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 two thirds of Americans think Trump's
Speaker 1: tariffs will lead to higher prices.
Speaker 2: The other third don't know where they are. That's according
Speaker 2: to Poles.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today, the
Speaker 1: Mary Trump Shows. Mary Trump stops by to talk about
Speaker 1: how her uncle is going to destroy America. Then we
Speaker 1: will talk to Garbage Days Ryan Broderick about politics being
Speaker 1: downstream from internet culture and what that means.
Speaker 2: For our political future. Spoiler it's bad. But first the
Speaker 2: news Somalia.
Speaker 3: As we were alluding to the intro to this, I
Speaker 3: think some people don't know what tariffs are, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that I feel like we've been discussing them for
Speaker 3: half a year at this point, at minimum, if we
Speaker 3: didn't learn this in school. But I'm going to shock
Speaker 3: you here. Eric Trump does not know what tariffs do.
Speaker 2: What it cannot be uh.
Speaker 3: Here he is with Warre Grimman. He's gonna show us.
Speaker 4: You want to drugs to come through our southern border,
Speaker 4: We're going to tarif you you want to allow them
Speaker 4: come through Canada, We're gonna teify China. If you're gonna
Speaker 4: allow this stuff to get sold in our country, largely
Speaker 4: produced in China, we're gonna add another ten percent.
Speaker 2: To your chair.
Speaker 4: We are gonna cost your countries, your economies.
Speaker 3: We're gonna cost.
Speaker 4: Your businesses billions, hundreds of billions at dollars. If you
Speaker 4: think you're gonna pair you know terror, you're going to
Speaker 4: poison Americans. It's not gonna happen. You're not gonna destroy
Speaker 4: your youth. You're not gonna destroy our society. You're not
Speaker 4: gonna destroy our families. You're not gonna do it.
Speaker 3: It's going to cost you.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna put an end to it.
Speaker 1: Laura.
Speaker 4: When my father sent that twenty minutes ago, I literally
Speaker 4: cheered out loud.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the second son, the drama
Speaker 1: of the second side.
Speaker 3: You better watch it. He might tear a few.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's gonna he's reading his father's tweets. All he
Speaker 1: wants is for his father to love him, and instead
Speaker 1: all he gets are his tweets, and he says, yay, Dad.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Do you think your kids ever read your tweets? And
Speaker 3: stand up and cheer?
Speaker 2: No? I want to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Tariffs do make things more expensive, yes, but the people
Speaker 1: selling the drugs are not the Chinese government, right, they
Speaker 1: understand that.
Speaker 3: Right, They're not the exporters and importers of.
Speaker 2: Fent and all.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, man, Trump was elected to make everything
Speaker 1: less expensive, and so he's going to make everything more
Speaker 1: expensive by putting tariffs on it, including fent and al.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to get a cheap
Speaker 1: vent and all anywhere. Just kidding, No, no, don't get
Speaker 1: vent and all. Don't take drugs. Also, don't tariff everything,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 3: Just say no to tariffs and drugs.
Speaker 2: Tariffs drugs, no, thank you.
Speaker 3: All right, Molly, let's talk about the elephant of stupidity
Speaker 3: in the room. Trump got away with everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did.
Speaker 1: That's the top line here is that Jack Smith has
Speaker 1: made it official's over. He's dismissing the case without prejudice,
Speaker 1: so it could theoretically be opened up again. But let's
Speaker 1: be honest. I think that we all know this is
Speaker 1: the end of the law trying to hold Trump accountable.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think any of us should be surprised,
Speaker 1: but I do think the one thing I will say
Speaker 1: is that people put too much faith, and.
Speaker 2: By people, I mean me as well.
Speaker 1: I'm not some you know, if we've learned anything from
Speaker 1: his election, it's that I, you know, just have the
Speaker 1: same sort of I'm wrong too infallible for sure. But
Speaker 1: I think that we definitely saw that a lot of
Speaker 1: people really thought that the law would hold Trump accountable
Speaker 1: for some of the ways he evaded accountability, and it
Speaker 1: was unable to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds about right. So here's a blast for
Speaker 3: the past. Do you perhaps remember a bunch of not
Speaker 3: so fine people named No Labels?
Speaker 1: I yes, No Labels, Nancy Jacobson and the former Clinton
Speaker 1: pollster Mark Penn, who went on to start No Labels
Speaker 1: and get a lot of money from a lot of
Speaker 1: different people, threatening to run a third party candidate, which
Speaker 1: they never did.
Speaker 2: But they are still salty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they seem pretty salty. They launched this big glossuit.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: This should not be surprising because it's so stupid, but
Speaker 1: it is maybe a little surprising. So No Labels is
Speaker 1: going after Reid Hoffman and Third Way because they feel
Speaker 1: that they were insufficiently supportive of.
Speaker 2: The candidate they never ran. I mean, this is like.
Speaker 1: If we had run a candidate, you would have been bad.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to get a legal discovery going exposing
Speaker 1: the secret machinations that they think led to their project's demise. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how this works, but it does seem
Speaker 1: like an enormous waste of time for all parties involved.
Speaker 1: And we'll see what happens. But you know, No Labels
Speaker 1: continues to be up to no good.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Now we get to what seems to be a mandatory
Speaker 3: section of this podcast, which is what dumb shit is
Speaker 3: Elon up to.
