Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump is mad at Fox
Speaker 1: for using unflattering pictures of him.
Speaker 2: We have an interesting show today.
Speaker 1: Vice's Greg Walters joins us to talk about Trump's strange
Speaker 1: choice of lawyer in his Georgia trial spoiler, he's a
Speaker 1: billion dollar lawyer. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post
Speaker 1: Drew Harwell about Elon Musk's Twitter x throttling mainstream media
Speaker 1: outlets to punish them for not being nice to him.
Speaker 2: But first we.
Speaker 1: Have legendary democratic strategists. Your friend of mine, the one,
Speaker 1: the only, James Carple.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics. James Carple.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm always happy to be on his program. Always
Speaker 3: I've been seeing on TV a lot.
Speaker 2: You're doing right, Hey all, thank you. I'm very delighted.
Speaker 2: Do you hear it?
Speaker 1: You've been doing this for a while. Did you ever
Speaker 1: think that you would have a Republican Party with a
Speaker 1: front runner with four and it's actually five indictments because
Speaker 1: of the superseding.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing to say is, I've been doing politics
Speaker 3: for a while in the United States and around the world.
Speaker 3: I have no experience suggest this is like unheard of.
Speaker 3: What I'm thought of interested in in a short time
Speaker 3: is does he show up at the debate or does
Speaker 3: he show up and turn himself in at the time
Speaker 3: the debate starts. I'm making book or even money that
Speaker 3: he announces when his.
Speaker 4: Claim is going to land in Atlanta. Now it's gonna
Speaker 4: be a modicade there.
Speaker 3: He's going to show up right at the time that
Speaker 3: the first question come, and I think he's gonna pull
Speaker 3: every stunt you can think of.
Speaker 1: If he does that, does he win the debate because
Speaker 1: he sucks all the oxygen out of the room.
Speaker 3: Well, you don't understand Trump's mind, attention is winning. So
Speaker 3: by his definition of winning, Yeah, if you just look
Speaker 3: at the schedule of arrangements, motion, you name it, the
Speaker 3: civil trials, it's kind of hard to see how any
Speaker 3: of these guys get very much oxygen, very much attention.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think he's still have that mundigi
Speaker 3: where he's got one hundred page manifesto and how the
Speaker 3: election is stole in front. But that's up there with
Speaker 3: Mexico paying for the wall and infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a kind of baffling fiasco, right, like think
Speaker 1: you think about if you're a Republican donor, I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you you're freaking.
Speaker 3: Out right, Well, he's fucking up all of the money
Speaker 3: to pay legal fees, so I hit a lot of Republicans,
Speaker 3: like professional Republicans. He's taking money away. He doesn't give
Speaker 3: any money back to the campaign. They're all to his
Speaker 3: lawyers in himself. He's cleaning up what the citate candidates
Speaker 3: are having trouble raising money because he's taken at all,
Speaker 3: and none of it is going to help them withn't
Speaker 3: and I don't know how to that changed it very much.
Speaker 4: He doesn't care about the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: In fact, I think I think he actually paints it
Speaker 3: the Republican Party, and he likes me dominating it.
Speaker 4: And you know, to him, cruelty is the point.
Speaker 3: And he still be as cruel to them as a
Speaker 3: conmedian now and now, Rudy, according to court files, times
Speaker 3: he got the money, he can comply with the feeders anymore.
Speaker 3: How much money Rudy Giuliani has made in this century,
Speaker 3: you have no a lot earthy idea of how much
Speaker 3: money he made, speaking until he Brew himself up, and
Speaker 3: how much is Guliane Partners made Giuliani Law firm, and
Speaker 3: they had every shakedown. Then you can think of it's
Speaker 3: all gone, all right, the man's gonna die in jail.
Speaker 1: Do you think Rudy is going to die in jail?
Speaker 1: You're not the first person who has told.
Speaker 3: Me those, by the way, hard to think of how
Speaker 3: he doesn't I mean, but actually doesn't you know?
Speaker 4: Off themselves with this Weeko statute.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of part of the legal game here
Speaker 1: is to try to get the littler fish to flip
Speaker 1: on the bigger fish.
Speaker 2: Do you see that happening?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: If there's nineteen indicted under the rid Cose acta Georgia.
Speaker 3: So I'm a gamble, so you know what the over
Speaker 3: under is?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Okay? So down on. If there's a.
Speaker 3: Football game and you say the over under is fifty,
Speaker 3: that means that the total number point. If you take
Speaker 3: the under, that means that the score ends up twenty
Speaker 3: five to twenty four, The underwins because that's forty nine
Speaker 3: total points. If it ends up twenty six and twenty five,
Speaker 3: you win because that's fifty one total point. So what's
Speaker 3: the over under of the nineteen. How many plead before trial?
Speaker 3: So what do you because you feel pretty sure that
Speaker 3: some of them are in. They had to get leverage
Speaker 3: to get them to bleed. So is it the twelve
Speaker 3: ats you go to til or fourteen actually go to trial.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it's just something to think about,
Speaker 3: and they're going to try. I've seen a lot of commentary.
Speaker 3: The friend of mine worked for the DA in Fococato,
Speaker 3: was a very high level guy. I think his wife
Speaker 3: still works there. And the people got to realize that
Speaker 3: Atlanta School's case that Friandi Will was one ran and won,
Speaker 3: was the most complex criminal trial in the history of
Speaker 3: the United States, and they tried all of them together.
Speaker 4: And which got a lot of the chatter ari going is.
Speaker 3: A Ruth Marcus column who basically wrote a column saying,
Speaker 3: I don't think the Atlanta people capable of handling this.
Speaker 3: It's too complicated. They should just turn it over to Jacksmith.
Speaker 3: I think miss Marcus under estimates to competence at that
Speaker 3: office or actually simple the RICO status, but I don't
Speaker 3: know that. But that's a talking point is should they
Speaker 3: wait and defer to defense? And there's also significant there's
Speaker 3: a chance. Walg Metal has already fouled to have the
Speaker 3: case removes from state court to court. Why is this important?
Speaker 3: First of all, jurypool goes from Fulham County to the
Speaker 3: Northern District of Georgia, which would be considerably more favorable
Speaker 3: jury pool to Trump than because it would be less democratic,
Speaker 3: if you will. But the big reason is is that Georgia.
Speaker 3: If he's tried in Georgia, it's on TV. Tried in
Speaker 3: the Northern District. In federal court, it's not on TV.
Speaker 3: And this is a motion that had some chance to
Speaker 3: be granted, and there's actual stashed out. There is a
Speaker 3: big argument as to why it shouldn't be granted. And
Speaker 3: you know, but you got a lot of Trump appointed
Speaker 3: judges in that Northern District of Georgia go decide that case.
Speaker 3: The Eleventh District is heavily you know, can Republican appointed judges?
Speaker 3: So I don't know, but that's going to be a bet.
