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The Journalist and the Firefighter · Question Everything

0:00
Speaker 1: So I've been looking back at old episodes of our show,
0:03
Speaker 1: which still feels like a new show to me. So
0:05
Speaker 1: it's weird to even say that we have old episodes,
0:07
Speaker 1: but we're about to have been at it for two years, amazingly.
0:11
Speaker 1: And it's cool sometimes, especially if you're relatively new around here.
0:14
Speaker 1: We do have a lot of new people in our
0:16
Speaker 1: audience to listen back to where we started. So today,
0:19
Speaker 1: while a bunch of people on our team are taking
0:21
Speaker 1: well-deserved vacations, myself included, I wanted to share one of
0:25
Speaker 1: our very first episodes, which first ran in September of 2024.
0:29
Speaker 1: about a super serious journalist who had come to question
0:33
Speaker 1: his whole career, which sent me into some questioning too.
0:37
Speaker 1: Try to put yourself back in that headspace if you can.
0:39
Speaker 1: Americans had not yet reelected Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was
0:43
Speaker 1: in the midst of her super fast campaign after that
0:46
Speaker 1: intense summer where Joe Biden withdrew from the race and
0:49
Speaker 1: Donald Trump had been shot at on stage in Pennsylvania
0:52
Speaker 1: and none of us knew what would happen next. Our
0:54
Speaker 1: show hadn't even started using that glitchy sounding sonic button
0:58
Speaker 1: we now play before each episode. But I get to
1:00
Speaker 1: add it in here, retroactively now. Enjoy the episode. Before
1:10
Speaker 1: the last presidential election in 2020, a reporter wrote a
1:13
Speaker 1: story that predicted the future. I remember reading it. It
1:16
Speaker 1: was one of those pieces of journalism I'll never forget.
1:18
Speaker 1: Though it's hard to put myself back into that moment
1:21
Speaker 1: in time, into that headspace, when the frightening things the
1:24
Speaker 1: reporter was saying were about to happen hadn't happened yet.
1:28
Speaker 1: And I still had to wonder. Is this guy right?
1:31
Speaker 1: Will the things his story is predicting become true? But
1:35
Speaker 1: he was.
1:36
Speaker 2: And they did.
1:39
Speaker 1: The reporter's name was Barton Gelman. In his story for
1:42
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, he laid out ahead of time the specific
1:45
Speaker 1: tactics then-President Donald Trump and his allies would use to
1:48
Speaker 1: attempt to stay in power, regardless of the outcome of
1:50
Speaker 1: the election. The story was called The Election That Could
1:53
Speaker 1: Break America. Barton Gellman predicted that Trump would never concede defeat.
1:58
Speaker 1: He identified January 6th, 2021 specifically as a date that
2:02
Speaker 1: could see chaos. He reported ahead of time that there
2:05
Speaker 1: would likely be immense pressure on Vice President Mike Pence
2:09
Speaker 1: to not certify the electoral vote. Barton wrote all this
2:13
Speaker 1: in September 2020, a full month and a half before
2:16
Speaker 1: Election Day, before Trump stepped out on that election night
2:20
Speaker 1: at the White House and delivered a speech saying, insisting
2:23
Speaker 1: the election had been stolen from him.
2:26
Speaker 3: All of us here today do not want to see
2:28
Speaker 3: our election victory stolen.
2:30
Speaker 2: We will stop the steal.
2:36
Speaker 1: Before the insurrection on January 6th. Before Trump supporters gathered
2:43
Speaker 1: around a noose on the Capitol lawn that day and shouted,
2:46
Speaker 1: hang Mike Pence. I didn't know Barton Gellman's name when
2:53
Speaker 1: I read this piece, but I realized when I looked
2:55
Speaker 1: him up that I definitely knew his work. He was
2:58
Speaker 1: the reporter who brought us the huge Edward Snowden leak
3:00
Speaker 1: via the Washington Post, which revealed for the first time
3:04
Speaker 1: the National Security Agency's vast surveillance of American citizens. For sure,
3:08
Speaker 1: one of the biggest stories of the last few decades.
3:11
Speaker 1: Barton's won three Pulitzer Prizes. Over 30 years of reporting,
3:14
Speaker 1: he's covered the Pentagon and 9-11 and the War on Terror.
3:18
Speaker 1: He traveled with weapon hunters in Iraq and and documented,
3:22
Speaker 1: at a time when many others were not, that they
3:24
Speaker 1: weren't finding weapons of mass destruction. He's the kind of
3:27
Speaker 1: journalist who moderates panels with former secretaries of Homeland Security.
3:31
Speaker 1: On his website, he lists five different methods for sending
3:34
Speaker 1: him confidential material securely. When his Atlantic story came out,
3:39
Speaker 1: the chatter among journalism types online was all, Bart Gellman
3:42
Speaker 1: wrote a piece. Ooh, Bart Gellman wrote a piece. Like
3:44
Speaker 1: he was a high priest of journalism, sending down a
3:47
Speaker 1: proclamation about the state of our country. So I was
3:50
Speaker 1: startled and intrigued when I read something new Barton Gelman
3:54
Speaker 1: wrote at the beginning of this year. It was a
3:56
Speaker 1: tweet in which he announced that after more than three decades,
4:00
Speaker 1: he was quitting journalism. It was time, Barton wrote, to
4:05
Speaker 1: get off the sidelines and join the fight for democracy. Apparently,
4:11
Speaker 1: Barton Gelman felt he couldn't do enough as a journalist
4:14
Speaker 1: to help our country to make enough of a difference.
