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 Elon Musk wants to prosecute Dr
Speaker 1: Anthony Fauci because Elon Musk is definitely not an al
Speaker 1: to right troll. We have a jam packed show for
Speaker 1: you today. The good liars will join us to talk
Speaker 1: about all the fun they have attending mega rallies. Doesn't
Speaker 1: sound that fun, but sure. Then we'll talk to the
Speaker 1: editor in chief of The Verge, Nili Patal, about Twitter
Speaker 1: and chat GPT. But first we have nation writer and
Speaker 1: author of allowing me to retort, Ellie missed all. Welcome
Speaker 1: to you Fast Politics. Ellie missed all. Molly, how are you?
Speaker 1: I am just always so excited to have you because
Speaker 1: you are so smart and interesting but also hilarious. No pressure,
Speaker 1: no pressure, Yeah, exactly. Be hilarious. Nope, let's not be hilarious.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Supreme Court, which is I feel
Speaker 1: like the opposite of hilarious. It's terrifying, is what it is.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious like a clown, right, It's a thing that
Speaker 1: should be funny and should be dismissable. But actually is
Speaker 1: just very creepy and scary. There are a bunch of cases.
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about Yesterday's case where they
Speaker 1: are toying with democracy. Yeah, so yesterday's case is the
Speaker 1: case to legalize the coup. Essentially right, it was the
Speaker 1: oral argument, and the case is called mor v. Harper.
Speaker 1: It arises out of the North Carolina State legislative Republican
Speaker 1: control North Carolina State legislature making a map that was
Speaker 1: so partisan, so favorable Republicans basically rigged the election um
Speaker 1: in favor of Republican corressional candidates and Republican state legislative candidates.
Speaker 1: That the North Carolina State Supreme Court throughout the map
Speaker 1: as a violation of the North Carolina Constitution and ordered
Speaker 1: it to be redrawn. North Carolina Republicans appealed that decision
Speaker 1: in that case when all is what, it went all
Speaker 1: the way to the Supreme Court. But the theory under
Speaker 1: which they appealed it is what's really troubling. Um. They
Speaker 1: didn't do the normal thing of just saying, hey, the
Speaker 1: North Carolina Supreme Court is wrong, please help us, Mr
Speaker 1: John Like that would have been the normal Republican thing
Speaker 1: to do, right, No, no, no, no. They propagated what's
Speaker 1: called independent state legislature theory or doctrine, depending on which
Speaker 1: cuckoo for cocopus person you talked to. And this doctrine
Speaker 1: or theory says that the state legislature and the state
Speaker 1: legislature alone, through the process of an up or down vote,
Speaker 1: is the final arbit on every time, place, and manner
Speaker 1: on every aspect of an election held in the state,
Speaker 1: subject only to the Federal Constitution's supremacy clause. So while
Speaker 1: that might not jump off the page as a huge thing,
Speaker 1: it does not above the page. But yes, continue, it
Speaker 1: changes everything, right. It basically means that the state legislature,
Speaker 1: which will often be controlled by partisans, are allowed to,
Speaker 1: for instance, draw maps that violate the state constitution, and
Speaker 1: the state Supreme Court cannot tell them that the state
Speaker 1: constitution has been violated because only the state legislature can
Speaker 1: do that. It means that potentially a state board of
Speaker 1: elections could say like, Okay, we're gonna have voting from
Speaker 1: this day to that day and it's gonna be early
Speaker 1: voting from here to there, and the state legislators to
Speaker 1: say no, because only the state legislature gets determined when
Speaker 1: the time place again in manner of elections, so we
Speaker 1: get to decide. It could mean that when the state's
Speaker 1: certification bureau says we have now certified our slate of
Speaker 1: presidential electors the state legislature and only the state legislature,
Speaker 1: it gets to say, no, no, no, we would like
Speaker 1: to have a different slate of presidential electors. So the
Speaker 1: entire kind of structure, the kind of nitty gritty nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of how democracy works, these North Carolina Republicans say,
Speaker 1: can only be controlled, can only be be adjudicated by
Speaker 1: the partisan upper down vote of a state legislature. It
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise to your listeners that the
Speaker 1: first place where this cockamamie ferry voice was in two
Speaker 1: thousand in Bush Vigor. This theory was adopted by former
Speaker 1: Chief Justice William Renquest in Bush Vigor. Now, if you
Speaker 1: guys remember what and I'm gonna date myself here by
Speaker 1: like being alive during Bush Vigor. Right, I was a
Speaker 1: one out during Bush Vigor. So like it's stuck in
Speaker 1: my mind a bit, right, and that when and uh,
Speaker 1: the issue in Bush for your younger viewers listeners, is
Speaker 1: that the Florida State Supreme Court had ordered a recount
Speaker 1: of the general election between Gore and Bush in Florida.
Speaker 1: That was a court ordered recount following the state courts
Speaker 1: interpretation of Florida statutory law. It was the Republicans, who
Speaker 1: usually are all four state rights, suddenly when the presidency
Speaker 1: was online, didn't want to listen to states rights, didn't
Speaker 1: want to listen to Florida wants to have a different
Speaker 1: standard of review to find a way to stop the recount. Intellectually,
Speaker 1: this was hard. So Renquist invented this independent state legislature
Speaker 1: theory that said that it was actually the then Republican
Speaker 1: controlled Florida State legislature that had the final authority on
Speaker 1: whether or not there should be a recount, not the
Speaker 1: Florida State Supreme Court. Now, it's important to understand that
Speaker 1: renquests idea here was rejected by the court. That's not
Speaker 1: the grounds on which the Republicans made George W. Bush president.
Speaker 1: They found a different way to stop the court mandated recount.
Speaker 1: But that's the first time this theory was put into play.
Speaker 1: But here's the coda to that story, Molly. As I said,
Speaker 1: it was a concurring opinion by Justice William Renquist. It
Speaker 1: was signed only by two other justices, Antonin Scalia who
Speaker 1: is now dead and Clarence Thomas, who was very much not.
Speaker 1: In addition, if y'all remember one of the lawyers on
Speaker 1: George W. Bush's team who was pushing this independent state
Speaker 1: legislator theory was current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There's
Speaker 1: actually a clip of Kavanaugh from two thousand. Mark Joseph
Speaker 1: Stern actually founded I saw. I saw him posted on
Speaker 1: Twitter the other day a clip of Brett Kavanaugh in
Speaker 1: two thousand talking to Wolf Blitzer pushing independent state legislature theory. Interesting,
Speaker 1: that's how this cockamamie theory got started. It was Republicans
Speaker 1: casting about for a way to make George W. Bush president,
Speaker 1: and now it's coming back to us as a book.
Speaker 1: Ins cast about for a way to legalize not the
Speaker 1: previous coup, but to legalize the next coup that they're planning.
