Transcript:

Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Did you hear? Did you hear?

Get this—one-tenth of the entire United States Navy and $200 million a day is what it‘s going to take to send Barack Obama on a trip to India? I know. Did you hear about this?

Taxpayers are spending $200 million a day and the U.S. Navy is providing 34 warships to send Barack Obama to India? Did you hear about this? No, really, did you hear it? I totally heard about this.

(BEGIN IVIDEO CLIP)

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN R, MINNESOTA: Just within a day or so, the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He‘s taking 2,000 people with him. He‘ll be renting out over 870 rooms in India. And these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: No one really knows the cost, because for security reasons, they don‘t disclose the cost. So, this idea that‘s it‘s, you know, $200 million or whatever, is simply made up.

BACHMANN: Well, these are the numbers coming out in the press.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: That is actually true. That last thing she said there about how these numbers have been coming out in the press—that is true. Those numbers have, in fact, been coming out in the press, in a very, very specific part of the press.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Two hundred million dollars a day, 3,000 people. He needs the whole Taj Mahal hotel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That‘s actually reported.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS HOST: No, no, it‘s $2 billion. We have 34 warships. Have you seen this?

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO HOST: Five hundred seven rooms at the Taj Mahal, 40 airplanes, $200 million a day that this nation will spend on Obama‘s trip to India.

ERIC BOLLING, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: What‘s Obama about to do? Go on a trip to India that will cost $200 million. That‘s $200 million per day.

I will tell you, unequivocally, this has been reported. Go to the Internet. Go take a look. I‘m not making this up. The show‘s not making this up.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

MADDOW: Go to the Internet. I‘m not making this up. This stuff is on the Internets. It‘s true on the Internet.

You want to know what else is true on the Internet? A conned Unicorn meat, with sparkles.

You want to know what else is true on the Internet?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Zoom in a little bit closer. What does that look like to you? Those are the bite of a vampire. Rachel Maddow is a vampire. We are letting a lesbian vampire comment on America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: I love that guy.

Sometimes what you learn about on the Internet—sometimes what you learn about what people is true on the Internet, you learn about it in weird ways. For example, at some point recently, somebody started screaming at me in all caps on Twitter, “Why don‘t you ask Obama why Muslims are exempt from Obamacare?”

Now, your immediate natural response is, oh, this is very sad. This is a crazy person who thinks that Muslims are exempt from health reform. This is sad that this crazy person is crazy and thinks that. But at least all they‘re doing is yelling at me about in all caps on the Internet.

It turns out it is more than just one crazy person on the Internet. If you go on Google right now—I know this from experience—if you go to Google and you try to search for articles about this allegation, Muslims exempt from Obamacare, to see if other people believe this crazy thing, you only get as far as typing in Muslims e—before Muslims exempt from Obama-care pops right up. It‘s not true, of course, but people believe this stuff.

There is a lot of stuff on the Internet. Stuff being on the Internet is not a guarantee that it is true.

This has been true—this has been an issue as long as there has been an Internet and a rumor mill before that. But, today, we have an alternate, self-contained, right wing media universe. The right wing Web sites and talk radio and the right wing TV network, and in that alternate, self-contained, right wing media universe, this stuff is not just repeated as if it is fact, it is made into de facto fact.

In the alternate self-contained right wing media universe, this whole “we‘re spending $200 million a day to send Barack Obama to India” thing is true because they‘ve confirmed it for each other. They looked it up on the Internet and it‘s totally there. Their friend said it, right along side the unicorn meat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEOFF MORRELL, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy, some 40 ships and an aircraft carrier to support the president‘s trip to Asia. That‘s just comical. Nothing close to that is being done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: It is not in fact true that it is costing American taxpayers $200 million a day to send the president to India. Nor is it true that one-tenth of the Navy is being dispatched to take him there. It is not true.

But the fact that it‘s not true doesn‘t matter anymore. I mean, there have always been myths and lies around American politics. But there used to be a process of debunking those things. And then they would more or less go away, give or take the fringe, give or take protocols of the elders of Zion.

