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Angie's List is now Angie, and we've

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heard a lot of theories about why. I

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thought it was an eco move. For your words, less

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paper.

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No, it was so you could say it faster.

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No, it's to be more iconic. Must

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right. It's because now you can compare

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0:45

It's

0:45

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023,

0:47

from Peachfish Productions. It's The Gist.

0:49

I'm Mike Peska. A Utah woman who

0:51

wrote a children's book about coping with grief

0:54

following the death of her husband has been charged,

0:56

oh, not with plagiarism, with

0:59

murder. And most pertinent

1:01

to the story at hand, of her husband.

1:04

Corey Richens, Corey spelled stupidly, K-O-U-R-I,

1:07

ought to be a crime for that, is alleged to have

1:09

mixed a cocktail for her husband,

1:12

Eric, and laced it with five times

1:15

the lethal

1:15

dose of fentanyl. Richens

1:18

told friends that he believed

1:20

that his wife was actively trying to poison

1:22

him.

1:23

On Valentine's Day of 2022, he

1:25

became violently ill after accepting

1:28

a sandwich made by Corey. He

1:30

also fell ill during a vacation to Greece

1:33

a few years prior. And yet on his

1:36

last night on this earth, he accepted

1:38

a Moscow mule from his wife, laid

1:40

down and died. Buddy, at some point, fix your

1:42

own food and drink. Poison me once, shame on

1:44

me. Poison me twice, shame on

1:46

you. Poison me three times, what are you trying to punch

1:49

your card for the free footlong?

1:51

I can't think of a shorter length of time

1:53

than the gap between. It's okay, honey,

1:55

I'll make that for you. And no, I got it, Corey. Uber

1:57

Eats order, it's already in. Please, please.

1:59

Please do not bother yourself.

2:02

There is some evidence that Corey Richens

2:05

wasn't even sure the fentanyl would work. I

2:07

based that on an interview the author gave to

2:09

KNTX Utah's Good

2:11

Things. And Corey, I want to start with

2:14

your story. What happened in your

2:16

personal life? So my husband

2:18

passed away unexpectedly last year.

2:20

Corey Richens

2:21

is an incredible mother who touched our

2:23

hearts by sharing her personal story of loss,

2:25

reads the first line from the webpage

2:28

of that TV show describing that TV

2:31

appearance to promote the book.

2:32

Look, maybe Corey wasn't a bad person. She

2:35

just knew that this excellent grief book

2:37

that the world needed would not sell without

2:39

the first person hook. And what do I know? Maybe

2:42

all these authors who got us through the

2:44

tough times also may have murdered

2:46

Joan Didion, the year of magical

2:49

thinking that I'd get away with it. Maybe

2:52

Mitch killed Maury and then

2:54

met him in heaven for the sequel. Maybe

2:56

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was really

2:58

a murderer. Stage three, bargaining

3:01

on a plea with the DA.

3:02

Let's end with the sign off that

3:05

the hosts of Good Things Utah shared

3:07

with Richens in her interview. You

3:09

are an amazing woman and mom

3:12

and we thank you for being vulnerable and sharing

3:14

this and touching the lives of others.

3:16

And by touching, we mean with

3:18

fentanyl, lots and lots of fentanyl.

3:21

And now I render the most healing word

3:24

of all, allegedly. On

3:27

today's show, CNN, Town Hall, Trump,

3:29

let's have at it. But first, it's

3:31

ubiquitous, yet so often unavailable.

3:35

When we need it, we can't get it, but

3:37

the very act of needing it makes so

3:39

many more things harder to

3:41

obtain. It is parking.

3:44

Henry

3:46

Grabar is the author of Paved

3:49

Paradise, How Parking Explains

3:51

the World.

3:52

He joins me to talk about the

3:54

idea that if we solve the parking problem,

3:57

world peace would follow shortly after.

3:59

Close, close to that. Henry Grabar,

4:02

up next.

