get new ones, right, then the question is, can any of the old ones be saved? Can any of these places, which are still the big audiences, they still have owners who care about holding powerful interests accountable. They still have reach and investigative muscle. Can any of these places change? I think that's the question before us, unless you think somebody's starting something new. So let's think about the Washington Post, where Glenn Kessler worked up until just recently, for years. And I didn't ask Glenn Kessler about this, and I should have. There were two guys at the Washington Post, both of whom have recently left. Philip Bump and Aaron Blake. Okay, they, they were not columnists. Their work did not appear on the website, in the paper, on the op ed page where they'd clearly be seen as liberals. They appeared in the news section, seen as news analysis. Okay, when I say new, see news analysis, I don't think opinion. I think kind of like what I do here, reporting with some analysis that put, put a finger, finger on the scale a little bit, but not ideological finger, but historical perspective or calling something out that's wrong. But again, not only calling out one side. And that's the problem with these two guys, as far as I'm concerned. I read a lot of their work. I couldn't read all of it because after a while I got the joke. They were hostile to Donald Trump, Philip Bump and Aaron Blake, both gone from the paper, but for many, many months over a long period of time. And lots of articles appeared to a regular Washington Post reader like they were news reporters and they were not. I could, I could give you a thousand examples, including the dogs that don't bark, which is to say it'd be hard to find either of these guys writing stuff negative about Democrats, except the left will write about Democrats negatively by saying they're not doing enough to fight Donald Trump. That's the one criticism they'll make. But here's a couple things from Phil Bump. A five, please. Again, if you read the Washington Post, you would think this guy was considered a part of the news department. And here's, here's an article from him. Even some in the pro Trump media environment are wary of his plans. Okay, that just, that's just a negative thing, you know, saying, well, Trump is so bad that even some people who normally like Trump don't like him. That, that just again, just, again, I don't even think to explain the bias there. Here's another one. A6. This is Philip Bump, Trump's fake it till you make it autocracy. Okay? Now, I could see a liberal columnist for the Washington Post calling Donald Trump's government an autocracy. I could see somebody on MSNBC doing that. But somebody who's in the Washington Post news section talking about that. You won't find any Republican, anyone associated with Donald Trump who didn't think Phil Bump was biased when he was at the Washington Post. Here's another guy, Aaron Blake. Okay, here's Aaron Blake. A7. Aaron Blake writes, the Republican squirm is in full swing. Now, to be fair, reporters don't write the headlines. And so I don't think that Aaron Blake or Phil Bump wrote the headlines, but the articles they wrote, their general oeuvre reflective of this Republican squirm is in full swing. Quote, it's not exactly news that the Republican controlled Congress has largely subjugated itself to Trump. Where's the bias here? Well, when Nancy Pelosi got every Democrat to vote with her, the liberals in the media talked about how masterful she was, what an extraordinary legislative technician. But when Donald Trump does it for Aaron Blake, it shows that the Republicans are subjugating themselves to Donald Trump. All right, here's one more from Aaron Blake. A8, please. Too many. The many big things Trump, quote, didn't know about. There's certainly a question about how much Trump actually is out of the loop and how much he's just saying that Trump's record for dishonesty is nearly without compare. Now, I don't think you can find a lot of Aaron Blake columns about Joe Biden saying that, you know, Donald Trump said good people on both sides, or Donald or Joe Biden said the Georgia election law was Jim Crow on steroids. These two guys writing for such a long time in the Washington Post news section with tendentiously hostile columns, articles about Donald Trump, now they're both gone. I can't tell you the exact circumstances. Blake sometimes would team up with fair reporters and have double bylines. I was stunned about that. He's now, spoiler alert. He's now at cnn. And I've seen him a couple times on cnn. And CNN treats him like he's just a straight ahead political reporter with Washington Post credentials. CNN continues to be a huge offender. We'll talk about that in the next segment. But I watched a roundtable on Monday on CNN about President Trump's announcement this week about putting various federal personnel on the ground in Washington, D.C. and I was going to show you part of it, but it's just too painful to think about watching again. But the whole thing was like five CNN reporters and other reporters they booked for this roundtable just so hostile to Donald Trump. Just no notion of let's show both sides, just hostile. Okay, now the Washington Post got rid of those two guys. My suspicion is, I don't know this, but my suspicion is it had something to do with the paper understanding that if you're going to put anti Trump propagandists in the news section, you're going to have a hard time appealing to people if you want them to read the paper because they think it's fair. Here's again, a thousand examples of what they cover and don't cover. But here's a recent thing from the Washington Post. This is a 10, please. This is about President Trump saying he wants to bring back what people my age will remember. Younger people. No idea. There used to be a thing called the Presidential Fitness Test. So if you were in public school and probably a lot of private schools too, I went to public school. You had to take this fitness test to demonstrate you were meeting the basic minimum requirements of pull ups and push ups and running and other stuff. So Donald Trump loves nostalgia. The headline, the Presidential Fitness Test is Nostalgia in the Worst Way. It's just like this president, an overweight aficionado of fast food whose primary exercise appears to be clamoring in and out of a golf cart. So again, great for a column. What this is doing in the news section of the Washington Post I cannot say. Mocking the president, being focused on his weight and having the emphasis not be, well, isn't it interesting that we're bringing back something to encourage physical fitness? Rather, it's just let's slam the president, let's slam him, let's make fun of him physically. The Washington Post, even in the absence of Glenn Kessler, even in the absence of Phil Bump and Aaron Blake, still, I think would fairly would say has a long way to go. And they're just every day there's so many examples. And I'll say what I said last week, if you want to Work at the Washington Post or be a defender of the Washington Post and say they're not liberally biased. You need to know that half the country thinks it is and to a degree that they don't take it seriously. I want the Washington Post to be strong. Now, there are a lot of you who are going to say, can't happen. You're wasting your time. You're deluded and you're, you're risking building up a place as credible when they're not. And I'll say again, we need big places in the media that are strong to hold every powerful interest accountable. Not just Republicans, Democrats, businesses, labor unions, anybody with power. That's, that's, that's the bit, one of the two big roles of the media along with telling the stories of our time. So can the Washington Post fix it? Well, I think they're making some progress, but they have to change their business model, right? So it's two prongs and they're related. One is the business side. Who are you selling to? Who's buying what the Washington Post has on offer? And right now, I think Glenn Kessler's right. They're selling to a lot of liberals. They need to figure out that business model. How do they thrive, not just survive having a product that works for people that they'll pay for. And then the other side is, what is the product? Who are you hiring? What's their attitude? How is the paper being edited? All this stuff is, is you're never going to be perfect. But what you need is a body of work that over time people can say, well, it's not the same Washington Post. They got rid of those liberals who were, who were masquerading as news reporters, writing for anti Trump propaganda and other changes. And again, it starts with what's a business model that will work? Do the liberals who read the Washington Post only want to read liberal stuff? The Washington Post opinion section has some prominent conservative voices. Now, I won't say they have a lot of MAGA voices, but at least they have some conservative voices. But it all starts with this concept of what do you do? What do you do if you want a thriving business that's fair. And I don't understand people who own newspapers or manage newspapers or write for newspapers or anchor a show on cable news. I don't understand them coming in and saying, as Glenn Kessler did, I worked at a fair place. And then seeing the reaction. Again, a fair looking at the, look at the content would say it's not right. But even if you Think somehow it is. Even if