Obama: Conspiracies Will Outlast Trump as GOP Pretends Not to See; Backlash Against NBC over Dueling Trump-Biden Town Halls Tonight
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I think one of the biggest challenges all of us have -- this is not just progressives versus right-wing issue, this is really a genuine American society issue -- is, how do we reestablish some baselines of truth that at least the vast majority of people can agree to.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Joining me now is former FOX News chief political correspondent, Carl Cameron. He's currently the chief political correspondent for "Front Page Live." Great to see you, Carl. I wonder if you agree with former President Obama that this lives in the bloodstream beyond President Trump.</s>CARL CAMERON, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "FRONT PAGE LIVE": Sure it does. It has been made normal in a lot of parts of America to believe whatever the incoming conspiracy theory might be. It's worth noting that Barack Obama was a firsthand victim of that when it was Donald Trump who created the Birtherism movement, suggesting that he wasn't an American-born citizen. That kind of thing is very real for Obama and Democrats. It's important to remember that conspiracy theoryism is not new and not unique to Trump and to what happened to Barack Obama. In the modern era, all of this stuff really kind of started with the Kennedy assassination and the attempts to find out what really happened. Americans, coast to coast, were inundated with conspiracy theories. Then came Nixon. That wasn't a conspiracy theory. That was a conspiracy crime. And he actually left the office. So this has been going on for a long time. It is not the fault of free speech. It is the fault of vocabulary. Because too often people talk about the media and they lump in straight fact-based news with the media. There's a huge difference between Facebook and QAnon and various different platforms online and organizations that work to tell the public the truth. Fact-based news does exist. And unfortunately, the president has attempted to corrupt it by mixing it in with an awful lot of garbage on the Internet.</s>KEILAR: When you think about some of that, when you think about some of the media that's not fact-based, there's never any accountability. Some things, say, pushed by FOX and the president is completely refuted, it's proven not to be truth. Like you had unmasking. You had the president's Voter Fraud Commission haven't to do with the 2016 election. It doesn't find fraud, they just kind of move on to the next thing. But here it is in the bloodstream. Is that the strategy, repeat, repeat, repeat, no accountability, just move on?</s>CAMERON: Sure. But we can't just blame Trump for things that he says that aren't true, or the conspiracies that he concocts in order to take down an opponent. He's had help. He's had help from members of the U.S. Senate. He's had help from the Republican Congress, the Republicans in Congress. He's had help from Republican governors and Republican operatives all over the country. He has been saying forever that Obama-gate or the unmasking was going to be the biggest scandal of the century, bigger than anything the country has ever had. That has now been dismissed. It's gone. So those Senators, those House members, those Republican officeholders, who bought into the conspiracy theory, a false conspiracy, one that didn't ever exist, they have a lot to answer for. The news has a responsibility to talk about the falsehoods that politicians talk about on both sides. The media has become so bifurcated, such a Wild, Wild West, that it can often shout down facts. That's part of the problem. And American voters going to polls need to be discerning. Don't just buy into the stuff your family and friends send you to on Facebook. That isn't necessarily the news. It might be entertaining, but it isn't going to be educating for a good vote.</s>KEILAR: Tonight, we have some dueling town halls. Are they going to be educating?</s>CAMERON: Right.</s>KEILAR: We'll see, right? You have Trump on NBC. Biden is on ABC. Do you think NBC deserves the backlash it's been getting for giving Trump a platform right opposite Joe Biden at the same time when he refused to debate Joe Biden as scheduled?</s>CAMERON: Well, I don't understand the inside workings of either of those two networks. The fact of the matter is the president refused to take part in a bipartisan commission that's been around for almost half a century. And had said, look, we'll have a town hall meeting, but it will be virtual because of coronavirus. That's just good health regulation at this point. Trump said absolutely not. So, OK, then one network says, OK, then we'll give a town hall meeting with just Biden. It seems to me, now that they're both at the same time, those two networks ought to basically say, for the good of the country, they'll mesh the two together and make Trump and Biden talk to each other across networks. Of course, that's ridiculous and it's not going to happen.</s>KEILAR: Yes.</s>CAMERON: But that's -- what should have happened was the debate. The one that refused to do it was Trump, not Biden.</s>KEILAR: Carl, you'll remember back to the primaries in 2016, Trump skipped a debate, a Republican debate in Iowa. And he actually paid for it, right? That didn't go his way in the end. He had a big veterans event. But, in the end, it wasn't good news for him. I wonder what you think the outcome will be this time. Is it going to cost him or this -- will this actually benefit him that he's not going to be debating?</s>CAMERON: Well, that kind of depends on the questions that come from the town hall. If a well-spoken Democrat gets a question for Trump, and he doesn't like it, it will be interesting to see what happens. Chances are in a well-spoken Republican gives Biden a question, he'll give him a straight answer. The Republican may not like it. But it's not likely to be the kind of thing we have learned and seen from Trump over the course of the last four years. This is a really strange turn of events. And it's unfortunate the news operations are sort of caught in the middle of it. We should be having debates. We should be having a conversation about the possible instead of trying to break down the institutions and the norms of what the American election has been in the past. The fact that we have ballot issue questions and that Trump is saying that the whole thing will be a mess, it's never been like that. There's no evidence in our history of the kind of stuff that he's talking about. He's making the election sound like a conspiracy theory.</s>KEILAR: Carl, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to talk to you.</s>CAMERON: Thanks, Brianna. Hope we get in contact soon.</s>KEILAR: All right, we will. Bye, Carl. Still ahead, Alabama's head football coach tests positive for coronavirus, but the team is still set to play this Saturday. Plus, an American tennis player is accused of going into hiding after testing positive for coronavirus while in Russia. We'll have details on his escape by private jet next.