Speaker 1: The first time around, and actually during his campaign, this
Speaker 1: moniker of fake news was so corrosive.
Speaker 2: I really think that was one of the biggest catalysts
Speaker 2: to kind of where we are today, because when you
Speaker 2: can't trust the news, when you can't trust what you're
Speaker 2: reading or what you're watching anymore, or even if you
Speaker 2: do trust it, but there is just a little birdy
Speaker 2: in the back of your head that says, maybe this
Speaker 2: isn't fully right or fully accurate, because Donald Trump says
Speaker 2: it's not.
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question.
Speaker 1: Hi everyone. Well, if you're not already, you may soon
Speaker 1: become one of the nearly six million followers of Aaron Parness,
Speaker 1: a viral news aggregator his words in the substack slash
Speaker 1: TikTok universe. And by the way, I've recently joined the
Speaker 1: substack universe myself, so you might want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Aaron's school is to take on legacy media. But the
Speaker 1: question is how and why? So here to tell me
Speaker 1: all about that is Aaron Parnis himself.
Speaker 3: Hi erin, Hi, how are you good? How are you
Speaker 3: so nice to meet you?
Speaker 2: Like Wise, likewise super excited for this.
Speaker 1: I feel like I know you already, Erin, just because
Speaker 1: I watch you all the time, and I'm like, oh, hi, Eron,
Speaker 1: do you feel like that with people online too?
Speaker 2: I do. It's very weird. It's like you wrote these
Speaker 2: parasocial relationships and then you meet them in person or
Speaker 2: over zoom, and it's like it's like you've known them
Speaker 2: for years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really fun. Well, I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this, Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for having me absolutely well. I wanted to start by
Speaker 1: asking you a little bit about yourself. Erin for tim like,
Speaker 1: we're having coffee, we've never met before. Tell me your
Speaker 1: story because you're a brainiac, and you have been since
Speaker 1: you were very young, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've had a very unique kind of upbringing.
Speaker 2: My story really starts actually back when I was twelve
Speaker 2: years old. At the time, I wanted to be a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what being a lawyer really meant.
Speaker 2: So my dad actually sat me down in front of
Speaker 2: the TV and told me to watch at the time,
Speaker 2: the case Cy Anthony Trial, which was blowing up all
Speaker 2: over Florida and.
Speaker 3: Really lovely content for a twelve year old.
Speaker 2: By the way, you would think, right. I mean, I
Speaker 2: grew up in a Ukrainian household, so parenting, that's parenting.
Speaker 2: But so anyway, so she sat me down and he
Speaker 2: was like, just watch opening statements and you may like this.
Speaker 2: I ended up sitting myself for thirty one days watching
Speaker 2: start to finish the entire trial and kind of fell
Speaker 2: in love with the way the attorneys moved around the
Speaker 2: courtroom and advocated for either her side. And that moment
Speaker 2: there made me want to go to law school and
Speaker 2: made me want to go in an expedited fashion.
Speaker 1: So yes, I'll say expedited. You went to college at fourteen? Right,
Speaker 1: This is, by the way, growing up in Boca Raton, Florida.
Speaker 3: Did you have siblings?
Speaker 2: By the way, I have six siblings. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I know it. Yes, I am the oldest. I have
Speaker 2: younger siblings who I love very close to. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I grew up in Bokertone. Started college when I was
Speaker 2: fourteen in this like dual enrollment hybrid program.
Speaker 3: Where was that? By the way, it's.
Speaker 2: Called Florida Atlantic University.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've heard of that because I used to
Speaker 3: live in Miami.
Speaker 2: Oh amazing. Yeah, So it's about one hundred kids do
Speaker 2: it a year. We instead of taking high school classes,
Speaker 2: you take college classes with college students, and it kind
Speaker 2: of counts for both high school and college credit. And
Speaker 2: so I kind of overloaded. Graduated with my BA when
Speaker 2: I was eighteen, actually a week before technically graduating high school.
Speaker 2: And I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer
Speaker 2: and wanted to go to law school, and so I
Speaker 2: went straight to George Washington University in Washington, DC, graduated
Speaker 2: three years later, and then quit practicing law a few
Speaker 2: years after that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that pivot for you professionally. Why
Speaker 1: did you decide after watching the Casey Anthony Trail for
Speaker 1: thirty one days and graduating from GW Law School at
Speaker 1: the tender age of twenty one, what changed your mind?
Speaker 1: Why did you decide suddenly I don't really want to
Speaker 1: be a lawyer.
Speaker 2: Well, so I realized that being a lawyer wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: being in a court room every day. I think everyone
Speaker 2: on TV really makes it like this glamorous lifestyle where
Speaker 2: you're fighting for these big issues and you're in front
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court or you're in front of a
Speaker 2: jury every day. And yeah, I had my fair share
Speaker 2: of time in court, but it wasn't an everyday kind
Speaker 2: of experience. I mean, my dream, truly was to be
Speaker 2: a public defender for the rest of my life and
Speaker 2: just do that. But public defenders, unfortunately in our country,
Speaker 2: just don't make a livable wage in many areas, and
Speaker 2: I believe at the time in Miami, public defenders were
Speaker 2: making about thirty six thousand dollars a year to start,
Speaker 2: and in Miami you can't live off of that. You
Speaker 2: just truly can't. So I had to go and I
Speaker 2: had massive student debt, so I had to go into
Speaker 2: private practice, and it just wasn't the lifestyle that I
Speaker 2: wanted to live. And so it wasn't necessarily that I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be a lawyer. It's just that I
Speaker 2: found a different avenue to advocate for the issues and
Speaker 2: the people that I believe in.
Speaker 1: You really had this, I guess, dramatic or significant life change.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to twenty sixteen. You're volunteering for the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign. Back then, how old were you then? My
Speaker 1: maths is not good, Aaron.
Speaker 2: So at sixteen seventeen years old?
Speaker 3: So what appealed to you about Donald Trump at the time?
Speaker 2: So I think it was just different. And I tell
Speaker 2: everyone my first experience, my first foray into politics was
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. Just like many people my age, I don't
Speaker 2: remember the Obama years, I don't remember the Bush years.
Speaker 2: I remember the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen election cycle. And
Speaker 2: during that election cycle, I really knew nothing different other
Speaker 2: than Donald Trump. My dad had known him in the past,
Speaker 2: being in the same circles in Miami, and I think
Speaker 2: I believe he actually worked for Donald Trump's dad in
Speaker 2: New York as one of his first jobs. And so
Speaker 2: I just what appealed to me was that he was
Speaker 2: just a different kind of beast in this political realm,
Speaker 2: and he just kind of told it like it was
Speaker 2: and he was just interesting. And so I personally, I
Speaker 2: volunteered very kind of haphazardly, like I was still in
Speaker 2: school and like really wasn't doing much for the campaign,
Speaker 2: if anything at all, maybe knocked a door to but
Speaker 2: ultimately didn't really realize what it was like or what
Speaker 2: it meant to be a quote unquote Trump supporter or
Speaker 2: even a Republican until love. Yeah, so I always identified
Speaker 2: at the time. I was like, yeah, I'm a Republican,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know what Republicans stood for.
