[0:00]for all Trump saying no one cares about this, it's [music] a distraction. Perhaps the reason that he doesn't want these emails being released is because he once was a close friend of Jeffrey
[0:10]Epstein and there are worries about what it might implicate. [music] >> Hello and welcome to this edition of Trump World. I'm Matt Fry in London.
[0:21]>> I'm Anushka Gristana in Washington DC. >> And Anushka, some breaking news today. Bring us up today please about Epstein. Yeah. So, we woke up this morning wanting to talk about Trump and the
[0:31]media, Trump and the BBC, but also um a lot of the media here in the US. Um we didn't think there was going to necessarily be a huge other story, but this is Trump world and this is how
[0:42]things change. And this is quite a bomb that has dropped. For some time, Donald Trump has been telling everyone that the push to release the so-called Epstein
[0:53]files. We think over a million documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful people that he spent time with.
[1:03]Um was something that was a Democratic hoax and Donald Trump said no one cares about it. It's not interesting. He once said he himself believed that the files
[1:14]should be released, but since being president a second time, he's very clear that he didn't want that to happen. And we sort of getting an impression this morning of why that might be. The um House Oversight Committee has had a lot
[1:25]of information on Epstein and has been putting bits of it out. And here's the bomb. Um a number of emails from 2011 um which was after Epstein had been um
[1:37]to jail already once for um a case. And it's the real difficult one here is an email from Jeffrey Epstein to Gileain Maxwell who is in jail at the moment and
[1:49]his closest confidant. A nicer jail because she's been moved to a nicer jail and now apparently is asking Donald Trump to commute her sentence. Um and here's what the email says. I want you
[1:59]to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump. Then there is a redacted victim's name spent hours at my house with him. He has never once been
[2:10]mentioned and and Matt that is like a bomb isn't it for the White House in terms of you know suggesting that for
[2:20]all Trump saying no one cares about this it's a distraction perhaps the reason that he doesn't want these emails being released is because he once was a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein and there are
[2:31]worries about what it might implicate >> he was a close friends then they fell out with each other and the tone of that email that you just read It looks as if that was, you know, written when Epste had very much fallen out with with Trump
[2:42]already. But it it gives the impression at least that that there might that in itself is potentially really damaging because Trump said that he never spent any time, you know, with any underage
[2:52]girls. You know, he denies any any involvement in the kind of senior side of the Epstein uh sphere. I have your statement about the new
[3:04]Epstein emails that have been released by House Democrats. Separate from why you believe the emails were made public, can you address their substance, did the
[3:14]president ever spend hours at Jeffrey Epstein's house with a victim? >> Uh, these emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that
[3:23]President Trump did nothing wrong. >> But also, what else is out there? I mean, you know, a million documents, as you said, thousands of emails and and whatever else. The danger is that all
[3:34]this stuff will be a massively embarrassing data dump for Donald Trump at some stage if the House votes in to do so. And they might do that once the lockdown has finished or rather the
[3:46]shutdown, which will happen anytime soon. So, it could be a very nasty Christmas surprise for Donald Trump. Um and and it's worth remembering that this is not just a problem for Trump in terms
[3:56]of the wider perception in the American public uh which has already become pretty negative. His approval ratings have have dipped really quite low recently as a result of you know the government shutdown uh the problems with
[4:08]the economy and inflation the effect on tariffs going after immigrants too aggressively etc etc. But the the neuralgic point for Trump u which doesn't play well you know with the people in the middle the so-called
[4:20]independent voters but also importantly with his base with the MAGA base is Epstein. We saw pictures just a few months ago of MAGA supporters bros
[4:29]burning their MAGA hats you know on funeral ps uh of MAGA shame because Trump refused to do what he said he would do which is to release all the
[4:39]files. his attorney general Pam Bondi admonia said the files are in my desk all I need to do is open the desk and and release the files and she hasn't done that either and they're really upset about this and if you listen to
[4:49]Steve Bannon if you listen to you know people in the magosphere have been very loyal to him or Marjgerie Taylor Green you know the the congresswoman from Colorado they are absolutely adamant
[5:00]that this stuff needs to come out so Trump's got a problem here >> yeah and and just to read you another of the emails that's come out this morning this was to Michael Wolf the author um also from Epstein and again parts of
