February 4, 2021

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to “Amanpour and Company.”

Here’s what’s coming up.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): If we are now going to start judging what other members have said before they’re even members of Congress, I think it

is going to be a hard time for the Democrats to place anybody on committee.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Whether to weed out extremists in the GOP. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson joins me on his party’s existential crisis.

Then:

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR (through translator): At 19:00, she set out to sea on a homemade submarine to get an interview and didn’t return as planned.

AMANPOUR: New on HBO, “The Investigation,” the bizarre murder case of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall. I talk to her parents and to director Tobias

Lindholm about honoring Wall’s quest for truth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I’m Christiane Amanpour in London.

[14:00:02]

President Biden continues to assert his leadership at home and around the world with a major foreign policy address, and of course, rafts of domestic

directives, not least on COVID and the vaccine rollout.

But his underlying appeal to unity is hitting early obstacles, from the bailout bill for American families to row politics. Indeed, across the

aisle, the Republicans are in a highly divisive and very public fight for the soul of their own party.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has refused to strip a member who embraces QAnon conspiracy theories of her committee assignments, and

despite her shocking endorsements of violence against Democrats and fanning the flames of the Capitol Hill insurrection.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized the Republican leadership about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I remain profoundly concerned about House Republicans’ leadership acceptance of extreme conspiracy theorists,

particularly to serve as their eagerness to reward a QAnon adherent, a 9/11 truther, a harasser of child survivors of school shootings, and a valued —

to give them valued committee positions, including — who could imagine they would put such a person on the Education Committee?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Now, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has slammed the new GOP congresswoman’s — quote — “loony lies” and calls them a

cancer on his party.

So, where does the GOP stand?

Who better to ask than the Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson? He’s a former three-term congressman. He was undersecretary of the

Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. And he was an impeachment manager in the case against President Clinton.

Welcome, Governor, from Little Rock, Arkansas. Thank you for being with us today.

Can I turn to something that’s super important and obviously was determinative during this last election? And that is obviously COVID in the

United States and the vaccine rollout. Your state seems to be doing better, with deaths and cases coming down and vaccines rolling out.

Just give me a picture of how it’s going in Arkansas.

GOV. ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR): Well, it is going well, even though we have a limited supply of the vaccine.

And as long as that is limited, it’s going to be slower than we’d like. But we are doing well. We’re getting over 60 percent of our doses out very

quickly. Whenever it’s a first dose, we get it into the arms within 72 hours of when it gets here into the state. And we’re getting better and

better at it every day.

We continue, want to improve. And I applaud the fact that, with the Biden administration, we now have 16 percent increase in our vaccine supply,

followed by another 5 percent that’s going to be increased late this week. And so that will help us to do more.

But our cases are going down. People have to continue to make sure, one, they take the vaccine when it is their turn and realize that it is safe and

it is necessary. And then, secondly, until the vaccine is widely distributed, we have to continue to be disciplined with wearing a mask,

socially distancing.

We’re trying to do that here in Arkansas.

AMANPOUR: You are, I guess, one of the rare Republicans who publicly has praised what you have called the seamless vaccine efforts under this new

administration. And you have said that you have a pretty good partnership with the federal government.

You probably know that President Trump’s own pollsters, the former president, in the autopsy on his loss in November, essentially attribute it

to his mishandling of the COVID crisis. I mean, the very fact of life and death was at stake.

So, how do you compare, let’s say, as governor of your state, the previous administration’s handling of this and the current administration? What are

the big structural differences you see?

HUTCHINSON: Well, that’s a great question.

And when I referred to it as being a seamless transition, it’s really a compliment to the professionals on the Trump administration Coronavirus

Task Force as they handed off to the Biden administration. And it’s been seamless. And that’s important for the states, because we don’t want that

supply chain to be interrupted.

And there absolutely is differences in style and leadership and comments from the presidential level. But if you look underneath that to the

professionals, to the vice president’s leadership, Vice President Pence on the Coronavirus Task Force, and with what’s happening under President

Biden, it is the same level of commitment, professionalism, understanding the importance of getting the vaccines out, accelerating the production.

[14:05:03]

And so I’m sure that there will be differences. But, from a governor’s standpoint, it was critical that they hand this off well. And I think

that’s been done.

Obviously, I asked the Biden administration, well, how are we get this new supply? Did you just find it somewhere? And, of course, I said that

jokingly, but the answer is, just like we get better in the states, the manufacturers get better as well, improve their processes. So I hope that

supply continues to increase.

AMANPOUR: And, again, you complimented the Biden administration for seamless distribution of the vaccine.

So, I want to ask you what you’re thinking. I know you’re a governor, and this is happening in Congress and with the White House. But this $1.9

trillion, basically, the bailout bill for hurting American families, where do you think it’s going to land?

