Center for Strategic and International Studies

Bob Schieffer’s “About the ” with H. Andrew Schwartz Podcast

Subject: “”

Speaker: , Host, “The Young Turks”

Hosts: H. Andrew Schwartz, Senior Vice President for External Relations, CSIS

Bob Schieffer, CBS Political News Contributor; Former Host, “Face the Nation,” CBS News

Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Transcript By Superior Transcriptions LLC www.superiortranscriptions.com

BOB SCHIEFFER: I’m Bob Schieffer.

H. ANDREW SCHWARTZ: And I’m Andrew Schwartz.

MR. SCHIEFFER: And these are conversations about the news. We are in the midst of a communications revolution. We have access to more information than any people in history. But are we more informed, or just overwhelmed by so much information we can’t process it?

MR. SCHWARTZ: These conversations are a year-long collaboration of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Now, everyone knows Bob Schieffer’s a newsman, but not everyone knows how he became an anchorman. He wrote a song about it. Let’s have a listen.

(Music plays.)

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Sings.) Well, I left this job that I just took, started practicing my sincere look, they said I had the face of a man with heart.

They wrote me some lines, taught me a style, drew a happy face in the script where I should smile, and the key demographics went right off the charts.

I have to say, they pay me good, a whole lot better than Stuckey’s ever would, and a cute little stage manager gives me all my cues.

Selling tractor hats and pumping gas, that’s all part of my long-ago past; now I just sit there and read the news.

CHORUS: (Sings.) He became a TV anchorman.

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Sings.) A TV anchorman.

CHORUS: (Sings.) He joined the Eyewitness team.

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Sings.) Was that Channel 4 or Channel 9?

CHORUS: (From video.) (Sings.) With razor cut hair, and with bells up to there, it’s the new American dream.

(Music ends.)

MR. SCHWARTZ: So now you know. If you notice a slight change in the audio during this podcast, don’t worry. We just had a slight hiccup with the recording. But it’s a fascinating interview with one of today’s top media innovators, Cenk Uygur. And here’s Bob Schieffer.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Joining us today is Cenk Uygur from online new show “The Young Turks.” He is a Turkish immigrant who attended the Wharton School at UPenn, Columbia Law School, practiced law in and Washington, briefly hosted a show on MSNBC, and then started “The Young Turks” in 2002. First, “The Young Turks” was a Sirius Radio show. Then in 2006, it became an online , the first of its kind. Now, it’s YouTube channel has nearly 3 million subscribers and offers a variety of livestreaming services.

So, welcome, Cenk. And I notice you say in your biography, and I found this interesting, the name of the show is not about your heritage, but about the definition of Young Turk. So what is the definition of Young Turks?

CENK UYGUR: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. There’s 60 people that work here, and I’m one of only two Turkish people that work. And it’s got nothing to do with our background. Young Turks means young rebels looking to overthrow the established system. And that’s exactly who we are. And that’s why we named the show that way. My two co-founders happened to be Jewish-Americans. But we all agree that we’re progressives and we are definitely not interested in this current system. We want to change it – change it entirely.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, how are you coming along with that?

MR. UYGUR: Pretty good, actually. (Laughs.) So first of all, through “The Young Turks’ our plan is to change the media. And I think that we are doing that in a similar way that Billy Beane did with “Moneyball.” So if we succeed well enough, we think that a lot of people will copy us. And so our model is to be honest with the audience and to serve the audience first, rather than corporate parents, advertisers, and all the different forms of money that flow into media that greatly, and I think adversely, affect them.

And then, secondarily, we’re hopeful enough that we believe that we can also change the government. And the number-one problem with government, as we perceive it, is that it is awash in corruption through the money in politics. And our goal is to get that money out of politics.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, we’re talking about money, and that’s obviously a big thing with every journalistic enterprise. We live in a country of free enterprise, and nobody wants the government to be the people that dispense the news. That’s the whole purpose of the – of an independent journalistic organization, as it were. So how do you finance yourself? I know there are a lot of newspapers around this country that are having a hard time trying to figure out how to pay the bills. How do you – how do you pay for what you’re doing?

MR. UYGUR: So there’s two primary revenue sources for us. One is traditional advertising, but advertising that can’t affect the programming. So, for example, we had a large oil company who wanted to buy ads, and we said no, we’re not interested in that. We had a for- profit college that wanted to buy ads on our network and we said no. So it is obviously a little unusual for a media company to say no to advertisers, but that’s what we do from time to time because the most important and valuable thing we have is trust with our audience. But there is a million advertisers out there. And lot of them are – sell wonderful products that I use and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with. So we do make good money doing that.

