As one door opens for Biden, another shuts on Carlson
2023-04-28 00:27:56
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
This is The Guardian.
It's been a big few weeks in U.S. politics, starting with a long-awaited video announcement on Tuesday.
That's why I'm running for re-election.
President Biden finally told America what the country had pretty much predicted he will run again in 2024.
His message centred on freedom and making sure Americans have more of it. This coincided with one of Joe Biden's biggest critics this week finding himself with quite a bit more freedom and time on his hands than he may have wanted.
A total earthquake that comes amidst the rockiest period in the history of the controversial conservative Fox News channel.
Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News just days after the network, owned by Rupert Murdoch, settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, Fox, paying out $787.
5 million. Reports now suggest the decision was made after Fox executives saw offensive messages that Carlson had sent while working on his show. But the question now remains, What does Tucker Carlson do next? This week? I take stock of these and other upheavals in U.S. politics and ask, What could they all mean for 2024? I'm Jonathan Friedland and this is Politics Weekly America.
So this is round about the time that we typically see an incumbent begin to gear up their presidential campaign.
Cornell Belcher is a Democratic political strategist and pollster who worked on both of Barack Obama's campaigns for president. Like many other political analysts, Cornell was not surprised to see Joe Biden announce this week that he's running again.
You know, this is something that Joe Biden has won at all his, you know, all his political career. I mean, he's run several times. And if you look at the set of accomplishments that he's been able to get done in his first term. In the first couple of years of his first term, of course, he runs, you know, unless the man collapsed and was unable to run physically, he was going to run for re-election. There was never any doubt in my mind about that.
Yeah, so let's talk about this opening shot of his campaign, this three minute long video. There's much to deconstruct about it. But first off, just as a political professional, what did you make of it?
It was very optimistic. And there is a thread we could argue if it's justified or not. But there is a thread that runs through America of this ideal of American exceptionalism. And that was on display.
I know we're good and decent people, I know we're still a country that believes in honesty and respect, and treating each other with dignity.
Opportunity and our best days are ahead of us. And it was a very optimistic portrayal of what Americans can do if we all come together. And for years, people running for president have tried to capture that and try to own that American exceptionalism space and this ideal. That America is a very special place. And there's nothing we can't accomplish if we work toward it, and tomorrow is always a better day in America.
It's fascinating you're lighting on the point about optimism, which was obviously the theme, for example, famously of Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1984, a re-election campaign, the slogan It's morning in America. There was some of that, I think, you know, hinted at in this message. But also the opening word of the video is Joe Biden saying with just one word freedom. And a lot of people were struck by that. Because, again, that's a word Republicans sort of own in American politics, it's actually the word mentioned more than any other.
In the video, I think six times, What's Joe Biden up to with that attempt to grasp the word freedom for Democrats?
That optimism, what? Certainly, Reagan's Morning in America ad was very famous, but Bill Clinton also launched his re-election. That same sort of thing, and certainly the guy that I work for, Barack Obama, did it as well. And that's a really hard and important and powerful contrast to. If you look at any of the Republicans and Donald Trump messaging, you would think that it was that America was a dystopia. They don't see America as a shining city on the hill.
They see America as Gotham, and so I think that is a really important contrast. And then that does fit into the sunshiny, sort of optimistic ideal about freedoms. And in that renouncement he talked about, it's really a choice between more freedom or less freedom and less rights.
I know what I want the answer to be, and I think you do, too. This is not a time to be complacent.
And it's really defining a hard contrast, regardless of if the nominee on the Republican side is Donald Trump or DeSantis. That our challenge is to push back authoritarianism, and authoritarianism has. It's on the march around the world, and it's also on the march here in the United States.
And just to be specific about that, I mean, there are images early on of pro-choice, pro-abortion rights protesters early on. So when you say rights, do you, and the threat to them, are you being implicitly pointing to abortion rights?
Yes, but that's not it. In this country, there are attacks on literally the freedom to vote in this country, which is also a big issue all across our country. Where Republican state legislative bodies and even at the federal level, if they get a chance is they want to make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. So that's also about freedom, and you can also connect this idea of freedom with this about safety, right? And your kids should have the freedom to go to school without having to be worried that some crazy person's going to march into their school with an Ar-15, right?
So freedom encompasses so much you can fit almost any pillar issue under that thematic of freedom. That's why I think it's such a smart thematic.
Yeah, well, that's the opening word. What about the closing slogan?
Let's finish this job, I know we can.
Let's finish the job. You were on a successful polling team for not one, but two presidential campaigns for Barack Obama. You know how meticulously these words are tested and focus grouped and polled. So what's the appeal, what's the logic of a message that says, Let's finish the job?