But the debunking process is gone now. No non-right wing information is allowed to be used to debunk right wing information. So, if conservatives self-confirm something as fact in their close circuit media world, it‘s fact to them. We should have known we had lost the capacity to debunk when this happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

DICK MORRIS, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: They‘re going to be saying, no, you can‘t give this person hip replacement. They‘re too old. This would be done by this federal board, which is really the death panel that Sarah Palin was talking about.

BECK: Death panels, yes, back in the news again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He warned Americans about so-called “death panels.”

HANNITY: Those death panels which created a big controversy—

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

MADDOW: There weren‘t death panels in health reform. Democrats, in fact, accepted a Republican-proposed idea to promote living wills where people say what they want their own end-of-life care to be. That is not a death panel. There are not death panels. There never were.

But in the alternate, self-contained, right wing media universe, death panels are real. In that world, it‘s true. They‘ve confirmed it with each other. And it is therefore unquestionable.

The reason this is more than just funny or sad is that when people who are informed by their time in the alternate, self-contained, right wing media universe, when those people move on in life, sometimes what they‘re moving on is getting control of parts of the government.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

BACHMANN: I‘m very concerned about the international move they‘re making, particularly the question that there was about moving the United States off of the dollar and on to a global currency.

Between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt. And that‘s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.

I‘m not saying that that‘s what the administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private, personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

MADDOW: Did you hear that the Census is being used by a tool by the Obama administration to round up conservatives and put them in internment camps, just like the Japanese in 1940? I totally heard that.

Now, that census is over and so you maybe watching from a conservative internment camp right now. If you are, I apologize for any offense.

But the idea that the U.S. Census mandated by the Constitution is a thinly veiled conspiracy to round us all up and put us on interment camps, the idea that Barack Obama has a dastardly plot to eliminate the dollar and create a one-world currency—those things aren‘t just stupid, they‘re true on the political right.

And because she is un-debunkable in today‘s media world, Michele Bachmann is now vying to become the number four Republican in the leadership of the United States House of Representatives. Things that are true only in self-contained, right wing media world are leaking out into real politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: At a recent rally in Nevada, Senate candidate Sharron Angle said, quote, “Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don‘t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States,” end quote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Sharia law has not, in fact, supplanted the United States Constitution anywhere in the United States.

When confronted with that truth, candidate Sharron Angle‘s response was not to withdraw the claim but to explain why she believed it, which is good enough for her.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

LARS LARSON: Did you say, though, that Sharia law was in place in Dearborn right now?

SHARRON ANGLE R, FORMER NEVADA SENATE NOMINEE: I had read that in one place, that they started using some Sharia law there, that‘s what I had read.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MADDOW: I have no doubt that you have, in fact, read that, Sharron Angle.

If you‘ve been reading around in conservative media world recently, you read a lot of stuff like that. And because that media world is now so big and so well-funded that it is self-contained, and self-sustaining, there is no debunking of this stuff anymore. It just becomes true by dent of mutual conservative reinforcement and repetition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: Their mission is to blur or completely erase the borders between Canada and U.S. and Mexico to get goods and services freely flowing between all three countries in the dream of one big, happy, Mexamericanada.

SENATOR-ELECT RAND PAUL R, KENTUCKY: I guarantee, this is one of the long term goals to have, you know, one sort of borderless, mass continent.

CHRISTINE O‘DONNELL R, FORMER DELAWARE SENATE NOMINEE: American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals, and coming up with mice with fully-functioning human brains.

MADDOW: Do you want to know what happened in Laredo? Did you hear what happened in Laredo? Oh, my God, a Mexican drug gang called the Zetas, the Zetas rampaged over the border and took over two ranches in Laredo, Texas. American ranches now are being run, right now, by a Mexican drug gang.

Mexican drug gangs have officially breached the border. The invasion from Mexico has begun. Did you hear about it? Did you hear about it?

If you live in right-wingville, then I‘m sure you have heard all about it. None of it is true. None of those things actually happened.

