November 24, 2020 • 46 mins
You’ve no doubt heard that the 2020 election welcomed historic turnout. But what do those high numbers of voters mean for our democracy, for future elections, and for the warring political parties as they conduct their post-mortems? On this episode of Turnout with Katie Couric, we hear from a data journalist who is starting to comb through the numbers. Neal Rothschild, director of audience and political data reporter for Axios, shares the four big takeaways that help explain the 2020 election. Then, Katie talks with her friend, the best-selling author Mitch Albom about the state of our divisiveness, the media’s problem, how we can find ways to reconnect and start to move forward as a country together.
More about the episodes and guests featured in this episode:
Four demographic trends that explain Biden’s victory (Axios)
Read more from Neal Rothschild or find him on Twitter
Mitch Albom: The election will be meaningless if we don’t change our ways (Detroit Free Press)
Find more about Mitch Albom’s books at his website.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Katie Couric, and this is turnout. As you have
no doubt heard, the election welcomed historic turnout, But what
does that turnout mean and who actually turned out? Data
journalists are starting to comb through the numbers. I'm Neil Rothchild.
I'm the director of Audience for Axios and I also
(00:23):
cover politics from the data lens, and I wrote an
article about how to explain what happened in the election.
Typically post election analysis like this is done mostly with
exit polling, but of course was no typical year because
so many people voted early this year. Well, exit polling
(00:44):
is no longer such a reliable way to you know,
get at this and as we saw also with kind
of the way polling performed as a predictor of this election,
like polling is taking a big hit and reputation anyway,
So forget exit polls this year. To get a picture
of who turned out, data journalists like Neil can look
(01:06):
county by county and compare the tallied votes with available
demographic information. All of the results. We're looking at our
official election results, uh that are coming through each state,
but you can divide them up by each county because
each state reports their counties that feed into the state
(01:27):
level total, which will help to allocate electoral votes. So
by looking at that state voting total and then diving
into the demographic area, So this is a heavily Latino community,
this is a suburban area, so you can start to
get a sense of Okay, so this suburb swung toward
Biden by twelve points compared to That allows you to
(01:51):
start to really like learn about what the key demographic
trends were for the election. What did the voting results
say in these key counties, What did the votes say,
and for those areas, what changed in compared to what
areas moved further left, which areas moved for the right.
(02:13):
Even if in both cases they went Trump or both
went Biden, those differences of within twenty or thirty points,
even for an area that went for Clinton and Biden,
can be really telling for the key shifts that are
undergirding America's like political preferences. When comparing voting data from
(02:34):
two thousand sixteen to Neil identified for trends that help
explain the results. So the first point is that suburbs
have undergone a fundamental shift in favor of Democrats and
away from Trump. It remains to be seen whether this
is a lasting trend for Republicans or whether this is
(02:55):
just a very Trump phenomenon that people in the suburbs
are kind of turned off by his behavior and his rhetoric.
The second point is that the blue areas have gotten
even more blue, and the red areas have really dug
in for Trump. So we're not seeing a lot of
cases where some urban areas have shifted towards Trump and
(03:17):
some rural areas have shifted towards Biden. Each of those
have really become even more entrenched in their politics. I
really think it is kind of a trust in institutions.
And for those in the cities and around the cities,
a lot of them work for big employers and rely
on kind of institutions like government and media and big
(03:41):
business for both their livelihoods and kind of how they
understand reliable information. While those in rural areas become less
dependent on those companies and on those institutions and might
be more kind of self sustaining and reject being told
what to think or how to think. And so for
(04:03):
them Trump more represents, you know, this idea that opposing
what everyone else kind of just takes for truth and
assumes to be the case. He really is galvanized that
support across the country. Number three is that the white
working class vote in the Midwest did not deliver for Biden,
(04:26):
which is funny because that was his appeal in the
Democratic primary. The American middle class brings dignity and security
every day to work. They deserve the dignity and jegutor
restructed in their leaders kind of why you would vote
for him instead of Bernie or a Warren who might
have more kind of educated and progressive appeal, but might
(04:47):
not be able to get those working class voters in
the states that Clinton lost in, which was Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin. And then the last point that how to
complicate things a bit, is that Latino support for Trump
grew in a number of key regions. Cuban support for
(05:08):
Trump in Miami Dade County got a lot of the
attention on election night, but it was not, you know,
unique to just that area where there was trends towards Trump.
In the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, a number of
those counties had like double digit, twenty plus point shifts
towards Trump compared to what Clinton saw in. Neil says,
(05:31):
there are a few surprises about this election that are
worth noting. Trump has gotten more minority support than Republican
candidates for president in a couple of decades, So he
ended up, you know, being able to tap into something
that I don't think either party was really expecting to
be the case. And you know, there could be a
(05:54):
few factors that worked into this, like maybe the Trump
campaign on the ground operation was just able to knock
on doors in these areas that the Biden campaign, you know,
figured that could be done remotely. Maybe it's just a
high turnout election and some of that, you know, Latin
America Catholic tradition ended up resulting in support for the
(06:16):
Christian religious right for Republicans. That is also something that
people didn't see coming. Trump's rhetoric made it seem like
a gimme that Democrats would get the vast majority and
make even bigger gains in support for voters of color,
when that's actually the opposite of what we saw. As
(06:39):
the parties do their own election post mortems, Neal points
to a few key lessons. I think one area for
soul searching for Democrats is how Hispanic support for Trump
has grown, and it's not just the Hispanic vote, but
even the Black vote has turned towards Trump in a
(06:59):
numb ber of cities, not enough that it became like
a hugely meaningful election trend, but even in cities like
Philadelphia or Chicago, if Hillary want it by eight five
points over Trump in Biden, one handful of those by
only eighty points this year. So of course it's nowhere
(07:20):
close to being able to say Philadelphia or Chicago went red.
But it's these small shifts that hint at where Trump
might be able to corral more support. So for Democrats
who have you know, grown to assume that they would
always have kind of the support of the base of
people of color in this country might make them, you know,
(07:42):
reckon with well, there's more to be done and more
that we need to prove to show that we should
earn these votes. Republicans might see out of this that
they can't rely on forever having to depend on white
working class voters outside of cities, because that demographic is shrinking.
(08:03):
It's poorer than the rest of the country in population,
it's shrinking, incomes are getting smaller. So this coalition might
have delivered for Trump in but it's not a long
term strategy, and they need to do more to you know,
grab that working class support and earn it in cities
(08:24):
and suburbs. So it can't just be about kind of
these rural areas. You really need to make in roads
where the population centers are as for the rest of us.
The real takeaway is that proved we are more partisan
than ever. We've become even more polarized and even more divided,
(08:45):
particularly by our geography, where if you're in cities and
around cities, you believe one thing and trust a certain
set of facts and assumptions, Whereas if you're outside of
that and you live in rural areas, if you live
in the country, you not only don't embrace it, but
you outright reject it. And that, you know, has shown
(09:06):
to be a huge groundswell of support for Trump. When
we come back how to mend those divisions. An interview
with author Mitch Album. Mitch Album is a journalist and
a best selling author. He wrote Tuesdays with Marie, perhaps
(09:28):
his most famous book, along with many others. He's a
really compassionate thinker and writer. So I thought it would
be interesting to hear his perspective on how divided we are,
the role of the media may be playing, and how
we can move forward. First and foremost, let's talk about
(09:49):
the election. What a wild ride. Had you ever seen
anything like this, Mitch in your life experience before? No,
I mean a close. This thing was probably the last one,
you know, which I thought, well, won't get any wilder
than that. I think everything that's happening right now, Katie,
is in the shadow of a very weird time. I
(10:12):
think the whole summer that we went through. I think
all the dividedness that's happened in the country. You know,
none of us, at least unless you're over a hundred
years old, have faced the pandemic and what it does
to your psyche, what it does to your frame of mind,
what it does to your sense of community or lack
of sense of community, how scared it makes you. And
(10:34):
I think all of those things are behind all the
craziness that's going on in so you know, the sports
term is a mulligan. You know, you get a mulligan
on a golf course for a year for a first
shot that just was errant. And we may need a
mulligan for this year because it was errant in its
own way. And I don't know about you, Mitch, I
guess in nineteen, I'm not sure how old you were.
(10:57):
I was eleven, and I guess that's the closest thing
to compare what we're going through now in terms of
how divided and how passionate and how intense the division felt.
You know, the country being divided isn't new. I think
(11:18):
the anger that comes with the division is fairly new.
And I think that, uh, you know, they've always been
Republicans and Democrats, have always been liberals and conservatives, but
they haven't uh felt like the other one needs to
be wiped out the way it's sort of feels like now.
And I think that vitriol and that anger can be
(11:40):
directly tied to social media and to media in general.
