Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Illinois Governor JB. Pritzker has blocked
Speaker 1: January sixth riders from state jobs. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today, Media Matters. Angelo Kirasone talks
Speaker 1: us through the media's reaction to Trump's shock and all
Speaker 1: legislation strategy. Then we'll talk to Owen Higgins about his
Speaker 1: new book Owned How tech billionaires on the right bought
Speaker 1: the loudest voices on the left. But first the news Somali.
Speaker 2: Obviously, we are still discussing this tragic aviation accent are
Speaker 2: first in sixteen years with a commercial flight involved on
Speaker 2: American soil. And I'm going to shock you here. Trump
Speaker 2: has totally bullshitted his way through this whole thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually was listening to it, well, I
Speaker 1: was late for you, and I was listening to it
Speaker 1: on c SPAN. I was listening to the Seespan has
Speaker 1: this podcast where they replay all the sort of bits
Speaker 1: of content that have happened during the day. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is he says a statement that's like a normal
Speaker 1: statement where you think, oh, this sounds pretty good, like
Speaker 1: this is what a president should say, our hearts ache
Speaker 1: for you. People in different countries, we all feel for you.
Speaker 1: And you think, all right, well, that doesn't sound so bad.
Speaker 1: And then he gets out these clips clearly and he says,
Speaker 1: now I want to talk about this is why it's
Speaker 1: actually good to listen to all of Trump because people say, well,
Speaker 1: the clip was taking out of context, but the context
Speaker 1: is actually totally fascinating and more upsetting.
Speaker 2: So that seems like the theme of the week is
Speaker 2: that was also the theme in cash Ptel's hearings.
Speaker 1: Right, he has all these articles and he goes, I'm
Speaker 1: going to now read some articles that happened before I
Speaker 1: was president, I swear to God, and he starts reading
Speaker 1: this article about how the Biden administration wanted to employ
Speaker 1: people with mental disabilities for airline controllers.
Speaker 3: Now, is that air traffic controllers.
Speaker 1: It's not air traffic controllers, it's that part of DEI
Speaker 1: is employing people with mental disability is okay, and that
Speaker 1: it sort of makes a lot of leaps. It's clearly
Speaker 1: like some right wing talking point article like, but it's
Speaker 1: just fascinating, even just the fact that he shows up
Speaker 1: to this press conference about this aviation disaster, and he
Speaker 1: says this thing about how like he feels for all
Speaker 1: the families, and then he's like, and here are some articles.
Speaker 1: What I was struck by was the fact that Team
Speaker 1: Trump is always always always working the refs on like
Speaker 1: their favorite culture war topics. So right, they're already like
Speaker 1: this is DEI and they have like a sort of
Speaker 1: weak foundation for it, but whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a house built on the zone that they footed
Speaker 3: with shit.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And so I just thought that was pretty
Speaker 1: interesting though, to sort of like actually listen to it
Speaker 1: not cut up at all, because it just is totally strange.
Speaker 1: And you know, the question, of course, Trump's big question
Speaker 1: is will this work for him? Will his people somehow
Speaker 1: decide that DEI is what caused a crash which was
Speaker 1: very likely human error? And you know, there weren't enough
Speaker 1: people at the desk, but it sounds like from what
Speaker 1: I understand, the controller asked the helicopter pilot if he
Speaker 1: saw the plane and he said he did, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously he didn't, and that's how we got here.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you'll be shocked to hear that Trump launched
Speaker 2: the air controller diversity program that he doesn't like.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem with hating the federal government and running
Speaker 1: it is that he constantly gets into problems like this, right,
Speaker 1: he says, you know this is to blame. Oh and
Speaker 1: it's from my last administration, so no one should be
Speaker 1: surprised by this. Also, Fox News has a huge DEI,
Speaker 1: I mean, Rupert Murdoch is running DEI in his own
Speaker 1: parent corporation that is filming the news shows that are
Speaker 1: saying DEI is killing America. So make it make sense.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you can't. They're hypocrites, Molly.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm going to defend my president here for
Speaker 2: a second. He's a New Yorker just like us, and
Speaker 2: we know all about self conflicting hating things we're a
Speaker 2: part of.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you that if he tries to
Speaker 1: get rid of congestion pricing, which I've already got a
Speaker 1: news alert that he was going to, I will take
Speaker 1: to the streets.
Speaker 2: Oh you and I both, Okay, I'm gonna throw you
Speaker 2: a wild card. We didn't have this planned, but I
Speaker 2: feel like it's the weekend. We got to recap these
Speaker 2: confirmation hearings of RFK and cash PTTEL. What are your
Speaker 2: feelings on these?
Speaker 1: I think the smartest take I saw was Andrew Desiderio
Speaker 1: from punch Bowl News, very straight down the middle, not
Speaker 1: on the opinion side, but he covers Congress, and he
Speaker 1: pointed out that there were a bunch of times when
Speaker 1: we saw Republican senators desperately trying to get RFK Junior
Speaker 1: and also to get Tulsey to say that they like
Speaker 1: they would say, but you really think vaccines are good?
Speaker 1: And he would say, well, not really. And they kept
Speaker 1: trying to get Tulsea to say, well, you really think
Speaker 1: Edward snowed in as a trader and she'd be like, no,
Speaker 1: you know, these are like the please please, please please
Speaker 1: let me fool myself for long enough to vote for you,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't even do that. Now, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: these Republicans aren't going to vote for them, but those
Speaker 1: were pretty incredible moments, and we saw that throughout. We
Speaker 1: saw that with Cash Battel too.
Speaker 2: I thought it was very very interesting the right wing
Speaker 2: echo chamber of them thinking like Cash Battel and RFK
Speaker 2: are owning the senators and everything with like really some
Speaker 2: of the worst responses like oh you have this out
Speaker 2: of context.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Yeah, you really own me out.