And then the other huge source of revenue for us in the most important one, which is people subscribing to our show. And they pay $10 a month and they get the whole show without ads, and they get it conveniently. They can download it, they can stream it, they can do anything they want with it. They get extra content. They get content, like interviews, before anybody else. But, Bob and Andrew, more than anything else, what they get is independent media. They are what is changing media online today. So by being part of “The Young Turks” they are the Young Turks. And they power this independent media. And that’s a huge source of revenue for us.

And one final note on that, it aligns our interests with the audience’s interests, because at the end of the day financial incentives, whether we like it or not, do matter. And if our financial incentive is to serve the audience, otherwise we’ll lose subscribers, well, then, great. We’ve set the right incentive package for us so that we serve the audience rather than anyone else.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, you called yourself a news broadcast, but are you really a news broadcast or are you more like an opinion column in a newspaper? Coverage for this campaign, for example, do you go about it in what you call an objective way, or do you cover it from a certain point of view? Do you cover both sides? Just tell me how you go about covering the stories you cover?

MR. UYGUR: Yeah. So let’s break that down, Bob, in a couple of different ways. Number one, the most important thing to understand is the difference between objectivity and neutrality. So neutrality is the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State played a game last night. And Cleveland says they won and Golden State says they won and, golly gee, I don’t know which one it is. And unfortunately, I think that a lot of the mainstream press has fallen into that trap. The Republicans say this and the Democrats say that and, golly gee, I don’t know. It would be un-neutral – it would unfair of me to tell you who’s right and who’s wrong.

Now, I don’t need to know their opinion about whether they’re pro-life or pro-choice, but for example from the right-wing perspective I do need to know if there was more people at the pro-life rally than the pro-choice rally. Well, that’s relevant. I do need to know, from a liberal perspective, you know, for things that they care about, but that is important for all of America. Did Saddam Hussein attack us on 9/11 or didn’t he? And so there is an objective answer to that, which is he did not. So if you say the Bush administration says this and the Democrats say that, well, then you’ve done a great disservice to the American people, and to objectivity.

So I might agree with more than I agree with Hillary Clinton – and I will be clear and honest about that – but it is incumbent upon me to be objective about his position on, for example, gun control, which I think objectively is not as good as Hillary Clinton’s. So it is not biased in terms of taking a particular candidate and being on their side no matter what, taking a particular political position and being on the side of that party no matter what – no, that’s partisan. That’s unacceptable. And if you’re partisan online, boy, you will not last. People will sniff that out and they call it out.

But on the other hand, to say, hey, I’ve been covering politics for, you know, decades, and, golly gee, I don’t have a single thought in my head about is both preposterous and not believable. And so, yes, we have an opinion and we share it with the audience. But I think you can be objective and be honest about your perspective at the same time.

MR. SCHIEFFER: You know, I’m not sure anybody is – and I have been covering politics for decades – (laughs) – I’m not sure anybody can be totally objective. But I think you can be fair. Is that what you’re saying?

MR. UYGUR: Yeah. In essence, Bob, I think that’s exactly what we’re saying. We can say, hey, look, I’m going to be honest with you say I agree with more of the policy positions, as a progressive, with Bernie Sanders than I do with Hillary Clinton. But let’s be fair here. Now, she has more pledged delegates. She has more superdelegates. In fact, when I interviewed Bernie Sanders I said: Isn’t is hypocritical to say that you’re against superdelegates, which you have said all along, and now to lobby the superdelegates to come to your side when Hillary Clinton has more pledged delegates?

So my agreeing with his policy positions doesn’t mean that I should be unfair to Hillary Clinton or, you know, bias things in favor of Bernie Sanders. No, you can be fair and say what is right, whether it’s policy or it’s political coverage.

MR. SCHIEFFER: You know, I have to say, your broadcast is catching on. As I understand it, you have surpassed both CNN and MSNBC in unique desktop viewers. The first thing I want you to tell me is what is a unique desktop viewer?

MR. UYGUR: (Laughs.) That’s a good question. So it’s understandable that people have confusion about how to measure audiences online, because it’s relatively new to the – to folks, right? So there is, in essence, two metrics that people look at online. One is views – how many people watched your videos. The other is unique viewers. So the desktop part of that equation is a thing that ComScore measures that almost no one else does. That’s not the important part of that equation. The important part is unique viewers.

