DEF038 - caleb ecarma Interview

fox news coronavirus misinformation lawsuits

Interview date: Saturday 11th April 2020
Interview location: Zoom

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Caleb Ecarma. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email us. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, we discuss how Fox News is preparing to be sued over Coronavirus misinformation, media coverage of coronavirus and the upcoming presidential election.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION

Peter McCormack 03:29:
Good morning, Caleb. How are you?

Caleb Ecarma 03:31:
Doing well, Pete. Thanks for having me on.

Peter McCormack 03:34:
Yeah. No problem. Okay. We are here to talk about ... I was going to say an article you wrote. I've got the title. Fox news is preparing to be sued over Coronavirus misinformation, but it's going to be a little bit more than that, because after reading that article I did my research. You've been covering this actually since, I would say, early March? Is that fair?

Caleb Ecarma 03:57:
Yes. It's been weeks and weeks of this coverage really, because as the pandemic has evolved in the U.S., the messaging has shifted week-by-week. There're constant updates and constant new's spins that they have to roll out, whether to defend the president or defend their initial narratives. It's a process.

Peter McCormack 04:22:
Okay. Look, before we get into this ... What is the background to this for you as a writer? Where did you first become kind of aware or concerned that Fox News was disseminating misinformation with regards to Coronavirus?

Caleb Ecarma 04:39:
Yeah. It started ... I would say late February when Trump was sort of saying this virus, like a miracle, is going to disappear and is going to go away with hot weather, it's a media hoax, and sort of everything in that line of thinking. Of course, Fox News, the Prime Time post, and the ones on Fox Business who were sort of leaning towards Trump started regurgitating all of those talking points and really just hammering the fact that this is not as serious as the media is making it out to be, and the media is making it out to be a serious issue because they want it to hurt Trump and his re-election chances, et cetera.

Caleb Ecarma 05:24:
That's kind of when I first started looking into it and just really following their messaging and seeing how it would evolve as this thing got worse, because I knew it was going to get worse based on trajectory you'd see in Europe and Asia. I knew it would get worse, and I was like, "Well, I don't know how they're going to dig their way out of this hole that they're continually putting themselves down over and over." That's kind of when I first started following it, and then it morphed into a whole new thing in the following weeks.

Peter McCormack 06:00:
Yeah. It's quite an unusual one, this one, because there is one of your colleagues who wrote an article that was comparing the republican reaction to Coronavirus very similar to the republican narratives around global warming. I can't remember the name of the journalist. It was a very interesting piece there. Do you think this was just carelessness?

Caleb Ecarma 06:22:
Yeah. There's definitely a big factor of carelessness. There's been a lot of surveys showing that in March there was republican respondents to a number of polls by key research in the Kaiser Family Foundation on the public's response to Coronavirus. It showed that republican leaning respondents were far less likely to take any sort of precautions to mitigate Coronavirus, like social distancing, staying inside, not shaking hands, et cetera, compared to their democratic counterparts. Of course, we know that the only outlet that the majority of republicans trust is Fox News, so they were getting this information from Fox News, following through with the idea that it's not that big of a deal, not doing anything to mitigate the outbreak, and in essence spreading it more and to people who aren't in on the Fox News misinformation stuff who are just a part of these people's daily lives.

Peter McCormack 07:35:
Right. Do you separate, and were you able to identify any differences between those who were spreading misinformation and others focused a little but more on civil liberties? It is very much a republican attitude that you have more freedom of choice for your own actions, whereas the disinformation itself is a little bit more sinister.

Caleb Ecarma 08:03:
Of the major Fox News hosts, I would say Tucker Carlson was the initial one who was sounding the alarm, and almost subtly attacking his colleagues saying ... I'm paraphrasing, but that "There are people who are telling you not to take this seriously. Don't listen to them. They have incentives to say that. This is going to be a big deal regardless." Ultimately, he's not by any means perfect on this, because he's sort of pushed his own weird theories around Coronavirus. He had a segment that said it had been hatched in a lab, which does not really bear any standing in the medical community at this point. He has ideas that the Coronavirus death numbers are being inflated, but he also did reportedly go to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's resort in Florida, and talk to Trump and try to get him to take this seriously back when Trump was not taking it seriously. It's kind of a mixed bag on that front. He's really the one, I would say, in terms of the early stages who played it fairly straight down the line, other than the conspiracies about it being hatched in a lab as a bio-weapon.

