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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview With Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov About Russia's Demands; Two Former Western officials Who Have Sat Across From President Putin At The Negotiating Table Share Their Thoughts On Putin's Threats; Interview With Harvard Scholar Danielle Allen About What We Can Learn From The Pandemic. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired January 16, 2022 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Could have worked and it might work next time. Pay attention to who they're lining up to count the votes, and on this Martin Luther King Day weekend, think about whose votes they don't want to count.

Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us. "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts next.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program, what to do about Russia? Talks between Moscow and the West this week brought the sides no closer to compromise.

WENDY SHERMAN, U.S. DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE: It is Russia that has to make its stark choice. De-escalation and diplomacy or confrontation and consequences.

ZAKARIA: Will Putin invade Ukraine again? Will he capitalize on Kazakhstan's unrest? I will talk to Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, then to two former top Western officials who negotiated with the Russian president.

Also, the pandemic has wreaked havoc in schools and hospitals, and on our mental health. But how much damage has it done to American democracy? The Harvard scholar Danielle Allen, who's running for governor of Massachusetts, spent most of the last two years thinking about exactly that. She'll tell me what she's learned.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first here's "My Take." As we watch inflation spike upward at a pace not seen since the early 1980s, experts are debating whether this phenomenon is worrying and long term or benign and transitory. Now I'm not an economist but as a student of history, I do wonder

whether the return of inflation is part of a larger shift that is taking place across the world. To put it simply, for decades in country after country, economics trumped politics, but now from China to Turkey to the United States, politics is trumping economics.

The conquest of inflation is one of the most far-reaching changes of our times. Countries used to think that they simply had to live with and manage escalating prices and wages. When inflationary trends got out of hand, they often had severe political consequences. You see, unlike unemployment, which affects just a small percentage of people who don't have jobs, inflation affects everyone.

And unlike unemployment, which shrinks what you might have earned in the future if you had a job, inflation shrinks what you have now by eroding the value of all your savings. That's why high inflation has been so often associated with political turmoil from Germany in the 1920s to Iran in the 1970s, to Latin America in the 1980s. We forget now but as recently as the 1980s, inflation was rampant across much of the world.

Countries like Brazil, Argentina and Peru had inflation rates that were measured in the thousands of percent. The United States kicked off the decade with over 12 percent inflation. In some European countries like Italy, it rose above 20 percent, and most of these countries, the causes were some combination of large government deficits, lax central bank policies and external shots like the oil crisis of the 1970s.

These crises produced a policy revolution. Central banks became more independent and focused on taming inflation. Governments in the developing world became more fiscally responsible. In some cases, Chile and Mexico, they briefly tied their currencies to the dollar. One crucial reason that countries like Italy were willing to give up their currency in favor of a common European one was that they believed that essentially merging their monetary policy with Germany's would enable them to fix their inflation problem.

In large measure, it worked and by the early 2000s, countries were congratulating themselves for having won the war. It all seemed part of a paradigm in which governments recognize the power of free markets and free trade. Thomas Friedman used the metaphor of the golden straight jacket to explain what happened. Governments placed themselves in a situation where their policy options were tightly constrained by markets and as a result their politics shrank but their economies grew.

Over the last few years, it has seemed as though the opposite is happening almost everywhere. Look at Turkey, which by the 2000s had become a model developing country, taming inflation and spurring growth. Its policymakers were lauded across the world.

[10:05:03]

Today Turkey's president has abandoned even the pretense of rational economic policy, using that policy to reward friends and punish foes and advocating monetary policy that is the opposite of what most experts believe would work. Chile, which was considered the most fiscally prudent country in Latin America, now appears to have taken a path toward a more familiar left-wing populism. Or consider the poster child of developing countries, China, where economic growth was the North Star of policy making.

Today Xi Jinping pursues policies that often attack the private sector in key growth areas like technology. As the scholar Elizabeth Economy has pointed out, it is China, not America, that began the move to decouple the two countries' economies and embrace protectionism and economic nationalism when Xi announced his made-in-China strategy. India for its part has mirrored this with its own protectionism and subsidies.