you're in that blue bubble that Glenn Kessler was in. And so many of you who wrote in and tweeted about it, see, even then you have to say to yourself, well, people aren't, people aren't buying what we're selling if they're conservative or fair minded. Huh? Maybe we need to think anew. So let's, let's use a metaphor. You have a restaurant and no one under 35 will eat in your restaurant. Almost no one. Like all your customers are older, right? And you'd say, well, the way the menu is now, old people like our menu. Got an early bird special. We got the food that's easy to chew and digest. Great business. And, and we certainly don't want to change them. We don't play loud music. It's easy to hear in here. Menu's got big type. We don't want to change any of that because our business right now, our revenue comes from, from older people. And then maybe do. A new manager comes in or a new owner and says, you know, it's great to have all these customers older than 35, but what about younger people? Wouldn't it be great to have a business that could appeal to all of this restaurants? Not only is it half full, but every year fewer and fewer people are eating in our restaurant. Maybe we need to figure out a way to have younger people eat in this restaurant without alienating the older people so still have the easily digestible food. Maybe have the big print menu, maybe don't have loud music throughout the restaurant. But then you'd say, well, maybe there's some younger, younger dishes we could serve. Maybe there could be another room in the back of the restaurant that we could play some, some nice music in. Maybe we could, we could talk to young people and say, why aren't you eating in our restaurant? Are there things we could serve here that you might like to eat? And then if you executed it right, and you'd say, well, we're having stuff that lots of people would like. And maybe we can even find some dishes that the old people like and the young people like. And maybe we'll build our business around that. Maybe there's a way to have a restaurant where, sure, off to the side, we're serving some, some stuff specifically for young people. And over here we're certain some stuff specifically for old people. But in the main, we're, we're, we're making some stuff that everybody likes because who wouldn't like a good chicken pot pie or Some, some Thai sushi, whatever it is, maybe not be a perfect metaphor, but you see my point. The Washington Post has been serving one group of people and claiming our restaurants for everybody who wouldn't like eating here at this Washington Post restaurant. But the proof, sir and madam, is in the pudding. That restaurant serving pudding that fewer and fewer people are eating make it harder and harder to keep the restaurant in business. But they're acting like everybody should like this pudding. I don't know why young people don't like this pudding. It's totally great. Everybody should like it. I'll say again, I want these places to thrive there. Nobody's starting a successful new cable channel. Nobody's starting a successful national newspaper. I'd love it if somebody did, but I don't see it happening. So the few places that are left that are big enough to do what needs to be done, we gotta. You gotta change. We have to hope they find a way to do it better. And I hope they do it fast enough that I can talk about other things on future episodes. But I will return to this topic as much as I need to because it's vitally important. We have major, vital national institutions that have lost their way. And if they think it's going to fix itself when Donald Trump leaves the presidency, I don't believe that's true. It'll make it easier on them in some ways, but they shouldn't look at it as an escape route. They should look at it as an opportunity to start now. And once Trump derangement syndrome has receded as a pandemic sweeping through the newsrooms of dominant media opportunity, business model that works. And actually doing your job the way it's intended to be done. Tell me what you think about today's report. You can send me an email nextup halpernmail.com and watch this program on X on instagram TikTok@nextup halperin. Next up is our handle there. It's also on YouTube@YouTube.com NextUp Halperin and of course, we are a podcast available everywhere. Although I gather many of you listen to podcasts on Apple and Spotify. But find some other place, it'll be there too. Very grateful to you for watching. And next up, my conversation, more about what is up with the American dominant media. That's next up. There's a real concern right now that the continued divide between the Trump White House and the Federal Reserve is putting us all behind the curve again. Will the Fed be able to take the right action at the right time or are we going to be looking at a potential economic slowdown? So what does all this mean for your savings? There's an opportunity. Now consider diversifying with gold through Birch Gold Group. For decades, gold has been viewed as a safe haven. Tom. In times of economic stagnation or global uncertainty or when there is high inflation, Birch Gold makes it incredibly easy for you to diversify some of your savings into gold. If you've got an IRA or an old 401k, you can convert that into a tax sheltered IRA in physical gold or you can buy some gold to keep in your safe at home. First, you need to get educated and that's where Birch Gold comes in. They will send you a free info kit about gold. Just text the word next to the number 989-898. Again, text next to 989-898. Consider diversifying a portion of your savings into gold. That way if the Fed falls behind the curve again for America, at least you can stay ahead for yourself. All right, let's talk more about how we're going to save American media for the good of the republic and for the good of my sanity. Joining me now, Steve Krakow. He's the executive producer of the Megyn Kelly show and AM Update and a longtime observer of chronicler of media, Andrew Holden, author of the Holden Court Substack, which is must reading for those who want to have the media be held accountable and follow him on Twitter as well. Gentlemen, really grateful to you for joining. And what I like and respect so much about you is you're not in the media criticism business to to score partisan points. You really just follow the facts. And because most of the people in the media criticism business are left wing, people sometimes will say, well, you guys are right wing. You're not actually in my experience, you're just looking to try to tell the story the right way. And you certainly do often focus. Drew's Twitter feed focuses more on holding the liberal media accountable, but that's because there's a vacuum there that needs to be done. So I want to follow up with you guys on a question that I get asked all the time, but particularly in the wake of my interview with Glenn Kessler, which is this question of do people in the legacy media know they're liberally biased and they simply are lying about it, or they truly don't know because neither answer is particularly satisfying. Steve, I know may not apply to everyone, but just in general, do you think they know or you think they're actually so enwrapped in blue Bubble wrap that they don't know.
- [27:25]
Drew Holden
Yeah, I think that it is a mix, I would say. And I, and I say, I think, but I, I would say I, I also really try to, to get a sample and talk to people. I was, I was at CNN not that long ago. I was there from 2010 to 2013. I worked very closely with Jeff Zucker in 2013. I worked with a lot of people that are still in the building. And there are people that are inside that building, for example, just because I know CNN the best, who understand that there were. There's an intrinsic, intrinsic liberal bias that existed and has existed for years because that's the makeup of the building. But it went from being sort of the goal of being, suppressing that during the time that I was there, I would say making sure that that never shows up on air, that never shows up on the website. And there was an active effort to do that to being empowered to bring that out to fight Donald Trump, to save democracy. So it was a switch in that sense. And the recognition that, yeah, we've gone from pretending that bias didn't exist or to, to trying to hide it to letting it go out, to kind of wearing it on our sleeves. So, yes, I think that there are some people that understand it, but I would say that the vast majority do not. The vast majority are like Glenn Kessler, as we saw in that excellent interview, who could not put two and two together, could not say that if we have a base of subscribers that are liberally biased and, and that if we deviate a little bit, if we start to maybe like, incorporate a little bit more conservative voices or pro Trump voices, that they would actually leave the newspaper. And if he can't put two and two together that say, well, what does that say about us? But I believe he truly, he's a true believer, and I think he has such a low opinion of the certain part of the country. And they say, listen, these, these right wingers, they don't want real news. You know, that that's on one hand. And on the other hand, he thinks that there's such snowflakes in his liberal readership that they would potentially leave if they started to deviate a little bit from, from where they are. So, so, yeah, I think most people are true believers, and I think that's really sad.
