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 Ted Cruz has been caught on
Speaker 1: tape describing step two of the plot to overturn the election.
Speaker 2: We have an interesting show for you today, veeps.
Speaker 1: Dave Mandel will talk to us about his new show,
Speaker 1: The White House Blumbers, which is out now on HBO Max.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Semaphore's Ben Smith about his new
Speaker 1: book Traffic.
Speaker 2: But first we have.
Speaker 1: The author of Lucky, How Joe Biden Barely won the Presidency,
Speaker 1: NBC's John Allen. Welcome back to Fast Politics, your friend
Speaker 1: of mine.
Speaker 3: John Allen, Wally, what a introduction.
Speaker 1: We're very enthusiastic here, team because it is the Sunday
Speaker 1: after the White House Correspondence dinner weekend bonanza of political
Speaker 1: journalists and the politicians who don't necessarily like them.
Speaker 4: I think that's fair. Uh schmoozing.
Speaker 3: I mean it's everybody wants to schmooz, schmoozing, plus a
Speaker 3: couple of celebrities.
Speaker 1: It's pretty brutal. So the celebrities were John Legend and
Speaker 1: Christy Tegen.
Speaker 4: It's pretty good. Celebrities.
Speaker 3: I think that's good celebrities. I also saw Jerry O'Connell
Speaker 3: and Rebecca Remain. Yeah, I saw that Rosario Dawson for
Speaker 3: a little while. She was very good to her, like
Speaker 3: very cool.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about real stuff, because the only thing more
Speaker 1: boring than media.
Speaker 4: Coverage is media party coverage.
Speaker 1: So instead, but it's a good explainer for why John
Speaker 1: Allen and I might sound low energies that we have
Speaker 1: stayed it very late and I had to take.
Speaker 4: The train home.
Speaker 1: But I want to talk to you about pretty interesting mourning.
Speaker 1: A lot of talk about this debt ceiling drama, so
Speaker 1: I want to like talk through what happened last week
Speaker 1: because it's pretty interesting. The Speaker of the House, one
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, handsome genius, and by handsome I mean whatever,
Speaker 1: and genius I mean whatever, decided he was going to
Speaker 1: pass a new budget. Right, He's passed his budget through
Speaker 1: the House.
Speaker 3: He's passed his debt ceiling fix, which is basically to
Speaker 3: raise the debt ceiling and cut a whole bunch of spending.
Speaker 1: Right to twenty percent non discretionary spending.
Speaker 3: Right twenty percent, I think discretionary, but.
Speaker 1: Yes, not twenty percent of all non military spending.
Speaker 4: Does that sound right to you?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, Billy, honestly.
Speaker 4: Well, something to that effect. It sounds like a lot.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a lot. So I mean, basically, what
Speaker 3: you've got here is the House moving forward with some
Speaker 3: it's debt on arrival in the Senate, but it gives
Speaker 3: the House, from a political standpoint, the ability to stay
Speaker 3: that they have passed something that would raise the debt ceiling,
Speaker 3: and so that puts the bonus on the Senate and
Speaker 3: the President Biden to some extent to counter. Of course,
Speaker 3: the Senate and President Biden would like to counter with
Speaker 3: just raise the debt ceiling and don't cut a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of programs.
Speaker 1: Now again, I want to pause here because even you're
Speaker 1: a straight reporter, which is one of the many things
Speaker 1: we love about you. But I need to add here
Speaker 1: that when a Republican as president, Republicans just tend to
Speaker 1: pay our bills. I mean, passing the debt ceiling is
Speaker 1: in fact just paying.
Speaker 3: We've already in heard these debts. So the question is
Speaker 3: will the United States honor its debts and pay service
Speaker 3: on its debts, or will the United States choose not
Speaker 3: to honor and pay service on its debts and potentially
Speaker 3: crash the economy, not only our economy, but potentially the
Speaker 3: global economy.
Speaker 2: Right anyway, Yes, so continue on.
Speaker 1: So the goal here as Republicans are to get give
Speaker 1: themselves cover so that they can't say they didn't try.
Speaker 3: Correct. Not only does it give them cover, but I
Speaker 3: mean they actually have put something forward. Right, So there
Speaker 3: is something that has passed the House. Right, You've got
Speaker 3: a pretty simple process and theory for passing laws past
Speaker 3: the House, past the Senate. Maybe something different passes the Senate.
Speaker 3: You negotiate between the two chambers, and then you send
Speaker 3: something to the president. So the House has now done
Speaker 3: that initial step. And without having done that step, if
Speaker 3: they hadn't done that at all, then President Biden the
Speaker 3: Senate would be able to basically trash the Republicans for
Speaker 3: not having done anything to raise the debt ceiling. So
Speaker 3: from a political argument standpoint, they have moved forward. But
Speaker 3: to the point you were making before, it's not just
Speaker 3: a debt ceiling increase, but you're talking about three point
Speaker 3: six trillion dollars of cuts over the next decade, all
Speaker 3: in discretionary spending. So discretionary is the spending that's done
Speaker 3: annually by Congress rather than and the mandatory spending, the
Speaker 3: sort of autopilot programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Speaker 1: Right, And I just want to point out, so, now
Speaker 1: what happens now with this? They take us a Senate,
Speaker 1: it dies, They take this to Biden. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is sort of their hope of like their sort of
Speaker 1: foray into trying to get Biden to cut spending as
Speaker 1: a way to not have to crash the economy.
Speaker 3: Well, correct, I mean the next step is for the
Speaker 3: Senate to try to pass something, and that's going to
Speaker 3: be difficult because you have fifty Democratic senators, and one
Speaker 3: of those Democratic senators, Joe Manchin, is publicly out there
Speaker 3: saying very loudly that he believes that the White House
Speaker 3: should negotiate with McCarthy on spending cuts. So I don't
Speaker 3: think you can expect that it's likely to be very
Speaker 3: quick that the Senate would be able to pass a
Speaker 3: debt ceiling and increase that doesn't include spending cuts. So
Speaker 3: there will probably be some internal negotiation among the Democrats
Speaker 3: where Chuck, Schumer and Mansion sit in a room or
Speaker 3: trade paper and trying to figure out what it is
Speaker 3: Joe Manchin can vote for.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Joe mangic for me, because Joe
Speaker 1: Manchin is in a very precarious spot. He is going
Speaker 1: to run against Jim Justice or for president.
Speaker 4: Oh God.
Speaker 1: The West Virginia Republican governor is wildly popular. He used
Speaker 1: to be a Democrat because everyone in West Virginia used
Speaker 1: to be a Democrat, as the place is crazy. He
Speaker 1: is now a Republican. He has a bulldog called baby Girl.
Speaker 1: People really like him.
Speaker 4: Is that fair?
Speaker 3: I think all of those things are fair. He's well liked.
Speaker 3: He has a primary on the Republican side.
Speaker 1: He's very rich, and he owns the Greenbrier, and he's
Speaker 1: like one of the more famous famous West Virginians.
Speaker 4: Who is his primary.
Speaker 3: A congressman named Alex Moody from West Virginia who is
Speaker 3: very well regarded by the Freedom Caucus types and some
Speaker 3: of the Club for Growth conservatives. So there could be
Speaker 3: a fight in that primary. Justice together, as he said,
Speaker 3: it's very popular in the state and he's very wealthy,
Speaker 3: So it would be a surprise if he lost that primary.
Speaker 3: But it wouldn't be a shock if he lost that primary.
Speaker 3: I was to say there's a non zero chance that
Speaker 3: he could lose the primary, but if he wins the primary,
Speaker 3: Justice again very popular statewide elected official. Mansion's popularity seems
Speaker 3: to have been dwindling some over recent years, in part
Speaker 3: because he supported what Biden called the Inflation Reduction Act last.
