Erin Burnett Outfront: Rep. Jeff Jackson (D- NC) is Interviewed about Calling Out Lawmakers for "Faking It"

Interview

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I will. I think it's probably the least surprising political news of the year, so far. I learned about it in the run up to your segment. I think we've all been under the assumption that he's going to be running for reelection.

And frankly, I think the American electorate, broadly has sort of gotten ahead of this particular announcement. We've all sort of been acting under this assumption for at least the last few months.

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I think what the president would say is, it's a perfectly fair concern for anybody to have, and I think his likely opponent in this matter is going to have a very similar concern applied to him. I think it's a fair question for both of the candidates here.

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I am. Yes.

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Oh, definitely. There's an enormous amount of consensus and compromise behind closed doors, and then you go out into public and everything changes.

And look, I'm under no illusion that I'm breaking any news to you or even the most of your viewers. But the reason I made that video is because it became very clear that a big percentage of Americans don't know this. When they see the people yelling when they see the anger from Congress, they think it's real. They think it's sincere.

And it was sort of my job as the new guy to report back to the rest of the country that, very often, it is not. They're just a bunch of people there who were on team outrage and they're not there to pass laws.

They're there to try and be captain of team outrage every day.

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I don't know if I would go that far. And to be honest with you, I haven't had a lot of conversations with her behind closed doors, but that clip that you just showed, that is exhibit A for what I'm talking about.

But what's more important than pointing out the insincerity behind all of that is the incentive structure that exists. I mean, as you said, Speaker McCarthy went out and said, I have her back. There is an entire incentive structure that exists to protect the people who are willing to be on team outrage. That's what more Americans need to understand.

This isn't random behavior. There are rewards for bad behavior for members of Congress. You get access to certain media outlets who also want to anger their audience. So, there's an alignment of interests between these very angry politicians and media outlets that are trying to anger their audience.

And basically, what she's doing is auditioning. That was an audition, and it worked. She got the part.

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None.

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None.

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They've incorporated team outrage into their model. They know that they need team outrage to go use certain news outlets to communicate with certain parts of their base. And she's just too reliable. She delivers for them by conveying that anger.

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Thank you.

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