01/13/25 (Reintroduction)

The news is back!

If you’re new here, or if it’s just been so long you forgot… This show is called Here’s What’s Happening and it’s hosted by me, Kim Moffat.

I started this show in November of 2021, which seems insane to me. That’s so long of doing this show!

Like most things in life, I started this show because my best friend Ashley Dylan Zazzarino asked me to.

She was looking for a way to get the news in a way that let her go on with the rest of her day.

And so that’s what I’ve always tried to go.

The point of this show is not to break news, but to break it down. Make it more manageable. Maybe put it into some historical context.

And that’s what I’ve tried to do for the last three-plus years.

But it’s all been made a little easier by this one fact: I’ve always done this show under a Biden presidency. And while so-called fake news, better described as bad actors, has always been something to contend with, we’ve never really been in a situation like this.

Just before the election, as I covered here on this show, the Washington Post pulled their endorsement of Kamala Harris after their owner, Jeff Bezos told them to. The LA Times did the same. Now, in the weeks since I’ve been off, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram will no longer do official fact-checking, instead letting community notes do that work, similar to Twitter (no, I will still not call it X. That’s lame).

Among that, ABC/Disney paid $15 million to settle a defamation suit that Trump brought after anchor George Stephanopoulos said Trump was found liable for rape. He was actually found liable for sexual assault however, defamation requires malice. In this case, this would have been an easy one for ABC/Disney to fight, because the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case, to which Stephanopoulos was referring, even said he was only using the term sexual assault over rape because of New York’s narrow legal definition of rape. The charge did not mean that Carroll had “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

But instead of fighting for their anchor, ABC/Disney simply chose to pay Trump.

Trump has threatened litigation and retaliation against everyone from 20/20 (because they aired an interview with Kamala Harris – an interview he was also offered but turned down) to Iowa pollster Ann Selzer (who published a poll that put Kamala in the lead. Honestly, I have more of a case against her than he does. Emotional distress, Ann! Alta Vista it!).

The cost of fighting these suits will be too high for some, who will be forced to settle. Worse yet, some will be forced out of business.

All for the so-called crime of telling the truth about a tyrannical autocrat.

Am I telling you all this to scare you?

No! I hate scary stories. I’m scared of the Knott’s Scary Farm commercials.

But, it is important to know what’s going on.

The media landscape is changing, but maybe it’s because only like 7 people listen to this show, or maybe it’s because I refuse to be silenced by someone that has never, not once, not even on accident, worn a normal-length tie, but I will not be scared out of this show.

Really, the show isn’t changing at all, just like I’ve done for the last three years and change, you can expect:

·      Fact-checking and links to everything I’m talking about in show notes.

·      Honesty in reporting, regardless of how I feel about it

o   Though you will know how I feel about it, because I believe that’s part of being honest as well

·      No fear-mongering

·      Kelly Clarkson references (I can’t help it! We voted her our first Idol and as time goes on, more and more it appears to be one of the very few elections we’ve ever voted right in!)

If you’re new here, the show comes out Monday through Friday. I produce it by myself. What are my credentials? Besides having seen The West Wing at least five times, which makes a political expert, I have a master’s in political science and run a voter education nonprofit called We Are Voters, which this show is not connected to.

Beyond that, I’m someone who deeply believes that this country is better than this moment we are in. Who believes that democracy only works when it works for everyone. Who is, frankly, deeply worried about this incoming administration. But that does not mean we can bury our heads in the sand (as nice as that might feel… I guess. I mean, it sounds good as a saying. Literally though, it sounds very sandy. You’ll never get clean!).

So I’m going to tell the news. We’re not going to be scared of it. We’re going to stay aware. That, in itself, is a radical act of resistance. We’ll find some other stuff to do as well.

Because we are here.

It is the call of the moment to fight for the future of our country.

And just like Leslie Knope said (I believe Teddy Rosevelt got this from her): “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

Here’s What’s Happening

The news is complicated. This helps.

And that’s it. That’s a little reintroduction to the show.

I should also note that my voice doesn’t always sound like this, but if you listen to the next episode, I’m sure I’ll be the first to break the news that there are fires in Los Angeles, where I live. So that’s what’s going on here. Anyway, I’m proud of my little voice doing the best I can.

But more than that. Because you are powerful. And you’re here. And we’re in this together… I’m proud of you.