Speaker 1: And as such a smart kid, I'm surprised that you
Speaker 1: sort of blindly followed him because he was different or
Speaker 1: charismatic or unfiltered. That just doesn't sound like the Aaron
Speaker 1: Parness I've come to know in the last five minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you're right. But when you grow up
Speaker 2: in a house and all that's hon is Fox News,
Speaker 2: and that's all you're watching, and that's all you're kind
Speaker 2: of absorbing, And then when you're talking in family discussions,
Speaker 2: all you're absorbing is Donald Trump, and when you're with
Speaker 2: family friends, all you're absorbing is Donald Trump, you don't
Speaker 2: know any better. And I never really had something about
Speaker 2: me that people have come to realize that I'm a
Speaker 2: very stubborn person. So when people kind of pushed back
Speaker 2: on me in college, when my friends were like, hey,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? What are you thinking? Every time
Speaker 2: they did that, I kind of dugged my heels in
Speaker 2: further as just being stubborn myself. So it really was
Speaker 2: a fault of mine for not really kind of doing
Speaker 2: my own research and understanding really what was happening. And
Speaker 2: at the time, I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 2: when you look back at the twenty sixteen campaign and
Speaker 2: you look from start to finish Donald Trump's campaign, I
Speaker 2: don't know that you can really tell me a policy
Speaker 2: proposal or two that he really had. He just kind
Speaker 2: of throughout these big ideas that he's going to make
Speaker 2: America great again and he's going to do all these
Speaker 2: great things for the country, and that resonated, I guess
Speaker 2: with my sixteen year old self. But when I really
Speaker 2: learned about his policy agenda when he became president kind
Speaker 2: of shifted dramatically.
Speaker 1: And well before we talk about that shift, I'm curious
Speaker 1: what was it like being involved in the Trump campaign. Adriana,
Speaker 1: who produced this interview, had an interesting question about sort
Speaker 1: of the bro culture, I guess, the nascent manosphere, if
Speaker 1: you will, that was starting to bubble up I think
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. Can you talk about that and what
Speaker 1: some of your fellow volunteers were like and why they
Speaker 1: were attracted to Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: That was a long time ago. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 2: truth be told, I don't really remember much from that time,
Speaker 2: but b I didn't really I wasn't really ingrained in
Speaker 2: the campaign that much. I think there was one article
Speaker 2: that was written that I was a volunteer on the campaign,
Speaker 2: but that just meant like I knocked a few doors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you weren't really that invested, but you liked him,
Speaker 1: and you liked you preferred him to Hillary Clinton. And
Speaker 1: you say it's really because Fox News was playing twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven in your house and your dad, who
Speaker 1: I'll talk about with you in a moment. But what
Speaker 1: did you have against Hillary Clinton?
Speaker 2: I had nothing against Hillary Clinton. It wasn't an anti Hillary.
Speaker 2: It was more of a pro Trump, right. I had
Speaker 2: nothing against her, And looking back on it, if my
Speaker 2: political personal views definitely aligned with her is a lot
Speaker 2: more so, it was nothing against her at all.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your dad. So your dad had a
Speaker 1: huge influence on you, and God, talk about a fascinating backstory.
Speaker 1: Tell me about him and what happened to him and
Speaker 1: how it contributed to your political ideological transformation. That sounded
Speaker 1: very aeradite, didn't it?
Speaker 2: I little, but it makes sense. I mean, so, my
Speaker 2: dad wasn't really ever involved in politics growing up. I
Speaker 2: remember the first time we ever went to a political
Speaker 2: event was the twenty twelve election night party, and my
Speaker 2: dad and my family were red for a Republican for
Speaker 2: Mitt Romney, and you had to wear the wear the
Speaker 2: colors of either red or blue. I ended up choosing
Speaker 2: to wear orange because I didn't want to identify with
Speaker 2: either side. But other than that, we didn't really do
Speaker 2: politics at all, and it wasn't until Trump announced in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. About a month or so later, he had
Speaker 2: a rally in Durell, Florida, and my dad took me
Speaker 2: there and was able to I don't know how, but
Speaker 2: we got some kind of pass and we met Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and kind of one of those step and repeat
Speaker 2: photo lines, and about one hundred of us met him,
Speaker 2: and then we went to the rally, and then I
Speaker 2: thought that was the end of it, But then Fox
Speaker 2: News continued to play in the house. Then my dad
Speaker 2: continued to kind of get closer and closer to the
Speaker 2: Trump orbit. He became buddy buddy with Rudy Giuliani. He
Speaker 2: ended up, I believe, co hosting or helping host some
Speaker 2: type of fundraiser for Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood
Speaker 2: tape came out in South Florida, and just became very
Speaker 2: very close to the craziness within MAGA. But I don't
Speaker 2: even to this day know the true extent of it all.
Speaker 1: And wasn't he involved in trying to dig up dirt
Speaker 1: about Hunter Biden and Ukraine.
Speaker 2: He was, but that was post Trump's victory, that really
Speaker 2: whole effort from what I understand, Like I said, I
Speaker 2: don't know everything, but from what I understand, that didn't
Speaker 2: really start happening until twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, when he
Speaker 2: and Rudy became closer. But during the twenty sixteen campaign,
Speaker 2: I don't think they were discussing that up.
Speaker 1: But after they became close. During Trump's first term, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of illegal shenanigans going on right.
Speaker 2: Erin from what I can see, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of shenanigans.
Speaker 3: Going on that I mean, he eventually went to prison
Speaker 3: your father, right.
Speaker 2: He did, But he went to prison. It was unrelated
Speaker 2: to anything related to the Rudy Hunter Biden stuff.
Speaker 3: What did he go to prison for?
Speaker 2: So he went to prison for defrauding a number of
Speaker 2: investors in a personal company that he was running, and
Speaker 2: then also for he was convicted of funneling about a
Speaker 2: half a million dollars from this Russian man into a
Speaker 2: US superPAC But that was during the twenty sixteen campaign.
Speaker 2: I believe I don't really know that the true detail
Speaker 2: clip them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is fascinating to me, Aaron, You're so smart,
Speaker 1: You've got a law degree. Your dad gets in trouble,
Speaker 1: he goes to prison, and yet you're kind of fuzzy
Speaker 1: on the details.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I between you and me, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think anyone who goes through something like that, I mean,
Speaker 2: I say, October ten, twenty nineteen, the day he was arrested,
Speaker 2: was one of the worst days in my life because
Speaker 2: it truly was. It's a time period where I have
Speaker 2: worked my hardest to kind of black out in a
Speaker 2: way as a coping mechanism. It fractured my family, It
Speaker 2: changed my life completely, and really we felt the weight
Speaker 2: of the federal government on our shoulders for several months
Speaker 2: over a year, and it was a very difficult time. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is very clumsy, and it's intentionally fuzzy because I
Speaker 2: don't want to take myself back there if I don't
Speaker 2: have to.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, and I think, on a lot of levels,
Speaker 1: very understandable. So what is your relationship like with your
Speaker 1: dad today?
Speaker 2: We have a good relationship, I mean, like a father
Speaker 2: and a son. I mean, it's definitely not as close
Speaker 2: as it used to be. I think we have went
Speaker 2: through our own trials and tribulations and it's been tough.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, he's my dad
Speaker 2: and I love him for being my dad, and that's
Speaker 2: what I want him to be, just a regular playing dad.
Speaker 1: And I'm putting a button on this because it sounds
Speaker 1: like this is not easy to talk about and dredges
Speaker 1: up a lot of painful memories for you. But how
Speaker 1: does he feel about Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: the whole MAGA movement given what he's been through? Obviously,
Speaker 1: you said his prison time was not related to that,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there was a lot of negative fallout
Speaker 1: from his political dealings. So where is he right now
Speaker 1: in his head about all of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think he really felt like they
Speaker 2: turned their backs on him, right that he did all
Speaker 2: this stuff for them, He helped them with the Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden stuff. He went out of his way and put
Speaker 2: his neck out on the line for them, and then
Speaker 2: the moment that he got in trouble, they kind of
Speaker 2: turned their back on him, and I think he really
Speaker 2: took it personally He's someone who's very kind of emotionally emotional,
Speaker 2: and so the moment they kind of turned against him
Speaker 2: was I remember about twelve days after he was arrested,
Speaker 2: he kind of called and he was like, I'm done,
Speaker 2: Like I'm not going back, Like I'm not letting them
Speaker 2: drag me back into that world.
Speaker 3: Hi.
