Trump Claims He Downplayed Coronavirus Threat To Avoid Panic; DHS Whistleblower Accuses Trump Administration Of Downplaying Russian Interference And White Supremacist Threat.
TEXT: LET'S GET AFTER IT.</s>CUOMO: Let's bring in Tom Friedman. The politics of humiliation, you should read his article about it. It is a very interesting and intelligent look at how powerful humiliation is, in pushing human behavior. And what is more humiliating than to learn that your President thought you were too weak and too stupid to give you the truth about the severity of a pandemic, such that he didn't even think you had the right or the ability to protect yourself and your family. If that isn't humiliating, I don't know what is! How do you think this plays into the dynamic that's going on in this election, which, you are dead-right, is about the politics of humiliation?</s>TOM FRIEDMAN, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUTHOR, "THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE": Well Chris, the argument I made in my column in "The New York Times," which I really wrote with my friend, Michael Sandel, who's written a book called "The Tyranny of Merit," which is about this question of political humiliation, really makes the point that Trump voters, from the beginning, I think, have actually not been paying that much attention to Trump. They actually hate the people who hate Trump more than they care about Trump.</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>FRIEDMAN: And they hate those people, liberals, progressive, elites, because they think they look down at them.</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>FRIEDMAN: And these are White working-class Americans for the most part, people without college degrees, at a time when we've kind of valorized college degrees, and made them really the badge for a dignified work and social esteem, and basically said to people who don't have college degrees, that your work, whether it's with your hands, or whatever else, doesn't quite measure up. And so, that has really produced a certain resentment among part of the population. And, as a result, they don't follow Trump for his policies. They follow him for his attitudes. And his biggest attitude that they follow him for is the way he sticks it to liberals, elites, and progressives, the very people they think look down at them.</s>CUOMO: Absolutely.</s>FRIEDMAN: And that's why, Chris--</s>CUOMO: You are exactly right. People don't get that. I hope they get it.</s>FRIEDMAN: Yes.</s>CUOMO: The concision on it is many of his supporters support Trump despite Trump, the person, because of his attitudes about the people, who they don't trust and who they think are trying to humiliate them. That's why that foppish fraud, over on Fox, tries to pretend he's anti-elite, when he's got four names, and a daddy who was gifted from being a fundraiser, and a wife, who's family's got all this money, and used to wear bowtie. Now he's anti-elite, because that is who they want people to be angry at. How does this play into that though, Tom? They now have proof on tape that he lied to them and thought it was OK for them to pay the price for his own political ambition?</s>FRIEDMAN: Well I was talking to a friend tonight, Chris. And we decided that the uber book on the Trump years, at least the uber book by journalists, should be called "Surely! Surely! This is the story that will bring him down." I'm afraid there is no story that will bring him down. Trump has Teflon, OK? He has the Teflon of these people, again, who are looking at him, and they're actually looking through him, and seeing him as a club, a stick they poke in the eye of the people they don't like. He has another kind of Teflon. There have been so many stories about his misbehavior. Trump's Teflon is mud. When you're covered in mud, and I throw more mud at you, nothing really sticks anymore. And so, I would suggest that because we - you've alluded to this. He's on Fox right now. That's a whole group of people not watching your show, not reading about this in the "Washington Post" and "The New York Times." We live in alternative information ecosystems. So, first of all, what outrages you is not even going to get to those people, because in the Fox ecosystem, or the Breitbart ecosystem, it's not going to be presented that way. And secondly, even if it did, they've made up their minds because humiliation is the single most powerful human emotion.</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>FRIEDMAN: And when you trigger that in people, it trumps everything.</s>CUOMO: And that's why White privilege is such a powerful tool against the Democrats. Because now, you're taking people who feel that they are struggling to get by, who are frustrated and failed by a process, who believe their kids are disadvantaged because everybody has got to check a diversity box now, and you're telling them that they're the privileged ones, and it is really dynamite to that group of White working people that are a paycheck and a half away from not having any money in the bank. What's the anti-dote?