Speaker 1: Year, which he's now really turned on and he's sort
Speaker 1: of trying Monday Morning quarterback about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and honestly, that bill was written to satisfy Joe
Speaker 3: Manchell because it's the only way they can make it law, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could have called it the Mansion Inflation
Speaker 3: Bill if you'd wanted to, right.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you, now we have this
Speaker 1: Joe Mansion.
Speaker 4: He's turned on this bill.
Speaker 1: He has become sort of the I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw there was a Republican on Dana
Speaker 1: Bash's show, hersyn show this morning talking about how he's
Speaker 1: going to negotiate with Mansion, and Mansion was going to
Speaker 1: be the key. He's become sort of the Republican favorite
Speaker 1: because I think they think they.
Speaker 4: Have him, which they may.
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you, like, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just nonsensical, right, I Mean, is there some reason
Speaker 1: why mansion is the go to here.
Speaker 3: Well, number one, because Joe Manchin realizes that the fifty
Speaker 3: Democratic member Senate, he has a whole lot of leverage
Speaker 3: if he holds down on things right, So it puts
Speaker 3: them at the center of the discussion.
Speaker 1: Right, But isn't it it's fifty one. It's just that
Speaker 1: one of the senators doesn't want to resign.
Speaker 3: Well, it's yeah, I mean the point of the margin
Speaker 3: is so small here that Joe Manchin has effective.
Speaker 1: Right, But you could have fifty one if dii FI
Speaker 1: would resign.
Speaker 4: But I understand that she is eighty nine and has
Speaker 4: no plans to return, so why should she be pressured
Speaker 4: to resign?
Speaker 2: Continue?
Speaker 4: Sorry, going to say the.
Speaker 3: Margins very small. Of course, we don't know what Senator
Speaker 3: Cinema from Arizona will do in any given situation. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are, for lack of a vetter, trump cats and
Speaker 3: dogs that Chuck Schumer has to manage in order to
Speaker 3: get to the majority vote that he needs to pass
Speaker 3: things right. And to your point, because Diane Feinstein has gone,
Speaker 3: you effectively have fifty Democratic senators right now, and if
Speaker 3: you turn that into forty nine Democratic senators because a
Speaker 3: mansion or a cinema decides they're not going to vote
Speaker 3: for a clean debt ceiling or for any other particular thing,
Speaker 3: then you know you no longer have the ability to
Speaker 3: pass legislation.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you read that McKay copp and
Speaker 1: Kirsten Cinema piece, but he interviewed her and she didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily say she was going to run again.
Speaker 4: Do you think she's going to run again?
Speaker 3: I think she will take a look at what the
Speaker 3: polls tell her about the ability to win either a
Speaker 3: Democratic primary or the general election in Arizona, and may
Speaker 3: ultimately make a decision based on whether there's any chance
Speaker 3: of her winning. I think it is difficult for her
Speaker 3: to do both of those things.
Speaker 1: So let's talk out this debt ceiling drama. This happens now.
Speaker 1: It looks like July. The Treasury is saying it happens
Speaker 1: in July.
Speaker 4: What do you think this looks like? Now?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I have family friendly words to describe
Speaker 3: what this looks like right now?
Speaker 4: So good is what you're saying?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what I'm saying is that like the word that
Speaker 3: I would use to describe it starts with cluster. Look
Speaker 3: at say, July. There's always some ability the Treasury Department
Speaker 3: to forestall and using emergency measures, extraordinary measures or whatever
Speaker 3: to forestall default. You never know exactly what's going to
Speaker 3: come in revenue wise, so not going to affect the
Speaker 3: real zero hour, meaning if there are more revenues than
Speaker 3: they expect in, that zero hour gets pushed back. If
Speaker 3: there are less revenues than they expect in, the zero
Speaker 3: hour moves up earlier on the calendar. But Hairess moves slowly.
Speaker 3: And anybody who thinks that number one, they will resolve
Speaker 3: this before they absolutely have to, or number two, that
Speaker 3: it will be easy to do has not watched this
Speaker 3: process play out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean I think we've really seen that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there were periods when these Republicans
Speaker 1: were a little more focused on kind of the sort
Speaker 1: of more traditional behavior, but now it seems unlikely to
Speaker 1: make that. These Republicans, they're not really incentivized to make
Speaker 1: a deal with the Democrats.
Speaker 3: Well, the Republican base has become increasingly populist over time,
Speaker 3: and that's sort of changed the nature of the Republican
Speaker 3: Party's elected officials in terms of what they see as
Speaker 3: I mean, it needs and what they're most worried about
Speaker 3: it at a given moment is that somebody will primary them,
Speaker 3: sort of from the populist side, no matter how populous
Speaker 3: they are. And they are less concerned about what donors,
Speaker 3: major corporations or on Wall Street think, because while those
Speaker 3: people fund campaigns, they are not usually in the position
Speaker 3: to take these members out, whereas the sort of grassroots
Speaker 3: based elector it is.
Speaker 2: Right, So I want to ask you, like, what happens now?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a great question. I've watched the fiscal
Speaker 3: cliff lay out, yeah, right, like during the Obama administration
Speaker 3: in particular, and there's at one point like the incentives
Speaker 3: for everybody where like whether default happened, and actually there was,
Speaker 3: they briefly went beyond the deadline once. The problem is
Speaker 3: that there's not an easy answer here that makes everybody happy,
Speaker 3: or at least makes everybody not curious. So I think
Speaker 3: the next step is for the Senate to pass something.
Speaker 3: If Chuck Schuber can figure out how to pass the
Speaker 3: dead ceiling with no spending cuts, then he'll do that,
Speaker 3: but I think that will be very difficult for him
Speaker 3: to do. So then the question is whether it's spending
Speaker 3: cuts or tax increases, Like, what is it that they
Speaker 3: can do to offset future deficits? I think tax increases
Speaker 3: are off the table because you've got a Republican House.
Speaker 3: So are there spending cuts that the Democrats can find
Speaker 3: that they are happy with that make Joe Manchin happy
Speaker 3: that in the event Dianne Feinstein is able to come
Speaker 3: back for a vote or whatnot, But basically make all
Speaker 3: of the Democrats happy. Can they find that and can
Speaker 3: they do it quickly so that they can kind of
Speaker 3: go from whatever their strongest position is, and maybe their
Speaker 3: strongest position is they just blame the Republicans for a
Speaker 3: default and watch everything burn. But I don't think that's
Speaker 3: really the interests of an incumbent president. I think anybody
Speaker 3: who's sitting in a position of power at a time
Speaker 3: and everything burns down is pretty vulnerable. And by the
Speaker 3: same token, anybody who's not sitting in a position of
Speaker 3: powers in a much stronger place if everything starts to
Speaker 3: burned own.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Republicans want to see it burn anyway,
Speaker 1: because these are people who and again, I know you're
Speaker 1: a straight reporter, so I'm not going to try to
Speaker 1: ask your opinion, but it is my opinion that a
Speaker 1: lot of these people would like to drown the federal
Speaker 1: government in the bathtub, So burning it down works for that.
Speaker 4: If that's your worldview.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I would say that there are sort
Speaker 3: of two different factors or two different things going on here.
Speaker 3: What is absolutely there's a strong element of the Republican
Speaker 3: Party that believes what Grover north Christ once said, which
Speaker 3: is that he would like to shrink government down to
Speaker 3: the size that he could drive in the baptop, right,
Speaker 3: like that was what he wanted to do. And I
Speaker 3: think there is a significant amount of support for that view,
Speaker 3: generally speaking, in the Republican Party. But you know, the
Speaker 3: other piece of it is, I think there are a
Speaker 3: lot of Republicans who believe that if they are sitting
Speaker 3: in power, like putting aside the fact that there are
Speaker 3: a number of Republicans that would like to see the
Speaker 3: United States not default because they are patriots and want
Speaker 3: a strong economy and all those things, putting that aside
Speaker 3: from it just from a political level, like I said,
Speaker 3: anybody who's in office, if everything crumbles, if there's a
Speaker 3: global recession, if the US the full faith and credit
Speaker 3: of the United States.
