Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump says his two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bailed stems from the DA thinking he'd fly far,
Speaker 1: far away, maybe to Russia and share a gold domed
Speaker 1: suite with Vladimir Putin. Totally normal stuff, everyone, We have
Speaker 1: a star studded show today. Semaphores Dave Wigall talks about
Speaker 1: how the Republican Party continues to tack right. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to tech journalist Taylor Lorenz. We'll talk about her
Speaker 1: new book Extremely Online, the untold story of fame, influence,
Speaker 1: and power on the Internet. But first we have the
Speaker 1: host of the Laurence o'donald Show, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. Lawrence.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's always great to be here. This is the
Speaker 2: way to start the day.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Republican debate because this episode will
Speaker 1: drop tomorrow, which is Wednesday, which is the day of
Speaker 1: the first GOP debate.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's begin with a footnote to the audience. Yes,
Speaker 2: no one told me this discussion would be about something
Speaker 2: I don't care about. No one told me what ahead
Speaker 2: of time. I have not covered this on my hour
Speaker 2: long program because the program's only an hour. If it
Speaker 2: was seven hours, I might devote ten minutes to it
Speaker 2: at some point, but we just have ye No. On
Speaker 2: a nightly basis much more important stuff to discuss. And
Speaker 2: you know, I saw Steve Kernaki last night on the
Speaker 2: nine o'clock show, on Alex Wagner's show, and I didn't
Speaker 2: have the sound on, and I just thought like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe we'll we'll get to Steve next year,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's like, you know, this is so early,
Speaker 2: it's so silly. It's the completely childish section of the
Speaker 2: campaign where people are going to be learning about people
Speaker 2: who will become the Mike Huckabees of their lives.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember learning a lot about Mike Huckabee
Speaker 2: when he was running for president. I knew everything about
Speaker 2: Mike Huckabee when he was running for president, and man,
Speaker 2: that was a wasted collection of data, to put it mildly.
Speaker 2: And if it's anything, it's the vice presidential campaign, right,
Speaker 2: it's the you know, could I possibly suck up to
Speaker 2: him enough to you know, end up on the ballot
Speaker 2: with him. I'll say this to the audience. If you're
Speaker 2: looking for something to ignore in the mewsuckle, this would
Speaker 2: be the thing to pick. This would be the thing
Speaker 2: to pick. And so I'm actually going to be going
Speaker 2: uh and I very much want the audience to know this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be on against the debate at ten pm.
Speaker 2: The debate is on some other channel from I guess
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, and I'm going to be on at
Speaker 2: ten so I will never have to talk about it.
Speaker 2: And you know, the network don't don't don't tell anyone this,
Speaker 2: but the network asked me to come on at eleven,
Speaker 2: you know, immediately after my show to talk about the debate.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, you know, this is an unusual
Speaker 2: response for TV creature, But I said, well, I can't
Speaker 2: go on TV to talk about a debate. I haven't
Speaker 2: seen I know that is that didn't occur to anyone
Speaker 2: else as being any It's like, how would that get
Speaker 2: in the way and talking about the Republican debate? And
Speaker 2: I actually suppose maybe it's what we should do. Maybe
Speaker 2: that should be the gimmick I go on and I said, wow,
Speaker 2: I didn't see it. But I think, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Think you had a good point, which is it is
Speaker 1: like a HUD secretary.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's no, well it's And also there are these
Speaker 2: you know, characters, always characters out there who are running
Speaker 2: for fame, Like you're not going to be confirmed by
Speaker 2: the Senate for anything ever in your lives, but you're
Speaker 2: running for fame. And then maybe you know, you can
Speaker 2: get a podcast and you know, be as famous as
Speaker 2: as Molly.
Speaker 1: Is true Yang yeah, well yeah, you know aim higher
Speaker 1: like Andrew Yang.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the and you always know, like you can
Speaker 2: tell it instantly. You know which ones are running just
Speaker 2: for fame because one of the things they do is
Speaker 2: that they they say the most outrageous things. You know,
Speaker 2: Tim Scott knows that the most likely thing that he
Speaker 2: will next be elected to in life is the United
Speaker 2: States Senate, and in South Carolina, that's the most likely thing,
Speaker 2: you know. And then in a happy world, he becomes,
Speaker 2: you know, the vice presidential nominee for Donald Trump and loses.
Speaker 2: And but you know, almost all of the rest of them,
Speaker 2: you know, Nicky Haley has hopes for a future you know,
Speaker 2: in cabinets or in office. But you know, Mike Pence.
Speaker 2: You know, it's hopeless, and everybody knows it's hopeless, and
Speaker 2: the others are just outright, you know, clowns running for
Speaker 2: fame and to you know, improve their possibilities of getting
Speaker 2: a Fox contract or some you know, podcasting thing or whatever.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a question about Nicky Haley
Speaker 1: and sort of this Republican field and Mike Pence really
Speaker 1: especially one of the things that Mike Pence really did
Speaker 1: was he gave evangelicals permission to support Donald Trump, right,
Speaker 1: he said, this guy's our guy. And he did it
Speaker 1: so well that then evangelicals were like, well, why do
Speaker 1: we need you? What do you think like the legacy
Speaker 1: of that is.
Speaker 2: Well, I think actually Mike Pence is the most dangerous
Speaker 2: thing to Donald Trump in this campaign because what he's
Speaker 2: eventually going to do is show you the gap. He's
Speaker 2: done it already, but no one's paying attention, and he's
Speaker 2: done it really, really effectively. It is the gap between
Speaker 2: Donald Trump and the religious right on abortion, because Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is saying, hey, you went too far in abortion. Hey,
Speaker 2: you know, the Supreme Court, you know, left it to
Speaker 2: the states, but the states weren't supposed to do anything.
Speaker 2: You know that was Donald Trump's deal, you know, on abortion,
Speaker 2: and Pence has been out there saying Trump is wrong
Speaker 2: on abortion, he is not a supporter of our position
Speaker 2: on abortion, and Pence is right. And to the extent
Speaker 2: that Pence gets traction on that and actually does show
Speaker 2: the religious right the giant gap between him and Trump
Speaker 2: on abortion and between them and Trump on abortion, that
Speaker 2: will shake the most solid support system that Trump has
Speaker 2: out there. And of course we know what Trump will do.
Speaker 2: It'll take him longer than it should because he's stupid,
Speaker 2: but he will just move over to the Pence position
Speaker 2: on abortion. He'll end up over there. And then when
Speaker 2: he when he goes toward the Pence position on abortion,
Speaker 2: then you know, he revived, you know, the opposition to
Speaker 2: him on that issue that should exist in these other
Speaker 2: you know, in the end, in the pro choice section
Speaker 2: of Republicanism. I mean, I noticed it immediately in Pence's
Speaker 2: very very first public comments as a candidate that wow,
Speaker 2: there's a big problem there. And you know, so it's
Speaker 2: not just that Pence won't be protecting him and certifying
Speaker 2: him on abortion. He's going to be doing exactly the opposite.
Speaker 1: But again, Trump has no ideology right, So this is
Speaker 1: all about expedients and getting elected. And he sort of
Speaker 1: knows that abortion will kill a mainstream Republican candidate in
Speaker 1: a in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he thinks that the Pence position for any other
Speaker 2: candidate would kill any other candidate. But I don't think
Speaker 2: Trump thinks anything he says about any policy will ever
Speaker 2: kill the Trump candidacy. And he may be right about that.