And I just want to play — because, obviously, there’s some pushback from Republicans. They want it smaller or differently targeted. But this is what

the Republican governor of Virginia has said about this moment now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R-WV): Trying to be, per se, fiscally responsible at this point in time with what we have got going on in this country, if we

actually throw away some money right now, so what?

We have really got to move and get people taken care of and get people back on balance. And I want to work with the Biden administration, just like I

worked with the Trump administration. And I want us to move forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, of course, I misspoke. It’s the governor, Jim Justice, of West Virginia, as you clearly know better than me.

So, where do you stand on this coronavirus relief bill? Where do you think it’s going to land?

HUTCHINSON: Well, more importantly than being — going big, we need to go reasonable on it.

And I think it is a fair debate as to exactly the dollar amount that should be contained in the relief package. Everyone agrees that the states need

money for vaccine administration. We need additional funds in terms of education, keeping our schools open. We need to also make sure that we

provide relief for small businesses that are still hurting. And the stimulus checks are important.

But, at the same time, there is a fair debate as exactly how large that package should be and make sure it goes to the right people. And for the

Biden administration to say, we’re just going to stick with our plan, we’re not going to seek compromise with the Republican side, I think, is

shortsighted.

For example, in Arkansas, we have right now a $240 billion surplus. We have a 4.9 percent unemployment rate. And so we are — our economy is doing

well. We don’t need $1.9 trillion to boost the economy right now. We need a smaller amount to do that with the assistance to the states.

So, I think we have to be commonsense about this and recognize that it’s borrowed money. And we need to be careful about exactly the amount that we

borrow and we send out to the states for these needs.

AMANPOUR: Understood that sometimes it has to be carefully targeted, but really interesting to hear major economists across all sorts of even the

IMF and wherever you look, including in the United States, say that it’s never been a better time to lend money. There is just so much at good rates

right now.

Can I ask you, though, about your own party? So, you kind of stand out in the Republican firmament of having acknowledged two days before the Capitol

Hill insurrection, when Biden’s election victory was meant to be certified, you said: “Joe Biden is our president-elect.”

You attended the inauguration. You spoke, as we have just talked about, to his transition team, and you pretty have much been following the

constitutional playbook.

Do you feel somewhat out of step with your party, when you see how the majority of Republicans in the House which you used to be a member of voted

not to certify his election and all the stuff that’s going on now? Where do you think you fit in the regular Republican Party?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I don’t feel out of step at all. I do believe that the Republican Party needs to return more to its roots.

We need to make sure that we concentrate on sound fiscal policy, less regulation and growing the private sector of our economy, things that have

really brought people together within the Republican base.

We have got sidetracked for the last four years, but with a very dominant personality, and that has created division. The election has created

division within our party and how we have responded to it.

And so I don’t feel out of step, but I do believe I want to, without any question, engage in the debate to lead — help lead the Republican Party

back to its roots. That’s a fight that is important for us.

[14:10:05]

And what’s happening in Congress, both on the Senate side with the impeachment trial and on the House side with a debate about a member who

offered these atrocious comments that I reject, that the party should reject, that is — the debate is going to go on for some time.

But we need to get back to our roots, and we need to get away from that extremist element that has moved our country in the wrong direction in some

areas.

AMANPOUR: So, let me just talk about this member who you have just mentioned.

Atrocious comments, you say you reject them. As we said, the Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, has called them loony lies, a

cancer on the party. And yet the House, where she is a member, seems to be trying to have it all ways.

They’re not — the Republicans are not censuring her. And they are also coming to the support of the moderate traditional Republican who’s been

under great fire. And that is Liz Cheney, who comes from a top-notch Republican pedigree, obviously, with her family history.

Can you have it all ways? Can you really have your Republican Party and this loony, as we might call it now, the loony right, as they used to say

the loony left, gaining so much strength and power?

HUTCHINSON: Well, the fact that Liz Cheney defended her vote for the impeachment as a vote of conscience, that they retained her in leadership,

shows that you can differ from others, and still have a vote of conscience like this.

So, I think this speaks very well of our Republican Conference, and the fact that they have embraced and understand the importance of the liberty

of Liz Cheney and her vote.

In terms of the other congresswoman that has said these things that are outlandish, that’s a different category, because those are statements that

have hurt people, that have misrepresented our party, and have been disavowed.

In fact, she has now had to disavow them herself. That’s a tough call, because she’s elected. You don’t want to deprive a district of

representation, but also a seat on a committee. But we have done that in the past.

I know that, back in the 2000s that we, as a Republican Party, took the committee assignments away from Steve King for statements that he made. And

so it is a different environment now. For my vote, I would say that she should be not on those committees, simply because we have got to distance

ourselves from those kind of comments that are conspiratorial, that are hurtful, and embrace violence.