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Speaker 1: So you witnessed all this, how did it feed into
Speaker 1: your change of heart about Donald Trump being kind of
Speaker 1: cool and different and speaking his mind to Donald Trump
Speaker 1: might not be so good for the country. And how
Speaker 1: much was it influenced by what your dad experienced, or
Speaker 1: simply by you becoming a more informed citizen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's interesting. A lot of people think that
Speaker 2: my dad got arrested and I switched parties a day after.
Speaker 2: That's not how it happened. I actually was in law
Speaker 2: school at the time, in my third year, but over
Speaker 2: the first two years prior, I really started to shift personally.
Speaker 2: I saw thing I really kind of experienced a political
Speaker 2: awakening by going through day to day life, Like for example,
Speaker 2: I had a friend who was doing a Mericorp in
Speaker 2: Miami when I was a summer associate there, and I
Speaker 2: went to her school and just saw the disparities between
Speaker 2: what the children in her school had and what I
Speaker 2: had growing up. And in that moment, I was like, well,
Speaker 2: one party wants to make sure these kids have equal
Speaker 2: access to education. The other party doesn't. Right. So I
Speaker 2: had lived experiences like those, completely unrelated to my dad
Speaker 2: that really began to move me away from Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: and truth be told, being in those circles made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: I just never really fit in to the quote unquote
Speaker 2: maga circles. I never talked like them, I never acted
Speaker 2: like them. I just I didn't enjoy being in those rooms.
Speaker 2: And so while I stood by my dad while he
Speaker 2: was in those circles and just kind of kept quiet
Speaker 2: because I wanted to be a lawyer, right and I
Speaker 2: didn't really want to be in this political circle. I'd
Speaker 2: be in that shift a long time before he was arrested.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about being in those circles.
Speaker 1: What was it that made you uncomfortable?
Speaker 2: Aeron seem like a lot of people in those circles.
Speaker 2: Number One, what really got me uncomfortable was the language
Speaker 2: they used. I just I don't want to say I'm
Speaker 2: like more proper, but like I don't curse in my
Speaker 2: day to day life, like I don't demonize women, and
Speaker 2: a lot of like the older men would do that,
Speaker 2: and it was very uncomfortable, just very like I didn't
Speaker 2: like it felt like kind of gross. Sometimes walking out
Speaker 2: of those rooms, everything was very heavy on, like drinking
Speaker 2: or smoking cigars. It was very like bro I felt
Speaker 2: like I was in a frat house with people over
Speaker 2: the age of fifty, and that to me, just like
Speaker 2: never vibed. I just I didn't like it at all.
Speaker 1: So you witnessed sexism, did you hear much racism in
Speaker 1: those circles. I'm just curious.
Speaker 2: I mean, I never heard like blatant racism, but there
Speaker 2: are plenty of microaggressions. I mean, you can tell the
Speaker 2: underlying thoughts and beliefs of a number of these people
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, you have a fascinating backstory. Thank you for spending
Speaker 1: some time sharing it with me. So you decided to
Speaker 1: not be a lawyer, and that you couldn't really earn
Speaker 1: a living in some of these jobs. So what flipped
Speaker 1: the switch for you to say, I want to help
Speaker 1: people understand the world. I want to be a communicator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it was actually February of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: I was about a year and a half out of
Speaker 2: law school at the time, and when in Russia and
Speaker 2: nade the Ukraine, and at the time I had family
Speaker 2: in Ukraine and Kiev on the ground. I had an uncle,
Speaker 2: a cousin, and an aunt, and I would hear from
Speaker 2: them what they would be seeing outside of their front window.
Speaker 2: Right they'd see tanks rolling down the streets, planes overhead.
Speaker 2: And then I'd watch mainstream media or cable news here
Speaker 2: in the United States, and I really saw a disparity
Speaker 2: in the coverage and mainly in just how fast cable
Speaker 2: news got the news to us here in the United States.
Speaker 2: I would hear things from my uncle and then an
Speaker 2: hour and a half later, I'd hear it on CNN,
Speaker 2: and I was like, well, I think there's a vacuum
Speaker 2: here that could be filled. I think that what cable
Speaker 2: news is doing isn't necessarily as good of a job
Speaker 2: as it should be. And so I just pulled out
Speaker 2: my phone and just started sharing on TikTok what my
Speaker 2: uncle and my family was sharing with me on the ground.
Speaker 2: And within about a week I had a million followers
Speaker 2: who were now interested in what was happening in Ukraine
Speaker 2: and didn't many of them didn't even know where Ukraine
Speaker 2: was on a map, but they were interested in what
Speaker 2: was happening on the ground. And I think in that
Speaker 2: moment I realized, Hey, there's something here. I can do
Speaker 2: this not just about Ukraine, but I can really start
Speaker 2: kind of educating folks about other topics as well. And
Speaker 2: that didn't really happen until later on, but I spent
Speaker 2: about six months every day posting ten to fifteen times
Speaker 2: about Ukraine and what was happening when Russia was invading.
Speaker 1: Did you ever feel any trepidation earon that as much
Speaker 1: as your uncle was experiencing something firsthand. You know, as
Speaker 1: an old school journalist, of course, there are things like
Speaker 1: you know, vetting, double sourcing, making sh sure what you're
Speaker 1: sharing with consumers is accurate. Did you ever feel like, Gosh,
Speaker 1: I may need to understand the situation more than simply
Speaker 1: my uncle's eyewitness account.
Speaker 2: For sure. And I think, especially at the beginning, there
Speaker 2: were times where I would actually hear something from on
Speaker 2: the ground, like, for example, I remember hearing that President
Speaker 2: Zelenski there was a story where President Zelensky was either
Speaker 2: asked to leave Kiev out of fears for his safety
Speaker 2: or something like that. It was like a bombshell story,
Speaker 2: and I heard it because Ukrainian media were kind of
Speaker 2: talking about it from family. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I can't necessarily report this. This kind of seems like
Speaker 2: a crazy story to talk about without any corroboration. An
Speaker 2: hour later, CNN reported and then I reported it. But
Speaker 2: I think over time I grew more comfortable in kind
Speaker 2: of doing my own kind of due diligence and doing
Speaker 2: my own research and doing my own bedding, and it
Speaker 2: got to the point where I've kind of established my
Speaker 2: own kind of set of ethics that I have for
Speaker 2: anything that I put out was or that. As a lawyer,
Speaker 2: I would never rely in a brief to a federal
Speaker 2: to a judge, I would get disbarred. I would never
Speaker 2: put something out on my social media that could get
Speaker 2: me disbarred in a court room. So it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: the traditional journalistic ethics, but kind of take those legal
Speaker 2: ethics and really apply them to what I do.
Speaker 1: And there's transparency in terms of telling your audience if
Speaker 1: something hasn't been corroborated yet. I mean, you're very honest
Speaker 1: about that, and so they understand that something may need
Speaker 1: to be re reported or adjusted to events that may occur.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, for sure. And there are definitely times where
Speaker 2: I get things wrong, and there have been, and there
Speaker 2: are times where stories have had to be kind of
Speaker 2: not necessarily edited but recanted and I repost and I say, listen,
Speaker 2: this was wrong and here's why it was wrong. And
Speaker 2: I think that all builds to kind of the authenticity
Speaker 2: of the platform that I built. I'm not afraid to
Speaker 2: say when I'm wrong or when a news report that
Speaker 2: I kind of share ends up being recantid for example,
Speaker 2: which has happened a number of times.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, let's talk about this transition a little bit
Speaker 1: more and about legacy media, because I know you go
Speaker 1: on a tear about legacy media and it sometimes hurts
Speaker 1: my feelings. I'm totally getting, but I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things wrong with legacy media myself. But I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about something you wrote on your substack.
Speaker 1: You said, for years, legacy media outlets have painted Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as a threat to our way of life. But
Speaker 1: once he won, they changed their tunes. Suddenly he wasn't
Speaker 1: a danger to democracy anymore. It was as if a
Speaker 1: switch flipped and legacy media became concerned about Trump's potential
Speaker 1: to impact their financial interests. And that's exactly why my
Speaker 1: platform has seen such rapid growth since the election. All Right,
Speaker 1: So let's take a look at what you said that
Speaker 1: and investigated.