Because over the next several months, they want to build a case. That Biden has in fact moved America forward, and the work that he's done has been beneficial to everyday Americans. Campaigns are one or two things broadly in America, they are referendums and contrasts.
Typically on an incumbent, part of it is, and a large part of it is a referendum with Joe Biden. He's been able to move legislation around infrastructure. Every president for the almost two decades has been promising to move legislation around infrastructure to help rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of this country. He's been able to do that.
People forget it wasn't like Obama had a 51 or 52 job approval, either. His job approval wasn't that dramatically different than what Joe Biden's is right now. And Obama's signature, the piece of legislation, the most signature piece of legislation that most people thought of at that time. With Obama was the Affordable Health Care Act, which was underwater, so his signature piece of legislation was actually underwater. But Joe Biden enters re-election, being able to point and sell pieces of legislation that are vastly more favorably viewed for Americans than President Obama was.
I think people would say if it was just a matter.
Of the record, he's actually in a very strong position, just as you said, a big problem he has hanging over him. And let's face it. It's so obvious is that he would be running to be re-elected for a term that he would not finish until he was 86 years old. His age is a big problem, and a lot of people say it's only not a problem if his opponent is just a few years younger than him. Namely, Donald J. Trump.
Watching the video, that three-minute video, which opens with images of the January 6th, 2021, attempted insurrection on Capitol Hill, you feel as if this campaign completely works. Even with his age, as long as the opponent is Donald Trump, is that your feeling that Biden needs Donald Trump as his opponent? No, I disagree with that.
And this is why, because look at what happened in our past midterms here in this country. Our Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, he's not majority leader, because they could not take back the Senate. And this was supposed to be a red wave year in America, meaning that Republicans were supposed to have a wave election, they were supposed to win everything. There wasn't a red wave here, and a lot of the reason why there was a red wave here was the trumpification of the Republican Party.
You have baby. Trump candidates breaking through the primary. Look at Carrie in Arizona, look at both of the statewide candidates in Pennsylvania who were Trump candidates. And in the end, the majority of voters reject the Trump candidate. Because it's not just Trump's personality, it is, in fact, his brand of divisive politics. No, no, for sure, but the.
Thought is that that was definitely true in November 22.
But if he's not the nominee in 2024, Republicans can say, Look, we're not the trumpified party. Now, he's nowhere near.
No, that's not true, because if it is Ron DeSantis who's number two, he breaks through. He has literally positioned himself and built his brand. After Trump, he is Mr. Ban Books, he is Mr. Don't Say Gay.
So no, it's not simply about Trump, it is about, quite frankly, what the Republican Party has become. You are not likely to come out of a Republican primary nationally if you are, in fact, that old school, middle of the road Republican like the bushes.
Were so, even if you're not Trump, you're Trumpist, and that may be enough. Let me ask you just before we move on. The other face that appeared a lot in that video was that of the vice president, Kamala Harris. She appeared at intervals frequently again. You've been in the room where these decisions are made.
What's the thinking there? Well, they're a team and she does.
Bring a youthful, diverse balance to that ticket. Look, it is because her poll numbers are not great, are they? Well, no, vice president is is wildly more popular than than the person who is top of the ticket, or they wouldn't be vice president. I think she is important because one, it's a woman.
And and the majority of our voters in this country are women, and certainly, Democrats don't get to a majority in this country without driving a gender gap. But also, you know, she's a woman of color. And America is increasingly a very diverse country. And particularly that cohort of voters, those millennials and those Gen Z voters, who are potentially the largest swath of the electorate in this country than baby boomers.
So can she speak to some of that and do they see themselves in her? And I argue she'll probably play a larger role in the reelect of Biden than any vice president in modern times has.
Now, in any normal week, Cornell, one of the people who would have been quick to pounce and probably rip this campaign video of Joe Biden's apart, would have been one Tucker Coulson. But his viewers didn't get to hear his thoughts on that or anything else for that matter. Because Fox News dropped him, even though he has long been the most watched anchor in the cable news universe. They fired him on Monday, with the statement saying Fox News Media and Tucker Coulson have agreed to part.
Ways tonight, the New York Times has new details about what led to the network's breakup with.
CARLSON Now, there's been lots of conversation, discussion, speculation about exactly why he was let go. Although there are now reports that the day before, what was going to be a trial, a defamation trial, from Dominion voting system. Suing Fox News, just before that trial was set to start, executives at Fox learned of private messages sent by Coulson that had been redacted.
Blacked out in those legal filings, Dominion lawyers plan to pin Tucker Carlson down on the messages that were most demeaning toward women, including ones that referred to women. Both guests.