And they didn't have that that. I remember. I was alive,
and I remember we didn't have cell phones or iPhones
or social media accounts. We had, but we had baseball
cards in our in the spokes of our bicycles. You know,
That's how I tech we were. In an essay you
(12:02):
wrote recently, which I think got a lot of attention, Mitch,
you said hopes for a national reconciliation may be threatened
by new battle lines. So what did you mean exactly
by that? Well, I didn't. I think that was the
headline for it. But what I wrote was, it won't
it won't really matter what we do on Tuesday if
we don't change what we do on Wednesday and Thursday
(12:24):
and Friday. And sadly it turned out to be prophetic
because Wednesday and Thursday and Friday were worse than Monday,
you know, uh in this particular case, because everybody was
still fighting over the results, and they still are as
we're as we're recording this um. So you know, my
point was that vitriol and divisiveness they don't come to
(12:48):
a head on one day of every four years. They
take a lot longer than that to build up, and
they take a lot longer than that to bring down.
And if anybody thought that there would be an election
and then oh good, we'll all just get along with
one another, they really weren't paying very much attention to
how we became divided in the first place. It wasn't
just over an election, and it was over a lot
(13:10):
more than that. So an election didn't election didn't create it.
An election wasn't likely to solve it. Um. But my
hope in that piece that you cited was that, you know,
we tried to understand that we're a lot more like
than different. Um. But I've been saying that for a
long time and writing that for a long time. And
(13:31):
Maury said it to me when I wrote Tuesdays with Mari.
You know, it's probably the first time I heard it
verbalize that way. And what did he say again, exactly Mitch,
He said, we're all more alike than different. That you know,
everybody thinks they're gonna die. Everybody knows they're going to die,
but nobody believes it. And he said, when you actually
believe it, when you start to realize he had to
(13:54):
because he was dying from Lew Garret's disease and was
really facing his own mortality. He's once you realize you're
actually going to die, you're human after all. You feel
a kinship with everybody else in the world who's suffering.
I remember once I watched him, we were we flipped
on the news. We almost never watched any television together,
(14:15):
but we click on the news. In Bosnia, there was
something going on at the time Bosnia, and they had
some footage it was very you know, violent, and he
started crying and I said, why why are you crying?
He said, well, it's just so terrible. What's happening to
those people? I said, no, but you've never been there.
You remember been to Bosnia? You don't know anybody from Bosnia,
he said, Mitch, when you really realize you're dying, um,
(14:37):
you can you feel the suffering of everybody else in
the world who's suffering as well, and you realize you
we're all more alike than different. I mean, that was
the context in which he told me that, and I
never forgot that because you know, here he was watching
something that we all watched, just passionately, and like, well,
I'm glad it's not here. And then we moved on
what what was different about him? Well, it was because
(15:00):
in his brain he had accepted the fact, you know,
he really was a human being with all the ending
that all human beings are going to face. And we
don't really walk through life accepting that until suddenly we
get hit with the doctor's diagnosis, or or we're in
a hospital all of a sudden and we'll get COVID.
Uh and so um, that's the context that he said.
(15:23):
It's very, very true. The problem, Katie is we have
to wait until we have a death sentence, you know,
our terminal illness, in order to recognize that we share humanity.
But unfortunately it usually takes something like that to shake
us loops. Let's talk about the role of the media,
because you were very critical of the media and your essay,
(15:44):
and honestly, Mitch, I'm very confused about how I feel
about this, so maybe you can help me be my therapist.
But you and I have been in the media for
a long time. Yes, it's changed dramatically, but where do
you think the media has on you know, where did
it go wrong in terms of its complicity in aiding
(16:09):
and abetting the divisiveness. Well, I mean, you and I
probably started in the journalism business around the same time.
And I remember going to you know, I went to
Columbia Journalism School. I got my masters there and I
remember the opening speech that the first day of school,
Osborne Elliott, who I think at the time of the
(16:29):
editor of Newsweek. Um, he made a speech and he
talked about, well, what this business of journalism is all about?
And it was all about having a fire in the
belly to try to get to the truth of things
and and all that, and and you know, to tell
the stories that needed to be told. None of it
had to do with bringing down people, belittling people, taking
(16:51):
a side. None of that was ever spoken about. I mean,
if anything was the other way around, it was you know,
be invisible, you know, bringing the new news and not you,
not your views. You know, that's not the way what
we what we call cable news today. Um. And I'm
not taking sides on any of it. I mean you
can find you know, pretty much all across the board, uh,
(17:13):
different degrees of it. But it's not really news in
the sense that you and I when we started in
the business commentary it's commentary, right, dis guy says, well,
here's here's the factual thing that happened. Let me tell
you my opinion about it. Here's the factual thing that happened.
Here's what's wrong with it, here's the factual thing that happened.
Here's why these people are doing what these people are doing.
And so how we got from where we were when
(17:37):
you and I were starting this to now, you know,
you could point to a lot of things. It's a
long discussion. But somewhere along the line, news started making money.
You know this very well, you know, and the news
division started to be places where you could see a profit.
Was before it was almost like something they did just
for the social good. You know, they made every television
made its money on their on the lastie programs, and
(17:58):
they put the news up. You know, it's okay, we
have to do the news. But when the news started
to become profit, uh, you know, people started taking different
directions and it has grown. And you don't need me
to rehash how Fox News is going one direction, MSNBC
another direction, CNN in another direction. Well, I think also
I'm just going to add, as as the landscape became
more fragmented, I think outlets became more niche. So if
(18:24):
they wanted to get an audience that was loyal to
whatever they were delivering, uh, it wasn't interesting enough or
enraging enough, because Kara Swisher calls it engagement through enragement
that people would want to see stuff that was conflict
free or that was just the facts, ma'am. And so
(18:48):
as a result, I think it was more profitable to
get to to give people. I've said this a million
times but it's so fitting affirmation instead of information to
get them riled up emotionally, and so I think that's
one of the reasons we've seen this bifurcated media landscape
(19:10):
bubble up and explode if you will, in the last
four years. That's right. I mean, it seems kind of crazy,
and I'm I'm you know, I I try because I
still write for a newspaper, even though I'm not primarily
do books and movies and charities and stuff like that,
but I still write a newspaper column. Therefore, I'm obligated
to stay informed. And I watch all three of the
(19:32):
cable networks when I when I sit down and watch,
I will always flip back and forth because I want
to see not only the information, but I want to
see how people are playing the information, what is it.
And it's gotten to the point where it's like reporting
on different planets. You will see a totally different broadcast
on one cable news network, then you will see on
the other, not the same stories, not the same footage.
(19:54):
Forget about the commentary. The information isn't the same. So
even what people are choosing to bring forward and choosing
to suppress is different on every single channel. Now that
shouldn't be If you've got national news, chances are of
the news of the day should be the same on
each one. If you're really just talking about the news,
(20:16):
here's the important things that happened, it's not. I mean,
you literally can watch at half hour of one program
and not see anything closely related to the other. So
I think that's where it begins. Then there's a problem
with the I think the geography of the country, and
I mentioned that, um in the piece that you referenced.
(20:36):
I live here in Detroit, in Michigan, I have for
many years, um for over three decades now, so I
consider this my home. But I was raised in the
East and I you know, I grew up in Philadelphia,
went to college in Boston. I lived in New York
and Florida, so I know East Coast, and I worked
for some publications on the East Coast. Is when I
have a lot of friends who are still there, back
(20:58):
in the big cities and on the last s Angels
Coast as well. And I think somewhere along the line,
we really got separated in our viewpoint of what this
country is and what the values are by where we
live and the media that we are subject to in
those areas. So I can tell you, living out here
in the Midwest, I have many conversations with my friends
(21:21):
in the East, and they just don't get it, you know,
they just don't. They think they think people out here
are nuts, you know, or how could they or how
could they this? Or how can they that? And now
those are my friends. The people who are in the media,
some have started to take that to another level where
it's like they're too stupid to know what's good for them,
(21:43):
and so we need to tell them what's good for them.
That should never be a journalist position. I don't care
what publication you work for. You should never look down
on people who redo or follow you or somehow say well,
they're hopeless. I'm just going to tell them what they
and somewhere and that works for both sides, both sides.
And somewhere along the line we got into that business
(22:06):
of you know, we're smarter than the people who are
consuming our news, and that I think was it was
that day. I guess I buy everything you're saying, Mitch
and agree with you wholeheartedly, except I feel like it's
very hard to have this conversation when you have a
(22:27):
president like Donald J. Trump, and let's talk about that,
because when you have someone who is not truthful, who
behaves in a way that's, let's just put it out there,
morally repugnant, right, making fun of handicapped people, grabbing women
by the you know, what's um, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But
(22:51):
how do you point out when someone is, you know,
the the leader of the free world and is is
trading in mistruth and misinformation? Go, well, I mean, you know,
as I told you before we started this, I'm not
a political writer. I'm not you know, and I don't.
(23:14):
But I think that's what I struggle with, and that's
what I wrestle with. Yeah, well, I'm not well versed
enough or knowledgeable enough to evaluate the presidency or how
you cover the president because it's not what I do.
