Ben Wizner

As I just did, and as I once did, when your fellow Pulitzer Prize winner, Laura Poitras, came to my office in January of 2013 and said, put your phone in your desk and lock it.

We've got to go talk somewhere else.

Are you talking about the attire that I wear to Knicks games, the Rasheed Wallace ball don't lie t-shirt that I wore when we went together?

The thing about fandom, and I'm going to be a little bit sincere right now if your show can tolerate it, is that it is a place without class or politics where people meet on this common terrain, often with joy, sometimes with anger, sorrow.

It's a place to...

really, you know, experience these emotions intensely with strangers.

And that's why in the 1990s, I was sleeping on the sidewalk outside of Madden Square Garden to share season tickets with people.

And it's why my disposable income goes to Knicks playoff tickets.

I love riffs about radical lawyers having power.

The power that radical lawyers have is to convince conservative federal judges that we're right.

That's it.

That's it.

The Supreme Court has been conservative every day of my life.

I was born in 1971.

That was the last year there was a liberal majority on the Supreme Court.

So whatever power I have derives from my ability to convince people, most of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, that my position is right and someone else's position is wrong, usually the government's position.

If that's too much power, you're complaining about the wrong person.

I don't think it was fun for all of my colleagues, particularly the one who was named in that transcript.

But I will say this.

When Trump was kicked off the major platforms in 2021 following January 6th and his attempt to stay in office, we were critical.