Spoiler alert.
Kind of
without going into too much detail.
Last night's episode of Succession
on our sister channel.
HBO Max told the story involving
political pressure
on a conservative cable
news networks decision desk
during a presidential election.
Every vote must be counted.
This is about the future of the country.
We can't just say false flag if you don't
agree with something.
Oh,
The episode titled America Decides
takes place on a close
election night
where the Roy family, not America,
actually decides
whether to make a premature call
to throw.
At the very least, momentum
to their favored candidate
who is the conservative in the race now.
Given the text messages that we all saw
in Dominion's defamation
lawsuit against Fox, where supposedly
neutral anchors
discussed leaning on the decision desk
because of political pressures,
it might have seemed rather
chilling to you.
Instead, of entertaining.
With me
now, Eric Schultz, former
deputy press
secretary in the Obama
White House, and Ben
Ginsberg, a former attorney
for President George
W Bush and Mitt Romney and former RNC
general counsel.
Both were political consultants
for succession.
But first of all,
congratulations on being part
of such a cool show.
Ben, let
me start with you,
because the episode is eerily similar,
even though I think you guys taped it
months ahead
from some of the things we learned
in court.
Material from Dominion's
lawsuit against Fox.
Top anchors talent Fox Chairman
Rupert Murdoch
endorsing lies
to keep viewers all around.
And we've learned about
claims of pressure
on the on the decision desk.
Were you surprised when all this
the news stories about Dominion
came out
after you had consulted on this
on this drama.
Yeah.
Z aren't
limited to imitating life
or life imitating art.
Yeah.
It was a little bit
chilling about how eerily similar though
the whole thing was.
I mean, the personalities involved,
the pressures on a news
organization station
where I came from, which was campaigns
and how they would react in the moment
and what they might be able to depend on
from a news organization.
Yeah, it was really quite something.
Yeah.
And I have to say, like,
I wouldn't
even know how to lean on a decision
desk here at CNN.
I mean, like,
I don't even know who's there.
There's a
there's a big firewall,
but that's not what we saw
last night
on HBO, Max on the fictional 18 Network.
And Eric, it's not
it's not
what we saw in the Dominion attacks.
There's a moment in the episode
where we're at
and calls the state,
even though
there's not going to be a clear winner
in that state that night.
And then they stick with the decision.
It seemed very similar to what we saw
and in 2020 and according to the book
The Divider written by Peter
Baker and Susan Glasser,
Fox anchor
Bret Baer wrote in an email to Fox
President J.
Los about the call Fox made for Arizona.
For Biden,
he said, quote, It's hurting us
the sooner we pull it,
even if it gets us
major AG
and we put it back in his column,
the better
we are, in my opinion, unquote.
We should note that
Arizona was never in Trump's column,
so putting it back in Trump's
column makes no sense.
And then according to The Daily Beast,
there was a different exchange
between Tucker Carlson and Bret Baer.
And we're Baer wrote, quote,
I have pressed them about the decision
that's too slow
and I think they will slow walk.
Nevada.
Just to be clear, Erick,
you didn't know of any of this
when you and the writers it's expansion.
We're talking
we're doing this episode
about political pressure on
the decision desk.
Yes.
I think
that we've known for a while
that the writers on
this show are brilliant,
they're funny, they're creative,
and now we know they're eerily prescient.
The Enquirer
we started working on the show
last spring.
And obviously the revelations
the latest revelations about Fox
and Dominion came out much more recently.
But I think that you are right that we're
the writers
are always looking for real life
analogs to
just sort of play off of.
And obviously, Fox
has called for Arizona into in
20, 20 put them out on a ledge.
A lot of the other networks
were not willing
to go there at that point.
But what that did
is that box
them in from calling other states
because then they would have been
the first network to have announced
President elect Joe Biden.
And so the writers I think, in
this show
wanted to turn them on its head
and sort of play with
if they weren't willing to go out there
and in fact reverse their motives.
What that would look like.
And Ben, I mean, this is
this is a nightmare scenario of what
I imagine
somebody like you or somebody like Eric
Imagine goes on.
The truth
is, most networks
and I work used to work at NBC
and now I work at CNN,
have a complete firewall
where there are just statisticians
and experts talking about
whether or not
to make the call based on the math,
not based on the politics.
But, boy,
you got it right on at the end,
because that's really seems like
that was going on
behind the scenes at Fox.
Yeah.
I mean, look,
I sort of flashback to the experience.
2000 Florida
where as you'll recall,
because you wrote the book, Jake,
the calls were made
early in the evening
that Al Gore had won Florida yet.
Karl Rove
and the folks in Austin
realized that those numbers were wrong.
They called in to Fox or to the networks
and the decision desk and showed them
why the call was wrong.
So it's not that there is zero contact
between campaigns and news organizations.
Well,
we show so shocking about this one
is that no organization would make a call
like this with that
many outstanding votes.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, congratulations.
And it's great to have you guys here.
Ben Ginsberg, Eric Schultz,
thanks so much.