Peter McCormack 09:27:
Right. Okay. Do you think there's something in this that this is very much a ... As an outsider from the U.K., we follow the divide between the left and right in the U.S. I've never known it to be such a gulf in my lifetime, and that every political point becomes a football that comes back and forth. Do you think part of this was down to the fact that there is this kind of war between the left and right, and this was initially something that people didn't really fully understand? Therefore, it just became another political football. Then, as people realized the seriousness of this they had to change their narratives, or do you believe there was enough evidence early on that there should have been a lot more responsible reporting?

Caleb Ecarma 10:12:
I think you said it perfectly there that this another partisan issue that you fall on either the left or the right side of in the eyes of a lot of conservative media personalities. I think a good reference to make is sort of ... Have you seen that BBC interview where Ben Shapiro is on with Andrew Neil? Ben Shapiro is under the impression that Andrew Neil is some far left liberal crazy person, which of course is ... You know, he's sort of a right leaning Sunday Times editor. It's hard for American conservative media pundits to digest anything outside of a right left spectrum a lot of the times. Of course there are smart ones, but as far as the big Fox News hosts go and the ones who have a lot of viewers in the base of the party, everything sort of goes down to the right left end of the spectrum.

Caleb Ecarma 11:24:
It almost got to a point where, at least in the first couple of weeks in March, there was pictures like ... Laura Ingraham, Fox News host, posted a picture of her on an airplane saying, "Now is the perfect time to travel", like it was a partisan playing card because, "All these cowardly liberals are staying inside just curled up in their beds and, and I'm out in an airplane. It's a great time to fly." She was telling her followers, "Get on an airplane right now." It did become one of those partisan things where it seems so insane in hindsight. It did become a partisan issue, where it was like you're either on the side of the left and you're staying inside afraid of a virus, or you're on the side of the right and you're jumping in an airplane.

Peter McCormack 12:13:
Yeah. What do you make of what happened with Trish Regan? Do you think she ... I was going to say fall-guy, but obviously she's not a guy. Do you think she's been used as a scapegoat, as someone to just push out the door and deflect some of the blame? I also saw this video that circulated yesterday, which was a collection of videos. I think it was Sean Hannity, who was at the start not taking it seriously, and saying the world is going to end, and it ends with him saying, "We at Fox News have always taken this serious." Do you think she's been made a scapegoat?

Caleb Ecarma 12:47:
Yeah. She is definitely the sacrificial lamb. There was a Daily Beast report that was really good. That came out, I think, last week. It basically went into how the Fox News front office, the Murdoch's basically had to use Regan as a sacrificial lamb to try and get people to get off Fox News for their coverage, when in reality the stuff that Regan said was not at all different than things that Sean Hannity was saying or things that Lou Dobbs was saying. It was things that Tomi Lahren was saying. It was sort of all in the same vain. Fox News has sort of a history of turning sour on their hosts and finding a reason to push them out when that reason presents itself. It's sort of like the Rahm Emanuel quote, "Don't let a crisis go to waste." That's when she saw the door.

Peter McCormack 13:53:
Mm-hmm. Do you think there are other people at risk right now though?

Caleb Ecarma 14:00:
It's hard to say. That place is a fortress in terms of getting information out of PR and other people a lot of the times. I don't know that there's anyone else on the hot seat, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody went out of line and got the ax down the road. Everything is just a very heightened situation in the media landscape right now with Coronavirus.

Peter McCormack 14:31:
Yes. A very strange media landscape, the U.S. media landscape, to follow externally. No country is perfect. Somebody I was talking to yesterday said to me, "The U.S. has two form of state media. They have Fox News, which is state media ... And CNN and MSNBC, which is anti-state media. If it was a democrat in power, then it would switch. MSNBC and CNN would become state media, and Fox News would become anti-state media. They're all guilty of pushing forms of propaganda to support their political bias, and it makes it very difficult to get high quality impartial news." What do you think of that?

Caleb Ecarma 15:15:
I think that's a pretty fair criticism. I would say that yes, Fox is of course all the way Trump all the time. A lot of their coverage varies in territory. There are a couple of good journalists there. Shep Smith was ... I liked him. He was a good host, but unfortunately he's gone now. Over at MSNBC and CNN, some of their hosts were involved in some of the worst parts, in some of the most sensational parts I should say, of the Russia-gate conspiracy. There was some truth there, but there were times when they took a crumb and turned it into a loaf of truth to say that Trump was more in with the Russians than evidence really proved it out to be. There were a lot of issues with that. I will say the difference between the two is that at MSNBC and CNN, under the Trump presidency, they're breaking news stories.

