Jon Stewart's Post-Kimmel Primer on Free Speech in the Glorious Trump Era | Maria Ressa

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Speaker 1 Rules and restrictions apply.

Speaker 5 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 6 From Comedy Central, it's the all-new government-approved daily show

Speaker 6 with your patriotically obedient host, John Stewart.

Speaker 9 My name is Jon Stewart, and welcome to The Daily Show on I'm going to guess

Speaker 11 Monday.

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 13 We have another fun, hilarious

Speaker 15 administration-compliant show.

Speaker 15 What are you doing? Shut up,

Speaker 15 blow this friend.

Speaker 15 So we're

Speaker 17 coming to you tonight from a real shithole

Speaker 7 for the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no one's ever seen before.

Speaker 19 Someone's National Guard should invade this place, am I right?

Speaker 20 Shut the f off

Speaker 4 if you felt a little off these past couple of days it's probably because our great father has not been home

Speaker 21 for

Speaker 22 father

Speaker 23 has been gracing England

Speaker 8 with his legendary warmth and radiance

Speaker 18 Gaze upon him with a gait even more majestic than that of the royal horses that pranced before him.

Speaker 15 He wowed the English with charm, intelligence, and an undeniable sexual charisma

Speaker 7 that filled their air like a pheromone-packed London fog.

Speaker 16 And as part of this historic trip,

Speaker 15 the perfectly tinted Trump

Speaker 19 dazzled his hosts at dinner with a demonstration of unmatched oratory skill.

Speaker 27 A fifth of all

Speaker 27 humanity speaks, writes, thinks, and praise in the language born on these aisles and perfected in the pages of Shakespeare and Dickens and Tolkien and Lewis, Orwell and Kipling.

Speaker 27 Incredible people.

Speaker 27 He didn't have to look down once,

Speaker 27 completely off-book,

Speaker 7 as he name-checked his favorite authors from the top of his head.

Speaker 15 Trump employing restraint not to quote verbatim these great authors.

Speaker 4 Our president has devoured voraciously.

Speaker 8 Incredible people indeed.

Speaker 15 I'll tell you whose client list Trump's name is on,

Speaker 7 Dewey Decimals.

Speaker 9 But of course, as great as those authors are,

Speaker 29 There can only be one most tremendous author in the English language. And I think we know that that author begins with the T

Speaker 30 and ends

Speaker 26 in P.

Speaker 29 Oh, how fortune has smiled upon us, for that very scribe is also our dear leader.

Speaker 27 We're joined by history and fate, by love and language. We're like two notes in one chord.
or two verses of the same poem, each beautiful on its own, but really really meant to be played together.

Speaker 27 The whole room is enthralled.

Speaker 16 That's resting interest's face.

Speaker 15 It was a most beautiful recitation, Mr. President.

Speaker 19 It brings me to tears almost as much as your favorite poem about that man from Nantucket

Speaker 19 and the variety of things that man can do that rhyme

Speaker 16 with tuck it.

Speaker 8 Although, Mr.

Speaker 29 President, if I may humbly I beg of you, take a small detour off this highway of adoration you have so richly earned for a bit of a comic repast.

Speaker 7 What the f is on this guy's head?

Speaker 7 hang on the mistletoe you want,

Speaker 33 Earl of Higgin-Hoffenbaum.

Speaker 15 Our president's luscious lips shall never grace your forehead,

Speaker 34 or is that

Speaker 15 some sort of second-rate Harry Potter scar shit?

Speaker 7 What's on his head?

Speaker 24 He's scarred with the mark of the fun,

Speaker 7 Neviakis groatosis,

Speaker 32 But the president, almost despicably humble,

Speaker 34 gave the royals a rare glimpse at his soft-spoken yet prideful side.

Speaker 27 We had a very

Speaker 27 sick country one year ago, and today I believe we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. In fact, nobody's even questioning it.

Speaker 27 Nobody,

Speaker 27 certainly not this guy, am I?

Speaker 19 You got something to say to me, King Chuck? Don't make eye contact, bitch.

Speaker 24 I'm the alpha dog.

Speaker 19 Trump knows USA is the hottest we've ever been.

Speaker 34 And not just because of climate change.

Speaker 34 Which is a good thing.

Speaker 19 It's actually climate change is a good thing.

Speaker 26 Cities

Speaker 24 should

Speaker 29 be part of the ocean.

