All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 17, 2025 15:59-16:52 - CSPAN
52:57
Kara SwisherandLarry Wilmore Discuss TechnologyandPolarization
Participants
Main
l
larry wilmore
15:38
|

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Your Highness, Mike Wallace, National Security Advisor.
And now journalist Kara Swisher and comedian Larry Wilmore speak about the role technology has played in political polarization in the United States.
This is about 45 minutes.
Kara?
Larry, welcome.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Hello.
unidentified
I'm going to start off the conversation the same way that Mark Lawrence started off with Carl and Bob, and that is to ask you how you got into your chosen professions.
And Carol, let's start with you.
How did you get into reporting?
Why did you want to be a reporter?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Before Kara goes, can I just thank William Bernstein for opening for us?
I just thought that was nice.
Wasn't that nice?
That was very nice.
They did a good job.
I thought they did a good job.
unidentified
I think they have some promise.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I think so too.
I'm going to keep my eye on those, too.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, you should.
Yeah.
Me, how I started.
How did you start as a reporter?
I wanted to be a spy.
And I was the yearbook editor, which is a job of immense power in high school.
But I was not in newspapers.
I didn't work for newspapers.
And I really wanted to be a spy.
And I am gay, as obvious, as is obvious.
And it's true.
Come on, let's stop.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I'm glad you said it.
unidentified
There's not a lot of questions here.
And I couldn't be in the, it couldn't, I wanted to be in the military in college to start with.
And I wanted to do military intelligence, essentially.
My dad was in the military.
He was in the Navy.
He served until he died early.
And I couldn't because I was gay.
And it was pre-Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which the Clintons did, but everybody had a terrible history of doing this.
And so I couldn't be in the military without telling, essentially.
And so I didn't.
And I was going to do some others public service, but it was really hard at the time at that time.
People don't remember that, but it was true.
And so I got into reporting, which is similar.
It was adjacent to it, to analysis, because I was going to be an analyst, essentially, like, you know, on homeland, but 100% less wacky.
And I couldn't do what I really did want to do, which is serve the country.
And I would have been a fantastic admiral at this point.
I would have been have a big boat and things like that.
But anyway, that was lost to me and the whole country.
So sorry.
And so I got into reporting and I started writing for the student newspaper, the Hawaii at Georgetown University.
I wrote columns, I wrote all kinds of things.
And my freshman year, I won the Journalism Award, which is usually won by a senior, because frankly, I was better than them.
And I was, let's be clear.
And so I went, I started working for the Washington Post really early.
Actually, it's where I met both of them.
I was just, I worked in the, I was a news aide and all kinds of small level things.
And I did story string.
I was a stringer from Georgetown University, which I got the job because they wrote a story that I wrote for the college newspaper and it was full of errors.
And I called them and told them they sucked.
And they said, come down here and say that to our face.
And I did, and they hired me.
So that's how you go.
It's always the best policy.
It is, apparently.
Larry, how did you get into the world of comedy?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I also wanted to be a gay spy.
I actually wanted to be an astronaut.
unidentified
It is true.
What if I was actually a CIA agent right now?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Well, you could be, and you could be throwing us off right now by saying, what if I was.
unidentified
What if I was.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Right.
Because that's the double speak of a spy, right?
Man, they're so good.
But I was always funny.
I come from a funny family.
My parents, they're not like consciously funny.
They're just funny.
Like, they don't know that they're funny.
They're just funny people.
And my brother and I used to always make fun of them.
And I never thought it was a possibility to be in showbiz until I realized that it was the only thing I really wanted to do.
And I first, I was a theater major in college, and I started as a stand-up comic.
And I was kind of trying to do acting and comedy at the same time.
But I realized during that time in Hollywood, they didn't quite know what to do with me.
I was a black comic, and I did political humor.
I did, you know, satire and stuff like that.
And at that time, they were really casting, you know, Hollywood Shuffle did a, Robert Townsend's movie did a good take on this.
If you were from the ghetto, you know, and it had a certain kind of feel, that's what Hollywood wanted.
And I felt like I needed to carve out a space for myself, which is why I started writing and producing and went behind the scenes and kind of did that.
Wrote for shows like In Living Color, Fresh Prints, things like that.
Started creating shows.
And then by the time the Daily Show came around, I was back to performing and had wanted to create a space for myself.
And that's how the Daily Show came about.
Me coming back to performing, coming back to my stand-up roots and doing that.
And now I've kind of done all kinds of things in showbiz, producing, writing, performing that type of thing.
But I like being in front of an audience.
It's probably the most fun.
unidentified
Obviously, the theme of this conference is the news ecosystem.
Very complicated and fragmented media ecosystem in which we find ourselves today, which in so many ways compromises our democracy.
I want to go, Larry, to a quote that you from The Guardian, an interview you did with The Guardian, in which you said, I think the term fair reporting is overused when it comes to journalism.
I think saying they want to report evenly is more accurate.
What do you mean by even reporting?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I'm like, when did I say this?
I must have been talking about CNN because I was always slamming them.
Everything was breaking news in CNN at some point.
I'm like, at some point, you're actually going to break the news, you know?
And people like, a lot of news organizations like to use these slogans, like they're trying to gaslight us into how they're covering the news rather than covering it.
And at the time, that phrase was being used a lot, I think, that we're covering this fairly, you know, which in my mind, they were really making an effort to cover it evenly.