Speaker 1: When we last saw Elon mush Or, as Donald Trump
Speaker 1: calls him Leon, he was jumping up and down and
Speaker 1: exposing his stomach, forming his body in the shape of
Speaker 1: an X, and complaining bitterly about how mean the mainstream
Speaker 1: media was to him. You will be shocked to hear that,
Speaker 1: in fact, he is still complaining about the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: But this is an interesting media issue because it is
Speaker 1: Elon Musk versus Rupert Murdoch. So Trump is billionaire's biggest supporter,
Speaker 1: richest man in the world, is furious at legacy media,
Speaker 1: this time the Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch,
Speaker 1: which is unbelievably ironic and hilarious. So they have a
Speaker 1: big piece that dropped on Monday night which was about
Speaker 1: the environmental problems at his Tesla facility in Texas. I
Speaker 1: just want to say that the headline is Musk says
Speaker 1: he wants to save the planet, Teslass factories are making
Speaker 1: it dirtier, and then he captioned it writing, legacy media
Speaker 1: is a sewer pipe of lies. This is a team
Speaker 1: who have won Pulitzerprises. They are pretty smart and careful.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to imagine that Walter Journal does
Speaker 1: some of the best reporting going and Elon is furious
Speaker 1: because look the reason they don't the reason and again, like,
Speaker 1: this is the thing I would say to those of
Speaker 1: us who are on the more liberal side when we
Speaker 1: critique the mainstream media, is like, the mainstream media is
Speaker 1: actually trying to keep these people accountable, and without them,
Speaker 1: you will never know about the dirty Tesla factory or
Speaker 1: the dumping this waste in the river. And so the
Speaker 1: reason that Elon is at war with the mainstream media
Speaker 1: is because he doesn't want people reporting stuff. He just
Speaker 1: wants Tesla fans one, two, three news and Maga News four, five,
Speaker 1: six and so it is really important to realize, like
Speaker 1: this is real and in fact, his mother, you may
Speaker 1: remember May Musk, has been going on television to complain
Speaker 1: about how unfair it is that people are mean to
Speaker 1: her son, who happens to be the richest man in
Speaker 1: the entire world.
Speaker 3: Real mom going to the principal's office to clean up
Speaker 3: the best of a shitty kid.
Speaker 2: De energy going on right there, Yeah, Aze and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Mary Trump is the host of The Mary Trump Show
Speaker 1: and the author of Who Could Ever Love You? A
Speaker 1: family memoir. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mary Trump, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me, Molly joc Fast, I love you,
Speaker 1: and we are real friends.
Speaker 2: You know, we're in the woods right now. We're in November.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not in the second Trump admin yet,
Speaker 1: but we're starting to get a feel of the insanity
Speaker 1: that we all remember from twenty sixteen, the sheer chaoticness
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with the recognition because we've been paying attention that
Speaker 5: this is going to be much worse.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, and in fact, we were talking about this
Speaker 1: just now, Like there are definitely people in our business,
Speaker 1: in the media industrial complex, and I think like one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm struck by is like I wrote
Speaker 1: about getting a lot of the election wrong, or at
Speaker 1: least I thought Harris was going to win, and I
Speaker 1: got that wrong.
Speaker 2: And there were other things I got wrong.
Speaker 1: And I've spent a lot of time like thinking about
Speaker 1: the ways in which wish casting overwhelmed my I for data,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. But I want to be
Speaker 1: clear eyed and like the truth is. And people say
Speaker 1: this to me. Sometimes they'll be like, well, didn't you
Speaker 1: guys all want them to win? And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: did not, But there are definitely people who work in
Speaker 1: the mainstream media who did.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, then what, as I said, be careful what you
Speaker 5: wish for. It's not going to end well for a
Speaker 5: lot of people.
Speaker 2: It's not going to end well for anyone.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because it's like, when we are talking
Speaker 1: about this, it's like we're in this period where I
Speaker 1: just hope it's not going to be as bad as
Speaker 1: the stuff I've read in Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: I hope that I'm not confident of that, because there's
Speaker 5: literally no reason it wouldn't be. I just want to
Speaker 5: say something really quickly though, about people's receptions of how
Speaker 5: the election was going to go for alone time. Some
Speaker 5: people were saying it's not close, it's uncertain, and right
Speaker 5: that it was both, And I think that it's extraordinarily
Speaker 5: important to point out that there have been massive global
Speaker 5: trends against incumbency, and which is deeply unfair for many reasons,
Speaker 5: because the reason where where we are now in some
Speaker 5: ways is directly because of the malfeasance and incompetence of
Speaker 5: the first Trump administration. But the United States, across every
Speaker 5: economic indicator, it's fared better than every other country in
Speaker 5: the developed world, and the margin in our election was
Speaker 5: much much smaller than in any other as far as
Speaker 5: I'm aware. So I don't think it was a mistake
Speaker 5: at all to believe that Harris was going to pull
Speaker 5: it out. She did extraordinarily well under very difficult circumstances.
Speaker 5: And we now know that it was people who made
Speaker 5: up their minds late in the game who broke for
Speaker 5: Donald because of massive amounts of disinformation that we're being
Speaker 5: pumped in. So I don't think we were wrong quite honestly.
Speaker 1: Right, No, now I agree, and I feel like I
Speaker 1: was wrong about certain things, and I saw things that
Speaker 1: I ignored and actually about this but I agree that
Speaker 1: it was certainly much closer than it was anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And also, I mean, they're just any number of things
Speaker 1: that are important or remember here. And also Democrats did
Speaker 1: in almost all the swing states except for Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Keep the Senate seed.
Speaker 5: That's something really important to keep in mind. And the
Speaker 5: other important thing to keep in mind. I guess it
Speaker 5: doesn't matter, it really matter, but it matters to me
Speaker 5: because we have a huge uphill battle to climb now.
Speaker 5: Donald Trump one does not have a mandate. He didn't
Speaker 5: even break fifty percent of the popular vote. The margin
Speaker 5: is the smallest it's been in modern history because remember
Speaker 5: Gore won the popular.
Speaker 2: Vote right exactly.
