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 Kevin McCarthy's role in leadership isn't
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble. Today we have a show filled
Speaker 1: with the ups and downs of democracy. First, we're joined
Speaker 1: by the Daily Shows Jordan Klepper, who's going to discuss
Speaker 1: his new special American follows Democracy and things he saw
Speaker 1: attending mcgarelli's. Then we'll talk to Douglas Rushkoff, author of
Speaker 1: the Survival of the Richest, about what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on with Elon Musk and Twitter. And trust me,
Speaker 1: you do not want to miss that because it's gonna
Speaker 1: tell you a lot about our politics today. But first
Speaker 1: discussed last night's election. We have the author of Lucky
Speaker 1: How Joe Biden barely won the presidency NBC News Digitals.
Speaker 1: John Allen, Welcome to Fast Politics. We are taping this
Speaker 1: minute before you are listening to it, so it's very
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. I have brought on my friend, be very sleepless,
Speaker 1: John Allen. Welcome, John Allen. Hey, Molly John Fast. We're
Speaker 1: so giddy and punchy because none of us have slept
Speaker 1: very much. And Jesse is I think in a coma.
Speaker 1: Are you glive? Um? So, if you're hearing this, it
Speaker 1: means that Jesse was not in a coma. John Allen,
Speaker 1: good night for democracy, bad night for Donald J. Trump
Speaker 1: discuss certainly a bad night for Donald J. Trump. I mean,
Speaker 1: he put up a bunch of candidates, a lot of
Speaker 1: them lost, particularly election deniers, people that he might have
Speaker 1: been able to put in place to help him try
Speaker 1: to steal a future election. And then you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of the cherry on top of the bad night
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump, uh Sunday is Rod de Santis, his
Speaker 1: main potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination, winning by
Speaker 1: like twenty points in Florida. Rod Savus couldn't have looked
Speaker 1: stronger last night. It's possible Donald Trump could have looked weaker,
Speaker 1: but not much would. By the way, the other piece
Speaker 1: of it, just a small sliver piece. It gets less
Speaker 1: attention because it doesn't it doesn't say Trump next to it.
Speaker 1: But Joe Biden walks out in better standing than he
Speaker 1: did going into the night. Oh yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: was just reading Playbook this morning, and it was like
Speaker 1: Joe Biden the comeback kid. Now there is a scenario
Speaker 1: where Joe Biden this is just a punditry fail, right,
Speaker 1: like the pundance and I and by pundance, I mean
Speaker 1: you and I too. Everybody gets together and it's so,
Speaker 1: you know, has a lot of thoughts and feelings, and
Speaker 1: then the polling we know is complete. Hohoeie. Though one
Speaker 1: of my poster friends wrote to me last night it
Speaker 1: was like a lot of polls were right. I was like, okay, um,
Speaker 1: but I mean the polls were wrong. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: as a general matter, yes, and certainly like the thing
Speaker 1: the thing that we do is is to like aggregate
Speaker 1: the polls and then strapolate the aggregation. Like the further
Speaker 1: you get from actual polling, uh, the more likely you
Speaker 1: are to be often in some bad direction, you know.
Speaker 1: Obviously there were factors that played in the election last
Speaker 1: night that um that either weren't picked up by the
Speaker 1: polling or were ignored by polsters and the people who
Speaker 1: read polsters, including people like you and me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like one of the I am waking up this morning
Speaker 1: very happy to be wrong, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: are waking up this morning very mad. Which let's just
Speaker 1: have a moment to it in our sleeplessness and let
Speaker 1: us have a moment to enjoy. For example, does Dr
Speaker 1: Oz move back to New Jersey? I mean you're assuming
Speaker 1: that he ever moved Pennsylvania. I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think are the top lines? Do I think is going
Speaker 1: to be a Pennsylvania residents six months from now? Like?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. I will be surprised if is there Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: residents six months from now, six days from an how
Speaker 1: or six hours from now. So here's a question for you.
Speaker 1: What are you What are the things that you really
Speaker 1: saw like I mean, I mean the things that like
Speaker 1: I okay, great, let's go abortion. Like we saw for
Speaker 1: months and months and months, all this polling that suggested
Speaker 1: that yes, abortion was among the issues that the voters
Speaker 1: cared about a lot. And but but it was far
Speaker 1: behind the economy, inflation, other things that are similar to
Speaker 1: those things, jobs, um, and and so I think what
Speaker 1: we saw last night, and this bears out from the
Speaker 1: exit polling. In fact, when I saw the exit polling
Speaker 1: the first time last night, I was like, Wow, our
Speaker 1: exit polling might be off because it was so foreign,
Speaker 1: odds with what would have made sense for what the
Speaker 1: polling on everything else shown, and I think it in
Speaker 1: fact turned out that the polling on that issue was
Speaker 1: much more accurate and uh, you know, in the exit
Speaker 1: polls and should have been like a good indication of
Speaker 1: where things were headed last night. That basically all that
Speaker 1: energy that we anticipated there being, um, you know, after
Speaker 1: it became clear the Supreme Court was going to overturn
Speaker 1: versus Way. Uh, that energy actually appeared on election day,
Speaker 1: even though for a while it wasn't happening. So really
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court and the jobs decision really did motivate voters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the Supreme Court decision, you know, as much
Speaker 1: as anything else killed the red wave, killed the traditional
Speaker 1: mid term advantage that the out of power party has,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think to the extent that it
Speaker 1: continues to be a right that is in jeopardy. You
Speaker 1: may see, um, you know, similar outcomes. This is and well,
Speaker 1: by the way, look, Republicans knew in a sort of
Speaker 1: abstract way that this was a problem for them, um,
Speaker 1: and went ahead and pushed forward anymore like they thought
Speaker 1: it was the right thing. You do. Put conservative justices
Speaker 1: on this report, have them overturned o versus Way, and
Speaker 1: then deal with the consequences of that when this consequence
Speaker 1: has come. But I think, you know, throughout that process,
Speaker 1: I think at least smart Republican strategist knew that there
Speaker 1: was a risk that if they got the thing they
Speaker 1: wanted policy was um, then it would end up being
Speaker 1: a political albatross. You know. What's funny is like I
Speaker 1: keep thinking about that moment when they overturned Dobbs and
Speaker 1: they talked to Trump and Trump was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like he knew. I mean, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: give Trump any critic because he's absolute, abject more on,
Speaker 1: but speaking of Trump, I feel like this is the
Speaker 1: moment where Republicans start to distance themselves. But you may
Speaker 1: you may be right. But the reason I laugh at
Speaker 1: that is we say that what's the moment where the
Speaker 1: republic existence themselves from Domaldrup. So you may actually be right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is there may could be an alternative
Speaker 1: Roger Santis. If rod De Santis decides that he's going
Speaker 1: to run for president, there may be an alternative. And
Speaker 1: if Roda Santis says, uh, Donald Trump did some terrible
Speaker 1: stuff as president or was like really bad at getting
Speaker 1: things done, or um, whatever the set of things you right,
Speaker 1: run against someone essentially run into his right, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: the Republicans may like jump onto some other some other guy,
Speaker 1: but for the moment, I would say, always be a
Speaker 1: little bit wary of the copy idea that Republicans are
Speaker 1: going to distance themselves from Trump because about thirty five
Speaker 1: percent of them love him and the rest of them
Speaker 1: will fall in live right right, But they're but they
Speaker 1: are making their parties smaller and smaller, you know again,
Speaker 1: like this is the thing they go to, you know,
Speaker 1: Republicans of a situation where they are stuck, which they
Speaker 1: did that, you know, they held themselves hostage and now
Speaker 1: they continue to throw away the keys to the handcuffs.