Caleb Ecarma 16:27:
They're breaking new information and putting it out into the world, exclusive scoops, and real news that their viewers can consume, whereas with Fox you're looking at sort of a network that is almost entirely based on opinion journalism. They have journalists there as well, but Tuck doesn't really break stories. They just don't break stories in the same way unless it's just the administration giving them talking points and saying, "Hey, you get to be the first one to tell the world about this." It's not like they have investigative people really digging in and bringing new information to the table. It's more so just consuming the news that's already out there and spinning it for their viewers in a way that backs whatever the right narrative is in a given issue.

Peter McCormack 17:22:
Do you think Fox News therefor is an extension of the government?

Caleb Ecarma 17:27:
I think there are links. I wouldn't say it's a direct extension. It's been on record that Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, and others are consistently on the phone with Trump. They're advising him in an informal, albeit important capacity, on given issues. He's watched Fox & Friends, the morning Fox News program. He's used the hosts' talking points to send out public policy and decide who he's going to pardon and how he's going to spend his day in terms of policy promoting. Sometimes it seems like Fox News is the one that's pulling the strings instead of it being an extension of the government.

Caleb Ecarma 18:19:
It does kind of go back and forth, because on this Coronavirus issue Trump has made a 180 in the middle of March-ish. Fox News was forced to follow Trump on this issue. He kind of just left them standing there alone, because he just suddenly turned ship on this whole "Coronavirus is a hoax" thing, and was forced to take it seriously. Of course, Fox News had been following him, and then were left trying to figure out what to say next. We don't really see that a whole lot. I think a lot of the times it is Fox News guiding Trump into certain talking points and certain issues and not them having to follow Fox News ... Or sorry. Them not having to follow Trump and take his word as a queue to start talking on a certain issue.

Peter McCormack 19:21:
But you did say that Tucker Carlson had been in touch with him. I've heard this before ... Somebody else was telling me the other day that Tucker Carlson was advising him to take it more seriously, so that seems like a disconnect if they were following afterwards. Is Tucker Carlson his own man that gets to operate in his own domain?

Caleb Ecarma 19:39:
Yeah. I would say he was kind of a lone wolf on that whole front, whereas a lot of the other people at the network, the top hosts, were sort of all in unison on not taking this seriously.

Peter McCormack 19:56:
Okay. Interesting. All right. Just before we get back into the potential lawsuits, one other thing I'd noticed is that I've been tuning into the press conferences every day, part interest and part entertainment. I've been following them on CNN, and I noticed a few days ago that CNN has stopped showing them. What's the reasoning behind this? Do you think that's healthy?

Caleb Ecarma 20:16:
I think the reasoning is that Trump is not really using these press conferences as a way to really inform America, at least the vast majority of those press conferences. It's almost like a remote campaign rally in some ways, where Trump is taking shots at the media. He's taking shots at reporters in the room who he doesn't like. He's taking shots at political opponents, and at the same time sort of just praising his administration's efforts on Coronavirus ... Even as on record, at least in the last ... America has, of course, the worst trajectory on Coronavirus. It's not really beneficial, I don't think, to the vast majority of viewers to tune in to these press conferences. There's useful information that comes out of them in bite-sized form, but in its entirety a lot of them are just being used to kind of rally his base and throw red meat into the crowd.

Peter McCormack 21:21:
Yeah. See, I've noticed that as well. I've noticed the attacks on journalists. If anyone puts a pokey question at him, he insults them and questions the organisation that they work for. That in itself is kind of difficult, but he does have other people with him, like Dr. Fauci, so I would say argue back that there is still useful information in there for people. We have our daily press conference in the U.K., and I know a lot of people are tuning into that. It feels a bit like a political decision to take the press conference away, but I guess that's objective. People can find it either way if they want to watch it, right?

