Good afternoon from Washington. I'm Chuck Todd and this is the Chuck Todd cast. Today is

a special edition of the Todd cast who coincide with a special edition of Meet the Press. We're

examining alternative facts. It was a term that was coined for better for worse right here

in our Sunday show way back on a inauguration weekend 2017 and it turned out it set the tone

for something fake news gaslighting deep fakes conspiracy theories these phrases are thrown

around constantly nowadays. So how do we turn it determine what is true what is false and what

is actually fake and what is false or should we just log off and crawl into a hole for the foreseeable

future for this conversation join by Cara Swisher co-founder and editor at large of recode and host

of the recode decode podcast. I'm just desperate to get a little bit of her audience and Joshua

Johnson host of one an NPR and now an NBC news contributor and soon to be a full-time member of

the NBC news family because we couldn't keep up with him at 1 a.m. so he said, let's just get your

audience over here. You know I'll see how much I can bring over. So I I lose sleep at night

because I feel as if we in the press if 40% of the country don't believe anything we're saying

then then I feel like we're not doing something right. It's not on them it's on us.

Is that right? I think it is on both I mean we're all citizens and we all have a role in the democracy.

Citizens who are not journalists are not I think required to have the same kind of

acumen for facts and verification and precision and writing that's our craft so we're responsible

for that but at the same time we're Americans so I think it's right to be concerned. I'm concerned for

sure. I'm also fired up because I think this is like one of those moments where I as an American

just as a patriotic person feel like I can do something about this. This is an existential threat

to our democracy and I'm not you know fit out to fit to listen to the military or you know become

a classroom teacher but but this is a problem that that threatens our democracy that I can help fix

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