Speaker 1: And I love to see it. Boy, I'm, I'm. That's
Speaker 1: like the most lovely mixed metaphor what they're holding themselves hostage.
Speaker 1: But listen, man, I got not much that is art.
Speaker 1: I think like the things that I was the most
Speaker 1: worried about as a you know, are these, like, um,
Speaker 1: the seats where the sort of vote counter would be
Speaker 1: an election denialist, the people where Trump was putting them
Speaker 1: in office for his race. Those people have either all
Speaker 1: lost or about to lose. Can we go through those Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a big suite, right, Like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the ones that, uh that you would look at
Speaker 1: Tutor Dixon, everyone's favorite actress. Tutor Dixon loses, um, you know,
Speaker 1: Carrylas having trouble on your Zona, some secretary states and
Speaker 1: there in these very states around probably of course the
Speaker 1: one interesting place where the Republicans did very well. Uh
Speaker 1: in Georgia you have Governor Brian Kemp winning re election,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of Democrats unhappy. But Brian Kemp
Speaker 1: did stand up to Donald Trump last time round, and
Speaker 1: Brad Rathisburger winning re election after standing up to Trump.
Speaker 1: So you know, I mean, I think it was a
Speaker 1: bad night for an election deniers and a good night
Speaker 1: for people who say that we should have free and
Speaker 1: fair elections and then, which is honestly quite good. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the places where Democrats really got Jesse
Speaker 1: wants us to talk about the places in which Democrats
Speaker 1: got the did not do well. Um, Florida is the
Speaker 1: most glaring, Like Florida is no longer a purple state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like one might even argue that there
Speaker 1: was a red wave it just washed over Florida and
Speaker 1: didn't hit the rest of the country. UM, So Florida,
Speaker 1: I would say vance. I mean Ryan ran a really
Speaker 1: good campaign. I mean it wasn't I think an unwell
Speaker 1: winnable seat, but like Ryan did really show how Democrat
Speaker 1: can run in those states. Maybe running to lose, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know. I mean shared Brown can show
Speaker 1: you how to run and yeah, that's right. So I
Speaker 1: don't think I don't think Tim Ryan's is good at
Speaker 1: a candidate Brown, it's like just fought out. Um and
Speaker 1: and the Democrats have of weight been able to fall
Speaker 1: in love with candidates who can come kind of like
Speaker 1: within a few points statewide, UM, in various states Texas, Georgia, Ohio, UM,
Speaker 1: its stead of the ones that can win. And you know,
Speaker 1: there are Democratic candidates that can win competitive states Steve Fetterman,
Speaker 1: Toma John you know, like so I think even even
Speaker 1: Iver's I mean in Wisconsin he won again. He got
Speaker 1: re elected, you know, and that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a tough race. Yeah, and that was good. I mean,
Speaker 1: I we did have the state party Democratic state Party
Speaker 1: chair from Wisconsin on the podcast, Ben Whickler, and um,
Speaker 1: they've worked really hard at their state party. I wonder
Speaker 1: how much like I know Florida has had some real
Speaker 1: problems with their state party and Nevada has also had
Speaker 1: some state party problems. So I wonder if this is
Speaker 1: connected to you know, I think this is an important
Speaker 1: point here. Yeah, I think it's um. It's absolutely true
Speaker 1: that having a party organization is helpful to winning elections.
Speaker 1: I mean, what are elections? What our elections by getting
Speaker 1: people to vote, and if you have a disorganized party
Speaker 1: makes a lot harder to do that. If you have
Speaker 1: an organized party, it makes it easier to do that.
Speaker 1: Of course, you still have to have a good product
Speaker 1: to sell, right. Sometimes maybe you sell OUTBO and people
Speaker 1: buy it. But for the most part, if you're going
Speaker 1: to um, you know, if you're gonna win racist, you
Speaker 1: need sort of both things to be true. You need
Speaker 1: a good product to your candidate and also a good
Speaker 1: party organization or non party organization that functions in that
Speaker 1: same way. And uh and you know can a network
Speaker 1: for you so they can get people out of the polls.
Speaker 1: I mean that said Val Demmings was a great candidate
Speaker 1: and Charlie Chris was not, and Charlie Chris lost by
Speaker 1: twenty points, and Charlie Chris is lost now as an
Speaker 1: independent Republican and a Democrat. Congratulations, maybe it's time to retire.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that I want to, like take
Speaker 1: a second to talk about is that there was towards
Speaker 1: the end of this pundentry cycle, before everyone was proved
Speaker 1: wrong to varying degrees. Uh, they we did see a
Speaker 1: lot of chunky, gop leaning polls which may have goosed
Speaker 1: the averages. Can you talk about that for a minute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a pretty simple, uh strategy, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you put out a bunch of bogus poles or
Speaker 1: poles that lean in one direction, you'll affect what the
Speaker 1: averages for the pollsters that do straight averages, And a
Speaker 1: lot of people use the real clear politics average of poles, um,
Speaker 1: something I've long used. What you can see is actually,
Speaker 1: you know, the very easy potential for manipulation of the
Speaker 1: average of polls by you know, bad faith actors. I
Speaker 1: would be reluctant to point to a specific case and
Speaker 1: say this was a bad faith poll. What I would
Speaker 1: say in general is that, you know, we saw that
Speaker 1: average point move towards the end, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: these races and moved to places where it wasn't actually true.
Speaker 1: So interesting, all right, So let's just we're gonna go
Speaker 1: through before we both go back to bed. The GOP
Speaker 1: gubernatorial candidates who are reflecting election deniers who lost. Okay,
Speaker 1: you ready, these are the people who turned on democracy.
Speaker 1: Lee's Eldon, Everyone's favorite little buddy in New York State,
Speaker 1: Dan Cox in Maryland, Darren Bailey in Illinois, Doug Mastriano
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, Tutor Dixon in Michigan, and Tim Michael's in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: And then we're still waiting on Carry Lake in Arizona.
