Dems say that the Russians hacked into our political system to help Donald Trump win. President Trump and associates blame former President Barack Obama for the interference. But the truth is, both sides have it wrong.
Filmmaker Alex Gibney, known for documentary films like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, has been immersed in the world of foreign hacking, troll farms, and most importantly, what happened in 2016 for his upcoming docuseries Agents of Chaos. And he knows the real reason that the Kremlin came after our democracy.
“It wasn't a ‘flip votes in order to give Trump the election’” kind of thing, he tells Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal. It actually was all about Hillary.
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“It's that kind of ruthless de-legitimizing of the rule of law and democracy that I think is ultimately the larger agenda here, both for Putin and for Trump,” he says.
Speaking of Trump and the 2020 election, Gibney says there are definitely a lot more “scary” disinfo campaigns to come—and they’re “more sophisticated.”
Is there anything we can do to fight it? Good news: Yes. Bad news: It’s on the Trump administration to take certain actions, and, well, yeah.
Then, actor Adam Scott joins the party (er, podcast) to talk about the just-announced Parks & Rec reunion in Wisconsin to support Democrats (Leslie Knope, 2024!) and why he is not gonna “stick to acting” despite ticking off the “shut-up-and-be-an-actor” Twitter trolls by supporting Joe Biden.
“I think I'm just looking for ways to help out without being too gross and annoying. It's tough, because I'm frightened. I think a lot of people are,” he says.
He also has a warning for voters: “Just something to keep our eye on is this false equivalence with Trump lying about the severity of the virus to the American public and covering up the truth and then trying to flip it onto Biden,” he says. “Like, ‘what was he doing?’ Well, he was not the president and he was doing what he could with the knowledge that he had.”
Plus! Rick and Molly give Adam the special honor of his very own Fuck That Guy pick.
And! The two discuss Roger Stone’s Civil War, QAnon’s own Jason Gelanis (who works for CITIGROUP!!) and whether Trump has secretly gotten a COVID vaccine.
