Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Donald Trump's transition team has refused
Speaker 1: to sign the normal ethics forms. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today the Lincoln Project Zone. Rick
Speaker 1: Wilson talks to us about the impending disaster of the
Speaker 1: next Trump administration. Then we will talk to Zucked author
Speaker 1: and my friend Roger mcnamie about how tech is going
Speaker 1: to eat us all. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, I for one really enjoy you think about
Speaker 2: our jobs that we get to work from home. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: our friends who are federal employees are not going to
Speaker 2: enjoy that anymore. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: I have a lot of very naughty things to say
Speaker 1: about Elin and Vivek and their very stupid fake government entity,
Speaker 1: But I actually don't think this is that bad. But
Speaker 1: they have called for government employees, federal employees to return
Speaker 1: to five days a week in the office work weeks.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys are going to do some bad stuff, Okay,
Speaker 1: some real bad stuff, some real bad stuff, and we
Speaker 1: know that because they're tweeting about it, saying things like
Speaker 1: we're going to have to tighten our belts and suffer
Speaker 1: in order to balance the budget and get us all
Speaker 1: a tax cut. But this, I think is not so bad.
Speaker 1: But they do want federal employees in the office five
Speaker 1: days a week. But hidden under that headline, I think,
Speaker 1: and I think the real part of this that we
Speaker 1: should talk about is that they did write an op
Speaker 1: out in the Wall Street Journal this week. The two
Speaker 1: of them and Wright is doing some heavy lifting, because
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that neither of them wrote it.
Speaker 1: And you'll remember the Wall Street Journal opinion section is
Speaker 1: kind of very, very very right way. President Trump has
Speaker 1: asked the two of us to lead a newly formed
Speaker 1: Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, because we love the
Speaker 1: memes to get the federal government down to size. The
Speaker 1: entrenched and evergrowing bureaucracy represents an existent threat to our republic.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that works, and politicians have abetted
Speaker 1: it for too long. That's why we are doing it differently.
Speaker 1: We are entrepreneurs, not politicians, entrepreneurs who got rich on
Speaker 1: government subsidies, but who's counting. We will serve as outside volunteers,
Speaker 1: not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory councils.
Speaker 1: We won't just write reports or cut ribbons, will cut costs.
Speaker 1: You want to bet me a million dollars they just
Speaker 1: write reports and cut ribbons.
Speaker 2: I'm not taking that bet.
Speaker 1: All right? Are they going to write a lot of reports?
Speaker 1: Some beliegue or staffer who's also a quote unquote volunteer
Speaker 1: is going to write a lot of reports.
Speaker 2: But Malli, they're going to have a podcast too, Oh,
Speaker 2: I would hope. So Pete Hegsath one of Trump's many,
Speaker 2: many amazing Best People nominees. He has some questionable views
Speaker 2: about women in the military. And I'm going to shock
Speaker 2: you here. They're not really rooted in fact. What are
Speaker 2: you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So Pete Hegsas has said about women in the military.
Speaker 2: He said, the standards have been Lord, I'm straight up
Speaker 2: saying we should not have women in combat roles.
Speaker 1: So Pete Hagsas said that. And you'll remember he is
Speaker 1: a weekend television host. Not that there's anything wrong with
Speaker 1: the weekend cable news on Fox again Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: You'll remember he does love a television host because he
Speaker 1: feels they are the most serious of people to serve
Speaker 1: in administrations. Whatever Anyway, The point here is Pete Hagsas
Speaker 1: said that women have a lower standard. There is volumeous
Speaker 1: evidence to show that that isn't true. And when he
Speaker 1: goes for his congressional hearing, if he gets that far,
Speaker 1: he will sit across from Tammy Duckworth, the senator from
Speaker 1: Illinois who lost both her legs in battle. So we
Speaker 1: shall see how he can make that case against women
Speaker 1: in the military to a woman who has given everything. Jesse,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Donald trump favorite boogeyman.
Speaker 2: I've noticed something with his nominations. There's two things in common.
Speaker 2: A lot of sexual abuse allegations and a lot of
Speaker 2: people who have weird stories with doctors. Yes, what are
Speaker 2: you seeing here?
Speaker 1: They really really really hate woke, right, whatever woke is,
Speaker 1: and they're really obsessed with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Let's
Speaker 1: just talk about the second. They hate diversity, equity and inclusion. Okay,
Speaker 1: they hate a thing that is probably like diversity. They
Speaker 1: hate diversity. Imagine hating diversity. They hate equity, imagine hating equity,
Speaker 1: They hate inclusion including something anyway, So they hate DEI
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump has said that on day one, day one,
Speaker 1: he is going to end Dei and a key figure
Speaker 1: in Trump's anti Dei agenda is the son of immigrants,
Speaker 1: Steven Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, and he
Speaker 1: is white and Jewish, not entirely the same thing. He
Speaker 1: is Jewish, just like I'm Jewish. And he feels that
Speaker 1: people who are black have had too many advantages, and
Speaker 1: so he is hoping to rollback workplace protections for Black
Speaker 1: Americans to a degree not seen since the end of Reconstruction,
Speaker 1: which ushered in Jim Crow. Jim Crow, which was in
Speaker 1: some ways used as a framework for someone who many
Speaker 1: people in Donald Trump's cabinet have compared Donald Trump to
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler. We will see what happens here. It's super
Speaker 1: upsetting to watch people get their rights taken away. But
Speaker 1: the American voters did this, so good luck to everyone.
Speaker 2: Somali. We should also talk about what the signals of
Speaker 2: this cabinet and this administration or saidek, what do you see?