[5:11]it are redacted so we're not quite clear exactly who they're talking about in terms of victims and so on but it's talking about Marila to some extent and
[5:21]the email says Trump said he asked me to resign never a member ever of course he knew about the girls as he asked Gilain to stop um and and again that is going
[5:33]to be a very difficult one for Donald Trump to answer on I mean the reason in a way that his MAGA have been so obsessed about Epstein is because they did think that this was a scandal that
[5:43]was going to explode for the Democratic party. Epstein had so many powerful friends. One of them was the former Democratic president um Bill Clinton and and that's what they thought would
[5:54]happen. But obviously since he's been in power, the lens has turned somewhat to Donald Trump himself. And and as we've repeatedly said on this, this is not going away from him. As you say, we've
[6:06]been in the middle of a shutdown. the federal government has not been operating. That has meant that they haven't been able to push this vote forward. And there was an extra
[6:15]Democratic um congresswoman elected in Arizona who actually gives them the numbers in order to force the vote, but
[6:24]the Republicans wouldn't let her take her seat, which could have actually happened whilst the shutdown was ongoing. But now we have the situation where we both have this evidence and the
[6:34]shutdown is coming to an end. And why do the rep why do the Democrats suddenly uh get the majority to release these files? Because four Republicans are going to
[6:45]vote with the Democrats in order to get a majority in the House for the files to be released. And those four Republicans include uh the aforementioned Marjgerie Taylor Green. Massive alarm bells there
[6:55]for Trump. Now, all this, of course, you know, comes in the context of Trump's talent for distraction from the stuff that he doesn't want you to talk about, and he really doesn't want us to talk
[7:07]about Epstein. And so, that may mean that his he will double down on his war with the BBC. Remember, Friday, I think, is the deadline for his 1 billion uh
[7:17]dollar lawsuit that he will file if the BBC doesn't offer a full retraction um and an apology. and they they they've already issued the apology but not the retraction and pay him some kind of
[7:28]undisclosed amount of money. And I think again I think we have to just stand back a little bit and and appreciate the weirdness of the fact that Donald Trump who's very know very well known for
[7:40]being latigious and has taken on you know media companies, newspapers and television companies left, right and center including late night comedians is now picking a fight with the the the the
[7:52]public broadcaster of supposedly one of his favorite countries. I mean, he was just here for the historic second state visit in the summer in Windsor Wonderland and and absolutely loved
[8:02]that. And when you when you consider how important the whole question of that panorama is to his own self-esteem and his view of the world that the big
[8:13]election and that the election in 2020 was the big steal, that actually Joe Biden never won it, that it was Donald Trump who won it, etc., etc. I think, you know, this I think there's a there's
[8:23]real jeopardy here for for the BBC, frankly. Um, and there's also obviously some jeopardy for Donald Trump. Not so much in the in the in the in the detail
[8:34]of of January the 6th, but the broader context of all these other things that are beginning to assail Donald Trump, whether it's the economy or the Epstein question, you know, or the, you know,
[8:45]being too harsh with with immigrants and riding rough road over the Constitution. I find this kind of bizarre situation when you think about Donald Trump suing lots of different media organizations
[8:57]because look clearly there are things in the memo that leaked about problems within the BBC which are genuinely problematic. I actually think lots in
[9:09]the memo looks like it's coming from somebody with a very strong political slant. But if we talk about that Panorama documentary just for a moment, there was an edit in there which did
[9:20]make it look like Donald Trump said something different to how it was actually said on the day. I think the frustrating thing for a lot of people is that they didn't need to make the edit
[9:31]to make the same point. if they'd actually just played what he said um in a kind of fairer way at the beginning and at the end. Actually, the bigger point would have probably still stood,
[9:41]which is that he has since been actually found by, you know, a committee of the house here to have been >> egging on the January the 6 protesters to go to the capital and um carry on
[9:53]with what happened. Um but but as a journalist, we we've both worked as journalists for many years. You know, you think about whether the person who
[10:03]you're writing about who isn't wellknown or isn't the president or the prime minister might sue you for a certain thing, but when you're commenting on politics or when you are reporting on
[10:15]what a government is doing and you're trying to hold them to account, politicians don't tend to sue people in those situations because it's a completely different type of commentary.
