A conversation with the Fall 2021 GU Politics Fellows

Below is a transcript of Melody Stainbrook’s, Ethan Johanson’s, and Cleary Waldo’s conversation with the GU Politics Fellows for Fall 2021. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

To learn more about this semester’s GU Politics Fellows, check out this article. 

MELODY STAINBROOK: My first question is about the pandemic and in recent weeks, we have once again witnessed an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases. Currently the United States is experiencing 300% more infections and 250% more hospitalizations than this time last year. In response, I’m sure we all know that President Biden held a press conference yesterday where he announced mandates that are affecting around 100 million Americans. These mandates mandate vaccines and testing for 80 million Americans and testing for 17 million Americans. Most Democrats and public health officials have been quick to support Biden in this action, but many Republicans have called Biden’s actions unconstitutional with the RNC threatening to sue the Biden administration over the new mandates. What are your thoughts on the Biden administration’s new mandates. Do you feel as though the mandates were necessary for public health or do you think that they were an executive overreach?

CHARLOTTE CLYMER: I think they should go further. The rule that was announced yesterday I believe was businesses 100 people or more. It should be all businesses, all organizations, all places of employment, period. I mean this is ridiculous. We know the science, we see that ICUs are being overwhelmed. It’s time to treat this like the critical situation it is.

RORY COOPER: The vaccinations are effective. They’re available, everybody should get one, and businesses should absolutely be in the right to mandate that their employees have one, but it is hard for me to find the legal precedent that allows the president to federalize these types of mandates. They certainly have been done at the state and local level in the past. We’ve seen from his tenant and landlord policies that he’s willing to allow the delay of the courts to implement policies that they know are not going to pass the scrutiny of the judiciary, and I think that’s probably the case here as well. I would rather spend time thinking about why there are people who don’t want to get the vaccine and what’s going to persuade them to do so, because so far it’s been mostly disgust, not disgust — everyone’s mocking the people who don’t get the vaccines. I want to know what it’s going to take to convince them and what we can do to get that done. But if you look at the states that have high vaccination rates, the covid cases are obviously going down, so I hope people would just listen to reason. 

CLYMER: It’s a good point about executive overreach, but I would rather have a conversation five years from now with people who are alive, not ones who are dead because they were hesitant to take the vaccine. 

COOPER: It’s easy to be principled, but it’s not convenient. 

CLYMER: I mean it’s not convenient, or to anyone in this room, for that matter. This is terribly devastating on the economy, on our social fabric. I mean, it’s time to stop this. It’s been 18 months. The arguments have been out there. We’ve used carrots, time to use sticks.

COOPER: It’s also been fully authorized by the FDA for like two weeks. So it’s not 18, you know. We need to get people there. We’re on the same side with that. 

CLYMER: Right. We are. We just have different approaches.

COOPER: Every president has decided to overreach based on current circumstances.

CLEARY WALDO: How do you propose to kind of implement that on a more local level? I mean, I think we’ve seen a lot of variation in how the various states have handled this, whether it be like governors or even more local leaders. So, at this point, do you think there is a way to effectively reach those people who haven’t been vaccinated. Is there really anything left to do besides mandates?

COOPER: Well you get the leaders you vote for. And the whole point of local government and state government is that it’s closer to the citizen than the federal government, and I can assure you that any leader, Republican or Democrat, knows where public sentiment is on their leadership and the decisions that they’re making, and if this public sentiment is going sideways, they’re going to change their tactics. Governor DeSantis is clearly seeing that he’s got broad support within the state of Florida for what he’s doing. Now that doesn’t mean that people in the Northeast like it, but his voters do and the people he thinks might be able to court in 2024. You look at Andrew Cuomo, he had great ratings for everything he was doing until he didn’t, and now he’s gone. So, I mean, you can have a very short life in politics if you’re doing the wrong thing, and the voters make it known. I think I wish that we had more leaders on both sides of the aisle that were clear-headed about vaccines and about rational risk. So we have a lot of anti-vaccine people, which is bad. We also have a lot of people who cannot comprehend rational risk-taking, that a 0.0035% of something is very low when it comes to kids under 18 years old. So I think everybody has lost their minds a little bit over the past year.

BRIAN STELTER: Yeah, the entire pandemic is a story of trust in my mind. This entire event is about trust and lack of trust, and I’ve become much more aware in the last 16 years of just how much social trust has been lost in the country. I think about some groups and individuals being very high-trusting of institutions and media and government authorities. Skeptical, obviously, everyone is skeptical, but generally high-trusting. And then clearly you have a minority that is incredibly low-trusting, more so than I perceived pre-pandemic. And you asked if there’s anything else: no, there’s nothing else we can do. I don’t think there’s been anything else that we can do for months. I think all the talk about vaccines [unintelligible] from June and July was outdated. By then it was about absolute rejection and also [unintelligible] of the people telling you to get shots. I think that’s really sad. 

COOPER: By the way, let’s also not forget that before the election last year…

STELTER: I know, here it comes.

COOPER: It was Democrats who didn’t want to take the vaccine, because they didn’t trust anything coming out of the Trump administration.

STELTER: I would like to know how many Democrats —  listen, I think it’s a travesty that it took so long to get the vaccine approved, because hundreds of thousands died. If I had been offered the vaccine in April 2020, I would have taken it. 

COOPER I’m just saying, my point wasn’t to get after the Democrats. My point was to say that there are people who this decision is purely political now. And there will be nothing to persuade them.