Speaker 1: Is they're all going to get the blame ultimately, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. I mean that involves a kind of
Speaker 1: forethought which a lot of these legislators may not have
Speaker 1: because there are Republicans. Again, since you're straight reporting, you
Speaker 1: can just listen and you don't have to agree or disagree.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying that if your general gestalt is
Speaker 1: kill the federal government, that does help.
Speaker 3: Molly. I appreciate being window dressing on the show.
Speaker 1: So we'll see some kind of response to this in
Speaker 1: the Senate and then a lot of fighting until.
Speaker 3: July, and before you see a response, you'll probably see
Speaker 3: the White House in the Senate just bash the House, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, until the Senate can figure out what it's
Speaker 3: going to do. You're going to have Biden and Schumer
Speaker 3: and all of the other Democrats basically say that the Republicans'
Speaker 3: offer is not serious and that they are pushing America
Speaker 3: toward default because they're not serious. And they will. But
Speaker 3: anybody's guesses how the public reads all of it. I
Speaker 3: suppose most of it will be through a partisan lens
Speaker 3: as to who's at fault for things. But to the
Speaker 3: extent that they are persuadable Americans out there the Democrats
Speaker 3: will do their best to persuade Americans, and the Republicans
Speaker 3: are playing games with default and not being serious and
Speaker 3: know what they've passed in the House is pushing the
Speaker 3: country closer to the fault, not further away from it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean that seems right, John Allen? What
Speaker 4: is keeping you up at night?
Speaker 3: Besides this, I've been traveling with basically following the Republican
Speaker 3: presidential primary campaign a lot lately. So I was just
Speaker 3: in Manchester, New Hampshire with Donald Trump on Wednesday and
Speaker 3: Thursday of this week. He was there Thursday, basically been
Speaker 3: to a whole bunch of Trump events, a couple of
Speaker 3: DISSANTUS events. What keeps me up at night is like,
Speaker 3: how do I cover this?
Speaker 4: How do I get to Tallahassee?
Speaker 3: Right? I have not been to Tallahassee during this presidential cycle.
Speaker 3: I have been there before. I'm perfectly happy to go
Speaker 3: to Tallahassee if and when it's necessary. But what keeps
Speaker 3: me up at night is like, how to cover this
Speaker 3: presidential primary the right way and how to cover the
Speaker 3: general election because I also do coverage of Biden and
Speaker 3: the Democrats. How to cover this campaign in a way
Speaker 3: that is most useful for readers.
Speaker 1: John Allen, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you. John bost.
Speaker 1: Day of Mandel is the producer and director of The
Speaker 1: White House Plumbers. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, my friend
Speaker 1: and yours.
Speaker 2: Dave Mandell.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm back so the White House Plumbers. You're here
Speaker 1: to publicize The White House Plumbers, which I have actually
Speaker 1: seen and is incredible. First, I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: how did you find yourself in White House Plumbers Land?
Speaker 5: I found myself in White House Plumbers Land in a
Speaker 5: really sort of strange way because it really goes back
Speaker 5: to when VEEP ended, and in a funny way, the
Speaker 5: last thing I was necessarily looking for was more politics,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean right, More incompetent, power hungry people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It was not what I was looking for. Per Se
Speaker 5: and two of the writers from VEEP, Alex Gregory and
Speaker 5: Pete Pike, had been working on and they had put
Speaker 5: this together with Woody and Justin, and they had put
Speaker 5: together the first script and they were asking you to
Speaker 5: put together a little writer's room, which is a very
Speaker 5: typical thing, which, by the way, is one of the
Speaker 5: things I believe that the writer's bill will be striking
Speaker 5: about next month. So I went in to help, and honestly,
Speaker 5: I was not mad about this. I want to be
Speaker 5: really clear, this is this is a thing that's a
Speaker 5: problem in our industry. But in this case, this is
Speaker 5: two friends asking me to come help and HBO asking
Speaker 5: me to come help, both of whom I like and
Speaker 5: want to help. So I went in to you know,
Speaker 5: just sort of help them with what they had, and
Speaker 5: a week later we had the shape of the five
Speaker 5: episodes and I was the director. And I'm not quite
Speaker 5: sure how any of that happened. Yeah, amazing, sort of
Speaker 5: very ass backwards, but in a great way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so explained us what the journey there was.
Speaker 5: Well, it's sort of a two part thing, and obviously
Speaker 5: there's a small break for COVID as well, because this
Speaker 5: goes all the way back to before the before the shutdown. So,
Speaker 5: you know, the director, I'm working with the writers, I'm
Speaker 5: i'm I'm helping to shape it, I'm helping to guide it.
Speaker 5: And then as we get going, I start trying to
Speaker 5: put together, you know, the team. You know, I'm trying
Speaker 5: to hire the production designer, the DP, and I'm starting
Speaker 5: to sort of both think and talk about what I
Speaker 5: wanted to look like, what I wanted to feel like.
Speaker 5: And the big thing on this one, among other things,
Speaker 5: was also the tone, because it's a very unique tone.
Speaker 5: It's very funny, but it's not jokey like Deep. I mean,
Speaker 5: you've seen it. It's not we don't write we don't
Speaker 5: write jokes. There's not you know, there's not those written
Speaker 5: jokes that obviously Deep was famous for. This is it's
Speaker 5: a character thing. It is very serious. It's you know,
Speaker 5: we're talking about the president of the United States basically
Speaker 5: committing illegal acts, trying to subvert democracy, trying to subvert
Speaker 5: the will of the people. And yet at the same time,
Speaker 5: even though this is serious business, you cannot help but
Speaker 5: laugh as we sort of dug Deep. We're into the details.
Speaker 5: And so when you find out I thought I was
Speaker 5: a Watergate expert, and all of a sudden, I'm reading
Speaker 5: and finding out about the fact that there were actually
Speaker 5: four Watergate break ins, that they actually they broke in,
Speaker 5: planted the bugs once the bugs didn't work, and they
Speaker 5: had to go back in, and you kind of start laughing,
Speaker 5: and it's an uncomfortable laugh, but you are laughing, and
Speaker 5: I just kind of say, it's a really funny tragedy,
Speaker 5: but at all times, even though it's funny, again, the
Speaker 5: horrible tragedy that well, I don't know, you know, just
Speaker 5: just the nightmare. That was what that president tried to do.
Speaker 5: So that's what a director does in a nutshell and
Speaker 5: you start casting, you start putting it all together.
Speaker 1: Is this the first major movie you've directed?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, they call it. It's so funny.
Speaker 5: They call it. Everything has a category in a name,
Speaker 5: so they call it like a limitary, that's what they
Speaker 5: call it. Yes, but this is the first time that
Speaker 5: I've actually sort of I guess it's funny that I directed.
Speaker 5: I directed a lot of VP and I and I
Speaker 5: loved directing VP, but it had a house style, you know,
Speaker 5: it looked VIEP looks a certain way I've directed. Curb
Speaker 5: your enthusiasm, it looks a certain way. This is the
Speaker 5: first time I actually directed something where I could sort
Speaker 5: of have fun with the look. You know, the seventies
Speaker 5: and I don't mean fun. You know, we were we
Speaker 5: get our best to avoid you know, mustard yellow turtlenecks,
Speaker 5: you know, the seventies cliches. But I was able to
Speaker 5: kind of like dig deep into my favorite like seventies movies,
Speaker 5: like you know, Marathon Man, a Parallax View and of
Speaker 5: course all the President's men, right and kind of you know,
Speaker 5: embrace the seventies a bit, but through you in a
Speaker 5: perfect world, through a modern lens. So yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Wondered if you could talk a little bed about I
Speaker 1: want to say the lessons from Watergate for.
