← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
BONUS B-Side Pod: Epstein a Mystery, Not a Conspiracy; Trump FASTER than Putin: Ari x Bazelon, Shteyngart in Pod Chat
00:28:12
The legal and journalistic scrutiny of Jeffrey Epstein's horrific crimes was slow and late - Ari & NYT's Emily Bazelon discuss that problem, dynamics behind the scenes, and how the main story was never a "conspiracy theory." Then Russian-American novelist Gary Shteyngart tackles parallels between Putin and Trump. These NEW interviews are a Beat bonus from our new podcast series "The B-Side": Real talk and Ari's extended conversations off air.
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- [01:09]
C
Glad to be here.
- [01:11]
A
We want to talk about some serious stuff, including what we've learned in the Epstein case and how that's unfolding. I also want to ask you, because here we're talking about everything under the sun and how you feel about whether law works. Is it worse? Is it falling apart? So we're going to start with Epstein and then get to that. When I look at this story, I feel like it started out as very obviously a traditional crime story, what in other venues we call true crime. Then the extent of the political links and other things he had became evident. And then somewhere over the next couple years, it became a mass movement story because a lot of people really were interested and care about it. How do you view it? And obviously you might view it differently, but as a legal writer, do you feel like it's evolved into something larger? Is it approaching like JFK levels?
- [02:00]
C
I mean, it's obvious. Yes, it's absolutely evolved into something larger. I remember the Sweetheart deal. I remember thinking that that was really strange. I Didn't understand it. It was puzzling. And those kinds of things bother me because it feels like the justice system is not behaving in any way in an even handed manner.
- [02:19]
A
Yeah.
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C
And then I feel like it, you know, his death in jail was a big turning point because that also seemed mysterious. And it then there was like a kind of sense that there was a conspiracy theory, but then it was like one of those conspiracy theories like JFK's assassination that feel like, well, maybe there is actually a conspiracy here.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah. And it's funny, lawyers, when we say conspiracy, that's its own legal term, which involves more than one person conspiring to break the law. There are conspiracies in law, then there's conspiracy theories in the world, and then there is the stigma or the negative that you're referring to. And a lot of mainstream politicians, certainly in journalism, people don't want to just be trafficking in what is unproven conspiracy theories. Then I would add, and tell me what you think there are unsolved mysteries that's different than a conspiracy theory. If you say, oh, someone won this election and you've got a group of people who for whatever reasons won't accept that, and they're only cherry picking material against that, but it looks like it was resolved an unsolved mystery, like this person dies in prison and then the key video goes missing. And then it takes, we checked, four years to get a watchdog report out
- [03:35]
C
of the doj and then there's this missing snippet.
- [03:39]
A
So how do you view that? Like, is it helpful if we're gonna take this seriously? And again, I know there are people who wanna sell anything for their reasons, money, clicks, whatever. I know New York Times tries not to do that, we try not to do that. But what do you think of that spectrum of like an unsolved mystery? Already is different.
- [03:55]
C
Well, I think as journalists, you want to, when you don't know the answer to questions, you want to remain open to the idea that maybe there is something more here. On the other hand, if you're constantly like chasing wild leads, that's a waste of everyone's time and you feel foolish. So I think for a while it seemed like we were all supposed to just accept the idea that Epstein committed suicide in jail and not question it and that it was sort of fringy to think otherwise. But it never really got adequately answered.
- [04:26]
A
Can I ask you a hard question?
- [04:27]
C
Yes.
- [04:29]
A
When you have that pressure, you don't want to seem fringy because of your own seriousness. Your editors, then how do you not let that become a bias where you're not pursuing certain things? How do you, as a legal reporter? Because I have my thoughts. How do you do that?
- [04:45]
C
I mean, I think you're right. I think that it does. If people are mocking the pursuit of something as a conspiracy theory, then you might feel like you're not supposed to touch it. It's a little. And you know, this is where Julia K. Brown gets a ton of credit, Right. She's been on your show, and deservedly so. Like, she took this incredibly seriously from the point of view of the survivors in a way that I think other people just didn't dig into it the way she did. And she built out a set of evidence about their experiences that made the harm and the extent of the harm undeniable. And so then, at least to me, that felt like, okay, well, now I'm interested in this. Now it justifies all this attention because you're talking about all these women who, as girls, some of them, had these incredibly terrible experiences. And then it stopped feeling salacious to me. It started feeling like, okay, this matters and we don't understand. We haven't gotten to the bottom of it. We're still not at the bottom of it.
