David Brock was used by the right in the 90s. He turned his career around & founded Media Matters.
About a decade ago, I was hanging out with a couple of friends at Smileys, a dive bar in Bolinas, California, a small beach town about an hour north of San Francisco.After a few vodkas, I spotted David Brock, the author and well-known Democratic Party organizer. I had interviewed Brock years prior as Washington correspondent for The Advocate. Related Scott Wiener never backs down from a fight. And we are better for it. Sen. Scott Wiener talked to LGBTQ Nation about his infamous Folsom photo, internet misinformation, and his push for more housing. Before long, we were at the bar, trading political stories. We chucked at how far hed come from his days as a right-wing provocateur, landing in Bolinas. In this left-wing hippie town, he was visiting withHillary Clinton at the estate of Suzie Buell, the wealthy Esprit founder and friend of Hillary. Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024 Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today In-person, Brock is reserved, almost shy, hardly the bombastic author who had infamously slandered Anita Hill as a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty during Clarence Thomas 1991 Senate confirmation hearings.While there was no denying the horrors hed unleashed on the cause and Hill, an honest and brave young attorney who, by all reasonable accounts, was doing her her civic duty exposing Thomas for what he was: a hard-right ideologue who had harassed Hill and other women in the workplace.Critics found it difficult to forgive Brock for his book that came out of the hearings, The Real Anita Hill.Yet it was hard to deny his transformation in the intervening years. He had done what one hoped all right-wing victimizers would do: repent, apologize, and spend his considerable talents righting his wrongs, becoming one of the most influential Democratic Party operatives, and an out gay one at that.In 2000, he published Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, a political memoir where he owned up to his misdeed and denounced the right wing. In 2004, he founded Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog organization. And he has since founded the Democratic Party-aligned super PAC American Bridge 21st Century.In a divided time that values ideological purity over truth and decency, when admitting you were wrong and changing your political stance can amount to career suicide, Brock had made a remarkably rare reversal.In his latest about-face, Brock has written Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America, which takes on the conservative majority of the Supreme Court and what he sees as its descent into partisanship. Over Zoom in late October, just days before the election, I reminded Brock of our long-ago meeting at Smileys, not long after Hillary Clinton had lost the election. We talked about the irony of having a second chance to elect a woman president against the same misogynistic candidate, Donald Trump.Then we got down to business, discussing the election, the Thomas Court, and how the equality movement can better anticipate and overcome attacks from the right.LGBTQ Nation: Tell me a little bit about your life leading up to this election. It must be hectic.David Brock: Well, Im between Washington, D.C., and Miami these days. As you reach the end of a campaign, you want to feel like you have done all you could. Weve run ads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that are first-person testimonials aimed at moving people from Trump to Harris. But those have run by now. Theres not much more money to be raised. So Im just sitting here nervous like everybody else.And how do you feel about the outcome, given that you have more information than most of us?Theres a lot that could go wrong on the Harris side that keeps me up at night. Theres the potential for under-polling the Trump voters, which weve seen before.Some factors could hurt Trumps vote, too, such as his poor campaigning and increasingly open displays of misogyny.Yes, thats right. During this campaign, weve heard scary threats from Republicans. Project 2025, for instance, would eliminate us from all federal anti-discrimination protections. Weve listened to anti-American ideas like employing the military against protesters and immigrants and locking up Trumps political opponents. If Trump wins, how do we protect ourselves and our families against this onslaught?Thats a great question. Rapid and vigorous resistance formed in late 2016 and early 2017 laid the groundwork for defeating Trump in 2020. My concern is how up for a fight we are after all this fighting. Its one thing to do it once, but it will be hard doing it twice if he is vindicated by voters this time. The threat is more significant, and people will be dejected. We are grappling with trying to understand how half the country could feel this way when it seems unfathomable to the other half of the country.There has to be something we can rally around.Other institutions that