Speaker 3: That's a big deal. That's a big deal is the
Speaker 3: removal from state to federal court.
Speaker 2: But the larger.
Speaker 1: Issue here, it seems to me, is that Trump World
Speaker 1: is trying to try this case in the media.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, is that smart?
Speaker 2: I mean, he's the only.
Speaker 4: Thing he can do.
Speaker 3: To ask him not to seek out all the press
Speaker 3: in publicity again is like asking a shock Well, I
Speaker 3: mean that's what he does. And in his mind this
Speaker 3: has never failed him. He's never been convicted of anything,
Speaker 3: he's been sued thirty five hundred times, never admit anything,
Speaker 3: and he gets publicity, he wins a nomination. He actually
Speaker 3: won the presidency one time, and he's not going to
Speaker 3: change his way of operating or his political strategy on Iota.
Speaker 4: You can't do it. You're just in gave up on it.
Speaker 1: So if you were a Maga Republican strategist, would you
Speaker 1: thank god they're not What would.
Speaker 2: You do right now?
Speaker 1: He seems like he's going to be the nominee. He
Speaker 1: can't possibly he's not growing the electorate. I mean, what
Speaker 1: are the choices here?
Speaker 3: Well, if I'm a Maga Republican, I keep doubling down.
Speaker 3: But what we have to understand, what the press has
Speaker 3: to understand be out it's with you. I'm getting fricking
Speaker 3: irritated at interviewing people at the Iowa State there right,
Speaker 3: who do quote I do my own research unquote, They
Speaker 3: need to interview Republican politicians, What will you do if
Speaker 3: he's convicted? Do you think that this is motivated at
Speaker 3: these serious charge what do you ask? Quit asking these
Speaker 3: goddamn people in a diner what they think and start
Speaker 3: making these Republican politicians that can't say what they really think.
Speaker 3: I wish that son of a bitch would catch to
Speaker 3: clap and die. All right, that's what they think, right.
Speaker 1: Well, we've seen reporting where Republicans have said we're depending
Speaker 1: on the actuarial tables, which was a way of them
Speaker 1: saying they had hoped he would But that's an insane
Speaker 1: thing to hope for your front runner.
Speaker 3: When you can't an advice like that, you got to
Speaker 3: hope with some weirdship because they're forty percent of that party,
Speaker 3: and the problem is they knock him off, they're going
Speaker 3: to have no enthusiastics.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: DeSantis was ultimately proof that trump Ism doesn't scale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Mollie, I think that a lot of
Speaker 3: us just missed what a poor candidate, the census less,
Speaker 3: and I think we are kind of willing to cut
Speaker 3: him slack because everybody and I put myself and I thought,
Speaker 3: well this guy, you know, it's one about twenty points
Speaker 3: re election Florida. He seems to have something going for him,
Speaker 3: you know, and he says, well, he's Trump, but a
Speaker 3: competent in less splashy version, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 3: he's turned out to be not a mediocre candidate, a
Speaker 3: really bad candidate. And again talked about this on the
Speaker 3: show before Susie Wiles. She keeps sticking pins in that
Speaker 3: Dessantra's No, I can tell you how you turn around.
Speaker 4: He's getting off a bad story, you know, all this
Speaker 4: dol News attorney don't.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to read the Desanta's campaign book and
Speaker 3: I can't law and have mercy better have five chapels.
Speaker 4: I'm actually more interested in her. And again it's.
Speaker 3: Just as a how does somebody go from the color
Speaker 3: person of the golf channel to the dominant person in
Speaker 3: a one hundred million dollar presidential campaign on a pretty
Speaker 3: interesting story.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a chance at any of these
Speaker 1: other candidates, Like, is there a place for a Tim
Speaker 1: Scott to come out or is there a I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Nikki Haley clearly, Oh.
Speaker 4: Tim Scott, this is my favorite.
Speaker 3: If you talk to like your friends who were publican
Speaker 3: friends that you know they can't stand Trump, but they
Speaker 3: hate Democrats and they're just hoping that somebody will come
Speaker 3: along and it it can actually be for And it's
Speaker 3: always that you listen to one of them, be it
Speaker 3: interviewed well. I mentioned Tim Scott. He's got that kind
Speaker 3: of Reagan Sonny optimism of the body, and you know
Speaker 3: he'll be so prop piece of legislation is hit right.
Speaker 3: I want to hope a president. I want to have
Speaker 3: a beer. I want a guy that can relate to me.
Speaker 3: I want somebody that knows the goddamn price of a
Speaker 3: dozen eggs a quarter milk.
Speaker 4: God that preaches celebraty. Can you really identify with him?
Speaker 2: Is that what Tim Scott does?
Speaker 4: Yes? No, yes, he.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That may not be a winner.
Speaker 3: My experience in Americana is it's not a winning issue
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 3: Iut Egan too graphic about it. It seems a little
Speaker 3: bit weird, honest with you. He talks about the virtues
Speaker 3: of celebracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it may not be the winner.
Speaker 4: It may not be the regular guy. You know, you guy,
Speaker 4: you know what we're looking for.
Speaker 3: It's been a remarkably the legislative record is kind of vapid,
Speaker 3: and ineffective. He's safe, I can be. I'm really looking.
Speaker 3: I'm taking a real good look at.
Speaker 1: Him, right, I mean, I know Republican donors who are
Speaker 1: just desperate for young Kin to jump.
Speaker 3: In, right, you know, and y'all can say, you know,
Speaker 3: he's Connors of the sweat of s and he's a
Speaker 3: you know, bred governor of a mostly blue state. Just
Speaker 3: hard to see them coming out and voting for Glenn Yelkin.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think all of this energy goes to and
Speaker 1: no labels goes to trying to get their party candidates
Speaker 1: to peel off enough of the vote so that Trump wins.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Remember, now it's not just no labels. He's called Well West. Right,
Speaker 3: if you said, well Biden, the Trump people said, well
Speaker 3: Bob probably when that I don't have much of earth.
Speaker 3: But it's not going to be Biden, b Trump going
Speaker 3: to be Biden Trump, no labels, Cornell West and I'm
Speaker 3: not sure I'm not more worried about Cornell West.
Speaker 4: And I have no labels?
Speaker 2: Can you say more?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: In twenty sixteen, Jill Stein ran as a Green Party candidate.
Speaker 3: He got more votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, and
Speaker 3: Hillary lost Bot right. She was also funded by the Russians.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: She is now Cornell West's campaign manager.
Speaker 3: In Cornell Jesus Or I said, attractive communicator. No one
Speaker 3: even knew who she was or if she said something,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't even recognize her voice. Cornell West has been
Speaker 3: around forever, you know, to disaffected young people.
Speaker 4: The guy kind of makes sense to him.