So for example, in March we had 218 million views on “The Young Turks.” And we had 86 million monthly unique viewers. So that means 86 million different people watched the show at one point, watched one of videos at some point in that month. So now, again, different rankings will break it down in different ways. And they’ll say desktop or mobile, et cetera. But that’s the less relevant part. But when you look at Tubular, ComScore, OpenSlate, Google, any of those metrics, up and down we crush the competition. It’s not even close. For example, in Tubular we’re three times larger than CNN.

And so what’s fascinating is not whether it’s – we’re particularly talented. What’s fascinating is what is that phenomenon that is driving so many people to watch this show that, honestly, has no marketing budget, had no resources to begin with, but has risen online to beat these giants?

MR. SCHWARTZ: Cenk, let’s talk about that phenomenon. On The Young Turks Network, what is that you consistently talk about that the mainstream media doesn’t talk about?

MR. UYGUR: So, number one – there’s two ways to break this down. One is stylistically and one is substantively. So stylistically, for example, we don’t have teleprompters. So what that means is you look into the camera and you tell a story. You’re forced into telling a story. And when you speak like a real human being instead of reading, it gives a cue to the audience, oh, wait, I should pay attention. This is a real human talking to me and not a robot reading a script. It feels so much more authentic.

And in online, being authentic makes all the difference, because we’ve gotten to the use – we’ve got used to the fakeness, I should say, of TV. And so you think that’s the only way to do it. Well, we upended that paradigm and said, no, that’s not the only way you can do it. And it’s OK to stumble every once in a while. Sometimes – we do a two-hour live broadcast every day. Rarely, but sometimes we’ll even lose our train of thought. That’s OK, because it tells the audience, oh my god, these are not robots. These are actual human beings.

Now, substantively is even more important, of course. One, it’s shocking what being honest with the audience will get you. What we hear all the time is, oh, I didn’t know you were allowed to say that. Isn’t that an interesting phrase? Because they get a sense that on TV you’re not allowed to say certain things. So when we break those conventions they’re shocked by it, they’re fascinated by it, and they watch.

So let me give you an example. On TV, you almost never talk about the single-most important issue in politics, who’s paying these guys? So you’ll have a legitimate conversation about, hey, does Senator X believe this or Senator Y believe that? I don’t think they believe anything, pretty much. Now, I think that they are largely controlled by the millions of dollars they get from corporate and private interests. And 90 percent of the American people agree with me. So when I do a show and I say, yeah, they’ve been corrupted by that money, and TV has almost deafening silence on that issue, well, who’s more credible? Of course we’re more credible.

And I want to clarify one more thing. This is very important. We don’t have a monopoly on the truth. It’s not like, OK, we are true-sayers, and people love to say things like that, right? But we do our best to be honest. And that is a very important distinction. And I think it comes across very clearly to the audience. And that’s why they’ve been attracted to us.

MR. SCHIEFFER: I get the point you’re making, but I would have to say I think there’s been a considerable amount of coverage in this campaign about money, about where the money is coming from, about Hillary Clinton, about the Clinton Foundation. I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t think it’s like we have done nothing on that. I think the mainstream media has devoted a considerable amount of time about that. I mean, we just went through this whole business with and tracking down where the money he said he was raising for veterans, where it went. And I have to say, I give a lot of credit on that. They forced out a lot of information on that.

MR. UYGUR: So two things on that. One, the part where I think you’re absolutely right. I think The Washington Post did a great story on Trump, and not just one story but a series of stories. And I’ve been all over The Washington Post and criticizing them for their coverage of Bernie Sanders, and I could prove that out. But in that case, they did a wonderful job.

And I want to make an important distinction here. So in my opinion, the right wing attacks the media to try to tear them down and to replace the information you’re getting from the media with their propaganda. So that’s why they attack all the different things that bring you knowledge – college professors, scientists, members of the media. We don’t want to tear down the media. We want to build up the media. We want to make it better. We want to do objectivity instead of neutrality. We want to drive towards those investigative pieces.

I was greatly frustrated that MSNBC, when I asked to an investigation of a particular issue on Ron Paul back when I was there in 2010/2011, and there was literally not an investigative reporter in the building that could do that. I want them to have more investigative reporters, not less. So that’s the part I agree with you on, Bob.