STELTER: That’s right. There’s nothing to persuade them. And it’s very sad to think that, well, maybe it’s sad, maybe it’s not — if Trump had been re-elected… 

CLYMER: Sorry, there were Democrats who said they wouldn’t take the vaccine because it was coming out of the Trump administration?

COOPER: Prominent ones. Many of them.

WALDO: I think Vice President Harris had mentioned that she didn’t trust… 

COOPER: Yes, Kamala Harris.

WALDO: Trump, she trusted the science and the [unintelligible] who said you should take it.

CLYMER: CDC.

WALDO: Yes, CDC. Yeah, all those medical institutions.

CLYMER: Well that’s not the same as saying you won’t take the vaccine. 

COOPER: She said that he had compromised the institutions that would be approving it and that she would not take it until she got clearance from somebody else.

STELTER: Until she had confidence. I believe she would have actually taken it.

COOPER: Of course she would have. 

STELTER: Just like everybody rational.

RORY COOPER: I have to say that the vaccine had been made political for a while.

STELTER: Yes.

STAINBROOK: That kind of leads me into my next question, which is about political polarization, and kind of the way that issues like mask-wearing and getting vaccinated were turned into political issues, and why do you think that things that are so clearly public health issues were turned so political in this past year and a half and do you think that kind of led us to the place we’re at today where it is necessary to mandate vaccines because people won’t get it.

REBECCA PEARCEY: No, I think people being at home for so long and being on Zoom — Brian’s right, like people have lost their minds, and I think being at home and being home alone has really hurt the social fabric — like Charlotte says — like we’re not seeing other people, and I think this is our first group outing, right? And being back on campus is a new big thing after 18 months of being away, and so being home alone just makes you lose it a little, and you go back to your home camp and you’re with your parents, or you’re back home not in DC, or whatever it is. We don’t get those outside perspectives, and so it does make it a little more polarizing. And so, when it comes to the pandemic, like, sure, if you live in a state where there are no mandates on vaccines in workplaces or masks or anything like that, or in the schools, or schools are still not open, it’s tough. It’s tough to break out of that, and it does feel polarizing. I think the discourse has probably, has definitely, suffered as a result of being home, because you’re not engaging with people who have different — who come from different walks of life, or have different opinions than you, and so I’m happy to see things opening back up. I do think the mandates — I wish we didn’t have to get to the point of mandates, right? I wish people would just see the science. They’ve already taken up a bunch of vaccines to get into kindergarten for the love of god, right? This is crazy.

STELTER: And most people have, we should give credit where it’s due. Most people have, right?

PEARCEY: Yeah, yes, yes.

STELTER: Most people did the right thing months ago. Most people are smart and know what to do and know how to protect each other, and we’re talking about a minority in the country that is also a minority that tends to believe the election was stolen. Like, let’s just be honest about what’s broken in our country.

BOB LIGHTHIZER: That’s not true. If you look at the data, it’s the black community — certain parts of the minority community — that haven’t gotten vaccinated. If you’re an African American, your chances — the odds of you being vaccinated are much smaller than other groups, so it’s not all like somehow Trump people are [unintelligible]. So what you’re saying is just not factual.

STELTER: There are some — clearly there are data that shows some minorities have held back, but are more willing to think about it. The most resistant tend to be Republicans. Is that not — do you not agree with that? The most…

LIGHTHIZER: No, I don’t agree with that.

STELTER: There’s a core in the party that also believes that Trump won that can’t accept Biden’s vaccine.

LIGHTHIZER: I don’t think there’s any overlap over that. I think that’s… 

STELTER: There’s no overlap?

LIGHTHIZER: No, no, no, no, no. I think that’s just what kind of conspiracy people on CNN would think. If you look at the data, it’s just as likely that it’s a minority person — the vaccination rate in the minority community is about half of what it is in the other communities. Those people aren’t Trump supporters. Those people aren’t Trump supporters. They have a history — there’s a history there in the black community [unintelligible] vaccination is a bad thing and in fact it was during parts before for that community and they’re suspicious.

CLYMER: But there’s no history of that for the white community or with white voters, middle-class voters, et cetera. There’s no exploitation of that community through public health [unintelligible].

AMNA NAWAZ: I do think part of this is — and even here — we’re having a public health conversation in a political atmosphere, which is not great for anyone, but to all of the points that have been made, there’s a very — the most vocal anti-vax group we’ve heard resisted completely to the vaccine has largely been rural conservatives. Like, that is statistically true, but there are other groups. There are still lingering minority communities who are hesitant and suspicious of the healthcare system that has never served them and has exploited them in the past. There are people who quite frankly for whom access is still an issue. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in lower income communities and Latino communities and other communities — along the border in particular — and it’s like, “I don’t have time to go. I don’t know who has the car today. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to drive 15 minutes and go stand in line, even if it’s a drive-thru.” Like, it’s just not convenient until someone shows up at your doorstep with a needle in their hand. And I think all of those are lingering things. To some of the issues you digged in too, one of the most resistant groups, one of the most problematic for the future — whether we come out of this pandemic whole or not — are people who bought into the disinformation that this is some huge global conspiracy. That like Bill Gates is putting chips into all of us. That is a very strong, core part of the resistance that will never be convinced, regardless of whether there’s a mandate, or the science is upfront and center, or you have access to someone coming to your community. And that’s a combination of things this pandemic hit. 

