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Trump Floats Pulling TV Licenses If Networks Are "Against" Him; Researchers Give Doomsday Warning About Building AI Too Fast; Farm Aid's Founding Fathers Focus On Building Healthy Food Chains. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired September 19, 2025 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": We have another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show.
(Audience laughter).
What are you doing? Shut up. You're going to (bleep) blow this for us.
JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": Yeah. A lot of people are worried that we won't keep saying what we want to say or that we'll be censored, but I'm going to cover the president's trip the U.K. just like I normally would. Well guys, President Trump just wrapped up his three-day trip to the U.K. and he looked incredibly handsome.
SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": I just want to say before we get started here that I've always admired and respected Mr. Trump. I've always believed he was -- no, no, no -- a visionary, an innovator, a great president and even better golfer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That is just a taste of what we heard overnight from late-night in defense of Jimmy Kimmel after ABC suspended him indefinitely following threats from the White House.
Jon Stewart -- you just saw him -- he came in for a special Thursday night edition of his show and explained the First Amendment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEWART: In America we have a little something called the First Amendment and let me tell you how it works.
There's something called a talent-o-meter. It's a completely scientific instrument that is kept on the president's desk and it tells the president when a performer's TQ (talent quotient) measured mostly by niceness to the president, goes below a certain leave, at which point the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates. And these affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to the even larger megacorporation that controls the flow of state-approved content or the FCC can just threaten those licenses directly. It's basic science.
It's in the Constitution. Read your Constitution. Read it!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: So that's what Jon Stewart had to say about the First Amendment.
What are they saying about it on Capitol Hill? CNN's Annie Grayer is there this morning. Good morning.
ANNIE GRAYER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Good morning, John.
Well, we are seeing a split-screen unfolding on Capitol Hill where Republicans are largely supportive of the decision of ABC to remove Kimmel from the air indefinitely. They say it is a business decision and they're largely sidestepping any questions about FCC or Brendan Carr.
Now, Democrats, on the other hand, are raising alarm bells here. They say that this is just the beginning of what could be a dangerous road towards censorship. This sets a very dangerous precedent and really infringes on free speech.
Take a listen to just a sampling of how lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are talking about this issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): There's free speech and if you're going to go out there and speak your piece, fine. But you're accountable to somebody. It's not the government. You're accountable to your people that employ you.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Is the right dabbling in cancel culture?
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): Not this guy on the right. I mean, I just -- I just said he's entitled under the First Amendment to say what he wants. But on the other hand, I applaud the move of Disney, his corporate parent, to say we think this is terrible.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): It's not a question of whether you agree with Mr. Kimmel or disagree with Mr. Kimmel. The point is one of the government not coming in and making decisions about whose speech gets heard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRAYER: So as you see, very different reactions here and it's really just unfolding a larger conversation on Capitol Hill about free speech and if there are any limits to it. And one thing that Republicans have been pushing for a very long time
is being against cancel culture, and that is a question that's coming up again as they support the decision to remove Kimmel from the air. This is something that is going to continue to develop but it is really remarkable to see such different reactions here.
I should point out that Democrats are even trying to investigate this decision. But given that they are in the minority they do not have the power on committees to really compel any testimony or documents there.
But this is something that both Democrats and Republicans have very strong but very different views on.
BERMAN: Different, although I will say there are some conservative outlets or center-right outlets now that are raising questions about the government role in all this. But so far, a lot of the members on Capitol Hill not seeing it the same way.
Annie Grayer, great to see you. Thank you very much -- Kate.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Sticking their neck out once again.
President Trump is applauding ABC's decision, as we have seen, to pull Jimmy Kimmel from the air. He's also saying very clearly that he thinks networks should lose their broadcasting licenses simply for criticizing him.
Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They give me only bad publicity or press. I mean, they're getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. I mean, I think it will be up to Brendan Carr.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[07:35:05]
BOLDUAN: And joining us right now is Greg Lukianoff. He's the president of FIRE, a free speech advocacy group. And you guys have been very outspoken on this -- and for years, let's be honest. It's very nice to have you here. Thanks for being here.