Speaker 1: They are sending signals, and the signals are that me
Speaker 1: too is no longer. This is a really interesting piece
Speaker 1: by Jill Philipovich about how it is the Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: sexual cabinet. Trump's second term is shaping up to platform
Speaker 1: even more men who have been incredibly abusive sexual assault
Speaker 1: and harassment. You've got Matt Gates who's now out, who
Speaker 1: has now dropped out and is now spending his time
Speaker 1: doing cameos, which we're not advertising his cameos, We're just
Speaker 1: saying that's true. You've got Pete Hagsith. You've got the
Speaker 1: sexual abuse issues, the lawsuit that has focused on the WWE,
Speaker 1: which is co owned by Linda McMahon, and she was
Speaker 1: actually named in one of these lawsuits. Here, there and everywhere.
Speaker 1: RFK Junior has numerous allegations of all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: that's not okay. Look, they're normalizing what Trump considers to
Speaker 1: be normal, and none of us should be surprised by
Speaker 1: any of this.
Speaker 2: Strong a grief.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
Speaker 1: the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Mollie john Fast, Welcome to Thanksgiving Week.
Speaker 1: It's Sunday, so we must be podcasting. I want to
Speaker 1: air the petty grievances. Nextgiving makes me know it's time
Speaker 1: to air the petty grievances.
Speaker 3: Wish those grievances out and get to it all right.
Speaker 1: So my pettiest grievance is that I wrote this whole
Speaker 1: I think very smart essay. If I do say so myself,
Speaker 1: which I do.
Speaker 3: Which I retreated or re exed or whatever the right it's.
Speaker 1: Called yes, yes to all the bots and elon about
Speaker 1: how I was wrong about some fundamental premises about the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty for election. Right, I thought, oh, this will
Speaker 1: be followed by a plethora of other people going on
Speaker 1: about how they were wrong about the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 1: You know what I found. I was greeted with no
Speaker 1: one else.
Speaker 3: You know what. Let me just say this. There is
Speaker 3: a degree of post election duchiness that manifests itself across
Speaker 3: four or five different axes and domains. Number one is
Speaker 3: the sorest winner syndrome, with every mob out there, Right.
Speaker 1: They won, but they're still not happy.
Speaker 3: Right, this election is all about free speech? Shut up liberal. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a big set. I have a fraction of progressives
Speaker 3: who are like, if only we had declared we would
Speaker 3: seize the means of production, we would have won.
Speaker 1: But they are not nearly as of notch as. Oh god, no,
Speaker 1: tell me the other groups you think.
Speaker 3: There's also some practical types who are like, oh, if
Speaker 3: only we'd done more of this or that mechanical thing,
Speaker 3: and it's always the mechanical thing their group does best. Right,
Speaker 3: only we've gone out for more turnout among dog owners.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, right, But.
Speaker 3: The entire the entire post election.
Speaker 1: Wait, we're not going to mention the never trumpers here.
Speaker 3: I love We're getting it, We're getting to it, We're
Speaker 3: getting to it. But the whole dream that is dead.
Speaker 3: That Look, I will say this, I'll take some creditae.
Speaker 3: I'm an early adopter of abandoning the full Republican thing
Speaker 3: because it was never coming back. I said it in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. It was never coming back. But there were
Speaker 3: a lot of people who were hopeful that, you know,
Speaker 3: we would be able to motivate a larger number, and
Speaker 3: we got about we got a little more than we
Speaker 3: did last time, but it wasn't enough to offset all
Speaker 3: the new people he's brought into the Republican Party, most
Speaker 3: of whom you know, are are not shall we say,
Speaker 3: folks deeply read in Burke Kirk, Buckley, et cetera, and
Speaker 3: are instead like I want to kill all them pedophiles
Speaker 3: and send them Mexicans back. That's their Republican Party. So
Speaker 3: the idea that we could somehow and that's two degree
Speaker 3: groups like ours, like Sarah Longwells, like other folks. It's
Speaker 3: a dead issue now, and you got to get over
Speaker 3: wanting to have the Republican Party back now. And again,
Speaker 3: I've been a very early adopter on that for a
Speaker 3: very long time, Like not long after the first my
Speaker 3: first book came out. I was like, Oh, it's not
Speaker 3: going to work. We're not getting that party back. But
Speaker 3: people who wanted that party back it's gone now.
Speaker 1: I want to also point out, and again I actually
Speaker 1: thought that the Liz Cheney thing was smart, but actually
Speaker 1: it turns out that it may have hurt her with
Speaker 1: the base. Did you see this data for Pride Progress polling.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: No, So Data for Progress is not without its foibles
Speaker 1: and without it's you know, it is left leaning. And
Speaker 1: what might want to get to.
Speaker 3: This if by leaning you mean so far it's practically perpendicular,
Speaker 3: but yes, go on, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It's left leaning, and that makes you a little bit upset.
Speaker 1: But among Pennsylvania and Michigan, independence, messages about Harris's economic
Speaker 1: platform perform better than messages touting her support from former
Speaker 1: Republican congress women.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, this is like saying would you like
Speaker 3: the would you like the cuttlefish or the vanilla paste?
Speaker 1: Which one do you want? Because I don't want either
Speaker 1: of those vanilla paste.
Speaker 3: It's a self park joke. It's a self park centipede joke.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying here is that is one of those
Speaker 3: logical constructs that isn't really the point. You can have
Speaker 3: things simultaneously in politics. You could appeal to more moderate
Speaker 3: conservative voters while having a strong economic policy. And so
Speaker 3: the vast majority of her ad load, of her communications load,
Speaker 3: was not about Liz Cheney or Republicans. The vast majority,
Speaker 3: I would say, probably back of the envelope, somewhere around
Speaker 3: a five percent of it was about a better deal
Speaker 3: for Americans, fair deal for Americans, you know, the child
Speaker 3: tax credit, all the things that she was rightly I
Speaker 3: thought emphasizing in her campaign. There are a lot of
Speaker 3: progressives right now who are done to desperately try to say, well,
Speaker 3: what we really didn't get was enough progressive progressivism in
Speaker 3: a progressive country. But in case anybody missed the fucking notes,
Speaker 3: this is not a progressive country. Look it wasn't even
Speaker 3: as progressive as I modeled.