Speaker 1: Isn't l losing and we'll probably lose. Bad night for
Speaker 1: election deniers, good night for democracy. Absolutely a bad night
Speaker 1: for election deniers. I would say it's a good night
Speaker 1: for democracy anytime people are at the vote and there
Speaker 1: aren't huge fights over over the truth. And what we
Speaker 1: didn't see a lot of is is people claiming that
Speaker 1: they had won when they lost. So that's kind of democracy.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Still, so how does it end now? John
Speaker 1: Allen tell us the future. It's still seems like McCarthy
Speaker 1: will eke out the speakership, right, I think we're way
Speaker 1: too early to tell how mcar speakership. No I mean,
Speaker 1: the Republicans will eke out winning. Right, It seems very
Speaker 1: like that the Republicans will have the House and maybe
Speaker 1: even have some pad um in terms of their numbers,
Speaker 1: But it's not gonna be a situation where they're you know,
Speaker 1: they've got like a majority. So you know, this will
Speaker 1: be very difficult for Kevin McCarthy to make himself speaker
Speaker 1: in the first place, and if he gets to be
Speaker 1: speakers to actually manage that confidence. It's I love to
Speaker 1: see it, and there's gonna be and you think they'll
Speaker 1: definitely be a leadership kerfuffle at best. I think it
Speaker 1: will be painful for Kevin McCarthy to get the votes
Speaker 1: that he needs to become speaker. Not I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you can't do it. I think it'll be painful. Mary, Mary.
Speaker 1: We're gonna leave it with this quote from Ben Collins,
Speaker 1: the Monitor of the Many Maladies of the Art. All right,
Speaker 1: this is true. Trump cannot fail in the bat in universe.
Speaker 1: He can only be failed. I'm not even sure what
Speaker 1: that needs. There you go. Jordan Clipper is a correspondent
Speaker 1: on the Daily Show and the host of an American
Speaker 1: follows Democracy. Welcome to Fast politics Jordan Clepper, Well, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Oh my god, I just watched your special,
Speaker 1: which is wait, tell us what this specialist? God, did
Speaker 1: it make you happy? To give you hope? What the
Speaker 1: what the funk is happening out there? It's the feel
Speaker 1: good special of the year. It's it's a weird time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have. People's brains are melting across the country and
Speaker 1: luckily the only thing we have to stop it is
Speaker 1: a referendum where we have to utilize those brains. So
Speaker 1: it's an interesting time to stay the least. I feel
Speaker 1: like another title for your special could be democracy dies
Speaker 1: in stupid. That's not bad. You should have been around
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. We went with America unfollowed
Speaker 1: democracy because you know, we're trying to get the kids.
Speaker 1: We're trying to get them. We want to get all
Speaker 1: the young kids on their social media is But I
Speaker 1: think you're You're not wrong. You could feel our democracy
Speaker 1: quickly slipping away, and if we had a little bit
Speaker 1: more engagement, a little better information, we might be in
Speaker 1: a better place. But wish is where horses beggars would ride, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There were so many destinations and so
Speaker 1: many people you interviewed, and all of them seem to
Speaker 1: have the medical diagnosis is brain worms. My favorite were
Speaker 1: the pole watchers. Sure I did not know that Mark Fincham,
Speaker 1: who is running for Secretary of State and could very
Speaker 1: well win, was actually an oathkeeper. Yeah, Fincham's got quite
Speaker 1: the backstory. I think that was part of what we
Speaker 1: wanted to jump into, is those Secretary of State races.
Speaker 1: It shows you how desperate things are when Comedy Central
Speaker 1: and comedians are covering Secretary of State races during the
Speaker 1: mid term election. It's this is all heads on deck everyone. Um.
Speaker 1: I actually want to push into that a little bit
Speaker 1: because so you're a comedian, but you're covering what's actually
Speaker 1: happening in a way And I actually was thinking about
Speaker 1: that when I was watching. In a way that seems
Speaker 1: like almost a little more accurate than a sort of
Speaker 1: more straight news. Like straight news will come into that
Speaker 1: and be like, well, Mark Fincham is an oathkeeper. But
Speaker 1: Democrats want to, you know, give view free glasses. So
Speaker 1: basically they're the same. The question is are you better
Speaker 1: suited to cover the state of American decay than a
Speaker 1: more traditional news program because you don't have to two sides.
Speaker 1: What seems like the death of democracy. It feels like
Speaker 1: we're living in a force. So you see where comedians
Speaker 1: serve a purpose. You understand where we're coming from. I've
Speaker 1: always said that this idea that there's any kind of
Speaker 1: unbiased information that we get is in and of itself
Speaker 1: a illusion. And so when people would come to the
Speaker 1: Daily Show, they would understand, like I understand, this is
Speaker 1: a comedy show. It has the bias of a comedy.
Speaker 1: Hopefully the comedy bias is looking for bs, having your
Speaker 1: own point of view and bringing that to something. I
Speaker 1: think that allows us to go into the field. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we bring logic into the field. We we we
Speaker 1: try to counteract some of these narratives and try to
Speaker 1: get down to why these people believe certain things, or
Speaker 1: just try to see what the word on the ground is.
Speaker 1: And more often than that, you're wasting time and you
Speaker 1: yourself are full of bs if you're both sidering so
Speaker 1: wild stuff like should we fight for democracy or not?
Speaker 1: Or should votes count or not? Or should we trust
Speaker 1: an election that has been adjudicated or not? And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think we don't waste time trying to
Speaker 1: put on this veil of an unbiased perspective where in
Speaker 1: many cases the biases just coming through the facts of
Speaker 1: the realities that we're in. And so that gives us
Speaker 1: a good spot as a comedian, as a comedy show
Speaker 1: of approaching these things. I'm curious it seems like this
Speaker 1: Denish Just Susan movie has had a huge influence on
Speaker 1: a lot of these people. Can you talk about that
Speaker 1: for sure? You know what I found is we go
Speaker 1: out into the field and we try to sense what
Speaker 1: narrative people are holding onto. How do they push back
Speaker 1: against some some pretty incontrovertible evidence. Something like January six
Speaker 1: was one where you quickly saw there didn't have to
Speaker 1: be a cohesive narrative for people to push back against
Speaker 1: wanting to accept the reality of January six. People would
Speaker 1: say it was Antifa, some people would say it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Some people would say it was a good thing. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a coherent narrative, but you didn't need one. And
Speaker 1: then you fast forward to this election and there isn't
Speaker 1: a good coherent narrative for people to bat down the
Speaker 1: fact that Donald Trump lost so many lawsuits that there
Speaker 1: hasn't been really clear, incontrovertible evidence of election fraud. And
Speaker 1: then Denisia SUSA does this documentary which is cleverly titled
Speaker 1: It's Got Scary Music. It's called two thousand Mules, and
Speaker 1: you don't even have to watch it to be given
Speaker 1: a tool to push back against someone. And so it's
Speaker 1: not as if we even get into the details of
Speaker 1: what is claimed in Denisia SUSS two thousand mules, which
Speaker 1: has been knocked down by many of folks, many including
Speaker 1: those inside the Trump administration, but it does give you
Speaker 1: a catch phrase. And so this last time out, I've
Speaker 1: had discussions with people about what happened this past election,
Speaker 1: and people didn't have great answers. Now they can easily
Speaker 1: just say two thousand mules, and then you give them information,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, two thousand mules, and so that's almost
Speaker 1: all you need. What is the catch phrase? What is
Speaker 1: the simple idea that we can boil down to it,
Speaker 1: something that's clean that you can put in the face
Speaker 1: of uncomfortable information. So I have to move on to
Speaker 1: something else, then what I just wait, stop for one second?
