Special Edition - This Time is Different

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That's ziprecruiter.com slash z-i-p-d-a-i-l-y. DHS has designated September 25th as If You See Something, Say Something Awareness Day, also known as hashtag See Say Day. On September 25th and year round, stay prepared to identify the signs, report suspicious activity to local authorities, and help prevent terrorism-related crime.

One tip could make the difference. Learn more by visiting dhs.gov slash See Say Day. Good morning. Jane Pauley is off this weekend. I'm Ted Koppel, and this is Sunday morning. With something a little different this morning, we're devoting these 90 minutes to a look ahead to the November election because we believe this time is different. It may be the most important election of our lifetime. On the face of it, that sounds like one of the very few things that most Americans can agree on these days.

But is it really? The words are the same, but what one half of the country seems to mean is God save us from another four years of Trump in the White House. While another sizable portion, maybe even the other half, is equally convinced that a Harris victory could only be the result of another stolen election.

Beyond the expectation that millions will be unhappy with the outcome, expect no further predictions on this program. Donald Trump has survived 34 felony convictions and an assassination attempt. He remains very much a contender. Indeed, following President Biden's hapless debate performance and arousing Republican convention, Trump looked like a shoo-in until he wasn't. The leadership of the Democratic Party decided that one Biden term was enough and that a second Trump term would be one too many.

And so far, that looks like a smart, if unsentimental move. But there are two months left, and as noted, this time is different. So this morning, we'll be examining a few of the factors likely to make this election perhaps the most important of our lifetime. With Martha Teichner, we'll take a closer look at what makes immigration such a complicated issue. Are there enough legal immigrants to do the agriculture work in this state?

There's not at this time. You need the labor, but you don't want the immigrants. No. Lee Cowan will tackle the very fraught debate over abortion. Is a total ban something the people are for?

The polling shows that 70 plus percent of women in South Carolina do not want a total ban. Right. From Kellefasani, we'll hear how even old glory can be a partisan issue and we'll have some lighter fare as well. Ben Makowitz takes on politics at the movies, talking with, among others, Martin Sheen from TV's The West Wing. You have to tell the truth, and nowadays it's always questioned about whose truth. Tracey Smith gives a listen to the soundtrack of presidential elections. This is the fourth or fifth Republican president I've sat through, but I've sang for 10 presidents. And more on this special edition of Sunday Morning.

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Wisconsin voters are going to get a lot of attention this election season. Swing state, nice people. Hello. Hello. Friendly. You are so awesome. You're very nice. Journalists like you.

Thank you. Pretty much everything you get here is like something, but then you deep fry it. What's wrong with that?

Exactly. This is our Doritos pickle. That's our new food this year. That is a pickle on a stick. It is.

Creative too. So we take the pickle, we spiral cut it, flour, batter, chips, and then we top off with ranch. That's pretty good. We do deep fried mashed potatoes. We do deep fried buffalo chicken wing dip. Don't get the wrong idea. It's not all deep fried. This was the 100th anniversary of the famous Wisconsin state fair cream puff.

They must've sold a kajillion of these. Thank you so much. What are the issues that you're voting on? Reproductive rights.

Rights as a woman in general. And respect. Yeah, that'd be nice. Is it your sense that the democratic ticket's going to get a lot of the youth vote? I think so. I hope so. I hope so. I think so. I think so.

But we're all falling out of a coconut tree. Yeah. There's enough stuff on TikTok.

So tell me what it is about TikTok that appeals to you. Saying Kamala's brat. It was also here that I learned the difference between brat, you know, the sausage, and brat. Now brat here means something totally different.

Yeah, it's not food related. Yeah, not a brat. A brat. And a brat, in my ancient terminology, would be a little kid who's not well behaved. It's not. So what is a brat? Well, maybe when your generation was listening to NPR and learning about brats, there were kids running around biting knees. Exactly. Now it's more people that don't mind going a little against the grain, being themselves, and not biting, in a way, biting back to the people, telling them to get back into their box. That's very well explained.

Thank you. The fairgrounds are located in a Milwaukee suburb, so there's a good mix of farm people, many of them Republicans who come in from the countryside, and city dwellers who also vote their interests. Well, I'm a Democrat. Same? Yes. Forgive me if it's a personal question, but are most African Americans in the city Democrats?

