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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,

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Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of

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Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump says his two hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars bailed stems from the DA thinking he'd fly far,

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Speaker 1: far away, maybe to Russia and share a gold domed

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Speaker 1: suite with Vladimir Putin. Totally normal stuff, everyone, We have

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Speaker 1: a star studded show today. Semaphores Dave Wigall talks about

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Speaker 1: how the Republican Party continues to tack right. Then we'll

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Speaker 1: talk to tech journalist Taylor Lorenz. We'll talk about her

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Speaker 1: new book Extremely Online, the untold story of fame, influence,

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Speaker 1: and power on the Internet. But first we have the

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Speaker 1: host of the Laurence o'donald Show, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome

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Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. Lawrence.

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Speaker 2: Oh, it's always great to be here. This is the

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Speaker 2: way to start the day.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about the Republican debate because this episode will

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Speaker 1: drop tomorrow, which is Wednesday, which is the day of

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Speaker 1: the first GOP debate.

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Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's begin with a footnote to the audience. Yes,

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Speaker 2: no one told me this discussion would be about something

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Speaker 2: I don't care about. No one told me what ahead

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Speaker 2: of time. I have not covered this on my hour

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Speaker 2: long program because the program's only an hour. If it

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Speaker 2: was seven hours, I might devote ten minutes to it

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Speaker 2: at some point, but we just have ye No. On

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Speaker 2: a nightly basis much more important stuff to discuss. And

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Speaker 2: you know, I saw Steve Kernaki last night on the

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Speaker 2: nine o'clock show, on Alex Wagner's show, and I didn't

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Speaker 2: have the sound on, and I just thought like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe we'll we'll get to Steve next year,

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Speaker 2: you know, because it's like, you know, this is so early,

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Speaker 2: it's so silly. It's the completely childish section of the

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Speaker 2: campaign where people are going to be learning about people

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Speaker 2: who will become the Mike Huckabees of their lives.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: I mean I remember learning a lot about Mike Huckabee

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Speaker 2: when he was running for president. I knew everything about

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Speaker 2: Mike Huckabee when he was running for president, and man,

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Speaker 2: that was a wasted collection of data, to put it mildly.

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Speaker 2: And if it's anything, it's the vice presidential campaign, right,

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Speaker 2: it's the you know, could I possibly suck up to

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Speaker 2: him enough to you know, end up on the ballot

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Speaker 2: with him. I'll say this to the audience. If you're

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Speaker 2: looking for something to ignore in the mewsuckle, this would

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Speaker 2: be the thing to pick. This would be the thing

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Speaker 2: to pick. And so I'm actually going to be going

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Speaker 2: uh and I very much want the audience to know this.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to be on against the debate at ten pm.

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Speaker 2: The debate is on some other channel from I guess

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Speaker 2: nine to eleven, and I'm going to be on at

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Speaker 2: ten so I will never have to talk about it.

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Speaker 2: And you know, the network don't don't don't tell anyone this,

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Speaker 2: but the network asked me to come on at eleven,

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Speaker 2: you know, immediately after my show to talk about the debate.

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Speaker 2: And I said, well, you know, this is an unusual

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Speaker 2: response for TV creature, But I said, well, I can't

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Speaker 2: go on TV to talk about a debate. I haven't

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Speaker 2: seen I know that is that didn't occur to anyone

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Speaker 2: else as being any It's like, how would that get

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Speaker 2: in the way and talking about the Republican debate? And

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Speaker 2: I actually suppose maybe it's what we should do. Maybe

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Speaker 2: that should be the gimmick I go on and I said, wow,

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Speaker 2: I didn't see it. But I think, you know, I.

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Speaker 1: Think you had a good point, which is it is

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Speaker 1: like a HUD secretary.

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Speaker 2: Yeah it's no, well it's And also there are these

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Speaker 2: you know, characters, always characters out there who are running

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Speaker 2: for fame, Like you're not going to be confirmed by

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Speaker 2: the Senate for anything ever in your lives, but you're

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Speaker 2: running for fame. And then maybe you know, you can

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Speaker 2: get a podcast and you know, be as famous as

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Speaker 2: as Molly.

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Speaker 1: Is true Yang yeah, well yeah, you know aim higher

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Speaker 1: like Andrew Yang.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the and you always know, like you can

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Speaker 2: tell it instantly. You know which ones are running just

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Speaker 2: for fame because one of the things they do is

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Speaker 2: that they they say the most outrageous things. You know,

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Speaker 2: Tim Scott knows that the most likely thing that he

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Speaker 2: will next be elected to in life is the United

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Speaker 2: States Senate, and in South Carolina, that's the most likely thing,

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Speaker 2: you know. And then in a happy world, he becomes,

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Speaker 2: you know, the vice presidential nominee for Donald Trump and loses.

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Speaker 2: And but you know, almost all of the rest of them,

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Speaker 2: you know, Nicky Haley has hopes for a future you know,

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Speaker 2: in cabinets or in office. But you know, Mike Pence.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's hopeless, and everybody knows it's hopeless, and

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Speaker 2: the others are just outright, you know, clowns running for

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Speaker 2: fame and to you know, improve their possibilities of getting

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Speaker 2: a Fox contract or some you know, podcasting thing or whatever.

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Speaker 1: I want to ask you a question about Nicky Haley

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Speaker 1: and sort of this Republican field and Mike Pence really

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Speaker 1: especially one of the things that Mike Pence really did

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Speaker 1: was he gave evangelicals permission to support Donald Trump, right,

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Speaker 1: he said, this guy's our guy. And he did it

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Speaker 1: so well that then evangelicals were like, well, why do

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Speaker 1: we need you? What do you think like the legacy

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Speaker 1: of that is.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think actually Mike Pence is the most dangerous

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Speaker 2: thing to Donald Trump in this campaign because what he's

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Speaker 2: eventually going to do is show you the gap. He's

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Speaker 2: done it already, but no one's paying attention, and he's

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Speaker 2: done it really, really effectively. It is the gap between

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump and the religious right on abortion, because Donald

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Speaker 2: Trump is saying, hey, you went too far in abortion. Hey,

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Speaker 2: you know, the Supreme Court, you know, left it to

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Speaker 2: the states, but the states weren't supposed to do anything.

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Speaker 2: You know that was Donald Trump's deal, you know, on abortion,

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Speaker 2: and Pence has been out there saying Trump is wrong

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Speaker 2: on abortion, he is not a supporter of our position

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Speaker 2: on abortion, and Pence is right. And to the extent

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Speaker 2: that Pence gets traction on that and actually does show

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Speaker 2: the religious right the giant gap between him and Trump

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Speaker 2: on abortion and between them and Trump on abortion, that

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Speaker 2: will shake the most solid support system that Trump has

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Speaker 2: out there. And of course we know what Trump will do.

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Speaker 2: It'll take him longer than it should because he's stupid,

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Speaker 2: but he will just move over to the Pence position

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Speaker 2: on abortion. He'll end up over there. And then when

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Speaker 2: he when he goes toward the Pence position on abortion,

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Speaker 2: then you know, he revived, you know, the opposition to

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Speaker 2: him on that issue that should exist in these other

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Speaker 2: you know, in the end, in the pro choice section

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Speaker 2: of Republicanism. I mean, I noticed it immediately in Pence's

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Speaker 2: very very first public comments as a candidate that wow,

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Speaker 2: there's a big problem there. And you know, so it's

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Speaker 2: not just that Pence won't be protecting him and certifying

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Speaker 2: him on abortion. He's going to be doing exactly the opposite.

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Speaker 1: But again, Trump has no ideology right, So this is

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Speaker 1: all about expedients and getting elected. And he sort of

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Speaker 1: knows that abortion will kill a mainstream Republican candidate in

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Speaker 1: a in general.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he thinks that the Pence position for any other

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Speaker 2: candidate would kill any other candidate. But I don't think

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Speaker 2: Trump thinks anything he says about any policy will ever

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Speaker 2: kill the Trump candidacy. And he may be right about that.