GREG LUKIANOFF, PRESIDENT AND CEO, FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION (FIRE): Certainly.
BOLDUAN: Brendan Carr has said very -- you hear that from the president, but Brendan Carr also said yesterday that the ABC move is not the last shoe to drop.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: It's very hard to revoke and pull a broadcasting license.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: At least it was in the past.
LUKIANOFF: Yes, it was.
BOLDUAN: Where do you think this goes now?
LUKIANOFF: Oh my God. Well, I mean, first of all, I want to say, like, the murder of Charlie Kirk was a savage blow against freedom of speech, but the administration is exploiting that to go after its political enemies in a way that violates the First Amendment consistently. I have seen them adopt practically every argument they criticize on the left, whether it's hate speech or misinformation, as a rationale for censorship.
Brendan Carr himself --
BOLDUAN: Um-hum, um-hum.
LUKIANOFF: -- criticized --
BOLDUAN: There's a lot of tweets for Brendan Carr that are not aging well for him.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah, exactly -- where he said precisely the same thing. And they're turning those into weapons of -- for their own use.
BOLDUAN: You heard President Trump say that networks should lose their licenses for criticizing him.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: And you mentioned Charlie Kirk because interestingly enough, Charlie Kirk said -- had something to say about this very issue and --
LUKIANOFF: Yes, he did.
BOLDUAN: -- in the past. And we looked -- I looked back. He's on social media reacting to when South Park made fun of him.
LUKIANOFF: Yes.
BOLDUAN: Lampooned him in an episode.
He said this. "We need to have a good spirit about being made fun of. This is a success. This is all a win. We as conservatives -- we have thick skin, not thin skin. You can make fun of us. It doesn't matter."
I mean, that is -- that is a true statement --
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: -- and should be for anyone in public life.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: But then you hold that up against the threat -- this new threat coming from the president -- I just wonder what it leads to.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah. Well, I think they've been pretty transparent and that's one of the reasons why the -- like, the whole conservative attempt to be like oh, this was just a business decision by ABC -- the government played no role.
And it's like Trump actually said Jimmy Kimmel is next, you know, months ago --
BOLDUAN: Um-hum.
LUKIANOFF: -- and he repeated this. So what we -- what can we expect? We can expect him to go after the other late-night hosts.
BOLDUAN: Brian Stelter brought it up that -- brought up today that if they're going to run up against the law --
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: -- and the Constitution, what they are -- could be trying to do though is lead to self-censorship.
LUKIANOFF: Yes.
BOLDUAN: Do you see that happening?
LUKIANOFF: Oh, yeah -- no. That's been a lot of the playbook. I mean, so far, the Trump administration -- you know, its approach has been to go after centers of sort of like liberal power.
BOLDUAN: Um-hum.
LUKIANOFF: And so they've gone after universities, they've gone after the media, they've gone after journalism. And it's been -- but unfortunately, a lot of these corporations have been caving in the face of it.
And by the way, one of the only people who hasn't caved is Ann Selzer --
BOLDUAN: Um-hum.
LUKIANOFF: -- who were defending it against -- a personal lawsuit by Trump.
BOLDUAN: A very well-known pollster out of Iowa.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah. And she -- what they're going after her for is allegedly it was a violation of consumer protection law that she got a poll wrong about because it didn't favor Trump.
BOLDUAN: You -- I was looking through your bio. You are also executive producer of a documentary about really getting at this very thing.
LUKIANOFF: Yes. BOLDUAN: The chilling effect that kind of outrage culture and cancel culture can have on comedy. The documentary is called "Can We Take A Joke?" It came out almost 10 years ago.
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: And I'm wondering how you answer that question today. Can we take a joke?
LUKIANOFF: Well, the answer was, back then, kind of no, and it's definitely no at the moment.
BOLDUAN: Um.
Just finally, when you look at what's happened -- just the ABC News- Disney example of what we've seen --
LUKIANOFF: Yeah, yeah.
