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Welcome to Sisters-in-Law, the podcast, episode nine, The New Reality. We are Janice and Davida Mathis, real sisters, real lawyers, and we hope to give you some really good talk. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to Sisters-in-Law, the podcast, The New Reality.
Reality used to mean real, but more and more reality means conspiracy theory. It means conjecture. It means deep state, alternate reality. What does it mean for us personally and what does it mean for this country politically? We're going to talk about it, about QAnon, a term I hadn't known until just a few minutes ago. Well, I guess I knew the concept, but maybe not the name. About Breonna Taylor, about the protests.
and about the ever-present Twitter and Facebook. Jan, tell us what QAnon is. Well, let me say this. In its early days, Twitter was known for its permissive rules that allowed just about anything to be posted in the name of free speech. Recently, though, Twitter has become more conscious of the cost of unfettered speech. No right is absolute. The right to free speech has limits.
And seemingly this week, Twitter found those limits being violated by QAnon. In case you're not familiar with it, QAnon is a cult-like conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is waging a
war against a devil-worshiping, child-trafficking group of high-profile individuals, mostly leftists, progressives, and Democrats, who are intent upon mounting a coup to end Donald Trump's presidency. QAnon grew out of a misplaced belief that Trump is a messiah-like figure who is working to take down an elite ring of pedophiles.
QAnon has been linked to false coronavirus information, harassment of high-profile targets, and the real problem with QAnon is that its adherents, their followers, have been linked to real-world violence, including murder. Reddit platform banned QAnon over violent threats in 2018.
This past Tuesday, Twitter announced that it too would be limiting the influence of QAnon on its platform. Twitter is recognizing how it has been manipulated, said Joan Donovan, a research director at Harvard Shorming Stiller on media, politics, and public policy. If you believe that and you're a passionate person, it might lead you to do all kinds of things if you believe in the QAnon platform.
Conspiracy theory. Twitter's announcement had two main goals. The first is account termination. Twitter announced that it was going to permanently ban anyone who tweets QAnon content and violates rules around coordinated harassment, running multiple accounts.
are trying to evade previous suspensions. Now the other thing that Twitter says that they're gonna do is about amplification. They are going to stop recommending QAnon accounts. Say you search for conspiracy theory, QAnon is not supposed to come up in those searches because Twitter plans to suppress them and block QAnon related URLs from being shared.
Twitter says that they've already removed 7,000 accounts linked to QAnon and that some prominent QAnon influencers have been taken down. So that's sort of what QAnon is and what Twitter is doing about it.
Well, I wasn't familiar with the term QAnon, but I certainly was familiar with the conspiracy theory that I first heard in the fall of 2016 before Trump was elected president. As I always do, I asked one of my clients, was she going to vote and was she registered?
And she said, well, I'm not going to vote this time. And I said, well, why not? And she said, well, I can't vote for Trump. And, you know, I can't vote for Hillary because of what she's doing. I said, what is she doing? She said she's running the sex ring out of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C. And I said, but that can't be true. That can't be real. Well, it wasn't just my client who thought that.
Apparently, a lot of people thought of it, including a man named Edgar Madison Welch. Edgar Madison Welch, according to his friends and family members, was a Christian man with a family that lived in Salisbury, North Carolina. And on December the 4th, my husband's birthday in 2000.
He armed himself with an AR-15 rifle, a .38 caliber Colt revolver, and a shotgun and got in his Toyota Prius and drove to Washington, D.C. to visit the Comet Ping Pong Pizza Restaurant. Apparently, that was the restaurant that those people thought was harboring child victims of Hillary Clinton.
He stormed in with his guns and threw the children and parents and grandparents who were having pizza there at the Comet Ping Pong restaurant and broke open a door, which he thought would lead to a basement where they believed that children were being held and found out that there was just a sold computer there in a little closet office. He was arrested. He got four years in prison and he even apologized. He said, my intel was wrong.
Well, the intel that he was referring to is what we now know is QAnon, that conspiracy theorist group that believes all types of things, like what you were talking about, that the Democrats, the left wings led by Hillary Clinton, were conspiring to take down Donald Trump, certainly conspiring for him not to be elected, and that Donald Trump was their savior and leader.