Speaker 5: Me, what I think, and this is this is America.
Speaker 5: America has a problem which it has sort of like know,
Speaker 5: short term memory loss, which is different than the short
Speaker 5: term memory loss I have in my real life at
Speaker 5: this point, which is to say, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 5: literally you know, it's like I'll sit there and be like,
Speaker 5: who's that person? And then I'll think about it for
Speaker 5: a while, and then when I think about something else,
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, now I remember their name. But anyway,
Speaker 5: here's what happens. I mean, it's again, it's sort of
Speaker 5: a little history lesson. We had Watergate and they you know,
Speaker 5: they found out about it, and you know, we elected
Speaker 5: Jimmy Carter, and we passed a whole bunch of ethics things,
Speaker 5: you know, epic new ethics laws, you know, in the
Speaker 5: in the house and stuff. And then I think there's
Speaker 5: this just mistake of thinking we fixed it, we sanded it,
Speaker 5: and it's kind of you know, it's kind of like Obama.
Speaker 5: It's like we elected Obama and we solved racism. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and guess what it turns out you do. And so
Speaker 5: there's this thing that kind of went on with Trump.
Speaker 5: And I'm sure you were you you heard it a
Speaker 5: thousand times from people where when Trump sort of popped up,
Speaker 5: there was this sense that like from people of like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, this is new. We've never seen anything
Speaker 5: like this, this is this is oh my god, this
Speaker 5: where did this come from? All something? It's never been
Speaker 5: like this? And the honest answer is it has it
Speaker 5: has been like this. And we can just draw a
Speaker 5: direct line from Watergate, right too, Donald Trump. The same paranoia,
Speaker 5: the same war on the press, the same abuses of power,
Speaker 5: and in some cases abuses of power where you didn't
Speaker 5: you didn't even need to bother abusing power. One could
Speaker 5: make the argument just and I guess the honest answer,
Speaker 5: the lessons of Watergate in a perfect world, or at
Speaker 5: least of this project are maybe and this is kind
Speaker 5: of what you know, you and John actually were talking
Speaker 5: about the other night on TV John Allen is to
Speaker 5: hopefully one remind people what Watergate was, this even happened,
Speaker 5: because I think there are people that you know, don't
Speaker 5: know Watergate, don't know Nixon. Maybe they know the word gate,
Speaker 5: but you know, to them it's like I don't know
Speaker 5: Kanye Gate or whatever. You know. We did an episode,
Speaker 5: we did an episode of Meat that was all about Gates,
Speaker 5: and of course we did ours was the Gate? See
Speaker 5: you next Tuesday Gate? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yes, but I give.
Speaker 4: Away the end.
Speaker 2: They all said it.
Speaker 5: Sorry, they all said it exactly. But you know, we
Speaker 5: did lots of talking in that episode about it. It's
Speaker 5: not a gate, it's a gate. It's not a gate,
Speaker 5: it's a gate. Well what is a gate? Well, here
Speaker 5: we are Watergate. So I don't know. I guess My
Speaker 5: honest answer is to a hope people remember this went on,
Speaker 5: and you know, and in the perfect world, remind people
Speaker 5: about like what it means to abuse power. I know
Speaker 5: that that for me is the biggie and then the
Speaker 5: other thing to me when I look at Watergate, when
Speaker 5: I look at Hunt and Liddy, because this is very
Speaker 5: much you know, this is the story of this is.
Speaker 2: Really the Hunt and Liddy story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, exactly like they to me, and I don't
Speaker 5: know it's the fawn bird. But to me, the other
Speaker 5: big topic that I want people to take away from
Speaker 5: this is this the sort of the birth of true believerism.
Speaker 5: That these these people who in the name of in
Speaker 5: this case Nixon and the Republican Party and whatnot, put
Speaker 5: their their lives and family secondary to the cause that
Speaker 5: they they're so there's such you know, holy warriors of
Speaker 5: this sort of Nixonian cause that they don't even realize
Speaker 5: the damage that they're doing to themselves, let alone the country.
Speaker 5: And I just think this is you know, we talk
Speaker 5: about partisanship right now in America, but it's more than partisanship.
Speaker 5: It is this crazy true believerism that just polluted the waters.
Speaker 5: And so that's another thing that I guess I kept
Speaker 5: thinking a lot about as we were doing this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that seems really clear when you watch it.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I'm was drunk by was,
Speaker 1: you know, the little bit of a difference between the
Speaker 1: two men.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Hunt was kind of a
Speaker 5: has been I mean, that's the busiest way of saying it.
Speaker 5: He had been important, and now there's this sort of
Speaker 5: almost desperation to matter again, and that's kind of what
Speaker 5: drives him a little bit. You know. On set, we
Speaker 5: talked a lot about almost like a Willy Lowman as
Speaker 5: kind of death of a salesman, desperation to be important,
Speaker 5: and Lyddy is almost the flip side. Lyddy's a a
Speaker 5: never was, but he's equally desperate to matter, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. He's bounced around, he failed out of
Speaker 5: the FBI, he kind of you know, tried running for government.
Speaker 5: He kind of just wanted to be important. In some ways,
Speaker 5: he's an incredibly modern figure because in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 5: he's a guy that wants to be famous and doesn't
Speaker 5: care even if he becomes famous. For the nineteen seventy
Speaker 5: two equivalent of getting out of a limo and flashing
Speaker 5: his ball, you know what I mean, Like he didn't Yeah,
Speaker 5: he didn't care how it happened. He just wanted it
Speaker 5: to happen, and that he wants to matter. He also,
Speaker 5: in that desperation that kind of pours out of both
Speaker 5: of them, is just like a like a dangerous TNT
Speaker 5: kind of you know, kind of mix I don't know.
Speaker 5: So that's that's one of the things that I think
Speaker 5: kind of interesting. And by the way, in the end,
Speaker 5: and I guess we are jumping to the end, but
Speaker 5: again I like to you know, one of the things
Speaker 5: we joked a lot about is there's no season too.
Speaker 5: Everybody goes to Dale except Nixon. He resigned. But in
Speaker 5: the end, Lyddy such as it is, gets what he
Speaker 5: wanted in a way. He becomes sort of infamous and
Speaker 5: famous and he's a you know, he becomes a punchline
Speaker 5: on Johnny Carson for sticking to his insane guns. That's well,
Speaker 5: do the Hunt family. Hunt just ruined his family and
Speaker 5: you cannot watch again. You cannot watch what these guys do,
Speaker 5: and your brain just jumps to the you know, the
Speaker 5: Michael Cohnes of the world, these guys that he's gonna
Speaker 5: take care of me. He loves me. Oh you know,
Speaker 5: I'm his favorite. He gave me a gold star on
Speaker 5: you know, there's a moment in the show in episode
Speaker 5: four where things are starting to go wrong, you know,
Speaker 5: think the public has found out about it. Things are
Speaker 5: starting to the walls are starting to close in a
Speaker 5: little bit. But they're watching Election night of course, you know,
Speaker 5: Nixon is destroying McGovern and you know, Lydia is bragging
Speaker 5: to his family about a memo that he sent the
Speaker 5: president that he's heard second hand as the President gave
Speaker 5: an a plus two. And it's like a small little boy,
Speaker 5: you know, in a very very sort of I don't
Speaker 5: want to say sad, because we should not have sympathy
Speaker 5: for these guys, but it is sad, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, like like maybe occasionally a little empathy if
Speaker 5: we did our job, but never s empathy, if that,
Speaker 5: If that.
Speaker 1: Makes sense, Yeah, yeah, I want to ask you, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the writer's strike because this is super interesting.
Speaker 2: What is going on over there.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, they're negotiating right now as of I
Speaker 5: think last week, the Writer's Guild, which I am a member.