STELTER: And you don’t have to believe there’s actually a microchip, you just have to wonder, right? You just have to have that question in your mind. Bob and I are on the cusp of friendship, so I don’t want to do anything to disrupt that.I personally though do see connections between downplaying the riot and downplaying covid — between denying the logic of vaccines and denying the outcome of the elections. And we can debate how big within the Republican Party — whether that’s a tiny little mole or whether it’s a massive tumor that’s going to eat the party alive — but there is this loss of trust that seems to come from conservative, rural America, seems to exist in rural, conservative America that affects all of us. And coming back to GU, coming back to here, I hope that we can have honest discussions in the groups about getting out of our DC bubbles, and myself included — or my New York bubble or wherever my bubble is — to see where has that trust gone, why has that trust evaporated.

COOPER: I would like to make one last point, since all you have to do is say covid and rural America.

PEARCEY: We’re all epidemiologists, right?

COOPER: I think Trump deserves a lot of credit for Operation Warp Speed, so this isn’t a criticism of him, but I will say that he took a very federalist approach to this from the very get-go — not a national approach — which changes the dynamic and changes the media dynamic, which made it state-competitive. How many deaths? How many cases between New York and Florida? Do you know how New Mexico has done? Of course not, because nobody’s covering New Mexico. They’re covering Texas and Florida and polarizing politicians. People who may be running for president, and Andrew Cuomo went from media darling to you know, dirt, and Ron DeSantis was like — you saw the pictures of the beaches and thought, “Well all these people are going to die,” and then Florida’s cases were actually way better than the rest of the country. And they said, “Where’s DeSantis going to get his apology?” And now DeSantis is actually really having a hard time, and a lot of folks are saying “Well see, we were right all along.” And that’s where the disgust comes from, because we essentially turned this into a competition between our political people as opposed to a national crisis that we all had to confront together. And to this day, you can turn on the TV and look at them covering this on a state-by-state basis with a political tint to it.

STELTER: Right, the subtext is, “Who covered Florida for that reason?”

COOPER: And it changes the way you look at the public health crisis because now it is a political issue. 

WALDO: So, do you think that this trust is sort of a gradual trend that we’ve seen? I mean, I think in the media, we’ve seen a lot of coverage obviously about Afghanistan, but you know, post 9-11, Iraq — not a great track record over the last two decades as far as public trust in government institutions. Do you see that as something being recent with say the Trump administration and the polarization that came as a result of his election, or is this sort of more narrow to the pandemic — where do you see this going forward? 

NAWAZ: I just want to make sure I understand your question. Are you saying, “Was there sort of an erosion of trust over the last 20 years, because of the way the media treated the lead-up to war in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

WALDO: Not even how the media treated it, but just the decisions and what actually happened.

STELTER: Can I ask Bob a question?

BOB LIGHTHIZER: No, you can’t.

STELTER: I was going to attempt an analogy. Let me attempt an analogy and see if Bob then agrees. Isn’t it like a factory town that fell on hard times decades ago — and, you know — one by one the factories close and then markets that supported the factories closed and then the next generation had less hope and then there was less belief in the government and in the economy. So, isn’t it like decades by decades, the — kind of the slow, gradual erosion, or corrosion, in a community — isn’t that what’s happened to social trust?

LIGHTHIZER: First of all, I’m not an expert on this subject anymore than anyone else in this room, so you know, let’s get that on the table.

STELTER: I was trying to trade analogies. 

LIGHTHIZER: Rebecca’s point was exactly right. We’re all experts in pandemics, I mean we’ve literally created like 200 million doctors in America, right? Do I believe there’s an erosion of trust in our elites? For sure. Do I believe there’s erosion in trust in the media? No one who looks at that for five seconds wouldn’t agree that there’s been an enormous -- you know, and there’s a whole lot of reasons for it. Including the fact that there’s so much more media than there was, right? People pick their own media. Back when it was Brinkley and Cronkite, and whoever the hell was on ABC, you kind of had three things, and everyone watched it and kind of accepted it. And back then it was probably slightly biased one way or another. but now the media’s all biased and everyone’s politics, and of course everyone’s going to, that’s just my take on it, I don’t know. 

PEARCEY: I do agree that there’s an erosion of trust in government, and I don’t know if that’s because we’re - it’s not because we’re doing a worse job, right? Or maybe it is. But is it because we’ve got 24-hour news…

STELTER: Our job’s more visible. Every mistake is magnified. 

PEARCEY: Everyone knows everything that’s happening all the time, and it’s not… it’s not even a 24-hour news cycle, it’s like this happened at this hour. And then like, remember yesterday when you were like, “The Suez Canal is blocked again? I forgot about that already!” Everything happens so quickly, and we’re getting, in my mind, it feels like desensitized to the big stuff that happens because we’re always aware of the next big thing. And it’s not a five day story on any news outlet, it’s a 5 minute segment and then it’s the next thing. And then it’s the next thing, and you keep rolling along, and then it’s, it’s not a thing - you can’t keep up. 

STELTER: I do want to update you, the ship has been freed. 

PEARCEY: Has it? Okay.

STELTER: And umm, no long-lasting damage this time.

STELTER: But stay turned tomorrow, because another ship might get stuck in the canal. 

COOPER: They have a live feed now. 

STELTER: And if so, we’ll bring you live coverage

PEARCEY: Brian, are you going to the Suez Canal? 

