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 says he never said
Speaker 1: locker up about Hillary Clinton. He did, in fact, stay
Speaker 1: locker up about Hillary Clinton. We have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today talking Feds. Harry Littman is here
Speaker 1: to talk Donald Trump convictions. Then we'll talk to Semaphores
Speaker 1: Ben Smith about the media's coverage of the election. But
Speaker 1: first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Ollie John Fast, and what a beautiful thing it is
Speaker 2: to talk to you once again, as I do every day.
Speaker 1: Ah, it is yet another day of justice. Alito telling
Speaker 1: Democrats to go fuck themselves discuss.
Speaker 2: I do believe that we have a system where the
Speaker 2: three branches of are separate, our tripartite system, to use
Speaker 2: a good three dollar word. But I also believe that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that he's not being a dick, and that
Speaker 2: there's not a honestly incredibly troubling and dark underpinning to
Speaker 2: this which he's basically saying to America, fuck you. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do what I can to help my boy Donald.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the second, because there's an oversight
Speaker 1: question here, right. There are members in the Senate who
Speaker 1: have oversight over.
Speaker 2: This, yeah, over the courts.
Speaker 1: Right, Maybe not quite the way they would like, but
Speaker 1: they certainly do. Let's pretend for a minute that they
Speaker 1: was reversed and it was a Democrat.
Speaker 2: Let's do Katanji Brown Jackson puts up a Black Lives
Speaker 2: Matter flag? What do you think would happen with Fox?
Speaker 2: What do you think would happened with the MAGA universe?
Speaker 1: And say Republicans controlled the judiciary? H what do you
Speaker 1: think would happen?
Speaker 2: Take those hypotheticals for a moment, and I will describe
Speaker 2: it to you in the technical term of public affairs
Speaker 2: and politics, of a screaming, gigantic shit show of the
Speaker 2: highest possible order. There would be nothing but chaos. And
Speaker 2: oh my god, the American Republic is dying. How dare
Speaker 2: she engage in this outrageous, unbelievably undignified behavior that is
Speaker 2: reducing America's dignity in the courts? And I could almost
Speaker 2: write the story for you of just how crappy they
Speaker 2: would be about it. And you know what, it's not
Speaker 2: like we don't know what they're going to say. They
Speaker 2: are nothing if not utterly predictable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Alito said he's not going to recuse. Robert said,
Speaker 1: go fuck yourself. What do you think Dick Durbin should do? Now?
Speaker 1: What would you do if you were Dick Durbin's chief
Speaker 1: of staff?
Speaker 2: Dick Durbin, He's in the horns of a slight dilemma.
Speaker 1: Yes, save American democracy or be a good guy.
Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly it. It's like, is anybody still pretending that
Speaker 2: American institutions are robust and the guardrails are fully intact?
Speaker 2: Because if you are, I have a bridge to sell
Speaker 2: you or several, because that is no longer a viable
Speaker 2: position to have in the world today. No one for
Speaker 2: a moment should think that we live in a world
Speaker 2: where the institutions will hold, where the rules will be sustained,
Speaker 2: where nothing could go wrong, because America is just too strong. Look,
Speaker 2: and I've been calling the Supreme Court the red Court
Speaker 2: for a while now. First, with this whole thing about
Speaker 2: giving Trump all the time he needed to delay the
Speaker 2: Jack Smith case on the immunity question, and the rest
Speaker 2: of their actions as an overtly political branch of the
Speaker 2: MAGA movement have sort of added up. I think it's
Speaker 2: hard for Americans to kind of admit it to themselves.
Speaker 2: There are even conservatives who are like, yeah, you know
Speaker 2: what if the Democrats did this. There is a little
Speaker 2: bit of hesitation on this, not a lot, but there's
Speaker 2: a little bit of like a sense of like, is
Speaker 2: this really how we're going to end this thing? Because
Speaker 2: right now it's kind of how we're going to end
Speaker 2: this thing.
Speaker 1: Honestly, American democracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like we're not in a great spot
Speaker 2: as a country. You know. Everybody keeps asking me today,
Speaker 2: like tell me something cheerful, give me some good news.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm a barrel of freaking laughs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, but let's pause for a second because
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who want everyone who listens to this podcast
Speaker 1: to despair and to not bother and to tell you
Speaker 1: that Trump has it, But in fact, Trump doesn't have it.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to point to a political twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four Dave Wasserman tweet twenty twenty four is a tale
Speaker 1: of two electorates, and again this is something I've written
Speaker 1: about ad nauseum. Same Biden leads forty nine forty five
Speaker 1: among the most reliable voters, betrayals Trump forty one fifty
Speaker 1: one among low mid engagement voters. So the point is
Speaker 1: low mid engagement voters are likelier than high engagement peers.
Speaker 1: They may not turn out. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ticket, Democrats are brushing the Republican
Speaker 1: in those Senate seeds and the House seats.
Speaker 2: Oh listen, I will give people some good news. The
Speaker 2: Senate races look increasingly optimistic. I think initially it felt
Speaker 2: a little bit like Arizona might be a tie ballgame.
Speaker 2: But now Ruben is starting to open up real numbers.
Speaker 2: I think there are a number of arguments to be
Speaker 2: made that the House number could end up being much
Speaker 2: larger than we even think right now. And I think
Speaker 2: that there's a weird reverse coattail effect here that we
Speaker 2: need to consider. It may end up in some of
Speaker 2: these states that the Democratic candidates North Carolina being one
Speaker 2: of them, end up pulling Joe Biden over the line,
Speaker 2: and it's normally the other way around. But I'll take it.
Speaker 2: I will happily take it. At this point.
Speaker 1: So reverse cotails is an idea that I first heard
Speaker 1: from Amanda Lippman, who does Run for Something and if
Speaker 1: you are despairing, Run for Something is an awesome organization
Speaker 1: that helps candidates everyone from the dog walkers to the
Speaker 1: state legislators to the House of Delegates.
Speaker 2: They're concouraging up and down the ballot.
Speaker 1: And her theory of the case was that young local
Speaker 1: voters would energize the electorate in a way that an
Speaker 1: eighty one year old incumbent might not look.
Speaker 2: I think there are going to be a lot of
Speaker 2: voters out there this year that take a long damn
Speaker 2: time to get home to the reality that this really
Speaker 2: is not Donald Trump versus Gavin Newsom, or Donald Trump
Speaker 2: versus Gretch Whitmer or somebody else. They're going to realize finally,
Speaker 2: it's just Donald Trump. If you're going to vote for
Speaker 2: Donald Trump as an eighteen to thirty year old, I
Speaker 2: am not buying it. I'll be perfectly can that I'm
Speaker 2: not buying that argument at this point. I think that
Speaker 2: we are going to see people come home it. Maybe later,
Speaker 2: but you know, I mean obviously, and as I always
Speaker 2: tell people, there's no excuse for not every day, getting
Speaker 2: up to beat the bad guys in the face. But
Speaker 2: this is not a Donald Trump from twenty sixteen. This
Speaker 2: is not a Donald Trump from twenty twenty. This is
Speaker 2: a diminished and weird and less mentally capable and frankly,
Speaker 2: I think I have no evidence of this, but I
Speaker 2: feel this sense with Trump that there's a physical diminishment,
Speaker 2: that there may be something wrong with Trump more than
Speaker 2: we know, is what I'm trying to say. It feels
Speaker 2: like he's.
