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(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music) - [Announcer] And now, the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, featuring journalists, newsmakers, and innovators from around the country in conversation about the issues making headlines.

Thank you for joining us for "Left, Right & Center: Serious About Satire," with Mo Elleithee, Sarah Isgur, and David Green.

Before we begin, a special thank you to our stage sponsor, BECU, and our founding sponsor, the Kerry & Linda Killinger Foundation.

Finally, thank you to our host sponsor, Amazon.

(attendees applauding) - Welcome to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival.

I'm David Green.

I'm the host of "Left, Right & Center" from KCRW.

And I am joined today by Sarah Isgur and Mo Elleithee.

Mo is the executive director at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service.

He was the communications director for the Democratic National Committee and also advised Hillary Clinton.

Sarah is senior editor at The Dispatch.

She is a lawyer and was the spokesperson at the Department of Justice under President Trump.

Thank you for being here, everyone.

Thank you, Mo and Sarah.

(attendees applauding) - Thanks.

- You know, the mission of our show and what we do is try to show America that it is still possible to sit in a room, and bring in different political perspectives, and talk about hard things.

And the goal is for none of us to wanna change the subject to what we had for breakfast, or run for the doors, or try and yell at each other, or throw things at each other, which, sadly, I think that's just the standard.

If you can meet the standard, and be in a room, and talk about hard things, we've accomplished something.

I think one of the important things that a lot of people speak about is you want a foundation.

Like, it's better to have a foundation and a relationship that predates the hard topics that can rip you apart.

Mo, I've known you for years since I covered Hillary Clinton and you worked for Hillary Clinton.

Sarah, we've known each other for less time, but we're already happy to talk about, like, marriage and bad TV, and I feel like that's the measure of friendship.

So we've established that kind of foundation.

And you two, even though you come from two different sides politically in DC, you met over food, right?

- Falafel.

- Falafel.

- Yeah, so the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee are actually about a block and a half, two blocks away from each other.

And in the center of that two-block sort of Tetris symbol are the food trucks.

And so, if you want to eat at lunch, you're going to have to form a bipartisan relationship.

- (laughs) Or it'll be really unpleasant.

- It'll be really unpleasant 'cause that line for the food trucks is not short.

It takes a while to get your falafel.

And so this was like in the beginning of the age of Twitter campaigns, really.

And so we would, you know, be sort of tweeting little political jabs at each other in the morning, and then meet up at the falafel line, and be like, yeah, that was pretty funny.

(laughs) - And we are still here today.

- And here we are.

(laughs) - Hi, friend.

- Hi, friend.

- We're gonna sort of, you know, just ease right into topics such as, how about Israel and Gaza?

I think that issue, as we've talked about on the show, has tested even the bounds of civility that we established and take pride in, which I think speaks to how hard it is to talk about that.

You know, as I've said to to both of you privately, you know, being Jewish is not this prominent part of my identity that I think about, like, all the time.

I'm not religious at all.

My wife who is not Jewish says that she's been to way more Seders than I have, and it's probably true.

But after October 7th, I felt this sudden, unexpected, like, rage that I had to defend.

I had anger about what had happened to my people.

And it was deep and it was real.

And then over the weeks and months since, there's been this other emotion that has come, and it's this sense of shame, shame that somehow a government that is connected to me or not is doing horrific things.

And, you know, meanwhile, in our political conversation, we hear a lot about this term, antisemitism.

And, you know, I find myself conflating it in a way, where I'm like, well, I'm Jewish, and if this is antisemitic stuff that we're hearing in some cases, should I be scared?

What does that mean for me?

And so it brings a lot of sort of a personal emotion that I never expected into really hard conversations that we've had.

And I think that reflects where a lot of people are.

- Yeah, I mean, we live in an era where everything political is black and white because that's how we score political points, is making everything black and white.

And this issue really sucks at being black and white, right?

There are a few black and white moments.

The attack on October 7th was clearly a bad thing.

It was clearly a tragedy.

And we can and should all be behind that notion.

The taking of hostages and the fact that they're still being held is clearly a tragedy, and we should all be calling for their release.

But the death of so many civilians in Palestine is also a tragedy.

