Steve Ballmer on Politics and Disinformation: A Data-Focused Approach

Insights from Steve Ballmer on Politics and Disinformation

On a crisp fall day in Midtown Manhattan, some of the most powerful people in sports gathered for a meeting of NBA owners. Former Microsoft CEO and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers Steve Ballmer was in attendance, walking the hallways with a folder and his phone, fulfilling his duties as the chairman of the audit committee.

Since leaving his post at Microsoft, Ballmer has been sharing his time between basketball and his not-for-profit venture USAFacts. The billionaire, who is estimated to be one of the richest people in the world, has turned his love of computers, data, and facts into crunching government statistics into digestible information for the public.

Ballmer's Vision on Disinformation

He spoke with Scripps News’ Disinformation Desk about getting real information out to Americans and combating disinformation.

Here is Liz Landers' conversation with Ballmer from Monday, Sept. 9, 2024:

• Liz Landers: Was there a moment or incident that spurred you to start USAFacts and doing these Just The Facts videos?
• Steve Ballmer: Yeah, there were two things. I got started on USAFacts when my wife and I were talking about our philanthropy, focused on economic mobility.
• And I said, 'Look, the government takes care of all that.' And my wife said, 'No, we're going to do philanthropy.' But I really wanted to understand government's impact in this specific area.
• I found that hard to answer. Hence, I started USAFacts. We're now nine years further in, now almost 10 years actually further in, and that's evolved to how do we help educate the American public on these issues, particularly in a year like this, an election year.

And we came to the video format as a good tool, which is why we produced our videos.