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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,

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Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of

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Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.

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Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade

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Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.

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Speaker 1: Coverage that is possible.

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Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means

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Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.

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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show. You

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Speaker 1: started covering a lot of the foreclosure crisis.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was my first hint that something like

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Speaker 3: Trump was going to happen. That's what this whole memestock

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Speaker 3: thinker out of, I think, is just this rage directed

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Speaker 3: towards these financial professionals who were basically being subsidized and

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Speaker 3: then acting like they had like this special financial genius

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Speaker 3: that allowed them to make money.

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Speaker 4: We actually haven't even opened one of the most important

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Speaker 4: chapters in your journalism career at now, which is the

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Speaker 4: Twitter files. As someone who's actually like interacted with him

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Speaker 4: and feuded with him and has had this relationship with him,

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Speaker 4: where do you think Elon Musk bits into this.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Counterpoints for today's Friday show. We're going

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Speaker 1: to be joined by long time veteran journalist Matthew Tayibi.

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about his career, which has spanned

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Speaker 1: the pre Internet era, basically back when you see actually

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Speaker 1: print things. I mean, I'm there too, so I can

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Speaker 1: say that up to today and continuing to evolve like

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Speaker 1: we have not seen. It's not as if we've gotten

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Speaker 1: some static place. So we're going to talk about the

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Speaker 1: history of journalism and the history over the last thirty years.

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Speaker 1: But we wanted to start with a question though about

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, this election, which we're all trying to cover.

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Speaker 1: And I have a theory that I wanted to try

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Speaker 1: on both of you, which is that I think the

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Speaker 1: country is in denial right now, like it think of

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Speaker 1: this as the other kind of election denialism, like people

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Speaker 1: just I think as I talk to people around the

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Speaker 1: country that they just refuse to believe that this is

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Speaker 1: the election, that it's Biden against Trump, Like there was

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Speaker 1: basically no Democratic primary, and so that allowed people to

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Speaker 1: kind of so you know what, this isn't really happening.

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Speaker 1: There's no competition, but it's not going to be him,

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Speaker 1: like there's gonna be And I was talking to my dad. Yes,

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Speaker 1: she's like they're going to do something right. Right maybe

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Speaker 1: at the.

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Speaker 5: Convention has a medical situation.

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Speaker 1: And I think the Nicky Haley. We talked a lot

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Speaker 1: about how Nicki Haley got all this mainstream news coverage

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Speaker 1: that she didn't deserve based on the fact that she

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Speaker 1: never had a shot. But I think part of it

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Speaker 1: was psychological that people are like, it's got to be

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Speaker 1: something other than Trump. Like Biden said he was basically

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Speaker 1: going to be a one term guy. Country took him

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Speaker 1: at his word. Now here he is allegedly running again,

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Speaker 1: and so I think that I think that the refusal

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Speaker 1: of people to check into the election has to do

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Speaker 1: with them just denying the reality that it's these two guys.

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Speaker 3: What do you think that, Uh yeah, well, I think

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Speaker 3: a couple of things. Number one, I think people are

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Speaker 3: right to be suspicious because we're not treating this like

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Speaker 3: a normal election season. I mean, at this cover five

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Speaker 3: presidential elections. At this stage of a race, normally, every

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Speaker 3: single day it would be a campaign story. You'd be

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Speaker 3: you see somebody out in the campaign till we would

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Speaker 3: have constant arguments about the back and forth. But you know,

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Speaker 3: between the candidates and there's none of that would.

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Speaker 1: Have staff getting fired, like you know who the staff are, right,

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Speaker 1: Like they became celebrities over the five election cycles that

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Speaker 1: you've covered, like well the Carl Rose, the David Axelrods,

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Speaker 1: like who's running Biden Trump's campaigns?

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Speaker 5: Where was the first publication that you worked on a campaign?

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Speaker 5: Just like in general the village?

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Speaker 4: So because that sounded to me like such a Politico

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Speaker 4: Huff Post question, because but that's actually what was sort

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Speaker 4: of new, right. I mean, you guys can correct me

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Speaker 4: if I'm wrong, But in the aughts there was this

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Speaker 4: journalism as almost a sport.

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Speaker 1: Well James Carville.

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Speaker 5: Campaigning become became more almost gamified. I don't know that

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Speaker 5: the characters popped.

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Speaker 3: I anything that was really popularized, but a helper in

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Speaker 3: and who's the other guy I've always forget is high, Yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 3: you know, with game change and all that and this

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Speaker 3: whole idea. But that was the first, you know, when

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Speaker 3: I started covering campaigns for Rolling Stone, the first thing

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Speaker 3: that I saw as a big story on the campaign

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Speaker 3: was that the journalists thought they were running the whole thing.

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Speaker 3: There was a kind of a cabal inside the campaign

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Speaker 3: where they would get together. At the end of the day,

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Speaker 3: they would decide which candidates were serious and viable and

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Speaker 3: have discussions about that. And I thought that was crazy.

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Speaker 3: Now there's really none of that. I mean, nobody really

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Speaker 3: knows what the campaign is anymore. And it doesn't it

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Speaker 3: doesn't there's no script. It's not the reality show that

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Speaker 3: was all consuming for so long.

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Speaker 1: So five elections I could do. The math was what

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Speaker 1: was the first one? For actively covered?

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Speaker 4: Oh?

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Speaker 3: Four? Really?

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Speaker 1: Right, okay, Carrie Carry, I don't know, yeah, yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: So everybody knew but Bush, even though Bush was the nominate,

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Speaker 1: like everybody knew it was gonna be the dominie again

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Speaker 1: Karl Rove and like here's and he had a strategy.

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Speaker 1: He's gonna he's going to bring out the bigots too

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Speaker 1: for the over marriage equality. Like that was like that

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Speaker 1: was the theme of the two then plus John John

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Speaker 1: Kerry's quizzling and like, you know, he's weak on the

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Speaker 1: war and you know, right, you knew you kind of

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Speaker 1: knew what the election was.

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Speaker 3: About, right right, yeah, exactly. I mean they they made

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Speaker 3: it about things that should have really didn't matter to

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Speaker 3: the population all that much. I mean that the war

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Speaker 3: was the dominant topic in the country at the time,

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Speaker 3: and neither candidate really wanted to go there all that much,

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Speaker 3: not you know, in terms of and also the larger

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Speaker 3: issues about the warrant and that sort of thing. They

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Speaker 3: just didn't come up a whole lot. It was you know,

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Speaker 3: John Carrey's medals versus yeah, other the swift boats boats, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 3: all that stuff.

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Speaker 1: So how did the how did the campaign press handle

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Speaker 1: the swift boats? Actually? Like what was the and then

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Speaker 1: and then I want to go back and how he

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Speaker 1: got in juralm the like so to like the Bush campaign,

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Speaker 1: they start pushing this swift boat stuff and for people

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Speaker 1: who are basically weren't even born.

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Speaker 3: Then, which is almost everybody.

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Speaker 1: So swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a right wing

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Speaker 1: group that was kind of formed by people who had

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Speaker 1: served with John Kerry in Vietnam, and they hated his

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Speaker 1: story of turning his swift boat toward the Vietcong and

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Speaker 1: like shooting and they said he like sort of like

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Speaker 1: throwing the metals. Well, they really hated that he threw

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Speaker 1: his medals in protests or his ribbons. I think he

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Speaker 1: kept his metals before his ribbons, which is a very

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Speaker 1: John Kerry, but they didn't like his purple heart and

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Speaker 1: he wasn't injured enough or whatever. It became this like

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Speaker 1: he smoked his ribbons. Yes, became this real character attack.

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Speaker 1: Democrats just avoided it for a very long time, not

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Speaker 1: understanding the way that the internet and politics had changed,

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Speaker 1: thought that if they just didn't address it, it would go away.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: It ended up causing immense damage. But I'm curious how

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Speaker 1: the press was thinking about this kind of new well,

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Speaker 1: I think they campaigning.

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Speaker 3: What I remember about that is that a lot of

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Speaker 3: people saw it as a continuation of the sort of

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Speaker 3: nineties David Rock, you know, sort.

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Speaker 1: Of which was a new thing used to be on

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Speaker 1: the right for right. Yeah, he was this also or not.

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Speaker 3: Quote unquote right wing hit man back in the day

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Speaker 3: who was the point person behind the scenes and the

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Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas hearings, than Whitewater and all this stuff, And

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Speaker 3: that was a sort of a new thing in media

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Speaker 3: at the time, this idea of organized the multi pronged

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Speaker 3: media attacks, creating new organizations just for the purpose of

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Speaker 3: going out into the public and creating news stories. And

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Speaker 3: I think a lot of people saw the Swift Book

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Speaker 3: group as that. But you're right. There was a massive

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Speaker 3: and effect in the way. You know, they covered that

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Speaker 3: so much that it became overwhelmingly the theme of the campaign.

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Speaker 3: And the Democrats I don't think did a great job

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Speaker 3: of pushing back because they their whole campaign was John

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Speaker 3: Kerry in an army jacket. They didn't have an issue

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Speaker 3: to run on, and so this whole thing. He was

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Speaker 3: a sitting duck for that kind of stuff. So I

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Speaker 3: don't know, most of the reporters just thought it was

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Speaker 3: a fun story that they were happy to work on

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Speaker 3: every day. There wasn't a whole lot of outrage.

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Speaker 4: Kind of a fascinating thread though, And this might get

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Speaker 4: to your next question, and that Chris Lasavita, who's now

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Speaker 4: running the Trump campaign, was like the pioneer of the

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Speaker 4: swift boat Oh was he?

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Speaker 5: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, People credit him for the entire swift boat campaign attack.

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Speaker 4: And what's interesting about that is at the time people

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Speaker 4: saw it as the sort of rupture of ethics, and

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Speaker 4: now you have the man who finally put an end,

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Speaker 4: at least on the presidential scale, to this debate about

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Speaker 4: whether it's okay to rupture the ethics. It's like the

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Speaker 4: it's like the filibuster debate, but for decorum and presidential campaigns, right,

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Speaker 4: like we can't they like once you open that Pandora's box,

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Speaker 4: Like what happens? That absolutely happened in twenty sixteen on

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Speaker 4: the presidential level. And now Chris los Avita, the swift

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Speaker 4: boat guy, was running the Trump campaign.

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Speaker 1: I didn't even know he was running the Trump campaign.

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Speaker 1: Like I'm in denial too about this election.

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Speaker 3: I didn't know that either. I'm supposedly supposed to be covering.

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Speaker 1: So don't don't tell anybody that that I didn't know that,

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Speaker 1: because that would be kind of embarrassing.

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Speaker 5: It's a good thing you didn't say it on air.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So well, yeah, just keep it between us in

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Speaker 1: the Friday Show here. If you guys out there.

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Speaker 5: Watching, nobody cliped this whole all flow.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, don't keep riving. So h growing up, did you

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Speaker 1: always think you were going to be a journalist because

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Speaker 1: your father was a journalist?

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Speaker 3: Is that right?

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Speaker 1: He was like a local TV journalist in New York?

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Speaker 1: Is that right?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? So my parents were at Rutgers and my father

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Speaker 3: I was born when they were very young, there were

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Speaker 3: like twenty and so he to support the family, he

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Speaker 3: was working as a newspaper reporter at the Home News

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Speaker 3: in New Brunswick, New Jersey. So he started when he

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Speaker 3: was eighteen or nineteen. Wow, he's been doing this forever.

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Speaker 3: And then as soon as he graduated, we moved to

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Speaker 3: Boston and he worked at a local affiliate there. So

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Speaker 3: in my childhood was like Anchorman basically. You know, I

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Speaker 3: spent a lot of my childhood in those newsrooms with

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Speaker 3: you know, the bad facial hair and all that stuff.

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Speaker 3: And I used to play with the weather set up

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Speaker 3: and try to print, pretend with the green screen and everything.

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Speaker 3: It was really cool.

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Speaker 1: And did your mom get an a journalism too? No?

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Speaker 3: No, she ended up being an attorney. But I spent

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Speaker 3: most of my time hanging around my father. My father

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Speaker 3: is he's a journalist, journalist, like very old school, incredibly gifted.

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Speaker 3: I was very fascinated by his work because he's a

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Speaker 3: super gregarious personality who could just show up at any

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Speaker 3: scene and get people trusting him and talking to him instantly.

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Speaker 3: And you know, in journalism, in TV journalism especially, you

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Speaker 3: have to get you know, a good SoundBite, and then

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Speaker 3: you have to be able to knock out a script

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Speaker 3: like really quickly. And he was really good at all

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Speaker 3: that stuff. He did his own editing, even back in

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Speaker 3: the days when it was film going all that back

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Speaker 3: that far. So I thought that was really cool. But

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Speaker 3: I never thought I would be able to do this.

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Speaker 3: And I also wanted to be a writer, a TV journalist.

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Speaker 1: Was it that? Oh, so you wanted to be a

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Speaker 1: writer of journalism or novels and novels. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So I was kind of a depressed kid. So comic

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Speaker 3: novels were my big escape growing up, and I thought,

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Speaker 3: that's what I want to do. I want to be

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Speaker 3: like Elin Waugh or Nicolai Gogol or somebody like that.

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Speaker 3: You know. It turned out I don't have talent for

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Speaker 3: writing fiction, but I didn't learn that until later. And

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Speaker 3: by the time I figured it out, I realized I

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Speaker 3: didn't have any actual skills except the family business. So

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Speaker 3: that's how I got into journalism.

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Speaker 1: So how do you wind up in Russia?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 5: That was gonna be my next question.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so my favorite writer is growing up were all Russian?

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Speaker 3: I mentioned go Gol Bulgakov was another one. I went

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Speaker 3: through this period where I was just reading lots and

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Speaker 3: lots of Russian literature.

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Speaker 5: Do you think that was from your politics or do

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Speaker 5: you think your politics came from that?

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Speaker 3: Oh? I couldn't. I couldn't stand politics. I still don't.

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Speaker 3: I still can't stand it. I really the books. I

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Speaker 3: was just really into how well they were written and

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Speaker 3: how beautiful they were, And you know, the Russians have

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Speaker 3: this amazing absurdist view on life, and I was, you know,

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Speaker 3: when you're depressed, you kind of try to lose yourself

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Speaker 3: in that landscape and the writing of people like Tolsta

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Speaker 3: it's so vivid. I wanted to go experience it. And

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Speaker 3: then I wanted to learn the language so I could

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Speaker 3: read those books in russ So I went there as

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Speaker 3: a student. And one of the funny things was, you know,

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Speaker 3: in the States, what years that probably eighty nine nineties,

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Speaker 3: so it was still Soviet. Yeah, so I went to

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Speaker 3: a Soviet college. But in America, you remember the eighties,

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Speaker 3: that was like the kind of Porky's and everything right,

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Speaker 3: Like everybody was you know, they spent a lot of

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Speaker 3: time in their appearance and there was a success culture

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Speaker 3: and everything, and I thought, I hated that. I'm like,

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Speaker 3: I'm going to be a failure. When I grew up

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Speaker 3: in Russia, everybody's a failure, right, So I felt like

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Speaker 3: I fit right in and it was it was a

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Speaker 3: cool things. So that's why I ended up moving back there.

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Speaker 3: I thought this place is paradise. It turned out not

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Speaker 3: to be, but it was a great thing.

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Speaker 1: Well, so you graduate from college and came back to

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Speaker 1: the US, and what'd you try first before you went

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Speaker 1: back to Russia.

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Speaker 3: I didn't try anything.

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Speaker 1: I immediately started making plans.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I worked demolition and way the table saved

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Speaker 3: money and it just went over there and started stringing.

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Speaker 4: So and you said, it turned out not to be paradise,

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Speaker 4: but there's something so interesting about someone growing up immersed

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Speaker 4: and as you said, the landscapes, that was a really

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Speaker 4: beautiful way to put it. And then having your eyes

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Speaker 4: opened up gradually over time. What was that process like?

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Speaker 4: What really started to disillusion you?

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Speaker 3: Well, Russia was just it went through a very tough time,

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Speaker 3: both when it was still Soviet and then after the

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Speaker 3: revolution in ninety one.

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Speaker 5: That's when were you there in ninety one.

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Speaker 3: I missed the actual thing by a couple of months

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Speaker 3: on either side, but I saw it coming obviously my

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Speaker 3: last semester there. You could you know there was a

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Speaker 3: a ban on food products, so you had to use

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Speaker 3: a rationing system just to get vegetables and things like that.

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Speaker 3: It was it was a mess. But then after that,

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Speaker 3: Russia immediately transformed this like gangster state, which was kind

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Speaker 3: of horrifying to watch, but as a journalist was fascinating,

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Speaker 3: you know, I mean I got to go and see

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Speaker 3: incredible things. It was a great place to start one's

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Speaker 3: career because you know, you got to cover very high

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Speaker 3: level things quickly, which you don't get to do in

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Speaker 3: America if you're working as an intern in you know,

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Speaker 3: a magazine or something. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I always thought your ability to cover Wall Street corruption

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Speaker 1: later in your career must have been connected to witnessing

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Speaker 1: it in its like most extreme form, right, like up

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Speaker 1: up close? Was it so? And for people who aren't

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Speaker 1: that familiar with that period of history, correct me if

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Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I think it The most rapid collapse in

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Speaker 1: life expectancy in world history is Russia in the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 3: That's probably right, Yeah, which is remarkable.

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Speaker 1: To consider that they went from rationing food in nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety one and then that was the high point, right,

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Speaker 1: the collapsed, you know, life expectancy dropping by just years

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Speaker 1: and years and years because the state, you know, with

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Speaker 1: US facilitation, just gets sold from out from under the

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Speaker 1: people to these oligarchs. Could you see it happen in

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Speaker 1: real time? Like are you like you know, there's still

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Speaker 1: these famous videos of Jeff Sachs, who we should have

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Speaker 1: on the show because his arc from that totally to

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Speaker 1: where he is now. It's absolutely incredible. Jeff Sacks helped

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Speaker 1: to basically auction off the entire Soviet Union and create

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Speaker 1: all these oligarchs through this Harvard run.