Caleb Ecarma 22:00:
Right. I agree that Fauci, Birx, and others have provided good, useful information to Americans during those press hearings. Those comments can sort of be summed up in maybe a two to five minute segment rather than running an hour-and-a-half to two hours press conferences in their entirety. It's like everything he's joking about fucking models during these press conferences. That's legitimately happened. It seems crazy to say, but it did. At the end of the day, it's like all this stuff that's coming out of his mouth is not beneficial to the viewer. If they want to watch it, there's a million live streams they can tune into. You don't have to air the thing in its entirety. You can just highlight whatever are the most important parts from the task force professionals and what are the craziest moments out of Trump's mouth.

Peter McCormack 23:05:
Okay. All right. Back to the article ... As I said, the title if people want to find it is Fox News is Preparing to be Sued Over Coronavirus Misinformation. What lawsuits or potential lawsuits are you aware of, and what is the basis of these lawsuits?

Caleb Ecarma 23:23:
The first consumer protection complaint that got filed last week was based on essentially accusing Fox News of acting that it's safe to maliciously disseminate false information downplaying Coronavirus. Their argument was filed by the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics, which is this Washington state based organization, non-profit, and they're basically accusing Fox News of, as one of their board members put it, airing evil programming that interfered the prompt Coronavirus response in the general public. I guess the argument is that Fox News is culpable in how a lot of their viewers respond to Coronavirus and how there's public response data showing that the viewers at Fox News did not take Coronavirus so seriously as other media consumers. The argument is essentially that these people were led astray, and thus public health crisis emerged. Personally, I don't know how these lawsuits will develop or how seriously they'll be taken in court. It is an interesting idea. I just don't know that this is something that can be waved away with first amendment arguments.

Peter McCormack 25:05:
Do you think this is damaging long-term to Fox News, or do you think this is something that will blow over? I know that's a tough question, but what I'm trying to wonder is ... Is there so much political loyalty in left v. right in the U.S. that this will be excused by the general public, or do you think this is damaging to Fox News and even damaging to the republican party as well?

Caleb Ecarma 25:28:
I think it will ... I don't know. It's hard to say, because we live in such strange times in terms of media consumption by voters. I don't think this is going to hurt Fox's viewership. If anything, we're actually seeing Fox's viewership go up. I think they recently topped the record for most prime time viewers since the first few months of the Trump administration, when so many viewers were turning in to see the man that they voted for and what he was doing in office. It's helped them enough, but at the same time ... The Tucker Carlson show, for instance, has lost so many advertisers over the past couple of years. I can't remember the exact data point, but I think it's like 70 per cent less advertising revenue despite viewership going up. That is really the real rift for Fox News, and not that they'll lose influencer viewers. The advertisers might get skittish. They could lose more, particularly on their prime time programs that sort of push the most hyperbolic forms of this Coronavirus commentary and really commentary on most issues.

Peter McCormack 26:53:
Is there any reasoning? Do we know why they're losing advertisers for Tucker Carlson? Actually, as an outsider, he seems like one of the more reasonable presenters on Fox News.

Caleb Ecarma 27:04:
I think he has a background at MSNBC and CNN. He's worked for The Weekly Standard. He's a great writer. He does have this air of legitimacy that other hosts are lacking. When it comes to Tucker, the things that he's said over the past two years include saying immigrants make America dirty and poor and basically demonizing immigrants at every chance he can get. Of course, he sort of refers to immigrants in vague terms, but of course he's talking about Hispanic immigrants migrating from south to north. Even at times when he's dissuaded Trump from, for instance, pursuing military action against Iran or persuaded Trump to take Coronavirus seriously, he's more grounded on some issues than other Fox News hosts, but when it comes to immigration, that's really what's scared advertisers away and made him an outlier in terms of how bad Fox News coverage is. He's sort of been pointed to as one of the worst offenders.

Peter McCormack 28:27:
It's quite interesting, that trade off then that Fox News is facing in that they want to keep their support high and keep their viewership high, but if they're going to be losing sponsors, that's going to directly hurt the bottom line. That could potentially lead to some shifts in editorial policy?

Caleb Ecarma 28:42:
Yeah. I don't know. It seems like either they don't care ... I mean, they face so many pressure campaigns over the years. There was a time where Laura Ingraham lost so many advertisers, because she was mocking the students who survived the Parkland mass shooting. She lost a lot of advertisers then, and they stood by here. Then, they stood by Tucker Carlson through every controversy, which there has been a litany. When it came to Trish Regan, they basically just dumped her the first chance they got with this Coronavirus stuff. I think it more comes down to the internal office politics at Fox News than who's making the biggest mess publicly. It's like ... If they like you, they'll stand by you. If they don't like you, they'll find a reason to get rid of you.