Speaker 5: It is the smallest margin of popular vote victory. And
Speaker 5: in my view, he's an illegitimate president because he was
Speaker 5: an illegitimate candidate, and the fact that he was able
Speaker 5: to run it all speaks less to his ability to
Speaker 5: overcome obstacles than it does to how deeply broken the
Speaker 5: system is that somebody like him was allowed to run
Speaker 5: in the first place.
Speaker 1: A good point, this is something that I've sort of
Speaker 1: gotten to in my head, is that if you look
Speaker 1: at the election results, we see that it's like what
Speaker 1: Trump did was the same thing he did in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty sixteen, which was he was able to
Speaker 1: create his own thing right and get non voters voting,
Speaker 1: And we can sort of unpack how he did that,
Speaker 1: though I don't think we totally get I don't think
Speaker 1: we have completely all the information yet. But I think
Speaker 1: that if you compare it to like, there's so much
Speaker 1: punitrary about like the Democratic.
Speaker 2: Brand being bad, but I don't actually think that's right.
Speaker 1: I actually think I think Democrats didn't do enough to
Speaker 1: get their base engaged and try too hard to win
Speaker 1: over Republicans who weren't white on college educated women who
Speaker 1: weren't coming along with it anyway.
Speaker 2: I also think that there's a real.
Speaker 1: Theory of the case that the brand that is worst
Speaker 1: off is a publican brand.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, it's absurd to claim otherwise. And I think this
Speaker 5: falls under the umbrella of normalization of corporate media in particular,
Speaker 5: always coming down to the disadvantage of Democrats to normalize
Speaker 5: Donald and everything that the Republican Party has been doing,
Speaker 5: because you know, treating this election like it was a
Speaker 5: normal election and saying that the Democrats lost because their
Speaker 5: brand is terrible they have to, you know, burshe the
Speaker 5: party and rebuild it from the ground up.
Speaker 2: Right. It's crazy.
Speaker 5: It's completely crazy because again they barely lost. Okay, you know,
Speaker 5: we do make the electoral College calculations, which unfortunately we
Speaker 5: have to do. It was what two hundred and twenty
Speaker 5: five votes in seven states or something. So that's just
Speaker 5: absurd on its face. And it also completely ignores the
Speaker 5: fact that the Republicans nominated an adjudicated rapist, a man
Speaker 5: who was convicted of thirty four felonies, who started the
Speaker 5: Big Lie, who had incited an insurrection against his own government,
Speaker 5: who was out on bail and three other jurisdictions, and
Speaker 5: who is where he is today simply because our system
Speaker 5: is so deeply, deeply corrupt that one federal judge and
Speaker 5: six illegitiate members of the Supreme Court decided that he
Speaker 5: was above the law.
Speaker 1: But I also think just one last part of this,
Speaker 1: like when you look at the numbers, you see that,
Speaker 1: in fact, voters did this crazy thing where in a
Speaker 1: lot of these swing states they voted for Trump and
Speaker 1: then they left the bottom of the ticket blank.
Speaker 5: Right, Or there was more splitting of tickets than usual,
Speaker 5: or there was some very odd, very voting patterns that
Speaker 5: I think need to be taken into account or you know,
Speaker 5: need to be not investigated, but examined analyzed, because that's
Speaker 5: information we need to have, like what happened there? What
Speaker 5: is that about? But the other thing that I completely
Speaker 5: forgot to mention is that, you know, this isn't about
Speaker 5: the Democratic brand. This is about the fact that this
Speaker 5: the United States of America, continues to be a deeply
Speaker 5: racist and misogynistic country. You've got sixty percent of white
Speaker 5: men and fifty three percent of white women voting for
Speaker 5: this adjudicated rapist, voting for the men who is proud
Speaker 5: to have made women in half of our state's second
Speaker 5: class citizens, who is proud to take away a fundamental
Speaker 5: right that women have had for over fifty years simply
Speaker 5: because his opponent was a black woman. We can't just
Speaker 5: skip over that, because that continues to be a fundamental
Speaker 5: problem that is not getting fixed.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I'm wondering, can we talk about like what
Speaker 1: we do now with Trump? So sorry, I always forget
Speaker 1: that we have to cover him because he's the president.
Speaker 1: We don't have to give him the benefit of the
Speaker 1: doubt because we covered him for four years.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like that is the way to do it?
Speaker 2: I mean, what do you think.
Speaker 5: I don't think I've ever met anybody who deserves the
Speaker 5: benefit of the doubt less Donald Trump right exactly. Yes,
Speaker 5: we have to cover him, and we have to cover
Speaker 5: him properly because we're already seeing many of the corporate
Speaker 5: media falling down one because there was just a pole taking.
Speaker 5: And the majority of Americans think that the transition is
Speaker 5: going swimmingly.
Speaker 2: Oh no, really, really, what is it? What is the
Speaker 2: swimming part of it?
Speaker 5: They like his picks, you know, they like dominees. Maybe
Speaker 5: some of them like the fact that he's not going
Speaker 5: to demean himself by blowing procede jerk.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah, by letting his cabinet appointments be it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrible. And nobody wants that.
Speaker 5: Signing the memoranda of understanding, which gives the GSA power
Speaker 5: to make sure that there's no grift happening or no
Speaker 5: barn money being illicitly raised, etcetera, etcetera. So he's not
Speaker 5: any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, nobody likes that.
Speaker 5: I think we need to cover him absolutely so that
Speaker 5: we can disabuse people of these notions. That does not, however,
Speaker 5: mean making it easier for him, like the idea I
Speaker 5: was talking to somebody earlier about, you know, access journalism,
Speaker 5: and what is the point of interviewing Donald Trump at
Speaker 5: this He's just going to lie to your face and
Speaker 5: try to, you know, tear down anybody in the media
Speaker 5: who thwarts him or who fact checks him, or what
Speaker 5: have you. I think he needs to be covered like
Speaker 5: a hostile foreign power, because he is one, right.