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Speaker 3: Harvard Institute for International Development. Yeah. Yeah, So the auctions

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Speaker 3: that you talk about when you mentioned the financial reporting later,

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Speaker 3: these are some of the most complicated thefts maybe in

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Speaker 3: the history of the world, and probably the biggest ones

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Speaker 3: maybe in the history of people. So just take an example, Well,

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Speaker 3: they had a thing called loans for shares, which was

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Speaker 3: a way of kind of handing out the crown jewels

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Speaker 3: of Soviet industry to basically cronies of the yeltsin regime.

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Speaker 3: And what they did is they took people who really

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Speaker 3: had no cash at all and they lent them money.

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Speaker 3: So in the case of for instance, Yukos, which is

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Speaker 3: a company about the size of excellon mobile, the yeltsin

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Speaker 3: regime lends one of the banks fifty million dollars, which

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Speaker 3: turns out to be half their steak that they put

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Speaker 3: up to get a thirty eight or thirty seven percent

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Speaker 3: steak and one of the world's biggest oil companies. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: exactly right. So they put up basically nothing to get

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Speaker 3: to become instantly some of the richest people on earth.

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Speaker 3: And they did that with you know, seven or eight

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Speaker 3: of these banker groups. And we later learned that there

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Speaker 3: was a kind of a backroom deal that was broker

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Speaker 3: to Davos where there was an agreement that they were

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Speaker 3: going to get these properties in return for massively supporting

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Speaker 3: Yelds in the ninety six election, and that's how Yelsen

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Speaker 3: went from being at six percent in the polls to

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Speaker 3: actually winning. There were some other things that went on too,

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Speaker 3: but you know, it was a US broker thing. We

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Speaker 3: helped advise in the structure of all those auctions, which

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Speaker 3: were totally corrupt, and so that was an early introduction

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Speaker 3: for me.

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Speaker 4: What's also playing out in a split screen for you

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Speaker 4: is you're seeing up close what's actually happening in Russia.

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Speaker 4: You're also probably absorbing Western media coverage of what's happening

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Speaker 4: in Russia. And you've written one of the best books

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Speaker 4: on contemporary media problems hating people should.

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Speaker 5: Read it if they haven't.

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Speaker 4: But watching that was that also something because and this

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Speaker 4: is kind of a rambling question, but I think about

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Speaker 4: Tucker Carlson going to Russia and realizing a lot of

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Speaker 4: what he has been told about Russia is wrong. Maybe

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Speaker 4: though sometimes people realize a lot of what they've been

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Speaker 4: told about something is wrong, and it pushes them further

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Speaker 4: to the direction of like not being right on a

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Speaker 4: different side of the question, like.

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Speaker 5: Tucker out of this. That's a phenomenon that happens all

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Speaker 5: the time.

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Speaker 4: So for you, what was it like watching the Western

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Speaker 4: media say this place is a corrupt nightmare while not

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Speaker 4: covering the Westerners that are creating the corrupt nightmare, but

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Speaker 4: then also kind of missing some of the story that

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Speaker 4: you were covering with like everyday people.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so a lot of the journalists, actually most of

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Speaker 3: them didn't speak Russian. That was the first thing that

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Speaker 3: was kind of shocking to me. I didn't understand that

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Speaker 3: at all. It turns out that's sort of an intentional strategy,

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Speaker 3: both with diplomats and foreign correspondence for the big bureaus.

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Speaker 1: They what's the strategy there?

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Speaker 3: So for diplomats, there was a bad experience with China

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Speaker 3: with the Maoist Revolution, where the United States felt like

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Speaker 3: the diplomats were too close to the local population and

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Speaker 3: that's why they didn't get the warning that the revolution

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Speaker 3: was going to happen. So there's a kind of a

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Speaker 3: strategy of switching people out on a regular basis so

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Speaker 3: they don't get to attenuated to the low population. With journalists,

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Speaker 3: I'm not really sure why they do it, but you

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Speaker 3: almost never have somebody who is really in tune with

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Speaker 3: you know, the local population, the language, everything, And I

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Speaker 3: don't know how you cover a country if you don't,

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Speaker 3: you know.

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Speaker 1: That's like I'm trying to imagine a Russian journalist who

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Speaker 1: comes to Washington, d c. And only speaks Russian, right,

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Speaker 1: and is then translating what's happening in Washington back to

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Speaker 1: a Russian audience. Can you imagine that it would be

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Speaker 1: remotely accurate?

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Speaker 3: No, it would be a money python routine. Yeah right,

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Speaker 3: you couldn't. It's bored, It's you could. It's even dumber

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Speaker 3: than that.

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Speaker 5: Would they just have to talk to the English speakers.

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Speaker 3: Well, so that's that's the problem. So what they got

404
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Speaker 3: almost all of their input on what was going on

405
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Speaker 3: in Russia from English speaking Russian politicians, many of whom

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Speaker 3: went to Harvard like Anatole Chibias Yegur guide are borising themselves, right,

407
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Speaker 3: people like that. But you went, you know, an hour

408
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Speaker 3: outside of Moscow or Saint Petersburgh and there was like

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Speaker 3: subsistence farming and like, you know, a complete gangsterism. You

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Speaker 3: would go to a place and there would be total

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Speaker 3: barter economy, no cash anywhere, starvation, you know, incredible surges

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Speaker 3: and crime, all this stuff. So I started to do

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Speaker 3: a lot of like participatory reporting. So I would just

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Speaker 3: go from place to place, get a job somewhere, and

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Speaker 3: then just write, you know, what's it like to work

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Speaker 3: construction in this place, or you know, work on a

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Speaker 3: you know, a mine over here, right. And in contrast

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Speaker 3: that with what they were telling people back home, which

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Speaker 3: was that there's this emerging middle class and everything's awesome,

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Speaker 3: and you know, it was you know, it was really

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Speaker 3: wild for me because I had a lot of illusions

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Speaker 3: about how good the media was, and that was the

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Speaker 3: first time I saw that they just will lie about stuff,

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Speaker 3: and that was kind of amazing to me.

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Speaker 1: Who would you publish those with?

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Speaker 3: So I had my own newspaper over there is exility,

427
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Speaker 3: so yeah. But I did work at the Moscow Times

428
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Speaker 3: over there, which is an expat paper. But I also

429
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Speaker 3: I wrote for the Nation and some other papers in England,

430
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Speaker 3: like believe it or not, I think I did a

431
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Speaker 3: couple for the Telegraph, for the Daily Mail. I worked

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Speaker 3: for euro Money, believe it or not.

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Speaker 5: He's always been a right wing.

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Speaker 3: Hack exactly going back, that's right, that's right, euro Money.

435
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Speaker 3: So you know, I contributed. I also wrote in Russian.

436
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Speaker 3: I wrote for Russian papers and uh yeah, so that

437
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Speaker 3: was that was mostly what I did. But I the

438
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Speaker 3: audience mostly wasn't back in the United States, so that was,

439
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,320
Speaker 3: you know, kind of the difference. But it was interesting.

440
00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:44,240
Speaker 1: How did you come about founding the paper? And who

441
00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:49,720
Speaker 1: was it was? It was Mark Ames was Zai Chika much.

442
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:53,399
Speaker 3: Later, Yeah, so it was it was really Mark. There

443
00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:56,600
Speaker 3: were there were actually two papers originally, you know, for

444
00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:58,880
Speaker 3: a long time there was this paper they're called Living Here,

445
00:22:58,920 --> 00:23:02,640
Speaker 3: which was a club guy because the Moscow Times didn't

446
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:05,160
Speaker 3: have a good club guide and so there was everybody

447
00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:07,439
Speaker 3: realized that's how you make money in the next bad city, right,

448
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:12,000
Speaker 3: because everybody's clubbing, right. So we put out the sort

449
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:15,639
Speaker 3: of trashy club guide and that was actually doing well,

450
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:18,159
Speaker 3: and somebody had the idea to long, when don't we

451
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,159
Speaker 3: just make it out the paper and Mark was the

452
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:25,520
Speaker 3: first editor of that. I had actually I would during

453
00:23:25,520 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 3: that time. I was actually playing basketball in Mongolia when

454
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 3: this was all happening. I got sick, came home and

455
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:35,600
Speaker 3: they said, do you want to come help do a

456
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,639
Speaker 3: competitor to that? And I came back and ended up

457
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:40,800
Speaker 3: merging with Mark, and that's how the XLE happened.

458
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:43,240
Speaker 1: And I forgot about your Mongolian basketball career. How long

459
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:44,080
Speaker 1: did that last?

460
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 3: A season? Yeah? Yeah, I was. I was the Mongolian

461
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 3: I'm really it was really more like a small forward,

462
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:58,920
Speaker 3: but I can't shoot, so but I was leaving the

463
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 3: league in rebounding when la That's funny, That's my point

464
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:01,680
Speaker 3: was like.

465
00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:04,359
Speaker 5: You were the number one, the top rebounder in the Mongolian.

466
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,119
Speaker 3: Boder was I was it? Six for two? Believed it

467
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:06,359
Speaker 3: or not?

468
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,320
Speaker 1: Did you have a nickname that the Mongolian Mongolian Rodman?

469
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 3: Yeah? And I did the whole thing. Back then, I

470
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 3: had hair and I used to diet red with and

471
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:18,440
Speaker 3: have a yellow beard and all kinds of crazy stuff.

472
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 3: The owner wanted to drum up interest, so he would

473
00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:23,919
Speaker 3: ask me to start fights and do all kinds of

474
00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 3: crazy stuff.

475
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:26,360
Speaker 5: Really, Kenny Powers in Mexico.

476
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 3: Totally, yeah, totally is that's why I went. I wanted

477
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:31,920
Speaker 3: to write a book about this, and you know, the

478
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 3: whole idea was like it was a gag. It was

479
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 3: supposed to be Charles Barkley and the far East Right,

480
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,960
Speaker 3: and I was going to do it, but you know,

481
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 3: I contracted pneumonia in the middle of it, and you know,

482
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:44,080
Speaker 3: never got to finish the project.

483
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:45,679
Speaker 1: So did you ever write about that?

484
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 3: Not really. I wrote like one article for the Boston

485
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:51,600
Speaker 3: Globe magazine a long time ago, but I never did

486
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:54,479
Speaker 3: the full thing. And now I wish I lost all

487
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:56,879
Speaker 3: my notes from that time period because it would have

488
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:59,359
Speaker 3: been a very funny story actually, if I had actually

489
00:24:59,400 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 3: written it.

490
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 4: Another lesson that I'm curious about that I imagine you

491
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:07,600
Speaker 4: gleaned from those years is the kind of intersection of

492
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 4: journalism and intel that I imagine was especially crazy in

493
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:18,679
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties early aughts Russia, but also I feel like

494
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 4: has just flourished in recent years. And this gets to

495
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 4: a lot of your reporting with the Twitter files, where

496
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:28,479
Speaker 4: there's this mundane think tank at Stanford that is looped

497
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:33,119
Speaker 4: into all of these different Pentagon agencies or whatever. The

498
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:36,159
Speaker 4: all of the alphabet soup from the Pentagon. But I

499
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 4: feel like that must have been a water that you

500
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 4: learned to navigate, probably in Russia too.

501
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yet so Russia when it became when stopped being communist,

502
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:53,639
Speaker 3: it did have a very vigorous free press for a while,

503
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 3: but it wasn't exactly free right, like the system was.

504
00:25:58,080 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 3: You had a whole bunch of different newspapers, each one

505
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 3: was owned by a different gangster, and the people who

506
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 3: were the investigative journalists at those papers, they would be

507
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 3: handed something, a packet of something that would come from

508
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 3: you know, whatever intelligence service was connected to that mob figure,

509
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 3: and they would write up that report. They had a

510
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 3: term for it. They call it selling jeans over there,

511
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 3: like somebody just sold me some jeans, because that's what

512
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 3: the people on the street used to do in the

513
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 3: communist time. So I knew a lot of these investigative reporters,

514
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 3: and actually they were right away. They were incredible like reporters,

515
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:38,480
Speaker 3: they were really good and very brave. A lot of

516
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 3: them got killed or beaten or threatened, and they were

517
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 3: just unbelievably brave people who were trying to navigate this

518
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 3: very difficult system. And I learned a lot from them,

519
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:55,640
Speaker 3: and I didn't learn until later that there was probably

520
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 3: something similar going on in the Western side, but certainly

521
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 3: on the Russian side. That was the first time I

522
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 3: understood that whole dynamic and got to see how it worked.

523
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,400
Speaker 3: And of course, by the time Putin came on the scene,

524
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 3: he's sort of all he really did is consolidate, uh,

525
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:21,399
Speaker 3: you know, instead of having seven different agencies, he basically

526
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:24,200
Speaker 3: put them all under the same umbrella. And if you didn't,

527
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 3: you know, get in line and publish what he wanted you.

528
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 3: You know, that's when you got in trouble.

529
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 1: So where where did the exile fit into this constellation

530
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: of papers?

531
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,879
Speaker 3: Well, so we were in this amazing place where we

532
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 3: were writing in English. American libel law didn't apply to us,

533
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 3: The Russians didn't read us.

534
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 5: Where were you incorporated?

535
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:45,159
Speaker 2: Like?

536
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 5: Business wise?

537
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 3: Business wise we were a Russian business, just so were

538
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 3: we were a Russian we were a Russian press outlet

539
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 3: in a second, and uh so we basically had to

540
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,160
Speaker 3: deal with this authorities that like a Russian newspaper would,

541
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 3: but they weren't paying attention to what we wrote until later,

542
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 3: and then they started to. We had some problems with

543
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 3: them originally because they would just ask for bribes on

544
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 3: tax day, but then I think there were some content

545
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 3: issues later on, and then after I left, the paper

546
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:22,719
Speaker 3: actually got shut down by the tax police.

547
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: What was it that brought it onto the radar? When

548
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: did it start becoming a problem?

549
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 3: Well, Putin was much more attentive to the whole press scene.

550
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 3: There were some other Western reporters who had started to

551
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 3: annoy the authorities even before he took control. He might

552
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 3: remember a guy named Paul Kldnikoff who worked for Forbes.

553
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 3: He got himself machine gunned towards the end of the nineties,

554
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of interplay between sort of

555
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 3: connected Russian government figures and Western reporters. Increasingly that started

556
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 3: to happen. The Russians started to pay a lot more

557
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 3: of attention to that situation at the end of the nineties,

558
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 3: and we were, you know, writing very critically of Putin

559
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 3: and I was also pulling all kinds of stunts, like

560
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 3: I worked with this Russian paper that actually wire tapped

561
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 3: this chief of staff, so they definitely noticed that radar. Yeah, yeah,

562
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 3: So there were things like that. But I got out

563
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 3: of the country and nothing ever happened to me. I

564
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 3: didn't know a lot of people that, you know, ended

565
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 3: up in bad places after he took power, Like I

566
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:41,479
Speaker 3: knew and at Polakowska, for instance, not terribly well, but

567
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 3: I did know her well.

568
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 4: I was just gonna say, what prompted you come back

569
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 4: to the States, What was how did that transpire?

570
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 3: You know? I thought creatively, the exl had kind of

571
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 3: run out of ideas. We were starting to repeat ourselves,

572
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 3: and h I got a little bit tired of writing

573
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 3: for a dwindling audience. The XPAC community was shrinking pretty fast.

574
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 3: Our ad base was no longer what it had been.

575
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: Is that because of the creeping authoritarianism, the economic collapse,

576
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: all of those together, like.

577
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 3: Why well, Prutin's big idea was that he wanted to

578
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 3: keep capital in Russia, So that diminished a lot of

579
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 3: opportunities for Western business, Like there was an immense capital

580
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 3: flight out of Russia in the nineties. That was the

581
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 3: whole thing. Everybody there wanted a piece of all these

582
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 3: energy companies. They wanted to get under underpriced you know,

583
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 3: commodities and timber gold, whatever it was. And those opportunities

584
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 3: closed up as soon as they started, you know, not

585
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 3: quite nationalizing things, but but funneling all the contracts to

586
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 3: Russian specifically, and not to Americans.

587
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: Like you could steal money, but it has to stay here.

588
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 3: It has to stay here. Exactly. He literally had a

589
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 3: meeting Putin did like four months after he got elected,

590
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 3: where he just brought all the guys who had gotten

591
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 3: rich in those privatizations, and he said, look, here's the deal.

592
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 3: You get to keep all that stuff if you, you know,

593
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 3: pledge your allegiance to me. If not, you know, consequences

594
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 3: straight out of the movie Casino, remember like the money

595
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 3: or the hammer scenes. So you know, once once that

596
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 3: whole thing happened, a lot of the Americans just bolted

597
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 3: because there just wasn't a way to make cash the

598
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 3: way there had been.

599
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:33,360
Speaker 1: And he made good on that thread on to a

600
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: cup to several of the oligarchs, right, yeah, to kind

601
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:36,720
Speaker 1: of check.

602
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I was just I was just thinking

603
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 3: about this. In fact, some of my old friends from

604
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 3: over there, we were just talking about this because yeah,

605
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,239
Speaker 3: it's an it's not an exact comparison, but let's just

606
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 3: talk about, for instance, the raid on mar A Lago, right,

607
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 3: the showiness of that, with all the agents and the

608
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 3: TV crews and everything. There was something very similar. They

609
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:02,440
Speaker 3: raided a television station with you know, guys were repelling

610
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 3: for windows and they dragged people out and one of

611
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 3: the oligarchs got wrung up on a fraud charge. And

612
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 3: then there was another famous one named Mikhail Hardakowski who

613
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 3: was in prison. Now Hardakovski people presented him as this

614
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 3: sort of martyr to good capitalism, but he was one

615
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 3: of the people who most benefited from those crooked auctions.

616
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 3: So I his.

617
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: My memory was his crime was getting involved in politics. Yes,

618
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 1: like because he said, like, keep your money that you stole,

619
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: but you have to support me. Yeah, you got to

620
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: get off, you gotta get He wanted to do both.

621
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: He wanted to keep the money and also be involved

622
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: in politics.