Speaker 3: And you know, he's Stiller and he's a Black Ivyle
Speaker 3: educated guy. He's, you know, got a real left wing
Speaker 3: message and you know, calls everybody brother and sister, and
Speaker 3: you know, to both parties. I just can see a
Speaker 3: disaffected people going to his camp, even more than Joe Stein,
Speaker 3: who caused us some unbelievable grief. I mean, same thing
Speaker 3: in two thousand. I mean sorry, Ralph Nada won the
Speaker 3: presidency majority w Bush given had a chance, and they
Speaker 3: gonna do it again. I mean I said, they's a
Speaker 3: good chance to do it again. It's a real, real problem.
Speaker 3: So it's not going to be two people in the ring.
Speaker 3: That that's not that's not it's going to come out.
Speaker 3: It's going to be four people at least in the ring.
Speaker 2: So do two seconds for me on the Senate map
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 3: All right, the city map is it's hard to see.
Speaker 3: So we have a one boat fifty one point nine senate.
Speaker 3: It's hard to see how we keep West Virginia. I
Speaker 3: just really the next most problematical sea is probably Montana, right, Ohio,
Speaker 3: I feel better about boast. There was some concern about
Speaker 3: Senator Casey and if Dave McCormick ran, he was the
Speaker 3: kind of moderate, the kind of Glennykin.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't see McCormick honestly is I see him as
Speaker 3: a receding threat. Things can go wrong in Nevada, they
Speaker 3: can't go wrong in Arizona. Two best opportunities to pick up,
Speaker 3: and I think that they're both better than anybody thinks.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit here and tell you that
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty or Texas and Florida. I am particularly
Speaker 3: high on Florida if we can avoid a primary and
Speaker 3: get a good candidate. Said, well, James, we've got be
Speaker 3: bad there. In twenty twenty. We had the worst year
Speaker 3: you could imagine in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: Oh true.
Speaker 3: The first thing the census is numbers are now, and
Speaker 3: I think they're dropping by the day. Rick Scott has
Speaker 3: never been popular, and he is on the front he's not.
Speaker 3: He is the proponent of mostly getting the renaissance puriity
Speaker 3: of medicare, raising tactors on hotel maids, and he's never
Speaker 3: been popular. The other thing is, I cannot emphasize this enough.
Speaker 3: The home insurance rake Florida are a major issue. Most
Speaker 3: people don't live with that issue, they're with it like crazy.
Speaker 3: So I think Florida is a real opportunity for a pickup.
Speaker 3: And I think if Colin Allrod very high to call
Speaker 3: and he's able to get through the Democratic nominating primary
Speaker 3: process with a pretty united party, I mean Ted Cruz,
Speaker 3: They're to be asking Ted Cruz every day about Trump
Speaker 3: and his troubles. And there's nobody that's had a more
Speaker 3: complicated history with Trump. You know, he called his wife
Speaker 3: a hag, he called his daddy. And I told Colin
Speaker 3: he played football at Baylor. I said, y'all, I could
Speaker 3: remember that old song you can't get out.
Speaker 4: Of talk like a man.
Speaker 3: I just will you know, Ted Crews taking that little
Speaker 3: rollerbag through the air out of jaxas and you know,
Speaker 3: having Trump humiliate him and come back and then have
Speaker 3: Colin hour to you know, sweat and mud all of
Speaker 3: his space for a bail of football, you know, hormone.
Speaker 3: But cruises is easy to pick on, so that's what
Speaker 3: we're gonna have. Any pick up, you know, then you're
Speaker 3: down to Indiana, which is not promising.
Speaker 2: James Carveld, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: I hope you'll come back absolutely.
Speaker 2: Greg Walders is a reporter advice. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Greg, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: This is a really interesting niche story.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about Donald Trump's Georgia lawyer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so what interested me about this piece is that
Speaker 5: Trump's lead attorney in Atlanta in the Rico case is
Speaker 5: basically arguably the premier hip hop defense attorney in America.
Speaker 5: He just has this gold plated roster of hip hop royalty.
Speaker 5: We're talking Cardi b Migos, the Baby Walk, a flock
Speaker 5: of Flame. Little Baby's also worked with some basketball stars
Speaker 5: like Dennis Rodman, Shaquille O'Neil, and he has this really
Speaker 5: strong bond with them that when you reach out and
Speaker 5: talk to these big name clients, but that's it's a parrot.
Speaker 5: They just it's weird. It's almost spiritual. We can talk
Speaker 5: about that in a moment. But the other thing that's
Speaker 5: really fascinating about him is he's, you know, he's got
Speaker 5: very personally progressive politics. So he's not the kind of
Speaker 5: attorney you would expect to be defending the Maga god
Speaker 5: king in his power of need.
Speaker 2: Explain to us about his politics.
Speaker 5: Sure, I mean, he's progressive on some key issues. You know,
Speaker 5: he's very pro choice. When the Supreme Court repealed Roe
Speaker 5: versus Wade, he overturned Ropas's wad. He jumped in and
Speaker 5: said that if anybody were prosecuted in Georgia for an
Speaker 5: abortion law, he would defend them free of charge. He
Speaker 5: has called Colin Kaepernick the greatest patriot in America for
Speaker 5: taking a knee. He is very eloquent on the subject
Speaker 5: of race and discrimination in the American justice system and
Speaker 5: the need for reform. It's a topic very close to
Speaker 5: his heart. He is very sympathetic to immigrants, and he's
Speaker 5: been expressly critical of Trump in the past on Twitter,
Speaker 5: in tweets that he has not taken down.
Speaker 2: I kind of love this guy, I.
Speaker 5: Think for scene saying this is important. Let me read
Speaker 5: a couple of these tweets please. At one point, Trump
Speaker 5: got into a beef with Lebron James, and we don't
Speaker 5: have to go over what that was about. But he
Speaker 5: tweeted the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University, criticizing Lebron
Speaker 5: the founder of a free school for children, Potus pathetic.
Speaker 5: Once again, it's not the end of it. That's not
Speaker 5: at the end of it. So the other tweet is,
Speaker 5: you may remember when Trump fired Bararra. Former SDNYUS attorney
Speaker 5: Drew tweeted this the Potus firing as DNY US attorney
Speaker 5: pre Berrara is a sign of fear in all caps
Speaker 5: that he would aggressively investigate the stench hanging over this post.
Speaker 5: This is the same guy who's about to go into
Speaker 5: court in Atlanta and be like, my client did nothing wrong,
Speaker 5: You're off.
Speaker 1: Right, Wow, Why is he representing Trump if he's not?
Speaker 1: And I like it seems to me like if we're
Speaker 1: looking at Trump lawyers, and I'd love to broaden this
Speaker 1: conversation out because Trump is a lot of legal exposure,
Speaker 1: and he has a lot of lawyers, right, and he's
Speaker 1: got some lawyers who will find themselves in terrible legal trouble,
Speaker 1: like a Rudy Giuliani or a Ken cheesebro And.