- [05:43]
A
No. And have you observed, again, helping peel back the layer of the system? Here we are, we're inside a mainstream media institution, but we have a little more time. Did you observe a shift where whoever they are, but the people who matter, what we call the elite, suddenly said, oh, I guess this does matter. I guess we do need to do it. Did you see a legitimization? Yeah.
- [06:04]
C
And I think, look, the pressure for it started on the right. It seemed first, like that was absolutely where it was coming from. And the people who were a lot of them Trump supporters or just in the Maggie universe, were kind of keeping the story alive. And then I think it became bipartisan. And that was a pretty interesting moment in Congress where it's not just Tom Massie, the Republican, who's leading the charge, but you have Democrats starting to come in and look, you know, there was something politically opportunistic about that because they realized, like, there were these unanswered questions, but also it seemed like Trump was trying to make the story go away. So it's, you know, there was a political incentive there. But that was an important turning point moment, too, because then you really have serious congressional attention to this story, which previously had felt like it was kind of coming up from the bottom and the media was interested in it. But it didn't have necessarily like the political establishment fully engaged, and then they got really engaged and now we have all these wild disclosures.
- [07:04]
A
Right. And it's funny you say that because I think about that in terms of reporting. We're in the politics. So you can be like, here's what it feels like to do normal yoga and you're as flexible as you are. And then you can try to do hot yoga and feel like, well, I'm doing the same thing, but there's all of this heat. And then at a certain point you're like, you don't know. You'll see. I'm going to land this analogy. You don't know, like, is this harder because of the heat? What percent of it is the heat? You almost can't even really know. All you can try to do is your practice yogi. And when you're reporting this kind of story, if you actually care about the facts. And I get that some people are just going to do what they want with it, but you kind of are swimming through something with so much political heat. And the developments relate to political institutions like campaigns in the Congress and what the government does. Even as you say, well, we're still going to follow these leads. So it doesn't really matter to people in the UK which political party did this for which benefit. In the US the reality of the strength of the evidence has mattered. If you talk to survivors and advocates and lawyers, they see that as long overdue progress in a whole different country. And so you have that or we've been covering. Trump clearly has these problems here and the Trump DOJ is under rightful scrutiny because they're the ones with the power now. But we've also covered how Epstein very deliberately tried to cultivate and in some reports, allegedly potentially illicitly cultivate leverage over both parties, financial institutions, the customs officials. The files added more detail to how. And it's not the biggest issue, but it's an issue. And how he was trying to basically curry favor with the Federal Customs Enforcement down there, which matters for all sorts of reasons. But then we have Larry Summers, who was at one point a gold standard figure in the Democratic Party from President Clinton. Treasury Secretary Kathy Ruemmler was a top White House lawyer. It's not an accident. It's because Epstein wanted to have all this insurance. And so that's a long winded way of saying that you can be in the sauna of the hat. Yucha. You don't like this analogy?
- [09:18]
C
No, I kind of like.
- [09:19]
A
And you could be in it and Be like, wow, there's all of these other pressures and all these people have all these reasons, and yet where we're trying to land is not who does this benefit, but, like, what's the truth?
- [09:30]
C
Yeah. So I guess I would say two things. I mean, one is that what you were talking about is this, like, sense of corruption from this whole elite network that feels like a cabal that was. And you can see everyone talking to each other, and it feels like there's this layer of social capital way above the rest of us, certainly above me. And people know each other and they're benefiting and Epstein is working it. To go back to your analogy, what that brings up for me is like, sometimes it's easier for me to work on a story when I don't have obvious political, like, heat to worry about. Right. You're just, like, pursuing the facts. It doesn't matter.
- [10:10]
A
A warm temperature, place to work out.
- [10:12]
C
Yeah. Like, you're just doing your thing. Thing we always do, which is like, asking questions, pursuing the facts where. Wherever they're gonna lead. Right. If there's a lot of political heat on something, then we become more self conscious because there's this other whole layer going on of consequences. And you're still supposed to. We have the same tools. We're supposed to do the same thing. I think, though, sometimes it just, the. The stakes go up and you feel like there's all this attention, and then sometimes it's really hard. You do think about, like, what the consequences are gonna be. You can't help but think about that. And, you know, you still have to, like, call it the way it's gonna go. But it does change what it feels like to be doing the work when it gets hot.