That group has morphed into the same group that thinks that the coronavirus is not real, that it's just a part of a deep state effort to control the public. And they are the only ones who know the truth, the reality, the QAnon group. And they think Donald Trump is their savior. I've been going around saying, Janice, I didn't know the name QAnon when I was saying this.
that it appears that those people who deny the coronavirus think Donald Trump can save them from getting sick. Well, I didn't know that I was speaking right into the QAnon ideology, but it does appear that they believe that. That, number one, they believe that coronavirus is not real, and if it's real, that Trump is the one who can save them.
It's hard to say and even harder to think. But apparently there is a number, a group of people who believe in that type of ideation. Another another aspect of it is what you hear the president referred to as Obamagate, where President Obama is supposed to have authorized illegal surveillance of his campaign in order to try to defeat him in the 2020 election.
16 elections. And so now President Obama is part of the coup conspiracy of taking down Donald Trump. So it's all a fantasy. But what is so ironic about it, the candidate who is most closely and obviously associated with the child pornography ring is that circle of friends around Mr. Epstein, who was killed when in jail.
And this week, the president said that he wished Ghislaine, whatever her name is, the woman,
was the accomplice for Mr. Epstein, that he wishes her well, that he's met her several times. So the supreme irony is that the very person who is at the center of this QAnon, because the president has retweeted QAnon postings and has members of his administration have been seeing photographs throwing up the QAnon signs.
So it's just a morass. And what people really have to do is arm themselves with truth so that they can separate fact from fiction. And I want to later on in the broadcast give some tips and some information on how you separate fact from fiction on the internet, which can be a very dangerous place to hang out for news. ♪
It's interesting that Barack Obama is now being called a part of this conspiracy, this deep state that is against Trump, because in many ways it started with a Barack Obama birther theory. Trump started years before his run for president saying Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
And people in Hawaii knew that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and Hawaii is a part of the United States. But Trump persisted in carrying that theory all around the world. Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. Really, it's what elevated Trump as a political type of figure. I say political type because he wasn't political, but he was trying to be.
And he rose on the back of Barack Obama, saying that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore not eligible to run for president. The so-called birther theory, one of the beginning theories of what we now call QAnon.
Well, that is true. And the other thing that is true is that Twitter and QAnon are not the only threats to democracy that we have to be aware of as we head into this election season. The 2020 U.S. elections are primed right now to be fraught with difficulty. Poll workers are in short supply. There's much noise in the system about the reliability of mail ballots.
much of that coming from the White House itself. We are nearly at the point of no return for states and localities to gear up equipment and polling places for the election season. So far, the Congress has not made sufficient resources available to address the special challenges presented by COVID-19 like distancing and that sort of thing. And
Discredited conspiracy theories flourish in a virtual environment where fiction masquerades as truth. Yet without free and fair elections, there's a real danger that the character of democracy in the United States could be significantly impaired or damaged for years to come. This situation prompts many to challenge not only Twitter but Facebook.
to take immediate decisive action to prevent misinformation on its platforms, Facebook and IG. Recent data indicates that 70% of black U.S. residents and 79% of U.S. adults age 18 to 29 use Facebook. Whether or not the company is a publisher, which has been a source of contention for now years, this level of utilization comes with awful some power
and a lot of responsibility. Facebook should adopt the recommendations and advice found in its recently released final report of the civil rights audit. Now, to their credit, they commissioned a civil rights audit, but I am disappointed that Facebook has not engaged in a more robust and consistent enforcement of its policies against voter suppression.