623
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. Putin said you got to stay on the bench.

624
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 3: And this guy tried to go onto the court and

625
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 3: when that's it, you know, put him in a cage. Right, right.

626
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 3: So you know, as as you mentioned before, when you

627
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 3: watched this stuff, which is it's like you know, going

628
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 3: on the ocean and a glass bot boat. I mean,

629
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 3: everything's crystal clear. They don't hide their corruption in Russia.

630
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 3: They just announce what they're doing and oops sorry and

631
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 3: and you know that's an incredible education for a reporter

632
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 3: to see that stuff, especially as a young person.

633
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 4: Doesn't it feel increasingly like that's what's happening here? I

634
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 4: mean with your Twitter follows reporting, but also just with

635
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 4: all of your censorship reporting everything, it's starting to look

636
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 4: like they're almost bragging about censorship opportunities.

637
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 5: You just mentioned the raid. Are there other parallels with that.

638
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 4: Period of time that you witnessed in Russia and what's

639
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 4: happening now with creeping authoritarianism censorship? I mean there's it's

640
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 4: both left and right too. It's not like it's just

641
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 4: against Trump, but it runs the gamut. It's just when

642
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 4: the sort of security state wants to clamp down, they

643
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 4: put their machinery emotion.

644
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 5: What other similarities have you noticed?

645
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 3: So the first time I noticed real similarities was when

646
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 3: so I had been assigned to the campaign story for

647
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone. When I got back, you know, they hired me,

648
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 3: so yeah, three oh four and they sent me out

649
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,760
Speaker 3: and I remember going out in the campaign thinking, God,

650
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 3: this is so boring. There has to be some other

651
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 3: you know, compared to the other thing. There has to

652
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 3: be some deeper level to all this that I that

653
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 3: can be covered. And it wasn't until the wait financial crisis,

654
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 3: and they when they assigned, you know, a story to

655
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 3: me like what happened with aig. Then you start to

656
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:32,319
Speaker 3: see the real machinations of American politics, like, you know,

657
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 3: we're going to bail out this connected group of oligarchs

658
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 3: using state money. We're going to present it to the

659
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 3: public as something something noble and beneficial where everybody wins.

660
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:46,799
Speaker 3: I mean, it was all very very familiar to that

661
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:47,760
Speaker 3: whole scene.

662
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: And so.

663
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:52,200
Speaker 3: As soon as you know, I had a couple of

664
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 3: people on Wall Street who kind of walked me through

665
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:56,919
Speaker 3: some of the basics. But after that, I'm like, wow,

666
00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:00,279
Speaker 3: this is exactly the same story. So that that helped

667
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 3: a lot.

668
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: I would say, were you surprised at the reaction to

669
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:06,920
Speaker 1: that that long piece you did, Goldwyn?

670
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, Yeah, it was unbelievable.

671
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 1: It's like long, you know, to this to this day,

672
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: we're fifteen years later almost maybe I'm getting closer to

673
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: twenty years and people still know the vampire squid right.

674
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 5: Piggybacking on that.

675
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:25,279
Speaker 4: The right I remember as like a young conservative at

676
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 4: the time, the right, which was in a populist moment,

677
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 4: really didn't.

678
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 5: Like you, Matt. You were you were the subject of

679
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 5: eye rolls. You were just the.

680
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:37,879
Speaker 1: Same they like communists when they like going after the

681
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 1: scold Wall Street.

682
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 4: At the time, it was really a taboo on the right,

683
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 4: even in the midst of this populist moment. And there

684
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 4: are a lot of people who were opposed to the

685
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 4: bail the Tea Party moment at posed to that. There

686
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 4: a lot of people who ended up being opposed to

687
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 4: tarp and all of that. But it didn't matter for you, Matt.

688
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 4: I this is just my impression, but correct me if

689
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 4: I'm wrong. The way the Right reacted to you recently

690
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:02,839
Speaker 4: is very different than how they did then.

691
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe originally, but I think that was a miss

692
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 3: a little bit of a misunderstanding. Also, I did get

693
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 3: some stuff kind of wrong in that first story. Like

694
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 3: you know, I was a complete novice to financial reporting,

695
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 3: so I was reporting what I was being told. And

696
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:20,400
Speaker 3: you know, as you know, when you do these stories,

697
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 3: you're listening to twenty people and you think, well, these

698
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:25,920
Speaker 3: three make sense, and you know they and so I

699
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 3: went with some things and any corrections what were they? No, No,

700
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 3: they weren't like factual errors. They were more like a

701
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 3: sort of interpretive you know, sometimes I would overinterpret what

702
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 3: was going on a little bit. But really those stories

703
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 3: were really not anti capitalists. They were actually stories about

704
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:50,920
Speaker 3: how politically connected companies were getting unfair advantages in the market.

705
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,440
Speaker 3: And that's why all my sources were Wall Street people.

706
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 3: They weren't like people were being foreclosed on that game.

707
00:36:56,640 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 3: Later and so I was getting a lot of people

708
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,359
Speaker 3: from hedge funds or from smaller banks who are calling

709
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 3: me up and saying, this is totally unfair, Like, you know,

710
00:37:05,560 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 3: they get bailed out, their cost of capital drops, they

711
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 3: get to borrow more cheaply, we lose, right, And this

712
00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 3: is a it's a complicated story. But the reason I

713
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 3: think that people responded to it is because financial reporting

714
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 3: is not done for ordinary people. There is no yeah

715
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 3: at the time anyway, there was no sort of popular

716
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:29,919
Speaker 3: way to explain what was going on, and just the

717
00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 3: process of saying, Okay, if you've never been around finance before,

718
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 3: here is kind of roughly what happened. People really responded

719
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 3: to that, and it was a shock to us. There

720
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 3: was supposed to be only one story, and we ended

721
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 3: up doing ten years of them. So I mean, that's

722
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 3: how that happened.

723
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:49,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was at the Huffington Post. Well, I went

724
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 1: from Politico in two thousand and eight to Hoffington Post

725
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. And when did that story

726
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: come out? Probably own nine, Yeah, and yeah, I remember

727
00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: that was there was a rare moment where or several

728
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: years where we could write stories about the financial crisis

729
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: and what led up to it and also how to

730
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,759
Speaker 1: fix it, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the fight

731
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 1: over God Frank, and they would get clicks. Like people

732
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 1: were like intensely focused on that. I remember we it

733
00:38:18,480 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 1: might have been twenty ten, right around the time the

734
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: tea parties popping off. We wrote a piece saying that

735
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: it might make sense for you actually to just walk

736
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:34,720
Speaker 1: away from your home because you're so far underwater you're

737
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 1: never going to come back. You can just mail the

738
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 1: keys back to the bank. And we set up using

739
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: like what's meetup or whatever it is say like, if

740
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 1: you guys want to like talk to people in your

741
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:51,319
Speaker 1: neighborhood who were in similar situations, here's how you can

742
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 1: do it. And hundreds of meetups happened like around the

743
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:58,439
Speaker 1: country and they were covered in the local news. Would

744
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 1: do like eight home on or showed up at this

745
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: Starbucks to like discuss why or not they should just

746
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: nail the keys.

747
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 3: Well, that's amazing, right, but probably told you something about

748
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 3: the extent of the yeah, right right, it was.

749
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 1: It was such a dark bleak moment.

750
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:16,319
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah.

751
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: And so then you started covering a lot of the

752
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: foreclosure crisis.

753
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was that was when that was sort

754
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 3: of my first hint that something like Trump was going

755
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 3: to happen. They sent me to cover something called the

756
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 3: Rocket Docket, which means in Florida. Then in Florida and Jacksonville,

757
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:35,399
Speaker 3: and there there was a group of Jacksonville lawyers were

758
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 3: the first ones to tune clue into the whole robo

759
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 3: signing problem where the banks were just sort of kind

760
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,319
Speaker 3: of willy nilly making up documents. So they're in place

761
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 3: of documents they should have, they would just create affidavits

762
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 3: and have the machines just sign them, yeah exactly, or

763
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 3: or people they would just you know, they sit there

764
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 3: with stacks and signing these things. So I went down

765
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 3: there and they they wanted to show me how people

766
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 3: got before closed on and there was a They dragged

767
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 3: these half scene and hell judges out of retirement and

768
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:10,840
Speaker 3: not even a real courtroom. They just put them in

769
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 3: conference rooms and had people come in and the average

770
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 3: turnover time had to be like two and a half minutes,

771
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 3: so they would take two and a half minutes to

772
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 3: kick each family out of their home. And the line

773
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 3: was like, you know, from the courtroom all the way around.

774
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:29,399
Speaker 1: The block, right were the families there? They were all there.

775
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 3: They were there, yeah, they had to and you know

776
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:35,319
Speaker 3: it was they were all across the map right there.

777
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 3: They were white, black, you know, young, old, everything. And

778
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 3: the level of rage in that room was like nothing

779
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 3: I'd ever experienced before.

780
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 4: This is Florida, by the way, right would become a

781
00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 4: hub of right populism.

782
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 3: Well I'm not surprised, right, that's interesting. Yeah, And you

783
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 3: know it's funny because Occupy happened at the same time,

784
00:40:57,280 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 3: and I remember going up to Occupy and thinking, you know,

785
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 3: this is interesting, it's great but the other thing is

786
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:08,319
Speaker 3: where something's going to blow right, because that's representative of

787
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 3: the whole population. And you know, because five million people

788
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:14,880
Speaker 3: or six million people got four closed on in those years,

789
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:17,359
Speaker 3: that's a lot of people, you know, And there were

790
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 3: ordinary working class people. A lot of them got screwed.

791
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 3: They didn't just not pay their bills. A lot of them,

792
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 3: you know, got put into exotic mortgage mortgage products they

793
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 3: didn't understand. They ended up with eight thousand dollars a

794
00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 3: month bills and stuff like that, and it was horrible.

795
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,919
Speaker 3: And I knew as soon as anybody figured a way

796
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 3: to tap into that that there was going to be,

797
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 3: you know, some kind of political movement.

798
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: And this was a really pivotal moment, and it was

799
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 1: also a policy moment, like it was a policy choice.

800
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 1: And like Larry Summers described it as foaming the runway,

801
00:41:55,800 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: you remember that phrase, and I put I put that

802
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 1: in my book because I thought it was almost self explanatory.

803
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: And an editor was like, what on earth does he

804
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: mean by this? And I realized, actually, kind of you

805
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 1: do have to unpack this. And so what he was

806
00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: saying is that you could go in and rescue these

807
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,399
Speaker 1: homeowners There's something in bankruptcy law known as cram down,

808
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 1: where you can say, look, the cost of this home,

809
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:22,160
Speaker 1: the price, the value of this home is this, nown

810
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 1: the mortgage is this. There was fraud involved here. We're

811
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: going to cram the mortgage down to your home, to

812
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 1: your home value. You're no longer underwater. It's like, okay, cool,

813
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: Now my mortgage is less and I'm not just throwing

814
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: money away every single month, and I can afford it.

815
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get foe closed on. That's a policy choice,

816
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: and that was available to Democrats. A lot of Democrats

817
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 1: fought for it in the House and the Senate, the

818
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 1: White House because his economic team argued against it. They said,

819
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 1: if you do that, the banks would too quickly lose capital.

820
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 1: The banks would go under and they're too big to fail,

821
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: and we can't allow that. And so the banks are crashing.

822
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:01,759
Speaker 1: So you need to foam the runway with these for

823
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:06,840
Speaker 1: the rubble of the foreclothes. Is this way, the banks

824
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: just gradually lose money and their blow is softened as

825
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 1: they land on the runway by the bodies of all

826
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,759
Speaker 1: of these former homeowners. Because you stretch it out that

827
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: you stretch it out then from twenty ten all the

828
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: way through twenty sixteen, by it's a rocket docket, but

829
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: it's still people are fighting, scraping like making payments, fighting

830
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: their foreclosures, trying to get the paperwork in. And then

831
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: they set up these programs called what hamp and Right

832
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 1: and the Garden Work that deliberately did not work, that

833
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 1: are supposed to rescue homeowners. But what they actually did

834
00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:46,400
Speaker 1: is they just kind of guarantee that they'll be in foreclosure,

835
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,080
Speaker 1: but only but years down the road.

836
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 3: They even told people in miss payments.

837
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: Right, they would say, I would say, what you need

838
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: to miss payments in order to get into this program.

839
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:57,439
Speaker 1: This program will rescue you. The So these homeowners would

840
00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:00,880
Speaker 1: deliberately miss payments on the advice of these program officers,

841
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 1: and then they would be hooked in this program, which

842
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 1: meant that they were inevitably going to get fore clothes on.

843
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 1: But that was good for Wall Street because the banks

844
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 1: would all.

845
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 3: Survive, right right, Yeah, No, that's unbelievable, right, and you

846
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 3: think about how sociopathic that is, right, And they used

847
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 3: to be able to get away with that because if

848
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 3: it's not in the evening news, who's going to pay attention.

849
00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 3: But I think with the Internet, this is this is

850
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:29,359
Speaker 3: why these movements can happen now, because people can start

851
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,520
Speaker 3: to do their own research and realize when you're getting

852
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 3: thrown out of your house, you will tend to look

853
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 3: into things, you know, and find out what's happening, you know,

854
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:41,239
Speaker 3: I know, I talk to people who would ask questions like,

855
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:45,720
Speaker 3: how come they're spending six trillion dollars or ten trillion

856
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 3: dollars in the bailout when it only would cost a

857
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 3: trillion and a half dollars to pay off every single

858
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 3: subprime mortgage in the country. And then you have to

859
00:44:54,520 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 3: get into answers like, well, then all the people who

860
00:44:57,480 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 3: basically made bets on all of these uh, you know,

861
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 3: dead instruments, some of them would lose unfairly, right, and

862
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 3: they would have claims. And it turns out that there's

863
00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 3: this colossal, uh you know, amount of leverage money exactly

864
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:15,919
Speaker 3: that all depends on this right and and so that's

865
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 3: where the moral hazard comes in. And yeah, of course

866
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 3: people once they started to figure out what was going

867
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 3: on with that, they they were they were going to

868
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 3: get very very upset. That's what this whole you know,

869
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 3: memestock thing grew out of. I think is just this

870
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 3: rage directed towards these financial professionals who were, you know,

871
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 3: basically being subsidized and then acting like they had like

872
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 3: this special financial genius that allowed them to make money,

873
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 3: and that is a very bitter pill to swallow. I think.

874
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:51,400
Speaker 4: That's a perfect point about what I wanted to ask,

875
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 4: and that there's this faux brick wall that we think

876
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:57,239
Speaker 4: of between the culture war and economics. It's like, you

877
00:45:57,239 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 4: sort of have culture in this corner, economics in this corner.

878
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:03,880
Speaker 4: But when you're saying around the time of Occupy the

879
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 4: rocket docket people in Florida, you're thinking, like, wow, there

880
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 4: might be something coming out of this. Donald Trump runs

881
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 4: for president. Were you thinking of economics and culture in

882
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 4: a different sense at that time? Because I was in

883
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 4: college during Occupy and one of the things that just

884
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:24,600
Speaker 4: drove me crazy was the way, you know, people talked

885
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 4: about the people who grew up like I did, like

886
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 4: going to church, owning guns, hunting, like all the stupid

887
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 4: stuff like Duck Dynasty was super popular at the time,

888
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 4: and it sounds stupid, but there was this cultural backlash

889
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 4: that could have presaged Trump in the same way that

890
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 4: the economic backlash could have. And I just want to

891
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 4: ask about how much you like the meme Stocks is

892
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,799
Speaker 4: a great example. It's like both cultural and economic. What

893
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 4: were you reading into that kind of thing that was

894
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:54,799
Speaker 4: building under the surface that eventually became Donald Trump coming

895
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 4: down the golden escalator.

896
00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:03,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I was probably like most kind of liberal,

897
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 3: left leaning cosmopolitan reporters, and then it wasn't that in

898
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:10,439
Speaker 3: tune with the other part of the country at the time,

899
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,840
Speaker 3: which is I think a real failing going back and

900
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 3: looking at.

901
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: And despite all the foreclosure work you'd been doing.

902
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:17,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, look, I.

903
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: Want to put that off to a little compartment economics.

904
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's economics. I like most reporters, you know,

905
00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:28,600
Speaker 3: I kind of naturally sympathize with, you know, the ordinary

906
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 3: working person and not the you know, rich or politicians.

907
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:36,520
Speaker 3: But at Rolling Stone, look, you do a lot of

908
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 3: the sort of picking on the yokal humor. I mean,

909
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 3: that's part of what columnists have been doing since the

910
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 3: days of Mankin in this country, right, And I was

911
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 3: specifically hired to be that kind of person. I mean

912
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:51,959
Speaker 3: that was my job. You know. I was walking into

913
00:47:52,239 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 3: a very particular gig at Rolling Stone that had been

914
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 3: you know, the predecessors did that, and now I look

915
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 3: back that stuff and I'm kind of embarrassed by it.

916
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 3: And I once Trump ran and I started to talk

917
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 3: to people in the crowd, I did realize that there

918
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:13,240
Speaker 3: was this convergence of the economic stuff and the cultural

919
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 3: resentment that was really powerful that I didn't understand all

920
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:21,319
Speaker 3: that well, but it was clearly something like there was

921
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 3: definitely resentment about the way they were talked about in

922
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 3: the press. Yeah, you know, and I remember Trump, He's

923
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 3: very clever, right. He would get up there at his

924
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 3: campaign events and he would point at us, you know,

925
00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 3: and you would say, look at them, those bloodsuckers, you know,

926
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 3: they you know.

927
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 5: They vampire squids.

928
00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:46,719
Speaker 3: Yeah. Basically he would say that, you know, they hate me,

929
00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:50,440
Speaker 3: but more than that, they hate you, right, and you know,

930
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,400
Speaker 3: look at us, we did look like snobs, you know.