AMANPOUR: So, it’s very interesting to hear you say that, as one of the grandees of the Republican Party.

And, yes, she did have to come and do a mea culpa, knowing that the House was going to vote, and that the Democrats had the votes and that she was

going to be voted off these committees. And she did not denounce this QAnon. She, in fact, equated it with the media. She played the victim. She

did the whole nine yards, as usual.

So it’s really interesting to hear what you say.

But I want to also just push you a little bit, because I want to ask you — you used to be a U.S. attorney. I said you were in the Department of

Homeland Security. You have had many, many major, important government jobs over your career and elected jobs.

I think I heard you say that four years of allowing President Trump to finally end up with this Capitol insurrection may not have been wise. And I

guess I’m trying to figure out whether you think the head of the snake of this QAnon new generation needs to be cut off now, before it becomes

unmanageable?

HUTCHINSON: Well, absolutely.

If you’re talking about QAnon, we reject that. That’s got to be cut off.

AMANPOUR: And those who support it?

I mean, this woman who supports it, any elected official who supports it?

HUTCHINSON: I don’t know if you can make that judgment carte blanche, but I wouldn’t want anyone that embraced that conspiratorial theories to

represent me. I would not vote for them. I would not want them to be associated with our party.

Now, let me go back to President Trump, though. He was good on policy. He did a lot of good things for the Republican cause, for America, that I

fully, fully support. And I don’t want to distance myself from those things. I embrace those things.

But in terms of how the election was handled and how it misled Americans that the election was stolen from him, we’re still reaping damage from

that. And that’s what we have got to remedy very quickly, and make sure we’re not going to go down that path again.

[14:15:03]

AMANPOUR: I’m going to push you again, because the former Senator John Danforth, of course, another lion of the Republican Party, has said that

your party has become — quote — “a gross caricature of what the Republican Party has traditionally been.”

And I know you say Donald Trump has been good for policy in some of the instances that you mentioned. But he also was — launched a major attack on

the Constitution and on your own democracy.

So, where do you think the party is headed? When you see all this, plus the impeachment that’s going to happen — or the trial, rather, in the Senate,

where do you see this landing? And how long do you think it’s going to take to iron out these issues within your party, to make it a two-party system,

like it’s meant to be in the United States, as opposed to unelectable, as we saw in the last election?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I mean, first of all, the Republican Party had a very good election cycle, increasing representation in our state legislators in

Congress. The Senate, we split.

And so, other than losing the top position of president, we had a very good election cycle. We are going to go through a very difficult two to four

years, because these are going to be primary issues. It’s going to be fighting for the heart and soul of our party. There’s going to be division

there. There’s going to be primary contests.

And the next couple weeks are going to be challenging, because people are going to have to express themselves and these issues in the United States

Senate. And so — but the history of the Republican Party has been diminished in times past. They say, we’re not going to survive an election.

We do.

We’re going to be a major player in the next — we’re going to win whenever you look down the road, because the American people do embrace the

conservative philosophy that we offer. They just do not want to have us dominated by extremism.

And that’s what we have got to avoid in the coming two years.

AMANPOUR: You lost — you lost the White House. You don’t have the House. You pretty much don’t have the Senate. And you lost Georgia. These were

pretty big losses that many are putting at Donald Trump’s doorstep.

But can I ask you this? You are not running again. You are coming up to the end of your second term. You’re unable, under the constitution of your

state, to run again.

And Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who, as we remember, was President Trump’s White House press spokesman — woman — she’s running. She’s the daughter

of a former Arkansas governor. She’s raised a lot of money already. But she was known to be one of the least truthful adherents to facts and truth

during her time on the podium.

Do you support her candidacy? Will you vote for her?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I have got two years left in my term, I’m going to concentrate on that.

Yes, the election has started for 2022. There’s three candidates in there now. There’s likely to be more. I’m going to stay out of it. That’s

probably the smartest move I have made politically for some time. And they’re going to have a hard-fought contest in the primary and presumably

the general election.

I expect the seat to stay Republican after I leave the governorship. And I know the people of Arkansas will decide that issue.

AMANPOUR: So, kind of yes or no, if she’s the candidate, you will vote for her?

HUTCHINSON: I’m not going to say who I will vote for. That’s two years away. And I’m not taking sides in that election.

And so we will wait and see how the campaign goes. But I’m — I’m neutral on that.

AMANPOUR: All right.

HUTCHINSON: I’m not taking sides on it. There are some really good candidates that are offering themselves.

AMANPOUR: And it was extraordinary for all of us, as members of the press, to watch her really wage this war on truth throughout her time on the

podium.

Anyway, I didn’t hear a ringing endorsement from you, Governor.

So, thank you very much for your perspective. Really valuable. You have said some really interesting things this evening to us.

Governor Asa Hutchinson, thanks for joining us from Little Rock.