It is insufficient to exempt ads and posts by elected officials from fact checking based merely on the assumption that the content is automatically newsworthy because it comes from an elected official. Mr. Trump was blasting mail balloting. There is no credible evidence
that voting by mail is more susceptible to any kind of fraud. And frankly, there is little evidence that there is in-person voter fraud or voter impersonation. That final audit report says that there is ample evidence, this is a quote, to support the heightened risk of harm such misinformation represents, especially to poor minority or otherwise marginalized communities
and those characterized in the civil rights laws as a protected class. I think that we must take the common sense position that content that is provably false violates the company's voter suppression policy and should be removed. No person or group, even the president of the United States, should have the right to spread damaging information about voting because it is so central to what we think of
as democracy. So while Twitter seems to be moving in the right direction, there are others like Facebook that need to follow that lead. Well, it's a shocking reality that Facebook has, according to Facebook, 116 million fake accounts. 116 million fake accounts on Facebook, according to Facebook's calculations.
But they're not removing them. Twitter removed 7000 QAnon accounts. I'm not aware of Facebook removing any of the 116 million accounts that they know to be false. Well, they are removing them. But see, this is the thing. A lot of it depends on what users report. You know, there are a lot of ways to determine that account is fake.
Facebook has all kinds of algorithms that sweep through the platform and target accounts that appear to be suspect. Some of those get taken down. Some of it is done by artificial intelligence. So there's no human connection to it. But at some point, you have to invest in human reviewers who work for Facebook and not just depend on the public, because after all, it's the public that's being fooled by this content.
So how effective can it be to rely mostly on what users report? It's almost circular in the nature of the argument. You're relying on the people who are being victimized to report that a crime has occurred where the very nature of engagement on social media is the endeavor is to fool you into thinking that something that is fake is real.
So we have a lot of work to do to ensure that we have fair elections in November. And Facebook needs to step up to the plate. And Twitter, now that they've announced this policy, needs to mount a very robust enforcement effort.
Well, I agree with that. I'd like to go back to something you said earlier about Facebook policy, that if it's political speech, they are not going to limit it or monitor or fact check it. Well, in a different world, that might have been sufficient. But in Trump world, with Trump being a pathological liar,
it's irresponsible not to fact check him or other politicians. Well, see, this is the thing. They do fact check. For example, there are a lot of people on Facebook who don't believe in vaccinations. They think that children getting shots when they're young creates causes ADD and autism. Right. Facebook has taken those accounts down because they're presumably false.
And it's not just all elected officials. It appears to be some elected officials who get a pass. Well, certainly Trump gets the biggest pass because he lies at a level that has not been seen before in public life. And they seem to be making a distinction between elected officials and candidates for office. So that would mean if, say, Mr. Biden put up something that was false,
his would be taken down because he is not an elected official where Trump's would be left up because he is an elected official. That's nonsensical. It is. And, you know, it follows that those acolytes of Trump
If they start lying, like the governor of Georgia, the governor of South Carolina, when they say we're doing a great job with the coronavirus and we we're going to be able to move forward with starting schools again because our numbers are down. Well, that's provably false that those are not fact checked either.
You know, the irony in all of this, one of the many ironies is that all through school, I studied, like everybody, what the communists were prone to do, what rogue regimes were prone to do. And one of the first things that they do is attack the press and try to manipulate the truth.
as a way of undermining confidence in citizens, confidence in the election system, confidence in government in general, and confidence in each other as citizens. It never occurred to me that such tactics would be used on such scale in the United States. Yeah, and I think in a large part, it is possible because of Facebook, because we can communicate with the world instantaneously through the platform of Facebook.
that lies can be spread so rapidly. Lies always spread rapidly, but they can be spread more rapidly now than ever in history because of Facebook and other social media, but mostly Facebook because it's the largest platform.
And to say that they're not going to fact check elected officials damages certainly our country and the entire world. Well, you know, there is enough blame to go around. I've talked to one expert who said that she thought YouTube was the biggest offender. And certainly YouTube now is in the United States.
rivaling Facebook for the number of users and the amount of time they spend on. Think about YouTube, you spend a lot of time on YouTube because you're watching whole videos and not just a post here and a post there. But the internet started out as this place, remember when we talked about the internet being a place that would promote democracy because everybody would have an equal voice? But now we're seeing the dark side of the internet and how it can be manipulated and frankly,
The Europeans have started to legislate regulation of the Internet, and the United States is eventually going to have to do the same thing, in my view. Well, we should have already done it. Facebook should be regulated, or the Internet should be regulated, just like television and radio are regulated. Some of the regulations won't transfer directly, but in a similar fashion...