Speaker 1: Sick, right, I mean, people have been saying that for
Speaker 1: like a million years.
Speaker 2: It feels increasingly like this is a guy who's like
Speaker 2: faking it to get through the.
Speaker 1: Day, a man who knows. But I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: want to speculate about his medical health. Only Republicans do
Speaker 1: that about Biden. By the way, one of the things
Speaker 1: I love so State of the Union, so Trump always
Speaker 1: says Biden is dementias, dementia, he's sww, senile, he's diminished.
Speaker 1: He gives all these speeches, but nobody watches them because
Speaker 1: nobody gets verified news. The only clips that ever make
Speaker 1: it onto social are you know, crazy lists that right,
Speaker 1: or that are selectively edited. But I'll be curious after
Speaker 1: this debate when Biden does really well, because though he
Speaker 1: is not a gifted orator, he is not a complete lunatic,
Speaker 1: so he will kill I think he'll do really well
Speaker 1: in these debates, and Trump will say insane things, and
Speaker 1: I think what will happen then is Trump World will
Speaker 1: again say that he's on drugs, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: if there was a drug that made demented people not demented,
Speaker 1: I would give it to my mom. Like, this is
Speaker 1: not a thing, right.
Speaker 2: This is an imaginary thing. It is to my mind,
Speaker 2: one of the great telling points of how broken the
Speaker 2: Republican Party is right now is that they continue to
Speaker 2: have this bifurcated view of Joe Biden. Either he is
Speaker 2: a drooling, senile idiot who can barely stay awake, or
Speaker 2: he's a devious mastermind running a program throughout all the
Speaker 2: American courts and legal system to destroy Donald Trump. It's
Speaker 2: got to be one of the other. Folks. Pick a side,
Speaker 2: pick a theme.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you a question here that you're
Speaker 1: not prepared for, and it's something I've been thinking a lot.
Speaker 1: I think Gaza is hurting Biden.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm going to disagree with you for two reasons.
Speaker 1: By the way, I've been told my Biden world that
Speaker 1: that's not true. I've been told that people don't vote
Speaker 1: on foreign policy. But I think that it's hurting him
Speaker 1: with voters.
Speaker 2: It's hurting him with young voters who are not voters.
Speaker 1: Those are the voters that Trump is winning. Right.
Speaker 2: Let's put it this way. If I was to demographically
Speaker 2: describe the average Trump voter, it's a sixty five year old,
Speaker 2: pissed off white dude who drives a four out two fifty.
Speaker 2: It is not a young African American looking at Donald
Speaker 2: Trump at long last as a as a solution to
Speaker 2: the political stasis in this country. That's not the real world.
Speaker 2: And young voters historically aren't voters. You know, just I've
Speaker 2: lived in politics too long and seen it hyped too
Speaker 2: many times. You know, George Bush and Mike Dukakis got
Speaker 2: a higher percentage of young voters than Barack Obama and
Speaker 2: John McCain, and Barack Obama was supposedly the singular motivator
Speaker 2: of young voters in American history. It just isn't real.
Speaker 2: And those kids you're watching in the college came campuses
Speaker 2: scream about Gaza, they're not going to vote. I know
Speaker 2: people want to believe that they're all motivated in democracy.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. They're not going to vote. They are
Speaker 2: low propensity voters. They are one to two voters. And
Speaker 2: if somebody had the secret sauce rock the vote wouldn't
Speaker 2: still be in business thirty five years later. No one
Speaker 2: knows how to reliably turn out young voters. They just
Speaker 2: don't know how to do it. It's a mechanical process
Speaker 2: with a hard target, and it's much easier to go
Speaker 2: out and swap out. And even if you accept the
Speaker 2: theory right and you say, oh, okay, we're hurting with
Speaker 2: young voters, Okay, go turn out some more white union members,
Speaker 2: Go turn out some more African American women in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Go turn out people you know how to turn out.
Speaker 1: See. I don't think you're right, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: agree to disagree with you here. But I am curious.
Speaker 1: Why do you think there is so little movement in
Speaker 1: the Middle East? Why can't Biden and the war tomorrow?
Speaker 2: It is a hard choice. You could say, Okay, we
Speaker 2: don't like Babe, and nobody likes Boebe Byebe's a global pariah.
Speaker 2: At this point, as somebody who tried to defeat BB
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one with a secular center right candidate,
Speaker 2: I can tell you how hard it is. It's not
Speaker 2: easy to get rid of the guy. But even if
Speaker 2: you said that, you said, Okay, we're cutting off all
Speaker 2: aid to Israel until they stop doing X. You have
Speaker 2: not solved the problem. You have not solved the settler problem.
Speaker 2: You have not solved the massive problem that Iran has
Speaker 2: its finger in the pie here. You have not solved
Speaker 2: any number of the other externalities that are real and
Speaker 2: that you know. Look, if BB died tomorrow, you're not
Speaker 2: gonna have Kumbaya in Gaza. Hamas still believes that Israelis
Speaker 2: should be stacked like Cordwood and killed.
Speaker 1: What state do you think Democrats would be focused on
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of pushing Wisconsin and Michigan. Right now,
Speaker 2: I'm feeling a little better about Pennsylvania, feeling a little
Speaker 2: worse about Arizona, but not like dramatically, so, not like catastrophically,
Speaker 2: so I think it's still gettable, winnable, fixable. But you know,
Speaker 2: I would not take the bait on Minnesota that's going
Speaker 2: to be It's not a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Trump's favorite thing that they're going to put Minnesota.
Speaker 2: I'm play I know, so I'm trying to make Minnesota
Speaker 2: a thing. Don it's not a thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, But what about like Florida. If you have
Speaker 1: a choice between Florida and North Carolina.
Speaker 2: I'd go to North Carolina. It's a cheaper state to win.
Speaker 2: Florida is a very expensive state to try to win.
Speaker 2: I think the numbers in North Carolina, especially with Robinson
Speaker 2: at the top of the of the state ticket, are
Speaker 2: really I think. I think You're going to end up
Speaker 2: with a guy who is so weird and so cuckoo
Speaker 2: that it gives Democrats a lift there that they did
Speaker 2: not otherwise anticipate.
Speaker 1: They would have, right, explain that story a little more so.
Speaker 2: This is a guy who believes that women shouldn't vote.
Speaker 1: He's black, he was the lieutenant governor, and he's now
Speaker 1: running for governor, and he's running against someone.
Speaker 2: Who is pretty moderate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so go on.