Speaker 2: Of context that you said that you're going to go
Speaker 2: after your enemies, a thing that probably should disqualify you
Speaker 2: from running the FBI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I thought it was pretty interesting too.
Speaker 1: There were so many moments when RFK was actually just
Speaker 1: unprepared and they asked questions and he was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got to get the data. And there was also
Speaker 1: I mean we talked about this earlier in the week,
Speaker 1: but the Bernie stuff where he was like, you just
Speaker 1: take money from pharmaceutical companies. OURFK, Junior, this will be
Speaker 1: a humongous drama for pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies that have
Speaker 1: many many lobbyists have managed to keep drug prices high
Speaker 1: for a long long time. It's a very powerful group
Speaker 1: of people, not exactly you know, poor kids who need
Speaker 1: free lunches. Right, So I'll be curious to see how
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies go to war with RFK. There are just
Speaker 1: a lot of conflicting interests here. Everyone you know in
Speaker 1: DC is so cynical and they're like, all these people
Speaker 1: are going to get through. The only one who might
Speaker 1: not get through is toll SI. Well that's what Trump
Speaker 1: world is telling everyone, and maybe that's true. Maybe everyone
Speaker 1: else sails through, but you know, nobody thought that Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell was going to vote against teg Sas. Nobody thought that,
Speaker 1: and they get through until they don't. And so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe all three of them sail through, but maybe they don't.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important not to be so nihilistic
Speaker 1: and let the Republicans win because you know they may not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I have to say I've heard some
Speaker 2: language from some of these Republican senators where they've spent
Speaker 2: a long many decade hating the name Kennedy right well, and.
Speaker 1: It was hard for me to see. I mean, Bill
Speaker 1: Cassady from Louisiana, he is a doctor, and he, unlike
Speaker 1: Ran Paul who's also a doctor but seems to not
Speaker 1: believe in medicine, he really did seem furious and he
Speaker 1: did not seem like a person who is going to
Speaker 1: vote for RFK. So now maybe they can till us him.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can go in and spend two hours saying
Speaker 1: whatever they said to Tom Tillis to get him to
Speaker 1: vote for Hegseth. But maybe they can and more will
Speaker 1: be revealed on this Angelo cuirasone is the CEO of
Speaker 1: Media Matters. Welcome back to Fast Pas Politics, the home
Speaker 1: of all good, happy things. Just kidding, Angelo.
Speaker 4: That sounds right.
Speaker 5: There's a lot going on.
Speaker 1: Things going great. I think we should start by talking
Speaker 1: about the many ways in which media companies are not
Speaker 1: meeting the moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a big one. And I think of all
Speaker 5: the things that I mean a lot of what I
Speaker 5: was talking about in the lead up to the election,
Speaker 5: except because I'm not involved in the day to day
Speaker 5: campaign work, I had somewhat of an advantage of thinking
Speaker 5: about so the larger trajectory, and obviously my expertise in
Speaker 5: the media space, and so I spent a lot of
Speaker 5: time thinking about products on twenty five and what an
Speaker 5: administration would look like, and all the sort of the
Speaker 5: parade of horribles that could happen if Trump were to win.
Speaker 5: And the one thing that I myself, even again I'm
Speaker 5: a critic of the media, did not.
Speaker 1: Fully account for.
Speaker 5: It's like I sort of assumed that there would be
Speaker 5: some bending, that the coverage would be a little bit
Speaker 5: milk toast, then maybe that there would be privileging of
Speaker 5: lies and misinformation, you know, some false equivalences. I sort
Speaker 5: of expect and built that into my like, what are
Speaker 5: all the things that are going to go wrong? What I
Speaker 5: did not fully account for was how quickly the fear
Speaker 5: would be internalized at like the staff level, the reporter level,
Speaker 5: and then how quickly the transactional nature of hey, if
Speaker 5: I just give you a bunch of money, I will
Speaker 5: extract benefits from it would internalize at like the you know,
Speaker 5: at the executive corporate level. And two things together are
Speaker 5: I think have really created an incredibly wobbly foundation for
Speaker 5: and really undermined the little resilience we had in maintaining
Speaker 5: a lot of our core democratic structures.
Speaker 1: You know, there was news yesterday that CBS was planning
Speaker 1: to make you know, so we had ABC, now we
Speaker 1: have CBS. I mean basically everyone is just paying Trump off,
Speaker 1: basically Facebook, Facebook settled in the hopes that that will
Speaker 1: mean that he will let them survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically, there's a lot of evidence to support the idea
Speaker 1: that a traditional autocrat that this would not work, That
Speaker 1: a traditional autocrat would you would pay them off and
Speaker 1: then eventually would destroy you, Like if you look at Russia, right, like,
Speaker 1: historically this has not worked, say, more about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean historically what ends up happening is that, well,
Speaker 5: it's a couple of things. One, if you were to
Speaker 5: say align with them or sort of capitulate really early, historically,
Speaker 5: what ends up happening is that they sort of take
Speaker 5: the reprieve, they focus on other priorities, and they come
Speaker 5: back around and get you anyway, because you're not ever
Speaker 5: really considered a full loyalist and they need to replace
Speaker 5: you and so, and also like they're just it's such
Speaker 5: a grievance based industry and an operation like autocracies are
Speaker 5: are theater in a way, and so you can't really
Speaker 5: keep lots of the old guard around too long because
Speaker 5: that they represent a status quo that you're entirely trying
Speaker 5: to upend. And it's also just great theater to sort
Speaker 5: of get rid of the past leaders. The other thing
Speaker 5: that tends to happen, which is strange, is that is
Speaker 5: that you have and this happened a lot in Hungary,
Speaker 5: is that you have aligned you know, deep financial interest
Speaker 5: by up the competitive media properties and sort of then
Speaker 5: turn them into something that are appendages of the burgeoning autocrat.
