David Letterman on the Threats to Late-Night Hosts
01:50: (Donald Trump) I read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me.
01:55: (Donald Trump) I got 97 percent negative, and yet I won it easily.
01:59: (Donald Trump) I won all seven states, popular, but won everything.
02:03: (Donald Trump) And...
02:04: (Donald Trump) If they're 97% against, they give me only bad publicity or press.
02:11: (Donald Trump) I mean, they're getting a license.
02:13: (Donald Trump) I would think maybe their license should be taken away.
02:17: (Donald Trump) It will be up to Brendan Carr.
03:02: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Well, um...
03:04: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Just so you understand, so as you know, David Letterman was coming to do an interview here.
03:12: (Jeffrey Goldberg) But given the events of the last 18 hours or so, we asked him if he would come out a little bit early and talk to me about the events of the last night.
03:21: (Jeffrey Goldberg) So David Letterman is going to come out, and Ayad is going to switch places with him.
03:25: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you, Ayad.
03:30: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Ladies and gentlemen, David Letterman.
03:35: (David Letterman) How you doing?
03:36: (David Letterman) Nice to meet you.
03:37: (David Letterman) Thank you very much.
03:38: (David Letterman) Thank you.
03:40: (David Letterman) Thank you.
03:41: (David Letterman) Wait a minute.
03:42: (David Letterman) I was hoping there'd be a second wave.
03:43: (David Letterman) You're all right.
03:46: (David Letterman) Nice to see you.
03:47: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Yeah, yeah, thanks for doing this.
03:50: (David Letterman) I was gonna talk about the playwright in the age of AI.
03:53: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What the hell?
03:54: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Yeah, I know, I know.
03:55: (Jeffrey Goldberg) We totally flipped the script on you, I'm sorry.
03:58: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm just gonna stay out here for a few minutes and talk to you about it, and then you're gonna interview your guest.
04:04: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Yeah.
04:05: (Jeffrey Goldberg) But look,
04:07: (Jeffrey Goldberg) We saw what happened last night.
04:08: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It follows what happened to Colbert.
04:11: (Jeffrey Goldberg) You're the godfather of the genre.
04:15: (David Letterman) Yes, I am.
04:16: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Yeah.
04:17: (Jeffrey Goldberg) You're the godfather of the genre.
04:19: (Jeffrey Goldberg) The great-grandfather.
04:21: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I wasn't going there.
04:23: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Tell us what you think about what happened last night to Jimmy Kimmel.
04:29: (David Letterman) Well, this is misery.
04:31: (David Letterman) And in the world of somebody who is an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched.
04:39: (David Letterman) But this is me.
04:40: (David Letterman) For 30 years, I did this for a living.
04:43: (David Letterman) So I see this happen.
04:44: (David Letterman) They took care of Colbert.
04:46: (David Letterman) That was rude.
04:46: (David Letterman) That was inexcusable.
04:48: (David Letterman) The man deserves a great deal of credit.
04:50: (David Letterman) He's in the Hall of Fame nine times.
04:52: (David Letterman) And to be manipulated like that because the Ellison family didn't want to trouble Donald Trump with this move, so they got rid of him.
05:01: (David Letterman) Not only got rid of him, got rid of the whole franchise.
05:03: (David Letterman) You're not going to have to worry about anything, Larry.
05:05: (David Letterman) It's all gone.
05:07: (David Letterman) It's fine.
05:07: (David Letterman) Good night.
05:08: (David Letterman) And then my good friend Jimmy Kimmel.
05:10: (David Letterman) You know, I just...
05:12: (David Letterman) I feel bad about this because we all see where this is going, correct?
05:17: (David Letterman) It's managed media.
05:19: (David Letterman) And it's no good.
05:21: (David Letterman) It's silly.
05:21: (David Letterman) It's ridiculous.
05:23: (David Letterman) And you can't go around firing somebody because you're fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office.
05:35: (David Letterman) That's just not how this works.
05:44: (David Letterman) 10 years ago, I was smart enough to cancel myself.
05:50: (David Letterman) But the other thing is, the FCC, this guy, Connor.
05:56: (David Letterman) Brendan Carr.
05:57: (David Letterman) Brendan Carr, yes.