And we can and should be doing more to put an end to those hostilities.

How we get there is complicated.

It is ugly, it is messy.

But for me, there should not be any complication in being supportive of the Jewish people and the Israeli state while also being critical of the Israeli government.

There should be no problem with being supportive of the Palestinian cause, as I am, while being completely and totally anti-Hamas, and the fact that Hamas is putting the Palestinian people.

They are not liberators.

They are putting the Palestinian people at further risk by holding on to the hostages and by waging these types of attacks.

Wouldn't it be so cool if our political discourse could reflect all of that?

But it's not.

- That you could believe all those things at once.

- That you can believe all those things at once.

But it's not.

Can we?

(attendees applauding) - Can we stop doing that?

- I think it is important to think about why this has captured America's domestic political culture war to the extent that it has.

Because, to be honest, I do not believe for a moment that this is about Israel, and Gaza, and Hamas, and Netanyahu, for the majority of Americans who did not know where those places were on a map a year ago, and suddenly all now have incredibly strong feelings about it.

And so I think you have to ask, why this, why now, and what is it actually about?

To me, it is actually far more about illiberalism, authoritarianism, who has the power, and in some ways, a focus on free speech.

You know, you talked about antisemitism.

I do not care one bit how you define antisemitism because antisemitism is not against the law.

But the problem is that the number of people who are interested in defending the value of free speech when it's the speech they hate, where are those people now?

- There's the question of why Americans are so wrapped by this.

But also, like, I think it's a question of, are our elected leaders, like in Congress and elsewhere, should we even view them as credible in helping us process this moment?

And I think that, you know, like Julia Ioffe, who's a friend of mine, she writes for Puck news, I mean, she held both party's feet to the fire in a way over this.

I mean, she wrote that there's some hypocrisy on the far left, that they will put the emotional wellbeing of marginalized groups ahead of someone's free speech unless we're in this case now.

And they're saying that, you know, basically the opposite, that free speech is more important.

She's also held the right's feet to the fire, saying that, I mean, under the banner of fighting antisemitism, a lot of Republicans are basically forwarding an agenda, A, to suggest that college institutions are these liberal far-left places that are completely out of touch, and two, like they're doing things that they know are going to create the chaos that we're seeing right now, which will just feed into Donald Trump's campaign, saying that, like, the world is going to hell, everything is chaos, you can't trust anyone, you need me.

And so it's like we're talking about all those things.

We're not even focusing on what's happening in Gaza.

But yet, somehow, our political conversation and the behavior of our political leaders is drawing into all these other fights, and it just feels uncomfortable and bad.

- 'Cause it is.

It is uncomfortable and bad.

The most consequential advances we have made in our republic have come on the heels of a real protest movement.

My problem with this protest movement is I don't get them.

I don't get what they're trying to accomplish, right?

I want there to be a focus on the plight of the Palestinian people.

But I look at what's happening on college campuses and I don't get how they are actually accomplishing that.

There are other ways and other places to do it more productively.

I look at images of people sitting on the Golden Gate Bridge, shutting it down to traffic in the name of helping advance the Palestinian cause.

I promise you, there is no more sure-fired way to turn public sentiment against you than shutting down traffic during rush hour.

What this has shown us is that neither side truly believes in unfettered free speech, right?

That is just not a thing.

- They wanna limit it when it serves their own they views and purposes.

- They wanna limit it to their purposes.

And if you want to see it, this is about to accelerate because we are seeing a generational shift as well.

Poll after poll after poll shows that when you ask Americans what is the more fundamental value, what is the more important value, protecting speech or stopping hate speech, protecting free speech wins by a narrow margin.

But when you break it down and you ask young Americans and just look at the results there, in the past decade, we have seen a massive shift to the, I've seen some polls where it's two to one, young people believing that stopping hate speech is more important than protecting free speech.

- But I think you'd agree- - Regardless of where you are on that, like you have to acknowledge that is going to be a fundamental seed change in how we practice democracy if those young people continue to carry that belief into positions of leadership when they achieve them.

- The problem is they wanna also be the ones who get to define what the hate speech is.

They don't want someone else to get to define that.