Speaker 5: Those get to survive unless they eventually and even they
Speaker 5: get turned on over time, but they have a better
Speaker 5: longer chance of survival. That's the part here that I
Speaker 5: don't fully get is that it's an extremely short term
Speaker 5: gambit from my perspective, because they are assuming that he
Speaker 5: is that he will never sort of retaliate against them,
Speaker 5: and it other means actually, in a way, it's scary.
Speaker 5: It means one or two things. It means one, they're
Speaker 5: assuming that he's never going to retaliate against them in
Speaker 5: the future, meaning that they can operate somewhat independently. And
Speaker 5: if it cuts against him, that they're not going to
Speaker 5: end up in the exact same position cause them to
Speaker 5: effectively pay him off in the first place. Or they've
Speaker 5: so deeply accepted that they no longer have total control
Speaker 5: that they're never planning to do anything that runs a
Speaker 5: foul of Trump. That's an even scarier prospect, right, Like,
Speaker 5: what's the point of buying him off If you say, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm going to have a stiff spot in a year
Speaker 5: from now and speak truth to power and have operational
Speaker 5: control over my platform. Are they just not going to
Speaker 5: or they're going to. Are they just planning to buy
Speaker 5: them off every.
Speaker 6: Time something comes up and that, to me is the
Speaker 6: real concerning part of this is that the either or
Speaker 6: here you really gets back to the core issue, which
Speaker 6: is that the pieces of our sort of core democratic structures.
Speaker 5: That is what resilience is, and that that will evaporate.
Speaker 5: I'm not not even saying, oh, the media will save us,
Speaker 5: but this, you know, and I just delay it a lot.
Speaker 5: It's like it's it's obviously ABC settling again a lawsuit
Speaker 5: that was very unlikely to succeed. Most recently, Facebook settled
Speaker 5: with Trump for twenty five million dollars for suspending him.
Speaker 5: There's still YouTube lawsuit that's out there that I think,
Speaker 5: you know, potentially gets settled.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 5: It's just there's just this mass sort of shift. That's
Speaker 5: the stuff We're going to ultimately need to just be
Speaker 5: somewhat neutral at least to have a real fighting chance
Speaker 5: here at preserving some of the core parts of our society.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because it's like I am often
Speaker 1: an optimist, which is not good for me. Like when
Speaker 1: I went through sort of the post mortem on what
Speaker 1: I really got wrong in the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 1: it was at every point I was a little bit
Speaker 1: too optimal stick about things, right, And it was much
Speaker 1: to my detriment. But I actually think that my optimism
Speaker 1: is not unfounded here, which is Look, the problem with
Speaker 1: the corporate media is that all of these media companies
Speaker 1: are not just one newspaper. You know, they're like Jeff Bezos, right,
Speaker 1: they own space companies, they have contracts for this, they
Speaker 1: have this, they have that. So it turns out billionaires
Speaker 1: are not good star wards of democracy, right they right,
Speaker 1: they don't give a fuck. They just want to get
Speaker 1: their space. You know. They got to be billionaires for
Speaker 1: a reason, right, And it was not because they cared
Speaker 1: about the common good. Right, those people are social workers.
Speaker 1: But I do think to a certain extent, I'm very
Speaker 1: interested to see because what I noticed this week, and
Speaker 1: I want you to sort of tell me if you
Speaker 1: think I'm crazy, because I might be. What I noticed
Speaker 1: this week was Donald Trump got up there after that
Speaker 1: plane crash blamed DEI and said this is the fault
Speaker 1: of DEI. And I know what he was doing, right,
Speaker 1: He was like, we control the narrative. We got to
Speaker 1: get a story out there that controls the narrative. This
Speaker 1: is a story. Are people like they don't like DEI?
Speaker 1: They want to blame DEI, let's blame Di. Now. I
Speaker 1: think that was a moment that a lot of normal
Speaker 1: people were like, there's no way that, Like it just
Speaker 1: didn't make any sense, right. You get that. You get
Speaker 1: that if you're in the fevers pitches of the far
Speaker 1: you know, the internet swamp, you think, oh, Di, okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But I think that that was It's
Speaker 1: like one of those moments where normal people are like, huh.
Speaker 1: And I think that is ultimately Trump's problem really is
Speaker 1: that he's in the media bubble just like everyone else's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I don't think you're wrong. I think that's
Speaker 5: a reasonable assessment. I think to take a step back,
Speaker 5: and to me, I always ask the question of like,
Speaker 5: so what and the assumption, and I think there's so
Speaker 5: a lot of what you're saying is that, well, you
Speaker 5: still have to have some degree of buy in from
Speaker 5: the government in order to maintain power for an extended
Speaker 5: period of time, and that's correct. The thing to consider, though,
Speaker 5: is that a lot of and this is where it
Speaker 5: ties into the media conversation and so much of sort
Speaker 5: of this smashing, grab, shock and awe that is happening,
Speaker 5: is that that's so what only works over an extent
Speaker 5: of perod of time, meaning it to the next election or
Speaker 5: the next chance to really transform or change, or the
Speaker 5: next inflection point where there could be some response to
Speaker 5: public pressure. The issue, though, is that part of what's
Speaker 5: unfolding right now, and this is why the media capitulating
Speaker 5: so fast is concerning to me.
