ed with the statement that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. So I don't know. He agreed with it. He agreed with it. He didn't. Why don't we get we've played it twice. Let's play it a third time. All right. All right. So listen for the yes Mr. Vice President are you aware that you were misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville. He never called neo-Nazis very fine people. No he called all those folks who walked out of that they were neo-Nazis shouting. He said they were neo-Nazis. Yeah you're right. Okay so let's play it again. I mean keep going. Keep going. I mean now we're referring to the same people. So Biden is agreeing that the topic is neo-Nazis. Right. Yes. Biden is agreeing that the topic is neo-Nazis. So then and that the topic is what Trump said. So all right so the topic is neo-Nazis. He said specifically that he was condemning them. He did not. He said he walked out and he said let's get this straight he said there were very fine people in both groups. They're chanting anti-Semitic slogans. So he started out by defining the groups. He defines clarifies what Trump said which was the point. The reporter said are you aware that you're misquoting Trump. Biden has not quoted Trump as saying Nazis are very fine people and we have found that quote. Oh man if I'm being over semantic please tell me because I don't understand what you're saying. The your claim and correct me if I'm wrong if I'm getting your claim wrong I apologize. Your claim is that Biden said Trump said that Nazis are very fine people unquote. That's your claim. It right. All right so this is some super. Here see if I can explain this. Let me see is that your claim or isn't it yes or no. No no let me explain it to you. Your claim is not that Biden said that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. You're doing this thing where you're changing my words like you don't understand how language works. Let me explain how language works. The conversation is Nazis, neo-Nazis and racist. I use them interchangeably and you know that. So when I say that he says something about Nazis I include neo-Nazis. I include racists. If they said racists I'm including neo-Nazis. I'm calling neo-Nazis Nazis. Yes is that clear?

Yes. If that's clear then the fine people that Biden explains are the neo-Nazis. He says it directly and he says that Trump called them fine people because they're on the other side. Who else was he talking about Biden?

Okay I can't get into Biden's head but say what he said. Hold on. The initial question from the citizen was are you aware that you are misquoting Trump when he says Nazis are very fine people which he didn't answer right. Agreed. Biden then describes the people who are at the Charlottesville rally whether accurately or inaccurately to you know. Okay but we both agree that there were Nazis, white supremacists, racists etc. at that rally. Right. Okay. So then the reporter asks for clarification about the quote. Right. We agree on that. He was asking why he said it. Yes. Okay. And then Biden answers let's get this straight and he quotes Trump again. He says there were very fine people on both sides. That's different. That's quote. No he started by saying that there were neo-Nazis. Okay. And he never mentioned anybody else until he said they're very fine people on both sides which would suggest there's neo-Nazis on one side and the anti-Nazis on the other. Let me put a pin in this for a second because I think we can both agree that this conversation was happening in a very public space where there is probably room for misinterpretation and mishearing on both sides. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I would go further and say if that were the only evidence. Oh here I got some more. Here we go. Here we go. Also as an aside. Hold on before you play it. Before you play it. Before you play it. And I want to hear it. As an aside let's say for example that Biden did say that Trump said Nazis are very fine people and I don't know that he did. To me that is irrelevant to the conversation that I wanted to have with you which is about the media not about a politician. But let's hear this next example.

All right. Trump supporters had recently started to claim that the president didn't actually say neo-Nazis in Charlottesville quote very fine people even though he did say it. He did say it. Absolutely incorrect. Where's more. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. Here's the part they got out. Why can't this president who by the way called Nazis very fine people. He believes those Nazis and white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville are very fine people. And the president said they were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis white supremacist. Hold on there. So here here's Biden himself and of course my phone breaks just at the most important time. In Charlottesville Trump's very fine people. Let's get back to Biden here. There were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis from white supremacist and Nazis in Charlottesville. Trump's very people. He praised those people marching with neo-Nazis and the KKK as very fine people. Saying that neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists are very fine people. Who was that last person? Not sure. You know what it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me. Excuse me. I saw the same picture. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of a very very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another. George Washington. So will George Washington now lose his statue?