And by that, they were trying to appease the audience into showing that they were covering both sides of something, which in their mind was fair.
But I'm like, no, that's even.
Fair is covering the story in the way in which it should be covered.
That would be fair reporting, you know, in my mind, right?
So evenly, when you're covering something evenly, you're catering to the audience.
When you're covering it fairly, you're catering to the story.
And there was too much catering to the audience as far as I was concerned and not to the story.
It's like, who cares if you agree with something or disagree with it?
I said, I disagree with myself constantly.
You know, I may have an opinion, but the facts change my opinion about something.
News should be as surprising by the people who deliver it.
I shouldn't be able to predict what a journalist is going to say.
unidentified
Karen.
You know, interesting, you said that about CNN, though.
I think the best quote recently has been Christiane Amanpour, which is truthful, not neutral, which I think kind of says that a little better.
Is that there has been this way that we have, I don't do it.
This sort of, it's called both sidesism for everything, right?
That's how we're using it widely.
But I think the press was so scared not to be reflective of another side, you end up going to that diner and asking unqualified people unqualified questions.
You know, the diner thing.
Like, what do they know?
Why are we talking to them?
We were talking to some normal people.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Is it a Waffle House or a Denny's?
Like Ellen and I.
To me, like, that makes a difference.
unidentified
You know, one of the things you get a lot when you're in the press is like, you know, why don't you talk to real people?
And I go, well, I'm a real person.
They're like, you're not a real person.
I'm like, I'm a real person.
Like, why don't you come to where I was living in San Francisco and come visit my neighborhood?
Why do we have to go to your neighborhood?
Why don't you know about us?
And so I think the press gets nervous about that.
And I think something that I've done and a lot of people have done lately is not do that anymore.
In the journal, when I worked for the Wall Street Journal, they called the to be sure statement, which drove me crazy, which is, I would say, I was writing about Web Van, and I did all the reporting, and I knew it was a disaster.
And so I wanted to write, it's going to be a disaster, and here's why.
And they wanted me to get, when I went back to this and I said, this is going to be a disaster, get someone to say that, one, which is, I think, false reporting as far as I'm concerned.
And then put in the to-be-sure statement.
To be sure, some people think this is going to be a success.
And so I wrote it, I put it in.
I said, to be sure, some people think it's going to be a success.
They're all idiots.
And they took it out.
And I was like, but they are.
It's not going to.
And of course, it collapsed.
So, to be sure.
Is journalism in mass vehicles, the big responsible, is it better than when you started 35 years ago?
What's a mass vehicle?
You know, the Washington Post.
No, I'm not at those places.
Well, Wall Street Journal.
I was.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
35 years ago.
unidentified
But as an observer, as a reader, as a consumer.
No, it's changed drastically.
Those businesses are in distress.
The business is yes.
But the journalistic practices, are they more responsible now than when you started?
You just said the business is yes.
So it doesn't really matter if anything else matters.
If it's not a good business, you're not going to survive unless you're at the behest of billionaires right now.
And several billionaires own publications.
So that's an unusual thing to have to deal with because you never know if they're okay, maybe their kids aren't.
You never know when they're going to say, maybe lose their minds after buying a social network, for example.
No, but they're not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
So you're at the behest of billionaires.
If you don't have a good business, you don't have journalism.
That's it.
That's the whole enchilada, whether you realize it or not.
It's the news business.
It's like show business.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Right.
There was a time when the news wasn't part of the profit center of the networks.
You know, it was considered a different part of the networks.
There was a news division that was separate from the entertainment division.
And I think when they combined this, network talked about that brilliantly.
But now the news had to get ratings.
And it had to perform.
Broadcast news, too.
And they just put it in a whole different performative counter.
I go, God, you look at network, it's amazing.
unidentified
Everything came true.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
It's amazing.
And he was writing about the past.
That's what's fascinating about it.
Patty Tayaski was writing about what he had already observed.
He wasn't predicting the future.
unidentified
Yeah.
So let me talk about comedy.
So there's record numbers of news avoidance today, right?
People think the news is depressing, and they're tuning out.
So I assume that they're going to comedy shows to get there as many people are getting their news from comedy shows.
Do you feel responsibility when you relate the news in your comedy?
Do you feel a responsibility in getting it right?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Of course not.
No, I've never thought about getting it right.
For me, it's always, what is the truth here?
What is my point of view?
Do I have something to say about this that is worth saying?
That's the, but I'm not reporting on something.
I have an observation of something which is different.
That to me is what the comedy is.
I don't know if people get their news from comedy, like the way people say they used to get it from Jon Stewart or something like that.
I think they get their opinions confirmed by the shows more than anything else.
I think Jon Stewart, or I should say John Oliver, just delivers this grand soliloquy to confirm what people are suspicious of in the first place.
Yes.
Puts it together in a beautiful way, does a lot of research about things, and gives people a nice little meal of something that they probably already agree with or are suspicious of, or that type of thing, or illuminates them on something.
But I don't think it's there.
I don't think it changes people's minds about things, which people sometimes think, or they want comedy to do that.
It rarely does that.
It's not a needle mover in that.
I think occasionally, and by the way, here's what I'll also say this.
I think funny goes farther than serious, quasi-funny commentary.
So when people talk about thinking that Jon Stewart or Oliver, you know, will change people's minds, not as much as Tina Faye just doing Sarah Palin would.
Because that's just pure funny.
