00:00:00
so glenn greenwald i met taibi folks
00:00:07
so
00:00:08
by way of introduction the the i want to
00:00:10
just sort of tell the story of how this
00:00:12
panel happened um it arose out of almost
00:00:15
a throwaway comment that jason
00:00:18
made on an episode of the pod where he
00:00:19
was talking about you know lining up
00:00:21
speakers for this event
00:00:23
and he said that you know he was having
00:00:25
a hard time getting liberals
00:00:27
and
00:00:28
all he could find were like right
00:00:30
wingers
00:00:31
like uh glenn greenwald and matt taibi
00:00:34
and
00:00:36
in terms of just just to explain their
00:00:38
backgrounds a little bit you know matt
00:00:40
used to be
00:00:41
the they're both independent journalists
00:00:43
who
00:00:44
write phenomenal columns on substack and
00:00:46
all of you should check it on subscribe
00:00:48
and by the way they also do call-in
00:00:50
shows on a phenomenal podcasting
00:00:52
platform you should all check out
00:00:55
but
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but matt uh was sort of like the the
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left-wing fire brand for populist fire
00:01:01
brand on writing for rolling stone who
00:01:03
back in 2009 was asking the question why
00:01:06
the people who caused the great
00:01:08
financial crisis why no one was going to
00:01:10
jail and glenn you know broke the
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snowden story
00:01:15
about how the government was engaging in
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mass surveillance on all of us and
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raising questions about the infringement
00:01:22
of our civil liberties so you know both
00:01:24
these guys have i'd say uh
00:01:27
you know well-established bonafides uh
00:01:30
you know
00:01:31
who used to be considered uh left-wing
00:01:34
sort of liberal bonafides but now today
00:01:36
somehow they've been read out of
00:01:39
what you would call liberalism today and
00:01:41
so
00:01:42
that comment that jason made sort of i
00:01:45
think there's so much to unpack there on
00:01:48
how that happened
00:01:49
what does liberalism today mean if it
00:01:53
doesn't include you guys
00:01:55
uh and and so that maybe that's the
00:01:58
place to start is trying to understand
00:02:00
what has happened in our politics
00:02:02
that makes you guys not liberal anymore
00:02:05
and what is liberalism and then what is
00:02:07
conservatism and are we even thinking
00:02:09
about
00:02:10
the political divide in our country the
00:02:12
right way if left versus right doesn't
00:02:15
really capture it anymore
00:02:17
so
00:02:18
that was sort of the the the starting
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point for this
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uh who wants to just react to anything i
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just said
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yeah well first of all it's of course
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very gratifying to realize that your
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attendance at a conference is due to a
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throwaway line from
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super honored to hear that that's the
00:02:38
reason why we were invited
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[Music]
00:02:52
[Music]
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yeah you know it's interesting i guess
00:02:57
we join a long list of other far-right
00:03:00
luminaries like russell brand who has
00:03:03
spent the last 15 years as one of the
00:03:05
most vocal devotees
00:03:07
to the socialist jeremy corbyn he's now
00:03:10
also on the right and
00:03:12
joe rogan who just 18 months ago said to
00:03:15
millions of people that his favorite
00:03:17
candidate running for president was
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bernie sanders the socialist left-wing
00:03:22
candidate
00:03:23
from vermont and even now elon musk who
00:03:27
voted for barack obama in 2012 over mitt
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romney and is one of the
00:03:32
largest donors to the aclu sometimes
00:03:35
somehow he's also on the far right so in
00:03:37
some sense it's just become
00:03:39
a kind of
00:03:40
punishing label that's designed to
00:03:43