STELTER: In a heartbeat… although I have the day off tomorrow. And as Rebecca said, it’s messed up our brains. This ability to know everything anywhere at all times is a great gift and a great curse. Umm, and I guess there’s a part of me that wishes that everyone could go back to college and learn how to grapple with it. You know, people like me talk on television about how we need media literacy for everyone, knowing that’s never going to happen. You know? Knowing that that’s a nice reach-goal, but it’s not practical. But we do all need tech and media literacy in an environment where chaos and hell and fury and hoax are coming at us 24/7. 

CLYMER: I think the other side of the coin is something that we don’t talk about nearly enough - in fact, probably not at all - is that there’s a low set of expectations for a certain kind of voter in this country. You know, I am from the South. I was raised in trailer parks in central Texas, my mother is from Kentucky, my father is from Oklahoma and Texas, and it really annoys me the way that there is this almost condescending, almost pandering approach to talking to more conservative voters in the South. You know, these are not dumb people. They have common sense. And yet, there is this, you know like Jake Tapper, going on TV today and saying, “We should treat them with kid gloves”. No! Hold them accountable as grown-ass adults. It infuriates me the way that that type of, basically white, conservative voters in the South, are condescended to and treated like children. Because they’re not children, they’re grown adults. So, treat them like they know what they’re doing because they do, there’s just something deeper there going on. It has nothing to do with information, it’s all about this widely-politicized environment and in the way that they’re held to such low expectations. It pisses me off. 

STAINBROOK: Yeah, I see that personally. I’m from a rural conservative area, so a lot of what you guys were saying I saw in my area reflected. There was actually a protest, I think it was yesterday or the day before in my town - it’s a very small town - against the new mask mandate. I’m from Pennsylvania, so there’s been a mask mandate for students in school, and there was recently a protest of parents that were against that. I actually have close friends who won’t get the vaccine, and I tried to talk to them about it and they just said they wouldn’t listen to me. So it definitely reflects a lot of this conversation, that there are people that are just, for some reason, I’m not really sure why either, just resistant to the information and to the science.

NAWAZ: What town are you from? 

STAINBROOK: Clearfield County.

NAWAZ: Where is that? 

STAINBROOK: Central Pennsylvania.  

COOPER: I think the mask mandate stuff is really interesting because I think if you had said in March of last year, schools can remain open but children have to wear a mask, it wouldn’t have become a controversial issue. What happened was is that they kept schools closed in large, urban areas while the rest of the country went to school, and you saw this breakdown in trust of the officials, saying “Why are we different? We can look at the science, we can look at the data, we can see community spread in schools, we’ve learned a lot. And so then when those same districts come out with a mask mandate, it just seems like well, these people have already made such bad decisions. This must be another one of them. And we’re already agitated at the school board, so this is just another thing we’re going to get agitated about. And I think that that is the domino effect of losing a little bit of trust at a time, and then when you come up with something that maybe should have been your first and only mitigation measure, you can’t get people on board with it. 

ETHAN JOHANSON: Also, I mean, we’ve talked about political polarization in the context of the pandemic. I was hoping to ask about a slightly different aspect of political polarization. Recently, I think we’ve seen this increasingly hostile so-called culture war, so to speak, play out in schools, like Melody was talking about, where people on both sides of the aisle express really strong feelings, not just about mask wearing, but like teaching critical race theory among other issues. So, my question for all of you, just as a politically-mixed group, is, do you think it’s possible to change the tone of discourse and dialogue in the US or are these culture wars and feelings of hostility that seem to have dominated these school board meetings just kind of an inevitable feature of an ideologically-divided country? 

CLYMER: I can’t stand that it’s framed as culture wars. I completely hate that phrase so much. Because it sounds like these are two weighted opinions that just happen to be at odds with each other, and it’s not. You have people who are spreading blatant disinformation about marginalized communities and then pretending that they’re trying to be reasonable and reach across the aisle, and they’re not. You know, trans children have been viciously attacked for the past year. Over 100 pieces of legislation introduced in something like 37 states banning trans kids from sports with absolutely merit whatsoever. Banning certain kinds of healthcare treatments for trans and non-binary children, and it’s not based on science or common sense, because medical authorities have come out and clearly said, “This isn’t a problem. Why are you trying to make this a problem?” Somehow, that’s reported as a culture war, and it’s not a culture war; it’s grown adults who are attacking children who aren’t even medically cleared for this treatment. And yet, it’s not presented that way. It pisses me off beyond belief, because those children are going home, some of them are going to commit suicide (some of them already have, by the way), and people just ignore it and frame it as a culture war. 

STELTER: Also, what you’re describing gets lumped into a Doctor Seuss controversy. 

CLYMER: Yes! 

STELTER: Which is really just, entertainment. No high stakes there. And yet it’s all put into the same pot, and it doesn’t belong in the same pot. I think, to answer your question, yeah there are always going to be some of these stories. There’s always going to be a market for it. Clearly, there’s a really big market for blue and red warfare. Can we reduce the appeal? Can the marketplace shrink? Can a marketplace for an alternative be grown?... I think is what I wonder, and I’m a little pessimistic on that, but hopefully others are not. 

CLYMER: It would be much easier if the media took a more intellectually honest approach to covering these topics. Because if you frame it as a culture war, people are going to frame it as a culture war. If you frame it as a factual, a set of facts that cannot be disputed because they are firmly established, it’s much harder for folks to look at that and go, “Oh, it’s just both sides arguing against each other” instead of what it clearly is. 

COOPER: The only reason I would just disagree a little bit is to separate it a little bit. I think that the issues that you are talking about are vitally important and a little bit different than arguing about critical race theory or curriculum in schools. 

STELTER: I don’t know about that. 