Now, we turn next to a gruesome murder that shocked the world back in 2017. And it is now the basis for HBO’s gripping new series “The Investigation.”

Thirty-year-old Swedish journalist Kim Wall went missing after she boarded a homemade submarine in Copenhagen to interview its designer. Her work had

appeared in “The New York Times,” “The Guardian,” VICE, and elsewhere.

Now, this series is not so much a crime drama, but an investigative drama. Here’s a clip from the trailer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS (through translator): This isn’t a perfect crime. It’s a clumsy, disgusting crime.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR (through translator): She did nothing wrong. She was just curious. She was exactly as we want our children to be.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS (through translator): How will we ever know what happened?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR (through translator): We need answers. Do you understand? We need answers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:20:07]

AMANPOUR: Now, the Oscar-nominated writer/director Tobias Lindholm created the investigation, with close collaboration from Kim Wall’s parents,

Joachim and Ingrid Wall.

And all three are joining me now.

And I just want to say, welcome to all of you.

I believe the Walls are in Sweden. And, Tobias, I believe you’re in Denmark. Thank you very much for being with us.

And I really do want to say, from the bottom of my heart, for all of us in the press, we have so much sympathy for you. And we offer still our

condolences on the death of your daughter, who was a great journalist.

So, I just want you to — I just want to ask you, Ingrid and Joachim, why you decided — and what was it about Tobias’ pitch that made you want to go

into this filming and reliving of this terrible, terrible episode?

INGRID WALL, MOTHER OF KIM WALL: During the time from August 2017, there were — there’s been more than 100,000 articles written about this horrible

case.

But then — but Kim isn’t in the story at all. And we are so thankful for all the people who made the absolute effort, too, that we could bring Kim

home again.

So, we see this TV series as an honor to all these men and women that do their utmost, so that we could have Kim came back and bury her here at

home.

JOACHIM WALL, FATHER OF KIM WALL: In some way, our…

AMANPOUR: And, Joachim, what are your views?

J. WALL: We didn’t give any interviews, nothing under the time the search for Kim was going on.

And it was — it’s the same as Ingrid said. So many things have been written about this case, but not about Kim, who she was, what she has done,

and so on. And the effort of all those peoples that has done possible to get the murder victim is — we would like to give them the thank you for

that.

I. WALL: And it’s also important for but that Kim is portrayed as a journalist, not as a crime victim. She was a journalist on an assignment.

She was…

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Exactly.

I. WALL: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Yes. And that was very, very — definitely very prominent in the series.

So, let me ask you, Tobias Lindholm.

I mean, the murder was gruesome, I hesitate even to speak about it. But her torso was dismembered. Her legs were and her arms were all found

separately, her head. And it was a terrible, terrible, terrible shock for the whole world, and obviously for her family.

What was it that made you want to really get to the bottom of this investigation? And what was your connection? Obviously, Jens Moller, the

head of homicide in Copenhagen, played a huge role.

TOBIAS LINDHOLM, DIRECTOR, “THE INVESTIGATION”: Well, as everybody else in Denmark, I followed the story unfold in the press back in the late summer

of 2017.

And I quite fast turned my back to it, because it felt like that the media was reproducing a plot from a crime show that I had seen 100 times before.

I just — as everybody else, I felt great sympathy with the people involved, but I didn’t find any interest in following the obsession with

the darkness that I saw in both local and international press.

And not until I met Jens Moller, who was the chief investigator of Copenhagen homicide back then, and he told me some of his story after this

case, I realized that that darkness that had been described in so many details in the press, that darkness had a light inside of it.

It had a story about a system that worked, a society that stood together, and had a beautiful story about a friendship between Jens and Ingrid and

Joachim. It had a story about their strength. And it had a story about people in uniform who basically just did their job to help complete

strangers.

And I realized that, by telling that story, we could change perspective and hopefully, hopefully regain the respect in this story that had been told so

many times in a — in my mind, a different — strange way.

AMANPOUR: Well, the humanity of it really comes out loud and clear. And the connection between — he is a really straight-laced professional

homicide chief and Joachim and Ingrid was amazing.

[14:25:00]

So I want to pay this little clip, which shows a little bit their relationship and his determination to continue the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS (through translator): Someone laid a stone, and now it’s a heart for Kim.

And they keep coming. Now almost everyone who passes by lays a stone.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR (through translator): And you knew nothing about it?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS (through translator): No.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR (through translator): Jens here.

Yes. OK. I will meet you at the harbor. Yes.

They haven’t found anything. But I will keep you posted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, Ingrid and Joachim, it really shows — and, actually, so much of the series shows how many obstacles the investigation came up,

despite all the efforts.

But it also shows your relationship — those were the actors playing you, the parents. Describe to me what it was like for you to make this

connection with the homicide chief, and how you got through what was a very, very painful many, many months until they were able to crack the

case.