BOLDUAN: -- from your perspective who do you think delivered a bigger blow to free speech and expression: The threats leveled by the FCC and the Trump administration and the president, or the actions by Disney and ABC as a network in bending to those threats?
LUKIANOFF: I would say yes. I would say -- I'd say that both of them are to blame. And I think that corporations need to stand up for freedom of speech even if it's against their financial interest.
BOLDUAN: It's great to see you, Greg. Thank you very much --
LUKIANOFF: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: -- for speaking out and thank you for being here today.
LUKIANOFF: Thanks for having me.
BOLDUAN: John.
BERMAN: All right. New this morning the FTC in seven states have filed a new lawsuit against entertainment giant Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, accusing the company of "illegal ticket resale tactics that allow them to mislead customers and profit from scalpers."
CNN's Matt Egan is with us now. If there's one thing you hear universal complaints about from, like, everyone who walks the earth is ticket prices.
MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah, John -- I think you nailed it right? This does get at that nearly universal frustration, which is how expensive it is to go to a football game, to go to a concert, and in particular, it's those pesky last-second fees that can jack up the total cost.
[07:40:00] So the FTC put out this lawsuit -- 84-page complaint -- a series of allegations against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, including arguing that the companies are tacitly coordinating with brokers, allowing them to gobble up a huge amount of tickets on the primary market and then resell them to consumers on the secondary market at a massive markup.
And they're also arguing that the companies have deceived consumers -- what they're calling bait-and-switch pricing which is the fact that you see one price when you're looking for a seat and then you see a much bigger price because of fees when you're checking out at the last moment.
And this is a big deal for the company because fees are a really big moneymaker for them, right? This lawsuit says that they can, at times, make up to 44 percent of the total price just in fees, and that the company in just the past six full years made $16 billion on fees alone.
And they cited one example of a Bad Bunny concert in Chicago at the United Center. For two tickets they said that at first you see $490, and then when you add in the fees, ultimately, Ticketmaster charging $662 -- a massive difference.
Now, they cited a number of different internal emails to try to make their point in this lawsuit, including one where a Ticketmaster executive admitted that their customer experience "sucks" because of the "sticker shock at the end."
And in another email a senior executive at the company says that they kind of have this policy to turn a blind eye to brokers, ignoring those limits that are supposed to prevent brokers from gobbling up a whole lot of tickets.
They also have a company document where they found that just five ticket brokers possess nearly a quarter of a million tickets --
BERMAN: Oh!
EGAN: -- to 2,600 different concerts.
In a statement, the FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said, "It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician's show."
John, we've reached out to Ticketmaster and Live Nation and we have not heard back. We'll see how they fight these allegations and whether or not this lawsuit forces any changes in how the companies operate.
BERMAN: Look, I -- the legal intricacies here -- I don't understand them fully. Obviously, they're complicated. But I know as a consumer you go through this process and by then you're like you can't be serious --
EGAN: Yeah. BERMAN: -- you know, and I want the last half hour of my life back because it took me life half an hour to get to this point and I'm spending this much.
EGAN: Yeah. We've all experienced it.
BERMAN: All right, Matt Egan. Thank you.
EGAN: Thanks, John.
BOLDUAN: That last graphic was crazy, wasn't it?
BERMAN: Yes. You saw the numbers there.
BOLDUAN: Five brokers with, like, 300,000 --
EGAN: Yeah.
BOLDUAN: -- concert tickets. That's crazy.
EGAN: It's incredible.
BOLDUAN: Wow.
All right, I'm going to take it now. Thanks, boys.
This is breaking overnight. Officials in Washington State -- they have found human remains that they believe are of Travis Decker.
Now, he is the man who is accused of killing his three little daughters. Decker has been the focus of a monthslong manhunt after the children were reported missing by their mother. This was that -- they were reported missing at the end of May. The girls' bodies were discovered three days later near a campground. They were just five, eight, and nine years old. Officials believe that Decker suffocated them and then fled on foot.