But you're you're you're well informed, Mitch. You you watched
the news. Yeah, but but but I don't. I'm not
(23:35):
in the position of having to say, well, how do
you how do you deal with the question that you
asked me? You know, how do you deal with a
person who lies or a person who does the repugnant
things as you refer to them, whatever, how do you
cover them? Fortunately, that's not my job. I don't have
to do it. But what I can say to that is,
I think there's a difference between how you cover a
(23:55):
president and how you cover people who may have voted
for the president. And that to me, when I wrote
that piece, that was that was the point that I
was sort of making. I think all presidents are fair
game for criticism. When Joe Biden takes over and becomes
a president after the honeymoon period that always goes on
with a new president, he'll be aptlete criticized, I'm sure,
(24:18):
no matter whether he does the greatest job in the
world or not. That's what we do in America. We
criticized the president. The Americans criticized the president, you know,
they criticized Barack Obama, that criticized George Bush. It's not
going to change, but when and that goes with the job.
And I think every president would tell you that goes. Yeah.
You don't find any president who loves the press. No, No,
(24:39):
I've never seen one that I can't wait to have
a press conference, you know. Uh so, But I think
what happened here, particularly as as we approach the election
is that the criticism spilled over into the people who
voted for Donald Trump. I think that that began with
the Hillary Clinton made that regrettable comment about you know,
(25:01):
basket of deplorable. I can tell you that living here
in Michigan, many people uh here in the state of
Michigan took that person. And if you remember, the state
of Michigan ended up going for Donald Trump barely in
two thousand and sixteen, after everybody just presumed that Hillary
Clinton would would win it. You can't say those kinds
(25:22):
of things. And I'm not picking on Hillary Clinton. That
was one sentence said by one person, but I'm using
that as a as a as an example. If you
have that sort of add in your writing and your reporting,
in your commentary, you are going to alienate a good
portion of the country. And that that I can speak
to because I don't believe you get to put down
(25:44):
half of the country, whichever half it may be, simply
because you have a position as a journalist. Your role
as a journalist is to understand both halves of the
country and understand how they come together as a whole.
And you may personally inc they're not as smart as
you or or and and by the way, this does
not just go east to midwest. This goes midwest to east,
(26:07):
or midwest and west to There are plenty of people
who write who feel that, you know, they call liberals
with a with a quotation mark and far left and
all the rest of them. They look down on them
as you know, trying to take down the country coastal,
even coastal elites as a pejorative. Yes, coastal elites is
as much of pejorative as a basket of deplorables. It's
(26:29):
all bad. You don't divide the country up like that.
And I think that's the new element that has happened
in our journalism. We were already heading in this direction
of you know, left and right, but now the audience,
the audience has been attacked. Uh, the voters have been attacked,
(26:50):
and there's this there's a sense of like you can
talk about Trump voters as if they're all the same,
and you know, I know many Trump voters. I live
in the Midwest, and I can tell you they're not
all the same, you know. And I can certainly tell
you they're not all racist or homophobic. I can tell
you that the people that I've met who voted for Trump,
(27:11):
many of them don't like him, you know. Uh. And
they don't like him as a person. They don't like
the things that you pointed out about him. Um, But
for whatever reason, they felt that they couldn't vote for
the other party, you know. And and you shouldn't assume
that everybody who votes for somebody has the characteristics of
the person they voted for. I don't think everybody who
(27:34):
voted for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is the factor
Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. A lot of people just
voted because they wanted a change. They don't want Donald
Trump in there anymore. So this is this is where
I have been critical, and you know, in one piece.
I mean, it's not like what I do for a living,
but you know, I just felt that we owe it
(27:55):
to our humanity and we owe it to our citizenship
and sense of citizenship, not to demean the people who
vote for a politician, but to try to understand them
and understand the things that are behind it. Politicians are
fair game, presidents are fair game. But regular voters and
citizens should be treated with respect by the media, and
(28:18):
I think sometimes we fall down them a few more
thoughts from Mitch album and Maury right after this. What
(28:39):
do you think is the way out of this, this
very difficult time in our history? You know, I interviewed
David Brooks and he talked about our tribal mentality, which
is in a news flash, but I thought he he
phrased it in an interesting way. He talked about the
fact that our political party has become our ethnicity and
(29:04):
it is so wrapped up in our identity. You know,
politics used to be something you kind of did on
the side right, that would come up during important elections,
but it wasn't so defining as it is today. So
how do you break those chains and how do you
kind of step out of this is who I am
(29:26):
and if you say anything that's different, it's almost a
primal threat to my survival. Yeah, well, first of all,
I have a couple of answers to that. First of all,
I don't think we're as defined by our politics as
the people who write about politics think we are defined
by our politics. This is part of the problem. Everything
is seen through the prism of where the people who
(29:49):
are commenting on it uh tend to work. I mean,
the same people who are pondering this issue. Are the
people who are covering this issue and writing about this issue.
Whereas I can tell you that when of the elections over, Okay,
this one's stretching out because of the controversy over the
account of the votes, but whenever it comes to an end,
and a few people around here outside my window here
(30:10):
in Michigan, they're not spending every minute talking about politics
or what political party they're associated with, or what tribe
they're associated with. These are things that the media makes
up and and and determines. So right off the bat,
you know, one of the great things for me, Katie,
by leaving the East Coast and coming in the West
was learning that the world doesn't begin an end like
that famous New York cartoon. Oh first that second Avenue,
(30:33):
First Avenue, California. You know, Uh, there's us whole middle
where people just go about their lives and they really aren't.
They aren't debating about to just see to just read
that piece in the Times this morning. It's not a
sentence out here, and and it's not It doesn't it's
not what motivates people. So one the first step is
to recognize that not everybody to find themselves by the politics.
(30:54):
I think people do define themselves in America today by something,
and I think we're very identity or oriented. And the
for me, the cure for that, which is the second
part of my answer to your question of three parts um,
is to put yourself in a situation where this isn't
an obsession. So I'm very blessed. I think you know
(31:15):
that I I operate an orphanage in Haiti, and I've
been there for the last eleven years, and i go
every single month of my life, and I'm there, you know,
up to a week, sometimes two weeks of every month.
There is no worry about which political party you're in
in Haiti. It's where am I going to eat and
where i'm i'm how am I gonna get food? And
(31:35):
how am I gonna get clean water? And how and
how am I going to take care of this child
that I don't have any money for it? That's it.
And when you deal go to places and you don't
have to go as far as Haiti, you can do
it right here in America. There are many many places
in America where you go where you say, okay, are
our concerns right now are much more basic food, education safety.
(31:57):
You quickly realize the argument over who's gonna who's gonna
be the new Defense secretary really doesn't change your your
daily existence. And number three, you gotta you gotta take
these these devices and and and just say I'm gonna
give myself a limit, and then that's it. Don't dive.
(32:18):
You know, people somehow think that they're getting perspective by
diving deeper into social media, when actually they're narrowing their
perspective as they dive deeper into social media because you're
just staying on that and they're just adding another person
to follow on Twitter, you know, trying to get more
(32:38):
people on Facebook. That is not broadening your perspective, even
though you're you feel you're growing because look how many
followers I got to, Look how many people I follow.
You're not growing, You're shrinking. You're shrinking because your perspective
is shrinking and you're not going outside that little device
to see the world and to see real people. And
so the only way it's going to change is if
(33:00):
people really start taking to this like they did to smoking.
You know, we we actually finally turned a corner on
smoking after decades or people said, well, I can't. It's addicting.
I can't do anything about it. But eventually enough people died,
and enough and enough facts came out, and people said,
you know what, maybe I should stop smoking. You know,
maybe my kids shouldn't start smoking. And and maybe there'll
(33:20):
be a moment with social media where we'll kind of
realize the damage it's doing to us and actually start
to pull back from it. When that happens, then maybe
you see the temperature turned down a little bit on
this national divide. I go back to my visits with
Morey again. I was, you know, again, that's twenty five
(33:41):
years ago now died twenty five years ago. Last week
that was the anniversary of his death, And so it's
twenty five years ago that I was sitting beside him
as he was dying and asking a lot of these
similar questions in my own, you know, little youthful version
of myself. Uh uh. And you know one of the
things he said about anger was that, and you know,
(34:04):
at the time, I remember asking him about anger too.
There were angry shock jocks and angry you know, I
think Rush Limbaugh was kind of getting started and getting big,
and there's a lot of anger going on in the
and the the O. J. Simpson trial was going you know,
that case was going on, and right in ninety it
happened while I was there. So there's plenty of divisiveness
in the country back then. You know, we didn't invent
(34:25):
it in two thousand and and I asked him about
you know, all this anger and that Mitch, that reflects
unsatisfied lives. You know, lives that that are are that
that don't have in them, the the essences to feel
like you have contentment, and he mentioned, you know, the love, community, family,
(34:49):
feeling needed. All of those things were antidotes to this
anger when all you have is your little world of
you know, this one said this one, and this one
said this one, and this this one. You know in
sports writing, which you know I that's how I began. Um.