- [10:59]
A
Great answer. Really interesting. And I like, we're just kind of really talking through it. Part 2. In conclusion, the law in general, is it broken? Go ahead.
- [11:09]
C
I mean, I think it is vulnerable and weak right now in a way that feels different to me.
- [11:16]
A
So different than your entire career doing this?
- [11:18]
C
Yeah, different than my entire career. And I would say that there are two big institutions. I mean, the Justice Department, the politicization of the Justice Department, which, you know, the Trump administration has been very frank about. They see. I mean, Trump just hung a big banner of his picture on main justice in Washington. That kind of says it all. Like, you know, he sees DOJ as an extension of the presidency. And that has not been the way it has worked since Watergate. We've had separation independence, especially when it comes to criminal investigations.
- [11:51]
A
An honest prosecutor Looks at crimes, not people.
- [11:55]
C
Exactly. Start with the behavior.
- [11:57]
A
Trump admits that they just wanna target people.
- [12:00]
C
Right. And so that is, to me, like breaking something. And it goes beyond norms. I've gotten kind of frustrated with norms. Like, we depend on them so much and they're so important, and they worked fine, mostly for 50 years. But, like, actually, it's the rule of law that's at stake. Right. And so that vulnerability feels new to me. And then the other thing I think is different is the Supreme Court. And I don't think it makes sense to write off the Supreme Court as a bunch of hacks who just do Trump's bidding. And the tariff ruling earlier this week is, like, the best evidence for that. At the same time, it has become deeply conservative and ideological in a way that is new in my lifetime. Sometimes I like to go back and think about the Warren court, which was the last time the court was super liberal, maybe the only time the court was super liberal. And you can argue that that court was like, you know, charging ahead in this activist way in a way that is similar to what's happening on the right, that, like, you get control and then you pursue your agenda, and that's how it works. And liberals didn't complain about the war in court. But I still think some of these opinions are so unpersuasive. I mean, to me, it goes back to Shelby county when the Supreme Court started dismantling the Voting Rights act, which, like, we may be about to see more of from them. It just is not, on its face, a good opinion. That majority of the.
- [13:25]
A
Yeah, it's bad faith, probably.
- [13:27]
C
It's just like bad legal reasoning. And some of the, you know, the reliance on the theory of originalism, this idea that you just go back to the original meaning of the Constitution or the law and the text is there and you just read it and you automatically apply it. Like, they've. The conservatives have never done that consistently. It's not a methodology that really leads to neutrality the way it's often claimed. And so all. And now they've switched this broader, even less accountable theory called history and tradition, where you can just, like, cherry pick from any year anyway, all that is that, to me, feels new and bad.
- [14:06]
A
Yeah. And that's why, depending on your reference, if you like Zoolander, it's when Mugattu's like, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Or network. For our older viewers who remember, if you go back to old movies, I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. I Watch some of this stuff. And it is funny because there is a certain type of breaking point. And you can concede that all societies have had progress over time. That law has always moved in concert with political and public reality. So rich people do better, and 200 years ago white male property owners did better. And you can. That's a valid long standing problem. That's its own problem. But then you have what in autocratic studies they call dual state, where separate from that real problem, you look up and you go, oh yeah, there's just these rules and then there's the actual dictatorial effort over here. Or to quote Martin Luther King, he said, never forget that everything that happened in Nazi Germany was legal. By which he meant it was part of that government system. Legal doesn't always mean valid. And I'm not saying we're there, don't misquote me. But I'll give you the final word on. There are times where you're trying to just show what's happening. And other times you go, wait, maybe all of the way that we're looking at this is changing around us and everyone. That means lawyers. I'm a lawyer and a journalist. People who are in this field actually need to step up and make a bigger switch. You get the final word.
- [15:39]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think about this dual state historical analogy a lot. Right. I mean, you can also use it for Jim Crow. It applies like you have one law for white people and one law for black people. And the white people kind of pretend that everything's okay and it's like completely not. And afterward it seems utterly obvious it should. That that is utterly unjust. And I don't know where we are on that trajectory right now. I feel like it's important not to get ahead of myself about this because it's not my job to get ahead of the facts. Like I'm supposed to find out the facts. Thank you. And also, I don't think it helps because it just makes us all really cynical. Right.