Speaker 2: And by kill, what Trump means is lose votes that
Speaker 2: he already has. Because Trump is stupid, he does not
Speaker 2: understand even if he holds on to every vote he
Speaker 2: already has, he is going to lose. So he has
Speaker 2: to do the thing that every winning politician has always
Speaker 2: tried to do, which is soon as as soon as
Speaker 2: you win the election, you start working on the votes
Speaker 2: you didn't get. You know, if you win by fifty
Speaker 2: one percent, you strongly believe there's another five six seven percent,
Speaker 2: or you used to believe. You know that there's another
Speaker 2: five six seven percent that you can pick up on
Speaker 2: your reelection. You know, Ronald Reagan believed that, you know,
Speaker 2: and he did it. You know what's made Trump such
Speaker 2: an unprofessional politician and profoundly stupid one is from the
Speaker 2: moment he won the electoral College. I just sat there
Speaker 2: and waited for him to say something to the voters
Speaker 2: who didn't vote for him, and he has still never
Speaker 2: said that. And so you know, he's running what is
Speaker 2: nothing other than a cult campaign. It's just, you know,
Speaker 2: vote for me because I'm Donald Trump. And that cannot
Speaker 2: win him the electoral College. It can win him the
Speaker 2: Republican nomination, but it cannot win him the.
Speaker 1: Electric and that's a fundamental problem he has. But I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you were to sort of like game this out.
Speaker 1: So he's seventy seven years old, many many Republicans have
Speaker 1: lost their careers on the hope that someday that on
Speaker 1: the actuarial tables, as I remember reading reporting on. But
Speaker 1: he does have all of these criminal you know, his
Speaker 1: for indictments and a super so really five imagine a
Speaker 1: world a twenty eight, right, I mean, where Trump is
Speaker 1: no longer a candidate. Maybe he thinks he is, but
Speaker 1: he's no longer a real candidate. I mean, does a
Speaker 1: Republican party can it rise from these ashes?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, in twenty twenty eight, that might not
Speaker 2: be the first post Trump election. He won't be in it.
Speaker 2: But the question is how much does Trumpism still define
Speaker 2: how you excite a Republican primary voter. America's problem is
Speaker 2: not Donald Trump. America's problem is Republican primary voters. They
Speaker 2: are a minority of Republican voters. Most Republican voters do
Speaker 2: not vote in primaries ever, not for president, not for anyone.
Speaker 2: And so the ones who do vote in primaries are
Speaker 2: exactly the ones you're hoping don't vote. And so still
Speaker 2: they are controlling everything at the congressional level because you know,
Speaker 2: every you know Republican house member is afraid of being
Speaker 2: primaried by a crazier Republican and so they have to
Speaker 2: sound as crazy as they possibly can, and that might
Speaker 2: have an afterburn, But once you get out to the boy,
Speaker 2: these numbers are weird. To say to twenty thirty two.
Speaker 2: That's when you have the first opportunity, I think, clear
Speaker 2: opportunity for the Republican Party in a presidential election to
Speaker 2: start over and just start over and say, what's the
Speaker 2: Reagan version of that, what's the Reagan candidacy? What is
Speaker 2: the kind of reasonable Republican candidacy? And I say reasonable
Speaker 2: within their terms, because let me just say, having lived
Speaker 2: through the Reagan presidency. There wasn't a day when I
Speaker 2: thought it was reasonable. It was like to me, you know,
Speaker 2: the reasonable Republicans were like the George H. W. Bush Republicans,
Speaker 2: you know, And of course George H. W. Bush had
Speaker 2: to be defeated and challenged in a Republican primary and
Speaker 2: then kind of basically defeated by Republican voters because he
Speaker 2: wasn't crazy enough as presidents, so he didn't get it
Speaker 2: to be re elected. You know. Bob Dole was the
Speaker 2: reasonable Republican and George W. Bush ran initially in two
Speaker 2: thousand in that reasonable Republican category, and then the world
Speaker 2: happened to him and that changed things. But that's a
Speaker 2: winning space, I mean that space of you know, the
Speaker 2: Bush presidencies, you know, the Reagan presidencies. I mean there
Speaker 2: were times during you know, but the the Bush, the
Speaker 2: Reagan into Bush twelve years of Republican presidencies where there
Speaker 2: were plenty of think pieces about how the Republicans had
Speaker 2: won the presidency permanently. So that's an available space. It's
Speaker 2: you know, it's somewhat to the right of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 2: and it's for lower taxes, not zero taxes, not crazy taxes,
Speaker 2: but lower taxes. You know, it's for less regulation. It's
Speaker 2: basically a party with less confidence in or sense of
Speaker 2: dependence on government. Truth is, their dependence on government is
Speaker 2: at least as high as the Democrats' dependence on government.
Speaker 2: But they have a sense that they are less and
Speaker 2: that's a place where you can get you know, you
Speaker 2: can actually win a majority of the vote. It's very
Speaker 2: important to note that there's not a single Republican candidacy
Speaker 2: that has a theory of winning more votes than Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: No one has that plan. Trump doesn't have a plan.
Speaker 2: I'm going to win a million more votes than Joe Biden. Nope,
Speaker 2: there's no such plan. It is it's only the electoral college.
Speaker 2: It's only because the Dakotas are two states. That's the
Speaker 2: only reason that strategies, the only reason they have that
Speaker 2: they think they can possibly win a presidency is by
Speaker 2: winning the electoral.
Speaker 1: P in West Virginia. My dad, it's so interesting though,
Speaker 1: I mean, will you talk to me for two seconds
Speaker 1: about this Senate map, because you have a really interesting
Speaker 1: historical perspective. So you remember when the Senate map whatever
Speaker 1: how many years ago it was that the Senate map
Speaker 1: was this bad before for Democrats?
Speaker 2: Well, it always comes down to individuals, you know, it
Speaker 2: always comes down as individuals. And so if the Democrats
Speaker 2: are lucky, if you don't understand this sentence, then you
Speaker 2: do not understand politics and government and the American design
Speaker 2: of government. And that sentence is, if the Democrats are lucky,
Speaker 2: Joe Manchin will win his re election as a Democrat
Speaker 2: in West Virginia if they're lucky. And if and then
Speaker 2: he can appear to torment the Democrats in the Senate
Speaker 2: when in fact he will have contributed to the most
Speaker 2: important thing that matters in the Senate, which is the
Speaker 2: Democrats holding the majority. And so you know, you kind
Speaker 2: of begin there and work your way around. And you know,
Speaker 2: John Tester is the only person, the only Democrat who
Speaker 2: can win in Montana, and he's running in Montana and
Speaker 2: so so, and you know, normally you would just say,
Speaker 2: look West Virginia. Normally you'd say West Virginia is now
Speaker 2: impossible for a Democrat. Montana is now impossible for Democrat.
Speaker 2: And then you say, yeah, but the Democrats Mansion and
Speaker 2: the Democrats Tester, and you go, okay, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: So it's always it's always about the individuals and how
Speaker 2: they run it, as long as they're well supported. And
Speaker 2: I have to say the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has
Speaker 2: been run better, you know, in the last few cycles
Speaker 2: than I've ever seen. I mean, they're just they're just extraordinary,
Speaker 2: you know. In the nineteen nineties, is recently his nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: those Democratic Setate campaign committees, Republican said campaign committees they
Speaker 2: were just sort of irritations in the lives of senators,
Speaker 2: you know, of like stuff where they like senators that
Speaker 2: they go to their events and stuff, and then they
Speaker 2: just kind of complain about not getting enough money from them,
Speaker 2: and they would be sending you know, those committees would
Speaker 2: be sending to the campaigns, you know, like twenty two
Speaker 2: thousand dollars you know, or you know, and and so
Speaker 2: it'd be like, ah, geez, just an irritation. Now it's
Speaker 2: very serious money and they're really professional, really really and
Speaker 2: I do believe the Democratic Setate Campaign Committee is much
Speaker 2: better than the Republican SID campaign.
