Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 4: As somebody who is generally supportive of Maga in there
Speaker 4: pressing the White House Press Secretary of an opportunity to
Speaker 4: do it, how are you thinking about that?
Speaker 5: We are forthright and our support for President Trump, And
Speaker 5: I'm aware that maybe that's hard to square with the
Speaker 5: idea of like being a journalist.
Speaker 6: I don't want to be a Trump cheerleader for four years.
Speaker 5: I don't really find any intellectual merit in doing that either,
Speaker 5: if you can tell, like I love digging into documents,
Speaker 5: I don't like standing there and being like Oh my.
Speaker 6: Gosh, we took over Gossa.
Speaker 4: I look at what Elon Musk is doing getting rid
Speaker 4: of Usai, the amazing, cathartic, beautiful, a masterpiece. At the
Speaker 4: same time, you now have like a genuine oligarch running
Speaker 4: loose in the government.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's great to have unelected billionaires running
Speaker 5: any government agency. But spare me, mainstream media the performative
Speaker 5: outrage that you guys either a care about the constitution
Speaker 5: or me that you care about unelected bureaucrats or billionaires
Speaker 5: running government. So it's the framing of it. I sort
Speaker 5: of rejected.
Speaker 1: Right over here at Counterpoints. You know that we like
Speaker 1: to have long form conversations with people in the journalist ministry,
Speaker 1: find out where they came from, where they're going. Independent journalists, independent, independent.
Speaker 4: Journalists Foratus, corporate apparatus.
Speaker 1: We had Ezra New York Times loves to call itself independent.
Speaker 1: That's true, which it technically is technically like they own themselves.
Speaker 1: That's right, fair enough. We have my dropsite colleague Jeremy
Speaker 1: Scahill and Matt Tibon. That was a fun one. Today
Speaker 1: we've got another fun one. We're joined by Natalie Winters,
Speaker 1: who is the White House correspondent for the war Room podcast.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: And I just want to say I think one blind
Speaker 4: spot in DC, especially among Republicans, and maybe you've run
Speaker 4: into this snadly. I'm curious. This might be a good
Speaker 4: place to start to start. They don't realize.
Speaker 6: How powerful war Room is.
Speaker 4: If you look at the podcast charts, war Room is
Speaker 4: routinely near the very very top. It is an extremely.
Speaker 1: Powell about the numbers, like sure, with an internal look
Speaker 1: because it does seem like because when you guys ask
Speaker 1: your posse or what asked the posse to do? Stuff
Speaker 1: like the phone lines melt down, so the numbers got
Speaker 1: to be big. What can you put some like what
Speaker 1: are your highest numbers? What are your average numbers?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 5: Sure, I feel like it's a dark moment when you
Speaker 5: just called me a journalist to be.
Speaker 6: Independent, Right, I guess I got it. I got to
Speaker 6: accept it.
Speaker 5: Look, I think our audience is so powerful for two reasons,
Speaker 5: quality and quantity. What do I mean by that? We're
Speaker 5: first and foremost a TV show. We're on Real America's Voice,
Speaker 5: which is in I think nine million plus homes.
Speaker 6: I think our average viewership average is.
Speaker 5: At least around seven hundred thousand plus or mine is
Speaker 5: probably a few hundred thousand. But that's just people who
Speaker 5: are watching on a traditional TV that excludes all streaming,
Speaker 5: all Rumble, all Twitter.
Speaker 1: Live, watching lives Honest TV.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, but that's.
Speaker 5: Not including like I said, Rumble, which is another you know,
Speaker 5: sixty thousand or so Twitter, the clips that go viral
Speaker 5: after everything like that. So it's just a massive audience.
Speaker 5: But to the quality. And I don't mean that our
Speaker 5: viewers are better than yours. I just mean in terms
Speaker 5: of engagement and grassroots activism, there really has never been
Speaker 5: I think a more impactful or powerful audience. I would say,
Speaker 5: just ask Kevin McCarthy. But any time that Steve Bannon,
Speaker 5: who I always feel like what I call him my
Speaker 5: co host, I am demeaning him.
Speaker 6: It's Steve A. K. Bannon's war room. But they will
Speaker 6: do it.
Speaker 5: I've literally met audience members who take days off of
Speaker 5: work to make phone calls, to call the Senate, to
Speaker 5: call members of Congress, and in some ways I think
Speaker 5: it's interesting. Actually, just last night they had Azra Eleven
Speaker 5: of Indivisible on Rachel Mattaw talking about their sort of
Speaker 5: resistance tactics, right, and they want to be burning down
Speaker 5: the phone lines, they want to be writing off.
Speaker 6: Eds in the local papers.
Speaker 5: They have a very systematic sort of characterization of how
Speaker 5: to push back.
Speaker 6: Through their manuals.
Speaker 5: And I think war Room has sort of culturally appropriated
Speaker 5: a lot of the LEFS tactics, which I guess if
Speaker 5: goes back to sort of McConnell in the early like
Speaker 5: two thousands, right, so you know, you kind of a
Speaker 5: debate over whose tactics they were. But I think Steve
Speaker 5: Bannon has really capitalized on the art of the phone call.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm friends with a lot of members.
Speaker 5: They're always texting us saying thank you for giving us
Speaker 5: the cover to stand in the breach, to hold the line,
Speaker 5: particularly against CRS kind of omnibus spending bills. So our
Speaker 5: audience really really does have power. I'm honored to even
Speaker 5: be able to speak to them. But I think people
Speaker 5: really underestimate the power of our audience. But like I said,
Speaker 5: I just asked Kevin McCarthy about the power of our No, it's.
Speaker 1: Real, no, no, no doubt about it. It seemed like
Speaker 1: the audience got steamrolled a bit by Musk in the
Speaker 1: So let's talk. Let's start, well, actually, let's start with
Speaker 1: the daily mail attack on you, because I think that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people. That's what a lot of people
Speaker 1: are going to be curious about. Put up this. You
Speaker 1: can put up this first element and then we'll get
Speaker 1: to some more serious stuff. So if you're just listening
Speaker 1: to this on the podcast, that this is a daily
Speaker 1: mail headline, You're not a hostess at Hooters. You work
Speaker 1: at the White House. Kennedy's maternal warning to the scantily
Speaker 1: clad correspondent moaning about her fashion critics. So walk us
Speaker 1: through what what happened here? So this goes back to
Speaker 1: the new White House opens up, uh, it's press briefing
Speaker 1: room to non traditional folks. Breitbart, you know, got a
Speaker 1: little seat along the side there. Other people. They said,
Speaker 1: go ahead and apply. I applied for one, you know,
Speaker 1: I used to I had permanent ish badge under Obama,
Speaker 1: then Biden for a while, then they took away a
Speaker 1: bunch of badges from Yeah, so now I've wonder of
Speaker 1: mine was one of those. They're like, everybody has to reapply,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm not reapplying because KJP is
Speaker 1: like not answering any questions, I'm just going to go
Speaker 1: to the state department, like that's stop wasting my time.
Speaker 1: So I didn't even reapply, but I have applied to
Speaker 1: this new one. So they're letting in new people. So
Speaker 1: then they let you in, and then there's this social
Speaker 1: media meltdown over how you looked? What was how walk
Speaker 1: us through what happened?
Speaker 4: And before let me also ask because it was a
Speaker 4: lot deeper than how you look, how you look, and
Speaker 4: maybe you can win on this. It was even just
Speaker 4: the fact of you being there was controversial to the
Speaker 4: old guard, who really is uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And in the old guard's defense, like, as you just
Speaker 1: said yourself, you're brand new in thinking of yourself even
Speaker 1: as a journalist. Yeah, sure, so you can imagine other
Speaker 1: journalists are like waiting.
Speaker 5: And then look, I think the way you framed it
Speaker 5: is the right way, right the buried lead. The significant
Speaker 5: angle of the story is that new media is in
Speaker 5: there in oppressed briefing room that for so long has
Speaker 5: sort of been an active or really I think just
Speaker 5: sort of propaganda esque in terms of not answering real questions,
Speaker 5: kicking out journalists that they disagree with, and now President
Speaker 5: Trump and Caroline Levet are taking historic steps to put
Speaker 5: in new media voices. And I think the story should
Speaker 5: have been, Wow, Steve Bannon's war room is in the
Speaker 5: White House. Yeah, it's a controversial twenty three year old
Speaker 5: girl who's maybe said some edgy things, which I all
Speaker 5: stand by, But that should have been the story. So
Speaker 5: I sort of viewed it when it really started to
Speaker 5: I think snowball and become.
Speaker 6: A bigger and bigger thing.
Speaker 5: It was like article after article after article, and the
Speaker 5: Kennedy piece, which I think is a ridiculous accusation to
Speaker 5: say that I was dressed like a hostess at Hooters.
Speaker 6: I don't think Kashmir sweater with like Oli I was
Speaker 6: gonna say.
Speaker 5: I think like all of Fox has that, Alison olivia'sweat
Speaker 5: it's like the most basic, Like I'm very basic. It's
Speaker 5: the most basic swetner that exists. I think that was
Speaker 5: obviously outlandish, but more precisely, I just think it's sort
Speaker 5: of what Rather going back to the original story, they
Speaker 5: had said that I was being slammed on Instagram in
Speaker 5: comments for saying that I was dressed and appropriately. I've
Speaker 5: gone through my comments the typical haters who will always
Speaker 5: comment on anything I wear or anything I do. Sure,
Speaker 5: they said what they said, but overwhelmingly it was an
Speaker 5: outpouring of support from our audience and from people who
Speaker 5: are really truly excited to have war room in the
Speaker 5: press briefing room. Like I said, our audience played a
Speaker 5: critical role in President Trump's victory. So they saw I
Speaker 5: was like, Wow, this is amazing. So I know that's
Speaker 5: what the Daily Mail does, that's their business model, the
Speaker 5: rage bait, the clickbait headlines. But it wasn't like I
Speaker 5: was being slammed for what I was wearing. So when
Speaker 5: I saw the stories continue to pile up, and then
Speaker 5: the Kennedy article, which was just so offensive and if
Speaker 5: you read it, she refers to herself as like a
Speaker 5: fellow hot person and saying that I showed up to
Speaker 5: the White House trying to look like Barbie. Just all
Speaker 5: these really bizarre attacks, I was like, this feels like
Speaker 5: more to impune my character, our show and make us
Speaker 5: seem unseerious and mock this sort of whole new media
Speaker 5: operation and take away sort of reframe the story as
Speaker 5: opposed to, Wow, let's give the Trump White House credit
Speaker 5: for putting in alternative media voices instead, it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: they're putting in, you know, just.
Speaker 6: Some good looking chick because you.