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Speaker 2: And by kill, what Trump means is lose votes that

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Speaker 2: he already has. Because Trump is stupid, he does not

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Speaker 2: understand even if he holds on to every vote he

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Speaker 2: already has, he is going to lose. So he has

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Speaker 2: to do the thing that every winning politician has always

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Speaker 2: tried to do, which is soon as as soon as

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Speaker 2: you win the election, you start working on the votes

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Speaker 2: you didn't get. You know, if you win by fifty

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Speaker 2: one percent, you strongly believe there's another five six seven percent,

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Speaker 2: or you used to believe. You know that there's another

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Speaker 2: five six seven percent that you can pick up on

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Speaker 2: your reelection. You know, Ronald Reagan believed that, you know,

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Speaker 2: and he did it. You know what's made Trump such

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Speaker 2: an unprofessional politician and profoundly stupid one is from the

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Speaker 2: moment he won the electoral College. I just sat there

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Speaker 2: and waited for him to say something to the voters

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Speaker 2: who didn't vote for him, and he has still never

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Speaker 2: said that. And so you know, he's running what is

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Speaker 2: nothing other than a cult campaign. It's just, you know,

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Speaker 2: vote for me because I'm Donald Trump. And that cannot

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Speaker 2: win him the electoral College. It can win him the

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Speaker 2: Republican nomination, but it cannot win him the.

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Speaker 1: Electric and that's a fundamental problem he has. But I'm

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Speaker 1: curious if you were to sort of like game this out.

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Speaker 1: So he's seventy seven years old, many many Republicans have

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Speaker 1: lost their careers on the hope that someday that on

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Speaker 1: the actuarial tables, as I remember reading reporting on. But

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Speaker 1: he does have all of these criminal you know, his

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Speaker 1: for indictments and a super so really five imagine a

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Speaker 1: world a twenty eight, right, I mean, where Trump is

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Speaker 1: no longer a candidate. Maybe he thinks he is, but

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Speaker 1: he's no longer a real candidate. I mean, does a

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Speaker 1: Republican party can it rise from these ashes?

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Speaker 2: I mean, well, in twenty twenty eight, that might not

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Speaker 2: be the first post Trump election. He won't be in it.

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Speaker 2: But the question is how much does Trumpism still define

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Speaker 2: how you excite a Republican primary voter. America's problem is

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Speaker 2: not Donald Trump. America's problem is Republican primary voters. They

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Speaker 2: are a minority of Republican voters. Most Republican voters do

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Speaker 2: not vote in primaries ever, not for president, not for anyone.

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Speaker 2: And so the ones who do vote in primaries are

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Speaker 2: exactly the ones you're hoping don't vote. And so still

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Speaker 2: they are controlling everything at the congressional level because you know,

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Speaker 2: every you know Republican house member is afraid of being

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Speaker 2: primaried by a crazier Republican and so they have to

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Speaker 2: sound as crazy as they possibly can, and that might

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Speaker 2: have an afterburn, But once you get out to the boy,

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Speaker 2: these numbers are weird. To say to twenty thirty two.

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Speaker 2: That's when you have the first opportunity, I think, clear

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Speaker 2: opportunity for the Republican Party in a presidential election to

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Speaker 2: start over and just start over and say, what's the

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Speaker 2: Reagan version of that, what's the Reagan candidacy? What is

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Speaker 2: the kind of reasonable Republican candidacy? And I say reasonable

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Speaker 2: within their terms, because let me just say, having lived

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Speaker 2: through the Reagan presidency. There wasn't a day when I

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Speaker 2: thought it was reasonable. It was like to me, you know,

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Speaker 2: the reasonable Republicans were like the George H. W. Bush Republicans,

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Speaker 2: you know, And of course George H. W. Bush had

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Speaker 2: to be defeated and challenged in a Republican primary and

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Speaker 2: then kind of basically defeated by Republican voters because he

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Speaker 2: wasn't crazy enough as presidents, so he didn't get it

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Speaker 2: to be re elected. You know. Bob Dole was the

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Speaker 2: reasonable Republican and George W. Bush ran initially in two

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Speaker 2: thousand in that reasonable Republican category, and then the world

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Speaker 2: happened to him and that changed things. But that's a

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Speaker 2: winning space, I mean that space of you know, the

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Speaker 2: Bush presidencies, you know, the Reagan presidencies. I mean there

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Speaker 2: were times during you know, but the the Bush, the

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Speaker 2: Reagan into Bush twelve years of Republican presidencies where there

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Speaker 2: were plenty of think pieces about how the Republicans had

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Speaker 2: won the presidency permanently. So that's an available space. It's

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Speaker 2: you know, it's somewhat to the right of the Democratic Party,

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Speaker 2: and it's for lower taxes, not zero taxes, not crazy taxes,

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Speaker 2: but lower taxes. You know, it's for less regulation. It's

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Speaker 2: basically a party with less confidence in or sense of

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Speaker 2: dependence on government. Truth is, their dependence on government is

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Speaker 2: at least as high as the Democrats' dependence on government.

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Speaker 2: But they have a sense that they are less and

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Speaker 2: that's a place where you can get you know, you

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Speaker 2: can actually win a majority of the vote. It's very

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Speaker 2: important to note that there's not a single Republican candidacy

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Speaker 2: that has a theory of winning more votes than Joe Biden.

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Speaker 2: No one has that plan. Trump doesn't have a plan.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to win a million more votes than Joe Biden. Nope,

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Speaker 2: there's no such plan. It is it's only the electoral college.

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Speaker 2: It's only because the Dakotas are two states. That's the

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Speaker 2: only reason that strategies, the only reason they have that

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Speaker 2: they think they can possibly win a presidency is by

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Speaker 2: winning the electoral.

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Speaker 1: P in West Virginia. My dad, it's so interesting though,

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Speaker 1: I mean, will you talk to me for two seconds

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Speaker 1: about this Senate map, because you have a really interesting

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Speaker 1: historical perspective. So you remember when the Senate map whatever

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Speaker 1: how many years ago it was that the Senate map

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Speaker 1: was this bad before for Democrats?

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Speaker 2: Well, it always comes down to individuals, you know, it

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Speaker 2: always comes down as individuals. And so if the Democrats

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Speaker 2: are lucky, if you don't understand this sentence, then you

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Speaker 2: do not understand politics and government and the American design

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Speaker 2: of government. And that sentence is, if the Democrats are lucky,

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Speaker 2: Joe Manchin will win his re election as a Democrat

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Speaker 2: in West Virginia if they're lucky. And if and then

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Speaker 2: he can appear to torment the Democrats in the Senate

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Speaker 2: when in fact he will have contributed to the most

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Speaker 2: important thing that matters in the Senate, which is the

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Speaker 2: Democrats holding the majority. And so you know, you kind

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Speaker 2: of begin there and work your way around. And you know,

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Speaker 2: John Tester is the only person, the only Democrat who

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Speaker 2: can win in Montana, and he's running in Montana and

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Speaker 2: so so, and you know, normally you would just say,

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Speaker 2: look West Virginia. Normally you'd say West Virginia is now

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Speaker 2: impossible for a Democrat. Montana is now impossible for Democrat.

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Speaker 2: And then you say, yeah, but the Democrats Mansion and

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Speaker 2: the Democrats Tester, and you go, okay, let's talk about it.

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Speaker 2: So it's always it's always about the individuals and how

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Speaker 2: they run it, as long as they're well supported. And

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Speaker 2: I have to say the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has

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Speaker 2: been run better, you know, in the last few cycles

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Speaker 2: than I've ever seen. I mean, they're just they're just extraordinary,

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Speaker 2: you know. In the nineteen nineties, is recently his nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 2: those Democratic Setate campaign committees, Republican said campaign committees they

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Speaker 2: were just sort of irritations in the lives of senators,

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Speaker 2: you know, of like stuff where they like senators that

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Speaker 2: they go to their events and stuff, and then they

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Speaker 2: just kind of complain about not getting enough money from them,

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Speaker 2: and they would be sending you know, those committees would

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Speaker 2: be sending to the campaigns, you know, like twenty two

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars you know, or you know, and and so

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Speaker 2: it'd be like, ah, geez, just an irritation. Now it's

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Speaker 2: very serious money and they're really professional, really really and

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Speaker 2: I do believe the Democratic Setate Campaign Committee is much

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Speaker 2: better than the Republican SID campaign.