Speaker 1: For two seconds, the VIC were never going to worry
Speaker 1: about a vac after this campaign, like no one's ever
Speaker 1: gonna But one thing that was a little bit interesting
Speaker 1: was He talked about how nine to eleven was an
Speaker 1: inside job and that has led to him, you know,
Speaker 1: doing well in the Republican polls. Extrapolated for me what
Speaker 1: kind of trouble we're in from that.
Speaker 2: So the good and the bad of it is that
Speaker 2: the Republican Party has come along to be the administrator
Speaker 2: of national collective intelligence tests. And I really liked living
Speaker 2: in the country before I knew how stupid people were.
Speaker 2: I actually, like, you know, I overestimated the low end
Speaker 2: of intelligence in America. I had a pretty good sense
Speaker 2: of the upper end of intelligence, as much as I
Speaker 2: could understand it, you know, which leaves out all of
Speaker 2: the sciences, of course, but that lower end, like, how
Speaker 2: stupid is it? I know people, and grew up with
Speaker 2: people and love people one hundred percent as stupid as
Speaker 2: the stupidest Trump voter. Okay, but I didn't know there
Speaker 2: were that many of them. I thought I knew most
Speaker 2: of them, you know. And so and though it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's tens of millions of people who are
Speaker 2: abjectly and permanently and hopelessly stupid, and they don't go
Speaker 2: to classrooms anymore. So there's no hope. It's not like, well,
Speaker 2: he's doing badly in third grade, but you know, he
Speaker 2: got into gear in fourth grade and he started to
Speaker 2: finally learn that there really were fifty states. And you know, no,
Speaker 2: they're lost forever. They they're outside of the educational system
Speaker 2: forever for the rest of their lives. And they will
Speaker 2: you know, collect input, you know, from the vivex and
Speaker 2: you know the you know, Robert Kennedy's and this horrible
Speaker 2: cesspool of the world Wide Web. You know that they
Speaker 2: will find the stupidest material available on it and embrace it.
Speaker 2: We didn't know that. You know, they were stupid before
Speaker 2: Trump ran. They were stupid all day every day before
Speaker 2: Trump ran. And then Trump ran and they got to
Speaker 2: step out publicly and said this is how stupid I am.
Speaker 2: It's like there's something of a public service in that,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, it is. I have to say,
Speaker 2: it's one of those diagnoses that when I saw it,
Speaker 2: I kind of wish I didn't know. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just and as long as you had a relatively disciplined
Speaker 2: system of nominating Republican candidates for president, it never got revealed,
Speaker 2: Like mid Romney was never going to reveal to you,
Speaker 2: there was nothing about his candidacy. That was going to
Speaker 2: reveal to you how stupid people. It wasn't stupid to
Speaker 2: vote for mid Rodney, you know, it wasn't stupid to
Speaker 2: vote for John McCain. You know it wasn't. And and
Speaker 2: so you know, we got to kind of happily cruise
Speaker 2: along thinking the stupid people had limited options more destroying
Speaker 2: our lives. In fact, it never occurred to us that
Speaker 2: they could. We didn't know that they were empowered to
Speaker 2: do that. And so this thing exists only in the
Speaker 2: Republican Party. It doesn't exist anywhere else, you know, And
Speaker 2: that's going to be on display in the debates, you know,
Speaker 2: where there will be rewards for being the craziest. And
Speaker 2: by the way, debate is not the word for the
Speaker 2: thing you're going to see. That's not what you know.
Speaker 2: It's just it's a sound by Chovo, and there's nothing
Speaker 2: in it that tests a single quality that is necessary
Speaker 2: in a present. No debate can ever test a single
Speaker 2: quality that is in any way necessary in a present.
Speaker 2: It's not how the presidency works, it's not how the
Speaker 2: job works. Nobody ever rushes into the Oval office and says, listen,
Speaker 2: you've got ninety seconds to explain and decide. It's like no, no,
Speaker 2: he does. And he's the president. He has as much
Speaker 2: time as he wants. He can sleep on it, he
Speaker 2: can think about it, he can read about it, he
Speaker 2: can listen to advisors, he can convene a meeting. He
Speaker 2: doesn't have to answer it right now. He's the president,
Speaker 2: you know. But we do a game show version of
Speaker 2: the presidency on TV, call it debate instead of game show.
Speaker 2: So we think we're watching something meaningful, and you know
Speaker 2: it's really a television event, you know, made for invented
Speaker 2: by television. Didn't exist before television, just never happened before television.
Speaker 2: Whenever you're looking at something that didn't exist before television,
Speaker 2: don't trust Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: I will come back, you know, I'll always come.
Speaker 1: Dave Weigall is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back Politics.
Speaker 1: A person I respect a lot, and really somebody who's
Speaker 1: like traveling a lot in sort of everywhere he needs
Speaker 1: to be. Welcome Dave, it's good to be here.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Before we started recording, we started talking about this GOP
Speaker 1: debate coming up, and there's a temptation to ignore all
Speaker 1: of the mimeographs who are on the stage. But when
Speaker 1: we were just talking, you had a really interesting and
Speaker 1: salient point about the sort of what little policy discussion
Speaker 1: there is and where it's landing. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: what you see this stage looking like, Well, we.
Speaker 3: Know what the stage is now. It's eight candidates who
Speaker 3: are not Larry elfare In, Francis Firez, Barry Johnson. And
Speaker 3: so this is a field of with the exception of
Speaker 3: vik Ramaswami who's running for his first office, is you know,
Speaker 3: field of candidates who run for stuff who has crudentials,
Speaker 3: But it is it is a more conservative field than
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, the last time they had open primary, than
Speaker 3: twenty twelve. Ideologically, it's actually for all the diversity in
Speaker 3: this race, and racial diversity too. Really, the only point
Speaker 3: of contention that tears them apart is is Ukraine. On
Speaker 3: the rest of it, everyone's running on either continuing the
Speaker 3: Trump legacy with a couple of tweaks or going to
Speaker 3: Trump's right, And I almost think that's been overlooked because
Speaker 3: there's just a way that we interpret a campaign. Trump
Speaker 3: is running. There end you'll see somebody described as a
Speaker 3: moderate if they're trying to appeal to voters who Trump
Speaker 3: couldn't win. But the thing I've noticed in covering all
Speaker 3: these people very closely, but none of them are saying, oh,
Speaker 3: Trump alienated this group of voters. I'm going to get
Speaker 3: them back. Trump just he had a complete victory on immigration.
Speaker 3: Everyone's taking his notes and thump prows and to build
Speaker 3: a wall. Everyone has committed to purging a bunch of
Speaker 3: federal employees, getting rid of Christoper Ray. With exception of
Speaker 3: Chris Christy. Everyone is basically saying I'm going to do
Speaker 3: a Trump did. And the exceptions are maybe I will
Speaker 3: support Ukraine more than he's supporting it, and we get
Speaker 3: into some details. But I feel like this is covering democrats.
