A hurricane of conspiracies

KCRW's Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A new front has opened in the culture wars: meteorology. Rampant disinformation spread across the Southeast after Hurricanes Helene and Milton left thousands in need of disaster relief. While some conservative lawmakers have been trying to manage the devastation, others including Donald Trump have platformed dangerous conspiracy theories. What does the GOP’s relationship with disinformation mean for the party’s future, and where does it go after Trump?

Nebraska is one of two states that does not use a winner-take-all system for its electoral votes. That means the blue dot of Omaha, Nebraska could conceivably swing a close presidential election. Does this reveal the weirdness of the Electoral College overall? In a system designed to protect the minority from the majority, is the reverse now true?

Can journalism save a marriage? Journalist Brian Reed is the host of KCRW’s new podcast Question Everything, which turns the critical lens on his own profession. Reed tells the Left, Right, and Center team a story of an Orange County couple that almost lost a decades-long marriage over where they get their news before finding an outlet they could both agree on. So how do journalism and politics tie into our personal relationships?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone let's do left right and center. I'm David Green your host
0:04.6	Mo Lathy is here Sarah Isger is here we've got the team in place and I want to talk
0:09.2	about the ever-expanding culture war which has now claimed its latest victim.
0:16.0	Meteorology.
0:17.0	As soon as hurricanes Helene and Milton
0:20.0	touched down in the southeast of the United States,
0:22.0	the conspiracy machine started to whip up a storm.
0:25.0	Cooking up claims like that the hurricanes were geo-engineered by the government to target Republicans,
0:30.6	a notion that Marjorie Taylor Green endorsed by tweeting,
0:33.0	yes, they can control the weather.
0:35.0	FEMA is also weathering a PR maelstrom.
0:38.0	Rumors about the agency abound claiming that it is limiting aid blocking donations seizing private property
0:44.3	abandoning rescue efforts and running out of money because of illegal
0:47.8	immigration and no one is shouting this louder than Donald Trump.
0:51.0	Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars on housing for illegal migrants.
0:58.3	These lies coming from the top are putting Republican officials in a pretty tough spot. Representative Chuck Edwards of North Carolina
1:04.4	sent a letter to constituents promising
1:08.0	that no one can control the weather.
1:10.0	All of the rumor, the falsities were more getting in the way of us trying to help the people
1:15.3	here in Western North Carolina recover from Helene.
1:18.2	Several Republican governors and senators have also rebutted claims about FEMA malfeasance as they try to manage the aftermath, which is pretty
1:27.1	rough on a lot of people across a pretty big swath of the United States.
	...

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