Speaker 35 If you think about it, because obviously what's more important than staying hydrated

Speaker 35 for cities.

Speaker 9 Of course, this visit wasn't just an opportunity for President Trump to rub shoulders with lesser royals.

Speaker 29 He also met with political lessers, like the British Prime Minister, who had to be reminded that Trump has ended all the wars in the world,

Speaker 29 especially the one between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Speaker 27 To think that we settled

Speaker 27 Aberbaijan and Albania as an example.

Speaker 35 I would like to apologize very quickly.

Speaker 4 I stand corrected.

Speaker 35 Azerbaijan

Speaker 4 is actually pronounced Aberbajan

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 26 Armenia

Speaker 23 is pronounced Albania.

Speaker 28 I regret the error?

Speaker 9 Trump ended the war between Abor

Speaker 26 and Albania.

Speaker 20 Do better, do better, do better!

Speaker 20 F ⁇ dumb shit, f ⁇ ing fa!

Speaker 4 That wasn't smart either.

Speaker 26 Now the visit to England couldn't have gone better for our president.

Speaker 19 Finally, a country affording our great leader the respect and deference that any sun god would command.

Speaker 2 We saw the dismissal of a very well-known chat show host in America last night, Mr. Kimmel.

Speaker 37 Is free speech more under attack in Britain or America? How dare you, sir!

Speaker 37 How dare you, sir!

Speaker 16 What outfit are you with, sir?

Speaker 24 The Antifa Herald Tribune?

Speaker 7 Why, I wouldn't even line my parents' cage with your rag.

Speaker 19 There's a very reasonable explanation for what befell this scallywag, Kimball.

Speaker 27 Well, Jimmy Kimball was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else. And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person.

Speaker 27 He had very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago. So, you know, you can call that free speech or not.

Speaker 27 Shut the f ⁇ up!

Speaker 27 Yay!

Speaker 19 You may call it free speech in jolly old England.

Speaker 16 But in America we have a little something called the First Amendment.

Speaker 18 And let me tell you how it works.

Speaker 35 There's something called a talentometer.

Speaker 4 It's a completely scientific instrument that is kept on the president's desk.

Speaker 19 And it tells the president when a performer's TQ, talent quotient,

Speaker 11 measured mostly by niceness to the president,

Speaker 34 goes below a certain level, at which point the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates.

Speaker 4 These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to the even larger megacorporation that controls the flow of state-approved content or the FCC can just choose to threaten those licenses directly.

Speaker 14 It's basic science.

Speaker 14 Read your constitution!

Speaker 14 Read it!

Speaker 14 Look,

Speaker 9 there are certain rules of free speech that we must all abide by, but in case anyone needs a refresher, we're going to go over the rules again.

Speaker 2 He does not have a right to have a television show where he lies his ass off to the American people.

Speaker 37 All right, but there are are repercussions to spreading lies.

Speaker 33 Exactly.

Speaker 10 And even though two months ago, our president, because of his grand ability to see the future, it's a curse,

Speaker 18 somehow knew that Kimball would be next, as he explicitly said.

Speaker 34 You can't just make things up on television.

Speaker 29 People cannot just go on television and mislead viewers with made-up crap.

Speaker 38 Millions of illegal aliens that Boris Arharis brought into the country will be voting.

Speaker 40 The bottom line is this: there is massive voter fraud.

Speaker 39 Global warming is a hoax. Crime.

Speaker 21 Crime is at an all-time high right now.

Speaker 18 50 million on condoms in Gaza.

Speaker 10 They're taking people's pets and killing them and eating them.

Speaker 39 On January 6th, two years ago, the overwhelming majority were peaceful. They were orderly and meek.
These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers.

Speaker 39 All true!

Speaker 1 Oh Your Lordship

Speaker 11 I do not know whence these peasants come

Speaker 16 that last roll of clips all true

Speaker 34 Especially that last one about sightseers because technically anything you see

Speaker 26 is a sight.

Speaker 19 Even if that is you punching a cop,

Speaker 33 I see,

Speaker 4 therefore I am sightseeing.

Speaker 15 But of course even before this

Speaker 15 Jason Kringle situation at ABC,

Speaker 14 there were plenty of other people in America exercising their free speech incorrectly. So here's some examples of things you cannot say about your political opponents.

Speaker 2 You can't call someone who you disagree with a fascist. Leaders cannot call their political opponents Nazis and fascists and enemies of the state.