4:13

["The eta

5:05

one

5:17

of them is that actually when we when we work

5:19

together Mike I used to bike to work and

5:22

I was biking in a bike lane and I got hit by

5:24

a car don't worry I'm fine

5:28

I remember like I know I got hit

5:30

I got hit by a police car of all things who

5:33

was pulling out of a parking spot and

5:35

just not looking where she was going and she just clipped

5:38

my back wheel and I sort of like leapt off the bike

5:40

and landed very acrobatically but I

5:43

had this realization which is that it's

5:45

I was why was the bike lane the bike

5:48

lane was in a dangerous place the bike lane was exactly

5:50

in the zone where

5:53

drivers who were turning out were going to turn right

5:55

into it and it was right in the zone where drivers who

5:57

are getting out of their car would open their door

5:59

into your path. And I think

6:02

anybody who's ridden a bike in a major American cities

6:04

had this experience. And if you start thinking about

6:06

it, you're like, well, why is the bike lane where

6:08

it is?

6:09

Why

6:10

am I obligated to risk my life just

6:12

to get somewhere on two wheels? And the

6:14

answer when it comes down to it is that American

6:17

cities are afraid to

6:19

mess with street parking. And

6:21

street parking stands in the way

6:24

of, for example, creating a safer

6:26

bike lane, among many other things.

6:28

Yeah. So a lot of times I'll interview

6:30

an author and then they'll tell a story and then I'll say

6:32

and then it hit me. In this case, it literally

6:35

hit you. That's how you guys how

6:37

you got your idea. So

6:40

it's and it's beyond street parking. Um,

6:42

one of the people that you deal

6:44

with was a person who'd like

6:46

to get into affordable housing,

6:49

build some affordable housing, you know, make

6:51

some money at it, but also help the people

6:53

who need affordable housing. And that wasn't

6:55

to be necessarily street parking.

6:57

She had parking

6:58

units in her building. And

7:01

it's as big a disaster as you can imagine. Take

7:03

me through that story. That's an amazing

7:05

story. I found this affordable housing developer

7:07

in a suburb of San Diego, who

7:09

was trying to build

7:11

basically a dozen

7:13

apartments for low income

7:15

residents who had been evicted from

7:18

from their apartments and basically kicked out of

7:20

the city a couple decades earlier. And

7:24

what she found was that even by

7:27

providing the amount of parking

7:29

that was required by law, and by

7:31

replacing the parking on

7:33

the public parking lot on which she was building,

7:36

she could not get residents to drop

7:38

their opposition. Now, you could

7:40

say, well, were they really concerned about the

7:42

parking? Or were they concerned about living next

7:45

to low income

7:47

neighbors? And I think that's a very valid

7:49

question. But the fact remains, the

7:51

project didn't get built, because the neighbors

7:53

were able able to marshal

7:55

parking as a legitimate

7:58

subject, a legitimate reason for

7:59

for opposition and she spent 10 years trying

8:02

to build this and ultimately it

8:04

died on the grounds of people

8:07

complaining about the parking situation.

8:08

Yeah, but it wasn't even the neighbors, right? It was even

8:11

people or potential people who would be moving

8:13

into her unit. She

8:15

would say, well, the only thing that makes this

8:17

affordable is that we don't build

8:20

extra spaces for visitors and they

8:22

didn't care. People's relationship

8:24

with parking is intimate in the sense

8:27

that the way they think about parking is

8:29

this space is in front of me, I'm in my car,

8:31

I want this space and they are incapable of

8:34

seeing the larger picture. In the case of affordable

8:36

housing development, the larger picture is

8:38

if Ginger, this affordable housing developer,

8:41

includes twice as many

8:43

parking spaces as units, there will be

8:45

no units because the parking costs so much to

8:47

build and takes up so much room that if she includes

8:50

a certain amount of parking, the whole project won't pencil at all.

8:52

Our relationship with parking, because

8:54

we cannot get over this psychological

8:57

fixation on having free parking right

8:59

in front of our door, constantly available when

9:01

we need it, is stopping us from achieving

9:04

many things that are actually more important to

9:06

us. Okay, so you said a couple things, psychological

9:09

and free. Those are really important,

9:11

let's get into it. Don Shoup,

9:14

he's the guru of parking and

9:16

he made some calculations over a decade

9:19

ago. Well,

9:22

you tell me,

9:22

but basically it comes down to the

9:25

entire value of all

9:27

of our cars and all of our roads

9:30

doesn't even touch the value

9:32

of our parking spaces, which we generally

9:35

don't charge for.