stigmatize or demonize anybody who in
00:03:45
any way descends from or diverges from
00:03:48
liberal orthodoxy it's just kind of an
00:03:50
enforcement or coercive label that has
00:03:52
no meaning just bereft of any
00:03:54
actual substance but i think there's a
00:03:57
broader dynamic underneath it all
00:04:00
which is that
00:04:03
you know it is true that every five
00:04:05
years ten years what was once
00:04:07
an issue at the forefront of our debates
00:04:11
goes to the background and other issues
00:04:13
go to the forefront so
00:04:15
10 years ago we were spending a lot of
00:04:16
time debating things like obama's drone
00:04:18
program or guantanamo not being closed
00:04:22
or as you said the work matt was doing
00:04:24
on you know derivatives and the fraud on
00:04:26
wall street we don't talk much about
00:04:28
that anymore we spend a lot of time now
00:04:29
talking instead about
00:04:31
whether the internet should be this
00:04:33
instrument of censorship and information
00:04:34
control
00:04:36
um
00:04:37
whether
00:04:38
we should trust the u.s security state
00:04:40
to dictate what is and is not
00:04:42
disinformation
00:04:43
uh whether we should be involved in very
00:04:46
similar kinds of
00:04:48
proxy wars like we spent the cold war
00:04:50
doing over places like ukraine
00:04:53
and so in one way it's natural that
00:04:55
political alliances shift is different
00:04:57
issues go to the fore and alliances
00:04:59
change as a result but i think something
00:05:01
much more important is that liberalism
00:05:03
itself has changed largely by virtue of
00:05:06
donald trump because liberals as a
00:05:09
defining view maybe as an overarching
00:05:11
view maybe maybe democrats yeah by
00:05:14
liberals i just mean kind of the
00:05:15
mainstream wing of the democratic party
00:05:17
the way hillary you know hillary clinton
00:05:19
calls herself progressive so again
00:05:21
illustrating the bankruptcy of these
00:05:22
terms but by liberals i just mean kind
00:05:24
of like the nancy pelosi barack obama
00:05:25
hillary clinton chuck schumer wing
00:05:28
have come to believe that the
00:05:30
overarching way to understand politics
00:05:32
is that there's one
00:05:34
primary
00:05:35
menace and risk to the united states
00:05:38
which is donald trump his movement in
00:05:40
the republican party and it's not just
00:05:42
that they have a bad ideology but that
00:05:44
they're actual fascists trying to
00:05:45
instill a white nationalist dictatorship
00:05:48
and if you actually believe that if
00:05:50
that's something that you genuinely
00:05:51
believe on some level it becomes
00:05:53
rational to start embracing
00:05:55
authoritarian uh methods of resisting
00:05:58
that of combating that censoring
00:06:00
um you know using
00:06:03
due process free processes to punish
00:06:05
people and deprive them of their liberty
00:06:08
and i think any time a political
00:06:10
movement gets convinced that it is no
00:06:12
longer involved in a political debate
00:06:14
but a
00:06:15
historic war between pure good and pure
00:06:18
evil it starts to turn to authoritarian
00:06:21
tactics to win because it believes
00:06:22
that's justified or even necessary and
00:06:24
those authority authoritarian toxic
00:06:26
happens to be the ones that the left
00:06:28
traditionally had opposed and now are
00:06:31
embracing and
00:06:32
i guess matt and i didn't decide that we
00:06:35
were going to change our views of the
00:06:37
last 30 years about these issues and
00:06:39
that has caused this organic breach not
00:06:42
just between us two but you know others
00:06:43
like us and as i said anyone who finds
00:06:46
themselves outside of liberal orthodoxy
00:06:48
automatically receives the far-right
00:06:49
label
00:06:51
yeah um
00:06:52
first of all i agree with all that and
00:06:54
um
00:06:55
you know for me it's even funnier
00:06:57
because
00:06:58
uh prior to 2008 i would say that
00:07:02
um i was sort of like the triumph the
00:07:04
insult comic dog of journalism
00:07:07
uh
00:07:08
basically my job at rolling stone was to
00:07:10
throw off one-liners about republicans
00:07:14
my editors almost never sent me to a
00:07:16
democratic function because they didn't
00:07:18
want me
00:07:19
uh describing
00:07:21
uh those events in in a colorful way
00:07:23
let's put it that way so i got
00:07:25
i got sent to a lot of events um where
00:07:28
people like sarah palin or fred thompson
00:07:31