05:59: (David Letterman) So this guy, the FCC, is we can do things the easy way, we can do things the hard way.
06:03: (David Letterman) Who is hiring these goons?
06:05: (David Letterman) Mario Puzo?
06:07: (David Letterman) The FCC, we're not happy until you're not happy, for God's sakes.
06:11: (David Letterman) When I was a kid, I was like 20 years old, and I wanted to work at a radio station, so I went to Chicago to the FCC.
06:18: (David Letterman) You take a test, you pass the test, you have your third phone radio broadcasting license.
06:24: (David Letterman) That's what the FCC does.
06:26: (David Letterman) If you're a 50,000 watt clear channel radio station, once a year, they'll come and check your dials to make sure you're not broadcasting at 55,000 watts.
06:35: (David Letterman) And God forbid you are, then you get an $8 fine.
06:38: (David Letterman) That is the FCC.
06:41: (David Letterman) I don't know what is going on here.
06:43: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Let me ask you this.
06:44: (Jeffrey Goldberg) You worked through five or six presidential administrations.
06:49: (David Letterman) Oh, my God.
06:50: (David Letterman) And yes, a whole list.
06:51: (David Letterman) It started with Jimmy Carter.
06:53: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And your first show in the Carter era.
06:55: (David Letterman) Yes, that's right.
06:56: (David Letterman) And then all the way right up through Barack Obama.
06:59: (David Letterman) And was there one after that that I worked for?
07:01: (David Letterman) When did I leave?
07:01: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Possibly.
07:02: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I don't know, personally.
07:03: (Jeffrey Goldberg) When did you?
07:04: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Ten years ago, you said.
07:05: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Hang on.
07:06: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I got a list.
07:08: (David Letterman) Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush II, Barack Obama, yeah.
07:15: (David Letterman) And attack these men mercilessly, never once, well, Jimmy Carter, not so much, because what can you say about Jimmy Carter?
07:24: (David Letterman) He was just a sweet guy.
07:26: (David Letterman) But everybody else, we really went to work on.
07:29: (David Letterman) And I can remember Bill Clinton we really went to work on.
07:32: (David Letterman) And then it got so, it was like, whoa, this is a gift.
07:37: (David Letterman) What are we going to do, Bill Clinton?
07:39: (David Letterman) He's out of office after eight years of Bill Clinton.
07:41: (David Letterman) And then George Bush came along, and it was easy motoring after that.
07:47: (David Letterman) But the point is, beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy, not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.
08:03: (David Letterman) Republican, Democrat, never.
08:05: (David Letterman) Well, I will say we probably went easy on Barack Obama, because I kind of like the guy.
08:10: (Jeffrey Goldberg) but never a call from the White House, never an intimation.
08:14: (David Letterman) No, because everybody sort of understood in the name of humor, in the name of commenting on what's going on in the world, cultural events, why not?
08:23: (David Letterman) And by the way, the institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.
08:30: (David Letterman) You know, it just really ought to be bigger.
08:32: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Well, it was really interesting last night, late at night,
08:37: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Trump is tweeting or truth socialing from Windsor Castle after a steak dinner hosted by the king of England in doing his late night television show critique.
08:49: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It feels like we're living in a simulation when you think about that.
08:53: (David Letterman) Well, it would be hilarious if it wasn't all leading to something from which we won't recover.
08:58: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What do you think it's leading to?
09:00: (David Letterman) I think it's easily... First of all, here's the thing that's up my nose these days.
09:04: (David Letterman) By God, we've got to get to work on those midterms.
09:06: (David Letterman) Well, I think the midterm elections will be elections in name only.
09:10: (David Letterman) I'm sorry.
09:11: (David Letterman) The Republicans have raised untold billions of dollars.
09:16: (David Letterman) The Democrats, I think, are staggering a bit behind in terms of fundraising.
09:21: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Let me ask you about the actual joke or commentary that Jimmy Kimmel made the other night.
09:26: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It actually was inaccurate.
09:28: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, recognizing that he's a comedian, not a journalist.
09:31: (David Letterman) Yes, exactly right.
09:34: (David Letterman) We all make mistakes.