- [29:40]
Mark Halperin
Drew a version of the same question to you. You think if you talk to Mark Thompson who runs CNN or Jeff Zucker, who used to, do you think they would privately acknowledge that they're selling what is not exclusively but primarily a liberal product.
- [29:53]
Glenn Kessler
I would hope so, Mark. I think, I think Steve is spot on in terms of how it tends to operate within. Within a magazine or an outlet. But I think there's. There's an important kind of distinction without, within all of this at the high level. The people who I think are running these organizations who actually have to count the coins, at the end of the day, they're the ones who are probably more attuned to the fact that, yeah, in fact, these are like, these are our frequency biases. This is what our. These are what our readers are interested in. My big concern, and I think where I tend to focus a lot of my time on Twitter and otherwise is more directed at the Kesslers.
- [30:28]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [30:28]
Glenn Kessler
People who I do actually believe are pretty dogmatic, who do genuinely believe this. And to Steve's point, I think a lot of them just think, well, this, this Trump guy is such an aberration, he's such a phenomenon that all we have to do is. Is hold him accountable and when he speaks, he tends to be wrong. And that when the people who are around him speak, they tend to be wrong when it's in his interests. And so there's almost this like, weird kind of blinders on in. In the instances where that isn't the case to just an unwillingness and inability to just step back and say, oh yeah, maybe it doesn't specifically to Kessler, maybe trusting Joe Biden to say he doesn't dance as evidence for why it deserves four Pinocchios that Republicans have these videos that are maybe a little bit misleading, maybe cut a little bit funny, but zooming in on those specific points at the omission of everything else in the universe because Trump is just. Is so incompatible with everything they believe is true and right in the world.
- [31:26]
Mark Halperin
All right, so you've got the managers who say our business model relies on a lot of liberal consumers. But then you've got the individual editors and reporters. And again, the three of us could sit around reading the Sunday New York Times together and circle countless paragraphs that say, well, this is just represents a liberal bias. Those individual reporters, in the main, there's some exceptions, are liberal. So is there a connection? Not on the business side, but is there an ideological connection? And of course it does. It's been accelerated in Trump, but they were biased against Nixon and Reagan and the Bushes. Is there a connection between their liberal ideology and what they produce, Steve?
- [32:08]
Drew Holden
Yeah, well, look, I think that this gets to perhaps the more pervasive issue. You know, I wrote A book about two and a half years ago called Uncovered, and, you know, I lay out five problems with the media. I try to figure out what happened here, you know, in the last 10 years. And Trump is certainly an element of this. But I think that if Trump existed yet the media landscape in some bizarro universe, we took all of the heads of tech companies and we just put them on an island somewhere, and they never invented social media or potentially. I think that the idea of social media, particularly Twitter and now X, has so fundamentally changed the business of journalism, the incentive structure that exists, that it's not really just about Trump. It's more. More about the feedback loop and the feedback mechanism. And because of that, the, the way that liberal journalists who have existed for years, people that, that lean left, the way that they act, the way that they do their job, has so fundamentally changed. And I think it's. It's changed in a lot of different ways. And I would say Glenn Kessler might agree with this. You know, in the old days, not that long ago, if you wanted to say, you know, say how you were mad at the newspaper you followed, you sent him a letter, or you'd send an email, or you'd call the newsroom, and there was no way of that happening in public. Now, both the feedback that you get from an audience, both positive and negative, I think positive feedback is perhaps even more of a problem than negative feedback that you get on Twitter. And the way that the journalists put their pieces out there, if you put a piece out there that is somewhat critical of Joe Biden during that years, and I talk to people, you know, journalists that would go through this and would. Would be nervous about what would happen, the reaction that they might get, it's that reaction that causes the change in the way that the media operates. And I think that that is actually a much more. It's. It's a much greater problem that if Trump never existed and social media exists, we would still be in this. This real serious problem for the state of corporate media journalism than we are right now.
- [34:04]
Mark Halperin
All right, all three of us read a lot about the media. We're all interested in that. I don't know that most consumers who watch CNN or who read the Washington Post, I don't know that they care much about that beat. Maybe they do. I don't know what the stats are. If I were running in major news organization, I would try to have reporters who weren't biased. And amongst my top priorities would be the media critic. Because if you have a media critic who's left wing. You're sending a signal to your, to your consumers that you only are left wing if you're only holding right wing media accountable, if you're only being anti Trump. So if I look at the people who've covered the media at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN just to take three places, they only have left wing media critics. It's so bizarre, it's so off. And it's not just what they cover, it's what they don't cover. Right. So they do fact checks. Statistically, they fact check everything Donald Trump does. And then every so often, they'll fact check a Democrat just so they can say they also fact check Democrats. And the most mysterious to me is a guy, you guys both know who he is, Brian Stelter. He is longtime critic, media critic at cnn. He hosted a show, he writes a newsletter. He then left, was fired. I don't know how much of his firing was ideological, but my reporting suggests some of it was because they said what I'm saying. We can't have our media criticism be so hostile to Donald Trump as a business matter, but also as a matter of trying to appeal to conservative consumers, but also just a matter of doing our job correctly. I think it was some combination of those three things. He's now back at cnn. He doesn't have his own show anymore, but he's on CNN regularly and he writes a daily newsletter that is so predictably anti Republican, so predictably anti Trump. I know what he'll write about. I know what stories he'll choose to write about and not choose to write about. And I know exactly what he'll say in every case because it's going to be tendentiously aggressively anti Trump. And so my question is, if you're CNN and you want to appeal to conservatives, it's not their only problem. But Drew, how big a problem do you see it that their media critic, he might as well write for the Nation magazine, he's so anti Trump. How big a problem is that for the brand of cnn?
- [36:26]
Glenn Kessler
I think it's an enormous problem, Mark. I think, you know, you talked a lot in your, your interview with Kessler about what the American people think about media bias. Right. There is a, a strong sentiment among not just conservatives, but independents too, that the media has gone off the rails in ways that are predictably patternistically liberal. Right. When you look at the polling and trust in media, it's basically Democrats trust the media about 60 to 70%. Everybody else is on the toilet. And so I Think when you think about that, Right. It should call to mind if you're, if you're someone who's interested in these business decisions, who's interested in reaching conservatives, who's interested even in reaching independents to say what might be the problems here. And if all of your problems every single day, every single week are one team, I think that one is a problem in and of itself. Two, because it's not likely to be right. But two, and really importantly, you're right, it codes to all of your readers and all of your listeners and everyone who's, who's consuming this content that there's only one bad guy here.