Yes. Because? We're poor, and we gotta, look, to be honest, we gotta think to help us move ahead. It's a lot of people who don't have good jobs, a lot of kids who can't eat, so to keep things moving for the poor people, then we vote Democrat. If I made $200,000, I probably would be a Republican, because then I would get more tax breaks, you know?

So I gotta keep the money that we can get. I'm a white woman. I was not able to go to college. My parents could not afford that. I sent my children to college.

I paid for them. And now I see people voting for a president who's going to forgive them for their college education. I do not agree with that. Everybody needs to work for what they have in life. What they all seem to have in common, Democrats, Republicans, more often than not, I want some more money in my pocket.

They vote their pocketbooks. And who do you think's gonna do that for you? Trump?

Read all the way. I don't know. This is the sazzy pig racing arena. It'll hold about 1,500 people. This is where the magic happens. It's true, a full house every couple of hours. And it appears to be a completely nonpartisan attraction. What draws people?

Man, I don't know what it is. It's the oddity of pigs racing. People think pigs are slow, these lazy animals, but they're not. They're very fast.

Not always fast enough. When the pigs get too big to run, we donate them to pigs. What they do with them is what they do with them, but we always donate them.

When you say, what'd you do with them? That's up to your imagination. As noted, Wisconsin is a firm state and not everyone gets their bacon in a package. What do people mean when they talk about woke? Oh, they mean to be judgmental. To be woke is to be judgmental? Absolutely.

Really? Woke is the elitist telling everybody else how they should think. Right. If you're woke, you're an elitist, and you're judgmental. All I know is the one thing I don't like is it says black lives matter. It should be all lives matter. That's the problem.

Everybody's throwing wraiths and everything, and it's gone overboard now. Have you heard the term woke? Yes. What does that mean? I don't like it. What does it mean? I don't really know. Well, what do you think it means? You don't like it.

I just know that it's shoved down my face, and I don't like it. We've seen what Trump has done. We've had a good economy.

We've had peace in the world. He's not going to back down. Is he lovable? No. Heck no, he's not.

Do I like him? No. But do I think he's a better leader for us? Yes, I do.

Somebody has to do it. You echo all of it? Oh, 100 percent. Yeah, absolutely I do. Yeah. I think he'll bring the people together more.

We heard that a lot. I sure like his views on how to run a country. I just don't like him as a person. The Trump is not particularly likable, but the things were better under his administration. So why are you carrying this on?

Why am I carrying this on? I want to pull my support for the United States. I do believe that we need to go in a different direction. His supporters revel in his bad boy image. One T-shirt brags, I'm voting felon.

Another claims, even a bullet won't stop us. That's often followed by a wistful yearning to stop the hatred and bring the country together again. As though someone else were promoting all that attitude. He's probably not a great person, but that's not going to affect me. I don't really care what he does in his personal life. I really think we need somebody who is going to pull this country together.

And I just don't think it's Donald Trump. Let's face it, you come to the State Fair to leave reality behind for a few hours. Hey, you got one in! More people came to the fair this year than ever before. Well over 1.1 million visitors to play silly games, to take terrifying rides, to clog their arteries with unhealthy food. And it's not cheap.

Hi, two lemonade bites. But as one fairgoer explained, I can't afford to take the kids to Florida, so this is our Disney world. And if the rides seem scary, consider what lies ahead in the real world. What do you think is going to happen the day after the election? I don't know. I hope there's no riots. It shouldn't be. It's America. We're all free.

We shouldn't have to go and destroy the world just to make a point. So you think if Trump loses, you think there's going to be trouble? Yes. Really? Yes.

I think either way there'll be trouble. Honestly. It's enough to send you back for another deep-fried pickle on a stick. Yeah! Woo! That was delicious. That was delicious. Alright.

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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Mario Cuomo, the late governor of New York, put it so elegantly. Candidates, he said, campaign in poetry and govern in prose. All that's missing is the melody. And Tracy Smith has that part of the story.

The man himself is long gone. But you might still know the words to John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign song. High Hopes, with new lyrics sung by Frank Sinatra. The right music can set a candidate apart from the pack. And that's why it's been part of the American political landscape since day one, says University of Michigan music history professor Mark Clegg. How far back does campaign music go? I mean, back to the time of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. You know, really even predates the time when we had broad popular elections, when it really was the electoral college. Music was still a part of the discourse, and it was a way to bring passion into politics.