Speaker 5: Know whatever, and it's it's an annoying story too to
Speaker 5: I think engage with. I mean, for starters, I think
Speaker 5: our show has been deplatformed, decensored, demonetor like everything. They
Speaker 5: only threw my boss in wet prison for four months,
Speaker 5: so we're used to the attacks. So you know, a
Speaker 5: daily mail criticized criticism on my outfit kind of peels
Speaker 5: in comparison. But I just think more broadly, it sort
Speaker 5: of represents really an effort to just delegitimize us. And
Speaker 5: now I feel every time that I walk into the
Speaker 5: press briefing room, it's like just a loaded situation. And
Speaker 5: I mean the first time that I opened the door
Speaker 5: and walked in, everyone looked at me was like, what
Speaker 5: the heck are you doing here?
Speaker 6: Like who are you? And I get it.
Speaker 5: It's as and I respect that, but I do think
Speaker 5: that my presence being there, what we were just talking about,
Speaker 5: in terms of warroom's viewership, it sort of holds a
Speaker 5: mirror to their face, and I think it raises more
Speaker 5: broadly the question, which is something we always dive into
Speaker 5: at warroom, which is sort of the idea of credentialism
Speaker 5: or the idea of like what even is the mainstream
Speaker 5: media and why they're referred to as the mainstream media
Speaker 5: because we trounce them in viewership, and if you look
Speaker 5: at the trajectory of viewership, I would take our trend
Speaker 5: line over theirs because they're essentially perpendicular and we trounce
Speaker 5: them an impact too in terms of our audience calling
Speaker 5: phone line. So I'm just curious by what metric and
Speaker 5: what standard right that they would think that they're more
Speaker 5: deserving to be there. But it's just annoying because I
Speaker 5: think to respond to these accusations, I then become like
Speaker 5: the trope of what they want me to become.
Speaker 6: Where I'm sitting here saying like.
Speaker 5: Sorry, I wore a sweater, like sorry, I'm blonde, and
Speaker 5: I'm like, that's so and it cracks me up too,
Speaker 5: And I know I'm rambling but in the stories, but
Speaker 5: it really cracks me up because, like, for your audience
Speaker 5: who's not familiar with me, my background was in investigative reporting.
Speaker 5: I was the person who had no social life. All
Speaker 5: I did was stay up and go through like pharophilings
Speaker 5: and the Federal Register and USA Spending dot gov and
Speaker 5: reading Brookings Institution reports. I have like never traded off
Speaker 5: being a young girl in media I love.
Speaker 6: I always referred myself.
Speaker 5: As like an autistic in so like I love researching,
Speaker 5: and it was just funny to be portrayed as something
Speaker 5: that I so don't view myself as, but then like
Speaker 5: deciding how to push back against. It was my first
Speaker 5: time ever really being smeared as something that I just
Speaker 5: felt so desperate from.
Speaker 1: Do some more. Let's hear some more background, like where
Speaker 1: you came from?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, so where'd you grow up? And how'd you
Speaker 1: become political for the first time?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 5: So, I was born and raised in Los Angeles in
Speaker 5: Santa Monica, and my parents were conservative, but more run
Speaker 5: of the mill kind of like a politically conservative, like
Speaker 5: just default, like oh I just don't really want to
Speaker 5: pay taxes like the classic trope. But I was fortunate
Speaker 5: enough to go to a very Democrats.
Speaker 1: Now are they still? No?
Speaker 5: No, they're still My mom is like a Mike Lindell
Speaker 5: super fan.
Speaker 6: She's watched too much more room. My dad's maybe not
Speaker 6: so much. On the bipillage right now.
Speaker 5: But I was very blessed to have gone to probably
Speaker 5: one of the most prestigious high schools in certainly California,
Speaker 5: in the country, Harvard Westlake.
Speaker 6: Which is Zebra Alex Marlow. Yes andlia Han.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, this is this is not
Speaker 4: uncommon in abandoned world that you come from.
Speaker 6: The defects from Oweden's public school.
Speaker 4: It's private, right, yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the year that I was applying to college was
Speaker 5: the year that Operation Varsity Blues, if you remember, the
Speaker 5: girls like pretending to be on the growers. So actually
Speaker 5: one of my best friends from elementary school was the
Speaker 5: daughter of the individual people who sort of I guess
Speaker 5: like radded to the Feds or leaked on the whole thing.
Speaker 5: So that was an interesting just sort of like class
Speaker 5: system understanding where I was like, oh, and for me,
Speaker 5: getting into college at Harvard Westlake was like the apex.
Speaker 6: It was why you existed, the paragon of existence, right.
Speaker 5: And seeing a sort of admission system where it was
Speaker 5: like you either had to be a first gen LGBTQ,
Speaker 5: you know whatever to get in, or you had to
Speaker 5: be some like old guard, old money, super blue bloody
Speaker 5: type donating, you know, ten million dollars to.
Speaker 6: A fake sports program.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, that's an interesting way to conceive
Speaker 5: of American society, which I think is very bannon esque, right,
Speaker 5: it is that Republican versus democrat.
Speaker 6: I was never really into that, but it was very.
Speaker 5: Like, oh, the elites and there's sort of woke pet
Speaker 5: projects and then everyone else and concurrently on that timeline,
Speaker 5: it was also or the year's prior, it had been
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen. So I graduated high school in twenty nineteen
Speaker 5: and I saw in twenty three and I was in
Speaker 5: tenth grade during President Trump's twenty sixteen election cycle, and
Speaker 5: I was not like the cringe person in the maga hat,
Speaker 5: like trying to just cause conflict for the sake of
Speaker 5: causing conflict. I remember at first I had like an
Speaker 5: English teacher who was so radical, I mean, like the
Speaker 5: short dyed hair. She ultimately became a they them and
Speaker 5: encouraged other kids in our class to like transition like
Speaker 5: the whole like literally the meme that you hear on
Speaker 5: Fox News, like it was that kind of teacher. And
Speaker 5: I remember one day I had lied to her because
Speaker 5: it was the election day and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: because we were going around, she wanted us to all
Speaker 5: tell stories of like how you know, politically and civically
Speaker 5: engaged you were. And I was like, oh, I saw
Speaker 5: like a young family voting and they all had like
Speaker 5: Hillary weear on and it made me feel like really empowered,
Speaker 5: and it was like the worst feeling that I ever had,
Speaker 5: because I was like, I don't ever want to lie
Speaker 5: to be and I don't want to live a truth
Speaker 5: that is not my own. And very shortly after I
Speaker 5: was like, I'm never doing that again. Got into a
Speaker 5: very long form like controversial debate because they were having
Speaker 5: a gender pay gap bake sale, and I was like,
Speaker 5: the gender pay gap doesn't exist, rattled off to like
Speaker 5: quintessential peak twenty sixteen culture war like prayer you talking points,
Speaker 5: and from then on I think got sort.
Speaker 6: Of type cast, at least in high school.
Speaker 5: As like the Maga turning Point girl, which was so
Speaker 5: not me. I always pride myself like I love my job,
Speaker 5: but I have a you know, whole life outside of
Speaker 5: it too, And I think that there's sort of this
Speaker 5: weird urge to like type cast all conservatives on campus
Speaker 5: as sort of like zoo animal that's your only personality.
Speaker 6: And I did a podcast because.
Speaker 5: They had started a show called Right on Point, and
Speaker 5: I was under the impression that it was like, oh,
Speaker 5: we can say what we want. And I'd been sort
Speaker 5: of pushing the administration to bring conservative speakers. They had
Speaker 5: literally had a member of the Communist Party USA come
Speaker 5: and speak, and they had sort.
Speaker 6: Of abdicated their role.
Speaker 5: I would argue of admissions, and they kind of weaponized
Speaker 5: that whole process just to accept essentially, like you know,
Speaker 5: minority is the whole DEI trope. But I was very
Speaker 5: disheartened sort of seeing all this happen around me, so
Speaker 5: I tried to push back, not in like a hair
Speaker 5: on fire kind of way, but just like raising points.
Speaker 5: You guys say you care about diversity, what about diversity
Speaker 5: of thought? And apparently what I said on the podcast
Speaker 5: was really controversial. They had to call an emergency meeting
Speaker 5: with like the Gay Straight Alliance, the Feminists Club, like
Speaker 5: the Black Kids Club.
Speaker 1: What'd you say?
Speaker 6: I just said, I wasn't a feminist.
Speaker 5: I was like, you know, I kind of explained why,
Speaker 5: like Trump, particularly on immigration, it wasn't a lot more
Speaker 5: radical now for.
Speaker 4: Since in fact, when Ryan announced you were coming on
Speaker 4: the shop I since referred to like Tranny is and
Speaker 4: gone further along those lines, which I think is probably
Speaker 4: an arc that a lot of people in your generation
Speaker 4: have gone down in the last several years too.
Speaker 6: Yes, I think for sure.
Speaker 5: I mean also to just from my perspective, before Steve
Speaker 5: went to prison, I was doing more investigative reporting, particularly
Speaker 5: on Chinese Communist Party infiltration, which I guess was where
Speaker 5: I was getting to my story, and I'm very proud
Speaker 5: of the work that I did, you know, members of Congress,
Speaker 5: the Republican Study Commission, sided at the National Association of Scholars.
Speaker 5: I broke a lot of stories about the origins of COVID,
Speaker 5: stories from Hunter Biden's Hard Drive that led to the
Speaker 5: removal of you know, Peter Dawshak from the COVID Origins
Speaker 5: investigative team. Doing like I said, the exclusives listening to
Speaker 5: the audio tapes from Hunter Biden's hard Drive is I think,
Speaker 5: an extremely cool career accomplishment. I was, you know, nineteen
Speaker 5: or twenty at the time, so I always focused on that,
Speaker 5: and my approach to doing media was like, I never
Speaker 5: want to be an opinion commentator because I was very
Speaker 5: cognizant of my age, and I think being a woman too.
Speaker 5: I was just like, I don't ever want to come
Speaker 5: off like my opinion matters because it doesn't like I
Speaker 5: don't have experience, Like I was very cognizant of that,
Speaker 5: always abstained from doing opinion commentary. And then when Steve
Speaker 5: went to prison and I joined the show about two
Speaker 5: years ago as a co host, I couldn't just rattle
Speaker 5: off my like deep dive researching for an hour while
Speaker 5: hosting a show, right, It's a different gig.
Speaker 6: So I always joke that, like, the.
Speaker 5: Worst thing they did was send Steve to prison because
Speaker 5: it helped me kind of find my broadcasting voice and
Speaker 5: go on the rants, which I know we were talking about,
Speaker 5: but that sort of forced me, pushed me into that role.
Speaker 5: But to my core, deep down, I'm like an OPO
Speaker 5: researcher and I wish I had the time and the
Speaker 5: chance to do that more. But I also think people
Speaker 5: people like the rants. They like the kind of inflammatory content.
Speaker 5: Not that I'm you know, trying to be like the
Speaker 5: Daily Veil and go for clickbait, but you know, if
Speaker 5: you're doing these long form investigative pieces and no one's
Speaker 5: reading them.
Speaker 6: It's kind of like, what's what's the point.
Speaker 1: We have a clip from one short's going.
Speaker 6: To make me watch myself?
Speaker 4: I need that.
Speaker 1: It's pretty short. So yeah, let's ex two here.