Speaker 3: Last time, you had a few cants saying, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: going to moderate the moderate things that we can win
Speaker 3: back some people. Basically, let's go back to do Obama
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, that was more popular, and that's
Speaker 3: just not happening this time. Nobody's saying I'm going to
Speaker 3: go back to the you know, Bush two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: or the last time that the party won a majority
Speaker 3: of the vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like what you're saying, or
Speaker 1: at least what it sounds like to me, is that
Speaker 1: Republicans have they've interpreted or the rest of this field
Speaker 1: has interpreted trump Ism as a need to go further right,
Speaker 1: which is what we saw with DeSantis, versus what I
Speaker 1: think trump Ism was to those people and is, which
Speaker 1: is a very charis amount a guy who could get
Speaker 1: them to pretty much do anything right.
Speaker 3: And there are Republican governors who won in the Trump years.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of Brian tamp especially, who have governed as
Speaker 3: conservatives and throwing some bones to liberals on education and
Speaker 3: what have you. But nobody is running on the stuff
Speaker 3: that Trump did to win Democrats in twenty sixteen. Not
Speaker 3: really so. Mike Tens, who's been one of the clearer
Speaker 3: candidates on his policy if he's elected, along with Ron
Speaker 3: DeSantis Pens has been clearer we need to actually tackle entitlements.
Speaker 3: He's brought back some of the Paul Ryan agenda, which
Speaker 3: Trump won votes by abandoning. Same with DeSantis. There is
Speaker 3: protectionism that Trump brought into the party for trade war
Speaker 3: with China, but otherwise what Trump did was drop some
Speaker 3: of the unpopular fiscal conservative austerity politics and combine it
Speaker 3: with populism, border control, low immigration, and aggressive trade policies.
Speaker 3: All that there's also a desire to go further. So
Speaker 3: Trump in twenty sixteen talked almost I shouldn't say he
Speaker 3: almost never talked about LGBT rights. When he talked about it,
Speaker 3: he would say that he supported them. I mean, he
Speaker 3: had no problem with trans people using whatever bathroom they
Speaker 3: prefer based on their gender. And the entire field has
Speaker 3: moved to Trump's right, where the most moderate position at
Speaker 3: this point is Asa Hutchinson, who's saying, as governor, I
Speaker 3: was for banning some of this, but not all of it.
Speaker 3: That is the liberal squish position, whereas in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: it was sixteen I should say, a non issue. And
Speaker 3: so that's looking at this debate. So much of discussions
Speaker 3: about Trump, it has to be why wouldn't it be?
Speaker 3: He's up by forty points, but the party is just
Speaker 3: there's very little disagreement inside the party about what they
Speaker 3: stand for, and it's I would zone say, you think
Speaker 3: this happened with Democrats. After Hillary lost there was a
Speaker 3: lot of thinking, are there some progressive ideas that were
Speaker 3: popular that she abandoned that we can get back, they
Speaker 3: moved to the left. I think it's significant the Republicans
Speaker 3: have moved to the right. And if Christian Hutu was
Speaker 3: running or Larry Hogan was running, it'd be a different conversation.
Speaker 3: They're not. This is a very conservative feel Aweso.
Speaker 1: When you were talking about the bathrooms, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about Trump on abortion. I mean, that's the terrible thing
Speaker 1: about Trump is he's actually weirdly very good at this,
Speaker 1: So he knows abortion is a loser and he said
Speaker 1: it when the Supreme Court overturned Row. He said, this
Speaker 1: is a loser for us. So he really is to
Speaker 1: the left of those guys on abortion too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. He is the one who
Speaker 3: sang the least about a portion. I would say next
Speaker 3: to him is for Vic Ramaswami, who sang that literally
Speaker 3: he doesn't see a federal role at all. He thinks
Speaker 3: it's divisive. The pitches is kind of like the Ted
Speaker 3: Cruz pitch in twenty sixteen, which is our idea is
Speaker 3: if we go even further right, are actually more popular,
Speaker 3: but we're going to drop a couple that are just
Speaker 3: not going over And actually, if you talk to pro
Speaker 3: life Republicans who to be frank, they think they'll have
Speaker 3: to deal with President Donald Trump or nominee Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: They don't think they'll have to deal with president fake Ramaswami.
Speaker 3: They're really irritated by that. But the rest of the field,
Speaker 3: the gap is between I would go further than Trump
Speaker 3: and support a federal limit after fifteen weeks, or I
Speaker 3: would do that and then continue to go further again
Speaker 3: with Pence. Some Democrats I was talked to yesterday were
Speaker 3: describing Pence is basically the Bernie Sanders of this race,
Speaker 3: and that he is the one, I think because he
Speaker 3: really cares about changing the party. He's the one trying
Speaker 3: to get people on record for more conservative ideas. One
Speaker 3: of is is we shouldn't have any high promise to
Speaker 3: appoint a pro life cabinet. I promise all my healthcare
Speaker 3: appointees are going to be pro life. I'm going to
Speaker 3: bring back those because remember what happened with Trump and
Speaker 3: social conservatism is did he run on it? Not really?
Speaker 3: Once he was in power and tension was there, Tens
Speaker 3: was the guy helping pick a lot of the social
Speaker 3: conservatives running healthcare runners, Seema Verma, Roger Severino, these people
Speaker 3: who nobody knew their name. I would say, like Indiana
Speaker 3: reporters do their name. Some people in dcwer conservatives. He
Speaker 3: made sure it was a more conservative administration, and that
Speaker 3: is what he's running on, is this, I'm going to
Speaker 3: do Trump, and I'm going to do it in a
Speaker 3: more conservative mindset with less wiggle room, with fewer liberals
Speaker 3: who get appointed to things and did disobey us.
Speaker 1: So interesting, it's pretty crazy. So what the thing I'm
Speaker 1: struck by, and I'm actually writing about this in a
Speaker 1: sort of like opinion piece about this debate, is why
Speaker 1: does it seem to you that these Republicans have so
Speaker 1: much trouble imagining a post Trump future for the party?
Speaker 3: Well, you mean post Trump because he won't be around
Speaker 3: forever unless he's you know, the god emperor of Doune.
Speaker 3: But you mean like a party that is building his
Speaker 3: in his image.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it does seem to me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you look at Democrats like wringing their hands about the
Speaker 1: bench and this and that, and then you have Trump
Speaker 1: and basically it seems like the base just assumes that
Speaker 1: this seventy seven year old guy will be you know,
Speaker 1: president forever or running for president forever no.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. What's happened here is what's happened
Speaker 3: to a lot of the let's say Western world, there's
Speaker 3: a better term for these days. But all over the
Speaker 3: world you look at the Brazil had this last year.
Speaker 3: There are people who The current Conservative coalition includes a
Speaker 3: lot of people who were maybe voting for the left
Speaker 3: party before. They were working class people, part of labor unions,
Speaker 3: and they moved right for a number of reasons social issues,
Speaker 3: and it changes from country to country, but Trump is
Speaker 3: the first Republican candidate who has moved those people into
Speaker 3: the tent and after a few elections it looked, it
Speaker 3: looks permanent. And one reason there's such a discussion on
Speaker 3: the right about Brian Kemp and a little bit about
Speaker 3: Glenn Youngkin because he did some of this, is that
Speaker 3: they did not run as Trump acolytes. They actually were
Speaker 3: kind of embarrassed. They tried to run. In Kemp's case,
Speaker 3: he beat a Trump pat Can in a primary, but
Speaker 3: they held onto those gains. They did better with rural
Speaker 3: white voters than they ever had, and the idea fair
Speaker 3: is really okay. We have a new coalition. The party
Speaker 3: is going to be built in that mold, kind of
Speaker 3: like what Democrats did after FDR, and they had the
Speaker 3: FDR coalition for decades and decades saying like, this is
Speaker 3: the president who brought that black voters into our coalition,
Speaker 3: who brought this these working class farmers who didn't trust us.