Talk about passion. The 2024 election has become a battle of the bands, starting with Kid Rock at the RNC in July. And a few weeks later, the Democrats turn their roll call into a dance party. A catchy song can be a campaign's calling card, a free ad that plays indefinitely. Take Bill Clinton with Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop. Or Ronald Reagan with Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA. That song took on special meaning in the days after 9-11.

And Greenwood says he wrote it for all Americans. Now, initially, you didn't want it to be tied to any political campaign. No, no.

Why not? No, that bothered me at first. The Democratic Party had called me in 1984 and wanted me to participate in the campaign. The party had called me in 1984 and wanted me to perform USA at their convention in San Francisco, and I said, no, I declined. The Republicans also called me for their convention in Dallas.

I also declined. But when President Reagan asked him to sing it in 1988, he did, and it's since become a Republican anthem. Is there any doubt who's going to be the next president of the United States? He also sang it at the RNC this summer. If a Democrat asked you if they could use your song, would you let him?

If that question came, I'd have to consider that. This is the fourth or fifth Republican president I've sang to, but I've sang for ten presidents, including President Obama and Clinton and Carter and Nixon and Bush. And so if another president on the Democratic Party wants to use God Bless USA, I don't know if it would be wise, but I'd have to consider that. Vice President Kamala Harris has her own musician friends, most notably Beyoncé, who's allowed Harris to use the song Freedom in her campaign. But what happens when a musician doesn't want their music used?

Dozens have said no to the Trump campaign. The winner takes it all. From ABBA You can't always get what you want. to the Rolling Stones. The Isaac Hayes family objected to the use of Hold On, I'm Coming, and last week a judge in Atlanta granted a preliminary injunction barring them from using it. Wherever you are And Celine Dion pushed back when the campaign used the Titanic movie theme, My Heart Will Go On, saying, really? That song? So if musicians have a problem with a candidate using their music, you're the guy they come to?

I hope so. Lawrence Eiser is a music copyright attorney in Los Angeles who successfully sued John McCain's campaign over the use of Jackson Brown's Running on Empty. If they've been told not to use it, but then they continue to use it, then that's actually copyright infringement, and it's actionable. And it's actionable in federal court. So you can sue?

So you can sue. So if you are a political candidate, those candidates need to respect the constitutional right of a musician or a songwriter to just say no to the use of their song in the political campaigns. After all, music may not change voters' minds, but it can definitely make them sway.

It's having that chorus that sort of sticks in your brain that doesn't let you forget it, and so that's part of music's power in a way that a stump speech is never going to pull off. ["My Hopes"] Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, What the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole? So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Forty-five dollars up front for three months plus taxes and fees. Promote for new customers for a limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month.

Slows. Full turns at mintmobile.com. This September, unlock new worlds and new possibilities with Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible originals, all in one easy app. As the weather finally cools down, take a listen to All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, a highly acclaimed mystery thriller that is sure to leave you hanging to every suspenseful detail and dying for more. And thankfully, as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. So if you really enjoyed All of the Colors of the Dark, you can listen to it over and over again to your heart's content. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash wonderypod or text wonderypod to 500-500.

That's audible.com slash wonderypod or text wonderypod to 500-500. Thirteen stripes, 50 stars, the symbols of our United States. And yet, as Kelleforsani explains, what our flag stands for remains open to interpretation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

This Wednesday marks 23 years since 9-11. In the aftermath, patriotism was near an all-time high. The principal saying that they're practicing, they're learning about patriotism. And it looks like this guy Stephen, for example, I love America, he writes.

You know what? There's a lot of people who love America today. But now... Patriotism level and the love of the symbol and what it represents has decreased.

At Gettysburg Flagworks near Albany, New York, owners Maria Coffey and Patrick Dory have felt the change. It's definitely been on a decline since 9-11. They say flag sales are strong, but not off the charts. Most election years are banner years just because there's more interest. Literally banner years. Literally banner years, yeah.