are not necessarily part of the initial resistance could come into playbusinesses, for example, religious institutionsbasically, civil society. And then theres a vigorous network of never-Trump Republicans who will be there. They were not there last time. How will they help?There are all these former Trump administration people, many quite prominent, telling us what it would be like from firsthand experience. So, you have a potentially broader coalition.The queer community votes overwhelmingly Democratic. But there are still bunch of gay Republicans. What would you say to them?Id say take a look at what his record is, which is not good. And then you have to look at what we know about their plans. And you look at a lot of the anti-gay planks of Project 2025. And look back at all the things that Trump did when he had the power to do it. Theres not much on the pro side of the ledger.Youre presenting a rational argument. But Trump runs on emotions, on anxiety, on bigotry.Katherine Frey/Getty Images David Brock | Katherine Frey/Getty Images We need to try to personify the issues, humanize people. Look at all the advertising in the late stages of the campaign is anti-trans. I mean, its off the charts. In the end, you have to close the argument. Its not enough to make an anti-Trump argument. You need a pro-Harris argument.What does that look like?It combines the stark contrast with Trump and what she can do to move the country forward.You worked with Hillary Clinton the first time around. You know, there was some sense close to election day that Trump was just self-destructing and she could just let him do it. That was a mistake. What parallels do you see between the two campaigns? The obvious thing is that [FBI director] Jim Comey dropped that letter [that the FBI was investigating Hillary Clintons emails] onto Hillarys head. By all measures, she was in the lead when that happened. There are probably 20 reasons she lost that race, each of which is valid. But if I had to pick one, I would choose that.You must look at the similarities if you dont see such an October surprise. The opponent is the same guy. And so I think that Harris and her campaign initially resisted making this all about Trump and talked more about her vision, bringing joy back to politics. But when the danger is high, you cant avoid the elephant in the room, and so a big part of her closing argument is that hes unhinged, unstable. Hell be unchecked this time, so theres no way around dealing with that. Some of that seems similar to how Hillary spoke about Trump, but one of the significant differences is that her critique of Trump was primarily theoretical. It was mostly what could happen that would be bad if he was elected. And people didnt know who Trump was until he got into office. So, I think theres much more evidence today regarding the case against Trump. Harris is deploying that very effectively.The last wild card is we dont know yet how a Black woman will play with the electorate. There was sexism in 2016 that held some folks back from casting votes for Hillary. We may see some of that in polling of young Black men, for example. We dont know how thats going to play out yet. Hopefully, as a trailblazer, Hillary has made it easier for Harris to break this glass ceiling. Harris has been able to campaign not as the first woman but as the best candidate. You founded Media Matters for America in 2004 to fight misinformation and propaganda. We are seeing a flood of it now, from Elon Musks X to AI videos used to demean Harris and Walz. Are you surprised by this trend?I have to say yes and no. I had specific insights from 20 years ago when I started Media Matters about what I was calling the Republican noise machine that was dominating and distorting discourse. I felt we needed a vigorous watchdog. But did I see it coming to this extent? I would have to say no. You didnt have the social media piece when I started Media Matters. And so its metastasized. The big platforms dont police themselves. We try, but its a David vs Goliath situation, so misinformation has become much more extensive. It requires a significant investment in technology, which weve done. And you know, now were lurking in the nether reaches of the Internet to find out where some of this is starting. The idea is to nip it in the bud before it gets onto Fox News. I wrote a book, The Fox Effect, about the echo effect of Fox and the mainstream media. It can feel like Whack a Mole some days because youre hitting in one place, and then something else is sprouting up in another place.The biggest troll owns one of the platforms, X, and has eliminated content moderation. Elon Musk seems angling to be the shadow president since Trump doesnt pay much attention to details or have the attention span. Its unprecedented to have someone with that capacity trying to buy an election. So youve got Musk, on the one hand, a big spender out there among the billionaires, and he also owns the social media platform thats incredibly powerful and that he uses and abuses.Lets talk about lying in