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Speaker 1: For two seconds, the VIC were never going to worry

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Speaker 1: about a vac after this campaign, like no one's ever

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Speaker 1: gonna But one thing that was a little bit interesting

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Speaker 1: was He talked about how nine to eleven was an

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Speaker 1: inside job and that has led to him, you know,

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Speaker 1: doing well in the Republican polls. Extrapolated for me what

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Speaker 1: kind of trouble we're in from that.

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Speaker 2: So the good and the bad of it is that

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Speaker 2: the Republican Party has come along to be the administrator

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Speaker 2: of national collective intelligence tests. And I really liked living

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Speaker 2: in the country before I knew how stupid people were.

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Speaker 2: I actually, like, you know, I overestimated the low end

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Speaker 2: of intelligence in America. I had a pretty good sense

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Speaker 2: of the upper end of intelligence, as much as I

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Speaker 2: could understand it, you know, which leaves out all of

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Speaker 2: the sciences, of course, but that lower end, like, how

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Speaker 2: stupid is it? I know people, and grew up with

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Speaker 2: people and love people one hundred percent as stupid as

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Speaker 2: the stupidest Trump voter. Okay, but I didn't know there

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Speaker 2: were that many of them. I thought I knew most

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Speaker 2: of them, you know. And so and though it's like,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's tens of millions of people who are

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Speaker 2: abjectly and permanently and hopelessly stupid, and they don't go

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Speaker 2: to classrooms anymore. So there's no hope. It's not like, well,

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Speaker 2: he's doing badly in third grade, but you know, he

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Speaker 2: got into gear in fourth grade and he started to

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Speaker 2: finally learn that there really were fifty states. And you know, no,

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Speaker 2: they're lost forever. They they're outside of the educational system

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Speaker 2: forever for the rest of their lives. And they will

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Speaker 2: you know, collect input, you know, from the vivex and

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Speaker 2: you know the you know, Robert Kennedy's and this horrible

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Speaker 2: cesspool of the world Wide Web. You know that they

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Speaker 2: will find the stupidest material available on it and embrace it.

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Speaker 2: We didn't know that. You know, they were stupid before

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Speaker 2: Trump ran. They were stupid all day every day before

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Speaker 2: Trump ran. And then Trump ran and they got to

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Speaker 2: step out publicly and said this is how stupid I am.

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Speaker 2: It's like there's something of a public service in that,

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Speaker 2: you know, I mean, it is. I have to say,

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Speaker 2: it's one of those diagnoses that when I saw it,

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Speaker 2: I kind of wish I didn't know. You know, it's

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Speaker 2: just and as long as you had a relatively disciplined

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Speaker 2: system of nominating Republican candidates for president, it never got revealed,

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Speaker 2: Like mid Romney was never going to reveal to you,

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Speaker 2: there was nothing about his candidacy. That was going to

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Speaker 2: reveal to you how stupid people. It wasn't stupid to

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Speaker 2: vote for mid Rodney, you know, it wasn't stupid to

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Speaker 2: vote for John McCain. You know it wasn't. And and

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Speaker 2: so you know, we got to kind of happily cruise

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Speaker 2: along thinking the stupid people had limited options more destroying

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Speaker 2: our lives. In fact, it never occurred to us that

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Speaker 2: they could. We didn't know that they were empowered to

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Speaker 2: do that. And so this thing exists only in the

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Speaker 2: Republican Party. It doesn't exist anywhere else, you know, And

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Speaker 2: that's going to be on display in the debates, you know,

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Speaker 2: where there will be rewards for being the craziest. And

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Speaker 2: by the way, debate is not the word for the

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Speaker 2: thing you're going to see. That's not what you know.

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Speaker 2: It's just it's a sound by Chovo, and there's nothing

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Speaker 2: in it that tests a single quality that is necessary

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Speaker 2: in a present. No debate can ever test a single

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Speaker 2: quality that is in any way necessary in a present.

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Speaker 2: It's not how the presidency works, it's not how the

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Speaker 2: job works. Nobody ever rushes into the Oval office and says, listen,

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Speaker 2: you've got ninety seconds to explain and decide. It's like no, no,

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Speaker 2: he does. And he's the president. He has as much

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Speaker 2: time as he wants. He can sleep on it, he

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Speaker 2: can think about it, he can read about it, he

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Speaker 2: can listen to advisors, he can convene a meeting. He

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Speaker 2: doesn't have to answer it right now. He's the president,

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Speaker 2: you know. But we do a game show version of

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Speaker 2: the presidency on TV, call it debate instead of game show.

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Speaker 2: So we think we're watching something meaningful, and you know

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Speaker 2: it's really a television event, you know, made for invented

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Speaker 2: by television. Didn't exist before television, just never happened before television.

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Speaker 2: Whenever you're looking at something that didn't exist before television,

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Speaker 2: don't trust Lawrence.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.

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Speaker 2: I will come back, you know, I'll always come.

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Speaker 1: Dave Weigall is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back Politics.

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Speaker 1: A person I respect a lot, and really somebody who's

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Speaker 1: like traveling a lot in sort of everywhere he needs

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Speaker 1: to be. Welcome Dave, it's good to be here.

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Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1: Before we started recording, we started talking about this GOP

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Speaker 1: debate coming up, and there's a temptation to ignore all

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Speaker 1: of the mimeographs who are on the stage. But when

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Speaker 1: we were just talking, you had a really interesting and

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Speaker 1: salient point about the sort of what little policy discussion

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Speaker 1: there is and where it's landing. Talk to me about

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Speaker 1: what you see this stage looking like, Well, we.

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Speaker 3: Know what the stage is now. It's eight candidates who

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Speaker 3: are not Larry elfare In, Francis Firez, Barry Johnson. And

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Speaker 3: so this is a field of with the exception of

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Speaker 3: vik Ramaswami who's running for his first office, is you know,

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Speaker 3: field of candidates who run for stuff who has crudentials,

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Speaker 3: But it is it is a more conservative field than

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Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, the last time they had open primary, than

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Speaker 3: twenty twelve. Ideologically, it's actually for all the diversity in

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Speaker 3: this race, and racial diversity too. Really, the only point

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Speaker 3: of contention that tears them apart is is Ukraine. On

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Speaker 3: the rest of it, everyone's running on either continuing the

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Speaker 3: Trump legacy with a couple of tweaks or going to

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Speaker 3: Trump's right, And I almost think that's been overlooked because

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Speaker 3: there's just a way that we interpret a campaign. Trump

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Speaker 3: is running. There end you'll see somebody described as a

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Speaker 3: moderate if they're trying to appeal to voters who Trump

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Speaker 3: couldn't win. But the thing I've noticed in covering all

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Speaker 3: these people very closely, but none of them are saying, oh,

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Speaker 3: Trump alienated this group of voters. I'm going to get

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Speaker 3: them back. Trump just he had a complete victory on immigration.

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Speaker 3: Everyone's taking his notes and thump prows and to build

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Speaker 3: a wall. Everyone has committed to purging a bunch of

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Speaker 3: federal employees, getting rid of Christoper Ray. With exception of

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Speaker 3: Chris Christy. Everyone is basically saying I'm going to do

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Speaker 3: a Trump did. And the exceptions are maybe I will

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Speaker 3: support Ukraine more than he's supporting it, and we get

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Speaker 3: into some details. But I feel like this is covering democrats.

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Speaker 3: Last time, you had a few cants saying, hey, I'm

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Speaker 3: going to moderate the moderate things that we can win

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Speaker 3: back some people. Basically, let's go back to do Obama

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Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, that was more popular, and that's

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Speaker 3: just not happening this time. Nobody's saying I'm going to

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Speaker 3: go back to the you know, Bush two thousand and four,

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Speaker 3: or the last time that the party won a majority

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Speaker 3: of the vote.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like what you're saying, or

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Speaker 1: at least what it sounds like to me, is that

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Speaker 1: Republicans have they've interpreted or the rest of this field

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Speaker 1: has interpreted trump Ism as a need to go further right,

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Speaker 1: which is what we saw with DeSantis, versus what I

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Speaker 1: think trump Ism was to those people and is, which

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Speaker 1: is a very charis amount a guy who could get

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Speaker 1: them to pretty much do anything right.