4:18
Speaker 1: This feeling was that journalism is too passive, that it's
4:21
Speaker 1: failing to meet the moment. I've been wrestling with that myself,
4:24
Speaker 1: but I don't want to quit the profession that I love. Instead,
4:28
Speaker 1: this grappling became a big part of the impetus for
4:30
Speaker 1: this show, where I'm questioning the ways we do journalism
4:33
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out how can it change, if
4:36
Speaker 1: it can change, to be more impactful. Some of this
4:40
Speaker 1: came out a few mint juleps deep in our last episode,
4:42
Speaker 1: Drinks for Five. Astead Herndon at The New York Times
4:45
Speaker 1: and my mentor from This American Life, Ira Glass, were
4:48
Speaker 1: talking about their feeling that the job of a journalist
4:51
Speaker 1: should be to document the world, not necessarily to try
4:54
Speaker 1: to influence it. And I said, you talking about like
4:57
Speaker 1: journalism's role being to reflect reality or just kind of
5:00
Speaker 1: document that's the best we can do. I believe that
5:02
Speaker 1: for a long time and I've been in this zone
5:04
Speaker 1: of just feeling like it doesn't feel like enough. That's
5:08
Speaker 1: kind of the spirit of this. It's just like, there's
5:10
Speaker 1: something like that felt like enough for so long. And like, yeah,
5:14
Speaker 1: that that was our role and our purpose. And, and
5:17
Speaker 1: there's something about it that I just hit a point
5:19
Speaker 1: where like, it feels insufficient. Even though this sentiment has
5:25
Speaker 1: been growing in me for years now, I still feel
5:28
Speaker 1: stuck or at least much more comfortable in the observe
5:31
Speaker 1: and document approach I'm used to. It's a conflict for me.
5:35
Speaker 1: When I read Barton Gelman's tweet, I imagined that he
5:38
Speaker 1: felt similar to me. But from afar, at least, it
5:41
Speaker 1: appeared that he'd chosen a different route to deal with
5:43
Speaker 1: his frustrations. Apparently, he decided that continuing to do journalism
5:47
Speaker 1: wasn't the way, that in order to have the impact
5:49
Speaker 1: he wanted, he was better off freeing himself from the
5:51
Speaker 1: field entirely rather than trying to change it. I look
5:55
Speaker 1: up to Barton, aspire to do work like him. So
5:59
Speaker 1: I needed to know what led Barton Gelman to quit journalism.
6:03
Speaker 1: What's he doing now? And what does that say about
6:06
Speaker 1: the limits of the work we do? He told me
6:08
Speaker 1: something that I did not expect. From KCRW and Placement Theory,
6:16
Speaker 1: I'm Brian Reed. This is Question Everything. Stick around. When
6:27
Speaker 1: Barton Gelman quit journalism in January, he went to work
6:30
Speaker 1: in an organization whose research he'd cited in his articles
6:33
Speaker 1: over the years. the Brennan Center for Justice. It's a
6:36
Speaker 1: nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is, quote, to reform, revitalize, and
6:41
Speaker 1: when necessary, defend our country's systems of democracy and justice.
6:46
Speaker 1: They filed briefs in support of the Voting Rights Act
6:48
Speaker 1: when it's been challenged. They advocate for reforms on the
6:51
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, like term limits for justices. They've represented Guantanamo detainees.
6:56
Speaker 1: That's where I went to meet Barton to find out
6:58
Speaker 1: how he came to make this remarkable career move, at
7:00
Speaker 1: the Brennan Center offices in New York.
7:03
Speaker 3: It's a think tank. It's kind of a policy advocacy shop.
7:07
Speaker 3: They do litigation and they do very good. Right.
7:11
Speaker 1: It's a we now, right? You work here now.
7:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I'm still getting used to that. Yeah.
7:18
Speaker 1: To the we, to the saying like we do litigation
7:20
Speaker 1: and we advocate for policy. That still feels a little
7:23
Speaker 1: unnatural for you to say.
7:25
Speaker 3: You know, I've always been trained to kind of keep
7:28
Speaker 3: myself out of the story as a journalist. to be
7:32
Speaker 3: standing back and reporting on what other people do. So
7:36
Speaker 3: I'm still not as used to the first person.
7:39
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for doing this. I know you're very busy.
7:41
Speaker 1: You know, just seeing your tweet, just being an admirer
7:43
Speaker 1: of your work, I have kind of watched what you've
7:47
Speaker 1: done in the last year, and it strikes me as extraordinary,
7:49
Speaker 1: someone with your track record and just your experience as
7:52
Speaker 1: a journalist, to feel that you had to leave the
7:54
Speaker 1: field to really have the impact that you want to
7:56
Speaker 1: have right now. Can you point to when this feeling
7:59
Speaker 1: that you wanted to leave.
8:02
Speaker 1: Or that you had to leave in order to take
8:05
Speaker 1: the action that you wanted to take started to bubble
8:07
Speaker 1: up for you?
8:13
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I have written about a lot of
8:19
Speaker 3: bad and scary things over my career. And every now
8:24
Speaker 3: and then I've felt like I shouldn't just be a spectator.
8:29
Speaker 3: Maybe I should try to get involved and try to help.
8:32
Speaker 3: I was and I'm still convinced that doing the right
8:37
Speaker 3: kind of journalism is constructive and valuable. But this time
8:44
Speaker 3: just felt a little bit different for me as a citizen.
8:48
Speaker 3: There's a threat that we'll no longer have the power
8:54
Speaker 3: to decide who governs us or to ensure that The
9:00
Speaker 3: rule of law is upheld to ensure that constitutional rights
9:05
Speaker 3: are upheld. There is way too much support for sort
9:09
Speaker 3: of dictatorial powers in the hands of one candidate or
9:14
Speaker 3: one president. And I felt like at this time, the
9:19
Speaker 3: most important thing I could be doing was to deliberately
9:24
Speaker 3: try to influence events. And that is not quite kosher.