[10:25]The idea that holding a government to account is the sort of thing that you might get sued for just seems to me we've crossed some sort of quite dark line.
[10:35]>> What's so novel about Donald Trump as he's that he has decided to pick a fight a very personal fight with a whole range of companies. I mean, he attacked the
[10:45]New York Times and took them to court. I I can't remember how many billions of dollars he wanted from them for, you know, defaming him. And then the the judge threw it out and said, "This is
[10:55]such a wishy-washy case. You know, come back to me with something much more focused and and much more specific, and then we can talk, but as it stands at the moment, this is nonsense." He took
[11:06]the Wall Street Journal uh to court for $10 billion for uh publishing a page from the Yes. again Jeffrey Epstein birthday book of 2003 which we've talked about as well in
[11:17]which Donald Trump you know was praising Jeffrey Epste and then his his signature was in a in a place where you would find you know female pubic hair again he said that never happened I never wrote that
[11:28]this is a lie he took them to court this is a you know fairly right-wing newspaper the Wall Street Journal that often agrees with Donald Trump's on on not on everything they've been pretty robust but on some things they do owned
[11:40]by Rbert Murdoch Um he took them to court even though actually some of the other people whose whose pages appeared in the birthday book including uh our our former ambassador Lord Mandlesson said yeah that's me that's my page I
[11:51]wrote that. So what's so odd about this Anushka and I think very novel for Americans is that this is a country that used to really worship the fourth estate. I mean, think of all the movies
[12:02]made about journalists, you know, fighting government or fighting corporations. Whether it's the insider with Russell Crowe about uh you know big
[12:11]tobacco intimidating CBS not to run that 60 Minutes piece. Whether it's you know good night goodbye and good good night and good luck with Ed about Edward Armaro taking on Senator John McCarthy
[12:22]during the Red Scare. You know whether it's Spotlight and we're going to talk to the editor of that newspaper at the time the Boston Globe and then the Washington Post later on which won an Oscar. you know whether it's the most famous one of them all the president's
[12:34]men about the Washington Post again America worships or used to worship the fourth estate and Trump has declared war on a lot of these once hallowed
[12:45]institutions and to some extent that is a function of the internet the democratization the fragmentation of the media landscape but to a large extent it's also down to Donald Trump not being
[12:56]afraid to pick a fight and then weaponizing this combination of corporate greed you know big companies that own these these very famous newspapers or TV organizations having to
[13:06]make a deal and needing the federal government to sign off on it. >> Yeah. If we just run through some of these um some of the cases are so baseless it's almost unbelievable. So
[13:17]the CBS case was that they did a big interview with Kamla Harris and he didn't like the way they edited it. He thought it made her look better last year >> before the election which is such a
[13:27]subjective point anyway. I mean the idea that a court is going to particularly judge on that. Um and and yeah, this is the sort of extraordinary thing about it was that the parent company Paramount
[13:39]Global suddenly told us it was going to settle paying $16 million to Donald Trump's library. Um and so the case doesn't go ahead. They don't say there
[13:49]was anything wrong with the interview, but obviously the implication of a massive payout is we accept. We were too kind to Kamla Harris in in that. And yeah, it turned out that Paramount was
[14:01]trying to get through an 8.4 billion dollar merger with Sky Dance, it needed the Federal Communications Commission to okay that the Federal Communications Commission is led by one Brendan Carr
[14:12]who is a Trump appointee. Now, even if the case in Florida will never get heard, the the BBC not to I find it very hard to imagine that they will just, you know, that Trump will just take, you
[14:23]know, a retraction, you know, you know, per se, and say, "Okay, fine. It's I forgive." No, not I forgive you, but let let's let's park this one. Let's kick it down, you know, the into the long grass.