Speaker 1: I also think that it's sort of an interesting like.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think, look, they have to cover him,
Speaker 1: and coverage means that could mean any number of things, right,
Speaker 1: But you.
Speaker 2: Know, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm of two minds about interviewing him, because
Speaker 1: you certainly have to talk to the people around him.
Speaker 1: You're going to get stories that way. Trump's White House
Speaker 1: leaks like a sieve. The only way that any of
Speaker 1: the norms and institutions are going to hold is if
Speaker 1: people are leaking out some of the nefarious stuff they're doing,
Speaker 1: which delightfully they all love to do. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm very conflicted about sort of the right way to
Speaker 1: go about this, And there is no handbook for covering
Speaker 1: an authoritarian and in what's left of a democracy.
Speaker 5: No, I think we'll know more when we see what
Speaker 5: happens with the White House Press Office. You know, when
Speaker 5: we see who gets press passes, who doesn't, who gets
Speaker 5: better seating, who doesn't. You know, who gets pushed to
Speaker 5: the back of the room, who's allowed to the first
Speaker 5: two rows? Is a NEWSMAC and more of Fox people
Speaker 5: and Charlie Kirk and those people I know, people who
Speaker 5: probably aren't going to going to get press passes this Cybern.
Speaker 5: That'll be a good cue for what how we handle it.
Speaker 5: But and I mean this is this has been true
Speaker 5: for a long time. We need stronger independent media. There
Speaker 5: are two things that continue to mystify me and have
Speaker 5: for a long time. Why the Democrats haven't for decades
Speaker 5: now made the Supreme Court more important issue, and why
Speaker 5: there's nobody on the left throwing tons of money at
Speaker 5: independent media. And then there's a new third thing, which
Speaker 5: is why the Democrats did absolutely nothing to create safeguards
Speaker 5: against the potential for another Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yeah, all right, sounds right to me.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean, I it certainly sounds right
Speaker 1: to me. I also am just shocked that we're hearing
Speaker 1: at I mean, now is the other thing dead? And
Speaker 1: I also feel I mean, I don't know how this happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do know how this happened, and I
Speaker 1: do know, but I also feel like Trump ran on
Speaker 1: this idea of making things less expensive, and now the
Speaker 1: first thing he's going to do is tariffs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he lied about He lied about everything, and he
Speaker 6: was allowed to lie about everything because we were told, well,
Speaker 6: that's what he does that dial it's a big did right,
Speaker 6: It's all just big.
Speaker 5: So oh, he hates women and he abuses them and
Speaker 5: assaults them. Yeah, but we knew that already. Who cares
Speaker 5: like every single disqualifying thing about it? We were told
Speaker 5: that we just have to accept. So what do you
Speaker 5: do right, Like, how do you make any distinctions anymore? So, yes,
Speaker 5: he's going to do exactly the opposite. This is going
Speaker 5: to be a cacistocracy, a kleptocracy in an oligarchy all
Speaker 5: rolled into one, a little bit of a theocratic apartheid
Speaker 5: states just for fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well the theocracy as the granddaughter of a leftist communist.
Speaker 2: That stuff really bothers me.
Speaker 1: I mean it all bothers me, But that the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow stuff and the religious extremists stuff really gets to me.
Speaker 5: And that's going under the radar because the economy of
Speaker 5: the economy of the economy, which was covered so poorly
Speaker 5: that people actually thought we were better off four years
Speaker 5: ago than we are now.
Speaker 1: But some of it was poor carverage and some of
Speaker 1: it was people just don't go to the news anymore, right,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 5: Or they get it from places that just lie to them.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. Oh, Mary Trump.
Speaker 5: Well they jus feel better now.
Speaker 2: No, I don't feel better.
Speaker 5: Sorry.
Speaker 2: What else are you looking at right now? What else
Speaker 2: are you thinking about? What else are you reading?
Speaker 1: Can we do two minutes on what we're watching on television?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 7: Totally.
Speaker 1: I am watching Bad Sisters and it is really great.
Speaker 5: Had you seen it the first season already?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: Oh okay, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: It's so good. What are you watching on television or reading?
Speaker 5: Or I am watching so much more television than usual,
Speaker 5: But I don't know way they gets in the background.
Speaker 5: It's all like I'm reading Murder Mysteries and I'm watching
Speaker 5: shows like you know, it's all BBC stuff pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's class respect.
Speaker 5: I had been watching Slowhorses, which is amazing. But in
Speaker 5: terms of just my murder mystery phase I'm in, there's
Speaker 5: this new thing called the Marlow Murder Club, which is
Speaker 5: just silly and adorable stuff like that. I'm also watching
Speaker 5: an Australian show which is so unlike not not because
Speaker 5: it's Australian, but what it's about. It's called Under the Vines.
Speaker 2: Oh fabulous.
Speaker 5: It's just this sweet little show about two people who
Speaker 5: come together because they both inherited a vineyard. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: just you know, That's what I'm doing because everything else
Speaker 5: is very hard.
Speaker 2: Yes, Mary, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having them Alla hanging there. We're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: Ryan Broderick is the editor of the newsletter.
Speaker 2: On Garbage Day. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 7: Ryan, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited because I am a longtime caller, first
Speaker 1: time listener.
Speaker 7: No, i am as well for you, I'm a first
Speaker 7: time caller. I'm the right version of what you said also,
Speaker 7: but for you that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell everyone what you do.
Speaker 2: You're really brilliant.
