--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, ever since I had a Septuagenarian on the show last week talking about KiwiCo in one of our ads, people have been saying, I had no idea that KiwiCo made stuff for adults.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, KiwiCo does. You can try out your first month on KiwiCo for free right now at KiwiCo.com slash explained.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was hard to not feel a little cognitive dissonance watching those impeachment hearings the last two weeks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'd hear the head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, say something like, Are we prepared to accept that a president of the United States can leverage official acts, military existence, White House meetings, to get an investigation of a political rival?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you'd hear ranking member Devin Nunes respond with something like, They got caught trying to obtain nude photos of President Trump from Russian pranksters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Throughout the two weeks of televised testimony, it always seemed like the ranking Republican, Devin Nunes, was chasing a completely different story.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like he had zero interest in the story about the Trump administration that was being presented to him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then right as the proceedings were wrapping up on Friday, Devin Nunes became a part of that story he wasn't interested in.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which is actually not that unusual for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Marisa Lagos co-hosts Political Breakdown.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a podcast from KQED in San Francisco.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The congressman who is from California Central Valley essentially was accused first in a Daily Beast story that Lev Parnas, one of those indicted associates of Rudy Giuliani, essentially said that he had helped arrange meetings and calls for the congressman with some Ukrainians.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Another of Parnas' lawyers, Ed McMahon, told the Daily Beast earlier this week that Parnas, quote, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Representative Devin Nunes in 2018.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nunes aide Derek Harvey participated in the meetings, the lawyer said, which were arranged to help Nunes investigative work.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then there was some congressional records showing that Nunes indeed did travel to Europe last November, early December with some of his aides on the taxpayers' dime, which I think we should know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's an interesting time frame, right, because at that point, Democrats had taken back the House at the polls but hadn't actually been sworn in.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he was still in the majority party at that time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there was, you know, not a lot of oversight from the minority party, which was about to assume the majority.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What exactly is Lev Parnas trying to suggest Representative Nunes was doing in Ukraine?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, at first it was a little unclear, but over the weekend there was some other reporting.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a couple of his attorneys have essentially come forward to a couple of different news outlets and said that Nunes asked Parnas to hook him up with that former Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shokin was a symbol of hiding corruption and supporting corruption, especially high-ranked corruption in Ukraine.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who has been sort of the center of a lot of these questions around the Bidens and whether Shokin, you know, who is widely seen as corrupt by the West, had been investigating Biden and other Western leaders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, as I said, it's clear that Nunes did take a trip to Europe around this time frame.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, this is all basically on the word of the attorneys for a guy who is indicted on campaign finance fraud charges right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the insinuation is that Representative Nunes may have also been seeking help in investigating the Bidens?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, we know that he's one of, you know, President Trump's strongest allies in Congress.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These allegations would indicate that even as he's been, you know, the ranking member sort of helping preside over these impeachment inquiry hearings and really calling them completely ridiculous the whole time, that he perhaps a year ago was actually the one, not Rudy Giuliani, but the one going to Europe to try to encourage an investigation of the Bidens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course, you know, Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and that energy company, Burisma.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So as bad as that could be for Representative Nunes, the flip side is it's coming from someone who doesn't exactly have a sterling record of credibility.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, that's totally true.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that, you know, there's a lot of sort of tainted folks within this entire process.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so essentially one of Parnas' lawyers is saying, hey, we'd love to testify about this in front of the Intelligence Committee, which I think raises questions about what he might hope to get in exchange for that.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Of course, he's being prosecuted by the federal government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Congress.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They are separate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Department of Justice, you know, is part of the Trump administration.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's very messy, Sean.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If this turns out to be true, could Nunes have just avoided all this by saying, hey, by the way, let's just get this out there.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I also went to Ukraine for a minute and had a conversation, but it's all good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nothing happened.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here we are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess maybe.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But from what has been reported so far and if you look at the timing, it looks like he specifically did it at a time frame when he thought he wouldn't be caught.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that doesn't always bode well, right, if you are sort of building in hiding something.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that this gets to the sort of crux of these impeachment questions, which is like, is there any situation where it's OK to enlist a foreign government to dig up dirt on a political opponent?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, maybe, but it's I think the fact that it seemed to have happened if it did happen on the public's dime is also going to be really sticky for him.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this news broke on Friday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Monday.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What has Representative Nunes said about it since then?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He criticized all the outlets who reported this as fake news.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, he's never been particularly fond of the news, let's say.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The media has become totally corrupt, but now they're willing to actually engage and help with criminals, indicted criminals.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's been threatening lawsuits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are going to take both CNN and the Daily Beast likely into federal court right after Thanksgiving.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think sort of denied it but it took him a while to get to that point on Fox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think it a little unclear.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he sort of promising more details to come in his lawsuits and other responses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We going to file all this.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everyone's going to know the truth.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everybody's going to know all the facts.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think you can understand that I can't compete by trying to trying to debate this out with the public media when 90 percent of the media are totally corrupt.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he hasn't come out and just flat out denied it.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has promised further action, further information, and is suing CNN?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know if he's filed a lawsuit yet, but he is certainly threatening to, and that would not be out of the norm for Devin Nunes.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do you mean?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he's been very sue-happy lately.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has sued a farmer in his district and two other folks who actually went to court asking that Nunes not be allowed to be called a farmer on the ballot last year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They felt like it wasn't accurate because he's not really farming anymore.