Speaker 1: You know who else is a proponent of independent state
Speaker 1: legislature theory. Jenny Thomas. This was one of the theories
Speaker 1: that she was pushing in her emails to Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: and all the other people that she was trying to
Speaker 1: get to legalize the coup. So there's an entire kind
Speaker 1: of you know, white wing, right wing ecosystem here around
Speaker 1: the concept of pushing this theory forward so that red
Speaker 1: state legislatures are able to decide the results of elections
Speaker 1: as opposed to Board of Elections, nonpartisan commissions, or even
Speaker 1: the state Supreme Court. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: get back to the second. There was some pushback here,
Speaker 1: though it didn't go as badly as I thought. Random, Yeah, y,
Speaker 1: that's congratulate ourselves for it not going as badly as
Speaker 1: we thought. I I was reading some piece about this,
Speaker 1: and I was super eyes that it didn't go as
Speaker 1: badly as we thought. Yeah, Democrats not as bad as possible. Well,
Speaker 1: this Supreme Court, they really suck so whenever they are
Speaker 1: slightly and I thought it was interesting. It seems like
Speaker 1: Gorcitch was the one who was the most into the idea,
Speaker 1: explained to us what happened. So Thomas, with his priors,
Speaker 1: Aldo and Gorci, we're all in independence legislator theory. Gorsig
Speaker 1: was actually particularly odious and I don't even want to
Speaker 1: waste a lot of time on this on this guy,
Speaker 1: because he's he He was literally just trolling. I think
Speaker 1: all black Americans with his questioning. But that only gets
Speaker 1: you to three. Right now, again, because of what I
Speaker 1: said about Kavanaugh, I expected Kavanaugh to be a solid four,
Speaker 1: but at oral arguments he was a bit weak. I
Speaker 1: mean Kavanaugh is like constitutionally like a weak person. I
Speaker 1: mean that's kind of his brand. But yes, continue right,
Speaker 1: he was. He was a little bit intellectually washy. He
Speaker 1: was trying to distinguish Bush v. Gore. And actually, just
Speaker 1: by the way, mentioned that at the time of Bush
Speaker 1: Vigor he was any lawyers I'm saying he was. He
Speaker 1: was one of Bush's lawyers. Yeah, is so sketchy, and
Speaker 1: now he runs the highest court in the land. Continue right.
Speaker 1: The Kavanaugh tried to distinguish Bush Vigor from the case
Speaker 1: in front of him from North Carolina. He was trying
Speaker 1: to make a very it's a thin slice of the
Speaker 1: legal pie. He was trying to make a distinction between
Speaker 1: statutory interpretation, which is what was at issue when Bush
Speaker 1: Vigor versus state constitutional interpretation, which is what is that
Speaker 1: issue in North and Morvy Harbor. And he was trying
Speaker 1: to say that like, those two things are different and
Speaker 1: independent state legislature theory works for one but not for
Speaker 1: the other. So that was a little bit surprising. I
Speaker 1: don't know they'll have the strength of character to fall
Speaker 1: through through with that. But the swing vote was always
Speaker 1: gonna be Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, he doesn't like
Speaker 1: this theory, like it's it's funny because part of the
Speaker 1: reason why we're here is because of an earlier Robert's decision,
Speaker 1: like this is a bit of chickens coming home to
Speaker 1: roost to him. But but Roberts is not down for this,
Speaker 1: because Roberts, this whole thing is to give more power
Speaker 1: to judges, not take power away from judges, even at
Speaker 1: the state court level, um and put it in the
Speaker 1: hands of partisan legislatures. That's that's not Robert's m l.
Speaker 1: So Roberts doesn't like independence legislature theory. But Amy Coney Barrett, like,
Speaker 1: she has no priors on this right, She hasn't written
Speaker 1: about this before, she hasn't ruled on this before. She
Speaker 1: isn't married to a person who tried to support a
Speaker 1: violent insurrection against the American government. And yet and as
Speaker 1: far as I know, Molly, and I'm not a schooled
Speaker 1: in theology, as I am on law, but I do
Speaker 1: not believe Jesus has taken a strong position on independence
Speaker 1: date legislat This is why I love you because anyway, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't think Jesus has a right. So if so,
Speaker 1: if she can't tie this to anything in her prior
Speaker 1: law and to anything in Leviticus, to anything in her background,
Speaker 1: she's in play, is what I'm saying. And based on
Speaker 1: her questions, she seemed quite skeptical that independence legislature theory
Speaker 1: was a thing now, and I have written about this
Speaker 1: from the Nation and an article that's coming out a
Speaker 1: little bit later today. You always have to be careful
Speaker 1: with reading the tea leaves on Barrett, because in her
Speaker 1: brief history she has actually shown herself to be a
Speaker 1: very good, thoughtful, smart questioner, where at oral arguments she
Speaker 1: seems to really be intellectually getting in to the meat
Speaker 1: of the issue in front of her. But then when
Speaker 1: it comes times to vote, all she's done is vote
Speaker 1: for the most extreme, brain dead version of the conservative
Speaker 1: case like she like. Whatever she does at oral arguments
Speaker 1: has thus far not linked up to what she does
Speaker 1: behind closed doors when it comes time kind to vote.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to put too much faith in there,
Speaker 1: but based on aur arguments at least, she seemed extremely
Speaker 1: skeptical that independent state legislature theory was a thing. Right,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting. So she is actually smarter than she votes.
Speaker 1: I think she gets a bad rap because, you know
Speaker 1: her her background coming into the court was so light,
Speaker 1: and people dislike her for entirely legitimate reasons. But please
Speaker 1: don't come at her as if she's dumb. She's not dumb.
Speaker 1: She's not a man, basically, right, like all of the
Speaker 1: women are the Supreme Court are smarter than all of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're laughing, but that sounds right to me. It's much
Speaker 1: harder to succeed in these businesses as a woman, just
Speaker 1: like it is much harder to succeed at these than
Speaker 1: when you're black. I mean exactly. This is why the
Speaker 1: people who get there tend to be much, much, much
Speaker 1: smarter than the white guys. You can't be Amy Coney
Speaker 1: Barrett but have a background like Brett Kavanaugh, Right, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just fail up and be a woman, even
Speaker 1: in kind of conservative Republican circles. You know, there are exceptions,
Speaker 1: Carrie Lake Springs find for no reason, But she didn't win. Right,
Speaker 1: when you're a woman and you get to the level
Speaker 1: of Amy Coney Barrett, even within conservative circles, that there's
Speaker 1: probably some intellectual heft there, and she has it. She's
Speaker 1: an intelligent person. Her problem is not that she's dumb.
Speaker 1: Her problem is that she's at least she votes like one.
Speaker 1: Her problem is that she's a religious wing nut, or
Speaker 1: at least she votes like like. If you're gonna come
Speaker 1: at her, come at her for what she does. Don't
Speaker 1: come at her for her background. Because when you listen
Speaker 1: to her at court, she is an intelligent person who
Speaker 1: asks and again I can't emphasize this enough. Her questions
Speaker 1: are consistently now over the past two years, the best
Speaker 1: version of the conservative case possible. Right, she asked the
Speaker 1: questions correctly from the perspective of her view of you
Speaker 1: that I obviously disagree with. Really, the only stinker was
Speaker 1: during the dobbs Or argument where she kind of went
Speaker 1: off on a Jesus tangent about firehouse babies and in
Speaker 1: two years that the thing she said. I do not
Speaker 1: go through two years and have one thing to be
Speaker 1: the dump right, the most things you said in two years,
Speaker 1: but other than that kind of obvious problem. She's really
Speaker 1: intelligent and she asks really good questions. Again, when it
Speaker 1: comes time to vote, she votes like she's a brain
Speaker 1: dead problem right, talks like Kagan votes like Havana. That's
Speaker 1: her problem. Right. But you, as someone who has covered
Speaker 1: this court for a long time and who is quite smart,
Speaker 1: I think what you're trying to tell me is that
Speaker 1: there is that the Court is a power that changes people.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, and again I'm maybe reading between the
Speaker 1: lines here, but it seems like what you're saying is
Speaker 1: that people grow into the court. I'm not quite willing
Speaker 1: to go that far in her yet, right, but it
Speaker 1: could you feel like it's theoretically possible. What I think
Speaker 1: is true is that Amy Coney Barrett knows what she's doing, right.
Speaker 1: I think what is still unknown is what she wants
Speaker 1: to do. Right. She's got this power, she understands how
Speaker 1: it works, she understands how this game is played. The
Speaker 1: question is what she wants to do with that power.
Speaker 1: And I always contrast her with Brett Kavanaugh, not just
Speaker 1: because they are the closest in terms of their appointments,
Speaker 1: but because Bret Kavanaugh is a drooling idiot When he
Speaker 1: asked questions. They are the dumbest, most reductive, most most
Speaker 1: most least, most bog standard version of the Republican argument.