I. WALL: It was 111 very long days and even longer nights before the entire Kim was — was found.

And it was a very strange feeling to have this relation with Jens, because as — in the beginning, it was very strict professional. And then,

somewhere, we found each other, as we are about the same age. And so — and I think — yes.

J. WALL: I think I have done many, many phone calls to Jens. And he had done the same thing back to me, and we have been discussing what’s going on

and what we could do and what — I asked him, what have you done and suggested something, maybe, and he could tell me, yes, we have already

thought about that then.

And we got — he always was very, very clear of getting message to us in the first place. When he ran for a press conference — and he had many of

them — then he called us before and said: Now I will tell you — tell the press this and this, but I will not give them this.

And he trusted us that we shut up and don’t say anything to anybody. And that — so, we — he got trust in us and we got trust in him. And that’s a

— that goes to a big friendship on us to him.

AMANPOUR: And in real life, Joachim and Ingrid, I think that you are the ones — I think it was you who told Jens, the real-life detective, homicide

chief, about using cadaver dogs, special cadaver dogs, to actually go out into the water and sniff where they could to see if they could find your

daughter’s remains.

You were the ones that brought that up, right?

J. WALL: Yes.

I had one of our many telephone calls was Jens, and he was sad about that the divers were nearby giving up. And I asked him, because they didn’t have

any — it’s a huge place to look for things underwater. And it takes time. And they have been diving so much.

And then I asked him, have you tried to take it special trained corpse dogs, dogs that are trained to sniff human being, human leftover? And he

said, no, we don’t have that kind of dogs.

And I know from my work. So I knew that we have it in Sweden. So, I asked him: “Should you or should I tell the police to get over from Sweden to

Denmark?”

(LAUGHTER)

J. WALL: And he said: “No, no, I will call them.”

But I called the Swedish police as well.

(CROSSTALK)

[14:30:00]

AMANPOUR: It was extraordinary to see how that actually — that was the trick, that did it for the discovery of your daughter’s remains.

Tobias, so much about your cast, about the film, obviously, the collaboration with the Walls is real. Even you had real divers. Tell me

about using, as actors or extras, the people who actually were real professionals and may have taken part in the real investigation?

LINDHOLM: Well, many of them was part of the real investigation. And well, the simple truth is that, you know, divers dive better than actors and

actors act better than divers. And in this case, I was allowed to have both. I took a chance and I called them to see if they wanted to be part of

this, and they definitely did. They felt a pride in the work that they had done and they also felt that, you know, by doing this, they would pay

respect to the job that was done back then. So, they came in.

And, you know, from an artist’s point of view, I felt that if I wanted to keep on track and make sure that I didn’t start to reproduce the stories

that I’ve already told in the press I needed to have as much — as many elements from reality that I can get. So, we did get the real divers, the

real Swedish special trained police dogs, the real ships. And even, luckily, the real Isoval (ph), the dog of England, (INAUDIBLE), that played

itself. So, yes. We did have quite a lot of real elements in the show.

AMANPOUR: And you had — you know, you were very painstaking in laying out the investigation. You know, it’s over six parts. And it was extraordinary,

first, to see the divers and how they just kept at it and wouldn’t give up. But also, to see, you know, the detectives. That woman who was key to Jens’

Moller’s team, who — they kept going over and over the evidence. What have we missed?

Because what we haven’t said is that the prosecutor felt that he still didn’t have the evidence despite everybody knowing that this guy did kill

Kim, he simply didn’t have it beyond a reasonable doubt for court. And it was one of these young women or young investigators, who found the

inconsistency. I like the tribute you paid to the hard work of the investigators.

LINDHOLM: It meant everything to me to do a story that would celebrate their work. These are the unsung heroes of our society. And I think that,

you know, these years we spend a lot of time talking about our society not working, reminding each other of things that make us different as human

beings, and I felt that getting to know these people and realize the job they did reminded me that there are more things that connects us as human

beings than things that separate us.

So, it made it very important to be loyal to the work. And, you know, basically, I feel that many crime shows on the (INAUDIBLE) in general

misses the opportunity of getting to know what’s actually going on. I mean, we have a scientist who tells us about currents around the waters in

Denmark. We get to understand how these dogs works and everything. And for me, that is extremely important, too, from a scientific point of view to

understand the world we are part of. And we could tell that by, you know, throwing our camera in their direction.

AMANPOUR: Yes, it was really effective, really, really effective and actually gripping.