Good luck, you guys.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make sure you know that Lisa confirmed Eric Holder and we disagree with that.

MADDOW: She what?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Voted to confirm Eric Holder.

MADDOW: And why are you against that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He‘s the most anti-gun attorney general this country has ever had.

MADDOW: What‘s he done on guns that you‘re upset about, though?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I honestly—I‘m not—I don‘t know enough about him to answer that truthfully, Rachel.

MADDOW: Can‘t I just ask why you‘re upset about Eric Holder?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because he‘s anti-gun.

MADDOW: What has he done that‘s anti-gun?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don‘t have all the facts but I know that he is anti-gun.

REP. STEVE KING R, IOWA: A little baby with ink on their foot, stamped right there on the birth certificate. And there‘s one in this country we haven‘t seen.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

MADDOW: Get that. Barack Hussein Obama hasn‘t seen that birth certificate yet.

Again, for the record, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Eric Holder hasn‘t done anything against gun rights. Mexican drug gangs are not seizing ranches in Texas. Mice with human brains, that one actually I take a pass, I can‘t disprove that. But Mexamericanada, I can tell you with confidence—not actually happening.

This is not just about gullible people believing untrue things. It is about what‘s new in America about gullible people believing untrue things.

There is a closed circuit, giant, super well-funded conservative media machine that not only promotes this stuff when it‘s politically convenient, but they reinforce it and validate it and fend off any ability to debunk this stuff. So, things that would have been disprovable myths in times past in America now become conservative truths. Things that can be easily disproven outside of conservative American can never be disproven if you live in their closed circuit world on the right.

The other thing that‘s new is what happened on Tuesday night. Politicians who are a product of this media culture, who raised their money for their campaigns on FOX News, the un-debunkable faith-based fact horde is going to Washington. And as they get there, that becomes itself another means of validating these politically convenient made-up things. They put the prestige of the U.S. government, the person of it that they control at least behind all of this made-up stuff. Their new positions of power help to validate all of these otherwise totally disprovable things.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I keep reading that Obama keeps bringing small quantities of Muslims into this country. Why can‘t Congress stop that?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: OK, freeze frame. You‘re a member of Congress. You‘re Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa in this case. You get asked that question by a constituent. You have not heard that specific conspiracy theory about Obama and the tiny quantities of Muslims he keeps sneaking into the nation, what do you saw when confronted with this question?

Here‘s the difference between you and the new Republican Congress. This is how Republican Congressman Steve King chose to respond to that thing he‘d never heard before.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I keep reading that Obama keeps bringing small quantities of Muslims into this country. Why can‘t Congress stop that?

KING: You know, I don‘t know what the basis is of that. I wouldn‘t be surprised that that is—there‘s real, factual basis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: To be clear, Steve King, a serving member of Congress, has never heard that crazy story before. He doesn‘t know it to be true. It has never crossed his mind before. But there he is telling a member of the public that, you know, I wouldn‘t be surprised. It very well might be true. Because, you know, it sounds good.

So, now Obama has tiny quantities of Muslims on him at all times. And he‘s taking 34 warships with him to India. And these things cannot be disproven. There is no debunking process anymore. If you do not live in right wing land and you agree that those things have been debunked.

If that‘s not your reality, how do you ever talk to those people?

Joining us now is humorist and author of “More Information than You Require,” a man who is an expert in fake facts, John Hodgman.

John, it is great to see you.

What are you doing?

JOHN HODGMAN, HUMORIST: Vampire! Oh, no, you‘re not a vampire. But I never did notice that you have “I hate USA” tattooed on your eyelids.

I heard someone say that on television once.

MADDOW: You know, and on television, it must be.

HODGMAN: I also read it somewhere. In fact, I wrote it down and I read it.

MADDOW: Is that—is there a place this comes from? Is there a somewhere?

HODGMAN: Yes, the Internet. That‘s where it comes from.

MADDOW: Right.

HODGMAN: Would it make you more comfortable I put this on the Internet and then it would be true.

MADDOW: Then it would be true because it would be citable with a hyperlink.