Internet should be regulated and not to do it and not to have done it at this point in history is crazy.
It's a big platform, so big that it shouldn't even be called a platform. It is ubiquitous. Everybody uses it. Like you said, 70 to 75% of adults are on Facebook. And so you can't legitimately say Facebook is not a publisher, that Mark Zuckerberg is not a publisher. Mark Zuckerberg just doesn't apply the rules of publishing.
It's definitely a publisher, but the rules do not apply to Facebook. And that's a mistake. And of course, I'm sure the listeners are aware that
Color Change and NAACP and other organizations have called on advertisers to stop advertising on Facebook. And some of them have done that, including Coca-Cola cut back on its ads on Facebook. It did affect the stock price, but so far it has not affected the company's willingness to do more to fact check the information that is posted on Facebook. And because Donald Trump...
in my opinion, is the biggest offender with Twitter as much as Facebook. It leads me to conclude that Mark Zuckerberg must be a real big Trump supporter. That's what it leads me to conclude personally. I don't have any data, but it's very obvious that Donald Trump benefits more than anyone else from not having fact-checking on Facebook.
Yeah, back to QAnon. You know, QAnon is something that we haven't called it QAnon all these years, but it's something that you and I have talked about for a very long time, the glorification of ignorance, the glorification or rejection, the rejection of reason, logic, science, objectivity, and the
And many think that this ideology, this, well, I hate to call it an ideology because to have an ideology, you got to have an idea. But this thought process is like a religion. It does have, well, more than a religion, it has elements of a cult. And some would say, what's the difference? But I know it when I see it, but it's hard to describe.
A cult is really, you can have a religion without a central figure, but you can't have a cult without one. Usually there's a Manson or some extreme Jim Jones, somebody like that at the center of a cult. It's very much personality driven is one way to distinguish it. But I would like to give a few tips on how to defend yourself against so-called fake news or fake
QAnon type thinking. And this would work for any ideology. African American communities were targeted as a major part of online disinformation campaigns to negatively impact their vote. That is just true. It has been proven. To help shield against anything like this happening again, here are a few tips to assist you in being vigilant about protecting yourself.
Actively seek out the truth. You have to be an active engager. Information you seek out directly will usually be of higher quality than what you absorb passively on social media. If somebody is bombarding you with information, with messages that you didn't request, that is one signal that it might not be reliable.
Notice what percentage of your time you spend on authoritative news sites as opposed to news you get from social media. NewsGuard and Media Bias Fact Check have a comprehensive set of ratings of news outlets for partisanship and fact-based reporting. You can install NewsGuard browser plugin to help you navigate news sources online. In other words, check out where you're getting your news from.
And then here's a question to ask yourself. Who the author of online content is, why they posted the information, and what are they hoping you will do with it? Scrutinize the information you read before you share, especially if it confirms what you already believe to be true. Social media transparency features may help you to establish context. One of the things that's going on in social media now is that there are more and more demands that
People identify themselves when they put up opinion pieces and not hide behind fake names or account names. Avoid being manipulated by divisive or dishonest content. Oftentimes, social media outlets tend to reward the most outrageous and often false take on any event. When you share, make sure you're sharing content that is true and helpful to others, not as a knee-jerk reaction to content that angers or scares you.
That's important. If something makes you mad or makes you fearful, that is a sign that it may not be true. Like somebody was on Twitter and they were saying, don't fill out the FAFSA for financial aid, because if you do, you have to go to war. Well, that's untrue on so many fronts, but there were a lot of people saying they were not going to fill out the FAFSA for fear of having to go to the military.
And then finally, if you see something untrue on social media, try to inject truth into the debate without attacking the sharer because they may be a victim of false content themselves. Fact checkers like Snopes, AP Fact Check, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and Lead Stories may be able to help. So those are some tips on what you can do to protect yourself. The internet can be a very dangerous place.