Let me ask you again Ingrid and Joachim about your daughter’s legacy. You know, we know what an immensely trained and productive journalist was. You

know, she was at the LSA here in the U.K. She was at Columbia School of Journalism in New York. She was at the Sorbonne. As I said, she had — she

was printed in many different outlets. And one of the moving last aspects in the film is when you, Ingrid, you talk to a class of youngsters about

your daughter’s legacy, about her journalism, and that leads you to create a foundation for her. I just want to play this extract from the film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

I. WALL: Kim was a talented journalist. She was dedicated to talk about the injustice and the beauty of the world. She wanted to prove that a girl

from little Trelleborg can grow up and make a difference in a media dominated by men and help other people learn about themselves and about

others by telling stories from all over the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:35:00]

AMANPOUR: So, Ingrid, you actually wrote that speech along with Tobias. This is something that really meant a lot to you because it was about your

daughter and her legacy. Tell me — because it was really noticeable, obviously, that her journalism was a huge part of the series and obviously

her life. And you have created a memorial fund in her name, right?

I. WALL: Yes. We did that one of the first horrible days and nights after Kim was — had disappeared. We decided that this shouldn’t be the end. In

some way, we have to — Kim’s legacy should live on. And we asked a lot of — Kim had friends all over the world and we asked several of them, and

they said, of course, this is a good idea. And we worked together with IWMF, that I know you are very familiar with.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

I. WALL: And then — and so far, we have let six young female journalists going out in the world and making stories in Kim’s spirit. And right now,

we are in the final selection of this year’s grantee. And there are so many good stories out there. And we — and by helping other female journalists

going out and do these stories and let the world know, we know that Kim will live on through the fund and through other female journalists’ work.

AMANPOUR: It is really effective. And I just want to close with Tobias because he also — you made this about a quest for the truth. You made

Kim’s journalism part — a big part of your series but it was about finding the truth and it is such an important message always but especially today,

Tobias.

LINDHOLM: Yes. Thank you. It was important for me. You know, this is not a series about Kim. It’s about the investigation. I knew that, in this case,

the journalist that Kim Wall, was the victim and we didn’t want to make a show about her but we knew that talking about her we had to do it with

respect. And there was so much to respect. And then to meet Ingrid and Joachim, we felt honored of the opportunity to enlighten everybody with who

Kim actually also was.

AMANPOUR: Well, it really does show and is an extraordinary series. To you, Ingrid and Joachim Wall, thank you for joining us, and, Tobias

Lindholm, as well. And of course, what we know in real life is that the killer was sentenced to life in prison. And you never mentioned his name at

all and we never saw him, and that was very powerful as well. Thank you both so much. Thank you all of you for joining us. Now, the GameStop subversives rocked wall street and the whole investment world when amateurs outwitted long-time professionals. Simply put: Lots of hedge funds had bet against the struggling store, so when Reddit users shared tips and then bought shares en masse, GameStop’s price rocketed up and set off a loss-making scramble among hedge funders until the share price came down again. Here is Andrew Ross Sorkin talking about what this all means for investors of the future.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Andrew Ross Sorkin, welcome back to the show.

SORKIN: Great to see you. Thank you, Walter, for having me.

ISAACSON: What a wild weak this has been with this Reddit rebellion, trying to take down GameStop. Tell me what happened and how what’s the outcome of this.

SORKIN: This is the wildest and craziest story that I feel like I’ve been involved in, in my whole career, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Literally a group enabled by social media of investors using a website called Reddit, got together and decided that they wanted to buy up the shares of GameStop, which is a retailer for online gaming that had to be honest had been faltering. Most people have been buying games online in fact. They don’t actually go to the store. And so there was a lot of what’s called a short interest. The big hedge funds and investors have been betting against the shares of gamestop thinking that it looked very much like blockbuster. If you remember blockbuster, back in the day. But this group of investors said two things. One, we think it’s worth more money, but two, we want to stick it to the shorts.

We want to stick it to the hedge fund community. And in very many ways, the investment thesis wasn’t a classic investment thesis at all. It was in certain cases considered a protest vote. It was a protest against the system. It was a protest against inequality. It was a protest against the hedge fund community and what they felt was a market that was unfair. And it was almost an opportunity for them to demonstrate that they could manipulate the market in the same way that I think so much of the public believes that the market is oftentimes manipulated by professionals. And so we watched the stock of GameStop, go from literally 10 $20 all the way up to over $450 at one point, based on nothing to do with fundamentals or the numbers or metrics completely divorced in truth from reality. And that created massive losses, at least in the short term, for some of these hedge funds. And so in some ways we watched the little guy beat the big guy. But it is not clear, that’s really what the ultimate outcome was.

ISAACSON: Isn’t there some truth though, to what they were saying, which is that the market is kind of rigged. It’s rigged against the little guy, and we need some ways to shake it up?