Speaker 3: A little bit further.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little more about what you mean and
Speaker 1: why you think legacy media has really lost the room,
Speaker 1: so to speak.
Speaker 2: Well, I think legacy media or media generally, has lost
Speaker 2: started losing the room the moment they started putting money first.
Speaker 2: And I think it goes back to a long time ago.
Speaker 2: It's not recent. It's when the Washington Post first went
Speaker 2: from a free paper to one that you have to
Speaker 2: pay ten cents for and then thirty cents for. Now
Speaker 2: you have to pay several dollars a month for. When
Speaker 2: you put money above the stories and you put stories
Speaker 2: behind a paywall, and you look to your bottom kind
Speaker 2: of line more than you do to what you're reporting,
Speaker 2: I think you lose trust in the viewers and the
Speaker 2: viewers that you're kind of trying to reach.
Speaker 1: But newspapers have charged for a very long time, errand
Speaker 1: and they did maintain the trust of their readers, and
Speaker 1: broadcast news really maintained the trust of their viewers. I mean,
Speaker 1: they do have to pay their employees, and journalists have
Speaker 1: to make a living, and they can't necessarily do it
Speaker 1: through advertising alone. I feel like something more significant and
Speaker 1: nefarious has happened actually in recent weeks in terms of
Speaker 1: the trust factor. So you're saying news should be free,
Speaker 1: which is a very difficult model. I have to be
Speaker 1: honest and not really tenable.
Speaker 2: I tend to agree with you, and I think there
Speaker 2: needs to be a solution. I mean, my dream is
Speaker 2: for all news to be free. I realize that that's
Speaker 2: not necessarily always realistic, but I do take your point
Speaker 2: in that, especially recently, especially over the past I guess
Speaker 2: since November, but really since twenty sixteen, since Trump first ran,
Speaker 2: I mean, the moment he started attacking the press as
Speaker 2: the enemy of the people. I really think we have
Speaker 2: seen kind of a change in the tune of the press.
Speaker 2: But it really wasn't until I guess the past six
Speaker 2: months where he actually went after the press legally that
Speaker 2: we've really seen a dramatic shift.
Speaker 1: I think talk about those two phases erin because I'm
Speaker 1: so fascinated by this as well. I think that earworm
Speaker 1: that he incorporated early in his administration, the first time around,
Speaker 1: and actually during his campaign, this moniker of fake news, yeah,
Speaker 1: was so corrosive to media because it instilled this lack
Speaker 1: of trustworthiness and this dismissiveness of anything that was reported
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump that was negative. But it was incredibly effective,
Speaker 1: wasn't it.
Speaker 2: It was? It was I mean, it turned a large
Speaker 2: swath of people away from cable news, away from even
Speaker 2: reading anymore, and it really hurt our democracy tremendously. I
Speaker 2: really think that was one of the biggest catalysts to
Speaker 2: kind of where we are today, because when you can't
Speaker 2: trust the news, when you can't trust what you're reading
Speaker 2: or what you're watching anymore, or even if you do
Speaker 2: trust it, but there is just a little bird in
Speaker 2: the back of your head that says, maybe this isn't
Speaker 2: fully right or fully accurate, because Donald Trump says it's not.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also contributed to the rise of
Speaker 1: right wing media, because he only says the journalists he
Speaker 1: claims are enemies of the people, or the news that
Speaker 1: he claims is fake is only content that is critical
Speaker 1: of him, So people get an extremely warped perspective. And
Speaker 1: the way he's taken on journalists and these sort of
Speaker 1: oval office gaggles, whether you're talking about Caitlin Collins and
Speaker 1: insulting her Peter Alexander, I couldn't believe how he unleashed
Speaker 1: on Peter Alexander, who's not only an incredibly nice person
Speaker 1: but a really experienced, intelligent reporter, was just honestly appalling
Speaker 1: to me. And so I think he has really instilled
Speaker 1: this disdain, honestly for media that is not lauding him
Speaker 1: or celebrating him. And then, as you mentioned, Phase two
Speaker 1: was a whole new level where he was actually suing
Speaker 1: these media outlets for quote unquote offenses that most experts
Speaker 1: say could have been defended in a court of law,
Speaker 1: starting with ABC News and George Stephanopolis and then moving
Speaker 1: on to other news organizations and most recently CBS Paramount
Speaker 1: in sixty minutes. So, talk about that and how you
Speaker 1: felt as a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer. My late
Speaker 1: husband was a lawyer, so I used to talk to
Speaker 1: him about all this stuff. But how you have felt
Speaker 1: about this new level that we're seeing Donald Trump unleash
Speaker 1: on traditional journalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean listen as a lawyer, and it's not
Speaker 2: just traditional journalism, it's on law firms as well well.
Speaker 3: Yes, of course, right.
Speaker 2: And as a lawyer in law school and just in practice,
Speaker 2: you're taught to kind of be a zealous advocate for
Speaker 2: your client, for the issues that you're fighting for. If
Speaker 2: these cable news shows, these legacy media companies don't fight
Speaker 2: back and don't have lawyers who are willing to fight back,
Speaker 2: what does that say for when you're going to need
Speaker 2: someone to fight for you. It's slowly kind of eroding
Speaker 2: at the trust of the legal profession. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: it's slowly eroding at the trust of the media apparatus
Speaker 2: in our country. And I will say it's a very
Speaker 2: dangerous path that we're on. I tell everyone that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump two point zero is so much more dangerous than
Speaker 2: Donald Trump one point oh for the simple reason that
Speaker 2: he's not facing reelection. He has complete immunity for any
Speaker 2: official acts by the Supreme Court. He doesn't need to
Speaker 2: win another race in four years. He doesn't really care
Speaker 2: what happens on a day to day, and he's willing
Speaker 2: to push kind of the bounds of the United States Constitution,
Speaker 2: the bounds of the law, to see what he can do,
Speaker 2: how far he really can go. And when you capitulate
Speaker 2: to that, when you will allow him to win in
Speaker 2: a case that probably is winnable for yourself. I mean,
Speaker 2: ABC News could have won that case, CBS News can
Speaker 2: win this case. If they capitulate to him, it just
Speaker 2: gives him permission to do it again and even worse.
Speaker 2: And I think that is a dangerous part. Every time
Speaker 2: someone folds and doesn't fight back, he's emboldened to do more.
Speaker 2: And we're seeing it time and time again.
Speaker 1: And clearly with the CBS situation. It is a quid
Speaker 1: pro quo for the Paramount Skydance merger, and it's really
Speaker 1: all about money and people not wanting to stop this merger,
Speaker 1: specifically Sherry Redstone. And there used to be such a
Speaker 1: strong division between these corporations who own these media companies.
Speaker 1: When I was at NBC, I would never listen to
Speaker 1: someone at GE who owned us at the time, telling
Speaker 1: me what to do or how to do an interview
Speaker 1: or criticizing something I did. I mean, I was in
Speaker 1: a position of power because I was on a very
Speaker 1: successful show, and I basically told them to pound sand
Speaker 1: and stay in their lane, I mean, which is not
Speaker 1: necessarily a position a lot of journalists might find themselves in.
Speaker 1: So now you have a lot of anticipatory obedience on
Speaker 1: the part of these journalists who are afraid to come
Speaker 1: down too hard. And indeed, we've seen ABC used executives
Speaker 1: telling the people on the view to tone it down.
Speaker 1: We've seen other examples of executives, corporate executives telling their
Speaker 1: journalists to take it easy. W NET I read took
Speaker 1: out a part of a documentary where somebody was very
Speaker 1: critical of Donald Trump. Do you think people appreciate how
Speaker 1: fed up and dangerous this is.
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I don't think people, especially people my age,
Speaker 2: don't realize it because we've never lived through something like this.