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Speaker 3: And there are Republican governors who won in the Trump years.

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Speaker 3: I'm thinking of Brian tamp especially, who have governed as

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Speaker 3: conservatives and throwing some bones to liberals on education and

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Speaker 3: what have you. But nobody is running on the stuff

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Speaker 3: that Trump did to win Democrats in twenty sixteen. Not

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Speaker 3: really so. Mike Tens, who's been one of the clearer

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Speaker 3: candidates on his policy if he's elected, along with Ron

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Speaker 3: DeSantis Pens has been clearer we need to actually tackle entitlements.

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Speaker 3: He's brought back some of the Paul Ryan agenda, which

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Speaker 3: Trump won votes by abandoning. Same with DeSantis. There is

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Speaker 3: protectionism that Trump brought into the party for trade war

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Speaker 3: with China, but otherwise what Trump did was drop some

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Speaker 3: of the unpopular fiscal conservative austerity politics and combine it

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Speaker 3: with populism, border control, low immigration, and aggressive trade policies.

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Speaker 3: All that there's also a desire to go further. So

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Speaker 3: Trump in twenty sixteen talked almost I shouldn't say he

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Speaker 3: almost never talked about LGBT rights. When he talked about it,

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Speaker 3: he would say that he supported them. I mean, he

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Speaker 3: had no problem with trans people using whatever bathroom they

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Speaker 3: prefer based on their gender. And the entire field has

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Speaker 3: moved to Trump's right, where the most moderate position at

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Speaker 3: this point is Asa Hutchinson, who's saying, as governor, I

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Speaker 3: was for banning some of this, but not all of it.

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Speaker 3: That is the liberal squish position, whereas in twenty twenty

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Speaker 3: it was sixteen I should say, a non issue. And

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Speaker 3: so that's looking at this debate. So much of discussions

429
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:12,720
Speaker 3: about Trump, it has to be why wouldn't it be?

430
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 3: He's up by forty points, but the party is just

431
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 3: there's very little disagreement inside the party about what they

432
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:21,360
Speaker 3: stand for, and it's I would zone say, you think

433
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:23,680
Speaker 3: this happened with Democrats. After Hillary lost there was a

434
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 3: lot of thinking, are there some progressive ideas that were

435
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:29,360
Speaker 3: popular that she abandoned that we can get back, they

436
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:31,959
Speaker 3: moved to the left. I think it's significant the Republicans

437
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,440
Speaker 3: have moved to the right. And if Christian Hutu was

438
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 3: running or Larry Hogan was running, it'd be a different conversation.

439
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 3: They're not. This is a very conservative feel Aweso.

440
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: When you were talking about the bathrooms, I was thinking

441
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: about Trump on abortion. I mean, that's the terrible thing

442
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:49,080
Speaker 1: about Trump is he's actually weirdly very good at this,

443
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: So he knows abortion is a loser and he said

444
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:55,440
Speaker 1: it when the Supreme Court overturned Row. He said, this

445
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: is a loser for us. So he really is to

446
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 1: the left of those guys on abortion too.

447
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. He is the one who

448
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 3: sang the least about a portion. I would say next

449
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 3: to him is for Vic Ramaswami, who sang that literally

450
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 3: he doesn't see a federal role at all. He thinks

451
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,880
Speaker 3: it's divisive. The pitches is kind of like the Ted

452
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 3: Cruz pitch in twenty sixteen, which is our idea is

453
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 3: if we go even further right, are actually more popular,

454
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:22,639
Speaker 3: but we're going to drop a couple that are just

455
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 3: not going over And actually, if you talk to pro

456
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,240
Speaker 3: life Republicans who to be frank, they think they'll have

457
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 3: to deal with President Donald Trump or nominee Donald Trump.

458
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,400
Speaker 3: They don't think they'll have to deal with president fake Ramaswami.

459
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:35,760
Speaker 3: They're really irritated by that. But the rest of the field,

460
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 3: the gap is between I would go further than Trump

461
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 3: and support a federal limit after fifteen weeks, or I

462
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 3: would do that and then continue to go further again

463
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:48,160
Speaker 3: with Pence. Some Democrats I was talked to yesterday were

464
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 3: describing Pence is basically the Bernie Sanders of this race,

465
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:53,639
Speaker 3: and that he is the one, I think because he

466
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 3: really cares about changing the party. He's the one trying

467
00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,159
Speaker 3: to get people on record for more conservative ideas. One

468
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 3: of is is we shouldn't have any high promise to

469
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 3: appoint a pro life cabinet. I promise all my healthcare

470
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:07,199
Speaker 3: appointees are going to be pro life. I'm going to

471
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 3: bring back those because remember what happened with Trump and

472
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:11,919
Speaker 3: social conservatism is did he run on it? Not really?

473
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 3: Once he was in power and tension was there, Tens

474
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 3: was the guy helping pick a lot of the social

475
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 3: conservatives running healthcare runners, Seema Verma, Roger Severino, these people

476
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 3: who nobody knew their name. I would say, like Indiana

477
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 3: reporters do their name. Some people in dcwer conservatives. He

478
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 3: made sure it was a more conservative administration, and that

479
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:30,919
Speaker 3: is what he's running on, is this, I'm going to

480
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 3: do Trump, and I'm going to do it in a

481
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 3: more conservative mindset with less wiggle room, with fewer liberals

482
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 3: who get appointed to things and did disobey us.

483
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: So interesting, it's pretty crazy. So what the thing I'm

484
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: struck by, and I'm actually writing about this in a

485
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: sort of like opinion piece about this debate, is why

486
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: does it seem to you that these Republicans have so

487
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: much trouble imagining a post Trump future for the party?

488
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 3: Well, you mean post Trump because he won't be around

489
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 3: forever unless he's you know, the god emperor of Doune.

490
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 3: But you mean like a party that is building his

491
00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 3: in his image.

492
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it does seem to me, like, you know,

493
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: you look at Democrats like wringing their hands about the

494
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: bench and this and that, and then you have Trump

495
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 1: and basically it seems like the base just assumes that

496
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: this seventy seven year old guy will be you know,

497
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: president forever or running for president forever no.

498
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 3: That's a good point. What's happened here is what's happened

499
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 3: to a lot of the let's say Western world, there's

500
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 3: a better term for these days. But all over the

501
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 3: world you look at the Brazil had this last year.

502
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 3: There are people who The current Conservative coalition includes a

503
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 3: lot of people who were maybe voting for the left

504
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 3: party before. They were working class people, part of labor unions,

505
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 3: and they moved right for a number of reasons social issues,

506
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 3: and it changes from country to country, but Trump is

507
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 3: the first Republican candidate who has moved those people into

508
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 3: the tent and after a few elections it looked, it

509
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 3: looks permanent. And one reason there's such a discussion on

510
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 3: the right about Brian Kemp and a little bit about

511
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 3: Glenn Youngkin because he did some of this, is that

512
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 3: they did not run as Trump acolytes. They actually were

513
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 3: kind of embarrassed. They tried to run. In Kemp's case,

514
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 3: he beat a Trump pat Can in a primary, but

515
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 3: they held onto those gains. They did better with rural

516
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 3: white voters than they ever had, and the idea fair

517
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 3: is really okay. We have a new coalition. The party

518
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 3: is going to be built in that mold, kind of

519
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 3: like what Democrats did after FDR, and they had the

520
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 3: FDR coalition for decades and decades saying like, this is

521
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 3: the president who brought that black voters into our coalition,

522
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 3: who brought this these working class farmers who didn't trust us.

523
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 3: That's kind of it. It's just that there's still this

524
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 3: disagreement about why they voted for him, and so you

525
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 3: were saying, yeah, because of his unique talents. They think

526
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 3: it's actually this combination of conservative policy ideas. Once you

527
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 3: get people into the tent, they don't want to go back.

528
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:53,719
Speaker 3: You see some of them again, some of these countries,

529
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 3: like in the UK last round of elections, a lot

530
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 3: of the stuff the Conservatives gained and these working class

531
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 3: areas went back to the Labor Party on all of it.