Speaker 37 How horrible and dangerous it is to view people with whom we disagree as somehow being less than human.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 15 You can't say fascist.

Speaker 19 You can't say enemy of the state. You can't say less than human.

Speaker 24 These are simple rules that any responsible member of a society can easily follow.

Speaker 27 The Democrats, they're fascists. Joe Biden, he's an enemy of the state.
It's a very demonic party. Nancy Pelosi said, Please don't call them animals.
They're human beings. I said, no, they're animals.

Speaker 27 Of course, I think she's an animal, too. You want to know the truth?

Speaker 27 Technically correct.

Speaker 26 She's not a mineral.

Speaker 4 Anyway, he said that a long time ago, back when I was doing a semester abroad in Abu Baishin.

Speaker 10 You know what?

Speaker 35 It's not really about the specific words.

Speaker 29 It's about having a basic sense of humanity.

Speaker 38 People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence.

Speaker 2 This is not a both sides problem.

Speaker 41 The First Amendment, though, does not protect protect entertainers

Speaker 41 who say crass or thoughtless things, as Jimmy Kimmel did.

Speaker 16 Thank you. Thank both of you.

Speaker 34 Or I think we only have to be nice to one of you.

Speaker 34 You know,

Speaker 34 it is true.

Speaker 24 I do.

Speaker 4 Point taken, only a bad person would celebrate violence or make crass jokes about it.

Speaker 37 Nancy Pelosi, well, she's got protection when she's in DC. Apparently, her house doesn't have a lot of protection.

Speaker 38 Donald Trump Jr. shared an image of a hammer in a pair of underwear that had the caption, Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.

Speaker 37 Well, maybe Paul Pelosi needs the hammer instead of the metal.

Speaker 21 Well,

Speaker 21 it's metal.

Speaker 3 All right, Rachel.

Speaker 21 It's metal.

Speaker 21 No, no, no,

Speaker 21 And by the way,

Speaker 26 there were consequences.

Speaker 19 This gentleman had to leave television.

Speaker 14 I'm not sure where he went, but I'm sure it's not some prestigious, consequential position he's not remotely qualified for.

Speaker 28 Listen,

Speaker 6 these two,

Speaker 20 these two,

Speaker 4 these two could learn a lesson from our dear president, who,

Speaker 4 like Santa,

Speaker 9 knows that we are all all God's children.

Speaker 29 And would never, that is what Santa is, right?

Speaker 35 God's children.

Speaker 26 I'm not so up on the lore.

Speaker 8 I know he's good.

Speaker 29 But the president knows we're all God's children, and the president would never make light of a politically motivated attack.

Speaker 27 Well, stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco.

Speaker 27 How's her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know?

Speaker 10 You see, that's how it's done.

Speaker 29 You stop in the middle of a speech to inquire about the condition of an 82-year-old man who was attacked with a hammer in his own home.

Speaker 35 He has a fractured skull, Mr. President, but thank you for asking.

Speaker 29 Your kindness is only outshined by your manliness.

Speaker 24 So I don't know who this

Speaker 24 I don't know who this

Speaker 31 Johnny Drimmel live ABC character is, but the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech.

Speaker 31 Now, some naysayers may argue that this administration's speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance.

Speaker 34 Some people would say that.

Speaker 11 Not me though, I think it's great.

Speaker 16 For more, we go to our correspondents who are live at the Donald Ham Luth Trump Monument Constitution.

Speaker 16 Very much appreciate it. Very much appreciate you joining us.
Guys,

Speaker 16 you know,

Speaker 8 all this swirling around,

Speaker 13 are the naysayers and the critics right?

Speaker 8 Is Donald Trump stifling free speech?

Speaker 3 Of course not, John. Americans are free to express any opinion we want.
To suggest otherwise is laughable.

Speaker 26 Ha ha ha.

Speaker 26 We are a nation of diverse perspectives, and we are not afraid to be different.

Speaker 17 Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, what's up with your tie?

Speaker 12 You're going to get us in trouble? No, no,

Speaker 42 this is the only red tie I have. Okay, it's fine.
That's not red, it's pink.

Speaker 42 It's not pink.

Speaker 3 It's at least salmon, all right?

Speaker 42 That's a shade of red. It's not red enough, it's gotta be MACA red.

Speaker 26 Calm down.

Speaker 42 God, is this your first dictator?

Speaker 42 Listen.

Speaker 42 Listen!