This year has been kind of flat. We're not sure exactly why. Gallup found that while 70 percent of Americans were extremely proud to be American in 2003, that number is only 41 percent today. And surveys find that more Republicans than Democrats are proud to fly the flag. Not that you could tell from the recent Republican and Democratic national conventions.

We do get some feedback from people. They want to fly the American flag, but they're worried what their neighbors will think. They'll think they're an extreme Republican. And we try to dissuade them of that and say, look, the American flag is for all Americans to love and cherish. It stands for everybody, regardless of political affiliation.

You're an American in America in a neighborhood full of Americans. Why do you need to put up an American flag? Just to show that I'm glad to be an American. This is a 20-star flag.

20 stars. Peter Anstoff knows all about flags. Yeah, they call those a great star flag.

He's past president of the North American Vexillological Association. Vexillology, the study of flags. Often I want to display more than one flag. The flag has often been a partisan symbol. Ronald Reagan declared 1986 the year of the flag. And in 2007, Barack Obama defended his decision not to wear a flag lapel pin. Are Republicans just more vexillologically inclined than Democrats?

I don't think so. Generally, they see themselves as the protector and the conservator of respect for the flag and patriotism in general. And both sides feel that they're the ones doing the patriotic thing. These flag debates, he says, reflect a broader split. The patriotic divide is larger than in previous elections. But I think the use of the flag is kind of a symptom, not a cause. Today, both presidential candidates embrace the flag.

And only one of them does it literally. Ansoff says that once upon a time, Americans left flag-waving to the professionals. They were flown on ships to identify ship at sea, forts and government buildings. But the idea that an individual citizen would fly a flag on his house or something, that was kind of strange. That changed with the Civil War. All of a sudden, you saw this sort of burst of people carrying flags, waving flags in parades and things like that.

The tradition endured, although the meaning evolved. During the civil rights protests, it was waved and weaponized. The upside-down flag, a symbol of distress, has been flown by activists and at the house of a Supreme Court justice.

And some people even make their own. There is an African-American flag by artist David Hammons, and a Thin Blue Line flag meant to show support for the police. Peter Ansoff says even now, most Americans seem to want the traditional flag. And they seem to want to claim it as their own. The underlying idea is that my vision of what America should be is the right one. Well, it makes some sense if you think about a country that's born as a protest movement, right?

Born in revolution. In a way, yeah. The only way there is that the change is directed toward improving and fulfilling the promise of the founding of the country. Right. Well, everyone thinks that their change is going to improve the country, right? That's right. Everyone thinks they're right.

A comprehensive plan to fix the nation's immigration issues has eluded our leaders in Washington for decades, leaving some states, as Martha Teichner explains, to step in with controversial results. My heart is on this farm and the people that work on it. David Register's family has been farming this land in Pearson, Florida, for more than a century. He grows ferns. They take and mix all the different types of greenery into one bundle.

The kind florists use to fill out bouquets. In the summer, it can be triple-digit hot under the mesh protecting the plants. But Register's workers, most of them immigrants, he says are legal and loyal. Sabino, his crew boss, has worked here for more than 40 years. The difficulty comes when you're trying to recruit new people outside of that, and as people age out trying to get younger people in here, it's pretty difficult. What happens if you put out a help wanted sign? Nobody really shows up. Are there enough legal immigrants who have documentation of some kind to do the agriculture work in this state?

There's not at this time. In Florida, agriculture is just one industry where the politics of immigration is meeting its labor shortage head on, with consequences. This is the strongest legislation against illegal immigration anywhere in the country.

Florida's governor and both houses of its legislature, Republican. Among the harshest of Florida's new laws, SB 1718. A lot of these businesses that were employing illegal immigrants are now starting to think twice about it.

State Senator, Republican Blaise Ingoglio was its sponsor. We have a broken legal immigration system which is fostering the illegal immigrants coming over the border. So if we get a bunch of states together and we start cracking down on illegal immigrants in our states, maybe we will force the federal government to fix the legal immigration system. Just some of the provisions of SB 1718. Employers with 25 or more employees have to verify job applicants' immigration status against a federal database or risk $1,000 a day fines.

Showing a false ID to get a job? A felony. Also a felony, driving anyone undocumented across state lines into Florida.