or mike huckabee would be speaking i
00:07:33
actually won a national magazine award
00:07:35
for
00:07:36
a column about
00:07:38
huckabee called my favorite nut job
00:07:42
and um
00:07:44
but then after 2008
00:07:46
uh after obama got elected they assigned
00:07:49
me to do a story one story about uh the
00:07:54
2008 financial crisis
00:07:56
essentially with the idea of explaining
00:07:58
it
00:07:59
in terms of people who are not financial
00:08:01
professionals could understand
00:08:04
so i did one story that was really about
00:08:06
aig and we got
00:08:08
this overwhelming response that we'd
00:08:09
never gotten before from readers we'd
00:08:12
never
00:08:13
heard from before and that led to me
00:08:16
doing eight years of work instead of one
00:08:19
story and one of the themes
00:08:22
that came out of that reporting
00:08:25
was that
00:08:27
in the sort of post-bailout economy
00:08:30
the wealth gap was widening
00:08:32
and um you know i just read a statistic
00:08:34
that said that during the obama years
00:08:38
the bottom 99
00:08:39
saw their average wealth decreased by 4
00:08:42
900
00:08:44
whereas
00:08:45
the top 1 percent saw its wealth
00:08:47
increase by
00:08:48
an average of 4.9 million dollars
00:08:51
and so
00:08:53
you know i didn't make that much that
00:08:54
big of a deal of this in my reporting
00:08:56
but when
00:08:57
um 2016 came around
00:09:00
um
00:09:02
like in covering both the trump and
00:09:05
sanders campaigns
00:09:07
it was abundantly clear
00:09:09
that this widening wealth gap and
00:09:12
the stress that it had placed on
00:09:15
populations on both the left and the
00:09:17
right was a significant factor uh in
00:09:20
this race
00:09:22
and
00:09:23
when i started to write this
00:09:25
in the context of covering trump rather
00:09:27
than just doing the usual thing of
00:09:29
tossing off insults about the candidate
00:09:32
um which is easy enough to do with trump
00:09:35
uh
00:09:36
i started to say things like well there
00:09:38
are reasons why he's succeeding he's
00:09:40
attracting crowds that are not just the
00:09:43
usual republican crowds they're former
00:09:46
union members here
00:09:47
they have a lot in common with the
00:09:49
crowds who show up at bernie sanders
00:09:51
events
00:09:53
and
00:09:53
i
00:09:54
started to notice a distinctly
00:09:56
unpleasant reaction from people
00:10:00
inside the business
00:10:02
where it quickly became taboo to explain
00:10:04
donald trump in any way other than
00:10:07
um this is a white supremacist movement
00:10:10
and he's appealing to you know the
00:10:12
lowest common denominator
00:10:14
uh through that kind of messaging now i
00:10:17
i happen to believe that that's that was
00:10:19
part of certainly part of what was going
00:10:21
on but it wasn't the whole explanation
00:10:24
but i think trump is is the dividing
00:10:26
line of what you're talking about if if
00:10:28
you if you don't have
00:10:30
if you have a nuanced explanation for
00:10:33
donald trump
00:10:34
um
00:10:35
then you you can't be part of the club
00:10:37
anymore because
00:10:39
the uh
00:10:41
the dominant narrative requires
00:10:44
that he be cartoonized um you know in
00:10:48
the same way that we used to do it with
00:10:49
figures like saddam hussein or putin now
00:10:53
you know we call it the hitler of the
00:10:54
month club all right
00:10:56
uh
00:10:57
if you're not willing to just do that
00:11:00
and if you try to actually explain
00:11:02
where all these voters coming from why
00:11:04
are they upset
00:11:06
what went wrong that this would happen
00:11:08
also known as the purpose of journalism
00:11:09
yeah exactly right which is supposed to
00:11:11
be our job
00:11:14
[Applause]
00:11:20
i think both of us quickly learn
00:11:23
that there that was not welcome
00:11:26
and you know after trump got elected i
00:11:29
think that
00:11:30
that instinct to uh crowd out
00:11:33
anyone who was interested in going there
00:11:35
and trying to figure out what was wrong
00:11:37
um that it caused uh 2016 you know
00:11:41
suddenly became an apostate and by the
00:11:44
way that includes some politicians like
00:11:46
you know bernie sanders i think was one
00:11:48
of the people who was very interested in
00:11:50
examining
00:11:52
what happened in 2016
00:11:54
uh and and i think that's one of the
00:11:57
reasons why there was such a violent
00:11:59
reaction
00:12:00
uh to his candidacy in both 2016 and
00:12:03
2020.
