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In this heated political climate, there is a tendency to simply reject people who are saying the wrong thing and to ignore conspiracy theorists wholesale.
But as the U.S. approaches its third consecutive election in which misinformation and the fight against it are expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what drives people to distrust U.S. elections. .
CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan and his team will air the hour-long documentary “Misinformation Nation: Trump Believers” on Sunday at 8pm ET on “All About Anderson Cooper.”
I spoke to O’Sullivan about the documentary. In it, he has frank and disarming talks with people about what has shaken their faith in America. However, he paints a worrying picture of the rise of fringe movements in the country.
Our conversation, which took place over the phone and has been edited for length, is below.
The fringe infected the mainstream.
wolf: What were you trying to accomplish with this project?
O’Sullivan: Much of mainstream American politics is now infected and influenced by what was once thought of as the true fringe: by what is happening on fringe platforms and on the fringes.
And I think what we really want to do with this show is explain how these personalities may be pushing falsehoods, but they’re no longer fringe. This is all happening now. And it has a huge impact on our democracy.
wolf: Your attitude when interviewing people who are saying the wrong things is friendly. It shows my respect. While you pointed out the inaccuracies of what people said during the interview, you ended up talking to people instead of against them, so I’m fine with that. relieved. How do you conduct these interviews?
O’Sullivan: I don’t see my job as going out to change people’s minds. There are many others who can do it or who could try it. I want to hear what these people believe and why they believe it.
Obviously, when we present to an audience, we make sure that people know the facts. But I think it’s really important to understand that we’re all human and approach the interview with an open mind.
People in many countries believe this. Latest poll — I think about a third of Americans believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the last election. I think about a quarter of Americans believed that January 6th was an FBI orchestration or that the FBI was involved. That’s tens of millions of people.
Most of these people are just normal people. They have jobs, families, and involvement in their communities. But for some reason, they’re obsessed with this election-related topic, they’re obsessed with QAnon and other topics.
So I think it’s very important to treat everyone with respect, even if they don’t necessarily want to show us respect.
We showed some of the interviews on the air with some of the people we met along the way. Rachel Powell is currently serving a federal prison sentence for a crime she committed on January 6th. She is her mother and also her grandmother. When we published part of that interview, there were a lot of comments online saying, “Why are you humanizing this woman?” My answer to that was: “She’s human.”
05:55 – Source: CNN
O’Sullivan asks Rachel Powell, who will be in prison starting January 6th, if Trump is to blame.listen to her reaction
wolf: It’s not your job to change people’s minds, but after reporting this documentary, what do you think you can do to get people to agree on the same set of facts?
O’Sullivan: I don’t have a solution. I think listening and talking to people is a big part of that. We spoke to Colorado resident Joe Black.
(Note: They meet at a Donald Trump rally, O’Sullivan calls Black, and they end up at Black’s house, where they compare what Black sees on social media to what O’Sullivan sees. )
He didn’t even know CNN fact-checked Joe Biden.
(Note: CNN is doing a lot of things.)
That opens people’s eyes a little bit. But I think what’s more important is that you’re willing to have the conversation in the first place. Be willing to actually sit down and talk to people in the first place.
And I’m sure many of our readers have family members or friends who have entered the world of election lies and conspiracy theories. According to the experts I spoke to on this, empathy is a big part of it, whether it’s cults or conspiracy theories. Even if you start saying, “They’re idiots,” you’re not going to convince anyone of the facts.
wolf: The overall theme of the show is the Christian nationalist belief that the United States is a Christian nation, with Christianity enshrined throughout the Constitution and founding documents. There are some interesting moments in the show where people realize that the word “God” doesn’t actually appear in the Constitution. Did you expect that? Or is it something you stumbled upon?
O’Sullivan: There are so many factors that go into what’s going on in this country right now, especially when it comes to trust and distrust in democracy, and Christian nationalism is one of them. We wanted to show in this documentary how these two threads of her are intertwined.
When it comes to Christian nationalism in particular, we chose that path because 1) we hear it a lot at events like this, and 2) there’s a growing awareness of it.
Tim Alberta published a very good book about it last year.
(Note: Watch CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Interview with Alberta. )
Most of all, it speaks to evangelicals and other Christians who are really worried right now about what they’re seeing, how their faith is being weaponized in ways that attack democracy. It was from talking to pastors.
In terms of this kind of rapid weaponization of conservative Christianity, a lot of it is not new, but I think there’s an urgency to it now that we’ve never seen before.
Pastors have seen congregations and congregations leave because their sermons were not political enough or did not directly support Trump as a candidate.
When it comes to God in the Constitution, Pastor Caleb Campbell talks about sitting down with fellow evangelicals in the documentary, and he’s a theological evangelical, and many people believe that the Christian God is the Constitution. I believe that it dwells everywhere. That is not the case at all, although the founding documents are not.
There is nothing wrong with being a Christian. There’s nothing wrong with being a patriot. But what really happens with Christian nationalism is that it promotes a very specific type of Christianity at the expense of other people’s freedoms.
02:06 – Source: CNN
See what happens when a Trump supporter talks to a CNN reporter about the Constitution
wolf: You’ve covered some of these fringe movements, but you’ve also covered some social media, what do you think people should know about the rise of these kinds of fringe social media platforms? Telegram is featured in the documentary – and it’s getting a lot of attention.
O’Sullivan: Since January 6th, many people have been banned from major social media platforms. Trump was also banned, but what many people don’t realize is that many of his supporters were also banned for sharing election conspiracy theories and things like that.
In the documentary, we meet one such person, Joe Black. He says he was banned from Facebook after sharing a meme about January 6th.
(Note: Ms. Black said she felt isolated by not being able to do simple things like purchase products on Facebook.)
It pushes people into the dark corners of the internet and can become more extreme and radicalized. That’s a dilemma, isn’t it? Because major social media platforms like Facebook have these rules. But what happens when you kick out a lot of those people is they sometimes go to more extreme platforms.
Obviously, Twitter X has changed a lot. (Note: Twitter has changed a lot since it was acquired by Elon Musk and many of its moderation protections ended.) But overall, I think 2016 let everyone’s guard down when it came to social media. There were Russian trolls and all that stuff.
Then, in 2020, there was a massive crackdown by social media platforms that received a huge backlash from conservatives. And now it feels like we are in a completely new landscape – it has completely changed again.
wolf: There’s a woman you’ll be interviewing, Rachel Powell. When she talks to her, she is her mother on her way to prison. Is she in jail now? Are you still in touch?
O’Sullivan: she is in jail. I actually received a letter from her this week from a prison in West Virginia. I think she sent her letter over a month ago. But it wasn’t until this week that it reached me.
She is holding on to the hope that Trump will be granted a pardon if he is re-elected. Obviously, a lot is at stake in this election for her. It’s interesting because obviously President Trump, especially in recent months, has really started to shine a spotlight on the people who were indicted on January 6th, painting them as kind of martyrs.
she is in jail. She has a cellmate. But trust in Trump and his ilk never seems to wane.