The Western world has followed suit. Driven by an understandable concern about middle class wages and inequality, economic policy is no longer oriented toward growth. Tariff, subsidies and relief packages all reflect that fact that politics has trumped economics. Central banks everywhere have rushed in over the last decade to take extreme measures in response to the two big shocks of the age, the financial crisis and the pandemic.

As Ruchir Sharma notes, in the mid-1990s, not one country in the world had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 300 percent. Today, 25 countries have exceeded this mark.

Now the old obsession with economics over politics was overdone. It achieved great successes but it created other problems, such as wage stagnation. But the current emphasis of politics over economics seems more dangerous. It allows politicians to engage in patronage policies, protectionism and short-term gimmicks to prevent ordinary people from feeling the pain of a crisis.

In the long run, however, one wonders if it is the same ordinary people who will have to pay the price.

Go to CNN.com/fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

After three rounds of high-level meetings between Russia and the West this week, the two sides are no closer to compromise over de- escalation on the Ukrainian border. The Russians expressed frustration that the United States has not responded to a series of demand that include Ukraine never joining NATO and rolling back NATO activities in Eastern Europe. Washington says these demands are nonstarters and that Russia could be laying the groundwork to fabricate a pretext for an invasion.

So what exactly is Moscow's end game?

Kremlin's longtime spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has been by Vladimir Putin's side for two decades. One of his closest aides. I talked to him on Friday in an exclusive interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Mr. Peskov, pleasure to have you on, sir.

DMITRY PESKOV, PRESS SECRETARY FOR RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure, thank you.

ZAKARIA: Why has Russia brought these proposals -- some people would say why has Russia created this crisis now? Many of the things that are being talked about, the Russian demands, the draft negotiations, these issues that have been around for a few years. What has happened in the last few months or few weeks that has caused this to become a kind of urgent crisis with Russia amassing more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border? Has something changed very recently?

PESKOV: Well, you know, it started with the beginning of the '90s when Germany was reunited and when the then Soviet Union and the Soviet Union leader Mr. Gorbachev said OK to that, there was a promise by American side. Unfortunately not fixed in a judicial legally binding guaranteed document, but there was a guarantee that NATO would never -- would never expand its military infrastructure or political infrastructure eastwards. Unfortunately, the opposite thing started to happen since then.

[10:10:04]

And NATO's military infrastructure started to get closer and closer to the borders of the Russian federation. The United States started to deploy different weapons, different launching systems and so on and so forth, closer to our border with each year. This all led to the situation when we started to feel endangered by that and our nation of security was endangered.

So what you have mentioned is not a story of the last couple of months or couple of weeks. It's a story of a couple of decades, a couple of decades when NATO -- and by the way, NATO is, in our understanding, it's an organization that was tailored and was created for confrontation, not for defense. And NATO is not a dove of peace and not a dove of stability. And not a dove of prosperity.

NATO is a weapon of confrontation. And this weapon of confrontation with each year started to get closer and closer to our borders. And with the -- after 2014 when a coup happened in Ukraine, Ukraine started and Ukraine actually has said that it would be oriented more closer to NATO membership. At first they were just words, but with the time being, we have seen the gradual invasion of NATO into Ukrainian territory with its infrastructure, with its instructors, with supplies of defensive and offensive weapons, teaching Ukrainian military, and so on and so forth.

And that brought us to the red line. That brought us to the situation when we -- well, we couldn't tolerate it anymore and that was the main reason for President Putin to say, guys, this is a real threat for us and this is a real threat for stability and security in European architecture. Let's find a way out. Let's produce some guarantees for us. Let's think about returning NATO's military infrastructure back to the borders of 1997.

Let's get freed of the idea of Ukrainians membership to NATO and also let's get rid of the idea, let's abandon the idea of deployment of any offensive weapons on the territory of Ukraine next to our borders. This was the main idea, the main proposal of President Putin. So we are quite a big country, and we're too big and we're too important to keep silent against this danger. So that was the main reason.

ZAKARIA: So let's talk about the proposals. As you say, the core of it does seem to be about Ukraine's potential membership in NATO. And I'm wondering if there is a possible compromise here. Russia does not want Ukraine to become a member of NATO.