There was this thing that they used to do in
New York all the time. Uh. They would go to
(35:11):
a manager and they would ask him about you know,
like what do you what do you think of the
other manager? And you know, they keep pressing until they
got some comment, and then they run over to the
other manager and they'd say, he just said this about you.
What do you think about that? You know, and and
he said that, while I said, and it's literally like stirring.
It's like alchemy. It's like creating anger out of nothing,
(35:31):
you know, because there wasn't any feud, but you started
a feud and now there's a few, you know, so
to create that anger. If that's what's happening in our
political world too, it's just like every little thing. Well,
what do you did? You see what he said about this?
That's what twitter is. You take this comment, comment on
the comments, someone comments on your comment, on the comment,
They comment on that comment, and they get angry, they
(35:52):
get out. But when you realize you don't need that
to breathe, You don't need that to get up in
the morning, you don't need that in your life. Um,
if if people can just get back to that, uh
and start to emphasize those things that Morey said and
other people said before him about what's really critical in life,
you know, And and a sense of community, as Mr
(36:13):
Brooks may have said, and Maury said said to me,
and he was a big one who taught it to me,
you know, sense of being involved in your community, sense
of being needed, a sense of helping people who need help.
If you want to get out of your own sense
of misery or anger. Just go find somebody who has
it worse. And it's not hard to do. And that's
what I meant when I said, you go to Haiti
(36:35):
every month. It's the second poorest country in the world.
You can be You can get there an hour and
a half from Miami. I mean, it's not like you're
flying to the African continent. You know, it's right here.
And you land there and you see, you know, people
people literally dying because forget about COVID. They don't even
know they have COVID that they can't you know, Uh
(36:57):
Chica who I wrote the last book about a little
girl of what we adopted from Haiti. Her mother died
giving birth to her baby brother because there was no
doctor president and she had to do it herself, and
she started to bleed and something happening. She was in
a hospital. She never would have died, We never would
have gotten, would have adopted. All those things never would
have happened. So you realize how lives are changing on
(37:18):
just on just geography and and faith and where people
happen to be. And you the minute I get there,
there's always something that needs to be done, and always
somebody that needs some help, and always some kids we
need to take care of, and others something, and you know,
it goes like that and the time flies. And I
always say to my wife, I said, we we sleep
(37:39):
down there on his old mattress that's maybe this thick
on a bed frame that is made out of you know,
wobbly would in a hundred degree heat. And I always
sleep better there than I do anywhere else, including my
beautiful home that I have here in America that I'm
blessed to have. And I've asked there, so, why do
you think that is? You know? And she says, because
(38:01):
you was sent to purpose here, you know. And you
you sleep because you know at the end of the
day that you did something that was important and needed.
And I think a lot of times we go to
bed in America just feeling like we just argued a
lot but didn't necessarily make anybody else's life any different.
And I'm blessed to have found this outlet because it
(38:23):
helps keep me. I believe it helps keep me on
a much more even keel. Well, what advice would you give?
I mean, it's so inspiring, and what would you say
to people who say, yeah, I I want to find
a deeper purpose. I want to help someone who's less fortunate,
but they might not know how to start or where
to go or what they're calling would be. You know,
(38:46):
mine became cancer because I lost my husband, as you know, Mitch,
about twenty two years ago in January. And um, so
you know what would you say to people in terms
of finding something that that that that's bigger than themselves.
(39:08):
It's right around the corner. You do not have to
go very far in this country or anywhere else to
find it. You certainly don't have to get on a
plane and fly to ay you to do it. There
are there are if you're young, there are nursing homes.
This is all after COVID. Well, of course this is
discussion is post COVID. But one of the fastest things
you could do is there are nursing homes or places
(39:30):
for the elderly that would just love to have someone
come and visit and sit and talk. Play piano if
you know how to play piano, read a story if
you're a good reader. I mean, the simplest little thing.
There you go there around every corner of where everybody lives.
You know, there are so many young people who need
mentors and who would just thrill at the idea of
(39:54):
having someone take them to lunch and take them to
a movie once a week, or go play ball with
them or whatever I mean. And they're not hard to find.
It's it's really as someone here, you know, I oberate
a lot of charities here in Detroit. I meet people
all the time who tell me exactly what you just said,
like to get involved. I said, here's my number or
here's the email. Just we'll get you involved. And there's
(40:14):
a thousand things that you can choose from. It's not
that hard to give of yourself in this country. In fact,
God bless this country for being so charitable. There are
other places in the world that people hold up as
great countries, and they are great countries, are beautiful and
all the rest of it, but they don't have this
charitable sense that we do in America. This idea that
giving a charity, getting involved, volunteering, all the rest of
(40:37):
that stuff. It's it's it's uh. I don't want to
say it's uniquely American. It's very American. And and there
are so many organizations, so many charities set up to
who want your help. Uh, you know, and I feel
like saying that you go. We'll tell everybody you talk
to has that problem that they can call me. But
I'm afraid you have a big audience. I might never
get up, but you know, they can call it. Certainly
(40:59):
check in with their lowal agencies. There's many many places
need volunteers. That's true. Well, and closing, Mitch, since it's
the anniversary of of Maury's death, maybe we should end
on on how he changed your life and how he
made your life better and richer, and what you can
(41:22):
share from Maury that may do the same for people
listening to this. So one time I watched a bunch
of people come and visit Maury um on the day
that I was there, and they all followed this same pattern.
They had seen him on TV with Ted Copple and
(41:42):
all that, and they weren't really great friends, but they
hadn't known him a little bit. They wanted to come
talk to them and and but they were kind of
nervous about how to talk to a dying person. So
they had like a strategy. They had photos and stuff,
and they were all set to cheer him up, you know.
And I would watch one at a time. They would
I went to Maury's office, the door would close, spent
(42:03):
an hour to come out an hour later in tears.
But they would be crying about their love life, their divorced,
their work. There's something all about them. And they said, well,
I don't know what happened. I went in and tried
to cheer him up. But after about five minutes, he
started talking to me and started asking me questions about
my life, and so I started talking. They started to
asking me more questions. I started really talking. Next thing
I know, I was crying. Whatever. I wanted to try
(42:24):
to cheer him up, and he ended up cheering me up.
So I watched this happen Katie so many times, and
finally I went into him. I said, I don't get it.
You're the one who's dying from Blue Gary's disease. You
know you've hit the motherload of sympathy here. Why don't
you just say, let's not talk about your problem, let's
talk about my problem. And he looked at me as
(42:45):
if I had stepped off of a spaceship, and he said, Mitch,
why would I ever take from people like that? Taking
just makes me feel like I'm dying giving makes me
feel like I'm living. And I've never gotten that sentence.
It's profound, it's short, it rhymes, so it's easy to remember.
(43:05):
Giving makes me feel like I'm living. But it's so true.
And I have found when I was seeing him, when
I first went to go see him, I was all
about my career, my ambition, my success. I don't think
I was a jerk necessarily, but I certainly wasn't concerned
about other people. I was concerned about how fast can
I get ahead? Um. The years that have passed since,
(43:27):
particularly since Tuesdays with more of the book came out
and people started talking to me about that and knowing
me more for that than anything else that I did,
UM have been so much more satisfying and and so
much more about, you know, and my involvement now. I mean,
my life is six charitble stuff and and I couldn't
(43:49):
be busier. But I'm so much more um satisfied then
when I was just trying to shovel coal into my
own furnace, you know. And and so I would say
that that whole notion of giving is living has really
proven to be true, you know, And uh Um, I
thank him for that because it's uh, it's guided my life,
(44:13):
you know, to the point, you know, it's what ended
up bringing me to Haiti and ended up you know,
I have fifty two children I raised there now and
and I never had any of that without that change
in perspective. And it's never too late to change that perspective,
you know. I mean, my wife and I became parents
when we were in our late fifties to this little
(44:34):
girl from Haiti who had a brain tumor. But we
brought up thinking we'll get her operated on and we'll
bring her right back to Haiti and she'll be fine,
And she never went home, you know, and she ended
up living with us for two years while we travel
around the world trying to find a cure. And even
though ultimately, you know, we were not successful, and she
died when she was seven. But those two years that
(44:57):
we had changed our lives, you know, forever, forever, and
we didn't lose a child. We were giving one, you know,
and it was an amazing blessing. And it never would
have happened if if I hadn't been following Morey's suggestion
of you know, giving is what makes you feel alive.
And she certainly did us, so I think, and I'm
(45:19):
not unique in any way, and I'm not special in
any way. All these things anybody can do, anybody can
have happened, just you want to change your perspectives. All
thanks again to Miss Album. His most recent book is
called Finding Chica, a Little Girl, an Earthquake and the
(45:39):
Making of a Family. And a big thank you to
Neil Rothschild and his Turnout analysis at Axios. Be sure
to follow me on social media and go to Katie
currect dot com to subscribe to my morning newsletter called
wake Up Call. You'll get a little bit of Katie
(46:00):
free morning in your inbox and look could be better
than that. Turnout is a production of I Heartmedia and
Katie Currik Media. The executive producers are Katie Curic and
Courtney Littz. Supervising producers Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements,
Eliza Costas and Emily Pento. Editing by Derrick Clements and
(46:21):
Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrick Clements. Our researcher is Gabriel
Loser and special thanks to my right hand woman Adriana Fasio. Meanwhile, yes,
I'm Katie Curic. Thanks so much for listening. Everyone, we'll
see you next time.