And just the ridicule of that, just people go, oh, fuck.
She might be president?
No.
unidentified
It's because she got at the essential truth.
Yes.
That's correct.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
And it was so funny, it's infectious.
The same thing happened, I think, with Al Gore in 2000.
Saturday Night Live, this was their best, the 2000 election was Saturday Night Live's best attack on the election, I felt, because I felt they went after Bush and Gore with the same amount of fervor, you know.
And the whole Gore thing was the lock box, if you remember that whole thing.
You know, and Bush, Will Farrell's Bush was so funny, too, and just completely just took the piss out of him also.
But through laughing at that, people just had a different appreciation of that.
unidentified
I had insights into that.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
But no one remembers the commentary, the funny commentary about it.
That's what I mean.
unidentified
I have to say, I push back.
Our kids, I have a lot more kids than you do, I think.
But it was, how many kids do you have?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I have two.
unidentified
I have four.
Okay.
Very.
Try to keep up with the lesbians.
Try to keep up.
That is.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
That is.
I've been trying.
Sorry, Kerry.
Because there's a lesbian inside me trying to get out.
We know that.
unidentified
It's a good life.
It's a good life.
Now I've forgotten what I was going to say.
I'm thinking of something else.
Once I said there's a lesbian, she got all flustered.
My kids do get their cues from it, though.
They get their thinking moments.
And I think bringing it together systemically is important.
They love John Oliver.
They love, they're 18 and 21.
And they get their news from lots of places, by the way, and a lot more substantively than you think of young people.
I think that's the canard we have, that young people only will watch news or tiny TikTok things or dances or makeup tutorials.
You know, I tell this story a lot of my son, who I was doing an interview for Frontline for about, they were doing a Twitter one, and I like Frontline, so I was doing it.
I don't do a ton of those.
And my son called during it, and he said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm doing Nerdy Frontline.
He goes, I love Frontline.
I was like, really?
And I didn't know this.
I was like, hmm, interesting.
And he started to describe every show of Frontline that had been on over the past year.
I know.
I was like impressed.
I was like, well done, Kara.
And he and so I put it on because all these people are like, oh, look, a live 21-year-old listening to all your content that loves your content, right?
Here he is.
It's a lie that young people don't like substantive things.
And he goes, he describes the show.
I love this show.
I love this.
This was interesting.
I didn't know about this about Chile or something like that.
And he goes, and I said, gosh, Louie, I didn't know you watched PBS.
And he said, I don't watch PBS.
And I said, but you do.
And he goes, I watch YouTube.
Which is where he got all his.
And that's how he related to it.
Like, through the distribution and the content, and no longer the brand.
So it's just a different way of receiving information, but it's no less substantive.
I don't buy that about young people.
I don't.
I want to talk about social media in one sec, but let me just go back to comedy for one more second.
You said that one of the reasons Senator Net Live did it so well in 2000 is because they did both Gore and Bush, sort of evenly.
Do you feel responsibility if you're doing a joke about Biden to do one about Trump?
Do you feel like you'd have to be sort of even-handed in the comedy?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
No, not in that sense, not the even-handed nature.
I just, for me personally, I just have to make the point that is a relevant point.
Like when I was covering Hillary Trump, right?
And people were, some people were calling Hillary a liar, saying she lied about this, and some people were saying Trump was a liar, blah, blah, blah.
And my point was: look, both of these people are liars.
The difference is Hillary lies like a politician, okay?
You know, the way the politicians lies, she's very good at that, lies like a politician.
Problem is, Trump lies like a crackhead.
I mean, he rambles, right?
It's like, is he trying to sell me my own VCR?
Like, what's going on?
You know, I don't know whether he's like sleeping with whores on the street, you know.
It's like all this crackhead behavior.
unidentified
Yes.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Yes.
So to me, I'm not both sides in that.
I am using both comparisons to tell you what my real observation of this guy is a crackhead and is acting like that.
And so that's why I'm giving you both examples to that, you know.
But not to do it for its own sake.
You know, I don't feel the responsibility of that, I guess you could say.
unidentified
Let me quote you from your excellent memoir, Burn Book, A Tech Love Story, which, by the way, Kara will be signing after the program, is that right.
So if you haven't bought the best-selling Burn book, you have a chance to do so after the program, and Kara Swisher will sign it for you.
But you write, in social media's new paradigm, engagement equals enragement.
And it is addictive.
This is made worse by people who run these companies whose first instinct is to let all through the gate, regardless of the potential damage of danger.
And oh, yeah, we paid for all of it by funding the creation of the internet with taxpayer dollars and then with our own data.
They owe us.
Yet when the violence actually does harm, the companies respond with nothing more than apologies and persistent insistence that they will do better.
Yeah.
Yes.
Why aren't social media companies held responsible for the content they purvey?
Because our government has abrogated its responsibility to do its basic job with the most important industry in history.
So it's astonishing.
These are the richest people in the history of the world.
They're most valuable.
They're trillion-dollar companies, multi-trillion-dollar companies.
They have unlimited power.
They're in everything.
They're ubiquitous in our lives, in our work, in our social life, in our kids' lives, in our own lives.
It's addictive.
It is.
It's like cigarettes.
It is.
And you also have to use it.
That's the thing.
You must be on it, or else you can't work.
You can't communicate.
There's not a choice necessarily unless you go full-luddite.
And people just don't do that.
They just don't.
And so here they are with all the advantages.