[14:34]I find it hard for Trump to do that because also his base again, the same base that is upset about Epstein also really wants him to pick a fight with
[14:44]the BBC because the BBC in their view is the embodiment of the globalist media. And they've never liked the BBC. And you know, if you listen to some of the right-wing podcasts, which I've been
[14:55]doing in the last few days, they're really gunning for the BBC. And I I think Trump will hear that. And you might even think that a fight with the BBC will dis dist distract from all the Epstein stuff that is coming down the
[15:06]pipe in the next few days. So know there's the legal side of this, there's the political side of this. And you know, if I was a BBC boss looking at how much money they've got in the coffers uh
[15:17]to pay for any of this, I'd be very worried indeed. And by the way, this will of course >> taxpayer taxpayers. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if the Brit the British taxpayer has to pay Donald Trump? There
[15:28]are 300,000 license fee payers who are not paying their license fee, you know, as and as an act of protest. And one of them, by the way, is our former prime minister, Boris Johnson. Imagine how
[15:38]that will play, especially in a year when you're talking about charter renewal. I think I don't think Karma can pick up the phone to Donald Trump and say, "Lay off the BBC." And Starmmer himself, I think, is in a very very
[15:50]delicate position here of having to defend, as the culture secretary did yesterday, you know, the BBC as a as a as a shining light on the hill and a a great national institution that we all
[16:00]cherish. That's going to be quite tricky with Donald Trump, you know, in that supposed special relationship who's gunning for the BBC. I suspect the only person who can pick up the phone and tell Trump to lay off, who knows what's
[16:11]going on, is the king. The king might say, "Please, Donald, my dear friend, lay off this great if flawed national institution because if you go after it,
[16:22]there'll be all sorts of trouble for us." And you know what? If you if you lay off, then who knows, there might be a third, even more historic visit to Windsor Wonderland at some stage down the road. I'm just putting that out there.
[16:33]>> It is worth saying that some of those cases are carrying on. Not everyone is settling. The Wall Street Journal case is ongoing. Um I I can't see a position in which the BBC is going to offer
[16:43]British taxpayer money in order to settle a case with Donald Trump. >> Florida, >> of course, >> court rumor, you know, you have a Florida judge or a Florida jury. And remember, Florida is a pretty red state.
[16:54]It's it's Trump's home state now. I mean, that is that is full of peril and risk for the BBC as well. But, you know, either way, I mean, I think, you know, for its reput and remember also the BBC
[17:04]in America um has actually increased its footprint significantly. So they they've got a tie up with PBS, the public service broadcast in America. They do more news from America about America
[17:16]than ever before. Then of course there's BBC America, which is a separate, you know, commercial arm that really doesn't do the news. Used to when I when I was there, but not anymore. But still, you
[17:26]know, the BBC has, you know, a much bigger presence, not just in the American media landscape, but also in the imagination of Americans. And it's
[17:35]highly trusted by the American public. As you said earlier, you know, that that egregious edit, you know, and it was an egregious edit. It falsified what that
[17:44]speech was about, you know, strictly speaking according to the words. But of course the impression the speech gave was you know was was was different to
[17:54]people you know and and of and of course the whole thing was subject to you know very heated debate in Congress you know did the president of the United States
[18:03]incite insurrection in order to reverse the result of a of an election that he called the big steal. So the context was deeply incriminating of the context was
[18:15]deeply incriminating of Donald Trump. they didn't need to go the extra mile with that edit. You know, that was unnecessary. And so that >> it was but there was also an impeachment vote that agreed with the outcome. So
[18:27]we've now in this bizarre situation where a a clumsy edit or whatever you want to call it. It now allows the president to argue the opposite case that many have said before. Obviously,
[18:38]there is a difference between what we're talking about now and whether or not there has been a liberal bias in the media, whether or not the media has dropped the ball when it's come to understanding Donald Trump properly
[18:48]enough. and including, you know, in our own reporting in the UK, whether we properly interrogated the forces that led to Brexit, for example, whether there has been, you know, big news
[18:59]operations that are based in big cities here on the east and west coast, perhaps in London, in the UK, that therefore are full of people with more of a liberal slant. I I think that debate is there to
[19:10]be had. I think at the BBC, there's a lot of senior political voices from the BBC that went to work for Conservative governments. So whether or not that's true or not, I'm not entirely convinced.