Speaker 5: These House Republicans, they love to focus on the culture
Speaker 5: war so much, right, the limited hangout that the trannys
Speaker 5: in the bathrooms? Right, Well, Speaker Johnson and most of
Speaker 5: your colleagues, maybe there are a few good ones, the
Speaker 5: ones we have on this show, But I would humbly
Speaker 5: suggest that before you start screaming about transgender surgeries, that
Speaker 5: you focus on yourself because last time I checked, you
Speaker 5: don't even have any balls. And I'm not being hyperbolic
Speaker 5: when I say that, I'm actually just quoting you, Speaker Johnson.
Speaker 5: Let's introduce you to a version of yourself just a
Speaker 5: few months ago, who pledged that we were not going
Speaker 5: to have a Christmas time omnibus. But oops, here we are, Denver.
Speaker 1: Let's roll it so it goes. It goes on from there,
Speaker 1: so obviously from the left to people who don't use
Speaker 1: phrases like trannies. But one piece of that I wanted
Speaker 1: to pick up on is what is an inherently left
Speaker 1: wing analysis in there? Which is that elites use culture
Speaker 1: war yeah drama to distract from material analysis. And I
Speaker 1: was telling you before you came to the show that
Speaker 1: oftentimes I'll listen to your rants and I'll be like
Speaker 1: nodding along.
Speaker 4: He's a very regular listener.
Speaker 1: I'll be like nodding along for all yep, yep, check
Speaker 1: check check check, and then it'll veer off and I'm like, WHOA, well, ky,
Speaker 1: this is where I get off, and you you head
Speaker 1: over here. I wonder and I'm I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: following your career because I wonder if and say the
Speaker 1: same with you, like I feel like there's a more
Speaker 1: space on the left for you guys, if you if
Speaker 1: you can recognize like fully that that this culture war
Speaker 1: stuff is genuinely what you're what you were saying it
Speaker 1: was in that clip, That is, it is an elite
Speaker 1: distraction from intended to divide the working class so that
Speaker 1: the elites can go ahead and then accomplish their agenda.
Speaker 1: In this show, we're always in you know, the right.
Speaker 1: Left wing populism and right wing populists are always intention
Speaker 1: and my my argument consistently is that they're whatever the
Speaker 1: kind of motivations of good right wing populists. Actual right
Speaker 1: wing populism in practice winds up being co opted by
Speaker 1: the elon Musk's like the Ken Martin, who became the
Speaker 1: DNC chair recently rightly has gotten pillaried for this hilarious
Speaker 1: clip of him where he says, we're not going to
Speaker 1: take money from bad billionaires, but there are good billionaires
Speaker 1: and good like that's he should be pillaryed for that,
Speaker 1: because that's completely absurd. Right wing populism often falls into
Speaker 1: that same trap that and that's why sometimes it falls
Speaker 1: into conspiracism too and anti semitism, because the left has
Speaker 1: a structural analysis it's the one percent those are the
Speaker 1: bad ones, and there's no division between within the one percent.
Speaker 1: They're all bad, they're all capitalists, they're all ripping, ripping
Speaker 1: off the workers. For the right, when they say it's
Speaker 1: these cosmopolitan elites that are the bad ones and there's
Speaker 1: and there's some good ones like Musk or others, sometimes
Speaker 1: what that analysis needs is anti semitism to say it's
Speaker 1: actually the Jews who are doing it. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that the war room does that, but like that, I
Speaker 1: think that's why you get the strain of anti Semitism
Speaker 1: and right wing popular.
Speaker 4: Because populism as well, far left wing populism has the
Speaker 4: same problem.
Speaker 1: Well it shouldn't because it can say that all bankers
Speaker 1: are bad. It doesn't have to say that Jewish bankers
Speaker 1: are bad.
Speaker 4: Yes, but they will say that all of the bankers
Speaker 4: are Jewish bankers, Sorrytalie.
Speaker 1: And if they do, they should be run out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so there's this tension between the different wings of populism
Speaker 1: and uh so, and I often hear you talking about
Speaker 1: you and and and Steve Bannon as well, talking about
Speaker 1: the way that they're trying to divide people. Bannon recently
Speaker 1: in that New York Times column was saying, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Democrats screwed up because they beat Dornie Sanders like if.
Speaker 1: And I've spoken to him over the years, and I
Speaker 1: know he's being he's he's said this in real time,
Speaker 1: genuine he thought. He thinks Rokanna has a good analysis.
Speaker 1: He thinks Elizabeth Warren had a good populist economic populist analysis,
Speaker 1: and that if Democrats had effectively been able to render
Speaker 1: that then they would have had more purchase with regular
Speaker 1: people than they than with whatever this Ken Martin style
Speaker 1: DNC stuff is, so you know, so, how did how
Speaker 1: did your politics wind up kind of where they are?
Speaker 5: Well, I too, am an avid consumer of MSMBC. We're
Speaker 5: the same kindred spirits, and I'm trying to understand why
Speaker 5: I like watching it so much. I think I like
Speaker 5: hate watching My conclusion I've come to is it's like
Speaker 5: a slot machine. It's very dope magenic because you never
Speaker 5: know when they're going to say something crazy, right, so
Speaker 5: you're very hooked in. But I think that that clip
Speaker 5: is sort of I think very I would say representative
Speaker 5: of the distinction between war room and traditional conservative media
Speaker 5: because that night, probably you know, Fox News's main story
Speaker 5: was the transgender bathroom bill and the whole like Nancy
Speaker 5: Mace debacle, and we're like, okay, yes, that's an important issue,
Speaker 5: but it's sort of a shiny toy. It's a distraction.
Speaker 5: And I think that that's how Washington has operated for
Speaker 5: a very long time. I know, whence you was in prison,
Speaker 5: we were really staunchly against the crplus Save Act because
Speaker 5: we're like, you guys have done nothing for election integrity
Speaker 5: for the two years you've been here.
Speaker 6: Don't tell us now.
Speaker 5: Like a month before the election, that you suddenly care about,
Speaker 5: you know, securing elections. So that's where we need to
Speaker 5: get behind omnibus spending like you guys have done for
Speaker 5: what like sixteen times in the past few years. So
Speaker 5: that is I think, you know, the tranny referends aside
Speaker 5: an interesting I think sort of clip that shows you
Speaker 5: the difference where our show, I think sort of excels
Speaker 5: in terms of act taking on these issues.
Speaker 6: But I think it's interesting.
Speaker 5: And this is something too that Steve and I have
Speaker 5: sort of talked about on the show a lot, which
Speaker 5: is how Democrats will triage their twenty twenty four loss,
Speaker 5: because whatever they choose to identify as being the variable
Speaker 5: will obviously sort of dictate how they then progress forward.
Speaker 5: And I think in the beginning you saw a lot
Speaker 5: of meltdown over like misinformation and disinformation and we need
Speaker 5: our own Joe Rogan, and you know, then that's sort
Speaker 5: of a different position that they would take of like, Okay,
Speaker 5: well we got to double down on the censorship.
Speaker 6: We need to like fund independent media.
Speaker 5: Though I think the way they use the term independent
Speaker 5: media is a little cagy. But I think the civil
Speaker 5: war that's brewing that I think Frankly, if it pans
Speaker 5: out the way that.
Speaker 6: You're probably more inclined for it too.
Speaker 5: If it does pan out that way, it's bad for Republicans,
Speaker 5: it's bad for like my side, the populist right, is
Speaker 5: that the sort of more I think non establishment wing
Speaker 5: in the Democratic Party wants to take us on. I
Speaker 5: think probably has more similarities with us on protect workers rights.
Speaker 5: You're against the H one B visa stuff, and that's
Speaker 5: what most Americans I think support, right, it's sort of
Speaker 5: the reorientation of the political system outside of Republican versus Democrat,
Speaker 5: but like American workers and the ruling class, like Steve
Speaker 5: always says, And I think what you're seeing now is,
Speaker 5: you know, even with Ken Martin, like the Democratic establishment
Speaker 5: and the same way that they sabotage Bernie Sanders, just
Speaker 5: a refusal to hand it over to the sort of
Speaker 5: more activist wing of their party, which they like to
Speaker 5: decry and I think sort of villainizes like a bunch
Speaker 5: of you know, Hamas caused.
Speaker 6: Player protester types, which is part of your party. I'm
Speaker 6: sorry to report.
Speaker 5: But I also think that there are a lot of
Speaker 5: like you know, the more disaffected Democrat coalition and I
Speaker 5: think if you guys were to take those issues like immigration,
Speaker 5: like workers rights, even Bernie Sanders was on the warm side.
Speaker 6: Of the HMMBVSA debate, right, that's a lot more politically salient.
Speaker 5: I do think, however, that the version of left wing
Speaker 5: populism here in the United States is I think sort
Speaker 5: of weighed down by the identity politics in terms of
Speaker 5: you guys can't support you know, deportations or ice raids,
Speaker 5: or strengthening the border or saw the idea of sovereignty,
Speaker 5: because I think you guys are not saying you in particular,
Speaker 5: but have really bought into some really radical propositions about
Speaker 5: you know, like you know, starting off the DNC with
Speaker 5: like the Stolen Land declaration and just the idea that
Speaker 5: deportations are racist and that if you talk about, you know,
Speaker 5: a great replacement theory, that like that's totally not happening,
Speaker 5: that's a conspiracy. It's like, well, that's not a racialized sentiment,
Speaker 5: it's a replacement theory, and it's happening of American workers, right.
Speaker 5: They're importing our replacement and they're making Americans train their replacements.
Speaker 5: So I think that the refusal for the populace left
Speaker 5: to sort of engage.
Speaker 6: With that issue.
Speaker 5: Please keep doing it because it helps us. But if
Speaker 5: you guys were to really embrace that, like you know,
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris said, for I guess, for the first time
Speaker 5: ever in her history, the word sovereignty down while she
Speaker 5: was talking in the Arizona border during the campaign trail,
Speaker 5: or the patriotic flags inside the DNC.
Speaker 6: It sort of took everyone for a shock. They're like,
Speaker 6: what the heck? This is so new.
Speaker 5: But I don't think that the democratic elites will allow
Speaker 5: that to happen. And even that Senator I forget who
Speaker 5: did a whole tweet thread where they basically said that, like,
Speaker 5: it's bad for our donors if we embrace populism.
Speaker 1: I missed that one, but yeah, it certainly is intention
Speaker 1: with the donors.
Speaker 4: Well, and this is like a obviously a huge conversation
Speaker 4: about the ideological overrap lap. We have a question from
Speaker 4: one person in our audience, Nathan Carasberg.
Speaker 1: Gest readers that our viewers to send stuff in And.