532
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 3: The idea is, we have an agenda now that is popular,

533
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 3: that is going to keep on our tent all these

534
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 3: white working class voters who were Democrats for like fifty years.

535
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 3: That's still unclear because we had midterms last year and

536
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 3: some of those voters didn't come back. They didn't want

537
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 3: the Trump agenda. Where Democrats did really well, we're suburbs

538
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 3: there, there are a lot of voters who had been Republican

539
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 3: until twenty sixteen, certainly until twenty eighteen, you know, suburban Detroit,

540
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 3: suburban Chicago. You find on the right this attitude of okay, well,

541
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 3: we can cut them loose, we don't really need them.

542
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 3: It's a reverse of what you heard about Democrats in

543
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen saying, well, we're going to do a little

544
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 3: bit worse than working class whites, but we're going to

545
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 3: make it up in the suburbs. The Republican answer to

546
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 3: this is we're going to do worse in the suburbs,

547
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 3: but we can make it up with working class whites

548
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 3: with this agenda. And yes, the agenda has not formed yet.

549
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 3: One data point I'd add to this is the Fox

550
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 3: newspole from last week that showed, you know, Trump losing

551
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 3: Diviiden by little. Every Republican did worse. Every Republican was unpopular.

552
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 3: There's no evidence that there's a Republican running on the

553
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 3: trumpetenda without his brand that is selling this. They have

554
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 3: not been able to convince people, Okay, we figured out

555
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 3: how to run the country, low taxes, high deficits, trade wars,

556
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 3: They've retained a lot of the ground and immigration they've

557
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 3: adopted this idea that I thought was a reach, but

558
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 3: I think it's stuck with Republicans in twenty twenty, which is, hey,

559
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:21,840
Speaker 3: remember how good things were under Donald Trump? If you

560
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 3: subtract the last eleven months or I should say, like

561
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 3: ten months of down Trump. That's sort of the theme

562
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 3: of all the Republican campaigns is Trump got it right.

563
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 3: We need to restore exactly what he did, and the

564
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 3: fact that things were actually pretty lousy for the last

565
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,239
Speaker 3: year of the Trump years. It's really just disappeared. If

566
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 3: everyone agrees to something they went through positive thinking, they

567
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 3: can make it so. And that's what's happened. On the

568
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 3: right is hey, we fixed everything, we just need to

569
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 3: go back to this. I don't find that with Democrats.

570
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 3: I have not found Democrats say Barack Obama fixed everything,

571
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 3: let's reboot it. There's always an idea that we need

572
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 3: to improve. We lest some stuff on the floor, we

573
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 3: need to pick it up. We maybe alienated more people

574
00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 3: than we needed to. Is that, you know, hangdog apology

575
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 3: at a democratic nature. On the right, it's not Nope,

576
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 3: we only lost because we didn't go hard right enough.

577
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 3: If only he had fired Purge the DJ on day

578
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 3: one instead of trying to forgit the end, we would

579
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 3: have been more successful.

580
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:14,560
Speaker 1: Is this the unreality of I mean, is that what's

581
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: happening here? Because the elites in the party, the donors,

582
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 1: maybe the people who are involved in you know, the

583
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 1: political consultants don't care because they make money either way,

584
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: But the people who donate the money do seem to

585
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:31,720
Speaker 1: be furious that these candidates can't win. Do you think

586
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: everyone else is in that unreality? Is unreality element here?

587
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 3: No? I don't think it's on reality. But I think

588
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 3: of what DeSantis often says on the trail, or where

589
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 3: Kim Reynolds says in Iowa, which is, if you look

590
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:47,360
Speaker 3: at the last election there, we were expecting a red wave,

591
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 3: but and it only happened in Iowa and Florida and

592
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:51,479
Speaker 3: a little bit New York. That's different. That was more

593
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 3: of a backlash. The only places where Republicans gained a

594
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 3: lot of ground when they ran everything was Iowa and

595
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 3: Larida and the idea there is and the media was

596
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 3: telling us, you know, to be stricter about COVID. The

597
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 3: media was telling us that signing these abortion bills was

598
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 3: not going to be popular. Look at us we won.

599
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 3: We wiped the Democrats off the map. The evidence of

600
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 3: this is that we can just do that across the country.

601
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 3: Why why be so timid? That's the sort of the case.

602
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 3: Now you might listen to that and say, what about

603
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 3: the other forty eight states. That's kind of what's missaying

604
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 3: is that in a lot of the country it was

605
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 3: the worst I mean, relative to expectations, the worst midterm

606
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 3: performance ever. I mean, anyone who's in a newsroom on

607
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:31,320
Speaker 3: that election night started to see stuff come in, It's like, wait, really, yeah,

608
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,320
Speaker 3: the inflations this high and they're not voting for re holingans,

609
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:36,959
Speaker 3: what's up? And that has been just kind of wish passed.

610
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 3: Whereas Democrats in twenty eighteen had a good midterm, they

611
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 3: gained a lot of ground, they gained into Western governorships,

612
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 3: and they said, Okay, that's the model we should use.

613
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:48,320
Speaker 3: Whereas in this race, it's okay, we had two good races.

614
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,280
Speaker 3: We should use that model and run that around the country.

615
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: But so isn't that on reality?

616
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm disputing your premise too much because it's selective.

617
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:00,879
Speaker 3: It is taking something and I covered this on the left.

618
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,919
Speaker 3: I mean, there'll be cases where progressive wins a closed seat,

619
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 3: and there'll be arguments on the left. This proves that

620
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:09,839
Speaker 3: any of you in anywhere can run on medicare for all. Right,

621
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 3: there'll be an incumbent really wins with this and the

622
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 3: Remagan tax at work and scale it up, you know,

623
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 3: test it against a billion dollars in any events, and

624
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 3: it doesn't. Throughout what works. Sometimes a party will win

625
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 3: under random conditions. There really is no effort. If you're

626
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 3: a suburban woman who's pro choice, who would love it

627
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 3: to vote for Republicans again and think they've gone too

628
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 3: far right, your offer is no trust us. We're going

629
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 3: to keep going in that direction. The closest you get

630
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 3: to a compromise really is I'm going to let if

631
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 3: you live in Alabama, I'm going to let your state

632
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 3: ban abortion. It's a free country. You can move now.

633
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 3: Maybe that's where the party is always going to be.

634
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 3: If you're pro life party, that's going to be your position.

635
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 3: But there there is not attempt. And look, Democrats do

636
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 3: versions of this there. I think they are actually much

637
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 3: kind of describing it before. It's very apologetic and looking

638
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 3: for ways to win back win the voter they lost.

639
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 3: But you know, the party of ten twenty years ago

640
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:05,279
Speaker 3: said yeah, sure you can. We're not going to go

641
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:08,479
Speaker 3: for gun control. Now it says it can. But they've

642
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 3: won elections recently. They've won a bunch of elections with

643
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 3: this platform, despite a president who's not very popular, and

644
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:18,920
Speaker 3: Republicans lost some elections, despite some candidates who are in

645
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 3: a good position. No one's moving off, and also the

646
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 3: money in the party is not demanding to do this.

647
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 3: The only kind of donor revolt you see is some

648
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 3: of the big donors who plan to support Ron DeSantis

649
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,320
Speaker 3: going to the media and saying, I wish you wouldn't

650
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 3: assigned that six week abortion bill. The rest of the

651
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:38,360
Speaker 3: party is saying no, the next Republican president is facing

652
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:41,719
Speaker 3: the midnight. However, we need to dismantle the administrative state.

653
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 3: And there's not much conversation happening with voters who aren't

654
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 3: in on that. The assumption is the entire Trump coalition

655
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 3: once that's almost enough to win the election. I'm going

656
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 3: to be less unlikable than him, and that's going to

657
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 3: be enough to win me the election. There is no

658
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 3: reckoning with Is there some stuff that we're talking about

659
00:36:58,640 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 3: that's not popular?