The truth of the matter is, Ukraine is not likely to become a member of NATO any time soon. NATO runs by consensus. You would need 30 votes. Clearly those votes do not exist. And yet NATO has a policy of what it calls an open door, which is it does not in principle rule out that any country might apply to be a member.

Is it possible to imagine a compromise where in effect there is a statement that says there's no present plan for Ukraine to become a member, but we don't rule out that at some point in the future that might happen for Ukraine, as for any other country? Is there a potential compromise there?

PESKOV: Well, there is also space for compromise, excluding some principal concerns. And here we're talking about principal concerns. Russian has never had the deficit of political will for negotiations. To the contrary, President Putin was willing, was willing all the time and he is willing negotiations with NATO, with the United States, based on the mutual respect and readiness to take into account each other's concerns.

[10:15:07]

So NATO -- you're talking about open-doors policy for Ukraine, but you cannot create a security of one country at the expense of the security of the other. So there is an understanding of instability of security. And it's extremely important, extremely important. And we have to find out a combination to solve this problem taking into account concerns of Russia. We don't know what the outcome is going to be. We have these three sessions of negotiations.

There are some understandings between us but in general, in principle, we can now say that we are staying on different tracks, on totally different tracks. And this is not good. This is disturbing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: And we will be back with more of my interview with Vladimir Putin's longtime aide, Dmitry Peskov.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:20:27]

ZAKARIA: And we are back with the Kremlin's chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Mike McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia, had a series of tweets where he said, here's my list of demands from the Russians since the Russians have made demands for NATO. And they read, I'm just going to read them to you and I want to get your reaction.

"Russia agrees to withdraw its forces from Moldova. Russia agrees to withdraw its forces from Georgia. Renounce recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia agrees to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. Return Crimea to Ukraine. Stop supporting separatist forces in Ukraine. Russia agrees to withdraw Iskander missiles from Kaliningrad." What's your reaction to those?

PESKOV: So we have Russian peacekeepers in various regions and in those regions situation is still very fresh, is still very, very fragile and potentially the withdrawal of Russians can lead to inflammation of new crisis. We don't know what can be the outcome and what can be the situation with Abkhazia or with Ossetia, for example. And people of Abkhazia and Ossetia can be endangered by Georgia nationalists like it's happened when Georgia unleashed a war against Ossetia sending tanks against a peaceful population. You have to remember it.

And Russia will never discuss with anyone withdrawal of any missiles and any weapons from Kaliningrad because Kaliningrad is a territory of Russia. And with all the due respect, we will never tolerate any demands for us to do this or that on our own territory. None of the countries will tolerate.

ZAKARIA: What about --

PESKOV: Can you just imagine --

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: What about from Ukraine's territory? What about de-escalation in Ukraine?

PESKOV: Yes, de-escalation in Ukraine. Well, first of all, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine. There are no Russian troops in Donbass. There are Russian troops on the Russian soil, on the Russian territory next to Ukrainian border. It's quite understandable.

ZAKARIA: You know international observers say that there are Russian troops not wearing Russian uniforms but there are Russian troops in Donbass.

PESKOV: There are no Russian troops in Donbass. I'm a spokesperson to Kremlin and I officially can tell you that there are no Russian troops in Donbass and on Ukrainian soil. But there are Russian troops on the territory of the Russian federation next to Ukrainian borders. And we find it necessary to keep those troops there in front of the very tense situation and very unfriendly environment created by various training of NATO, jet fighters, NATO spy planes, NATO's military infrastructure moving towards our borders. We have to respond. We have to take measures of precaution. That's why we have our military guys on our territory there.

ZAKARIA: Do you have some kind of a timeline that you are -- at which point you will then say the negotiations have failed and are you then prepared to take military action?

PESKOV: Well, we're not speaking about military action. This is -- you have to understand, no one is threatening anyone with military action. This will be just a madness to do that. But we will be ready to take counteractions. So if you continue to say that, listen, Russians, we're not going to take into account your concerns, NATO will continue to expand, now we're not going to have Ukraine's side, NATO, but for the time being legally it will be possible, we're not going to say that we will not deploy any offensive weapons on Ukraine's territory and NATO's military infrastructure will stay next to your border and we will even for the time being get even closer. If you tell us that, we will have to do something. What is the timeline? What is the timeline?

