Bill Moyers On The Dangers Of So Much Dishonesty | All In | MSNBC

The legendary journalist has covered three impeachments. But he's never been as worried as he is today. Aired on 11/22/19.
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Bill Moyers On The Dangers Of So Much Dishonesty | All In | MSNBC

71 comments

    1. @Al Bernal
      One of the right-wing’s favorite lines is calling all people with any brains “soy boys” or “soi boys” because they believe the left all drinks soy milk and eats tofu.

  1. If Traitor Trump is really looking for corruption, then he should look into an infinity mirror. He’ll find an infinite amount of corruption staring right back at him.
    Trump isn’t interested in fighting corruption, because he IS corruption. He is the embodiment of corruption, in all of its manifestations.

  2. An insecure, dimwitted wannabe dictator is only possible when enough people are more interested in hearing what they simply WISH were true & not what is actually true. Our fellow citizens have failed us all.

    1. More the GOP have failed the American people. Majority of Americans are for impeachment of trump. GOP are covering up for him! They all need to go!

    1. @Pat Riot : Pat thank you for your information provided. You are cordially invited to provide more information & facts anytime Pat. Facts are facts & there is no such thing as alternative facts unless you live in a bizarro alternative universe or something.

    2. P J Thanks P J. These facts have been there for years now and if MSNBC actually would do their job, well, maybe this travesty would have ended a long ago. The biggest irony obviously is that the fake news actually are fake news. Yes, these people are very entertaining and sometimes even useful but most of the time they just deliver comforting talking points – very much like the Fox hosts.

      It took me a while to realize how skewed and corrupted the American society and especially media really is and how the utter failures of the American education system now bring the whole world to the brink.

      This truly is the most shameful moment of the human kind but it is crucial to understand that the data that we keep providing to the operators like Facebook is the ultimate problem here. We all are Donald J. Trump – way more than most of us want to admit.

      Every American should start paying some serious attention to real journalists like Chris Hedges who actually understand how the corporate interests combined with Christian fundamentalism has messed up the whole western world. Maybe it serves us right but I still believe that the security and support America has provided has made the world a better place – despite the horrible mistakes and greed of the American industrial military complex.

      All the best from Finland. Stay safe and take care!

    3. @Pat Riot When the incredible amount of theft and pilfering of gov’t assets becomes known and gov’t must recover it, the ensuing economic woes will be a lesson that in fact the gov’t does matter, and it’s main job is to protect the public from people like Trump. Of course, by then, it will be hard to find anyone who will admit they supported Trump. They will deny their responsibility in this just like they deny reality now.

    4. @Pat Riot : The media can leave a lot to be desired but at least we still have a semblance of an independent investigative journalism medium. These are under attack like never before & must be protected just like whistleblowers. Education is especially being dumbed down under tRumps/Betsy Devos”s education stewardship & then we can throw in the evangelicals into this ignorant toxic brew.

    1. The Informer According to the Times, Cambridge Analytica bought the data from Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American academic. Kogan, who told Facebook he was conducting academic research, built a Facebook personality quiz app called “thisisyourdigitalife.” When users downloaded the app, it scraped all of their available Facebook data, including their friends, their likes and where they lived.

      More than a quarter-million Facebook users downloaded the app, which also exploited a Facebook vulnerability that allowed it to to collect most of the same data from the friends of those who downloaded it. By prying into the friends lists of those who made the download, Kogan was able to get data from more than 50 million people.

      Throughout 2015 and into 2016, the Cruz campaign paid Cambridge Analytica almost $6 million for data that the campaign used for what it called “psychographic targeting,” which supposedly allowed the campaign to tailor its message to specific voters in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, where single voters can make a big difference. Using data from the firm, the campaign built profiles of potential voters, prioritizing those who fit in categories such as “stoic traditionalist” and “true believer”.

      In December 2015, the same month The Guardian revealed Cambridge Analytica and Kogan’s data harvesting practices, Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler called the company a “market leader and the best in the field.” Despite Tyler’s claim that the Cruz campaign stopped using the firm’s data in early 2016, it kept paying Cambridge Analytica until June of that year, a month after Cruz suspended his campaign. After Cruz dropped out of the race, the firm began working with Trump, supporting him through November’s general election against Hillary Clinton.

      Stephen Young
      Dallas Observer

      A few months later, in autumn 2013, Wylie met Steve Bannon. At the time, he was editor-in-chief of Breitbart, which he had brought to Britain to support his friend Nigel Farage in his mission to take Britain out of the European Union.

      What was he like?

      – Smart, says Wylie. – Interesting. Really interested in ideas. He’s the only straight man I’ve ever talked to about intersectional feminist theory. He saw its relevance straightaway to the oppressions that conservative, young white men feel.

      Wylie meeting Bannon was the moment petrol was poured on a flickering flame. Wylie lives for ideas. He speaks 19 to the dozen for hours at a time. He had a theory to prove. And at the time, this was a purely intellectual problem. Politics was like fashion, he told Bannon.