Speaker 4: Nathan, that's what would it take for the populist left
Speaker 4: and the populist right to agree to disagree on culture
Speaker 4: and unite against the techno feudalists and transhumanists. Otherwise, I
Speaker 4: don't see how we humans win. And this is a
Speaker 4: really interesting question because of kind of the H one
Speaker 4: visa dust up that we were talking about earlier in
Speaker 4: that Elon Musk super pro H one B visa's behind
Speaker 4: neuralink and a lot of AI software's complicated. Person but
Speaker 4: that's the bucket that he's in. And for a lot
Speaker 4: of people in the populist right, this is really offensive
Speaker 4: and it's sort of exactly what the fight against the
Speaker 4: left was.
Speaker 1: Who was given credit, Nathan.
Speaker 4: Finberg was positioned datas for a really long time. So
Speaker 4: I'm curious what you make of Nathan's question, Natalie from
Speaker 4: your vantage point, like can everyone agree to disagree on
Speaker 4: culture or is this actually part and parcel of the
Speaker 4: cultural war in and of itself.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that H one B eight all of you,
Speaker 5: there's so many visa categories. It's insane that debate. It's wild,
Speaker 5: Like that sort of represented that sort of re orientation,
Speaker 5: like the political fracturing I think you saw most acutely
Speaker 5: on the Republican side of things. I will say I
Speaker 5: think it was really just kind of war room from
Speaker 5: like an immedia perspective. Who and Steve Who who held
Speaker 5: the line most people right, really kind of jumped on
Speaker 5: the Elon Musk bandwagon.
Speaker 6: And I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think for starters, I love the idea
Speaker 5: of a big tent, right, I love the idea of
Speaker 5: bringing people in, and it's maybe great to see the
Speaker 5: tech bros liking us, But you know, I also think too,
Speaker 5: like you have to preserve some of the reasons that
Speaker 5: those people didn't like us in the beginning, and that
Speaker 5: was because we weren't like I would argue the Obama
Speaker 5: White House that was just like, hey, here's free a
Speaker 5: liv bit of money.
Speaker 6: We're not going to regulate you, just like please support
Speaker 6: us it.
Speaker 4: Musk didn't like Trump in the beginning, and you, Musk
Speaker 4: took a lot of money from Obama to start Tesla
Speaker 4: when it was not start, but to reinvigorate Tesla exactly.
Speaker 5: And we've even more broadly, I think, have been very
Speaker 5: critical of the tech bro like newfound Maga conversion.
Speaker 6: I think it's very performative.
Speaker 5: I think they have tried to do a kind of
Speaker 5: limited hangout version of what they did to the Maga movement,
Speaker 5: where they're like, oh, sorry, we accidentally censored you. I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 5: you algorithmically manipulated, blacklisted, censored, D banked D platforms spent
Speaker 5: what a billion dollars to like mess with the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty election, So we're not going to let you get
Speaker 5: away with that on like a two page letter, Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 5: But I think that to me, the H and B
Speaker 5: VSA debate was something that was very eye opening because
Speaker 5: I have done War and what for four is years now,
Speaker 5: which makes me feel very old.
Speaker 4: It's like your entire adult life really, since.
Speaker 6: I did the show the first time when I was
Speaker 6: nineteen mm hm.
Speaker 5: Fun fact, I had no Wi Fi connection at my house,
Speaker 5: so I had to do it in a friend's kitchen
Speaker 5: and I was standing up.
Speaker 6: So we've come a long way. I'm sitting down in
Speaker 6: a studio.
Speaker 5: But I had never received such an outpouring of support
Speaker 5: from our audience because we took a really hard line.
Speaker 5: I did an hour long episode with Steve where I
Speaker 5: sort of dug into the myth that is a, we
Speaker 5: need to be importing a bunch of foreign workers and
Speaker 5: B that the people who were therefore importing are the
Speaker 5: best and the brightest, and it wasn't I think talking
Speaker 5: points that anyone had really heard.
Speaker 6: I stayed up literally all night, and I just.
Speaker 5: Like read every government testimony ever, government report, like read
Speaker 5: a book on I was just like, the data is
Speaker 5: truly astounding.
Speaker 6: You never hear about it. This was all based on
Speaker 6: a lie.
Speaker 5: And of every issue I've ever covered, I never received
Speaker 5: so many messages from people, not just saying like, yes,
Speaker 5: you're on it, you're on the right side, but more
Speaker 5: importantly people being like this is my lived reality. Like
Speaker 5: I was replaced, I had to train a replacement, my
Speaker 5: wife did this, my son can't get a tech job.
Speaker 5: And that was when I really had a realization. I
Speaker 5: was like, Wow, this really is a politically significant and
Speaker 5: palpable issue. Like talk about the bathrooms, okay, whatever, that's
Speaker 5: the crux of it. And frankly, I think the sort
Speaker 5: of irony or paradox of the whole, like vivek situation,
Speaker 5: was that I think the H one BH two be
Speaker 5: all the visa categories. I think that's something that's just
Speaker 5: sort of gets swept under the rug, like people don't
Speaker 5: really know about it, like they do know about it,
Speaker 5: like you know, vaguely. It's like a nebulous thing. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're certainly like importing a bunch of workers.
Speaker 6: It's kind of symbolic, yeah, but it's not like, oh
Speaker 6: my gosh.
Speaker 5: When you actually get the numbers and you see who's overstaying,
Speaker 5: you're like, wow, this is a really, really, really deep problem.
Speaker 5: And I think that they sort of unintentionally expose themselves
Speaker 5: by like forcing a conversation, because now you know when
Speaker 5: the hebh to bo whenever visa sort of regulation or
Speaker 5: legislation comes.
Speaker 6: Through Congress or President Trump speaks on it.
Speaker 5: It's now such a hot button issue where I think
Speaker 5: we're on the right side of it.
Speaker 4: But are you destined to divorce with Musk?
Speaker 6: I mean, he gets a seat at the table, and
Speaker 6: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I think he recognized what was going on in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: I think they were smart to not put all their
Speaker 5: money into just like super TV ads, but it was
Speaker 5: like boots on the ground, door knocking grassroots, like.
Speaker 6: We have an affinity there. But he gets a seat
Speaker 6: at the table.
Speaker 5: He doesn't get like a commandeering presence to co opt
Speaker 5: the entire MAGA movement. And I think that Warroom has
Speaker 5: really been instrumental in pushing back against him, like imagine
Speaker 5: a world in which Steve Bannon wasn't there from within
Speaker 5: the Maga tent to be pushing back against some of
Speaker 5: the stuff that Elon does. And I also think too,
Speaker 5: like there's a very strong mindset to make everything very
Speaker 5: black and white, like it's gray, Like some of the
Speaker 5: stuff Elon does is good and some of it.
Speaker 6: Is probably not good.
Speaker 5: And maybe MSNBC's criticisms of him are accurate, and maybe
Speaker 5: they're not, but I think it shows why. Frankly, I
Speaker 5: think they don't want a sort of how we say, rogue,
Speaker 5: kind of war Room esque outlet right because we call it,
Speaker 5: we call the balls and stricks, like we are not afraid.
Speaker 5: We don't cater or cow tow to anyone. I would
Speaker 5: argue we're actually dependent. We're not beholden to anyone in
Speaker 5: Maga world or the other side.
Speaker 4: But you're playing and ask tough questions then of Caroline
Speaker 4: love It, which if people don't listen to war Room,
Speaker 4: very critical of Musk, very critical of certain moves when
Speaker 4: you get on the wrong side. So I think that's actually.
Speaker 5: People want mass deportations and we will, we need them.
Speaker 5: And if we are not meeting that benchmark, then I'm
Speaker 5: going to be asking about it. If we're not meeting
Speaker 5: the benchmark on certain policy proposals or campaign promises that
Speaker 5: our audience worked so hard to get them elected, I'll
Speaker 5: be asking about that, which I think.
Speaker 6: Is really funny.
Speaker 5: The idea that, like I'm there's some like lackey to
Speaker 5: just you know, make the Trump admin look great. I
Speaker 5: think they've been doing wonderful stuff so far most part.
Speaker 5: But my job there is to sort of speak for
Speaker 5: our audience, and we've been very forthright in criticizing when
Speaker 5: you know, criticized, criticism is necessary. We shouldn't be stapling
Speaker 5: green cards to diplomas, and we criticized that. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: I think the like trope of us is like Trump
Speaker 5: sycophants or something is very off base if you actually
Speaker 5: and this you too, like you were saying, so many
Speaker 5: people don't actually watch War Room. And some of the
Speaker 5: most like interesting funny conversations I've ever had is when
Speaker 5: people start, you know, totally a political classic, oh so
Speaker 5: what do you do?
Speaker 6: And I'm always like, I work in media, and they're like,
Speaker 6: you know, finally it's like the eighth question. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'll just tell you what I do. Oh, you work
Speaker 6: for Steve Bannon. I thought he hates women and he's
Speaker 6: like a Nazi and blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, actually, no, Steve is for like taxing
Speaker 5: the billionaires as much as possible. He's against concentrated well,
Speaker 5: he's for breaking this up. And you know, he's all
Speaker 5: about the America work. And they're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: that's so not what I thought he was, which I
Speaker 5: think sort of speaks the way they've sort of defamed
Speaker 5: the right wing populist movement because it is such a
Speaker 5: politically powerful force, and.
Speaker 1: So compared to Musk, there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: on the left that would prefer that Bannon when it
Speaker 1: comes to those pieces that you laid out, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the master deportations, but the other parts that he beat Musk.
Speaker 1: And so we have a question here from David Flagg.
Speaker 1: He says, what can liberals do to support Bannon over Musk? So, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what would you what would you tell that
Speaker 1: is a good question.
Speaker 6: Well, let's see, I got to put myself in the
Speaker 6: mind of both liberals and Steve V. K.
Speaker 1: Bannon or not really, because pretend they're liberally are going
Speaker 1: to do what you tell them to do. I think
Speaker 1: what their question is because they don't really understand the
Speaker 1: right wing ecosystem, and they don't know what levers to
Speaker 1: pull and what would help and what what wouldn't help.
Speaker 1: Sometimes what they do would backfire. They might if they
Speaker 1: support something, then it might lead someone the right to
Speaker 1: be like, well, if Bernie and AOC are for that,
Speaker 1: it must be bad.
Speaker 5: I think what I would say is, I think the
Speaker 5: media has a playbook with how they are covering the
Speaker 5: Trump administration, and to sort of back into this, they
Speaker 5: don't have any levers of governmental or institutional power right
Speaker 5: now to necessarily push back.
Speaker 6: Right They've lost like everything.
Speaker 5: And I think if you read or just listen to MSNBC,
Speaker 5: but sort of historically their playbook, and you know, I'm
Speaker 5: inclined to bring up sort of like the norm Eisends
Speaker 5: of the World, the Brookings Institution, their democracy playbook, how
Speaker 5: they've sort of pushed for regime change in foreign countries
Speaker 5: that's been through the idea of civil society in an
Speaker 5: opposition to what they call democratic backsliding. And I have
Speaker 5: always viewed the depiction of President Trump as a dictator
Speaker 5: as an autocrat, as an authoritarian, as part of a
Speaker 5: sort of narrative game to sort of stick us in
Speaker 5: the mindset of like, oh, we're having democratic backsliding going on. Therefore,
Speaker 5: even though we don't have the constitutional or electoral authority
Speaker 5: to impeach Trump or push back against him, we're justified
Speaker 5: because we're defending democracy. And I think the Elon Musk
Speaker 5: coverage oftentimes, when it gets reduced into Elon is acting
Speaker 5: like an autocrat and it's a hostile takeover of the
Speaker 5: United States government, it's not really all that hostile. I
Speaker 5: think Elon played a pretty visible role in the campaign trial.