9:37

When you put it that way, Mike, it does sound shocking,

9:39

but I guess what I've come to see is that

9:42

when you really think about it, we all

9:44

know that

9:46

the car culture has had

9:48

an enormous effect on American

9:50

society. I mean, everybody's familiar with that idea.

9:53

And when you think about car culture,

9:56

I think you mostly think about the vehicles

9:58

themselves and the road. codes and

10:00

people don't think about the parking. But the parking

10:03

in fact takes up more room and

10:05

it costs more money to build. And that sort

10:08

of makes sense when you begin to actually look

10:10

at a city because a car spends most

10:12

of its time parked. I mean, 95%

10:14

of a car's lifespan is spent

10:17

parked. So of course parking is the most important

10:19

thing.

10:19

Also we think

10:22

of parking when parking is free or

10:24

parking is just for, you know, a dollar

10:26

an hour. We love it. That's

10:30

just that it helps us,

10:32

I guess, as we're the parkers. It's really

10:34

bad societally and it's really

10:36

hard to roll that back. And so you

10:39

talk about specifically Chicago, a city

10:41

in which you lived where parking on the street

10:43

was for just quarters. And that alone

10:46

pretty much doomed so much development

10:48

in Chicago. But it's hard

10:49

to do anything to reverse that because

10:52

people get really attached to what

10:54

essentially is a government subsidy,

10:56

but they don't think of themselves as being the

10:59

fat cats who are subsidized, but they are.

11:02

Yeah, they are subsidized. I think people

11:04

think, well, I pay taxes

11:06

so I should be able to park for free. And

11:09

I think that argument or pay the meter and

11:11

the meters a couple quarters and like we

11:14

do put quarters in the meter. But

11:16

when we do that, we don't say to ourselves, we're

11:19

essentially

11:19

like the airlines getting a bailout

11:22

on a tiny little scale. The government

11:24

is subsidizing us and hurting

11:28

the overall goals because of this benefit.

11:32

I think that depends, Mike. I

11:34

think that if you're in a small town and

11:38

there's not that much competition for street parking

11:40

spaces, maybe it only takes

11:42

a quarter or 50 cents an hour to

11:45

create enough space for everybody to have a place

11:48

to park when they want it. And in that

11:49

case, I think that

11:51

system basically works. I think the problem that you

11:53

run into is you go to a really busy

11:56

city street where parking is

11:58

very much in demand.

11:59

and there are meters that are underpriced

12:02

or there's no meters at all. And

12:04

so when you show up, there's people parked

12:06

there, bumper to bumper, all

12:08

up and down the street. And the odds are, in the

12:10

case of free parking,

12:12

those people work there or live there. And

12:14

they arrived early in the morning and they took those

12:16

spots. And when you show up to do your shopping

12:19

or go to lunch, there's nothing available for you. And

12:21

so you circle the block and you look for parking. Now, that

12:23

seems like a minor annoyance, right? But

12:25

it turns out that just that circling

12:28

for parking, two, three minutes looking

12:30

for a parking spot,

12:31

makes up one third of

12:33

traffic in these busy neighborhoods. It's responsible

12:36

for millions of extra miles of driving

12:39

every year, an

12:40

unimaginable quantity of local

12:42

pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

12:45

And so the goal of the parking

12:47

reformers, who would like to see these

12:50

streets better managed,

12:52

is to see parking meter prices go up a little bit. And

12:54

it's not a money grab. It's not,

12:56

at least

12:57

in the ideal situation, run

12:59

by a benevolent city official, it's not,

13:01

the idea here is not to raise money

13:04

and

13:04

certainly not to take as much money from

13:07

drivers as possible. It's to manage

13:09

the parking. And it turns out that making people

13:11

pay for it is the only way we have of

13:13

trying to organize this very scarce

13:16

resource in busy places.