But the other part is important. Look, when you mention political donations on TV – and I don’t mean you personally, I mean in general – it’s in grazing. You graze by it. You just touch on it. When in reality, it is the dominant and overwhelming reason for the actions of the politicians. So it shouldn’t be 5 percent of 10 percent of the coverage. Based on its relative importance, it should be 80, 90, 95 percent of the coverage.

So, you know, and oftentimes the debate moderates will act shocked and chagrined when Bernie Sanders says that millions of dollars in contributions from Wall Street might affect Hillary Clinton. They say are you charging her with corruption? And I think he’s far too soft on that matter. And I’ve criticized him for that in the past. I think the answer is of course. Of course she’s part of the corruption. It’s not because she’s a bad person. The corruption is systemic. Even if you walked in as an angle it’ll corrupt you by the end.

And so, yes, Hillary Clinton; yes, the Democratic Party; yes, the Republican Party is part of that corruption. We’re not having a legitimate debate of ideas. And pretending that we are does not do the audience any favors. And they can sense that. So when given a real option, that’s why – as they are online – that’s why they’re flying to us who say that’s not a part of the conversation, a small part of the conversation, that is the main conversation.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, I think one of the reasons that we wound up with the campaign that we have this time around is because serious people are no longer willing to deal with what they have to do with. Now, on the whole idea of raising money, I think that’s one of the reasons that we wound up with the lineup of candidates we had right across the whole spectrum this time around. Too many serious people are saying, look, I don’t want to spend 30 hours of my workday making cold calls to people to raise money, which is what people in Congress now have to do, and what they’re asked to do. I think the money is the biggest problem.

But you know, I would also add this, and I’ve said it before: James Reston, the great New York Times columnist once said people will do anything about South America except read about it. And – (laughter) – I’m finding the same reaction to campaign finance. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve done stories about campaign finance and somehow what we have not figured out to do is to help people understand – they say, that just has to do with politics and politicians. No, it has to do with you, with every single voter out there, because this is what is so much controlling our politics now and, back to my original point, driving good people away from the whole process.

MR. UYGUR: Yeah. Well, again, I agree largely with what you’re saying. I think that the one way that we have found a way to cut through that is to speak in plain language and to say: It’s corruption. And what we’ve got now is a system that has legalized bribery. So when you put it that way people go, oh, yeah. I am interested in that and I can’t stand that. And if you’re fighting against that, then I’m on your side.

MR. SCHWARTZ: Cenk, you are connecting with an audience. And one of the things that you’ve said in the past is that you represent the unrepresented. Tell us what you mean by that.

MR. UYGUR: Sure. So the corporate interests – and again here, it’s not to demonize – “The Young Turks” is an LLC. It’s a corporation. So it’s – I’m not in the camp of burn everything down, get rid of corporations, corporations are evil. No, we have to be clear-eyed about what we’re talking about here. Corporations are amoral. By law, they are not allowed to have morality. And so we have programmed them to squeeze every cent they can out of their operations. And so that is their prime directive. So those corporate interests, understandably, have gone and purchased politicians, because – created a system where you can buy politicians, and they have. And they’ve also, understandably, purchased a lot of the media.

If you were going to be a giant corporation – for example, in the old days, GE, they predominately make their money from defense. Now, they actually make it in – it’s a giant conglomerate. The make in a lot of different ways. But if you were going to do that, one of the things you might want to do is have a media arm that tells everybody how wonderful wars are, and defense contractors are, and how patriotic they are, and how wonderful they are.

And if in the midst of going to war, like the , you own MSNBC and Phil Donahue is speaking out against the war, and he has the highest ratings on that program, you think, well, I didn’t buy NBC and MSNBC so I could make 20 million bucks in profit, or whatever small amount they make. Part of the reason – not the whole reason – but part of the reason that I bought that was so that when I have an opportunity to make billions of dollars they support that effort. So then Phil Donahue and others are removed from MSNBC.

So I give you that as one of dozens of examples of how I can give you of how corporations have taken over the country. And almost everyone else represents those corporate interests. We represent actual Americans, citizens, and their frustrations. So when we talk about those frustrations, when we explain what’s wrong with the system and how we can fix the system, and how we can actually represent you guys and get back to a democracy where representatives represent their voters instead of their donors, people go, oh, OK, finally these guys are sticking up for me. That’s the sense that we’re talking about.

MR. SCHWARTZ: That’s interesting. I mean, you have Americans who are actually thanking you for being their voice. Why do you think there’s such a need in American journalism right now to fill the void of being someone’s voice?

