Jeremy Zogby: [00:00:00] most Americans unfortunately don't understand freedom of speech

John Zogby: We have the intervention just this week of potentially actions by the Federal Communications Commission, which really troubles me

Jeremy Zogby: political tribalism is being engineered and normalized via mass communications, and people simply just need to turn it off. And they need to see human in their neighbor

and they, need to turn the nonsense off. Un

John Zogby: It's Friday and that means it's another edition of real polling in Real Time with Zogby. I'm John Zogby, and as always, I'm right here with, Jeremy, my son, managing partner. How are you doing this week?

Jeremy Zogby: I'm doing okay and

John Zogby: yeah, I'm doing okay. personally, we're doing [00:01:00] okay to folks out there, if you're looking for a message of hope, hopefully that'll be next week. this is not a good week and, I, for one, am very worried about the state of freedom of speech. In this country and I'm gonna wing it here 'cause I have so many things on my mind.

I didn't write any of them down. But let me begin by saying I blame both sides equally. For this, it is now the Republican's turn. It is now a backlash following the, killing of Charlie Kirk. But believe me, the overzealous attempt at controlling our language and controlling our culture that emanated from the left with something very disturbing, especially to those of us who have a long history.

On the left. And so here we are reaping, a serious [00:02:00] backlash. A number of things that bother me. The first is, government intervention and freedom of speech, which is not only a violation of our constitutional rights, but is dangerous and threatening. We have done it before, we've done it during wartime.

However, the Alien and Sedition acts that actually imprisoned people for speaking out against war. We've had those, since the 17, late 1790s and right through, and nobody looks to those periods with nostalgia. Those were awful ugly periods. We're not in wartime right now and. We have the intervention just this week of potentially actions by the Federal Communications Commission, which really troubles me in a direct line.

It appears it can be drawn between the statements, threats [00:03:00] of the FCC Chairman and the cancellation of the Jimmy Kimmel Show. The second thing that troubles me is what it is doing to us, what it's doing to our culture. That, there are people who are fired for, disagreeing with Charlie Kirk.

People who have been fired for saying nasty things about Charlie Kirk. Inappropriate, poorly timed, for later on down the road. There are genuine disagreements. It troubles me that Jimmy Kimmel has become the face of this.

Personally. I never thought he was very funny, but also, his job was to be a late night comic and he crossed the line. if you're looking for a nightly rant, then go to cable television, or stay within your family and neighborhood and [00:04:00] argue with folks. But Jimmy Kimmel's job was to be funny, and what he said was, let's just put a friendly spin on it, in inappropriate, but, that's a whole separate issue.

Nexstar was well within its rights to not distribute a show, ABC within their rights to say, Hey, your ratings aren't good. And, you don't belong on the air, at least. let's review this. The bottom line is Jimmy Kimmel has a right to freedom of speech. He is not entitled. To a nighttime, daily, nighttime show.

there's a difference there. I can speak my mind, and I [00:05:00] can do it privately. I can go out and do it publicly, but if I am claiming to represent my employer, then my employer has well within its rights to say, this is not helping us. This is hurting our clientele, hurting our, Our base of support, our audience or whatever.

I know there are folks that may disagree with that, but I don't think that, that Jimmy Kimmel is heroic in any of this. And I warn folks in Hollywood, that look for a hero elsewhere. look for a hero among, those on campus. Who have continued to teach or tried to teach, and teach both sides or have tried to teach a version of American history that folks on the left and the [00:06:00] right disagree with, but there's supposed to be academic freedom on campus.

People consider those who are heroic, who have said. a word that is no longer considered in vogue by a tiny group on the left and have had to pay, dearly for that by losing their jobs. But one final comment is that the president's behavior in all of this has been shameful. instead of trying to heal a wound, instead of trying to bind people and bond people together, he has immediately gone to the jugular and revving up the troops and promising more lawsuits, promising, more firings.[00:07:00]

And this is not to say in any way, shape, or form. That the left isn't responsible for this atmosphere as well, but it's President Trump's term, at this moment, and his behavior has been disgraceful.

Jeremy Zogby: Yeah, I, I have to agree with that. I have to go back to your first point on freedom of speech that plays a major role into the larger conversation about what we're having. what I fear and, what I observe is that most Americans unfortunately don't understand freedom of speech anymore. I, can actually remember a time where, I think it was pretty well ingrained in, our culture today. it's become [00:08:00] ideological, in this moment who are fearful of, what happened to Jimmy Kimmel and what is gonna come from that. And you can al already see the communications on the news, the, David Letterman saying, where, this is going, imp implying we're headed towards full blown authoritarianism.