Speaker 3: That's kind of it. It's just that there's still this
Speaker 3: disagreement about why they voted for him, and so you
Speaker 3: were saying, yeah, because of his unique talents. They think
Speaker 3: it's actually this combination of conservative policy ideas. Once you
Speaker 3: get people into the tent, they don't want to go back.
Speaker 3: You see some of them again, some of these countries,
Speaker 3: like in the UK last round of elections, a lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff the Conservatives gained and these working class
Speaker 3: areas went back to the Labor Party on all of it.
Speaker 3: The idea is, we have an agenda now that is popular,
Speaker 3: that is going to keep on our tent all these
Speaker 3: white working class voters who were Democrats for like fifty years.
Speaker 3: That's still unclear because we had midterms last year and
Speaker 3: some of those voters didn't come back. They didn't want
Speaker 3: the Trump agenda. Where Democrats did really well, we're suburbs
Speaker 3: there, there are a lot of voters who had been Republican
Speaker 3: until twenty sixteen, certainly until twenty eighteen, you know, suburban Detroit,
Speaker 3: suburban Chicago. You find on the right this attitude of okay, well,
Speaker 3: we can cut them loose, we don't really need them.
Speaker 3: It's a reverse of what you heard about Democrats in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen saying, well, we're going to do a little
Speaker 3: bit worse than working class whites, but we're going to
Speaker 3: make it up in the suburbs. The Republican answer to
Speaker 3: this is we're going to do worse in the suburbs,
Speaker 3: but we can make it up with working class whites
Speaker 3: with this agenda. And yes, the agenda has not formed yet.
Speaker 3: One data point I'd add to this is the Fox
Speaker 3: newspole from last week that showed, you know, Trump losing
Speaker 3: Diviiden by little. Every Republican did worse. Every Republican was unpopular.
Speaker 3: There's no evidence that there's a Republican running on the
Speaker 3: trumpetenda without his brand that is selling this. They have
Speaker 3: not been able to convince people, Okay, we figured out
Speaker 3: how to run the country, low taxes, high deficits, trade wars,
Speaker 3: They've retained a lot of the ground and immigration they've
Speaker 3: adopted this idea that I thought was a reach, but
Speaker 3: I think it's stuck with Republicans in twenty twenty, which is, hey,
Speaker 3: remember how good things were under Donald Trump? If you
Speaker 3: subtract the last eleven months or I should say, like
Speaker 3: ten months of down Trump. That's sort of the theme
Speaker 3: of all the Republican campaigns is Trump got it right.
Speaker 3: We need to restore exactly what he did, and the
Speaker 3: fact that things were actually pretty lousy for the last
Speaker 3: year of the Trump years. It's really just disappeared. If
Speaker 3: everyone agrees to something they went through positive thinking, they
Speaker 3: can make it so. And that's what's happened. On the
Speaker 3: right is hey, we fixed everything, we just need to
Speaker 3: go back to this. I don't find that with Democrats.
Speaker 3: I have not found Democrats say Barack Obama fixed everything,
Speaker 3: let's reboot it. There's always an idea that we need
Speaker 3: to improve. We lest some stuff on the floor, we
Speaker 3: need to pick it up. We maybe alienated more people
Speaker 3: than we needed to. Is that, you know, hangdog apology
Speaker 3: at a democratic nature. On the right, it's not Nope,
Speaker 3: we only lost because we didn't go hard right enough.
Speaker 3: If only he had fired Purge the DJ on day
Speaker 3: one instead of trying to forgit the end, we would
Speaker 3: have been more successful.
Speaker 1: Is this the unreality of I mean, is that what's
Speaker 1: happening here? Because the elites in the party, the donors,
Speaker 1: maybe the people who are involved in you know, the
Speaker 1: political consultants don't care because they make money either way,
Speaker 1: But the people who donate the money do seem to
Speaker 1: be furious that these candidates can't win. Do you think
Speaker 1: everyone else is in that unreality? Is unreality element here?
Speaker 3: No? I don't think it's on reality. But I think
Speaker 3: of what DeSantis often says on the trail, or where
Speaker 3: Kim Reynolds says in Iowa, which is, if you look
Speaker 3: at the last election there, we were expecting a red wave,
Speaker 3: but and it only happened in Iowa and Florida and
Speaker 3: a little bit New York. That's different. That was more
Speaker 3: of a backlash. The only places where Republicans gained a
Speaker 3: lot of ground when they ran everything was Iowa and
Speaker 3: Larida and the idea there is and the media was
Speaker 3: telling us, you know, to be stricter about COVID. The
Speaker 3: media was telling us that signing these abortion bills was
Speaker 3: not going to be popular. Look at us we won.
Speaker 3: We wiped the Democrats off the map. The evidence of
Speaker 3: this is that we can just do that across the country.
Speaker 3: Why why be so timid? That's the sort of the case.
Speaker 3: Now you might listen to that and say, what about
Speaker 3: the other forty eight states. That's kind of what's missaying
Speaker 3: is that in a lot of the country it was
Speaker 3: the worst I mean, relative to expectations, the worst midterm
Speaker 3: performance ever. I mean, anyone who's in a newsroom on
Speaker 3: that election night started to see stuff come in, It's like, wait, really, yeah,
Speaker 3: the inflations this high and they're not voting for re holingans,
Speaker 3: what's up? And that has been just kind of wish passed.
Speaker 3: Whereas Democrats in twenty eighteen had a good midterm, they
Speaker 3: gained a lot of ground, they gained into Western governorships,
Speaker 3: and they said, Okay, that's the model we should use.
Speaker 3: Whereas in this race, it's okay, we had two good races.
Speaker 3: We should use that model and run that around the country.
Speaker 1: But so isn't that on reality?
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm disputing your premise too much because it's selective.
Speaker 3: It is taking something and I covered this on the left.
Speaker 3: I mean, there'll be cases where progressive wins a closed seat,
Speaker 3: and there'll be arguments on the left. This proves that
Speaker 3: any of you in anywhere can run on medicare for all. Right,
Speaker 3: there'll be an incumbent really wins with this and the
Speaker 3: Remagan tax at work and scale it up, you know,
Speaker 3: test it against a billion dollars in any events, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't. Throughout what works. Sometimes a party will win
Speaker 3: under random conditions. There really is no effort. If you're
Speaker 3: a suburban woman who's pro choice, who would love it
Speaker 3: to vote for Republicans again and think they've gone too
Speaker 3: far right, your offer is no trust us. We're going
Speaker 3: to keep going in that direction. The closest you get
Speaker 3: to a compromise really is I'm going to let if
Speaker 3: you live in Alabama, I'm going to let your state
Speaker 3: ban abortion. It's a free country. You can move now.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's where the party is always going to be.
Speaker 3: If you're pro life party, that's going to be your position.
Speaker 3: But there there is not attempt. And look, Democrats do
Speaker 3: versions of this there. I think they are actually much
Speaker 3: kind of describing it before. It's very apologetic and looking
Speaker 3: for ways to win back win the voter they lost.