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He sued a couple of anonymous Twitter users who ran parody accounts against him, including one that's at Devin Cow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They wrote, Devin's boots are full of manure.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's utterly worthless.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's pasture time to move him to prison.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the people involved in that is a Republican consultant, if you can believe that, who he thinks is responsible for some of these parody accounts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has gone after the Fresno Bee, which I think it's worth noting until this past cycle had actually endorsed Nunes every time, but has done some reporting on some of the financial interest in his winery and some of the bad behavior by those folks.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he has basically accused them of smearing him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's gone after another journalist, Ryan Lizza from Esquire, who did a really interesting story about Nunes and how basically his family dairy farm is not actually in California anymore.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's in Iowa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, yeah, he is happy to go to court when he feels like people have defamed him.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In none of these cases has he been successful yet, but actually some of them are still moving their way through the system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, I think there's an argument to be made that some of these could be viewed as frivolous.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For those of us who just spent two weeks watching Nunes on a national stage, it seems like he's very much with the president and aligned with this Republican cohort who sees these Democratic proceedings, this impeachment inquiry as a total farce, as a shambles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How do people back in Devin Nunes' home district see him right now?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is where I think it gets really interesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has basically been sort of embraced as a hometown hero by farmers in his district.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, he does come from a dairy farming family.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, I mean, I think people, a lot of people, not everybody, but by his argument that it is a conspiracy against him by the media, that he is sort of doing right by his district.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's been really strong on farmers' water rights, which is basically like the issue in the Central Valley.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that a lot of times what we hear from folks is like that's what we care about.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All this other stuff is noise.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, it's the left-wing media trying to tear him down.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's won.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean he only won by five points last time, which was a pretty dramatic difference.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that district is – you know, has a Republican registration advantage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he's gotten more real challenges in the past couple of years, but he seems to still be really well liked in this district, which is fascinating, especially in part because it's very heavily Latino.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we know in 2018 that Latino turnout actually helped Democrats flip a lot of other districts around the state that had been held by Republicans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they have not had success with this one yet, although I should say they are going to target it again.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell us a little bit more about his district.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is farmland.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, this is the Central Valley.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It includes Fresno, but also parts of Tulare County, which is, I think, sort of even more rural.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fresno is kind of, you know, one of the population centers in the Central Valley.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it is a very different place than the coast in California.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, we think of California as such a blue place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if you go east a couple hours, it's farmland.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's heartland.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is largely very conservative.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And again, like people who I think understandably more concerned with their bottom line, especially as farmers, which is a tough industry to begin with, than, you know, what's happening thousands of miles away in D.C. or quite frankly, a couple hundred of miles away in like San Francisco or Los Angeles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And did Nunes grow up a farmer?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does he actually have a claim to that cohort?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They did farm.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His family does still own dairy farms, but in Iowa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, I mean, that's part of the reason that you've seen, like, folks who oppose him come out and say, hey, why do you get to say farmer on the ballot?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, you're not really a farmer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he has really been, as an adult, a politician.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he did go to ag school.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He had run when he was in school for, like, the board of his college because he was worried that they were going to shut down their farmland that kids trained on.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When, in fact, they said, no, we're actually just trying to buy a bigger place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's sort of like a conspiracy theory launched him into his first political office, which is pretty fitting because that's sort of like his vibe.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he's always been very much like on the outskirts of the mainstream sort of assumptions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's not just like a Republican Democratic thing.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even when Republicans were in charge of Congress and, you know, he's on the Intelligence Committee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a lot of anecdotes about him sort of listening to one person in the field who contradicts what the entire intelligence community is saying.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Republicans really getting frustrated with him over that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, like, I think that there was something, especially with Trump, that they saw eye to eye on from the get go and really sort of bonded over, which was like this distrust of the system and this idea that everyone's out to get you and that there's something like whatever the establishment thinks is the case, there's probably something different about it.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he's always had that sort of skepticism and I think some people would say paranoia about the intelligence community, about D.C., about the media.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is all in line with sort of his approach to politics and I would say probably life.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you Devin Nunes constantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of our institutions just a one In a minute, Fox's David Roberts argues it's part of a grand old plan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Michael from a condo all the way up in Toronto.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We spoke last week about how your daughter Jillian got you signed up with a KiwiCo subscription at KiwiCo.com slash explained where people can get their first month for free.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we didn't talk about the particulars.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You started with a pinball machine?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was a pinball machine.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, you know, probably collectively, if I hadn't been interrupted, probably took it, you know, two or three hours to put together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's that particular thing.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I don't know what, as I said, what next is coming was really quite durable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was quite surprised when it all got tied and snapped together.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I've got a almost a four year old grandson and a seven year old granddaughter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they're not always too gentle, but they've been playing with the thing and enjoying the heck out of it.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the best part is you now have a subscription to these KiwiCo projects and there will be more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, and my wife wasn't too pleased.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She said, where are you going to store all this stuff?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's my problem, not hers.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: You write about energy and politics for Vox and you recently kind of wrote about how people are running out of energy to participate in our politics.