660
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: So interesting? I mean, it really is. They're so intractable

661
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: in a strange way that I never thought Pod will

662
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:10,839
Speaker 1: drop on Wednesday. The debate is Wednesday night. I mean,

663
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 1: what are you watching for?

664
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 3: I'm actually a fan of the hated show of hands question.

665
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 3: I think there's a bunch of questions you could ask

666
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 3: candidates that would reveal where they are on that. I mean,

667
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 3: from the basic one, you know, did Mike Pens act

668
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,399
Speaker 3: the right way on January sixth too? Will you change

669
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:29,839
Speaker 3: those security for future retirees and Medicare? Would you block

670
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 3: grant Medicaid? There's just a bunch of conservative policy they

671
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 3: left on the ground I'd like to see asked. I

672
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 3: think what you're going to get is, frankly, just from

673
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 3: talking to campaigns or last couple days, there's a lot

674
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 3: of irritation with the vig Ramaswami just getting interview after

675
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 3: interview and going off the dome and coming up with policy.

676
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:48,840
Speaker 3: He's a very smart guy, but he's coming. Why is

677
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 3: he in day seven of talking about nine to eleven?

678
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 3: For example? It's baff ley and so I think there

679
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:55,359
Speaker 3: will be an effort to kind of draw him out

680
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 3: because people think he is rising quickly because they'll say

681
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 3: anything and they want to That happens to somebody. You're

682
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 3: the candidate, will say anything, you make a GAF, you're done.

683
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 3: But I'm really interested in what ends up happening on

684
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 3: Ukraine because you have candidates who've only really Tim Scott

685
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 3: who's had to take votes on Ukraine in the Senate

686
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,360
Speaker 3: and has voted for funding. You've got pens who's defended it.

687
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:19,319
Speaker 3: You've got Christy and Pence who've visited there. You have

688
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,279
Speaker 3: Haley who's defended the funding, but she's always trying to

689
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:24,359
Speaker 3: find like a place in the middle. And then you'll

690
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 3: have some DeSantis who's been unclear. So I kind of

691
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:30,560
Speaker 3: is it the biggest issue facing Americans every single day? Ukraine?

692
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:32,799
Speaker 3: Maybe not. I think it's a digression. I would love

693
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:35,239
Speaker 3: to get some clarity though, on if the candidates want

694
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 3: to fight inflation, how they do this, Because one, they're

695
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 3: all still talking about inflation. Not to get too weeky

696
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 3: on this inflation. The inflation rate is way down. There

697
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 3: are individual products that cost more months to month, and

698
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 3: gas costs more now, so everyone kind of fits inflation

699
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 3: as an issue into the box of what they want

700
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:54,279
Speaker 3: to talk about. I want to talk about any energy

701
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 3: exploration today. I'm going to say, hey, I just great news.

702
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,040
Speaker 3: It turns out my plan to let sure drilling happen

703
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 3: everywhere would decrease your gas prices. That would help inflation.

704
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 3: But there's more to ask. Would you continue all these

705
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 3: tax cuts because that wouldn't help deal with inflation? Would

706
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 3: you fire the FED chair and force him to lower

707
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 3: interest rates? What's There's a lot of economic stuff about

708
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 3: how the country's actually run that has not been asked.

709
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 3: I'd love that to be asked.

710
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:21,439
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Dave. I hope you'll come back.

711
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 3: Oh no, it's great to be here. Thank you.

712
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: Taylor Lorenz is a tech journalist and the author of

713
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power

714
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: on the Internet, which you can pre order now. Welcome

715
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,320
Speaker 1: to Ast Politics, Taylor Lorentz.

716
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 4: Great, how are you grave good?

717
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 1: Excited to have you here to talk about your book,

718
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 1: which is in pre orders. Let us talk about this book. Yes,

719
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: what's it called?

720
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 5: Tell us about Yeah, it's called Extremely Online, The Untold

721
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 5: Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. It's

722
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 5: about the rise of the content creator influencer industry and

723
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 5: kind of how we all became extremely online and on

724
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 5: social media.

725
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 1: So let me ask you. You have been extremely online also,

726
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,720
Speaker 1: like myself, we're both I think very online. I've actually

727
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: read your book and I thought it was excellent, Oh

728
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 1: my god, and you talked about this sort of how

729
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: it all started. I would love for you to like

730
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:33,080
Speaker 1: give us a two minute talk of like how we

731
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: got here.

732
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, I know.

733
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:39,239
Speaker 5: I feel like, well, I mean, my book is sort

734
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 5: of about the rise of like social media and kind

735
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 5: of how these platforms emerged and competed and the power

736
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 5: users on them. I think a lot of people kind

737
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:48,719
Speaker 5: of just like look up one day and are like,

738
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,800
Speaker 5: how did this whole Like, you know, how are their influencers? Hellover,

739
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 5: how are you know people making millions on TikTok? Like

740
00:40:56,360 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 5: why am I, you know, posting like an influencer, you know,

741
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 5: like just putting ourselves in photos and kind of like

742
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 5: being cognisant of our following and stuff like that. And

743
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 5: it seems like it happened overnight, I think to a

744
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 5: lot of people, or they think it happened maybe you know,

745
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 5: in the past couple of years. And I kind of

746
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 5: talk about how it all started with the rise of

747
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:19,239
Speaker 5: blogging and my space, you know, back like a really

748
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 5: long time ago, how people started to like share themselves online,

749
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 5: put more of themselves online, and kind of how yeah,

750
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 5: how like the social media content creator industry emerged, Like,

751
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 5: I mean, one thing I talk about my book is

752
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 5: kind of Facebook versut MySpace, and how Facebook sort of

753
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 5: taught people to post publicly for an audience with the

754
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 5: launch of New Speed. And then also yeah, how like

755
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,279
Speaker 5: mommy bloggers were kind of the first to really commodify

756
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:50,400
Speaker 5: their personal brands online and the businesses they built around

757
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 5: that in the backlash they got for it.

758
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:54,359
Speaker 1: So one of the things I was thinking about is

759
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: because I'm incredibly old and I come from the nineties

760
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: and I wrote for magazines when I was young, I

761
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 1: think about that moment in the nineties when it was

762
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: clear that we were losing the market share, that it

763
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 1: was that everything, that people were no longer going to

764
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: pay nine bucks for a magazine like, and it was

765
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: this moment. And it's funny because I was talking. I

766
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:17,520
Speaker 1: was on a panel with someone we were talking about

767
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: it in the break, someone who had come from one

768
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 1: of these magazine places. He had said, there was a

769
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:24,760
Speaker 1: moment where it became clear that we were about to lose,

770
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: like that this sort of tech had figured out a

771
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 1: way to go around journalism and we didn't see it

772
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: then the way we've seen it now now. I actually

773
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: would argue that they've never been able to reproduce what

774
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: we in mainstream journalism have done. But I mean, you know,

775
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: Brian Krassenstein is not the same as the New York

776
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: Times ed page, but there are a lot of tech

777
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,840
Speaker 1: bros who do think that they can get there. I'm curious,

778
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: you know, you and I are both at mainstream outlets.

779
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:00,719
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you're thinking when you look that is,

780
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:03,360
Speaker 1: and you know, is there a way for these media

781
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 1: outlets to be able to really succeed in tech in

782
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: a way they may not have?

783
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 4: Yeah?

784
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 5: Basically, I mean so much of this book is also

785
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:15,839
Speaker 5: about sort of like this shifting media landscape, exactly what

786
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:18,880
Speaker 5: you're describing. I mean, I started as a blogger in

787
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 5: the late oughts, and I mean I think that blogging

788
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,760
Speaker 5: and content creators have already provide, you know, higher quality

789
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 5: content than the New York Times in certain areas.

790
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 4: Obviously not I come.

791
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: From content creatorville too in a certain way, or or

792
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 1: I feel that I do. I don't know if that's accurate,

793
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: but I do think like the reporting even from the

794
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:43,040
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the Boston Globe, like a local paper,

795
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 1: is still going to be vetted. And I mean it's

796
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: one thing to be on the opinion side, like I am,

797
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: but it's another thing to have a team of people

798
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: and lawyers. And I mean, so I'm curious, Like this

799
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 1: is an unsolvable question, but I'm just curious.