Speaker 5: I think Doze was probably one of the most visible
Speaker 5: campaign promises of President Trump's twenty twenty four campaign. I
Speaker 5: just would sort of reject that framing. So, if you
Speaker 5: want to criticize Elon Musk, I don't think it's a
Speaker 5: very powerful tactic to decry him as like unelected dictator,
Speaker 5: shadow president evilman. I think it's more powerful when he
Speaker 5: messes up on issues like the m B visa to
Speaker 5: just call it out more plainly for what it is.
Speaker 5: And I think remind Trump right that the people elected
Speaker 5: you for the right wing populism stuff the Bannon world
Speaker 5: view a step. I would attack it more from the
Speaker 5: angle of like put American workers first, not oh, we
Speaker 5: have to get rid of Elon Musk and defend USAID
Speaker 5: because Elon's being an autocrat and he wasn't elected.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: The whole agency is run by unelected baracots and billionaires
Speaker 5: run the Democratic Party.
Speaker 6: So I think those attacks are.
Speaker 5: A lot more powerful than like buying into the paradigm
Speaker 5: that it's dictator Elon and dictator Tron.
Speaker 4: So from the perspective of a conservative populist, I look
Speaker 4: at Elon Musk and sort of like what Ryan Gerduski,
Speaker 4: I don't know, did you see his post about Musk.
Speaker 4: He said, let's just say there was a billionaire who's
Speaker 4: made most of their money from businesses whose success was
Speaker 4: based on government contracts and subsidies. The way you go
Speaker 4: from being a billionaire to being a trillionaire is getting
Speaker 4: a hold of government data and using it for your
Speaker 4: next business. I thought that was pretty interesting because, again,
Speaker 4: like as another served a populist, I look at what
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is doing getting rid of USAID. Amazing, cathartic, beautiful,
Speaker 4: a masterpiece. But at the same time, you now have
Speaker 4: like a genuine oligarch running loose in the government, and
Speaker 4: I can see easily how it would be a way
Speaker 4: to enrich He could use it as a way to
Speaker 4: enrich himself. And I feel like people who were against
Speaker 4: the concentration of power in the hands of people like
Speaker 4: Elon Musk on principled ideological reasons, I worry that we're
Speaker 4: sort of getting numb to having him run loose in
Speaker 4: the government. And I'm curious what you make of just
Speaker 4: like from the principle of Elon Musk coming in and
Speaker 4: cleaning house potentially in a way that could enrich himself,
Speaker 4: what is that? Do you have similar sort of like
Speaker 4: principled ideological aversions to the idea of as you said, well, okay,
Speaker 4: under Biden it was on elected bureaucrats in the pockets
Speaker 4: of billionaires. But then do we end up with like
Speaker 4: replacing those un elected bureaucrats in the pockets of billionaires
Speaker 4: with they're unlike to bureaucrats' billionaires.
Speaker 5: Our bureaucrats are better than their billaiers are right than
Speaker 5: their billaires. No, I think there's there's so many verticals
Speaker 5: that they're kind of carrying out this what I'm sure
Speaker 5: Steve would call like deconstruction of the administrative state. And
Speaker 5: I think you just have to take kind of each agency,
Speaker 5: each department through its own paradigm. And what do I
Speaker 5: mean by that, Like what's going on with DOJ and FBI.
Speaker 5: I think that's more like a legal battle like unitary
Speaker 5: executive theory, Like is President Shrump's chief magistrate? Like does
Speaker 5: the president have authority over not as the mainstream media
Speaker 5: makes it like, oh, he wants to control over all
Speaker 5: three branches, but no of the entire executive branch.
Speaker 6: Does he have the right to hire and fire?
Speaker 5: And I think that's what you're seeing go down right
Speaker 5: now with like the FBI purge right in the lawsuits
Speaker 5: that they're putting out getting rid of January sixth agents,
Speaker 5: Like that's the paradigm to view that through the USAID thing. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't think it's great to have unelected billionaires running
Speaker 5: any government agency.
Speaker 6: Of course that's bad.
Speaker 5: But spare me means media the performative outrage that you
Speaker 5: guys either a care about the Constitution or b that
Speaker 5: you care about unelected bureaucrats or billionaires running government so
Speaker 5: it's the framing of it I sort of reject, but
Speaker 5: I think you just have to take it.
Speaker 6: I mean, day by day.
Speaker 5: I mean I also think too, I'm also sort of inclined,
Speaker 5: and maybe this is a little less ideological, but I
Speaker 5: remember President Trump, what did he say in twenty sixteen
Speaker 5: when he was talking to African Americans?
Speaker 6: He's like, what do you guys have to lose? And
Speaker 6: I sort of feel.
Speaker 5: Like that's the approach of the Trump administration now in
Speaker 5: a more broad sort of whole of government, whole of
Speaker 5: society approach, which I mean by that it's like, we're
Speaker 5: so fiscally insolvent. Fiscally it's so bad, Like what do
Speaker 5: we have to lose by maybe taking a chance on
Speaker 5: another way of running the government. And yes, I'm sure
Speaker 5: you would give me a whole litany.
Speaker 6: Of what we have to lose.
Speaker 5: But on the other hand, what we're doing is not working,
Speaker 5: and what we've been doing at USAID is not working.
Speaker 5: And I think that there's this desire to sort of
Speaker 5: whitewash and euphemize, particularly in the context of usaideas like oh,
Speaker 5: we're helping Bangladeshi refugees eat, and it's like well, maybe,
Speaker 5: I mean, what is like twelve cents to the dollar
Speaker 5: actually makes it over to whatever country it actually is.
Speaker 5: But a lot of those usaid programs not only are
Speaker 5: a really concerning and have to do with like funding
Speaker 5: biological weapons in China and collaborating with DARPA.
Speaker 6: And stuff where you're like, what is going on here?
Speaker 5: But as someone who frequents the USA spending you know,
Speaker 5: database website a lot, there also is no oversight. And
Speaker 5: I think that that lack of oversight is almost equally
Speaker 5: bad as maybe lack of oversight on Elon Musk for example,
Speaker 5: there are a ton of government grants and they all
Speaker 5: curiously popped up starting around twenty sixteen combating misinformation disinformation.
Speaker 5: I'm talking like thousands in foreign countries in I mean
Speaker 5: Pakistan and India and the UK like everything everywhere, right,
Speaker 5: And you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, And
Speaker 5: if you read the grants, it's literally just like to
Speaker 5: empower and journalists and combat misinformation in Uzbekistan. And you're like, well,
Speaker 5: what the heck does that mean? And then I've gone
Speaker 5: a step further. If you look on Google Maps, like
Speaker 5: you look at the addresses to the places that these
Speaker 5: sizable sums of money are going to. There's shacks on
Speaker 5: the side of the road, like they're not real.
Speaker 6: It's fun. You should people should go and do it.
Speaker 6: It's wild, Okay, it's insane.
Speaker 5: And that's where I'm like, I think, if you look,
Speaker 5: I think why they're melting down about usai D.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's because these are basically almost spy programs and
Speaker 1: they're trying to they're covering the real identity because but I.
Speaker 5: Also think it's how this town has gotten rich. I
Speaker 5: think through usai D, I think they've laundered money and
Speaker 5: I use that in the truest sense in the name
Speaker 5: of democracy through a bunch of NGOs that you're like,
Speaker 5: what are you even doing?
Speaker 6: And two, I think why.
Speaker 5: They're melting down about the USAID stuff. And I do
Speaker 5: think it is interesting watching the mainstream media sort of
Speaker 5: just what to take the bait on, because I think
Speaker 5: that was the lesson that they learned from the Trump
Speaker 5: administration the first iteration. They're like, we can't melt down,
Speaker 5: we can't become apoplectic over everything. But I think they're
Speaker 5: resistance strategy this time around, or what they now are
Speaker 5: terming the opposition since they can't impeach him, since they
Speaker 5: can't really do anything. I know they were standing on
Speaker 5: the steps of USAID saying, you know, shut down the Senate,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, all right, Ress's appointments vib I mean no.
Speaker 5: But their plan and I think you see it in
Speaker 5: the groups that they've been setting up, like, for example,
Speaker 5: Democracy Forward, which is the like kind of consortium of
Speaker 5: a bunch of resistance type orgs. They've started a group
Speaker 5: called Civil Service Strong, which was outlining and coaching civil
Speaker 5: servants how to be whistleblowers, how to sue if they
Speaker 5: are feeling you know, put upon or whatever. And I
Speaker 5: think that the crux, the sort of cornerstone of their
Speaker 5: resistance tactics, was going to be whistleblowing and leaking and
Speaker 5: doing their kind of typical sabotage from inside of these agencies.
Speaker 5: And now that they can't do that, I think they're
Speaker 5: panicking right because they're like, how do we go after the.
Speaker 6: Trump administration now?
Speaker 5: And moreover to that point, maybe.
Speaker 6: This is where we get a little more room conspiratorial.
Speaker 5: But as someone who has read a lot of the
Speaker 5: texts coming out of these resistance type organizations, there's always
Speaker 5: this sort of undercurrent of well, maybe we need to
Speaker 5: partner with international organizations, we need to like go global,
Speaker 5: which they have done. I would argue with a lot
Speaker 5: of the censorship stuff. When they couldn't totally do it here,
Speaker 5: they outsourced the infringement of the First Amendment to international groups.
Speaker 6: I think the UK has been a hot bed for it.
Speaker 6: But I think too another.
Speaker 5: Reason kind of a compounding factor as to why they're
Speaker 5: so nervous about USAID being shut down is that I
Speaker 5: think again, maybe they weren't planning to launder the money.
Speaker 5: I'll be a little nice, so I'll be more charitable.
Speaker 5: They were just planning to send the money. But I
Speaker 5: think they really wanted to kind of bankroll the resistance
Speaker 5: internationally and sort of use that as a roundabout way
Speaker 5: to come after President Trump because they couldn't really they
Speaker 5: can't really do that much. They can call the Senate,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, and worm's great at that,
Speaker 5: but they don't really have the ability to push push
Speaker 5: back in a meaningful way. That's why they're you know,
Speaker 5: groveling on the steps of USA. I d looking rather cringe.
Speaker 5: I would have, like Jamie Raskin's gone from what impeaching
Speaker 5: President Trump twice and like running circles around US from
Speaker 5: a law fair perspective to now groveling outside of usai
Speaker 5: D with like a bunch of freaks.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: So I'm like, you know how, I guess times are
Speaker 5: tough for Dirograts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It does have them in a bind
Speaker 1: because they're trying to figure out how to defend usai D.