And our government has decided, and making all this money based on a technology that we created, right?
That the government created for lots of different reasons.
and taking advantage of it but not paying their fair share of the damage it causes.
And that's a similar, it's a similar story to opiates.
It's a similar story to cigarettes.
And I use this example because it's the best one right now is Alaska Airlines, they blow a single door.
There's several lawsuits.
There's going to be dozens of lawsuits.
The CEO was fired.
There's congressional investigations.
There's state investigations.
There's going to be, there's so much liability attached.
Meanwhile, there's all this evidence of problems with kids, for example.
You could pick any one thing that they might have done or been part of, right?
A good example of this sorry thing was Mark Zuckerberg was up on the hill again, where they again performatively deal with him and never do anything, never actually pass anything.
And Josh Hawley, one of my least favorite senators, but who should know better, who happens to be very smart, said, apologize to these parents.
And there were parents there whose kids had suffered due to social media stuff.
And they all had pictures of their kids up facing Mark Zuckerberg, which was something else to see.
And Josh Hawley said, turn around and apologize to them like that.
And I personally said, you need to apologize to them for not doing anything because you're the person, who, who, who in this room could do something about it, right?
You, sir.
Stop with your performative stuff that then you put online on Facebook to raise money, the most cynical act ever.
So Mark did turn around and said, instead of apologizing, and of course Hawley said nothing about this, he said, I'm sorry for what happened to you.
What is that, Larry?
Sorry for what happened to you.
I'm sorry the weather here in Austin is warm.
It's not my fault.
Like, that's what that's saying.
It's not an apology.
It's a, how did this happen kind of thing when you're at the scene of the crime and you're one of the perpetrators?
And to me, it's our government, not, we're about, we're maybe about to pass the first privacy bill in 25 years.
Senator Maria Cantwell, who used to be a tech executive, is doing it.
I'm not so sure it's going to pass.
So, but this is the first one in 25 years.
That's the only law that we've passed in 25 years.
Larry was talking about TV news when, in its nascent stage, and it was in the 1950s and there were 15-minute broadcasts.
But at the time, television was the dominant medium, and it was considered by the government to be a public trust.
And the reason that you had news broadcasts was because it was in the public interest to do so, even though they didn't make money.
They would later make money as their own entities.
But why isn't the internet considered a public trust?
Why was it not in its nascent days in the 1990s when you started covering it, considered a public trust?
I don't know.
That's a good question.
You know what it did instead?
It gave it broad immunity.
Instead of allowing it, by the way, it's a great thing to do.
It's just the opposite.
They protected it.
Look, Donald Trump got sued and lost.
Rupert Murdock got sued and lost, paid close to a billion dollars, and Dominion's facing another lawsuit.
These guys get a law that says you can't sue them.
You can't, we're not going to pass any laws.
Also, we can't sue you.
Also, you have total purview over our lives and make decisions from a small group of people in Silicon Valley, who are very homogeneous, by the way, making these decisions about everybody's lives.
It affects them.
That more people are not.
And by the way, you can't get off of this stuff.
You can't leave either.
And so I have no idea why.
I'm waiting for an antitrust bill.
I'm waiting for an algorithmic transparency bill.
I'm waiting for a, oh, there's dozens of bills.
We could have hacking disclosure.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I think one of the distinctions is the nature of the medium itself.
Whether it was film or television and radio, you had gatekeepers in those mediums who presented something to the public.
And, you know, mostly they were selling soap is what I call it.
You know, you had sponsors who were also responsible for delivering something to the public.
Those people were accountable to the people as entities of delivering something, you know, a product.
When the internet and these things came along, they presented themselves as a town square, you know, as information that was crossing from one person to another, from people out to here.
It wasn't looked at as broadcasting, you know, so it was thought of differently.
People thought, oh, this is democracy.
You know, we can say whatever we want.
Why should it government get involved in these types of things?
So I think they stayed away from that type of thing.
That's what it feels like to me, not realizing, but there actually are gatekeepers here.
Someone actually is presenting this too.
It's whoever owns this book.
unidentified
It's modern media companies.
I mean, to me, there's a big debate about TikTok.
All of them are modern media companies.
And they should be governed the way modern media companies are, meaning you can sue them.
Now, there's a lot of protections of media companies, libel laws, and everything else, which is appropriate.
And they deserve similar protections.
The argument they make, Elon did this recently on the Don Lemon interview we were just talking about, where he said, well, the newspaper has, you know, what, 20 articles a day?
I'm like, no, it has hundreds, but okay, fine, fine.
You'll go with your number, sir.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
He's breaking news.
unidentified
Breaking news, yeah, that's right.
Now you've got me off again.
So he said we only have 20, and we have, you know, 500 million or 5 million coming through in a day.
And my answer to that, and Don did not go back to him, I said, well, why'd you build it that way?
Like, it's your fault that you have a system that's so toxic that it spews toxic waste out at an alarming rate that you make.
Well, he doesn't make money off of it, but other companies do.
Twitter's never made money, by the way, at all.
But like Facebook, it's allowed to spew toxic waste and do nothing about it.
Like, why?
Why is that?
Why do they get to do that?
And then they get to make money off of your data.
So what they do is they take in a platform you paid for.
You then give them your data.
They take it, eat it, vomit it back up to you, and charge you and say, please say you're welcome.
Like, I don't get it.
I don't get it.
We're cheap dates to these people.