Peter McCormack 29:41:
It seems like a very strange organization.

Caleb Ecarma 29:44:
Yeah. It does. I think that's a perfectly fair way to put it.

Peter McCormack 29:49:
Yeah. Okay. Just a couple of other things. I think it's very hard to see how this will play out. The winning of a lawsuit might be quite difficult, because it's a quite challenging subject. It seems to me, if anything, the purpose or long-term benefits might be that it challenges the irresponsible reporting that comes from Fox News and not so much whether or not a lawsuit will be won.

Caleb Ecarma 30:16:
Yeah. I think that's probably it. We've also seen a bunch of top journalist professors, from America's top academic media institutions, like Columbia J School, U.C. Berkeley, and Northwestern ... They've all signed this letter sort of condemning the misinformation that Fox News pushed out to the audience, which they called a danger to public health. I think if more lawsuits are filed we could see this change, but as of now I think a lot of this just goes to sort of try and hold Fox accountable in the court of public opinion rather than in the court of law so much. It's caused reaction among a lot of hosts. We know that Fox is lawyering up, and they're ready to sort of fight back any lawsuits that do arise, but Hannity had an interview with Newsweek last week where he says, "I never called it a hoax. I've taken this way more seriously than ..."

Peter McCormack 31:25:
That's a lie.

Caleb Ecarma 31:25:
"... Most media did." Yeah, and it's just an outright lie, because on March 9th he said, "This is an attempt to bludgeon Trump with this new hoax." He, of course, called the seasonal flu much more dangerous. One way he wrote it off, which I find would personally be funny if it weren't so sad that his viewers would take this information in, but he argued, "We're all dying anyway, so there's no need to worry about Coronavirus." That was essentially his argument ... I guess a last ditch argument before he kind of turned around and followed Trump in trying to take this seriously and sort of pretending that he had been taking it seriously the whole time.

Peter McCormack 32:11:
Yeah. It's a really unusual thing, I find, from here that doesn't just end at Fox News but goes all the way up to the president ... This ability to deny things that have been recorded on camera and just kind of go ahead with it. I find it really unusual.

Caleb Ecarma 32:26:
Yeah, yeah. Everyone can sort of point to the record and say, "Well, actually you did this. You said this."

Caleb Ecarma 32:34:
Their response is, "Well, you know ... Whatever." It's just sort of a blanket denial that their viewers don't need evidence proving that what they're saying is correct. They can kind of just, I guess ... Cognitive dissonance and just kind of keep moving forward with whatever they're saying. No matter how many times these people, Hannity, Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and et cetera ... No matter how many times they get in trouble in a public backlash, their viewers are loyal, they're going to keep watching them, Trump is going to keep tuning into their shows, and they're just going to weather the storm almost no matter what happens it seems.

Peter McCormack 33:20:
Okay. Look, last couple of things, Caleb, and I'll let you go. It looks like today will be the day where the U.S. will sadly get the record of the most deaths than any country for people with Coronavirus. It's not anything anyone wants to get. One of the factors I do identify is that the U.S. does have unique challenges in that it has many destination hub airports as well as regional airports, so it has the infrastructure for something to allow for the spread of the Coronavirus. Also, add into that ... We look at London as a problem and maybe Birmingham now. You look at the U.S. and you've got 10s, if not many more cities, of that size. You have a bigger scale of problem to deal with. That aside, what additional pressure do you think this is going to place on Trump and the republican party, or do you think he will survive this fine?

Caleb Ecarma 34:17:
You know what's interesting? Yes, America faces unique problems when confronting this, but so do many countries in the EU, and they were able to mitigate this thing ... They're smaller countries, but when you look at it, sort of pound for pound per capita population wise, they were able to mitigate this thing a lot better than the U.S. was. They have the advantage of course of centralized health care, which we do not. We have very transient cities like you were saying, so people were sort of coming and going, and that's why I think New York was hardest hit. I think there's a new study showing that a lot of these initial Coronavirus cases in New York actually came from people traveling from Europe coming to New York. I think, oddly enough, Trump's approval ratings as this thing has sort of progressed have actually gone up slightly, and his approval ratings on the Coronavirus response have gone up significantly.