- [16:25]
A
That's.
- [16:25]
C
Yeah, the country, you know, there is more authoritarian impulse swirling around right now, far more than in my lifetime. But those impulses, those forces have not consolidated power really thoroughly, I don't think. And so I feel like it's really important to remember that the power still lies with the people and, and that so far elections are still happening that have, you know, they are flawed, but they need to remain free and fair. We need to believe that they can remain free and fair and fight for that. That's one thing I do feel like we can fight for democracy as journalists and lawyers.
- [17:01]
A
Yes. And we are within a factual system that respects law, rule of law. And yeah, I think that's a hopeful note. And to end on that hopeful note, the fact that bad things happen doesn't mean you don't try to do good things. The fact that you say, oh, we have a law against murder, you vast majority of people agree that we protect human life and we don't support killing people. The fact that there is murder and some murder goes unsolved doesn't mean lead people. Most rational people then say, I guess this whole banning murder thing doesn't work. Right. The fact that there are bad people doing bad things and in some periods of time they get away with more of it. Isn't that. Although. Yeah, look, I liked having you here on we don't, you know, it's just post show after hours outside. If you have. Do you have any ideas for the name podcast?
- [17:48]
C
Oh, name, huh? It totally feels like a podcast to me.
- [17:52]
A
Right. Well, that's the vibe. You guys can drop names in the comments if you want for these conversations. You can subscribe to these legal breakdowns. You can find Emily Bazelon on our TV show and here on YouTube. Thanks for joining.
- [18:03]
C
Thank you, Ari.
- [18:04]
A
Donald Trump is trying to make the US More like Russia under Putin. I know people say a lot of Russia talk and what are the facts behind that? That's what I'm actually going to get into right now. I'm Ari Melber, journalist, lawyer. If you watch these programs, you can always subscribe on YouTube, but we actually have the facts to back this. This is from the Financial Times and I can put this up on our YouTube page as well. This is just, you get the general snapshot. What it shows is that when you actually count the measures of autocratic and dictatorial moves, things we think of as problems over there and not here, at least a lot of Americans do. Rounding up journalists and searching them or arresting them or jailing them for things they do and report, or in Don Levin's case, that he was at a scene where there was violations, which is standard journalism all the time. We cover protests that are past curfew or involve trespassing. Journalists in America have the First Amendment to protect them. So covering that doesn't make you a part of that crime, except if you're in Putin's Russia or now Donald Trump's America. And this chart shows that Trump is actually pushing us away from rule of law, democracy faster than Putin did over time in Russia. That's not Something that's a criticism. That's what the actual measurable facts show. And so that's kind of my introduction to what we're doing here, because I've talked to some of our viewers and folks about what we want to get into and learn and not just have the strictures of television. So I got television quality guests, including Gary Steingart, who's a celebrated novelist, a Putin critic, now a Trump critic. Come on out here, Gary. Hey, how we doing? Good.
- [19:39]
B
Oh, good to be the first person on this couch.
- [19:41]
A
There we go. It's a really good. How do you feel?
- [19:43]
B
I feel great.
- [19:44]
A
Good. So we're here. It's light tv, but more casual. I love it. Maybe. Maybe a cross between Late Night and Wayne's World for those. Remember, but you actually know what you're talking about when it comes to Putin. Why do you say that Trump's moving faster to decline rule of law than even Putin in Russia?
- [20:01]
B
Well, look, I grew up partly in the Soviet Union, then moved to the United States. I seem to be involved with every failing superpower out there. Is it me?
- [20:10]
A
I don't know.
- [20:12]
B
Let's see. When you look at this chart, which is really incredible. God bless the Financial Times. When you look about where we went, how far down we went in a year, if this trend continues, by the end of Trump's term, we will be behind Turkey in Russia.
- [20:28]
A
Worse. Yeah.