</s>FRIEDMAN: Well you know - one of my all-time favorite movie lines is from Jerry Maguire, where Renee Zellweger is Jerry Maguire's - the agent's assistant. She's sitting in the first seat in the economy, looking at someone getting dinner in first-class, and she says to her son, "You know, first-class, it used to be a better meal, now it's a better life." And so the income gaps that we've seen widen in this country between working-class people without college degrees and people with college degrees let alone senior executives that's also feeding into this. What's the antidote? Well I think one of the antidotes is I would love to see Joe Biden go into Trump Country, spend five days traveling through the countryside, sitting with people, listening to people. Yes, I'm a huge believer that listening is a sign of respect. What you say when you listen is so much more important than the words. Do I think he is, Joe Biden, with one trip into rural Minnesota, where I come from, or Michigan, or whatever, it's going to turn around the Trump base? No. But you know what the margins? When people do feel that you're respected - that they're respected, when they think you don't look on them as deplorables, that can make a difference, maybe the difference of just not voting, maybe just staying home. It may be the difference of a few at the margin, actually seeing in Biden. The guy, the working-class guy from Scranton is the real person they should trust.</s>CUOMO: Well this is the opportunity. Look, and forget - forget about Biden. I mean I think you're right. I think he should. I think he's got to get out there and get his message out, and show why he's better. Just saying "Trump stinks" isn't going to be enough because, as you said, they are not voting for him, because he's a good man. They're voting for him because--</s>FRIEDMAN: Yes, they--</s>CUOMO: --he is a virus, of his own, into the political corpus that will make it sick because they hate that political corpus. And they're hoping he either changes or dies and he's the virus for them. We get it. Some people don't get it. But we get it. They have to prove that they're an antidote that they're something better that they respect people, and this is their opportunity, because the President just said more than anyone I've ever read about, his own words, Tom, he admitted that he was lying to his own supporters about the safety of their families, because it was better for him. He knows it's not about--</s>FRIEDMAN: Well--</s>CUOMO: --causing panic. He's knows there's no better way to cause panic than by leaving people unprepared for a pandemic.</s>FRIEDMAN: Well one of the key pillars of leadership is, trusting people with the truth. And when you trust people with the truth, they tend to trust you back. So, I would just say two things, Chris. One, the President is saying, "I didn't want to get people worried and anxious." He just spent the last two weeks basically, trying to frighten White Americans--</s>CUOMO: Right, and not to vote.</s>FRIEDMAN: --that Black people are coming to take over their neighborhoods, OK?</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>FRIEDMAN: So, this is the guy who's trying to make the whole country terrified, when he wants to, and he thinks it serves his interest. We need to go back to the very beginning, Chris. I think this is the real criticism of Trump. From the very beginning of this pandemic, we needed a policy, a plan that maximally saved lives and livelihoods. We needed to do both. Just focus on saving livelihoods, many more people will die than should have. Focus just on saving lives and people will die deaths of despair from lost jobs many more people than should have. We needed a plan for both. And what Trump never gave us was that. So what he said was, "I stopped the Chinese flights from coming in."</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>FRIEDMAN: That's great. And then three weeks later, a month later, he told people in Michigan, Virginia and Minnesota to rise up against their governors for closing down their economies. So, Trump took lives and livelihoods and he put them at war with each other--</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>FRIEDMAN: --rather than synthesizing them into a single plan. And I believe that is what history should and will truly damn him for.</s>CUOMO: Tom Friedman, thank you very much, always a plus, stay healthy.</s>FRIEDMAN: Thanks.</s>CUOMO: Closed down China, late, after it went to Europe. And 40,000 more people from China got in here because of his exemptions. He doesn't want to cause panic? But he tells you that "The Black man's coming with his crazy White friends to take your homes, led by this animal named Cory Booker." He doesn't want to cause panic? "Your election is going to be rigged, can't vote by mail. Fraud!" He doesn't want to cause panic? Irrational fear, what are those things? That's your truth. Now, Tom Friedman has a best-selling book, "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations." Now, when I read the book, I was like, "I don't understand this title." What it does when you read it is it tells you about how to deal with the cycle of information and how things move in the society today, and how to feel your way through it, in all deliberate speed, as we used to say. Tom Friedman, he's the man! Let's take a break.</s>TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.