MARK THOMPSON (HOST): [The focus on Clinton's email] worked, obviously. It's hurt her in the polls, and as I said, you know, I didn't think she should have apologized. I confess though, I mean, if -- and you work for Media Matters and, you know, when I used to teach media school -- help people understand the power of suggestion. That's that song you hear on the radio. You don't like it. The radio station keeps playing it, and what happens? Sooner or later you start singing it. That's the power of media. So you keep saying, “She's inauthentic, she's untrustworthy, she's inauthentic, she's untrustworthy, she's inauthentic.” So I'm watching her on Jimmy Fallon, David, and feeling guilty because I'm actually watching Hillary Clinton and wondering if she's being herself. And I say wait a minute, hold up, Mark, you're losing your mind. It -- this is -- they're doing this to you.
DAVID BROCK: Yes.
THOMPSON: I've never done that with any other human being, I've never watched anybody else on TV and wondered, David -- like, you're sitting [here], “I wonder if David is really authentic?” No, I've never done that before.
BROCK: Right. So it's a really great point. I mean, the challenge is, look, let's be honest that every politician has some calculation about them, that's part of politics. So she has to calculate how not to look calculating. And that's an almost absurd proposition. And so, yeah, so has some damage been done? You know, we're in a climate where nobody has to prove anything anymore. It's just the suggestion of wrongdoing, and the repeated and relentless suggestion of wrongdoing does have some stickiness. But, again, I think that we're in a period now where we can move on and the page has been turned for the reasons I said. But the Republican strategy here -- part of it has been brilliant, and that has to do with, which I go into the book in Killing the Messenger, about the success they've had in manipulating mainstream media sources. And I'll give them that, because The New York Times has carried, in recent months, three headlines that linked Hillary Clinton to potential criminal misconduct. And if that happened to you or me, where would our poll ratings be? It's just totally outrageous, and it all ended up being false.