Speaker 1: Okay, explain this again.
Speaker 3: This country is very much center right, right, Maybe I
Speaker 3: have to go with the data, and the data tells
Speaker 3: me very clearly that the country was not moved with
Speaker 3: sufficient numbers by the core messaging that people had hoped.
Speaker 3: It wasn't moved any degree. You know, we had we
Speaker 3: had a bunch of states that voted for pro choice
Speaker 3: amendments and still elected Donald Trump. That looked like the
Speaker 3: killer app and everybody's pulling mine and everybody else's and
Speaker 3: it wasn't. It wasn't. The economic pain argument was one
Speaker 3: that was that was more easily dismissed by folks on
Speaker 3: the left and the center. We were like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: the economy's fine, it's getting better. It was bad for
Speaker 3: a while, it's back, but it wasn't in the minds
Speaker 3: of the voters that came out. And remember, he activated
Speaker 3: less likely voters at a level that no one could
Speaker 3: have anticipated.
Speaker 1: No, no, I know. And he did the same thing
Speaker 1: he did in twenty sixteen and in twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: we kept under astrmating him. But I just want to
Speaker 1: point out economic populism technically should be the base of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the problem the Democratic Party to and for
Speaker 3: a ton of reasons, not not related to the campaign,
Speaker 3: but to the culture and to the disinformation matrix that's
Speaker 3: out there and to Fox everything else. What the country
Speaker 3: hears when they hear democratic economic policy, they hear one message,
Speaker 3: which is smart guys will tell you how to live.
Speaker 3: Welcome to communism. That's what they hear from Fox every day.
Speaker 3: It's not true, it's not true, but it's what they
Speaker 3: hear over and over and over and over again. Donald
Speaker 3: Trump says, I'm going to fuck people who you hate,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to throw the Mexicans out, and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna screw the Chinese over. None of it's true. None
Speaker 3: of it will work. It will be an economic disaster
Speaker 3: and a moral disaster. But we have to admit to
Speaker 3: ourselves that the country is not what we think it
Speaker 3: is or want it to be. A lot of the time,
Speaker 3: this country is not as good as we hoped it
Speaker 3: was on a lot of fronts. And I hate saying that.
Speaker 1: Again. Here's my hottest take. I don't agree. First of all,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people just felt that he
Speaker 1: spoke to them and they liked him, and they didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily think like, for example, they did not necessarily believe
Speaker 1: that he was going to do I mean, this was
Speaker 1: a thing we saw again and again. They didn't believe
Speaker 1: he was going to do the bad stuff for some reason,
Speaker 1: and they just didn't think.
Speaker 3: I have not seen a lot of polling that says
Speaker 3: that they didn't believe he would not do the bad stuff.
Speaker 3: I have seen a lot of polling that says they
Speaker 3: want him to do mass deportations and that they want
Speaker 3: him to do a jillion percent tariffs against the jinas,
Speaker 3: the China's not the vaginas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I got it.
Speaker 3: But I have seen them express this desire for the
Speaker 3: things he was selling. And I'm trying to not give
Speaker 3: America like an extra break here by saying, oh, well,
Speaker 3: obviously they didn't think. They thought he was joking, he
Speaker 3: didn't really mean mass deportations. I find that to be
Speaker 3: a dangerous area for us to go into, to not
Speaker 3: take him seriously and literally. That's the old joke, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't take Trump seriously or.
Speaker 1: Literally, right. I mean, it doesn't matter what they wanted,
Speaker 1: because they're going to get Project twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Five and they're going to get it good and hard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk about what that looks like. We got,
Speaker 1: we got my body and he's now body. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you he's really not my buddy Russ Vaught.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the great Russ Vought running OMBA.
Speaker 3: And for those of you playing at home, give.
Speaker 5: Us the TLDR on that guy running the Office of
Speaker 5: Management the budget is he's the guy who will be
Speaker 5: able to look down at great with great granularity, into
Speaker 5: the various departments and say, oh, you have a program.
Speaker 3: Here that might somehow hypothetically relate to climate change. By
Speaker 3: it's gone. If you don't think Russ Vought and Vivic
Speaker 3: and Elon will be swap and spit every day and
Speaker 3: taking long showers together to plot out how to best
Speaker 3: fuck the American people. That is the guy who's going
Speaker 3: to push the actual buttons to.
Speaker 1: Do it right. I think it's important to mention that
Speaker 1: the vac Russ Vaught is like, is a heritage guy,
Speaker 1: is a He's a Republican donor guy. He is like
Speaker 1: going to really run this admin. The Veke and Elon
Speaker 1: have a fake job. Now, whether or not they can
Speaker 1: do anything with that fake job. We don't know, but
Speaker 1: the the Department of DOGE is largely a meme.
Speaker 3: It is largely a meme. But if they have a
Speaker 3: relationship with a guy like Russvott, who already has plans.