SORKIN: No question. In fact, if, if, if anything good comes out of this, I hope it is a real conversation in this country about what needs to happen to make the market more trustworthy, to make people feel like everybody has an equal opportunity, not just to make money, but also to lose it, which is also the unique aspect of this situation. Because for so many years, we have talked about the idea of investor protection. We didn’t want the quote unquote little guy to be able to lose money. But one of the things that came out of this was a whole group of people saying, at least, actually, no, no, no, we’re okay losing money. That’s fine. Stop trying to protect us because in fact, by you trying to protect us, what you’re really doing is protecting the big guy — you’re protecting the establishment, you’re protecting the hedge funders. And so in many ways it was a bit of an Alice in Wonderland moment because it really upended the way I think so much of the culture has thought about this before.

ISAACSON:Well Janet Yellen is gathering, The new Treasury Secretary is gathering some of the regulators to try, I think, to create more consumer finance protection. Aren’t there things she should be doing?

SORKIN: Well, there are, and I think there’s, there’s a worthy conversation to be had about that. Before I get to that, I just want to make one mention though, we’ve all talked about this, just even in the context that I’ve had this conversation with you as a protest vote, as, as something with a moral crusade. As the objective journalist that I hope I can be, it’s not clear that that’s necessarily what was really happening. And I think it’s worth just appreciating that. There were some people that were making this this point, but others that would suggest this was a classic pump and dump scheme that we’ve seen over and over and over again, masquerading as something else. And so this could be a transformative moment in so far as we look at the social media and this enabled, ability to have a voice this way, or we may look at this years from now and say, this was just another one of these schemes, if you will, where people were trying to profit, they induce other people into their scheme because you need other people to participate. You tell them it’s a, morally, moral protest rather than a profit of a pump and dump scheme and that, and we find out that that’s what it is. So I think there’s going to be lots of questions just about who manipulated, who, and we’ve also discovered along the way that it wasn’t just the little guy who’s made money here. We’ve seen the big guys, lots of hedge funds and others who actually made an extraordinary amount of money. And also in the process, the quote unquote, little guy, the retail investor has lost money because when the stock was trading at $400, somebody was buying it, it’s now back down to a hundred dollars.

ISAACSON:You said this may have been a pump and dump scheme masquerading as a populous revolt. Explain to me what a pump and dump scheme is and whether or not that’s legal, whether or not that’s wrong.

SORKIN: Well, it is illegal to participate in a pump and dump scheme in so far as you cannot lie to the public about a stock. You cannot try to quote unquote manipulate the market. And there’s very interesting distinctions about what it means to manipulate a stock. If you publicly say that your intent is to manipulate a stock, that actually unto itself is illegal. It’s a very interesting, issue. And it there’s a, it there’s a gray line here about freedom of speech, and that’s going to be very central to whatever cases get brought one way on whether they get brought against hedge funds or whether they get brought against, some of these retail investors. A pump and dump scheme is when you try to push up the stock, you sell at the top, but everybody else sells below. And so that’s part of this, but it also raises questions about short selling — the idea, you know, to some people it’s un-American to have shorts on the idea that people are betting against companies. There’s another view that short selling helps create transparency. People who are betting against things have oftentimes unearthed major frauds like Enron, and, and create a transparency in the market. So there’s a pro and a con to every element of this.

ISAACSON:Should there be more consumer protection in this system?

SORKIN: Well, I think there’s a couple, a couple of big issues to consider. And the answer is yes. One of the things that happened during this process is, and really facilitated all of this was, an app called Robinhood, which was a now upstart online brokerage firm, where a lot of these young people had flocked to. And because they were a startup, they didn’t have a massive capital cushion, meaning they didn’t have a huge amount of money in the bank. And so when people started trading and buying up GameStop and some of these other stocks, they ended up curtailing their ability to keep buying because they actually ran out of money to keep making deposits. And a lot of people say that the stock fell and people were injured along the way in the past week because of that. So I think one of the things that’s going to come of this is how these brokers, these online brokerage houses, are regulated.

I think that’s going to be a major piece of it. What kind of disclosure should be around short selling? You know, we require the big investors to disclose whether they are long Amazon or, or, or long, Microsoft, if, especially if they are not especially, but if they have a more than 5% holding. There is no disclosure required on an individual basis for short-selling. Part of the reason is in fact sort of what happened we saw happened last week, which was the view that investors could start to target those funds or those firms, if they knew that they were on the other side, because part of what happened here was a supply and demand imbalance of sorts, which was because there were so many people who had sold short, these investors, very clever realized that if they push the stock up, they would force these people who are betting against it to actually get out of their positions, which unto itself would push the stock up.

ISAACSON:Does any of this have any real value for our economy or should we try to do things that reduce the amount of this craziness?

SORKIN: Well, I think you just hit on the most important point. This is all about trading. This is not about investing at all. And to some degree maybe these investors were trying to demonstrate that — that so much of the market has been turned into a casino that, that it’s made a mockery of the idea of investing in certain ways. So I do think we need to figure out ways to incentivize long-term investing and disincentivize this kind of short-term trading, because that’s what it is.