Speaker 3: But you know, the party of ten twenty years ago
Speaker 3: said yeah, sure you can. We're not going to go
Speaker 3: for gun control. Now it says it can. But they've
Speaker 3: won elections recently. They've won a bunch of elections with
Speaker 3: this platform, despite a president who's not very popular, and
Speaker 3: Republicans lost some elections, despite some candidates who are in
Speaker 3: a good position. No one's moving off, and also the
Speaker 3: money in the party is not demanding to do this.
Speaker 3: The only kind of donor revolt you see is some
Speaker 3: of the big donors who plan to support Ron DeSantis
Speaker 3: going to the media and saying, I wish you wouldn't
Speaker 3: assigned that six week abortion bill. The rest of the
Speaker 3: party is saying no, the next Republican president is facing
Speaker 3: the midnight. However, we need to dismantle the administrative state.
Speaker 3: And there's not much conversation happening with voters who aren't
Speaker 3: in on that. The assumption is the entire Trump coalition
Speaker 3: once that's almost enough to win the election. I'm going
Speaker 3: to be less unlikable than him, and that's going to
Speaker 3: be enough to win me the election. There is no
Speaker 3: reckoning with Is there some stuff that we're talking about
Speaker 3: that's not popular?
Speaker 1: So interesting? I mean, it really is. They're so intractable
Speaker 1: in a strange way that I never thought Pod will
Speaker 1: drop on Wednesday. The debate is Wednesday night. I mean,
Speaker 1: what are you watching for?
Speaker 3: I'm actually a fan of the hated show of hands question.
Speaker 3: I think there's a bunch of questions you could ask
Speaker 3: candidates that would reveal where they are on that. I mean,
Speaker 3: from the basic one, you know, did Mike Pens act
Speaker 3: the right way on January sixth too? Will you change
Speaker 3: those security for future retirees and Medicare? Would you block
Speaker 3: grant Medicaid? There's just a bunch of conservative policy they
Speaker 3: left on the ground I'd like to see asked. I
Speaker 3: think what you're going to get is, frankly, just from
Speaker 3: talking to campaigns or last couple days, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of irritation with the vig Ramaswami just getting interview after
Speaker 3: interview and going off the dome and coming up with policy.
Speaker 3: He's a very smart guy, but he's coming. Why is
Speaker 3: he in day seven of talking about nine to eleven?
Speaker 3: For example? It's baff ley and so I think there
Speaker 3: will be an effort to kind of draw him out
Speaker 3: because people think he is rising quickly because they'll say
Speaker 3: anything and they want to That happens to somebody. You're
Speaker 3: the candidate, will say anything, you make a GAF, you're done.
Speaker 3: But I'm really interested in what ends up happening on
Speaker 3: Ukraine because you have candidates who've only really Tim Scott
Speaker 3: who's had to take votes on Ukraine in the Senate
Speaker 3: and has voted for funding. You've got pens who's defended it.
Speaker 3: You've got Christy and Pence who've visited there. You have
Speaker 3: Haley who's defended the funding, but she's always trying to
Speaker 3: find like a place in the middle. And then you'll
Speaker 3: have some DeSantis who's been unclear. So I kind of
Speaker 3: is it the biggest issue facing Americans every single day? Ukraine?
Speaker 3: Maybe not. I think it's a digression. I would love
Speaker 3: to get some clarity though, on if the candidates want
Speaker 3: to fight inflation, how they do this, Because one, they're
Speaker 3: all still talking about inflation. Not to get too weeky
Speaker 3: on this inflation. The inflation rate is way down. There
Speaker 3: are individual products that cost more months to month, and
Speaker 3: gas costs more now, so everyone kind of fits inflation
Speaker 3: as an issue into the box of what they want
Speaker 3: to talk about. I want to talk about any energy
Speaker 3: exploration today. I'm going to say, hey, I just great news.
Speaker 3: It turns out my plan to let sure drilling happen
Speaker 3: everywhere would decrease your gas prices. That would help inflation.
Speaker 3: But there's more to ask. Would you continue all these
Speaker 3: tax cuts because that wouldn't help deal with inflation? Would
Speaker 3: you fire the FED chair and force him to lower
Speaker 3: interest rates? What's There's a lot of economic stuff about
Speaker 3: how the country's actually run that has not been asked.
Speaker 3: I'd love that to be asked.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Dave. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it's great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Taylor Lorenz is a tech journalist and the author of
Speaker 1: Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power
Speaker 1: on the Internet, which you can pre order now. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Ast Politics, Taylor Lorentz.
Speaker 4: Great, how are you grave good?
Speaker 1: Excited to have you here to talk about your book,
Speaker 1: which is in pre orders. Let us talk about this book. Yes,
Speaker 1: what's it called?
Speaker 5: Tell us about Yeah, it's called Extremely Online, The Untold
Speaker 5: Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. It's
Speaker 5: about the rise of the content creator influencer industry and
Speaker 5: kind of how we all became extremely online and on
Speaker 5: social media.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you. You have been extremely online also,
Speaker 1: like myself, we're both I think very online. I've actually
Speaker 1: read your book and I thought it was excellent, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, and you talked about this sort of how
Speaker 1: it all started. I would love for you to like
Speaker 1: give us a two minute talk of like how we
Speaker 1: got here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, I know.
Speaker 5: I feel like, well, I mean, my book is sort
Speaker 5: of about the rise of like social media and kind
Speaker 5: of how these platforms emerged and competed and the power
Speaker 5: users on them. I think a lot of people kind
Speaker 5: of just like look up one day and are like,
Speaker 5: how did this whole Like, you know, how are their influencers? Hellover,
Speaker 5: how are you know people making millions on TikTok? Like
Speaker 5: why am I, you know, posting like an influencer, you know,
Speaker 5: like just putting ourselves in photos and kind of like
Speaker 5: being cognisant of our following and stuff like that. And
Speaker 5: it seems like it happened overnight, I think to a
Speaker 5: lot of people, or they think it happened maybe you know,
Speaker 5: in the past couple of years. And I kind of
Speaker 5: talk about how it all started with the rise of
Speaker 5: blogging and my space, you know, back like a really
Speaker 5: long time ago, how people started to like share themselves online,
Speaker 5: put more of themselves online, and kind of how yeah,
Speaker 5: how like the social media content creator industry emerged, Like,
Speaker 5: I mean, one thing I talk about my book is
Speaker 5: kind of Facebook versut MySpace, and how Facebook sort of
Speaker 5: taught people to post publicly for an audience with the
Speaker 5: launch of New Speed. And then also yeah, how like
Speaker 5: mommy bloggers were kind of the first to really commodify
Speaker 5: their personal brands online and the businesses they built around
Speaker 5: that in the backlash they got for it.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I was thinking about is
Speaker 1: because I'm incredibly old and I come from the nineties
Speaker 1: and I wrote for magazines when I was young, I
Speaker 1: think about that moment in the nineties when it was
Speaker 1: clear that we were losing the market share, that it
Speaker 1: was that everything, that people were no longer going to
Speaker 1: pay nine bucks for a magazine like, and it was
Speaker 1: this moment. And it's funny because I was talking. I
Speaker 1: was on a panel with someone we were talking about
Speaker 1: it in the break, someone who had come from one
Speaker 1: of these magazine places. He had said, there was a
Speaker 1: moment where it became clear that we were about to lose,
Speaker 1: like that this sort of tech had figured out a
Speaker 1: way to go around journalism and we didn't see it
Speaker 1: then the way we've seen it now now. I actually
Speaker 1: would argue that they've never been able to reproduce what
Speaker 1: we in mainstream journalism have done. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Brian Krassenstein is not the same as the New York
Speaker 1: Times ed page, but there are a lot of tech
Speaker 1: bros who do think that they can get there. I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I are both at mainstream outlets.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you're thinking when you look that is,
Speaker 1: and you know, is there a way for these media
Speaker 1: outlets to be able to really succeed in tech in
Speaker 1: a way they may not have?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Basically, I mean so much of this book is also
Speaker 5: about sort of like this shifting media landscape, exactly what
Speaker 5: you're describing. I mean, I started as a blogger in
Speaker 5: the late oughts, and I mean I think that blogging
Speaker 5: and content creators have already provide, you know, higher quality
Speaker 5: content than the New York Times in certain areas.