13:18

Okay, I'm gonna get to solutions in a little while, but

13:21

since I have you, a parking expert, I'm gonna ask some

13:23

of the nitty gritty questions I've always asked. So

13:25

I go to a Jets game and they charge me 50, 50 dollars

13:28

to park. And I'm like, oh my God. But then I'm like,

13:31

wait a minute, why didn't they charge me 80? Why didn't they charge

13:33

me 180? I mean, I guess there's a

13:35

certain hypothetical

13:37

point where fewer people

13:39

will actually avail themselves of

13:41

the parking than is worth charging

13:44

more. But it does seem when you have especially

13:46

the stadia or places where

13:49

there are no other options, what's

13:51

the upper limit? What does the industry

13:53

say about how much you can charge?

13:56

And I'll ask a double barreled question.

13:59

stadium says we're going to charge 75. Do

14:02

all the other stadiums look and say, all right, we're

14:04

going to charge 75 now to so

14:07

the first question is why charge and the answer is

14:10

behavioral decision, it has a sort

14:12

of a nudge, right on your behavior

14:14

that ultimately

14:16

produces a more beneficial

14:18

situation for for the

14:20

for the venue, right? And then the second part is, what's

14:22

the limit? And I think this is a situation

14:25

where

14:25

this is even more clear in, in

14:28

cities and in public places than it is for say

14:30

the jets. But like, if you charge

14:32

so much for parking, that people will

14:34

not pay for parking anymore,

14:37

then

14:38

it's time to lower the price of parking, like, I

14:40

think one of the beautiful things about it is that it's so flexible.

14:43

You know, if you charge 50 bucks, and everybody

14:45

says, Well, that's worth it to me, then

14:48

you might not be charging enough. So and

14:50

this is also true for like, Six Flags

14:52

has some sort of abusive parking policies, whether

14:55

like, they will not only charge you an arm and

14:57

a leg to park, but they will not let you park

14:59

in like neighboring lots and walk to Six

15:01

Flags.

15:02

Yeah, to ensure that they have a monopoly on the parking.

15:05

I don't support that. I don't support using

15:07

parking as a tool to

15:09

extract as much money as possible from people

15:11

because they have no other choice. I don't think that's good. I

15:14

do think that when it comes to making

15:16

people pay for parking,

15:18

the question of how much will they pay is

15:20

really simple. Because what you're

15:22

trying to do here is not raise money, you're

15:24

trying to make sure that there's enough parking for everybody

15:26

who needs a space. And that is as true

15:28

for the jets as it is for your local Main Street.

15:31

And, and the way to do that is you

15:33

just see how many people are willing to pay

15:36

and how many people park.

15:37

And if it turns out the block is half empty at

15:39

2pm on a Saturday, looks like you're charging

15:41

too much. If it turns out that people are circling

15:43

the block over and over again, you're not charging

15:46

enough. It's that simple. How

15:48

much can one of these very high

15:52

trafficked urban garages make

15:54

either? I don't know if you know the dollar

15:56

figures off hand, but compared to

15:59

say how much

15:59

if you built retail in the space

16:02

or residential in the space? It's

16:06

a tough question. I mean, a major

16:09

big city garage can make a ton

16:11

of money in the downtown or at an airport,

16:14

right? Did you know that airports make more money from parking

16:16

than they do from airplanes?

16:18

Like it's often like the largest single source of

16:20

revenue for airports. Well, I thought Cinnabon was number

16:22

one. Cinnabon's number two. Cinnabon's number two. Yeah.

16:26

I know the answer to this to you. I

16:29

bet if you don't, you're gonna be able to figure it out. Does

16:31

New York City make more money for

16:34

people parking and paying

16:36

the meter or people incurring

16:39

fines from not paying the meter? In

16:41

other words, do they want you to break

16:44

the law or not? That is a great question.