Speaker 1: Like he said, like there there is a lack of
Speaker 1: intellectual left that you see with Brett Kavanaugh, and there's
Speaker 1: also a sweaty desperation. She's off the man to be
Speaker 1: liked by the media. Now. I think that that John
Speaker 1: Roberts has gotten a completely um. He is entirely too
Speaker 1: respected by mainstream media. They love Roberts. Everybody wants that
Speaker 1: wants Roberts as their conservative friend. That is the wrong.
Speaker 1: Roberts is an enemy of black people voting. It has
Speaker 1: been for his entire career. But the way the media
Speaker 1: treats John Roberts is the way Brett Kavanaugh would like
Speaker 1: to be treated. The problem, of course, is that John Roberts,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as we know, never tried to
Speaker 1: rape anybody, right, and so like he can't kind of
Speaker 1: can't get around that, but he would like to. There's
Speaker 1: no world in which Kavanaugh will ever not be tainted
Speaker 1: by what he has done exactly, but he wants to
Speaker 1: be treated like Roberts, and so all of his all
Speaker 1: of his little machinations are, even in this case where
Speaker 1: he's trying he's trying to make this dissension right between
Speaker 1: bustery goor in this case, I don't know if he'll
Speaker 1: follow through on and I don't know if he just
Speaker 1: did that because he wants to be liked. He wants
Speaker 1: to sound reasonable more so than he is. So you
Speaker 1: can really distinguish between what Kavanaugh does, which is always
Speaker 1: kind of dumb, but also media facing and whatever versus
Speaker 1: again what we've seen from Barrett so far, which is
Speaker 1: to be smart, to be thoughtful, to be probative, but
Speaker 1: then be hind closed doors, just do the Republican bidding.
Speaker 1: So people have to see about that. Obviously, the smartest
Speaker 1: justice on the court right now is is Katanji Brown Jackson. Whoo.
Speaker 1: She just she comes out swinging hard, taking no prisoners.
Speaker 1: She has been and I've said this before, Molly, but
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm a grown as man, right, I'm a
Speaker 1: forty four year old man. I don't need I'm beyond
Speaker 1: the stage where I'm like, I hope that Disney character
Speaker 1: looks like me, because i feel like I'm beyond that
Speaker 1: right right, right, Katanji Brown Jackson is like me being
Speaker 1: a twelve year old and seeing a black princess and
Speaker 1: being like, maybe I could be a princess someday. Like
Speaker 1: she's that level of affirming. It's not just what she says,
Speaker 1: but how she says it. The way she attacks an argument,
Speaker 1: it's exactly the way that I think. It's exactly what
Speaker 1: I think should be done. And to hear it for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life coming from a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justice, it's just been so affirming and wonderful to
Speaker 1: to listen to her in these arguments. She gotta lose.
Speaker 1: I mean, she lose right because the votes. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sucks that you have these three pretty incredible liberal justices
Speaker 1: and then you have like the drunken beer guy. But
Speaker 1: like it's not I mean, can you imagine like that
Speaker 1: the women have killed themselves to get there. But lawmakers
Speaker 1: have added a provision in the National to the National
Speaker 1: Defense Authorization Acts. This is I'm reading a tweet from
Speaker 1: Jane Mayer protecting Supreme Court spouses from having to reveal
Speaker 1: any outside employer in the name of security. If it passes,
Speaker 1: Jenny Thomas's professional entanglements would effectively be state secrets. YEP,
Speaker 1: that sounds on brand for Republicans and Republicans. But it
Speaker 1: also sounds like the kind of thing Joe Mansion would
Speaker 1: be for, right, because like when you go too far
Speaker 1: into there is a desire on the behalf of corrupt
Speaker 1: politicians for us to not know who's paying for them. Right,
Speaker 1: Like it's in Nascar, they at least have the dignity
Speaker 1: to emblazon who bought them on their cars and on
Speaker 1: their shirts, right, But in American politics, they don't even
Speaker 1: have that level of dignity, right. They they don't want
Speaker 1: us to know who is funding them because they don't
Speaker 1: want us to know who actually controls their votes. And
Speaker 1: so hiding the spouses it's not security issue, nobody's nobody's
Speaker 1: threatening Jenny Thomas's right wing crazy conspiracy Q and on employers.
Speaker 1: It's not a real thing, right. They're doing it so
Speaker 1: they can hide what these people do. I remember, these
Speaker 1: people are spouses, are you know, like Jenny Thomas, A
Speaker 1: lot of the Supreme Court justices have spouses who were
Speaker 1: public figures before their spouses ascended to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Unlike Jenny Thomas, they pulled back from public life to
Speaker 1: avoid the appearance of impropriety. But John Roberts's wife, for instance,
Speaker 1: Jane Sullivan was a fierce forced birth lawyer who ran
Speaker 1: forced birth organizations and pushed rel Leslie the legal theories
Speaker 1: that would eventually be used to overturn Roe v. Wade
Speaker 1: for her whole life until Roberts to send it to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Right, super interesting, Thank you so much, Ellie,
Speaker 1: super interesting. I hope you will come back absolutely, Molly.
Speaker 1: You guys, you guys have a nice one. You're the best.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Jason Selvig and dav Rom Stifler are a
Speaker 1: comedic duo known as The Good Liars. Welcome Too Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: The Good Liars, Thanks for having us, Thanks for having
Speaker 1: us here. Jason, Hey, how's it going make your voice
Speaker 1: sound distinctive? I can do it, am impression and yes,
Speaker 1: good do Advram oppression. Now I'm not gonna do that
Speaker 1: to da Vrom say hi to us so we can
Speaker 1: people can Hello everyone, This is Davrom here. Jason was
Speaker 1: a pretty good impression of me. A little it's on
Speaker 1: the offensive side, but uh, pretty good. Good enough that
Speaker 1: my my Syria on my phone picks him up and
Speaker 1: thinks it's me O. Hey SERI, oh wow, my series
Speaker 1: not going off, So that was a mistake on my part. Uh,
Speaker 1: get what you deserve. So anyway, welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have you guys on the podcast to
Speaker 1: talk about all of the stuff that you guys do
Speaker 1: that is pretty hilarious. I mean, I don't know where
Speaker 1: we start here. I guess you should start by telling
Speaker 1: people how you two found each other. Sure, yeah, de
Speaker 1: Vron and I were friends in the city through the
Speaker 1: comedy scene for years and years, and we didn't like
Speaker 1: do a lot of comedy together. We mostly were friends
Speaker 1: from playing basketball together. We would go play pick up
Speaker 1: games in the city. And then around the time of
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street, we did one video together, a comedy
Speaker 1: video where we acted like we were investment bankers that
Speaker 1: were down there protesting the protesters, and we called ourselves
Speaker 1: Occupy Occupy Wall Street, and we thought we were kind
Speaker 1: of you know, we thought it was pretty obvious that
Speaker 1: we were joking, and we were saying ridiculous things like
Speaker 1: if you guys keep protesting, we're gonna have to give
Speaker 1: up our house in the Hampton's and uh, quit our
Speaker 1: cocaine addiction. And we thought it was a pretty obvious joke.