- [37:29]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [37:29]
Glenn Kessler
And I think not only is this, is this the case of media critics, but I think it's very acutely the case when it comes to fact checking.
- [37:36]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [37:36]
Glenn Kessler
So it's cnn. Daniel Dale, I think I remember after the, after Joe Biden got elected, he went three months, this guy who fact checked Donald Trump every day, he went three months without fact checking Joe Biden.
- [37:50]
Mark Halperin
And it just inconceivable, I know Steve wants to get in and I want to get him in. But let me just ask you, have you done this? Has anybody done this? Has anyone gone through all of the DANIEL dale, CNN fact checkers, fact checks and just count up how many are about Republicans and how many are about Democrats. Have you done that?
- [38:05]
Glenn Kessler
I did. So in this one window, this 90 day window, he fact checked Republicans, I think 43 times.
- [38:12]
Mark Halperin
No, but I want to I'm assigning you to do a lifetime. I'm assigning you to do lifetime, went.
- [38:17]
Drew Holden
On vacation for like a month and a half. Joe Biden went, literally went on vacation. I'm so tired, I'm so tired from my fact checking. I must now go up as if there's not a new president.
- [38:28]
Mark Halperin
Steve, you were poker faced. For those listening as a podcast, Steve was poker faced while I talked about Brian Stelter. Steve has affection for cnn. He worked there. But I know what you think of his work. I just do.
- [38:42]
Drew Holden
I have a nuanced opinion on Brian Stalton. I will say, listen, I've known Brian for 17 years. I would consider him a friend. I, when I took over, my first job really in the media business was at working at TV Newser for and that, which was the blog that he started before he got hired at the New York Times. He called me over, we had coffee at the New York Times and back in 2007, I want to say, and so we've known each other for a long time and here's what I would say about Brian. First of all, when Brian did get fired for as you, I would say correctly pointed out his association with the politics of Jeff Zucker and like that, that Trumpian focus there. And as like the enforcer, he was replaced essentially with a much worse version of Brian Stelter, like the JV version of Brian Stelter in the guy who, you know, doesn't even deserve a mention. So I will just try to point that out. Now the second thing I would say is that I would put Brian in a category of someone who, let's just say, reads the comments. Okay. I actually Brian interviewed me for the Reliable Sources newsletter shortly after Trump won in 2024. He ended up showing up at UFC. And I made a point about the fact that this, you know, he was riding the culture. Look at the reception he got at ufc. Look at him shaking hands with, with NFL players there. And, and we talked about that and I saw Bryant got some major pushback for even just sort of rationally looking at why Donald Trump may have won and his place in the culture. And, and I do think that there is a subset of people that no matter how powerful they are, people who are much more powerful than Brian Stelter who are sitting within cnn. And I would put someone for example, like Jake Tapper in this category who are so swayed by the reaction they may get from their friends, from people that just random ex followers that they will do or not do certain journalism and certain coverage because of that reaction. And I think that that's unfortunate because I don't think you need to. This is a different landscape. You can do things, things like what you do Mark, and not be viewed as a partisan and be viewed as fair and get a great reaction by not going Trumpian and maga. I mean like I'm not putting on the red hat, but just being fair and rational about it and who cares what some random people say on X.
- [40:56]
Mark Halperin
Steve, I, I so admire, I truly do your loyalty to your friends. And I do because, because my view is if I had a friend, if I had a friend who was a doctor, there's a better for I always use. And his level of professional abrogation, of professional responsibility was the same as as Brian Stelters. I would say to my friend the doctor, you're killing people. People are dying on your operating room table. You need to find something else to do. So again, I appreciate your friendship, but I also appreciate given that he's your friend, what you just said. But, but it's not like he responds to the comments occasionally. Every day. He's writing a liberal newsletter about the media, which pretends to be an objective look at the media. And it's, again, it's not just what he writes about, it's what he leaves out there.
- [41:44]
Drew Holden
That's what's even more sad, I think.
- [41:45]
Mark Halperin
He'S doing what he's doing. Yes, of course, of course. But you and I both know there's a, there's a feeling at CNN just like there is at the Washington Post. I don't know about the New York Times, but they're in people in management at cnn, people who own those brands. Jeff Bezos and the people own cnn. They know this is an issue. Right. And they're looking to bring in conservative voices. So it's like, shouldn't they start with their media critic? Shouldn't be liberally biased? Shouldn't that be a starter? I agree with you that there must be people there who think that's the current thing they want to do. But they already fired him once. How could he. And I'm not trying to get him fired because he tries to get people fired. That's not my deal. But I don't understand how they allow him to do his job like that. I truly don't. If they want to, if they want to even have a pretense of being fair.
- [42:34]
Drew Holden
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, look, just to broaden it out, I think that this is, as you mentioned, this is a problem beyond that, because I do think that, and I could point to certain people, I mean, I will just, you know, I'm going to get people in trouble. But like there's someone named Mark Preston who's at cnn, who's a top producer there who I know is fair and I think, you know, has been there for a long time and understands it. I think there's people like at the New York Times, Sean McCreek is a reporter who now covers the White House, who I think is completely fair, who covered Trump on the campaign trail. These people find their way in and they're able to do it. And rather than saying that they're apparitions, I think of someone like Sean and say, if he can do it, shouldn't this be a call to everyone and say, listen, you're allowed to do this. This is not going to get you canceled and it may get you invited to one less cocktail party. And I know that the, this is like a cliche, but it is literally the true. I mean, people have said that, that, that you don't, you can have the balls to just be real and, and to do the, your, you know, do a job slightly differently within the same organization that you're in. You know, you don't have to be be fearful of getting like, kicked out because of that.
- [43:37]
Mark Halperin
I totally agree, except I think you got to do it pretty fundamentally differently from the way most of them do it. So this question of fixing it right, like, how does it get fixed? People on the right don't want it really to be fixed. They complain about it, but it's a business opportunity for them, not just because it gives them content. Right. Megyn Kelly could talk every episode about outrages in the, in the media. She could. Fox talks about it regularly. But also, but also, it's a consumer thing. If these legacy organizations actually did what they were supposed to do, they might take some market share away from fair outlets or conservative outlets. So they're not interested in change. To me, the only possibility of change is if these organizations decide to stay in business, they must do it. So, Drew, if the Washington Post management said, boy, I've been watching nextup and I see the light now, we cannot be addicted to the left wing audience. Whatever reason we have a left wing audience, whether you believe Kessler that it's happenstance or you believe Mark Halpert that it's liberal bias, we gotta change. What steps could they take to be a profitable and fair business? Yeah.