All right. So you can see that the media which is what we're here to talk about was no. What I saw. I saw one journalist say it. You saw Jake Tapper who's hosting the debate. Well I'm sorry go back. Can you show me Jake Tapper? I didn't see Jake. I heard him but I thought that was him. Take down. Are we going to take down statues? Trump supporters had recently started to claim that the president didn't actually. Fast forward a little. I'll find in a second. Here's Jake. Very fine people. And the president said there were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis. Let's hear Biden. Wait you're talking about Tapper. I'd rather stay on Tapper for a moment. Tapper quoted Trump correctly. They very fine people on both sides and then he said including marching with white supremacists which is true.

Well I'm the only person I know who actually interviewed people who attended the rally.

Irrelevant. That's irrelevant. I'm talking about Jake Tapper. You brought up Jake. The conversation about Jake Tapper. Oh are you saying that what Jake said is true or it's true that Jake said it? I'm saying it's true that Jake said Trump. Jake correctly quoted Trump. No. And then said no he did not correctly quote him. He left out the key part of the quote which is I'm not talking about the people who are marching. Okay that's the key part. That's a misquote not a quote.

It's not okay. So okay great. So this is a question of interpretation and it's also a question of context because when Trump says there were very fine people on both sides and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white supremacists who I totally condemn you're missing the larger context which is what I was talking about when I said it began with his initial campaign. So you can't use another hoax as proof of this hoax. He did not say that they were sending rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people.

I don't want to keep going in circles about this because I think he did and that's a hoax. It's a hoax because the ordinary way to interpret that is he's exaggerating and there's too much crime coming across. The ordinary interpretation how I interpreted it as is Trump saying they're sending rapists they're sending murderers and some meaning a minority I assume meaning I have no idea are very good people or very fine people whatever it was he said. So you and I obviously and this through no fault of either you or I hear language very differently. It doesn't mean that one of us is correct and one of us is incorrect because it is subjective.

So what? Well one of us is putting a filter on this which is that everything he says is an exaggeration. And that is something if everything he says is an exaggeration or a lie and he does frequently lie how can you trust anything he says which gets us back to the original question and the original point of why I'm on your show which is that the media always.

So the answer is I started out with saying I don't trust him when he says he can grow our way out of the debt right because I've got some background in that. But when he says a sentence that is clearly hyperbole and he says I always use hyperbole and then you observe him using hyperbole every time he talks then you say oh he's a hyperbole guy. I shouldn't take that too seriously.

Okay. Now if you're saying in the Art of the Deal he said and I believe you because I haven't read it he says I often use hyperbole to make my point that's a very different scenario than when you're running for president of the United States when your words matter when precision in language matters when the words that you say are going to become policy. It seems we agree.

Yeah we agree. Yeah. At that point hyperbole is no longer your friend. It's actually a tool you're handing a tool to your enemies to say he said this thing and he's lying. And by the way a lot of people on the right would agree that his language is unnecessarily provocative. I would agree with that. Yeah. So there's no argument there. A lot of lies. Right. What's that? It's also a lot of lies. Would you agree with that?

Yeah I would say that both presidents lie about pretty much every major topic at least a little bit. Well there's a difference between lying a little bit and lying consistently. Trump lies consistently. I mean it's all written down. I mean we've got all of his lies categorized. If you were to take let's say the top five things that Biden is running on I don't think you would find any of them be true. But that's not unusual. That's not even a cut on Biden. Let's talk about things he's running on. The fine people hoax. The drink. He's not running on the. He's running on immigration. He's running on inflation. He's running on the economy. He's running on competence. He's running on abortion. So those are I would say are kind of the top five. So abortion is his own category where I don't think anybody's lying about abortion.

I'm sorry to interrupt but I just feel like we're not talking about what I'm here to talk about which is the media. We're talking about politicians.

How do you talk about the media without talking about the topics of the media? Because we can talk about how something is reported versus and whether or not we can say that that report was real and we defined real as being true.

Oh so let me just go through some of my other tools. This might help you. One is that if you have an anonymous source it's almost always wrong if they have something wild to say. There's anonymous source about Hillary Clinton wanted to drone Assange. Now those are anonymous sources.