Speaker 1: And just for the people who are older like my
Speaker 1: dad who don't know about cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Sorry dad, go.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So my name is Ryan Broderick. I write a newsletter
Speaker 7: called Garbage Day, and I host a podcast called Panic World,
Speaker 7: and I mainly specialize in how the Internet is turning
Speaker 7: all the brains into mashed potatoes. That's sort of my beat.
Speaker 7: So Internet culture, technology, memes, trends, whatever, whatever is needed.
Speaker 1: On the day, Andrew Breitbart had a quote that politics
Speaker 1: was downstream of culture. Yes he did, And my hottest
Speaker 1: take is that politics is downstream of Internet.
Speaker 7: I think in the last four years everything has slowly
Speaker 7: become downstream of the Internet in a way. I think
Speaker 7: that is true, and I think politics was probably the
Speaker 7: first to go at some point around twenty fifteen, probably,
Speaker 7: but everything else has now followed suit, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: I would love you.
Speaker 1: To explain an example of politics being downstream of Internet.
Speaker 1: My example would be Donald J. Trump and how he
Speaker 1: won in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 7: So I would say, definitely how he won in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 7: I am skeptical about twenty twenty four. I'm still sort
Speaker 7: of processing it.
Speaker 2: Explain.
Speaker 7: I think the Internet played a big role in propaganda
Speaker 7: for him. I'm not sure if it actually mobilized voters,
Speaker 7: but I think a twenty twenty four example that would
Speaker 7: be interesting was perhaps the miscalculation of the Democrats on
Speaker 7: the power of the pop girlies, so Charlie XCX, chapel Ron,
Speaker 7: Taylor Swift kind of attaching themselves to a very TikTok
Speaker 7: friendly campaign. And I think what we sa I saw
Speaker 7: this time around was actually the conversations that people were
Speaker 7: having about politics in America were happening on text messages.
Speaker 7: They were happening in group chats, dark social That's where
Speaker 7: Trump was sort of playing I think his best ground game, right,
Speaker 7: like destroying your phone with clips of Kamala that's kind
Speaker 7: of thing. So, but I'm on the fence. I could
Speaker 7: be persuaded. I haven't made up my mind yet.
Speaker 1: I really love having you on because this is something
Speaker 1: that no one has said to me.
Speaker 2: Really, I'm on this weird like post.
Speaker 1: Mortem What I Got Wrong tour where I wrote about
Speaker 1: everything I got wrong, and then I tried to ask
Speaker 1: people what I got wrong, And now I sort of
Speaker 1: want to know what everybody else got wrong. And literally
Speaker 1: no one has made this suggestion to me. So I
Speaker 1: want you to spend another minute talking about it because
Speaker 1: it's meaningful and important. So and it explained us the
Speaker 1: difference between the sort of outward facing Internet and the
Speaker 1: kind of inward facing Internet.
Speaker 7: Sure, I've been thinking about this because it's part of
Speaker 7: my post mortem because I was spending the summer being
Speaker 7: like she's got it, Like this is so good. I
Speaker 7: love this. It's like, Okay, it didn't matter. Why didn't
Speaker 7: it matter?
Speaker 1: Right, same exactly. I was like, we're gonna know. Early
Speaker 1: I was on television and I was like, I think
Speaker 1: it's all gonna have and Matt Rachel Mattow is like,
Speaker 1: really gave me. Yeah, she gave me like you're gonna
Speaker 1: be okay, pep talk because I was like, had seen
Speaker 1: a ghost and she was like, you're gonna be okay.
Speaker 7: I think Rachel Maddow is correct. So okay. The first
Speaker 7: thing is like public versus private Internet, Right, So ten
Speaker 7: years ago, I think it was much more robust. So
Speaker 7: you had Facebook as the biggest public platform, and then
Speaker 7: you had Facebook actually in a lot of ways being
Speaker 7: downstream once again of Twitter, which is I always sort
Speaker 7: of think of as the tip of the iceberg of
Speaker 7: the Internet. It's small, but it's influential. You can kind
Speaker 7: of see the patterns and rhythms of the Internet. There
Speaker 7: but there's a bunch of other platforms Instagram, read it
Speaker 7: all that. Then you have private internet, which I think
Speaker 7: was more popular in other countries before it was popular
Speaker 7: in America because you have platforms like WhatsApp, telegram, signal.
Speaker 7: During the pandemic, I think Americans kind of actually really
Speaker 7: embraced what is called dark socials. So this is like
Speaker 7: email publishing, text messages, group chat, discord, and where I
Speaker 7: have seen sort of the most interesting points made about
Speaker 7: the Trump digital campaign is that he seemed to be
Speaker 7: very focused on text messages, podcasting another dark social platform,
Speaker 7: because you can't really see who's listening to your podcast, right.
Speaker 7: He seemed to be tapping into that a lot more
Speaker 7: than trying to go viral on TikTok or something, which
Speaker 7: would be the sort of the twenty twenties version of Facebook,
Speaker 7: the sort of mega platform everybody's on now, and it
Speaker 7: seemed to work. So my theory is that like that
Speaker 7: must be where people were sort of talking to each
Speaker 7: other more honestly, Whereas I think ten years ago people
Speaker 7: were being like in the comments on Facebook, fighting about
Speaker 7: politics very well. I think that conversation has moved to
Speaker 7: private spaces now, so.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that there is a whole politics discourse
Speaker 1: that we're not seeing.
Speaker 7: It's possible. And I am on the fence about this,
Speaker 7: like I do wonder, okay, if it's not happening there,
Speaker 7: where is it happening? Like when I woke up the
Speaker 7: morning after the election, I saw that he won the
Speaker 7: plot their vote, My first thought was like, all right, well,
Speaker 7: there's no arguing with this one, like you know, okay,
Speaker 7: So then my next question is where did people this that?