- [44:54]
Glenn Kessler
So I think it's tough, right? I want to be clear. This is not like, oh, there's an easy fix here. But I think what they really need to do at Bedrock is they need to have fewer liberal blind spots. And I think you make a really good point about there's probably particular parts of a newsroom where liberal blind spots are most dangerous. Your media critic, your fact checker. But I think to break that herd mentality, I think one of the big problems is that there is a herd mentality in a lot of these newsrooms where you have overwhelmingly liberal voices who, one, are only interested in or primarily interested in liberal issues on liberal topics. But two, don't even think about the types of questions that a conservative might ask. And so I think it seems a little trite to say, well, we have to do the New York Times 2016 Barry Weiss experiment all over again. But I think if you actually had people in key positions in newsrooms who were, if not conservative, at least not liberal, at least not from the kind of academic, educational background that so many reporters come out of, who can hold up a finger in a news conversation, newsroom conversation and say, hey, I actually don't think this is as straightforward as maybe we're saying it is. That I think would actually go a long way to helping broaden out and ask some of these questions. And then you just have to have the kind of the wherewithal and the will to fight through your probably overwhelmingly liberal audience who won't like that. You might have something like a Washington Post where you lose all of these subscribers and all of this feedback and you have to live through that pain to get to a point where it looks something better.
- [46:26]
Mark Halperin
Steve, let's say we could clone you and your clone gets hired by Mark Thompson. And as I always say, you get paid a burisma. Hunter Biden, burisma level attorney, 50 grand a month. And Mark Thompson says, steve, you have carte blanche. You can do anything you want. Fire, fire. Tell people to do their jobs differently. And you've got three months so that when the guys from the Ruthless podcast watch cnn, they no longer have anything to say except congratulations, great job. Go ahead, tell us your three month plan. Wow.
- [46:59]
Drew Holden
Okay. I mean, look, the short answer is it's going to take longer than three months for sure.
- [47:04]
Mark Halperin
But you just want the 50 grand retainer into infinity.
- [47:07]
Drew Holden
Can we get a longer term deal here?
- [47:09]
Mark Halperin
Just tell us how you start. I'll stipulate that it will take longer than three months. But what do you do in the first three months to try to figure out? CNN says, look, we want to be known as fair. We want to not be liberal, not conservative. We just want to be hard charging, straight news, holding everybody accountable. What do you do? What do you, what's the beginning of the, the crack hour plan.
- [47:30]
Drew Holden
Yeah, I think the dirty secret is that there is a pretty low bar that a lot of people like myself who consider myself like an independent, you know, I mean, I am like, I didn't vote for Trump, but I certainly don't hate him. I like Donald Trump in general as a, and I think his, some of his policies are good. There's a pretty low bar that these organizations can do to start to make waves in that direction. I always find a very interesting hire that Chris Lick did of and I forgot his name now. And I really, I'm sorry to say that, but there is a person who covers guns and he's a great reporter. It's a specialty, you know, and they hired him to be a contributor and he showed up a couple times a month. It wasn't a massive thing, but it was just a signal, if you will, because I do Think, you know, to Drew's point and to your point in your interview with Glenn Kessler, it's not just about political bias. You could find super liberal people, but if they go to church, if they own guns, if they're from not the coastal regions, and they didn't go to elite institutions and universities, they would help in this direction. So I do think that there's that as well. But what I would do is something. And I would hold firm in this. And I think Selena Zito, our mutual friend Mark Selena, is a good example. Selena got hired the month after Donald Trump won in 2016 by Jeff Zucker. And she told me she got. She put in front of the newsroom and what did we miss? Tell us what we missed. And she started to get asked questions on. On shows like Don Lemons and said, what. What do Trump supporters think about this? But within a month or two, it was, why do they think this?
- [49:01]
Mark Halperin
Right.
- [49:01]
Drew Holden
Why are these idiots thinking this? And so, and then she. She told me, you know, about a year and a half into her contract, she just, like, stopped getting put on completely and got sidelined and got paid to sit on the sideline. So what I would do in those three months is make very specific, hire small steps that are signals to certain parts of the country and don't alienate your other audience and just start to walk in the footsteps of, what are we missing? What are the blind spots we have and start to put those people on air. Not to take over all of a sudden put Selena in primetime, or you don't all of a sudden hire Charlie Kirk as your new 10pm host, but you make small steps that signal to the other side, the signal to. To average, rational, apolitical people, even, that we are interested in what other people have to say.
- [49:45]
Mark Halperin
All right, I could talk to you both about this forever, and I hope you'll come back, but we gotta end there. Drew Holden and Steve Krakow, really grateful to you both. And I'll say again, I'm sure the left, you guys have enemies on the left who say these guys are biased. You're not. You're just looking for truth, justice, and the American way. And I'm grateful to you both for that.
- [50:01]
Harmeet Dhillon
Thank you.
- [50:02]
Drew Holden
Thanks, Mark.
- [50:02]
Mark Halperin
Thank you. All right, more next stop right after this. So listen to this opportunity. What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? That's right. Imagine putting those two payments right back in your pocket and finally finding a little breathing room. It's possible if you call the folks at American Financing today, if you're feeling stretched by everyday expenses, high cost of groceries, gas, your bills piling up. You are not alone. Most Americans now are putting these expenses on their credit cards and that makes it seem like there is no way out. American Financing, though, can show you how to use your home's equity to pay off your current debt. So you need to call American Financing today before you get to the point where you can't make those payments. Their salary based mortgage consultants are helping homeowners just like you to restructure their loans and consolidate debt, all without any upfront fees. And their customers are saving, get this, an average of $800 a month. That's the equivalent of a $10,000 raise. It's fast, it's simple, and it could save your budget this summer. So call now before it's too late. Call 866-886-2026 again, 866-866-2026 or you can visit them online at americanfinancing.net next. Next up, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for Civil Rights. I try not to do long introduction, but I'm gonna have to do a slightly long one today because of the importance of civil rights in this country and my history with the job she has. I think it's one of the most fabled and important jobs in all of American government. If you love America, if you love this country, if you're fascinated by America, if you think the great American experiment is vital to our civilization, then you have to think about civil rights. There are other divisions in the Justice Department. There's, there's antitrust and criminal. There's all sorts of things that are important for the law. But civil rights is fundamental to the American experiment. And in the red blue divide we have right now, there are very different conceptions of civil rights. Voting rights, employment discrimination, disability access, housing discrimination, police misconduct. These are all issues that since the division was founded in the Justice Department in 1957, these issues have always come up. And the people who have held this job have been at the center of some of the great debates in American society. I don't look at them in the red blue divide. I can see both sides of all the great historical arguments think about civil rights in this country. Like a lot of issues, it involves the balance between the federal government and the states and local governments, involves all three branches of the federal government, often involves conflicts within the executive branch. These are really interesting issues. They're really important issues. And as we've seen with so much in the Trump administration, the people in this government are bringing, in some cases, a different conception. The civil rights community is a phrase I've heard my whole career. And people who care about civil rights on the left have a pretty broad conception of what the federal government should do, how active the Justice Department should be, not view shared by everybody. There are people who've held this job whose names you may not know, but they are important. American historical figures. Burke Marshall, William Bradford Reynolds, Deval Patrick all held this job. Lots of people have. And they all grappled with what's enduring, what's important about civil rights enforcement by the federal government that sustains over time with bipartisan consensus, and then what changes. And Armita has been in the job not very long, but she's already found herself at the crossroads of some of these extraordinary debates. She's someone with knowledge of law, of course, but also of politics. She ran for RNC chair and is part of the Republican Party, I'd say firmament, if not establishment. But she's also, again, a very accomplished lawyer who understands that this job requires an understanding of not just the law, but of America and the balance that's required within the United States. So couldn't be more delighted and honored because of my respect for this office and for her to have Harmeet Dhillon join us now. Thank you for making time.