Speaker 5: I'm a member the Writer's Guild and the Director's Guild
Speaker 5: and the Screen Actors Guild oddly enough, but right now
Speaker 5: we'll talk about the Writers Guild. We have voted to
Speaker 5: allow our we've approved the strike by an overwhelming percentage,
Speaker 5: and in some ways, from what I can tell, that's
Speaker 5: when the negotiations actually begin. When everybody realizes you could strike,
Speaker 5: is when the negotiations begin. But you know, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of issues. Since the move to streaming, among other things,
Speaker 5: shows have gotten way shorter, so number, you know, like
Speaker 5: now your average show, you know, it does like you
Speaker 5: know what, six episodes or something like that, as opposed
Speaker 5: to the twenty two you used to do. Studios are
Speaker 5: increasingly doing rooms and mini rooms where they'll put a
Speaker 5: room together and really almost come up with the six
Speaker 5: episodes then not hire a staff, not bring people in,
Speaker 5: you know, not. So your average writer is working on
Speaker 5: shows that are on TV, but they have no residuals
Speaker 5: because they're on streaming. They don't actually give you a
Speaker 5: decent paychecks or not a lot of episodes. Maybe it's
Speaker 5: figured out in this mini room, which is a flat see,
Speaker 5: you know, it's all this, it's these various things, so
Speaker 5: that writers are just not you know bring you know,
Speaker 5: are just not being able to. In some cases, writers
Speaker 5: that I've known for a long time, guys in their
Speaker 5: fifties that are no longer earning the living that they
Speaker 5: were able to make. And I'm not talking about Hawaiian vacations.
Speaker 1: These are the bread and butter writers who are not famous.
Speaker 5: Yes, exactly, exactly, Yes, and then there's the things that
Speaker 5: we're not even really talking about yet, which, of course,
Speaker 5: is AI right, which is, if you don't think that
Speaker 5: studios are trying to figure out can AI write a script,
Speaker 5: you're wrong. I'll just leave it at that. And they're
Speaker 5: going to do what they always do, which is they
Speaker 5: claim anything that's new. They always go, oh, it's new technology,
Speaker 5: don't worry about it. It's of course, And the honest
Speaker 5: answer is they're they're you know, they're they're pleading a
Speaker 5: little bit of poverty with studios because of obviously the
Speaker 5: stock prices are down, and the stock prices are down
Speaker 5: because they've made certain business decisions. They went all in
Speaker 5: on streaming, they've done these giant mergers and all these things,
Speaker 5: and you know, I didn't tell them to do any
Speaker 5: of those things, so you know, I don't remember the
Speaker 5: writers getting a vote on any of that. So anyway,
Speaker 5: I think rightly in the sense of I don't know
Speaker 5: any other way to make a difference in these negotiations
Speaker 5: than to strike. However, I am not looking forward to
Speaker 5: the strike, but I will strike, and I don't know
Speaker 5: house to put it. So that's kind of where we are.
Speaker 1: The studios want the strike though, too, because then they
Speaker 1: can do force majure.
Speaker 5: That is obviously our own paranoia, which is it allows
Speaker 5: them to get out of a lot of deals that
Speaker 5: they don't want to be in, and again it clears
Speaker 5: the debt sheet. You know, you start doing that kind
Speaker 5: of stuff because look, at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: they're just you know, it's stock price, stock price, stock price.
Speaker 5: It's sort of a very strange kind of ghost of
Speaker 5: I don't know, like Jack Welch's late eighties ge of,
Speaker 5: like it's how do we get the stock price up?
Speaker 5: Who cares if we destroy research and development? You know
Speaker 5: what I mean? So I don't know. That's as someone
Speaker 5: not involved in the negotiations but obviously is trying to
Speaker 5: pay attention. That's my sense of it.
Speaker 2: How long do you think this strike is going to last?
Speaker 5: For whatever reason? The last one was fifteen years ago,
Speaker 5: which I oddly remember, we can't actually, Yeah, it's a
Speaker 5: strange one. My daughter was born during it, and so
Speaker 5: oddly it was a very strange thing that not having
Speaker 5: work dealt well for the birth of my daughter, helping
Speaker 5: my wife after the birth, so she was a fan.
Speaker 5: But that one went on a little bit you know
Speaker 5: that was God, is that like seven months or something
Speaker 5: like that, or I think something like that. I may
Speaker 5: be wrong in my memory that's what it was, but
Speaker 5: I'm sure I'm wrong. I guess I just imagine it
Speaker 5: will be. It will be something like that.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 5: The interesting difference here is the Director's Guild. Again, as
Speaker 5: I said, I'm also a member or who are finding
Speaker 5: some of the same issues, especially in terms of the
Speaker 5: shorter shows and things of that nature. Their contract runs
Speaker 5: out in June. And while of course neither I find
Speaker 5: that neither guild ever really wants to help each other
Speaker 5: in this case, the fact that these things have lined
Speaker 5: up might be something that helps perhaps bring it to
Speaker 5: an end.
Speaker 3: But who knows.
Speaker 1: You know, very interesting. So what's next for you? Can
Speaker 1: you do another politics show?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 5: I mean, this is the funny thing, you know, As
Speaker 5: I said to you, you know, when I got involved
Speaker 5: in White House Plumbers, it wasn't the goal and I
Speaker 5: can't I.
Speaker 4: Know we needed.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to whine gone.
Speaker 5: No whine away. I know you know you know I
Speaker 5: love it and I'm final way. I'm sorry to get
Speaker 5: to see you in New York. But after we did
Speaker 5: the New York screening. We went down to DC and
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 1: No I know, I heard it was amazing. Everyone I
Speaker 1: know was there and said it was incredible.
Speaker 5: It was crazy. But I do have to say this.
Speaker 5: Can I tell you one little story about the screening
Speaker 5: in DC?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 5: I'm not making this up. And it was so nerve wracking.
Speaker 5: Sally Quinn and Bob Woodward at the screening to watch
Speaker 5: our little Watergate show. How insane is that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 5: Yeah? And that to me was far more nerve racking
Speaker 5: than the New York screening, where, of course everyone that
Speaker 5: I ever went to, like harras Man with you know
Speaker 5: what I mean? You know, Bob Woodward watching your watching
Speaker 5: mister Watergate, watching your Watergate thing, you just you feel
Speaker 5: like an idiot. But they both dug it, which was
Speaker 5: really cool. But I love DC. I love the world.
Speaker 5: The honest answer is much in the way I think
Speaker 5: this is related but different to meep it would be
Speaker 5: about finding something that was, you know, a different take
Speaker 5: on things, you know what I mean, I've had this.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I have this bit of an idea
Speaker 5: that almost goes the other way about people that and
Speaker 5: I'm not talking west Wing, but I'm talking about people
Speaker 5: that actually are trying to get something done, if that
Speaker 5: makes any sense, A little bit.
Speaker 2: Like the state level or something.
Speaker 5: What it's like but but yeah, but at the same time,
Speaker 5: not parks and wreck either, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: but something about what it's like to try and take
Speaker 5: a project on like and rying get something done, but
Speaker 5: at the same time one of these projects that's kind
Speaker 5: of impossible, like how like like if it was about
Speaker 5: like fixing education or solving homelessness, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: where inherently there is both a perhaps a sadness and
Speaker 5: a funny sadness to the whole thing. Anyway, I don't
Speaker 5: that's ay. Those are those are bits and pieces of
Speaker 5: nothing that I'm pitching you. Will you buy it? Do
Speaker 5: you like it? No?
Speaker 1: But I mean yes, I'll buy it. And it's good
Speaker 1: because I have no money so.
Speaker 5: Perfect that's I don't be on strike anyway, so it's fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing that you realize when you're
Speaker 1: in DC is that most of these people came there
Speaker 1: to do something good.
Speaker 5: Twelve half of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's but you know, and they really
Speaker 1: are idealistic.