09:35: (David Letterman) I mean, good Lord.
09:37: (David Letterman) And by the way,
09:38: (David Letterman) The condition of the United States of America has not been perfect from the time I was born to this very day and before that.
09:46: (David Letterman) We know that.
09:47: (David Letterman) The goal is not perfection.
09:49: (David Letterman) Mistakes are gonna be made.
09:50: (David Letterman) Hopefully it will improve.
09:52: (David Letterman) I think, sadly, it's not going to improve.
09:54: (David Letterman) I'm not exactly in full mind understanding of what Jimmy said, what he was trying to say, and what mistake was made.
10:01: (David Letterman) This is something that was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert got walked off.
10:07: (David Letterman) So you're telling me that this isn't premeditated at some level.
10:10: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Well, I mean, he also announced that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers were next.
10:15: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And Jimmy Fallon, this is my own view, is not quite as sharp-tongued as Jimmy Fallon.
10:22: (David Letterman) And why is that, Jeff?
10:23: (David Letterman) Why do you think that is?
10:25: (David Letterman) No, but... Has something to do with IQ?
10:26: (David Letterman) Is that what you're saying?
10:27: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I am...
10:30: (Jeffrey Goldberg) He has a different personality.
10:32: (David Letterman) He's just a different kind of... By the way, isn't this guy great on Friday nights?
10:37: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Look at that.
10:39: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you very much.
10:41: (David Letterman) Me and my grandparents really loved him.
10:45: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I told him he's way too young to watch Washington Week with the Atlantic.
10:51: (David Letterman) You know, when this thing happened last night, and by the way, I have heard from Jimmy, he was nice enough to text me this morning, and he's sitting up in bed taking nourishment.
10:58: (David Letterman) He's gonna be fine.
11:01: (David Letterman) But I said to my wife, I said, I don't know what to think or say about this situation.
11:06: (David Letterman) I wish in the world, and this is what's great about New York, I wish in the world I could talk to Jeff Goldberg.
11:13: (David Letterman) Here I am talking to Jeff Goldberg.
11:15: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, honest to God, isn't it amazing how these things work?
11:19: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It's all serendipity here.
11:22: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Keep going on this theme of this dissent.
11:27: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Because one of the things I think a lot of us are wondering about, I'm surprised at the number of
11:35: (Jeffrey Goldberg) hardcore moves that this administration has made in many, many different directions at once, including dismantling the CDC, as just one example, dismantling USAID in every direction.
11:48: (David Letterman) You don't like the labor numbers, you fire the person reading the labor numbers.
11:51: (Jeffrey Goldberg) You fire the person reading the numbers.
11:52: (Jeffrey Goldberg) So the question is, it does seem
11:55: (Jeffrey Goldberg) and I just want your analysis of this, it does seem that there's a kind of passivity in the country about these things.
12:02: (Jeffrey Goldberg) People are saying, well, Jimmy Kimmel did.
12:04: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, I have to ask you that question, but Jimmy Kimmel did get it wrong.
12:08: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And the company, we heard Mike Pence earlier say, well, look, it's a private company.
12:13: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Jimmy Kimmel doesn't have a First Amendment right to work for that company.
12:16: (Jeffrey Goldberg) He didn't exactly deal with the question of the pressure put on by the FCC.
12:21: (Jeffrey Goldberg) But what is...
12:22: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What is your diagnosis?
12:23: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What is the red line for the American people who I've believed like having a First Amendment historically and today?
12:35: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, I've always offered an exception that people think it's pretty good that you can get to say what you want in America.
12:41: (David Letterman) So what is going on here?
12:42: (David Letterman) Well, I would ask you, what are the determining landmarks here?
12:46: (David Letterman) Authoritarianism, how is that different from a dictatorship?
12:49: (David Letterman) Does authoritarianism breed dictators?
12:52: (David Letterman) Is a dictator a special category?
12:53: (David Letterman) Where are we on that progress?
12:55: (David Letterman) Because I think we're inexorably headed in that direction.
12:58: (David Letterman) So I need you to tell me something encouraging that I can take home that will settle down my wife.
13:05: (Jeffrey Goldberg) This is not rhetorical.
13:06: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm asking you.