Speaker 2: A lot of I guess my parents' generation may appreciate
Speaker 2: it a little more because they're coming from My parents
Speaker 2: immigrated over from the Soviet Union, right, This was more
Speaker 2: common in Russia. This isn't common in the United States
Speaker 2: of America. People my age don't appreciate it, and they
Speaker 2: won't appreciate it until it packs them directly. And I
Speaker 2: think that's a very dangerous part in all of this.
Speaker 1: Do you think a lot of Americans don't understand basic civics?
Speaker 2: I do, and it's not their fault. I think it's
Speaker 2: the fault of our education system. I think the fact
Speaker 2: that we don't have mandatory Civics education in every school
Speaker 2: across the country is a problem. I think that we
Speaker 2: need a baseline Civics curriculum. But the fact is, the
Speaker 2: fact of the matter is we're in a situation now
Speaker 2: where Oklahoma is teaching is forcing its students to learn
Speaker 2: about election denihalism in the twenty twenty election, and that's
Speaker 2: to them, that's civics to them, and that is dangerous.
Speaker 2: So if we don't have that baseline curriculum, it's it's
Speaker 2: going to be bad.
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's me Kittie Couric. You know, if you've
Speaker 1: been following me on social media, you know I love
Speaker 1: to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of
Speaker 1: my favorite chefs and foodies like Bennie Blanco, Jake Cohen
Speaker 1: and Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman and Ininagarten. So I started
Speaker 1: a free newsletter called good Taste to share recipes, tips
Speaker 1: and kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katie Couric dot
Speaker 1: com slash good Taste. That's k A t I E
Speaker 1: C O U r I c dot com slash good Taste.
Speaker 1: I promised your taste buds will be happy you did.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about a recent tear you
Speaker 1: went on Aaron about Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book,
Speaker 1: accusing them of being part of a coordinated effort to
Speaker 1: smear Joe Biden. Why don't you think that's a legitimate
Speaker 1: news story? And you know I interviewed Jake and Alex.
Speaker 1: I've known Jake Tapper for a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of contemporaries, and I'm curious why you didn't
Speaker 1: think that was a subject worth exploring.
Speaker 2: I never said that it wasn't a subject worth exploring.
Speaker 2: I think it was a subject worth exploring. I think
Speaker 2: how it's gone about in terms of presenting to the
Speaker 2: public is the problem a couple things. Number One, I
Speaker 2: think if you have all this evidence and you're learning
Speaker 2: all this information about President Biden's allegedimental decline during the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four election, as a journalist, to responsibility to
Speaker 2: release it when you have it and when you vet it,
Speaker 2: and that's during the election, so that the public is aware.
Speaker 2: That's number one. And a number of facts came out afterwards,
Speaker 2: I know, but there were a number of facts that
Speaker 2: they learned of on the campaign trip. So that's number one.
Speaker 2: I think Number two is the way it's being presented now.
Speaker 2: President Biden is no longer president. He is not the
Speaker 2: commander in chief. He is not making decisions. You can
Speaker 2: go and sell your book all you want. I have
Speaker 2: no issues of Tapper and Thompson doing that, But when
Speaker 2: you turn CNN into Tapper's book agent every night, and
Speaker 2: every single interview asks about Tapper's book. That to me
Speaker 2: is a problem because that seems like CNN is just
Speaker 2: trying to sell the book of one of their biggest hosts,
Speaker 2: not necessarily kind of doing honest and honest journalism. And
Speaker 2: so that's my biggest critique, and I think that the
Speaker 2: way it's kind of been presented publicly is this kind
Speaker 2: of US versus them mentality of like, we want to
Speaker 2: push this narrative that every Democrat running in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: eight needs to answer what they thought about President Biden
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, when that's not where we are
Speaker 2: as a country. That's not what everyday Americans care about.
Speaker 2: They care about who's in office right now and what
Speaker 2: the person in office is doing, and if your coverage
Speaker 2: isn't focused on that, then that's a problem in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Well, I agree with you on a number of points,
Speaker 1: but just as my personal rebuttal, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think they were obligated to divulge any information they've
Speaker 1: discovered during the campaign. They would say, ninety percent of
Speaker 1: what we learned that was going on behind the scenes
Speaker 1: we learned after he dropped out and after the election.
Speaker 1: I also think that the should have divulged it at
Speaker 1: the time. I agree with you wholeheartedly. There was something
Speaker 1: gross and unseemly about the way Jake was hawking his
Speaker 1: book every day on his show and holding it up
Speaker 1: and telling people to buy it and using it as
Speaker 1: a platform to sell books. I thought was really yucky.
Speaker 1: I do think that he has aggressively covered Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: so I don't think it's an either or situation. And
Speaker 1: I guess finally, many people would argue Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: his inner circle of enablers, and by the way, I
Speaker 1: know Joe Biden. I like Joe Biden, but they actually
Speaker 1: are the reason we have Donald Trump, because had he
Speaker 1: dropped out earlier and allowed a primary process to go forward,
Speaker 1: the best candidate would have emerged to beat Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And leaving Kamala Harris as the heir apparent with only
Speaker 1: one hundred and seven days to campaign was just not
Speaker 1: an adequate amount of time to introduce her to the
Speaker 1: American people. And that the judgment he and his inner
Speaker 1: circle showed got us in this situation where democracy is
Speaker 1: so much in peril.
Speaker 3: So that's what I would say to you about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you might be right. Hindsight is obviously twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I have my own kind
Speaker 2: of small rebuttal to that and.
Speaker 3: Your move, sir, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean listen, My rebuttal to that is, Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: didn't lose this election. Donald Trump won the election. And
Speaker 2: I truly, personally, I don't know a Democrat that would
Speaker 2: have beaten Donald Trump in twenty twenty four. Whether Biden
Speaker 2: dropped out six months earlier, a year earlier, the political
Speaker 2: headwinds were so strong against any Democratic nominee, whether it
Speaker 2: was Vice President Harris or Governor Newsom or Governor Whitmer,
Speaker 2: and arguably more so strongly against someone who is not
Speaker 2: Biden or Harris, because they're just not as well known
Speaker 2: to the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they would have had time to introduce themselves,
Speaker 1: and I mean you're right, could have, would have, should have.
Speaker 1: Hindsight is twenty twenty, but there is I think a
Speaker 1: pretty powerful argument to be made that things might have
Speaker 1: and will never know, turned out differently if Joe Biden
Speaker 1: had stepped down earlier, as he said during his campaign
Speaker 1: that he was going to be a bridge to the
Speaker 1: next generation. Flanked by Corey Booker, Gretchen Whitmer, and Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris and then he reneged on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and listen, I'm not defending President Biden. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that he should have stayed in the race as
Speaker 2: long as he did. I don't know, and truth be told,
Speaker 2: maybe it would have been better. But at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, hindsight is twenty twenty, what happened happened.
Speaker 2: And now I think it's important to look forward because
Speaker 2: Democratic Party isn't unning against Donald Trump anymore. It's not
Speaker 2: running against necessarily the MAGA movement. It's going to be
Speaker 2: running against a completely different form of Republicanism come twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight, and I think that the party needs to
Speaker 2: look forward, not backwards.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me ask you about legacy media a little
Speaker 1: bit more, because I know you say Earn News aggregator
Speaker 1: that you're not an investigated journalist, and a lot of
Speaker 1: your videos are regurgitating breaking news headlines, giving them context
Speaker 1: and perspective, granted, and your take on them. But isn't
Speaker 1: the work you do made possible by legacy media and
Speaker 1: all the reporters out in the field, And don't you
Speaker 1: have to be careful about disparaging their work too much?
Speaker 1: Because without them, you wouldn't have a job.