Speaker 42 They don't care about the exact shade, okay? It's just about being visibly uncomfortable while you praise them like a toddler.

Speaker 43 We love you, Donna.

Speaker 17 You did so good.

Speaker 43 You get all your poopy in your party.

Speaker 25 So good, so good. Thank you so good.

Speaker 29 I couldn't have said it any differently without obviously getting into trouble.

Speaker 9 Now,

Speaker 32 before we go to our commercial break,

Speaker 29 We'd like to end this segment like we do every night here at the Daily Show and have been ending our segments for years.

Speaker 29 Oh, Donald,

Speaker 29 we pledge to thee our

Speaker 29 world

Speaker 29 from the hottest

Speaker 29 country in the world

Speaker 29 with no fake news,

Speaker 29 and we don't even

Speaker 29 notice your kinkles

Speaker 29 or your bruises.

Speaker 29 You ended eight to ten your wars.

Speaker 29 And even though some of those countries don't really exist,

Speaker 29 you deserve all the prizes. I'm talking Nobel Prizes.

Speaker 3 You have a massive penis,

Speaker 6 much

Speaker 33 bigger than normal.

Speaker 37 Your Operation Warp Speed got us the COVID vax, which we don't like, but it was a great thing.

Speaker 43 But don't take it.

Speaker 2 Y'all come back to me, please.

Speaker 37 He's a superhero who needs no cape,

Speaker 37 and he was not technically convicted of

Speaker 17 Yeah, Donald, we love you, bro, because you're in the

Speaker 28 okay.

Speaker 3 Oh, Donald,

Speaker 25 we hold you

Speaker 25 back.

Speaker 25 My guest is journalist Maria Reta. Don't go right.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Daily Tell My Guest Tonight.

Speaker 31 My guest tonight is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, CEO of the Philippine news site, Rappler, and author of the book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator.

Speaker 8 Please welcome to the program, Maria Russa.

Speaker 26 Very nice people.

Speaker 32 You got to do it for the Graham.

Speaker 31 Maria's always said she does it for the Graham.

Speaker 4 First of all, thank you for being available on short notice.

Speaker 29 Generally, I have a Rolodex of all Nobel Prize winners

Speaker 41 and I had to get to R.

Speaker 26 So that's how hard it is.

Speaker 35 Your Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaker 29 Is there any chance you would give it to our guy and save us all?

Speaker 37 I know you were good at.

Speaker 20 Son of it.

Speaker 10 How are you doing?

Speaker 31 As you're watching

Speaker 29 not really the market working, but the government interceding in putting pressure on various things.

Speaker 29 How much is this moment resonating with you, with your experiences?

Speaker 31 For those who don't know, you were imprisoned in the Philippines for writing truth.

Speaker 37 I have 11 arrest warrants, or had 11 arrest warrants in a little over a year.

Speaker 16 But only four were Coke.

Speaker 4 Which is, I want to make sure people know that.

Speaker 14 But it's the same type of thing.

Speaker 37 You know, I got to say, since 2016, I've been saying over and over and over, and I guess I'm just going to say, I told you so.

Speaker 29 You've said it to me many times.

Speaker 35 And I've always said, we're resilient in our civic institutions.

Speaker 37 And he really has.

Speaker 26 I really have said that to him.

Speaker 37 Yeah, he said, no, it's not going to happen.

Speaker 26 Right, right.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Hello.

Speaker 10 What was it about how you were watching it?

Speaker 31 Are you at least surprised by the speed of it and the breadth of it?

Speaker 37 When we talked in March, I was saying this is going much faster than in the Philippines when Rodrigo Duterte took office.

Speaker 37 So the Philippines has a constitution patterned after the United States, three co-equal branches of government. And he collapsed our institutions within six months.

Speaker 29 Do you think it's weird it's taken Trump eight?

Speaker 37 I think he did it in the first hundred days.

Speaker 9 No, he did, yeah.

Speaker 37 Yeah, because if you think about it, 143 executive orders. Right.
And then if you look at the way that shaped the reality of everybody, right?

Speaker 37 I think that was why we spoke in March, because I was like, this is happening. If you do not reclaim your rights, if you don't stand up, it's going to be significantly harder to claw them back.

Speaker 29 Let me ask you about, you know, you've got three branches of government.

Speaker 11 Were they compliant?

Speaker 31 I think in this moment, they're compliant here, right?

Speaker 29 It hasn't been at their objection, it's been at their inaction.