Speaker 3: By the way, he will also be pointing those idiots
Speaker 3: in the direction of targets that he's already identified in
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five. So he's going to say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: we've gone through the budget line items of every department,
Speaker 3: and here in the Department of Commerce is a DEI program,
Speaker 3: or here in the EPA is a climate program, or
Speaker 3: here in Health and Human Services is something that LGBTQ
Speaker 3: folks benefit from. He's going to already tell them, and
Speaker 3: then they'll make it. Then Elon will go, why are
Speaker 3: we paying for lesbian loot players and the HI just
Speaker 3: budget or whatever fantasy bullshit he makes up, right, And
Speaker 3: so then you know, it's sort of a fiendish circle.
Speaker 3: Vaught and his types will identify the targets they've already
Speaker 3: set up for execution. Elon and Vivek will make it
Speaker 3: a giant public screen match.
Speaker 1: And do you know who serves as their congressional attache.
Speaker 3: I do not.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I get to be the one to
Speaker 1: tell you this, like, I do not know this. Taylor
Speaker 1: Green is going toal subcommittee.
Speaker 3: Now I will say this, Molly, that actually kind of
Speaker 3: makes me feel better.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, that's what AOC said too. She was like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's never done the reading once in her life.
Speaker 1: So good luck to all of you.
Speaker 3: Look, I have to say the President can do a lot, okay,
Speaker 3: but the Department of the Office of the Management of
Speaker 3: the Budget still operates under a number of different areas
Speaker 3: of congressional control. And those areas of congressional control are
Speaker 3: set down in law and set down in the Constitution.
Speaker 3: They appropriate that money, Okay, that is how it's done. Okay,
Speaker 3: they authorize and appropriate that money. That is how it's done.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that's going to happen here
Speaker 3: really quickly is going to discover that every government program
Speaker 3: is spread out among all fifty seven states or eighty
Speaker 3: one of Floria. Trump numbers fifty seven states and territories
Speaker 3: in this great country. Right. So when they say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: I'll give you a good example. Elon wants to get
Speaker 3: rid of the rocket that competes with His rocket doesn't
Speaker 3: really compete very well, but Boeing has this rocket, right,
Speaker 3: So he's going to say, oh, well, we've got to
Speaker 3: get rid of the Boeing whatever SLS, whatever it's called, right,
Speaker 3: and we want to kill that program. The Margie Taylor
Speaker 3: Green's going to discover that in her district they make
Speaker 3: some sort of fucking part for that and it employs
Speaker 3: eighteen people and they're paid one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a year each, And that happens across the nation.
Speaker 3: They're going to run into the critical reality wall of
Speaker 3: government spending, which is that government spending happens everywhere. They're
Speaker 3: going to also run into the wall that you could
Speaker 3: cut every discretionary program out there. You could cut the
Speaker 3: EPA and h justin commerce and everything else down to
Speaker 3: the bone. Okay, cut it to the bone. You could
Speaker 3: cut the Pentagon budget in half, and you know what,
Speaker 3: you still have gigantic debt service and four big social
Speaker 3: programs that they're not going to get rid of. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
Speaker 3: and the sub category there disability, which has been the
Speaker 3: one that's exploding. And guess what if you draw a
Speaker 3: map down Appalachia and the Deep South, that's where disability
Speaker 3: is happening.
Speaker 1: Well also, you know disability. We just went through COVID.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like what I'm always struck by
Speaker 1: by how insane this next admin is going to be
Speaker 1: is they've learned lessons from COVID, but they've learned all
Speaker 1: the wrong lessons, right right, So they were like, a
Speaker 1: million people died and it's because we had vaccine mandates.
Speaker 1: Right No, no, no, no, that's not why a million
Speaker 1: people died. I mean, and it's just like every you know,
Speaker 1: it's like watching a slow motion car wreck. But I
Speaker 1: actually haven't thought I want you to talk about for
Speaker 1: a minute because I think this is the thing that
Speaker 1: is so weird to me. These people, Vivek and Elon
Speaker 1: are obsessed with technology, right right, These people are RFK Junior.
Speaker 1: They all hate science. Make it make sense, Well.
Speaker 3: They hate a science that somehow identifies in the world
Speaker 3: that there are social factors that exist. So they hated
Speaker 3: the fact that there were mask mandates because there was
Speaker 3: an argument. Correct, I still believe that it would diminish
Speaker 3: in some way, even at the margins, the spread of COVID,
Speaker 3: But they felt like that was the government telling them
Speaker 3: what to do. Now, They're fine telling one what to
Speaker 3: do with her vagina, but they're not fine with the
Speaker 3: government saying you should inoculate your or you should vaccinate
Speaker 3: your kids from measles, mumps, rebellodip theoria, teennis, and polio.
Speaker 3: Part of it's like this strange San Francisco Bay Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley WU inflected thing. They believe in engineering more than
Speaker 3: they believe in science, because science can tell you things
Speaker 3: about the bigger societal picture than just engineering can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's the only answer. But it just
Speaker 1: seems to me like if you love technology, you should
Speaker 1: at least have a nodding as to science.
Speaker 3: You know, look, you ought to, it would be great.
Speaker 3: But they let me give you another part of what's
Speaker 3: happening here. There is a belief among this broligarchy, David
Speaker 3: Sachs and Bill Ackman and Elon Musk and Vivek and
Speaker 3: all these other people in a lot of ways that
Speaker 3: they will be the holders of all wisdom and approaches
Speaker 3: to how things are.
Speaker 1: Done right because they're smarter than everyone else, because somehow
Speaker 1: they got government subsidies for doing their businesses.
Speaker 3: Yes, correct, I would be happy for the doge to
Speaker 3: pass the world that says, no one involved who donates
Speaker 3: to a political figure, they receive government funding I like,
Speaker 3: of any kind, and they're no company of anybody who's
Speaker 3: involved or invested in they receive government funding. And you
Speaker 3: know what, I promise you that's not going to happen
Speaker 3: because Elon Musk's entire fortune has been made on the
Speaker 3: back of the US taxpayer.