Speaker 2: Well, so I'll push back a little bit. About fifty
Speaker 2: to sixty percent of the stories that I cover are
Speaker 2: actually stories that I source myself. It's not necessarily aggregating
Speaker 2: other breaking news headlines. I have notifications on for every
Speaker 2: single member of Congress, every single world leader. When Donald
Speaker 2: Trump posts something on truth social I read it and
Speaker 2: I report on it. I don't wait for the New
Speaker 2: York Times to read it, report on it, and report
Speaker 2: on what the time said. Right. I watch c Span religiously.
Speaker 2: When I see something on c Span, I kind of
Speaker 2: throw it out there. I get tips to my email
Speaker 2: inbox daily from federal employees for sending me memos and
Speaker 2: any information that I cover as well. So that's about
Speaker 2: half the work. The other half the work is made
Speaker 2: possible by legacy media, for sure, and.
Speaker 1: By investigating and you know, investigative reporters who spend weeks,
Speaker 1: if not months, digging in, you know, filing Foyer requests,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent, and I will I would never degrade
Speaker 2: the work that they're doing, especially the work that local
Speaker 2: journalists are doing. The ABC affiliates, the NBC affiliates on
Speaker 2: the ground, and I have top time and time again
Speaker 2: about the amazing work that they do and how they
Speaker 2: need to be uplifted. I think where my gripe with
Speaker 2: legacy media is I guess maybe framed wrong in the
Speaker 2: sense of my gripe is with cable news media and
Speaker 2: the hosts that are on it and the way news
Speaker 2: is portrayed on television rather than an individual reporter. I
Speaker 2: think the Washington Post has some brilliant reporters, but I
Speaker 2: have a problem with the Posts as a brand because
Speaker 2: of the influence that its owner has. Right, So I
Speaker 2: have I have a problem with kind of the overall
Speaker 2: media apparatus rather than any individual reporter.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And what is your beef, particularly with cable news. Is
Speaker 1: it that it's the way information is framed or putting context?
Speaker 1: And do you have a beef with all cable news
Speaker 1: or do you have a beef primarily with Fox News?
Speaker 2: So my primary beef comes from CNNMSNBC and Fox those
Speaker 2: kind of the big three in a way not necessarily
Speaker 2: like there's some great like David Muher does great work,
Speaker 2: Like there's some really good kind of cable news hosts.
Speaker 2: But I think when I'm watching CNN at the ten
Speaker 2: pm hour and it's Abby Phillips Show. And Abby is great.
Speaker 2: I think she's amazing. But when it's a roundtable discussion
Speaker 2: of politics rather than just giving me what I need
Speaker 2: to know from the day, that to me upsets me
Speaker 2: because it's no longer fact based journalism. It's an opinion
Speaker 2: talk show hosts. It's the view, but just at ten pm.
Speaker 2: And I'm not watching CNN at ten pm personally to
Speaker 2: get opinions from Scott Jennings or on the left. I'm
Speaker 2: watching CNNA ten pm to get information about what I
Speaker 2: missed during the day, and I just don't get that anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what about Fox the way they frame everything?
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, it's fascinating to watch MSNBC. And
Speaker 1: by the way, a very small audience is watching all
Speaker 1: of these cable news networks at this point. But I'd
Speaker 1: like to see how a story's framed by MSNBC versus Fox.
Speaker 1: Now I'm more aligned with the way MSNBC is framing
Speaker 1: the story. But Fox, I remember when the stock market
Speaker 1: was crashing, they took down the ticker. You don't hear
Speaker 1: about a lot of things that Donald Trump is doing
Speaker 1: on Fox News, and if you do, it's framed in
Speaker 1: a very positive way and not sort of a holistic
Speaker 1: look at whatever action has been taken.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. I mean I think I remember when
Speaker 2: the birthright Citizenship Executive Order was struck down the first time.
Speaker 2: Instead of talking about that, they were talking about plastic
Speaker 2: straws for fifteen minutes. And I was watching that and
Speaker 2: I was like, this is just you're doing a disservice
Speaker 2: to the people that are watching your channel. Just be
Speaker 2: honest with what's happening in our country and what the
Speaker 2: courts are saying and what the president is doing, and
Speaker 2: let them decide for themselves whether or not they agree
Speaker 2: with it or not.
Speaker 1: Well, their motto used to be, we report, you decide,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I always say it's like we retort,
Speaker 1: we deride.
Speaker 2: No, you're you're right. I mean, it's bad how they've
Speaker 2: kind of framed it. And I mean, I don't think
Speaker 2: at least anymore they pretend to be, at least at
Speaker 2: night with like the Hannities of the World and Laura
Speaker 2: Ingram I don't think they pretend to be a new
Speaker 2: show as much as they pretend to be kind.
Speaker 3: Of they're a talk radio on TV.
Speaker 2: Really, that's really what it is at this point.
Speaker 3: Does your family still watch Fox News?
Speaker 2: No, they do not, not from what I'm aware of.
Speaker 2: I haven't been down there in a little while, but
Speaker 2: probably not.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a little bit about your process.
Speaker 1: You post twelve to fifteen tiktoks a day, Aaron, you
Speaker 1: post five to six times a day on substack. How
Speaker 1: much time are you spending on social media and following
Speaker 1: the news every day? And how do you unplug? If ever?
Speaker 2: I don't unplug work life balance doesn't exist for me.
Speaker 2: I'm twenty six years old. I feel like I can
Speaker 2: work as much as I can until I start having kids,
Speaker 2: and then I'll have to slow down a little bit.
Speaker 2: I am online, truthfully all the time, unless it's Friday
Speaker 2: nights for Shabbat, I try to unplug and kind of
Speaker 2: be off my phone for several hours if possible, But
Speaker 2: otherwise I'm monitoring at twenty four to seven. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I have notifications on for every time a member of
Speaker 2: Congress tweets, so have I wake up to two thousand
Speaker 2: notifications every morning that I score grew to see what
Speaker 2: I'm like missing, So I'm always online.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about Ukraine because of your
Speaker 1: family connections there. I mean, there's so many news events
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk to you about, but let me
Speaker 1: just do run down a few right now. Do you
Speaker 1: think people understand how strange it is that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: did a complete about face on behalf of the United
Speaker 1: States of America when it comes to support swarding Ukraine
Speaker 1: versus Vladimir Putin? And how do you, as someone with
Speaker 1: such close ties, how do you make sense of it?
Speaker 2: I don't. I mean, I don't want to speculate, right like,
Speaker 2: there are so many people out there speculating that Trump
Speaker 2: is in Putin's pocket. There was even like a TikTok
Speaker 2: trend people talking about how Trump was being a Kremlin agent,
Speaker 2: and I think all that's BS. Like, I don't buy
Speaker 2: into the conspiracy theories or the speculation. I think truth
Speaker 2: be told. I don't know that this is as much
Speaker 2: Trump as it is about Vance and those around him,
Speaker 2: and this kind of America first mentality of trying to
Speaker 2: abandon anyone overseas. It's not just Ukraine, right, We're seeing
Speaker 2: them pull foreign aid from countries across the world, and
Speaker 2: America's soft power has been weakened tremendously.
Speaker 3: Since the jsaid right exactly.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that it's just Ukraine. I think
Speaker 2: Ukraine is just a hot button issue because it's the
Speaker 2: war where American dollars have been spent on. But I
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't know how to reconcile it. It's
Speaker 2: very scary. And maybe, I mean, listen, maybe Trump is
Speaker 2: coming around to the idea that Putin doesn't want peace.
Speaker 2: He's been Putin crazy lately and.
Speaker 1: Saying now he's actually acting like a petulant, jilted teenager
Speaker 1: on truth social talking about Putin now and how disappointed
Speaker 1: he is and how he's crazy. But it strikes me
Speaker 1: as like just reeking of naivete.
Speaker 2: It is, I mean it is. I think really Trump
Speaker 2: tried to portray himself as someone who could come in
Speaker 2: as a deal maker and really end this war, and
Speaker 2: Joe Biden couldn't do it. So Trump is going to
Speaker 2: do it. And I think with each passing day he
Speaker 2: gets more and more frustrated that he's realizing, hey, one
Speaker 2: side to this doesn't actually want to end the.