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 5: I never really trusted them, and I never thought they'd
Speaker 5: be the savior. But in a way they were sort
Speaker 5: of like extending the curve Beny so that we had
Speaker 5: a little more time. Part of what's happening right now
Speaker 5: in these initial few months is to do so much
Speaker 5: so fast that you shift the culture as well. You
Speaker 5: actually take away that's so what. And if you can
Speaker 5: convince people that the media companies are terrible, it's like, great, well,
Speaker 5: then we could just have people go off independently.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 5: But if you are successful in burying people in litigation
Speaker 5: and threats from cash betel and investigations, then you start
Speaker 5: to suffocate and smother the counter narratives that you're identifying,
Speaker 5: and people may think it just like they do in Russia,
Speaker 5: but then they stop saying anything about it, and that
Speaker 5: it doesn't mean so what, and that The one thing
Speaker 5: I would say is I agree with your assessment. I
Speaker 5: don't think it's too optimistic. What I would just caution
Speaker 5: is that that alone is probably not sufficient in this moment.
Speaker 5: It's sort of like a plant that's outside when it's
Speaker 5: still potentially able to frost, Like, we need to have
Speaker 5: a little more protective cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only thing that will save us, if anything
Speaker 1: does save us, is the is the innate incompetence of
Speaker 1: trump Ism. I mean, that's it, right, because the media
Speaker 1: is not going to save us. There's no Bob Muller, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, that guy really fixed everything, right. James
Speaker 1: Comy is writing novels in Connecticut. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: after prosecuting Martha Stewart. I mean these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: the people in the federal government are not brave. I
Speaker 1: do think that. I mean, the good news is he's
Speaker 1: so and again these this good should be in scare quotes, like,
Speaker 1: the good news is he's so dehumanized that people work
Speaker 1: in the federal goal for men. Yeah, that they're probably
Speaker 1: leaking like crazy, and the next four years are just
Speaker 1: going to be Trump's you know, sort of every thing
Speaker 1: that anyone in that administration has ever done.
Speaker 5: I think so the one thing that it's true, there
Speaker 5: is a lot of like incompetence and incapacity. I would
Speaker 5: also just note that the core and key players aren't
Speaker 5: in place yet. Russell Bote isn't it at omb and
Speaker 5: he's going to be a critical part of the capacity
Speaker 5: and capabilities because he's the one that sort of has,
Speaker 5: in a way the keys to the castle. So much
Speaker 5: of their plans are designed to sort of stem from
Speaker 5: the work that he did over the last couple of years.
Speaker 5: The other thing to note is that, and this is
Speaker 5: the thing that's really important, that they have a very
Speaker 5: large risk tolerance, Like they're going and assuming a wide
Speaker 5: amount of mistakes, and that is something that they're comfortable with.
Speaker 5: And it's also something that Elon Musk brings to the table.
Speaker 5: That's what he's done everywhere. And I remember when he
Speaker 5: first took over Twitter and everyone thought that when he
Speaker 5: because he had fired all the engineers and people out,
Speaker 5: the system was going to break and fall apart, you know,
Speaker 5: and that each it's like, yeah, he's like you know,
Speaker 5: and he did the same thing. It tess on other companies,
Speaker 5: like you take everything away, you strip it down to
Speaker 5: the to the bare bones, and yeah, there may be
Speaker 5: a bunch of embarrassing things that happened, but then you
Speaker 5: only put in the essential pieces needed to hold the
Speaker 5: place up and now it's yours. And that's the thing
Speaker 5: to consider, is that some of the incompetents they're okay
Speaker 5: with because it means that, you know, if they can
Speaker 5: get away with it, and each time they get away
Speaker 5: with it, it further empowers them in a weird way.
Speaker 5: So I agree, I think that is going to be
Speaker 5: a frustrating point. I think the part that does concern
Speaker 5: me a lot is that layered in within the incompetence
Speaker 5: is just a malevolence and a targeted malevolence that is
Speaker 5: going to really make it hard to operationalize the frustration
Speaker 5: from that incompetence. And that doesn't mean it's no hope,
Speaker 5: I do think, And you said something that really accept me.
Speaker 5: It's like you were pointed to or you started listing
Speaker 5: some of the saviors that democrats and the public pointed
Speaker 5: to the last time around. And that was always the
Speaker 5: thing that I was anxious about, is that there was
Speaker 5: no savor. The savor, in a way was us, and
Speaker 5: we just wanted to outsource it, and I think this
Speaker 5: is sort of the inflection point for all of us
Speaker 5: is like do we want to outsource it? There isn't
Speaker 5: going to be a say, and it's certainly not going
Speaker 5: to be the Democratic Party or is it going to
Speaker 5: be us? And that I think is a big piece
Speaker 5: of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean I also think this is a
Speaker 1: terrible moment in American politics. And I mean it really is.
Speaker 1: I mean it's okay to accept that this is just horrendous.
Speaker 1: I mean watching I mean I watched those hearings yesterday,
Speaker 1: and I mean these Republican senators just begging RFK Junior
Speaker 1: just to say that vaccines are okay and you wouldn't,
Speaker 1: I mean the sort of let you know, and begging
Speaker 1: Tulcy Gabbard to say that Snowden is a trader and
Speaker 1: she wouldn't. I mean, just like it was so pathetic.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, these people work, they were elected senators.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like not a great job, and
Speaker 1: they're doing it theoretically because they believe in some things.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just such an exercise and dehumanization. And
Speaker 1: I'm not even fans of these Republican senators.
Speaker 5: No, it's not I so I know this thing about it,
Speaker 5: and this sort of ties into a piece of this.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, the same conversation we're having about
Speaker 5: the corporate side and sort of their capitulation. I thought
Speaker 5: about that in the context of some of these Republican
Speaker 5: leaders as well. So you know, Ted Kruz sits atop
Speaker 5: the committee that will have subpoena power over tech, and
Speaker 5: you know he's he's been critical of big tech in
Speaker 5: the past and certainly would use subopenas I don't think
Speaker 5: to necessarily be a big justice advocate, but there's certainly
Speaker 5: it gives him power and capacity. One thing that the
Speaker 5: administration is already is anxious about and is trying to
Speaker 5: find a way to strip him away from it, is
Speaker 5: to reduce his ability to subpoena big tech companies. It
Speaker 5: seems small, but it's like it just reinforces your point
Speaker 5: about how much they're sort of pushing Republicans, and we
Speaker 5: have Republican leaders are willingly giving this power over for
Speaker 5: whatever short term gambit they think they're going to get
Speaker 5: out of it, but ultimately they've either made the assessment
Speaker 5: that they're going to become you know, they're going to
Speaker 5: go full Lindsey Graham, you know, and they're always going
Speaker 5: to tow the line, or they hope in the future
Speaker 5: maybe they can have a better terrain to fight on it.