00:12:04
so
00:12:05
for me i think that's the dividing line
00:12:07
it's not like something's changed so
00:12:09
much with liberalism or it's
00:12:12
it's really about trump i think
00:12:15
and and
00:12:17
journalism has adjusted it is you know
00:12:19
we've gone from being
00:12:22
people whose primary job is to be
00:12:24
curious about why things happen
00:12:26
um to being advocates who believe that
00:12:29
you know certain people have to be
00:12:31
opposed at all costs and even if that
00:12:33
cost is
00:12:34
you know a little bit of the truth or a
00:12:36
lot of it even so having ripped the
00:12:39
empire jersey off their backs to
00:12:41
basically stop the trump menace it seems
00:12:44
like journalism can't now go back to
00:12:47
even a pretense of neutrality is that so
00:12:49
what basically has happened now
00:12:51
i think so i think and i think you see
00:12:54
that in in what hap what's happening
00:12:56
with the ratings at cable stations
00:12:59
um you know i warned about this in 2016
00:13:02
and i i wrote a column in the in that
00:13:05
summer saying that a model where
00:13:08
basically right-wing media wrote about
00:13:11
the evils of the democratic party and
00:13:14
blue media wrote about the evils of the
00:13:15
republican party
00:13:17
um that that just wouldn't work audience
00:13:20
wise because audiences would no longer
00:13:22
trust either
00:13:24
uh source to be objective and to report
00:13:26
the facts and i think that's where we
00:13:28
are now like we see the declining
00:13:31
um the declining ratings of of companies
00:13:34
like cnn and msnbc
00:13:38
uh which were previously thought of as
00:13:40
more kind of down the road down the
00:13:42
middle of the road news agencies and now
00:13:45
are thought of as politicized and
00:13:46
they're having a terrible trouble
00:13:49
kind of going back because once you
00:13:51
cross that line into politics
00:13:53
um
00:13:55
you can't get your reputation back as a
00:13:56
neutral fact finder anymore yeah i think
00:13:59
people forget what things were like
00:14:01
before trump since he's such a
00:14:04
you know kind of uh ubiquitous presence
00:14:06
as matt was saying and for me i you know
00:14:09
he also defines and is responsible for
00:14:12
most of the changes we're discussing but
00:14:14
back in 2015 most of these news
00:14:16
organizations were on the brink of
00:14:18
collapse
00:14:19
every msnbc host was on the verge of
00:14:21
being fired you know a couple of months
00:14:23
away from being fired because nobody was
00:14:25
watching the new york times had severe
00:14:28
financial difficulty there was talk
00:14:30
about whether they would have to declare
00:14:31
bankruptcy because their balance sheet
00:14:33
was so
00:14:34
drowning in debt and
00:14:37
trump saved them all he saved the entire
00:14:39
industry they all owed their jobs their
00:14:42
second homes the ability to pay off
00:14:45
their irs debt to donald trump
00:14:48
because you can trace his emergence on
00:14:50
the scene to when people started
00:14:51
watching those programs again and what
00:14:53
they did was
00:14:54
they
00:14:55
rebranded as the resistance to donald
00:14:58
trump
00:14:59
and they sacrificed any even pretense of
00:15:03
journalistic function they know if you
00:15:05
and you just look at polling data that
00:15:07
95 of the people who watch msnbc and 93
00:15:11
of the people who read the new york
00:15:12
times and trust it
00:15:14
identify as democrats
00:15:16
um so there's a completely polarized
00:15:18
media you know one of the kind of
00:15:20
non-media examples is the aclu there was
00:15:22
an article in 2015 in the aclu about the
00:15:25
aclu and the washington post that they
00:15:27
were mass layoffs had to engage in mass
00:15:29
layoffs of their staff because they had
00:15:30
no money
00:15:32
trump gets inaugurated they start
00:15:33
tweeting you know every day we'll see
00:15:35
you in court mr trump and like
00:15:37
stimulating the
00:15:38
you know kind of g-zones of every
00:15:40
liberal and suddenly
00:15:43
they're drowning in money like millions
00:15:45
and millions of dollars you know like
00:15:47
building like the asclu you know it's
00:15:50
always financially struggled and as a
00:15:52
result they're completely captive now to
00:15:54
that kind of an audience you know i have
00:15:56
a friend i guess i had a friend
00:15:58
um
00:15:59
who was
00:16:00
a host of an msnbc show and they once
00:16:03
told me
00:16:04
that they don't get show by show ratings