Speaker 5: You've got to ask yourself if you're joining this illustrious circle,
Speaker 5: this Star Wars bar scene of weirdos, you know, why
Speaker 5: are you.
Speaker 4: Not going to be next?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 5: I mean Drew is now representing Trump in a case
Speaker 5: where Trump is his co defendants are also a bunch
Speaker 5: of like lawyers who tried to do what he wants.
Speaker 5: And I asked you about this. We had we had
Speaker 5: a really good conversation about this, and he basically said, look,
Speaker 5: if anyone tries to get me to do anything unethical,
Speaker 5: I'm off the team.
Speaker 1: Right If he's ideologically so opposed, this is just about mane.
Speaker 5: So I don't think it is. Actually, I think it's
Speaker 5: a lot more interesting than that. People are freedom of
Speaker 5: up their own minds, of course, but Drew would swear
Speaker 5: up and down that it's not. Obviously there's a lot
Speaker 5: of money involved. It's not like he needs this money, right,
Speaker 5: There's a lot of other opportunities for this guy to
Speaker 5: go out and earn some money. He takes a very
Speaker 5: interesting moral stance on this. If you talk to people
Speaker 5: who you know, he comes from his background as having
Speaker 5: a very strong regard for public defenders, I believe he
Speaker 5: was a public defender. I'm not mistaken. At least one
Speaker 5: of his kids is a public defender. He takes a
Speaker 5: very strong progressive stance on the value, the public value
Speaker 5: of defensive attorneys, and will argue that basically they need
Speaker 5: to be about race, gender, religion, and politics. You can
Speaker 5: make of this argument what you will, but after talking
Speaker 5: to him quite a lot about it, my view is
Speaker 5: that it's sincere that he believes it would be unethical
Speaker 5: for him to reject a client because of their diverging politics.
Speaker 5: And there's no mistake their politics diverge. I mean, this
Speaker 5: is a guy who donated to the prosecutor who is
Speaker 5: going after Trump.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, So interesting, This is like very unusual
Speaker 1: for Trump world.
Speaker 5: I feel like, yeah, one more thing that makes it
Speaker 5: unusual for Trump world is, unlike a lot of other
Speaker 5: attorneys who have agreed to work for Trump, Drew is
Speaker 5: good at his job.
Speaker 4: He's a good lawyer.
Speaker 5: He's doing a lot of things lately that are weird
Speaker 5: because he's been sucked into the gravitational pull of Trump world,
Speaker 5: and so he's acting more like a Trump lawyer out.
Speaker 5: But I tried to find people who would say bad
Speaker 5: things about him as a lawyer in Atlanta, and I
Speaker 5: couldn't do it. Wow, You call up a lawyer, a
Speaker 5: lawyer in Atlanta and ask them about Drew, who like
Speaker 5: knows him personally a reputation, and they'll tell you, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: he's the best guy.
Speaker 4: Drum could happen. He's good.
Speaker 2: Explain to me what the hell's going on here?
Speaker 5: I think there are a few things going on. I
Speaker 5: think one of them is you could argue that he's
Speaker 5: like drinking his own kool aid on this question of
Speaker 5: the role of a defense attorney. But I think it
Speaker 5: comes from a genuine place inside him, Like I think
Speaker 5: he really buys it. And I think that in some ways,
Speaker 5: like if I'm going to put on my shrinker's hat, right,
Speaker 5: like try to reach inside his soul.
Speaker 2: Which is what we're always interesting.
Speaker 4: Which is like this podcast why not yet?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I think part of it is that this
Speaker 5: is a way of proving, this is his way of
Speaker 5: putting his money where his mouth is and say I
Speaker 5: really need it. I'll even defend this guy who is
Speaker 5: someone who disagrees with him about everything he stands for,
Speaker 5: and he himself is on record calling a racist and
Speaker 5: saying he should be investigated because of a stench, that
Speaker 5: even that guy deserves competent criminal defense, and that he's
Speaker 5: gonna and he's not going to refuse to do it.
Speaker 5: So I think it's partly about proving that to himself.
Speaker 5: I think there's also a part of him that likes
Speaker 5: the limelight.
Speaker 4: You know. I think I don't think it's the money,
Speaker 4: it's the fae, you know.
Speaker 5: I think there's part of him that that does revel in, like,
Speaker 5: you know, stepping inside the aura of some of these
Speaker 5: famous people.
Speaker 4: It's excited.
Speaker 1: Tell us some of the famous musicians and athletes that
Speaker 1: he's represented.
Speaker 5: Sure, so you know, we're talking Cardi B, We're talking migos,
Speaker 5: We're talking Gucci Mayne. Gucci Maine was actually the guy
Speaker 5: who kind of like brought him into this world. He's
Speaker 5: known as the hashtag billion dollar lawyer.
Speaker 1: So is that because he costs a billion dollars or
Speaker 1: because he gets you a billion dollars?
Speaker 4: Neither He doesn't do either of those things.
Speaker 2: So why is he called that?
Speaker 4: It's pure hip hop hyperbole.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: At one point, I forget who it was.
Speaker 5: There was some rapper who he like a lot of
Speaker 5: the stuff about him is something that just some rappers
Speaker 5: said that, like they thought it was funny and they
Speaker 5: kind of ran.
Speaker 4: But he went to see some forget who it was.
Speaker 5: It would be a better story if I can remember
Speaker 5: which rapper it was, but anyway, right, it was some
Speaker 5: rapper I don't know that well. One of his early clients,
Speaker 5: he showed up at the case and the guy said, Man,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be fine. I got my billion dollar lawyer
Speaker 5: right here. And it just stuck and that was a
Speaker 5: billion dollars. He's not worth a billion dollars. I asked
Speaker 5: him that explicitly. He does not cost a billion dollars.
Speaker 5: No one's getting a billion dollars. There's no dollars involved.
Speaker 5: It's just bread.
Speaker 2: So so he liked celebrity.
Speaker 1: Is some of it too, besides the fact that he
Speaker 1: believes in these tenants of law.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think if you kind of put
Speaker 5: those two things together, like why not.
Speaker 1: Right, it's so interesting. But he has donated to Fanny Wellis.
Speaker 1: I would love you to talk for a minute a
Speaker 1: little bit about Fanny Wellis if you can, because I
Speaker 1: feel like is nineteen defendants, it's this enormous case she
Speaker 1: has successfully used Rico before. I mean, this is very
Speaker 1: different than some of Trump's other legal cases.
Speaker 5: It is, so I should say at the outset, I
Speaker 5: have not interviewed Fannie Willis, so most of what I
Speaker 5: know about her is by talking to lawyers who have
Speaker 5: worked with her come up against her. I have tried interviewer,
Speaker 5: but her people have been pretty guarded about that so far.
Speaker 5: So I can tell you what I've learned through you know,
Speaker 5: ulterior journalistic means she is tough man. She is tough.