Speaker 1: Real talk exactly. And now it's true. Now the money
Speaker 1: he's going to.
Speaker 3: Cut, yeah, correct, except for himself. I promise you now,
Speaker 3: a single dime of SpaceX or Tesla fund that has
Speaker 3: any government impact will Those will be the most meritorious
Speaker 3: spending items in the entire budget.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: The whole idea that you're going to bring some outside
Speaker 1: billionaire who's never done government into cut costs is very stupid.
Speaker 1: But this is all going to get very stupid, very fast.
Speaker 3: At the end of the Cold War, we have this
Speaker 3: thing called the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, because we
Speaker 3: had like seven hundred or nine hundred military bases in
Speaker 3: this country. At the end of the Cold War, we
Speaker 3: realized and we don't need all this anymore. Right, You
Speaker 3: had people from the most progressive fuck the military, burn
Speaker 3: the military to the ground liberal types to hardcore conservatives.
Speaker 3: Every one of them was like, oh no, Fort John
Speaker 3: Jones in my district, even though it hasn't hasn't been
Speaker 3: used since the War of eighteen fucking twelve, is essential
Speaker 3: to national defense. All of it is like, you're going
Speaker 3: to see the blowback that's going to happen on the
Speaker 3: doge from Congress itself, including from some of its most
Speaker 3: concernive members. They're gonna be like, wait, what They're great, true,
Speaker 3: true wake up call. It's going to be glorious. Rick
Speaker 3: Wilson as always happy to be with you and happy
Speaker 3: to be right.
Speaker 1: Well, not totally right, but sure. Roger mcnamie is the
Speaker 1: author of Zucht Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Welcome
Speaker 1: to past politics, Roger.
Speaker 3: It is a great pleasure moment.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Oh, we're so excited to
Speaker 1: have you. We are in such a strange moment in
Speaker 1: American life.
Speaker 4: But you saw those coming, well, Molly, I have some advantages.
Speaker 4: I first went to Silicon Valley in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 4: back when seriously it was a completely different world, you know.
Speaker 4: I followed the siren call of Steve Jobs to both
Speaker 4: create technology that would empower people, increase productivity, and frankly,
Speaker 4: make the world a better place. From nineteen eighty two
Speaker 4: until the financial crisis, it was really exciting. Silicon Valley
Speaker 4: produced a lot of things. But beginning, you know, two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine twenty ten, the tech industry discovered that
Speaker 4: post financial crisis, that they no longer had to make
Speaker 4: products that were good for people or that empowered them.
Speaker 4: That they could use data and the free capital that
Speaker 4: was available because interest rates were essentially zero for a
Speaker 4: long time, they could get unprecedented amounts of capital and
Speaker 4: use technology to exploit human weakness. And so the whole
Speaker 4: industry went from being the most exciting, dynamic, positive contribute
Speaker 4: to our economy to becoming the greatest threat to democracy,
Speaker 4: public health, and civil liberties that the country has seen
Speaker 4: in a very very long tut And all of that
Speaker 4: became clear to me in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Was it the election that made you.
Speaker 4: Know, oh, interesting, No, it was way before the election.
Speaker 4: So keep in mind, I'd been involved as an investor
Speaker 4: in technology companies, and I'd been a mentor to Mark
Speaker 4: Zuckerberg at Facebook and to Cheryl Samberg. I brought them
Speaker 4: together so that was all in from two thousand and
Speaker 4: six to two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Some was said Tobate that you mentor before we discovered
Speaker 1: that they're evil. Sorry you try.
Speaker 4: That was certainly true for me. Yeah, when I knew
Speaker 4: them well, I both respected them both and I liked
Speaker 4: them both. And there were signs that they had shall
Speaker 4: we say, big dreams. But that's not an uncommon thing
Speaker 4: with entrepreneurs. It's just in two thousand and six, if
Speaker 4: you had really bad intention, the technology itself didn't allow
Speaker 4: you to hurt people at large scale. That really didn't
Speaker 4: happen until cell phones had enough bandwidth to do videos.
Speaker 4: So at that point there were no limitations on what
Speaker 4: you could do with technology. And the key thing in
Speaker 4: early twenty sixteen, I started to see disinformation, really hate
Speaker 4: speech targeted Hillary Clinton. It was virallly spreading through Facebook,
Speaker 4: and I went, oh, that doesn't look good. And then
Speaker 4: there were some civil rights things that happened, and then
Speaker 4: Breggs it in the United Kingdom in June twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: The outcome was such a huge shock. Literally it was
Speaker 4: an eight point swing from what the polls had suggested
Speaker 4: the day before the referendum, and it occurred to me
Speaker 4: that Facebook was probably the only reasonable explanation for how.
Speaker 3: That had happened.
Speaker 4: And then in the summer of twenty sixteen, we discovered
Speaker 4: that Paul Maniford is shall we say, affiliated with Russian oligarchs.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that from season one. Trump as does continue exactly.
Speaker 4: But all of that really scared me. So I wrote
Speaker 4: up a thing which was originally going to be an
Speaker 4: op ed, but I'd never written an op ed before,
Speaker 4: and so it took me a long time to do it.
Speaker 4: Before I published it, I sent it to Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 4: and Schaw Sandberg to warn them. So this is nine
Speaker 4: days before the presidential election twenty sixteen. Saint guys, I
Speaker 4: am really terrified because Facebook, this company had been deeply involved,
Speaker 4: is being used by bad actors to undermine democracy and
Speaker 4: civil rights. And as your former mentor, what I'm saying
Speaker 4: to you is, I don't think you want your company
Speaker 4: to be associated with undermining democracy and civil rights that,
Speaker 4: even if you aren't morally interested in it. Right, it's
Speaker 4: a bad business strategy, and long story, sure everybody knows
Speaker 4: what happens.