And executives using the C word. Now, as I speak, we don't know exactly what was said, and Coulson himself hasn't responded directly to the firing. Instead, publishing or putting out on Twitter a cryptic, fairly bullish, aggressive even video on Twitter denouncing the quality of TV debate.
In America, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?
Reports suggest that he was quite blindsided by his firing, only told of it a few minutes before the rest of the world learned of it. But what I just wanted to put to you is, in a way, putting all of that to one side. The specific circumstances of how he went is how he got to this point, how Tucker Carlson became this huge figure in American politics. I mean, he and I are roughly the same age, and when I was based in Washington. He was then this kind of preppy figure with his bow tie, but he was, you know, he was part of the Republican mainstream.
He appeared on CNN, later on the liberal network MSNBC. So just Cornel, what's your view, and your account, really, of how he transformed himself from this fairly mainstream conservative analyst to a guy who, you know, was famously advocating? By the end, the Great Replacement theory, which suggests that America's white population is being deliberately replaced by a more diverse electorate. And often doing so in language that is on the line of racism and prejudice. How did he make that journey? Do you?
Think, Cornel, that is the question. And if you look back at his earlier days on television, as you pointed out, I mean, he was more of a libertarian than almost anything else. I say before that, that, you know, Bill O'Reilly's really talented, he's more talented than I am.
You know, he's got a lot more viewers than I do, he's a better communicator than I am. But I think there's kind of a deep phoniness at the center of his shtick. And again, as I say, the shtick is sort of built on this perception that he is the character he plays. He is every man, this kind of, he's not right-wing, he's a populist.
And then there's this dramatic change, and again, there seems to be a lot of opportunism there. There's a hustle going on and I think what that Dominion case showed is that Fox is their evening broadcasters, they're hustlers.
Sidney Powell is lying by the way, Tucker Carlson wrote to fellow Fox host.
Laura Ingram, I caught her. It's insane, Ingram responded. Sidney is a complete nut.
No one will work with her, ditto with Rudy. They knew very well that the election wasn't stolen, and they didn't believe that the election was stolen. But yet they still went out there and they spewed forth this harmful information.
Tucker Carlson hated Donald Trump, but you would never know that from what they were doing on.
Television? Yeah, no. I mean, he wrote of Trump that he's a demonic force, a destroyer, but he's not going to destroy us. He said to colleagues, as if understanding that he was good for business, perhaps, but no, I mean, I think that's the point. They knew the product was faulty, but they carried on selling it anyway. These Fox News hosts.
Nevertheless, this point about the influence, and I think it'd be really useful for people outside the country, especially to explain to people quite how influential he was. It wasn't just that he was a successful TV show. Republicans would bend towards him, they would change their message in order to get liked. And a sort of pat on the back from Tucker Carlson. And they partly in fear of what would happen if he turned against you as a Republican.
And people have been just as one example that. Ron DESantis, who previously had been ready to denounce Russia's invasion of Ukraine, started instead calling the Ukraine war a territorial dispute. TuCKER CARLson Very much against American entanglements in any wars, including helping Ukraine. That just looks like DeSantis was being led to, or felt he had to bow to Tucker Carlson. What explains that power? And I think the answer is his audience. But why was he so popular?
What was it about Tucker Carlson that found this huge audience that, in turn, made him so powerful? In terms of dictating to Republicans what they could and couldn't say, I think Tucker Carlson is the.
Center of it, in many ways. But it wasn't just Tucker Carlson. It is understanding what Fox and I put in air quotes news. Was they become an echo chamber, feeding the politics of grievance and feeding that politics of tribalism, which is strong in this country, and that's where their power comes from. It is this echo chamber where people tune in to hear and see things that reinforce their worldview. While at the same time, they are fanning the flames of fear as well as misinformation.
And why do I say misinformation? Because there have been studies in this country that show that. If you frequently watch Fox News, the probability is that you are more uninformed on the facts of most issues than a regular voter who does not.
So the question, I suppose now, is what he does next. That video he posted on Twitter on Thursday seemed to imply that he might go to some other network where he'll be more appreciated.
Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren't many places left, but there are some, and that's enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you.
Soon. But then there is the question of whether he will ever have anywhere else the kind of influence he had at Fox. People will remember that on the right, Bill O'Reilly was huge on Fox before he was fired there, and he's now very much not huge. And then you think of Keith Olbermann on the left, who was a massive star on MSNBC before that ESPN.
And again, now much more marginal. So either he makes one of those moves or does Tucker Carlson make a move into politics. I mean, should we be bracing for candidate Carlson on the Republican side?
I can only hope so.
Really, you would hope so.
For the sheer entertainment value of it, it would be better than any blockbuster movie of the last decade.