Speaker 5: She's the daughter of a black panther. She is someone
Speaker 5: who you know, was elected to this job in the
Speaker 5: same election that Trump is calling fraudulent and started basically
Speaker 5: in the beginning of January twenty twenty one. And so
Speaker 5: like the phone call, the infamous phone call erupted during
Speaker 5: her first week on the job, and she jumped into it,
Speaker 5: I think it's important to remember in this context the
Speaker 5: sheer audacity of what she's doing. We're talking about a overworked, overstretched, underfunded,
Speaker 5: understaffed office, and if you look closely, you can see
Speaker 5: that kind of tension bursting at the seams.
Speaker 2: With the early thing that they released online. Right, is
Speaker 2: that what you're thinking.
Speaker 5: Of yeah, you know, and not just that you've seen
Speaker 5: some departures from the office, Like it's not we're not
Speaker 5: talking about a juggernaut, right, We're talking about like a
Speaker 5: little engine that maybe can right. You know, it's not
Speaker 5: hard to see signs of disorganization and dysfunction coming out
Speaker 5: of that office.
Speaker 1: And what we're talking about is that the office accidentally
Speaker 1: posted the charging document before it was ready and then
Speaker 1: they took it down and that was a little bit
Speaker 1: of an embarrassment.
Speaker 5: That's right, And I think that if you I don't
Speaker 5: think that's going to be the last time this happens,
Speaker 5: you know, I think And another example in the past
Speaker 5: was was the four person of the Special Purpose Grand
Speaker 5: Jury that Fawdy Willison paneled to investigate Trump over the
Speaker 5: past year, came out and just made a bunch of
Speaker 5: just all over.
Speaker 4: The place statements to the press.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That was that woman who went on all the shows
Speaker 1: and seemed kind of nuts.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know that was not really a good
Speaker 5: look for the office, since she was talking about having
Speaker 5: ice cream parties with the prosecutors and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: So I mean this is you know, you almost have
Speaker 5: the feeling of the office like it's just not a
Speaker 5: tightly run ship. As I started to say, I think
Speaker 5: that they are doing something incredibly ambitious.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 5: The other local prosecutor pursuing this is the foremost local
Speaker 5: prosecutatorial office in the country, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office,
Speaker 5: and they have a much smaller, tightly wound case, about
Speaker 5: a few documents here and there. Her case is sprawling,
Speaker 5: you know, even compared to Jack Smith's democracy case. Jack
Speaker 5: Smith's case is like a haikup. It's just so tight.
Speaker 5: One person he's going to get try to get this done,
Speaker 5: his book possible. Her case is like the Odyssey. It's
Speaker 5: got everything in it. It's epic poetry, and it's all
Speaker 5: of the above. It's almost like Jack Smith's case is
Speaker 5: the one that might get there before the election, and
Speaker 5: then she's got the safety case that can't be pardoned
Speaker 5: away by whoever wins the White House next and catches
Speaker 5: like all the players.
Speaker 1: Do you think that they're going to be capable of
Speaker 1: doing this? Are you worried about that? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think she has a pretty good track record, doesn't she.
Speaker 5: She does have a track record for getting convictions. I
Speaker 5: think she is very dogged, very determined, and very tough.
Speaker 5: I would not want her prosecuting me. I do think
Speaker 5: that she's got just a colossal task and not the
Speaker 5: world's biggest office and staff to handle what they have done.
Speaker 5: The dog has caught the ice cream truck here and
Speaker 5: now has to figure out what to do. So should
Speaker 5: there be concern about whether they can get it done,
Speaker 5: I would say yes, we are just in historically totally
Speaker 5: uncharted waters here. I think indictment is very impressive. Clearly
Speaker 5: they did a massive investigation. Part of the context here
Speaker 5: that may not be so apparent to people who aren't
Speaker 5: living in Atlanta or following it closely is that. And
Speaker 5: one of the reasons she was elected in the first
Speaker 5: place is that during the pandemic's Fulton County built up
Speaker 5: this massive backlaw of chases. There are people who wait
Speaker 5: in the local jail at nine oh one Rice Street,
Speaker 5: which is you know famous in local hip hop down
Speaker 5: there as kind of both this. It's the jail cell,
Speaker 5: and it's where people do their first appearance and where
Speaker 5: Trump may appear soon. People go in there for months
Speaker 5: without even being charged, before they can even be charged
Speaker 5: with a crime, and conditions are notoriously bad. People die
Speaker 5: in they're not infrequently. There's just a it's a bad situation,
Speaker 5: and so she was kind of elected to clean that up.
Speaker 5: And then after she comes into office, she takes over
Speaker 5: this huge case and you know, circling back to like
Speaker 5: Drew and his support for her, that was where it
Speaker 5: came from, right, He thought she was someone who could
Speaker 5: try to help clear that up. I mean, she was
Speaker 5: seen as relatively the progressive take. She's a progressive guy.
Speaker 4: It makes sense.
Speaker 5: Then came the infamous phone call heard around the world
Speaker 5: and the Trump just needs to find eleven, seven hundred
Speaker 5: and eighty votes and everything changed.
Speaker 1: So interesting. You've written about Rudy Giuliani. We've all written
Speaker 1: about Rudy Giuliani. I feel like he's a holdover from
Speaker 1: last season. Do you feel like Rudy Giuliani could theoretically
Speaker 1: roll on Trump? I mean, does that seem he needs money,
Speaker 1: he's in trouble.
Speaker 2: I mean, are you seeing that.
Speaker 5: So with the caveat here that the last few years
Speaker 5: have been very surprising, so anything can happen. I guess
Speaker 5: with that to the side, my reaction is no, I
Speaker 5: don't think that's fawsible For a few reasons. I think
Speaker 5: One of them is what kind of deal could Rudy get.
Speaker 5: What could Rudy tell us about Trump that would be
Speaker 5: so vital to the prosecution that he would get his
Speaker 5: sentence reduced, you know, from a sentence that is supposed
Speaker 5: to be a minimum of five years that's actually probably
Speaker 5: over reported a little bit. I think the judges do
Speaker 5: have more leeway than that down there. But that's a
Speaker 5: lot of time. He's going to be eighty years old
Speaker 5: pretty soon, like he's seventy nine. He take any eighty
Speaker 5: year old, you know, and tell them they're going to
Speaker 5: do two years in the local penitentiary. I mean, that's
Speaker 5: you're gambling with a life sentence there. So what amount
Speaker 5: of time would he accept versus the possibility of beating it?
Speaker 5: You know, I don't know why he would. The second
Speaker 5: thing is that if you're the prosecutor, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I guess maybe you'd be tempted to score that easy victory.
Speaker 5: But so much of what he did was in public,
Speaker 5: and he's like the number two guy on the roster.