13:09: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Oh, you're asking.
13:10: (David Letterman) He said shit.
13:12: (David Letterman) Oh my God.
13:13: (David Letterman) The Atlantic Monthly guy said shit.
13:17: (David Letterman) Yes.
13:18: (David Letterman) There's your First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen.
13:20: (David Letterman) Thank you very much.
13:21: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you.
13:24: (Jeffrey Goldberg) No, as I said to Ayyad, we don't worry about the FCC.
13:28: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Look, we don't worry, and I have to say this in all seriousness to a group of people who subscribe to The Atlantic and read The Atlantic.
13:36: (Jeffrey Goldberg) There's only two ways to approach.
13:38: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm not trying to sound like self-righteous or whatever, but I'm not.
13:43: (Jeffrey Goldberg) There's only two ways to approach this moment.
13:45: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Either you stay true to your mission and just say what you think is true, what you know to be true, or you don't.
13:53: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm personally very surprised at the large numbers of companies that don't have to fold.
13:58: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It's just about money.
13:59: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, nobody yet is threatening to send them to the gulag, but the pursuit of money has distorted the reactions of the people who know better, including the people who employ Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and, by the way, a newspaper that's based in Washington that we can talk about at another time.
14:21: (David Letterman) What happened to that rag?
14:26: (Jeffrey Goldberg) There are only two kinds of owners.
14:28: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, we happen to have a good one, but there's two kinds of owners, and they're the owners who don't realize that their one responsibility is to protect the journalists
14:40: (Jeffrey Goldberg) to allow them to say exactly what, the whole country is built on this premise.
14:44: (David Letterman) This is exactly what I'm alluding to.
14:46: (David Letterman) There was these two standards of journalism in the United States, the Post and the Times.
14:52: (David Letterman) And one could think, okay, these will stabilize, these are people who represent the truth, and if they get it wrong, they apologize and will make changes.
15:00: (David Letterman) And now one is gone.
15:03: (David Letterman) I have family members who live in the Washington, D.C. area, and you're lucky if you get the crossword and weather out of the Washington Post.
15:14: (Jeffrey Goldberg) To answer your question briefly, there is no answer.
15:17: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What is the bright line between soft authoritarianism and preemptive authoritarianism?
15:25: (Jeffrey Goldberg) By the way, the analogy of the boiling frog is actually incorrect.
15:29: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Frogs do try to hop out of water, it turns out.
15:32: (David Letterman) Well, finally we've learned something here today, haven't we?
15:37: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Every day brings this almost cognitive assault.
15:41: (David Letterman) How do people, you think, okay, I'm still okay.
15:44: (David Letterman) I can still have breakfast.
15:45: (David Letterman) I still have a big screen TV, so things are okay.
15:48: (David Letterman) At what point do people who should be affected by this as early on, and the people that, and again, things were not good for a huge part of this country, and they're not going to get better for that same group.
16:01: (David Letterman) So at what point do the doors open in the mind of,
16:05: (David Letterman) average Americans, and they're petrified.
16:09: (Jeffrey Goldberg) The problem is, as long as there are an abundance of cheap calories, reasonably priced gasoline, and endless video diversion, it's very hard to imagine this country right now sort of saying, wait a second, having a functioning CDC, FDA, USAID, National Weather Service, et cetera.
16:30: (Jeffrey Goldberg) This is the main question that I ask, and I think a lot of our journalists at The Atlantic ask, is like, when is this gonna penetrate?
16:37: (Jeffrey Goldberg) When is the idea that, like, we've always believed that vaccination was a settled issue in America since the time of George Washington, as I mentioned earlier.
16:47: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It turns out that it's not settled.
16:49: (Jeffrey Goldberg) That doesn't seem to upset people
16:51: (David Letterman) I know, this is the great mystery.
16:53: (David Letterman) Why aren't people upset by this or half a dozen other things that are upset?
16:57: (Jeffrey Goldberg) You know what?
16:59: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Maybe it's like, and I'm not comparing any one country to another country, but maybe it's like Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011.
17:07: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Nobody thought that was going to happen until it happened.
17:10: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And I don't know what the thing is.
17:13: (David Letterman) This is the Arab Spring.