Although that provision has been put on hold by a federal judge. The anti-immigrant rhetoric certainly created chaos amongst our communities, created a lot of fear. Mariana Blanco is Director of Operations at the Guatemalan Maya Center in Lake Worth, Florida, which provides social services for migrant workers. About 40% of our families left.

Just to put it into perspective, in one day one of our local elementary schools had 10 children that were withdrawn from their school. Olga, Guatemalan, undocumented herself, helps run the Guatemalan Maya Center's food bank. And here's what the people who need the food are saying.

They say you can't work anymore. It's very hard, very sad. Does it bother you that it seems Americans don't want you here? Yeah, because we work for them. What did you think when the state passed those laws? We really thought, well, it was racism, she says. Philippa Cruz makes 48 cents a bunch before taxes, cutting ferns for a grower who employs undocumented workers. She got her work permit only last month, but for 20 years she was undocumented too.

Now, if an employer treats her badly, I have the opportunity to say no and go somewhere else. According to the Florida Department of Health, between 150 and 200,000 farm workers pick crops in Florida each year. At last count, nearly half of them were believed to be undocumented. With fewer and fewer legal farm workers and Florida's crackdown on illegal immigration underway, who's left to work in the fields? Isn't Florida cutting off its nose despite its face? You need the labor, but you don't want the immigrants.

No, we didn't skip a beat. We still were able to produce the crops. We are showing people that you can actually have the rule of law, crackdown on illegal immigration, and still have a booming economy.

I understand the idea that at a state level you're going to politically go ahead and send a message to Washington. In the meantime, crops are going to rot, crops won't be planted, farmers will suffer. John S. Forms is CEO of SunRipe Certified Brands, a giant multi-state tomato operation his family started in 1920.

His view is a lot gloomier. It's H-2A or out of business. Roughly 800 of his 1,200 employees are migrant workers in the U.S. on H-2A visas, available for seasonal agriculture. But bringing them here, housing, and feeding them adds significantly to the cost of a tomato. Florida cannot continue to produce the food that it has historically produced with the labor that's available, either domestically or through the H-2A program. Last year, Florida had more than 89,000 H-2A workers, the highest number in the nation, more than triple the figure in 2015. Year-round agriculture, such as ferns, has no such program, but just as big a need that the federal government still isn't addressing. And Florida's new anti-illegal immigration laws could exacerbate. They've only just begun to roll out.

Before long, if we keep going down this path, there won't be a tomato, there won't be a bell pepper, there won't be a cucumber, a grapefruit, or an orange that's grown in the United States because it'll all be imported. This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

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Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. In the two years since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, legislatures in a number of states have severely curtailed a woman's right to abortion. And as Lee Cowan discovered in South Carolina, lawmakers standing in the way did so at their own peril. If the walls of Sandy Sand's office could talk, they might not have that much to say anymore. The South Carolina state senator is stripping them of their memories. Well, this is where everything used to be. Senator Katrina Shealy, meanwhile, has her 12 year political career.

Trailblazer award. All crammed into cardboard boxes. And we found freshman senator, Penry Gustafson.

I've been meaning to go through these things for a while. Sorting through emails from her soon to be former constituents. Do you think you'd ever get back into politics?

I don't know. My farewell is conflicted because I don't want to go. All three lost in their primaries this past June.

We've helped women and we've helped veterans. And what I'm so worried about is who's going to do that now? I don't regret a single vote that I ever took. And I would make the vote again.

This is sin. That vote. No. An opposition to the state's near total ban on abortion would be of little surprise if it came from Democrats. But these three are all members of the GOP. I'm a Republican. I think.

I'm not sure right now do they claim me or not. If you look at my voting record, there's no doubt I'm a red R. But that one vote makes me a rhino baby killer. Republican in name only. We heard that a lot. They didn't just buck their party, they reached across the aisle to Margie Bright Matthews, a Democrat, and Mia McLeod, an independent. I'm super proud of my sisters because they knew what was at stake. They knew what they stood to lose.

And they did it anyway. Do you believe that abortion is the number one problem facing the state of South Carolina today? Senator, I'm not going to get into those kind of questions. Well then can you tell me why we're taking it up for the third time in six months? This unusual coalition, on three separate occasions, successfully filibustered an abortion ban, halting its passage.

Not only are we outnumbered, but we aren't even recognized. Not that they agreed on everything, they didn't. But as women and mothers, they agreed that banning an abortion at six weeks was time too little.