Speaker 1: And you know, initially they were defending it as you know,
Speaker 1: foreign aid as important and pointing to like if you
Speaker 1: shut down pep FAR, you shut down this protection for
Speaker 1: spending around infants in Sudan, and people like people are
Speaker 1: going to die and people literally are going to die
Speaker 1: if you do that.
Speaker 4: It's a clever insurance policy.
Speaker 1: But then Rubio can owner and say, well we're going
Speaker 1: to keep those programs going. Yeah, And so now you've
Speaker 1: started to see I think it was Chris Murphy who
Speaker 1: is like, the reason we're funding USAID in Africa is
Speaker 1: to counter China and so that we can extract the
Speaker 1: resources from Africa. I saw that. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: like now we're talking about what's actually happening, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's out in the open like that is it's always
Speaker 1: bodery with a foreign aid. I hate foreign aid, so
Speaker 1: it's so wasteful far and spending, you.
Speaker 4: Said, Usa, he spends money to make sure that we're
Speaker 4: countering Chinese influence inside of Africa and make sure we
Speaker 4: don't lose minerals.
Speaker 1: To make sure that we don't lose access to critical
Speaker 1: mineral supplies and.
Speaker 4: That we're fighting against Hesbula.
Speaker 1: Like, I hate this idea that the US is some
Speaker 1: charitable organization that is just so benevolent and wasting people's
Speaker 1: money by because we're so soft hearted that we're out
Speaker 1: here helping people know we're like a ruthless empire that
Speaker 1: is trying to extract resources from Africa, and usaid is
Speaker 1: the soft power way that we go in and do that.
Speaker 1: China's got its Belt and Road and this other efforts
Speaker 1: that it uses to try to get resources. It's a
Speaker 1: competition for resources. So finally, at least we're talking about
Speaker 1: it openly and then you can debate it like do
Speaker 1: we want to use this? And clearly what the MAGA
Speaker 1: folks are saying is we don't actually believe that it's
Speaker 1: for American soft power. We think you're going to use it.
Speaker 1: As your own partisan weapon in this intra civil war fight,
Speaker 1: which to me, if that helps to bring down the
Speaker 1: American Empire, good well.
Speaker 4: And I was just gonna say that we have, speaking
Speaker 4: of the American Empire, we have a question from Kevin McGonagall,
Speaker 4: who says.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask this one too, I like
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 4: Will there be a right populous pushback for American troops
Speaker 4: being as he puts, a cannon fodder for Israel I
Speaker 4: mean securing Gaza. It's been a whirlwind of last twelve hours, Natalie,
Speaker 4: But as.
Speaker 5: You know, before we were booked to do the show,
Speaker 5: apparently now we are taking over Gotha.
Speaker 4: Seriously. Yeah, So we're taping this within like twelve hours
Speaker 4: of all of the happening, and you're sort of in
Speaker 4: a position hearing from your listeners, who I'm sure probably
Speaker 4: more in the Josh Howley camp of saying, I don't
Speaker 4: know that this is the right use of US resources,
Speaker 4: A similar argument that's made against usaid in fact, So,
Speaker 4: how how are you? How's the war room audience kind
Speaker 4: of grappling with this massive, dramatic new Trump plan through
Speaker 4: the lens of everything you've talked about imperialism, USAID and.
Speaker 1: All of that.
Speaker 5: Sure, well, I think to sort of can join what
Speaker 5: both of you said. I think the issue first and
Speaker 5: foremost derives from the lack of transparency. And I think
Speaker 5: one way to view what President Trump is trying to
Speaker 5: doing or DOGE or anything. They view it as like, oh,
Speaker 5: they're stealing the contracts and they're doing this, and they're
Speaker 5: shutting it all down, and they, you know, I think
Speaker 5: are maybe a little harsh and they're sort of depiction
Speaker 5: of it. But I think the more maybe euphemistic way
Speaker 5: of describing it is they also just want radical transparency
Speaker 5: for the American people, and I do think that transparency
Speaker 5: maybe is a little concerning if you try to really
Speaker 5: understand what exactly has been going on at these agencies.
Speaker 5: I'm inclined to bring up the final months of the
Speaker 5: Biden regime.
Speaker 6: We caught a regime. I have like a reflexive. I
Speaker 6: can't call them an.
Speaker 1: Administration as long as we can call it the Trump regime.
Speaker 6: That's cool, sounds better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that isn't extremely That moment is extremely think like instructive.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there you go, that's the clip.
Speaker 5: But when the American people, when the support was cratering
Speaker 5: for Ukraine aid. There was I think it was October
Speaker 5: or last year, or maybe it's twenty twenty three, but
Speaker 5: there's a whole political story where they had sort of leaked.
Speaker 5: They were like, Okay, the White House knows that Americans
Speaker 5: are kind of like Cagy on supporting Ukraine. So our
Speaker 5: new effort, or our new sort of like propaganda campaign
Speaker 5: to get Americans to support Ukraine aid is going to be.
Speaker 6: The messaging which they were pumping out through local.
Speaker 5: Papers and local media was the idea that Ukraine aid
Speaker 5: is actually good for our industrial base and that it's
Speaker 5: good for our economy, and that it creates American jobs
Speaker 5: and we don't have to.
Speaker 1: Have that debates there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that was such an interesting moment for me
Speaker 5: because I was like, no, no, no, If you want
Speaker 5: the American people to support giving aid to Ukraine, the
Speaker 5: number one thing that you should do would be an
Speaker 5: audit and have a show us that our money is
Speaker 5: a actually making it there, which what Zelenski said just yesterday,
Speaker 5: He's like, I only got seventy seven billion, what about
Speaker 5: the outstanding one hundred and seventy billion or whatever. And
Speaker 5: it was that moment where I was like, oh, they
Speaker 5: were not audit it because they can't because if we
Speaker 5: were to know where that money's actually going, it's not
Speaker 5: good for anyone. And to answer your question, I think, Look,
Speaker 5: I think the Goaza thing is a little absurd. It
Speaker 5: just kind of happened, right, But I also think too
Speaker 5: the way that I've sort of been observing it is
Speaker 5: more just watching if the media takes the bait on it,
Speaker 5: which I think have though I was watching them at
Speaker 5: NBC this morning and they seem a little more upset
Speaker 5: over like the FBI lawsuits, like they're kind of focusing
Speaker 5: on that.
Speaker 6: Most prices Ryan right there.
Speaker 5: You see it as bait, well, because I think their
Speaker 5: whole paradigm is like cover what Trump does, not what
Speaker 5: he says.
Speaker 6: And I think.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting generally smart probably.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But I also think that I personally sort of
Speaker 5: view this kind of bold proclamation, which I would also
Speaker 5: love to know like behind the scenes, if this was
Speaker 5: something that he had talked about with n.
Speaker 6: Yah, because if you look at the like.
Speaker 7: Facial reactions, it seems like Trump just said it, which
Speaker 7: I mean for Trump to be telling in what a
Speaker 7: matter of like twenty four hours, Israel, China, Mexico and
Speaker 7: Canada like, actually, we're the top dog.
Speaker 6: We're gonna choose.
Speaker 5: What's going on here, I think is something we haven't
Speaker 5: seen in a while. But to that point, I think,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's not a cliche or you know, novel take,
Speaker 5: but the thing itself is sometimes not the actual thing itself, right,
Speaker 5: Like it's not actually about gos, it's.
Speaker 6: You know, for lack of better word, it's the art
Speaker 6: of the deal.
Speaker 5: In the same way that the tariffs was it actually
Speaker 5: about putting those tariffs in?
Speaker 6: Who knows?
Speaker 5: It was about extracting concessions. I will say this is sort.
Speaker 6: Of a like.
Speaker 5: A narrative like paradigm shifting idea where it maybe almost
Speaker 5: like brings anything like whatever we want, we don't want that,
Speaker 5: but I don't know.
Speaker 6: I think our audience, obviously, the.
Speaker 5: Israel issue, I always call it a lose lose no
Speaker 5: matter what you say, you're gonna get harassed by everyone.
Speaker 5: But the way that I've always approached it, and I
Speaker 5: think our audience too, is just from the America first perspective.
Speaker 6: I think there's sort of a mere scheimer.
Speaker 5: Esque kind of quality to it, where it's just like,
Speaker 5: are we super invested in it what you know the
Speaker 5: offshore around, Like what exactly is our investment in the region.
Speaker 6: How does it benefit us.
Speaker 5: To either have you know, a more or less terrorist
Speaker 5: state that absolutely hates us and is trying to attack us.
Speaker 5: But it's also not our job to prop up the
Speaker 5: opposition to said state. And I think our audience when
Speaker 5: it's come to anything related to Israel, Palestine, Goza, whatever.
Speaker 6: Is first and foremost.
Speaker 5: We don't want any refugees from Gaza entering the United States.
Speaker 5: Like that is sort of where I think we really
Speaker 5: toe the line, and I think we will definitely push
Speaker 5: hard on that.
Speaker 6: But I think, you know, if we.
Speaker 5: Were recording this episode tomorrow right like, it'd be a
Speaker 5: different news cycle. And I don't really think that it's
Speaker 5: about taking over Gaza.
Speaker 6: I think it's I hate to use.
Speaker 5: The words four D chess because I'm out one of
Speaker 5: those people.
Speaker 6: But there is an element to it.
Speaker 1: You described the Israel's issue for you guys as lose lose.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, like where your audience comes down on the
Speaker 1: on the question, because from an obvious internal logic perspective,
Speaker 1: America first and isolationism would include Israel like it would
Speaker 1: it would it would call into question, are like reflexive
Speaker 1: on apologetic, endless support for what they're doing. Yet there's
Speaker 1: so much cross pressure to make an accept in America,
Speaker 1: first exception to Israel and also apparently South Africa because
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is upset about the law that they're passing
Speaker 1: in South Africa coincidentally to Israel. So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I'm curious where they are on that, And then severally
Speaker 1: oftentimes on the on the war room, you'll have people
Speaker 1: like Frank Gaffney and others who will give this like
Speaker 1: really vulgar history of like Islam and talk about how
Speaker 1: like actually, you know, they're all polygamists and like warmongers
Speaker 1: and if you look at the Qur'an, like they're just
Speaker 1: violent people, and like it's really about the culture. And
Speaker 1: oftentimes Bannon himself, I haven't heard you on with those
Speaker 1: types of folks often banned himself. We'll say just as
Speaker 1: a caveat, we're we're not referring to the law abiding
Speaker 1: Muslim citizens of the United States, and like so you
Speaker 1: can sort of see his wheels turning, like that's a
Speaker 1: little bit like aggressive in how it's being phrased there.