--:-- David Roberts: You wrote that we're undergoing an epistemic crisis.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: What does that mean?
--:-- David Roberts: Epistemology is the philosophical term for the sort of branch of philosophy that's about knowing things, about knowledge, about how we gain knowledge, about how we assess knowledge, what is evidence, what's the difference between truth and opinion.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: All those related questions in philosophy are known as epistemology.
--:-- David Roberts: And so when I say an epistemic crisis, I mean a crisis in the way that we collectively come to know things, i.e. we don't seem to collectively come to know things anymore.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: It seems we are now have been kind of hived into two separate epistemic communities who know different things, trust different sources of information, have different procedures for evaluating knowledge and just are increasingly unable to communicate across that chasm.
--:-- David Roberts: And I think that would sound or seem familiar to anyone who watched the impeachment hearings.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: California Representative Schiff leading the charge for one community and California Representative Nunes leading the charge for the other.
--:-- David Roberts: And these two representatives of the same state may as well have been from different planets.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And you argue this particular phenomenon is something called tribal epistemology.
--:-- David Roberts: What's that about?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: Sure.
--:-- David Roberts: Well, the term tribal epistemology is just meant to sort of indicate a situation where the kind of dictates and interests of your tribe, in this case, meaning sort of the right-wing tribe in the U.S., what you come to know and how you come to know things is dictated by the interests of your tribe rather than vice versa.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: You believe what's good for your tribe to believe and disbelieve what's not good for your tribe to believe.
--:-- David Roberts: This isn't something that Trump invented, right?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: How exactly did we get to this crisis that you write about?
--:-- David Roberts: Sure, it's been ongoing for decades, but I really think Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate leader, is a politician who, almost more than any other contemporary politician, has realized what's going on and how to use it to his advantage.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: So he realized before Obama even took office, people aren't paying close attention to politics.
--:-- David Roberts: And they have a kind of these basic heuristics they apply to politics.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And one of them is if something is legitimate, if an idea or proposal is legitimate, it will get some agreement on both sides of the aisle.
--:-- David Roberts: It will command some consensus.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: That's sort of like a signal of legitimacy to everybody, really.
--:-- David Roberts: Like it's really deep in us to think that way.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And so what Mitch McConnell realized was, well, all I have to do to prevent Obama from being able to command consensus or get cooperation on both sides is just deny cooperation.
--:-- David Roberts: Like I can single handedly make him look polarizing.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: I can make him look divisive just by refusing to go along with him.
--:-- David Roberts: One of the most fascinating stories about Nixon's impeachment is Roger Ailes even, or one of those right-wing figures, was actually in Nixon's administration and said, if you had a network of your own, we could get through this, like almost verbatim.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: Ever since then, they've basically more and more come to view mainstream institutions.
--:-- David Roberts: That's the mainstream media, the mainstream science, the academy, you name it.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: As their enemy, as members of the other side, right?
--:-- David Roberts: So they have decided we need to build institutions of our own, basically.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: So they have built a kind of parallel set of think tanks and academic institutions and media.
--:-- David Roberts: So now you have this sort of separate epistemic tribe with its own sources of information, its own history, its own principles, its own science.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: I mean, its own sort of freestanding world.
--:-- David Roberts: You know, pre-Trump, I think they felt the need to sort of keep a foot in the old world or at least speak the language of mainstream institutions or sort of speak a language that gave their kind of tribal reasoning a kind of plausible deniability, a sheen of being something else.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: But what Trump has done is render that impossible because any sort of principle you stake your claim on, he'll violate the next day.
--:-- David Roberts: I mean, we've seen it over and over again.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And they keep trying to tell a story about why, you know, why his behavior is OK.
--:-- David Roberts: And he'll come out the following day and just stomp all over the story.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: So even this notion that we need to sort of like frame these beliefs in a way that plausible given the old standards has kind of faded away and it just become a much more naked thing.