Well, that's certainly true, Jan. It leads me to our next topic. We're talking about a new reality. Well, you know, we've done radio for a long time and we hope to do this podcast for a long time. And we've heard all kinds of conspiracy theories. And you and I both, I guess I'll speak for myself, I have poo-pooed those conspiracy theories and tried to add facts that would...
help people to understand that their conspiracy theories were not true. But one of them was kept coming up all the time, particularly from black men about martial law coming to the United States. I got so sick of hearing about martial law. Martial law is coming and we've got to be ready. And I use every legal argument and every common sense argument that I knew about
to prove that that was not the case, that that's not what we should be concerned about. However, I feel like I should take some of those words back because of the way federal agents have gone into Portland, Oregon, ostensibly to
quelled the so-called riots, really that many of the protests have been peaceful. As a matter of fact, most of the protests in Portland, Oregon, which originated after the killing of George Floyd before our very eyes,
They've been going on for two months almost in Portland, Oregon. But federal agents, and I want to say troops, but they're not really troops. They're Homeland Security agents dressed in fatigues and armed, have gone to Portland, Oregon to fight.
protect the federal buildings and monuments, they say. However, their role has been more than just protecting federal buildings and monuments. The role has gone into attacking peaceful protesters, including the mayor of Portland, Oregon. And Portland is not isolated in this, but it certainly is very stark in Portland.
And it makes me think that those conspiracy theories about martial law were not just conspiracy theories, but ideas that certainly Trump and some of his henchmen have adopted as a campaign strategy. You know, and I'm glad you brought up the idea of it being a campaign strategy. This whole campaign of fear about
The suburbs are going to be destroyed. You won't be able to reach the police when you need them. This all is part, it appears to be a re-election campaign strategy for the White House. What is disturbing about it is the use of federal employees, whether you call them, excuse me, shock troops or riot police or whatever you want to call them, they work for the federal government.
in furtherance of a very narrow agenda, which is scare people to death so that they will vote to put Mr. Trump back in office. Well, it's a dumb strategy. It reminds me of Willie Horton, but this is the dumbest part about it. The commercials and Trump often say this is the America of Joe Biden. But Donald Trump is the president now, and we're experiencing this under his presidency.
And he does not appear to be able to control it. And sending troops into the cities that are governed by Democratic mayors doesn't make him look strong. It makes him look out of control. But I still believe this is his strategy because his numbers on the coronavirus are dismal. His polling is at the bottom.
And so he's creating another reality where the cities are rising up and only he can save us by sending in federal agents dressed in fatigues and camouflaged gear to act like they're saving America. I've heard those commercials, and I tell you, I have to change the station when I hear them talk about the suburbs that are coming to get you. You and I were both in...
when we first heard about Willie Horton. We were working for the Dukakis campaign, and I thought it was awful. I thought it was the lowest blow that could be delivered, but I had no idea how low a blow could go. And as much as it was a low blow, it was an effective blow. Very effective. And it's been used ever since. It kneecapped the Dukakis campaign. A decent man, an honest man,
family man was defeated because there was a furlough program when he was governor of Massachusetts. Somebody went home for the weekend and committed a heinous crime. And that was enough to scare Americans into voting. Because if you recall, Mr. Dukakis was up about 17 points in the polls at Labor Day. And from Labor Day until Election Day, which was just about two months
the entire race turned around based on those Willie Horton ads and his answer to a question about whether or not he favored the death penalty if his wife had been raped.
Well, it was all a scare tactic, and this is the ultimate scare tactic. The sad thing about all of the whole Dukakis-Willard Horton situation was sad to me. But the real sad thing is Governor Dukakis had no say-so over who got parole and who didn't. But that wasn't a part of the commercial. And once that black face was shown on television and Willard Horton's face image was darkened to make him more menacing to white people,
After that face was shown on television, nobody wanted to hear that the governor doesn't rule on every person who comes up for parole. The governor doesn't get to review it. Nobody wanted to hear the facts. At that point, the internet was a relatively new thing. That was 1988. But now with this viral spread of misinformation and frankly,
what appears to me to be less information about how the United States government is put together and really works. Like when Mr. Trump was threatening to withhold federal funding from public schools if they didn't open as he instructed them to. That portrays a misunderstanding of how the appropriations process works. But we seem to have lost our way in terms of understanding how the government is supposed to work.