Speaker 2: But this is a guy who literally says things like,
Speaker 2: you know, women are up at they and they shouldn't
Speaker 2: be allowed to vote. I will say this, On the
Speaker 2: one hand, it's proof, thank God that our country is
Speaker 2: now color blind enough to accept insane people of all
Speaker 2: races on the Republican side of the ticket. But I
Speaker 2: know national Republicans, including the Trump campaign, are very nervous
Speaker 2: that this guy is gonna draw down a sufficient number
Speaker 2: of Republicans and leave them either on the bench like
Speaker 2: eg not voting at all, or drive them into the
Speaker 2: Democrat's arms. And I think if you're a person like
Speaker 2: that in a state like North Carolina. And again the
Speaker 2: reason I argue for North Carolina is it is about
Speaker 2: a third man maybe forty percent of the cost of
Speaker 2: operating in Florida. You've got five media markets versus ten.
Speaker 2: You've got operational cost per week. If you're really doing
Speaker 2: a campaign there per week in Florida, you're going to
Speaker 2: spend five million dollars now every week. In North Carolina
Speaker 2: you could probably do that for a million six somewhere
Speaker 2: in that member million five And those are back of
Speaker 2: the envelope math. But it's a legitimate question of how
Speaker 2: you handle the money assignments in a national campaign. That's
Speaker 2: where that kind of thing comes into play. Do you
Speaker 2: go to Nevada instead of North Carolina? As of now, No,
Speaker 2: but maybe Nevada's a really fluid state. It's a really
Speaker 2: weird state. So there's a lot here, Molly In we
Speaker 2: have one hundred and fifty nine days. Trump is going
Speaker 2: to absolutely fucking immolate himself any number of times between
Speaker 2: now and the end of the election. Sometimes it'll matter,
Speaker 2: sometimes it won't. The trick is to add up all
Speaker 2: the times it matters for voters who are still either
Speaker 2: undecided or uncomfortable voting for Trump.
Speaker 1: People say voters have their minds decided. I think that's
Speaker 1: true only of a small group. I think that the
Speaker 1: group that has gotten so excited about Trump, from what
Speaker 1: we've seen with the polling, that group actually is very
Speaker 1: low information. So aren't those actually hearts and minds that
Speaker 1: you could change.
Speaker 2: I'm much more inclined, by both experience and inclination, to
Speaker 2: try to go after the votes of those software Republicans,
Speaker 2: those conservative Democrats, those independent leaning conservatives that at Lincoln
Speaker 2: we were pretty good at talking to and we're pretty
Speaker 2: good at focusing on, because those folks are a gettable demo.
Speaker 2: They are not dug in on Trump and trump Ism
Speaker 2: at the same level. That's where I'd go.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 2: You are quite welcome talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Harry Littman is a former US attorney and host of
Speaker 1: the podcast Talking Feds. We're doing a little Fast Politics
Speaker 1: Talking Fed mashup Harry.
Speaker 3: Letman Moly junk Fest. What a day we chose for
Speaker 3: our latest Molly mass out.
Speaker 1: How much sleep did you get last night?
Speaker 3: It's a fair question. I'm four or five hours. Was
Speaker 3: a late night, and I had stuff tell the early morning,
Speaker 3: and it just kind of folded up right on a
Speaker 3: beautiful New York day, So I could have slept in
Speaker 3: a little more. But some kind of residual excitement or
Speaker 3: something for the day before.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what happened. We are talking about
Speaker 1: the Trump verdict, which came at four point fifteen on
Speaker 1: a Thursday, when everyone thought that the jury was about
Speaker 1: to be sent home. First of all, let's just quarterback
Speaker 1: on ourselves. You and I both have been talking about
Speaker 1: this on television, but you much more than me, because
Speaker 1: you obviously are a lawyer and know how to do this.
Speaker 1: What did you think, I mean, did you think this
Speaker 1: was going to happen? Were you surprised? And more broadly,
Speaker 1: I want you to sort of talk to us about
Speaker 1: what you thought when it came in and what you
Speaker 1: thought when you heard it.
Speaker 3: I was not surprised, it was They had told us
Speaker 3: they were going over the day, so I would have
Speaker 3: expected a verdict on Friday. But it is the verdict
Speaker 3: I expected. It's the verdict that at the time or
Speaker 3: maybe even in retrospect, seemed inexorable from the evidence. But
Speaker 3: really props to the DA. They really took the tangled
Speaker 3: story that could have been played as a hush money
Speaker 3: case and constructed a narrative of election interference that just
Speaker 3: had a through line from Pecker to Cohen and seemed
Speaker 3: really cogent and featured a few witnesses that could be
Speaker 3: assailed like so many witnesses in a criminal case in
Speaker 3: New York. Not just Cohen, but you know, Pecker is
Speaker 3: quite the character Stormy Daniels, but each of them. This
Speaker 3: was the great thing about being in the court roomly
Speaker 3: jurys make credibility determinations based on the overall sense, and
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, it's a really human thing to kind
Speaker 3: of take the measure of a witness and are they
Speaker 3: telling the truth? And I think they were, and that
Speaker 3: that came across, and so I wasn't surprised at the verdict,
Speaker 3: including that they ran the table. I do want to
Speaker 3: say though, at the DEA, I won't say they made
Speaker 3: it look easy, but the preparation gap was just enormous.
Speaker 3: Steinlass got up and he went too long shore, but
Speaker 3: knew every he had practiced it from the overall contours
Speaker 3: to the sentences and had pauses and drama and coherence,
Speaker 3: and really the defense who I think you may know
Speaker 3: this beread than I. There's some kind of backstory of
Speaker 3: real bickering among them. They were just didn't have any
Speaker 3: kind of narrative, and there was part based on the evidence,
Speaker 3: and part I think they just didn't really ever bear
Speaker 3: down on a story they could present. That's a shorthand verse.
Speaker 1: What I thought, as a non lawyer was the same
Speaker 1: thing as what you just said, which is and again
Speaker 1: I am not a lawyer. I don't even have a
Speaker 1: college degree. I have a Master's of Fine Arts. So
Speaker 1: few people are less confident. Not true way in the
Speaker 1: URA system. But what I noticed, what I was surprised by,
Speaker 1: was this was a case where a lot of us
Speaker 1: in the media industrial complex had misgivings. And then when
Speaker 1: they brought out David Pecker, I was like, Wow, this
Speaker 1: guy really just has Trump dead to rights. And then
Speaker 1: you had Hope Picks weeping on the stand because she
Speaker 1: knew she had him dead to rights. And then you
Speaker 1: had Madeline Westerhouse on the stand going like this is
Speaker 1: what this is, and everyone being like wow. And then
Speaker 1: you had Trump's lawyer attacking Storey Daniels and opening the
Speaker 1: door for a whole thing that didn't even have anything
Speaker 1: to do with the case. And so I was the same.
Speaker 1: I was shocked at what a good job the prosecution did.
