All right.
This week's
all new episode of The Whole Story
with Anderson Cooper,
CNN correspondent Donie O'Sullivan
looks at how conspiracy
theories and online
misinformation are affecting
this year's presidential campaign,
including the rise
of Christian nationalism in politics.
Here's a preview.
The job of the journalist
is to ask the questions,
allow the person to speak
and just report the facts.
What was spoken?
Would you like for me to pull up
the definition of journalists? Okay.
But thank you, Judy. Okay.
I have a God given right
to speak my own truth.
But there are facts.
The facts have shown
that the election was stolen.
Whether you're willing
to look at that and accept
that and really show what's going on,
that's your issue, not ours.
We want the God given freedom
that our Constitution
and our Bill of Rights is based on
God given constitutional rights.
Yes, there are two different things
right now.
So they're not
read are in the Constitution.
Read it out loud to yourself
so that you hear what
the words of the Constitution say.
God isn't mentioned in
the Constitution, sir.
Okay.
Joining us right now to
talk more about this.
Joining
O'Sullivan,
what she's about to bring out
the copy of her Constitution.
She was about to pull out her phone,
as did I.
As I said, I we both looked up
the Constitution and Bella writes.
There is no mention of God.
It says at one point,
it says in the year of our Lord,
just to have specified the date.
But, you know, really
what that gets into
is this idea that and we've spoken
to a lot of Christian pastors
across the country
that are really worried about this.
Right.
There's this idea
among some Trump supporters,
something that is being called
Christian nationalism,
not necessarily to say to that lady
there would identify as such,
but this idea that Christianity in
the United States
has supremacy over other religions,
which of course is not the case.
There's freedom of religion
in this country. Right.
But what we're seeing
is this strand
within the kind of MAGA movement
that Christianity should take this
supreme role
in the United States
and that Trump is very much
the person to to to achieve that.
And so that's
kind of one part of this stuff
that we're looking at
when we're speaking to two pastors
who are very concerned about this.
And then when it comes to the
misinformation part of which
you heard that lady falsely say that
she believes the
2020 election was stolen.
You know, what we've really seen
is that by convincing
so many millions of Americans,
I think something like a third
of all Americans don't believe
Biden was legitimately elected.
It really opens up the floodgates
to this sort of alternate reality
where everything else is possible.
So many other things that seem
crazy are seem plausible.
So we also kind of dive deep into that
super Taylor Swift
Super Bowl conspiracy theory
that you might remember.
We look at a bit at the genesis of that
and how that became so popular.
So in your conversations with people,
did you get the impression that they
they're really unwilling to budge
if they are attaching themselves
to these, you know, alternate facts,
misinformation, conspiracy theories?
I mean,
it just seems,
you know, that
nothing or no one can penetrate that.
Yeah.
And look, I mean,
I think a lot of what we try
and do in in our
our tomorrow night is to talk to
people and to hear them out.
You know, I don't
think you're going to achieve.
You're not going to change anybody's
mind without talking to them
in the first place. Right.
And you're not going to change
anybody's mind
in telling them that they're stupid.
And so
really, we're trying to get at
why are people buying
into all of this stuff?
Because a lot of the folks
we miss,
you know,
they are very productive
members of society.
They have families, they have jobs.
They're active in their community.
But, you know,
it comes to IQ
and on our election denialism
or whatever else,
they just kind of go off in this
tangent and, you know, really it's
it's I think it's going to be the story
of the the 2024
election campaign and beyond.
It's it's it's America.
Americans are living in two
for the most part,
two very different realities right now.
All right,
Donny O'Sullivan, look forward to it.
Thank you so much.
And be sure to tune in
to an all new episode
of the whole story with Anderson Cooper.
One whole hour, One old story
airing tomorrow at 8 p.m.
Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.