But the problem is, those same voices didn't really see a problem when previous administrations, particularly the Obama and Biden administration, the White House and social media networks were directly connected to each other and evident in the shows. That the White House was aware of Facebook and Facebook's algorithms to, silence those voices in opposition to, the White House and now the, same phenomenon [00:09:00] is, happening here today where republicans who leading up to 2024 were championing freedom of speech. have, just let that go. And so we don't really understand what freedom of speech is. I was a kid, I, remember it was so well ingrained in our culture that there were phrases that were commonly stated. For example, when, I was a, when I was in college and I would debate people older than me who were conservative, and we'd debate abortion or, gun control. You would hear people say, it's a free country. I don't agree with what you're saying, but you know what? That's the beauty of America. It's a free country. And then when it got really heated, I remember hearing individuals say, and this was common in our language, people would say, I don't agree with you, but I will fight for your right to [00:10:00] believe in that. And so there, there was a common culture that is gone. You don't even hear people say that anymore. just people have their ideological version of freedom of speech. If it's racist, if you're a liberal and it's racist, cancel it. If you're a conservative and it's hateful towards conservative people, cancel it.

It's dangerous. And here's the point. I saw the beginning of this. You saw the beginning of this, and this goes back 25 years. I look, I've read a lot of American history. I don't ever remember a time. In American history where the, notion of battleground states and battleground counties, we have been primed, our culture has been primed politically to think in terms of this as a battlefield. look at the language. Battleground states, battleground counties. That's phenomenon of a hyperpolarized political society. And now we are in the moment [00:11:00] where. A lot of people and, particularly us, have been asking the question about, some kind of civil war, right? And look, we don't mean Gettysburg digging trenches, firing, guns at each other on the battlefield with 10,000 debts in one day.

But what, we are talking about is civil unrest. And this, as we talked about last week, a tipping point, a point of no return, where. assassinations and violence become commonplace in this culture. And the reality is this, if you go on the news, whatever it is, CNN, Fox News, dredger Poor, all of the above, the Civil War is already taking place. Just look at the language, look at the vilification, and this has been going on. I'll go back to Biden and his speech in Philadelphia with a crimson red background, a [00:12:00] blood red background. And I will, draw a line to today with the announcement from Kash Patel saying, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna refer to them as, I'm assuming this is accurate, but, the notion that transgender people are. Are characterized a, broader type of a violent cohort. But remember the same thing was going on under Obama, the, I'm sorry, Biden, the frequent, term of MAGA extremists, Republican extremists. And so this is where we're at and, the messaging is full blown. And so where does it go from here? This is my warning. It's not my prediction, but it's my warning. Look up the communications ha leading up to the Randan genocide and the role that the radio communications played in that. In fact, I'm gonna give you a summary [00:13:00] from Google's Gemini. These, were the moments that led to the Rwandan Gen genocide.

The communications over the radio first started to dehumanize the Tootsie population. That was the population. That had the genocide waged against them. we have both sides dehumanizing each other. The demonization of political opposition. we've had that for quite a while, and the u using euphemisms to normalize violence. Unfortunately we are hearing suggestive language that's telling people essentially to mobilize and get mad and. The difference, obviously in the case of Rwanda is that it was culturally a tribal society. But you can see politically that political tribalism is being engineered and normalized via mass communications, and people simply [00:14:00] just need to turn it off. And they need to see human in their neighbor and the human in, in, in the opposition, and they, need to turn the nonsense off. Un unless it's gonna tell them otherwise.

John Zogby: you bring up a fascinating point, especially pointing to the genocide in Rwanda.

Jeremy Zogby: Mommy found.

John Zogby: And it just underscores for me, back to this country how much both political parties, have long ago outlived their usefulness that not only within Washington, dc and all of the breakdown of relationships, the non-relationship, the antipathy that members of.

Of each party have for the other. But how campaigns are waged campaigns have always been tough. And I've been involved, my first campaign as a volunteer was in 1968 [00:15:00] and negative advertising was becoming, a part of it. as we get into the nineties and now into the century, the campaigns I see, in a congressional district, it is not uncommon.

To have a Democrat and a Republican candidate who know each other. And when you're talking about a relatively small area, anyway, you're talking about prominent people who possibly have done business with each other, whose families may be, interlocked with each other in some way, may have even been friends of each other, but as soon as.