The remains that they've found now were in a remote wooded area nearby. And authorities are now doing DNA testing to confirm the identity.
I want to show you some video that's just coming in. Take a look at this. This is video from moments ago from outside an ICE facility in suburban Chicago. You can see members of law enforcement pulling protesters -- some falling on the ground. Police also reportedly deployed pepper balls into the crowd.
The protesters are there -- they're against the so-called "Operation Midway Blitz," which is that DHS kind of announced operation targeting, as they say, targeting illegal immigrants.
This just happening moments ago. We're going to have much more reporting on this as it continues -- John.
BERMAN: All right. Meanwhile, we do have some dramatic video just in. A suspect lunges at a judge right in the middle of a hearing. Look at that. We'll show you what happens next.
And a dire new warning that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity. Also, traffic and weather right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL)
[07:48:40]
BERMAN: All right. New overnight a fringe political party in Japan has decided its leader will be an AI chatbot. That news quaint compared to a warning in a new book about artificial intelligence.
"If any company or group anywhere on the planet builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth will die."
All right, Nate Soares and Eliezer Yudkowsky are with me now. They are the authors of the new book "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies."
And just so people understand, you guys aren't just, you know, nobodies on the street when it comes to AI. I mean, this is your life here. You guys are devoted to this. You're huge in the business, Eliezer. You know, Sam Altman says -- credits you with giving him the idea to found OpenAI. So you know what you're talking about here.
Why are you so convinced that everyone will die?
ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY, CO-AUTHOR, "IF ANYONE BUILDS IT, EVERYONE DIES: WHY SUPERHUMAN AI WOULD KILL US ALL", FOUNDER AND RESEARCH FELLOW, MACHINE INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Because if we go up against something much smarter than us, thinks faster, better technology, it doesn't particularly care about us one way or the other, it's not going to be a fight; it's going to be a short death.
BERMAN: And how close are we to that moment?
YUDKOWSKY: That's a really hard call. The AI companies think two to three years, but should we be paying any attention to what they say? Who knows? Scientists have a very hard trouble telling what will happen when as opposed to what will happen eventually.
[07:50:05]
BERMAN: So Nate, it obviously sounds alarmist, right? I mean, on its face it's alarmist. The title of the book is alarmist.
What do you say to people who say you know what, like, what about -- you know, we were told with nuclear weapons we were going to be wiped off the face of the Earth in the 50s and that didn't happen.
NATE SOARES, CO-AUTHOR, "IF ANYONE BUILDS IT, EVERYONE DIES, PRESIDENT, MACHINE INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE: WHY SUPERHUMAN AI WOULD KILL US ALL": You know, that didn't happen because people worked really hard to prevent it happening. It wasn't that the nukes turned out not to explode. It wasn't that it turned out they couldn't level cities. It was that everyone noticed that there was an issue and worked hard to prevent the issue.
With this case we need to notice and we need to act.
BERMAN: Now you see -- you say there are already warning signs that you're seeing from AI and the companies that things are going a little bit awry. What warning signs do you see?
SOARES: You know, it's hard to tell because these AIs are grown rather than crafted, so we never -- we don't really know what's going on in them.
But example warning signs that may be warnings. We've seen AIs resist shutdown. We've seen AIs notice when they're in training and change their behavior when they notice they're being tested. We've seen AIs cheat on problems that they're given and otherwise behave in ways no one asked for and no one wanted. You know, various other ways AIs are misbehaving -- some of them echo the ways they'd misbehave if they got even smarter.
BERMAN: So one of the key questions is you've identified a problem -- a threat here that could be imminent. What can we do about it?
YUDKOWSKY: International treaty. Shut it all down everywhere at once. The -- shut down the further escalation of AGI capability -- general intelligence capabilities -- everywhere at once. This is not a regional problem. If you abandon it in your country that doesn't protect you if some other country builds something smarter than humanity.
BERMAN: Well, you say -- you say a treaty to ban it. I mean, how -- ban what? How much are you banning here?