16:46

I suspect that the answer

16:48

is that they make more money from fines and

16:50

fees. That was certainly the case

16:52

in

16:53

Chicago up until 2008 and

16:55

is the case in most American cities. And that

16:57

just goes to show Mike how poorly managed

17:00

parking is, right? It's the largest single

17:02

land use. It's the most expensive and

17:04

most space consuming part of the whole car

17:07

culture. And it is just managed

17:09

like garbage, right? Cause

17:12

like this is the opposite of the way things should

17:14

work. We should make more money from meters

17:17

and try and discourage people from breaking

17:19

the law. We don't wanna give people tickets.

17:21

We do not wanna trap them in these cycles

17:23

of fines and fees, revenue driven

17:26

policing of the type we saw in Ferguson, Missouri,

17:28

that is bad, right?

17:30

But cities have realized

17:33

that by undercharging for parking meters and

17:35

forcing people to park illegally, they

17:37

can make more money from illegal parking than

17:40

they do from the meters themselves. That's really bad.

17:42

And like, you know, so if you run a box truck

17:45

delivery service in New York City

17:47

or the postal service, fresh direct

17:49

or UPS, any of these guys, those

17:52

trucks rack up tens of thousands

17:54

of dollars in parking tickets every

17:57

year. It's a massive source of revenue

17:59

for New York City.

17:59

They even have their own department that

18:02

sort of adjudicates these fines with these major

18:04

corporate operators on a separate

18:07

basis, right? It's not like you getting a parking ticket.

18:09

They have a special line because they get so many

18:11

parking tickets. And that's obviously not a great situation

18:14

because double parking is the absolute

18:16

worst thing for traffic. It creates so much

18:18

traffic. And yet the city is tacitly

18:21

endorsing this practice by refusing

18:23

to charge enough for parking to clear space

18:26

at the curb for these people to make their deliveries.

18:29

So much of our

18:31

solution rests in the hope that

18:33

one day we'll have driverless cars and

18:36

maybe we'll share them and they'll just come pick

18:38

us up when called. They could go park wherever

18:40

somewhere outside of town. Okay, let's

18:43

hope that happens. What else? What

18:45

else are we looking at for us as a solution?

18:47

Well, I think for starters, I don't

18:50

expect everybody's going to stop driving tomorrow. As

18:54

you know, the median American household has 2.2 cars. So

18:58

we're not saying it's time for you to go carless.

19:00

I recognize that the country

19:03

is large and sprawling and people depend

19:05

on their automobiles to do many things.

19:08

However, if a household with 3

19:11

cars can go to 2 or

19:12

a household with 2 cars can go to 1, then

19:15

that unlocks all sorts of possibilities

19:18

for what we may do with all this space

19:20

that has up to this point been dedicated

19:23

to parking. So

19:25

that's part of it. So and then the driverless

19:27

car plays into that one car for the family

19:30

takes dad to work takes mom to work. He's

19:32

on a different schedule.

19:34

I guess I'm not as optimistic

19:36

about driverless cars. What if Elon Musk

19:39

wasn't the main guy trying to fund him? Would you be

19:41

more optimistic? I just think there's so

19:43

many challenges, right? We've been hearing about this for 10

19:46

years and hearing that it's

19:48

it's always one year away and and

19:50

so far we haven't seen it. Mike, I'm more optimistic

19:52

about a very primitive piece of technology.

19:55

The foot? The bicycle. Damn

19:57

it. No, electric bicycles. I think the bicycle.

20:00

That's what you got brain done. That's how it started.

20:02

You get hit, you're like, bicycles

20:04

are still the solution. But who's going with you? And that's

20:06

how it comes back because, okay, first of all, we gotta talk about

20:08

e-bikes, not just regular bicycles.