Speaker 1: War, and maybe foreign policy is a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than he thought. Maybe maybe let me ask you about
Speaker 1: the big beautiful bill. I know that I believe you
Speaker 1: or somebody I read so much to Aaron, I kind
Speaker 1: of get mixed up at some point. But someone said,
Speaker 1: I think maybe you did how it was going to
Speaker 1: basically turbo charge income inequality in this country, exacerbate it
Speaker 1: as never before. Maybe that was someone else, was that
Speaker 1: you erin I may have said something. Anyway, do you
Speaker 1: think people understand truly what is in this bill and
Speaker 1: how will impact the least fortunate Americans?
Speaker 2: No, not at all, I mean, and I think the
Speaker 2: reason why is because the messaging just isn't there. I mean,
Speaker 2: I could say the Congressional Budget Office, the non part
Speaker 2: is in Congressional Budget Office says the bottom ten percent
Speaker 2: will suffer the most, in the top ten percent will
Speaker 2: suffer the least, or will benefit the most. But ultimately,
Speaker 2: this bill is hundreds of pages in length. Your average
Speaker 2: American is not reading it. Your average American doesn't know
Speaker 2: that on page five hundred and sixty two there's a
Speaker 2: paragraph that limits a federal court's ability to enforce contemp
Speaker 2: proceedings against the administration. Right like the average doesn't really
Speaker 2: understand what Medicaid cuts mean, what work requirements for Medicaid
Speaker 2: are and how that can be implemented in states around
Speaker 2: the country. So the impacts of it won't be felt,
Speaker 2: truthfully for a while, for several years. Maybe that's what
Speaker 2: they want because by that point, if you look at
Speaker 2: the bill, many of the cuts and the work requirements
Speaker 2: don't start until after the midterm election, So the impacts
Speaker 2: really won't be felt for a lot of people until
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven, and by then Republicans could run on
Speaker 2: the fact that they just cut a bunch of taxes
Speaker 2: and look, Medicaid's still fine, everything's fine. And then January first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven comes around and thirteen point seven million
Speaker 2: Americans are without healthcare.
Speaker 1: So what do you think of the fact that RFK,
Speaker 1: Junior and HHS and the CDC and basically are saying
Speaker 1: that pregnant women and children no longer need to get
Speaker 1: the COVID vaccine. I mean, that has been so politicized,
Speaker 1: and medical news was never sized in this way.
Speaker 2: It's unfortunate. I mean, here's the thing. If that is
Speaker 2: what doctors believe, and if that's what the research suggests,
Speaker 2: then great, go forward with it. Remove it off the
Speaker 2: communization schedule for pregnant women and healthy children. But it's
Speaker 2: gotten to the point where anything RFK Junior says is
Speaker 2: distrusted by a majority of the American public because of
Speaker 2: the things that he had said in the past about
Speaker 2: this vaccine. So it's an unfortunate situation where medical decisions
Speaker 2: are now politicized, where the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Speaker 2: If you ask the average American who was the HHS
Speaker 2: secretary under Biden or under Obama or even under Trump won,
Speaker 2: no one would know. Maybe one percent of one percent
Speaker 2: would know. A lot of people know who RFK Junior is.
Speaker 2: And that's a problem.
Speaker 1: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
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Speaker 3: Aaron, how do you book guests?
Speaker 1: Because you recently napped an interview with Corey Booker after
Speaker 1: his twenty five hour filibuster. Do you just reach out
Speaker 1: to their teams? Do they know who you are? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm lucky because I've been doing this for a long time,
Speaker 1: a lot longer than you have, and so I was
Speaker 1: able to establish a name for myself before the media
Speaker 1: landscape was so fragmented. But for you, you're relatively new
Speaker 1: to the game. How hard is it for you to
Speaker 1: secure these interviews with people like Corey Booker.
Speaker 2: It's hard, but I really hustle. I mean, I DM people,
Speaker 2: I cold email them, I cold text them, I try
Speaker 2: to get information wherever I can people's contact information, and
Speaker 2: I just kind of I bug them indeceptively until they
Speaker 2: say yes.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure now that they know about your reach,
Speaker 1: the fact that you are the number one news and
Speaker 1: politics substack in the world, and I've just joined substack,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to do some conversations like that on
Speaker 1: that platform. But you know they must be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know Aaron Parness. I'd be happy to talk to him.
Speaker 1: And you're reaching this audience of much younger voters who
Speaker 1: are really turned off by a lot of other news sources.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And I think it's gotten to the
Speaker 2: point where, like I now have a personal relationship with
Speaker 2: like senat or a book like you build relationships with
Speaker 2: not just their staff, but they're the member themselves as well.
Speaker 2: When you speak to them on numerous occasions and you
Speaker 2: talk them off the record and on the record, and
Speaker 2: you kind of just develop those relationships and it's it's
Speaker 2: been great. I mean now I get messages every day
Speaker 2: from members wanting to come on.
Speaker 1: Oh that's well, they're calling you instead of you reaching
Speaker 1: out to them. That's a very enviable place to be.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know, how do you make money eron
Speaker 1: because you don't charge for any of your content And
Speaker 1: my parents always told me it was impolite to discuss
Speaker 1: money with people, But how do you earn a living?
Speaker 2: Erin? So I don't charge for any of the content,
Speaker 2: but I earn a full time living from people who
Speaker 2: just want to become paid subscribers and support the work
Speaker 2: even though it's all free. So make a complete, full
Speaker 2: time living on Substack and also the platform TikTok YouTube.
Speaker 2: The platforms themselves pay out through creativity funds that they
Speaker 2: build out for creators, so they pay out through that
Speaker 2: as well, and that's kind of how I make a living.
Speaker 2: But people are willing to pay for even free news
Speaker 2: because they support me and the work that I'm doing.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: conversation about right wing media and how powerful it is.
Speaker 1: I interviewed Michael Tomaski. He's the editor of The New Republic,
Speaker 1: and he wrote in a piece quote, once upon a time,
Speaker 1: the mainstream media was a beach ball and the right
Speaker 1: wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media
Speaker 1: is the size of a volleyball, and the right wing
Speaker 1: media is the size of a basketball, which, in case
Speaker 1: you're wondering, is bigger. Twenty twenty four was the year
Speaker 1: in which it became obvious that the right wing media
Speaker 1: has more power than the mainstream media. It's not just
Speaker 1: that it's bigger, it's that it speaks with one voice,
Speaker 1: and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treason as
Speaker 1: elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God
Speaker 1: and country and are your last line of defense against
Speaker 1: your son coming home from school as your daughter. Why
Speaker 1: do you think the right wing media has been so effective?
Speaker 1: And do you see this surge of media on the
Speaker 1: other side that is starting slowly but surely to counter
Speaker 1: some of the messaging right wing media is spewing on
Speaker 1: a regular daily, if not minute by minute basis.
Speaker 2: Well, I think to the first point is because they
Speaker 2: got it right, like they know how to do. They
Speaker 2: know how to play the game right. So you'll have
Speaker 2: someone will put out a tweet saying that mister Potato
Speaker 2: has is actually transgender. That'll be the tweet that comes out.
Speaker 2: It'll get blown up on Twitter because Elon musk Quote
Speaker 2: tweets it. Then we'll Chamberlain on Fox News. We'll feature
Speaker 2: it during the day, then Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity
Speaker 2: will talk about it at night. Then it'll be on
Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro's podcast and Megan Kelly's podcast the next day.
Speaker 2: They will talk about the same talking point across whether
Speaker 2: you are one follower or ten million followers, and they'll
Speaker 2: beat it as much as they can do.
Speaker 1: They have this big editorial god who's sending them like
Speaker 1: talking points every day because Roger Ales used to do
Speaker 1: that at Fox News and they probably still do.