931
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 3: And it was a very smart move. And then when

932
00:48:57,080 --> 00:48:59,359
Speaker 3: you get out and you talk to people and ask, well,

933
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 3: why are they why are you winning for this guy

934
00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:04,479
Speaker 3: Donald Trump? And he's like, because he's got he's leading

935
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 3: you all by the nose, he's getting free coverage, you know,

936
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 3: and just his triumph over us was important, you know.

937
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 3: And I saw that and I said, wow, that's amazing,

938
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 3: you know. And it was also incredible to me to

939
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:21,840
Speaker 3: me that the other reporters weren't interested in that story.

940
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:23,800
Speaker 3: I found that incredible to me.

941
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: It's particularly if you've lost faith in the ability of

942
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: government to really do anything positive for you, then at

943
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 1: least it can make your enemies miserable, exactly, like some

944
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 1: satisfaction that the misery of my adversaries. So you go

945
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: into this campaign, You've got Jeb and the whole crew

946
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 1: against Trump and the Republican primary, and then you've got

947
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:51,520
Speaker 1: Hillary versus Barney. I'm still you know, nobody will ever

948
00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:54,840
Speaker 1: forget Hillary Clinton, get you know, giving speeches to Goldman

949
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:57,919
Speaker 1: Sacks like in the run up, like to talk about

950
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: a bubble, like strategic bubble, like she didn't need that

951
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand dollars. I know she was, And and

952
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 1: I would hope that if she would go back and

953
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:07,319
Speaker 1: do it again, she'd be like, you know, that.

954
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:10,399
Speaker 5: Was a mistake politically, not morally, a mistake. She would

955
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:12,399
Speaker 5: not say it was moral, No, because there is no.

956
00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: Such thing as morals. It's all set way beyond that.

957
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: Strategizing the will to power, like and it's like the

958
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: seven hund thousand dollars was not worth losing the presidency over.

959
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: Not that that did it, but it's symbolized for everybody

960
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 1: who the Democratic Party was becoming, and that they were

961
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: willing to do it.

962
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they weren't embarrassed about it, right, I mean

963
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 3: I remember The New York posted a story where they

964
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:43,040
Speaker 3: listed her speaking schedule, and there was one day that

965
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 3: was just hilarious. She had like a speech in the

966
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:46,920
Speaker 3: morning that was like four hundred grand, and then she

967
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:48,800
Speaker 3: had to fly to another country like.

968
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:52,040
Speaker 1: To do a biotag, right, yeah, exactly. I'm like, this

969
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: is like month, just months before launching the campaign, right,

970
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:59,319
Speaker 1: within months, not years earlier or like. And then there's Bernie. So,

971
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: how much time did you spend on the Democratic campaign

972
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: trail that year?

973
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:05,719
Speaker 3: Not much because my editors at Rolling Stone didn't want

974
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 3: me anywhere near the Democrats so they found them boring

975
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 3: or no, they were afraid of what I was going

976
00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:14,960
Speaker 3: to write. Oh oh so yeah, so they much preferred

977
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 3: to have me crawling up the backsides of Republicans.

978
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:22,800
Speaker 5: Meaning that you would be vicious to the Clinton campaign.

979
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:26,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, in fact, and then later on, when I

980
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:30,600
Speaker 3: covered the Democrats in twenty twenty, you know that whole

981
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 3: ridiculous twenty person field or whatever it was. I did

982
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 3: a couple of stories that were pretty nicely We're still there,

983
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:41,319
Speaker 3: I'm still a rolling Stone. Yeah. I thought there were

984
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:44,000
Speaker 3: great stories on like the like these are this is

985
00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 3: sort of classic Rolling Stone stuff, and they were like, yeah,

986
00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 3: I think we had it just about enough of your

987
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:50,600
Speaker 3: campaign coverage at that point.

988
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:54,360
Speaker 1: So because somebody's gonna lose an eye now, yeah exactly,

989
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:56,279
Speaker 1: it used to be fun and games. Now Trump's here,

990
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 1: yeah exactly right.

991
00:51:57,920 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, But that's I mean, that's kind of what

992
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 4: you roicle and hate ink, is that these organs of

993
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 4: media become corporate mouthpieces.

994
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 5: It's not that that didn't always happen.

995
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 4: I mean there's always some intersection, but in a different way,

996
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 4: in a way that it was like they didn't need

997
00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 4: to be told by the Clinton campaign to keep Tayibi

998
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:20,759
Speaker 4: away from it. They just share the ideological sort of hesitation.

999
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:24,719
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, there was at some point I think we

1000
00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:28,120
Speaker 3: probably all experienced the same thing where somebody got the memo,

1001
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:32,799
Speaker 3: like in spring to summer of twenty sixteen that this

1002
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:35,080
Speaker 3: was a new ballgame, and that we were no longer

1003
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:39,399
Speaker 3: going to, you know, be the detached press corps that

1004
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 3: we had been in the past. You know, there was

1005
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 3: no more of this like writing negative stuff about Democrats

1006
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 3: when that happened, right, we were going to just sort

1007
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:48,359
Speaker 3: of look the other way.

1008
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:53,400
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the cable networks are giving Trump unending airtime.

1009
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 3: Right.

1010
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:57,399
Speaker 1: But yes, the memo went out, definitely, I mean it's

1011
00:52:57,400 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 1: a phrase. There was actually no memo that I know.

1012
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:03,839
Speaker 3: There's no There may actually have been in me from

1013
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:09,439
Speaker 3: the microcy Integrity Project or whatever came before that, but no,

1014
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 3: I mean it was unspoken.

1015
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 1: I do I do believe that. Like, so there was

1016
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:19,800
Speaker 1: from two thousand and three on this like robust bloggisphere

1017
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: that they used to call it, which allowed all sorts

1018
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:29,959
Speaker 1: of intra Democratic party fighting like daily daily, daily Coast

1019
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:34,680
Speaker 1: for instance, was people were constanty's throats over different candidates

1020
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:38,439
Speaker 1: and different directions for the party, fighting over the war surveillance,

1021
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 1: how you know how to take on Bush? You know,

1022
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:46,920
Speaker 1: gay marriage in marriage prodict? Are you for civil unions?

1023
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 1: Like all of this robust fight And I feel like

1024
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 1: around twenty sixteen, definitely after he wins, but heading into

1025
00:53:56,480 --> 00:54:00,000
Speaker 1: the general the memo went out, let that's over. Yeah,

1026
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: like we're not We're not doing that. I think Alternate

1027
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:06,200
Speaker 1: Like was one of those places where this was happening.

1028
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: They were very critical of Democrats. There a lot of

1029
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:12,840
Speaker 1: their high dollar funding just evaporates. I a lot of

1030
00:54:12,840 --> 00:54:17,360
Speaker 1: these donors who were Democrats and believed in like just

1031
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 1: the idea of like the full throat of debate. Yeah,

1032
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:23,440
Speaker 1: we're all of a sudden, like you know what not

1033
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: not right now?

1034
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:26,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, And a lot of the n g os that

1035
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 3: maybe occasionally at least still went after, you know, sort

1036
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:34,120
Speaker 3: of democratic members of Congress. There was none of that

1037
00:54:34,200 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 3: anymore now, and now we had the full blown, like

1038
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 3: sort of David Brock model of politics, where you know,

1039
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:44,879
Speaker 3: we have an NGO that exists for a political purpose only. Right,

1040
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 3: We're not going to do this institutional you know, purity

1041
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 3: thing anymore. And there was in the press, you know,

1042
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 3: there was a very influential piece by Jim Ruttenberg in

1043
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,719
Speaker 3: the New York Times who said, I think it was

1044
00:54:59,760 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 3: called Trump is testing the norms of objectivity and journalism,

1045
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:06,280
Speaker 3: and the whole idea was, yeah, we used to worry

1046
00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:08,399
Speaker 3: just about what's true. Now we have to be true

1047
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 3: to history's judgment. So you know, everybody knew what that meant, right,

1048
00:55:14,640 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 3: And the way I got it was I remember I

1049
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:21,719
Speaker 3: did a story where I interviewed somebody. It was right

1050
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:25,279
Speaker 3: after the Access Hollywood thing, and I interviewed somebody at

1051
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:27,279
Speaker 3: a speech he was supposed to go to but had

1052
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:31,319
Speaker 3: been uninvited to by Wisconsin Republicans. So I talked to

1053
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 3: some Trump supporter who had his whole family had been

1054
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 3: union workers. They had always voted Democratic, and now they said,

1055
00:55:41,160 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 3: you know, after NAFTA and all that stuff, we've been

1056
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,879
Speaker 3: screwed so many times, we can't listen anymore, and we're

1057
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:51,319
Speaker 3: going with this guy. And it's just a quote, right,

1058
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:53,359
Speaker 3: you know, I put that in there, and I got

1059
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 3: all this. I got flamed on Twitter for using the

1060
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:02,520
Speaker 3: economic insecurity right, which was now code for racism or

1061
00:56:02,520 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 3: something like that, and I was totally shocked by that.

1062
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:09,120
Speaker 3: I guess I shouldn't have been in retrospect, but that

1063
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 3: was that was wild, Like, this is a real reason

1064
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:16,120
Speaker 3: this guy's getting you know, he's succeeding. Why would we

1065
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:18,880
Speaker 3: not want the audience to know that? I just couldn't.

1066
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:22,440
Speaker 3: What did you think during that time? You know I'm curious.

1067
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:26,360
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, as I said, like Wisconsin, I'm from Wisconsin.

1068
00:56:26,480 --> 00:56:28,399
Speaker 4: I didn't really I lived in DC at the time.

1069
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:30,720
Speaker 4: Didn't pick up on it until I was in rural

1070
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 4: northern Wisconsin where my mom grew up. I was rollerblading

1071
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:37,279
Speaker 4: and I was going on around the neighborhood and just

1072
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:41,080
Speaker 4: giant homemade Trump signs on plywood was spray paint.

1073
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 5: And then it was like July.

1074
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:45,560
Speaker 4: And that's why I was like, it was David Obie's

1075
00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:48,920
Speaker 4: district for forty years, you know, deep blue district flipped

1076
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:51,399
Speaker 4: in twenty ten, and that's when I was like, oh

1077
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 4: my gosh, nobody has any idea what's about to happen.

1078
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:57,719
Speaker 1: The piece I'm proud of stuff from that year was

1079
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:00,120
Speaker 1: in February of twenty sixteen that I co opt was

1080
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 1: Zach Carter and the headline is something like it's in

1081
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: the humping boast. Headline is something like don't laugh, Donald

1082
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 1: Trump could win, and like here's how there you go.

1083
00:57:08,239 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 5: And it was I remember that that.

1084
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:12,799
Speaker 1: Was you, yeah, me and Zach, Me and Zach Carter

1085
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 1: and we're saying like you're going to hear about nothing

1086
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:22,320
Speaker 1: but nafta from here until the election, and we pointed

1087
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:26,040
Speaker 1: out some very basic things. We said, Wisconsin has a

1088
00:57:26,080 --> 00:57:30,400
Speaker 1: Republican governor, Michigan has a Republican governor, Pennsylvania has a

1089
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:34,440
Speaker 1: Republican governor, and if he wins these three states, then

1090
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:38,320
Speaker 1: he wins, right, yeah, the White House. It may have

1091
00:57:38,320 --> 00:57:41,280
Speaker 1: been Rendell by that time, like there may have been

1092
00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 1: a democratic governor back, but Pennsylvania had had Republican governors

1093
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 1: for like a decade plus leading into that, and we're like,

1094
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 1: so we just making this point that like.

1095
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 3: Look, how did people respond to this? But that was

1096
00:57:54,360 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 3: still okay in February February.

1097
00:57:57,040 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 5: February twenty sixteen. Yeah, it had the narrative and solidified.

1098
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there was there was no like cancelation attempt

1099
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: because I think because I think people didn't see him

1100
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: as a threat yet. Yes, and so it's okay to

1101
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:16,280
Speaker 1: say he can win, because he can't win, so fine

1102
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:20,880
Speaker 1: to make no argument. And then our our polling aggregator.

1103
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: By November, well, we had our own Polster. It was

1104
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: called we bought Polster dot com uff posts tried to

1105
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:32,040
Speaker 1: hire Nate Silver. They were in a bidding war with Disney,

1106
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:38,880
Speaker 1: not well, and so they went and bought polster dot com,

1107
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: which was another polling aggregator run by Mark Blumenthal and

1108
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: some other polsters, and ours was very similar to Nates,

1109
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:51,200
Speaker 1: except had it slightly higher certainty that Hillary Clinton was

1110
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 1: going to win. And so by the time the election

1111
00:58:53,200 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 1: came up came around, all these polling aggregations had had her,

1112
00:58:58,080 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: you know, well ahead. But what Nate actually pointed out

1113
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: is that if they're off a little bit in one state,

1114
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: then they're probably off in all of them, mm hmm,

1115
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:08,000
Speaker 1: and so you need to factor that in. And he

1116
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: turned out to be right. Yeah, So his was wrong,

1117
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 1: but he was right that he might be wrong.

1118
00:59:13,640 --> 00:59:16,920
Speaker 3: Right, right, Yeah, I mean it's funny. I think he

1119
00:59:17,080 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 3: was probably if you go back and look at their coverage,

1120
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 3: they kind of accurately presented the percentage chances and all that,

1121
00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 3: but it was things like, you know, trumple playing the

1122
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 3: NBA before he's going to be the nominee like that.

1123
00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 3: That stuff is what told especially liberal readers, yeah, don't

1124
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 3: worry about it. You know, this is funny, right, It's

1125
00:59:37,320 --> 00:59:40,680
Speaker 3: not gonna nothing's going to happen, And they didn't take

1126
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,240
Speaker 3: the story seriously. You know, I got fooled in a

1127
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 3: different way. I initially did what you did. I said, Wow,

1128
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:49,440
Speaker 3: this is going to work, like Hillary Clinton's the perfect

1129
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:52,560
Speaker 3: opponent for this guy, right, just watching the speeches. But

1130
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 3: then I went to the convention and some polster sat

1131
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 3: me down and walked me through the numbers and said,

1132
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:04,520
Speaker 3: look at likability numbers, right, And I thought, well, that's insurmountable,

1133
01:00:04,640 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 3: not realizing that there were a lot of people who

1134
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:11,640
Speaker 3: hated both candidates, right. And you know if among those

1135
01:00:11,720 --> 01:00:14,720
Speaker 3: Trump ended up winning two to one, and that was

1136
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:16,280
Speaker 3: a key factor in that race.

1137
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:20,360
Speaker 4: That's really interesting because that's where we are now. Press

1138
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 4: right about the double haters this morning, or someone wrot

1139
01:00:22,280 --> 01:00:23,560
Speaker 4: about the double haters this morning.

1140
01:00:24,400 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 5: That's a good point, Matt.

1141
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 4: And what do you think, how is it playing out

1142
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:29,720
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty four when you have some like I

1143
01:00:29,760 --> 01:00:31,640
Speaker 4: think they put it out a quarter of the country

1144
01:00:31,720 --> 01:00:35,760
Speaker 4: or quarter of voters say they hate both candidates. Is

1145
01:00:36,120 --> 01:00:38,920
Speaker 4: that the key demographic in twenty twenty four? Who wins

1146
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 4: the we hate both people?

1147
01:00:40,440 --> 01:00:44,000
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's you know, they were the key

1148
01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:47,960
Speaker 3: demographic in twenty sixteen. It was a slightly smaller number

1149
01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:50,840
Speaker 3: back then. I think it was nineteen percent or twenty percent.

1150
01:00:51,240 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 3: So if it, I would imagine it'd be even higher now.

1151
01:00:55,720 --> 01:00:58,640
Speaker 3: But it's not predictable how those folks are going to vote.

1152
01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:00,840
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there will be more people who

1153
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 3: won't vote. But having cover campaigns, I always feel like

1154
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:12,040
Speaker 3: people's if they have a strong emotion somewhere, it's going

1155
01:01:12,080 --> 01:01:14,720
Speaker 3: to guide them to make the vote. So if they

1156
01:01:14,800 --> 01:01:18,840
Speaker 3: hate somebody more than they dislikes them, or more than

1157
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 3: they like mildly somebody else, that's going to bring them

1158
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 3: to the polls. And you know, there are a lot

1159
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 3: of people who are very they're very wary of Trump,

1160
01:01:30,880 --> 01:01:33,400
Speaker 3: but have a lot of negative feelings about the Biden

1161
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 3: campaign and vice versa. But I just think it's tended

1162
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 3: to work out in Trump's favor, you know, when it's

1163
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 3: like that.

1164
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:48,760
Speaker 1: And so after twenty sixteen, then you're when does your

1165
01:01:48,840 --> 01:01:52,480
Speaker 1: Eric Garner book come out? So far I can't breathe.

1166
01:01:52,640 --> 01:01:56,120
Speaker 3: Yeah that was like two years two years later, Yeah,

1167
01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:57,000
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen.

1168
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:00,680
Speaker 1: And so that brings us to the life the height

1169
01:02:01,200 --> 01:02:05,280
Speaker 1: of cancelation time in station period, which brings back your

1170
01:02:05,360 --> 01:02:10,200
Speaker 1: Russia time. How often had in the culture worse that book?

1171
01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: How often had that X style been brought up again?

1172
01:02:14,480 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: Like in your career, like what made it? Like how

1173
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:18,440
Speaker 1: did that happen? Then?

1174
01:02:19,720 --> 01:02:21,760
Speaker 3: So I don't want to be conspiratorial about this, but

1175
01:02:22,560 --> 01:02:24,880
Speaker 3: what I will say is that during it had never

1176
01:02:24,960 --> 01:02:28,360
Speaker 3: come up until twenty sixteen, and then I started to

1177
01:02:28,440 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 3: notice that whenever I wrote about certain things, it would.

1178
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:33,280
Speaker 1: Come up, like what kind of.

1179
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:38,560
Speaker 3: When I said negative things about Hillary Clinton? When I

1180
01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:41,640
Speaker 3: said positive things about Bernie Sanders, they came up.

1181
01:02:43,360 --> 01:02:45,440
Speaker 1: But you know, in the context of the Bernie bro

1182
01:02:46,120 --> 01:02:47,720
Speaker 1: yea often.