800
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think we've like witnessed the

801
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:04,760
Speaker 5: death you know, because of the rights of social media

802
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 5: and these tech companies. Obviously, it's gutted local news. And

803
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 5: I do think that we're in a bad place in

804
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 5: terms of reporting. Like I think so much of what

805
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 5: happens on the internet is commentary, it's not reporting. People

806
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:20,240
Speaker 5: don't really understand the difference. And yeah, it's a bad

807
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 5: situation that we're in in terms of like I think

808
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 5: for those of us that work in journalism, you know,

809
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:28,719
Speaker 5: there's just not the jobs that there used to be,

810
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 5: there's not the money that there used to be, there's

811
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:34,320
Speaker 5: at the resources you have like these few national publications,

812
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 5: which are great in some ways but horrible in others.

813
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 5: So I mean I think the media has been asleep

814
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 5: at the wheel for a long time. I actually I

815
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:46,239
Speaker 5: think I think they're still in deep denial over kind

816
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 5: of their relevance and the sustainability of their business model.

817
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 5: But I don't think that means that everyone needs to

818
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 5: be a content creator, you know what I mean?

819
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:57,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a very interesting thing you just said.

820
00:44:57,480 --> 00:44:59,360
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I would like to keep going with it,

821
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 1: if it's okay. What it seems like, what I've been watching.

822
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,279
Speaker 1: What it seems like to me, and you can tell

823
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,399
Speaker 1: me if you think this is nuts. Is that it's

824
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:11,839
Speaker 1: sort of like the way that these tech platforms work

825
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:14,880
Speaker 1: is they elevate a person more than a brand.

826
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 5: Yes, it's all about sort of individuals and you know,

827
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 5: individual personalities and building trust directly with your audience as

828
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 5: an individual rather than a sort of faceless corporate brand

829
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 5: that you are then sort of you know, lots of

830
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 5: faceless people work for.

831
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: So like, one of the things I've seen with podcasts

832
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 1: is that podcast publishers don't seem to have the same

833
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: kind of prestige that major media outlets do.

834
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:43,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think major media outlets probably, I

835
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 5: don't know how you feel certainly. The reason that I

836
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:49,399
Speaker 5: decided to work in mainstream media is just sort of

837
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 5: like having that like badge of approval, I guess, and like,

838
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously I'm there as well for all the

839
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 5: resources that we got reporting in my colleagues, so I

840
00:45:57,719 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 5: love but it means something. It's very hard to build

841
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 5: a brand that sort of rivals a lot of these

842
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:04,959
Speaker 5: judicial brands, but I think they're degrading every day.

843
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 4: I mean, just all legacy media.

844
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 5: I was literally just listening to something about ESPN last

845
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 5: night and like their struggles, you know, and that's that

846
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:15,200
Speaker 5: used to be like the brand in sports media and

847
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,240
Speaker 5: it's struggling, and so you know, it's just it's happening

848
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 5: across the industry, not just in news media, but fashion

849
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 5: media and sports media because people have channels like Dude

850
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 5: Perfect or other. You know, like the media environment is

851
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 5: so much more crowded and distributed and niche. It's just

852
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 5: hard to kind of get those mass audiences and monetize

853
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 5: a journalism brand.

854
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. And also, I mean it's

855
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 1: just a sort of interesting unseen consequence of the Internet.

856
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 1: So let me ask you, where are we right now

857
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:52,839
Speaker 1: with this sort of content creator platforms. I would love

858
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 1: you to just sort of give me a like a

859
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: sort of overview of what it looks like.

860
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:02,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I would say the pandemic in twenty

861
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 5: twenty truly kind of pushed everyone online. And that's when

862
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:08,919
Speaker 5: like the Silicon Valley people finally started to really pay

863
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:12,360
Speaker 5: attention and realized that the influencer industry is a major

864
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 5: economic force. And so that's why you saw them calling

865
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 5: it the creator economy and dumping all this investment in

866
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:21,320
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one. But we're at this point where there's

867
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 5: there's sort of competition between platforms. You have TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Substack, Patreon,

868
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 5: Like there's all these different platforms where you can grow

869
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:33,800
Speaker 5: an audience and monetize, sometimes directly through subscriptions, sometimes through ads,

870
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 5: sometimes through things like a creator fund on TikTok, which

871
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 5: is just like one big pot of money that they

872
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 5: kind of split among content creators that are accepted into

873
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,560
Speaker 5: the program. And I would say it's just getting easier

874
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 5: and easier to monetize and to build a media business.

875
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 5: You know, if you want to start out, you can

876
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 5: easily launch emerch shop on Shopify. You know, like there's

877
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 5: also this sort of simultaneous rise in DIY like e

878
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 5: commerce that's facilitated a lot of monetization, so you don't

879
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 5: just have to rely on deals. You can launch your

880
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:03,520
Speaker 5: own product line. But I do think that we're still

881
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:05,759
Speaker 5: at the beginning of all of this. I think there's

882
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 5: only sort of like a vague recognition of it from

883
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 5: kind of like legacy institutions, like it's happened in the

884
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 5: past few years. It's still like early days in terms

885
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:16,319
Speaker 5: of the shift in To.

886
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: Me about what it looks like with the.

887
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:23,280
Speaker 5: TikTok, Yeah, I mean TikTok has obviously exploded since launching

888
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 5: in twenty eighteen, and it was musically, which is what

889
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 5: TikTok was prior to that. I talk about this in

890
00:48:29,040 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 5: my book about I don't know like why musically took

891
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:33,799
Speaker 5: off and why people didn't take it seriously. I Mean,

892
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:36,160
Speaker 5: one's funny kind of theme in my book was just

893
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 5: like tech founder is not really knowing how their products

894
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:39,800
Speaker 5: will be used.

895
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 4: But TikTok, you knows.

896
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 5: Short form video app that's become kind of the most popular,

897
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:49,240
Speaker 5: fastest growing app, I guess, the fastest going social platform

898
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 5: in the sense that like you know, took Facebook quite

899
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 5: a while to take off. Same with YouTube, TikTok became

900
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:57,280
Speaker 5: quite popular, and that's because of the algorithmic discovery. Unlike

901
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 5: all the other social platforms that force users to kind

902
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:02,960
Speaker 5: of like get on there and build followers and kind

903
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:06,840
Speaker 5: of I mean, you know, discover content through manually hunting

904
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 5: people down and following them. TikTok distributes content solely through

905
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 5: this or primarily through this algorithmic feed that just delivers

906
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 5: the content that you want to see. You don't have

907
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 5: to follow a single person to watch content. And also

908
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:21,280
Speaker 5: you don't need any followers.

909
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:23,600
Speaker 1: To go viral, right right, right right, which is so

910
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: interesting too. So what do you think now we have

911
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: Elon controlling X, we have Threads, we have TikTok. So

912
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:36,919
Speaker 1: TikTok is like constantly in danger of being shut down

913
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 1: by the American government, which hates it because if you're

914
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 1: going to steal data, you can't be a Chinese company,

915
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,319
Speaker 1: you have to be an American company, which you know,

916
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: I respect that we have Threads, which is you know,

917
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 1: sort of on the move. But again, Mark Zuckerberg is

918
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:55,400
Speaker 1: nobody's idea of a hero. And then we have Elon,

919
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:59,879
Speaker 1: who is trying to turn X into banking brain scal

920
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: and also fascism. I mean, where do you think the

921
00:50:05,239 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: sort of everybody goes or do you think we are

922
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 1: in this period of decentralized social media?

923
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:10,399
Speaker 3: Now?

924
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we're moving to sort of a more

925
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,800
Speaker 5: decentralized landscape, but not like in the way the crypto

926
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 5: people say it necessarily. But I mean, I think there's

927
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:23,920
Speaker 5: just more platform competition that's coming up from smaller platforms,

928
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 5: from things like Discord, where people could kind of build

929
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 5: communities specific you know, hyperniche communities and monetize there if

930
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 5: they want. I think Twitter X whatever you want to

931
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:36,359
Speaker 5: call it, is essentially irrelevant. I mean, I just think

932
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 5: Elon's alienated every top user and creator and you know,

933
00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:43,680
Speaker 5: he's just the sort of the stowing tens of thousands

934
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,560
Speaker 5: of dollars on any kind of stickupent that will praise him,

935
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 5: but he doesn't understand anything about running up functional so

936
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:53,480
Speaker 5: you know, social platform. He fired the whole creator relations

937
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 5: team that was sort of doing a lot of great

938
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:57,319
Speaker 5: work there. I don't think there's going to be a

939
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,640
Speaker 5: one to one replacement with Twitter, like I know everybody

940
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:04,520
Speaker 5: wants that in media, but I just don't think that's happening.