They're not gonna like that.

This is how you end up in the place of free speech.

No one likes speech that they find offensive and that they personally disagree with and hate.

That's the reason we have free speech though, is because who gets to decide whose speech is good?

Whose speech is hate speech?

And if you can't agree on who you want making that decision for you, is it the president?

How about a Republican president?

How about a Democratic president?

Is it Congress?

They don't seem very good at getting anything done.

So if you can't agree on who's going to do it, then you end up in the same place, free speech, and protecting the speech that you hate most.

The encampments violate the free speech rights of the other students on campus who also have a right to protest, who also have a right to have their voices heard, when you refuse to abide by the permitting process by time, place, and manner restrictions.

Time, you know, you can't protest at 10:00 PM 'cause people need to sleep.

Manner, you can't use a bullhorn and disrupt class.

Place, you can't do it in a class.

You can't take over a hall.

That's protecting the free speech rights of other students.

It turns out you do have to protect free speech because we can't agree on what that hate speech is.

Because if you think MAGA is hate speech, then you're gonna have to think that the Palestinian scarves are hate speech.

Oh, you don't wanna agree on that?

Then we're just gonna have to agree to disagree and let both thrive.

- I think we need to do something better.

We need to convey the stakes in a way that doesn't make us seem like we're biased.

As a journalist, I believe in freedom of the press, I believe in democracy.

I think Donald Trump has made it very clear that he wants to undermine institutions.

He says these things.

He is enamored by authoritarian leaders around the world.

He says these things.

Like, we need to somehow figure out a way for the media to convey the stakes of this election.

We as journalists can believe in democracy and convey that there are things that could threaten our democracy while also respecting that part of democracy is American voters having a choice.

And if they decide to make a choice, once we have conveyed those stakes, then they make that choice.

But what I just described is not happening right now, and I don't have the answer.

- So I would agree with that characterization of Donald Trump.

I believe he is a threat to democracy.

Here's the challenge, I think.

In most recent polls, I think it's between 70 to 80% of Americans believe that democracy is either not working for them or just under direct threat, under direct assault.

So that's problem number one is what's our baseline for the conversation on why democracy is under assault?

Number two, I agree that the press has a role to play in this.

The problem is for a significant portion of Americans, across all parties, the press is seen as one of the threats to democracy.

The press is seen as part of the problem.

They are seen as too polarized and polarizing.

They are not trusted in terms of the information that they give in.

The press is seen as, you know, there was just a poll this week that came out that showed an overwhelming majority of Americans, including, I was surprised frankly at the high number of Democrats.

I almost expect it from Republicans.

I spent six years as a Democratic contributor on Fox News.

I didn't watch Fox News.

I watched the other networks.

And then I would go on air and talk about Fox News.

And the conversation I was having there was never the same conversation I was seeing anywhere else.

We're just having different conversations as a result because I'm not gonna trust what's over here.

I'm only gonna trust what's over here.

- How do we turn that around?

- How do we turn that around?

And how do we reestablish that trust?

- I think it's a big problem that the media has lost trust.

And I think there are a few different things to blame for that.

But one of the things to blame is the media.

They have lost the trust of the American people through their own actions, through a lack of curiosity and knowing what end result they want, which is the opposite of what the purpose of journalism is.

And so you look at the media's response to the origins of Covid or the media's response to the Hunter Biden laptop story, and it's not that they got it wrong.

I mean, you can't bat a thousand, right?

I don't.

They weren't curious though.

And in fact, when they were presented with facts that didn't meet with the worldview that they wanted, the ends that they wanted to get to.

- I was there.

I was curious.

Like, I was curious about whether there might have been a lab leak.

But like everything that I was hearing from the reporting that we were doing, from really smart scientists, were, like, that's really unlikely.

- Yeah, and it turns out that those scientists were being bullied and silenced by sort of mobs that were led by journalists, the White House, other places.

And it was up to reporters to be the brave ones and to say, that's weird that the scientists are all saying the same thing when scientists generally, like, can't agree on anything.

- But why is that important?

Let's just say we could reverse the clock.

Like, why would that have helped the media have more credibility today, if I had sat there and said like, let me be more curious about the Wuhan lab?