[19:20]But I do think like striving to make sure that what we report and how we report it isn't seen through some
[19:30]metropolitan liberal um lens is incredibly important and I just would like people to know that we always strive to do exactly that. >> Let's bring in our guest.
[19:41]Well, joining us now is Marty Baron. uh he was editor of the Washington Post for the better part of a decade including while Trump had his first term as president and before that he ran the
[19:52]Boston Globe and while he was there uh the paper won a pullet surprise in fact quite a few pullet surprises for its coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandal and also uh uh the character that played him star of the movie
[20:03]Spotlight which by the way won an Oscar was about the same subject Marty it's good to have you on Trump world >> great to be with you >> so let's just start with a with a story. I mean, once a jouro, always a jouro.
[20:15]What did you make of the thing that's just dropped on the New York Times? Um, this is an email exchange between uh Jeffrey Epstein and Gileain Maxwell where Epstein basically describes
[20:26]President Trump, then of course not president, spending hours with uh one of Epstein's alleged victims. >> Yeah. Well, two thoughts occur to me
[20:38]since I really just read it. Um, one is that, you know, this administration has claimed that it's the most transparent administration ever and it's clearly not being uh transparent at all. Uh,
[20:49]particularly about about this case. Uh, the second thought that occurs to me is the the level of control that Trump has over the justice department. uh in the past in this in this country [clears throat] the justice department
[21:00]acted with uh full independence uh and uh or pretty close to full independence and uh it would have thoroughly investigated this case in a way that uh
[21:10]was sort of separate and apart from the president's wishes uh that clearly is not occurring >> and it is kind of extraordinary isn't it how his position on Epstein has changed
[21:20]so dramatically from when he was in opposition and it was very clear that his own base his MAGA base wanted answers on this to the way they've behaved since they've been in power.
[21:31]>> Yeah. Because he was claiming then that that it would disclose all sorts of information about his adversaries in the Democratic party, particularly Bill Clinton. Uh and he said that the all the files should be released and that he
[21:42]would have the files released if he became president. Well, as soon as he became president, he didn't want the files released at all. uh and um and that's exactly what the Justice
[21:51]Department is uh is abiding by is his wishes not to have those files released. So uh they clearly are not engaging in a truly independent investigation of the facts before the Epstein story uh
[22:03]dropped. Marty, the the thing that we were going to talk about and that's what we're going to talk about now is Trump's ongoing battle with the media and of course the latest iteration of that battle which you know you know about in
[22:14]the United States and it's been going on in various forms for years is you know him taking on the BBC. He's threatened to sue them for a billion US dollars you
[22:25]know if they haven't issued a full retraction and an apology you know by by Friday evening I think our time. So let's see what happens there. But of you know but what's really fascinating is
[22:36]how Donald Trump has declared war against his critics you know whether on late night television or in the newspapers you know or indeed you know television news. So tell us about how
[22:48]novel this is. I mean you there plenty of examples of American presidents unhappy with the coverage they're getting. But what Trump is doing is different isn't it? >> Yeah absolutely. I mean I think he goes well beyond what other presidents have
[22:59]done. Clearly, presidents in the past have complained about about coverage of them by the by the American press. Uh, and uh, there's always been an adversarial relationship between the
[23:10]press and and the presidency. Uh, that's just built into the into the nature of the of the relationship and the work of the of journalists, which is to hold powerful individuals to account.