We do not know when we're pregnant, when we get pregnant. If we didn't say it on the floor, it wasn't going to be heard. This bill is about control. Using the Bible to say that you can control my body. I'd say things just to rattle the men. Like, you know, wouldn't you want your side piece to be able to get an abortion? And then all of the older men just looked at me and you don't say things like that.

Maybe the men who wrote it know more about pregnancy than the women in this chamber who can actually get pregnant and give birth. At what point did you know it might be the end of your political careers? I knew at the time I said it because my party was, like, calling me and screaming at me. Two hours before the vote, I was pulled off the floor and had a very strong, intense conversation. This could be a career-ending vote. I didn't care.

I had to look myself in the mirror. They were the only five women in the Senate, in a state that they say has often left women behind. In 1920, they gave women the right to vote. Well, South Carolina didn't ratify that until 1969. And then we didn't put it into law until 1973.

We are just a little behind. The filibusters were essentially their versions of mansplaining. When someone makes a statement, well, if you're raped or if you get pregnant as a result of incest, it's not the child's fault.

You just need to learn to love on the baby. And that same senator held up a woman's picture and said that she told him that she was grateful to have been raped because it was the only opportunity God gave her to conceive a child, and I almost lost it. As a survivor of sexual assault, there are no words.

They didn't have words for the level of anti-abortion pushback, either. Taunts, personal attacks, odd gifts left in their offices, like these spines that came with a note warning them to grow one. I got one hell of a spine already, but now I got another backup.

But it got more intense and even more disturbing. We have one gentleman, I'm not sure we can call him that, that stands at the top of the escalator every day, and he preaches to us. He has this Bible. Swings a baby around with a rope of noose around its neck. And he's been to my church saying, Trina Shealy's a baby killer. And she's singing in the choir while he's doing this. Senator Shealy also says she had her tires slashed and a window in her home shot with a pellet gun.

My kids and grandkids were seeing that. I'm glad I'm not going to be in politics because politics are mean. In May of last year, the sister senators could no longer hold off a vote on what is now the state's law, a six-week ban on abortion.

And yet, not all was lost. We're fortunate to be able to gather to celebrate courageous leadership, which we need more than ever today. All five senators were recognized last year with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. I am proud of losing this Senate race just to get this because I stood up for the right thing. I stood up for women. I stood up for children.

I stood up for South Carolina. Is a total ban something that people are for? The polling shows that 70-plus percent of women in South Carolina do not want a total ban. All of us have stood up and agreed and tried to put forth a referendum to put it on the ballot.

They said we can't. Unlike 10 other states who will have abortion rights on the ballot in November, South Carolina doesn't allow voters that option. What is clear is that post-Roe v. Wade, abortion rarely breaks down on clean, partisan lines. What the sister senators have shown is that it's in that gray area where compromise, while costly, may not be as endangered as we all think.

Instead of just attack someone for feeling differently on an issue, it's better to ask why. In a world of politics, we're constantly being told you can't do that or you shouldn't do that and you're expected to be this way. We just broke that political social moray right in half. But you paid the price for it. We paid the price for it, but look what we have right now. We have this national ear for the most wonderful thing of finding common ground, respect, civility in politics. That is what we gain. That is what America gains from the sister senators of South Carolina. I don't think the incumbent is really in touch with how people live or what they need.

That's what I tried to do as a lawyer and that's what I hope to go on doing as a candidate. This time is different, a special edition of Sunday Morning. And here again is Ted Koppel. Politics in the movies is made for many a memorable film, but for one reason or another, as Ben Mankiewicz tells us, not so much anymore.

There's no place out there for graft or greed or lies or compromise with human liberties. Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Listen, this is me, Marco, talking. Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men. Big political movies with big stars have long been part of the Hollywood playbook. Robin, you can brief the press this afternoon. As of today, the crime bill is priority one. Martin Sheen as Michael Douglas' chief of staff got his first taste of a fictional White House in 1995 in The American President.