941
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 5: I think I wrote a piece on this a couple

942
00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:08,000
Speaker 5: of months ago. But a lot of the core functionality

943
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 5: of Twitter has already been replaced by TikTok, just in

944
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:13,800
Speaker 5: terms of like TikTok is where people go to follow

945
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:16,400
Speaker 5: big news events, it's where you go for cultural commentary.

946
00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 4: It's just it's replaced so much.

947
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you think it'll be sort of Twitter, I

948
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:23,280
Speaker 1: mean Twitter will be TikTok.

949
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:26,840
Speaker 5: I think it's already happened even you know, it was

950
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 5: happening even before Elon, but I think Elon's accelerated it.

951
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think the use case for Twitter, for

952
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:37,720
Speaker 5: average people's use usage of Twitter has already been replaced

953
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 5: by TikTok. I think journalists have a specific use for Twitter,

954
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 5: and I don't think you can replace it as easily.

955
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:45,760
Speaker 5: I don't particularly like TikTok.

956
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:48,359
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems fine, but it's like it's hard

957
00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 1: for me to imagine like that you could get more

958
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 1: of this sort of like you know, how do you

959
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:57,360
Speaker 1: get an article in the Washington Post from TikTok?

960
00:51:57,719 --> 00:52:00,400
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well that's the problem is, like Twitter, what are

961
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 5: the last places where you could link out Obviously threads

962
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 5: you can link out now too, but social platforms generally

963
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 5: don't like linking out as we saw I reported just

964
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:13,360
Speaker 5: my colleagues did too, like just yesterday that Elon's throttling

965
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 5: links to the New York Times. You know, like, I

966
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 5: don't think people necessarily a lot of people want to

967
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 5: read articles. You know, if you can get all the

968
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 5: information in a short ten second video that summarized see article,

969
00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:25,640
Speaker 5: they're happy with that, or they'll google the article and

970
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:27,799
Speaker 5: try and find more information about it, or watch a

971
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 5: long form thing on it. I think there is a

972
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:33,640
Speaker 5: place for writing and links on the Internet. I mean,

973
00:52:33,680 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 5: there are newsletter platforms and things like that, But I

974
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 5: don't think I just don't think that like that structure

975
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 5: of Twitter and that one to one feed is ever

976
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:45,440
Speaker 5: going to like be completely replicated because most people aren't journalists,

977
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 5: Like most people using Twitter like they're just kind of

978
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 5: going to keep up with general news and topics. I

979
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 5: think sports Twitter is a real thing. That's another thing

980
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:55,520
Speaker 5: that's going to be hard to replace, like that real

981
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 5: time kind of collective watching Pope.

982
00:52:58,239 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 4: We'll see, we'll see what comes up.

983
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:06,359
Speaker 1: So interesting, So Taylor, let's do another sort of minute

984
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:10,320
Speaker 1: or two on like, so threads, blue Sky, all this

985
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:16,040
Speaker 1: sort of Twitter e tech s based socials. I mean,

986
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: do you see a future for Threads?

987
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:20,600
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm rooting for Threads, hate root for Mark Zuckerberg,

988
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 5: but I really like it. I find it a very

989
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 5: easy to use product, and I think it's like a

990
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 5: It's a good product, but it doesn't have the functionality

991
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:30,239
Speaker 5: that Twitter has. But I'm hoping that media people use it.

992
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 5: I think Twitter was such a good sort of platform.

993
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 5: It's like this group chat for you know, journalists, and

994
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:37,600
Speaker 5: that has not been replicated.

995
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:39,120
Speaker 4: What do you use Threads?

996
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,839
Speaker 1: I use Threads. I like it fine. I wanted to

997
00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:44,919
Speaker 1: have some of the functionality that Twitter does.

998
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're able to like roll out a lot of

999
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:49,439
Speaker 5: that step sooner rather than later.

1000
00:53:49,800 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 4: And do you think that they can create off a

1001
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 4: lot of users.

1002
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:55,240
Speaker 1: I think they're going to have to quickly keep going

1003
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:59,239
Speaker 1: and pivoting, like the needs to have dms. Somehow the

1004
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: comments feel siloed the way that the Instagram comments feel siloed.

1005
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: I like to interact with comments on the Internet. I

1006
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:12,920
Speaker 1: like to interact with people because I am like one

1007
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:15,880
Speaker 1: of those people who loves to talk to random people,

1008
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:18,920
Speaker 1: and I mean not all the time, but a lot

1009
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: of the time. So I feel that it's sort of

1010
00:54:23,640 --> 00:54:25,359
Speaker 1: siloed in a way that makes it a little bit

1011
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:27,480
Speaker 1: hard to use. So I don't like that. One of

1012
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:29,880
Speaker 1: the things I love about social media, and perhaps this

1013
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:33,360
Speaker 1: is my own moral feeling, is that there's no barrier

1014
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: to entry, right. You can write to anyone, they can

1015
00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 1: write to you. It's just a free for all. And

1016
00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 1: it feels with threads like there's a little bit of

1017
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,839
Speaker 1: a like velvet rope, and I don't want that. I

1018
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:48,320
Speaker 1: want to be able to just do the world through

1019
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: the Internet.

1020
00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:51,440
Speaker 5: Yeah, I get what I mean. I think it's also

1021
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 5: less anonymous and the different culture than Twitter. I mean,

1022
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 5: Twitter has a very specific culture and modes of interaction.

1023
00:54:59,120 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 4: But I don't know.

1024
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:01,920
Speaker 5: I mean, I do reply to people on threads, like

1025
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 5: I do, feel like I check the activity feed and

1026
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 5: I feel it's somewhat similar, but it's more sanitized for sure.

1027
00:55:08,920 --> 00:55:10,640
Speaker 4: And I miss the messiness of Twitter too.

1028
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:14,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing that is sort of

1029
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: like the messiness of Twitter is what I love too,

1030
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 1: though probably healthier just to be in our corporate threads.

1031
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:26,040
Speaker 1: Bubble Taylor Lorenz. Thank you so much for joining us.

1032
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:28,279
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And I

1033
00:55:28,320 --> 00:55:29,600
Speaker 4: hope people pre order my book.

1034
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 5: I think anybody will find it interesting if you're interested

1035
00:55:32,080 --> 00:55:34,399
Speaker 5: in any of these sort of the battles between tech

1036
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:39,200
Speaker 5: platforms and how people use them.

1037
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:44,960
Speaker 2: No more perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my junk Fast This John

1038
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:45,879
Speaker 2: Eastman guy.

1039
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,760
Speaker 1: We are all like who is this guy at first,

1040
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: and now we're starting to learn O.

1041
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 2: My man is Sip, the cool aid of crazy.

1042
00:55:53,440 --> 00:55:56,680
Speaker 1: John Eastman is the second defendant to surrender in the

1043
00:55:56,719 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 1: Georgia election interference case, which those of you keeping track

1044
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 1: at home, is a reco case that has eighteen defendants,

1045
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 1: one of which is the one the only forty fifth President,

1046
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump, and one of which is our favorite

1047
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:18,640
Speaker 1: America's mayor, though he really was never that Rudolph Jiuliani anyway.

1048
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:23,319
Speaker 1: John Eastman is a fancy lawyer, and John Eastman and

1049
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: I think this is the height of the fuckery continues

1050
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 1: to lie about the twenty twenty election, and for that

1051
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:38,399
Speaker 1: he is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this

1052
00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:42,120
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and

1053
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:45,239
Speaker 1: Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense

1054
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:48,320
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,

1055
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:51,640
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.

1056
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.