Speaker 1: Yet those types of people keep coming on and making
Speaker 1: the case. Just last night, one of those guys was
Speaker 1: on talking about the you know, the history of Gaza
Speaker 1: and making the case that the Palacidians are just kind
Speaker 1: of irredeemable, violent or something, so like, how does how
Speaker 1: do you blend and think about that? Like it that,
Speaker 1: I guess you don't. Guys don't like the phrase islamophobic strain,
Speaker 1: but like the fairly vulgar thinking about a billion people
Speaker 1: or two billion people, how't any Muslims are on the planet?
Speaker 1: Compared to thinking about America first populism, which says, if
Speaker 1: you're a citizen of the United States, like you have,
Speaker 1: you're entitled to equal dignity and respect and it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what your race, religion, or anything else is.
Speaker 5: I think it's sort of the steep paradigm of wanting
Speaker 5: allies and not protectorates. And I think that where audience
Speaker 5: sometimes maybe gets a little tripped up or is sort
Speaker 5: of anti age Israel, I think is just because the
Speaker 5: sheer magnitude of the funds that are going to them,
Speaker 5: And I don't think that it's ever really been clearly
Speaker 5: articulated to the American people, like what exactly we're getting
Speaker 5: in return for that. And I think too, I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, as someone who's covered foreign influence right and
Speaker 5: foreign lobbying, you know, the idea of any foreign country
Speaker 5: having a strong lobbying presence in DC is something.
Speaker 6: That I take a version to. And I think that,
Speaker 6: you know, whether it's APAK or whatever.
Speaker 5: Entity it may be, I think that that just sort
Speaker 5: of hard hard to square.
Speaker 6: Conversely, it's like, well, I also don't.
Speaker 5: Want and I think if you go back to the
Speaker 5: infamous Steve whiteboard pick what was it designating the Muslim
Speaker 5: brother and a terrorist organization.
Speaker 4: From the White House.
Speaker 5: Yes, he always says that his biggest regret was never
Speaker 5: doing that. And for Steve Bannon, who's had a lot
Speaker 5: of lives and a lot of cool things, for that
Speaker 5: to be as big as regret, I think tells you something.
Speaker 5: And I think the way that our show sort of
Speaker 5: conceives of Islam is probably a little more on the
Speaker 5: not Islam with phobic scale. But I think maybe reject
Speaker 5: the framing then it's a phobia, because I do think
Speaker 5: some of the fears are are rational in the sense
Speaker 5: that I think if you look at well, it's funny,
Speaker 5: I sort of feel like the Chinese Communist Party threat,
Speaker 5: and if even if you look at like the trajectory
Speaker 5: of someone like Frank Gaffney sort of superseded the idea
Speaker 5: that it was the Muslim Brotherhood who was coming to
Speaker 5: overtake the global you know, hegemony of the United States
Speaker 5: with the Caliphate, and then suddenly like the Chinese Communist
Speaker 5: Party became the new threat. And I'm always cagy of
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff because I do think it can
Speaker 5: very quickly turn into like reductive neocon war mongering, right
Speaker 5: where it's like, well, I'm a really bad, squishy Republican senator,
Speaker 5: but I'm really tough on China, right, but.
Speaker 6: I'm really anti it. Yeah, I really think we need to.
Speaker 5: So I'm aware it can become performative very quickly in
Speaker 5: the same way like the transgender bathroom stuff, right, it
Speaker 5: sort of becomes a cultural thing.
Speaker 4: Muslims were, where it's like, oh, it sort of comes
Speaker 4: comes back.
Speaker 1: It goes to my earlier point that right wing populism
Speaker 1: often needs to because it won't go after the one
Speaker 1: or said it often needs like, oh, it's the Muslim Brotherhood.
Speaker 5: I also think that that's a function two of right
Speaker 5: wing media in terms of like I think our show
Speaker 5: and it's funny, I'm even sort of struggling, like you played.
Speaker 6: One of my rants.
Speaker 5: I much prefer having something to rant about as opposed
Speaker 5: to something to celebrate about from just a broadcasting perspective,
Speaker 5: and I think we thrive on like having an enemy.
Speaker 5: And I do think sometimes the MSMB secretique of us
Speaker 5: is like we do better in opposition than actually ruling.
Speaker 5: Is sort of an interesting critique if you look at
Speaker 5: it through the lens of right wing media. In other words,
Speaker 5: like we were all united right during the campaign because
Speaker 5: we had a clear and defined enemy and a clear
Speaker 5: and defined goal. But then very soon after you sort
Speaker 5: of started to see the fracturing of the base, the
Speaker 5: atual me stuff happened the sort of like yeah, right,
Speaker 5: it happened very quickly. And that's why in some ways,
Speaker 5: and this may be a hot take, I almost think
Speaker 5: that it would have been better for Republicans. Don't actually,
Speaker 5: but like had Democrats taken the House or something, because
Speaker 5: then we would have had something to really push back
Speaker 5: against as opposed to be infighting, because it'd be like, oh,
Speaker 5: we're all concerned that they're going to impeach president Trump,
Speaker 5: like we're very good. I would maybe push back on
Speaker 5: the frame of a conspiratorial I think, is it conspiratorial?
Speaker 5: Is it coincidental? But just sort of the like linking
Speaker 5: of a bunch of stories. I think it's pattern recognition
Speaker 5: is maybe how I would describe it. And I think
Speaker 5: that now we're sort of like not struggling, but the
Speaker 5: resistance is very weak.
Speaker 6: And if I had to host the show this evening, like.
Speaker 5: I could have, you know, two months ago, done a
Speaker 5: whole rant about every way that in our view, they
Speaker 5: were trying to sort of, you know, fool around with
Speaker 5: election stuff, and they were trying to you know, lie
Speaker 5: or smear President Trump. And now like the best that
Speaker 5: I can do is into the you know, attorney who's
Speaker 5: representing the nine and anonymous FBI agents who in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two is tweeting up the storm.
Speaker 6: About how quote all of MAGA needs to be fired
Speaker 6: from the United States government.
Speaker 5: So it's it's just a shift, and I'm just like
Speaker 5: I want to like, I'm like, give me a chance
Speaker 5: to rant well.
Speaker 4: And so this brings me at least my last question,
Speaker 4: because I could keep doing this forever. This is from
Speaker 4: M and n H This is a viewer who says
Speaker 4: what ethical consideration should be top of mind for war
Speaker 4: Room and other new media outlets as they report on
Speaker 4: the White House with their newfound access. We talked about
Speaker 4: this a little bit earlier and how you feel like
Speaker 4: from the America first perspective, your climb balls and strikes. So,
Speaker 4: as somebody who is generally supportive of MAGA in there
Speaker 4: pressing the White House Press secretary, you have an opportunity
Speaker 4: to do it. How are you thinking about that? To
Speaker 4: the point that M and N is making, Is this
Speaker 4: like a is it a priority to push the White House?
Speaker 4: Is it a priority to use your time in a
Speaker 4: way that advances maybe concerns? How are you get about
Speaker 4: this as somebody who's a journalist but also it's sort
Speaker 4: of in the camp of the White House.
Speaker 5: Well, I would say my first and foremost ethical consideration
Speaker 5: is what I wear.
Speaker 6: No, the skirts are not going anywhere, you know.
Speaker 5: It was funny they were mad at me for wearing sneakers,
Speaker 5: which I was like everyone does when they're not on camera,
Speaker 5: and I was like, look, I was actually go friendly
Speaker 5: and I walked to the White House from Capitol Hill,
Speaker 5: so I was like, I love walking.
Speaker 6: It's my favorite thing to do.
Speaker 5: So I was like, I was trying to reduce my
Speaker 5: carbon footprint, and then I got ratioed for it, but
Speaker 5: not ratioed. We ratioed the Daily Mail and they had
Speaker 5: to take the journalist's name.
Speaker 6: Off the story. It's another war room wind, the power
Speaker 6: of the war of audience.
Speaker 5: But no, I think that's an interesting question, and I
Speaker 5: think that it's something that I've kind of internally struggled with.
Speaker 6: I've always said, despite my you know.
Speaker 5: Rather bombastic rhetoric like I have, I spent a lot
Speaker 5: of my free time actually trying to deduce how to
Speaker 5: be a responsible steward of this platform that I have
Speaker 5: not stumbled into. But just you know, in twenty three,
Speaker 5: put yourself in my shoes. You're speaking to hundreds of
Speaker 5: thousands of millions of people, the most powerful politically. Like
Speaker 5: it's a lot to conceive of and not sound cliche,
Speaker 5: but I've always just sort of let the truth guide me.
Speaker 5: That's why I've always stuck to sort of like primary
Speaker 5: source based reporting also made writing copy easier because I
Speaker 5: could just sort of copy and paste from one of
Speaker 5: the documents that the grants were saying.
Speaker 6: But I also think.
Speaker 5: Too, like it's an interesting question because we are forthright
Speaker 5: and our support for President Trump, and I'm aware that
Speaker 5: maybe that's hard.
Speaker 6: To square with the idea of like being a journalist, but.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry every time I walk in that press briefing
Speaker 5: room and everyone's sitting there, who has their you know,
Speaker 5: superior superiority complex and like, you know, I guess really
Speaker 5: chip on their shoulder, but like the idea that like
Speaker 5: we're a clownish operation by being there, it's like, you
Speaker 5: guys are probably more partisan.
Speaker 6: Than we are.
Speaker 5: And that's sort of what I find to be the
Speaker 5: most cognitively dissonant or just gaslighting experience of that press
Speaker 5: briefing room, where I'm like, I have to sit here
Speaker 5: and pretend like what you guys are doing is telling
Speaker 5: the truth. Like they act so professional and so serious,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, you're a bunch of liars and you're
Speaker 5: advancing a certain talking point or certain narrative. So I
Speaker 5: just to keep our audience kind of ahead of the
Speaker 5: curve because I don't want to be a Trump cheerleader
Speaker 5: for four years. I don't really find any intellectual merit
Speaker 5: in doing that either. If you can tell like I
Speaker 5: love digging into documents. I don't like standing there and
Speaker 5: being like.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, we took over Gassa and how I've
Speaker 6: sort of come to.
Speaker 5: Really, I think square that is focusing on the resistance
Speaker 5: because it gives me something.
Speaker 6: To latch onto because I guess maybe I need.
Speaker 5: An enemy or something to cover, So I really want
Speaker 5: to focus on that angle. But I also think too,
Speaker 5: like I want to cover the media, Like there's enough
Speaker 5: people who are gonna be trying to ask questions.
Speaker 6: I you know.
Speaker 5: Learned the hard way, like this is where I stand,
Speaker 5: this is where I sit. I'm like, okay, sir, I'm
Speaker 5: not trying to come for your see, I'm new, like
Speaker 5: I got it. And I think covering the media is
Speaker 5: more interesting. And sure it's funny the people in the
Speaker 5: briefing room and the masks and when someone asks the question,
Speaker 5: they're like rolling their eyes because it's, you know, a
Speaker 5: different outlet than what.
Speaker 6: They're used to.
Speaker 5: But I think, to wrap up my answer, what we
Speaker 5: were talking about in terms of the resistance stuff like
Speaker 5: civil society and the media is the crux is the
Speaker 5: cornerstone of their ability to push back on President Trump.