Speaker 5: And I don't think that's going to happen. I think
Speaker 5: in a weird way, Trump is at his wet right
Speaker 5: now and everybody else is at their most potent, and
Speaker 5: in three months from now, if we continue on this trajectory,
Speaker 5: that will be inverted.
Speaker 1: I am not convinced of that because I think ultimately
Speaker 1: the key to trump Ism is that he kind of
Speaker 1: blows himself up. Thank God. I mean, that may not
Speaker 1: continue to be true, but what I have noticed in
Speaker 1: the past is that it's just like with the family businesses,
Speaker 1: he just can't keep it going. Like there's a reason
Speaker 1: he's not maclough right, there's a reason he's not. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of real estate families in New
Speaker 1: York who have made billions and billions of dollars who
Speaker 1: are not geniuses. Like it's not a hard it's not
Speaker 1: a hard career to run real estate in a city
Speaker 1: where everything where real estate just gets more and more expensive.
Speaker 1: So what I think is what's interesting about Trump, or
Speaker 1: what may save us, and again I am a cock
Speaker 1: eyede optimist. Is the fact that he is just very
Speaker 1: self destructive and he tends to not be able to
Speaker 1: keep it going. But again, I guess we're going to say, right.
Speaker 5: I think that's sort The only thing I would note
Speaker 5: is that perception is reality to an extent in politics.
Speaker 5: And the thing that makes me very anxious, and this
Speaker 5: is especially tied in with the way the tech companies
Speaker 5: have sort of been so quickly, is that the imbalance,
Speaker 5: the asymmetry in that landscape is so drastically different. So like,
Speaker 5: if you look at left leaning and left aligne sort
Speaker 5: of like podcasters shows across the full spectrum, and then
Speaker 5: you look at their monthly listens, it's somewhere in the
Speaker 5: range of on the high level, about seventy million or
Speaker 5: so monthly listens, and aggregate on the sort of the
Speaker 5: right leaning side, it's close to three hundred million. And
Speaker 5: that's just one data point. I mean, the asymmetry and
Speaker 5: that is a fairly narrow lens on what you would
Speaker 5: identify as right leading. And that's in part because you know,
Speaker 5: and so I think part of it is. And that's
Speaker 5: just one data point. But the imbalance there the asymmetry
Speaker 5: does give them the ability to either shift blame for
Speaker 5: problems or for issues, and I think you're sort of
Speaker 5: seeing them begin to plant the seeds of that. So
Speaker 5: this idea of like malicious compliance, for instance, that everything
Speaker 5: that's gone wrong with our edicts are not a result
Speaker 5: of the edict, but rather these deep staters that are
Speaker 5: implementing it to hurt people on purpose, to make it
Speaker 5: bad for us. That's very believable. And if you have
Speaker 5: a narrative dominance, which he does, you could see how
Speaker 5: most many people would buy into that, like, oh, that
Speaker 5: kind of makes sense. They always hated him, you know,
Speaker 5: so clearly they're trying to sabotage him. And I think
Speaker 5: that's the only thing that gives me a little anxiety
Speaker 5: there is that even if he's self destructive in a
Speaker 5: few months from now, we'll be love to see it.
Speaker 5: Will we even know that he's self destructing?
Speaker 1: Right? And that I think is a big scary todd. Well,
Speaker 1: there we go. Not great, not great. We love to
Speaker 1: keep from crying. Thank you, Angelo, Thank you. Owen Higgins
Speaker 1: is the author of owned How Tech Billionaires on the
Speaker 1: Right Bought the loudest voices on the Left. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Owen, thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your book.
Speaker 4: The book is called Owen, How tech billionaires on the
Speaker 4: right about the loudest voices on the left. And it's
Speaker 4: kind of an exploration of both. How Silicon Valley billionaires
Speaker 4: like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Andrees and David Sachs
Speaker 4: and others have become more public about their right wing,
Speaker 4: in some cases far right views. How they've used their
Speaker 4: cash their investments to shape the information and media ecosystem
Speaker 4: in the United States and beyond. And I use Glenn
Speaker 4: Greenwald and Matt Taibi to prominent independent journalists who rose
Speaker 4: to fame. They cannot be bought, right, they cannot be bought.
Speaker 4: And I use them being bought to explain this phenomena.
Speaker 1: So how did they get bought? Pick whoever, which one
Speaker 1: you want and talk us through it in the vaguest
Speaker 1: possible way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I would probably say that Greenwald his
Speaker 4: independence has been one of the things he's been most
Speaker 4: fierce about throughout his career as a journalist, and over time,
Speaker 4: I mean, he created his own career really like just
Speaker 4: by writing, which which I think is admirable. He was
Speaker 4: in the blogisphere in the mid to late two thousands,
Speaker 4: joined Salon, then joined The Guardian. Then he broke the
Speaker 4: Snowden story, which catapulted him to global fame, then translated
Speaker 4: that into founding The Intercept with financing from Pierre Ohmadyar
Speaker 4: former eBay founder.
Speaker 1: Who's generally thought of as a pretty good guy.