MR. UYGUR: That’s a great point, Andrew. They wouldn’t say that if they didn’t feel it. Nobody pays them to say it. You know, when we – I run into somebody in the street and they recognize me, or we’re doing a meetup for our audience, that’s one of the most common things that I get – you know, thank you for being my voice – or somebody said thank you for being my mom’s voice, I often get my dad’s voice, right? That, to me –

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, they thank me for their grandpa’s. (Laughter.)

MR. UYGUR: And that, to me, means that they felt that their voices weren’t represented. In the old days, when we were in the middle of the Bush administration when we first started the show and we were just a radio show in , we were really a voice in the wilderness. There was really not any – almost any other national show speaking out against the Iraq War. So we would constantly get emails from North Carolina and Texas and all these places saying: Oh my god, I thought I was alone, and then I found you guys, and it was an oasis.

And so in this era where so many of the megaphones have been bought by the rich and powerful, when someone is speaking out for, you know, the proverbial little guy, they feel like this is our voice. This is the one voice we have. And it’s an unbelievable honor that they have bestowed us on us, because there’s many people doing many different shows online. They could have picked any of them. For them to pick us, through this marketplace – the most amazing marketplace we’ve ever seen, the interest, that’s touching and I hope I don’t let them down with that honor that they’ve bestowed on us.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this. I mean, I’ve been doing this so long that, you know, there was no TV when I was a little boy. It didn’t come till I was in the eighth grade. And then I started out as a newspaper reporter. And I did that for a long time. And then I got into television. How are you organized there? I mean, do you have editors? Do you have beat reporters? How do you cover the news?

MR. UYGUR: Great question. And at this point, we are largely commentary. But we want to hire a lot more reporters. And what’s really interesting about how we are doing this is that now it allows the audience to say, hey, if we have more subscribers, we have more members of TYT, then we’ll be able to hire more reporters. So we’ve got our campaign reporter, , who’s run around the whole country with his producer, going to Trump rallies, Bernie Sanders rallies, talking to different individuals in the states.

So when he goes up to Oregon and he’s covering that primary, he’ll go and find people who are trying to get a higher minimum wage at Burgerville. And he’ll talk to them. And he’ll ask them, hey, in your ideal world, what job would you have? And this 25-year old kid said, I never even thought about it, because it just was not within the realm of possibility for us. So those really amazing stories – I hope that we can do more and more of those. But most of the operation, Bob, is producers.

And that’s why we need a strong media, because we can’t be the Associated Press. We can’t be Reuters. We need them to collect the news and for us to analysis and perspective on it. So producers, hosts, yes, since we’re in the video business lots of editors, graphics, and then you’ve got your normal logistics of, you know, your salesforce and your executive team, et cetera.

MR. SCHIEFFER: But it does sound like you’re doing some original reporting.

MR. UYGUR: Yes. And we’ve started that, honestly, just within the last year. From time to time we would venture out and do documentaries, we would do some original reporting that was brought into us, because there’s now so many “Young Turks” viewers across the country. So somebody will be working at TLC, and they’ll have a scoop on Sarah Palin’s series there. So they’ll bring that into us, because they know they can trust us, and then we’ll run that, right? We used to do that throughout. But now we actually get to go out and have our reporters in the field, which I love. You know, we’ve started with one. I hope to have dozens out there breaking stories.

MR. SCHIEFFER: So you have got somebody out on the campaign trail. So I take it you’re covering Trump. Still have your credentials and so forth? (Laughter.)

MR. UYGUR: Yeah. Well, only because we’ve been flying under the radar. (Laughter.)

MR. SCHWARTZ: You’re marginal. (Laughs.)

MR. UYGUR: Yeah.

MR. SCHIEFFER: What do you think of the Trump campaign? Talk a little bit about it. I mean, it’s different than anything I’ve encountered in a lot of years covering politics.

MR. UYGUR: Yeah. So I think that there are two reasons for the Trump phenomenon. The one side has been adequately covered – you know, the bigotry, the racism, the xenophobia, et cetera. I actually think the press has done a very good job at that. And then – and they get a lot of flak for covering him too much, but I’m the press too, and I feel their pain. I mean, the guy says crazy things. What are you going to do, not talk about it? You know, when somebody calls everybody that’s coming into the country in an undocumented fashion criminals and rapists and – you have to cover that. You can’t not cover it.