Speaker 1: Nut shocked, but I was impressed. And then I was
Speaker 1: really shocked at what a bad job. I mean, Trump
Speaker 1: is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on legal fees.
Speaker 1: And what was clear, and Todd Blanche said this on
Speaker 1: television later, was that in fact, Trump had basically told
Speaker 1: him everything he had to do.
Speaker 3: Everyone noted what a big problem you had who didn't
Speaker 3: just meander in his closing. They went after if you noticed,
Speaker 3: their big point was these records are not false. Michael
Speaker 3: Cohen actually performed these legal services. Are you leidding me?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And just so just in general, not only the lack
Speaker 3: sort of pop and kind of overall it's less the
Speaker 3: lawyers on a storyteller's art, but they made so many
Speaker 3: bad choices. Let me talk to you about the verdict
Speaker 3: from your sort of vantage point, because you know, you
Speaker 3: wrote in your bed Trump sash money, gully vertics, someone
Speaker 3: going to make him more dangerous that in the aftermath
Speaker 3: we knew was coming, and has everything to do with
Speaker 3: his habit of lying for his political gain. That he
Speaker 3: was always going to Trump was always going to try
Speaker 3: to use candidate Trump to help defending Trump. Surely true,
Speaker 3: and any verdict was destined to be molded into his
Speaker 3: brand and narrative of persecution which hunts in a fight
Speaker 3: against the political system, also clearly true. But do you
Speaker 3: think in other instances it's things that seemed so meaningful
Speaker 3: and pivotal just kind of receded. Do you actually think
Speaker 3: that he's going to leverage the verdict to fight against
Speaker 3: the political system and he'll be railing about this in September,
Speaker 3: when he could just hope that time would put it
Speaker 3: enough in the distance that he could do. As the
Speaker 3: rest of his playbook.
Speaker 1: Trump World desperately wants you to believe that, right, this
Speaker 1: is a guy and I'm going to quote Will Hurd
Speaker 1: here he announced a week after the midterms because he
Speaker 1: hoped that it would keep him from being indicted. So
Speaker 1: this has always been a play about Trump not going
Speaker 1: to jail. So what Trump desperately wants, what Trump World
Speaker 1: desperately wants is for you, you and the justice system and
Speaker 1: the three other cases which are waiting to go forward
Speaker 1: and may never go forward because Trump has been able
Speaker 1: to use all this donor money to punt these cases.
Speaker 1: What Trump desperately wants is for people in the pundit
Speaker 1: complex to say it's baked in. Voters know they don't
Speaker 1: care that he's done crimes. That's what Trump wants, and
Speaker 1: that's what Mitch McConnell wants, and that's even what Susan
Speaker 1: Collins wants. Concerned moderate Susan Collins also wants you to
Speaker 1: not believe that any of this matters, because nihilism helps
Speaker 1: autocracy and Trump is an autocrat.
Speaker 3: Nicely put, we need a button for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Trump is an autocrat, and all Trump wants is
Speaker 1: for people to say doesn't matter, don't care. And the
Speaker 1: reality is we have seen and again I fucking hate poles,
Speaker 1: but we have seen polls that say that swing voters
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin don't want to vote for a criminal and
Speaker 1: they don't like this. And the look, Trump has only
Speaker 1: won one election twenty sixteen. Since then, he has lost
Speaker 1: every election. He has never tried to grow the base.
Speaker 1: Like if you just think of this, like the idea
Speaker 1: that Trump is constantly trying to get pundits to think
Speaker 1: in three dimensional chests is really so fucking stupid. That's
Speaker 1: all I could say. I was going to make a
Speaker 1: larger case about how autocrats work, but the truth is
Speaker 1: it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 3: Okay, And how does that translate? So right, So what's
Speaker 3: a canard? Great, give me the conviction. But so do
Speaker 3: you think that means, in practical terms, Molly, that he
Speaker 3: will do a pivot from this and try to ignore it,
Speaker 3: or do you think he'll be beating his breasts about
Speaker 3: this the whole time? That's a strategy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because first of all, Remember, Trump has for this
Speaker 1: entire time thought that being a defendant helps him, and
Speaker 1: he's thought that. I mean, I really do think Trump.
Speaker 1: There's so much bullshit here and so many conservatives lying
Speaker 1: about stuff, but I actually do believe that Trump believes
Speaker 1: be being a defendant helps him well.
Speaker 3: And his poles went up during the trough, So you
Speaker 3: think that's my foot ships.
Speaker 1: In turn, that's not true. His poles did not go
Speaker 1: up during the trial. His polls were pretty much static.
Speaker 1: And during the incredible primaries where Trump ran against many
Speaker 1: versions of him who had no other leg to stand
Speaker 1: on except he's our guy and we're not as interesting
Speaker 1: as he is, then he did well. But that is
Speaker 1: the Republican base, which is again a brain worms contingent
Speaker 1: of the American public.
Speaker 3: Yeah all right, but so you're saying he wants me
Speaker 3: to but this will actually be a feature, not something
Speaker 3: to put to the side of the campaign. He'll beat
Speaker 3: his breast all the way through about New York and
Speaker 3: Biden and I'm your martyr.
Speaker 1: Trump ran against American democracy. You'll remember, even when he
Speaker 1: lost in twenty twenty. It's a fixed system, it's a
Speaker 1: rigged system. He was saying that even before he won
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. This guy is an autocrat. He wants
Speaker 1: to degrade and attack American institutions, that's what. So he's
Speaker 1: going to run against the courts. But you know, a
Speaker 1: person with that much legal trouble needs to run against
Speaker 1: the courts. And remember, for him, this all works out
Speaker 1: great because either way he uses that campaign money for lawyers. Right,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to pay one hundred plus million dollars
Speaker 1: in legal fees not coming out of the Trump family
Speaker 1: irrevocable trusts. And I think that that is a really
Speaker 1: important point.
Speaker 3: By the way, I wouldn't say great in the sense
Speaker 3: that the endgame might be if he doesn't win, you know,
Speaker 3: confinement for the rest of his natural life. But you
Speaker 3: know it's a real risk.
Speaker 1: No, but it's still he was going to have that confinement.
Speaker 1: I see their way. So running for office just gave
Speaker 1: him free money for lawyers. And I would say that
Speaker 1: I would be shocked if he didn't try to run
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty eight. Wow, why wouldn't he There's no
Speaker 1: It's like, there's no incentive not to. If you can
Speaker 1: use this money for lawyers, why wouldn't you just keep
Speaker 1: running until you die.
Speaker 3: So we keep asking is there trump Ism after trum
Speaker 3: but instead there's Trump after Trump? Holy cal I.
Speaker 1: Mean I do think there's trump Ism after Trump.
Speaker 3: And it's named Donald Trump. Okay, what you got? Bring it?
Speaker 1: How are they going to keep this Joey safe?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no great answer from the criminal justice system.