Speaker 4: Obviously not I come.
Speaker 1: From content creatorville too in a certain way, or or
Speaker 1: I feel that I do. I don't know if that's accurate,
Speaker 1: but I do think like the reporting even from the
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the Boston Globe, like a local paper,
Speaker 1: is still going to be vetted. And I mean it's
Speaker 1: one thing to be on the opinion side, like I am,
Speaker 1: but it's another thing to have a team of people
Speaker 1: and lawyers. And I mean, so I'm curious, Like this
Speaker 1: is an unsolvable question, but I'm just curious.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think we've like witnessed the
Speaker 5: death you know, because of the rights of social media
Speaker 5: and these tech companies. Obviously, it's gutted local news. And
Speaker 5: I do think that we're in a bad place in
Speaker 5: terms of reporting. Like I think so much of what
Speaker 5: happens on the internet is commentary, it's not reporting. People
Speaker 5: don't really understand the difference. And yeah, it's a bad
Speaker 5: situation that we're in in terms of like I think
Speaker 5: for those of us that work in journalism, you know,
Speaker 5: there's just not the jobs that there used to be,
Speaker 5: there's not the money that there used to be, there's
Speaker 5: at the resources you have like these few national publications,
Speaker 5: which are great in some ways but horrible in others.
Speaker 5: So I mean I think the media has been asleep
Speaker 5: at the wheel for a long time. I actually I
Speaker 5: think I think they're still in deep denial over kind
Speaker 5: of their relevance and the sustainability of their business model.
Speaker 5: But I don't think that means that everyone needs to
Speaker 5: be a content creator, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a very interesting thing you just said.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I would like to keep going with it,
Speaker 1: if it's okay. What it seems like, what I've been watching.
Speaker 1: What it seems like to me, and you can tell
Speaker 1: me if you think this is nuts. Is that it's
Speaker 1: sort of like the way that these tech platforms work
Speaker 1: is they elevate a person more than a brand.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's all about sort of individuals and you know,
Speaker 5: individual personalities and building trust directly with your audience as
Speaker 5: an individual rather than a sort of faceless corporate brand
Speaker 5: that you are then sort of you know, lots of
Speaker 5: faceless people work for.
Speaker 1: So like, one of the things I've seen with podcasts
Speaker 1: is that podcast publishers don't seem to have the same
Speaker 1: kind of prestige that major media outlets do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think major media outlets probably, I
Speaker 5: don't know how you feel certainly. The reason that I
Speaker 5: decided to work in mainstream media is just sort of
Speaker 5: like having that like badge of approval, I guess, and like,
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously I'm there as well for all the
Speaker 5: resources that we got reporting in my colleagues, so I
Speaker 5: love but it means something. It's very hard to build
Speaker 5: a brand that sort of rivals a lot of these
Speaker 5: judicial brands, but I think they're degrading every day.
Speaker 4: I mean, just all legacy media.
Speaker 5: I was literally just listening to something about ESPN last
Speaker 5: night and like their struggles, you know, and that's that
Speaker 5: used to be like the brand in sports media and
Speaker 5: it's struggling, and so you know, it's just it's happening
Speaker 5: across the industry, not just in news media, but fashion
Speaker 5: media and sports media because people have channels like Dude
Speaker 5: Perfect or other. You know, like the media environment is
Speaker 5: so much more crowded and distributed and niche. It's just
Speaker 5: hard to kind of get those mass audiences and monetize
Speaker 5: a journalism brand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. And also, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just a sort of interesting unseen consequence of the Internet.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you, where are we right now
Speaker 1: with this sort of content creator platforms. I would love
Speaker 1: you to just sort of give me a like a
Speaker 1: sort of overview of what it looks like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I would say the pandemic in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty truly kind of pushed everyone online. And that's when
Speaker 5: like the Silicon Valley people finally started to really pay
Speaker 5: attention and realized that the influencer industry is a major
Speaker 5: economic force. And so that's why you saw them calling
Speaker 5: it the creator economy and dumping all this investment in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one. But we're at this point where there's
Speaker 5: there's sort of competition between platforms. You have TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Substack, Patreon,
Speaker 5: Like there's all these different platforms where you can grow
Speaker 5: an audience and monetize, sometimes directly through subscriptions, sometimes through ads,
Speaker 5: sometimes through things like a creator fund on TikTok, which
Speaker 5: is just like one big pot of money that they
Speaker 5: kind of split among content creators that are accepted into
Speaker 5: the program. And I would say it's just getting easier
Speaker 5: and easier to monetize and to build a media business.
Speaker 5: You know, if you want to start out, you can
Speaker 5: easily launch emerch shop on Shopify. You know, like there's
Speaker 5: also this sort of simultaneous rise in DIY like e
Speaker 5: commerce that's facilitated a lot of monetization, so you don't
Speaker 5: just have to rely on deals. You can launch your
Speaker 5: own product line. But I do think that we're still
Speaker 5: at the beginning of all of this. I think there's
Speaker 5: only sort of like a vague recognition of it from
Speaker 5: kind of like legacy institutions, like it's happened in the
Speaker 5: past few years. It's still like early days in terms
Speaker 5: of the shift in To.
Speaker 1: Me about what it looks like with the.
Speaker 5: TikTok, Yeah, I mean TikTok has obviously exploded since launching
Speaker 5: in twenty eighteen, and it was musically, which is what
Speaker 5: TikTok was prior to that. I talk about this in
Speaker 5: my book about I don't know like why musically took
Speaker 5: off and why people didn't take it seriously. I Mean,
Speaker 5: one's funny kind of theme in my book was just
Speaker 5: like tech founder is not really knowing how their products
Speaker 5: will be used.
Speaker 4: But TikTok, you knows.
Speaker 5: Short form video app that's become kind of the most popular,
Speaker 5: fastest growing app, I guess, the fastest going social platform
Speaker 5: in the sense that like you know, took Facebook quite
Speaker 5: a while to take off. Same with YouTube, TikTok became
Speaker 5: quite popular, and that's because of the algorithmic discovery. Unlike
Speaker 5: all the other social platforms that force users to kind
Speaker 5: of like get on there and build followers and kind
Speaker 5: of I mean, you know, discover content through manually hunting
Speaker 5: people down and following them. TikTok distributes content solely through
Speaker 5: this or primarily through this algorithmic feed that just delivers
Speaker 5: the content that you want to see. You don't have
Speaker 5: to follow a single person to watch content. And also
Speaker 5: you don't need any followers.