Speaker 37 So it's identical to what happened. Identical.
Identical to what happened in the Philippines, right? And so I feel like it's both deja vu and PTSD.

Speaker 37 I mean, you know, we have you have an executive, very powerful, which by the way, our first president, Marcos, declared martial law by executive order. Right.
That was in the 70s.

Speaker 37 Anyway, you have an executive. The legislature is the one that's supposed to hold him in check in in real time, and the judiciary maintains the rule of law, right?

Speaker 37 Well, what happened in the Philippines is the same.

Speaker 29 I want you to have a third hand to show me.

Speaker 24 I want to see how this model actually works.

Speaker 37 Well, so what happened? This collapsed. Right.
Which was shocking. It was shocking to watch, but the very first line of defense you had were the Republicans.
Right. Right?

Speaker 37 And then when that collapsed, that meant in real time, I mean, are you going to get USAID workers back? All of those things that happened that were implemented in the first

Speaker 29 appropriations and money that was done.

Speaker 37 All of that has happened, and that now is normal, right? And you can, whether it's in the physical world or in the virtual world.

Speaker 37 And then the judiciary, what's I watched the same thing happen here that happened to us, which is the individual judges and justices become targeted. And holding up rule of law becomes

Speaker 37 that much harder. But here's your other thing, and this is Silicon Valley is American after all, right? How can you have rule of law if you don't have facts?

Speaker 35 What is that last word?

Speaker 28 We were told,

Speaker 28 so here's what's interesting.

Speaker 29 We've been told that any attempt to check facts was a curb on free speech, that any policing on public platforms of anything that occurred, and by the way, some of it was not right, some of it was unjust, some of it was censorious, but it didn't mean, and we were told that the principle here, they've said it, we're going to be the most free speech, we're going to be the most open, and they've just redefined what speech means.

Speaker 29 What free speech means is free speech is speech that supports the president.

Speaker 31 And that's the new definition.

Speaker 37 Are you talking about the tech CEOs or the president's men and women?

Speaker 11 Well, but are they different?

Speaker 29 I mean,

Speaker 29 when you have that kind of meshing, right?

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 29 It was, he threatened Mark Zuckerberg with jail because of Zuckerbucks, which were bipartisan. They went out.
It wasn't even electioneering.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Mark Zuckerberg went, did you see jail?

Speaker 29 Which apparently is the only thing that's worse than being in the metaverse.

Speaker 33 I'm not sure which is worse, actually, but

Speaker 4 he flips over. Now we've got tech.

Speaker 26 I mean, Elon Musk spent over $100 million to get this man elected, but that's not seen as interference.

Speaker 29 They go

Speaker 29 join together,

Speaker 31 and they're consolidating their power.

Speaker 37 Yes.

Speaker 31 Is that a similar, you know, in Philippines it's a little different. Basically, social media in the Philippines was more like it was Facebook.

Speaker 37 No, I mean, primarily Facebook, but, you know, I would say for six years, these are stats, for six years in a row until 2021, Filipinos spent the most time online and on social media globally.

Speaker 37 Out of anybody? Out of anybody globally. And so, what the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower said, you guys remember that 2018, right? I do indeed.

Speaker 37 So, what he said was that they tested tactics of mass manipulation in our country, and if they worked in our country, they ported it to yours.

Speaker 17 Wait, this is like the McRib?

Speaker 24 They took a...

Speaker 33 They did a test sandwich and ran it in like someplace in Columbus and were like, these people love this shit.

Speaker 37 And we kept telling you this was happening.

Speaker 37 In 2016, I said this in Silicon Valley. I said, what is happening to us is coming for you.
2016, right? And nothing was done.

Speaker 37 And if anything, all those safeguards

Speaker 37 that they tried to put in place have been ripped off in time for the 2024 elections.

Speaker 29 But it hadn't to that point, point, in my mind, they had weaponized that brain hack for profit.

Speaker 29 They hadn't yet weaponized that brain hack for political consolidation and power. That's what feels different.

Speaker 37 No,

Speaker 37 what happened in the Philippines is just happening to you.

Speaker 33 Yes, no, I meant in our country.

Speaker 26 In our country.

Speaker 29 It felt like they weaponized the algorithm for profit. Now they're weaponizing it for both profit and political consolidation.

Speaker 37 They went hand in hand for most of the rest of the world. I mean, you're not exceptional in this sense.
There is a dictator's playbook.