Speaker 1: But people thought we were real, and the news reported
Speaker 1: on us like we were real, and real investment bankers
Speaker 1: came and joined us in the protests. Yeah. Eventually we
Speaker 1: we had like we had a website. We were selling
Speaker 1: cuff links for like three hundred bucks, just like I said,
Speaker 1: one percent on them, be part of the one percent,
Speaker 1: and by these like everything was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: joke was taken seriously, and then real bankers joined us
Speaker 1: and we're saying all this that crazy stuff we were
Speaker 1: saying along with us. It was like this out of
Speaker 1: body experience where like we thought we were, you know,
Speaker 1: doing caricatures of people, and now here they are joining us.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because we had New York Times pitch on
Speaker 1: this podcast and he said that he used to comment
Speaker 1: on this conservative blog as a way of trolling them,
Speaker 1: and they thought he was serious. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the same deal where it was like the more ridiculous
Speaker 1: we would get, the more people would be like nodding
Speaker 1: and saying yes. And it was kind of at that
Speaker 1: point where we realized that like both of us, I
Speaker 1: feel comfortable, you know, for better or worse, doing these
Speaker 1: things in public and doing ridiculous things in public and
Speaker 1: from there, we kind of were like going. We ended
Speaker 1: up doing a movie on the election where we kind
Speaker 1: of got into the world of pranking politicians, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of evolved along the way. But it's all in
Speaker 1: the real world. We're putting ourselves in, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of tricky situation sometimes, but all all for the sake
Speaker 1: of comedy. I mean, do you guys have anxiety about
Speaker 1: doing these things? I mean, I don't have any anxiety
Speaker 1: about public speaking, but I think this might freak me
Speaker 1: out a little bit. I think yes is the answer
Speaker 1: to some degree. But we have gotten used to it.
Speaker 1: Like there is as crazy as some of these situations are,
Speaker 1: there's like a routine to it. Like we go somewhere,
Speaker 1: we stay in a shitty hotel, we write our little
Speaker 1: notes about what we want to say, we show up
Speaker 1: like it is kind of tense, but because we've done
Speaker 1: it enough, there's like a little bit of a routine
Speaker 1: to fall back on. In a weird way. But I
Speaker 1: think some of the craziness of the situations, you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't go away over time because there's like a certain
Speaker 1: amount of danger and and it will always be new
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with real people. So yes, yes and no.
Speaker 1: I guess. You know what's funny because I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: we had this incredible activist on this podcast, crackhead Barney.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah yeah, oh yeah yeah yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: I said, like, did you ever feel like actually scared?
Speaker 1: Was there any place where we've ever felt scared? She
Speaker 1: got arrested once, right, she could put in a mental
Speaker 1: institution once. That would be scared. I would be scary
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, hard, yes, hard, yes, I guess would
Speaker 1: be her answer. What is Belleview still? Does that still exist? No?
Speaker 1: I mean, guess where was the scariest place She said
Speaker 1: she'd ever been? Troup Rally, Staten Island. That is a
Speaker 1: scary place, you know, scary. So so what do you guys?
Speaker 1: I mean, where have you felt really like we're going
Speaker 1: to get murdered? January six was scary? That was That
Speaker 1: was That was like the thing that the event that
Speaker 1: we went to that where it definitely took a toll
Speaker 1: on at least my mental state. I tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about that experience. We got there like the
Speaker 1: day before and it was we were staying in this
Speaker 1: hotel and people were up all night playing like military
Speaker 1: pump up music, and so that was like all night
Speaker 1: the night before, so it just definitely felt like something,
Speaker 1: something was coming. Jason interrupted a little, but I just
Speaker 1: felt like we should mention that the January that was
Speaker 1: almost as crazy, like Alex Jones and Roger Stone and
Speaker 1: Ali Alexander and all those people spoke to night before
Speaker 1: people went to that and we're just like partying and
Speaker 1: it was that was the night before was we got
Speaker 1: there on the fifth and we did some interviews and
Speaker 1: talked to some people, and then we went back to
Speaker 1: the hotel or checked in the hotel, and I remember,
Speaker 1: and we then walked to the Alex Jones Roger Stone
Speaker 1: speaking thing and there were people like Proud Boys or
Speaker 1: I don't even know who, militia members in bull profess
Speaker 1: and military gear all around the city that like had
Speaker 1: a perimeter, that were on radios talking to other people.
Speaker 1: They like basically like owned the city at that point,
Speaker 1: owned d C. They like they they were the uh
Speaker 1: quote unquote police presence there or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, their their own military presence. And then we
Speaker 1: got to the Alex Jones event and he was speaking
Speaker 1: and it was like the closest thing I can imagine
Speaker 1: what it would be like to see Hitler speech speak
Speaker 1: at in Germany in the nineteen thirties. Just the way
Speaker 1: he was speaking. I think we have a video of
Speaker 1: it somewhere where he's speaking and just screaming and pounding
Speaker 1: the podium and talking about how it's a war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like indistinguishable. He's throwing his fist up and he's
Speaker 1: like yelling, and he's pounding the podium like in rhythm
Speaker 1: as he's speaking, and it's like it's not well lit.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were expecting, you know, as many
Speaker 1: people as they got there, it didn't feel like it
Speaker 1: was very organized, like the chaos was like brewing. For sure,
Speaker 1: it was a very unsettling night. Everything was closed, We
Speaker 1: couldn't get dinner anywhere. Everything was boarded up. I think
Speaker 1: people were thinking something really bad was going to happen
Speaker 1: the next day, and then they were right to think that.
Speaker 1: But then the next morning we went out and we
Speaker 1: talked to people, and just everyone that we spoke to.
Speaker 1: You know, Davram has this amazing interview where he talks
Speaker 1: to a guy who's saying he's going to die in
Speaker 1: his boots for Donald Trump. Like everyone was speaking like
Speaker 1: this was an injustice and it was going to be
Speaker 1: right that very day. This was seventeen seventy six, two
Speaker 1: point Oh, we're going to take this thing over. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they tried to do. And it when
Speaker 1: the we wanted to get out of town. Before we started,
Speaker 1: we started to feel like some some like as Trump
Speaker 1: was about to be finished speaking, We're like, this is
Speaker 1: probably the time to leave. And then um, we were
Speaker 1: driving along whatever whatever it is constitution is that right,
Speaker 1: trying to leave and we saw like this mob of people.
Speaker 1: So in the time that we had gotten our car
Speaker 1: and started to head out of town, Trump had said
Speaker 1: we're going to the capital, and so we're like leaving town,
Speaker 1: checking Twitter, like no way. He actually told them to
Speaker 1: go there, and he did, and we pulled over and like, well,
Speaker 1: whatever is about to happen, let's at least just not
Speaker 1: miss it. And then within like five minutes they had
Speaker 1: broken through the you know, the barricades and yeah, there
Speaker 1: were flashbanks. Yeah. That was the thing that stuck with
Speaker 1: me was you were seeing these cops like just like
Speaker 1: getting the hell beat out of them by by these people,
Speaker 1: and we were, you know, we were by the steps
Speaker 1: in the in the back where they broke through, and
Speaker 1: you're just seeing these just getting hit in the face
Speaker 1: with flags, flag balls, I should say. And it was
Speaker 1: I thought that the police, like, for the most part,
Speaker 1: I acted completely heroically and they were just like getting
Speaker 1: beat up. But I thought at some point one of
Speaker 1: them was going to pull out a gun and like shoot,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what I would do in that
Speaker 1: situation if I was getting beat up and people were
Speaker 1: gonna were trying to get in there to potentially kill
Speaker 1: members of Congress or the vice president. So whenever a
Speaker 1: flashband went off, my first instinct was, oh, bullets are
Speaker 1: gonna fly, and I like could get shot right now,
Speaker 1: and it's probably you know better that you know, people
Speaker 1: didn't get shot with it, you know, one obvious exception,
Speaker 1: but that really stuck with me where I would like
Speaker 1: go try to go to sleep at night, and then
Speaker 1: I would be like kind of had like PTSD for
Speaker 1: a little bit. From that, I was I was standing
Speaker 1: next to the police officer trying to call he was
Speaker 1: trying to call for back up, and it was in
Speaker 1: tears because I think as far as anyone knew, it
Speaker 1: was like many many, many people were dying in there.