Speaker 7: Like where was that happening? And you know, it could
Speaker 7: be that just people are out in bars and restaurants
Speaker 7: and physical spaces, but I have to imagine there's a
Speaker 7: digital trail there. And so my last guess is, like
Speaker 7: that conversation is happening in private digital spaces.
Speaker 2: It makes sense.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I did go to campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware,
Speaker 1: which was, by the way, the most difficult assignment I've
Speaker 1: ever done.
Speaker 2: Like they didn't want to have me.
Speaker 1: I was given like three minutes with each person, and
Speaker 1: it was very like it was it felt very controlled.
Speaker 7: For Trump or for Harris, for Harris, for Harris, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Trump, I mean Trump campaign would not let me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like and the death threats were awesome. But
Speaker 1: I went to the Harris campaign and one of the
Speaker 1: things that people were talking to me about was this
Speaker 1: idea that they were doing, like what app ads in
Speaker 1: different networks about climate change, Like they had figured out
Speaker 1: that there was a garden that gardening WhatsApp chat would
Speaker 1: be a good place to talk about climate change.
Speaker 7: That's so such a Democrat idea. I love it. Plants, Yeah,
Speaker 7: they like plants, right, they must want plants to live.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is, you know, it's like the Democrats,
Speaker 1: they're the good guys, but unfortunately the good guys. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about like just to get to superhero
Speaker 1: movies for a minute, Like I know, in superhero movies,
Speaker 1: the good guys win, but I see in American politics
Speaker 1: that does not always happen or ever.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it does feel like ever for sure lately. I
Speaker 7: mean the massive sort of slide to Trump this time around.
Speaker 7: I think another interesting thing here is sort of I
Speaker 7: think the millennial misunderstanding about gen Z's politics. We sort
Speaker 7: of like welcome them like the saviors of the human race,
Speaker 7: and it turns out they're all like addicted to gambling
Speaker 7: and like don't like women. And comple outside.
Speaker 2: They want flavored vapes.
Speaker 7: They love vaping. They love vaping. Once we got rid
Speaker 7: of the flavored jewels, they're like, I'm voting for Trump.
Speaker 7: This is too much government regulation for me.
Speaker 2: It's right, flavored jewels. I mean that really?
Speaker 1: So gen Z, how old are they and why are
Speaker 1: they ruining our lives?
Speaker 7: I think the cutoff right now is what like twenty
Speaker 7: six or twenty seven something like that, and.
Speaker 2: They're all Trumpers.
Speaker 7: They do seem to be a little more conservative, and
Speaker 7: I've heard a bunch of different explanations for why, Like
Speaker 7: was it too much zoom school during the pandemic? Was
Speaker 7: it online dating destroying like, you know, physical interactions. I
Speaker 7: don't really know. I do think we tend to assume
Speaker 7: that they're the ones making all of the gen Z
Speaker 7: content we're seeing online, when actually it's like millennials, and
Speaker 7: I think that they're I call them the lurker generation.
Speaker 2: I think the millennial I.
Speaker 7: Am I'm a dead center in the middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah what am I?
Speaker 3: You and R R Zennils were on the cusp of
Speaker 3: millennial and gen X.
Speaker 7: That's a good place to be.
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
Speaker 7: That's good. You still remember when TV was good. Yeah,
Speaker 7: that's true. I call gen Z the lurker generation. I
Speaker 7: think they consume a lot of Internet content, but they
Speaker 7: don't particularly make it. And I think if you imagine,
Speaker 7: let's say you are twenty six right now, so you
Speaker 7: are sixteen when Trump became president, that means the most
Speaker 7: formative years of your sort of media diet have been
Speaker 7: shaped by a post Trump world. And so when I
Speaker 7: think of like a gen Z kid growing up in
Speaker 7: you know, a red pilled manosphere centric Internet, it's not
Speaker 7: super surprising to me that they might have conservative views
Speaker 7: of the world because they just they've never seen a
Speaker 7: different version of the Internet, right, all right.
Speaker 1: They've never seen a different version of the Internet. Where
Speaker 1: are they seeing this version of the internet.
Speaker 7: Based on what I've seen, what I've read about Now, you're.
Speaker 1: An expert, listen, right, you're an expert here. You're allowed
Speaker 1: to be an expert. Just go for it.
Speaker 7: No, but I always try to sort of make sure
Speaker 7: I'm up to date here, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat if
Speaker 7: you're a little younger or still in school. So that
Speaker 7: seems to be the major three.
Speaker 1: I just want to like do two seconds on TikTok.
Speaker 1: TikTok is owned by the Chinese government.
Speaker 7: I mean it's only by dance, which is clearly you know,
Speaker 7: under the thumb on the Chines.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, and the album rhythm that the Americans get
Speaker 1: are like bannarexi and hate women. And the algorithms that
Speaker 1: the Chinese get our do school and be a hard work.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I will say, Okay, so you're you're probably talking
Speaker 7: about Duian, which is sort of it's sort of like TikTok,
Speaker 7: but it's not. It's a I call it like a
Speaker 7: sister app or a cousin app. It's it is a
Speaker 7: different app.
Speaker 2: Can we get that app here?
Speaker 7: I've used it. It's I mean, I watched a Chinese
Speaker 7: farmer cook. He deep fried a whole ostrich leg on
Speaker 7: Duian and it was so fascinating. It was massive. I
Speaker 7: think the Chinese algorithm is probably better.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very big. It was a very big
Speaker 2: Did they take the feathers off?
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, no, the whole thing. He prepared it like
Speaker 7: a chicken wing, but it was a size of an ostrich.