- [20:29]
B
Will be worse. If, you know, this continues. If we don't continue to do the wonderful things people have done in Minneapolis and other cities, if we don't contact our Congress people, if we don't march in the wonderful. Oh, those wonderful parades. I covered one of them for the New York Times. The no Kings parade in Chicago, which, of course, is a city that has dealt so wonderfully with what Trump is doing, you know, because dictators, authoritarian people, are scared of being made fun of. And it's also important for us to know that we're not alone, that there are so many people like us. The problem with countries like Russia and other places is that you can't appear somewhere. When Putin started making sure that demonstrations were becoming illegal, people decided the rule of law, said that a demonstration is more than one person. So one person would appear, because that's not really a demonstration. It's just one person. And then when Putin said you couldn't use, you couldn't talk about the special military operation, which is what the invasion of Ukraine was called, people would just show up, one single person holding a copy of War and Peace because it has the word war. In it, which was banned by Putin. So it's fascinating to see how people resist. We still have the opportunity to resist in Russia. That opportunity has long been done.
- [21:50]
A
Right. And then you're past that point and you're also speaking to something that you're a novelist, among other things. Like that happens when there are limits. I mean, people today, online know if there's a limit, that doesn't really make sense. If they say, well, you can't mention killing or self harm, there's a respectful, thoughtful way to do it. But you're not going to discuss what's going on in the world without discussing the fact that the US government killed two people in Minnesota. So people quickly come up with, oh, they're gonna say unaliving or they're gonna say it a different way. And if you tell people, yeah, you can't gather, you're giving them examples. But what about this sort of civic tipping point where. And I've been in countries in Latin America where it seems like things got so bad that most folks weren't trying to protest anymore, they were trying to survive. It doesn't feel like we're at all there yet, from what I can observe, although there's a contrast between elites and CEOs who are like, okay, I'll sit this one out. And citizens who aren't. We've covered that. But like, did you observe that or your family in Russia? Is there a tipping point there and are we at risk of that?
- [22:53]
B
Well, look, the reason the Soviet Union fell apart was there wasn't enough ham on the shelves.
- [22:58]
A
It was a very simple reality. Yeah, it was reality.
- [23:00]
B
You know, we left in 1979 and 50,000 of us, we were called the grain Jews. We were traded because the Soviet Union didn't have enough wheat to feed its people. So we were traded for bushels of wheat. I was traded for a baguette.
- [23:13]
A
You know, I don't know who got
- [23:14]
B
the better side of that one. But, you know, the thing is that these regimes are both evil and stupid. There's a lot of incompetence. The whole thing that just happened with El Paso's airport is another wonderful example of people cosplaying. And then there's real life effects and everything falls apart. So. But the question is, how far can we take this without? How far can we trust that our systems are resilient? Well, according to this chart, they ain't that resilient.
- [23:41]
A
One is that again, real talk? Is that a little depressing? People like to share good news plans. I'm someone who usually looks at, okay, what's possible, but is it depressing that ultimately it's reality, like you say in economics, which again, Trump seems to know people who've underestimated him by putting this cartoon criticism of Trump. He hasn't just zeroed in on economics, he zeroed on the Federal Reserve. He's put two members under investigation. Like an autocrat move. Not completely autocrat. We don't see any validity there. Because he wants them to do what they otherwise wouldn't do, which is artificially juice the economy so he doesn't run into the problem, you're saying.
- [24:18]
B
Right. Well, look, he's following the Bannon plan. Every segment of society, including Bad Bunny's performance, you know, at the super bowl, is an object that he tries to politicize. There's no, there's nothing left that's unpoliticized. That is a very autocratic move. Growing up in the Soviet Union, everything was politicized. You know, the space race, this, that. Not that it wasn't here, but it was just incredible.
- [24:38]
A
And why, what is what, how did that benefit the ruler?
- [24:40]
B
Because the ruler then has their hands in every little thing. You can't turn to a private reality. That's just you. The ruler is always in the same. They're always right next to you. It's in a Big Brother kind of way.
- [24:52]
A
They're always looking over your shoulder, which is whack.
- [24:55]
B
Whack.
- [24:56]
A
And interestingly is not really how most people want to live. When you think about. Again, some people don't call politics at all in America lately. It's become a big part of everything.
- [25:05]
C
Yeah.
- [25:06]
A
And then you got betting markets. But, but when politics works well, it empowers people to have better lives and not have to think about politics.