- Again, you get to the root cause of that, and it was an unwillingness to have the courage to stand up, to be different, to be curious, to do the things that journalists pride themselves on so much.

And so, look at the sort of whistleblower, if you wanna call 'em that, from NPR, who said, what's happening, the conversations that are happening in our editorial rooms are so bonkers, and it's not what we're telling the public that we're doing, that we will decide who we use in our stories based on their race and ethnicity.

You're not telling your listeners that.

And look, I think that that's important, to have that conversation out in the open, but the response from NPR was to discipline him, and then he was pushed out.

- There are a couple of things that can be done.

One, we need more diversity in our newsrooms.

And I mean all the diversities, right?

We need more people of color.

We need people who come from different life experiences.

We need more people who didn't go to coastal, you know, elite journalism schools, people who come from middle America.

We need people who come from families that represent more ideological diversity and who themselves have, you know, more ideological diversity.

One, I think that will help because it's just, there's a bubble.

And number two, I've long believed this, the line between analysis and editorializing has been so blurred.

We need reporters who can- - Absolutely.

- We need reporters who can give us smart analysis and give us context.

But it's become too blurred with editorializing to the point where I don't need you as a reporter to tell me what is and isn't a threat to democracy.

What I need you to do is tell me what is happening, what they said, what they did, and what that would result in- - [David] And let you decide.

- And let me decide.

And I think that will change how some people view the media.

- Absolutely.

- I had a contract with CNN after I left the Department of Justice.

They found out that I had been married by Brett Kavanaugh.

And they said that was such a lack of judgment on my part that I could no longer be trusted to work in the newsroom there.

In another story, when I was at the Department of Justice, a story was gonna come out about two employees of the Department of Justice who had been carrying on an extramarital affair.

They had been working on the Mueller investigation.

And the reporter who had the story called me to confirm certain details that I didn't have, for what that's worth.

And he was trying to coax me.

He's like, "Well, if you have anything, it's really important.

This story will help Donald Trump, and so we need to be careful with it."

Those are the things that are a problem.

They're happening in newsrooms.

And the incentives for those reporters so that they don't get fired, like James Rosen at the New York Times with the Tom Cotton op-ed.

- I will say- - The NPR guy- - Your story resonates- - That's pretty bad.

- That there is, reporters should never be thinking about which candidate it'll help or hurt.

However, I will say, like, during the Trump years, like, there were some truth issues from that administration.

- For sure.

- And so being more careful was- - But he wasn't being careful because the information was coming from Trump.

- If they told you, like, we're doing this because this could help Trump, that's wrong.

- It was because the story itself would put the Mueller investigation in a bad light.

- Yes.

And that is a poison and a- - It was a shocking- - Yeah.

- A shocking thing to hear.

And so there's fear in these newsrooms.

There's fear from reporters about how they're gonna keep their jobs.

And it's just social, right?

We want to be with our people, and liked, and not ostracized.

Ideological conformity breeds extremism.

And that's what you're seeing happening in everything, on the college campuses, on the right wing, within the Republican Party, but also in newsrooms.

- Okay, I wanna lighten things up a little bit.

(attendees laughing) The night of President Biden's State of the Union Address was supposed to be this big moment for Alabama's junior senator, Republican Katie Britt.

(attendees laughing) She gave a Republican response to the State of the Union that I think struck a lot of people, including myself, as weird.

She was in a kitchen.

She was smiling a lot but talking about sex trafficking, and fentanyl poisoning, and the American dream becoming a nightmare.

And it turned out the real star that week was Scarlett Johansson, who did a stellar Katie Britt impression on "Saturday Night Live."

She nailed it.

And I remember saying how, I mean, amazing that was, but also, I really respected Katie Britt for coming out and saying like, that was a great impersonation.

Like, to have Scarlett Johansson being you, like, not bad.

But you immediately kind of eyerolled and said, like, of course SNL's being, you know, mean because she's Republican.

- No, like, of course it's funny.

Like, of course they did this amazing job doing a satire of the right, but they're increasingly unable to do that on the left.