Speaker 5: Argue with late Am or Meadows. When you flip people,
Speaker 5: you want them to flip against someone bigger than that, right,
Speaker 5: would she want to Flip or Julia with a deal
Speaker 5: that would let him not go to prison. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I don't really see the strong urge
Speaker 5: to get to a deal with Rudy on either side.
Speaker 5: That's just my my hot take that you know. Then again,
Speaker 5: as I said, the twenty twenties have been nothing if
Speaker 5: not surprising, so maybe I doubt.
Speaker 2: It so interesting. Thank you so much. I hope you'll
Speaker 2: come back.
Speaker 4: Hey, I'd love to. This is fun.
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
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Speaker 1: Drew Harwell is a reporter of covering technology at The
Speaker 1: Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Drew, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Your beat is Internet media? Is it media?
Speaker 6: Internet, explain discuss I just cover anything on the Internet
Speaker 6: that seems interesting at the time. A lot of it
Speaker 6: lately has been, you know, Elon Musk taking over the
Speaker 6: company formerly known as Twitter. But a lot of it
Speaker 6: is just how you know, politics and media on the
Speaker 6: Internet intersect. So a lot of it is Trump and
Speaker 6: a lot of it is Elon, TikTok, all that sort
Speaker 6: of fun stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Elon Mosk. Incredible stuff here. You
Speaker 1: had a scoop yesterday, the champion free speech. He has
Speaker 1: an interesting way of dealing with things he doesn't like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and if you're using Twitter, sorry X, and you
Speaker 6: want to click on a link to a story, you
Speaker 6: expect to go immediately through to that other story. That's
Speaker 6: how it has always worked. That is how it works
Speaker 6: for pretty much every website. Except we started running some
Speaker 6: tests yesterday and found that there were a pool of
Speaker 6: websites that actually get a five second delay. So when
Speaker 6: you click on it, it just goes to gray for
Speaker 6: five seconds. It wastes your time for five seconds before
Speaker 6: you can actually access the link. Twitter X does that
Speaker 6: now or did that yesterday? When we tested for The
Speaker 6: New York Times. Reuter's Facebook Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Substack,
Speaker 6: and the connective tissue on all of those is all
Speaker 6: of those websites have upset Elon Musk to some degree.
Speaker 4: He has gone on a.
Speaker 6: Tirade against you know and the New York Times and
Speaker 6: Reuters for doing accurate reporting that has made him look bad.
Speaker 6: He's obviously been in this long suffering slap match with
Speaker 6: Mark Zuckerbird, who owns you know, Facebook, Instagram and threads,
Speaker 6: bluse Guy and substack or our Twitter rivals. So here
Speaker 6: what we saw was, you know, Elon Musk appears to
Speaker 6: be behind the scenes pushing a button to waste everybody's time,
Speaker 6: slow the traffic to all of these properties that he
Speaker 6: personally dislikes, and do it in this really secretive way
Speaker 6: so people would not even realize what was happening, and
Speaker 6: they might click a link and it might go gray
Speaker 6: and they might say, Okay, well, I don't want to
Speaker 6: go there anyway, and that can have a real impact
Speaker 6: on the website because they lose traffic and add revenue.
Speaker 6: So it was a very secretive, malicious thing to do.
Speaker 6: And we don't have any evidence that this was just
Speaker 6: sort of a technical clitch because it only isolated these websites.
Speaker 2: I want you to.
Speaker 1: Get to the punchline here, which is as soon as
Speaker 1: you reported about it.
Speaker 6: M yeah, a couple hours after we reported on it,
Speaker 6: the delay magically started to disappear. We could actually see
Speaker 6: it in the test. This delay that was stuck at
Speaker 6: around five seconds just started going away, and you could
Speaker 6: magically get to that website. So very clearly, I mean,
Speaker 6: X and Elon never never addressed it in any meaningful way,
Speaker 6: but once.
Speaker 4: We can get reported on it.
Speaker 6: No, and Elon actually blocked my emails when I started
Speaker 6: asking about it, you know, so this is you know,
Speaker 6: from anybody else, it would be almost too petty to believe.
Speaker 4: But this is Elon Musk we're dealing with. This is
Speaker 4: this is just kind of his playbook.
Speaker 1: Right, No, I mean it is super interesting to me, Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting because this kind of thing, there's
Speaker 1: always been so much paranoia about Twitter from the left,
Speaker 1: first from the right, and now I think from the
Speaker 1: left this paranoia may actually be warranted. This story is
Speaker 1: proof that they're in there monkeying around, right. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, like it used to be, people
Speaker 1: would say, you'll remember the days of old when Twitter
Speaker 1: was like a normal company run like a normal company,
Speaker 1: people would always say Conservatives would always say, I'm being
Speaker 1: shadow banned, I'm being throttled.
Speaker 2: Was that happening then?
Speaker 1: And also if it was happening, then is it happening
Speaker 1: now in the other way or.
Speaker 2: Is there just not enough evidence?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's the hilarious point of all of this. So,
Speaker 6: back before Elon had bought it, Yeah, like you said,
Speaker 6: there was the constant griping about shadow banning. Anytime, you know,
Speaker 6: someone typically on the right would tweet something that they
Speaker 6: felt like didn't get enough likes or retweets, they would say,
Speaker 6: oh lord, the shadow banning is happening again.
Speaker 4: The liberals in Silicon Valley are out to get me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: There was never really any systemic proof of any of that,
Speaker 6: and actually the research ended up finding that conservative viewpoints
Speaker 6: on the platform got more attention and they were actually
Speaker 6: less suppressed. But that was the reason and why Elon
Speaker 6: took it over to begin with. He felt like there
Speaker 6: was this massive injustice happening. Now once he's taking it over,
Speaker 6: instead of you know, balancing out the force and making
Speaker 6: it so there's no shadow banding happening. To anybody we
Speaker 6: can actually tell there's legitimate, you know, behind the scenes
Speaker 6: algorithmic tinkering happening in the other direction against all of
Speaker 6: the So, you know, this just again belies the whole
Speaker 6: free speech absolutist claim that Elon Musk has always set
Speaker 6: it out himself. And this, you know, these throttlings that
Speaker 6: he did yesterday, Like it's hard to even remember all
Speaker 6: of the examples he has put together in the last
Speaker 6: twelve months of just taking down things he disagrees with.
Speaker 6: Of course, he took down the elon jet account that
Speaker 6: tracks his private jet. He banned journalists who covered that,
Speaker 6: including me and many others for reporting on it. These
Speaker 6: are not things that you would expect from like a
Speaker 6: First Amendment free speed champion. But this is Elon musk playground.
Speaker 6: He has decided that it's his rule and he can
Speaker 6: just sort of do whatever he wants. And hey, he
Speaker 6: paid forty four billion for it, and he's getting his
Speaker 6: money out of it.