00:16:06
they get segment by segment ratings
00:16:09
and ever since trump
00:16:11
they told me the minute you put on
00:16:13
anybody who's critical of the democratic
00:16:15
party anyway you can just see the
00:16:16
audience completely disappear
00:16:18
which you can imagine a person in that
00:16:20
position what an enforcement mechanism
00:16:23
that is to know that they have a salary
00:16:24
and kids and they need to pay for
00:16:26
college and their mortgage and they know
00:16:28
if they do anything that deviates at all
00:16:30
from democratic party doctrine they're
00:16:33
going to lose their audience the new
00:16:34
york times knows that the clu knows that
00:16:37
and so yeah i think they're all not it's
00:16:39
not just that they've lost their
00:16:40
credibility and can't get it back which
00:16:41
is absolutely true as matt said it's
00:16:43
also that they're now captive to this
00:16:45
kind of
00:16:46
uh prison cell that they built for
00:16:48
themselves chasing the sugar high that
00:16:51
trump provided
00:16:52
just really quickly i got to tell the
00:16:54
story in the middle of all this
00:16:56
phenomenon reporters were arguing about
00:16:59
whether or not we should be covering
00:17:00
them less because maybe we had helped
00:17:02
him
00:17:03
get the nomination uh you know i covered
00:17:05
trump's campaign and this was a a hot
00:17:08
topic in on the bus at the time um but
00:17:12
then it was sort of decided that now
00:17:13
he's just making us all so much money
00:17:15
let's just let's just go with it
00:17:17
and uh
00:17:18
i remember being in indianapolis when
00:17:22
trump sewed up the um
00:17:24
the nomination by beating crews who
00:17:26
still had a mathematical chance of
00:17:28
winning i guess if he had done well
00:17:30
there but trump if you remember
00:17:32
during that particular race accused
00:17:35
cruz of being the zodiac killer
00:17:38
uh
00:17:40
which was
00:17:41
hilarious because cruz was born two
00:17:43
years after the killings
00:17:45
ended so
00:17:46
but there was one reporter i know who
00:17:49
who actually uh got the nerve up to ask
00:17:52
i i believe it was
00:17:54
i believe it was cruz's wife
00:17:56
about about the the accusations like
00:17:59
what do you have to say to the idea that
00:18:01
uh
00:18:02
you know that you know your your husband
00:18:04
is this is a zodiac killer
00:18:06
and he's telling me the story about this
00:18:08
afterwards and he goes you know i felt
00:18:10
so dirty doing it but i also felt so
00:18:12
great
00:18:15
so
00:18:16
i think that's where they were they were
00:18:18
in that space for a long time
00:18:20
the media the media and trump had a
00:18:21
weird codependent relationship
00:18:25
just in terms of trying to appeal to
00:18:26
people out there who may not be trump
00:18:29
fans or to get through them on this
00:18:31
point
00:18:32
it just seems to me that when you lose
00:18:34
an election anytime and you lose an
00:18:36
election as a party you need to analyze
00:18:38
what went wrong and especially when the
00:18:42
candidate is a complete political novice
00:18:45
with no you know no prior experience and
00:18:47
had so many
00:18:49
attributes that historically were
00:18:50
considered extreme negatives
00:18:52
and it seems to me that if you're just
00:18:54
to look at what happened in 2016 trump
00:18:57
was able to ride a few key issues all
00:19:00
the way to the white house one was
00:19:02
these you know foreign wars these
00:19:04
interventions that we've had in
00:19:06
afghanistan iraq syria libya that were
00:19:08
disasters we hadn't gotten out of
00:19:10
afghanistan yet but it was on its way to
00:19:13
being a historic 20-year failure he
00:19:15
shattered the republican party with that
00:19:17
message no more bushes
00:19:19
he then
00:19:20
took the issue of trade
00:19:23
and basically broke down the democrats
00:19:26
blue wall and the rust belt by basically
00:19:28
pointing out the ways that our trade our
00:19:30
bipartisan trade policy just like our
00:19:32
bipartisan
00:19:33
uh foreign you know our war policy
00:19:36
had led to uh the de-industrialization
00:19:40
of the of the rust belt
00:19:42
and then he also used the immigra the
00:19:44
issue of immigration which was sort of
00:19:46
closely related to that idea of creating
00:19:48
wage pressure on the working class so
00:19:50
you would think that having
00:19:52
rode those issues all the way to the
00:19:54
white house that there would be some
00:19:55
sort of reappraisal