Well, in this new reality, the president is a king and he controls everything except under the Constitution, there are certain powers that belong to Congress and certain powers that belong to the president and the power to appropriate money, federal funds, belongs to Congress. Just like in this whole situation in Portland and the other cities where Trump is threatening to send federal agents. Federal agents do not have power.
local or state policing power. Federal agents, the federal government has the right to enforce federal law all over the United States. However, they don't have local policing power. And so the way they tried to get around it is saying, well, we're sending them to police the federal buildings and federal monuments. Okay, that's a part of their jurisdiction.
But their activities belie what they say their mission is.
Their activities have been that now that they're almost in two months of protesting in Portland, the protesters are coming very close to the federal building but not attacking the federal building. And as they move by the federal building and move away, even blocks away, the federal troops are marching behind them and forcing them away or even confronting them blocks away from federal buildings or statues.
And so they're clearly overstepping what they say their mission is and what their jurisdiction is. And so it does not appear that their role is to protect any federal building. Their role is to confront protesters who have a constitutional right to protest. And I tell you what else it's doing, too. It is diverting public attention and media attention away from the reason for the protests
Now, instead of talking about institutional racism and police violence, now we're talking about protester violence and law and order and controlling the streets. And that also is not a good thing. Well, you can turn it around on its head, too, because not only are there anti-racist protests, but there are anti-fascist protests, too.
The protesters who were out there to say that Black Lives Matter are also saying we are not fascist and the American government, the government of the United States should not be fascist either and should not control us with military power turned on its own citizens. You know, I had to smile. There was an incident where an officer was seen repeatedly using a baton to whack a Navy veteran who said he had come to speak to the agents. He was a big guy.
And he just stood there and took the beating. Videos taken by members of the public captured the camouflaged vehicle personnel pulling up and putting protesters in the unmarked vans. And this guy was just saying, well, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? He was trying to have a conversation. And, of course, the media picked it up because they beat him. They broke his finger and he had to have surgery on his hand.
But I thought to myself, how many times has a black man been beaten for trying to ask, why did you stop me, officer? What did I do that was wrong? Please tell me. Because you would think common sense would tell you that you have the right to ask, why are you trying to arrest me or why are you detaining me? Why do you want to question me? But that is not often the way the police see it.
Well, it certainly isn't. I think, though, Jan, that the protests in Portland may have dwindled down by this time, except for the presence of those federal agents. I think they are revving them up, giving them new energy, and giving them a new reason to protest. Not a new reason, but an additional reason to protest. But I am concerned that the movement for racial justice
is now focused on whether or not the federal forces should be there. And that is a diversion. And that goes, that to me helps Mr. Trump, because a lot of Americans believe in law and order. They don't understand that there's always a tension between law and order and democracy. And the more you give in to this sort of hardcore police tactics,
the less freedom of speech you're going to have. The guy who got beat up for asking a question is an example. I don't think it bodes well for Mr. Trump, though. I might be wrong, but I think Americans know mostly that we have the right to free speech and the right to assemble. And that right is based in the right to free speech about politics. Yeah, I think you give people too much credit.
As the young people would say, I think it's a bad look for the president to have federal agents beating up a man who is obviously unarmed and just trying to ask a question. How do you explain that a majority of white Americans still favor Mr. Trump and plan to vote for him? Don't explain it.
You and I talked about that, and I meant to look it up and figure out where you got that from, because I was going to try to dispute it, but I did not. Where did you get that from, Jen? Well, I think what we're finding out is it doesn't take a majority of white Americans to elect a president anymore. The demographics have changed to the point, and that's why there is so much tension, because there is a loss of control.
Well, obviously, you gave us the numbers, and I like to repeat it, that most people under the age of 18 are not white. Most people in the United States under the age of 18 are not white. That's right. And for people who want to be racist, for people who want to hold on to their white privilege, that is a scary proposition.