1183
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So there was a group of you know,

1184
01:02:51,440 --> 01:02:54,800
Speaker 3: sort of internet trolls, but it's such an inexact science

1185
01:02:54,840 --> 01:02:56,680
Speaker 3: and I was never able to get a real handle

1186
01:02:56,720 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 3: on what happened. I mean, whether it was coordinated, right,

1187
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:02,160
Speaker 3: you can't say that, right, So I don't know. I mean,

1188
01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:04,200
Speaker 3: I do know who if some of the original people

1189
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 3: were who were trying to make us think.

1190
01:03:06,520 --> 01:03:08,400
Speaker 4: About it, were they any of the same people that

1191
01:03:08,440 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 4: started the Birther rumor in two thousand and eight.

1192
01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:13,840
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I mean, you know, I didn't

1193
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:16,400
Speaker 3: really look at all that hard at this, and you know,

1194
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 3: I spent much more time just being bummed out and

1195
01:03:19,960 --> 01:03:23,160
Speaker 3: feeling guilty. And then then I got mad about some

1196
01:03:23,200 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 3: of the press coverage that was making some you know,

1197
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:31,840
Speaker 3: basically I had written some very offensive things, but there

1198
01:03:31,960 --> 01:03:36,560
Speaker 3: was a scene in the book that it was Mark

1199
01:03:36,680 --> 01:03:40,400
Speaker 3: fantasizing about something about sort of a sexual harassment scene

1200
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:47,160
Speaker 3: that wasn't true, and there was no way to talk

1201
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 3: about it and not sound like, there was no way

1202
01:03:51,080 --> 01:03:52,960
Speaker 3: to make sense of it. I mean unless you had

1203
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:55,840
Speaker 3: been through the whole Russia thing, like the disgustingness of

1204
01:03:55,880 --> 01:03:58,000
Speaker 3: the humor of the exile was never going to make

1205
01:03:58,040 --> 01:04:00,840
Speaker 3: sense of the two American audiences. So I didn't even

1206
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:06,640
Speaker 3: really try. But you know, that was really it turned

1207
01:04:06,640 --> 01:04:10,600
Speaker 3: out to mostly just be a blip in my career.

1208
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 3: The much bigger thing was the Russia Gate thing, and

1209
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:18,320
Speaker 3: that was when, you know, I suddenly was on the

1210
01:04:18,360 --> 01:04:22,440
Speaker 3: outside with everybody in the business. And that started before that,

1211
01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 3: so I don't know how So so right after Trump

1212
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:32,680
Speaker 3: got elected, you know, I had experience with Russia, I

1213
01:04:32,680 --> 01:04:39,680
Speaker 3: started getting calls to about the subject, and I remember

1214
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:43,280
Speaker 3: looking at some of the early stories and saying, Man,

1215
01:04:43,360 --> 01:04:45,960
Speaker 3: the sourcing and this stuff is really weird, right, Like

1216
01:04:46,000 --> 01:04:48,160
Speaker 3: it's all anonymous. There's no way we can we can

1217
01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:52,000
Speaker 3: replicate any of this in the lab you know, and

1218
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:54,640
Speaker 3: and I wrote a piece called something about this Russia

1219
01:04:54,680 --> 01:04:56,680
Speaker 3: story stinks like.

1220
01:04:56,640 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: Really early, like Rolling Stone, in Rolling.

1221
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 3: Stone, Yeah, and all of a sudden, like lots of

1222
01:05:03,800 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 3: people just sort of froze me out, and I stopped

1223
01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:08,920
Speaker 3: getting you know, my phone calls returned. People in Congress

1224
01:05:08,920 --> 01:05:13,760
Speaker 3: didn't didn't call me back, and uh, yeah, that was

1225
01:05:13,800 --> 01:05:17,480
Speaker 3: that was the beginning for me. I started to realize

1226
01:05:17,520 --> 01:05:19,240
Speaker 3: that I was not going to be able to stick

1227
01:05:19,280 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 3: around in that Rolling Stone.

1228
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:26,800
Speaker 4: See that's also interesting because again without seeming conspiratorial.

1229
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 5: It just feels it feels like a Clinton op. It

1230
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:31,000
Speaker 5: feels like you got.

1231
01:05:30,880 --> 01:05:36,360
Speaker 4: On the wrong side of the sort of steel dossier.

1232
01:05:37,600 --> 01:05:39,200
Speaker 1: Was the name of the Wall Street back point. It's

1233
01:05:39,240 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 1: not an op, it's it's the entire culture. Yeah, yeah,

1234
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:42,640
Speaker 1: it's like.

1235
01:05:43,040 --> 01:05:46,160
Speaker 4: But being driven by the external reporters who are feeding

1236
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:48,240
Speaker 4: and around and like there was a there was a

1237
01:05:48,280 --> 01:05:50,600
Speaker 4: group of people that was, you know, talking to David

1238
01:05:50,640 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 4: Horn and all that stuff.

1239
01:05:52,240 --> 01:05:54,520
Speaker 1: People were leaking things, and yeah.

1240
01:05:54,200 --> 01:05:56,720
Speaker 3: It just wish I had known that back then, you know,

1241
01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:00,200
Speaker 3: because all I had was just just doesn't seem right

1242
01:06:00,200 --> 01:06:02,800
Speaker 3: if I had known about all that, you know, stuff,

1243
01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:06,560
Speaker 3: But it was cultural. It was this weird thing that

1244
01:06:06,560 --> 01:06:12,040
Speaker 3: that now is normal, which is this group think culture.

1245
01:06:12,120 --> 01:06:15,400
Speaker 3: Which one of the reasons I liked journalism early on

1246
01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:17,280
Speaker 3: when I first got into it is that it was

1247
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:20,320
Speaker 3: not that you know, you used to go into a

1248
01:06:20,360 --> 01:06:25,840
Speaker 3: newsroom or you know, a TV you know, studio, and

1249
01:06:25,880 --> 01:06:28,439
Speaker 3: it would be like a comedy club in the back room,

1250
01:06:28,520 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 3: like everybody was busting each other's chosa about everything. You

1251
01:06:31,320 --> 01:06:35,720
Speaker 3: could say anything. Nobody cared what your politics were as

1252
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:38,040
Speaker 3: long as you did the job. Well. I thought that

1253
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:42,360
Speaker 3: was a really cool feature of reporting, and then like overnight,

1254
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:44,960
Speaker 3: it turned into the exact opposite. I don't know if

1255
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 3: you had the same.

1256
01:06:45,560 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 5: Experiences, like college campuses.

1257
01:06:47,600 --> 01:06:51,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I can't miss that, but yeah, but.

1258
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 4: It felt like, well, I mean I went to college

1259
01:06:53,840 --> 01:06:57,200
Speaker 4: campus after they became like thoroughly sanitized, and it feels

1260
01:06:57,240 --> 01:06:59,000
Speaker 4: like that in green rooms now it feels like you

1261
01:06:59,080 --> 01:07:01,160
Speaker 4: have to watch what you It feels like it's very

1262
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:03,720
Speaker 4: self serious, and it seems like it wasn't super self

1263
01:07:03,760 --> 01:07:04,600
Speaker 4: serious before though.

1264
01:07:05,680 --> 01:07:08,160
Speaker 1: I think my the way I had handled that, I

1265
01:07:08,440 --> 01:07:11,800
Speaker 1: basically didn't touch the Russia against stuff. I didn't go

1266
01:07:11,880 --> 01:07:16,840
Speaker 1: either way on it. I was just covering other things.

1267
01:07:17,480 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 1: So that might have been the way that I just

1268
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:22,840
Speaker 1: like subconsciously was like, you know what, like go like

1269
01:07:23,640 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 1: if I could break some new news there, Like I

1270
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:27,760
Speaker 1: think we broke a good story on Elliott Broydy who

1271
01:07:28,120 --> 01:07:32,880
Speaker 1: was doing like unregistered lobbying for Russia, but like somebody

1272
01:07:33,000 --> 01:07:34,920
Speaker 1: hacked his emails and we had the emails and boom,

1273
01:07:34,920 --> 01:07:38,200
Speaker 1: here you go. But and he was like number two

1274
01:07:38,240 --> 01:07:40,320
Speaker 1: on the RNC or something like this. Really it's a

1275
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:44,320
Speaker 1: big fun fundraising. Yeah, it was a big fundraiser, big story.

1276
01:07:44,360 --> 01:07:48,040
Speaker 1: I think he went to prison, but that was not

1277
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:50,800
Speaker 1: but that was different than the campaign. That's just classic

1278
01:07:51,520 --> 01:07:54,960
Speaker 1: foreign governments influencing the process.

1279
01:07:55,120 --> 01:07:57,280
Speaker 4: But that does bring up an interesting issue though. I'm

1280
01:07:57,320 --> 01:08:00,080
Speaker 4: curious about this, Matt, like how you decide what to

1281
01:08:00,120 --> 01:08:03,640
Speaker 4: cover now because having been in conservative media, there's this

1282
01:08:03,800 --> 01:08:07,400
Speaker 4: like the entire corporate press is focused on three shiny

1283
01:08:07,400 --> 01:08:11,120
Speaker 4: objects and sometimes they're doing legitimately important reporting, like I'm

1284
01:08:11,200 --> 01:08:14,040
Speaker 4: glad that they are, you know, when there's a hurricane,

1285
01:08:14,160 --> 01:08:16,120
Speaker 4: I'm glad they're down there, like they're doing There's some

1286
01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:19,080
Speaker 4: reporters who are doing good stuff, but conservative media sees

1287
01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:22,040
Speaker 4: its role as saying they're all doing that you know,

1288
01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:26,759
Speaker 4: they're getting every stone overturned when it comes to Donald Trump.

1289
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:28,880
Speaker 4: We have a limited amount of time and resources.

1290
01:08:28,920 --> 01:08:31,599
Speaker 5: We're going to spend them over here. And I feel

1291
01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:33,479
Speaker 5: like maybe that's what you were doing with Russiagate.

1292
01:08:33,479 --> 01:08:33,720
Speaker 3: I don't know.

1293
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:34,960
Speaker 4: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but

1294
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:36,680
Speaker 4: like you were doing the reporting that was coming to you,

1295
01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 4: how do you decide what's to report on now, Matt,

1296
01:08:39,560 --> 01:08:41,479
Speaker 4: Because I'm sure you get a lot of stuff that

1297
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:43,880
Speaker 4: just comes to you naturally, but you also have limited

1298
01:08:43,880 --> 01:08:46,160
Speaker 4: time and resources, so it's not like that people who

1299
01:08:46,240 --> 01:08:49,360
Speaker 4: expect you to spend every day. This is why Donald

1300
01:08:49,360 --> 01:08:51,760
Speaker 4: Trump is evil in a million different ways. This is

1301
01:08:51,800 --> 01:08:55,040
Speaker 4: why I hate that and Yahoo, this is why the CIA,

1302
01:08:55,160 --> 01:08:58,400
Speaker 4: well like other people are doing some of that reporting.

1303
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:00,639
Speaker 4: You're doing what comes to you. How you decide where

1304
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:02,000
Speaker 4: to spend your time and resources.

1305
01:09:02,320 --> 01:09:04,760
Speaker 3: So I've always had the same attitude about this, which

1306
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:11,519
Speaker 3: is that the press basically exists more for people who

1307
01:09:11,600 --> 01:09:14,360
Speaker 3: don't have anybody else to press their point of view

1308
01:09:14,840 --> 01:09:22,080
Speaker 3: than for people who have institutional backing already. So I dating,

1309
01:09:22,160 --> 01:09:24,080
Speaker 3: going back all the way to the beginning of my career,

1310
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:27,160
Speaker 3: I always tried to pick stories that nobody else was doing,

1311
01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:32,280
Speaker 3: because you know, that's that's who needs those stories, right

1312
01:09:32,360 --> 01:09:35,040
Speaker 3: Like for instance, with the we talked, we started talking

1313
01:09:35,040 --> 01:09:39,000
Speaker 3: about the how Russia was being reported while everybody at

1314
01:09:39,000 --> 01:09:43,320
Speaker 3: home is getting it's great, it's turning into Switzerland. I

1315
01:09:43,360 --> 01:09:45,960
Speaker 3: would I would go out and say, you know, look,

1316
01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:49,479
Speaker 3: it's subsistence farming and you know, people getting shot, you know,

1317
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:54,400
Speaker 3: in broad daylight. So I would do those stories when

1318
01:09:54,400 --> 01:09:57,200
Speaker 3: Obama got elected. I was a big fan of his

1319
01:09:57,240 --> 01:09:59,320
Speaker 3: when he got elected on the on the campaign trail.

1320
01:09:59,439 --> 01:10:04,160
Speaker 3: Then after that, you know, I had to cover finance,

1321
01:10:04,560 --> 01:10:07,920
Speaker 3: and you know, he was involved in a pretty shady

1322
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:12,200
Speaker 3: series of relationships with City Group. I did a big

1323
01:10:12,240 --> 01:10:16,960
Speaker 3: story called Obama's Big Sellout for Rolling Stone that I

1324
01:10:17,000 --> 01:10:19,799
Speaker 3: was heavily criticized for. But I think that's what media

1325
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:22,120
Speaker 3: is for, right, Like we're not supposed to be in

1326
01:10:22,160 --> 01:10:25,680
Speaker 3: the friends business. We're supposed to do stuff that is

1327
01:10:26,680 --> 01:10:31,879
Speaker 3: true but unpopular. So but I do now now because

1328
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 3: so much of corporate media is monomoniacal and in this

1329
01:10:35,280 --> 01:10:41,240
Speaker 3: Trump direction. And you know, I'm personally very worried about

1330
01:10:41,600 --> 01:10:44,120
Speaker 3: kind of collapse of civil liberties and things like.

1331
01:10:44,080 --> 01:10:46,400
Speaker 5: That small matter of collapsing civil liberties.

1332
01:10:46,439 --> 01:10:49,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I've probably lost my sense of

1333
01:10:49,920 --> 01:10:52,439
Speaker 3: humor about this a little bit, but that's kind of

1334
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 3: how I pick it. You know, people say, why don't

1335
01:10:55,160 --> 01:10:57,400
Speaker 3: you criticize Trump, where I'm like, we don't have enough

1336
01:10:57,400 --> 01:11:00,479
Speaker 3: people doing that already, Like there's five million people doing

1337
01:11:00,479 --> 01:11:01,000
Speaker 3: that already.

1338
01:11:01,080 --> 01:11:04,160
Speaker 1: So I think the first time you and I met

1339
01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 1: in person was at a cafe in New York because

1340
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: you had finished a novel. Oh if you remember this,

1341
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:15,800
Speaker 1: And I used to run this with a friend a

1342
01:11:15,960 --> 01:11:18,559
Speaker 1: little publishing house, little publishing house, because we were like, look,

1343
01:11:18,600 --> 01:11:21,240
Speaker 1: you don't need printers anymore. You can just if you

1344
01:11:21,240 --> 01:11:23,559
Speaker 1: have a website and you have some books, you could

1345
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:28,519
Speaker 1: just actually print them. And you had written a novel

1346
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:33,720
Speaker 1: about a drug dealer, right, and we talked about publishing it,

1347
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:35,880
Speaker 1: and but then eventually you said, you know what, I'm

1348
01:11:35,880 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 1: actually going to try substack this brand new thing. At

1349
01:11:39,160 --> 01:11:41,000
Speaker 1: the time, that was.

1350
01:11:41,000 --> 01:11:42,920
Speaker 5: The first time you guys met, I would have thought

1351
01:11:42,920 --> 01:11:43,680
Speaker 5: you knew each other one.

1352
01:11:44,160 --> 01:11:46,080
Speaker 1: Well, we've been on a bunch of listeners.

1353
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:50,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, we didn't we digitally cross paths.

1354
01:11:50,439 --> 01:11:52,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's in New York. I'm on dclso after I

1355
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:55,720
Speaker 1: had twins, I basically haven't left the house except to

1356
01:11:55,760 --> 01:11:56,200
Speaker 1: go to work.

1357
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:59,080
Speaker 3: That makes sense. It makes sense.

1358
01:12:00,160 --> 01:12:03,800
Speaker 1: And so you ended up doing it through substack, kind

1359
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:07,559
Speaker 1: of serializing the novel. Like what was that experience like

1360
01:12:07,640 --> 01:12:10,519
Speaker 1: and that you were still at Rolling Stone if I remember,

1361
01:12:11,000 --> 01:12:13,880
Speaker 1: how did you decide to make that? Like how did

1362
01:12:13,880 --> 01:12:15,720
Speaker 1: that evolve into your full thing?

1363
01:12:16,040 --> 01:12:21,519
Speaker 3: So that happened because the only thing I could do

1364
01:12:22,240 --> 01:12:26,040
Speaker 3: legally with my existing rolling Stone contract that wouldn't have

1365
01:12:26,080 --> 01:12:30,360
Speaker 3: violated the terms noncompete. Yeah, it would have been something

1366
01:12:30,920 --> 01:12:35,360
Speaker 3: like fiction on you know, a serialized book. They let

1367
01:12:35,400 --> 01:12:37,840
Speaker 3: me write books, So I had to write a book,

1368
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:44,000
Speaker 3: and you know, Substack came to me early, and you

1369
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:47,559
Speaker 3: know they I got to know those guys pretty well

1370
01:12:47,560 --> 01:12:52,280
Speaker 3: and it seemed like a really interesting idea. And after

1371
01:12:52,320 --> 01:12:56,920
Speaker 3: the experience of doing that, which I think turned out well,

1372
01:12:56,960 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 3: I also wrote hate inc there first, and I thought

1373
01:13:03,960 --> 01:13:07,479
Speaker 3: this is going to work better just in general, if

1374
01:13:07,479 --> 01:13:10,840
Speaker 3: I just leave rolling Stone and do this for a living.