I want to meet Mendoza. Four years later, Sheen became the small screen's most famous commander-in-chief as President Jed Bartlett on the West Wing. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. I imagine that as you look back on some number of decades in this career, playing President Bartlett has to be pretty close to the top of the list. Very much so, yes. As an actor, as an American, it's one of the best moments of my life. The West Wing premiered 25 years ago this month, but getting it on the air in today's contentious political climate would be tricky. It feels inconceivable that that show could be on today, that a network would greenlight that show today. Well, yeah. Today, with where we are in our divided politics, sure, it would be very difficult.

You have to tell the truth, and nowadays it's always questioned about whose truth. Despite this frenzy and interest in the election, do you believe Hollywood has largely stopped making political movies? If they're making them, they're not showing them to me. Former studio executive Michael Linton ran Sony Pictures Entertainment for 13 years. Show business, he says, is a bottom-line business that is today more risk-averse than ever, relying on big-budget global franchises to drive profits. We can be cynical about the commercial nature of the decision-making process, but running a studio means you are answerable to whom? To your bosses and your shareholders, very much so. And, you know, they want a return, understandably, and that's a huge piece of the equation. They want a financial return.

Yes, hello, Judy. This is Donald Trump. What they don't want is controversy. Consider The Apprentice, a new film tracking Donald Trump's rise to power in the 1970s and 80s. It took months for producers to find a distributor. No one wanted to touch the film, especially after the Trump campaign threatened to sue.

Producers and studio executives have long had an obsession with the bottom line, plus a healthy fear of political controversy. Hey, you redneck scoundrel still here? But it didn't stop them from making films with bold political themes, like 1957's A Face in the Crowd, starring Andy Griffith. Are those morons out there? I can make them eat dog food now they can stay.

Sure, I got them like this. I think A Face in the Crowd is an excellent film and terribly relevant for our own times. Annette Innsdorf is a film professor at Columbia University. We actually get to see the rise of someone who assumes power, and it is not because he's particularly gifted, idealistic, or has a vision.

It's because he's plucked from a certain kind of obscurity and managed until he ends up managing the others. So does that leave us in a bad place where we are absent Hollywood, churning out films? The relationship between Hollywood and Washington is not a static one. It swings back and forth. It depends who will be elected in November. Is there an election this November? Oh, yeah.

I was not aware. I think most of the time, politics comes through in movies through metaphor. Movies refract more than they reflect. Michael Schulman writes about culture in the arts for The New Yorker. He says robust political messaging still thrives in the subtext of great movies. Come on out. I'll come out.

Let her go. One of my favorite movies from the 50s is High Noon. It's a Western about a sheriff in a small town who has to face this enemy alone because all of his allies abandon him. This is a movie about the blacklist. It's about the cowardice of people in Hollywood during the Red Scare.

What is that? A man, Dr. Maximus. Planet of the Apes is, of course, about a planet of apes, but it's really a surprise about how humanity is destroying itself and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

God damn you all to hell. Many of the biggest hits of the last five years, says Schulman, convey deeply political ideas. What's more political than Joker, which kind of captured the white male disaffection and isolation of the Trump era? What's more political than Barbie, which is about feminism and how difficult it is to be a woman?

You have to never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you, and everything is your fault. Movies are always even subconsciously capturing something about the politics of their age. Michael Linton, the former studio boss, misses those daring films of the past. This whole damn thing's about oil.

Yes, it was. So he understands the current challenges of making and marketing a politically charged movie. I ran the business, and I understand why business would be fearful of it, and I'm not advocating, by the way, that businesses should change their practice. I'm just observing what's going on. On the other hand, I think it's a shame. I think it's a shame that right now we're not hearing from some of the people we really should be hearing from. Martin Sheen agrees. He wants to hear from those filmmakers, too.

I think we're entitled to different opinions and to the courage of writers, producers, directors, actors, all the creative people to say that they declare or that they reflect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in what they're doing. So you think maybe this is the exact time to start making a political story. This may be the most critical time. No man wants to lose his hair, but for men, it's actually very common. And now with HIMSS, the solution is simple. Try HIMSS Hair Loss Solutions, and you'll be joining hundreds of thousands of subscribers who got their flow back.

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Discounts not available in all states or situations. Now, everything about this woman, and I mean everything, comes across as phony. We live in an age of alternate facts. Today's Republican Party sees diversity as the top national security threat. More and more Americans are getting their information almost entirely from outlets that echo their own political point of view. I believe Dr. Fauci has manufactured the coronaviruses. Now there's 100% evidence that the deep state colluded with the mainstream media to actively interfere in the last presidential election.