Speaker 4: As I say in the book, he's been described by
Speaker 4: his peers as perhaps more libertarian than he gives the
Speaker 4: impression of in public life, but his investments in media
Speaker 4: have kind of tilted to the left, tilted liberal. And
Speaker 4: you know, this is another example, getting Glenn Greenwell to
Speaker 4: come on board after you know, revealing the Snowden leagues,
Speaker 4: which was you know, widely I think and correctly seen
Speaker 4: as something that was more left wing than right wing.
Speaker 4: He also got Jeremy ska Hill, famous international affairs journalists
Speaker 4: as well, and Laura Poitras, a filmmaker, and the three
Speaker 4: of them found the Intercept. Glenn was with The Intercept
Speaker 4: until twenty twenty, when he left over editing of his
Speaker 4: article on the Hunter Biden laptop right before the election.
Speaker 4: I won't go super into the details, but basically the
Speaker 4: editorial stat did not feel that his reporting at the
Speaker 4: time met the factual standards that they needed. They just
Speaker 4: didn't know enough of what he was saying. Some of
Speaker 4: what he was saying has been born out, so he
Speaker 4: tends to use that as a pushback, but at the
Speaker 4: time they didn't really have a solid idea that what
Speaker 4: he was saying was strictly accurate. But either way, he
Speaker 4: had already been kind of tilting to the right. He
Speaker 4: had been going on Tucker Carlson. He had been kind
Speaker 4: of cultivating this right wing audience. He then moved to Substack,
Speaker 4: which at the time was Flora Shamming still is, but
Speaker 4: coming off of the maths of investment from Mark Andresen
Speaker 4: or funding round men by Andresen and so Greenwall joined there.
Speaker 4: He wasn't entire there by Substack. They didn't pay him
Speaker 4: to come.
Speaker 1: Right, It was early Substack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But he came over there and established himself and
Speaker 4: did play well for a while. And then in May
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, so the following May, so he left
Speaker 4: the Intercept, I think November twenty twenty and in May
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, an investment group consisting of in among
Speaker 4: other people, the billionaire Peter Thiel and future Vice president
Speaker 4: J D Vance invested in this YouTube alternative called Rumble,
Speaker 4: and then Rumble took that money and gave deals to people,
Speaker 4: including Glenn. In August twenty twenty one, Glenn was announced
Speaker 4: as one of the paid deals that they were hanging
Speaker 4: out him alongside Tulsea Gabbard. And if you just kind
Speaker 4: of look, his politics had already been moving to the right.
Speaker 4: The things he was saying have been moving to the right,
Speaker 4: and I think that he has been moving there ever
Speaker 4: since in order to cultivate and to keep the audience
Speaker 4: that he has. With a few exceptions, a few issue exceptions,
Speaker 4: I think Pali sign and some surveillance stuff, he's kind
Speaker 4: of broken with the right a little bit on, but
Speaker 4: overall he's been He's been pretty close to the conservative
Speaker 4: movement and certainly opposed to liberals, which I think is
Speaker 4: kind of more maybe how his politics manifest themselves.
Speaker 1: You know, again, I'm not a fan of any of
Speaker 1: these people, but I'm just curious, how is he bought
Speaker 1: by the right. I mean, it sounds like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's made money where the money is and he's a
Speaker 1: kind of contrarian, which a lot of those guys are.
Speaker 1: But how is he sort of bought by them?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the Rumble investment and then him going
Speaker 4: over to Rumble is a pretty clear one to one.
Speaker 4: You know, this is a in all but name and
Speaker 4: unabashedly right wing video publication, and they gave him money
Speaker 4: to come over there. He's still on his deal there.
Speaker 4: He actually had to leave substacks, so he consolidate his
Speaker 4: writing over there as well on a platform called Locals
Speaker 4: that they bought. So I think that the as far
Speaker 4: as the money goes, I mean, he's he's clearly making
Speaker 4: money from a website that promotes and kind of wakingly
Speaker 4: markets itself to the right wing. So I feel like
Speaker 4: that's kind of a pretty clear one to one as
Speaker 4: far as like how this comes across. I did a
Speaker 4: study back, and I believe this was early twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: maybe might have been twenty twenty two, where I looked
Speaker 4: over his tweets and how he was talking about Fox News,
Speaker 4: which would have him on and that kind of helped
Speaker 4: him to build up his writing audis as well. Tucker
Speaker 4: Carlson was a big ally of his and would have
Speaker 4: him on his show often, and so I did analysis
Speaker 4: of his positive and negative tweets about the network, and
Speaker 4: you could just see, like I made a whole graph
Speaker 4: of it, and you could just see them just spiking,
Speaker 4: going huge, like either cumulative or not culative. Once he
Speaker 4: started going on Fox, he's stopped being critical of it
Speaker 4: and basically added like an unpaid cheerleader, almost like an
Speaker 4: employee right of the network. But I think that that
Speaker 4: is instructive. That's telling because it shows how Glenn is
Speaker 4: willing to adjust his message and adjust the way that
Speaker 4: he talks about things and who he allies himself with
Speaker 4: depending on if they are benefiting them. Pierre Amyar, who
Speaker 4: we were just talking about right, the funder of the Intercept.
Speaker 4: When Glenn worked for the Intercept, he never had a
Speaker 4: bad thing to say about Pierre. He would say occasionally,
Speaker 4: you know, we may disagree on something, but Pierre always
Speaker 4: lets me, like do whatever I want. Once he was
Speaker 4: away from the Intercept, his rhetoric about ah Mijar became harsh.