See, it worries me when you say that, Cornell, because I remember Democrats saying, Oh, it would be great if Donald Trump runs for president. It will be just, you know, it will be such a spectacle in a show and look what happened.
Well, no, I didn't say that. But Tucker Carlson throwing his hat into a Republican primary and mixing it up and fighting with Ron DESantis and Donald Trump. It is a roller coaster ride to the bottom. So yes, I would absolutely be thrilled to see him throw his hat in that ring.
Putting these two things together, the Joe Biden announcement, this big change at Fox. Do you think all of it put together? Including actually what happened on January, the 6th, you know, and the Dominion lawsuit that followed? Do you think that's going to change the way 2024 is reported by the media? Do you think it's going to be a different story next time than it has been for previous elections?
I hope it will, but I'm not sure that it will, because there's always profit. And look, you get to the heart of it. In those texts from the employees of Fox is that they know they're lying, but they're lying for profit and for self-interest. And is that going to go away? Unfortunately, we both know the answer to that. No, that's not going to go away.
That's going to continue. And every opportunity that they have to profit from lies, people are going to profit from lies. They've been doing that from the beginning of time. It's just on a different scale now with technology. But what I do hope is that some at Fox will give pause.
And look, the lawsuits aren't over either, right? Fox is probably facing even more lawsuits around the lying about the election, so it's not over. So hopefully this lawsuit does give some pause to it, but I'm not optimistic.
There's so much else going on that we could get into, but just as we move towards the close here, mop up a few other things, obviously. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida in his big battle now going legal with Disney, which he accuses of being like a woke corporation. And they are now.
Suing him, the federal lawsuit alleges that DESantis retaliated against Disney after it criticized a Florida bill that banned the use of the word Disney. And it's not just classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. The governor and his allies then provoked the special tax district that allowed Disney to essentially self-govern for.
Nearly 60 years and Donald Trump is got one legal story after another. Writer E. Jean Carroll.
Taking the stand in the second day of her civil battery and defamation case against former.
Donald Trump civil case brought against him by the Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll for battery and defamation after she alleges the former president raped her in a New York department store in 1996. He obviously denies that allegation. Meanwhile, the prosecutor in Atlanta, Georgia, investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies meddled illegally in the last presidential election.
You know, we remember famously that call where he asked officials in Georgia to find him the vote. She, the prosecutor there, says she expects to announce charging decisions in that case this summer. You put that together with the Stormy Daniels case in New York, all these legal battles, I mean, the indictment in New York, actually saw him get a bump in the numbers among Republicans.
Does any of this stuff hurt him, or does it only help him play the victim?
As he goes into 2024.
Well, this is where we are in American politics, as long as Donald Trump is their tribal strongman, they'll forgive him of anything. You know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. An indictment would probably would more than likely end your presidential aspirations, whether you're Democrat or Republican. But somehow, in the mixed up world, the skewed world where a segment of our voting population fears most, change.
As long as Donald Trump remains their tribal strongman and gives voice to their tribalism, they'll forgive anything.
As he famously said, he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and they would still vote for him. Cornell We always ask our guests on the podcast a what else? question, something completely different. We've already. You and I talked about quite a lot this week, but I did want to ask you about the news that. Harry Belafonte died this week at the age of 96. Obviously famous for his career on screen as an actor, also as a singer. But he himself said that he wanted to be remembered and thought he would be as an activist, his role in the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
He's very close relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. bailing him out of jail in Alabama and continuing it into his work on apartheid, on AIDS. Sometimes many. He criticized the guy you worked for, Barack Obama, for example, over the detentions in Guantanamo Bay. Your reflections on the passing of and the legacy of really Harry Belafonte.
It's a tremendous loss. He used his celebrity and the resources that came with that celebrity to push forward human rights and civil rights. There's a lot of conversation about talk, the talk, where he talked the talk and he walked the walk. In his real life. I struggle to see where we are creating more. Belafontes. Hopefully we can look at his legacy and look at what he did. And use it as an example of what we should do in our fight for human and civil rights when we have platforms.
To do so, Cornel Belcher, Thanks so much for joining me on Politics Weekly America.
Thanks for having me.
And that is all from me for this week. Before I go, I just wanted to remind you to subscribe to the Guardian's podcast series, Cotton Capital, which is looking at the Guardian's links to transatlantic slavery. New episodes are released every Monday. Episode four travels to Brazil to find out more about the Guardian connection there. So make sure to search for and subscribe to Cotton Capital wherever you get your podcasts.
But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Daniel Stephens and the executive producer is Maz Ebtehaj. I'm Jonathan Friedland. Thanks as always.
For listening.
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