[23:20]>> So, that's built into the relationship between the press and the and the president. Uh, that's the way it goes. Clearly during the administration of Richard Nixon, he was very harsh on the press and sought sought to penalize them
[23:31]in a variety of ways. But Trump has gone well beyond that. Uh he has talked about freedom of expression. Uh that was his first executive order. Uh but he doesn't actually believe in that. He only
[23:42]believes in freedom of expression for himself and his allies. Uh so um you know he's cynically invoking the first amendment uh for himself. uh but he schemes to withhold those rights from
[23:53]from others through uh baseless lawsuits through regulatory reprisals through uh malicious investigations uh and of course always vilifying vilifying the
[24:03]press in the most sadistic possible way. So that is is his that is his manner. Uh that is what he is doing. He clearly is working to weaken the press, weaken it
[24:14]economically, weaken its legal position, and accelerate its the decline in public confidence in the traditional media. >> On all of this, what what we're seeing
[24:23]is we're seeing the media capitulate to him in a lot of cases. cases where, as you say, the the legal case may be
[24:31]completely baseless, but firms owned by companies that are facing, you know, decisions by the FCC when it comes to mergers are paying him millions and
[24:43]millions of dollars or paying his library or whatever it is, millions of dollars in order to capitulate to him because they're scared of him. And actually it links back to the story we're talking about at the beginning of
[24:53]this which was Epstein, you know, which places that you've edited in the past have had a huge role in outing what's been going on here or other public
[25:03]interest stories. What ex to what extent do you worry that the chilling effect of what he's doing is actually making news organizations scared of holding the government to account?
[25:14]>> Well, I am worried about what some of the owners are doing. Uh clearly some of the owners are capitulating and agreeing to pay him enormous settlements just to settle his lawsuits and to make sure that they're no longer that they're no
[25:25]longer at odds with the president of the United States who's the most powerful person in this country and clearly the most powerful person throughout the world. Uh they need him for uh to approve mergers. They need him to
[25:35]approve other other sorts of things for the networks. They need uh the Federal Communications Commission's approval uh for their licenses or at least for the licenses for the stations that are
[25:45]affiliated with them. Uh but I think the frontline journalists are doing a very good job. They have not capitulated and I admire them for sticking to their guns. I admire them for digging into
[25:56]what this administration is doing with regard to the Epstein files. They have been very aggressive on that on that front. Every day there are revelatory stories about other subjects as well. And so I think the reporters and the
[26:08]editors who work directly with them are very determined to continue to do the work that they're supposed to do, what they're expected to do under the first amendment, which is the reason we have a first amendment, which is to hold uh
[26:20]politicians and other powerful individuals and other powerful uh institutions to account. Uh and that is what the frontline journalists are doing. Clearly the owners are a point of vulnerability and we'll have to see how
[26:32]that plays out over the intermediate term and over the longer term. >> Marty, you know, your own newspaper that you edited, the Washington Post, has gone on a bit of a journey, if I can put it like that. You that we all remember
[26:43]the days of Katherine Graeme, the legendary owner of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal. She gave cover uh to the editor at the time and then of course Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. they were able to do
[26:55]their award-winning uh government changing work. And then further down the line, just last year, you had Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, who's also the owner of the Washington Post,
[27:05]deciding very late in the day not or or his people deciding very late the day not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election of last year. Tell
[27:16]us about that journey and tell us about that particular decision uh of late last year. Uh Jeff Bezos became the owner of the Washington Post uh early in my tenure there. Uh it was announced only
[27:26]about seven months after I got there and then it closed about uh nine months after I got there. And um during the period of time that I was the editor of
[27:36]the Post up until uh February of 2021, he never interfered in our news coverage. And as far as I know, he didn't interfere hardly at all if if at all uh in the editorials either. In
[27:47]fact, he praised uh the editorials of the paper. He praised the editorial page editor. He praised me for our news coverage. He did so on numerous occasions, and he did so profusely. Uh
[27:58]uh he continued that policy, I would say, up until the moment that you mentioned, which was the decision on whether to endorse uh in the 2024 election. So 11 days before the
[28:08]election, he made the decision uh to kill an endorsement that had been drafted by the editorial page editors, the editorial board of the Washington Post. They would have endorsed Kla