Caleb Ecarma 35:25:
They're slowly going down, and he is sort of taking a hit now in some recent polls, but it's hard to say if this will affect him going into November's election. He's such a novel political character that it's hard to say what bullets will really pierce his arm. It's impossible to guess, because it seems like things that looked the worse to some of us actually make republican leaning independents and his base of supporters love him even more. They're as enthusiastic as ever to vote for him, it seems. You don't see that same level of enthusiasm going for Joe Biden. He's now really the presumptive nominee, so it's hard to say that any of this will actually hurt him at the end of the day. It seems more than likely that it's actually really encouraging his base to stand by him and sort of "stand by your man" Tammy Wynette style, just defend him around every corner, and come out stronger than ever before.

Peter McCormack 36:44:
Yes. You referred to Biden there. Obviously you have an election due at the end of the year, and potentially under multiple challenging circumstances. I don't understand constitutionally or if there's any precedent for a situation where an election has been delayed, but what are the discussions that people are having in your field with regards to the election, how it will go ahead, what the risk are, and et cetera?

Caleb Ecarma 37:09:
Everyone is just stipulating at this point of course, but even this primary election doesn't even feel like a legitimate election a lot of the times. In a lot of these most recent primaries, there was issues between the governor, the DNCs, and just election laws in general of how to go forward with these elections. You had, I believe, it was a Michigan primary where you had a Biden spokesperson going on TV and saying, "You know, it's safe to go out. Go out and vote. Get out and vote", whereas as people in sort of the Bernie camp were saying, "Listen to public advisories. Practice social distancing. Don't go out to vote if it's not safe." It kind of does make everything feel like ... Of course people could argue, "Well, Biden had an incentive to send voters out, and Bernie had an incentive to sort of try and elongate this election as much as possible", but at the end of the day there are public health risks when you're sending millions of people to polls.

Caleb Ecarma 38:24:
I don't know what this is going to look like, and it's seeming more and more likely that the DNC will be put off or at least tried to be restructured in a way that can allow for remote delegation process. I imagine you might see it from looking at the RNC, depending on how long this thing drags out, but if we're looking at really the increases going down in a real way going into June, increasing case numbers, then I don't know how we're going to go forward with the election as it stands now, especially in terms of the RNC and the DNC. I think you kind of have to look at it like one battle at a time, because it's hard to even look towards November when everyone is kind of just scrambling day-by-day to survive at this point.

Peter McCormack 39:12:
Final question just on Biden himself ... It seems to me, externally, as an unusual choice as an opposition to Donald Trump. It doesn't seem, to me, to have the strength of character to take on someone like Trump. What's the general feeling within your circles about Biden and his potential of challenging Trump?

Caleb Ecarma 39:34:
I think there's a lot of media people ... And when I say media people I mean pundits, and not so much journalists, that are sort of on this idea that it's anybody other than Trump. Then, you have other people that oppose Biden that are saying, "Well, he's sort of been on the wrong side of history so many times, whether it's the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, military action in Libya and in Pakistan ..." Of course, you have this new rape accusation that's come out against Biden. He's been accused of sexual misconduct before, so the line between Biden and Trump kind of get blurred on a lot of issues. The argument from a lot of these Bernie people is that, "If there's not enough contrast between these two candidates, that's not going to inspire excitement from democratic leaning independents and swing voters who have to come out for democrats in a lot of these swing states, like Pennsylvanian, Michigan, and Florida ... Who have to come out for democrats to win."

Caleb Ecarma 40:50:
I think there's still, of course, people saying, "We'll vote for anybody if it's not Trump. How can you support another supreme court justice getting put in on the bench by republican etc, but still, given the wide divide in disagreements among the democratic voting block, it's seeming more and more likely that Trump could win re-election. It just doesn't translate to the two camps, and I don't know how that fracture will come together by November.

Peter McCormack 41:29:
All right. Listen, Caleb ... I appreciate your time over this weekend. Stay safe out there. I hope everything's okay for you. I'll go ahead and read the article you published yesterday. If people want to follow your work, tell them where they can find you.

Caleb Ecarma 41:41:
You can follow me on Twitter @calebecarma, and you can read my writing at vanityfair.com/news. I really appreciate you having me on.

Peter McCormack 41:51:
No problem at all. Listen, take care and stay safe out there.

Caleb Ecarma 41:54:
You as well.