      Carole Cadwalladr
      The Guardian

      Wylie said that Bannon’s plans began to solidify in 2014, when Cambridge Analytica consulted various Republican campaigns and PACs ahead of the midterm elections. The company began to test and apply its psychographics by using Facebook data to model individuals’ personality types in order to understand how to influence them.

      Documents show the John Bolton Super PAC, which promoted candidates supported by recently appointed White House national security adviser John Bolton, paid Cambridge Analytical $454,700 in 2014 for “behavioral microtargeting with psychographic messaging.” Those services included strategies that broke individual voters into “clusters” based on what messages would resonate with them.

      Wylie also said the company used focus groups and messaging trials in 2014 to test some of the concepts that became core themes of the Trump campaign, such as “drain the swamp” and imagery of walls. “A lot of the narratives of the Trump campaign were what we were testing in 2014,” Wylie said.

      He added that Bannon directly presided over much of the company’s initial research. “Everything that we were doing ultimately had to be passed up to Bannon for approval,” said Wylie, who left the company in late 2014.

      Wylie said Bannon would fly to London about once a month for company meetings, and during that time he came to understand Bannon’s ideology. “He really liked the idea of using a military-style approach to changing people’s perceptions,” Wylie said.

      Curt Devine, Donie O’Sullivan & Drew Griffin
      CNN

      This was a serious business, it was actually backed by Goldman Sachs, but it crashed and went bankrupt because the gamers themselves who weren’t cheating became enraged basically that these other people were doing, they put so much pressure on the gaming companies.

      They put so much pressure on the video game companies, that they decided to basically ban gold-farming, which killed Bannon’s business, but it awakened him to the power of what he called “rootless white males” who spend all their time online. And five years later when Bannon wound up at Breitbart, he resolved to try and attract those people over to Breitbart because he thought they could be radicalized in a kind of populist, nationalist way. And the way that Bannon did that, the bridge between the angry abusive gamers and Breitbart and Pepe was Milo Yiannopoulous, who Bannon discovered and hired to be Breitbart’s tech editor.

      From the time I met him in 2011, he’s had exactly the same politics. The same stuff you heard from Trump, you saw on the campaign trail. What he was looking for was a vessel because nobody in Republican Washington believed in these kinds of ideas. The whole trend in the Republican party was toward liberalizing immigration laws, passing comprehensive immigration reform. He was against it.

      Joshua Green
      Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

      QAnon fans are applying this same participatory behavior that we have celebrated in fiction fandom to real-world political drama. And why not? The boundaries between politics and entertainment have been collapsing for years. The entire Trump presidency operates like Reality TV, completely divorced from any real stakes or substance.

      That’s what makes this all so terrifying. Do these people really believe that Tom Hanks and Hillary Clinton are personally running a massive pedophilia ring? Really??? But consider this: Trump announced at a rally this week that the farmers being harmed by his stupid trade war had told him “we can take it.” No actual farmers said that to him. We all know that. But it’s a little thing, just part of the story we are all interacting with.

      The pulsating heart of the QAnon theory is not a lunatic fringe denying the real consequences of a failing presidency. The heart of it is a devoted fan base constructing elaborate theories to make the story more fun and engaging. And if you start from the premise that nothing government does matters, then it’s easy to come along for the ride. There’s no real difference between Hillary Clinton and the Smoke Monster. They’re both just characters on the television.

      That’s what alarms me most about the growth of QAnon. It’s not that these people are unhinged and possibly armed. It’s that we’ve lost the capacity to treat civics, governance, and public affairs as though they have actual stakes with actual consequences. The premise of the Trump presidency is that nothing matters, so you should root for your side and heckle the opposing team. He encourages his supporters to treat Democrats and journalists like a rival fan base.

      David Karpf
      Medium

  3. Make no mistake, Trump is a complete sociopath.

    Trump quote from 2004, a response to a Larry King Live caller asking how he handles stress. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.”

    Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. Trump a sociopath in every sense of the word. He meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..

    • Manipulative and Conning – check
    They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as      permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims. 

    • Grandiose Sense of Self – check
    Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.” 

    • Pathological Lying – check
    Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.

    • Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt – check
    A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims and accomplices, who end up as victims. ( Cohen, Stone, Sessions, Manafort, Flynn, etc) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way. 

    • Shallow Emotions – check
    When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced, and serves an ulterior motive. Trump is outraged by insignificant matters, yet remains unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises. 

    • Callousness/Lack of Empathy – check
    Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them. 

    ● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature – check
    Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others. 

    • Irresponsibility/Unreliability – check
    Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. Trump blamed Dems for his government shutdown, even after he said he would take full responsibility for the shutdown. Trump threw the crowd at his rally under the bus for chanting “send her back” even though they were only repeating his own words and beliefs.

    1. @Astrobrant2 The Berlin wall fell without a shot, and communism was diminished, when the Soviet Union fell apart, and only one person did that. Our Lady Of Fatima, the Mother of the living GOD! Google it, if you want to know the truth! Read what’s on our own dollar bill”In GOD we Trust”. FYI, Google – “2 Thessalonians 2” The man of sin will fall! If you really want trump gone, than pray the Holy ROSARY every day, and I promise you, it will happen!…Wisdom

    2. Good stuff, David. Trump demonstrates so many of the major markers for psychopathic behavior, he should be the permanent poster poster boy for psychosis.