Speaker 7: It was amazing.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So I think the biggest misunderstanding what TikTok is
Speaker 7: that Okay, you know how like Facebook, there would be
Speaker 7: like a dog, for instance, that would go viral and
Speaker 7: everyone on Facebook would see this dog or Gangham style.
Speaker 7: We all knew Gangham style.
Speaker 2: Oh I wish I didn't, but yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, TikTok doesn't work that way. So your TikTok and
Speaker 7: my TikTok never to shell me. It is totally personalized.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it might trigger for somebody eating disorder content.
Speaker 7: For other people, it might be like slime videos where
Speaker 7: you like make slime.
Speaker 2: Oh, so the eating disorder is just special for may Okay.
Speaker 7: I guess you might be getting the Osama bin laden letter,
Speaker 7: but I might be getting isis propaganda? Like It's just
Speaker 7: different for everybody.
Speaker 1: So so one of the things that I'm struck by
Speaker 1: is I think that the grown ups, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of like like sort of the Joe Biden crew may
Speaker 1: have underestimated the power of TikTok.
Speaker 7: I have seen numerous like younger Internet users pointing out
Speaker 7: the very clear irony of Kamala being like it's brat
Speaker 7: summer on TikTok. Just don't pay attention to what Joe
Speaker 7: Biden My literal president that I'm working for right now
Speaker 7: wants to do to TikTok in six months, which is
Speaker 7: ban it, right, So I do think they notice the
Speaker 7: cognitive dissonance there. For sure.
Speaker 1: It is supposed to be banned in December, right, but
Speaker 1: like make it make sense because Trump is.
Speaker 2: Not going to ban it.
Speaker 7: No, Trump doesn't care. He doesn't care about TikTok at all.
Speaker 2: He doesn't care, but he also benefits from it.
Speaker 7: I think he benefits from doing the reverse of anything
Speaker 7: Joe Biden wants to do right, especially early. So I
Speaker 7: do think if Biden does go through with the band,
Speaker 7: which last I read, I think the deadline for the
Speaker 7: band so okay. The way I understand it works is
Speaker 7: like Biden Dance has to divest TikTok by December, let's
Speaker 7: say mid December, and if they don't buy that deadline
Speaker 7: by January tenth, Biden bans it. So it could be
Speaker 7: a situation where they missed the deadline and just sort
Speaker 7: of try to keep it in the courts and then
Speaker 7: Trump's like, yeah, we're good, Like you don't have the
Speaker 7: you can stay. That's what I assume will have.
Speaker 1: So this is one of my favorite things to complain
Speaker 1: to members of Congress about they hate they really hate
Speaker 1: me for doing this. One of the many things I
Speaker 1: do that's very annoying is I get members of Congress
Speaker 1: on the podcast and then I, because I am the
Speaker 1: granddaughter of a communist, then spend all this time complaining
Speaker 1: that they are unable to regulate technology, and then they
Speaker 1: say things like well and.
Speaker 2: Give some very unsatisfying answer.
Speaker 1: Sure, now that period of American life is over, right,
Speaker 1: because on January twenty first, Trump is going to come
Speaker 1: in there and they are not going to regulate anything
Speaker 1: ever again.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it's all good. Well unless like some China
Speaker 7: hawk gets in his year about like Hawaii or something.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I don't think it's really going to happen
Speaker 7: in a meaningful way for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, and we're going to have a boom of AI
Speaker 1: which is going to replace all of us likely hopefully go.
Speaker 7: A clippy for everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, explain what a clippy is.
Speaker 7: It's a little paper clip and Microsoft word and now
Speaker 7: we have like a very expensive version that destroys the
Speaker 7: planet every time you make a generate pornography for you.
Speaker 7: It's great, it's the future. We all want it, and.
Speaker 2: It's what Elon Musk is going to put in all
Speaker 2: our brains.
Speaker 7: It's right, Yeah, the Department of Government Efficiency, which has
Speaker 7: two bosses, very efficient.
Speaker 1: Right, It's so efficient they needed two people to leave it.
Speaker 1: And Marjorie Taylor Green in Congress because this that's great.
Speaker 7: I love that. That's super fun for it's funny.
Speaker 2: The movie version of it can never ever compete.
Speaker 7: Go on, Sorry, I think the closest movie I've seen
Speaker 7: to our current political situation is like Death of Stalin.
Speaker 7: I think you've got to kind of like abstract it,
Speaker 7: you know, so he you don't notice the similarities.
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving is Death of Stallin exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 7: No, But in terms of tech regulation under Trump, he
Speaker 7: is interesting because, like he got fixated on Fortnite during
Speaker 7: his first administration and he really wanted to ban Fortnite,
Speaker 7: and I always heard the rumor that it was because
Speaker 7: he caught Baron playing it too much, and I always
Speaker 7: sort of liked that idea, like that's why he's an
Speaker 7: anti Fortnite. I mean, he's a he's a demagogue, so
Speaker 7: he'll he'll pick random stuff to just like get upset about.
Speaker 7: So who knows, like he might just like discover technology
Speaker 7: in the next four years, like we got to get
Speaker 7: rid of it for like no reason. You know, that's
Speaker 7: just life under a dictatorship.
Speaker 2: We laugh to keep from crime exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I want you to this is a thing
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about a lot.
Speaker 2: And these people love technology, right.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk made billions of dollars in government subsidies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ilady abound and also on technology.
Speaker 2: But they hate science, right. Huh. Explain this to me.
Speaker 7: Okay, so they like technology. The kind of crew you're
Speaker 7: talking about, the Peter Tails that Ela Musks are bosses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they see you are about to run the
Speaker 2: federal government.