- [54:24]
Harmeet Dhillon
Thanks for having me, Marc, and for that wonderful introduction.
- [54:28]
Mark Halperin
Incredible job. And I'm just wondering, you've been in private practice. You've done a lot in politics and a lot in law. You've run your own firm. You went to a prestigious law school. Is this job something you thought about for a long time, wanting to have?
- [54:41]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, I've wanted to give back to my country in various ways over the years. And in fact, I actually was considered for this position in the first Trump administration and was offered some other positions as well. And I really am passionate about civil rights. And so what I decided to do instead is form my own civil rights nonprofit outside, and that's been successful center for American Liberty. That goes on as well as my law firm. But it is a dream come true to be able to serve the United States and to serve in this administration. And I have a tremendous team of patriots who are working with me. And so I can't say an ill word about it.
- [55:20]
Mark Halperin
I've read so much and listened to so much of what you've said since you started the job, and you pay homage to the history of the department and of the division and so many of the things that you would share with the people who've held this job in Democratic administrations. But you also have some issues and some points of view that are different than say, the Biden administration. How would you say for people who aren't lawyers and don't follow this stuff closely, what's the difference in orientation between the Trump Civil Rights Division and the Biden Civil Rights Division?
- [55:50]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, that's a great question mark. And there's a huge difference. There's even a pretty big difference between the first Trump administration and this Trump administration. And so just looking at the Biden side for the Biden administration has been squarely, and you might call it the third term of the Obama Obama administration. It has been squarely on the far left periphery of radicalism in terms of civil rights. And civil rights has gone from meaning what it meant in 1957 when the Civil Rights division was first created and the civil rights statutes began to be passed, the modern civil rights statutes, and they were about equality, they were about remedying existing or fairly recent discrimination that were that provided barriers to access mainly to African Americans and then to women and people with disabilities. What civil rights has come to mean in the modern Democratic Party parlance is a results oriented system of spoils, really a form of Marxism that guarantees group outcomes, group preferences and group discrimination against the formerly advantaged people. And to me, that's squarely out of step with both the wording as well as the intent of the civil rights laws and of course of our Bill of Rights and Constitution. And so our focus at the Civil Rights Division has been to actually go back to those words that meaning that intent and that concept of a race blind, colorblind, discrimination, free society. And so I don't, like some people would say that the so called affirmative action is reverse discrimination. It's just discrimination in our viewpoint in this administration, and we're putting a stop to it. It's 2025. America can congratulate itself for being the most egalitarian, fair and open society in the world. And we need to now be applying the same laws to everybody in our country equally with some base principles.
- [57:45]
Mark Halperin
Well said. And again, that lays out the difference in so many ways. The division was created in the context of the civil rights movement when a lot of the early mission was about seeing what I've heard you say you acknowledge existed a challenge for African Americans to vote and exercise other rights equally at the time. Because in 1957, people who are young may not believe it, but 1957, not that long ago, there were problems for housing and employment and voting. Now as we've progressed to where we are. Do you see any role for the Civil Rights Division of Justice Department to help black Americans? Or is or is there really no area where that's still necessary?
- [58:31]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, of course. I mean, you know, to be. To be clear, I testified in the Senate when I was confirmed, that I saw vestiges of that racism in the 1970s in rural North Carolina, where I grew up, there was a sign from the Ku Klux Klan welcoming people to my small town of Smithfield, North Carolina. It's not there today. And that's the key point. And so African Americans, Asian Americans, whites, men, women, they actually all encounter incidents of discrimination in our country today. Incidents. And we absolutely have helped African American plaintiffs in this civil rights division. If someone attacks somebody in a hate crime, you know, shouting the N word, if there's a pattern in practice of discrimination that is against a particular race or gender or religion, we've seen quite a bit of that in the United States in the last couple of years. We take action on that. We've taken disability cases, we've done a lot of traditional civil rights enforcement. But what's different is we're not assuming that because someone is a particular color, they're advantaged or disadvantaged. We look at the facts in each case, and that's a new and to some people, disturbing perspective.
- [59:43]
Mark Halperin
Yeah. Tell me what your view of the first of the 10th amendment is. I'll read it for people who don't know. The power is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people, as the 10th Amendment pertains to civil rights. Federal enforcement of civil rights law. How do you think about the 10th Amendment?
- [60:06]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, that's a good question. I will start by saying that I was the president of the largest chapter of the Federalist Society in the United States. States in law school at the University of Virginia, a wonderful law school education that I received there. And that is a central tenet of the Federalist Society and federalism. That's exactly federalism in a nutshell, which is that we have a system of a republic where most of the rights are reserved for the states. But the civil rights movement, I mean, the Reconstruction era statutes, and then the modern civil rights movement did cross over that barrier. And we've had successive court rulings, including importantly, Brown v. Board of Education, that applied these federal civil rights statutes to the states. And in fact, most of our work traditionally in the civil rights movement has been applying our federal civil rights statutes to state governments, state law enforcement, and state officials. Because if you look historically, those were the people who were standing in the way of the original intended beneficiaries of the civil rights movement from enjoying their full rights. It was sheriffs, it was school departments, it was governors, and it was the police. And so we still look at that now. I'm investigating the city of Chicago for racist hiring practices. I'm investigating Hennepin County, Minnesota, for using race in plea agreement, sentencing, and so forth. And so we do believe in federalism, but courts have made some exceptions to that in the incorporation of the 13th Amendment to the states and its application. And so quite a bit of our work. But a lot of times people come to me and they. They think that the Civil rights division is legal aid or something for the whole country. And, you know, unless I have jurisdiction, which is pretty limited, I cannot help. And there is a wonderful civil rights edifice and civil rights lawyers, I was one of them in private practice and in the states. California has some great civil rights laws, the Bain act, the Unruh Act. They're better than some federal civil rights laws in some ways. And so I do encourage people to make use of all of the federal laws and state laws that are out there to help them.
- [62:16]
Mark Halperin
Right. So you said the courts have made some exceptions in the view of people who are sort of very pro 10th amendment. They've made lots of exceptions. And the federal government, your division, Congress, the federal courts have regularly told state and local governments and private individuals and businesses what to do. They've imposed from Washington and from federal courts their conception of where rights should be. So that's confusing to people who read the 10th Amendment and wonder why and where to draw the line. So I want to ask you about some cases, and as you said, a lot of the violations, historically and probably currently, are by government actors, by police, by state and local governments, by governors. But there are also these issues in the private sector. And probably one of the cases that's gotten the most attention is the question of does a baker have to make a cake for a gay couple's wedding? If they make cakes for heterosexual couple weddings, do they have to make a cake for a gay couple? And if the gay couple wants something in the cake or on the cake, that's. That's specifically embracing or celebrating their type of wedding, do they have to do it? And that involves two rights. Right? It's the right of the private company to do what it wants to do, not conflict with their beliefs and the rights of the couple to have the same opportunities as a heterosexual couple. How do you say, how do you use that case to explain the role, if any, of the federal government in adjudicating a situation like that?