[10:25:01]

Well, of course, we're not speaking about tomorrow. We're not speaking about hours, but what was meant by our president is that we don't want to see a process for the sake of the process. So we don't want to see a month-long or yearlong negotiation discussing our disagreements. We want to feel for the beginning the readiness to take into account our concerns. Right now unfortunately we fail to do that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I will ask Dmitry Peskov how Moscow would respond to further American sanctions, and what he really thinks of Joe Biden.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:08]

ZAKARIA: Back now with the final part of my interview with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Do you worry about the kind of sanctions that are being proposed?

President Biden, I know, told President Putin in the phone call that these would be sanctions of a kind that are substantially more extensive than ever done before?

PESKOV: Well, I understand that Washington is -- is a great fan of introducing sanctions against different countries. And what was meant for the last -- for the last kind of sanctions, this -- even sanctions, mentioning sanctions against the leadership of Russia, well, of course, it's beyond -- beyond our understanding.

Potentially, these kind of sanctions can lead to -- to discontinuation of any relationship between our two countries, which will not be in the interests of nor Moscow neither Washington. It will be a great mistake.

And, of course, every time we would like to just to -- just to ask people in Washington, can you recall any example of a situation when sanctions helped you to solve a problem, whether sanctions were really effective in making a country to make certain steps?

This never happened. This never happened. And, well, we've got used to live under American sanctions, and to some extent we're trying to take advantage of them, in terms of developing our domestic economy, our domestic production, compensating a deficit of certain import parts and elements; we're producing our own. So it gives a boost to our national economy.

So that's why we're quite big and we're quite -- quite self-sufficient to be -- to be fragile against these sanctions. You have to understand it.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you, finally, Mr. Peskov, you've said some very generous things about President Biden. You've said he's one of the most experienced politicians in the world. You've said that he and President Putin have a good relationship. You've said that the negotiations have been started in good faith.

Are you optimistic that things are going to de-escalate, that there's going to be some search for stability?

Or are you pessimistic and feel things are spiraling downwards?

PESKOV: Well, I sincerely believe that the wisdom of our two leaders, I mean, the wisdom, political wisdom of President Putin and his political experience and political wisdom and the experience of President Biden is a good soil for continuation of attempts to find a common ground.

But there is a critical situation here. The critical situation is the situation around the concerns, national concerns of Russia. If we see political will from Washington to try to take it into account somehow and to discuss it with us, then it's a common ground for continuation. If we continue to get response in the way that, "No, it's out of question; we're not going to discuss it," then it will be reason for being pessimistic.

ZAKARIA: All right, we will leave it at that. And it's always a pleasure to have you on, and I hope we can do this again.

PESKOV: It's my pleasure.

ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," how should the West respond to Russia's rhetoric and actions?

I will talk to two former Western officials who have sat across from President Putin at the negotiating table. Their thoughts on Putin's threats, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:38:30]

ZAKARIA: We just heard the Kremlin view, and I should say a lot of independent observers would push back and contest many of the things that Mr. Peskov said. But the crucial question is what should the West do?

Radek Sikorski dealt with Vladimir Putin when he was foreign minister of Poland. He is currently a member of the European parliament.

Thomas Graham was involved in dialogues with Putin as the senior director for Russia at the National Security Council under George W. Bush. He is currently a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Tom, let me start with you. You heard Peskov's line. Does it appear to you that they are preparing for war?

THOMAS GRAHAM, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: No, I don't think -- well, first, yes, they are preparing for war and military conflict. But I think that the -- the preference, at this point, is to go down the diplomatic track.

The steps that they've taken over the past several months, from the Kremlin's standpoint, have been efforts to compel the United States to engage seriously on what they say their primary concerns are, which is basically that this position of NATO forces in Europe and the expansion over the past 30 years.

But we've heard in recent days threats of escalation, the possible placement of Russian nuclear architecture in Cuba or Venezuela, for example, I think this is an effort to underscore, from the Kremlin's standpoint, it's not only Ukraine's security that is at risk. It's not only Europe's; it's the United States.

[10:40:02]

And the hope is that that will compel the United States to engage seriously on a range of issues.