I'm Katie Couric, and this is turnout. As you have
no doubt heard, the election welcomed historic turnout, But what
does that turnout mean and who actually turned out? Data
journalists are starting to comb through the numbers. I'm Neil Rothchild.
I'm the director of Audience for Axios and I also
(00:23):
cover politics from the data lens, and I wrote an
article about how to explain what happened in the election.
Typically post election analysis like this is done mostly with
exit polling, but of course was no typical year because
so many people voted early this year. Well, exit polling
(00:44):
is no longer such a reliable way to you know,
get at this and as we saw also with kind
of the way polling performed as a predictor of this election,
like polling is taking a big hit and reputation anyway,
So forget exit polls this year. To get a picture
of who turned out, data journalists like Neil can look
(01:06):
county by county and compare the tallied votes with available
demographic information. All of the results. We're looking at our
official election results, uh that are coming through each state,
but you can divide them up by each county because
each state reports their counties that feed into the state
(01:27):
level total, which will help to allocate electoral votes. So
by looking at that state voting total and then diving
into the demographic area, So this is a heavily Latino community,
this is a suburban area, so you can start to
get a sense of Okay, so this suburb swung toward
Biden by twelve points compared to That allows you to
(01:51):
start to really like learn about what the key demographic
trends were for the election. What did the voting results
say in these key counties, What did the votes say,
and for those areas, what changed in compared to what
areas moved further left, which areas moved for the right.
(02:13):
Even if in both cases they went Trump or both
went Biden, those differences of within twenty or thirty points,
even for an area that went for Clinton and Biden,
can be really telling for the key shifts that are
undergirding America's like political preferences. When comparing voting data from
(02:34):
two thousand sixteen to Neil identified for trends that help
explain the results. So the first point is that suburbs
have undergone a fundamental shift in favor of Democrats and
away from Trump. It remains to be seen whether this
is a lasting trend for Republicans or whether this is
(02:55):
just a very Trump phenomenon that people in the suburbs
are kind of turned off by his behavior and his rhetoric.
The second point is that the blue areas have gotten
even more blue, and the red areas have really dug
in for Trump. So we're not seeing a lot of
cases where some urban areas have shifted towards Trump and
(03:17):
some rural areas have shifted towards Biden. Each of those
have really become even more entrenched in their politics. I
really think it is kind of a trust in institutions.
And for those in the cities and around the cities,
a lot of them work for big employers and rely
on kind of institutions like government and media and big
(03:41):
business for both their livelihoods and kind of how they
understand reliable information. While those in rural areas become less
dependent on those companies and on those institutions and might
be more kind of self sustaining and reject being told
what to think or how to think. And so for
(04:03):
them Trump more represents, you know, this idea that opposing
what everyone else kind of just takes for truth and
assumes to be the case. He really is galvanized that
support across the country. Number three is that the white
working class vote in the Midwest did not deliver for Biden,
(04:26):
which is funny because that was his appeal in the
Democratic primary. The American middle class brings dignity and security
every day to work. They deserve the dignity and jegutor
restructed in their leaders kind of why you would vote
for him instead of Bernie or a Warren who might
have more kind of educated and progressive appeal, but might
(04:47):
not be able to get those working class voters in
the states that Clinton lost in, which was Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin. And then the last point that how to
complicate things a bit, is that Latino support for Trump
grew in a number of key regions. Cuban support for
(05:08):
Trump in Miami Dade County got a lot of the
attention on election night, but it was not, you know,
unique to just that area where there was trends towards Trump.
In the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, a number of
those counties had like double digit, twenty plus point shifts
towards Trump compared to what Clinton saw in. Neil says,
(05:31):
there are a few surprises about this election that are
worth noting. Trump has gotten more minority support than Republican
candidates for president in a couple of decades, So he
ended up, you know, being able to tap into something
that I don't think either party was really expecting to
be the case. And you know, there could be a
(05:54):
few factors that worked into this, like maybe the Trump
campaign on the ground operation was just able to knock
on doors in these areas that the Biden campaign, you know,
figured that could be done remotely. Maybe it's just a
high turnout election and some of that, you know, Latin
America Catholic tradition ended up resulting in support for the
(06:16):
Christian religious right for Republicans. That is also something that
people didn't see coming. Trump's rhetoric made it seem like
a gimme that Democrats would get the vast majority and
make even bigger gains in support for voters of color,
when that's actually the opposite of what we saw. As
(06:39):
the parties do their own election post mortems, Neal points
to a few key lessons. I think one area for
soul searching for Democrats is how Hispanic support for Trump
has grown, and it's not just the Hispanic vote, but
even the Black vote has turned towards Trump in a
(06:59):
numb ber of cities, not enough that it became like
a hugely meaningful election trend, but even in cities like
Philadelphia or Chicago, if Hillary want it by eight five
points over Trump in Biden, one handful of those by
only eighty points this year. So of course it's nowhere
(07:20):
close to being able to say Philadelphia or Chicago went red.
But it's these small shifts that hint at where Trump
might be able to corral more support. So for Democrats
who have you know, grown to assume that they would
always have kind of the support of the base of
people of color in this country might make them, you know,
(07:42):
reckon with well, there's more to be done and more
that we need to prove to show that we should
earn these votes. Republicans might see out of this that
they can't rely on forever having to depend on white
working class voters outside of cities, because that demographic is shrinking.
(08:03):
It's poorer than the rest of the country in population,
it's shrinking, incomes are getting smaller. So this coalition might
have delivered for Trump in but it's not a long
term strategy, and they need to do more to you know,
grab that working class support and earn it in cities
(08:24):
and suburbs. So it can't just be about kind of
these rural areas. You really need to make in roads
where the population centers are as for the rest of us.
The real takeaway is that proved we are more partisan
than ever. We've become even more polarized and even more divided,
(08:45):
particularly by our geography, where if you're in cities and
around cities, you believe one thing and trust a certain
set of facts and assumptions, Whereas if you're outside of
that and you live in rural areas, if you live
in the country, you not only don't embrace it, but
you outright reject it. And that, you know, has shown
(09:06):
to be a huge groundswell of support for Trump. When
we come back how to mend those divisions. An interview
with author Mitch Album. Mitch Album is a journalist and
a best selling author. He wrote Tuesdays with Marie, perhaps
(09:28):
his most famous book, along with many others. He's a
really compassionate thinker and writer. So I thought it would
be interesting to hear his perspective on how divided we are,
the role of the media may be playing, and how
we can move forward. First and foremost, let's talk about
(09:49):
the election. What a wild ride. Had you ever seen
anything like this, Mitch in your life experience before? No,
I mean a close. This thing was probably the last one,
you know, which I thought, well, won't get any wilder
than that. I think everything that's happening right now, Katie,
is in the shadow of a very weird time. I
(10:12):
think the whole summer that we went through. I think
all the dividedness that's happened in the country. You know,
none of us, at least unless you're over a hundred
years old, have faced the pandemic and what it does
to your psyche, what it does to your frame of mind,
what it does to your sense of community or lack
of sense of community, how scared it makes you. And
(10:34):
I think all of those things are behind all the
craziness that's going on in so you know, the sports
term is a mulligan. You know, you get a mulligan
on a golf course for a year for a first
shot that just was errant. And we may need a
mulligan for this year because it was errant in its
own way. And I don't know about you, Mitch, I
guess in nineteen, I'm not sure how old you were.
(10:57):
I was eleven, and I guess that's the closest thing
to compare what we're going through now in terms of
how divided and how passionate and how intense the division felt.
You know, the country being divided isn't new. I think
(11:18):
the anger that comes with the division is fairly new.
And I think that, uh, you know, they've always been
Republicans and Democrats, have always been liberals and conservatives, but
they haven't uh felt like the other one needs to
be wiped out the way it's sort of feels like now.
And I think that vitriol and that anger can be
(11:40):
directly tied to social media and to media in general.
And they didn't have that that. I remember. I was alive,
and I remember we didn't have cell phones or iPhones
or social media accounts. We had, but we had baseball
cards in our in the spokes of our bicycles. You know,
That's how I tech we were. In an essay you
(12:02):
wrote recently, which I think got a lot of attention, Mitch,
you said hopes for a national reconciliation may be threatened
by new battle lines. So what did you mean exactly
by that? Well, I didn't. I think that was the
headline for it. But what I wrote was, it won't
it won't really matter what we do on Tuesday if
we don't change what we do on Wednesday and Thursday
(12:24):
and Friday. And sadly it turned out to be prophetic
because Wednesday and Thursday and Friday were worse than Monday,
you know, uh in this particular case, because everybody was
still fighting over the results, and they still are as
we're as we're recording this um. So you know, my
point was that vitriol and divisiveness they don't come to
(12:48):
a head on one day of every four years. They
take a lot longer than that to build up, and
they take a lot longer than that to bring down.