- [63:48]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, look, that's a traditional First Amendment case. I don't think that's even a close call. We aren't talking about some of the police power cases that are a little bit closer to the line, I think. So in that case, it's really a question of whether the state apparatus can be used to compel speech. And that's the lens that the courts have used in that case to compel an artist, in the case of cake decorator or website designer or what have you, to utter particular speech. And they have a right as citizens under the First Amendment to not be compelled to say certain words or utter certain concepts or speech. They have, in the case of, you know, these particular difficult cases, they have religious objections as well. So they have, you know, two different aspects of the First Amendment that are implicated by these cases. I don't really think those are a close call. That's a traditional use of the courts to enforce the First Amendment. And, you know, one of the earliest necessary uses of the. Of the courts has been that important statute. Where you see closer cases is like, you know, I know some conservatives have had issue with Title vii, for example. Title ix. Now, on the Title VII case, you know, you. I think you can easily construct an argument with some scholarship that corporations themselves are kind of a fiction created by the government. And so, you know, in the case of corporations, and that's Title vii, of course, covers only corporations above a certain size. States have more minute regulation of employment, including down to the individual level. I think that's defensible because the state has granted certain rights, certain protections, certain liability protections. And so the state has given something. The state has a right to regulate that. Similarly, in all of these cases we're looking at with American universities, school districts, government contractors, millions or billions of dollars are flowing to the institutions that are complaining that they have some 10th amendment right to be free of federal oversight. No, you don't. You get taking federal money. That is a very clean hook for federal responsibility and federal law enforcement. And so you know what? I would say, just not your question. I take issue with members of Congress looking at fads and passing federal laws to handle things that should be dealt with at the state level. I think that's a problem. And I think that there's another problem, which is some courts have been far too reticent to look at States rights in context like these vaccine mandate cases. And you know, they've, they've allowed people to run roughshod using police power and basically suspend the constitutional rights that inhere in both the Constitution and state constitutions. To suspend the Constitution, really enforce police power to allow forcible vaccination or coerce vaccination of people during COVID that's something that I litigated quite a bit. So our system of laws is not perfect. And neither do I get to be on the Supreme Court and make up those laws or in the legislature. But I did swear to do is apply those laws fairly and equally. And gosh, even as I've been in this job, the Ames decision came down from the United States Supreme Court. That made clear what some lawyers like myself have been already arguing to courts for a long time, namely that Title vii, the federal employment law statute, doesn't have different or higher standards for majority plaintiffs than minority plaintiffs. This should be obvious from the statute. I have used this type of analysis in cases against big tech companies for years, and finally the Supreme Court has come out and agreed with me in a 9 to 0 decision in June. And so it's gratifying to see the things you've been arguing come true at the highest level.
- [67:40]
Mark Halperin
I'm not one who says that just because all nine justices thought one thing, it's necessarily true. But I take your point, understand why you're gratified by that. I have so many actual and hypothetical cases to ask you about. I know we won't have time to get to them all, but I want to ask you about this. You said correctly, that if the Trump administration wants to leverage federal funds for universities and other entities, public and private, you can certainly do it. You can certainly get away with it. No one's going to stop you. But I want to ask you another question that I think implicates the 10th Amendment that confuses me. If Modesto, California's school system says we want to allow trans athletes to play in women and girls sports, why is it any business of Washington to tell them they can't do it? Why not just defer to the local people in Modesto if that's what they want to do?
- [68:28]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, that's a good question for Congress when they pass Title 9. But the fact of the matter is that every state in the country does get some support and federal funding, and they're all on federal welfare. So it is very much of a theoretical question. It isn't reality. In reality, every state is reliant on These federal welfare.
- [68:46]
Mark Halperin
But you don't have to leverage that to. I mean, you personally, but the administration doesn't have to leverage that power to tell people in Modesta what to do. You could, you could still let them have their money without saying, we don't agree with your public policy choice and we're going to basically force you to change.
- [69:03]
Harmeet Dhillon
So we're going to just abandon the girls in a certain backward place because they have a different policy. No, I don't think that is what Congress intended in Title nine. And we are not going to allow children to be abused or mutilated anywhere in this country and girls to be shamed into having to be harassed and change in front of boys. I think that's a privacy issue. That's a constitutional norm as well. And so I don't really have a big problem with that. And then you add federal funding to the mix, and I think it's clear that we have a right as a federal government. And even if there wasn't any federal funding, there is something called natural law and human rights. And I do think that they come into play where women are being forced to share spaces with men, give their trophies to men, and put themselves at sexual risk to men. I think that is highly problematic, and it is an appropriate area for police power of the federal and the state government.
- [70:00]
Mark Halperin
Again, I get why you feel strongly about it, and you speak for tens of millions and certainly for the policies of the administration. It just. Not everybody would agree with you. I know. You know, there are people who would say that's not.
- [70:11]
Harmeet Dhillon
I'm very, very, very familiar with that.
- [70:14]
Mark Halperin
So what's the. What's the standard for saying this is something where Washington should set the rules? Is it whatever the policies of the president are, how do you decide? And again, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just find this to be fascinating that the conservatives in particular talk about the 10th Amendment. But then when you see something you don't like that's happening down at the local level, you have no problem using the coercive powers of the federal government. So is there a way to describe the line between cases where you'd be inclined to be deferential and cases where you wouldn't?
- [70:48]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, that's a good question for a Federalist Society panel. But I'm here to speak on behalf of the Department of Justice and this administration, so I can't really get into policy matters like that. What I can tell you is with the resources that I have, there's no shortage of deserving Targets for our federal civil rights investigation.
- [71:06]
Mark Halperin
Okay. Tell me about your goals. I assume, at least in the abstract, you're planning to stay well into the administration, maybe all four years. How would you like to see the department, and more importantly the country, be different after the end of your time in this important job?