COOPER: Well let me just… [laughter]. I think that because of the school closures, you had parents getting a very close look at their kids’ schools over the past year, and in many places, they just didn’t like what they saw. And I think that if you look at test scores across the country, you have kids who are literally failing in reading and math. Like, just like the basics of education, and if you look at Baltimore, the leaked IReady test scores were showing 11th and 12th graders ten grades behind. Ten grades! Meaning that like they didn’t even have a third grade education in reading and arithmetic, but they had reached almost graduation. Or graduated. Now that’s, that’s a complete failure of adults on behalf of those kids. 

STELTER: Adults, right. 

COOPER: And, that’s going to also have a systemic effect because those kids are going to become adults. They’re going to be less educated, they’re going to have less job opportunities, they’re not going to help their community grow, and the government is thinking, “I’m going to have to figure out how to help those adults because we’ve failed them as kids”. And, now, critical race theory to me, and other issues like it, are things that could be debated. Whether they should be taught in schools, whether schools need to teach them, whether that’s the responsibility of parents or guardians vs. a school system. But from what I’ve seen, a lot of families are just saying, “That seems like a luxury.” Even if you’re for it or against it, that seems like a luxury when the schools are failing on the fundamentals. And, that’s not, that’s why I was trying to separate that from whether or not we’re doing the right thing on behalf of childrens’ civil rights. 

NAWAZ: Didn’t we, just because I covered this in Loudoun County, where all of these issues… 

COOPER: Oh yeah. Well, I know Loudoun is a special place. 

NAWAZ: But it’s the same conversation that I think we’re seeing in a lot of communities across the country, and I think why everything gets lumped together and we lose that specificity is (and this is according to my reporting there and the superintendent telling me this) it was the same group of parents. It was the same group of parents who, during the pandemic, when they were getting a closer look at the school and suddenly paying attention in a way that not most parents - I mean I personally have never been to a school board meeting, I go just to report but - they had the time to start to look into the practices and realize, “Maybe I’m not happy with the way things are unfolding”. So one group of parents who led a lot of the most vocal and vociferous argument to reopen quickly, and then when the schools reopened it was the same group of parents who started to lead, there was a conversation around one teacher in particular who said in a public forum that he would not respect the preferred pronouns of trans students, and he was disciplined for that (you can argue whether or not he should have been) but the parents backed him, and that became a big division point. And then this conversation of CRT which was not being taught in schools was also taken up by the same group of parents. And it just became everything kind of packaged together when each of those conversations deserve their own attention and discussion in a way. But in this pandemic time, when everyone is suddenly back out in the open and engaging face-to-face again, everything was lumped in together. And the CRT debate debate, by the way, which is something I’ve reported on quite a bit, is quite ridiculous. 

CLYMER: Yes, it is. 

NAWAZ: It is absurd that everyone even knows these three letters to the degree that they do. And it’s become a political talking point.

STELTER: And that’s a victory of conservative activism media. 

NAWAZ: Correct. 

STELTER: To dominate the GOP conversation. 

NAWAZ: And it’s a failure of the media… 

COOPER: Are you both saying that it is not being taught?

NAWAZ: Say it again? 

COOPER: Are you saying that it’s not being taught? 

NAWAZ: I am saying that critical race theory is not being taught in K-12 schools. 

COOPER: I mean, it’s being trained. I’m not even against it, I’m just saying that it is - Fairfax County and Loudoun County both train their teachers through those programs. 

NAWAZ: They train their teachers in like anti-racist education.

STELTER: This is by far the spiciest we have gotten in the past two days; by the way, this is by far the best. 

NAWAZ: This is also why the conversation, I mean CRT is such a narrow, specific, like graduate-level framework...

COOPER: No, I know. 

NAWAZ: I honestly think, and this is just what I’ve seen in Loudoun, and I haven’t reported in other parts, it is largely white parents who do not agree with their children having to confront racism in the way that teachers are teaching it. And by the way, it’s also mostly white teachers who also do not have fluency with this and who are really struggling in their own way. And the schools are doing the best they can to try to find out how to handle that. And you can debate all day how good or bad a job the schools are doing. But calling it CRT is inaccurate and disingenuous. Calling it anti-racist education is accurate, and I think that’s a conversation a lot of parents are having…

COOPER: I think a lot of parents would disagree with that. 

NAWAZ: I know a lot may disagree with it. I think they are wrong. 

COOPER: This is like, this is issue like number 7000 for me. I don’t care. And if my kids’ schools teach - I don’t care. As long as they’re open.  But I think that there is an argument over this distinction over whether it’s really about whether it’s anti-racism or if it’s teaching children that “you have a systemic advantage over the other”. And whether that systemic advantage is something that children need to confront when it’s something that is typically taught when you’re much older. And whether or not that’s something that kids can really grapple with. 

NAWAZ: No, I agree. And that is where the debate is among parents, right? And what you’ll hear among parents of kids who have to confront it earlier is that, “My child is confronting it at age 3,4,5, so I want their peers to confront it”. And what you hear from parents whose kids don’t have to confront it is, “I don’t think my child is ready for that.” And that’s absolutely a discussion worth having. 

CLYMER: And by the way, there is an actual… This is very germane and important to point out. There is an actual propaganda campaign going on in public education right now. 25% of the nation’s textbooks are produced out of Texas, by companies who are influenced by conservative lawmakers and pundits, who intentionally downplay the element of white supremacy in the history of our country. Or outright ignore it or remove it. 25% of the nation’s textbooks say things like, “It was the war of state’s rights, not the Civil War.” That “Jim Crow wasn’t really that bad” when it was obviously horrific. A horrific chapter. So, you know there is an intentional propaganda campaign going on, but somehow we’re not talking about that because it is a white-dominated media who doesn’t want to confront these issues. 