Speaker 3: They are not going to go into witness protection program,
Speaker 3: et cetera. You know, I have to think, are they
Speaker 3: really the villains in the eyes of the maga faithful,
Speaker 3: even the crazy maga faithful, the kind of you know,
Speaker 3: Loan Wlos who went in and shot up the Cincinnati FBI.
Speaker 3: You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I was half the
Speaker 3: kind of subtext, wasn't it, of don't put him in jail,
Speaker 3: that maybe they come after you. It's folly to think
Speaker 3: that their identities won't be known by people who want
Speaker 3: to diligently do it. So the short answer this used
Speaker 3: to I come up. Well, you know, in terrorism age,
Speaker 3: I was a US attorney and judges would say, what
Speaker 3: happens if some crazy person wants to come and tear
Speaker 3: us and blow us up? And the answer really was, well,
Speaker 3: then they'll blow you up. You know, I think it
Speaker 3: will reduce to a marginal risk. I don't see why
Speaker 3: they would be the target, but there's no way to
Speaker 3: forget criminal justice. The entire justice system can one percent
Speaker 3: prevent and now, of course they could one hundred percent
Speaker 3: go after it would be very serious crime. So it's
Speaker 3: the same kind of disincentive as how do you get
Speaker 3: keep a judge or a US attorney. You know, we
Speaker 3: used to have Marshall protections, et cetera. But it's it's
Speaker 3: I have no good answer for you.
Speaker 1: They can't send them home with security.
Speaker 3: Sure, Oh no, no, no. When I say good answer, I
Speaker 3: mean fool. How are they going to keep them safe?
Speaker 3: I mean literally, if Trump world they're what they want
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: Is starts boxing them or something.
Speaker 3: That's all I'm saying. Of course, they're the equivalent of
Speaker 3: double locks on the door and burglar alarms and buzzers
Speaker 3: and stuff. But I think that the literal answer to
Speaker 3: your question is they can't. They can just they can
Speaker 3: reduce the risk, and you know, these guys could leave
Speaker 3: New York, but no one's hopefully gonna do that. I
Speaker 3: just think that during these few weeks, there's been a
Speaker 3: few of our peers who have been distinguished by the
Speaker 3: glowers they seem to draw personally from Trump and the
Speaker 3: personal messages. You know, it's kind of a resume builder.
Speaker 3: But there's been real questions among our are we in danger?
Speaker 3: I don't put myself in that category. And the short
Speaker 3: answer is, you know, look, if some crazy person hears
Speaker 3: from channels with aluminum foil the voice of Donald Trump saying.
Speaker 1: Go, got that out, we don't need to tempt fade here.
Speaker 1: You go, Okay, ask me a question.
Speaker 3: Go so, I'm really intrigued. You said, you fucking hate poles,
Speaker 3: and I do too, But I also think I but
Speaker 3: we as really don't fucking understand poles, and we're gonna
Speaker 3: make so we're gonna learn a lot about it, just
Speaker 3: social scientists over the next several years, but especially this
Speaker 3: whole problem that it seems like all the action for
Speaker 3: Trump is at the level of social media and things
Speaker 3: that just don't actually register in the typical polls. But
Speaker 3: you said, I'm talking now about your piece, really great piece,
Speaker 3: by the way, the Vanny Fair piece. Everybody checked. It's
Speaker 3: out the panic of the polls. But anyway, you said, look,
Speaker 3: Nikki Hagey's zombie campaign still getting more thin ten percent
Speaker 3: of the vote. Biden seems to be pulling better among
Speaker 3: those who are likely to actually show up. But just
Speaker 3: I want to zero in on the point that the
Speaker 3: polling industry just doesn't seem to have the real precision
Speaker 3: of access to, as you put a people's political persuasions
Speaker 3: and habits that tech companies do. So, you know, are
Speaker 3: these are the pollsters you think overestimating mega members commitment
Speaker 3: actually shown up for their guy? You know? Is does
Speaker 3: that lesson? I don't think we can calibrate it yet,
Speaker 3: but the do you think in general it points toward
Speaker 3: hidden good news for Biden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is what I would say, Yes, pollsters
Speaker 1: have a big problem.
Speaker 3: It's actually a good question.
Speaker 4: You were going, yeah, no, Well.
Speaker 1: It's actually something I spent a lot of time thinking about.
Speaker 1: So posters don't have a great pulse on what's happening,
Speaker 1: but what's happening here is actually something different. So in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and again, posters will tell you they weren't wrong,
Speaker 1: but they were wrong. They were really, really really wrong.
Speaker 1: They were wrong. And from that they extrapolated Hillary Quinn
Speaker 1: as a ninety nine point nine percent or an eighty
Speaker 1: nine percent chance of winning.
Speaker 3: And then during the evening eighty seventy you watched it
Speaker 3: like the oxygen level dropping it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a real polling error. And since
Speaker 1: then what they've done and part of the reason that
Speaker 1: was a polling error, not to make excuses for them,
Speaker 1: but this is actually was not their fault. Was that
Speaker 1: Trump voters were a group of low frequency voters who
Speaker 1: you couldn't pull because he didn't think they existed. And
Speaker 1: that was what Kelly and Conway said about these hidden
Speaker 1: Trump voters. They were hidden because they weren't voters. They
Speaker 1: were just people who usually didn't vote. But Trump had
Speaker 1: this populist message which they responded to, and that happened
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, and that also happened in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't happen in the midterms. Those people don't
Speaker 1: come out for anyone else. Trump Ism does not scale.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe you win a primary, but like
Speaker 1: a really good example is Jade Vance in Ohio, Ruby
Speaker 1: red state running you know, trumpy Trump and trump Asaurus
Speaker 1: running ten points behind the partisan lean because ultimately it
Speaker 1: doesn't work for anyone else. It only works for Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in Ohio, the guy who was just
Speaker 3: a friend of mine lost the U to the wine
Speaker 3: had more votes than anybody who's ever had, but the
Speaker 3: wind somehow, these hidden Trump voters came out and just
Speaker 3: new voters put the wine over the top.
Speaker 1: Same thing with Vans, right, but usually that doesn't happen, right,
Speaker 1: and Vans still ran behind the partisan lane. So what
Speaker 1: I would say is that my guess is what these
Speaker 1: posters are doing. And Nate Cohen wrote very smartly about
Speaker 1: this other times, they're trying to estimate whether or not
Speaker 1: this group comes out. I think they will come out.