Speaker 26 Right?

Speaker 15 You think we fell for it?

Speaker 6 We're just a run-in-the-mill country that falls for this?

Speaker 10 It really is a playbook.

Speaker 29 They studied Hungary. They studied soft autocracy.
They studied hard autocracy. They use the same, man, when I watch them and they go on and they go, we fired a missile at a Venezuelan drug boat.

Speaker 37 I think about Duterte and I think about that's extrajudicial killings in our country. That's what we called it, right?

Speaker 29 And that's how we consolidated through the fear,

Speaker 37 anger, fear, anger, hate, fear, anger, hate. So it's like,

Speaker 37 we'll say this one more time because I feel like, you know, Sisyphus and Cassandra combined. We kept saying this.

Speaker 4 Hold on, that is a great idea for a movie.

Speaker 26 Hold on.

Speaker 37 By design, these platforms spread lies. Social media spreads lies by a 2018 MIT study at least six times faster.
So by design, lies spread faster. That's the incentive.

Speaker 37 And then in 2017, we saw in our country, in the Philippines, that if you lace it with fear, anger, and hate, it can go viral. That's the incentive structure.
So that was used to attack us.

Speaker 37 Now, imagine

Speaker 37 if you're pumped full of, in the Nobel lecture I called it toxic sludge.

Speaker 37 Online violence is real world violence. So they hacked our biology, thinking fast, thinking slow, we're thinking fast people, our emotions, they change the way we feel

Speaker 37 to change the way we look at the world, to change the way we act, to change the way we vote.

Speaker 37 And as of March this year, VDEM in Sweden said that we are 72% of the world is now under authoritarian rule, that we are electing illiberal leaders democratically

Speaker 37 because of insidious manipulation.

Speaker 37 So they go hand in hand, money and power.

Speaker 29 And now with the horrific events in Utah, everybody has the Zapruder film of it in their pocket.

Speaker 37 It wasn't taken down on social media.

Speaker 21 No, right? Yeah.

Speaker 29 Horrifying. And it's, you know what I liken it to to some extent?

Speaker 31 Because this type of manipulation will always exist.

Speaker 29 I liken it to this. It's like a chef.

Speaker 31 A chef has a couple of tricks. You come into a restaurant, what's a chef going to do?

Speaker 29 He's going to be like, you know what, I want these people to come back.

Speaker 31 I'm going to throw in a little extra butter.

Speaker 29 I'm going to add a little bit of sugar to the marinara. But it's still within the realm of, but then you look at ultra-processed food and you realize that's different.

Speaker 31 That's guys in lab coats trying to figure out how to bypass

Speaker 29 whatever biological signals you give that cause you to stop eating, to bypass that, to make you sick. And it's so interesting because you watch Maha

Speaker 29 talk about we have to get rid of ultra-processed foods, it's killing us, it's making us fat, and then big pharma comes in and they give us GLPs, and it's a big cycle.

Speaker 31 But nobody talks about ultra-processed speech, and that's the difference.

Speaker 29 The algorithm is ultra-processed, it's not about adding a little bit of humor, or a little bit of fear, or a little bit of outrage, it's about

Speaker 29 designing a machine.

Speaker 37 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 26 Me and Maria won the Nobel Prize!

Speaker 26 I won it too!

Speaker 26 We, oh my God, I can't.

Speaker 26 I can't believe we're both Nobel Prize winners.

Speaker 21 Maria, I want to talk about,

Speaker 29 right now in this country,

Speaker 29 so many people are living on eggshells on the whims of one man, whether you're a researcher in a university or a day laborer outside of

Speaker 11 a home depot or someone who shitposts on Twitter or any of there are so many people in so many spheres.

Speaker 29 Or whether you're a small business that doesn't understand the diabolical whims of tariffs and how they're being laid out just willy-nilly.

Speaker 29 What do you do with that? I know that must have been what it's like in the Philippines.

Speaker 29 An authoritarian regime, civic institutions and the way that they function, they can be abysmal, but they provide a certain stability.

Speaker 29 I've never seen this country where so many are living on eggshells.

Speaker 37 And part of that is precisely because there hasn't been enough. I mean, we were talking about this.
There hasn't been, it feels like Americans are like deer in headlights.

Speaker 10 Yeah. You know?

Speaker 26 I feel that way.

Speaker 37 But if you don't move and protect the rights you have, you lose them. And it's so much harder to reclaim them.
It's, it will be.