00:19:58
and instead it seems like what the elite
00:20:00
did to protect itself
00:20:02
was create these mythologies
00:20:04
that
00:20:05
trump somehow got elected not because
00:20:08
the people of the country were fed up
00:20:10
with the way that it had been run for 20
00:20:12
years by both parties
00:20:14
but rather because the russians somehow
00:20:16
were behind it
00:20:18
or
00:20:19
or the country was shot through with
00:20:20
white supremacy and that somehow
00:20:22
explained it
00:20:23
um
00:20:24
and so we never really got a true
00:20:28
uh sort of accounting or reappraisal of
00:20:31
what trump's election meant and instead
00:20:33
the media turned to like this hysteria
00:20:36
this mode that we're not even out of yet
00:20:40
your reactions to that no i think you
00:20:41
know it's one of the most amazing things
00:20:43
about the 2016 election which is first
00:20:46
of all you know
00:20:47
in a lot of ways
00:20:49
barack obama being this kind of once in
00:20:51
a generation political talent papered
00:20:53
over the the incredibly serious systemic
00:20:56
problems the democrats had even while he
00:20:59
was being re-elected underneath obama
00:21:01
and all his glitter and glamour the
00:21:03
democratic party was collapsing they
00:21:05
were losing state houses and
00:21:07
congressional seats and governorships
00:21:08
all over the country
00:21:10
and the reason for that is the
00:21:13
anger the growing anger with the
00:21:15
neoliberal policies that the democratic
00:21:17
party in the early 1990s had decided to
00:21:19
embrace in lieu of the working-class
00:21:21
politics for which they had always been
00:21:22
known the kind of clintoniae
00:21:26
pronouncement that the democratic party
00:21:28
needs to start embracing corporate
00:21:29
america instead of unions that it needs
00:21:32
to move much closer to these politicist
00:21:34
politics that says you know we're going
00:21:36
to encourage
00:21:39
corporate america we're going to embrace
00:21:40
the pentagon and all of that and it
00:21:43
radically changed the the democratic
00:21:45
party into this party of technocracy and
00:21:47
the elites culminating with the obama
00:21:49
presidency and the only and what is
00:21:53
amazing is in 2016 the democrats lost
00:21:56
the white house
00:21:58
to a game show host
00:22:00
and so you would think they would wonder
00:22:02
why that happened as you were saying
00:22:05
right you would think they would wonder
00:22:06
what is it about us
00:22:08
that caused us to lose to donald trump
00:22:12
and instead they invented this long list
00:22:14
of people that they decided were to
00:22:15
blame instead vladimir putin principally
00:22:17
wikileaks jill stein for having the
00:22:20
audacity to continue to run for
00:22:21
president you know a whole long list of
00:22:23
villains essentially everybody except
00:22:25
themselves and the people who are
00:22:26
responsible for it
00:22:28
and and and i think the the most toxic
00:22:30
narrative is the one that said
00:22:33
the only reason trump won
00:22:35
was because the country is radically and
00:22:38
fundamentally racist and he capitalized
00:22:40
on that
00:22:42
and what's so amazing about that is
00:22:44
there are literally millions of voters
00:22:46
in excess of 10 million
00:22:48
depending on how you count but
00:22:50
definitely in excess of 10 million
00:22:52
voters who twice voted for barack obama
00:22:54
in 2008 and 12 and then in 2016 voted
00:22:59
for donald trump
00:23:01
there are
00:23:02
increasing numbers of non-white voters
00:23:05
all over the country
00:23:07
moving to the republican party under
00:23:09
trump and voting increasingly for trump
00:23:10
you had a larger share of black voters
00:23:12
latino voters asian-american voters than
00:23:15
any republican candidate and decades and
00:23:17
those trends are only worsening
00:23:19
and so
00:23:20
you have this media that has
00:23:24
no interest in and no ability to
00:23:27
understand how the majority of people in
00:23:29
the united states live because their
00:23:30
lives are completely separate lived in
00:23:32
these isolated enclaves in this kind of
00:23:34
liberal bubble and you know just today
00:23:37
there was this amazing
00:23:39
uh article by rolling stone it was about
00:23:42
what most of you have probably heard
00:23:43
which was this horrific
00:23:45
uh mass murder in buffalo where an 18
00:23:48
year old white kid feeding on this kind
00:23:51
of
00:23:51
ideology of racial hatred that has