YUDKOWSKY: Well, you know, I'd say go pretty hard but maybe somebody goes a little softer. But you can't just like keep climbing the ladder and making the AIs smarter and smarter and smarter. That's the central thing to shut down. You know, research, lines of research leading up to that -- you want to shut that down. It probably doesn't affect the person on the street very much, but a lot of mad scientists need to be reined in here.
BERMAN: You say shut it down. But look, have you looked at the stock market lately? It's booming based on all these AI technologies. These are, you know, party times. Do you think people want to shut it down?
SOARES: So one thing people don't understand is that the superintelligence is different from the chatbots of today. We don't necessarily need to give up ChatGPT here. We don't need to give up on the self-driving cars. We need to give up on the race to smarter and smarter AIs to the point where they're smarter than any human and smarter than all humanity.
And that, frankly, wouldn't affect the average person. These things are made in huge data centers with very specialized chips. It wouldn't be hard to stop that race.
BERMAN: And I don't want to get too alarmist here, but you've talked about maybe the eventualities here. Look, if there are -- if this does continue, right, would you be opposed to the destruction of data center? You know, a military strike on a data center in another country if it was building things that you thought were too dangerous.
YUDKOWSKY: I think you want to clearly communicate via diplomatic routes that this is what you will do in terror for your lives and the lives of your children if they don't stop. But yeah, then if they don't stop, you know, better that than the destruction of the entire human species.
BERMAN: All right. You've made me feel a lot better about all this, this morning. Gentlemen, thank you very much. The book is fascinating. The subject is fascinating. You guys have devoted so much of your lives to it, so I appreciate your work. Thank you very much -- Kate.
BOLDUAN: Some of the headlines we're watching right now.
A wild scene in a Florida courtroom. During what was supposed to be a routine hearing an inmate suddenly lunges at the judge and spat at him. He was shackled at the time -- shackled at the ankles, handcuffed, and belly-chained when all of this went down. Deputies took him down and then removed him from the courtroom. The judge was not hurt. The inmate now faces felony battery charges.
And some dramatic video from a hospital in Dallas showing the moment a man pulls up to the front of the hospital with his wife in labor. No time to spare. He jumps into action helping to deliver the baby in the SUV's front seat. And credit where credit is due. This woman successfully delivered her baby in a car -- no epidural, no nothing.
Dozens of doctors, nurses, and even the hospital's president rushed out to help as this all was playing out. Moments later, the doctors were handing this mother her newborn baby girl and they were taken inside. Thank God, and we wish them well.
New video also in this morning police say is that -- that is a Dodge Durango Hellcat. It's apparently worth $100,000 or was worth $100,000. It got absolutely crushed. Authorities in Louisville, Kentucky say it was used in illegal street racing and the confiscated it as -- at a hotrod show and found it was full of stolen parts, including the engine. The police warning this: We will seize your car and if it's not legal for the streets, we will crush it -- John.
BERMAN: That's why I always just use an old, like, you know, VW Rabbit for all of the illegal street racing that I do. Because you don't want to see it.
BOLDUAN: I mean, you are -- I mean, you are capable of so many things. Street racing I just feel is not a John Berman pastime.
[07:55:00]
BERMAN: You don't want to see the car crushed like that, to be sure.
No, you set the cruise control for three minutes -- three miles over the speed limit. That's as fast as I'm willing to go. BOLDUAN: Sure, J.B.
BERMAN: Thank you very much.
All right, you want to hear something super exciting? Bob Dylan has just been added to the lineup of the 40th anniversary Farm Aid Music Festival tomorrow. Why is that so exciting? A) Bob Dylan is awesome. B) CNN is broadcasting the concert live tomorrow night. C) I get to anchor that coverage with Laura Coates. You know, Neil Young is there, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and CNN's Bill Weir, who I have to say honestly will have the best seat in the house for this whole thing.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: It's pretty good.
BERMAN: I mean --
WEIR: It's pretty good.
BERMAN: -- I'm super excited for this.
WEIR: Me, too. I -- Willie is still going. I get to see him -- 92 years old. But this Bob Dylan --
BERMAN: Yeah.