9:30
Speaker 2: For a journalist.
9:32
Speaker 1: And when did you start getting that inkling that you
9:33
Speaker 1: wanted to do that? Like more recently, like, you know,
9:36
Speaker 1: in the last four years, do you remember when it
9:37
Speaker 1: started to occur to you that maybe this is where
9:39
Speaker 1: I'm going to head?
9:40
Speaker 3: So I did a cover story for the Atlantic a
9:43
Speaker 3: few months before the election in 2020.
9:46
Speaker 2: And it was called The Election That Could Break America.
9:49
Speaker 1: A very memorable story.
9:51
Speaker 3: It got attention. I felt like I'd had some impact.
9:55
Speaker 3: I felt like I'd issued a warning and it did
9:58
Speaker 3: motivate people and institutions. I felt like I did my job.
10:03
Speaker 2: But then a.
10:04
Speaker 3: Year later, I wrote another cover story. It was called
10:07
Speaker 3: January 6th was just practice.
10:12
Speaker 1: In this story, Barton investigated Republican efforts to seize power
10:15
Speaker 1: regardless of the vote in the 2024 presidential election. the
10:19
Speaker 1: election we're in the middle of right now. He looked
10:21
Speaker 1: at how Republicans have been preparing legal theories to swap
10:25
Speaker 1: in Trump-friendly electors, replacing officials on election boards state by state,
10:30
Speaker 1: pushing bills that would give them more control over vote tallying.
10:34
Speaker 1: While he was reporting on this, Barton went to a
10:36
Speaker 1: protest in D.C. in support of people being held on
10:39
Speaker 1: criminal charges after invading the Capitol on January 6th. It
10:44
Speaker 1: was here that he met the person who had set
10:47
Speaker 1: him on a new life path, A New Yorker who
10:49
Speaker 1: Barton ended up profiling in the cover story.
10:53
Speaker 3: I picked a guy out of the crowd. He was
10:55
Speaker 3: a tall man wearing a New York firefighter's uniform. And
11:01
Speaker 3: other people sort of seemed to be deferring to him
11:05
Speaker 3: and listening to him. So I struck up a conversation
11:07
Speaker 3: and he was a very pleasant guy and open to conversation.
11:15
Speaker 3: which is always true if you go to one of
11:17
Speaker 3: those mega events. And I ended up talking to him
11:23
Speaker 3: for probably 12 hours over a period of days.
11:29
Speaker 2: Richard Patterson.
11:30
Speaker 3: I just tried to probe him in ways that were
11:34
Speaker 3: consistent with my journalistic methods over the years. Like if
11:38
Speaker 3: I could just actually examine a belief and produce evidence,
11:44
Speaker 3: maybe I could change minds. Maybe we could come to
11:48
Speaker 3: a common understanding of the truth. You know, he would
11:51
Speaker 3: give me some election statistics and say, I don't know,
11:55
Speaker 3: there were more votes for Biden in Pennsylvania than there
11:58
Speaker 3: were registered voters.
12:00
Speaker 2: So obviously there was fraud.
12:03
Speaker 3: And so I went out and did a little research
12:05
Speaker 3: on that and figured out what the origin of that
12:09
Speaker 3: claim was. You know, I said that originated in this
12:13
Speaker 3: tweet by a person who conflated two different categories of numbers.
12:18
Speaker 3: So this number came from this source and that number
12:21
Speaker 3: came from that source and it's apples and oranges.
12:23
Speaker 2: So it's actually not true.
12:24
Speaker 1: And you sent them the sources, the underlying sources.
12:27
Speaker 3: And I said, uh, I sent them to him and
12:29
Speaker 3: I also talked to him about it on the phone.
12:31
Speaker 2: And this was after the demonstration.
12:35
Speaker 3: And that was like a complete failure. Uh, it just,
12:40
Speaker 3: you know, uh, it just glanced off him. He didn't
12:44
Speaker 3: engage with it because, I don't know, cognitive dissonancy, you know,
12:48
Speaker 3: he was convinced of something. And so if that evidence
12:51
Speaker 3: was there, but he just, he's just switched immediately to
12:54
Speaker 3: another one.
12:56
Speaker 1: And was that surprising to you?
12:59
Speaker 2: I mean, I kind of, I.
13:00
Speaker 3: Was generically aware that people did this, but I, I
13:06
Speaker 3: guess I imagined that the cure had not been administered
13:11
Speaker 3: properly and that if I only just kind of persuaded
13:15
Speaker 3: someone to kind of engage with facts.
13:17
Speaker 2: That they might go, oh, that's not what I thought.
13:21
Speaker 2: That's different. Maybe I was mistaken.
13:25
Speaker 3: I mean, so it really did kind of undermine my
13:30
Speaker 3: faith in what I do for a living.
13:33
Speaker 2: As a journalist.
13:34
Speaker 1: That experience with Richard Patterson, the firefighter.
13:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
13:40
Speaker 1: Barton didn't give up. Richard Patterson kept presenting him with
13:43
Speaker 1: more stories and theories, and Barton kept running them to
13:46
Speaker 1: the ground. Like, there was a man who broke into
13:48
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's office at the Capitol on January 6th and
13:52
Speaker 1: stole a computer. Patterson told Barton that he believed that
13:55
Speaker 1: man was actually a member of Antifa, the left-wing group,
13:59
Speaker 1: masquerading as a Trump supporter.
14:02
Speaker 3: And I said, how do you know that? Why do
14:05
Speaker 3: you think that? And this one, uh, He was able
14:11
Speaker 3: to pinpoint, he named a retired general who had explained
14:18
Speaker 3: that this was the truth in a Rumble video that
14:21
Speaker 3: he had seen.