STAINBROOK: Do you feel like the media almost, sometimes - we’ve mentioned the Dr. Seuss controversy, we mentioned CRT - do you think the media sometimes picks out smaller issues that aren’t really issues and then kind of blows them up and it kind of almost makes some of these bigger issues 1. overlooked and 2. kind of grouped in with these smaller non-issues? And you think this kind of contributes to the polarization that we were talking about earlier? 

CLYMER: Absolutely. Do you know how the Dr. Seuss thing happened? So the company that produces Dr. Seuss textbooks, they listened to a number of academics who came out with very credible reports of the history of racism in Dr. Seuss’s work, which is well-established at this point, and decided to remove six books out of the entire catalogue. Because they identified these six textbooks as particularly toxic and racist. And they were. Like, everyone in this group would agree. Removed six textbooks, and then school districts thought, “you know what, we’re not going to ban them, but we are going to stop promoting Dr. Seuss as the gateway to childhood literacy. And instead what this did is it blew up into this horrendous claim that school districts and public libraries across the country are banning Dr. Seuss books, and that is factually incorrect. Completely incorrect. And yet, when the media could have stepped in and said, “Look, we looked at this, this is what happened, this is the timeline of events, this is how we got here,” they just played into it because it’s so juicy and entertaining. Dr. Seuss is something everybody knows. It’s something that everybody can have an opinion on, and therefore it is very profitable. 

COOPER: It is pretty funny, by the way, on that one, like all my kids books, like I read all the old books like, the old ones are very problematic. Like all over the place. I’ll get to the end of books all the time and be like, ughhhhhh. That’s out, that’s out of the rotation.

WALDO: I’m interested, I think we’ve talked a lot about how the right-wing media has sort of exacerbated a lot of this, but I think, you know, left-wing media does this too. [STELTER:] isn’t here anymore, so he can’t engage with this, but CNN does hyperbolize a lot of different things. I’m interested, from a more conservative point of view, posing to you with more conservative views, that is, how have you seen that sort of affecting your ability to engage with the public and having to go through that media echochamber? 

COOPER:  I think part of the problem is that conservatives got so-- listen, first off, there is bias in reporting. I think people should just accept that. Most people who want to go into journalism tend to be young idealistic liberals. And that’s fine, but then they pretend that they don’t have those biases and it frustrates Republicans. And I spend a lot of time on the hill as a spokesperson having reporters tell me all day long they have no bias, they’re just trying to report the news. And then three months later you see their real viewpoints on twitter and you think back to that conversation of 90 days ago when they told you they didn’t have a strong viewpoint and now they do have a strong viewpoint because twitter allows them to be uninhibited. And so it creates this distrust and then what conservatives ended up doing was creating their own media chamber because they’re like “well we’ll just create our own.” But they weren’t going to create a mainstream media chamber, they were just going to create one that’s an echo. And then you had National Review and Weekly Standard — which were credible organizations that did good reporting — turned into Breitbart and Daily Caller and worse. And it became less about news at all and more about ginning up outrage. It has become a real problem for the right. I think that some of this problem also exists a little bit on the left, with you know, The Intercept, or, I mean I could name a lot of them. But the point is that there are ones on the left who are kind of doing the same thing. And it’s bad because you’re pushing 25 percent over here and 25 percent over there into these camps that get misinformation, who get bad reporting and it’s all with a very toxic premise. And people don’t agree that there is this center channel that is more well-reported and actually does the ethics of journalism and multiple sources. I mean, I don’t know, I could talk for an hour about the media. You know, even just in our industry, the prevalence of background quotes at this point, like where every story has ten of them. 

NAWAZ: —Anonymous sources.

COOPER: —Anonymous sources that are just knifing each other.

PEARCEY: That is bullshit, if you’re gonna say it, say it on the record. 

COOPER: Yeah, and listen, I’m not an angel. I’ve used background quotes a billion times—

NAWAZ: —Yeah me too.

COOPER: —Because it’s a tool that I have, but someone could take it away from me, you know, and they don’t. You know, it’s difficult — it’s not difficult for me from a partisan standpoint — it’s difficult as someone who just really cares about the news. The reason I am in politics is because I grew up with my dad watching David Brinkley on ABC and Tim Russert on Meet the Press, and reading the newspaper, and caring about it. It is a problem that needs to be addressed. And my last thing on this rant, sorry—

COOPER: I was hoping that after Trump, there would be a little ounce of self-reflection on the media of how they kind of got swept up in themselves over four years and what they were going to do to fix that. And there wasn’t any. And, you know, like the snarky chyrons, you know: “Trump says this, he’s lying.” Like they don’t do that stuff for anybody else. And they got kind of caught up in the game too and—.

CLYMER: But to be clear, you would agree that no one else does what Trump has done? Like, what was the record? He lied an average of 5.6 times everyday for the first three years of his term. Let me add another point, real quick. Black women vote for Democrats, I want to say, 86 to 92 percent of the time, nationally and at the state level. By far the most supportive sub demographic for any political party by a mile. Where are all the pieces in New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, asking a panel of black women what they think of Biden’s actions? Yet, in two years of the Trump administration there were something like 121 pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post asking Trump voters in diners out in Indiana what they thought of Trump’s latest actions. There is such a disconnect and there is such a pandering, an infuriating and pandering way, that reporters go into these diners and they’ll ask a basic question like: “What do you think about Trump doing this?” And they’ll get a response like, “Well I think that space aliens are here to put Trump in charge of the planet, we love that. And there’s no pushback. There’s no, “Tell us more. Why do you think space aliens have invaded the earth?” 