Speaker 1: I read reporting that said that actually, some of these
Speaker 1: autocratic governments like Saudiowabia and Turkey, and I can't exactly
Speaker 1: remember who, but the people we don't generally think of
Speaker 1: as the good guys, India has an autocrat as a
Speaker 1: leader right now. That some of those places, and again
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly what countries, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to be wrong here, but that they had actually asked
Speaker 1: Elon to throttle some of the content and that he
Speaker 1: had gone along with it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that has happened. That you mentioned India, that was
Speaker 6: specifically one of the bigger examples. Governments were asking x
Speaker 6: slash Twitter to remove specific tweets that they didn't like
Speaker 6: from political advocates, dissidents, just people they didn't want on
Speaker 6: the platform. And Twitter has never been a perfect company.
Speaker 6: It has always been problematic. But before Elon took it over,
Speaker 6: it was known for kind of fighting these battles a
Speaker 6: little bit, either you know, from a legal standpoint in
Speaker 6: court or just you know, the officials in the company
Speaker 6: saying no, we have all these rules. Elon has kind
Speaker 6: of bent over backwards to placate these governments by removing
Speaker 6: this content. And he, you know, when he has been
Speaker 6: called out for this, hey, not very free speech, he
Speaker 6: has said, well, what are.
Speaker 4: You going to do? You know, we want we.
Speaker 6: Want clients in India. The government's asking us very nicely,
Speaker 6: who are we to say. And so you know, again,
Speaker 6: it's not just free speech when it's speech you like
Speaker 6: or it's easy for you. Elon just sort of has
Speaker 6: used the free speech idea as a cudgel really against
Speaker 6: the ideas he doesn't seem to like. And then when
Speaker 6: a government comes along and asks for that. So, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's been a it's been a big frustration. You know,
Speaker 6: we see these problems here in America, but we don't
Speaker 6: even really know the extent of the problem overseas, where
Speaker 6: you know, Twitter remains still pretty influential.
Speaker 2: It's such an interesting bit of projection.
Speaker 1: So basically all of the things that Elon accused old
Speaker 1: Twitter of doing, he is now doing at.
Speaker 6: X basically, yeah, and inventing new and surprising ways to
Speaker 6: do it right.
Speaker 4: And you know, and we've.
Speaker 6: Seen a couple of weeks ago there was an account,
Speaker 6: it's kind of like a far right account, that posted
Speaker 6: an image of child sexual abuse. This is the kind
Speaker 6: of thing that would never have it allowed on the platform.
Speaker 6: That has always been you know, the company has always
Speaker 6: had we have zero tolerance. If you post that, we're
Speaker 6: reporting it to the authorities. Your band, you're out of
Speaker 6: here as well. It should be right for child pornography. Yes,
Speaker 6: everyone would expect that, everyone wants that. The industry just
Speaker 6: operates like that, and so it was really kind of
Speaker 6: you know, even for the people who it's hard to
Speaker 6: surprise around Twitter anymore, including me, it was surprising when
Speaker 6: Elon allowed this far right influencer to come back on Twitter.
Speaker 6: They deleted the post with the image. They basically gave
Speaker 6: less than a slap on the wrist. And that far
Speaker 6: right influencer has remained on Twitter and is now getting
Speaker 6: paid through the ad revenue share. So got like two
Speaker 6: thousand dollars from Twitter just for you know, outrage and
Speaker 6: engagement that they get on Twitter. So Twitter is cannot
Speaker 6: be any more different than it was even a year ago.
Speaker 6: Is really just become Elon Musk's a sandbox of whenever
Speaker 6: he wants, and he's constantly sort of pushing the boundaries
Speaker 6: on what's acceptable and that you know, you see that
Speaker 6: and the user base and how people are going away.
Speaker 1: That's an incredible bit of sorcery right there. So here
Speaker 1: we are Elon is engaged in monetizing the platform, whatever
Speaker 1: that looks like. So it seems to me like what
Speaker 1: Elon had always wanted was to make it so.
Speaker 2: And I think this.
Speaker 1: Is a lot of tech pros were like this. They
Speaker 1: sort of thought, like, what does the mainstream media do nothing?
Speaker 1: We're going to just recreate it by getting our guys
Speaker 1: to sort of make their own media, right, Like that
Speaker 1: was sort of the idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, we saw him tweet about it.
Speaker 1: We saw David Sachs, we saw all of his like
Speaker 1: tech pros get very excited about this.
Speaker 2: And they were like, this is easy.
Speaker 1: Will replace you know, We'll replace a liberal outlet with
Speaker 1: the crass and Steen, We'll replace the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: with Bill Mitchell.
Speaker 2: You know, how hard can it be?
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the monetizing situation too, was
Speaker 1: that you know, then you would make more money. You
Speaker 1: know whatever has that worked out for them?
Speaker 6: It hasn't and not yet, I mean, and this has
Speaker 6: been the challenge for like you said, the whole kind
Speaker 6: of right wing internet experiment. And this happened during the
Speaker 6: Trump years where they said, you know, after January sixth,
Speaker 6: really when some of these websites for being deplatformed, you know,
Speaker 6: Parlor disappeared, and you saw the companies go, well, we
Speaker 6: have to create our we don't need Amazon anymore.
Speaker 4: We don't need Twitter.
Speaker 6: We'll create truth Social and Rumble, and those websites all
Speaker 6: have by and large not been successful. I mean, they
Speaker 6: have built niche audiences, but they are not anywhere near
Speaker 6: the mainstream networks. And the big problem with those is
Speaker 6: there's no libs to own on their right, it's just
Speaker 6: all it's all preaching to the choir, and it gets
Speaker 6: a little boring. I mean even on the people on
Speaker 6: there say, you know, why do I just want to
Speaker 6: look at the same memes all day? So Elon, I
Speaker 6: guess he thought maybe he could do it differently with
Speaker 6: Twitter by sort of taking this a social network that
Speaker 6: you know, a lot of the popular influencers on there.
Speaker 4: Were effectively liberals, right.
Speaker 6: You had a lot of celebrities and politicians and comedians
Speaker 6: and they you know, they were a journalist and a
Speaker 6: lot of people who were just you know, on the side.
Speaker 6: He felt like was too woke and too left, and
Speaker 6: he felt like, well, I'm just going to come in
Speaker 6: and I'm going to make it more central around these
Speaker 6: kinds of ideas. And so you saw him elevating people
Speaker 6: like libs of TikTok and other sort of anti trans
Speaker 6: accounts and the makeup of Twitter started to change really quickly,
Speaker 6: and a lot of the technical levers he's been pulling
Speaker 6: since then have been kind of in service of that ideal.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's a reason why Tucker Carlson has his
Speaker 6: show on x now instead of anywhere else and so,
Speaker 6: but financial, you know, so culturally, I think he has
Speaker 6: been able to shift the vibe of the website, but
Speaker 6: financially it's still like a huge loser. I mean, AD revenue,
Speaker 6: even as he has admitted AD revenue has plunged.