--:-- David Roberts: Things are bad but our lawmakers used to shoot each other and you see legislative sessions in other countries descend into straight up brawls.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: But still, you argue that this is a crisis that could like make or break our democracy?
--:-- David Roberts: I'm only, you know, about halfway sure of that.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: I mean, I've been watching, you know, politics for the last several decades and I keep thinking like this, this will be the moment it reaches a boil.
--:-- David Roberts: Like this is the crisis point.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: Something's got to break.
--:-- David Roberts: Something's got to give.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: But it just like keeps going on and on.
--:-- David Roberts: So I should say like maybe not.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: Maybe this isn't the crisis.
--:-- David Roberts: But it feels to me like a combination of the stakes, right?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: I mean, this is like the third impeachment trial of a president in American history.
--:-- David Roberts: It's a really big deal.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And what's more, Trump's guilt in what he's being accused of is just so obvious at this point.
--:-- David Roberts: It's almost comically obvious.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: We've got like multiple witnesses.
--:-- David Roberts: Multiple administration officials have admitted to it on camera.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server?
--:-- David Roberts: Absolutely.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: No question about that.
--:-- David Roberts: But that's it.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And that's why we held up the money.
--:-- David Roberts: Before they later came and scrambled and tried to take it back.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: We have a significant reversal now from the White House, a new statement from Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney saying, once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump.
--:-- David Roberts: Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: He himself admitted to it on camera on the White House lawn.
--:-- David Roberts: We had a great conversation.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place.
--:-- David Roberts: It was largely the fact that we don't want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating the corruption already in the Ukraine.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And did it again solicited help from foreign powers investigating his opponent to help his political run.
--:-- David Roberts: China should start an investigation into the Biden's because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with with Ukraine.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: He did it on camera in front of all of So to me, it just seems like if even this can't break people out of their us versus them, our tribe versus their tribe sort of fixation, then it really seems like nothing can.
--:-- David Roberts: And furthermore, like the conservative movement is going to see what happened with Mueller.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And then it's going to happen again with impeachment.
--:-- David Roberts: They're just going to learn again that there's no reason not to make stuff up.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: It's become so much easier to lie and get the lie out in front of millions of people.
--:-- David Roberts: I mean, it's literally now easier to get a lie in front of millions of people than it is to get a truth in front of millions of people.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: And Representative Nunes actually pinned the entire weight of these proceedings on exactly how many people were watching, as if the only possible metric of the importance of the entire impeachment inquiry would be how many people were watching it on TV.
--:-- David Roberts: Well, Ambassador Mr. Morrison, I have some bad news for you.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: TV ratings are way down, way down.
--:-- David Roberts: I don't don't hold it personally.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: I don't think it's you guys.
--:-- David Roberts: But whatever drug deal the Democrats are cooking up here on the dais, American people aren't buying it.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: I should say millions upon millions of people were watching this on TV.
--:-- David Roberts: So he was, again, misleading at least some American people because some American people are inclined to believe the ranking Republican member on the House Intelligence Committee.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: What is the antidote to this moment we're in, to this tribal epistemology?
--:-- David Roberts: The antidote to Nunes is for institutions to do their job.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- David Roberts: That's sort of the key crisis I'm trying to describe here.
--:-- David Roberts: It's like this looks to me like U.S. institutions, just like their last gas, their last chance to sort of behave the way they're supposed to.
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--:-- David Roberts: But the institutions are weak, Sean.
--:-- David Roberts: I don't know if you've noticed this, but like our institutions are weak and they've been under constant assault.
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--:-- David Roberts: You know like the media is a great example it's just been under constant unremitting assault from the right for decades now and it has been beaten into this position a sort of terrified hesitance and sort of refusal to sort of draw clear lines or say this is true and this isn't so the institutional checks that used to sort of keep this behavior limited in its impact at least are weakened and dying.
--:-- David Roberts: So that's just one of many, many, many reasons.
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--:-- David Roberts: You know, whenever Trump's gone, whenever this country thinks about how to sort of rebuild and revive itself, we've got to sort of recapture the value of these norms, of just like fact-checking, of like evidence and, you know, respect for principles, even if they work against the interests of your tribe, you're beholden to them.
--:-- David Roberts: This sense that we are all of us beholden to some principles higher than partisanship.
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--:-- David Roberts: We've got to restore that sense somehow.
--:-- David Roberts: All of politics is suffering from the lack of it.
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--:-- David Roberts: Whether you're 7 going on 8 or 79 going on 80, KiwiCo would like to give you the chance to try out their fun and engaging and educational projects for free.
--:-- David Roberts: To redeem the offer, you can type in kiwico.com slash explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening to today's episode of Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you want to learn more about the topics we covered today, check out the links in our show notes.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you want to support the show, you can subscribe to Vox on YouTube or through your favorite podcast app.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm the host of Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I'll see you next time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
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