And if anybody thought that there would be an election
and then oh good, we'll all just get along with
one another, they really weren't paying very much attention to
how we became divided in the first place. It wasn't
just over an election, and it was over a lot
(13:10):
more than that. So an election didn't election didn't create it.
An election wasn't likely to solve it. Um. But my
hope in that piece that you cited was that, you know,
we tried to understand that we're a lot more like
than different. Um. But I've been saying that for a
long time and writing that for a long time. And
(13:31):
Maury said it to me when I wrote Tuesdays with Mari.
You know, it's probably the first time I heard it
verbalize that way. And what did he say again, exactly Mitch,
He said, we're all more alike than different. That you know,
everybody thinks they're gonna die. Everybody knows they're going to die,
but nobody believes it. And he said, when you actually
believe it, when you start to realize he had to
(13:54):
because he was dying from Lew Garret's disease and was
really facing his own mortality. He's once you realize you're
actually going to die, you're human after all. You feel
a kinship with everybody else in the world who's suffering.
I remember once I watched him, we were we flipped
on the news. We almost never watched any television together,
(14:15):
but we click on the news. In Bosnia, there was
something going on at the time Bosnia, and they had
some footage it was very you know, violent, and he
started crying and I said, why why are you crying?
He said, well, it's just so terrible. What's happening to
those people? I said, no, but you've never been there.
You remember been to Bosnia? You don't know anybody from Bosnia,
he said, Mitch, when you really realize you're dying, um,
(14:37):
you can you feel the suffering of everybody else in
the world who's suffering as well, and you realize you
we're all more alike than different. I mean, that was
the context in which he told me that, and I
never forgot that because you know, here he was watching
something that we all watched, just passionately, and like, well,
I'm glad it's not here. And then we moved on
what what was different about him? Well, it was because
(15:00):
in his brain he had accepted the fact, you know,
he really was a human being with all the ending
that all human beings are going to face. And we
don't really walk through life accepting that until suddenly we
get hit with the doctor's diagnosis, or or we're in
a hospital all of a sudden and we'll get COVID.
Uh and so um, that's the context that he said.
(15:23):
It's very, very true. The problem, Katie is we have
to wait until we have a death sentence, you know,
our terminal illness, in order to recognize that we share humanity.
But unfortunately it usually takes something like that to shake
us loops. Let's talk about the role of the media,
because you were very critical of the media and your essay,
(15:44):
and honestly, Mitch, I'm very confused about how I feel
about this, so maybe you can help me be my therapist.
But you and I have been in the media for
a long time. Yes, it's changed dramatically, but where do
you think the media has on you know, where did
it go wrong in terms of its complicity in aiding
(16:09):
and abetting the divisiveness. Well, I mean, you and I
probably started in the journalism business around the same time.
And I remember going to you know, I went to
Columbia Journalism School. I got my masters there and I
remember the opening speech that the first day of school,
Osborne Elliott, who I think at the time of the
(16:29):
editor of Newsweek. Um, he made a speech and he
talked about, well, what this business of journalism is all about?
And it was all about having a fire in the
belly to try to get to the truth of things
and and all that, and and you know, to tell
the stories that needed to be told. None of it
had to do with bringing down people, belittling people, taking
(16:51):
a side. None of that was ever spoken about. I mean,
if anything was the other way around, it was you know,
be invisible, you know, bringing the new news and not you,
not your views. You know, that's not the way what
we what we call cable news today. Um. And I'm
not taking sides on any of it. I mean you
can find you know, pretty much all across the board, uh,
(17:13):
different degrees of it. But it's not really news in
the sense that you and I when we started in
the business commentary it's commentary, right, dis guy says, well,
here's here's the factual thing that happened. Let me tell
you my opinion about it. Here's the factual thing that happened.
Here's what's wrong with it, here's the factual thing that happened.
Here's why these people are doing what these people are doing.
And so how we got from where we were when
(17:37):
you and I were starting this to now, you know,
you could point to a lot of things. It's a
long discussion. But somewhere along the line, news started making money.
You know this very well, you know, and the news
division started to be places where you could see a profit.
Was before it was almost like something they did just
for the social good. You know, they made every television
made its money on their on the lastie programs, and
(17:58):
they put the news up. You know, it's okay, we
have to do the news. But when the news started
to become profit, uh, you know, people started taking different
directions and it has grown. And you don't need me
to rehash how Fox News is going one direction, MSNBC
another direction, CNN in another direction. Well, I think also
I'm just going to add, as as the landscape became
more fragmented, I think outlets became more niche. So if
(18:24):
they wanted to get an audience that was loyal to
whatever they were delivering, uh, it wasn't interesting enough or
enraging enough, because Kara Swisher calls it engagement through enragement
that people would want to see stuff that was conflict
free or that was just the facts, ma'am. And so
(18:48):
as a result, I think it was more profitable to
get to to give people. I've said this a million
times but it's so fitting affirmation instead of information to
get them riled up emotionally, and so I think that's
one of the reasons we've seen this bifurcated media landscape
(19:10):
bubble up and explode if you will, in the last
four years. That's right. I mean, it seems kind of crazy,
and I'm I'm you know, I I try because I
still write for a newspaper, even though I'm not primarily
do books and movies and charities and stuff like that,
but I still write a newspaper column. Therefore, I'm obligated
to stay informed. And I watch all three of the
(19:32):
cable networks when I when I sit down and watch,
I will always flip back and forth because I want
to see not only the information, but I want to
see how people are playing the information, what is it.
And it's gotten to the point where it's like reporting
on different planets. You will see a totally different broadcast
on one cable news network, then you will see on
the other, not the same stories, not the same footage.
(19:54):
Forget about the commentary. The information isn't the same. So
even what people are choosing to bring forward and choosing
to suppress is different on every single channel. Now that
shouldn't be If you've got national news, chances are of
the news of the day should be the same on
each one. If you're really just talking about the news,
(20:16):
here's the important things that happened, it's not. I mean,
you literally can watch at half hour of one program
and not see anything closely related to the other. So
I think that's where it begins. Then there's a problem
with the I think the geography of the country, and
I mentioned that, um in the piece that you referenced.
(20:36):
I live here in Detroit, in Michigan, I have for
many years, um for over three decades now, so I
consider this my home. But I was raised in the
East and I you know, I grew up in Philadelphia,
went to college in Boston. I lived in New York
and Florida, so I know East Coast, and I worked
for some publications on the East Coast. Is when I
have a lot of friends who are still there, back
(20:58):
in the big cities and on the last s Angels
Coast as well. And I think somewhere along the line,
we really got separated in our viewpoint of what this
country is and what the values are by where we
live and the media that we are subject to in
those areas. So I can tell you, living out here
in the Midwest, I have many conversations with my friends
(21:21):
in the East, and they just don't get it, you know,
they just don't. They think they think people out here
are nuts, you know, or how could they or how
could they this? Or how can they that? And now
those are my friends. The people who are in the media,
some have started to take that to another level where
it's like they're too stupid to know what's good for them,
(21:43):
and so we need to tell them what's good for them.
That should never be a journalist position. I don't care
what publication you work for. You should never look down
on people who redo or follow you or somehow say well,
they're hopeless. I'm just going to tell them what they
and somewhere and that works for both sides, both sides.
And somewhere along the line we got into that business
(22:06):
of you know, we're smarter than the people who are
consuming our news, and that I think was it was
that day. I guess I buy everything you're saying, Mitch
and agree with you wholeheartedly, except I feel like it's
very hard to have this conversation when you have a
(22:27):
president like Donald J. Trump, and let's talk about that,
because when you have someone who is not truthful, who
behaves in a way that's, let's just put it out there,
morally repugnant, right, making fun of handicapped people, grabbing women
by the you know, what's um, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But
(22:51):
how do you point out when someone is, you know,
the the leader of the free world and is is
trading in mistruth and misinformation? Go, well, I mean, you know,
as I told you before we started this, I'm not
a political writer. I'm not you know, and I don't.
(23:14):
But I think that's what I struggle with, and that's
what I wrestle with. Yeah, well, I'm not well versed
enough or knowledgeable enough to evaluate the presidency or how
you cover the president because it's not what I do.
But you're you're you're well informed, Mitch. You you watched
the news. Yeah, but but but I don't. I'm not
(23:35):
in the position of having to say, well, how do
you how do you deal with the question that you
asked me? You know, how do you deal with a
person who lies or a person who does the repugnant
things as you refer to them, whatever, how do you
cover them? Fortunately, that's not my job. I don't have
to do it. But what I can say to that is,
I think there's a difference between how you cover a
(23:55):
president and how you cover people who may have voted
for the president. And that to me, when I wrote
that piece, that was that was the point that I
was sort of making. I think all presidents are fair
game for criticism. When Joe Biden takes over and becomes
a president after the honeymoon period that always goes on
with a new president, he'll be aptlete criticized, I'm sure,
(24:18):
no matter whether he does the greatest job in the
world or not. That's what we do in America. We
criticized the president. The Americans criticized the president, you know,
they criticized Barack Obama, that criticized George Bush. It's not
going to change, but when and that goes with the job.