We're cheap dates.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and it's like, why are they spending, why do they want to ban TikTok?
It's like, Facebook is already doing these things that you're afraid of that TikTok might do.
unidentified
Except in this case, I'm going to disagree with you because the Chinese government is always involved with every Chinese company there.
In this case, Facebook wants to sell you socks on Instagram.
The Chinese government, we don't know what they want to do.
they are a foreign adversary.
So I'm going to say that.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Well, then I would take a slight disagreement.
Well, then I would take a slight disagreement.
unidentified
Okay.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I would say that...
unidentified
But they're not a foreign adversary?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
No, I would say that the phone that you're looking at TikTok on is already made in China.
unidentified
So that is 100%.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Yes, China already is in your hands following you around.
unidentified
You can get rid of TikTok, but you know, you're still being followed around by on Black on the Air with Taylor Lorentz for the Washington Post about TikTok.
You were talking about TikTok.
What I did not realize and realized during the course of that interview is that Meta has a lobbying campaign against TikTok for years and has sort of demonized them.
But right.
What should we think of TikTok?
Bare bones, what is obviously they're owned by the Chinese, and that in itself is.
It's a Chinese company.
Chinese company, but we know what that means in China very often.
He tends to mean that.
Let me give you two examples very quickly, and then Larry can win on what he thinks TikTok means.
Every company that's in China has involvement by the Chinese Communist Party.
It's just the way it is.
That's that country.
Sorry.
For example, Jack Ma, one of the greatest entrepreneurs, he started Alibaba.
He disappeared at one point for a while.
It's like in this country, suddenly Jeff Bezos disappearing and then being quiet.
And he's not quiet these days, but he, you know, just disappearing these people.
Just like, I think we'll put Steve Jobs in the cooler for a while, that kind of thing.
That happens in China.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Dysonic governor of South Carolina disappeared.
unidentified
Yeah, right, yeah.
So that's one of the issues.
The other one is that it's that Mark absolutely, in an interview with me, he sort of put out this G or me argument where we are the national champions.
Xi wants to run the Chinese internet, which is all true.
But when he said that to me, he goes, well, it's Xi or me, I go, don't like the choice.
I'm going to take you, obviously, but it's like a bad date.
Like, I have to take the bad or worse.
And in the case of Facebook, they are.
They're information, they're rapacious information thieves.
That's what they are.
But it is in a different interest than what's happening in China.
And so I am concerned that we allow a foreign government to have, they wouldn't be able to buy CNN.
They couldn't buy CBS.
They couldn't buy the Washington Post or anything else.
So why should they be able to have a lesson?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
If the Washington Post started showing cats playing the piano, I would be concerned that the Chinese company would be interested in buying that.
unidentified
I don't know what they're going to do.
And that's the thing.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Well, looks like, what is the worst thing that they could do with TikTok?
unidentified
What do you talk about?
Everything.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Like, what would be the worst thing?
unidentified
What they've been doing forever on social media by buying ads, by creating Discord and partisan nature.
Years ago on Facebook, and I believe it was the Russians who did this, but they had ads on there that Hillary Clinton was a lizard.
And it worked, by the way.
Let me tell you a lot of people.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Wait, you're saying she's not a lizard?
unidentified
She's not a lizard.
I've attempted to scratch her face, and it did not work.
Secret Service intervened, but I've seen a lot of dead skin when I've been here.
Okay, fine.
But I actually called them.
I'm like, Hillary Clinton's not a lizard.
Why is this showing up on your platform?
They're like, well, everyone has a right.
And I said, I think it's being bought by the Russians.
And of course, they were paying in rubles at this point.
And they were trying to create an information war.
And we have won the classic war, say, against Russia, but they have been able to more cheaply attack our democracy at its roots by partisanship.
And so it happens domestically, too.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I feel like we're just better at that, though, still.
We're better at dividing ourselves than they're at dividing ourselves.
unidentified
No, but we've been at it a lot.
Yes, it is, but it's been fueled by this ability to part us.
And I think the use of bots by these countries, and not just other countries, it's domestic, too.
It's now being used by domestic.
And so these bots are constantly creating rage that then creates engagement and then creates more rage.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Right, but those bots are on X, right?
unidentified
Not just X, it's all over the world.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
No, but X isn't the Chinese, you know.
unidentified
Well, we don't know who they're doing.
The problem is you can't trust them.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
But I mean, but it's on that platform.
Like, the things that you're saying can happen on Facebook, can happen on X.
unidentified
Sure, but why let them have their own company that we don't have full insight into?
It's just, they can't buy, if they can't buy, and the other part of that equation is we can't be in China.
No U.S. company can be in China.
And the reason why we can't be in China, because we'd spy on them.
That's why.
And they know that.
So if we don't have reciprocity, why are they allowed here?
That's just my feeling.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I would argue that we're already spying on China.
unidentified
Not be a social network, not be a social network used by 170 million people.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Well, because the Chinese are already doing it to themselves.
unidentified
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
That's true.
Carol, why did Elon Musk buy Twitter?
Some have talked about the decline of Twitter as being cultural vandalism, and clearly it's deteriorated under his.
It was such a fine product before.
But it has changed discernibly.
It's a right-wing bar.
It's not our right-wing bar.
What did he want to do?
What was his intention?
It is.
It's a bar from the bottom.
Did he want to weaken it?
It's a bar from Star Wars now.
It really is.