ZAKARIA: Radek, how do you read the same situation?

RADOSLAW SIKORSKI, FORMER POLISH FOREIGN MINISTER: Well, President Putin is an experienced and intelligent leader, but he's a gambler and gamblers sometimes overreach.

Let's get some things straight. I was at the NATO summit with President Putin in 2008 when we denied Ukraine a membership action plan.

There are no NATO facilities or offensive weapons in Ukraine, and Russia is a nuclear power. Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal under the Budapest memorandum of '94 in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine's borders and security.

The idea of Ukraine being a threat to -- to Russia is as absurd as Canada being a threat to the United States.

ZAKARIA: Tom, what Radek says is true, of course. Russia did guarantee that security. It does seem that it is trying to rewrite or roll back the -- the concessions, or the strategic reality, that developed over the last 20 years, where NATO has moved to incorporate Poland and Hungary and countries like that.

How much give is there? Is there room -- as I was asking, is there room for some kind of compromise here, you think?

GRAHAM: No, I do think there's some room for compromise. I think what the Russian position is at this point is that we need to address the (inaudible).

Now, they have obviously laid out some extreme positions, almost in the form of ultimatums, that are unacceptable to the West.

The challenge, I think, for diplomacy is to thread the needle of our position that NATO retains an open door, that countries of the former Soviet Union, if they so desire, are free to associate with any -- any countries, in a military/political type of arrangement, and that includes NATO.

On the other hand, Russia has made it quite clear that it needs to seek some sort of security buffer zone in Europe to feel -- feel secure, and the focus of this is obviously on Ukraine. What a colleague of...

(CROSSTALK)

GRAHAM: Go ahead.

ZAKARIA: Radek, I wanted ask you, we can talk about the United States more, but Europe is a big player here, or should be. Would Europe back up a tough line against Russia?

Right now, gas prices in Europe are sky-high. Were there to be any kind of confrontation, sanctions against Russia, there would be a kind of energy crisis in Europe on the scale of the 1970s in the -- in the U.S.

Are Europeans willing to deal with that?

The German leadership, certainly, they're doing Nord Stream, which actually helps Russia, hurts Ukraine. They -- I don't hear them being very -- very strong right now.

Where will Europe -- will Europe back the United States were it to be compelled to take a tough line?

SIKORSKI: I think President Putin was very surprised that Europe imposed sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine before, for taking over Crimea and for invading Donbass. And I think there would be consensus to increase them further.

Remember, Russia also needs to sell us their gas. We can buy gas from the United States. A huge tank is on their way now. We have LNG terminals.

I think Russia needs to calculate that, for example, if she invades, Nord Stream 2 will never be operational.

ZAKARIA: Tom, do you think that, fundamentally the -- the best way to deal with this is deterrence, or diplomacy?

I mean, I realize there needs to be a combination of the two.

GRAHAM: That's correct.

ZAKARIA: But at some level, it feels like there's a tension here. The more you back Ukraine to strengthen it to deter Russia, the more the Russians are going to feel that the U.S. is not listening to their concerns.

GRAHAM: I think -- absolutely. We've done very well on the deterrence track so far. I think we need to do more on the diplomacy.

And what I think we ought to give serious consideration to is something that I would call the moratorium on the further expansion of NATO eastward, for a defined period, say 20 to 25 years. The period is not -- is not set in stone. That's a matter of negotiation. But the idea here is to have a period that's long enough so that the Russians can say that we have met our major security concern, which is about NATO's expansion eastward.

[10:45:02]

This is a long enough period it could be, in fact, forever.

At the same token, we haven't compromised our view that the door to NATO is still open. And that means that we have to have a short enough period so it doesn't look like we've given up or abandoned Ukraine.

ZAKARIA: All right. On that -- on that potential note of compromise, I have to -- I have to close. We will doubtless be back with the two of you to discuss this, because this crisis isn't going away. Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:15]

ZAKARIA: American democracy is under great strain these days, first and foremost from the current nature of American politics itself, but the pandemic has also tested our political system and displayed weaknesses for all to see.

My next guest, the Harvard scholar Danielle Allen, has been busily studying and writing about what we can learn from the pandemic. Her new book is "Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus."

Danielle, welcome.