politics. In Stench, you write that Clarence Thomas lied when confronted about Anita Hills allegations of sexual harassment. And then you sort of aided and abetted that with The Real Anita Hill, in which you famously called her a little nutty, a little slutty. And now we see even more routine lying from the MAGA crowd, with Trump a pathological liar.You acknowledged and apologized when you spread these mistruths and took responsibility for it. You apologized, changed, and made a difference. But admitting you are wrong is not easy. Certainly we have not seen this in Thomas or Trump.Book cover | Book cover There are certain expectations once youre invested in the lie, especially in a partisan environment, you know it will be bad for your career if you dont meet them. And I think doing a 180 and, you know, copping to having misled people and having smeared Anita Hill was unusual because it was mid-career for me. Its just a scary thing to do because theres not necessarily a path forward after doing that. You lose your career. I lost all my friends, pretty much. And so it upended my life entirely. And I think that most people are not up for that. Some prominent right-wing commentators are not saying what they believe on the air, and theyre doing it just for career reasons.What was different about you?I had a very searing experience where I had come up against, you know, first-hand knowledge that what I was saying in my reporting was wrong. And so I had written The Real Anita Hill, taking Thomas side and trying to undermine Hills credibility in every way I could. It was sourced entirely from the pro-Thomas camp, the Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill. But I thought that what I was doing was telling the truth in that book, and what happened to me was as a result of kind of getting out on a limb with the pro-Thomas people with that book. Over a few years, I concluded that they were the people who had helped me write that book and had never believed Thomas. They knew he had done some of the things Hill said, and this was just a political game. That knowledge shook me to my foundation.At a certain point, I felt I couldnt push that lie forward anymore. When I hit rock bottom, I started to write a book about Hillary Clinton. Going into that, the assignment was to do what I did to Anita Hill. And I felt, you know, I wasnt able to do that anymore because my perspective had completely changed by the knowledge that I had been used. Isnt there a burden in carrying a lie forward? Doesnt Thomas have a burden? Doesnt Trump have a burden? And how do you live with that burden?Thomas has been living with this perjury for many, many years now. I cant get inside his head about how he justifies that or rationalizes it to himself. But what we do know is that the anger that he had when he was under attack in the hearing and tried to portray himself as a victim is something that hes taken forward. And you can see how he works it out in the jurisprudence. Hes carrying that burden.Trump is probably a different animal in that, as you say, hes a pathological liar. He probably doesnt think twice about lying; its just second nature to him; its how he operates in the world. And so I doubt its weighing on his conscience the way it probably is on Thomass.Do you think Thomas has any sense of decency? Is there an ability to, you know, to understand people who are different, to understand the predicament of trans kids or people who are in a legal same-sex marriage? Did you come across any semblance of that in your research? Book cover | Book cover No, I didnt. I came across someone who is not only extreme but heartless. The fact that he had the experience he had growing up, not raised by his parents. He had a rough go of it early and he never developed compassion. We see absolutely the opposite. He is cruel.Do you think there would be any hesitation on the part of this Court to overturn Obergefell, the marriage equality decision in 2015?I dont trust this court based on what theyve done [stripping abortion rights] with the Dobbs. You know, Thomas and (Samuel) Alito are the tip of the spear. I subtitled the book The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America, which is to say that John Roberts has lost control of the Court. He lost control of it during Dobbs, so yes I think we should be very concerned about the possibility of overturning Obergefell. What about Bostock v. Clayton County, the 2020 landmark Supreme Court decision in which the majority held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination? Didnt that show some open-mindedness? Not on Thomas part; he was in the minority. But Neil Gorsuch, another Trump appointee, was the author. And that was probably hard for him, speaking against the right-wing tide that put him on the Court.Yes, the majority is not 100% a monolith. I just think about the issues that matter most: Theyll reward those who put them there. And thats a big part of my bookto show what this campaign was over 40 years to get where we are to have this court.What happens