Cantina.
Why don't you take that one?
Why did he buy Twitter?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
No, no, no.
You know this.
I have done it.
unidentified
I'm going to hear your thoughts.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
All right.
Well, for me, it feels like just an ego move.
I mean, you know, a lot of these billionaires are in bubbles, right?
And part of being in a bubble is people are going to kiss your ass all the time and all that type of stuff.
This is the ultimate type of bubble to be in, where you just get to be, I mean, the thousand-pound gorilla, like nobody's business.
You talk about controlling the narrative from, you know, from this standpoint, had to have been the allure of this.
It wasn't just wanting free speech because he wouldn't be doing all that tweeting himself.
You know, I think he wants to be the object of the attention on X.
So to me, it was self-serving.
That's what it looks like to me more than any kind of altruistic thing.
And by the way, I'm a huge fan of SpaceX.
I've loved a lot of the stuff that SpaceX tried to do.
We talked about this before, Carol, like when Tesla came out, they had some really great ideas.
And what his mission was, when you heard Elon talking about some of his just green ideas and climate ideas and things like that, had some really good ideas behind him.
But something happened where he just turned and there's this attention grab that just became this narcissism, this narcissistic thing.
And he chose a side in it as well.
And a lot of that side that he chose, I think, is an ugly side, too.
So it's just not very, it's just not very appealing.
unidentified
He's got it pretty right.
I mean, this is someone who, that was about 5% to 10% of his personality.
The dank memes, the weird jokes, the sort of hateful stuff was about 10%.
And the rest was really interesting for a long, long time here.
And I've known him for a long time.
And the stuff he did at Tesla was groundbreaking, no question.
Although very, they're in very much more trouble now because there's a lot of competitors and they haven't kept up with the products.
And he's ruining the brand through his antics on Twitter.
So that's an issue.
SpaceX, another groundbreaking company.
By the way, let me just say, he didn't do it alone.
There's an executive named Rebecca, I mean, Gwynne Shotwell, who runs SpaceX.
She doesn't get any attention.
She's the reason it's doing so well.
Very few women are in that sector, so I'd like to call attention to her.
And there's a lot of other things.
Starlink was really smart.
But what happened, I think, as you get that rich and you're surrounded by enablers and yes people who are, what I say, they lick you up and down all day and you're always right.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I have to get that image out of my head.
unidentified
Okay, well, some of them like that.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Like that Elon on the yacht image, right?
unidentified
Okay, all right.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
You know that.
unidentified
Yeah, I've seen that picture.
Yes, I have.
He doesn't like it.
So you have all these people doing this all day, and then you get a sense of your own, like, God.
He already had those tendencies.
You know, when he was, in the beginning of the book, I talk about him saying, I can change Trump's mind.
And I was like, well, thank you, Jesus, but you're not going to.
This man's been a lifelong racist and all kinds of things.
Really?
I can do it.
Like, he had that kind of mentality.
A lot of tech people do.
I think COVID, something happened to him during COVID.
He suddenly started talking.
You know, the pedophile stuff started to pop up, which was odd.
I think the COVID.
I think he's, you know, they wanted to close down one of his companies.
He's very much like, I'm my own man, I'm a man of the people, even though he's the richest man in the world, which is kind of funny.
He started to get the victim complex that a lot of these people get.
I call it grievance industrial complex.
And they love to be aggrieved, even though they're incredibly blessed, which is really astonishing.
I think COVID did.
We've read in the Wall Street Journal about his partying, which everybody knows about.
And I think that had an effect on him.
And then this part of his personality just took over the rest of it.
And a lot of people get radical.
You've met people who've been radicalized, right, in different ways.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
What do you mean by radicalization?
unidentified
Well, just look like that.
Suddenly, my mom's a good example.
She hated Trump, and then Fox News every fucking day.
She's like, she loves Trump.
And then she hated him for a while, and now she loves him again.
Listen, that wasn't social media.
That was just the persistent repetition of hate and misinformation.
And I think he got pulled into that in a lot of ways.
That's interesting.
A lot of them are like that.
He's not alone.
Quote you from a New York Times editorial that you did six years ago.
Facebook, you wrote, as well as Twitter and Google's YouTube and the rest, have become the digital arms dealers of the modern age.
They have weaponized the First Amendment, they have weaponized civics discourse, and they have weaponized most of all politics.
If you could reform, I want to ask you both, Larry, we'll start with you.
If you could reform social media, if you could put regulations in place, what would you do?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
That's a tough one.
You know, I may have to go second on this because I have to think about it.
Because I don't think in those terms, I'm the opposite of that.
You know, I'm more freer in terms of speech and that type of thing in how I view things.
unidentified
We tend to go to speech.
It's a business model problem, is what it is.
And we tend to focus on it as a speech problem.
And they use it as a fig leaf because they don't know it at all.
I've been in speeches.
Mark gave a speech at Georgetown where he was misconstruing the First Amendment so badly I wanted to rush the stage and hand him a copy, which I keep with me.
I was like, it's real short, it's first.
It's easy to understand.
Like, government shall make no law, not Mark Zuckerberg.
You can make any law you want, and you do often.
And so he does when it pleases him.
And when he doesn't, he says First Amendment, which is interesting.
But it has nothing to do with any of these companies, the First Amendment, at all in many ways.
And so it's a business model problem.
It's an advertising business model that enragement equals engagement.
And they win by taking our data.