You spent a lot of time putting together groups, to try to do something about this, both in Massachusetts and around the country. You come to this as a scholar. You're running for governor of Massachusetts.

If I were to ask you, what was the single weakness that the pandemic exposed in -- in American society and politics, what would you say that was?

DANIELLE ALLEN, AUTHOR, "DEMOCRACY IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS": Thanks so much, Fareed, for having me, and for all the amazing work you've been doing on democracy.

The single greatest weakness exposed is that we've got a broken social contract. We don't trust each other. We don't trust our governments. And we don't trust each other or our government because for years folks have been asked to pitch in, pay taxes, work hard and haven't really gotten basic protections, access to basic health resources, basic security.

And when the pandemic hit, that broken social contract has showed in spades. You know, we had a split-screen reality where some folks got protection but others, hard-working people, frontline workers and the like, really didn't.

And so I think that -- the fact that we have this sort of underlying problem of distrust and a broken sense of connection meant everything else we tried to do was so much harder, so much harder to achieve than if we had a strong, healthy social contract.

ZAKARIA: I'm struck by the degree to which politics and polarization has gotten into COVID. Because it's really quite almost unique in America.

I mean, America didn't have a very strong anti-vax movement before COVID. And if you looked at the numbers, places like France were much worse in terms of suspicion of vaccines.

But then it became all part of the Republican versus Democrat, Trump versus the rest. And it seems like we now have so much politicized this public health debate that it's difficult to imagine a collective response on anything because there's always going to be opposition.

So in that specific case, you know, which still remains hugely problematic -- only 62 percent of Americans are double vaccinated -- is there a solution?

I mean, what would you do to try to get us back to where we used to be, which is there were vaccine mandates all over the -- the country. You couldn't go to public school if your kids weren't -- if you weren't vaccinated. How do you get back to that ethos?

ALLEN: Well, I think it's a lot of work. You know, this is really the reason I'm running -- running for governor in Massachusetts. Our democracy is what we live or die by. The pandemic really showed us that. And it's going to take work on multiple fronts in order for us to get back there.

So I think, actually, we have to equip ourselves at the local level. We have decision- making tools that are depolarizing. But I think it's also about our culture and how we orient ourselves to one another, and recognizing that we have a set of multiple things we care about.

We care about public health. We care about freedom as well. And we don't need to start by assuming that those things are in competition. We need to start by asking the question, how can we align these different goods and ideals that we do actually hold in common?

ZAKARIA: A lot of people believe that social media drives polarization even further, intensifies it. And certainly on -- you know, looking at it objectively, I think it's fair to say that there is some truth to that. Do you have any ideas about how you change that dynamic or you address it?

I do think we have to face the fact that Facebook has broken our democracy. You know, again, I don't think that was intentional; I think it's unintended consequences. But it's for real. It really has supported the spread of misinformation. And we have a, sort of, information ecosystem that doesn't give people healthy diets of information, healthy opportunities for deliberation and conversation.

I believe it's really necessary to rebuild a healthy ecosystem of local journalism. And so I am proposing for Massachusetts that we tax the revenue that social media companies get for targeted advertising and then use those resources to fund rebirth of local journalism, re- establishment of (inaudible), you know, local communities about what counts as good evidence and the kinds of arguments and debates we want to have.

[10:55:01]

ZAKARIA: You -- you sound, at the end of the day, optimistic. Is that something you get out of having gone around on and -- you know, on the -- campaining around the state?

ALLEN: Yes, absolutely. Campaigning is just the most incredible source of hope. I'm a doer and an implementer. When I see a problem, I jump in and I do everything I can in my power to fix it.

And as I travel around Massachusetts, I have discovered I am by no means alone. There are so many people in our state who are doing incredible things to bring health to their communities, to bring healthy partnerships, to build bridges, honestly.

There's an amazing partnership between social justice activists and police in Lynn, for example, to build an alternative dispatch program. There are leaders all over our Commonwealth who are forging a path out of these dark, hard times. And I'm working really hard to bring that same spirit to this effort.

ZAKARIA: Danielle Allen, pleasure to have you on. Best of luck.

ALLEN: Thanks a lot, Fareed. Great to see you.

ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.