COOPER: You know what’s funny by the way, after two days of this? We get to sit here and just crap all over Amna’s profession, would you like to talk about how crappy we are at our jobs? 

NAWAZ: I don’t think you’re crappy at all. I have enormous respect for all of you and what you do, I could never do what you do, I can’t. And I get the luxury of sitting back and watching and listening, which I think is my most valuable skill. And I learn, and I do learn. Everytime one of you says something I learn something, that’s absolutely true. I will say my biggest pet peeve, if I have one, is that we have this conversation about the media, as if it is one thing. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been at a protest or a rally or a GROUP of some kind, and I’m literally interviewing someone and they say, “The problem is the media doesn’t cover it.” And I’m like, “I’m literally talking to you, I’m covering it.” 

NAWAZ: I am here. Let’s go. 

CLYMER: Not all media? 

NAWAZ: I mean—

CLYMER: I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

NAWAZ: I think, look, this is both an American thing and a function of where we are right now, there is a oversimplification of a lot of stuff, we’ve lost all nuance in a lot of these conversations, specificity is out the door, like it’s easier to form an opinion about something and then look for things that reinforce it. And that holds us back, in all of these things, whether we are talking about information, or policy, or the pandemic, or whatever. So, my responsibility is to add that specificity and I hope that there’s an audience for it. 

CLYMER: By the way, I do want to point out, I do recognize liberal bias. (I struggle with what she says here) Stephen Glass made up shit about young attendees of a CPAC conference. I mean there are numerous examples of liberal biased media but we’ve gone so far to the other side now, I almost see the trepidation of reporters in mainstream outlets who are afraid to hold conservative politicians and voters accountable on blatant bullshit because they’re afraid of being called biased. That is not the role of the media; the role of the media is to point out facts, hold us accountable and to get the truth out there and in many ways that is not happening lately. 

COOPER: I actually think, you know, the other thing I kind of appreciated is, I know most of my brotherin on the right do not, but I kind of appreciate outlets like Daily Beast, who come at it like “hey we’re gonna report hard and we do have a bias.” Just say it. I’m going to actually trust your reporting more if you just admit it at the front hand then to act like it doesn’t exist. 

CLYMER: Can I ask you a question real quick? How do you feel about the New York Times and everything they have done in the past four years? 

COOPER: I read the New York Times very regularly, it’s on my phone. Washington Post, New York Times, and the Detroit News are my three go-tos because I watch the sports page from Detroit. And, you know, I mean, I’m in a different situation because I know the reporters, or a lot of them. So, I can kind of judge based on my experiences and also how it's gonna affect clients or how it's gonna affect business. So, I am kind of looking at it through a different lens.

CLYMER: But you’re a reasonable adult,right? You are conservative. 

COOPER: But I also, like, I don’t think most places have the resources that the New York Times have to put into two month long investigations that involve six really good reporters and have to go to a bunch of places to investigate. And so, I think that there is a value and a role that they play that no one else can. I wish that they would appreciate the seismic gap between them and  conservative outlets and try to do something to close it rather than just to be stubborn about it and be like “fine we’ll never reach them.” 

CLYMER: There’s a story that came out last year of a staff meeting at the New York Times where it was a complete meltdown. Because the staffers were complaining about the incredibly inaccurate information being put out on Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests overall and somebody released a recording I believe. And, who’s the chief editor-in-chief? I forget his name.

NAWAZ: Dean Baquet?

CLYMER: Yes, yes. And he’s basically saying, “Yes sorry. I mean yes we’re trying to..” I mean, just, it was obvious that there was a high level of pampering going on from the paper to attract conservative readers. And the columnists, I mean Brett Stephens was coming out here saying all kinds of, you know, off-the-wall shit about, you know, all these different topics that were completely factually inaccurate. And I don’t see Republicans pointing at it and saying, “Well, yes, that’s wrong too. That shouldn’t happen.” I mean, you  [referring to RORY COOPER], yes, but—

COOPER: Most Republicans hate Brett Stephens. 

CLYMER: Well—

COOPER:  [Laughter]

STAINBROOK: Can I ask a question? Uh—

COOPER: Oh, you’re here!

GROUP:  [Laughter]

CLYMER: Sorry.

STAINBROOK: No, it’s alright. It just kind of brings me into my next point—

NAWAZ: Friday at 3:30 is not a good time for us. 

STAINBROOK: It’s alright, we wanted to briefly ask for your guy’s thoughts on the insurrection at the capitol— 

COOPER: Oh no.

NAWAZ: Briefly about the insurrection!

COOPER: Before we go, democracy! 

GROUP: [Laughter]

NAWAZ: Sorry.

STAINBROOK: It’s alright. It kind of generally goes with the conversation but also can pivot a little bit away from the media. Just kind of share your thoughts on the insurrection at the capitol. Uh, do you think that the events that happened there affects the ways that other countries view the United States? 