- [25:16]
B
Well, that's it, you know, so this is, this is what my last book I wrote, Viera, which is about this 10 year old girl said slightly in the future. The reason I wrote it was because, and it does have a kind of dystopian element to it, but I wrote it because I had, my son's 12 now, but he was 10 and he knows so much as a 10 year old, he knew so much about politics because that's what he and his friends talk about. And that's the same way that when I was a 7 year old in Leningrad, I knew every member of the politburo. But this is what happens when you live in a world where, you know, it's just you and the leader. I was just in a country, I Won't even name it. But an authoritarian country where people kept saying, our president, our government, and then looking this way, that way, you know, and that's exactly. And then saying things that were obviously false about the president and the government.
- [25:59]
A
Yeah. And I'll share one final thought. That's, that's about something serious. And then I'll ask you one more question and we'll end like. We have had Rob Reiner on our show a lot, Rest in peace. And I've gotten to know him a little bit. And after he was tragically killed, and we had covered that that night, you know, we thought in the show about how to cover it. And we covered it by looking at his life and his legacy as well as you do in news. The latest in the investigation, that's part of the news and that's where we left it. Now, I'm not second guessing because there's a million ways to do it. Some people were so outraged by what the President said that we didn't cover that night, that I'm not repeating that they felt the need to respond, which I understand, because that's how that stuff works. But we really looked at it like, wow. And my mom even mentioned to me like, oh, so it's obviously despicable what he said. But also it's that Trump couldn't stand that for a day, the attention would be fully on someone else. And so he's using outrage to get in there. So at least people are still talking about him. And as you say, that's the opposite of a conservative government that says get things done and get out of people's lives. He's everywhere.
- [27:08]
B
It's fascinating because it's a damned if you, the damned if you don't kind of scenario.
- [27:11]
A
Well, that's the challenge in news.
- [27:11]
B
Well, that's the challenge of it. And I think, you know, growing up in Russia, there was a phrase that means a writer couldn't write, couldn't publish things because he would be, whatever, lose his job, maybe even end up in prison or a gulag. So he wrote into his desk. That's what the phrase means, meaning he would write down his thoughts, but he would keep them in the desk. Which is interesting. Right. Because when you. 1984 begins with Winston writing his diary, Right. His diaries, everything that he can't say
- [27:39]
A
about this regime, the Orwellian government, state.
- [27:43]
B
And I think we are. We were talking earlier about universities and law firms, etc. There is such a self censorship now that there is some. That's the scariest aspect of it all. And yeah, I think, I think it's wonderful that you honored Rob Reiner. I think that's probably the best thing you could do. It almost like you took a little oxygen away from that from our friend the orange fellow. But, you know, at the same time, it's like, and I think Masha Gessen wrote about this in the Times.
- [28:10]
A
All you Russian writers, all of us,
- [28:12]
B
well, we're all, you know, we grew up in the same. I mean, the whole idea is you have to keep the way he's fighting and Bannon and his minions the way they're trying to create a Leninist system where everything goes back to the great leader. We have to fight back in every way we can while maintaining our own dignity, our own joy and happiness. Because remember, if they can remove the
- [28:32]
A
joy and happiness, let them take your joy.
- [28:34]
B
If they take the joy, if they take our Mr. Bunny away from us,
- [28:38]
A
they take the joy. Then what? You're left with only almond.
- [28:41]
B
You're left with only almond.
- [28:43]
A
Some people say, what do you get when we're off air? You get the jokes I wouldn't even tell on television. Yeah, they're that bad. Final question, on a lighter note. Do you read the comments? Do you read the YouTube comments about.
- [28:53]
B
Oh, I'm very non commenty.
- [28:55]
A
I'm scared of comments. You don't look. So if you're on a show and then it's on you, you don't look at the comments.
- [28:59]
B
I try not to look at the comments.
- [29:00]
A
They're all silly.
- [29:00]
B
It's all my parents saying you're terrible. No, I'm kidding.
- [29:03]
A
Well, we will check out some of the comments. You can always subscribe. Thanks to Gary for St. Thanks for sticking around.
- [29:08]
B
Thank you.
- [29:09]
A
Hey, it's Arian 50. Don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe. Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it. So by stopping at the education section of a resume, you might throw away the perfect hire skills first. Hiring helps you see talent others miss. Like more than 70 million stars skilled through alternative routes, let their story unfold and gain a competitive advantage. Because hiring managers who start with skills are 60% more likely to find a successful hire. Hire skills first. Learn why@10ThePaperceiling.org, brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.