So he has gotten an unprecedented amount of free media. And that worked in the Republican primaries because the Southern Strategy was based on dog whistles, implying racism without actually saying it. Trump just let go of the subtly and said: I’m just going to say. (Laughs.) And voters were like, hallelujah – the Republican voters. They’re like, finally a guy who’s saying what we’ve been thinking. So that’s one side of it.

But I think the most important side is the one that hasn’t gotten enough coverage, which is Trump saying: I’m financing my own campaign, which he did in the primaries. And, yes, there’s a lot of wiggle room in there, and he’s changing a lot of it in the general election run. But when he stood on that stage and said: I bought all these guys. I gave them campaign donations and they did exactly what I wanted them to do. The right wing hates the corruption and the crony capitalism as much as the left wing does. So when they heard that, the message resonated. That is a huge part of the reason why he won the primary and why he still polls as well as he does, given how many people dislike him.

And then, finally, there’s a – there’s a hidden part of that that almost no one talks about. Since he didn’t have the big donors, he wasn’t beholden to running a campaign in a way that the donors demand. And one of the things that the donors don’t like is populism, for understandable reasons. So they instruct the people running those campaigns, hey, do not run a populist campaign. Well, if you don’t have donors instructing you that way, well, you’re free to run a populist campaign. And when you do, and – (laughs) – shockingly, it works.

I kid about the shockingly, because in reality it’s the most obvious thing in the world. That’s why Bernie Sanders succeeded on the right and Donald Trump succeeded on the right, because they were free from the shackles of the donors who want you to run a campaign telling you how wonderful Wall Street and corporations and millionaires and billionaires are. If only cared about getting people’s votes, you would never run a campaign that way. You would run a far more populist campaign. And as we’ve seen, it works.

MR. SCHIEFFER: You know, it was working during the primaries, but I wonder, after he, you know, called that judge – said he was a Mexican, there was the dealing with that lawsuit that he had, his remarks after this shooting in Orlando, I don’t think he’s polling as well right now as he was. I sense a shift. And maybe it’s just I have no, you know, instant polling to back this up, but I’m seeing a different attitude toward him now. Do you sense that?

MR. UYGUR: Oh, absolutely. And I’d be shocked if the polling didn’t indicate that soon. Well, there’s two different things going on that are hurting him a lot. Number one, now in the general election everybody’s telling him he’s got to raise a billion dollars. Even at this point, if he kowtows to everything donors want, he’s still not going to get anywhere near that number. But he’s trying.

And in that effort, I mean, he just fired Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager. And I actually think that that is tactically a mistake for him, which I’m happy he’s making – (laughs) – because obviously I don’t agree with him. But if he starts hewing in the direction of the donors, well, he’s going to lose that populist edge. And the establishment prefers Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, clearly. And so in an establishment race, Hillary Clinton will win easily.

And then – but the second thing you were talking about leads to a theory of mine that I would imagine is a little bit more controversial. I call it the invisible hand the establishment. So like Adam Smith talked about the invisible hand of the market, all it is a series of micro- decisions that lead to a macro result. So that works in the market, people buying based on what they want. That leads to setting the right price based on supply and demand.

In the case of the invisible hand of the establishment, what winds up happening is, well, I mean, what he said about the judge was no more vitriolic, crazy, unacceptable than what he said during the primaries. During the primaries he said unbelievable things. I mean, what he said about Megyn Kelly, she’s bleeding from wherever, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never heard a politician say anything near that grotesque, that wild, that outrageous, and the list goes on and on.

But yet, during the primaries, well, isn’t that curious? Isn’t that interesting? We’re going to cover it, but we’re not sure whether we condemn it. Now in the general election, the press has decided Trump is unacceptable. And everybody weighing in, through a series of micro- decisions, no, we’ve got to call it as it is. And normally I would love that. And I do love it. And I think that they should have been far more courageous during the primaries in calling it out.

But now that we have a purely establishment candidate, like Hillary Clinton, all of a sudden her opponent is seen as the abyss, which he is. And so now you don’t have a choice. You’ve got to vote for the establishment. And it is a curious thing how that happens and how you can see it with your own eyes playing out right in front of you.

MR. SCHIEFFER: All right. Cenk Uygur, another voice, a new voice, but an increasingly influential voice in our ever-changing communications landscape. Thank you so much for being with us this morning.

For Andrew Schwartz of CSIS, I’m Bob Schieffer.

ANNOUNCER: If you liked this podcast, leave us a review on iTunes, visit us at CSIS.org, and check out the Schieffer College of Communication at SchiefferCollege.TCU.edu.

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