to equality if the GOP takes the White House and Congress and has this Court majority led by Alito and Thomas? Is anyone who will stand up for us as they shred our liberties? You know, is it Gorsuch? Is there some shred of hope there? You could look at Gorsuch, [Amy Coney] Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh if you want independence on these questions. Kavanaugh and Barrett were wavering on Dobbs. But then they went with the Thomas and Alito argument. So, there is the possibility that one of those three or more could break. But I wouldnt hold my breath for it because they have no incentive to do that. All the incentives are the other way.What do you what do you mean by incentives?The incentives are the payback for the people who got them therethe money spent on the campaigns that got them there. Thats where their bread is buttered.But once they are in court, theyre not accountable to anybody. These are lifetime appointments. They could just give the middle finger to Leonard Leo, the right-wing figure who is chairman of the Federalist Society. Theres still tribal loyalty that comes into play. The problem I talk about in the book is that the big idea of the right is originalism, which says that nothing exists except what the Constitution said when it was written; and were not in there. So, in an extreme interpretation of originalism, which Thomas, Alito preach, and [former Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia did preach, were not in there. We dont exist.But theres this long tradition of appointees being independent-minded. We have marriage equality because of Ronald Reagans appointment of Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the eloquent majority opinion. Even Lewis Powell Jr., whom you write about, had a belated about-face on Bowers v. Hardwick. Isnt there also a solid motivation to uphold the courts reputation for independence?There was a 40-year effort to overturn Roe, and the reason it took 40 years was that you had Sandra Day OConnor, you had Anthony Kennedy, you had David Suiter, all of them appointed by Republicans. And Roe was written by a Republican appointee, for Gods sake, Harry Blackmun, who Richard Nixon appointed in 1970.After that experience, though, the right wing has been much more careful to vet people so that you wouldnt have another David Suiter. By the time Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh got to the level of being on the lists provided by the Federalist Society to Donald Trump in 2016, you had judges with less of an independent streak.You and I are close to the same age. In 1986, I graduated from Vassar College, and that same year, the Supreme Court in Bowers upheld a Georgia law criminalizing same-sex sodomy. At the same time, there was a mass die-off of gay men from AIDS while the Reagan administration refused to address it. Gay bashing was a pandemic. I thought, what kind of a world am I and my friends coming out into? Yet things got better and quickly. I didnt think Id see medicines to treat and prevent HIV. I didnt think Id see hate crimes legislation that included sexual orientation. I didnt think Id see the overturning of Bowers and marriage equality. The cause of equality has had a great run. Is it coming to an end? Well, we dont know quite yet [laughs]. I think if we have another Trump term, the scapegoating of various groups is part of this authoritarian tendency. You can see where theyre going with their ads, which are attacking trans people and immigrants. Whoever wins, were in for a period of retrenchment where were going to well have a real fight on our hands to try to preserve what weve got.You have lived this history that I just described. How would you counsel people worried about this retrenchment and how it will affect their lives and the lives of their loved ones? We need a more vigorous and coordinated response to things like these Dont Say Gay bills in Florida. We leave people alone without counter-arguments and support. We need to teach Democrats how to talk about the transgender issue. Its not easy, but you cant run away from it. Theres more to be done on the messaging side for these battles. What does that mean? It could be new organizations trying to anticipate what the right will do and get ahead of it, returning, for example, to the Virginia parents rights movement that defeated [Virginia Democratic Governor] Terry McAuliffe. We were completely off balance. The anti-gay organization Moms For Liberty. Where is our counterweight? Theres more work to be done in terms of creating infrastructure.Where do you see hope?On January 6, the last time they tried to steal the election, the courts and institutions held. Even in the worst-case scenario, the hope is that the institutions still hold, giving us a chance to rebuild and win again.Chris Bull, the author of Perfect Enemies: The Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement, is the editorial director of Q.Digital.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
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