[28:18]Harris. Uh but he uh uh killed that killed that editorial and he then announced that they would not be making an endorsement at all. In fact, they would never make presidential
[28:29]endorsements in the future. And then he followed up that that decision uh with um with a book a variety of behaviors that I think were deeply concerning. Uh he was clearly cozing up to the
[28:40]president of the United States. Uh he appeared at the president's uh inauguration right there on the stage. Um uh which was a bad look for a newspaper that strives to be independent. Uh certainly where the
[28:52]journalist there strives to be strive to be independent. He subsequently am Amazon subsequently made a deal to purchase uh Melania Trump's uh so-called documentary for $40 million which is
[29:03]nearly three times the price of the next highest bid. Um and she gets a huge chunk of that money. Subsequent to that, Amazon agreed to buy the rights to the television series uh The Apprentice that
[29:14]which in which Trump starred. Uh and and then of course he uh announced that he was changing the opinion pages completely uh that the opinion pages of
[29:24]the paper uh would be uh dedicated to as he put it uh um personal liberties and free markets without defining what he meant by that. But what was meant by
[29:34]that became clearer later. Uh and that was that they purged pretty much all of the um columnists who were left of center uh from the opinion pages and they then hired a bunch or retained a
[29:45]bunch of columnists who were right of center and the editorials themselves have been definitively uh right of center. Um and uh that's where he's taken things. But I have no evidence
[29:56]that he has interfered in the news coverage. In fact, I do not believe that he has. and uh the the news coverage itself is is a testament to the fact that he hasn't because it's been quite
[30:07]aggressive and I think they've done an admirable job of covering this administration >> and and if you just separate the kind of two sides of this in a way which is on
[30:17]the one hand you've got what looks like a bit of an authoritarian playbook coming from the White House when it comes to the media and the treatment of the media but on the other hand you have the argument the underlying argument
[30:28]that some make which is that the media has skewed liberal for years and has failed to listen to right-wing voices.
[30:38]Um I I mean I question how on true that is. We have the same debate in the UK for example over Brexit. But most of I'd say more than half of UK newspapers actually did support Brexit were on the
[30:49]right um are very you know anti-woke when you think about the current um narrative. But on that kind of argument, you know, is it true that newspapers
[31:00]like the Washington Post have historically had this skew and and is that true in the newsroom? I know I know I actually worked for three months at the Washington Post in 2006 as part of
[31:10]the um part of a fellowship where you get one British journalist every year. And I remember speaking to Leonard Downey at the time who was the executive editor and he I I actually came back
[31:21]from that. He said he hadn't voted in an election since 1984 in order to try to not be biased when it came to uh news coverage and editing and
[31:31]so on. And I actually came back as a cup reporter at the time to the UK and I decided not to vote in elections because I was quite inspired by that. Um and I do think it helps you to then not think
[31:42]about the outcome of that election and therefore report on it in a different way. So my question sorry after a very long spill is it true that there has been a liberal bias and if so how did
[31:52]you as an editor try to deal with that? >> Well look people on the staff have their own opinions. I never gave a litmus test to the people on the staff. Uh I never asked them what their opinions were. I know there were people who were conservative on the staff. I mean I
[32:04]would guess that the m you know majority of people on the staff leaned left of center but not extremely left of center. uh and but within the newsroom I would say that there was a strong commitment
[32:15]to just getting the facts. I mean the real battle today is not over people's opinions. Uh the real battle today is over facts. You know what happened in the election of 2020 in the United States? Was there fraud? Was it a
[32:26]legitimate election or wasn't it? There is no evidence that it was an illegitimate election, that it was fraudulent in any way. And and all the evidence points to the fact that Joe Biden was elected uh legitimately. uh
[32:37]what happened on uh January 6th of 2021. Were those patriots or were they people trying to reverse the results of an election in essentially what was an insurrection? Were they in fact beating
[32:48]up uh capital police? Yes, they were. Uh we could see that all for ourselves. Uh is that patriotic? I'm not I would not describe that as patriotic in any in in any fashion. Uh do vaccines cause
[32:59]autism? You know, um all of the evidence suggests that they do not cause autism. That's all of the scientific research, all of the medical research. Those are the kinds of battles that uh that are
[33:10]really the real the real battles today, not whether somebody has an opinion about this policy or that policy, that sort of thing. So, um I think that that is and and with regard to the post,