Speaker 1: They were like, no, it's a good business strategy.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, Actually it was more cynical than that.
Speaker 4: There's a term of art at Silicon Valley when somebody
Speaker 4: is really nice to and smiley at you, but doing
Speaker 4: the opposite of what you want to do. It's called
Speaker 4: grin fucking. And that's what they did to me. And
Speaker 4: they couldn't have been more polite, and they could not
Speaker 4: have been less interested in acting. And so I became
Speaker 4: an activist. I went to Congress, I went to state
Speaker 4: attorneys general, I talked to governors. You know, I did
Speaker 4: work with believe it or not, I worked with the
Speaker 4: Trump administration and the Trust people, all trying to get
Speaker 4: them to recognize that uncontrolled Silicon Valley representatives to everything
Speaker 4: that we value in America, democracy, public health, civil liberties,
Speaker 4: you know, just the whole function of our society. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't because they were banned people. It was because
Speaker 4: they perceived that what their mission was, you know, in
Speaker 4: the case of Mark Zuckerberg connecting the whole world on
Speaker 4: a communications network that he managed, that that was so
Speaker 4: important that it justified any harm that might result from it.
Speaker 4: And you know, my view was that, let's face it,
Speaker 4: we've been through things like this with automobiles, with tobacco,
Speaker 4: with aircraft, with lead and paint. Right, there are been
Speaker 4: zillions of examples of the government is actually government acting
Speaker 4: to ensure safety, to ensure protection of civil rights, and
Speaker 4: to preserve competition. So I argued for those three things,
Speaker 4: and you know a lot of people listened. We had
Speaker 4: lots of conversations, and nothing happened. So twenty twenty comes along,
Speaker 4: and in twenty twenty, Phase Book's role was different that
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen. You know, the Russians want to advertise
Speaker 4: and Facebook goes, well, they're a good customer, and they
Speaker 4: offered their services both to Trump and to Clinton. Clinton
Speaker 4: said no, and the Facebook guys threw themselves into helping
Speaker 4: Trump win, and together with Cambridge Analytica, they matched thirty
Speaker 4: million Facebook user IDs to voter files, which allowed them,
Speaker 4: from a targeting point of view, to have a level
Speaker 4: of accuracy in targeting that it never occurred.
Speaker 3: At politics previously.
Speaker 4: And they used to just suppress the votes of black people,
Speaker 4: suburban women, and young voters in target states. How did
Speaker 4: they get that information? Was that because Russia hacked the
Speaker 4: Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We
Speaker 4: don't know, because nobody ever really investigated, but they had
Speaker 4: perfect targeting and they suppressed those votes and Trump won
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty. It was different because in the lead
Speaker 4: up to twenty twenty we had COVID, and during COVID, QAnon,
Speaker 4: which were the guys who were around Pizza gain were
Speaker 4: they were like super active, and Facebook could have kept
Speaker 4: all those people at the fringes. But their business model
Speaker 4: is different than that. Their business model is about getting
Speaker 4: people's attention, and the way you do that is with
Speaker 4: fear and outrage. Not because everybody reacts to that, but
Speaker 4: because probably half the population reacts to that more than
Speaker 4: anything else, and half the population is enough, and so
Speaker 4: they even after the FBI warned them in May of
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, Facebook continued to allow QAnon to prosper. And
Speaker 4: then when COVID broke out, Facebook had already been at
Speaker 4: place where they have these things called facebo, people who
Speaker 4: have a shared interest get together, and one of the
Speaker 4: core ones was is groups for new mothers, and people
Speaker 4: who were anti vaxers infiltrated these new mothers groups, and
Speaker 4: the anti vaxers were essentially indoctrinating new mothers to be
Speaker 4: anti vax The q and on guys saw this, and
Speaker 4: they aimed at the anti vaxers and subsumed them. The
Speaker 4: Trump campaign saw this and went, wow, these are our people,
Speaker 4: and so they went and MAGA essentially merged with q Andon.
Speaker 4: That's why Trump spent the summer of twenty twenty putting
Speaker 4: out all those tweets about q and on stuff and
Speaker 4: so Facebook. You know, if they had been more worried
Speaker 4: about democracy and profits, they would have stopped this, but
Speaker 4: they did just the opposite. And of course then Trump
Speaker 4: began to stop the steal. And all of that was
Speaker 4: organized in Facebook groups right up to the right up
Speaker 4: to the insurrection. And I had written my book two
Speaker 4: years earlier, and I talked about the fact that Facebook groups,
Speaker 4: because there's no police, a lot of bad things happen
Speaker 4: in them, and if you don't controlled them in some way,
Speaker 4: eventually we were going to have an insurrection. And son
Speaker 4: of a Gun it actually happened at Genuar of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one, and we had a whistleblower, Francis Hoguand who
Speaker 4: brought out all the paperwork and said, all the people
Speaker 4: on Facebook knew all about this. And you know you're
Speaker 4: sitting there going, okay, wow, that's really bad. Well, in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, it took one step even worse than that,
Speaker 4: which is that people in Silicon Valley stop pretending to
Speaker 4: be neutral. You know, obviously the most extreme example is Musk,
Speaker 4: but they all were pretty tightly aligned with Trump. And
Speaker 4: you know, the problem is that Silicon Valley controls the
Speaker 4: most important communication systems we have in the country, in fact,
Speaker 4: in the whole world. And so we go into this
Speaker 4: thing in a year at which fifty four percent of
Speaker 4: American adults cannot read above a sixth grade level. So,
Speaker 4: you know, public education, which has been crushed for forty years,
Speaker 4: has put us on this point where a lot of
Speaker 4: people vulnerable to manipulation, and these technology products, which are
Speaker 4: designed for manipulation are aligned with the forces that are
Speaker 4: against democracy. And that's how we wound up where we
Speaker 4: are today. So it didn't matter how good a campaign
Speaker 4: the vice president ran. The people on the other side
Speaker 4: never heard any of it.