20:11

I was being a little facetious when I said it's a primitive piece

20:13

of technology. I think the e-bike

20:15

is an absolute

20:17

revolution in local transportation

20:20

whose effects we are just beginning to see, right? Because

20:23

it permits people to do errands

20:26

of one, two, three miles on

20:28

a device that to store takes

20:31

up a fraction of the space that it takes up to

20:33

store a car. And not to mention it costs a fraction of

20:35

the purchase price to

20:37

buy one. And

20:39

to take it back to me getting hit by a car on

20:42

my bicycle, I think

20:44

one thing that has to happen in

20:47

order for us to be able to take the car

20:49

ownership for family from three to two or

20:51

from two to one, or even from one

20:53

to zero, is that we need to unlock this

20:56

virtuous cycle between land use

20:58

and transportation. There's two cycles here,

21:00

there's the bad cycle where you build

21:02

more parking lots and so more people drive because

21:04

it's not safe to get around any other way and things become

21:07

less dense and then you need more cars. And

21:09

before you know it, everybody's driving everywhere. That's the bad

21:11

cycle. The good cycle is

21:14

you build a safe protected

21:16

bike lane between the

21:17

residential neighborhood and the popular city

21:20

park, and all of a sudden, people who used to drive

21:22

their cars decide, oh, you know what?

21:24

I can ride my bike with little Timmy to his

21:26

baseball game

21:28

and I don't need to drive and I don't need

21:30

to look for parking. And so maybe that parking

21:32

in front of the grocery store gets sold

21:35

off and turned into affordable housing for the people

21:37

who work at the grocery store, et cetera. And

21:40

maybe they ride their bikes too because there's more

21:42

places for them to ride safely as well. And

21:45

so some family that lives there decides that

21:47

they don't need two cars in the garage anymore, they can

21:49

just go with one. And those are the kinds of

21:51

cycles that I think

21:53

I can imagine beginning to take place

21:56

if cities would get serious about finding ways

21:58

besides driving for people to get around.

22:00

There's a lot of statistics in the book which

22:03

point out that if we didn't have parking, we'd

22:05

have, however, much more space

22:07

in urban centers and then think about what

22:09

that would do in terms of being

22:12

able to house people. I'd

22:15

like for you to share those statistics

22:17

as well you can. But my question is, now

22:20

that we see the collapse of

22:23

the office space, is

22:25

that having an impact on the calculations?

22:28

In other words, where you say, wow, think about it.

22:30

If we didn't have parking, then we'd have all

22:32

this more

22:34

space curbage and that

22:37

can be dedicated to, let's say residential,

22:39

putting people in. But we're now seeing the

22:42

collapse of something that is already taking up space.

22:44

So how does that affect the argument about,

22:47

let's do away with parking, this will open an

22:49

opportunity for us.

22:50

I think there's ups and downs with the collapse

22:52

of office space. The downside

22:55

is pretty clearly that

22:57

we might see a collapse in tax revenue and

23:00

a collapse in public transit service that makes

23:02

it hard for people to get around without a car. That's obviously

23:04

bad. The good thing

23:06

about this perhaps is that office commutes are some

23:08

of the longest trips that people take. And

23:11

to the extent that people need three

23:13

cars per family or two cars per family, it's because

23:15

we need a car to get to the office.

23:18

People, the trips that people make in their neighborhoods,

23:21

they may make them by car, but they're often quite

23:23

short. And if they were given the opportunity to safely

23:25

make them on foot,

23:26

I think they would. And so

23:28

to the extent

23:30

that people are freed from the obligation to go

23:32

to the office and spend more time in their neighborhoods, maybe

23:35

that creates an opportunity

23:37

for people to spend more time not driving.

23:39

I think that's certainly one of the reasons that people like working from

23:41

home, is that they don't have to drive to work anymore.

23:44

How many people are assaulted or murdered each

23:46

year over parking? Assaulted,

23:48

I can't say, because I have a Google

23:50

alert that tells me about parking space murders.

23:53

And so I would say it's between 25

23:55

and 50 every year, murdered

23:57

and assaulted. I can't say, it's probably a number. count.

24:01

That's

24:01

unbelievable. Henry Grabar

24:04

is a staff writer at Slate who writes about housing

24:06

transportation and urban policy,

24:08

a past guest host of the GIST

24:10

and current author of Pave Paradise,

24:13

How Parking Explains the World. Henry,

24:15

thank you so much.

24:16

Thanks, Mike.

24:36

And now, the spiel. Former President

24:39

Donald Trump will be on CNN tonight to speak

24:41

to Republican and undecided voters in

24:43

a New Hampshire town hall style

24:45

event moderated by CNN's Caitlin

24:48

Collins. I hope she will ask him about

24:50

the recent ruling that found the former

24:52

president liable for a sexual assault.