Speaker 5: No, came to do something, yes, exactly and they still
Speaker 5: have that idealism and then of course, sadly there is
Speaker 5: that other fifty p.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So whoa.
Speaker 1: I I'm so delighted to get to have you on
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm such a fan.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, And thank you for watching the whole
Speaker 5: damn thing. I really meant so much when you watched
Speaker 5: it own.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's so good.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. I'm a huge, huge fan.
Speaker 1: And you and Julia have both really thrown yourself into
Speaker 1: like doing important work for democracy, and you know, you've
Speaker 1: been involved in Wisconsin and all these small state area
Speaker 1: fights that have really that will really add up to something.
Speaker 5: That is the hope, and we keep hammering away together separately.
Speaker 5: One of the good things aside, I mean, there were
Speaker 5: many good things that came out of this last cycle.
Speaker 5: Some of them were the fact that for the first time,
Speaker 5: it feels like Democrats are starting to focus on the
Speaker 5: state level and realizing how important it is, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, and how a single a single Supreme
Speaker 5: Court seat in Wisconsin can make a difference. And hopefully
Speaker 5: that helps because you know, shows like yours that you
Speaker 5: keep telling the audience this is important. This is important.
Speaker 5: So thank you right back at how about that?
Speaker 2: Oh so mutual? Thank you?
Speaker 1: Thanks Hi, It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that
Speaker 1: for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening
Speaker 1: to right now, is going to have merch for sale
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Speaker 2: Thanks for your support.
Speaker 1: Ben Smith is the editor in chief of Semaphore and
Speaker 1: the author of Traffic, Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the
Speaker 1: billion dollar Race to Go Viral.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Ben.
Speaker 6: Smith, thanks so much for having me, Mala.
Speaker 2: We're delighted to have you. You are the editor in.
Speaker 1: Chief of Semophore and also the author of Trump Pick.
Speaker 1: First of all, why did you decide to write this book?
Speaker 1: And where were you working at the times? Where were
Speaker 1: you when this happened?
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, when I left BuzzFeed in twenty nineteen
Speaker 7: to go to the New York Times. I mean, there
Speaker 7: was this pandemic, and so we all had a little
Speaker 7: extra time on our hands, and I suppose time to reflect,
Speaker 7: and I guess I sort of wound up thinking like, huh,
Speaker 7: what was that? Like what just happened? Like what was
Speaker 7: this whole era we all just kind of lived through?
Speaker 7: And yeah, and I guess it sort of had a
Speaker 7: little extra time on my hands because of the pandemic
Speaker 7: to report it out, and so spent a lot of
Speaker 7: time digging into kind of the origin. What I see
Speaker 7: is sort of the origin story of this moment.
Speaker 1: So I want to I ask you, first of all,
Speaker 1: I mean, this book is just about to come out
Speaker 1: or has just come out, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, traffic's out. May second, explain.
Speaker 1: To our listeners what happened with BuzzFeed and where it
Speaker 1: is now, because that and it just happened and it
Speaker 1: seems relevant.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, it makes me really sad they had
Speaker 7: made the decision to shut down BuzzFeed News, which I
Speaker 7: helped start in twenty twelve last week.
Speaker 6: I think, you know, I.
Speaker 7: Would say we did not you know, when I was there,
Speaker 7: we were this venture backed startup that was focused on
Speaker 7: growth and not on making money, and by the time
Speaker 7: I left, we were the news department was attempting to
Speaker 7: make money and it was not something I was perfectly
Speaker 7: good at. I think, you know, they were making some
Speaker 7: progress on building a business, but at the same time,
Speaker 7: the fundamental issue is that we'd built this media company
Speaker 7: for social media, for this, for the for the social
Speaker 7: media age, which is clearly drawn to some kind of
Speaker 7: an end, and I think, you know, I think our
Speaker 7: fundamental bed at Buzfeed in some ways was that the
Speaker 7: social networks in twenty twelve were what kind of cable
Speaker 7: had been in the eighties, this new form of distribution,
Speaker 7: and that there was going to be a new wave
Speaker 7: of content that came with this new form of distribution.
Speaker 7: I think that metaphor didn't kind of quite play out
Speaker 7: that way.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting. Also, I'm married to a venture.
Speaker 1: Capitalist, so every day he's like, media companies are terrible,
Speaker 1: they're terrible businesses, They're terrible, and I'm always like, this
Speaker 1: is what we all do, right, So I'm just curious, like,
Speaker 1: was this sort of fantasy that social media would somehow
Speaker 1: make regular media more profitable.
Speaker 7: No, I think The idea was that not a fantasy,
Speaker 7: that social media would dramatically change society and would be
Speaker 7: where lots of people got their information, and that if
Speaker 7: you built, you know, the way cable had, and that
Speaker 7: if you built a news organization, say that was focused
Speaker 7: on getting the word at through social media, you could
Speaker 7: reach a big audience. The question of how you would
Speaker 7: make money off that, I think obviously was not something
Speaker 7: we exactly solved. And I think you know, the cable companies,
Speaker 7: as you think about it now, created an ecosystem which
Speaker 7: they made money, but you know ESPN makes a lot
Speaker 7: of money too. The social media companies prefer user generated content,
Speaker 7: which is free to anything professionally created. And I think
Speaker 7: actually one of their problems was they got if you
Speaker 7: look back now at their decline, is they kind of
Speaker 7: got stuck in this world of low quality content while
Speaker 7: we all went off to watch Netflix and HBO.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because you see this again and again with
Speaker 1: whatever psychodrama Elan is acting out on Twitter, where he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we can just have people do it. We
Speaker 1: don't need to pay for content. So you do definitely
Speaker 1: see he's sort of doubling down on that.
Speaker 7: I mean that's not just elon. Twitter never wanted to
Speaker 7: pay for content. They flirted with it here and there.
Speaker 7: But you know, the beauty from the Twitter perspective was
Speaker 7: we were all working for them for free. I don't
Speaker 7: think Elan is doing a particularly good job running Twitter,
Speaker 7: and it's obviously pretty off the rails. I do think
Speaker 7: that it was already decline. It like it was losing
Speaker 7: its cultural relevance. The company was losing we had not
Speaker 7: figured out a way to make money even at the
Speaker 7: peak of its cultural relevance. I think has probably kind
Speaker 7: of accelerated its decline and given it a shove. But
Speaker 7: you know, the thing with these social networks is they're
Speaker 7: kind of you know, they're social institutions. They're like bars
Speaker 7: or nightclubs. You go to it for a while because
Speaker 7: all your friends are there, and then they all leave
Speaker 7: and go to podcasts, and so you go there.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting problem that's sort of like because
Speaker 1: so much, so much of content content distribution, and certainly
Speaker 1: this is not true for the New York Times of
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, but it's it's true for pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody else is on these social networks. And also aggregation sides, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 7: I mean I think I think you know less than
Speaker 7: it used to be, but certainly, yeah, I think you
Speaker 7: know they were. If you think about it, it's not just
Speaker 7: sort of news, right. If you think about the extent
Speaker 7: which the social networks just sort of like splashed through
Speaker 7: societies and family life and everything politics and everything else
Speaker 7: in the twenty tens, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Because I don't feel this way, but I think some
Speaker 1: people really do. Do you feel that the social media
Speaker 1: was kind of a blight?