14:22
Speaker 1: Rumble's like an online platform, basically.
14:24
Speaker 2: Rumble, yeah.
14:24
Speaker 3: It's the kind of right-wing YouTube. And so I went
14:28
Speaker 3: and found the video. And then I interviewed the general.
14:33
Speaker 3: I tracked him down and asked him how he knew.
14:36
Speaker 1: How he knew that it was Antifa masquerading as.
14:39
Speaker 3: Right. Actually, his view was it was Antifa working alongside U.S.
14:45
Speaker 3: special forces from the deep state who had actually, on
14:50
Speaker 3: January 6th, broken into Nancy Pelosi's office and stolen her computer.
14:56
Speaker 3: And he said that he had a source who he
15:01
Speaker 3: wouldn't name to me who had been a witness on
15:04
Speaker 3: the ground who had said, Those guys looked like special forces.
15:10
Speaker 3: And as they were leaving the capital, they had bulges
15:14
Speaker 3: under their coats that were sort of rectangular. And they
15:19
Speaker 3: looked like they could be laptops. That was the evidence.
15:23
Speaker 1: Okay.
15:23
Speaker 3: Which is, I hope your listeners will agree, comically inadequate.
15:29
Speaker 3: for claiming that it's Antifa backed by special forces, rectangular bulge,
15:33
Speaker 3: and that he knew that they were the ones who
15:34
Speaker 3: had gone into Nancy Pelosi's office and stolen her.
15:37
Speaker 1: And he had nothing more than that, obviously.
15:38
Speaker 2: That's all he had.
15:39
Speaker 4: Yeah.
15:40
Speaker 1: Okay.
15:40
Speaker 3: And then I got a call back from this general's
15:43
Speaker 3: son who said, I heard you talk to my father.
15:48
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah.
15:49
Speaker 3: He said, I really wish you wouldn't use that interview.
15:52
Speaker 3: My father has dementia. And we're trying to get him
15:56
Speaker 3: to stop talking about this stuff in public.
15:59
Speaker 2: So, I mean, that was the evidence. The evidence was, you.
16:02
Speaker 3: Know, a preposterous story by a guy with dementia. But
16:05
Speaker 3: he had convinced probably a lot of people, including my firefighter,
16:09
Speaker 3: Richard Patterson.
16:11
Speaker 1: And then did you go talk to Richard Patterson about this?
16:14
Speaker 3: And I told him the whole conversation. I didn't write
16:16
Speaker 3: all of it because it was very personal and, you know,
16:19
Speaker 3: a guy talking about his father's decline. But I told
16:24
Speaker 3: it all to the firefighter and he said, You know,
16:28
Speaker 3: this general's a patriot. I believe him more than I
16:31
Speaker 3: believe the FBI. It just, I mean, no impact. There's
16:44
Speaker 3: a little bit of a crisis of confidence. I'm not
16:46
Speaker 3: saying I've lost all belief in the importance of journalism.
16:49
Speaker 2: I haven't.
16:50
Speaker 3: But it started to feel like that was not the
16:53
Speaker 3: most powerful tool available to try to protect democracy at
17:00
Speaker 3: a time when it's under threat.
17:02
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
17:02
Speaker 1: It's like you got a firsthand experience of what it
17:05
Speaker 1: means to put reporting out into the world. Like normally
17:08
Speaker 1: you're reporting something and you're publishing it and there's a
17:11
Speaker 1: bit of a distance between you as the journalist and
17:13
Speaker 1: the readers. You don't totally know how the findings or
17:17
Speaker 1: the facts are resonating in people's minds, what they're making
17:19
Speaker 1: of them. And here you had a very kind of
17:21
Speaker 1: acute experience face to face with someone. Where you did reporting,
17:26
Speaker 1: showed it to them, and it was completely useless.
17:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't just that I was putting it– well,
17:34
Speaker 3: first of all, you're right. You tend to get feedback
17:37
Speaker 3: from strong partisans. So you get angry, trollish kinds of
17:43
Speaker 3: emails and phone calls from one group. And you get,
17:46
Speaker 3: thank God for you, that great story, what can I
17:51
Speaker 3: do kind of emails from someone else. But you don't
17:56
Speaker 3: get reactions from very many average readers. Here, I was
18:02
Speaker 3: not only putting it out in the world, but I
18:03
Speaker 3: was interactively explaining it to someone and iteratively going through,
18:09
Speaker 3: you know, so why do you think this? And now
18:12
Speaker 3: here's the documentation. And what's your next point? And we
18:17
Speaker 3: went back and forth and back and forth. And at
18:19
Speaker 3: the end of it, he was just absolutely unchanged. And
18:25
Speaker 3: it just made me wonder, what's the value of doing
18:32
Speaker 3: what I'm doing?
18:38
Speaker 1: Documenting reality no longer felt like enough. Part of the
18:42
Speaker 1: problem is that even in the best of circumstances, it
18:45
Speaker 1: is so much work to document reality truthfully. An aging
18:50
Speaker 1: general can casually spit out something untrue.
18:53
Speaker 2: They took Pelosi's.
18:57
Speaker 1: People post it with almost no effort or thought.
18:59
Speaker 4: There were some people in there that were special forces
19:03
Speaker 4: mixed with Antifa, and they took her laptop.