PEARCEY: Yeah, I mean, yeah. When you see that happen in another country you think: Oh they can’t keep their shit together. What happened? Who are these people? What’s going to happen? I wonder what will happen to their markets, right? People died— what’s going on? Where else is this going to happen in their country? And when you see it happen, I live on Capitol Hill, when you see it happen a quarter mile from your house it’s a really really scary feeling, especially when you are basically locked in your house because of the pandemic anyways. So, for me it was a very personal, scary, set off few days. Uh, and I just don’t know if people outside of DC really understand what it felt like to be in DC when it was going on. 

NAWAZ: So I was on the grounds, outside, during the whole thing. The funny thing was that my colleague was inside of the capitol, they were like “that’s where the action’s gonna be everybody. You know, watch the proceedings unfold and Amna just stay outside for some crowd shots.” And we ended up going into like twelve hours of rolling coverage. And a few times my team and I just had to grab our stuff and run because the mobs were turning on us at that point. And, uh, I said it on air that day and it remains true— I cut my teeth as a foreign correspondent so much of my early reporting was overseas in areas of unrest and conflict— and I never thought I’d see the same scenes that I covered there unfolding on the steps of the capitol and that’s exactly what we saw that day. So yeah, I think other countries saw that in very much the same lense as your democracy is as fragile or as strong as you allow it to be. 

CLYMER: I am very proud of my military service and I was horrified that— and make sure you fact check this because I want to make sure the figure is right— but I think it was one-sixth of the protesters were military veterans or active duty service members. And this correlates with polls that have come out of active duty service members. Something like, I want to say, over 55 percent witnessed some form of white supremacy in the ranks during their time. And that is deeply, deeply horrifying. I think we all should be horrified by that. 

COOPER: So the U.S. Capitol was my office for several years. I worked for a member who was protected by the U.S. Capitol police so I spent a lot of time within and around the Capitol police and being protected by them. And what happened on January 6th was disgusting and it makes me viscerally angry to think about it. As a conservative, it makes me angry that it was to represent, supposedly, my side of the political aisle. The fact that a lot of leaders said the right thing and told the truth within 24 hours of it happening and now have since decided to act like it was fine, I think is going to be something that they have to live with. Uh, the fact that we had to have fences around that building when the glory of the building is that it is the people’s building. You can walk in it. You can access your lawmakers. It’s not supposed to be a barrier between you and your elected representatives. And now we’re gonna have another protest, of the same sort, on September 18th. They’re gonna have basically, the entire U.S. Capitol police force surrounding the entire building and making it look like a police state in order to avoid something else happening and that’s gonna make me sad. You know, there is a real problem when people who lose elections won’t accept that and won’t allow their supporters to accept that. 

CLYMER: It’s kind of ironic too, over the past couple of decades there has been a rhetoric and reporting on quote-unquote “third world countries” and how they’re chaotic and yet that behavior has been supremely exhibited over the past several years here in the United States. And by the way, there’s very little self-reflection over that. Uh, over the fact that there was so much condescension toward other countries for what they were going through and we’ve looked like not much more than a banana state in the past year or so

COOPER: I will say, I wish that there were more Republican members on the committee to investigate that day. I am happy that Cheney and Kinzinger are there. As someone who worked in Homeland Security, what I am really interested in is what happened between when the first door was broken down in the Capitol and when it was finally cleared out. And I think there are a lot of unanswered questions to our federal response to the attack that deserve scrutiny from Congress. 

LIGHTHIZER: I’m gonna have to leave, I apologize. I would just say that on Rory’s point about the walls around the Capitol; for most of the summer, last summer, during the riots that went on for 40 or 50 days, there was a 10-foot wall around the entire White House compound. And if there hadn’t of been, they probably would have torn the White House apart, right? There were thousands of people literally banging up against the walls which were put up completely. So I just want to suggest that none of the riots were good, right? They were all bad. And the need for these walls is unfortunate. But it was very much evident that you would’ve had a real catastrophe at the White House if there weren’t these walls up, which were about, I don’t know if you ever saw them if you want by there, but they were concrete reinforced black-steel walls that go up about 10 feet. And if there hadn’t of been for that, you would’ve had riots in there. And this notion of having the Capitol surrounded by police is ridiculous, it’s bad I agree with that, but you had the White House run by police almost all summer last summer, almost everyday. 

NAWAZ: But to be clear, you’re not equating the marches for racial justice with what happened on January 6th? 

LIGHTHIZER: No, no, no. But I’m saying we had riots on the left and we had riots on the right. We had them both but we don’t think about the other ones. 

COOPER: Well I would just make the distinction that January 6th was specifically about stopping a democratic process from happening which is— 

CLYMER: For a quick ten seconds, it’s strange to me how the police were able to protect the White House but somehow that protection was lacking at the Capitol.

COOPER: Eh, that one I’m a little, you know I’m with you most of the way but, you know, that place [the Capitol Building] is culturally and specifically designed not to lockdown like that. Now, should they have had more Capitol police officers on duty that day, expecting something? 100 percent. Should the National Guard have been there sooner? 100 percent. That question needs to be asked. But, even in the most tense moments, other than inauguration day, and the years I worked there, you never saw that place get surrounded, ever. It’s just not who it is. 

NAWAZ: And to your point about unpacking that timeline, having watched it unfold, literally from the moment they broke through the first barriers the question was: where the hell, who’s responding? You know, it’s like a line of journalists were the first to greet a lot of the guys coming through the fences. And the Capitol police kept pushing further up, I mean all this will come out in the investigation. 

Melody Stainbrook’s, Ethan Johanson’s, and Cleary Waldo are all staff writers for On the Record.