WEIR: -- this is a huge announcement because it brings it first circle. I don't know if the music fans out there might remember Bob Dylan was the inspiration for Farm Aid in a very particular generous year of our Lord, 1985.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WEIR (voiceover): It was 1985 and compassion was cool.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd just like to bring a few things to your attention.
WEIR (voiceover): Images of African famine were enough to inspire "Band Aid" --
BAND AID: Singing "Do They Know It's Christmas."
WEIR (voiceover): -- and "USA for Africa" --
USA FOR AFRICA: Singing "We Are the World."
WEIR (voiceover): -- and a bicontinental mega concert.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please welcome America to Live Aid Day.
WEIR (voiceover): And when Bob Dylan took the Philadelphia stage around 10:30, flanked by a couple of Rolling Stones, he would spark yet another charity benefit --
BOB DYLAN, SINGER-SONGWRITER: I'd just like to say I hope that some of the money --
WEIR (voiceover): -- with a simple shoutout for the folks who grow the food that ends famine.
DYLAN: -- and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmers here owe to the banks.
WEIR (voiceover): Watching on his tour bus that night was a former cotton and corn picker named Willie Nelson who said it hit him like a ton of bricks because in '85, crop prices were crashing and the heartland was setting new records for farm foreclosures and suicides.
JOHN MELLENCAMP, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Because a simple man -- we end up paying all those bills and thrills that kill us here in America.
WEIR (voiceover): So Willie deputized fellow voices of blue-collar conscience John Cougar Mellencamp and Neil Young.
NEIL YOUNG, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing "Heart of Gold."
WEIR (voiceover): He got the governor of Illinois to help secure the football stadium in Champaign.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the site for Farm Aid, a concert for America.
WEIR (voiceover): And just 10 weeks after Dylan's offhand comment at Live Aid --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bob Dylan.
WEIR (voiceover): -- a parade of Hall of Famers showed up to spread some love for rural America.
DYLAN: Singing "Ain't Gonna Grieve."
WEIR (voiceover): And together they raised the modern equivalent of over $20 million that day.
JOHN DENVER, SINGER-SONGWRITER: I believe the small family farmer to be the backbone of our country. They need our help.
WEIR (voiceover): The following decades would bring millions more and country music by the bushel.
TIM MCGRAW, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing "Down on the Farm."
WEIR (voiceover): But Farm Aid was always inclusive enough for both patriots --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
WEIR (voiceover): -- and protest bands.
CROSBY, STILLS, AND NASH, FOLK ROCK SUPERGROUP: Singing "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." WEIR (voiceover): A tent big enough for everyone from George Jones to Rick James.
RICK JAMES, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Pretend your left hand is that old, wrinkled face of "bleep" Ronald Reagan. Now take your right hand and smack the (bleep) out of it.
WEIR: The politics of agriculture even more contentious today with immigration raids and trade wars, and an overheating climate when it seems like the rains either never come or they bring too much water at once.
DAVE MATTHEWS, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing.
WEIR (voiceover): Dave Matthews, a climate activist and leader in eco- conscious touring, joined the Farm Aid board in 2001.
And Margo Price brings the POV of a woman reared on a foreclosed farm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And if you don't know what a factory farm is let me give you a picture. Fifty thousand hogs stuck in buildings on a 35- acre farm.
WEIR (voiceover): But over 40 years later, Farm Aid's founding fathers remain focused on the families trying to build healthy, sustainable food chains and the massive forces they are up against.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't put all that out in one place without destroying nature and the natural forces that keep us here.
WILLIE NELSON, SINGER-SONGWRITER: As long as there's one family farmer out there who wants to stay on the land we'll be here.
Singing "On the Road Again."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WEIR: He wrote that song on the same bus where he saw Bob say that thing he said at Live Aid there. It's going to be so great. And these are some really outspoken voices of conscience in these perilous times. It will be really interesting to hear their thoughts.
BERMAN: So interesting. And the concert is really all day long tomorrow.