19:06
Speaker 1: And now, if Barton wants to say something true about
19:08
Speaker 1: this as a journalist, he has to dig up this video,
19:11
Speaker 1: track down the general's phone number, prep his questions, call
19:14
Speaker 1: the general. He has to get him to agree to
19:16
Speaker 1: talk to him. Then he has to take the call
19:17
Speaker 1: from his son. He has to comfort him, evaluate what's
19:20
Speaker 1: ethical to report or not. He has to figure out
19:22
Speaker 1: how to write it in a way that makes people
19:24
Speaker 1: care and helps them understand why it's important. To help
19:26
Speaker 1: him do all this, the Atlantic Magazine pays an editor,
19:29
Speaker 1: probably a few, a team of fact-checkers to make sure
19:32
Speaker 1: he didn't miss anything, lawyers to review it. They put
19:35
Speaker 1: the story online and distribute and market it so the
19:37
Speaker 1: facts Barton ferreted out actually get in front of you,
19:40
Speaker 1: in front of us, people. Even after all that, you
19:44
Speaker 1: can't ever really unstir the creamer from the coffee. You
19:48
Speaker 1: have to simply report the creamer. is spoiled and hope
19:51
Speaker 1: people listen to you and decide not to take a sip.
19:55
Speaker 1: But what I think many of us have experienced in
19:57
Speaker 1: the last seven or eight years and what Barton experienced
20:00
Speaker 1: with Richard Patterson is that people are drinking the spoiled
20:03
Speaker 1: cream anyway. They trust the dairy brand more than they
20:06
Speaker 1: trust the journalists saying it's rotten. This is the thing
20:10
Speaker 1: that's so existentially troubling to me and to lots of
20:12
Speaker 1: journalists I know, and apparently also to our high priest,
20:16
Speaker 1: Barton Gelman.
20:18
Speaker 3: I had a growing loss of confidence in the way
20:25
Speaker 3: I had looked at my journalistic role over the years.
20:29
Speaker 3: I mean, I always felt like I was aiming in
20:33
Speaker 3: my stories for someone, for an audience that wanted to
20:40
Speaker 3: know what's true and that if I found interesting things
20:45
Speaker 3: that were not already in the public record, if I
20:48
Speaker 3: kind of dug in and found something important was happening
20:51
Speaker 3: and I showed my work and I displayed my evidence,
20:53
Speaker 3: that there were lots of people who were open to
20:57
Speaker 3: be convinced about what's true in the world.
21:00
Speaker 2: And the.
21:03
Speaker 3: Super amplified polarization of our sort of politics and media
21:09
Speaker 3: and the kind of epistemological crisis that we're in where
21:16
Speaker 3: it's harder and harder to find any common understanding of
21:21
Speaker 3: the truth was making my work, you know, I wouldn't
21:26
Speaker 3: go nearly as far as saying irrelevant, but less impactful.
21:31
Speaker 3: I wondered if I was just writing for the already convinced.
21:37
Speaker 3: How many people who think that Biden defrauded his way
21:43
Speaker 3: to the 2020 election victory are reading The Atlantic? It
21:49
Speaker 3: started feeling to me like my job was not.
21:54
Speaker 2: Adequate to our times. My view that.
21:59
Speaker 3: Truth is sort of an elemental value that needs to
22:03
Speaker 3: be served by, you know, careful sifting of evidence.
22:07
Speaker 2: It just might not be.
22:08
Speaker 3: As important as it seemed to me it was earlier
22:11
Speaker 3: in my career.
22:14
Speaker 1: I was stunned, frankly, to hear Barton's thinking about this.
22:18
Speaker 1: I wasn't surprised that he'd encountered people who dismissed facts
22:20
Speaker 1: and that he was disturbed by that. What shocked me
22:24
Speaker 1: is the conclusion he came to after that experience. that
22:27
Speaker 1: this lifelong journalist's response to our country's turn away from
22:31
Speaker 1: the truth has been to say, maybe truth is a
22:34
Speaker 1: battleground I should cede. Maybe, if my goal is to
22:38
Speaker 1: protect democracy, there are more important battles to fight. I've
22:42
Speaker 1: heard plenty of journalists talk about their own crises of
22:45
Speaker 1: confidence in our work. I mean, even Ira, over drinks.
22:48
Speaker 4: You know, like, I came into journalism feeling like, oh,
22:52
Speaker 4: if you sort of lay out a case with facts
22:56
Speaker 4: information that's true, like you could persuade people and that
23:00
Speaker 4: would change something. And I feel like what I've seen
23:05
Speaker 4: is that's not true.
23:07
Speaker 1: But I don't think I've heard any other journalists say
23:10
Speaker 1: what Barton seemed to be saying, that maybe fighting for
23:13
Speaker 1: the truth, which is the foundation of our profession, isn't
23:17
Speaker 1: the most effective use of his energy right now. Not
23:20
Speaker 1: if he wants to improve things. I mean, that's kind
23:22
Speaker 1: of how I've heard you boil it down, the lesson
23:24
Speaker 1: of that experience. Basically, like maybe I've been wrong about
23:29
Speaker 1: how important truth is.
23:30
Speaker 3: Our country is in a kind of crisis about truth.
23:36
Speaker 3: And it really was brought home to me. So I
23:41
Speaker 3: made a phone call.
23:45
Speaker 1: After a quick break, what Barton Gilman's doing now that
23:48
Speaker 1: he felt he couldn't do as a journalist. The person
23:57
Speaker 1: Barton Gelman called when he decided to leave journalism was
24:00
Speaker 1: the president of the Brennan Center.
24:02
Speaker 3: I said, I'm thinking I want to step off the sidelines.
24:07
Speaker 3: Can you use me over there? And he said, well,
24:11
Speaker 3: that's interesting.
24:13
Speaker 2: What do you want to do? And I said, I
24:16
Speaker 2: want to.