Like, you think back to the Bill Clinton walking, running into the McDonald's "Saturday Night Live," like one of the first lines in that is the Secret service agent is like, "uh, don't tell Mrs. Clinton we let you go to McDonald's."

And he goes, "There's a lot of things we're not gonna tell Mrs.

Clinton."

Like, that was funny.

But the stuff about the left is more sort of making fun of them making fun of themselves.

- Okay, well, I wanna bring up an example from the left because SNL has gone after President Biden on his age, which is something that a lot of Democrats complain about and say the media should not be focusing as much on Biden's age.

I tend to think that, like, it's a fact, so we should report on the age of the president of the United States.

- Wait, what's the deal with his age?

I haven't heard of it.

(everyone laughing) - But SNL did this trailer for a second Biden term that was in the style of a horror movie.

- That's about Democrats, like, not being super enthusiastic about Biden, but it's not that bad- - She's searching his age on a calculator.

I mean, she's reminding everyone watching SNL that he's 81.

- Can I just say as a Democrat, that's about Biden, right?

Like, that is very much, that's the kind of thing that the RNC digital shop would cut and put out on social media right now to mock President Biden.

- How does it actually get to, like when you see Trump, he's a grifter, he's a liar, he's a sexual assaulter, all of those things, right?

- Yeah, keep going.

Keep going now.

- Yeah.

- No, yeah.

Yes.

- And those are the things that SNL does on him, but when it's Biden, it's not like they're showing him forgetting things, you know, stumbling over words.

- But I think one of the things about satire is, and I'll be very curious as this campaign progresses, especially with, I think, one of the most trusted voices in American media today sort of returning, John Stewart, right?

(attendees cheering) (attendees applauding) I'll be very curious because I think, and he by no means has been pulling punches on either person, I think.

- And especially not the media.

He's been incredibly critical of how people have covered Donald Trump.

And he said that people are spending too much time on the stupid stuff with Trump, and like whether he fell asleep in the freaking courtroom- - And I'd agree with that.

- Instead of what he's on trial for.

- Oh my God, I would totally- - And not what his election would mean for our country.

- Yeah.

- I would completely agree with that.

But, you know, the best satirists are the ones who have their pulse on their audience, and what their audience is tapped into, and what their audience is thinking about.

And, you know- - But this is why the audiences are fracturing even more.

You have now the right not watching any of those shows.

They're not watching John Stewart.

they're watching Greg Gutfeld.

Why?

- Do you really think the implications are that, like, I mean, my question, sort of to wrap up, was gonna be, why should we care?

Like, if there is sometimes some sort of bias in political satire- - Yeah, because it's another thing- - Should we worry about it?

we don't share.

- It's another thing we don't share.

And it reminds me of what Roger Ailes used to say when he was asked by a reporter, how can you call Fox News fair and balanced?

And his response was, you misunderstand me, we are the balance, that the entire media ecosystem has been hijacked by the left, and we are giving a different perspective.

That's now splitting into late night comedy and satire.

And that is something we need to be careful about.

- Watch Bill Maher, watch Greg Gutfeld, and ask yourself why those jokes, that I think are very hard hitting on the left, aren't being made on "Saturday Night Live," on Seth Meyers, and on most of the late night shows.

And it's because, again, that divide.

The left is the ones watching that, and they don't wanna see their side, you know, singed, not burned, they're fine with.

That horror show is a singed, not burned, right?

It's a light poking fun.

When you see, you know, Bill Maher's whole thing on the illiberalism on the left and making fun of that, like why isn't SNL doing that?

- Or on the right, right?

When I was on Fox and I would get people who would come at me in my social media feed and say, I don't know why Fox pays you, you should go to CNN or MSNBC where you belong, right?

Where you belong.

There's a place for your woke socialist liberal nonsense.

- And it's on left, right, and center.

- Yeah.

(laughs) Amen.

- That is a great, I'm gonna get a little corny, like we talk about things that we're not sharing today and that being the problem.

I'm very glad that we share this space together, and I'm really grateful for the two of you.

So we're out of time.

And I just wanna thank all of you for joining us.

And thank you for being part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival.

(attendees applauding) (lighthearted music) (upbeat music)