Speaker 1: At that moment, nobody, you know, we didn't have the
Speaker 1: benefit of any time having passed and watching on TV
Speaker 1: and getting any reporting. It was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: is this happening right now? And then of course someone
Speaker 1: saw our microphone and said we were part of the
Speaker 1: fake news and kind of like chased us out of
Speaker 1: there a little bit, and I think at that point
Speaker 1: we were happy to leave. Yeah, there was. It was
Speaker 1: like a group of like twelve guys that like circled
Speaker 1: around us and said that we were part of the
Speaker 1: fake news media. And then a flashband went off and
Speaker 1: everybody turned around and we were like, all right, that's
Speaker 1: our que let's let's let's make our way to the
Speaker 1: exit of Washington, d C. Now we do not want
Speaker 1: to be here for this. And oddly enough, like it
Speaker 1: was like some people were unaware anything was going on
Speaker 1: to like a block away. Someone's just like on a
Speaker 1: run with their dog, the same thing they do every day.
Speaker 1: Like at that time, it was like if you weren't
Speaker 1: in that like block or two radius, like life was
Speaker 1: just happening ordinarily, it was really eerie. That is really
Speaker 1: quite interesting, So tell me what else have you done?
Speaker 1: That's been weird and strange and interesting. Well every Trump
Speaker 1: rally we go to is is weird and strange and interesting.
Speaker 1: I think you could you could say all those words.
Speaker 1: Not the actual rallies, not go in any We don't
Speaker 1: go in. If you see there, goes on forever and ever.
Speaker 1: I mean just endless. We usually get out of there
Speaker 1: before he even speaks. And yeah, because it's just it's
Speaker 1: just not worth it. He really is boring, and it's
Speaker 1: just if you've seen one, you've you've seen them all.
Speaker 1: In the last couple years, we were filming in Georgia
Speaker 1: with herschel Walker and that was interesting. We were in
Speaker 1: Kentucky and we just saw a bunch of people wearing
Speaker 1: shirts matching shirts, and we thought, is this some sort
Speaker 1: of like Pyramids game or something. And we walked into
Speaker 1: this this big auditorium and it was it was like
Speaker 1: ten am, and they were all chanting along and singing
Speaker 1: along about some sort of like ionized water or something.
Speaker 1: We never put a video out about to Ketones, so
Speaker 1: I apologize that somebody a listener is a member, but
Speaker 1: you can end up in the weirdest places on these trips.
Speaker 1: It was like like it felt like a rave and
Speaker 1: it was ten am and we were the only ones
Speaker 1: not in these T shirts. The thing I'm always amazed by,
Speaker 1: like when you are sort of going around places, is
Speaker 1: that there's really strange stuff you can wander into. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really just putting ourselves in this situation and
Speaker 1: going out there, and the strangest place you can wander
Speaker 1: into our Some of these people's minds though, probably like
Speaker 1: seven out of ten people we stopped and talked to,
Speaker 1: granted it's a self selecting group of Republicans at a
Speaker 1: Trump rally, it's you know, it's going to be some
Speaker 1: of the people that are more out there, but it's
Speaker 1: like seven out of ten people are going to say
Speaker 1: something like that is wild, like really wild stuff. It's
Speaker 1: an actor wearing a mask. We've each heard that like
Speaker 1: enough times at oh yeah yeah. One woman we talked
Speaker 1: to said it was it was Jim Carey actually playing him,
Speaker 1: and we were like, Jim Carreck and we were like,
Speaker 1: because Biden tripped going up the stairs and it was
Speaker 1: so funny that only a genius comedic actor like Jim
Speaker 1: Carey could have been doing that. So wait, so if
Speaker 1: Biden is Jim Carrey. Are they happy with that or Now?
Speaker 1: That's the thing I can never really understand. One interview
Speaker 1: stands out to me. It was somebody at Sea Pack,
Speaker 1: I guess outside Sea Pack, they weren't inside the convention.
Speaker 1: I was talking to him and he was saying that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden isn't Joe Biden, it's an actor. Trump is
Speaker 1: actually still the president. And then I said, well, are
Speaker 1: you mad at Trump because of the high gas prices?
Speaker 1: And he said no, I'm not. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: whose fault is that? And he said Joe Biden. And
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a second. You just said Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is not the president and it's it made sense
Speaker 1: to him. It doesn't. It still doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: But he was still blaming Joe Biden even though he
Speaker 1: doesn't think he's president. I think the thing they think
Speaker 1: makes sense to enough sense to them is that there
Speaker 1: is a bigger plan. They're not concerned with the details,
Speaker 1: but it's just important to let everyone know that, like
Speaker 1: nothing is as it seems. And once you believe that,
Speaker 1: then you're you just need to trust and follow the
Speaker 1: plan and the details become like not important. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've interviewed the guy who thinks he's jfk Jr. Vincent Fusca.
Speaker 1: That guy doesn't look anything like jfk j even a little.
Speaker 1: He's way too tall and handsome, exactly for those extremely online.
Speaker 1: The guy who the Q and On people think is
Speaker 1: jfk Jr. Is not, is like it looks like he's
Speaker 1: a bad twenty years older and five inches shorter. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and he's actually like some sort of financial consultant
Speaker 1: that has like lived in Pittsburgh for thirty years. Like
Speaker 1: there's no public records that tell you this is who
Speaker 1: he is. That he's got kids. I think I think
Speaker 1: I forget someone we're in into said there, you know,
Speaker 1: some sibling went to school with his kids. Like this
Speaker 1: guy is just not jfk Jr. Not even a little No.
Speaker 1: But I think he's like happy to go along with it,
Speaker 1: Like he's got this the weirdest kind of fame. People
Speaker 1: stop him to take pictures. He's now like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's got a special spot, you know, somewhere behind Trump
Speaker 1: at a lot of these things. So I think he's
Speaker 1: just rolls with it and doesn't really answer any questions.
Speaker 1: But just like one more piece of weird shrapnel in
Speaker 1: all of this stuff that is going on. Is that
Speaker 1: now there's a little famous h JFK Jr. Walking around?
Speaker 1: What about the guy who wears the brick wall suit? Jason, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just interviewed him. Yeah, I just you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was interesting because he was saying, by
Speaker 1: the way, for those who are not incredibly online, this
Speaker 1: is the guy who goes to all of Trump's rallies
Speaker 1: and wears a suit that looks like a brick wall. Hey,
Speaker 1: so he's the build the Wall guy. He's the build
Speaker 1: the wall guy. But he was the guy I talked to.
Speaker 1: He was very clear. He's like, I just want to
Speaker 1: be clear. There's two of us, two of us, and
Speaker 1: I might not be the guy you're thinking I'm at
Speaker 1: all the rallies, but I don't know if I might
Speaker 1: might be thinking of the other build the Wall guy.
Speaker 1: But I do want to disagree with what you guys
Speaker 1: were saying, because I actually do believe that Vincent Fusca
Speaker 1: is JFK Jr. You want that on the record, Yes,
Speaker 1: I want that on the record. This Vincent Fusco looks
Speaker 1: like he's significantly older than JFK would be junior if
Speaker 1: he were still alive. It's almost like that's not him,
Speaker 1: but you could, Jason, that's what they want you to believe.
Speaker 1: He doesn't hive at all. No, it's very it's very,
Speaker 1: very weird. Back to the wall guy, Jason talked to
Speaker 1: him for kind of a long time and got him
Speaker 1: on a kind of you know, our biggest problem is
Speaker 1: China thing, and they went on that for a while.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the the tag of the guy's suit is
Speaker 1: just sticking out on, you know, out of the back
Speaker 1: of his neck, and you know, Jason asks to see
Speaker 1: the tag and the suits made in China case anybody
Speaker 1: wanted to know out there to build the walls, but
Speaker 1: suit when you ask them about that, what do they say?