Speaker 29 You know, they keep saying, our leaders, the ones that we elected to keep an eye on this, keep going on TV and going, you've got to speak up. And you're like,

Speaker 29 here?

Speaker 26 Like, right now?

Speaker 32 Out the window?

Speaker 9 Like, for what? Like, there is no

Speaker 29 real sense of process or scaffolding that could create a ladder out of this hole.

Speaker 37 But this is, this is. You're about to choke me.

Speaker 26 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 37 You know, so let me just say what this moment is, right? I've been struggling, and I just came from Australia.

Speaker 41 You're a very optimistic person. I know that.

Speaker 14 So this is everything you've been through.

Speaker 37 There were two ways I was going to describe this moment, and it does start with the manipulation and the corruption of our public information ecosystem, right?

Speaker 37 So I was saying, is this an information apocalypse or is it an information Armageddon?

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 32 Those are our, so

Speaker 16 you are a very optimistic person.

Speaker 33 And that.

Speaker 32 And our choice is apocalypse or Armageddon.

Speaker 37 But that's why, because I'm optimistic, I chose Armageddon.

Speaker 28 Yep.

Speaker 3 Right? Yep.

Speaker 37 No, think about it. Think about it.
Part of it is the apocalypse is done. It's the end of the world.

Speaker 12 It's the end.

Speaker 37 But our Mageddon is the battle. This is the battle.

Speaker 22 Right. Right?

Speaker 30 Peaceful.

Speaker 30 Peaceful. Peaceful.

Speaker 29 And by the way, so without this going in that direction then, I want to do talk about

Speaker 35 this was, when was Duterte?

Speaker 31 When did he take power?

Speaker 37 2016. He's gone.
Oh, yeah. Okay, so

Speaker 16 this isn't, it didn't last forever.

Speaker 9 And your work,

Speaker 31 your lone voice crying out from the apartment that they forced you to be in and

Speaker 31 the imprisonment that they were looking for,

Speaker 31 it's over. He's not there anymore.

Speaker 37 So it wasn't, I wasn't jailed for very long. I'm very lucky in this, right? But let me put it this way.

Speaker 37 Our lawyers told us I was crazy and I had a company. And by the way, nothing puts a news organization coheres, makes it feel so good to be a journalist than a news organization that is mission-driven.

Speaker 37 When we came under attack,

Speaker 37 Rappler came together in ways we could never have done that.

Speaker 29 Reach that to the heavens.

Speaker 31 That is so true and so missing.

Speaker 37 So what we saw was that if you stand up, if you just keep going, because our lawyers told us I was crazy.

Speaker 37 Do you negotiate with President Duterte or not? How can you negotiate when you can't give him what he wants? So we did.

Speaker 37 I.e., you can't do your job.

Speaker 37 So, and then here's what happened. We just kept doing our jobs.
We just kept putting one foot in front of the other. A year where I had 11 arrest warrants and then was convicted.

Speaker 37 And I still have, I have to ask for permission to travel from the Philippine Supreme Court until today.

Speaker 37 But in March this year, Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on alleged crimes against humanity, and he is now in jail in The Hague waiting for his trial. Wow.

Speaker 24 And it's not, listen, and that doesn't mean it's over.

Speaker 29 And I understand that, you know, in the Philippines, his daughter, and certainly the Philippines has a long tradition of family dynasties, and that still exists there, and there's still, I'm sure, choppy waters ahead for Maria Ressa.

Speaker 37 Well let's say we move from hell to purgatory right? It's not bad. It's not bad.

Speaker 11 The next book has got to be from Apocalypse to Armageddon.

Speaker 29 A story of optimism. Maria Ressa.

Speaker 29 Maria I can't tell you enough what a salve for the soul you always are whenever I get a chance to talk to you, whenever I get a chance to see you.

Speaker 29 Thank you so much for coming by in this unbelievably strange deer and headlight time. And I so appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 41 No, thanks for having me.

Speaker 29 It's such a pleasure.

Speaker 33 We're going to take a break. We'll be right back.
Maria Russell.

Speaker 33 Hey, everybody!

Speaker 33 That's our show for tonight.

Speaker 36 Here it is, your mum and your dad. Mr.
President, you have spoken of your pride in your British roots. In fact, not only have you set foot on British soil twice in the last two months alone,

Speaker 36 but I understand that British soil makes for rather splendid golf courses.

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