    3. Trump is obviously a sociopath.
      I’d really need to understand the pathology of those who will mindlessly line up behind and ceaselessly debase themselves to defend an obvious sociopath. THAT is the mindset that I cannot understand (and there are WAY more of them than there are full sociopaths).

    1. USA’s fate is not in Putin’s hands but in the American people. If Trump is not impeached it will only be because USA’s people did not consider it appropriate.

    2. Nilesh Bhakre the dump is Leaving This Year Into next hallelujah happy days are here again thank goodness 😅 Party 🎈 🎊 🎉 n Parade Time 🤠🌺

  4. The Constitution says in
    Article 1 Section 3 Para 6:
    “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.”

    So, I hope everybody in the Senate will tell the TRUTH and remember their Oaths of Office too.

    1. Elaine Johnson the corrupt GOP party has shown that they care more about thier own political interests rather than the interests of the United States.

    2. @Jeremiah Jeremecht Exactly. The GOP is only interested in pushing insane conspiracy theories that Fact Checkers and all of our USA Intelligence Agencies say have been investigated and totally debunked. Even I can so easily disprove the ones I know anything about. But they don’t care about FACTS or LOGIC or the CONSTITUTION. Fiona Hill just warned them not to push Russian Conspiracy Theories and they don’t blink an eye before doing it again!!! And, they are angry when anyone calls them out on it and attack and smear the messenger!!! They don’t care how many lives they are destroying and how many allies we will lose while strengthening our enemies and becoming more and more like a dictatorship. Our branches of government are not acting as SEPARATE and CO-EQUAL checks and balances on each other. I can’t believe our legislative branch thinks it is supposed to be subservient to the President and are relinquishing their power to him. They are going to the accused parties to find out how to respond to the accusations instead of following the Law and Constitution. It is like the police helping someone rob a bank by providing the getaway car then claiming the bank robber didn’t do it! They are acting like defense attorneys for the President instead of Attorney Generals for the American people and jurors. It is scary. If the ACCUSED is a Republican they are automatically innocent even if PROVEN guilty beyond a REASONABLE doubt, no matter what the FACTS are against them. If they are Democrats accusing a Republican of doing something wrong, accuse them of making up the facts and say “truth isn’t truth” and “2+2 does not equal 4!” If they are lifelong Republicans like Comey, Rosenstein, and Mueller leading the investigations against the President, complain that Dems are doing it anyway!!!

    1. M M I can’t, for the life of me, understand his appeal with the evangelical bunch. Reprehensible morality aside, he’s a serial cheater whose current wife – Callista – was his mistress with whom he was having affair while his then wife was battling cancer.

    2. Me either. Other than I remember a quote from my college professor (and he may have been quoting someone else too) but here goes: “religion is the opiate of the people”. I think this explains a lot.

    3. Dale Long It’s the biggest irony that Callista is now serving as the US ambassador to the Holy See. But then again, she might just fit right in.

  5. Republicans have never cared about integrity or honesty. Look at the people they’ve propped up over the last 50 years: Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and now Trump. All have had scandal, incompetence, and malignancy as a feature to their presidencies.

    1. Republicans are about creating a permanently semi-starved underclass and an all powerful billionaire class. This is their dream world.

  6. Witnesses: “These are the facts as I saw and heard them, and I have notes, emails and documents to prove them.”
    Trump: “The word is… People tell me….” and then spouts a conspiracy theory invented by Putin’s secret service and spread by his Fox News propaganda channel.

  7. Another sane voice stating the obvious America has, for whatever reason, elected a Walter Mitty Mobster. Time to admit this and remove the problem.

    1. Love the phrase “Walter Mitty Mobster”, LOL. …Maybe he is not so much pretending to be a mobster as he is pretending to be a president.

    1. Judy
      Like you, I fear that – given the inverterbrates that infest the Republican Party – Trump will survive an impeachment trial. However, assuming that Trump loses the next election (a major assumption, I admit), I have a feeling that there is an army of FBI operatives and prosecution laywers who will ensure Trump will have his collar felt come 6:30 am (local time) January 21st 2021.

    2. He’s going to be impeached, that’s a given. He might or might not be re-elected, that will be the test for Americans.

  8. If what trump has done is not impeachable, then nothing any president will ever do will be impeachable. There is NO respect for the Constitutional separation of powers. There is NO respect for the rule of law. You just do what you can get away with and power hungry Congress members are apparently willing to overlook a multitude of wrongdoing to maintain their grip on power and corruption. There is NO respect for democracy. So what if you run this ship of democracy into the ground. The people who count are the ones with money. If you don’t have real money (millions and billions), you don’t matter. Stop deluding yourself. White, Black, Brown, Yellow – you got no money, your voice doesn’t count. This is not a democracy anyway! It’s an oligarchy! trump and his supporters have made that abundantly clear.

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