Edward Snowden, "Citizenfour" director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald had a kind of reunion Thursday, their first time together publicly since clandestinely meeting in a Hong Kong hotel in 2013.
Snowden appeared on video link from Russia, joining Poitras and Greenwald for a talk conducted by New York Times media columnist David Carr. The conversation was held in the newpaper's New York headquarters shortly before Carr collapsed and died. They spoke about the Oscar-nominated documentary, which chronicles Snowden's leak of National Security Agency documents.
Snowden said he initially refused Poitras' wish to film their encounter but she eventually convinced him. He called the documentary "incredible," but regretted his presence in the film, comparing his analytical instruction to Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man."
Snowden figures to be a conspicuous absence from the Academy Awards on Feb. 22, at which "Citizenfour" is the favorite to win the documentary Oscar. He said living in Moscow he's busier than he ever was as a National Security Agency employee, but life is more rewarding as he continues to speak out about governmental surveillance.
Snowden said he remains confused why the U.S. revoked his passport midway in his initial flight from Hong Kong. He said his destination was Latin America, and claimed it would have been easier for the U.S. to extradite him from there than from Russia, which has granted him asylum.
He said he has no regrets, even if some label him a traitor.
"If you're not willing to be called some bad names to serve your country, you really don't care that much about your country," said Snowden. "So bring the names on."
More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate. That’s way up from June
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday's count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump's and Hillary Clinton's first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there's been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday's debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said,... Read More