Speaker 1: He was like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's hard to get
Speaker 1: anything else from another place, so I had to get
Speaker 1: it from China. It's just like, you know, you could
Speaker 1: spout out for a million years. And we've had that
Speaker 1: a couple of times where people would talk about China
Speaker 1: how much they hate it, and then do you like
Speaker 1: be like, can I see your hat and it's made
Speaker 1: in China. You know, it's just like it's a I
Speaker 1: don't want to say the jokes right themselves sometimes, but
Speaker 1: it's and I think one guy, he had all these flyers.
Speaker 1: He was like COVID as China's fault. You know, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: He thought it was the worst and came from China
Speaker 1: and we needed to be holding China accountable. That was
Speaker 1: his whole stick. He had like a table with fires.
Speaker 1: He was handing him out. He was talking to people
Speaker 1: and made in China hat. Oh yeah, it's amazing. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much. I hope you'll come back. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having us. Yeah, anytime. Nilai Patau is the
Speaker 1: editor and cheat of The Verge and host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Decoder. Welcome, Too Fast Politics. We're so excited to
Speaker 1: have you. We are in this weird where it's the
Speaker 1: it's the Twitter files, right, we got to talk about
Speaker 1: the Twitter files. You are the editor of a tech publication.
Speaker 1: You have spent a long time in tech journalism. What
Speaker 1: the funk is happening? Yeah? I have sent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in tech Journalist and the versions published a
Speaker 1: lot of stories content moderation. Over the years. We've been
Speaker 1: nominated like major journalism awards for big expos as content
Speaker 1: mode ration really works. These companies. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathy for a good content moderation story. It is
Speaker 1: a very complicated thing that big companies do. And every
Speaker 1: time you peel back the layers of the onion, you're
Speaker 1: like at the center of it. There's just like a
Speaker 1: couple of people who are like, I don't know, take
Speaker 1: it down right, like and like you build up all
Speaker 1: of these processes to try and make it fair to
Speaker 1: like let everybody sleep at night, and then kind of
Speaker 1: at the end of the day it's we don't have
Speaker 1: a rule, but it sucks. Take it down right, And
Speaker 1: you just see this over and over again and kind
Speaker 1: of the furthest version of this, the most like built
Speaker 1: up version. This is like Facebook literally set up a
Speaker 1: supreme court. They have an oversight ward that is composed
Speaker 1: of famous lawyers and politicians that is a supreme court
Speaker 1: for them because they don't want the responsibility. So that's
Speaker 1: just the stage. I just want to put that out there, like,
Speaker 1: this is a very hard thing that social media companies
Speaker 1: has to do. There are lots and lots of pressures
Speaker 1: placed on them to take all kinds of things down.
Speaker 1: For some reasons are really good, right, Like some content
Speaker 1: is illegal. Some content is like really damaging the teenage girls.
Speaker 1: Some content is just like openly racist. Some content they're
Speaker 1: advertisers would pay all their bills, don't like like some
Speaker 1: content government just don't want to have existed. So they
Speaker 1: face all these pressures and the goal in these systems.
Speaker 1: What's hilarious about the Twitter files, Like what they are
Speaker 1: exposing is a bunch of like diligent nerds doing bording
Speaker 1: stuff right. Right, It's like they haven't exposed like the
Speaker 1: Twitter would happily have told you all of the things
Speaker 1: right and they did, right. I mean, it's in the
Speaker 1: terms of service. It's well, it's not even in the
Speaker 1: terms of service, like Twitter has been very open. Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey isn't very open. We made the wrong decision with
Speaker 1: the Hunter Biden New York Post story. They changed their mind,
Speaker 1: like you know, they like started allowing the list of up.
Speaker 1: I think you have to recall that in the moment
Speaker 1: that story was published, no one knew the providence of
Speaker 1: that information, no one knew where it had come from,
Speaker 1: and there had been in the past. Yeah, like these
Speaker 1: hacken week operations beyond wiki leaks like I Cloud mccrowen
Speaker 1: leaks mccrollan leaks, if you will, recall a bunch of
Speaker 1: famous women had their eye cloud accounts act and their
Speaker 1: nudes leaked. Like that's the real thing that has happened
Speaker 1: in the past. Sony had its email systems breached, and
Speaker 1: the president's emy, Pascal Head her emails leaked all over
Speaker 1: the place, including like a very intimate shopping list on Amazon. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's because they got North Koreans really really mad.
Speaker 1: It's true. But so all of these platforms like developed
Speaker 1: these policies that are like, you know what, like we're
Speaker 1: complicit in this thing, and like we're complicit in someone
Speaker 1: hacks your system and says pay us the ransom and bitcoin,
Speaker 1: or like leak all your emails. We don't want to
Speaker 1: be complicit. It's like they developed all these sort of
Speaker 1: like hair trigger shut it down systems. I got in
Speaker 1: that context, overheated, overdone, and then they changed your mind,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, okay, that sucks. You made their
Speaker 1: own decision, But they weren't. None of those executives are
Speaker 1: running around saying this was the right decision. They all
Speaker 1: admit it was wrong decision. And so I think what
Speaker 1: you're seeing with the Twitter files, particularly a second set
Speaker 1: where it's like some people on Twitter had their reach suppressed.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, dude, like they they say it out
Speaker 1: loud like they were they were not unclear about what
Speaker 1: they were trying to do. They're trying to make the
Speaker 1: platform or pleasant. It's just it is being presented as
Speaker 1: though it is this ongoing scandal. Is things are revealed,
Speaker 1: and I think what everyone is going to come to learn,
Speaker 1: what we have come to learn doing hundreds of content
Speaker 1: moderation stories over the years, is once you fall all
Speaker 1: the way down the rabbit hole of talking on content moderation,
Speaker 1: but people just tune out, it's just boring. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. What I think is pretty interesting
Speaker 1: about Elon's Twitter purchase is that we've seen him he's
Speaker 1: like literally living out loud, like he's doing everything that
Speaker 1: Twitter has done. Right. He went back and you know,
Speaker 1: he said, we're going to just let everyone get verified. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that. We're gonna do no
Speaker 1: content moderation. Oh well, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does seem like he gets to the
Speaker 1: same place that Twitter is anyway. Yeah, so I just
Speaker 1: talked to Matt mollen White, who's the CEO of Coming
Speaker 1: called Automatic. They're the holding company that owns WordPress. They
Speaker 1: also owned Tumbler. He's the CEO of Tumbler as well.
Speaker 1: And you know, they bought Tumbler from Verizon for like nothing,
Speaker 1: for like three million dollars. And it was like, he
Speaker 1: said to me, this has been the most humbling experience
Speaker 1: of my career owning a social network. Like we bought
Speaker 1: it for nothing, Like we bought it for the smallest
Speaker 1: amount of money that anybody would feel good about. It
Speaker 1: was losing money and has all these users Tumblings famous
Speaker 1: content moderation problems kicked off the app store already. And
Speaker 1: he's like, our roadmap is basically Twitter short map. We
Speaker 1: want to reduce our reliance on advertising income. We want
Speaker 1: to build some subscriptions when you created all the stuff
Speaker 1: that he wants is he wants to do. And he's like,
Speaker 1: Ellen is quickly going to get to the place where
Speaker 1: he already was, because once you start going down the road,
Speaker 1: you could be as libertarian about speech as you want,
Speaker 1: but there is all this stuff that is horrible that
Speaker 1: drives away your users, that drives away your advertisers, that
Speaker 1: limits your ability to grow, that makes you feel bad
Speaker 1: about being the CEO of a social network that you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to just not have the example he gave,
Speaker 1: I think this is like impossible to argue with. There
Speaker 1: is a community of people out there who are pro anorexia,
Speaker 1: and they run around telling people to be interacting, specifically
Speaker 1: young women, and like, you should just not surface that content,
Speaker 1: You should not give that content reach. You should not
Speaker 1: feel good about running a service where that content is
Speaker 1: allowed to proliferate. And at some point, no matter who
Speaker 1: you are, what your beliefs, you're just going to run
Speaker 1: into the reality of millions of people are using my service.