- [71:22]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, it may sound corny, but I'd love to see us actually living Martin Luther King Jr. S dream from his famous speech about a colorblind society and a society where people are not judging each other or couching how they describe themselves, where Elizabeth Warren isn't pretending to be Native American to get ahead in the world, and where everyone feels like they have a fair chance as a child and as an adult in the workplace, in education, in bidding for contracts for their businesses. I think that is long overdue in this country. We failed to honor that promise, and we can do it, and we are aiming towards that. I think that's really one of the issues. But there's so many other areas that the Civil Rights Division covers. I mean, I think disability rights is an important issue. I've had disabled members of my family. A Republican president passed the Americans with Disabilities act, and I think it's an important law. And we're blazing some trails here in protecting children with learning disabilities who are being abused in school systems. I think that's an important area. And I also think that the voting rights area is an area where the Civil Rights Division has really been kind of weaponized by the left. But when, you know, Republican administrations come into power, they are afraid to try to correct the balance there, and I'm not afraid of that. So in my first almost four months here in the Civil Rights Division, about four months now, I have, you know, taken on the federal civil rights statutes in the voting area that we are responsible for adjudicating. Help America Vote Act, a Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration act, and, you know, to be continued with, you know, universal overseas voters laws and so forth. And so we're trying to make sure that every American citizen feels confident in the outcome of the election, whether they're a Democrat or Republican. They should feel at the end of the day that they believe in that outcome of that election. And too many times in recent elections, I haven't felt that, and other people have not felt that because they're in my former home state of California, a million people in the voter rolls who don't belong there by admission of Los Angeles county alone, and there are probably a couple million others in that state, not to mention very lax voter maintenance Rolls all over the country. Gerrymandering is in the news this week. It's illegal to gerrymander the way that Texas was. That's why I sent Texas a letter saying that four of their districts were illegal under recent 2024 precedent out of the Fifth Circuit that applies to Texas. After I sent that letter, the United States Supreme Court has called for additional briefing in a case that may challenge the very concept of whether, forget whether states must racially gerrymander. The question is going to be whether they may racially gerrymander at all. And that actually is like throwing the deck of cards up in the air. No one is going to know how it's going to turn out. But if the end result is that every person running for Congress has to compete for everybody's vote, I think that's going to be a good thing for America.
- [74:22]
Mark Halperin
I want to talk about one more area that's been a traditional focus of the department, which is policing. You mentioned it earlier as well, and of course it's long been a focus. But in the last decade or so, a lot of your predecessors have really gotten involved in some high profile cases. And I just ask again, I'm not taking a position. I just want to hear your point of view. If there's a case brought against local police for civil rights violations, often the local case fails. And then there's a federal case that's brought. What's the logic for trying people on a federal charge of civil rights violations if they've already are subject to the state and local laws?
- [75:02]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, there is a basis, but I'll get to a point where I disagree sometimes. So there are several states now, ironically, again, I'm going back to California. There are several states with extremely lax sentencing regimes for serious crimes. In part one would actually point to federal civil rights law for that and federal judges. In the case of California, federal judges have ordered California to open up its overcrowded prisons and reduce the crowding in the prisons. And that also dates back to Clinton era drug sentencing regimes. Okay. So a lot of people have been languishing in the prisons for decades over minor drug charges. And that's a whole different policy issue. But the point is that's now flown down or flown up, however you want to call it, to criminals being let out into the street after shooting people in the back or, you know, even law enforcement officials. And so that is an area where if there is a serious transgression of a, of a human being's rights in the United States and the local penalties either did not apply because a jury reached the wrong result or the sentence was so limited that justice was not served. That is why it's called the Justice Department, not the conviction department. We are supposed to look at whether justice will be served by a prosecution or not, or not prosecuting somebody. Now, I think it can be problematic when there are successive prosecutions, unless there's some misconduct by a juror. That does happen as well. So I've authorized a successive prosecution in a case where there have been allegations of juror misconduct. So was there a fair trial? It seems like there wasn't a fair trial, but I don't believe in just trying people again and again and again until you get the result that you want. We actually saw President Trump subjected to that type of lawfare. And, you know, it's troubling and it's wrong. And so we are expected as prosecutors. And I'm mainly a civil lawyer here in the Civil Rights division, but I'm also a prosecutor prosecutor for hate crimes cases and other criminal cases that we have jurisdiction over. You're always supposed to look ethically at whether you'll be pursuing and doing justice by pursuing that prosecution. And often the answer is no. So, you know, that's. I can't describe a norm for you, but we are expected to use our discretion.
- [77:19]
Mark Halperin
Okay. Lastly, and you'll forgive the irony here, I want to ask you about your Indian heritage. We've seen extraordinary rise in the last couple of years in the business community, but also in government and politics. Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Vice President Harris, the current second lady. And you are part of an extraordinary rise, unprecedented American history. I'm wondering what you think and feel about that, and if you think it's a coincidence or that this is some moment based on the flow of history.
- [77:53]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, I'm not sure. I mean, I think each of these people are individuals who are driven to succeed by a certain culture. And, you know, I don't want to generalize, but there is a work ethic amongst Indian American immigrants, particularly recent immigrants, that is pretty aggressive. I certainly have it. As a small child and as a grown up, the. The coming here with no money and having to hustle and feed your family that my dad did, that was inculcated in my brother and myself has never left me. I work harder, typically, than just about everybody else around me, even though I'm the boss. And that's a culture that I saw at home. And I think, you know, you see Vivek and other friends of mine like that as well. And so, you know, there, there's a great heritage and history in our country of immigrants coming to this country legally, following our laws, creating jobs and succeeding. And it is the, for all the denigration our wonderful country receives from its thankless citizens, it is the best country in the world. I say that as someone who's lived in other countries, lived in the UK, practiced law there, traveled around the world to over 50 countries. This is the best country in the world. And I am just grateful to have that opportunity. Having been born in another country, come here legally with my family and this is my time to give back to my country. That is what I'm doing in this public service. I want nothing from it. I simply want to contribute. There are other immigrants here working with me as well in the Civil Rights Division and other native born Americans. We're all pulling for America and pulling together to defend our Constitution and protect the American people. And it's a wonderful job.
- [79:38]
Mark Halperin
I followed your career for a long time and again, I think the position you have now is one of the most storied and important. Even though it's only been around since right. Late 1950s, it's really one of the most important symbolically and substantively jobs in the country. I mean no disrespect to your bosses at the department, but the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights is a, is a sacred trust. And, and it's been fascinating for me just even though you've been in only for a few months, to watch how you balance all the complicated equities involved, including people within the department who don't like the President, people outside, all the stakeholders, members of Congress, et cetera. Extremely complicated what you're doing. And again, it's just incredible to watch you navigate it. And I hope you'll come back as you get more cases under your belt to help educate me on the 10th Amendment, which as you can tell, still confuses the heck out of me, confuses us all.
- [80:27]
Harmeet Dhillon
But thank you Mark very much and I'll be happy to talk to you again in the future.
- [80:31]
Mark Halperin
All right. And am I right that all the Assistant Attorney Generals, just like the Attorney General, get to be called general? Right. That's how people address.
- [80:37]
Harmeet Dhillon
Well, people do. Although if you were a grammatical pedant, you might quibble with that because general is an adjective and not a noun. And so that is a debate here. People just call me Harmeet for the most part.
- [80:52]
Mark Halperin
If I'm, if I'm with a bunch of former people who've had the job, Attorney General I always call them attorneys general. I never make that error. Okay, Harmony, I'm really grateful to you for making time and as I said, really look forward to watching how you navigate the complexities of this important job. Thank you.
- [81:08]
Harmeet Dhillon
Thank you, Mark.
- [81:10]
Mark Halperin
That's it for today's likely Emmy winning episode. We'll be back on Thursday with a brand new episode of this program. Make sure you subscribe and download. Next up, wherever you get your podcast, watch us on YouTube and everywhere else so you always know what's coming. Next up.