Speaker 7: They are very obsessed with this idea that they sometimes
Speaker 7: refer to as like the Dark Enlightenment or the network state.
Speaker 7: It's it's essentially just like libertarianism run by computers. And
Speaker 7: they believe that the CEO curtisey Arvin, Yeah, that kind
Speaker 7: of stuff, right, Okay. I don't think Trump has any
Speaker 7: idea what any of that means, because, like, I don't
Speaker 7: think Trump is very online. If you told me Trump
Speaker 7: can't read, like, I believe you, like I believe that
Speaker 7: he's not. I saw a video where he's just he's
Speaker 7: he's the one dictating his tweets to some woman who's
Speaker 7: writing them down, so like it's possible he doesn't know
Speaker 7: how to read. So I don't think he's like this
Speaker 7: four chance Fengali guy. I think he's just like a guy.
Speaker 7: He's a poster. Yeah, but the text of you know,
Speaker 7: they have his ear and they basically just want to smash,
Speaker 7: you know, any sort of federal regulations, any sort of
Speaker 7: federal protections. And that's why they like technology and they
Speaker 7: don't like science. I mean, they don't like regulations based
Speaker 7: in science. So that's why they want you to drink
Speaker 7: raw milk and do get bird flu because like they
Speaker 7: don't want to have to deal with regulations. I think
Speaker 7: it's just a tax thing basically, yep, money.
Speaker 2: Thing, right, it's probably just a tax thing.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 2: Raw milk is Have you had it?
Speaker 7: Is it good?
Speaker 2: No? I haven't had it milk. I just have skim milk.
Speaker 7: I cannot have rough. I will die. I will fork
Speaker 7: to death.
Speaker 3: It's delicious.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of my kids has is lactose and he is
Speaker 2: so mad at me. He's like, you did this to.
Speaker 1: Me When we talk about this lack of government regulation,
Speaker 1: bird flu raw Milk, I want you to talk for
Speaker 1: one second about the possibility that RFK Junior may have
Speaker 1: actually delivered a lot of women voter to Trump, because
Speaker 1: this is a new theory I'm working through.
Speaker 7: I think you're dead on. I think the sort of
Speaker 7: connection between the Woo Woo Yoga QAnon and RFK is
Speaker 7: like a straight line through Facebook reels like it is
Speaker 7: just like go on. I had this theory actually twenty
Speaker 7: sixteen that like a lot of women voted for Trump
Speaker 7: and then regretted it because they realized that a lot
Speaker 7: of older women realized they had voted for their ex
Speaker 7: husband essentially right, And I do believe a similar phenomenon
Speaker 7: might be happening with RFK, where it's like this handsome
Speaker 7: older man who like says crazy stuff, but like in
Speaker 7: a fun kind of new agey way. I do think
Speaker 7: that that's that's helpful for them. And I remember over
Speaker 7: the summer ever, meaning like RFK might actually split the
Speaker 7: vote for Trump. But I actually think they played it
Speaker 7: pretty well.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Yeah, they definitely played everything really well.
Speaker 2: It's funny because it's like.
Speaker 1: I wrote something critical of RFK on Vanity Fair, RFK junior,
Speaker 1: and I was swarmed by like very attractive women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, why do you guys ca hair?
Speaker 1: And then it became clear to me once he won
Speaker 1: that this man not only does he have a just
Speaker 1: a horrific relationship with women on the macro or the micro,
Speaker 1: he also has it on the macro.
Speaker 7: But he's very handsome, you know. He jumps off cliffs
Speaker 7: without a shirt on. And he says stuff that people
Speaker 7: on Facebook say in real life, which I think is
Speaker 7: very attractive for like certain people in America.
Speaker 1: We're going to end on the he says things that
Speaker 1: people say on Facebook in real life, right, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is very attractive to America.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to come back.
Speaker 7: I would love to.
Speaker 2: And he.
Speaker 1: Now added to the sorry I did it, I made it.
Speaker 2: No moment Jesse Cannon, Oh Molly.
Speaker 3: You know how I know? It's about day. It's the
Speaker 3: second time we're having to discuss Laura Ingram.
Speaker 1: In one episode, Laura Ingram took aim a Republican micro.
Speaker 2: You may remember Mike Rounds from nothing.
Speaker 3: How can you talk about a Republican senator from South
Speaker 3: Dakota as nothing?
Speaker 2: Jesus nothing. You may remember him from nothing?
Speaker 1: So this political article that Ingram shared reported on Rounds,
Speaker 1: who is from South Dakota, but who Ingram is mad about,
Speaker 1: and so she's made him from North Dakota, that he
Speaker 1: was trying to reassure us ally as well. At the Congress.
Speaker 1: Round said he spent the weekend working to reset the stage.
Speaker 1: Let everybody know that everything is going to be okay,
Speaker 1: and that we're moving forward and there is consistency within
Speaker 1: the Senate. We believe there will be consistency within the House,
Speaker 1: and we welcome back former President Trump. Look, Laura Ingram
Speaker 1: wants a dictatorship on day one, maybe because who knows.
Speaker 1: But checks and balances are good. And I'm not a
Speaker 1: big fan of Mike Rounds.
Speaker 2: Actually that's not true. He might be great. Nobody even knows,
Speaker 2: has anyone ever met.
Speaker 1: But I do think that Mike Grounds is doing the
Speaker 1: right thing here, and he's trying to provide checks and balances.
Speaker 1: That actually is the job of Senate right, advise and consent. Right,
Speaker 1: they are supposed to be checking out these nominees.
Speaker 2: That's what they're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: So Lauringram is wrong yet again, and Mike Grounds is correct.
Speaker 1: Trump is not a North Korean dictator. He has checks
Speaker 1: and balances, just like everyone else.
Speaker 2: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.