ISAACSON:On a broader scale, are we allocating too much time, energy, IQ points, finances to things like trading, instead of having people spend those hours doing things that could be productive and good for society?

SORKIN: Oh, goodness, this is, this is, one of the great meta questions of, of our time. And I think, you know, ever since the financial crisis, but maybe even before that, we’ve been talking about whether too much of our economy has been financialized — that it is a, to some degree, there’s a financial engineering element to it. I’m of two schools of thought. I would like to have smart people allocating capital. I do think that’s important. I think the allocation of capital is not insignificant, but I also think as you noted, I don’t think we want to be promoting a casino and too much of, I think what’s taking place right now in particular is the casino. I’d also make one note though. A lot of this has been driven by the amount of liquidity that the federal reserve and so much of the stimulus money that we’ve put into the economy has created a lot of the folks who are now trading at this rapid pace today are unfortunately doing it sometimes with stimulus checks. This idea that we have free money has created a bit of this casino-like atmosphere right now. And it’s ironic given that we’re living in the middle of a pandemic.

ISAACSON:But the high speed trading and the financialization of the economy and the hedge fund seems to be a major driver in wealth inequality today. I mean, is that another problem with this? And should there be an alternative minimum tax or something that makes it so that the financialization of our economy doesn’t keep driving wealth disparities?

SORKIN: No question. I look, you know, that I I’ve been advocating for a number of different tax programs that I hope, we create a more fair and level playing field. That’s so critical. I’ve talked about an AMT and alternative minimum tax, especially at the high end, because you have people who are, have managed to make extraordinary amounts of money, but they’d be able to able to use it, do it using capital gains rates or carried interest rates. I mean, I think we need to figure out a more equal way to think about this. At the same time, one observation though about high-frequency trading and hedge funds and the like, which is, we need to think about who the money, where the money comes from, that’s being invested. Most of the money that’s being invested in high-frequency trading for example, is pension money. It actually is our money. It is teachers and firemen and policemens’ retirement. It is. And well, I would argue a disproportionate amount of the profits are going to the hedge fund that is managing that money. And we need to do something about that, but that can be done in the context of taxes. We do need to recognize that when we talk about a big firm, like a BlackRock, for example, BlackRock, ultimately, may be managing $9 trillion, but it’s not $9 trillion of Larry Fink’s money. It’s our money.

ISAACSON:If Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen, or President Joe Biden called you up and said, what are the three or four reforms we could make, not just coming out of this, uh, Reddit, issue, but just, uh, for our economy now and in trading and, hedge funds — what reforms would you make?

SORKIN: I would be focused mostly on taxes. I think that so much of this country feels that the system is rigged. The broader system is rigged, and that it’s just fundamentally unfair. So I look at things like carried interest, where effectively private equity and venture capital investors are are being taxed at a rate that’s so substantially lower than just about anybody else. It wouldn’t even raise an enormous amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but it would say to the public that we care about fairness, and we’re trying to level the playing field. I think there are certain, a wealth income number you would make capital gains the equivalent of income taxes, so that if you’re making more than a million dollars a year in capital gains, that actually should be considered income because it’s, it shouldn’t be considered a different thing. I think that, I think it’s much more in that way that we can probably get there than necessarily in the context of fundamentally rewriting the stock market unto itself.

ISAACSON:Do you think that we need another big stimulus COVID relief the way Biden’s proposing it? Are you more worried that that will add to the deficit?

SORKIN: I am somebody who does worry about the deficit. Um, I would like to see more stimulus relief. If there, if it could be targeted, uh, in a perfect world, you would do it that way. The question is, is it practical? I think actually one of the lessons of this crisis that we need to figure out for the next one is how we can actually create more targeted relief efforts when, and if we need them in the future, I think that’s a critical element of this. The other thing I think we do need to think about is I might put money into the system. What I call a restart up fund out of start a fund, a restart up fund that you might start to make available, come this summer or come September when hopefully the world gets back to some semblance of normal. And a lot of these businesses are then going to, uh, need funds to really remake themselves. Uh, I am concerned that some of this money is going to be wasted, uh, in truth, not in terms of protecting people who desperately need the protection, but keeping businesses, um, going temporarily when really what you do. And, and I will lose points for saying, this is you probably want to temporarily shut down for some period. And then having restart fund that allows you to continue when the time is right. And when the health precautions and procedures are in place, so you can do it properly.

ISAACSON: Andrew Ross Sorkin. It’s always interesting. And thank you so much for joining us.

SORKIN: You’re my hero. So thank you for having me.

AMANPOUR: And that is it for now. Thank you for watching “Amanpour and Company” on PBS and join us again tomorrow night.