The man who Republican members of Congress call Orange Jesus wants to shut down MSNBC. And then, of course, there's social media, where there are a few, if any, filters between users and a wide world of misinformation. And look what happened to our country. For example, July 13th, when a sniper came within inches of assassinating Donald Trump as he addressed an outdoor rally in Pennsylvania. Take a look what happened.

Within minutes, social media was alive. Who did it? With uninformed speculation. It was the government themselves.

They're all on the same side. You have no idea who she is. She has no particular credibility.

Why should I even care that she is out there? Because she could potentially have an audience if the algorithm gives it steam. That could be seen by millions of people.

And then on X, formally Twitter, this message. You're telling me the Secret Service let a guy climb up on a roof with a rifle only 150 yards from Trump? Inside job. 7 million views and counting. We're at a point where nobody believes anything. Truth as a concept is really in trouble.

It's suspect. The cumulative impact of the lies and distortions just keeps growing. Such the journalist Stephen Brill titled his new book The Death of Truth. There are facts and it used to be in this world that people could at least agree on the same set of facts and then they could debate what to do about those facts.

But we're losing our grip on any sort of shared reality. Stephen Brill's company, Newsguard, is attempting to put the brakes on. What are you looking at? I'm looking into this fake Hamas threat that was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Its 40 or so staffers around the world identify and rate the credibility of online news and information sources.

It's a finger in the dike because there's no price to be paid. So I see this bill as an enormous contribution to our moving into the information age. Almost 30 years ago the federal government decided that internet platforms were like the phone company.

Welcome, you've got mail. You can't sue the phone company for what a caller might say in a phone conversation. They inserted a three paragraph section called Section 230 which said these new chat room publishers would not be responsible for anything that was published in their chat rooms. Instead, it left the internet essentially without any enforceable rules.

Social media companies exercise only limited control permitting lies, fake news and intentionally divisive content to proliferate. A torrent of allegedly Moscow-backed content. Ukraine is our enemy. Being funded by the Democrats. Provoked an angry reaction from the US this past week.

The charges unsealed this morning do not represent the end of the investigation. But most of the damage is self-inflicted, homegrown, from national and supposedly local outlets. There are more fake news sites posing as legitimate local news in the United States than there are news sites of legitimate local newspapers. There is no monopoly on virtue from either side here. Just to take an example, the most effective fake local news sites are financed by liberal political action committees. And they're sort of especially self-righteous about it.

When I interviewed them, they basically said, well, the other guys do it, so we'll do it. But it's undermining democracy. And then Brill points out we're just beginning to come to terms with the full potential of artificial intelligence. Hello, Americans.

I want to take a moment to address some of the hateful s*** you've been talking about me. None of these images is real. It disorients everything because you don't know if something is a hoax or is political propaganda or is a deep fake.

You just don't know what to believe. In the environment you describe, is it possible for us to have a clean, fair, universally acceptable election? Your last condition is the one that is, I think, impossible, universally acceptable.

Forget universally, even modestly acceptable. I have a real fear that one way or another, regardless of the outcome, that the chaos and the disbelief and anger that's going to prevail on November 6th, the day after the election, is really going to put our country to a test. It's always been complicated. Whoever gets the most votes does not necessarily get to be president. There's that Electoral College complication. And let's not pretend that we haven't had our share of political corruption. I'm talking about you, Chicago, and you, Boston, and Texas, and South Carolina, and yes, New York. There's plenty to go around. And even though we had to go to the Supreme Court to solve that Bush-Gore thing in Florida, at some point or another, we used to accept the fact that one candidate won and the other one lost. We can no longer take that for granted. Somehow, this time is different. Thanks for listening. I'm Ted Koppel.

Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. And with Paramount Ads Manager, you can advertise your business on the biggest shows on TV for 30 unskippable seconds. Run your ads in premium content on Paramount Plus and over 15 major networks with hit shows, movies, sports, and more, all on the biggest screen in the house. Put your business in show business with Paramount Ads Manager. Go to adsmanager.paramount.com.

That's adsmanager.paramount.com to learn more. I'm Dan Tabersky. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. It's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.