Speaker 1: Are there two thousand mules? Are there two thousand Where
Speaker 1: does that even come from I did not see the movie.
Speaker 1: You got it downloaded. For God's sakes. Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to give Janesse disus of my money boat somehow.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the basic theory around it is
Speaker 1: there are two thousand people at least I believe, is
Speaker 1: what he claims, traveling around their voting districts, dumping piles
Speaker 1: and piles of votes in drop boxes. He uses cell
Speaker 1: phone technology to place certain people in different places, which
Speaker 1: has been pushed back upon because the cell phone technology
Speaker 1: is nowhere near as precise. Is what he claims. He
Speaker 1: has anecdotal evidence, He has greeny footage and sort of
Speaker 1: this narrative that we have cell phone technology, again a
Speaker 1: loose technology, but it sounds fancy if you're watching quickly,
Speaker 1: that puts certain people in locations of drop boxes. Hilariously,
Speaker 1: guess where drop boxes tend to be located around people,
Speaker 1: so you can see where there might be overlap in
Speaker 1: this conspiracy. But with a little bit of footage of
Speaker 1: people near drop boxes, it shows this doubt. People are wondering,
Speaker 1: okay exactly and when I go and I talked to
Speaker 1: the oathkeepers in Arizona who are armed outside of ballot boxes.
Speaker 1: They reference this, They references images of people carrying fifty
Speaker 1: to a hundred ballots in their hands, and that's what
Speaker 1: they're on the lookout for. I used to go to
Speaker 1: Seapack all the time before they would like just come
Speaker 1: over and scream at me. I found it very valuable
Speaker 1: and super fascinating because what they're doing here is kind
Speaker 1: of outside of the purview of many of our like
Speaker 1: ideas about reality, which is what you see when you
Speaker 1: do these interviews. Sometimes they're like weirdly proud, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they're mad at. You do find them mad at. You
Speaker 1: do have people screaming at you. Are now at rallies,
Speaker 1: I get my fair share of people who will scream
Speaker 1: at me, partially because from the Daily Show, but also
Speaker 1: just because I have a camera with me and the
Speaker 1: media are bad news. I went to see Pack and
Speaker 1: I had the opposite reaction. Though I had dozens of
Speaker 1: folks wanting to take selfies with me. I had young
Speaker 1: Republican candidates eager to do interviews, handing me their business
Speaker 1: cards waiting in line. And I had super Trump fans
Speaker 1: trying to get selfies and pictures and talk to me,
Speaker 1: which sort of melted my brain because it was a
Speaker 1: mix of thirsty Republicans who don't care about ideology and
Speaker 1: are just want to talk about the game of politics.
Speaker 1: There were assistance to prominent Republicans who were just like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we love your videos around the office and
Speaker 1: like oh interesting. And then there were people who are
Speaker 1: just the Trump fanboys who saw me as part of
Speaker 1: the MAGA universe. And even if they didn't necessary like
Speaker 1: some of the things that I put on television, the
Speaker 1: fact that I was part of the narrative that they
Speaker 1: were so invested in was exciting to them. I don't
Speaker 1: wonder how much of this is about fame too, Like
Speaker 1: Trump got so famous speak because he was famous already, right,
Speaker 1: I mean they loved him, Like do they sort of
Speaker 1: love you because you're famous? If that makes any sense. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is at sea Pack. It was all just a game.
Speaker 1: Seapack was nauseating because there's no discussion of governing. It
Speaker 1: was the show and this is show business. The more
Speaker 1: the deeper I go into it, I see the show
Speaker 1: business of it all. I only see the show business
Speaker 1: of it all. And the fact that Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: is walking through Seapack and she has twenty people behind
Speaker 1: her with cell phone footage trying to just get pictures
Speaker 1: of her because she's famous because she says the wildest things.
Speaker 1: And then I'm talking to moderate Republicans who can't get
Speaker 1: anybody to pay attention to them because they're not famous,
Speaker 1: because they don't say wild things that travel. And they're
Speaker 1: talking to me because I'm part of this narrative. I'm
Speaker 1: the bad guy, I'm the heel, I'm the villain, and
Speaker 1: therefore they want a selfie with me there too, And
Speaker 1: so it is just this big show, and and the
Speaker 1: deeper farther I go into, it's like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: the only way to compete in this is get your fame,
Speaker 1: get your brand, get as high as you can, and
Speaker 1: then rile up the true who want to turn on
Speaker 1: and watch the most exciting television show they can. It's
Speaker 1: funny because you are in a situation where there are
Speaker 1: people who really believe this stuff. Who are the people
Speaker 1: in the special right you interview them, they believe it,
Speaker 1: but the Sea Pack folks are are really just using them, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yes, And Seepack had a mix of the super fans,
Speaker 1: the super fans who do believe it, but again believing
Speaker 1: it is it's let's it's not the issues. The Trump
Speaker 1: fans are just Trump fans. They're a fan of the fame,
Speaker 1: the brand, and they want it to be it's it's
Speaker 1: about win loss. They identify with Donald Trump and therefore
Speaker 1: they want him to win at all costs. That's what
Speaker 1: they're excited about. And then you see the second tier
Speaker 1: of people in the MAGA universe who do know better
Speaker 1: and see this and just see the only way to
Speaker 1: find success in that platform is to utilize this to
Speaker 1: play it up. You know, I go out and I
Speaker 1: see Carrie Lake utilizing this. I see all of these
Speaker 1: major candidates utilizing this narrative. Okay, I'll use election denialism
Speaker 1: as a way to to people, to rile them up,
Speaker 1: to get them excited, and from that I will find
Speaker 1: my own success. So you know this group pretty wow?
Speaker 1: Where do you think they go? Now? They follow everything
Speaker 1: that Trump does, and so it's easy for them to
Speaker 1: jump on board. And Trump's going to give them a
Speaker 1: destination in a week. It sounds like social media is
Speaker 1: where they're going to converse, and so whoever can make
Speaker 1: the most noise there they will follow. I don't see
Speaker 1: other candidates that have the same as Donald Trump did
Speaker 1: if he extricates himself from the conversation. I went to
Speaker 1: a Dug Mastriano rally in Pennsylvania and jazz it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: here is Maga is m without Donald Trump, And it's
Speaker 1: that people are talking, talking to talk, but they're not
Speaker 1: showing up. Mastriano is not as compelling, and like you said,
Speaker 1: he's not as famous. He's not a big famous guy
Speaker 1: that they want to take a selfie with, And so
Speaker 1: even though the ideas are there, the energy isn't. So
Speaker 1: it's very curious. I think Trump can have little Maga,
Speaker 1: it's that grow up underneath him. But I've definitely seen
Speaker 1: failures of that and failures of charisma that start to
Speaker 1: populate the Hoplican Party. So I would say, like the
Speaker 1: sort of errors to Trump is um are the carry
Speaker 1: legs right and the de Santis is though I mean again,
Speaker 1: there's this possibility that there's going to be a de
Speaker 1: Santis Trump face off, right, m M. Yeah. When I
Speaker 1: talked to people out there, these rallies, people are showing
Speaker 1: up sea Donald Trump. Sometimes they can't even name the
Speaker 1: other people who the rallies are for that that's more
Speaker 1: often than that, and they really have They seem to
Speaker 1: have no idea who. Then Tutor Dixon is now even
Speaker 1: the even the Trump fans, she's like she was their
Speaker 1: third choice. But it doesn't matter. Trump is gonna be there.