Speaker 1: To go viral, right right, right right, which is so
Speaker 1: interesting too. So what do you think now we have
Speaker 1: Elon controlling X, we have Threads, we have TikTok. So
Speaker 1: TikTok is like constantly in danger of being shut down
Speaker 1: by the American government, which hates it because if you're
Speaker 1: going to steal data, you can't be a Chinese company,
Speaker 1: you have to be an American company, which you know,
Speaker 1: I respect that we have Threads, which is you know,
Speaker 1: sort of on the move. But again, Mark Zuckerberg is
Speaker 1: nobody's idea of a hero. And then we have Elon,
Speaker 1: who is trying to turn X into banking brain scal
Speaker 1: and also fascism. I mean, where do you think the
Speaker 1: sort of everybody goes or do you think we are
Speaker 1: in this period of decentralized social media?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we're moving to sort of a more
Speaker 5: decentralized landscape, but not like in the way the crypto
Speaker 5: people say it necessarily. But I mean, I think there's
Speaker 5: just more platform competition that's coming up from smaller platforms,
Speaker 5: from things like Discord, where people could kind of build
Speaker 5: communities specific you know, hyperniche communities and monetize there if
Speaker 5: they want. I think Twitter X whatever you want to
Speaker 5: call it, is essentially irrelevant. I mean, I just think
Speaker 5: Elon's alienated every top user and creator and you know,
Speaker 5: he's just the sort of the stowing tens of thousands
Speaker 5: of dollars on any kind of stickupent that will praise him,
Speaker 5: but he doesn't understand anything about running up functional so
Speaker 5: you know, social platform. He fired the whole creator relations
Speaker 5: team that was sort of doing a lot of great
Speaker 5: work there. I don't think there's going to be a
Speaker 5: one to one replacement with Twitter, like I know everybody
Speaker 5: wants that in media, but I just don't think that's happening.
Speaker 5: I think I wrote a piece on this a couple
Speaker 5: of months ago. But a lot of the core functionality
Speaker 5: of Twitter has already been replaced by TikTok, just in
Speaker 5: terms of like TikTok is where people go to follow
Speaker 5: big news events, it's where you go for cultural commentary.
Speaker 4: It's just it's replaced so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you think it'll be sort of Twitter, I
Speaker 1: mean Twitter will be TikTok.
Speaker 5: I think it's already happened even you know, it was
Speaker 5: happening even before Elon, but I think Elon's accelerated it.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think the use case for Twitter, for
Speaker 5: average people's use usage of Twitter has already been replaced
Speaker 5: by TikTok. I think journalists have a specific use for Twitter,
Speaker 5: and I don't think you can replace it as easily.
Speaker 5: I don't particularly like TikTok.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems fine, but it's like it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to imagine like that you could get more
Speaker 1: of this sort of like you know, how do you
Speaker 1: get an article in the Washington Post from TikTok?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well that's the problem is, like Twitter, what are
Speaker 5: the last places where you could link out Obviously threads
Speaker 5: you can link out now too, but social platforms generally
Speaker 5: don't like linking out as we saw I reported just
Speaker 5: my colleagues did too, like just yesterday that Elon's throttling
Speaker 5: links to the New York Times. You know, like, I
Speaker 5: don't think people necessarily a lot of people want to
Speaker 5: read articles. You know, if you can get all the
Speaker 5: information in a short ten second video that summarized see article,
Speaker 5: they're happy with that, or they'll google the article and
Speaker 5: try and find more information about it, or watch a
Speaker 5: long form thing on it. I think there is a
Speaker 5: place for writing and links on the Internet. I mean,
Speaker 5: there are newsletter platforms and things like that, But I
Speaker 5: don't think I just don't think that like that structure
Speaker 5: of Twitter and that one to one feed is ever
Speaker 5: going to like be completely replicated because most people aren't journalists,
Speaker 5: Like most people using Twitter like they're just kind of
Speaker 5: going to keep up with general news and topics. I
Speaker 5: think sports Twitter is a real thing. That's another thing
Speaker 5: that's going to be hard to replace, like that real
Speaker 5: time kind of collective watching Pope.
Speaker 4: We'll see, we'll see what comes up.
Speaker 1: So interesting, So Taylor, let's do another sort of minute
Speaker 1: or two on like, so threads, blue Sky, all this
Speaker 1: sort of Twitter e tech s based socials. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you see a future for Threads?
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm rooting for Threads, hate root for Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 5: but I really like it. I find it a very
Speaker 5: easy to use product, and I think it's like a
Speaker 5: It's a good product, but it doesn't have the functionality
Speaker 5: that Twitter has. But I'm hoping that media people use it.
Speaker 5: I think Twitter was such a good sort of platform.
Speaker 5: It's like this group chat for you know, journalists, and
Speaker 5: that has not been replicated.
Speaker 4: What do you use Threads?
Speaker 1: I use Threads. I like it fine. I wanted to
Speaker 1: have some of the functionality that Twitter does.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're able to like roll out a lot of
Speaker 5: that step sooner rather than later.
Speaker 4: And do you think that they can create off a
Speaker 4: lot of users.
Speaker 1: I think they're going to have to quickly keep going
Speaker 1: and pivoting, like the needs to have dms. Somehow the
Speaker 1: comments feel siloed the way that the Instagram comments feel siloed.
Speaker 1: I like to interact with comments on the Internet. I
Speaker 1: like to interact with people because I am like one
Speaker 1: of those people who loves to talk to random people,
Speaker 1: and I mean not all the time, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. So I feel that it's sort of
Speaker 1: siloed in a way that makes it a little bit
Speaker 1: hard to use. So I don't like that. One of
Speaker 1: the things I love about social media, and perhaps this
Speaker 1: is my own moral feeling, is that there's no barrier
Speaker 1: to entry, right. You can write to anyone, they can
Speaker 1: write to you. It's just a free for all. And
Speaker 1: it feels with threads like there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a like velvet rope, and I don't want that. I
Speaker 1: want to be able to just do the world through
Speaker 1: the Internet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I get what I mean. I think it's also
Speaker 5: less anonymous and the different culture than Twitter. I mean,
Speaker 5: Twitter has a very specific culture and modes of interaction.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, I do reply to people on threads, like
Speaker 5: I do, feel like I check the activity feed and
Speaker 5: I feel it's somewhat similar, but it's more sanitized for sure.
Speaker 4: And I miss the messiness of Twitter too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing that is sort of
Speaker 1: like the messiness of Twitter is what I love too,
Speaker 1: though probably healthier just to be in our corporate threads.
Speaker 1: Bubble Taylor Lorenz. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And I
Speaker 4: hope people pre order my book.
Speaker 5: I think anybody will find it interesting if you're interested
Speaker 5: in any of these sort of the battles between tech
Speaker 5: platforms and how people use them.
Speaker 2: No more perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my junk Fast This John
Speaker 2: Eastman guy.
Speaker 1: We are all like who is this guy at first,
Speaker 1: and now we're starting to learn O.
Speaker 2: My man is Sip, the cool aid of crazy.
Speaker 1: John Eastman is the second defendant to surrender in the
Speaker 1: Georgia election interference case, which those of you keeping track
Speaker 1: at home, is a reco case that has eighteen defendants,
Speaker 1: one of which is the one the only forty fifth President,
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump, and one of which is our favorite
Speaker 1: America's mayor, though he really was never that Rudolph Jiuliani anyway.
Speaker 1: John Eastman is a fancy lawyer, and John Eastman and
Speaker 1: I think this is the height of the fuckery continues
Speaker 1: to lie about the twenty twenty election, and for that
Speaker 1: he is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.