Speaker 1: They're chaotic, they cannot be controlled, and I have to
Speaker 1: make some decisions about what will happen here or or
Speaker 1: what I won't allow. And it is not for nothing
Speaker 1: that every major social network in this country more or
Speaker 1: less arrives at the exact same position around content moderation,
Speaker 1: because that's just the reality of the constraints if you
Speaker 1: want to grow your business. So now, this very white
Speaker 1: thing I thought was interesting. They were so breathless, like
Speaker 1: you know, they're like and then every reveal I mean
Speaker 1: and you saw it with that to do that, every
Speaker 1: reveal was like and then they said, I mean like
Speaker 1: there was no smoking gun yet, right. Yeah. My favorite
Speaker 1: part of the very tweet storm, I'm pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was hers, was she was like a secret committee composed
Speaker 1: of Jack Dorsey, the CEO, the head of trust and safety,
Speaker 1: the company's lewner And it's like, yeah, that's the top
Speaker 1: of the company. That's the that's the company, like the
Speaker 1: C suite, right, Yeah, that's the c suite of the company.
Speaker 1: Like you're saying that problems with like tricky problems in
Speaker 1: content moderation were escalated to a committee at the top
Speaker 1: of the company that then made a decision and they
Speaker 1: were somewhat unaccountable. Like have you ever worked at a company?
Speaker 1: Didn't you work at The New York Times, like one
Speaker 1: of the most famously hierarchical and political media companies. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't. Like, there's just an element of people reacting
Speaker 1: to the world as it is as though it's a scandal,
Speaker 1: which is built into all of this, and I think
Speaker 1: that's fine. You know, like I was once a teenager
Speaker 1: who reacted to the state of the world as though
Speaker 1: it was an ongoing scandal, right, I just don't think
Speaker 1: you're going to get a lot of traction with you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of mainstream consumer of Twitter. By saying did
Speaker 1: you know that the CEO of Twitter often makes capricious decisions?
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, that's been that is the experience of
Speaker 1: these Your Twitter has been for a decade. Did you
Speaker 1: know Mark Zuckerberg is very powerful? Yeah? Great? Do you
Speaker 1: think that Ellen will just keep going and keep doing these?
Speaker 1: I mean, they get attention from a certain group, They
Speaker 1: don't necessarily move the needle. They do seem to be
Speaker 1: getting more and more boring. The endgame here? Again, I
Speaker 1: have heard from people, and again I don't believe this,
Speaker 1: but I've heard that Ellen's goal is to drive down
Speaker 1: the value of the company so he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: service the debt. I don't know how he could do that,
Speaker 1: because I think the distressed investors, the investors who are
Speaker 1: good at getting money for people who buy stuff that
Speaker 1: they can't afford. In this case, he can't afford it,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't want to pay for it. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're going to let him do that. But do
Speaker 1: you does that look like the end game to you here?
Speaker 1: Or do you think he's just like having fun. I
Speaker 1: think mostly he's having fun. I don't think the endgame
Speaker 1: is the failure. And Ellen is a risk taker. I
Speaker 1: think he enjoys the gamble. And you know that people
Speaker 1: who surrounds himself with their metaphors for everything or like
Speaker 1: high stakes poker. Fine. I actually applaud the idea that
Speaker 1: you should take immense risks with the products that you make.
Speaker 1: I think that's cool. I think there's like an element
Speaker 1: that it's fun. I don't think his goal is failures.
Speaker 1: You can get out of financial obligation, and certainly there
Speaker 1: are reports this week that some of the banks are
Speaker 1: willing to accept testless stock and revalue the loans, and
Speaker 1: we'll see there's just some financial engineering here. I do
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of people in Silicon Valley, a
Speaker 1: lot of investors who are like, all of these companies
Speaker 1: are too bloated, and this is like the first time
Speaker 1: we're ever going to run an experiment like this where
Speaker 1: we just destroy a company's culture and rip out all
Speaker 1: of the fluff indiscriminately and see what happens. Like what
Speaker 1: if Meta could be fifty of its size and still
Speaker 1: operate like that company would just produce profits like massive
Speaker 1: profits would have. Google could be half the size of
Speaker 1: itself and still be Google. That company would just print
Speaker 1: money because it wouldn't be paying for all this stuff
Speaker 1: that you know a lot of people in the valley
Speaker 1: think or is meaningless or useless. And Twitter is much
Speaker 1: smaller than those companies. I remind everybody all the time
Speaker 1: when you talk about big tech, it is in error
Speaker 1: a category air to say Twitter is part of big tech.
Speaker 1: Twitter is teeny tiny. He fired fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: people and he still on me has two thousands some people.
Speaker 1: It's like nothing. Twitter in a year makes less money
Speaker 1: than Facebook. Facebook makes a right. So this is a
Speaker 1: tiny company, but it is the first and only time
Speaker 1: and experiment like this has been run where you just
Speaker 1: gut the company, you reset the culture, you get rid
Speaker 1: of all the institutional knowledge that most smart business experts
Speaker 1: would tell you it was important to sustain a company,
Speaker 1: and you see what happens, and thus far the experiment
Speaker 1: has been working out right, at least on one level.
Speaker 1: I experience all kinds of weird errors and Twitter left
Speaker 1: and right. I feel personally less motivated to tweet, to
Speaker 1: make content for free, for the service but but it's
Speaker 1: still up, it's still working, it's it's surviving the World Cup.
Speaker 1: So I think there's just an element of just experimentation.
Speaker 1: Like I think everyone's curious, and I think because of
Speaker 1: the people involved, they want to go and they wanted
Speaker 1: to succeed, so they can go out to the other
Speaker 1: companies are invested in, or the other companies they were
Speaker 1: on and say, you know what, what if we just
Speaker 1: delete it? That's just sort of fascinating and a little
Speaker 1: bit dystopian. I always thought of Twitter are as the
Speaker 1: people worked at Twitter were always sort of the most
Speaker 1: kind of upstanding, in the least evil, you know, they
Speaker 1: were earnest in a way. So I see what you're saying,
Speaker 1: but it's very depressing, and that earnest this is probably
Speaker 1: why Twitter was like a bad company. Criticizing Elon's administration,
Speaker 1: Twitter is in no way praise for the previous administration
Speaker 1: or the administration before that, Like this has not been
Speaker 1: a well run company. Often the earnestness that you describe,
Speaker 1: or the sincerity, and I certainly have experienced that sincerity
Speaker 1: fully got in Twitter's way when it came to being
Speaker 1: a well run company with a path forward to be
Speaker 1: successful and actually ellen buying the company. One person showing
Speaker 1: up and being like, yeah, I'll just buy the whole thing,
Speaker 1: like doesn't usually happen, right, And a board of directors
Speaker 1: does not usually look at an offer like this and
Speaker 1: be like, you know what, we have no fucking plan
Speaker 1: to get to evaluation of forty four billion dollars. There's
Speaker 1: nothing we can do, and this guy sucks and there's
Speaker 1: no one else screw it, Like, let's take the cash
Speaker 1: and walk, which is the decision the board of Rector's
Speaker 1: Twitter made, And that to me is as damning as anything.
Speaker 1: They had no ideas for how to get to this valuation.
Speaker 1: So yes, it's true as a company, as a culture,
Speaker 1: as individuals, very earnest, very sincere right, but not earnest
Speaker 1: enough not to cash out, right, They weren't, like, my
Speaker 1: principles are worth more than that this moron who's overpaying.