Speaker 7: I do not, Like, I mean, I think that there's
Speaker 7: always this impulse to sort of romanticize what came before
Speaker 7: and this golden age that's gone. I mean, I think
Speaker 7: social media did a lot of harm. But also I
Speaker 7: think it's a little hard for people to remember now
Speaker 7: how like sclerotic and corrupt the American media of like
Speaker 7: the Iraq era was. Do we think social media to
Speaker 7: anything quite as bad as cheerleading the Iraq war image
Speaker 7: interesting question, I think if you think about like just
Speaker 7: sort of you know, this is sort of maybe a
Speaker 7: dumb thought experiment, but it's interesting to think about what
Speaker 7: it would have been like to try to lead the
Speaker 7: country into war with Iraq with iraqis on the ground
Speaker 7: tweeting videos of what they were seeing, when Bush was saying,
Speaker 7: well we believe there's a yellow cake refining site in
Speaker 7: this place, or if the sort of marginal voices who
Speaker 7: got who only could get into the conversation by way
Speaker 7: of McClatchy had been making the case in the sort
Speaker 7: of like often bizarrely level playing field of social media
Speaker 7: that I think.
Speaker 1: Is ultimately the big question, right, is he is a
Speaker 1: closed system less problematic than an open one?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 7: I think it's all pretty problematic. Well, you know, like
Speaker 7: I think people like to imagine that well we can
Speaker 7: just solve that. We just he'll just solve this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of antagonism towards new newness, right
Speaker 1: the printing press, the newspaper. So I do agree that
Speaker 1: it's certainly true. You talk about gawker Nick Detton, is
Speaker 1: I mean I know him a bit. I'm curious, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you see him now and he's just a.
Speaker 2: Completely different person from that experience.
Speaker 1: I am curious what your sort.
Speaker 2: Of take on that, if you could talk about that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean Nick was one of was this pioneering
Speaker 7: figure of the early Internet who had started something that
Speaker 7: kind of was almost Google Reader, yeah, in the early
Speaker 7: early aughts in San Francisco, and then come to New
Speaker 7: York to kind of I mean, he had in some
Speaker 7: ways quite dark vision for the Internet, that it was
Speaker 7: a place where, you know, where both journalists could say
Speaker 7: the things, say the kind of like dark searing truths
Speaker 7: that they would never print, but that they you know,
Speaker 7: would say to each other in bars that that's what
Speaker 7: could be on the Internet, and that people who pretended
Speaker 7: to care about high minded policy or whatever could actually
Speaker 7: see the kind of prurient gossip that's what they really wanted,
Speaker 7: and that the Internet would sort of free the kind
Speaker 7: of you know, more elemental parts of human nature, which
Speaker 7: is probably true, and built this media empire kind of
Speaker 7: around that idea, and Gawker was the signature, you know,
Speaker 7: the signature brand of it, you know, with this sensation
Speaker 7: on the New York media scene in two thousand and three,
Speaker 7: four five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what do you think now?
Speaker 1: And I mean I also think like Drudge, but I
Speaker 1: want to know more is to sort of aggregate aggregation
Speaker 1: kind of situation.
Speaker 2: But I want to know, what do you think now?
Speaker 2: Is the sort of future of this.
Speaker 1: I mean in a way, I don't know how we
Speaker 1: could go backwards.
Speaker 7: There are weird little ways, and things feel like they
Speaker 7: specifically are going backwards. Like the Drudge Report you mentioned
Speaker 7: is which which had sort of been swamped by the
Speaker 7: scale of the of Facebook, is now back to being
Speaker 7: kind of the biggest you know, political refer on the internet.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, even as you know, a
Speaker 1: pretty partisan opinion columnist, I have a big place in
Speaker 1: my heart for Drodge.
Speaker 7: So go figure, oh, a genius editor.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: And you know, people who you remember as bloggers, Matthew,
Speaker 7: you know, Matt Iglesias Andrew Sullivan are now sending sub
Speaker 7: stacks that are in some ways very much in that tradition.
Speaker 7: But I actually think, in a way like the reason
Speaker 7: that they're working now, and the reason that shows like
Speaker 7: this work is that, you know, back in two thousand
Speaker 7: and three, the challenge that everybody was trying to solve
Speaker 7: is like, wow, like I'm stuck reading two newspapers and
Speaker 7: if only I could have more opinions and more diversity
Speaker 7: of opinions and all sorts of different people talking to
Speaker 7: me all the time, wouldn't that be cool?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I found it was fun, and.
Speaker 7: Now I think it's like, oh my god, shut up everything,
Speaker 7: and now it's everything everywhere, all at once, and people,
Speaker 7: regular consumers and you and me probably feel totally overwhelmed
Speaker 7: and are looking for voices we can trust and kind
Speaker 7: of get where they're coming from, to give us new
Speaker 7: information and to sort through everything out there and help
Speaker 7: us know what to look at and what to read
Speaker 7: and to some degree what to trust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, certainly that's what it seems like. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about what you're doing now with some.
Speaker 7: Before so some forurs very much rooted kind of that
Speaker 7: perception of what people of what's driving people crazy about
Speaker 7: the media right now, which is the sense that you're
Speaker 7: just overwhelmed by incoming and that a lot of it
Speaker 7: has motives that you can't totally figure out. And so
Speaker 7: what we're trying to do is say, it's very kind
Speaker 7: of human exercise if like I cover media, you know,
Speaker 7: if I'm writing about media, like I'm going to tell
Speaker 7: you what the scoop is that I got, you know
Speaker 7: that you know, Fast Politics is about to be acquired
Speaker 7: by NBC News or whatever, and then I will tell
Speaker 7: you what I think about it, which is that it's
Speaker 7: obviously a catastrophic mistake for NBC News.
Speaker 6: They'll probably destroy the whole thing. But I'm not like,
Speaker 6: but I'm also going to struck.
Speaker 7: We literally structure articles in a way that says this
Speaker 7: first part is true and the second part is my opinion,
Speaker 7: and I could be wrong somebody else who thinks it's
Speaker 7: a great idea, and so and here and by the way,
Speaker 7: and there's this other behavior, and I think it's a
Speaker 7: real opportunity, which is, I don't know, if you find this,
Speaker 7: I'll read an article in a publication I love and
Speaker 7: trust and think, ah, this is probably true. But I'm
Speaker 7: going to go ahead and google the subject and read
Speaker 7: seven more articles on it so I can triangulate what
Speaker 7: really happened. Right, And so we're also trying to do
Speaker 7: a really good job of curating, you know, news and
Speaker 7: journalism around the things we're writing about so that you
Speaker 7: don't have to do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think about that all the time, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm on the opinion side. But my problem
Speaker 1: is not when I read opinion columns. My problem is
Speaker 1: when I read straight news. I'm like, what does this
Speaker 1: person really think? And what are they leaving out and
Speaker 1: what are they putting in that might not even be
Speaker 1: germane and just because it's what they're interested in.
Speaker 7: And you're a sophisticated reader. But I think a lot
Speaker 7: of readers are pretty sophisticated and do read an article
Speaker 7: in a newspaper and think, huh, like this reporter obviously
Speaker 7: knows a lot. They probably have an opinion. I don't
Speaker 7: know what it is, but I can kind of guess
Speaker 7: what it is based on which quote they chose to
Speaker 7: use and which fact. And I kind of rather they
Speaker 7: didn't play that game and just told me so.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm not that sophisticated reader. I actually
Speaker 1: feel like I'm very naive. But one of the issues
Speaker 1: I always feel because I'm on the opinion side, it's
Speaker 1: over for me, right.
Speaker 2: I can't write straight news, everyone would think go as.
Speaker 1: Bias, And you know, I can interview, but it really
Speaker 1: has to be in that.
Speaker 2: Sort of opinion sphere, which is fine.
Speaker 1: But when you have your reporters writing these opinion parts,
Speaker 1: doesn't that mean that they kind of can't go back
Speaker 1: to straight news after that?
Speaker 7: Well, I mean, I think you know, there are a
Speaker 7: lot of different flavors of journalism. The kind of stuff
Speaker 7: we're doing is really a lot of it is beat reporting,
Speaker 7: where I'm not asking them to say my opinion is
Speaker 7: that these people are discussing monsters, right, I'm asked them
Speaker 7: to say my analysis is that the collapse of SVB
Speaker 7: means that this other bank is the next one to go.