Speaker 1: But the question is because you know, remember a million
Speaker 1: Americans died of COVID, and even if I know, that
Speaker 1: was three years ago, so no one remembers, but that
Speaker 1: was a million people, and so maybe a lot of
Speaker 1: those people were older. It doesn't matter. If your grandmother
Speaker 1: refuse to get vaccinated and then died of COVID, do
Speaker 1: her five grandchildren run out and vote for Trump. It's
Speaker 1: an open question. Maybe they think COVID is a you know,
Speaker 1: racist can I mean, maybe they have some racist way
Speaker 1: to make it work for them, but you could see
Speaker 1: that that could actually theoretically hurt him. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that I think is really still possible. It's just
Speaker 1: really hard to square what the unpredictable voters will do.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the bottom of the ticket,
Speaker 1: which I think is really where the action is happening,
Speaker 1: these Democratic senators are running way ahead, like I saw
Speaker 1: Tammy Baldwin running twelve points ahead and swing state Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: so I think there's some sorcery going on and trying
Speaker 1: to measure these Trump voters. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble imagining a voter coming out voting for Tammy Baldwin
Speaker 1: and then voting for Trump. Not impossible, but feels like
Speaker 1: a stretch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Mollie, like well as always, I think
Speaker 3: we cover from the what you cover, from the sort
Speaker 3: of daily to the more profound national trends and really
Speaker 3: that you know, the things that are growth. Sorcery is
Speaker 3: is such a perfect word for what seems to be
Speaker 3: going on. You know, presumably the magic will reveal itself
Speaker 3: not to be magic, but right now I'm not sure
Speaker 3: how and why. So that'll keep me biting my name
Speaker 3: else for the next six months.
Speaker 1: And you and I both agree that we don't know
Speaker 1: what we don't know, and we'll know a lot more in.
Speaker 3: November, there's an end. Look forward to the next Molly mashup.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot and a big week.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Ben Smith is the
Speaker 1: editor of Semaphore. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ben.
Speaker 4: Smith, thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker 1: You're here ostensibly to promote a podcast, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you lots of out the questions, but first
Speaker 1: you can tell us about the podcast. It's a media podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the people seem to care a lot about media.
Speaker 1: The last gasps of a dying industry. I it's like
Speaker 1: a snuff film.
Speaker 5: Oh god right, Molly, No, it's I like, I kind
Speaker 5: of hate that whole like colagulating journalism thing. No, I mean,
Speaker 5: I think the thing about media is that it is
Speaker 5: both grim and boring if you think of it as
Speaker 5: a sort of small, dying industry. But it's in a
Speaker 5: huge story if you think about it, as it cuts
Speaker 5: into politics, into culture, into technology, and it lends on
Speaker 5: all of those stories. And so we're launching a show
Speaker 5: called Mixed Signals. Naima Raza and I will be co
Speaker 5: hosting it some help from Max Tani, Samaphore's great media editor,
Speaker 5: to sort of tell those stories about what is happening
Speaker 5: behind the scenes, as it affects things that actually matter,
Speaker 5: as it affects national politics, as it affects Hollywood and
Speaker 5: the culture and things we really care about. And I
Speaker 5: think that's you know that to me, that's really one
Speaker 5: of one of the biggest stories of this media age,
Speaker 5: and so we're excited about it. And I think there
Speaker 5: is this sort of lingering sense that I think everybody
Speaker 5: has that there's some kind of conspiracy that media is
Speaker 5: a bit of a conspiracy, that people are making decisions
Speaker 5: that are in some sense manipulative, or that something's happening
Speaker 5: behind the scenes. I think what's so interesting about covering
Speaker 5: it is that in some ways media is a conspiracy,
Speaker 5: but often it's particularly a conspiracy to make money and
Speaker 5: not a very good one, and actually understanding how decisions
Speaker 5: are being made is often very interesting and often very
Speaker 5: different from what you would think from the outside.
Speaker 1: I listened to on the Media that podcast from w
Speaker 1: Andy See, which is really really smart. They had a
Speaker 1: podcast yesterday, but I think it was like two weeks
Speaker 1: ago or whatever, because you know, the timing of when
Speaker 1: these drop is not, you know, it doesn't totally line
Speaker 1: up and they talked about how much a lot of
Speaker 1: tech journalism has been really celebrating advancement without providing a
Speaker 1: lot of pushback, and then most AI coverage seems to
Speaker 1: do a similar like AA is going to change our lives.
Speaker 1: AI is fire and not been critical enough. That strikes
Speaker 1: me as like maybe a larger problem too when it
Speaker 1: comes to coverage.
Speaker 5: That strikes me as a pretty broad generalization and maybe
Speaker 5: a story that was true fifteen years ago. I mean,
Speaker 5: the sort of interesting story about tech coverage, I think
Speaker 5: is how hard it turned against the technology industry kind
Speaker 5: of during the social media era and during the Trump era,
Speaker 5: and kind of how hostile the industry has become to
Speaker 5: the people who cover it. I mean, I agree with you,
Speaker 5: there is a certain amount of and honestly a certain
Speaker 5: amount of justified like, hey, this shure is coverage of AI,
Speaker 5: because you know, at the core of a lot of
Speaker 5: technology coverage is and ought to be an excitement about technology,
Speaker 5: and a lot of tech reporters have that. But I
Speaker 5: actually find that we have sometimes imported the criticisms of
Speaker 5: social media into coverage of AI in a way that
Speaker 5: doesn't make all that much sense, Like they're just very
Speaker 5: different the threats posed b AI are quite different.
Speaker 4: So i'd actually I think I don't buy that.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's like one of the great things is
Speaker 5: that you can just have an avatar go on podcasts
Speaker 5: so you don't have to. I'm really a big fan
Speaker 5: of AI, and particularly for that use case.
Speaker 1: I think you're kidding, but I can't.
Speaker 4: Tell I'm kidding. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Okay, how do you think that's unfair? A pushback
Speaker 1: on something that none of us really know what it's
Speaker 1: going to do. I mean, I'm just curious, Like I
Speaker 1: love when people come on my podcast and I'm happy
Speaker 1: to have you and not your AI version.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the thing. Podcasting is the last use case
Speaker 5: for humans.
Speaker 1: Actually, again, like that would make AI kind of bad.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe I am just not as smart as
Speaker 1: you are, but I just assume that being replaced. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're seeing these summations now of pieces written. You know,
Speaker 1: now there are summaries of pieces. I mean, doesn't that
Speaker 1: strike you as like the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2: You do, know?
Speaker 5: I mean I think I guess from my perspective when
Speaker 5: it comes to journalism, particularly like again, I think there
Speaker 5: are lots of really scary things. I think some of
Speaker 5: the kind of really growth tesque sexual harassment and defix
Speaker 5: that AI can do are just incredibly disturbing. The sort
Speaker 5: of you know, I think there's a sort of general
Speaker 5: undermining people's broad shared idea of truth that is incredibly disturbing.
Speaker 5: I think there are there are really negative things. But
Speaker 5: also when it comes to journalism in particular, journalists you know,
Speaker 5: have been complaining about the birth the growth of new
Speaker 5: technology since you know, probably the printing press. But the
Speaker 5: main thing I use AFI for every day is transcribing interviews.
Speaker 5: I suspect you guys too, Like my least favorite part
Speaker 5: of journalism was doing an interview for an hour and
Speaker 5: that's spent two hours typing it up. I don't think
Speaker 5: anybody feels that that is a great loss to the
Speaker 5: profession that you're not doing that. I suspect there's editing
Speaker 5: of this show that gets you.