So why not attack the data issues, the business model issues, and the ways they capture our attention.
It's not free speech.
The model is made so that you could.
Let me give you an example: Google.
Google a search, right?
Not as many people do search as they used to, but they do.
It's a big business.
When you search, you don't linger there.
You essentially are just searching for something.
So it provides speed, context, and accuracy.
That's the architecture of Google search.
Uber, call the car, it comes.
That's the architecture of it.
The architecture of social media is virality, engagement, and speed.
Guess what that ends up in?
Rage.
It just goes right to rage.
And so their business model is rage.
So started to pass laws about data privacy, about the business model itself, what attacks the business model and the data stealing and the need to create that.
And then also hold them liable if things have those parents be allowed to sue them.
They might lose, but why can't they be, why can't those parents sue those companies and get disclosure on what's happening inside those companies?
Yeah.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
I do think rage gets a lot of the headlines, but it really is only part of it, you know.
But that's the part that concerns people because a lot of bad things come out of that or whatever.
But there's so much more.
Here's an aspect of it that people don't realize because I'm in this business and I realize that people broadcast themselves.
There's a cost to broadcasting yourself.
People don't realize what happens as a result of that.
You've made a public profile of yourself.
You're putting yourself out there.
Now you have created this avatar that isn't quite you.
It's representative of you.
But slowly, especially young kids, don't realize that they are blurring the line between who they are and what this representative of them is.
That's what a broadcast is.
It's representative of you.
It's not you.
And so when young people, especially children, are watching representatives of people, because it's not real, they are getting a confusing sense of who they should be.
So this isn't in the area of rage.
It's not in the area of misinformation or that.
This is more in the area of identity, which is really a subject that, like, I don't know how to govern this type of thing.
When I say, I don't know how to govern that, how do you govern that?
But this is a problem because there, I think, is suicide like at one of its highest rates now for young people?
unidentified
Especially men.
Yeah.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so, and this is especially a man problem when, you know, not that I'm a doctor in this, but, you know, as a boy who grew up to be a man, identity is very important to boys becoming men.
Who am I?
What's my place?
All these things.
We put a lot of stock in identity, right?
You know, it's very, very self-centered and self-serving.
When that is built on shallow ground, you know, and built on these false images, you are setting yourself up for some really bad stuff.
But I think the girl problem is even probably even worse because the presentations of women primarily have sex objects in a way that you could have never seen coming, you know, where it's, you know, they're doing this willfully.
You know, this isn't like the exploitation of the early days of porn and that kind of stuff.
It's presenting yourself in these sexual ways that, you know, are doing so much harm to kids that a lot of the Gen Z generation aren't even having sex that much because there's so much of this overstimulating stimulus that's happening.
unidentified
There's also deep fake porn happening.
There's actually a good story in the United States.
There's a whole other thing of using these tools.
I think one of the things that I think about a lot, you know, you have the Washington Post symbol, I mean, their motto, Democracy Dies in Darkness, which is very dramatic, right?
Yes, yes.
I think democracy dies in the full light of day.
And that's what has happened to us.
We can see it's occurring in real time.
And the greatest, let me pay him a compliment, the greatest troll in history is Donald Trump.
He knows how to use these things, and he knows how to, every time the press always goes, it kills me.
They're like, can you believe he said that?
I go, I believe it.
Because he does.
He's doing it as a trick.
It's a trick.
He now has become the character that he played on TV.
And now I think he really thinks it.
Like he's moved into some cognitive situation happening.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
He could pass lie detector tests.
unidentified
Right.
He's down full trackhead.
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Like any crackhead, yes, exactly.
unidentified
But he was just playing one before.
But I think the way he used social media, similar to the way JFK used television and FDR used radio, or Hitler used radio.
There's a great book.
I just did an interview with Tim Ryback who talks about Hitler right before he took over.
And the use of media is very similar.
They're very similar ways to use it.
And when that happens, you do get all those signals from people that never before could give you signals in the same way.
And it affects you drastically because that's because you aren't doing meeting in person.
You're not doing bars.
You're not doing church groups, whatever happens to be your way of community.
And I think all of us are at a loss because of the lack of face-to-face contact.
And what happened during COVID, which brings me back to Elon, is everybody then had to rely and live online during that period.
And so everything was accelerated, including the values of these.
Facebook has never been more valuable.
Apple's never been more valuable.
All of them, Microsoft, every single one of them.
And so during COVID, it accelerated trends that were already happening and now we're hooked, all of us.
Presidents almost inevitably have fractious relationships with the press.
But Larry, you participated.
There's one day a year when the arms are laid down, and that's the White House Correspondence Dinner.
You were the host of the White House Correspondence Dinner for what was Barack Obama's last appearance in 2016.
What was that like?
larry wilmore ▲ ● ▼
Well, their arms are down, but their middle fingers are up.
Let's just say it was a very surreal.
I should.
I should have gotten it.
It's like you're at a family reunion, but you're not in the family, is a phrase that I've always used.
It's just very bizarre, you know, because it's not really an audience there to see comedy unless it's the president, you know, who is very funny, by the way.
And I even told him it's not fair.
He's that funny before me.
You don't see me going around president, you know, everywhere, you know, stepping on his toes, right?
No, I don't do that, so stop doing that.
Very surreal.
I treated it as a roast, and I found out that, you know, many of the journalists are very prickly about, you know, as you know, too, Karen, when you go directly and question, you know, some of the things, and I'm doing it in a roasty way, it did not go over well.
