Five Questions with Barb McQuade

If you look carefully, you’ll see that the photo below is a picture of Barack Obama with Barb McQuade and me on either side of him. At the time, we were the U.S. Attorneys for the Western District of Michigan and the Northern District of Alabama, respectively. Obama did not hold private loyalty meetings with his U.S. Attorneys, but he did, on one occasion when we were all in Washington, D.C., meet with us as a group. After that meeting, we took this photo and because Barb and I were among the shortest people in the room, we ended up next to President Obama.

Barb joins us as our guest for "Five Questions With” tonight, and we are very lucky to have her. Her book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America, has just come out. She takes on the question so many of us struggle with: What can we do about the disinformation that runs rampant in American society today and causes so much of the turmoil we are experiencing. You can find Attack from Within at your favorite local bookseller or the usual places online.

Barb and I do the #SistersInLaw podcast together along with Jill Wine-Banks and Kimberly Atkins Stohr. We’re both legal analysts for MSNBC, and we both teach law. I’m constantly learning new things or thinking about issues in different ways because of Barb, who is one of the toughest, smartest, nicest people I know. She has a killer sense of humor to boot. So it’s no surprise that when Barb set out to write a book, she chose a challenging but incredibly important topic—disinformation. Her book is very helpful for those of us who are doing everything we can to enhance civil discourse in our communities.

“Five Questions” is the one column on Civil Discourse that is limited to paid subscribers. The rest of the newsletter is available to free subscribers as well. I value having everyone here. This feature is my way of thanking those who are able to support my work financially, which lets me devote more time and resources to it.