1375
01:13:11,800 --> 01:13:14,639
Speaker 3: So a lot of people ended up on Substack because

1376
01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:17,000
Speaker 3: they got forced out of their organizations. I'm like one

1377
01:13:17,000 --> 01:13:19,880
Speaker 3: of the only people who left out agreed. You know,

1378
01:13:20,000 --> 01:13:21,559
Speaker 3: I just thought I'm going to make more money doing

1379
01:13:21,680 --> 01:13:24,200
Speaker 3: this over here. So that's why I left.

1380
01:13:24,280 --> 01:13:25,960
Speaker 5: But a lot of people didn't understand at the time

1381
01:13:26,000 --> 01:13:26,799
Speaker 5: that that was true.

1382
01:13:28,240 --> 01:13:29,120
Speaker 1: Well, how are you liking it?

1383
01:13:29,240 --> 01:13:30,519
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was gonna say, how do you feeling about the

1384
01:13:30,560 --> 01:13:31,400
Speaker 5: substack revolution?

1385
01:13:32,560 --> 01:13:35,080
Speaker 3: I love it? I think substack is a great thing.

1386
01:13:35,320 --> 01:13:38,240
Speaker 1: And when did you jump out fully launch.

1387
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 3: In twenty nineteen? Maybe? Yeah, you know there are some differences.

1388
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:47,719
Speaker 3: You know, Rolling Stone, they would give me a story

1389
01:13:47,720 --> 01:13:49,559
Speaker 3: and I'd get ten weeks to work on it. Right,

1390
01:13:49,880 --> 01:13:54,160
Speaker 3: So investigative journalism it's a lot of work and not

1391
01:13:54,200 --> 01:13:58,479
Speaker 3: a lot of content. You know. Substack has not solved

1392
01:13:58,520 --> 01:14:01,360
Speaker 3: that problem. I don't think the how do you do

1393
01:14:01,479 --> 01:14:07,360
Speaker 3: investigative journalism and monetize it quickly? It's what it does

1394
01:14:07,400 --> 01:14:12,920
Speaker 3: pay for is like the strong take, And there's actually

1395
01:14:13,080 --> 01:14:18,599
Speaker 3: quite a reward on substack for writing people. It's people

1396
01:14:18,760 --> 01:14:23,960
Speaker 3: like to They will pay for something that they enjoy reading,

1397
01:14:24,360 --> 01:14:26,120
Speaker 3: just in general, even if they don't agree with it.

1398
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:31,160
Speaker 3: I found so like as opposed to doing I do

1399
01:14:31,200 --> 01:14:33,720
Speaker 3: a lot of reporting on substack. That stuff tends not

1400
01:14:33,840 --> 01:14:36,200
Speaker 3: to do well financially, But.

1401
01:14:38,520 --> 01:14:40,439
Speaker 1: How do you tell it doesn't do well financially? Like

1402
01:14:40,640 --> 01:14:43,920
Speaker 1: people are unsubscribing or it's people aren't converting from the

1403
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:44,799
Speaker 1: free to the paid.

1404
01:14:45,200 --> 01:14:47,320
Speaker 3: You can see how many subscriptions you get. I try

1405
01:14:47,320 --> 01:14:48,880
Speaker 3: not to look, but you can see.

1406
01:14:50,240 --> 01:14:53,400
Speaker 1: And so if it's a well written piece, I just

1407
01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:57,040
Speaker 1: that converts more people, right, and you get more I see.

1408
01:14:57,120 --> 01:15:01,240
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I mean generally they're like nine different types

1409
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,200
Speaker 3: of things that I do on the site, and I

1410
01:15:03,280 --> 01:15:07,080
Speaker 3: know which ones get you know, are monetizable, and which

1411
01:15:07,120 --> 01:15:07,799
Speaker 3: ones aren't.

1412
01:15:08,520 --> 01:15:13,040
Speaker 1: How do you balance out how often to.

1413
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:18,479
Speaker 3: Well, I think one pays for the other. You know,

1414
01:15:18,560 --> 01:15:22,800
Speaker 3: you have to do some of those op ed pieces.

1415
01:15:22,439 --> 01:15:24,200
Speaker 5: One for the studio, one for you.

1416
01:15:24,400 --> 01:15:26,559
Speaker 3: Right right, exactly exactly.

1417
01:15:26,640 --> 01:15:28,760
Speaker 1: Well, it's something we've thought about a lot here with

1418
01:15:28,880 --> 01:15:31,960
Speaker 1: the whole idea of audience capture and the way that

1419
01:15:32,479 --> 01:15:34,759
Speaker 1: we've sort of the way that we solve it here

1420
01:15:35,520 --> 01:15:40,840
Speaker 1: is we've got Emily's wrong takes and then people get

1421
01:15:40,880 --> 01:15:44,479
Speaker 1: to hear them both and then decide for themselves. But

1422
01:15:44,520 --> 01:15:49,439
Speaker 1: it does acculturate the audience to difference of opinion and

1423
01:15:49,479 --> 01:15:53,240
Speaker 1: being okay with like I say, some dumb things sometimes

1424
01:15:53,280 --> 01:15:55,720
Speaker 1: believe it or not. But doesn't mean that you have

1425
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:59,120
Speaker 1: to go running for the hills. It means you can

1426
01:15:59,160 --> 01:16:02,519
Speaker 1: just flame me and just saved Emily's great and move on.

1427
01:16:03,280 --> 01:16:05,400
Speaker 1: But that's very unusual in the media space.

1428
01:16:06,320 --> 01:16:08,439
Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't need to be, though, because I'm sure,

1429
01:16:08,479 --> 01:16:11,200
Speaker 3: as you've discovered, audiences are much smarter and more forgiving

1430
01:16:11,280 --> 01:16:15,920
Speaker 3: than people given credit minded and open minded. Yeah, yeah, so,

1431
01:16:16,040 --> 01:16:18,519
Speaker 3: I mean, like last week I did a piece about

1432
01:16:18,520 --> 01:16:21,759
Speaker 3: a you know, a writer for the World Socialist website,

1433
01:16:22,600 --> 01:16:27,200
Speaker 3: you know, a trotsky I who's in prison in Ukraine.

1434
01:16:27,479 --> 01:16:30,919
Speaker 3: And you know, there are some conservatives who were subscribed

1435
01:16:30,960 --> 01:16:32,600
Speaker 3: to my site and they weren't mad about it. Right,

1436
01:16:32,680 --> 01:16:35,479
Speaker 3: They're not going to unsubscribe because because the stories like that,

1437
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:41,240
Speaker 3: what they you know what they'll you will occasionally lose

1438
01:16:41,280 --> 01:16:45,200
Speaker 3: people over something that you say, but you know, over time,

1439
01:16:45,240 --> 01:16:47,080
Speaker 3: I think it evens out as long as you do

1440
01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:47,519
Speaker 3: good work.

1441
01:16:47,720 --> 01:16:51,000
Speaker 4: I've heard from some people I think I shouldn't say

1442
01:16:51,000 --> 01:16:52,360
Speaker 4: because I don't remember if I was told this on

1443
01:16:52,439 --> 01:16:55,400
Speaker 4: or off the record, but that people on the left.

1444
01:16:55,240 --> 01:16:55,840
Speaker 1: That's going on.

1445
01:16:56,160 --> 01:16:56,720
Speaker 5: Let's going on.

1446
01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:59,240
Speaker 4: Yeah, but people on the left who developed sort of

1447
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:02,800
Speaker 4: center right audiences or maybe even like populist right audiences

1448
01:17:02,920 --> 01:17:07,400
Speaker 4: during the Trump years. As soon as like Trump was

1449
01:17:07,439 --> 01:17:11,320
Speaker 4: out of office and then there was October seventh. They hemorrhaged,

1450
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:14,639
Speaker 4: but then people kind of slowly came back.

1451
01:17:14,800 --> 01:17:17,439
Speaker 1: I know Glenn and Glenn Greenwald and Lefang have talked

1452
01:17:17,439 --> 01:17:20,679
Speaker 1: to I think openly about that. That like, because they

1453
01:17:20,720 --> 01:17:24,040
Speaker 1: picked up right wing audiences, not totally right wing audience,

1454
01:17:24,040 --> 01:17:25,840
Speaker 1: but a significan chunk were right wing because they were

1455
01:17:25,920 --> 01:17:28,200
Speaker 1: they both agreed on the people that they were attacking,

1456
01:17:29,200 --> 01:17:31,320
Speaker 1: but then they realized after October seventh they didn't agree

1457
01:17:31,320 --> 01:17:36,840
Speaker 1: on Israel. Glenn has I think lost a substantial portion

1458
01:17:36,920 --> 01:17:39,559
Speaker 1: of his audience, but he has such a massive audience

1459
01:17:40,000 --> 01:17:42,800
Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter, Like, how do you work, how

1460
01:17:42,800 --> 01:17:43,679
Speaker 1: do you think about that?

1461
01:17:44,160 --> 01:17:47,360
Speaker 3: Or do you you know, I try not to think

1462
01:17:47,400 --> 01:17:52,320
Speaker 3: about that. I haven't done a lot of stuff on Israel,

1463
01:17:52,800 --> 01:17:56,200
Speaker 3: but I've never have I never liked that story. I've

1464
01:17:56,240 --> 01:17:56,880
Speaker 3: never been there.

1465
01:17:58,720 --> 01:18:00,360
Speaker 1: I heard that when you did the show with Katie,

1466
01:18:00,400 --> 01:18:03,280
Speaker 1: would you how often did that come up? Because she's

1467
01:18:03,280 --> 01:18:06,559
Speaker 1: big Katie help. Yeah, yeah, so we had to post

1468
01:18:06,640 --> 01:18:08,320
Speaker 1: post a podcast with Yeah.

1469
01:18:08,200 --> 01:18:10,840
Speaker 3: So you know Katie, Katie obviously cares a lot about

1470
01:18:10,840 --> 01:18:12,280
Speaker 3: that issue. We had a lot of guests on who

1471
01:18:12,280 --> 01:18:16,679
Speaker 3: would talk about that issue. You know, I have written

1472
01:18:16,680 --> 01:18:19,719
Speaker 3: about it in terms of things like censorship TikTok.

1473
01:18:19,760 --> 01:18:22,719
Speaker 5: You wrote about it when it came to the TikTok bill.

1474
01:18:22,080 --> 01:18:25,519
Speaker 3: Right right, And so you know we had people like

1475
01:18:25,520 --> 01:18:29,840
Speaker 3: ahiabunma on and you know that was after I believe

1476
01:18:29,840 --> 01:18:33,080
Speaker 3: it was electronic and a thought I had been suppressed,

1477
01:18:33,320 --> 01:18:37,040
Speaker 3: and I had written about that even previously, so had Glenn.

1478
01:18:37,120 --> 01:18:40,040
Speaker 3: Glenn was one of the first people to write about that. Uh.

1479
01:18:40,320 --> 01:18:44,879
Speaker 3: You know, I don't mind, uh, talking about certain aspects

1480
01:18:44,920 --> 01:18:48,960
Speaker 3: of it, but I find the whole thing super complex.

1481
01:18:49,320 --> 01:18:52,320
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't know how you feel about this,

1482
01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:57,000
Speaker 3: but I'm always very nervous about subjects where I just

1483
01:18:57,080 --> 01:18:59,120
Speaker 3: feel like there are naps in my knowledge. You know.

1484
01:19:00,640 --> 01:19:02,760
Speaker 3: I remember being on one of the first times I

1485
01:19:02,800 --> 01:19:05,479
Speaker 3: was on like CNN, they asked me a question about

1486
01:19:05,520 --> 01:19:11,479
Speaker 3: like Lebanon, and I just had to say, I don't know,

1487
01:19:11,600 --> 01:19:13,760
Speaker 3: I'm not confident to answer that question. And you could

1488
01:19:13,800 --> 01:19:17,920
Speaker 3: tell the camera hates that answer, right, So you know,

1489
01:19:17,960 --> 01:19:21,120
Speaker 3: it's a weird place to be, But so I stick

1490
01:19:21,160 --> 01:19:21,800
Speaker 3: with what I do know.

1491
01:19:22,840 --> 01:19:24,799
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I think I just think it's interesting because

1492
01:19:25,320 --> 01:19:29,360
Speaker 4: I do find that even hardcore partisans are more open minded.

1493
01:19:29,400 --> 01:19:30,200
Speaker 5: There's some that aren't.

1494
01:19:30,200 --> 01:19:31,840
Speaker 4: And I feel like the country right now is thirty

1495
01:19:31,880 --> 01:19:36,519
Speaker 4: percent hardcore partisan left, hardcore partisan right, and then everyone

1496
01:19:36,520 --> 01:19:39,080
Speaker 4: else is just like, please, I just want to believe something.

1497
01:19:39,760 --> 01:19:41,599
Speaker 4: Please just tell me the truth. I don't care if

1498
01:19:41,600 --> 01:19:43,760
Speaker 4: you're left, I don't care if you're right. Just tell

1499
01:19:43,800 --> 01:19:46,400
Speaker 4: me what you think and I can make that decision

1500
01:19:46,439 --> 01:19:48,439
Speaker 4: for myself. But like, just do the research and be

1501
01:19:48,520 --> 01:19:51,040
Speaker 4: honest about where you're coming from, which leads me to think,

1502
01:19:51,120 --> 01:19:53,879
Speaker 4: like if tomorrow the New York Times and the Washington

1503
01:19:53,880 --> 01:19:59,280
Speaker 4: Post said we are doing journalism from a clear liberal perspective,

1504
01:19:59,680 --> 01:20:02,400
Speaker 4: it would go like leaps and bounds towards restoring trust.

1505
01:20:02,640 --> 01:20:04,439
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I feel like that's why people.

1506
01:20:04,200 --> 01:20:08,679
Speaker 3: Subscribe, yeah to racket Right, Well, yeah, they they trust

1507
01:20:08,760 --> 01:20:12,000
Speaker 3: me to probably admit when I get stuff wrong, or

1508
01:20:12,280 --> 01:20:14,719
Speaker 3: you know, tell her to tell them where I'm coming from.

1509
01:20:14,800 --> 01:20:20,120
Speaker 3: But audiences are much I mean, this is my blank

1510
01:20:20,640 --> 01:20:25,680
Speaker 3: experience going back decades. People always think that audiences are

1511
01:20:25,720 --> 01:20:28,200
Speaker 3: dumber than they really are. If you go back to

1512
01:20:28,240 --> 01:20:30,479
Speaker 3: the nineties, remember the whole lad mag movement we had

1513
01:20:30,479 --> 01:20:33,439
Speaker 3: in these states where everybody thought that you had to

1514
01:20:33,479 --> 01:20:36,800
Speaker 3: do you know, stories in four hundred were boxes and

1515
01:20:36,840 --> 01:20:39,920
Speaker 3: that people would not read anything longer than that, and

1516
01:20:40,360 --> 01:20:40,639
Speaker 3: you know.

1517
01:20:40,880 --> 01:20:41,880
Speaker 5: You mean like axios.

1518
01:20:42,200 --> 01:20:45,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, that's I guess that's the idea there.

1519
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:47,960
Speaker 3: I'm even going back into the stone age when it

1520
01:20:48,040 --> 01:20:52,479
Speaker 3: was still paper. Yeah, but you know, a rolling stone.

1521
01:20:53,960 --> 01:20:56,439
Speaker 3: When we started doing those finance pieces, I'm like, I'm

1522
01:20:56,479 --> 01:20:59,519
Speaker 3: doing eight thousand word pieces about credit the fault swaps,

1523
01:20:59,520 --> 01:21:03,160
Speaker 3: and people love it, right, like as opposed to, you know,

1524
01:21:03,360 --> 01:21:07,080
Speaker 3: trying to dumb it down for people. I think audiences

1525
01:21:07,640 --> 01:21:09,880
Speaker 3: like it when you respect them and treat them like

1526
01:21:09,920 --> 01:21:13,559
Speaker 3: adults and you know it, don't make assumptions that they're not.

1527
01:21:14,320 --> 01:21:16,280
Speaker 3: You know, they're going to run away if you try

1528
01:21:16,320 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 3: to be complicated. So, I don't know, do you have

1529
01:21:20,360 --> 01:21:20,959
Speaker 3: the same.

1530
01:21:20,720 --> 01:21:23,760
Speaker 1: Thought I was as I'm as I'm listening to you talking,

1531
01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:26,400
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that the people on the left who think

1532
01:21:26,800 --> 01:21:29,200
Speaker 1: like that you've betrayed them, that you've left the left,

1533
01:21:29,280 --> 01:21:31,680
Speaker 1: you know what happened to Matt Tybee.

1534
01:21:31,479 --> 01:21:33,799
Speaker 5: That you've sold out it's all for clicks or whatever.

1535
01:21:34,080 --> 01:21:34,240
Speaker 3: That.

1536
01:21:35,640 --> 01:21:37,400
Speaker 1: Do you think your politics have changed or do you

1537
01:21:37,439 --> 01:21:42,519
Speaker 1: think that the you actually haven't been that political to

1538
01:21:42,520 --> 01:21:46,040
Speaker 1: begin with, or how like, how do you think about that?

1539
01:21:46,439 --> 01:21:49,519
Speaker 1: Like because I'm sure you still get people oh yeah,

1540
01:21:50,000 --> 01:21:50,960
Speaker 1: you ran.

1541
01:21:51,200 --> 01:21:54,439
Speaker 4: It's just like, right, what happened to you?

1542
01:21:54,280 --> 01:21:57,080
Speaker 1: Like I get that stuff question that it's it's the

1543
01:21:57,080 --> 01:22:00,360
Speaker 1: most annoying question on the planet. What happened to you? Yeah,

1544
01:22:01,120 --> 01:22:05,360
Speaker 1: people send that to you, even me, like, like, I

1545
01:22:05,400 --> 01:22:07,040
Speaker 1: haven't changed in twenty years.