I just didn't hear you. Hillary Clinton wanted to what?

There's a story that Hillary Clinton once mentioned in a meeting when she was at the State Department why don't we just drone Assange. Mean kill them. Now that's reported by anonymous sources. Anonymous source also says stuff about Trump and when they say things about Trump I say you can't trust an anonymous source. Now I apply that to Clinton as well. Don't trust it. However so there was so that's a good rule if it's an anonymous source.

Yes. And hold on let me just respond. In general I agree with you like you should not take anonymous sources. You should take them with massive grains of salt. However if you can then do follow-up reporting on what that anonymous source says and get somebody on record as either confirming or denying it then it's helpful.

Right. I agree. But generally those will turn out to be false. Generally the research doesn't find them. For example do you remember the story that Trump tried to strangle the driver of his car on January 6?

Yes that was in the news. Yes that news was.

But hold on. That news was based on testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson who reported. Okay. And then when they didn't ask. I'm so sorry but so in my memory that wasn't anonymous. You're right. Your point is taken that wasn't anonymous. Okay. But in my memory the journalists then reported what she said. Right. And then would that be an example of a story that's true. She did say that. It's accurately that she said it. Yes. And then what they didn't follow up on is to talk to the driver the one who got strangled. And if they had he was trying to tell a story that nothing like that happened. But I have seen that story. I have seen the story where the driver said that didn't happen. So but it took a long time and the January 6 committee I believe never asked him to testify which would be weird.

So let me give you a few other. There's a number of stories that I know the truth of because I was actually behind the curtain and I was kind of a key player in some big stories. So I can't teach you to do that. You just have to be there. They're probably at least five things that history will report as true that I know not to be true. Okay. And I can't tell you about but I wish I could. All I would love to tell you why climate change is more of a scam than you think. But is that off topic for you?

It's not off topic. No. Okay sure let's talk about it. But I will stipulate that I don't know enough about climate change to have a probably the most informed opinion about it.

All right. So neither of us are scientists so I'm not going to say that I know science and therefore I'm overruling the scientists. That's not going to happen. Let me tell you just what my detector tells me. Number one we learned in the pandemic that as long as scientists have a boss they're going to agree with the boss because the boss has a fiduciary responsibility to the company to the stockholders.

So who are we talking about specifically? Are we talking about Fauci? So do regular doctors. So during the pandemic most probably I don't know 95% of regular doctors agreed with the vaccinations and agreed with the program that the government presented. We found out later that a lot of things were not true such as the vaccinations didn't act as a vaccination. They didn't prevent as much as we thought. Just maybe a little bit in the beginning. And so there was a case where you could see that the people were seemingly agreeing with the people who paid them. In other words if the boss of the hospital says you cannot go out there and say vaccinations are bad we're making a fortune giving vaccinations because they got paid a lot to give vaccinations. So the doctor would lose their job lose their reputation. So it turns out that during the pandemic you really couldn't trust the experts and it's because the experts had a boss and the boss couldn't buck the narrative because it would be bad for business. But likewise climate change is the same situation.

Wait a minute. I don't want to move on from COVID because I don't agree with that at all. Which part? That they have bosses? No obviously everybody has bosses. Although most doctors I assume are in private practice.

No actually that's what everybody thought. When HMO and whatever they belong to these larger health organizations. Yeah they're almost all have bosses now. No. Okay. So yeah go ahead. Where I disagree is my understanding of the COVID story is that it was unfolding very quickly. That there was a novel virus circling around the world that people hadn't seen before. Information was scarce at first. It was constantly being updated and revised. Those updates and revisions were reported by the news. Donald Trump started Operation Warp Speed to get the vaccine into the hands of as many people as quickly as possible. All of that was reported. The deaths were reported as COVID was occurring. And it seemed to me that from where I was standing as a consumer of the news what we were witnessing was a fast-moving story happening in real time with a lot of difficult and conflicting information that resulted in a lot of trial and error in terms of what the best way to approach this pandemic was.

I think that's a fair characterization. We just make the general claim that if somebody is getting paid for an opinion you can't trust it. Is that fair?

Sure they could be right but you couldn't trust