24:55

And I hope that she'll ask him why it took so long

24:57

for him to tell the January 6th rioters

24:59

to stop rioting, calling them very

25:01

special and beautiful people. If

25:04

she might ask a voter standing or

25:06

sitting in front of you thinks that these rioters

25:09

were wrong to enter the Capitol and cause

25:11

damage in your name, are you prepared

25:14

to look that voter in the eye and tell them that

25:16

they're wrong? That the January 6th

25:18

insurrectionists were right? That's

25:20

sort of a good question I look forward to. It's a great opportunity

25:23

for Collins and for viewers, despite

25:25

Trump's bluster, bombast, bellicosity,

25:28

bullshit. The New York Times, previewing

25:30

the town hall in an article by Michael Grinbaum,

25:33

wrote, Donald Trump on CNN,

25:36

a live town hall

25:36

reignites a debate for a sentence.

25:39

Should a leading presidential contender be given the opportunity

25:42

to speak to voters on live television? Well,

25:45

yeah, I mean, I think so, even

25:48

if it's a loathsome such candidate,

25:51

because, you know, democracy and interviewing

25:54

a person doesn't mean you like the person.

25:56

It means you'd like to ask them some questions.

25:59

Speaking for the affirmative, meaning,

26:02

yeah, I interview the guy, and agreeing with

26:04

me, Grimbaum quotes Ted Koppel.

26:07

Is he a legitimate object of news attention?

26:09

You bet!

26:10

Grimbaum quotes Bob Schieffer. We're

26:13

in the business of telling people who's running for watch

26:15

and what they stand for.

26:17

Alright. Two of the most influential and

26:19

hard-hitting TV interviewers of the last 30 years.

26:22

For the negative, i.e. don't interview

26:24

him, Grimbaum has this graph. Joy

26:27

Reid, an anchor on rival MSNBC, derided

26:30

the event as, quote, a pretty open attempt by

26:32

CNN to push itself to the right

26:34

and make itself attractive and show its

26:36

belly to MAGA.

26:38

And Chris Hayes, also of NBC,

26:40

calling the town hall, quote, very hard to defend.

26:42

Well, Ted Koppel did, very succinctly. Didn't

26:44

seem hard for him. So did Bob Schieffer. I suppose

26:47

you will get criticism from a rival network

26:49

who will lose in the ratings that night to

26:51

CNN, and who could never land

26:53

an interview with Trump in the first place. That

26:55

last part about their inability to get an interview

26:57

with Trump, that's not actually critique. It's

27:00

an indication of their style of coverage. Mehdi

27:02

Hassan on his MSNBC

27:04

show, also

27:06

dedicated some time and some programming

27:08

to CNN's programming. I do hope

27:10

CNN chief Chris Licht doesn't have to end

27:12

up apologizing for giving Trump this platform

27:15

in the same way that his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, had

27:17

to apologize for running all those Trump rallies, uninterrupted

27:20

on CNN back in 2016. Personally,

27:23

I wouldn't interview a man who has used live

27:26

interviews to incite violence and tell

27:28

lies who has in the past encouraged violence

27:30

against CNN itself. I wouldn't

27:32

normalize him in that way.

27:34

Not only is Hassan advocating the wrong

27:36

call, I just don't believe him.

27:39

Oh, now the post hoc charge of hypocrisy

27:42

would preclude Hassan from accepting a

27:45

not forthcoming invite to interview

27:47

Trump. But Hassan's stock

27:50

in trade is subjecting bad

27:52

people and liars to tough interviews.

27:54

He interviewed Betsy

27:57

DeVos brother and Blackwater security founder

27:59

Eric Bader.

27:59

prince to devastating effect.

28:02

Clips of the takedown went viral,

28:05

providing Hassan with the biggest boost of his stateside

28:07

career. He's interviewed many

28:10

Trump officials and apologists, also

28:12

with the intent of using said

28:15

interview to expose the threadbare nature

28:17

of their argumentation. And he's done that.