Speaker 1: So they show up. And then De Santis his name
Speaker 1: pops up because he loves to make noise. He's becoming
Speaker 1: more famous in that world, and he's openly cruel just
Speaker 1: snanctimonius as we call him now, and that's yes, the
Speaker 1: sanctimonius as he now is. So I think I think
Speaker 1: there are people like him who if he runs against Trump,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a space for him. But if
Speaker 1: Trump leaves an opening, he has the playbook. He has
Speaker 1: the actionable cruel moves that people get excited about. And sadly,
Speaker 1: that is something that is out there that is is
Speaker 1: not talked enough about, is the cruelty and the excitement
Speaker 1: around the cruelty. There is palpable and can be weaponized,
Speaker 1: and I see a couple of those big stars they're
Speaker 1: figuring out how to do it. One of the things
Speaker 1: I think that we in the sane media industrial complex
Speaker 1: whatever that means, have always sort of made a mistake
Speaker 1: with Trump is that there's a lot of us feel
Speaker 1: like there's a moment where Trump will be like, oh
Speaker 1: this I can't deal with anymore. That's never gonna happen, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, he just keeps going until he hits the
Speaker 1: you know, until he hits sort of someone who will
Speaker 1: stop him, which is no one. So he is he
Speaker 1: is attempting to flush our democracy down the toilet because
Speaker 1: he was embarrassed he lost an election. He is willing
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, it goes no further than that
Speaker 1: that comment, I'm embarrassed that I lost, So what do
Speaker 1: I need to do? We'll burn it all down. So
Speaker 1: will he go away quietly? No, He'll never go away.
Speaker 1: If there's an ounce of embarrassment that the narrative around
Speaker 1: him is turning, he will do everything in his power
Speaker 1: to continue to push whatever lies make him a hero
Speaker 1: and people will buy that. And he's already set up
Speaker 1: the blueprint for it all. And that's where like even
Speaker 1: these mid terms and what's happened in the future, people
Speaker 1: are already don't believe the results. They haven't happened yet,
Speaker 1: and people don't believe it. They don't believe it. People
Speaker 1: already don't believe what happened in four And I think
Speaker 1: the ship is in the pool. It's hard to get
Speaker 1: the ship back out of the pool. And I think
Speaker 1: as long as there's ship in the pool, that's the
Speaker 1: pool that Donald Trump feels most comfortable. And that's both
Speaker 1: disgusting and also yeah, yeah, yeah, so I I I
Speaker 1: don't see a clean pool in the near future. And
Speaker 1: I do think I don't see a world where he's
Speaker 1: not a part of the conversation, if not attempting to
Speaker 1: make himself the central focus. What is stuff you saw
Speaker 1: that you couldn't put in the show because you were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can't put that in. Sadly, some of the stuff
Speaker 1: goes darker, stranger and Saturday, Yeah, I think we we.
Speaker 1: In Michigan, I ran into a woman who was openly
Speaker 1: anti Semitic and talked about the Rothschild's and the banking system.
Speaker 1: She was really forceful that it was there. There was
Speaker 1: a glimpse of her there, but you could tell there's
Speaker 1: there was There was a lot of hate that was
Speaker 1: out there. There was another man who went into depth
Speaker 1: about Nancy Pelosi and drinking the blood. I think there's
Speaker 1: also a little clip of him, but it went to
Speaker 1: a very dark place, and sadly, Mike Lindell kept popping
Speaker 1: up at rallies trying to interrupt our interviews and and
Speaker 1: frankly we were like, Mike, we just don't have the time, man,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. So there's sadly no Mike Lindell in this,
Speaker 1: and not without him trying. By the way, Mike Gondell,
Speaker 1: he has really worked hard to like mimic Trump is um,
Speaker 1: but he can't do it because he's just too uncharismatic.
Speaker 1: He is a celebrities rallies it is. He shows up early.
Speaker 1: There was I don't think I don't think he's technically
Speaker 1: invited to some of the inside events, right I saw
Speaker 1: a video of him outdoors, right, Yes, he's And two
Speaker 1: of the events we went to, he would show up
Speaker 1: literally seven hours before Trump spoke, and he would speak
Speaker 1: on a ramshackle stage outdoors for the people who are waiting.
Speaker 1: And there's part of it like he might not technically
Speaker 1: be invited, but they're like, if you want to stand
Speaker 1: on the stage in between us playing Y M C
Speaker 1: A by the village people for the hundredth time, you
Speaker 1: can get up there and say whatever you want and
Speaker 1: people will take selfies. And frankly, he travels. He gets
Speaker 1: in his big car and he drives to that stage
Speaker 1: and he likes to talk. Is the brick wall guy
Speaker 1: still there, the guy in the brick wall suit. Have
Speaker 1: you seen him or now I haven't seen brick wall Guy. No, Sadly,
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope he's all right. Although some of
Speaker 1: them are already up front. I mean they get there
Speaker 1: sometimes days ahead of time, So there's a chance either
Speaker 1: he's no longer part of the movement or he's so
Speaker 1: part of the movement he's way ahead of even where
Speaker 1: we have access to him. I have one last question,
Speaker 1: which is jfk Jr Guy. This is a guy who
Speaker 1: claims he's the reincarnation. No, he's he's actually jfk Jr.
Speaker 1: Who faked his own death. This guy looks nothing like
Speaker 1: one thing. He's several inches shorter than jfk Jr. Is
Speaker 1: that guy still around? I saw him at Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: handing out cards at sea pack. He's it's all a show.
Speaker 1: It's all the show guy right there, the guy who
Speaker 1: the Internet randomly said is actually jfk Jr. Was like,
Speaker 1: I can use this and frankly, he did. He's using it.
Speaker 1: He's taking pictures with people who may or may not
Speaker 1: think he's JFK Jr. But he's he's part of the
Speaker 1: model world. Congratulations. It's so grim because it's like it
Speaker 1: is hilarious and it's so stupid, but it actually is.