Speaker 4: He attacked him. He attacked many of his former colleagues
Speaker 4: at the Intercept. And look, I'm not saying that they
Speaker 4: did or didn't deserve any of his criticism. I'm not
Speaker 4: making a judgment on that. What I'm saying is that
Speaker 4: the decision to go after them once he was no
Speaker 4: longer employed by the intercept the decision to go after
Speaker 4: them once Pierre al Midyar's money was no longer funding
Speaker 4: his lifestyle as opposed to going after them before about
Speaker 4: all of these problems that he said that he had
Speaker 4: about the under seven about Omar, I think that just
Speaker 4: kind of says a lot about the way that he
Speaker 4: functions in this in this world, and the way that
Speaker 4: he picks and chooses his targets.
Speaker 1: Right. So basically they get them by employing them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they get them by employing them. They get them
Speaker 4: by kind of introducing them into this network, this world
Speaker 4: where there's a lot of money to be had by
Speaker 4: you know, the saying things that they like to hear.
Speaker 4: So you know, like not only does Glenn you know,
Speaker 4: have this contract with Rumble, but he's also paid to
Speaker 4: talk to events like Blagi Trinavisan's Network State conference had
Speaker 4: had him as a speaker the All In Podcast, which
Speaker 4: is fund which is founded by David Sachs, who's a billionaire.
Speaker 4: Like they had Glenn come to one of their conferences.
Speaker 4: I mean once you start to understand, like the way
Speaker 4: they all like and this isn't this is not at
Speaker 4: all unique to this space, but like this the speaking circuit.
Speaker 4: You'll see this liberals and conservatives do. It's once you're
Speaker 4: in this kind of world. There are a lot of
Speaker 4: financial opportunities here that are not always you know, kind
Speaker 4: of one to one, like you're being employed by it,
Speaker 4: like you're within this world.
Speaker 1: The Barry Wise phenomenon.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, and Barry features, I mean Barry and Matt
Speaker 4: Taibi are two people who have made most of their
Speaker 4: money using crowdfunding, right, or most of their money recently
Speaker 4: by using prowdfunding by using substacks newsletter service as a
Speaker 4: way of getting money from subscribers. They didn't get paid
Speaker 4: by substack to come over there. They pay substack a cotton.
Speaker 4: Substack facilitates their payments. Right. So if you're just kind
Speaker 4: of looking at that, you might say, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 4: this is just a situation where you know, they just
Speaker 4: have an audience and they are working with that audience.
Speaker 4: But then you have Elon Musk making the decision to
Speaker 4: choose both of them to publicize the Twitter files, right,
Speaker 4: These highly curated tranch of emails and messages that told
Speaker 4: a specific story that he wanted to be told, and
Speaker 4: they were able to use that to get larger audiences
Speaker 4: and to appeal to a right wing audience, and in turn,
Speaker 4: they told the story that Elon wanted to have out there.
Speaker 4: And so I think that's another example of like how
Speaker 4: they were paid, like they were chosen for this. Tayibe
Speaker 4: was chosen because David Sachs told Musk that Taiebe was
Speaker 4: somebody who Musk should give the files. Due Weiss was
Speaker 4: chosen because Mark Andreesen told Elon Musk, this is someone
Speaker 4: you should give the files to. So if you start
Speaker 4: to kind of put all this stuff together, you can
Speaker 4: see the network kind of working here in this kind
Speaker 4: of like patronage and backslapping and helping out and everybody.
Speaker 4: You know. Barry Weiss's Free Press just had a funding
Speaker 4: round last year led by Andresen that valued the website
Speaker 4: at one hundred million dollars. I think they raised fifteen million.
Speaker 4: It's very like clear, I think, what's happening here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're getting funded because they ideologically reflect the ethos
Speaker 1: of these far right billionaires. Do a minute on the
Speaker 1: Twitter files because I think that's pretty interesting. So they
Speaker 1: gave them these sort of pieces of Twitter stuff in
Speaker 1: order to prove a central thesis that Twitter was mean
Speaker 1: to conservatives, right, And I feel like it didn't quite
Speaker 1: go that way.
Speaker 4: I did it, Yeah, I mean there's a reason that
Speaker 4: Tybee chose to lead with the Hunter Biden laptop, right,
Speaker 4: like this this was a conservative story that they wanted
Speaker 4: to put out there. Elon made sure that the time
Speaker 4: line that they were allowed to access, you know, had
Speaker 4: certain parameters, made sure that there were certain things that
Speaker 4: they couldn't ask for. Un sure that he picked them
Speaker 4: because there were certain things that they wouldn't ask for, right,
Speaker 4: Like there are like certain activist groups on the left
Speaker 4: who would have been who were suppressed by Twitter for
Speaker 4: one reason or another. Like their suppression was not something
Speaker 4: that Musk wanted to have out there, and not something
Speaker 4: that Tybee and Weiss were interested in doing, I think
Speaker 4: for various reasons, including the fact that they just wanted
Speaker 4: to continue having access what the files purported to show.
Speaker 4: If you believe Tyee's kind of spent on this and
Speaker 4: Weiss's to it to a degree, is this kind of
Speaker 4: overarching liberal conspiracy within Twitter and the government which was
Speaker 4: at the time run by Trump like the time period
Speaker 4: they working for, but somehow was still controlled by liberals,
Speaker 4: and that this government and Twitter conspiracy, like all these
Speaker 4: bureaucrats and faceless Twitter employees were working together to suppress
Speaker 4: right wing commentary, whether it was about COVID, or it
Speaker 4: was about Hunter Biden, or it was about kind of
Speaker 4: any kind of criticism of the liberal consensus. You know, look,
Speaker 4: on the face of it, considering that they were talking
Speaker 4: about the Trump administration's time in office, I think this
Speaker 4: is kind of ridiculous. But they didn't really provide much
Speaker 4: in the way of proof. They had. They certainly showed
Speaker 4: in the case of the Hunter Bydon Laptop. Tybee was
Speaker 4: able to show the people behind Twitter trying to figure
Speaker 4: out how to deal with this reporting. And the reason
Speaker 4: that they were trying to figure out how to deal
Speaker 4: with this reporting was not because they were necessarily trying
Speaker 4: to help or hinder Biden or help her hinder Trump.