Yes, it is. And I understand the fear, but I think that we have to help people get beyond their fear and understand that they are not in danger as the country gets blacker and browner. They got enough money and privilege to last for another century. Well, I would hope it's only a century that they have that privilege. I used to think when I was a child and we were at Greenville Junior High School,
that by the time I got to be a grown lady, that that racism and sense of privilege would be gone. I guess because I was young and I couldn't see time in the correct perspective. And so now 100 years doesn't seem like a long time to me. I was looking for that statistic on white approval of Mr. Trump.
And I'm not finding it right now, but next week when we do the podcast again, I will make sure that I can share that. I see that a majority, like something like 80% of white evangelicals favor Mr. Trump, but he's also got a plurality. I believe, I think I'm right in saying that a majority of whites overall favor Mr. Trump. Well, yeah.
I guess I want to know and I guess I want to hear it. But back to this. And then maybe not because, you know, I'm the one that has to turn off the news at night because sometimes I like to sleep at night. And when I hear that stuff, it causes me not to be able to sleep. Well, here's the answer. Whites who are not evangelical, 61% of them favor Trump. 57% of white Catholics favor Trump.
I hope that they believe that voting by mail is wrong and they're scared to come out and vote. If it weren't for unaffiliated voters, atheists, and black people, Trump would be leading in all the polls. It's blacks, unaffiliated, and atheists, and nothing in particular with regard to religion who favored Biden. All you adults, 54% favor Biden.
But all U.S. adults takes in a whole lot of black and brown people. Well, yeah, because of those numbers that are changing. So we've got our work cut out for us. I want to remind people that early voting will start soon in some jurisdictions. You must be registered to vote in most states by the first week in October. So let's get ready. Know your status, whether you're a registered voter or not. And let's get everybody to the polls.
Absolutely. I want to say that every time we talk on this podcast, we have to vote, vote, vote like our lives and our children's lives depend on it because they apparently do. I want to talk a little bit more about these agents in cities. They're only going to cities where Democrats are the mayors. It is a strategy. It might be a winning strategy. I don't think it is, but it is a strategy. But is it
Harbinger for the future. Will future presidents, I know this one will and is doing it, but will future presidents use the United States military and Homeland Security and other armed bodies of the federal government to take advantage of their political authority to help their political positioning, specifically to help them maintain control? I don't know. I don't think so.
I don't think Trump feels that the cities are out of control. I think he feels that he needs an issue to wag the dog with. That's exactly what I think. I think it's for his political gain. And he would use the military, homeland security and anybody else who's likely to carry a weapon to enforce what he believes is in his political best interest.
You know, we talk about norms and how in the last three and a half years, the norms have been shattered, broken. My question is, are new norms being established and sending Homeland Security to the cities? That has not been done in my lifetime, except for the National Guard going out to deal with rioters. I will say after the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King.
And so I know you don't know, but my concern is that those people who I thought were conspiracy theorists when they were talking about martial law, that this is as close to martial law as I've ever experienced. Yeah, you know, and I don't know if they anticipated this particular brand of aggressive behavior.
surveillance of Americans. Certainly in the 60s there was some infiltration of groups thought to be left-wing groups and that sort of thing. But this sending the troops, I mean, that was just unheard of. You don't use federal troops or federal personnel to police American citizens on USR. It was just kind of a truism. But now we're forced to think, why did we think that was true?
If it needs to be true, how do we guarantee that it's true? Right now, we've got a Justice Department that is thoroughly complicit in policing and using these tactics to suppress lawful protest.
And like you said, not really because there's a crisis in the cities, but because it serves the need of Trump, the need to distract from his poor performance as a president, his extremely poor performance in leading us in this pandemic. Yeah, because even if you could, it does seem that some types of crime are up and say murder rate is up. But if you've got a situation where 40 million Americans are uninsured,
I mean, 40 million Americans are unemployed. Five million have just lost their health insurance. There's no end in sight to the pandemic. Those facts alone are sufficient to explain why murder rates would be up. But who's responsible for the underlying conditions then?
Yeah, rather than doing something about the underlying conditions, which do fall under the authority of the federal government, they're crossing lines into local police enforcement, law enforcement, which under the Constitution is the duty of the local and state governments. You know, the mayor of Chicago said something that was very interesting. She said, look, we need help.