Speaker 1: These people do really believe what is happening, and they
Speaker 1: really are being ruined by it. You know what breaks
Speaker 1: my heart about that? And it's true, the JFK Junior
Speaker 1: one specifically, because it's so absurd, but it's gaining momentum
Speaker 1: to the point that I was in Wisconsin a few
Speaker 1: months ago and I'm talking to the sweet old Midwestern
Speaker 1: ladies and I'm from the Midwest, and so I see
Speaker 1: these sweet old ladies. They look like relatives of mine,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Roe v. Wade, and out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: they bring up this JFK Junior conspiracy and they're consumed
Speaker 1: by it. And I saw them as people who don't
Speaker 1: need to be consumed by this. They don't have to
Speaker 1: waste their time and their energy and their anger on
Speaker 1: this Bonker's idea that the Internet has shoved in their faces.
Speaker 1: But yet here we are and now they're paranoid beyond
Speaker 1: belief about these absurdities, and it's pulling them and it's
Speaker 1: being manipulated by other people who know how to manipulate them. Jesus.
Speaker 1: So hilarious, but also incredibly soul crushing, Lee, sad and depression.
Speaker 1: That's comedy. Two baby, Thanks so much, Jordan, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Douglas Rushcoff is the author of Survival of
Speaker 1: the Richest. Welcome to Fast Politics. Doug Rushcoff, What a week?
Speaker 1: What a week? So? I feel like, is this the
Speaker 1: dystopian end times that I've read about before or now? Well,
Speaker 1: if we're over the lip of the event horizon, for sure.
Speaker 1: But this is the easy slope part, the easy slope down.
Speaker 1: This is not you know, we're not in the cannibalistic
Speaker 1: humanoid underground dwellers haven't emerged yet. We're still good. We're
Speaker 1: still good. What do you think about what we're seeing
Speaker 1: here with this? Elon musk bies Twitter go to cut
Speaker 1: to the chase. I mean, the punchline of this for
Speaker 1: me is I feel like this is the third level
Speaker 1: of something that started with Charlie Sheen. Whatever that means.
Speaker 1: Let's go. That sounds great. Well, remember when Charlie Sheen
Speaker 1: got in trouble or fired from Six and a half
Speaker 1: Men or whatever, he was on for something, and then
Speaker 1: he told people that he had aids that he didn't
Speaker 1: tell people whatever something right, then he went tiger blood right.
Speaker 1: So Charlie Sheen was, for my money, the first person
Speaker 1: who kind of jumped into the cultural standing wave created
Speaker 1: by Twitter, and he just embodied. He wrote it for everything.
Speaker 1: It was worth right, winning, winning, and and and we
Speaker 1: saw what happens to someone when they jump into that
Speaker 1: standing wave is it kills them right, finally destroys them.
Speaker 1: So he was the first test case. And then I
Speaker 1: feel like Donald Trump was the second. He goes I
Speaker 1: can do it, and he jumps in there and decides
Speaker 1: to look, Charlie Sheen, he just used the standing wave
Speaker 1: to maybe get laid and get some attention. I'm going
Speaker 1: to use it to become president. So he work and
Speaker 1: it worked, right, It worked. That was one thing real quick.
Speaker 1: So I can get a little bit more clarity here.
Speaker 1: What is a standing wave? A standing wave is like
Speaker 1: when you see the water in the ocean and there's
Speaker 1: a big wave coming at you. There's two things about
Speaker 1: that wave. There's the water in the wave, right, the
Speaker 1: molecules of water. But then there's like the wave itself,
Speaker 1: that thing, that dynamical system of of energy that's just
Speaker 1: moving right, so you can sort of jump in that
Speaker 1: wave and become part of that wave. So I look
Speaker 1: at culture as that it's this big wave moving forward,
Speaker 1: and you've got guys like Bannon who can say, ah,
Speaker 1: I am the wizard moving these wig waves around. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're just riding these waves like that rays about the crash.
Speaker 1: So but these folks, these almost like uh dominator masochists,
Speaker 1: kind of jump into the wave to ride it for
Speaker 1: everything it's worth and try to maintain some uh controller
Speaker 1: coherence over it. But it's I feel like what Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was to Charlie Sheen, Alon Musk is to Trump.
Speaker 1: He's like the next level of this. So he's using
Speaker 1: the same Trumpian trolling techniques on Twitter, but it's bigger.
Speaker 1: He's a bigger troll than Trump because he owns the
Speaker 1: platform itself, and I feel like he's showing that, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you did this, Trump, but your politics that was just
Speaker 1: kind of a a sub category, a little subset of
Speaker 1: the digital society that I own. You know, if if
Speaker 1: Trump has a real competitor in the social attention landscape,
Speaker 1: it is not you know, Hillary or Biden, it is Musk, right.
Speaker 1: And then Musk even does it like when the advertisers
Speaker 1: start start jumping ship it's so TRUMPI and he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: Twitter had this, this is called Twitter had a massive
Speaker 1: drop in revenue, you know, because of activist groups pressuring
Speaker 1: advertisers even though nothing changed. And then he says, what
Speaker 1: does he say, I'm gonna do thermonuclear name and shame
Speaker 1: on brands that drop out of Twitter? What is that?
Speaker 1: That is Trump? So when a politician says, I think
Speaker 1: Biden really won the election, You're gonna get Thermo nuclear shade.
Speaker 1: So now what Musk is doing is taking that Trump technique.
Speaker 1: I'm going to use my swarm of Twitter people to
Speaker 1: ruin your career, ruin your political career, to to to
Speaker 1: bring you down. Now Musk is using that same kind
Speaker 1: of of power, and what it's showing, I think, more
Speaker 1: than anything, there's been a drive among a lot of
Speaker 1: the big tech bros, like Musk and Teal towards what
Speaker 1: they're calling techno monarchism. You know, it's like they're sort
Speaker 1: of brand of fascism. They believe that, you know, the
Speaker 1: world should just be run by a really smart tech
Speaker 1: bro ceo and now we don't need voting or anything,
Speaker 1: but get a good one like Deal or like Musk,
Speaker 1: and they can just run things. And I think what
Speaker 1: we're getting is a preview of what actually look like.
Speaker 1: This is a very bad advertisement for the techno solutionist
Speaker 1: monarchy running our society. God, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything you're saying makes total sense. I want
Speaker 1: to know what you how you think Ellen Twitter drama
Speaker 1: plays out. I mean, it seems like to me from
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing as a person who's very online, is
Speaker 1: that he's just decompensating rapidly. Right, But I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean again, do you think there's some I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think this? You know he's super leveraged, but
Speaker 1: is there some way that he wins at this? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some way he wins at it. I mean, but
Speaker 1: I think then everybody loses if that happens. I Mean.