They declare their candidacy and have an R or a D. Then the D triple C, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee swoops in, sends in a bunch 20 somethings who are trained in warfare, period. Who? Who hire [00:16:00] opposition research. I have no problem with opposition Research on your voting record. on policies with which I disagree.

What I do have problems with is the hammering, hammering, of half truths, all for one purpose, win and don't just beat the other candidate, grind that bug into the carpet,

Jeremy Zogby: Yeah.

John Zogby: and that's how campaigns are waged. How are we supposed to govern? Then once the campaign is over, I've seen actual Democrats and Republicans start out campaigns as friends, colleagues, mutually respectful and end up long-term hating each other.

And this all reinforces the system that we're in. But now we're at a point where we're actually trying to snuff out the opposition, [00:17:00] snuff out. their freedom of speech and for that matter, snuff out. Even our friends when they don't use, you know what? Our polls have shown 3% favor the term Latinx.

And yet how many times have been, have you been, corrected for saying Latino or Latina? No, it's Latinx Who talks like that? Persons who give birth,

Jeremy Zogby: Yeah.

John Zogby: how many times have you been corrected for saying, oh, the pregnant woman. Our pregnant neighbor?

Jeremy Zogby: Yeah. and I'm just, because what you say has it, it's powerful because I, you're talking about the leadership, you're talking about, candidates and the infrastructure [00:18:00] of campaigns, and, that's all coming from, the top, and then I'm saying, what can, citizens do?

they don't have to get involved in the hyperpolarization, they don't have to get involved in the political tribalism. But then, it just dawned on me with those examples that, that you provided what discussion ultimately doesn't lead to politics. Like you can't even talk about parenting anymore without it ultimately ending up In a political debate, right? You can't even talk about farming. You can't even talk about food. leads to, to, to politics. And of course, as we've demonstrated pretty clearly, the politics here is toxic and nasty and, it's brewing. actually bubbling over.

John Zogby: So we know [00:19:00] that we need to be sensitive. We need to be sensitive to other people, other peoples. There are some totally, inappropriate, words and terms that cannot and should not be used. And we need to teach our kids that. However we live in am milieu right now where if I'm critical of Israel, my words are conflated with antisemitism.

Couldn't be farther from the truth. And when I've challenged people who've challenged me, they've said, no, but that's anti-Israel. I said, no, it's not. My criticism is critical of Israel. It's neither anti-Semitic. Come on. Or anti-Israel. Come on. I can't condemn a policy of a nation. [00:20:00] so one of the things that we need to understand is that this is a very slippery slope that we're in right now.

and there is a world of difference between saying, words and having them be conflated. With something that was never, anyone's in intention whatsoever. so it filters down government intervention, the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, sicking them now on folks sicking, the Federal government on colleges and universities where freedom of speech is supposed to be sacrosanct.

Although I certainly do recall that it was the left shouting down conservative speakers not that long ago, [00:21:00] possibly yesterday. but we're at a tipping. We're, I don't wanna use the word tipping point. We're at a very dangerous. Point right now, and the person who can put an end to this is the person who will not put an end to it, and that has to be the president of the United States.

Jeremy Zogby: the last thing I'll say, taking in everything that you're saying is that the, worst depictions both sides. Have become normalized. And I think our job as pollsters to show, to figure out and show what percentage of the population do not fit into those profiles of the rabid leftist and the rabid conservative. And I have a strong feeling that a plurality, maybe even a [00:22:00] majority of Americans don't, and. If there were a grand realization of that maybe, things could tone down.

John Zogby: I think one thing we have to remember, 'cause I've heard people say this, that this nation is sick. It isn't, it's people are fine. and you find that in every walk of life, we just went to, a little event your kid's school. and on the way there was a sign and a post.

And I always point to this 'cause I see these a lot, and it, an informal fundraiser in a village for a little child who has leukemia and whose parents don't have enough money to pay their health bills. And I think that's the [00:23:00] goodness of a lot of people. And there's a lot of them. Now if I go to that, I know enough to not mention Hillary Clinton's name or Donald Trump's name 'cause that's what divides us.

But if we can focus on what unites us, and I know, look, this sounds so Pollyannish, but the truth is there's a lot of goodness out there. And we need to be searching for it. And I think our responsibility as pollsters, as you say, is find those common areas.

That's it.

Jeremy Zogby: Yeah,

John Zogby: Have a good week. Maybe have some optimism next week. Hopefully

Jeremy Zogby: hopefully have a good weekend.

John Zogby: you too.

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