Speaker 2: Probably, I mean, but they are so coordinated when it
Speaker 2: comes to messaging. If they want to talk about Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden's laptop, that's all you'll hear for days from everyone.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where they get it right. As
Speaker 2: far as whether it's kind of building on the left,
Speaker 2: it isn't it isn't right. I think that there are
Speaker 2: definitely media kind of companies and media personalities that might
Speaker 2: as touched, for example, that are really doing great work
Speaker 2: on the left and they are building something really big there,
Speaker 2: But outside of them, I think where the left gets
Speaker 2: it wrong is that they're just looking to replicate what
Speaker 2: the right does. But you can't do that because the
Speaker 2: messaging isn't the same. Because on the left, if you
Speaker 2: say talk about reproductive rights, and everyone talks about reproductive rights,
Speaker 2: you're not going to get everyone to talk about that.
Speaker 2: Someone's going to talk about climates, someone's going to talk
Speaker 2: about small businesses, someone's going to talk about like criminal justice.
Speaker 2: You're going to be all over the place. And until
Speaker 2: you fix messaging, it doesn't matter whether you have one
Speaker 2: hundred million followers or a million followers or one follower,
Speaker 2: you're just not going to get anything across. So they
Speaker 2: are building I just think that they may be building it.
Speaker 1: Wrong, building it wrong because they are not sticking to
Speaker 1: one message.
Speaker 2: It's about messaging because they don't have a good message.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily sticking to one message, they don't have a
Speaker 2: good message that resonates with voters right now, So.
Speaker 3: What should their message be.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I am not in the
Speaker 2: position yeah make that decision.
Speaker 1: That's above your pay grade. Well we don't know that,
Speaker 1: but it is above.
Speaker 2: My pay grade. And I think that where I tell everyone,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four was not a bloodbath. It was not
Speaker 2: an election landslide the way some on the right had
Speaker 2: painted it out to be. It was two hundred and
Speaker 2: ten thousand votes in three swing states. That was the election,
Speaker 2: And ultimately, if the election were held a month later,
Speaker 2: it could have swum. If election were held two months earlier,
Speaker 2: it could have swam. I don't know. And I think
Speaker 2: to say that there is such a disparity between the
Speaker 2: right and the left right now in America, it's not
Speaker 2: fully accurate.
Speaker 1: It just as there's sort of this massive swath of
Speaker 1: people in the middle too.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of young people who we
Speaker 2: need the left needs to get better at talking.
Speaker 1: To, and also people need to help them understand the issues.
Speaker 1: Someone wrote in I know the rage gets clicks, but
Speaker 1: I'd like to see the Dems move forward with the plan.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about sort of progressive media, but
Speaker 1: what about the Democratic Party in general? I mean, I
Speaker 1: know you're not a Democratic strategist, and I think it's
Speaker 1: important to delineate what you do and what sort of
Speaker 1: people who are coming up with, you know, talking points
Speaker 1: and sort of the ethos and the future ethos of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: But what would you like.
Speaker 1: To see more of come from Democrats and not just
Speaker 1: the people covering them.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd like there to be a leader, right Like
Speaker 2: I'd like the Democrats to find a leader to unify around.
Speaker 2: That's number one. And whether that's someone like Pete Budhjed
Speaker 2: or Hakeem Jeffries, whoever it is, I'd like to them
Speaker 2: to find someone who has that voice that speaks for
Speaker 2: the party, because I don't think the DNC should ever
Speaker 2: be speaking for the party. It's more of just kind
Speaker 2: of inner party minutia that they decide. So I think
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party needs a leader number one, and then
Speaker 2: number two. I think once they have a leader, what
Speaker 2: I would like to see is just like ordinated message
Speaker 2: on a few main issues. We shouldn't be hitting Donald
Speaker 2: Trump on everything he does, because he does so much
Speaker 2: stuff that if you're just hitting him on everything, you're
Speaker 2: never going to be able to put forth your own
Speaker 2: message on things. And so I think we need to
Speaker 2: find coordinated messaging on key issues, whether it be immigration
Speaker 2: or form, reproductive justice, whatever it is. I mean, figure
Speaker 2: it out, figure out what polls well, I don't care,
Speaker 2: and just start hitting those and put forth your own
Speaker 2: agenda rather than just this we don't like Trump agenda.
Speaker 1: Well it's interesting because I do see a lot more
Speaker 1: Democrats showing up on social media, talking straight to camera,
Speaker 1: telling people what's going on. But it seems to me
Speaker 1: there should be somebody who says, Okay, everybody today on
Speaker 1: social media, let's focus on this so in aggregate they
Speaker 1: could communicate their message and really get it across. Before
Speaker 1: we go, I wanted to ask you about the MPR
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Donald Trump and everything that good Lord is
Speaker 1: happening at heart. You know, as a lawyer, how do
Speaker 1: you see all of this kind of shaking out? And
Speaker 1: do you think the judiciary is going to stand up
Speaker 1: for NPR and Harvard And if they do, do you
Speaker 1: think it will have any impact on what the administration does,
Speaker 1: because so far they don't seem to be paying a
Speaker 1: lot of attention to judges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do, I mean, I really do trust our judiciary.
Speaker 2: I clerked for a federal judge who has confirmed one
Speaker 2: hundred to zero. Back when federal judges were confirmed unanimously
Speaker 2: and I saw the judiciary from the inside out, I
Speaker 2: really do have a lot of faith in the judicial process.
Speaker 2: It's slow, it's mainly focused on gridlock really and obstruction within,
Speaker 2: but that's mainly what the system is meant to do
Speaker 2: and meant to be, and it protects the American people.
Speaker 2: And I think when it comes to NPR, when it
Speaker 2: comes to Harvard, when it comes to these lawsuits, I
Speaker 2: think the judiciary will rule in accordance with the law,
Speaker 2: and yeah, well, Trump will win on some grounds in
Speaker 2: some cases. I'm not saying he's going to lose every
Speaker 2: single case, but they will uphold the law. And I
Speaker 2: think that's ultimately what needs to happen. Trump is right
Speaker 2: or whether he is wrong, the law needs to be upheld.
Speaker 2: And if they uphold the law and Trump chooses not
Speaker 2: to follow the law and play fast and loose with
Speaker 2: the law, then I think where the new judiciary needs
Speaker 2: to go is it needs to be more explicit. Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: with this whole Abrago Garcia Supreme Court debacle, the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court said you need to facilitate his return. They never
Speaker 2: said you need to get Kilmore back. They were very
Speaker 2: intentionally vague in the word choice of facilitate, because facilitate
Speaker 2: could mean a number of things. And Trump is now saying,
Speaker 2: you know what, I am facilitating it. I am maybe
Speaker 2: we asked behind the scenes the government of l Salvador
Speaker 2: to bring him back or whatever.
Speaker 3: And they're refusing, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly that. But that is facilitating in his mind. And
Speaker 2: by being intentionally vague, the last thing judges want to
Speaker 2: do is make precedent. I've learned that, and so they
Speaker 2: are intentionally vague to kind of allow for these legal maneuvers.
Speaker 2: And I think the judiciary needs to become more explicit
Speaker 2: in its rulings to prevent what happened with Killmore Brayogarcia
Speaker 2: from happening to NPR or Harvard or any of these
Speaker 2: other institutions.
Speaker 1: Well, Aaron Parness, I have kept you over an hour
Speaker 1: and you've got a lot of news to cover, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to let you go. It's such a pleasure
Speaker 1: to meet you, Erin. I really appreciate your time, and
Speaker 1: keep up the good work, and thank you so so
Speaker 1: much for talking with me.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. This is amazing.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
Speaker 1: a subject you want us to cover, or you want
Speaker 1: to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
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Speaker 1: Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
Speaker 1: and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Speaker 1: Weller composed our theme music for Morning. For about today's episode,
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Speaker 1: Katie Couric. You know I'm always on the go between
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