Speaker 1: So I want you to the anti vax QAnon stuff
Speaker 1: is really interesting to me, and had not I absolutely
Speaker 1: did not, for whatever reason, totally thread the needle on that.
Speaker 1: So can you explain that to us a little bit?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Sure, So here's The way to think about it, if
Speaker 4: you look at the post mortems on the twenty twenty
Speaker 4: four election, people talked about Fox News and they talk about,
Speaker 4: you know, the various right wing podcasters, right, and the
Speaker 4: Democrats that had nothing to match that. The thing that
Speaker 4: they're missing is that Fox News Joe Rogan their audiences
Speaker 4: are what five million, maybe ten million at tops.
Speaker 1: I mean those Joe Rogan clips got to sixty nine
Speaker 1: million people.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I believe that. Sorry, I believe that. But
Speaker 4: how did they get there? They got there because Instagram, Facebook, TikTok,
Speaker 4: YouTube right, which is owned by Google, and Twitter elevated them.
Speaker 4: Are these platforms that were aligned with Trump's positions, right,
Speaker 4: And the thing that I think really matters is that
Speaker 4: you roughly eighty million people voted for Trump. How many
Speaker 4: people are in maggot, I don't know. It's it eighty is,
Speaker 4: at sixties, at one hundred, it doesn't matter. You can't
Speaker 4: sustain a collective dilution right right, at the scale of
Speaker 4: sixty to one hundred million people with things that only
Speaker 4: have an audience of five million. So the role that
Speaker 4: these things play is gigantic. So if you go back
Speaker 4: to anti vas the problem with Facebook, and Facebook really
Speaker 4: is worse than the other guys on this issue, but
Speaker 4: they all contribute to it, is that Facebook's whole business
Speaker 4: model is taking ideas from the fringe, things that historically
Speaker 4: before Internet platforms existed, were just people, you know, flat
Speaker 4: earthers and all that, where people are just screaming into
Speaker 4: a void and nobody listening. Facebook business strategy was to
Speaker 4: mainstream all those ideas, and in the context of anti
Speaker 4: vax and in the context of MAGA, in the context
Speaker 4: to stop the steal, and in the context of the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four election. What that meant was that you
Speaker 4: could literally create an alternate reality with roughly half the
Speaker 4: voters all completely involved and uncouched by reality. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's an Adam Surwer thing in The Atlantic this week
Speaker 4: where he's talking about the fact that there's going to
Speaker 4: be some buyer's remorse because the alternate reality is so
Speaker 4: unhinged that a lot of the people have voted for
Speaker 4: Trump don't believe he's actually going to do the things
Speaker 4: he's already doing.
Speaker 1: I want to get into that because that was something
Speaker 1: I absolutely saw, was that I really noticed this when
Speaker 1: you would when you would talk to voters, or when
Speaker 1: you would look at the data, is that a lot
Speaker 1: of these voters, You would say, well, Trump is going
Speaker 1: to do this, and they would say, no, he's not
Speaker 1: going to do it. At the RNC, they had signs
Speaker 1: that said mass deportation. Now, when you talk to voters
Speaker 1: you would say, you know, for example, like the large
Speaker 1: number of Latino voters at the border in the Rio
Speaker 1: Grande Valley who voted for Trump, they would say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not he's not going to do it, or
Speaker 1: it's not going to do it that way, or it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen to us. There was a real
Speaker 1: inability to sort of suspension of disbelief. I always thought
Speaker 1: it was because Trump wasn't able to do the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff he had wanted to the first time around.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: What I do know, though, is that a vote for
Speaker 4: Trump wasn't necessarily a vote for what he was advocating,
Speaker 4: but it was always a vote against Biden and the irony.
Speaker 4: The irony is that somehow the Democrats were unable to
Speaker 4: get credit for the Inflation Reduction Act and the various
Speaker 4: things that they did post COVID that essentially allowed the
Speaker 4: US economy to prosper in a way that no other
Speaker 4: economy in the world did, and for Americans to be
Speaker 4: protected in a way that the citizens of other countries
Speaker 4: were not, and they got no credit for that. Now,
Speaker 4: that may have been a flaw in the way the
Speaker 4: campaign was run, but it is customary in America for
Speaker 4: presidential elections to be referendum on whoever's in office, and
Speaker 4: prices are demonstrably higher than they were in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Biden got nailed with that, notwithstanding the fact that personal
Speaker 4: incomes are way up, employment is maxed out, and a
Speaker 4: lot of the services on which people depend have been
Speaker 4: financed in a way that helps it awful lot of people.
Speaker 4: And all of that's going to go away under Trump. Right,
Speaker 4: all of that's I mean, his strategy when he came
Speaker 4: in the first time was to undo everything that Obama did,
Speaker 4: and I assume his strategy will be underdo everything.
Speaker 1: I assume this will not be better.
Speaker 4: Yes, right, Meanwhile, they will claim credit, they will claim
Speaker 4: credit for all the things that Biden did, right, because
Speaker 4: you saw those polls that showed that sentiment about the
Speaker 4: economy isn't actually about the economy, it's about is your
Speaker 4: side winning or not right, So Republicans the minute the
Speaker 4: election was done, Republicans suddenly think the economy looks great.