Speaker 7: It's more more and I would say more analytical, although
Speaker 7: I think that these sort of boundaries between analysis and
Speaker 7: opinion are pretty pretty porous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like analysis is like just
Speaker 1: a way to trick straight journalists into giving their opinion
Speaker 1: and then getting in trouble.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I guess I think that.
Speaker 7: To me, what's really important is that supporters are trying
Speaker 7: to figure out what's going on, and it really open
Speaker 7: to the possibility that they're wrong, Like, and I mean
Speaker 7: not on the reporting on the facts, but if you're
Speaker 7: going to have a provocative piece of analysis, it might
Speaker 7: be wrong.
Speaker 6: If there's no way it.
Speaker 7: Could be wrong, it's not interesting, it's been all and
Speaker 7: people and I just I want people who are open
Speaker 7: to that possibility, and I do think that limits my
Speaker 7: pool a bit.
Speaker 1: Can you sort of explain where you sort of see
Speaker 1: sebafore going.
Speaker 7: Now, Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we feel
Speaker 7: pretty good about how people, you know, the reception we've had,
Speaker 7: and I think we're going to I think in our
Speaker 7: sort of like long term vision of the place, we
Speaker 7: do really think these are global questions and that increasingly
Speaker 7: global people are going to want to get outside a
Speaker 7: kind of parochial news environment and understand the relationship between
Speaker 7: the US and China and.
Speaker 6: Things like that.
Speaker 7: But we also justin and I like, have not been
Speaker 7: through this a few times and are being very careful
Speaker 7: not to bite off more than we can chew. And
Speaker 7: so we've launched in two places in the US and
Speaker 7: its Sub Saharan Africa, and I think in the medium term,
Speaker 7: I think there's a lot of opportunity elsewhere, but are
Speaker 7: also trying to really just try to get good at
Speaker 7: what we're doing.
Speaker 2: Right now Africa.
Speaker 1: It reminds me that there are a lot of places
Speaker 1: in America that have these kind of news deserts, and
Speaker 1: you see it more and more, and you see, for example,
Speaker 1: this child labor story, which I'm obsessed with, is happening
Speaker 1: all over the country, but it's happening at the state
Speaker 1: house level, and it's happening very quietly, and so because
Speaker 1: we don't have the same level of local coverage that
Speaker 1: we used to, things are happening and much faster. And
Speaker 1: this is my central anxiety in life, is that I'm
Speaker 1: just missing something that's right under my notes that like
Speaker 1: the George Santos story where you know, the American people
Speaker 1: in Nassau along Island elect as serial fabulous and know
Speaker 1: what notices.
Speaker 2: Do you have that anxiety or is it just me?
Speaker 7: Yeah, oh yeah, And I think, you know, it's interesting
Speaker 7: like people often say journalism is declining, news is declining.
Speaker 7: You know, look at all these jobs being destroyed in journalism,
Speaker 7: and it's not. That's actually not broadly true. Like in
Speaker 7: lots of spaces, podcastings booming, you know, or wasn't till recently.
Speaker 7: I think Washington reporting, financial reporting, tech reporting are all
Speaker 7: in great places. Local journalism is a catastrophic situation and
Speaker 7: a very specific problem, which is that in the United States, specifically,
Speaker 7: the sort of way the country was structured, the way
Speaker 7: the business is structure. These metro newspapers in every small, medium,
Speaker 7: large city, we're just incredible businesses that could hire hundreds
Speaker 7: of journalists. The Internet just pulled the rug out of that.
Speaker 7: I mean, the basic thing was if you wanted to
Speaker 7: sell a refrigerator and Clearland, the only way to reach
Speaker 7: refrigerator writers in Cleveland was the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and
Speaker 7: they could just make incredible amounts of money and employ
Speaker 7: lots of journalists. It's very hard to see a path
Speaker 7: back to anything like that. And there are these very
Speaker 7: I think good projects to rebuild small local things, local
Speaker 7: nonprofit things, but I think people like don't quite understand
Speaker 7: the scale of how incredible a business it was, and
Speaker 7: how many people it employed, and what kind of major,
Speaker 7: major part of civic life. These great newspapers with these
Speaker 7: huge buildings downtown play and I think, I mean, I
Speaker 7: feel nostalgia for that, but I also just do not
Speaker 7: see a path back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel nostalgia for that too. I mean the
Speaker 1: anxiety I have now we're just doing therapy for me,
Speaker 1: but it's very useful for me, so listeners aren't too bored.
Speaker 1: But the anxiety that I have about our current situation
Speaker 1: is like I came from magazines in the nineties and
Speaker 1: I lived through the just incredible, I mean spectacular meltdown
Speaker 1: of you know, these places that I thought of is
Speaker 1: like great institutions that.
Speaker 2: Are now you know, tiny fragments.
Speaker 1: So it does scare me, but I also do think
Speaker 1: I mean, are you a person who thinks AI is
Speaker 1: going to just completely put us all out of business?
Speaker 7: No, the things that are most interesting about journalism, which
Speaker 7: are new and gathering new information, you know, from sources
Speaker 7: and putting it in a kind of in a thoughtful context,
Speaker 7: are sort of the hardest things for these large language
Speaker 7: models to do. I think things like copy editing, it
Speaker 7: can be a very useful tool, But I don't think
Speaker 7: anybody looks at grammar lay, which is a great service,
Speaker 7: and says this is going to destroy journalism.
Speaker 2: Oh, my husband's obsessed with grammarly.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean, I mean, I'm not sure if that is
Speaker 7: technically artificial intelligence, but there'll be AI tools that do
Speaker 7: that better and better. But I don't think having fewer
Speaker 7: typos is going to destroy I mean maybe, I don't know,
Speaker 7: might even improve things, but their production roles that I
Speaker 7: think that'll probably affect. And then on the other end,
Speaker 7: I think there are huge opportunities. We've been using these
Speaker 7: AI tools for a nation and videos, which is prohibitively
Speaker 7: expensive for news organization. To do, you know, three four
Speaker 7: or five thousand dollars a minute if you're if you're trying,
Speaker 7: and so no one does it. And now we're working
Speaker 7: with this artist in Australia to do it in a
Speaker 7: way that I think makes the stuff better and is
Speaker 7: something we can afford.
Speaker 6: And so in sort of.
Speaker 7: The old fashioned internet ways, democratizing certain tools, and so,
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, I could I could be wrong.
Speaker 7: I've obviously been wrong before in this book, largely about that.
Speaker 7: But I think there's a lot of opportunity and I
Speaker 7: don't really see your job as Molly is particularly in danger.
Speaker 2: We will see hopefully you're right. Thank you, Ben Smith.
Speaker 7: Assuming this is Molly the moment full Jesse.
Speaker 8: Cannon Mai Jung fasts. So this Supreme Court, one might
Speaker 8: describe them as glacial moving. As old as they are.
Speaker 2: They're slow.
Speaker 1: Look, the truth is that if you are so busy,
Speaker 1: like my my friend and yours, Justice Samuel Alito, with
Speaker 1: finding the leaker who you're sure you know and it's
Speaker 1: certainly not you, and then you, like the one the
Speaker 1: only Justice Clarence Thomas, are so busy vacationing with billionaires,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to get the job done, but they're
Speaker 1: moving slowly.
Speaker 2: Honestly, when I saw this article, I thought, good, I'm
Speaker 2: slowing even more.
Speaker 3: Good point.
Speaker 8: Should we really be complaining that they've only done fifteen
Speaker 8: percent of cases and seventy five percent of the cases
Speaker 8: are still undecided.
Speaker 1: Take a load off, Get on Harlan Crowe's jet, have
Speaker 1: a little vak.
Speaker 2: Tom Thomas, we don't need you right now. You may
Speaker 2: be our moment.
Speaker 1: Of fuck Gray, but we suggest you take a vacation.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics make sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.