Speaker 1: The weird thing is we know that Elon Musk had
Speaker 1: time to think about what he wanted to do. He
Speaker 1: really had time. They were weeks and weeks leading up
Speaker 1: to this, and now we see that when he gets
Speaker 1: in the seat, his decision making process is is imperious,
Speaker 1: right like this, like this strange little child king. It's
Speaker 1: it's whimsical, and that he improvises minute to minute, like
Speaker 1: he's careening around in a game of you know, deathmatch
Speaker 1: or something. He's got no strategy and seemingly no awareness
Speaker 1: of the kind of second or third order effects of
Speaker 1: any decision he makes. He's like, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fire everybody, and then oh there's nobody, all right, hire
Speaker 1: them all back. It's like, yeah, when you fire people,
Speaker 1: the thing stops working. You gotta It's like and with
Speaker 1: his decision, he's got no reluctance to externalize harm to
Speaker 1: other people, just to fire and hire at will. He's
Speaker 1: doing it in front of everybody, almost like performance art
Speaker 1: or reality television. And he's gathered this sort of group
Speaker 1: of of sick of fants, you know, who used to
Speaker 1: be somewhat respected tech investors who are now just these
Speaker 1: sycathantic hangars on this entourage, tweeting suggestions around him like
Speaker 1: the would be first circle around the new cult leader.
Speaker 1: And he's so willing, it's so trump he's so willing
Speaker 1: just to destroy norms in order to yield this vision
Speaker 1: of a world of total equality, you know, where you
Speaker 1: use this kind of scorched earth tactic to wipe away
Speaker 1: every institutional governance or or hesitation or roadblock to this.
Speaker 1: Not even anarchy, it's something. It's something worse. And the
Speaker 1: only people I knew who used to talk about this,
Speaker 1: let's wipe away all regulations, all restrictions were libertarians who
Speaker 1: happened to be starting with wealth. It's like, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you've got a billion dollars take away, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: just a yeah, sure you are, you know, And that
Speaker 1: he was so out of the gate with fake news
Speaker 1: showed that he really just wants a tench. He's trying
Speaker 1: to get attention while demonstrating that this kind of rambunctious, chaotic,
Speaker 1: free form, impulsive explosion will just accelerate us to this
Speaker 1: next phase of totally free, total self expression, perfect self
Speaker 1: sovereignty without restriction. The thing I've been like stripped by
Speaker 1: is like, and maybe this is because they want us
Speaker 1: to be struck by this, but like how much it
Speaker 1: feels like ancient Greece, you know, like a white guy
Speaker 1: ruling over, you know, the sort of lesser women and manure,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're sort of not we're you know,
Speaker 1: not this sort of thing. You know. They have their
Speaker 1: sort of inner circle and they I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: see any women in this inner circle and just men.
Speaker 1: It's just tech guys. They're all white. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, I do. And the odd thing
Speaker 1: is they keep talking about no censorship, no rules, no regulation.
Speaker 1: Yet when you do that, at least in this landscape,
Speaker 1: you end up with just wealthy, white tech bros. Now
Speaker 1: why is that? It's because the landscape itself is tilted
Speaker 1: toward them, right. This is Twitter is the loving environment
Speaker 1: for trolls, right, and it's gonna favor the troll and
Speaker 1: the wealthy troll. And uh, it's uh. I'm hoping, although
Speaker 1: you know, I always overestimate people's awareness, but I was
Speaker 1: hoping that this raw Twitter thing, this this Charlie Sheen
Speaker 1: like public meltdown of the world's richest man, would somehow
Speaker 1: make this more transparent, would make people go, oh, this
Speaker 1: doesn't work. I Mean, the whole reason I wrote the
Speaker 1: last book I did, the Survival of the Richest Book,
Speaker 1: was I thought I'm gonna make these tech bros look
Speaker 1: so silly in an almost Swiftian way that people are
Speaker 1: gonna laugh them and then discard it. Yet, people who
Speaker 1: interviewed me about the book, we're like, okay, so where
Speaker 1: should I put my bunker? And what I've heard people say, well,
Speaker 1: Ellen thinks that he can scale back, make it profitable,
Speaker 1: and take a public next year. That in my mind
Speaker 1: seems completely improbable. Not just improbable, but it's the opposite
Speaker 1: of what is in theory philosophically behind what he's doing anyway.
Speaker 1: You know, what he's in theory, what he is trying
Speaker 1: to do is to build the open protocol system through
Speaker 1: which human civilization organizes itself in the next century. You
Speaker 1: know if there is pretty ambitious. Yeah, but it's it's
Speaker 1: that's what he's that's the thing. So you start with
Speaker 1: a social network and then you turn that into a PayPal, venmo, banking, crypto,
Speaker 1: blockchain thing. You know, it's Twitter is Musk's way of
Speaker 1: trying to do meta. And you're right, the guy behind meta,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg, what does he model He models himself after
Speaker 1: Augustus Caesar, Right, so I guess Musk could do Caligula.
Speaker 1: You know, and then Bezos can go for good old Julius, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I feel like a more likely scenario with Muskie
Speaker 1: is that Tesla stock continues to go down, Lender's calling
Speaker 1: the dead, and the bank owns Twitter in two years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the problem for him is Musk's crowd is different
Speaker 1: than Bannon's crowd. You know, if Musk really had like
Speaker 1: the Trump world behind him, then there'd be enough, there'd
Speaker 1: be a different Tesla buying audience, right, and all the
Speaker 1: red state maga you get maga Tesla or whatever, it
Speaker 1: could be a whole thing, but the Maga people, they're
Speaker 1: actually they're the people who are most afraid of these
Speaker 1: tech guys. Know you listen to Steve Bann, and they're
Speaker 1: afraid of the techno elite and the techno solutionists and
Speaker 1: Bill Gates putting nanobots in their vaccines and there they
Speaker 1: look at all this as taking us away from you know,
Speaker 1: good oil, piston whatever is that those horrible So I
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine any of my friends buying a Tesla at
Speaker 1: this point, no matter how good they are for the environment,
Speaker 1: even if they were, just because it's like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: do that it's like, you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: buying a Ford right after we published Protocols of the
Speaker 1: Elders of Zion's not a not a good moment for
Speaker 1: that brand. There are the kids, you know, the gamer
Speaker 1: Gate kind of kids, and the kids are gonna do
Speaker 1: meme stocks and some of the some of the crypto
Speaker 1: people who do think that Musk is realizing Jack Dorsey's
Speaker 1: vision When they talked about this thing called Blue Sky,
Speaker 1: can you explain to us what blue Sky is? Because
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of subjecture about it, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like people really know. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think Blue Guys is so real. That seems like an
Speaker 1: important data point. It's kind of like blue Sky is
Speaker 1: trying to imagine what if we did social networks the
Speaker 1: way that the original Internet worked, in this wonderful decentralized
Speaker 1: way with open standards, and it's not a no monopolist
Speaker 1: can come and own the platform, you know, and then
Speaker 1: create all these choke points that prevent people from leaving.
Speaker 1: We're getting a big interoperable thing. So isn't that Mastodon? Yes,
Speaker 1: right now, that is Mastodon, And it is interesting. I
Speaker 1: feel like that things are bad enough in the monopoly
Speaker 1: Internet for people to finally learn like the twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of stuff that you have to learn in order to
Speaker 1: use the Internet properly barrier to entry, you have to
Speaker 1: read on this works, Yeah, exactly. I mean that's my
Speaker 1: feeling is like I funked around with Masodon. I was like,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: and and I just like, you know, Adam Davidson, who
Speaker 1: who used to write for The New Yorker and is
Speaker 1: very tech savvy, started a server. So I just went
Speaker 1: on that and it was pretty easy, right, it actually is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing is it's easier than you think. All it
Speaker 1: really is is it works like email. Right, you're on
Speaker 1: you might be on Gmail. I might be on proton Mail.