Speaker 4: It was more is this real and is this the
Speaker 4: kind of you know, the political rat fucking that we
Speaker 4: want to be like allow on this platform. And so
Speaker 4: Tayebe presented this instead as an example of this malfeasance
Speaker 4: this conspiracy that involved Twitter and the government at the
Speaker 4: same time.
Speaker 1: But it really just involved Twitter, right, it didn't really
Speaker 1: involve the government. Yeah, I guess, well, the government was
Speaker 1: asking about the COVID stuff, so I guess it's sort
Speaker 1: of dead.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that was the stuff the Weiss I think
Speaker 4: did more of. But I just just to go back
Speaker 4: to Tybee for a saying, I mean, you know, he
Speaker 4: found examples of First of all, there were more examples
Speaker 4: of the Trump campaign asking to take stuff down. But
Speaker 4: for some reason, even though he admitted that in his reporting,
Speaker 4: that wasn't the lead. But secondly, in the reporting around
Speaker 4: Hunter Biden, there was also the question of revenge for
Speaker 4: the question of you know, there are images of this
Speaker 4: man naked or you know, involved in sexual acts activity
Speaker 4: that were released without his permission, and like under the
Speaker 4: rules of Twitter, the user rules, and also I think
Speaker 4: you know laws in some states like you can't broadcast
Speaker 4: that that's protected, so they were asking for that to
Speaker 4: be taken down. This was presented as some evidence of
Speaker 4: malfeasance on the part of the Bind campaign. I just
Speaker 4: don't think that that is accurate or fair. As far
Speaker 4: as the COVID stuff went, I mean, maybe there's a
Speaker 4: little more solid ground to stand on as far as
Speaker 4: calling that maybe selective censorship. Your mileage may vary on
Speaker 4: whether or not you think that that is appropriate during
Speaker 4: a pandemic or not. I mean, you can make an
Speaker 4: argument either way. I'm not particularly put out to make it.
Speaker 4: To make the argument, I.
Speaker 1: Personally believe both that it should have been taken down
Speaker 1: and that it was probably ultimately bad that it was
Speaker 1: taken down. Right, Like, you're in the middle of a pandemic,
Speaker 1: there are not great choices. I just think everybody did
Speaker 1: what they thought was the right thing, and some of
Speaker 1: it turned out to have larger consequences. But so all
Speaker 1: of this is sort of they just went to where
Speaker 1: the money is. Is ultimately your thesis.
Speaker 4: That's I mean, that's part of my thesis. They I
Speaker 4: think there were other reasons that they turned to the
Speaker 4: right that I get into in the book, you know,
Speaker 4: like frustration with liberals and Democrats for the way that
Speaker 4: they endorsed a lot of the policies during Bush that
Speaker 4: they had opposed at the time, right right, right.
Speaker 1: Right, for not being truly ideologically pure, which is a
Speaker 1: real complaint.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for Glenn especially, I think that that was a motivator. Also,
Speaker 4: the democratic reaction to Trump the first time, I think
Speaker 4: was also a motivator for him. That second one as
Speaker 4: well was for Tybee, and Tybee also had to deal
Speaker 4: with kind of being canceled over his former writing when
Speaker 4: he was in Russia. So it's not kind of like
Speaker 4: a black and white thing where it's like this happened
Speaker 4: and then this happened, right, It's not like a one
Speaker 4: to one. It's like there were a lot of different factors.
Speaker 4: But at that time, these billionaires also had their ideological project,
Speaker 4: which was to weaken and to decentralize the both the
Speaker 4: mainstream and critical independent media, and in order to do that,
Speaker 4: they needed to break down those institutions a little bit.
Speaker 4: And you know, putting forward a client sycophantic alternative media
Speaker 4: structure that they could control or at least that they
Speaker 4: could fund, meant that they were able to kind of
Speaker 4: damage these institutions. And you know, having big names like
Speaker 4: Tybee and Greenwald helped that process along. And I think
Speaker 4: that that is part of the motivator for them.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my pleasure, thank you for having me on No.
Speaker 1: Good Jesse Cannon by jug Fast.
Speaker 2: So the Trump administration's halt of CDC Weekly Scientific Reports
Speaker 2: is stalling bird flu studies. As this is like crossing
Speaker 2: over breeds and like we're seeing so much evidence of
Speaker 2: like why we need government to work, and this, uh,
Speaker 2: this feels so we're.
Speaker 1: All really really worried about bird flu. Look, nobody wants
Speaker 1: the bird flu, nobody wants a pandemic. But Trump has
Speaker 1: started deciding that if so, CDC's weekly Scientific Reports will
Speaker 1: not be published. This will stall bird flu studies. Trump
Speaker 1: administration has re intervened in the release of important studies
Speaker 1: on bird flu. The thinking here is if no one
Speaker 1: knows it's a pandemic, then I guess it will never
Speaker 1: be a pandemic. I mean, this is so stupid and
Speaker 1: self defeating. And one of the studies would reveal whether
Speaker 1: veterinarians who treat cattle have been unknowingly infected by the
Speaker 1: bird flu virus. Another report documents cases in which people
Speaker 1: carrying the virus might have infected their pet cats. Well,
Speaker 1: this seems really fucking bad and there we go.
Speaker 2: Welcome all yeah, and this mucking up the works is
Speaker 2: doing all sorts of things. My sister texted to us
Speaker 2: today that they stopped giving reportings on shootings, of course,
Speaker 2: because they have to also pretend that's not happening too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is just so fucking bad. It is really bad.
Speaker 3: Reality doesn't happen if you just pretend it's not happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it still does though. That's about news.
Speaker 3: That's the bad news.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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