The help we need is getting some of these guns off the street. If we could have some reasonable gun regulation, that would help us more than anything with the murder rate in Chicago. Or if they could reauthorize the unemployment compensation. Exactly. There are some things you can do to help, but it's not sending police here. Yeah, it reminds me of Betsy DeVos and Trump telling people to go back to school.
Now, that's not their authority. Education is under the authority of the states. But for people who don't read and who get their information off Facebook, who didn't do well in American history and didn't have opportunity to study civics, they think the president tells people when to go back to school. And let's be clear. And people who listen to the president of the United States, if you listen regularly to the president of the United States, you will be woefully misinformed.
Yeah. And you see that Dr. Fauci doesn't get to come out and speak too much now because what he was saying was talking about science and Trump was talking about whatever Trump was talking about, like drinking bleach. And so they pushed Fauci to the back and they have Dr. Birx, who can quibble more than anybody I've ever heard, who's supposed to be a doctor.
But the reality, the new reality is Trump in Trump world. Well, you know, I like Fauci, though, because even though he's been sidelined by the White House, he makes it his business to do the interview shows and get out as much as he can on the Internet. I guess he says if they won't let me talk, I'll go talk someplace. Now, I hope I'm not speaking out of school, but I think Dr. Fauci is an octogenarian. He's 78.
So he's close to being 80 years old. He's 78 years old. He looks to be in good health. You know, looks a deceiver, but he looks to be in good health. His mind is sharp. I wonder why he doesn't just quit and hold press conferences because the entire press would come if he did. Maybe he hadn't thought of it because he's definitely trying to get out there.
Yeah, he threw out the first pitch in baseball when baseball reopened. I would have preferred that he give his own independent press conference because we really need his expertise at this time. Even the CDC is scared to tell us about science and disease control. It's just sad and pitiful, a different reality, one that is really designed to hurt us and to help Trump.
Well, I don't want to end on a depressing note. You got any more tips about what we should do to find the real reality and not this new reality? I think the most important two things, the most important things to do are to look at many sources and try to separate the real news from what is being repeated on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and
Names that you know, CBS, NBC, Yahoo's got a very good news platform, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Herald. Read real newspapers in addition to reading what's on the internet. And real newspapers can be found on the internet. I'm just saying be selective. And if something is scary or frightening, consider that it might not be true.
Well, it's good to consider that, Janice. I should have asked myself before I asked you because I would have said the same thing. I think about Mama. And I have to say that we have to celebrate Mama's 100th anniversary. Avery brought it to my attention. There are no birthdays in heaven. So we have to say her 100th anniversary is Tuesday. And I think about things she told us over and over again. Read the newspaper.
Well, in this age of social media, why read the newspaper? Well, the reason you would read the newspaper is because newspaper is more in-depth than other forms of news. They have the luxury of doing research and going deeper into stories over a series of articles and reports. And so I read at least three newspapers a day.
And newspapers are obligated to correct any misstatements or factual errors in their work, unlike the Internet is exempt from all that. That's why they don't want to be considered publishers. Yeah, that's true. Now, I go on Facebook every day, but, you know, I feel like I shouldn't. I think I should read my newspapers and listen to news on television and radio and maybe give Facebook a break.
a little bit. Certainly don't use it for a source of news. I never have been able to use it for news. I tell you, some of these sources like PolitiFact and Washington Post has been doing a running series on misinformation. The information is out there. Don't rely on information that comes to you unsolicited because it's coming to you with a motive. Rely more
information you seek. Google it. And then you'll get a whole list of sources on the subject. Yeah, and I think you'll get closer to the truth. Well, as always, it's been fun talking to you, Jan. We could talk all the time. As a matter of fact, we do talk all the time. Yes, we do. Well, look for our Facebook page, Sisters-in-Law. I have a Facebook page.
Davina Mathis. Janice has a Facebook page. I promise you I won't share any fake news with you on Facebook. I encourage you to read, watch television and use your common sense. Facebook is