Speaker 4: All of that is I mean, it's really disturbing because
Speaker 4: history suggests when you get a change life, when people
Speaker 4: come into power whose goal is to destroy, it's a
Speaker 4: lot easier direct things than this to build. It's not
Speaker 4: certain that we can recover quickly. You know, for example,
Speaker 4: we may not be able to recover as quickly from
Speaker 4: the second Trump term as we did from the first,
Speaker 4: And recovering from the first one was obviously we had
Speaker 4: some very fortunate things that happened, and Biden did some
Speaker 4: brilliant things, but Democrats didn't get re elected for doing.
Speaker 3: All of that.
Speaker 4: And you know, after this next one, you know, we
Speaker 4: may be looking at today and going, you know what
Speaker 4: those were before times that those were the times we
Speaker 4: really love, That's when we were happy, and you know,
Speaker 4: we may be dealing with less of everything from here.
Speaker 4: I just don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's right, and I also
Speaker 1: think I think two things. One I think that's right,
Speaker 1: and two I don't think that there's any world in
Speaker 1: which I mean, yeah, I think that's right. Because the
Speaker 1: problem was inequality, and so the people elected a nefarious
Speaker 1: billionaire with the hopes that he would somehow fix it.
Speaker 1: I want you to give me like a two minute
Speaker 1: prescription on how you solve this incredibly enormous problem.
Speaker 4: We have to change our relationship to technology. We have
Speaker 4: an irrational trust in technology and a belief that anything
Speaker 4: new is better than what came before it. Neither of
Speaker 4: those things is true today. People should be not just
Speaker 4: skeptical but afraid of crypto. They should not just be
Speaker 4: skeptical but afraid of generative artificial intelligence. These are not
Speaker 4: products designed to make your life better. These are products
Speaker 4: designing to extract value from you and leave you worse
Speaker 4: off to the benefit of the people who are in control.
Speaker 4: And we need to change our relationship, and we need
Speaker 4: to do it now. So you and I are both
Speaker 4: on Blue Scott. Challenge with Blue Skot is that it's
Speaker 4: not obvious to me that there is a technology solution
Speaker 4: to the problems we face today. And because it's highly centralized,
Speaker 4: the incentives from Blue Sky are no different than they
Speaker 4: were for Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.
Speaker 1: So they could get sold.
Speaker 4: Or they could monetize in a way that is extractive,
Speaker 4: and what we need to do quickly is to work
Speaker 4: with the team and find a way to make it
Speaker 4: a subscription model or some model that isn't dependent on
Speaker 4: our data because the incentives are totally screwed up.
Speaker 1: Have you talked to them?
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 4: I don't know them, and I would love to meet
Speaker 4: them because what they have done is truly amazing. But
Speaker 4: the core thing is we can't be looking for silver
Speaker 4: bullets here. I think this is going to require all
Speaker 4: of us remembering that community comes first.
Speaker 3: We have to care about other people.
Speaker 4: You know that Reagan's admonition that we're all the Marlborough
Speaker 4: man that was wrong, That was dangerous. That's what led
Speaker 4: us to where we are now. Not because Regan was
Speaker 4: a bad guy, but just because that was a dumb
Speaker 4: idea that at the end of the day, we need
Speaker 4: each other and we need to respect each other and
Speaker 4: to be supportive, to acknowledge that there are folks whose
Speaker 4: very nature makes them potential victims of what's going on.
Speaker 4: Now we have to defend them.
Speaker 3: All.
Speaker 4: That means trans people, that means women, that means people
Speaker 4: of color, that means immigrants, that means everybody, and we
Speaker 4: have to recognize we're all in this together in that
Speaker 4: trying to claim that somebody is the problem that's wrong.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Roger, that was great, Thank you.
Speaker 4: God pleasure, no moment. Rick Wilson, Molly, Jong Fast.
Speaker 1: We have the one thing that we still have.
Speaker 3: We do. We want the one thing that we that
Speaker 3: we absolutely are required by state and federal law of
Speaker 3: performing at each podcast outing yes, And.
Speaker 1: This one is particularly amazing because it involves something we
Speaker 1: told everyone was going to happen.
Speaker 3: Yep, we sure did. We told y'all that when Donald
Speaker 3: Trump even started to propose tariffs, that companies would start
Speaker 3: raising their prices on regular people in anticipation. Oh my gosh, Molly,
Speaker 3: what's happening right now?
Speaker 1: Walmart lows may raise prices if Trump's tariff plans take
Speaker 1: into effect. CFOs say, you will be shocked to know that.
Speaker 1: In an interview with CNBC, Walmart CFO said he never
Speaker 1: wants to raise prices. I mean, who does. But he's
Speaker 1: going to have to raise prices, you know why, because
Speaker 1: tariffs are wildly inflationary, and.
Speaker 3: Their taxes on the American.
Speaker 1: People, on the consumer.
Speaker 3: It's so striking to me. We have this insistence by
Speaker 3: Trump and almost no one else, even his own people
Speaker 3: are very careful not to say this. The taxes they
Speaker 3: will be raised. Those are China taxes. They're on China, right,
Speaker 3: but they're not. But they're not. They're on Americans again.
Speaker 3: People voted for this, and they're going to get it
Speaker 3: good and hard. I think they're going to have a
Speaker 3: moment of shock, frankly, that the Great Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: raising their taxes, even if it's not going to go
Speaker 3: on their ten ninety nine every year, it's going on
Speaker 3: their taxes. They're paying more money because they are going
Speaker 3: to end up having the places they shop most driving
Speaker 3: the prices up in advance because they know what's coming.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson as always happy to be with you. I'll
Speaker 3: talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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