Speaker 1: I mean he's not a moron, obviously, but you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, he's overpaying for the privilege of taking over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe he'll crash the car off the cliff and
Speaker 1: maybe he won't. But like Twitter was successful despite itself,
Speaker 1: it was successful because it attracted so many users, but
Speaker 1: it was not successful as a business. I say, you
Speaker 1: will let Meta and metas like the comparison here, because
Speaker 1: it's the other large social networking company. Mark Zuckerberg has conviction, right,
Speaker 1: and like he's the god emperor of that company. You
Speaker 1: can't get rid of him, and it's going to do
Speaker 1: whatever he wants. And He's key is clear that like
Speaker 1: what he wants is for all of us to like
Speaker 1: put our brains in vats and live in the metaverse.
Speaker 1: I'm like, fine, he's gonna try to do it. Twitter
Speaker 1: had no conviction, right, It had no center. It was
Speaker 1: just it continued to exist to spite itself. And I
Speaker 1: think that to me is it is is damning of
Speaker 1: the administration of Twitter, the previous administration, as it is
Speaker 1: damning of Musk, Who's like, screw it. I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: it all off the cliff, including the good parts. I'm
Speaker 1: not even to evaluate the parts of this that we're working.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, screw it. Now. It's a payment set
Speaker 1: that's delightfully dystopian. We need to talk about the c
Speaker 1: g I chatbot that's going to destroy all of our
Speaker 1: careers and replace us. Are we going to be replaced
Speaker 1: by c g I, chat bots, GPTs. What you're talking about, yes,
Speaker 1: gbs whatever many initials put together. Our cameras are off
Speaker 1: what I could personally use some c g I. So
Speaker 1: maybe that's pretty good. Yeah, I think is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Will you explain to my dad what it is? Sure
Speaker 1: if you took a robot and you said, I want
Speaker 1: you to read the entire Internet, and then you said, now,
Speaker 1: what you are is the world's fanciest Microsoft word autocomplete system,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna ask you a question, and You're just
Speaker 1: gonna guess what the next word of the sentence should
Speaker 1: be in response to that question. And that's really what
Speaker 1: it's doing. It's not alive, it's not thinking. It just
Speaker 1: has a map of all of the language on the
Speaker 1: Internet and the probability that some words come after another
Speaker 1: in response to prompts, and so it's just it's just
Speaker 1: a really really fancy auto complete and obviously very impressive
Speaker 1: autocomplete and in some cases deeply hilarious autocomplete. But it's autocomplete,
Speaker 1: and so there's limits to it, right, and there's limits
Speaker 1: that are imposed by the people who make it. Open
Speaker 1: eye it won't it won't answer some questions. It will
Speaker 1: happily tell you it's not a search engine all the time.
Speaker 1: But then there are things, uh. And this is like
Speaker 1: a great phrase that our reporter James Vincent, who covers
Speaker 1: AI for the Vergi, told me that there's amazing phrase.
Speaker 1: It's called the capability overhang, which is you invent a
Speaker 1: system like this. The AI researchers and developers they can't.
Speaker 1: They're not as creative as the whole internet. So then
Speaker 1: you give it to the whole internet and you start
Speaker 1: discovering all the stuff that you had no idea could do.
Speaker 1: And then you were like off on the cliff being like, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't think about that. Should we slow it down?
Speaker 1: And I think that's the that's the thing we're all
Speaker 1: experiencing right now. These models have existed for years. In fact,
Speaker 1: the core technology of chat GPT is what they made
Speaker 1: was a user interface for it. That's really fun, right,
Speaker 1: They made it a chat bot. But Google has demoed
Speaker 1: this kind of technology for a long time. Microsoft has
Speaker 1: demoed it. I don't know if you recalled this, but
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago there's a Google engineer named
Speaker 1: Blake Lemoyne who was like Google's chat bot is alive.
Speaker 1: Be fired because Google is like, this thing is definitely
Speaker 1: not alive, right, it's super not alive. There was. Actually
Speaker 1: Google had another controversy with a woman named timnet Gibreu
Speaker 1: was one of their ethics researchers, and she published a
Speaker 1: paper was about a concept called stochastic parents, which is
Speaker 1: fundamentally like, if you train about like this on the
Speaker 1: on the text of the Internet, it will just be
Speaker 1: it will re flect the biases of the Internet at large. Right,
Speaker 1: It can only reflect to you what is on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and that means it will be sexist, it will be racist.
Speaker 1: But then people who talk to the robot will assume
Speaker 1: that the robot is more accurate than the Internet at large, right,
Speaker 1: so that you will ask it some question, it will
Speaker 1: deliver you from like racist or wrong answer, and it
Speaker 1: would be so confident that people will like assume that
Speaker 1: that is correct. And she got run out of Google
Speaker 1: for this paper. So Google has like put this technology
Speaker 1: that they haven't in a box right there. Their version
Speaker 1: is called Lambda, and they kind of like kind of
Speaker 1: afraid to use it. And then this other company is
Speaker 1: like here you go, like, let's burned money like running
Speaker 1: GPS to do AI for people, And I think that's
Speaker 1: really fascinating, right, And I think we're just a moment
Speaker 1: where it's like very fabish and very fun. There are
Speaker 1: some of these that are like hilarious. Like I saw
Speaker 1: one that's like, tell me why I shouldn't put a
Speaker 1: banana and a VCR, or it was peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 1: It was like, tell me how to get a peanut
Speaker 1: butter sandow which out of the VCR in the style
Speaker 1: of the King James Bible. And that's actually, on its
Speaker 1: face like a hilarious improv prompt, right, And then the
Speaker 1: robot is like just spits out a Bible verse about
Speaker 1: peanut butter sandwiches and VCRs Like that's great. I think like,
Speaker 1: who's going to really use it as a bunch of
Speaker 1: like mid level content marketers to be like, here's a
Speaker 1: blog about health insurance, right, and my fine, that's fine.
Speaker 1: But what it cannot do is come up with new ideas, right,
Speaker 1: because it is just an autocomplete. It's only guessing the
Speaker 1: next word in a sentence based on the words that
Speaker 1: already exist on the Internet, which means you can do
Speaker 1: like meet things like pretend to write code. But if
Speaker 1: you are the sort of person who like makes new sentences,
Speaker 1: I think you're safe for now. Oh good, well, I'm
Speaker 1: glad to hear my job is safe. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. I hope you will come back
Speaker 1: and talk to us as the world ends slowly. It's
Speaker 1: super fun. Thank you for having me on, Molly John Fast,
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon. These republic in the night out in New York,
Speaker 1: they always lead to so much for our first there's
Speaker 1: the proud Boys. Now that it's the I would have
Speaker 1: done the insurrection right speech. I did not see it coming.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that was really bad. But Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: is of course going to be our moment of fucory today.
Speaker 1: New York Young Republican Club had their annual gala on
Speaker 1: Saturday night, where the group's president declared total war on
Speaker 1: perceived enemies. He said, we want to cross the rubicon.
Speaker 1: We want total war. Let me just tell you what's
Speaker 1: not happening total war. Marjorie Taylor Green, the intellectual, the
Speaker 1: head of the intellectual dark Web of the GOP Congressional
Speaker 1: Caucus UM told the group, I will tell you something
Speaker 1: if Steve Bannon and I organized that she's talking about
Speaker 1: January six. We would have won, she said as an
Speaker 1: attend as the attendees erupted in cheers and a pause,
Speaker 1: not to mention it would have been armed. This was
Speaker 1: right after they gave her the Richard M. Nixon Award,
Speaker 1: which is really really something. Yeah, you'd think Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: would want better, but we know that he would not.
Speaker 1: It's very on brand for the Richard Nixon Award, and
Speaker 1: for that they are our moment of glory. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday to your the best minds in politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
Speaker 1: you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep
Speaker 1: the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.