[33:21]look, if if Jeff Bezos wants to take the editorial page in a right of center direction, uh well, fine. That's his prerogative. He's the owner of the paper. Uh he should never interfere on the news coverage, and I don't believe
[33:31]that he has. Uh but I also think that on the opinion pages they should have a wide range of opinion. You know this is a paper that has as its motto democracy dies in darkness. Excluding certain
[33:42]opinions from the opinion pages simply because they are left of center. Purging those columnists is an anti-democratic move. Uh and it goes against everything that Jeff Bezos himself has said in the
[33:53]in the past. So um and also I think with regard to the editorials themselves, they need to be fact-based. uh they can't be uh uh and they can't just exclude information that is really
[34:04]relevant because it might irritate Donald Trump. And I think that that is the case right now is that they often don't mention something or they they temper their language in a way so that
[34:15]uh they don't offend Donald Trump and that that concerns me. Uh they will not call they do not seem to be able to call an abuse of power an abuse of power. They seem to call it overreach. Uh so
[34:25]they're always using this uh this sort of more moderate language to describe something that is really uh uh measures that are truly autocratic in their very nature. >> And I mean there's been a lot of focus
[34:36]obviously about this now notorious BBC Panorama edit of the speech that Donald Trump gave on January the 6th um just before the insurrection before the riot
[34:45]took place. Um, but the bigger picture that you just alluded to, which is what was the intention of the speech, the overall intention, what was the result
[34:56]of the speech on January the 6th, what were those people trying to do? What was the context of what Trump called the big steal of the election, which he still maintains to this day he won, even
[35:07]though all the evidence suggested that actually it was Joe Biden who won the election. That's that bigger picture has been completely drowned out, has it not, by the noise about this one particular
[35:18]edit? >> Uh, well, I gather it has. Um, I mean, I think that it's important to well, first of all, it's important for the BBC and any other media outlet to get the facts
[35:28]right and not to not to engage in uh editing that distorts the actual words of the president or anybody else for that matter. So, uh, we have to do our jobs uh properly. We have to get things
[35:40]done right. We have to make sure the context is is right. We should be uh we should be critical of ourselves in that regard. We should not be making uh mistakes of well mistakes of fact or
[35:50]mistakes of judgment. And when we do, we should acknowledge them and acknowledge them quickly. Um and I don't believe that happened in this case from what I can from what I can tell. Uh that said,
[36:01]you are right that clearly Trump incited the people who were there. Uh his language was inciting. he invited people to Washington uh by talking about having a wild day. Uh ultimately he used the
[36:12]words to to use the word fight. Uh you know he has his own he offers now a different interpretation of that but clearly the people in the audience uh who were who were listening to him
[36:23]interpreted in a certain way uh and they were riled up and he didn't do anything while he was in the White House watching all of this happen. I think that's important to remember afterwards. And not only that, when he became president
[36:34]again for his second term, he pardoned all of those people, which means that he felt that what he has called them patriots, he called them political prisoners, uh, um, hostages, whatever.
[36:44]He used a whole variety of language to describe them. And, um, and he has treated them as if they were patriots. And, um, which means that he approved, I mean, the import of that is that he
[36:56]essentially approved of what they were doing. And so, um, he clearly incited them. He's approved of what they were doing. He let them off the hook. Um, um,
[37:07]and, um, that I think that's just a obviously that's just a terrible thing. >> And do you think that the court case, if it happens in this case, is something
[37:16]that the BBC should fight? I >> I I think that they should fight that. I don't think that that's defamatory. There's clearly no damages. He was elected president of the United States. He hasn't suffered at all for it. uh
[37:27]nobody even knew about this until more recently. Um and his reputation is not is not hurt in any way by it. So yes, I would think it would be appropriate for the BBC to fight that even as
[37:37]acknowledges acknowledges that it it it should have it should not have edited the the remarks that way. >> Marty, thank you so much for joining us. That was all really really fascinating.
[37:48]>> Thanks Marty. >> Great. Great. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. >> Well that that was really fascinating. And you know Marty Baron even in retirement is thinking very deeply about you know these issues which are coming
[37:59]up all the time and you know are just relentless um especially as you know stories like Epstein keep breaking and then Trump keeps you know deflecting and
[38:10]you know trying to steer us in another direction. These battles are very much ongoing. Uh that's it from this edition of Trump world.