Speaker 4: And actually like the way in which AI is actually.
Speaker 5: Manifesting itself in newsrooms, I mean sort of more sophisticated
Speaker 5: spell checking. Like I don't think anybody thinks Grammarly is
Speaker 5: going to be on the street corners murdering people. But
Speaker 5: you probably did reduce the number of copy editors in
Speaker 5: the business.
Speaker 4: Right right now, the.
Speaker 5: Way these tools are being used in newsrooms is really
Speaker 5: helpful and allows us to do more of the kind
Speaker 5: of stuff we want to do, which is trying to
Speaker 5: figure out what's really happening, talking to other human beings
Speaker 5: and leaving the boring stuff to the AI. And I
Speaker 5: guess I don't really think that either your job of
Speaker 5: helping people figure out the world and explaining it to
Speaker 5: them in a nuanced and human way, or my job
Speaker 5: of trying to get people to tell me information are
Speaker 5: really at risk. And maybe that's sort of self centered,
Speaker 5: but that is how I see it.
Speaker 1: No I agree, and Jase uses in AI software to
Speaker 1: edit this and to get rid of noise, and I
Speaker 1: certainly agree. As a dyslexic who is violently very dyslexic,
Speaker 1: the improvement in spellcheck has been humongous for me, so
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 4: So you also welcome our new overlords.
Speaker 1: Basically, my question is more like, should we be pushing
Speaker 1: back more all the time? For example, I had on
Speaker 1: this podcast Jim Hines, who I really like and who
Speaker 1: is a Democrat and who is very smart, and who
Speaker 1: comes from Connecticut and lives in coscop And I said
Speaker 1: to him, you know, you guys don't regulate anything, right,
Speaker 1: you didn't regulate any technology. And you know when you
Speaker 1: say that to a member of Congress, they always say, well,
Speaker 1: the First Amendment. And I'd say, the First Amendment doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with regulating technology.
Speaker 4: You say, what about the Second Amendment?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Right? Exactly?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: But I mean the reality is Congress gave up on
Speaker 1: trying to regulate technology. And they did that because they
Speaker 1: were like low key, they didn't want to. It was
Speaker 1: too many problems. If you look at Europe, like there's
Speaker 1: actual fullsome regulations, they haven't stopped some of the problems.
Speaker 1: And look, Europe is a much different regulatory environment. But
Speaker 1: like to a certain extent, Congress has fallen as sleep
Speaker 1: on the switch in certain ways.
Speaker 4: It's a strange story.
Speaker 1: Imagine a world where technology started. You know, we went
Speaker 1: onto the internet, we lost newspapers, and Congress said, okay,
Speaker 1: two percent of all pre tax earning or even post
Speaker 1: tax earning that tech companies make must be put in
Speaker 1: nonprofit funds for local news like something, you know, one percent,
Speaker 1: zero point five percent of the five hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk made. I mean, because remember Elon Musk
Speaker 1: made all of this money on these sort of regulatory
Speaker 1: tax bonuses for doing environmental stuff right like he has.
Speaker 1: He is like a guy who got government handouts. But
Speaker 1: the government handouts went to oil companies and went to
Speaker 1: people like Elon and didn't go to people like the
Speaker 1: main daily reporter. I'm just saying, like Congress had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to not crush the news industry, right, and they
Speaker 1: didn't take it.
Speaker 5: I hate to say this as a journalist, but I'm
Speaker 5: not sure this is totally about us in the news industry.
Speaker 5: And to me, the core deal, which is a pretty
Speaker 5: weird deal, is that we both got all of the companies,
Speaker 5: all of the jobs, all of the growth, and all
Speaker 5: of the wealth created, and we got to be the
Speaker 5: like laboratory where all the damage got done. And then
Speaker 5: the Europeans came in got, by the way, none of
Speaker 5: the wealth, none of the great job growth, none of
Speaker 5: the companies. But also they get to write they regulate
Speaker 5: us and themselves, and that is essentially the unspoken deal
Speaker 5: is that we get we get the business and the
Speaker 5: companies and the damage and they get neither, I think,
Speaker 5: and I do think that's fundamentally the deal that Congress
Speaker 5: made with not regulating these companies. It has costs and benefits,
Speaker 5: and I think they're both pretty substantial.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the election coverage right now. You know,
Speaker 1: we're a country of three hundred million plus, right, three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million, three hundred and thirty million. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of people, like maybe at most twenty million
Speaker 1: people read in newspapers, magazines, maybe a little more than
Speaker 1: watch cable news, you know, maybe a little more than
Speaker 1: that watch network news. So do you think we have
Speaker 1: any influence on them anymore?
Speaker 5: It's such a strange question this election. It's interesting because
Speaker 5: I'm also obsessed with this and for this first episode
Speaker 5: of Mixed Signals, I just just this morning went down
Speaker 5: to the courthouse just a couple of blocks from here,
Speaker 5: where there's a massive, you know, classic trial of the
Speaker 5: century media circus with you know, dozens and dozens of
Speaker 5: cameras and dozens of fifteen satellite trucks. And we went
Speaker 5: and I went and found our old friend Maggie Haberman,
Speaker 5: who's standing online, you know, at seven in the morning,
Speaker 5: task through that like you know, is anybody learning anything
Speaker 5: you go into this court and you cover this trial,
Speaker 5: and then and then what right is there anything new?
Speaker 4: Is it change? Is anybody's mind being changed? On our
Speaker 4: own mind being changed?
Speaker 5: Or does everybody in America basically feel one way or
Speaker 5: the other that you get who these people are, you
Speaker 5: get who Donald Trump is, and so you're not paying
Speaker 5: that much attention to this incredible, historic, dramatic spectacles. Very
Speaker 5: I agree, it's an utterly strange situation.
Speaker 1: So how do you think these people are getting their news?
Speaker 1: Which people it's three hundred and forty five million people
Speaker 1: on the storytry who don't read the New York Times.
Speaker 1: How do you think they're getting their news?
Speaker 5: That is a harder question to answer than it has
Speaker 5: been since the nineteenth century because they're basically from the
Speaker 5: kind of proliferation of newspapers, penny dailies and things in
Speaker 5: the second half of the nineteenth century through not that long ago.
Speaker 5: The big story was consolidation, was more and more people
Speaker 5: getting their information from fewer and fewer places. You know,
Speaker 5: big national television networks replacing local ones, big national newspapers
Speaker 5: displacing local ones, and then big social media companies and
Speaker 5: big centralized platforms replacing everything. And then the story of
Speaker 5: the last few years has been this crazy fragmentation and
Speaker 5: people moving out to.
Speaker 4: Smaller and smaller places.
Speaker 5: I mean audio is actually the most interesting example of that,
Speaker 5: where tens of thousands of people listened to an array
Speaker 5: of shows where they're each you know, finding people who
Speaker 5: they really find valuable and helpful, but there's no dominant player.