1546
01:22:07,240 --> 01:22:14,400
Speaker 3: But that's because there's within the business even small transgressions

1547
01:22:14,439 --> 01:22:18,080
Speaker 3: now are unacceptable. I mean I used to all the

1548
01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:23,880
Speaker 3: time do large, you know, feature length reports that were

1549
01:22:23,960 --> 01:22:27,400
Speaker 3: critical of the Democratic Party in Rolling Stone where they

1550
01:22:27,400 --> 01:22:32,120
Speaker 3: didn't like it, and that was considered a virtue in

1551
01:22:32,160 --> 01:22:34,680
Speaker 3: the business once upon a time, like you to you know,

1552
01:22:35,600 --> 01:22:41,120
Speaker 3: we're going to criticize Republicans also do this. I don't

1553
01:22:41,160 --> 01:22:44,040
Speaker 3: think my politics have changed that much, and I'm probably

1554
01:22:44,120 --> 01:22:47,320
Speaker 3: a little bit more. I've probably changed a little bit

1555
01:22:47,479 --> 01:22:51,360
Speaker 3: in in terms of things that I worry about, like

1556
01:22:51,680 --> 01:22:58,400
Speaker 3: caricaturizing audiences. But I see this, like for instance, the

1557
01:22:58,439 --> 01:23:03,400
Speaker 3: censorship story and even some of the other stuff that's

1558
01:23:03,400 --> 01:23:08,160
Speaker 3: gone on with Trump, as a continuation of this sort

1559
01:23:08,160 --> 01:23:14,560
Speaker 3: of degradation of civil liberties and you know due process

1560
01:23:14,680 --> 01:23:18,280
Speaker 3: that started with nine to eleven, which I was very

1561
01:23:18,320 --> 01:23:22,519
Speaker 3: sensitive to because I came into it after watching Putin

1562
01:23:22,560 --> 01:23:26,000
Speaker 3: come to power and seeing you know, all that disappear

1563
01:23:26,000 --> 01:23:29,760
Speaker 3: in overnight there in Russia. I think it's all the

1564
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:33,679
Speaker 3: same story. It's just that the you know, the people

1565
01:23:33,680 --> 01:23:36,840
Speaker 3: who are now advancing this idea that we have to

1566
01:23:36,880 --> 01:23:41,559
Speaker 3: become more aggressive in how you know, in the use

1567
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:44,240
Speaker 3: of illiberal tools. I think it's just a different group

1568
01:23:44,280 --> 01:23:47,320
Speaker 3: of people, if that makes sense.

1569
01:23:47,479 --> 01:23:50,120
Speaker 4: Is there anything you would say you have learned from

1570
01:23:50,360 --> 01:23:53,160
Speaker 4: the right or you've been like humbled by as you've

1571
01:23:54,240 --> 01:23:57,040
Speaker 4: made because I mean like I'm in way more left

1572
01:23:57,080 --> 01:23:59,280
Speaker 4: spaces than I ever expected would be in my career.

1573
01:23:59,320 --> 01:24:01,360
Speaker 4: Absolutely love, and I feel like I learned so much

1574
01:24:01,400 --> 01:24:04,080
Speaker 4: from it every day. Is there anything over the last few,

1575
01:24:04,120 --> 01:24:06,880
Speaker 4: maybe ten years you feel like, maybe that hasn't changed

1576
01:24:06,880 --> 01:24:09,920
Speaker 4: your principles, but that's changed your perspective from spending more

1577
01:24:09,920 --> 01:24:10,920
Speaker 4: time with people on the right.

1578
01:24:12,320 --> 01:24:17,960
Speaker 3: For sure, I'm much more conscious of how uniform the

1579
01:24:18,000 --> 01:24:23,240
Speaker 3: messaging is in like pop culture. I probably didn't notice

1580
01:24:23,240 --> 01:24:25,960
Speaker 3: that before, Like even stuff even shows that I like

1581
01:24:27,520 --> 01:24:31,559
Speaker 3: and still like, they just hit you over the head

1582
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:35,040
Speaker 3: with the same messages over and over again, repeatedly. And

1583
01:24:35,080 --> 01:24:39,200
Speaker 3: now you know, I can imagine as a Republican it

1584
01:24:39,200 --> 01:24:42,200
Speaker 3: would be very frustrating to turn on the TV every

1585
01:24:42,240 --> 01:24:44,680
Speaker 3: single time and see myself portrayed as the dumb and

1586
01:24:44,680 --> 01:24:49,640
Speaker 3: wrong one always right. And I'm maybe a little bit

1587
01:24:49,720 --> 01:24:52,680
Speaker 3: more in touch with that than I ever have been.

1588
01:24:53,439 --> 01:24:58,639
Speaker 3: But people, you know, people characterize my audience as right,

1589
01:24:58,680 --> 01:25:00,880
Speaker 3: when now it's really not that. Most of the people

1590
01:25:00,920 --> 01:25:06,000
Speaker 3: who subscribe to my site are like old disappointed liberals

1591
01:25:06,040 --> 01:25:09,360
Speaker 3: like me. Yeah, and there's just enough of those people

1592
01:25:09,400 --> 01:25:14,519
Speaker 3: to support my operation, I would say, but it's but yes,

1593
01:25:14,840 --> 01:25:17,960
Speaker 3: I think I think I've learned quite a lot, and

1594
01:25:18,840 --> 01:25:20,120
Speaker 3: you know, I go back and look at some of

1595
01:25:20,120 --> 01:25:22,040
Speaker 3: the things that I wrote over the years, and I'm

1596
01:25:22,080 --> 01:25:25,360
Speaker 3: a little embarrassed by some of the ways that I

1597
01:25:25,439 --> 01:25:27,080
Speaker 3: characterized people in the past.

1598
01:25:27,240 --> 01:25:32,040
Speaker 4: I think it's hard to even like overstate how important

1599
01:25:32,080 --> 01:25:34,800
Speaker 4: that was, especially to people who are like my It's

1600
01:25:34,800 --> 01:25:36,519
Speaker 4: like one of my favorite shows with thirty Rock, and

1601
01:25:36,560 --> 01:25:40,640
Speaker 4: thirty Rock was doing this dual tiered like economic satire

1602
01:25:40,680 --> 01:25:42,880
Speaker 4: that was brilliant at the time about like Comcast and

1603
01:25:42,960 --> 01:25:45,960
Speaker 4: cable town and consolidation and all of that. But it

1604
01:25:46,000 --> 01:25:48,559
Speaker 4: was still so it's not the most important issue in

1605
01:25:48,560 --> 01:25:50,680
Speaker 4: the world, but for people like me, it was just

1606
01:25:50,760 --> 01:25:54,439
Speaker 4: like come on, man like like these are good people,

1607
01:25:54,479 --> 01:25:57,520
Speaker 4: like they're normal people. And it just was really animating,

1608
01:25:57,720 --> 01:25:59,519
Speaker 4: and I understand why a lot of people voted for

1609
01:25:59,520 --> 01:26:01,439
Speaker 4: Trump as a result of that, or just were able

1610
01:26:01,479 --> 01:26:03,200
Speaker 4: to hold their nose and vote for Trump as.

1611
01:26:03,080 --> 01:26:05,200
Speaker 3: A result of that. Oh.

1612
01:26:05,240 --> 01:26:07,519
Speaker 1: The one thing we didn't talk about yet the you

1613
01:26:07,560 --> 01:26:10,639
Speaker 1: and I were almost sort of colleagues with the Racket,

1614
01:26:10,960 --> 01:26:15,519
Speaker 1: the rating. So I still work for the Intercept, which

1615
01:26:15,600 --> 01:26:19,920
Speaker 1: was set up by the Piero Midyard. And when he

1616
01:26:20,000 --> 01:26:22,400
Speaker 1: set it up, he originally was going to do twelve,

1617
01:26:23,000 --> 01:26:27,760
Speaker 1: as I was told the story, twelve magazines. Then there

1618
01:26:27,840 --> 01:26:29,479
Speaker 1: was going to be the Intercept was was going to

1619
01:26:29,479 --> 01:26:34,800
Speaker 1: be the investigative civil liberties, national security, and they were

1620
01:26:34,800 --> 01:26:37,639
Speaker 1: going to do sports. They were going to do basically

1621
01:26:38,120 --> 01:26:42,400
Speaker 1: a condemnast but for the Internet in the digital media era.

1622
01:26:43,600 --> 01:26:46,840
Speaker 1: And you you were going to run racket which was

1623
01:26:46,880 --> 01:26:49,360
Speaker 1: that named for the what's the Smedley Butler.

1624
01:26:50,800 --> 01:26:53,559
Speaker 3: No, we just liked the it was Alex Preen and

1625
01:26:53,560 --> 01:26:54,400
Speaker 3: I at the time it.

1626
01:26:54,360 --> 01:26:59,240
Speaker 1: Was going to be like business like investigative business, right. Yeah.

1627
01:26:59,520 --> 01:27:01,880
Speaker 1: And the stories I heard of the Intercept in its

1628
01:27:01,920 --> 01:27:04,200
Speaker 1: early days are just utterly hilarious and It's just it's

1629
01:27:04,240 --> 01:27:07,799
Speaker 1: shocking that it ever got launched. Yours didn't get launched,

1630
01:27:08,200 --> 01:27:11,320
Speaker 1: Like how long were you there before? Like set everybody

1631
01:27:11,360 --> 01:27:13,919
Speaker 1: gave up that. Yeah, and it never published a thing, right.

1632
01:27:13,960 --> 01:27:17,639
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, Like careers were destroyed, like you know, people

1633
01:27:18,280 --> 01:27:21,280
Speaker 3: had nervous breakdowns, and we never published a word.

1634
01:27:22,400 --> 01:27:25,080
Speaker 1: First Look Institute or whatever, first Look Media, whatever it's called.

1635
01:27:25,080 --> 01:27:28,920
Speaker 1: It just one of the most ridiculous organizations ever.

1636
01:27:29,240 --> 01:27:31,559
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many things like I remember walking

1637
01:27:31,600 --> 01:27:32,920
Speaker 3: in there and there was you know, there was a

1638
01:27:32,960 --> 01:27:34,760
Speaker 3: person who came into work every day and just sat

1639
01:27:34,800 --> 01:27:37,120
Speaker 3: in an office. It never did anything, and was like

1640
01:27:37,160 --> 01:27:40,400
Speaker 3: paid this enormous salary. And it was like months before

1641
01:27:40,439 --> 01:27:44,320
Speaker 3: I asked what was going on and there were there

1642
01:27:44,320 --> 01:27:46,160
Speaker 3: were so many things like that going on at that

1643
01:27:46,360 --> 01:27:50,920
Speaker 3: organization in twenty fourteen. Yeah, it was twenty fourteen, and

1644
01:27:51,360 --> 01:27:51,879
Speaker 3: you left.

1645
01:27:51,760 --> 01:27:53,519
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone for it, and then you went back to

1646
01:27:53,600 --> 01:27:54,160
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone.

1647
01:27:54,200 --> 01:27:55,880
Speaker 3: I went back to Rolling Stone, like Bay, you know,

1648
01:27:55,920 --> 01:27:59,240
Speaker 3: on my knees, you know, because they had been kind

1649
01:27:59,240 --> 01:27:59,600
Speaker 3: of you.

1650
01:27:59,640 --> 01:28:01,760
Speaker 1: Left as a hero, like I'm launching a brand new

1651
01:28:01,800 --> 01:28:03,839
Speaker 1: publication like the New Frontier.

1652
01:28:03,960 --> 01:28:04,160
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1653
01:28:04,400 --> 01:28:05,360
Speaker 1: Seven months later, you're like.

1654
01:28:05,280 --> 01:28:09,160
Speaker 3: Hey, I defied Yan Winner, right, young. You know, young

1655
01:28:09,200 --> 01:28:12,120
Speaker 3: can be a difficult person. And I thought he was

1656
01:28:12,160 --> 01:28:14,360
Speaker 3: sticking me around at contract time, and I was like,

1657
01:28:14,400 --> 01:28:15,560
Speaker 3: I'll show you.

1658
01:28:15,240 --> 01:28:16,680
Speaker 1: You know, like I'm gonna make it big.

1659
01:28:16,720 --> 01:28:18,080
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm going to go and make it big.

1660
01:28:18,120 --> 01:28:20,439
Speaker 3: And I like I went, I ran off to you know,

1661
01:28:20,479 --> 01:28:24,280
Speaker 3: and somebody even richer than you, and and they were

1662
01:28:24,280 --> 01:28:26,840
Speaker 3: going to invest two hundred and fifty million dollars in media.

1663
01:28:26,920 --> 01:28:28,800
Speaker 3: Then I get there and it's like, we don't have

1664
01:28:28,880 --> 01:28:33,519
Speaker 3: money to buy a pencil right intercept. Literally that happened,

1665
01:28:34,840 --> 01:28:35,599
Speaker 3: And there.

1666
01:28:35,439 --> 01:28:38,320
Speaker 1: Were rumors that Pierre himself was like doing expense reports

1667
01:28:38,520 --> 01:28:39,839
Speaker 1: in the in the very beginning.

1668
01:28:40,640 --> 01:28:42,040
Speaker 3: That's probably true.

1669
01:28:42,320 --> 01:28:45,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the eighth richest person on the planet.

1670
01:28:45,920 --> 01:28:46,240
Speaker 3: It was.

1671
01:28:46,360 --> 01:28:48,640
Speaker 1: It's like you really needed to take a cab. You

1672
01:28:48,720 --> 01:28:50,400
Speaker 1: have to get the subway right, there.

1673
01:28:52,160 --> 01:28:52,920
Speaker 5: Would have been faster.

1674
01:28:53,439 --> 01:28:56,960
Speaker 3: Actually, I can tell a story about that. They had

1675
01:28:57,000 --> 01:29:01,320
Speaker 3: this idea that we we should not use phones right,

1676
01:29:01,920 --> 01:29:05,400
Speaker 3: and that we should only the only time that we

1677
01:29:05,400 --> 01:29:07,479
Speaker 3: should ever be talking on the phone is in one

1678
01:29:07,520 --> 01:29:09,320
Speaker 3: of those boosts that they were you know, they now

1679
01:29:09,360 --> 01:29:13,160
Speaker 3: set up right, and I said, journalists need to have

1680
01:29:13,200 --> 01:29:17,920
Speaker 3: an actual line, right, because we need to record conversations

1681
01:29:17,960 --> 01:29:19,519
Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, but you can do that digitally.

1682
01:29:19,520 --> 01:29:22,640
Speaker 3: I'm like, it doesn't really, Like that doesn't work all

1683
01:29:22,680 --> 01:29:27,679
Speaker 3: the time. You know, why don't we just have phones? Right?

1684
01:29:27,720 --> 01:29:29,519
Speaker 3: And and you know it turned out to be like

1685
01:29:29,560 --> 01:29:32,479
Speaker 3: a cost thing. But they were like hyper focused on

1686
01:29:32,600 --> 01:29:35,000
Speaker 3: stuff that really didn't matter. Like I got in trouble

1687
01:29:35,040 --> 01:29:37,400
Speaker 3: with them early because they wanted to do a sign seating,

1688
01:29:38,840 --> 01:29:41,679
Speaker 3: you know, because they had this theory that there would

1689
01:29:41,720 --> 01:29:45,320
Speaker 3: be increased productivity with an open newsroom with people. And

1690
01:29:45,360 --> 01:29:47,800
Speaker 3: I said, this is a humor magazine. If I went

1691
01:29:47,840 --> 01:29:51,639
Speaker 3: into into the you know, this group and I said

1692
01:29:51,680 --> 01:29:53,600
Speaker 3: you all have to sit in a certain space, I

1693
01:29:53,600 --> 01:29:57,320
Speaker 3: would lose face immediately with these people. And so that

1694
01:29:57,320 --> 01:30:02,200
Speaker 3: thing went down south south quickly. But yeah, it was

1695
01:30:02,400 --> 01:30:04,759
Speaker 3: so that's right. We were almost colleagues.

1696
01:30:04,800 --> 01:30:07,640
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I didn't get there untill twenty seventeen, so

1697
01:30:07,680 --> 01:30:10,240
Speaker 1: I missed those those early days, but I got to

1698
01:30:10,240 --> 01:30:11,000
Speaker 1: hear the stories.

1699
01:30:11,360 --> 01:30:12,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we.

1700
01:30:12,280 --> 01:30:15,760
Speaker 1: Took on some of the people who were at Racket.

1701
01:30:15,479 --> 01:30:17,920
Speaker 3: Right on towards yes, some others.

1702
01:30:20,320 --> 01:30:24,760
Speaker 4: Before we wrap here, we actually haven't even opened one

1703
01:30:24,760 --> 01:30:27,439
Speaker 4: of the most important chapters in your journalism career at Matt,

1704
01:30:27,439 --> 01:30:30,479
Speaker 4: which is the Twitter files, and there's been I mean,

1705
01:30:30,479 --> 01:30:33,880
Speaker 4: you've talked plenty about Elon muss publicly. You've talked about

1706
01:30:33,880 --> 01:30:37,479
Speaker 4: the process and really interesting ways that I think people

1707
01:30:37,560 --> 01:30:38,880
Speaker 4: can go and listen to.

1708
01:30:39,120 --> 01:30:40,320
Speaker 5: I'm curious, with.

1709
01:30:40,360 --> 01:30:46,160
Speaker 4: All of this context in mind, Russian oligarchy, financial crisis, censorship,

1710
01:30:46,160 --> 01:30:50,040
Speaker 4: apparatuses from the Pentagon to Cia, and all of that,

1711
01:30:50,720 --> 01:30:53,599
Speaker 4: where do you think Elon Musk fits into He's such

1712
01:30:53,600 --> 01:30:55,639
Speaker 4: an interesting person, like whatever you think of him, genuinely

1713
01:30:55,640 --> 01:31:00,479
Speaker 4: an interesting person, but obviously as a defense contractor is

1714
01:31:00,560 --> 01:31:03,519
Speaker 4: now the owner of a media company. Ryan's reported on

1715
01:31:03,760 --> 01:31:06,320
Speaker 4: how that's gone in different ways with censorship and countries

1716
01:31:06,360 --> 01:31:09,840
Speaker 4: that Americans don't pay much attention to. Quite frankly, as

1717
01:31:09,840 --> 01:31:13,479
Speaker 4: someone who's actually like interacted with him and feuded with

1718
01:31:13,560 --> 01:31:16,439
Speaker 4: him and has had this relationship with him, where do you.