24:19
Speaker 3: Help protect the integrity of the 2024 election. And I
24:25
Speaker 3: want to plan for how you could restrain authoritarian act
24:34
Speaker 3: by the president if Trump is elected in 2025. And
24:38
Speaker 3: he said, well, we're doing a lot of the one
24:42
Speaker 3: and not as much of the other.
24:44
Speaker 1: The other being planning for.
24:46
Speaker 2: Right, planning for.
24:49
Speaker 3: a Trump presidency if he tried to carry out the
24:52
Speaker 3: authoritarian agenda he's talking about.
24:55
Speaker 2: And so that's what I did.
25:01
Speaker 1: Barton's preparing for if Donald Trump is elected president again.
25:05
Speaker 1: What he's mostly been up to since he joined the
25:07
Speaker 1: Brennan Center is running war games, simulations. Maybe you've heard
25:11
Speaker 1: of these. Not about war per se, but about high-stakes
25:14
Speaker 1: scenarios that could happen under a second Trump presidency. kind
25:17
Speaker 1: of like model UN for grownups. Again, the Brennan Center
25:21
Speaker 1: is nonpartisan. They're doing work to prep for a Democratic victory, too.
25:25
Speaker 1: But they acknowledge the unique authoritarian actions that Trump has
25:29
Speaker 1: either taken, such as attempting to prevent the peaceful transfer
25:32
Speaker 1: of power after the last election, or that Trump said
25:35
Speaker 1: he will take if he's elected again. Barton isn't focused
25:38
Speaker 1: on counteracting policies Trump might try to implement, like tax
25:41
Speaker 1: policy or climate or abortion. He's specifically focused on combating
25:46
Speaker 1: what he's identified as authoritarian behavior, figuring out ways to
25:50
Speaker 1: legally restrain a president who's, say, turning law enforcement or
25:54
Speaker 1: the military against his enemies, or against demonstrators exercising their
25:59
Speaker 1: constitutional right to protest, or going after election officials to
26:03
Speaker 1: get them to change results. So over the first half
26:06
Speaker 1: of this year, Barton gathered 175 people from around the
26:09
Speaker 1: country for five simulations— including former officials from the Trump
26:13
Speaker 1: White House and other administrations, former cabinet secretaries and congresspeople
26:17
Speaker 1: and governors and state attorneys general, labor leaders, execs, organizers,
26:22
Speaker 1: retired military generals. Everyone was given a role to play.
26:26
Speaker 1: There was a blue team, which were the, quote, pro-democracy forces,
26:30
Speaker 1: and the red team, which included the cabinet, White House staff,
26:33
Speaker 1: and someone playing President Trump.
26:36
Speaker 2: Who was Trump?
26:37
Speaker 3: Instructed to make his moves based on the sort of
26:41
Speaker 3: known and declared Trump authoritarian agenda. And then, you know,
26:45
Speaker 3: members of his cabinet and his agencies would try to
26:47
Speaker 3: carry them out and his outside supporters would push them.
26:51
Speaker 3: And pro-democracy forces could range from governors, state attorney general,
26:58
Speaker 3: members of Congress, NGOs, and so.
27:01
Speaker 1: Forth, And what was the goal of these exercises? We
27:03
Speaker 1: tried to stop him.
27:04
Speaker 2: We tried to restrain him.
27:05
Speaker 1: What was the goal of these exercises?
27:06
Speaker 3: The goal was to go beyond the kind of first
27:12
Speaker 3: step of saying, well, if Trump tries to do that,
27:14
Speaker 3: we'll just sue him. We wanted to see what happens
27:17
Speaker 3: if you iterate over several rounds of moves and people
27:22
Speaker 3: respond to the authoritarian move. And then the president responds
27:28
Speaker 3: to their response. And then they have to think about
27:30
Speaker 3: what to do next. But the objective was to test
27:34
Speaker 3: strategies and tactics that could deflect or delay or diminish
27:40
Speaker 3: the damage of what Trump might do if he carries
27:46
Speaker 3: out his declared plans.
27:49
Speaker 1: What Barton and the participants learned from running these simulations
27:52
Speaker 1: is that our system is not set up very well
27:54
Speaker 1: to deal with a president, Trump, or anyone intent on
27:57
Speaker 1: abusing their office.
27:59
Speaker 3: We didn't really think it would be likely we could
28:02
Speaker 3: stop him in many areas because the president has so
28:06
Speaker 3: much power. And honestly, there's a structural advantage for the
28:13
Speaker 3: president if he is not especially worried about whether he
28:20
Speaker 3: breaks rules or laws.
28:22
Speaker 2: It's a conundrum.
28:23
Speaker 3: How do you protect the law against someone who doesn't
28:26
Speaker 3: care very much about it? Everybody was a little stunned
28:31
Speaker 3: at how poorly Blue did in the games to restrain
28:36
Speaker 3: an authoritarian president. And they, you know, almost to a
28:39
Speaker 3: person came out determined to kind of strengthen the guardrails.
28:47
Speaker 1: Barton and his team put together practical lessons from the games. One,
28:51
Speaker 1: they found there was too much of a reliance on
28:53
Speaker 1: lawsuits to try and counteract simulation Trump's behavior. Lawsuits were
28:58
Speaker 1: often too slow for what was happening on the ground.