28:19

Successfully, he wrote a book about winning

28:21

arguments, which lays out how to

28:24

dismantle liars. Talks about the different

28:26

types of lies, the strategies

28:28

for questioning lies.

28:29

Now, all

28:31

of a sudden, this one liar, this

28:33

very bad and prominent, but also

28:35

important liar, he's a no-go

28:38

zone. Why? Because he won't

28:40

go on, many Hassan's show or network. There's

28:43

some columnists out there who agree with

28:45

the, I guess, overall MSNBC sentiment

28:48

that it's wrong for the cable

28:50

news network, CNN, to present

28:52

the cable news viewing public with an

28:54

interview of a newsmaker. Jackie

28:57

Calms, columnist for the LA Times

28:59

wrote, really CNN,

29:01

a town hall for Trump now? Yes,

29:04

after being found liable of sexual assault

29:07

and defamation, now is a very good time

29:09

to ask some questions. When he's leading

29:12

the Republican field in the polls, a good

29:14

time. The interview might not be

29:16

a good time for Caitlin Collins. She'll

29:18

be deluged with criticism from MAGA

29:21

Nation, if she does her job right. She's already

29:23

being deluged with criticism for

29:25

just taking the assignment that deluged

29:27

from the left. But yes, of course it's a good

29:29

time. Because you know, I don't think de-platforming

29:32

works ever. It certainly doesn't

29:34

work

29:34

to a guy with the power to command attention from

29:37

every platform there is, except maybe

29:39

the one or two who exempt themselves.

29:42

But to think that scrutiny

29:44

is indistinguishable from celebration,

29:47

that's

29:47

an argument put forth by people who

29:50

don't at all believe in the power of changing

29:52

minds, the power of debate, the power of inquiry.

29:55

That's not Mehdi Hassan. That goes

29:57

against at least the stated purpose of

30:00

all those MSNBC shows. I'll

30:02

now quote Tim Johnson writing for

30:04

Pointer, the journalism think tanky

30:06

type institute, CNN. Should

30:09

the cable news network have on the former

30:11

president, even though Trump has often been critical

30:14

of CNN and all non-conservative media?

30:16

Should they have Trump on even though he's

30:18

liable to say anything, even if it doesn't

30:20

come close to resembling the truth? Should

30:22

they host someone who is known to

30:25

spread dangerous misinformation and disinformation?

30:28

Absolutely. This is a no brainer.

30:31

Of course, CNN

30:32

should have on Trump, Jones continues. As

30:35

of this moment, he's the Republican party

30:37

favorite to be the presidential nominee in 2024.

30:39

That makes him newsworthy. Assuming

30:42

they agree to no preconditions, CNN is

30:44

in charge of the evening and the rest.

30:46

And this, I like this part the best. And the rest

30:49

of the media observers and critics, as well as

30:51

news consumers should be okay

30:53

with this. Well, it's not unusual

30:55

to agree with Tom Jones this much, but

30:57

I do. Anyway, I don't expect whatever

30:59

questions Trump gets from granite

31:02

staters or Caitlin Collins, that he will be

31:04

defeated or contained or

31:06

vanquished. That's a myth. He'll

31:09

be doing much more press.

31:11

He'll be available in the future. And

31:14

when a future interview might be conducted

31:16

by, NBC's Andrea Mitchell

31:19

or Chuck Todd or Savannah Guthrie,

31:22

well, then I expect the walk off and protest by

31:24

MSNBC hosts will be an interesting

31:26

story to cover in its own right. That

31:29

probably won't happen, but if it does,

31:31

I will never tell you you're

31:33

wrong for being interested.

31:40

And that's it for today's show. The Gist was

31:42

produced by Corey Wara. Joel Patterson is

31:44

the senior producer of The Gist. Michelle

31:46

Pesca is in charge of banking

31:48

and finance for Peachfish Productions. The

31:51

Gist is presented in collaboration with Libsyn's Advertisecast

31:53

for advertising inquiries. Go to advertisecast.com

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slash the gist. Umpruh, Jeeproo, Dooproo,

31:58

and thanks for listening.