1719
01:31:16,400 --> 01:31:17,240
Speaker 5: Fit him into this?

1720
01:31:18,320 --> 01:31:22,320
Speaker 3: That's a great question because, as you both know, like

1721
01:31:22,760 --> 01:31:25,639
Speaker 3: when you do any story, you want to understand your

1722
01:31:25,720 --> 01:31:28,200
Speaker 3: sources and what they're where they're coming from, and what

1723
01:31:28,280 --> 01:31:31,519
Speaker 3: they want out of the situation. I even asked, and

1724
01:31:32,120 --> 01:31:35,040
Speaker 3: you know, straight out, I said, what is it you're

1725
01:31:35,080 --> 01:31:38,080
Speaker 3: looking for out of this? You know? I mean and

1726
01:31:38,160 --> 01:31:41,360
Speaker 3: he he sort of said something about trying to restore

1727
01:31:41,600 --> 01:31:46,559
Speaker 3: trust with Twitter's audiences by opening the vault on different

1728
01:31:46,560 --> 01:31:51,080
Speaker 3: censorship practices. But this was it was such a big

1729
01:31:51,320 --> 01:31:54,240
Speaker 3: step for I mean, no CEO has ever done anything

1730
01:31:54,280 --> 01:31:56,479
Speaker 3: like that before, right, So I can't say that I

1731
01:31:56,520 --> 01:32:00,200
Speaker 3: ever understood where he was coming from or why he

1732
01:32:00,320 --> 01:32:04,760
Speaker 3: was doing anything. And then shortly after we started, you know,

1733
01:32:04,840 --> 01:32:07,040
Speaker 3: there was that incident where he banned a bunch of

1734
01:32:07,040 --> 01:32:14,400
Speaker 3: people for the jet thing, right, And we had conversations

1735
01:32:14,400 --> 01:32:16,759
Speaker 3: back and forth about it, and I made the decision

1736
01:32:17,280 --> 01:32:20,000
Speaker 3: right away, which I've been criticized for, but I thought,

1737
01:32:21,080 --> 01:32:23,559
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't matter, right, I'm not writing about

1738
01:32:23,560 --> 01:32:27,559
Speaker 3: that stuff, Like he's giving us access to all of

1739
01:32:27,560 --> 01:32:31,320
Speaker 3: this material. The story is the material. I'll worry about

1740
01:32:31,360 --> 01:32:33,360
Speaker 3: Elon and all of his problems later.

1741
01:32:33,280 --> 01:32:34,000
Speaker 5: The private jet.

1742
01:32:34,520 --> 01:32:36,880
Speaker 4: You have access to this trope of information about the

1743
01:32:36,920 --> 01:32:39,240
Speaker 4: Intel apparatus, and you're going to throw it away for

1744
01:32:39,240 --> 01:32:40,440
Speaker 4: a private jet story.

1745
01:32:40,280 --> 01:32:43,080
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah? Like I felt like the I mean I

1746
01:32:43,160 --> 01:32:48,360
Speaker 3: understood that there were people who who wanted the project

1747
01:32:48,360 --> 01:32:51,320
Speaker 3: to end. There was all kinds of strange stuff going

1748
01:32:51,360 --> 01:32:56,400
Speaker 3: on inside that whole scene at Twitter early on, where

1749
01:32:56,720 --> 01:32:58,519
Speaker 3: you know, from day to day, minute to minute, we

1750
01:32:58,520 --> 01:33:02,200
Speaker 3: didn't know whether it was going to in you. And

1751
01:33:02,960 --> 01:33:04,320
Speaker 3: so I was the person. I was one of the

1752
01:33:04,320 --> 01:33:06,599
Speaker 3: people who was sort of lobbying for no matter what

1753
01:33:06,600 --> 01:33:10,800
Speaker 3: we do, let's just keep getting stuff in until we

1754
01:33:10,840 --> 01:33:15,720
Speaker 3: have a story. And and so yeah, I can't say

1755
01:33:15,760 --> 01:33:18,680
Speaker 3: that honestly that I understand what Elon's motivation was. But

1756
01:33:19,439 --> 01:33:22,880
Speaker 3: I have to give him credit because the stuff that

1757
01:33:23,080 --> 01:33:28,120
Speaker 3: we did get was historic and interesting and will probably

1758
01:33:28,600 --> 01:33:31,679
Speaker 3: continue to be interesting in different ways even years from now,

1759
01:33:31,760 --> 01:33:33,839
Speaker 3: like you know, as we keep going.

1760
01:33:33,680 --> 01:33:36,760
Speaker 1: Through it, and you don't talk to him anymore, right,

1761
01:33:36,800 --> 01:33:38,920
Speaker 1: like that that bridge is burned.

1762
01:33:39,080 --> 01:33:42,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, unfortunately, you know, I still think he doesn't. He

1763
01:33:42,960 --> 01:33:44,360
Speaker 3: misunderstood the whole situation.

1764
01:33:44,439 --> 01:33:48,840
Speaker 4: I think that was over the substack Twitter thing, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1765
01:33:48,520 --> 01:33:52,479
Speaker 1: It is. He still crushing substack, which.

1766
01:33:52,320 --> 01:33:55,200
Speaker 4: Anyway proves your point about source management, which is an

1767
01:33:55,200 --> 01:33:57,640
Speaker 4: important part of doing good journalism is knowing when to

1768
01:33:57,720 --> 01:34:00,400
Speaker 4: push and when to pull. And that proved your point

1769
01:34:00,400 --> 01:34:02,400
Speaker 4: that when there's a level of sensitivity with a source

1770
01:34:02,400 --> 01:34:04,519
Speaker 4: and you're going to lose access to information that's in

1771
01:34:04,560 --> 01:34:08,320
Speaker 4: the public's interest, you have to be smart.

1772
01:34:08,720 --> 01:34:09,000
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1773
01:34:09,040 --> 01:34:14,439
Speaker 3: Well, there's a line, right, like you can't. You can't

1774
01:34:14,520 --> 01:34:18,200
Speaker 3: you know, soft pedal your coverage of somebody in order

1775
01:34:18,240 --> 01:34:22,639
Speaker 3: to get something right. Right. That's like access journalism, and

1776
01:34:22,800 --> 01:34:26,840
Speaker 3: there's a word for that, right the Twitter files. You know,

1777
01:34:26,920 --> 01:34:30,920
Speaker 3: look ethically, it was a unique situation. I would say,

1778
01:34:31,240 --> 01:34:34,240
Speaker 3: like I consulted with all kinds of people, like some

1779
01:34:34,240 --> 01:34:36,720
Speaker 3: some of the old dragons in this business. You know,

1780
01:34:37,680 --> 01:34:42,600
Speaker 3: how do you deal with something like this? And I

1781
01:34:42,840 --> 01:34:45,600
Speaker 3: don't think we crossed that line. I still think that

1782
01:34:45,680 --> 01:34:48,680
Speaker 3: the idea was that there was stuff in these documents

1783
01:34:48,680 --> 01:34:53,120
Speaker 3: that even Twitter and Elon didn't understand, that we were

1784
01:34:53,160 --> 01:34:55,639
Speaker 3: still getting up until the very end, and that that

1785
01:34:55,720 --> 01:34:58,320
Speaker 3: was more important than anything else that was happening. So

1786
01:34:59,360 --> 01:35:01,840
Speaker 3: is there more in there you think or like I

1787
01:35:01,880 --> 01:35:05,519
Speaker 3: think so, I mean, not not a ton, but we

1788
01:35:05,560 --> 01:35:08,240
Speaker 3: do keep finding things, and as you.

1789
01:35:08,160 --> 01:35:10,000
Speaker 1: Still have access to the ones that you got.

1790
01:35:10,360 --> 01:35:13,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not supposed to do, but yeah, but uh

1791
01:35:14,880 --> 01:35:18,960
Speaker 3: but yes, and you know there are agencies. You know,

1792
01:35:19,479 --> 01:35:21,760
Speaker 3: when we started, one of the things the problems was

1793
01:35:21,840 --> 01:35:24,599
Speaker 3: we didn't even just know that the names of these

1794
01:35:24,640 --> 01:35:29,720
Speaker 3: different agencies what they did, like which an yeah, exactly

1795
01:35:29,800 --> 01:35:34,280
Speaker 3: like sis Sissa, you know that, Well that's a long story.

1796
01:35:34,280 --> 01:35:38,920
Speaker 3: But there there's a lot of stuff like that on Twitter,

1797
01:35:39,040 --> 01:35:43,800
Speaker 3: especially in attachments that we haven't opened and looked at that. Uh,

1798
01:35:44,520 --> 01:35:46,880
Speaker 3: you know, as we continue to do that, every now

1799
01:35:46,880 --> 01:35:49,799
Speaker 3: and then we'll find something like Schellenberger still looking pretty

1800
01:35:49,880 --> 01:35:51,080
Speaker 3: closely at all that stuff.

1801
01:35:51,120 --> 01:35:55,000
Speaker 4: So wow, I mean, it's I don't envy you for

1802
01:35:55,080 --> 01:35:56,559
Speaker 4: having to parse through all of that. But in the

1803
01:35:56,560 --> 01:35:57,799
Speaker 4: other way's the story of a lifetime.

1804
01:35:57,960 --> 01:36:00,200
Speaker 3: No, it's awesome, Are you kidding? I mean, it's it's

1805
01:36:00,479 --> 01:36:02,439
Speaker 3: a dream. I mean, as soon as we saw like

1806
01:36:03,400 --> 01:36:06,760
Speaker 3: FBI flag this DHS flagged that, I knew Jim Baker, right, Yeah,

1807
01:36:06,960 --> 01:36:11,080
Speaker 3: you know, I mean this maybe once in a career

1808
01:36:11,160 --> 01:36:15,439
Speaker 3: you'll get something like that, and you know, it turned

1809
01:36:15,439 --> 01:36:18,479
Speaker 3: out to be, you know, a really big story about

1810
01:36:18,479 --> 01:36:23,640
Speaker 3: this subterranean relationship with the intelligence agencies. And it was

1811
01:36:23,720 --> 01:36:26,320
Speaker 3: very hard to work out and that's always fun as

1812
01:36:26,360 --> 01:36:31,000
Speaker 3: a journalist, the challenge of it. So but you know,

1813
01:36:31,120 --> 01:36:35,479
Speaker 3: I have some resentments too, because I do think that

1814
01:36:35,600 --> 01:36:38,160
Speaker 3: some of the other some reporters who dismissed it early

1815
01:36:38,200 --> 01:36:41,840
Speaker 3: on because they can't stand elon uh, you know, kind

1816
01:36:41,840 --> 01:36:43,960
Speaker 3: of missed the forest with the trees there that it

1817
01:36:44,000 --> 01:36:46,519
Speaker 3: wasn't really a partisan story and they should have been

1818
01:36:46,520 --> 01:36:49,840
Speaker 3: looking at it. But you know, I think it's a

1819
01:36:49,840 --> 01:36:50,679
Speaker 3: net plus overall.

1820
01:36:50,880 --> 01:36:52,679
Speaker 1: So something else.

1821
01:36:53,040 --> 01:36:54,840
Speaker 5: I mean, I could keep going, I could double the

1822
01:36:54,840 --> 01:36:55,320
Speaker 5: time of this.

1823
01:36:55,439 --> 01:36:58,599
Speaker 4: It's been so interesting, and you two are people I've

1824
01:36:58,680 --> 01:37:00,840
Speaker 4: learned a lot from just watching it, amazing reporting.

1825
01:37:01,920 --> 01:37:03,680
Speaker 3: Actually, I do have a question for you both. I mean,

1826
01:37:03,720 --> 01:37:07,439
Speaker 3: like this concept of you know, Crystal and Saga obviously

1827
01:37:07,520 --> 01:37:11,080
Speaker 3: did it too. Part of the whole idea is to

1828
01:37:11,120 --> 01:37:14,519
Speaker 3: go against the whole thesis of like the hate ink

1829
01:37:14,560 --> 01:37:18,880
Speaker 3: thing and see how it works when audiences aren't just

1830
01:37:19,360 --> 01:37:22,040
Speaker 3: being cheering sections. But I mean, how does it How

1831
01:37:22,160 --> 01:37:23,600
Speaker 3: is it working for you? I mean does it be?

1832
01:37:24,880 --> 01:37:29,519
Speaker 1: I think it's working shockingly well, right, Yeah, quite pleasantly

1833
01:37:29,560 --> 01:37:33,240
Speaker 1: surprised at how well it's working. What one thing that

1834
01:37:33,360 --> 01:37:37,759
Speaker 1: was very heartening actually, because the one thing I'd wondered

1835
01:37:37,800 --> 01:37:40,519
Speaker 1: about was, you know, there's this whole you can't on

1836
01:37:40,560 --> 01:37:44,000
Speaker 1: the left, there's a whole you can't platform odious views, right,

1837
01:37:44,720 --> 01:37:49,680
Speaker 1: and here's the platform for Emily and like fully.

1838
01:37:49,439 --> 01:37:53,360
Speaker 5: Anti abortion for example, And so it's not easy for you.

1839
01:37:53,560 --> 01:37:58,640
Speaker 1: So I went to the gw encampment, the God like

1840
01:37:58,680 --> 01:38:02,040
Speaker 1: the Gods Encampment a couple weeks ago whenever that was

1841
01:38:02,080 --> 01:38:06,519
Speaker 1: happening back in May, and it felt like everybody there

1842
01:38:06,560 --> 01:38:09,760
Speaker 1: watched the show, like every single person there, So at

1843
01:38:09,840 --> 01:38:12,760
Speaker 1: least if you're in your teens and twenties at this point,

1844
01:38:12,960 --> 01:38:16,200
Speaker 1: like it's fine, Like people are okay to hear different

1845
01:38:16,280 --> 01:38:19,719
Speaker 1: views because also we you know, you're gonna hear stuff

1846
01:38:19,760 --> 01:38:23,599
Speaker 1: about the Israel Palestine on our show that you probably

1847
01:38:23,640 --> 01:38:28,679
Speaker 1: won't find elsewhere. But they're also those people are okay

1848
01:38:28,760 --> 01:38:31,920
Speaker 1: hearing right wing views that they don't agree with, right

1849
01:38:32,040 --> 01:38:35,479
Speaker 1: they want, Like it was, I was, it was interesting

1850
01:38:35,600 --> 01:38:39,759
Speaker 1: how concentrated the audience was there. It's like, wow, everybody

1851
01:38:39,800 --> 01:38:42,519
Speaker 1: here watches this show. It's amazing. That's great. Really, that's great.

1852
01:38:42,560 --> 01:38:47,800
Speaker 1: That's heartening. Yeah. So yeah, I think, I mean, people

1853
01:38:47,800 --> 01:38:49,760
Speaker 1: can answer in the comments section if they if they

1854
01:38:49,800 --> 01:38:51,439
Speaker 1: agree with whether it's working or not. But if they're

1855
01:38:51,439 --> 01:38:54,519
Speaker 1: in the comment section, that means they're that's their heads.

1856
01:38:54,640 --> 01:38:57,599
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, not necessarily.

1857
01:38:57,120 --> 01:38:59,479
Speaker 1: But well not necessarily fans, that's true.

1858
01:39:00,160 --> 01:39:01,400
Speaker 5: The Dobbs decision gave out.

1859
01:39:01,400 --> 01:39:04,400
Speaker 4: You and I were on the show together, and I

1860
01:39:04,479 --> 01:39:07,160
Speaker 4: just feel like as someone who grew up when media

1861
01:39:07,240 --> 01:39:10,000
Speaker 4: was falling apart, like you just want the transparency, and

1862
01:39:10,040 --> 01:39:13,920
Speaker 4: it's almost efficient to get both perspectives in one sitting.

1863
01:39:14,000 --> 01:39:15,560
Speaker 4: You know, you can hear the best argument from the

1864
01:39:15,640 --> 01:39:17,840
Speaker 4: left and hopefully the best argument from the right from

1865
01:39:17,840 --> 01:39:20,600
Speaker 4: people that you trust are acting in good faith, and

1866
01:39:20,640 --> 01:39:21,479
Speaker 4: it's kind of efficient.

1867
01:39:21,479 --> 01:39:21,960
Speaker 5: You don't have to.

1868
01:39:22,160 --> 01:39:24,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've met these number of people who say that

1869
01:39:24,560 --> 01:39:28,560
Speaker 1: they watch both CNN and Fox or Fox and MSNBC

1870
01:39:28,680 --> 01:39:31,080
Speaker 1: because they don't trust either of them, right, but they

1871
01:39:31,080 --> 01:39:34,200
Speaker 1: want to hear both and then sort it through themselves.

1872
01:39:34,200 --> 01:39:36,360
Speaker 1: And right, just that we just cut out the middle man.

1873
01:39:36,400 --> 01:39:39,719
Speaker 3: You can just yea one stuff shopping.

1874
01:39:39,840 --> 01:39:40,280
Speaker 1: There you go.

1875
01:39:40,640 --> 01:39:44,680
Speaker 3: Awesome, excellent, Emily, Ryan, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

1876
01:39:45,080 --> 01:39:46,759
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming down, thanks.

1877
01:39:46,560 --> 01:39:48,960
Speaker 5: For watching everyone. This says it for us.

1878
01:39:49,000 --> 01:39:52,720
Speaker 4: On today's edition of Counterpoints, I finally found the camera, Ryan,

1879
01:39:52,800 --> 01:39:55,320
Speaker 4: I was like, which camera is it? But it's right here.

1880
01:39:56,000 --> 01:39:58,240
Speaker 4: Make sure you subscribe Breakingpoints dot com so you get

1881
01:39:58,240 --> 01:40:01,880
Speaker 4: this show early and and all tear inbox right away

1882
01:40:01,880 --> 01:40:02,599
Speaker 4: on Thursday nights.

1883
01:40:02,840 --> 01:40:04,960
Speaker 1: There you go, and so we'll see you next week.

1884
01:40:05,120 --> 01:40:06,080
Speaker 3: Sounds good to see you then,