29:01
Speaker 1: What Barton and the Brennan Center are suggesting instead is
29:04
Speaker 1: that people prepare in advance. They say governors and other
29:07
Speaker 1: state officials should be meeting with their legal teams now
29:10
Speaker 1: to talk about what they could do to push back
29:12
Speaker 1: if Trump were to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy
29:15
Speaker 1: the military against protesters in U.S. cities or send federal
29:19
Speaker 1: marshals abruptly rounding up anyone who can't prove their legal
29:22
Speaker 1: immigration status on the spot. Or, this is one I
29:25
Speaker 1: hadn't thought of, if one state's National Guard were deployed
29:29
Speaker 1: across the border to another state. Officials should understand the
29:33
Speaker 1: full limits of their own legal power in advance, Barton says,
29:37
Speaker 1: so they're not figuring it out on the fly. And
29:39
Speaker 1: they should publicly... declare ahead of the election their red
29:42
Speaker 1: lines and what they would do if Trump crossed them. Like,
29:46
Speaker 1: if Trump sends the National Guard to suppress protesters in Portland,
29:49
Speaker 1: the state of Oregon will do XYZ. Other suggestions Barton
29:53
Speaker 1: and his team came away with. Pro-democracy folks should be
29:57
Speaker 1: raising money and setting up teams of crisis communications people
30:00
Speaker 1: and security experts, and yes, lawyers, to protect election and
30:04
Speaker 1: other state workers who Trump and his allies could slander
30:07
Speaker 1: and put in danger. To fight back if Trump, as
30:10
Speaker 1: he's promised, fires thousands of civil servants he deems corrupt.
30:15
Speaker 1: To defend people he sees as his enemies, against whom
30:18
Speaker 1: he's promised to seek retribution. Also, let me use my
30:22
Speaker 1: journalistic platform to inform you They found in the simulations
30:25
Speaker 1: that one of the most effective ways to push back
30:27
Speaker 1: against presidential abuse of power were sustained mass demonstrations by
30:32
Speaker 1: the public. Barton and his colleagues are sharing these suggestions
30:36
Speaker 1: with people across the country. They're hoping the people who
30:39
Speaker 1: took part in the exercises, many of whom formerly worked
30:41
Speaker 1: in government and still have connections, will go galvanize their colleagues,
30:45
Speaker 1: get them to use these findings to prepare. I get
30:50
Speaker 1: that simulations, advising officials... It's not normally the kind of
30:53
Speaker 1: stuff we think of as part of a journalist's job description.
30:57
Speaker 1: But the way Barton framed his career change in the
30:59
Speaker 1: tweet where he announced it, that as a journalist he
31:02
Speaker 1: was on the sidelines, that was his word, and that
31:04
Speaker 1: he had to shed the title of journalist in order
31:07
Speaker 1: to fight for democracy, I think that struck a nerve
31:10
Speaker 1: with me. I started to wonder if, by Barton's estimation,
31:14
Speaker 1: the work he's doing now can do more for our
31:16
Speaker 1: government and society than reporting in the way we're used
31:19
Speaker 1: to thinking of it. Why couldn't what he's doing now
31:22
Speaker 1: be part of a journalist's job description? Is it really
31:25
Speaker 1: that different? Can I ask you, what were you allowed
31:28
Speaker 1: to do or able to do running these simulations now
31:31
Speaker 1: that you've left journalism that you weren't able to do
31:34
Speaker 1: as a journalist?
31:35
Speaker 3: What I could do differently now in this role was
31:39
Speaker 3: I could design the exercise. I could say, this is
31:44
Speaker 3: what I want to test against. I mean as a journalist,
31:47
Speaker 3: I couldn't recruit former governor or three-star general to come
31:54
Speaker 3: do an exercise like this and talk them into it.
31:57
Speaker 1: You couldn't or it just kind of was– like something
31:59
Speaker 1: I'm interested in just in the part of what my
32:02
Speaker 1: show is trying to interrogate is what can we reconsider
32:07
Speaker 1: about what we do as journalists? And so I'm curious
32:09
Speaker 1: if you feel like there's something that is just at
32:12
Speaker 1: odds kind of fundamentally between being able to do what
32:15
Speaker 1: you're describing now that you've left journalism– and journalism itself?
32:18
Speaker 1: Or could we do those things? And should we be
32:20
Speaker 1: doing those things?
32:22
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting.
32:23
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there are some things that journalists
32:27
Speaker 3: can do that are somehow related.
32:30
Speaker 2: To this exercise I just did.
32:32
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, journalists and pollsters bring in focus
32:36
Speaker 3: groups and ask them questions, and they can write about that.
32:39
Speaker 3: I don't know whether it would be within the normal
32:43
Speaker 3: span of journalism to create an exercise like this, a
32:48
Speaker 3: role-playing game.
32:51
Speaker 1: Barton and I went back and forth on this for
32:52
Speaker 1: a bit. I never felt persuaded. I got the sense
32:56
Speaker 1: that the distinction Barton was drawing was in large part
32:59
Speaker 1: a personal one. It sounds like it felt different to you.
33:02
Speaker 1: You felt different doing it. I'm curious about that. Was
33:05
Speaker 1: there a moment where you felt like this is what
33:08
Speaker 1: I left to do? This feels different. This feels like
33:12
Speaker 1: I'm off the sidelines.
33:16
Speaker 3: You know, I had a conversation with one well-known litigator
33:22
Speaker 3: in the democracy space. And this person sort of apologized
33:26
Speaker 3: for being late to a Zoom call and said I was,
33:30
Speaker 3: you know, sort of finishing logistical arrangements for moving out
33:35
Speaker 3: of the country. And I could tell from the tone
33:38
Speaker 3: and the look on the face this wasn't a joke.
33:41
Speaker 3: I said, you're serious?
33:42
Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, I'm serious. If Trump's elected, I'm not staying.
33:47
Speaker 2: I said, you can't go.