And I think every president would tell you that goes. Yeah.
You don't find any president who loves the press. No, No,
(24:39):
I've never seen one that I can't wait to have
a press conference, you know. Uh so, But I think
what happened here, particularly as as we approach the election
is that the criticism spilled over into the people who
voted for Donald Trump. I think that that began with
the Hillary Clinton made that regrettable comment about you know,
(25:01):
basket of deplorable. I can tell you that living here
in Michigan, many people uh here in the state of
Michigan took that person. And if you remember, the state
of Michigan ended up going for Donald Trump barely in
two thousand and sixteen, after everybody just presumed that Hillary
Clinton would would win it. You can't say those kinds
(25:22):
of things. And I'm not picking on Hillary Clinton. That
was one sentence said by one person, but I'm using
that as a as a as an example. If you
have that sort of add in your writing and your reporting,
in your commentary, you are going to alienate a good
portion of the country. And that that I can speak
to because I don't believe you get to put down
(25:44):
half of the country, whichever half it may be, simply
because you have a position as a journalist. Your role
as a journalist is to understand both halves of the
country and understand how they come together as a whole.
And you may personally inc they're not as smart as
you or or and and by the way, this does
not just go east to midwest. This goes midwest to east,
(26:07):
or midwest and west to There are plenty of people
who write who feel that, you know, they call liberals
with a with a quotation mark and far left and
all the rest of them. They look down on them
as you know, trying to take down the country coastal,
even coastal elites as a pejorative. Yes, coastal elites is
as much of pejorative as a basket of deplorables. It's
(26:29):
all bad. You don't divide the country up like that.
And I think that's the new element that has happened
in our journalism. We were already heading in this direction
of you know, left and right, but now the audience,
the audience has been attacked. Uh, the voters have been attacked,
(26:50):
and there's this there's a sense of like you can
talk about Trump voters as if they're all the same,
and you know, I know many Trump voters. I live
in the Midwest, and I can tell you they're not
all the same, you know. And I can certainly tell
you they're not all racist or homophobic. I can tell
you that the people that I've met who voted for Trump,
(27:11):
many of them don't like him, you know. Uh. And
they don't like him as a person. They don't like
the things that you pointed out about him. Um, But
for whatever reason, they felt that they couldn't vote for
the other party, you know. And and you shouldn't assume
that everybody who votes for somebody has the characteristics of
the person they voted for. I don't think everybody who
(27:34):
voted for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is the factor
Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. A lot of people just
voted because they wanted a change. They don't want Donald
Trump in there anymore. So this is this is where
I have been critical, and you know, in one piece.
I mean, it's not like what I do for a living,
but you know, I just felt that we owe it
(27:55):
to our humanity and we owe it to our citizenship
and sense of citizenship, not to demean the people who
vote for a politician, but to try to understand them
and understand the things that are behind it. Politicians are
fair game, presidents are fair game. But regular voters and
citizens should be treated with respect by the media, and
(28:18):
I think sometimes we fall down them a few more
thoughts from Mitch album and Maury right after this. What
(28:39):
do you think is the way out of this, this
very difficult time in our history? You know, I interviewed
David Brooks and he talked about our tribal mentality, which
is in a news flash, but I thought he he
phrased it in an interesting way. He talked about the
fact that our political party has become our ethnicity and
(29:04):
it is so wrapped up in our identity. You know,
politics used to be something you kind of did on
the side right, that would come up during important elections,
but it wasn't so defining as it is today. So
how do you break those chains and how do you
kind of step out of this is who I am
(29:26):
and if you say anything that's different, it's almost a
primal threat to my survival. Yeah, well, first of all,
I have a couple of answers to that. First of all,
I don't think we're as defined by our politics as
the people who write about politics think we are defined
by our politics. This is part of the problem. Everything
is seen through the prism of where the people who
(29:49):
are commenting on it uh tend to work. I mean,
the same people who are pondering this issue. Are the
people who are covering this issue and writing about this issue.
Whereas I can tell you that when of the elections over, Okay,
this one's stretching out because of the controversy over the
account of the votes, but whenever it comes to an end,
and a few people around here outside my window here
(30:10):
in Michigan, they're not spending every minute talking about politics
or what political party they're associated with, or what tribe
they're associated with. These are things that the media makes
up and and and determines. So right off the bat,
you know, one of the great things for me, Katie,
by leaving the East Coast and coming in the West
was learning that the world doesn't begin an end like
that famous New York cartoon. Oh first that second Avenue,
(30:33):
First Avenue, California. You know, Uh, there's us whole middle
where people just go about their lives and they really aren't.
They aren't debating about to just see to just read
that piece in the Times this morning. It's not a
sentence out here, and and it's not It doesn't it's
not what motivates people. So one the first step is
to recognize that not everybody to find themselves by the politics.
(30:54):
I think people do define themselves in America today by something,
and I think we're very identity or oriented. And the
for me, the cure for that, which is the second
part of my answer to your question of three parts um,
is to put yourself in a situation where this isn't
an obsession. So I'm very blessed. I think you know
(31:15):
that I I operate an orphanage in Haiti, and I've
been there for the last eleven years, and i go
every single month of my life, and I'm there, you know,
up to a week, sometimes two weeks of every month.
There is no worry about which political party you're in
in Haiti. It's where am I going to eat and
where i'm i'm how am I gonna get food? And
(31:35):
how am I gonna get clean water? And how and
how am I going to take care of this child
that I don't have any money for it? That's it.
And when you deal go to places and you don't
have to go as far as Haiti, you can do
it right here in America. There are many many places
in America where you go where you say, okay, are
our concerns right now are much more basic food, education safety.
(31:57):
You quickly realize the argument over who's gonna who's gonna
be the new Defense secretary really doesn't change your your
daily existence. And number three, you gotta you gotta take
these these devices and and and just say I'm gonna
give myself a limit, and then that's it. Don't dive.
(32:18):
You know, people somehow think that they're getting perspective by
diving deeper into social media, when actually they're narrowing their
perspective as they dive deeper into social media because you're
just staying on that and they're just adding another person
to follow on Twitter, you know, trying to get more
(32:38):
people on Facebook. That is not broadening your perspective, even
though you're you feel you're growing because look how many
followers I got to, Look how many people I follow.
You're not growing, You're shrinking. You're shrinking because your perspective
is shrinking and you're not going outside that little device
to see the world and to see real people. And
so the only way it's going to change is if
(33:00):
people really start taking to this like they did to smoking.
You know, we we actually finally turned a corner on
smoking after decades or people said, well, I can't. It's addicting.
I can't do anything about it. But eventually enough people died,
and enough and enough facts came out, and people said,
you know what, maybe I should stop smoking. You know,
maybe my kids shouldn't start smoking. And and maybe there'll
(33:20):
be a moment with social media where we'll kind of
realize the damage it's doing to us and actually start
to pull back from it. When that happens, then maybe
you see the temperature turned down a little bit on
this national divide. I go back to my visits with
Morey again. I was, you know, again, that's twenty five
(33:41):
years ago now died twenty five years ago. Last week
that was the anniversary of his death, And so it's
twenty five years ago that I was sitting beside him
as he was dying and asking a lot of these
similar questions in my own, you know, little youthful version
of myself. Uh uh. And you know one of the
things he said about anger was that, and you know,
(34:04):
at the time, I remember asking him about anger too.
There were angry shock jocks and angry you know, I
think Rush Limbaugh was kind of getting started and getting big,
and there's a lot of anger going on in the
and the the O. J. Simpson trial was going you know,
that case was going on, and right in ninety it
happened while I was there. So there's plenty of divisiveness
in the country back then. You know, we didn't invent
(34:25):
it in two thousand and and I asked him about
you know, all this anger and that Mitch, that reflects
unsatisfied lives. You know, lives that that are are that
that don't have in them, the the essences to feel
like you have contentment, and he mentioned, you know, the love, community, family,
(34:49):
feeling needed. All of those things were antidotes to this
anger when all you have is your little world of
you know, this one said this one, and this one
said this one, and this this one. You know in
sports writing, which you know I that's how I began. Um.
There was this thing that they used to do in
New York all the time. Uh. They would go to
(35:11):
a manager and they would ask him about you know,
like what do you what do you think of the
other manager? And you know, they keep pressing until they
got some comment, and then they run over to the
other manager and they'd say, he just said this about you.
What do you think about that? You know, and and
he said that, while I said, and it's literally like stirring.