Some people, actually, Don Lemon, who I called an alleged journalist, I'm sure he liked that.
That's gave me the finger, of course, you know.
But he gave me a nice, friendly finger, I should say.
Whereas Wolf Blitzer, I think, probably one of my children killed.
He was not very happy with what I said about him.
He was not very happy about it.
Yeah, but that's okay.
But I don't do it to be, you know, for the affection or to be, you know, for them to say, hey, we like you.
It's like, there's something I need to say here.
And, you know, if we don't agree, that's okay.
I got no problem with that.
But I think it's good that we say this right now.
unidentified
Kara Swisher will sign your book.
And you can hear Larry Wilmore on Black on the Air.
And it has been our delight to have you here tonight.
Kara Swisher, Larry Wilmore, thanks so much.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you.
This week, tune in for C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we talk to both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office.
Watch new members of Congress all week, beginning at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
Here's a preview.
So, my father integrated University of Alabama's law school.
And then following that experience, he came back home and launched into a civil rights, among other things.
He was a labor lawyer as well and did other civil litigation.
But he spent a lot of time focusing on civil rights.
And one of the more noteworthy things he did in that civil rights space was bringing a lawsuit against the United Klans of America back in the mid-80s after they had lynched a young man in 1981 in Mobile.
That lawsuit ultimately resulted in the financial bankruptcy of the Klan, obviously not bankrupting their mission, but certainly putting a dent into their financial capacity to execute that mission.
And that was something that's a case that has obviously loomed large over my life and something that my father was very well known for.
And several members around here are still known for that case.
I actually was born in the district.
I grew up in the district, did a little time here in DC when I went to Georgetown for undergrad and then my first year of law school and then moved back to the district after I had my second, or right before I had my second child and have been living there since.
So I have deep, deep roots there, raising four children there and very much in touch with the people who live there.
Did I read that before law school you worked in Thailand for a while?
What did you do there?
I did.
I was a dive master at a scuba school on an island called Kosmui and I spent some time there, worked there on my way to India.
After I left there, I went to India and I lived in Calcutta and worked for Mother Teresa.
What brought you across the world to do that?
What was the motivation?
So I had gone to visit a friend in Hong Kong the year before.
She's a friend from high school from the district who was a Chinese language major and was living in Hong Kong for a while.
So I went and visited her, did a little bit of traveling with her and with her sister and got the travel bug and decided that I was going to go explore more of the world.
I was single and in my 20s and had the opportunity to do that.
But I did want to have a focal point for my travel.
So I found a book called Volunteer Vacations and looked for different volunteer opportunities and found that you could, if you show up in Calcutta and you want to work for Mother Teresa, you can.
So that was the focal point of my trip.
What did you do for Mother Teresa and what was the overall experience like for you?
I worked in Kali Got, which is her home for the dying.
So your tasks there could be anything from cooking breakfast, cleaning up, bathing patients, feeding patients, just providing comfort to the patients, doing the laundry, all kinds of tasks.
Where there are people willing to work, they will give you something to do.
And you go there to give, but you get so much more.
It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life.
Born and raised in Fort Worth, I'm a fifth generation native of Texas, fourth-generation native of Fort Worth.
So it's been fascinating to trace my family roots.
My great-great-great-grandfather moved there in the late 1800s to help build the original TMP Railroad from Fort Worth to El Paso.
And we know this because there was an article written about him in 1910.
And so his name was Ike Gronsky, and he was a character.
And so, you know, just really establishing roots and helping build not only Fort Worth, but Texas, you know, helped build Texas.
My family's been part of for a number of generations.
So, yeah, with that kind of base of my family being there, not only in Texas, but in Fort Worth, I know, and it's kind of been instilled in me from the very beginning from a baby in Fort Worth, is we're here to serve the community.
And so, any and all opportunities I've had to be able to give back to the community that I love so much, I've been able to do it.
And then, you know, got into politics about 12 years ago, 13 years ago, and I've loved every second of representing southwest Tarrant County and now the great honor of representing western Tarrant County and northern Parker County.
I was born in 1970, and my hero growing up was Wonder Woman, but the Linda Carter Wonder Woman.
I dressed up like her for Halloween three years in a row.
So, fast forward, we're in the middle of this campaign, and they say, Okay, if you can have any surrogate in the country come in for you, who do you want?
And I know everybody else was saying things like, Michelle Obama, who's great, right?
I just said, Linda Carter, can you please get Linda Carter here?
And the last week before the campaign, she came in and she went all throughout my district.
She did a whole district tour with me, and we went in front of these groups of people, and everybody was just so excited to see her.
The governor came, and we were all, but at the start of every single one, we started just talking about how important it is to, you know, in the world to protect the country.
And I said, Okay, everybody in their Wonder Woman stands, and everybody did this, and all these little girls were doing this.
And it was the most memorable moment, not just of the campaign, but it was a big deal to me in my life trajectory.
All this week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office.
On Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Montana Republican Congressman Troy Downing, who paused his career in business to enlist in the Air Force after the September 11th attacks.
I was actually moose hunting in Alaska when September 11th happened, so I was one of the last people on the planet to find out about it.
I didn't see it on TV and got stuck there because the borders were closed.
I couldn't fly over Canada.
And as soon as I could get home, I walked into a recruiter's office.
▲
Export Selection