33:48
Speaker 3: I mean, you're exactly the person we need to protect
33:53
Speaker 3: the rule of law. You'll be needed more than ever
33:56
Speaker 3: if Trump wins and tries to do those authoritarian things
33:59
Speaker 3: he's talked about. This person said, look, I am on
34:03
Speaker 3: a target list of people that Trump and his allies
34:07
Speaker 3: want to prosecute. And I'm just not going to stay
34:11
Speaker 3: here for kind of spurious criminal charges that are going
34:15
Speaker 3: to ruin my life for years. And that is a dilemma.
34:22
Speaker 3: It's a risk for people who stand up and oppose autocracy.
34:28
Speaker 3: But one of the messages that I'd like to The
34:30
Speaker 3: sin is you have to stay and fight. You have
34:33
Speaker 3: to stand up. I mean, Americans can't just bow down
34:37
Speaker 3: to an authoritarian and watch their liberties erode. It's going
34:42
Speaker 3: to take a lot of people to stay and fight.
34:49
Speaker 1: It's interesting that when I asked Barton to tell me
34:52
Speaker 1: a moment that felt different to him from his years
34:54
Speaker 1: as a journalist, the anecdote he finally landed on was
34:57
Speaker 1: this one. I left mulling over why exactly. Then I
35:02
Speaker 1: imagined myself on Barton's end of that conversation with the litigator,
35:06
Speaker 1: my journalist self, talking to a prominent attorney known for
35:10
Speaker 1: filing lawsuits against Trump and his allies, who's making real
35:13
Speaker 1: preparations to decamp from the U.S. if Trump wins again.
35:18
Speaker 1: If this person had made that revelation to me, would
35:20
Speaker 1: my response have been to give them a rallying call?
35:23
Speaker 1: Would I have told them that they had to stay
35:25
Speaker 1: and fight like Barton did? Or would I have simply
35:29
Speaker 1: asked questions? Said, tell me more. What led to this decision?
35:34
Speaker 1: How do you feel about it? Can this conversation be
35:36
Speaker 1: on the record? Honestly, I'd probably do the latter. But
35:43
Speaker 1: that's not where Barton's at anymore. He's assumed a whole
35:46
Speaker 1: new identity.
35:47
Speaker 3: I just feel fully comfortable with the idea that I
35:52
Speaker 3: am an advocate, that I'm trying to make something happen
35:55
Speaker 3: and not just describe the world as it is. describing
35:58
Speaker 3: the world as it is, is absolutely centrally valuable to
36:03
Speaker 3: American democracy. And I don't feel like I wasted one
36:07
Speaker 3: minute of my professional life doing that. I may go
36:10
Speaker 3: back to it at some point. But right now, I
36:16
Speaker 3: like deliberately setting out to change something as opposed to
36:23
Speaker 3: kind of recording it.
36:28
Speaker 1: Four years ago this month, Barton had just published his
36:31
Speaker 1: story about the 2020 election, the election that could break America.
36:35
Speaker 1: Now we're a month and a half away from the
36:36
Speaker 1: next one, a presidential election that Barton feels is possibly
36:39
Speaker 1: more threatening to our democracy than the last. And Barton's
36:43
Speaker 1: quit journalism. And it feels more unclear than ever what
36:46
Speaker 1: those of us who are still in it should be
36:47
Speaker 1: doing to help fortify our country against authoritarianism. I desperately
36:53
Speaker 1: want journalism to be able to expand enough so we
36:55
Speaker 1: can do that. But it's hard. I don't know what
36:59
Speaker 1: to do exactly. I feel lost and a little embarrassed,
37:03
Speaker 1: like I'm throwing out random ideas. Should news organizations start
37:05
Speaker 1: running war games? Should we send advice to governors on
37:08
Speaker 1: how to combat an autocratic president? Or should we direct
37:11
Speaker 1: our energy inwards, towards trying to innovate more in our wheelhouse,
37:15
Speaker 1: turn all our efforts towards fixing this profound problem which
37:18
Speaker 1: led Barton to quit, of people no longer trusting us,
37:22
Speaker 1: no longer believing facts? So again, that episode first ran
37:30
Speaker 1: in the fall of 2024, before we knew who would
37:33
Speaker 1: win the presidential election. Then early in Trump's second term,
37:37
Speaker 1: we checked back in with Barton Gilman to see what
37:39
Speaker 1: he thought of how things were going and how it
37:42
Speaker 1: all stacked up against his war gaming. We aired that
37:45
Speaker 1: as another episode. It's a nice follow-up to this one.
37:47
Speaker 1: If you want to search for it in your feed,
37:48
Speaker 1: it's called He Quit Journalism to Fight Authoritarianism. How's that going?
37:52
Speaker 1: We'll also link to it in the show notes. I
37:54
Speaker 1: also want to mention that we did speak to firefighter
37:57
Speaker 1: Richard Patterson, who said, He didn't feel he was showing
38:00
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance when he was talking to Barton Gelman and
38:03
Speaker 1: claimed he didn't even remember some of the evidence Barton
38:05
Speaker 1: said he showed him. Patterson told our fact checker, It
38:08
Speaker 1: may well be that I'm stuck on things that are inaccurate,
38:11
Speaker 1: but I would hope that doesn't include things where information
38:14
Speaker 1: comes out that proves it wrong. This episode was produced
38:21
Speaker 1: by Lisa Pollack and me. It was edited by Neil
38:24
Speaker 1: Drumming along with executive producer Robin Simeon and Jonathan Goldstein.
38:28
Speaker 1: Zach St. Louis, Emily Miltare, and Kevin Shepard also worked
38:30
Speaker 1: on this episode. Fact-checking was by Kaylin Lynch. Sound design
38:34
Speaker 1: by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Our
38:36
Speaker 1: partners at KCRW include Arnie Seifel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill,
38:40
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Farrow. Special thanks to Untitled Studios. See you
38:44
Speaker 1: next week.