17:14: (David Letterman) The Arab Spring.
17:14: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I don't know what the thing is.
17:16: (Jeffrey Goldberg) You would think that it's when the government fires the people who track Ebola, which is not a partisan issue, you would think that many people would say, you know what, it's probably better to know where the Ebola is.
17:30: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And that hasn't happened.
17:31: (Jeffrey Goldberg) So we're all waiting to see what the reaction is.
17:34: (Jeffrey Goldberg) But we also understand that people in the Trump administration
17:37: (David Letterman) Let's just say there is an awareness.
17:39: (Jeffrey Goldberg) By the way, I know that we have to bring out your actual guests.
17:41: (David Letterman) I'm calling the shots here, pal.
17:46: (David Letterman) But let's just say there is an actual awareness beyond what you and I believe and can imagine.
17:51: (David Letterman) Let's see everybody is aware.
17:53: (David Letterman) What do we do?
17:54: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Well, look, we still have a free media.
17:59: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, we get to say- Do we?
18:01: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Well, large swaths of it, yeah, yeah.
18:04: (Jeffrey Goldberg) The world's biggest newspaper, the New York Times, is independent of what's happening in Washington.
18:07: (Jeffrey Goldberg) How many times has the president sued them?
18:10: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I understand that they're under pressure, but again, it comes back to- Well, look at what happened to the Washington Post.
18:15: (David Letterman) Well, exactly.
18:16: (Jeffrey Goldberg) No, no, I'm not saying that.
18:17: (David Letterman) I'm not saying we're not in trouble.
18:18: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I mean, thank God for your magazine, for God's sakes.
18:21: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank God, yes.
18:22: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I guess.
18:23: (Jeffrey Goldberg) That is worthy of a pause.
18:27: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And look, we have an independent judiciary.
18:29: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What we don't have right now is a legislative branch that is functioning according to the demands of the Constitution.
18:35: (Jeffrey Goldberg) That is the biggest troublesome fact.
18:38: (Jeffrey Goldberg) But we do have an independent judiciary.
18:40: (David Letterman) But will you agree that checks and balances, they're pretty anemic now?
18:44: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I agree that everything is under pressure right now.
18:47: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And ultimately, and look, coming back to the Mike Pence interview before, and I hear a lot of things about Mike Pence, and I understand there are a lot of people who disagree with Mike Pence and his worldview.
18:58: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I would say this.
19:00: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Sometimes a person's whole life can be judged by what they do.
19:07: (Jeffrey Goldberg) in one single moment of their life.
19:09: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Mike Pence said on that terrible day, nope, this election, this was a free and fair election.
19:16: (Jeffrey Goldberg) The results should be ratified.
19:18: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I don't care that the person who made me vice president wants to kill me.
19:23: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm going to do my constitutional duty.
19:26: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And I have this hope, and I think you do too.
19:30: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Maybe you don't.
19:31: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Well, all right.
19:32: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm sorry.
19:33: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm sorry, I don't.
19:34: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I have this hope that there are many, many more people like Mike Pence.
19:38: (Jeffrey Goldberg) We haven't seen enough of them in the current manifestation.
19:42: (Jeffrey Goldberg) What are they waiting on?
19:43: (Jeffrey Goldberg) That's the question.
19:44: (David Letterman) And by the way, I'll speak for everybody in this room who has kids.
19:49: (David Letterman) I don't so much care about me.
19:50: (David Letterman) I've had my fun.
19:52: (David Letterman) I got a 21-year-old son.
19:53: (David Letterman) I'm worried about him and his family.
19:55: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And that's completely legitimate.
19:57: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And I am now...
20:00: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I'm going to leave you so you can do.
20:02: (David Letterman) It's been fun though, right?
20:03: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It's been great.
20:04: (Jeffrey Goldberg) I appreciate it.
20:05: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you for coming to the Atlantic Festival.
20:06: (Jeffrey Goldberg) This is a great pleasure for me.
20:08: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It's great.
20:09: (Jeffrey Goldberg) It's great.
20:10: (Jeffrey Goldberg) And now you're going to introduce your guest.
20:12: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you very much.
20:14: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you.
20:15: (Jeffrey Goldberg) Bye.