Speaker 6: Right now, it's all they have, and being in that
Speaker 6: press briefing room therefore, sure it gives.
Speaker 5: Me access to the White House, the President, but it
Speaker 5: also gives me access to sort of ground zero of
Speaker 5: the resistance, and that is what I want to cover
Speaker 5: and sort of use that as like primary sourt of
Speaker 5: supporting to supplement the reporting that I've been doing kind
Speaker 5: of independently on tracking the resistance stuff.
Speaker 6: So that's how I.
Speaker 5: View it, which is, you know, maybe not the traditional
Speaker 5: ethics space journal but I think we live in a
Speaker 5: post journalism ethics world and I think I'm the first
Speaker 5: to admit it. They'll if they want to admit otherwise
Speaker 5: I would just point them to their viewership.
Speaker 1: I mean to support your point. And this probably happened
Speaker 1: when you were in elementary school back when Time magazine
Speaker 1: was a big deal in Washington. Time Magazine's White House
Speaker 1: correspondent transition to become Obama's spokesperson. So it went and
Speaker 1: went from the seat to the podium.
Speaker 6: So, Carolyn Love, it's.
Speaker 1: Been on war room a ton, which now I would
Speaker 1: humbly suggest that the resistance is boring and that you
Speaker 1: should take your talents and focus them on Musk corporate America.
Speaker 1: Trying to co opt the Mega movement and the intelligence community.
Speaker 1: That element of the residence I think is very interesting,
Speaker 1: and that brings me to this very interesting question that
Speaker 1: I'm curious about too. Gbr You says, is Donald Trump
Speaker 1: aware of the statements Steve Bannon has been making about
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Andresen and their intellectual guru,
Speaker 1: Curtis Yarvin, has war Room Bannon, you or any other
Speaker 1: MAGA affiliated person or organization brought these concerns about techno
Speaker 1: feudalism to President Trump? Is it? Is it breaking through?
Speaker 5: I think that person asse on that would be Steve, right.
Speaker 5: I don't want to speak about their conversations, but I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't even think it's just like a you know,
Speaker 5: Steve president Trump conversation.
Speaker 6: I think that you can't like turn on a TV
Speaker 6: or the media.
Speaker 5: Without being inundated with like this is the thing itself, right,
Speaker 5: this is the the story right now, you know, Stephen
Speaker 5: president Trump talk. Obviously he's not shy about that. But
Speaker 5: you know, Elot obviously has a seat at the table too.
Speaker 5: But I do think, I mean also to the sheer
Speaker 5: power of our audience, Like I said, that's a very
Speaker 5: grassroots force, so I don't think they're going to want
Speaker 5: to alienate.
Speaker 6: Us.
Speaker 5: But like I said, it's all about having a seat
Speaker 5: at the table and we can debate it out and
Speaker 5: when you have full transparency, like we will win. I
Speaker 5: have full faith in Stephen K. Bannon and myself and
Speaker 5: our kind of approach to the issue. I mean, you
Speaker 5: see Mark Zuckerberg and all these people are getting like
Speaker 5: totally ratio and controlled. No one believes their conversion. So
Speaker 5: I think I think it's just sort of a time
Speaker 5: will tell thing, like you know, and maybe maybe.
Speaker 1: This could be the last one because there's a ton
Speaker 1: of interest from our lefty audience.
Speaker 6: Here, and I was scared they were going to be
Speaker 6: mean to me.
Speaker 1: Well they did want they are a bunch of them
Speaker 1: said they wanted to ask you about the correspondence typo,
Speaker 1: which I don't know what that means, do you know?
Speaker 5: I know this whole interview, I'm like, I'm so smart,
Speaker 5: I'm so good at my job. I'm twenty three and
Speaker 5: like the youngest white OSK correspondent ever, I'm so intelligent.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 5: When I when I tweeted out the now infamous picture,
Speaker 5: I spol a co respondent with one R. And it
Speaker 5: was because it was I was getting ready to like
Speaker 5: go on air, and you know, you don't understand love
Speaker 5: Real America's voice, but I put them in the category
Speaker 5: like tech startup. So it's very like ratchet and and.
Speaker 6: I'm like getting pulled in this direction. I have like
Speaker 6: my air pods in my phone's not connecting.
Speaker 5: Like every journalist that like we've ever attacked, I think
Speaker 5: Steve the second before they came to me, they were like,
Speaker 5: we need to send these people to prison, like and
Speaker 5: I'm like, well it see anything. You just called like
Speaker 5: three of the people that I just saw walk by
Speaker 5: like that they should go to jail. So I'm standing
Speaker 5: there so like and I wanted to tweet out the
Speaker 5: picture because I was like, this is like a cool picture.
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, we'll make.
Speaker 5: Some people jealous, right, And so I know that when
Speaker 5: I had typed out correspondent, which is sort of like
Speaker 5: a difficult word spell, I was like the first rate, Okay,
Speaker 5: it's still complicated. I'm I was very honest, and I
Speaker 5: just got you know, like when you just want to
Speaker 5: use autocorrect, so you just kind of like get the
Speaker 5: gist of the word out there and then you let.
Speaker 4: It trust the machine. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So I guess for.
Speaker 5: Some reason, autocorrect thinks that I am like, well, you know,
Speaker 5: correspondent with one R means like the fair partner a divorce.
Speaker 5: I did not know.
Speaker 6: I'm not.
Speaker 4: Wow, did you learn something you ever?
Speaker 1: Know?
Speaker 6: But that one super viral, So.
Speaker 7: I kind of know, though I guess I guess I'm
Speaker 7: docsing myself.
Speaker 6: No I'm not.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so that was that was kind of annoying,
Speaker 5: and then they all piled in foot I will defend
Speaker 5: my honor and as a true opposition researcher. The lady
Speaker 5: who first quote tweeted me that led to like, it's
Speaker 5: like forty or fifty million impressions. I was like, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, this is so embarrassing. She spelled correspondent wrong too.
Speaker 5: I went through Rachel Bitakoffer. I went through her Twitter,
Speaker 5: and twice in February, it was February seventh and February
Speaker 5: eighth of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: She was tweeting about.
Speaker 5: The Virginia Correspondence Association. They were having their like big
Speaker 5: annual dinner, and she spelled it with one R, and she.
Speaker 6: Did it twice. So that's reflective.
Speaker 5: Of your intelligence, Buston, I am smarter than her.
Speaker 1: Aside from that, there does seem to be a lot
Speaker 1: of lefty hope that your faction is going to beat
Speaker 1: the techno feudalist authoritarian faction. And one of these this
Speaker 1: all make this the last one is related to I
Speaker 1: think asking you to look at some of the left
Speaker 1: wing stuff that was done and evaluated in a fair way.
Speaker 1: So they say, what are your thoughts on the Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act which promotes re shoring American jobs combined with
Speaker 1: imposing tariffs on imports to boost the US energy manufacturing sector,
Speaker 1: which is an accurate description of the IRA.
Speaker 5: Well, I will say I think they did an absolutely
Speaker 5: horrific job on messaging on some of their their winds
Speaker 5: like I can, like I said, we call balls and striking,
Speaker 5: But from a more I think meta kind of bird's
Speaker 5: eye view perspective, you can't really tell me they did
Speaker 5: a good job with reducing inflation. And I think if
Speaker 5: you look at their economic track record, whether it's the
Speaker 5: revisions of the jobs reports, I think what was like
Speaker 5: twelve out of thirteen times downward or the fact that
Speaker 5: so many of the new jobs that they created. I
Speaker 5: think it was at the end of it, like a
Speaker 5: net loss for Americans, and the net gain was happening
Speaker 5: among non citizens or like immigrant workers. So I always find,
Speaker 5: and I'm the first to admit it, that like economic
Speaker 5: data really confusing and overwhelming because there's so many layers
Speaker 5: to it, and they're like, well, consumer confidence or the
Speaker 5: price in decks is really high, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: what is that based on Americans lived experience?
Speaker 6: Is absolutely horrific.
Speaker 5: So I don't I mean, I think if they want
Speaker 5: to hang on to what they did with the economy
Speaker 5: as being something really strong, I would highly.
Speaker 6: Advise against that.
Speaker 5: I also think too, it's a broader I think issue
Speaker 5: in terms of I don't think any president who oversaw
Speaker 5: an invasion of fifteen million illegal aliens the most oppressive
Speaker 5: force on American workers' wages, you can't say that that
Speaker 5: was good for reducing inflation helping American workers.
Speaker 1: Separate it from Biden and partisans the idea of the
Speaker 1: Inflation Reduction Act, where you are subsidizing American jobs and
Speaker 1: transition to a clean energy economy which China's killing us
Speaker 1: in like in general directionally, if you separate it from Democrats.
Speaker 1: Is that something that fits into abandoned style.
Speaker 5: I think they're supporting American manufacturing base. Of course, I
Speaker 5: think President Trump kind of went a different way of
Speaker 5: trying to do that, more like tariff get kind of
Speaker 5: that sort of approach. But yeah, I think Peter Navarro,
Speaker 5: who obviously helped co host the show while he was
Speaker 5: in prison as close friends with all of us, we
Speaker 5: were very close with him, is very supportive of that too.
Speaker 6: We're very for restoring. I mean, if it were.
Speaker 5: Up to Steve, we would like kick out all Chinese
Speaker 5: companies and maybe the big tech ones too while we're
Speaker 5: at it.
Speaker 1: But it did say break up the big tech companies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he said they should have left Lean a conon place.
Speaker 5: But I just think it's sort of performative and not
Speaker 5: just a Democrat thing. Not to skirt your question, but
Speaker 5: like the idea that they're actually genuinely trying to reshore
Speaker 5: manufacturing jobs, there's.
Speaker 6: Still that sort you know what I mean, Like it's it.
Speaker 5: I don't think it had the impact that they intended,
Speaker 5: not because the legislation was bad or ideologically unprincipled. But
Speaker 5: this city is just and big business, big donors, corporate interests.
Speaker 5: They want to outsource and that's the fundamental issue, Like
Speaker 5: they just hate American workers, So I think you have
Speaker 5: to negotiate with them much more intensely.
Speaker 6: Like carrot stick. I think tariffs are more of the stick.
Speaker 5: I think stuff like that is a little more carrot based,
Speaker 5: and they're not going to take the carrot like you.
Speaker 1: You have to smash them. Yeah, smash the rich.
Speaker 4: Fascinating right, Yeah, thank you for growing in us.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I'm so glad I wore that.
Speaker 6: That's scared otherwise I don't know.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, listen, like the media infiltration of the
Speaker 4: White House PRESSU room is long overdue, like new media
Speaker 4: infiltration or.
Speaker 1: The White House, I'll see you in there.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's right. But thank you so much for having
Speaker 4: Thanks for thanks for being on taking the time.
Speaker 6: We appreciate it. Thank you guys. Awesome.
Speaker 4: Well, we'll be back with more counterpoints next week, so
Speaker 4: stay tuned for that. Appreciate it season