It's like alchemy. It's like creating anger out of nothing,
(35:31):
you know, because there wasn't any feud, but you started
a feud and now there's a few, you know, so
to create that anger. If that's what's happening in our
political world too, it's just like every little thing. Well,
what do you did? You see what he said about this?
That's what twitter is. You take this comment, comment on
the comments, someone comments on your comment, on the comment,
They comment on that comment, and they get angry, they
(35:52):
get out. But when you realize you don't need that
to breathe, You don't need that to get up in
the morning, you don't need that in your life. Um,
if if people can just get back to that, uh
and start to emphasize those things that Morey said and
other people said before him about what's really critical in life,
you know, And and a sense of community, as Mr
(36:13):
Brooks may have said, and Maury said said to me,
and he was a big one who taught it to me,
you know, sense of being involved in your community, sense
of being needed, a sense of helping people who need help.
If you want to get out of your own sense
of misery or anger. Just go find somebody who has
it worse. And it's not hard to do. And that's
what I meant when I said, you go to Haiti
(36:35):
every month. It's the second poorest country in the world.
You can be You can get there an hour and
a half from Miami. I mean, it's not like you're
flying to the African continent. You know, it's right here.
And you land there and you see, you know, people
people literally dying because forget about COVID. They don't even
know they have COVID that they can't you know, Uh
(36:57):
Chica who I wrote the last book about a little
girl of what we adopted from Haiti. Her mother died
giving birth to her baby brother because there was no
doctor president and she had to do it herself, and
she started to bleed and something happening. She was in
a hospital. She never would have died, We never would
have gotten, would have adopted. All those things never would
have happened. So you realize how lives are changing on
(37:18):
just on just geography and and faith and where people
happen to be. And you the minute I get there,
there's always something that needs to be done, and always
somebody that needs some help, and always some kids we
need to take care of, and others something, and you know,
it goes like that and the time flies. And I
always say to my wife, I said, we we sleep
(37:39):
down there on his old mattress that's maybe this thick
on a bed frame that is made out of you know,
wobbly would in a hundred degree heat. And I always
sleep better there than I do anywhere else, including my
beautiful home that I have here in America that I'm
blessed to have. And I've asked there, so, why do
you think that is? You know? And she says, because
(38:01):
you was sent to purpose here, you know. And you
you sleep because you know at the end of the
day that you did something that was important and needed.
And I think a lot of times we go to
bed in America just feeling like we just argued a
lot but didn't necessarily make anybody else's life any different.
And I'm blessed to have found this outlet because it
(38:23):
helps keep me. I believe it helps keep me on
a much more even keel. Well, what advice would you give?
I mean, it's so inspiring, and what would you say
to people who say, yeah, I I want to find
a deeper purpose. I want to help someone who's less fortunate,
but they might not know how to start or where
to go or what they're calling would be. You know,
(38:46):
mine became cancer because I lost my husband, as you know, Mitch,
about twenty two years ago in January. And um, so
you know what would you say to people in terms
of finding something that that that that's bigger than themselves.
(39:08):
It's right around the corner. You do not have to
go very far in this country or anywhere else to
find it. You certainly don't have to get on a
plane and fly to ay you to do it. There
are there are if you're young, there are nursing homes.
This is all after COVID. Well, of course this is
discussion is post COVID. But one of the fastest things
you could do is there are nursing homes or places
(39:30):
for the elderly that would just love to have someone
come and visit and sit and talk. Play piano if
you know how to play piano, read a story if
you're a good reader. I mean, the simplest little thing.
There you go there around every corner of where everybody lives.
You know, there are so many young people who need
mentors and who would just thrill at the idea of
(39:54):
having someone take them to lunch and take them to
a movie once a week, or go play ball with
them or whatever I mean. And they're not hard to find.
It's it's really as someone here, you know, I oberate
a lot of charities here in Detroit. I meet people
all the time who tell me exactly what you just said,
like to get involved. I said, here's my number or
here's the email. Just we'll get you involved. And there's
(40:14):
a thousand things that you can choose from. It's not
that hard to give of yourself in this country. In fact,
God bless this country for being so charitable. There are
other places in the world that people hold up as
great countries, and they are great countries, are beautiful and
all the rest of it, but they don't have this
charitable sense that we do in America. This idea that
giving a charity, getting involved, volunteering, all the rest of
(40:37):
that stuff. It's it's it's uh. I don't want to
say it's uniquely American. It's very American. And and there
are so many organizations, so many charities set up to
who want your help. Uh, you know, and I feel
like saying that you go. We'll tell everybody you talk
to has that problem that they can call me. But
I'm afraid you have a big audience. I might never
get up, but you know, they can call it. Certainly
(40:59):
check in with their lowal agencies. There's many many places
need volunteers. That's true. Well, and closing, Mitch, since it's
the anniversary of of Maury's death, maybe we should end
on on how he changed your life and how he
made your life better and richer, and what you can
(41:22):
share from Maury that may do the same for people
listening to this. So one time I watched a bunch
of people come and visit Maury um on the day
that I was there, and they all followed this same pattern.
They had seen him on TV with Ted Copple and
(41:42):
all that, and they weren't really great friends, but they
hadn't known him a little bit. They wanted to come
talk to them and and but they were kind of
nervous about how to talk to a dying person. So
they had like a strategy. They had photos and stuff,
and they were all set to cheer him up, you know.
And I would watch one at a time. They would
I went to Maury's office, the door would close, spent
(42:03):
an hour to come out an hour later in tears.
But they would be crying about their love life, their divorced,
their work. There's something all about them. And they said, well,
I don't know what happened. I went in and tried
to cheer him up. But after about five minutes, he
started talking to me and started asking me questions about
my life, and so I started talking. They started to
asking me more questions. I started really talking. Next thing
I know, I was crying. Whatever. I wanted to try
(42:24):
to cheer him up, and he ended up cheering me up.
So I watched this happen Katie so many times, and
finally I went into him. I said, I don't get it.
You're the one who's dying from Blue Gary's disease. You
know you've hit the motherload of sympathy here. Why don't
you just say, let's not talk about your problem, let's
talk about my problem. And he looked at me as
(42:45):
if I had stepped off of a spaceship, and he said, Mitch,
why would I ever take from people like that? Taking
just makes me feel like I'm dying giving makes me
feel like I'm living. And I've never gotten that sentence.
It's profound, it's short, it rhymes, so it's easy to remember.
(43:05):
Giving makes me feel like I'm living. But it's so true.
And I have found when I was seeing him, when
I first went to go see him, I was all
about my career, my ambition, my success. I don't think
I was a jerk necessarily, but I certainly wasn't concerned
about other people. I was concerned about how fast can
I get ahead? Um. The years that have passed since,
(43:27):
particularly since Tuesdays with more of the book came out
and people started talking to me about that and knowing
me more for that than anything else that I did,
UM have been so much more satisfying and and so
much more about, you know, and my involvement now. I mean,
my life is six charitble stuff and and I couldn't
(43:49):
be busier. But I'm so much more um satisfied then
when I was just trying to shovel coal into my
own furnace, you know. And and so I would say
that that whole notion of giving is living has really
proven to be true, you know, And uh Um, I
thank him for that because it's uh, it's guided my life,
(44:13):
you know, to the point, you know, it's what ended
up bringing me to Haiti and ended up you know,
I have fifty two children I raised there now and
and I never had any of that without that change
in perspective. And it's never too late to change that perspective,
you know. I mean, my wife and I became parents
when we were in our late fifties to this little
(44:34):
girl from Haiti who had a brain tumor. But we
brought up thinking we'll get her operated on and we'll
bring her right back to Haiti and she'll be fine,
And she never went home, you know, and she ended
up living with us for two years while we travel
around the world trying to find a cure. And even
though ultimately, you know, we were not successful, and she
died when she was seven. But those two years that
(44:57):
we had changed our lives, you know, forever, forever, and
we didn't lose a child. We were giving one, you know,
and it was an amazing blessing. And it never would
have happened if if I hadn't been following Morey's suggestion
of you know, giving is what makes you feel alive.
And she certainly did us, so I think, and I'm
(45:19):
not unique in any way, and I'm not special in
any way. All these things anybody can do, anybody can
have happened, just you want to change your perspectives. All
thanks again to Miss Album. His most recent book is
called Finding Chica, a Little Girl, an Earthquake and the
(45:39):
Making of a Family. And a big thank you to
Neil Rothschild and his Turnout analysis at Axios. Be sure
to follow me on social media and go to Katie
currect dot com to subscribe to my morning newsletter called
wake Up Call. You'll get a little bit of Katie
(46:00):
free morning in your inbox and look could be better
than that. Turnout is a production of I Heartmedia and
Katie Currik Media. The executive producers are Katie Curic and
Courtney Littz. Supervising producers Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements,
Eliza Costas and Emily Pento. Editing by Derrick Clements and
(46:21):
Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrick Clements. Our researcher is Gabriel
Loser and special thanks to my right hand woman Adriana Fasio. Meanwhile, yes,
I'm Katie Curic. Thanks so much for listening. Everyone, we'll
see you next time.
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