HODGMAN: Absolutely. Well, there have always been conspiracy theories and tall tales and urban legends and that sort of thing within the political world and without. But now, we have this gigantic, massive churning, rumor-mongering machine. The biggest that‘s ever been invented by humans.

And Internet is wonderful in terms of fracturing media into places where marginal view points that couldn‘t previously get into the conversation can now get into the conversation.

MADDOW: Yes.

HODGMAN: It also means that a lot of other marginal view points that we would consider crazy are getting in and sticking around and never going away.

MADDOW: And that I feel like that‘s the political dynamic that we went through. In the early days of the post-John McCain Republican Party and conservative movement, we—I remember we had like screen graphics that would say thing about like, oh, the fringe is moving to the center because the idea of believing conspiracy theories used to be a fringe thing.

HODGMAN: Right.

MADDOW: But now, there‘s no qualitative way to distinguish.

HODGMAN: Well, I mean, you know, when Sarah Palin and John McCain both made an innuendo that Barack Obama was hanging around with domestic terrorists, that‘s a serious accusation. Something you would expect to hear in the hullabaloo of a political campaign from low-level, you know, sort of supporters. From the candidate and vice presidential candidate, that was a real change. At least, I sort of took a deep breath when that happened.

MADDOW: Because you would want the presidential and vice presidential candidate, to serve as—if not leaders, at least arbiters of seriousness, is that what you want?

HODGMAN: Sure. Because behind that innuendo is an incredibly serious assertion that the other person is a criminal.

MADDOW: Yes.

HODGMAN: And, you know, John McCain did not look comfortable making that. But Sarah Palin looked very comfortable and in no way will she punish for it obviously.

MADDOW: Is there a way for truth to counter fake facts?

HODGMAN: Yes.

MADDOW: I feel like there‘s no way to talk to Steve King. There‘s no way to make that better.

HODGMAN: Yes. I mean, well, Steve King is a perfect example. He‘s afraid now that that might be a big conspiracy theory that he dare not refute, for fear that he be told of you don‘t believe in the truth, do you? Do you know what I mean? There is a lot of concern about these things because they are taking so seriously now.

And look, I don‘t want to make a false equivalency. Any time you have an echo chamber, you know, in the left wing or right wing—this sort of like self-preserve, or, you know, myths that require no evidence do crop up. But it does seem that the preponderance that happens in the right wing, or at least I just said that on television. So, therefore, it‘s true.

MADDOW: So, therefore, it‘s true and citable.

HODGMAN: Yes.

MADDOW: How do you construct the perfect political fake fact?

HODGMAN: Well, it has to have a ring of truth, or at least speak to what people are afraid of. Now, the Republicans created a very strong storyline from the begging with President Obama. That‘s he‘s elite snob, profligate and probably foreign, and maybe from another planet.

MADDOW: Right.

HODGMAN: So, you have to tell something along those lines. If I were to tell you, that I happened to know, for a fact, because I read it somewhere that Barack Obama sleeps standing up while covered with moths—that‘s not going anywhere. That‘s crazy town.

MADDOW: Right.

HODGMAN: That makes no sense because it doesn‘t play into fears.

MADDOW: Right.

HODGMAN: But if I were to tell you, did you know that Barack Obama spent $10 million of taxpayer money to Jimmy Carter‘s estate to get his one of his old cardigan to use as his prayer rug on Air Force One, that‘s on the Internet right now.

MADDOW: Right.

HODGMAN: And the crazy thing about that, the thing about the moths is actually true.

(LAUGHTER)

MADDOW: Exactly. And also something about which I‘m afraid that might work on the left.

HODGMAN: Right.

MADDOW: Excellent. John Hodgman, fake fact expert, humorist, the author of “More Information Than You Require” and all-around pal of the show—

HODGMAN: Oh, gosh. Thank you very much. Boy, oh, boy.

MADDOW: — nice to see you.

MADDOW: So, if we learned one thing on election night this week, it is that the new guys in control of the House of Representatives hate the deficit so much they are about to make it a lot bigger.