Speaker 4: A lot of companies just don't want to be selling. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the way to put Clorox wipes and shoes
Speaker 6: next to like a bunch of kooks.
Speaker 1: All right, did the Holocaust really happen? Yeah, so let
Speaker 1: me ask you the monetizing. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: last month got like ten fifteen thousand dollars. The Crafts
Speaker 1: and Steans were the sort of held up as the
Speaker 1: liberal example of this. Now you'll remember the Crafts and
Speaker 1: Steins really do work in service to Elon, despite maybe
Speaker 1: not being far right. They were kicked off Twitter originally
Speaker 1: for operating a bond network. So these guys are pretty sketch.
Speaker 1: They got money libs of TikTok. A lot of conservative
Speaker 1: influencers got money, but did normal people get money.
Speaker 2: Nobody offered me any money. I mean, like, let's talk
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the elevator pitch was buy Twitter Blue ex blue
Speaker 6: for eight dollars a month and you will be rewarded
Speaker 6: potentially with this big ad revenue split. All of the
Speaker 6: fine print, though, is why it's been so unbalanced. Like,
Speaker 6: to get money, you have to have a certain amount
Speaker 6: of like views on your tweets or X posts or whatever.
Speaker 6: I think it's something like five million a month or something,
Speaker 6: and those have to only come from other ex blue subscribers, Right,
Speaker 6: So these are other people who have paid eight dollars
Speaker 6: a month, yeah, who are yeah, leaning more conservatives. So
Speaker 6: you start to read through all the fine prints, and
Speaker 6: when we've done the research, it's a vanishingly small crust
Speaker 6: of people who are getting the payouts from this. Of course,
Speaker 6: when they get the payouts, they go on to X
Speaker 6: and say, oh my gosh, I'm rich, and so it
Speaker 6: creates this like flywheel. I mean that's what Elon wants,
Speaker 6: I assume, is to get everybody feeling like, hey, I
Speaker 6: could get paid for this too, but we have not
Speaker 6: seen this, you know, reaching down to the normal people.
Speaker 6: And to be clear, like you know, the creator economy
Speaker 6: of people making money off YouTube and TikTok and Twitch,
Speaker 6: it's it's always kind of a one percent economy. Some
Speaker 6: people get like fabulously rich and a lot of people
Speaker 6: get nothing. But Twitter is just it's become really clear
Speaker 6: that just the people, and like you said, with the
Speaker 6: craft and scenes, to get money, you really have to farm.
Speaker 4: Engagement in whatever way you can.
Speaker 6: And it's actually kind of made Twitter somehow even more
Speaker 6: crass because you can you can almost see people stunting
Speaker 6: for hate clicks and retweets and just posting the kind
Speaker 6: of crud online that you don't really want to see
Speaker 6: but just works to get people clicking because that's what
Speaker 6: they need to get, you know, another couple cents on
Speaker 6: their Twitter paycheck. And I always want to like remind
Speaker 6: people Twitter is not some fabulously money making company and
Speaker 6: it never has been. Yeah, so this is all I mean,
Speaker 6: they're kind of burning money. Some people have described this
Speaker 6: as really kind of desperate, because this is Twitter saying
Speaker 6: we're going to give payouts to people to keep using
Speaker 6: our product.
Speaker 4: It's like a quasi bribe.
Speaker 6: Obviously, Twitter before this never had to pay people to
Speaker 6: be creating content on Twitter, and yet it was still
Speaker 6: this cultural juggernaut. So the fact that Elon had to
Speaker 6: be handing out checks to accomplish the same just shows
Speaker 6: how struggling they are.
Speaker 2: We be banking on X. I personally do not want
Speaker 2: to give him.
Speaker 1: I have to say, after my experience with Elon owning Twitter,
Speaker 1: I want to neither let him put something in my
Speaker 1: brain nor give him my Social Security number.
Speaker 4: Discuss Yeah, I mean that's a good question.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you're not on the opinion side.
Speaker 6: But you can buy an Elon Musk car, you can
Speaker 6: get in an Elon Musk rocket, you can go in
Speaker 6: an Elon Musk tunnel, Elon Musk, brain chips, flamethrowers. Again,
Speaker 6: I'm not an opinion people. A lot of people love
Speaker 6: Elon Musk. I mean this has always been the way
Speaker 6: I covered Tesla before Twitter. There has always been an
Speaker 6: army of Elon Musk stands who you know, see the
Speaker 6: iron Man, see the guy who takes no gov says
Speaker 6: what he wants. I think that audience has obviously changed
Speaker 6: a lot. It's not like just nerdy type anymore. You
Speaker 6: see this big sort of maga love fest that's come
Speaker 6: to him. But I mean it's it's hurting the other businesses.
Speaker 6: You can see the other businesses. They're all getting distracted
Speaker 6: by this. I mean people who wanted to buy it
Speaker 6: to Tesla. Tesla purchases are down. Twitter usage is down,
Speaker 6: so you know, the circus around Elon does have an effect.
Speaker 6: Not normies don't always want to be buing into that.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 6: But then again, you know, Twitter is still still very popular.
Speaker 6: It's still beating Threads and Blue Sky and masks On
Speaker 6: and all these all these others. But those companies are
Speaker 6: are rising, and it's just the start of sort of
Speaker 6: Elon Musk's regime.
Speaker 4: So can he you know.
Speaker 6: And this is a guy who has to pay a
Speaker 6: billion dollars a year just to pay the debt for
Speaker 6: this company.
Speaker 7: So I don't think time is on elon must side.
Speaker 7: Oh well, thank you shut threatened me with a good time.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back true.
Speaker 4: Yes, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Moment.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast, that Roger stone Man who
Speaker 3: doesn't really give a lot of fucks and really always
Speaker 3: thinks he's the smartest one in the room.
Speaker 4: Well, I think he got him some trouble.
Speaker 1: Well, this is like such a great moment in Roger
Speaker 1: stone lore. He is out on bail from his conviction
Speaker 1: in the Mueller probe, as Andrew Weissman noted, and he
Speaker 1: is already this is like two days after the election
Speaker 1: in November. It was before it was called, but it
Speaker 1: was a few days after the voting had happened, and
Speaker 1: we already really knew the writing on the wall, and
Speaker 1: Roger Stone had decided that this was the way they
Speaker 1: were going to so doubt. You know what's funny about
Speaker 1: all these things is like, if you're going to do crimes,
Speaker 1: who is videotaping this are Why is he being videotaped
Speaker 1: all the time? Anyway, I just want to say, if
Speaker 1: you're going to do crimes, don't do them on video.
Speaker 1: That is my I'm not a defense lawyer. I don't
Speaker 1: even play one on TV. And yet, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: do crimes, don't do them on video.
Speaker 4: You know the wire they said, don't take notes on
Speaker 4: a criminal operation because doing video on it would be
Speaker 4: even stupider. Yeah, that's what Nicole said today.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.