Speaker 1: He might be on a o L. But magically I
Speaker 1: can send an email to you, and and a o
Speaker 1: L knows how to read the same protocol of email.
Speaker 1: That's all it is. You create certain standards so that
Speaker 1: you can have little servers all over the place. You
Speaker 1: belong to a server, you do all your social media
Speaker 1: functioning through that server, and if you want to leave
Speaker 1: that server, you move to another one, take all your
Speaker 1: data with you. And all your friends and all your
Speaker 1: links and all your everything, and now you're there, and
Speaker 1: so there's no big one place. Everybody has their own
Speaker 1: little servers with their own little rules and it it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's genuinely decentralized. What Musk would need to
Speaker 1: do if he wants to make money off Twitter, and
Speaker 1: I know he he knows this is Twitter, right is
Speaker 1: turn it into and everything is to look at the
Speaker 1: Chinese and you think about like we chat, so you
Speaker 1: do everything on that. You do your banking on there,
Speaker 1: and your socializing and your credit score and your education
Speaker 1: and your linked in qualifications. That everything's there. Your your
Speaker 1: identity which is on some blockchain, it's all right there.
Speaker 1: But why would you do it right there on a
Speaker 1: platform where, in his first week of running it, the
Speaker 1: guy who runs the platform says, if you take your
Speaker 1: ads off this, I'm gonna have all my followers do
Speaker 1: Thermo nuclear shame on your company. It's like, uh, that's
Speaker 1: worse than I mean, it's worse than China. At that point,
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh my god. I mean, That's what
Speaker 1: I don't understand too, is like, what do you think
Speaker 1: the thinking there is that he's so powerful. He doesn't
Speaker 1: need advertisers or that. I mean, because like, if if
Speaker 1: we've learned anything from the my Pillow guy, it's that
Speaker 1: there's not enough off of this sort of non advertisers,
Speaker 1: the non woke advertisers, so to speak, Well, he thinks
Speaker 1: he's got the power to de woke ify them. In
Speaker 1: other words, are you really willing to turn against me
Speaker 1: and Twitter? I don't think it's a bluff, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it works. I don't think he does have
Speaker 1: that power because all he could do, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: he could get you know, maybe himself for Jason Callicanis
Speaker 1: and you know, you know a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, doche coin people too, then turn against Nike
Speaker 1: because they left Twitter, and it's like, come on, this
Speaker 1: is not about free speech or anything else. It's about
Speaker 1: do I want my ads? Vengeance were right? For him,
Speaker 1: it's vengeance and for the company's leaving. It's not that
Speaker 1: they're against free speech. It's that Wait a minute. On
Speaker 1: the first day, you said that Nancy Pelosi's husband got
Speaker 1: hit in the head by a gay lover or something,
Speaker 1: and it's part of it. Really, do you really want
Speaker 1: to do that on your first day as CEO of
Speaker 1: the what you're trying to call where a public square
Speaker 1: most truthful. Yeah, there's so much talk about algorithms and
Speaker 1: anxiety almost about algorithms, like what do they do and
Speaker 1: how do they work? And you know, the right is
Speaker 1: always like the algorithms are against us big tech is
Speaker 1: can you just explain a little bit about what Elon
Speaker 1: can do with the algorithm? I mean, can he really
Speaker 1: sort of shadow band people? Is that a real thing?
Speaker 1: And it's sort of a little bit of an algorithm
Speaker 1: explainer for us. Yeah, algorithms simply choose what stories and
Speaker 1: ideas and tweets and things are put in front of
Speaker 1: you based on what you've done before. So a benevolent
Speaker 1: algorithm might just keep trying to bring you stuff that
Speaker 1: you're going to read and like and engage with. Very often,
Speaker 1: even if it just does that, what it brings you
Speaker 1: is going to get more and more salacious because we
Speaker 1: can't help but click on worse up. But uh, algorithm
Speaker 1: can also decide, oh, I'm gonna amplify these kinds of
Speaker 1: messages to make you I'm going to amplify news stories
Speaker 1: about crime to get you more scared of crime in
Speaker 1: the streets, so you're more likely to vote, you know, Republican,
Speaker 1: which we found as those people who are afraid of
Speaker 1: crime in cities vote Republican. Or we're gonna show you
Speaker 1: more of this or more of that, so you can
Speaker 1: tweak it. Where it gets the most interesting and the
Speaker 1: most dangerous, though, is when the folks who are tuning
Speaker 1: the algorithms are also getting deeply entrenched in what's called
Speaker 1: behavioral finance. Where behavioral finance is sort of a psychological
Speaker 1: study of how do you get people to act against
Speaker 1: their own best interests. It's the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: you know, credit card companies figure out when they're giving
Speaker 1: you offers to try to get you to pick things
Speaker 1: that where you'll pay more interest and and and get
Speaker 1: worser worser conditions. So when you have algorithms using behavioral
Speaker 1: finance techniques basically psychological ninja to get people to think differently,
Speaker 1: it's kind of sad. It's kind of dangerous. And I
Speaker 1: don't trust people at Facebook either, But the people at
Speaker 1: any for profit private company looking to establish a monopoly,
Speaker 1: they're gonna do first whatever they can to get you
Speaker 1: dependent on their on their platform. But if they are political,
Speaker 1: which is what Musk is basically saying. He is right.
Speaker 1: If they are political, you've got more control over the
Speaker 1: over the national psyche than the people who are producing
Speaker 1: reality television shows, you know. And that's really what we're
Speaker 1: looking at. We're looking at Musk as trying to establish
Speaker 1: himself as the true dictator. It's not that little reality
Speaker 1: star President Trump. It's the person who owns the platform
Speaker 1: capitalism right and can figure out where you spend your money.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that this was so interesting. I ran
Speaker 1: too long. Jesse is mad at me. Please please please
Speaker 1: come back, Molly John Fast, Jesse Cannon. So Trump's doing
Speaker 1: this like mega media tour today. He's hitting all the networks.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked he's not cuddling Mike Wilendell right now. Networks.
Speaker 1: I think we should use the word networks and quote yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's true. Rag tag operations. Trump told the News
Speaker 1: Nation you may have heard of News Nation, but you
Speaker 1: also may not this, which is like a sort of
Speaker 1: Trump and fortune cookie. About tonight's results, well, I think
Speaker 1: if they win, I should get all the credit. If
Speaker 1: they lose, I should not be blamed at all. Very
Speaker 1: trumpy and for that, Donald Trump, you continue to be
Speaker 1: our moment of that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to her the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics, makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
Speaker 1: a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Mm hm.