Speaker 5: In fact, there was a Pew study that said they
Speaker 5: asked people, who's your favorite podcast? Among people who have
Speaker 5: a favorite podcast, what's your favorite podcast?
Speaker 4: Pictively? The answer was Joe Rogan.
Speaker 5: But the most interesting thing about that was it was
Speaker 5: Joe Rogan at five percent. So you got a market
Speaker 5: where the number one player is five percent and everything
Speaker 5: else is smaller. And that's just a situation which you
Speaker 5: get on the subway and you have no idea what
Speaker 5: the person sitting across from you has in their ears,
Speaker 5: whereas five years ago you get in the subway and like,
Speaker 5: it's Facebook, right, and so they're ten years ago. And
Speaker 5: so there has I think been this big shift that
Speaker 5: makes the landscape way harder to understand because you just
Speaker 5: it's it's splintered.
Speaker 1: So how do you think people get their news. I mean,
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan is millions of people, right, just.
Speaker 5: So like Fox News and the big broadcast networks you know,
Speaker 5: will reach between maybe three and ten million a night,
Speaker 5: and that's that's something Rogan, you know, maybe a vaguely
Speaker 5: similar number. Lots of people a bit fewer than that.
Speaker 1: So say, Joe Rogan is twenty, Fox is four.
Speaker 5: Right, But these listens, I'm just listens, Like what gets
Speaker 5: counted as a view on YouTube is much much smaller.
Speaker 1: Okay, Howard Stern is eighteen.
Speaker 5: Those are much smaller numbers than what gets counted as
Speaker 5: a view on television. So there's it's hard these numbers
Speaker 5: don't really make sense to either. But nobody is anywhere
Speaker 5: close to the scale of what CBS News had twenty
Speaker 5: years ago. Everything is smaller.
Speaker 1: Right, So there definitely are millions of people on TikTok.
Speaker 5: Enormous numbers of people on TikTok, but again being kind
Speaker 5: of micro targeted with the thing that they're looking for
Speaker 5: and having the news reflected to them as what TikTok
Speaker 5: is great at telling them exactly what they want.
Speaker 1: By the Chinese government.
Speaker 4: Yes, by our friends that by dents, yes.
Speaker 1: Which is owned by the Chinese government.
Speaker 5: No, mostly it is just holding a mirror up to
Speaker 5: you and telling you exactly and giving you exactly what
Speaker 5: you want.
Speaker 4: That's what that machine does.
Speaker 5: Maybe it hasn't been proven the Chinese government puts its
Speaker 5: thumb on the scale would not particularly surprise me. But
Speaker 5: if young people are being told that the Palestinian side
Speaker 5: is correct, it's mostly because that's what they want to hear.
Speaker 5: And I don't really think the idea that tip people
Speaker 5: are being brainwashed on there. We're all kind of the
Speaker 5: beauty of social media as we get to wash our
Speaker 5: own brands.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone thinks that people are being brainwashed.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. Maybe there are people who
Speaker 1: think that, but I mean, with all of this, it's
Speaker 1: not just TikTok, it's also Instagram and Facebook. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are opportunities for transparency with the algorithm that we
Speaker 1: have not been given. Right.
Speaker 5: No thinks have been getting less transparent for as long
Speaker 5: as I've covered these companies. In twenty twelve, there was
Speaker 5: a site called your open Book where you could search
Speaker 5: Facebook and see what people were talking about on there.
Speaker 4: And Facebook cut that.
Speaker 5: Off from the API and progressively, all of these companies
Speaker 5: have released less and less and less data because they
Speaker 5: don't like the media coverage of what is actually happening
Speaker 5: on them.
Speaker 1: Right, we have so many people in this country, So
Speaker 1: say there are three hundred million people who are just
Speaker 1: not interacting with traditional news at all. I mean at
Speaker 1: least one hundred and fifty million of those people will vote.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but the biggest sources of sort of non big
Speaker 5: mainstream media are the local television news, local radio. I mean,
Speaker 5: voters are disproportionately older and being reached by these older forms.
Speaker 5: So like, among the biggest of these small and medium
Speaker 5: sized things are still, you know, along with deranged streams
Speaker 5: on rumble or YouTube, are a lot of fairly normy stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of targeting stuff.
Speaker 5: Moms on Instagram, a lot of it's just you know,
Speaker 5: it's splintering without I think the social media age really
Speaker 5: elevated hyperpartisan voices, and that was what worked for the
Speaker 5: sort of engagement metrics of Facebook. I think that's less
Speaker 5: true enough. I think it's just a legitimate sprit splintering
Speaker 5: that's spreading further probably further right, further left, but also
Speaker 5: all along the middle of that spectrum in a way
Speaker 5: that if you're writing about it, you are sort of
Speaker 5: operating in the dark in a way that is disorienting
Speaker 5: for me a list.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that the traditional media though we have
Speaker 1: become such an incredibly small piece of the pie, right
Speaker 1: and we have such a small reach.
Speaker 5: It's funny that we're saying we you a podcaster, me
Speaker 5: running a new website.
Speaker 1: Well, I am an editor of Fanny Fair. I'm a
Speaker 1: true official correspondent at a Condie Nast magazine.
Speaker 4: You got to foot in both worlds.
Speaker 1: My podcast is from a podcast company called iHeartRadio, So
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think that's true. Is not that?
Speaker 1: And you worked at the New York Times for many
Speaker 1: years and have a media startup called Temophore. So if
Speaker 1: we're not the mainstream media, I don't know who is, man.
Speaker 4: I think it's the New York Times.
Speaker 5: Molick, No, But I'm just saying I think there's a
Speaker 5: there's sort of a wide spectrum and a lot of
Speaker 5: and even the question of what is mainstream is is
Speaker 5: kind of disputed. Like you know, the like iHeart is
Speaker 5: a great example, Like that's a company that does a
Speaker 5: bunch of great podcasts that built around the House Stuff
Speaker 5: Works podcast. That's sort of what built that company at first,
Speaker 5: and where the sort of people running it come from,
Speaker 5: which I think I don't really think of a mainstream
Speaker 5: or political right. That's just sort of a great popular
Speaker 5: show that I hope is running promos for this podcast
Speaker 5: on its big network, and I think the lines have
Speaker 5: really blurred, actually quite a bit between what's what's considered
Speaker 5: traditional media and what's new media, making all of this
Speaker 5: more confusing.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Ben Smith, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: No moment Jesse Cannon by John Fast the reaction to
Speaker 1: the trumpert you predicted it hot. I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: have to be a psychic to know exactly how this
Speaker 1: is going to go. Donald Trump will degrade the rule
Speaker 1: of law, rail against the judiciary, say the judge was corrupt,
Speaker 1: and in fact he did all of the things we
Speaker 1: thought he would because Donald Trump has about four plays
Speaker 1: and he always does pretty much the same thing, no
Speaker 1: matter what the situation is. And that, my friends, is
Speaker 1: our moment of Fuckeray. That's it for this episode of
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