00:23:54
become fringe but
00:23:56
very dangerous around the west
00:23:59
went into a store that he knew was
00:24:01
predominantly black and shot as many
00:24:02
people as he could killing 10 of them
00:24:05
and then our the article by rolling
00:24:06
stone
00:24:08
that was published this morning was
00:24:10
he is not a lone wolf shooter he is a
00:24:13
mainstream republican
00:24:16
so i think all of you should be very
00:24:17
careful because you're currently in a
00:24:19
country where half of the people in this
00:24:21
country apparently are psychotic nazis
00:24:24
on the verge of like some sort of mass
00:24:26
murder outbreak including huge numbers
00:24:29
of non-white americans who are
00:24:31
supporters of
00:24:32
the republican party and the more
00:24:35
you kind of immerse yourself in an
00:24:37
instant in a set of institutional
00:24:39
beliefs and a kind of
00:24:41
ethos of your enclave you know just
00:24:43
constantly hearing a belief reinforced
00:24:46
and reinforced the more you believe it
00:24:48
the more you're immersed in it the more
00:24:50
immune you become to facts that negate
00:24:52
it and so that's the reason why the
00:24:55
media is so incurious because they've
00:24:57
embraced this narrative that the only
00:25:00
reason anyone would vote for republicans
00:25:02
the only reason anyone would vote for
00:25:03
trump is because they're racist or their
00:25:05
fascists or their white supremacist and
00:25:08
it's left them completely unable
00:25:11
to grapple with things like 10 million
00:25:13
people voting twice for obama and then
00:25:15
for
00:25:16
trump or the fact is matt alluded to
00:25:18
there were all kinds of people in 2016
00:25:20
who if you ask them they would say
00:25:22
yeah i have two favorite candidates this
00:25:24
year and you'd say who are they and they
00:25:26
would say bernie sanders and donald
00:25:28
trump
00:25:29
to a working journalist most most
00:25:32
working journalists are pundits or
00:25:34
political operatives that makes no sense
00:25:36
they can't comprehend that because they
00:25:37
see the world through this traditional
00:25:39
left right prism that for increasing
00:25:42
sections of the country i would argue a
00:25:43
majority
00:25:45
is no longer applicable is no longer how
00:25:47
they see the world and this is so
00:25:49
dangerous when you have
00:25:50
this radical breach between the opinion
00:25:54
making journalistic class and elite
00:25:57
class on the one hand
00:25:58
and most of the population on the other
00:26:00
they just live completely different
00:26:02
lives work with a completely set of of
00:26:04
beliefs about the world have completely
00:26:06
different sets of interests and if you
00:26:08
look at countries throughout history
00:26:10
where that has happened where there's
00:26:12
been this complete divergence between
00:26:14
the people who hold power in the country
00:26:16
and the rest of the country over whom
00:26:18
they exercise that power
00:26:20
instability at best and usually
00:26:23
much worse things inevitably arise and i
00:26:26
really think that's the point that we're
00:26:27
at
00:26:29
just quickly to um
00:26:31
piggyback on that the
00:26:33
one of the big stories that went
00:26:34
uncovered and and continues to go
00:26:36
uncovered is the transformation of the
00:26:38
democratic electorate um
00:26:41
the last time i looked at this
00:26:43
41 of the richest 50 congressional
00:26:46
districts in america
00:26:48
had democrats
00:26:51
in those seats and all of the top ten
00:26:54
richest
00:26:56
districts were won by democrats
00:26:59
whereas as recently as 1992 the split
00:27:02
was more like 50 50.
00:27:05
you know if you if you live in an
00:27:07
affluent suburb
00:27:10
the overwhelming majority of the voters
00:27:12
are there are going to be democrats now
00:27:14
and the big divide in american politics
00:27:18
is no longer about ideology it's
00:27:20
significantly about income and even more
00:27:22
education uh it's a split between people
00:27:27
who have
00:27:28
high school degrees or less
00:27:30
and people who are college educated
00:27:33
and this is one of the reasons why
00:27:35
donald trump was was so effusive and
00:27:37
saying i love the poorly educated
00:27:38
because you know they vote for him
00:27:41
but this is a this is another taboo
00:27:43
subject nobody likes to talk about this
00:27:45
because it speaks to
00:27:46
a transformation that happened in the
00:27:48
democratic party that began i think with
00:27:50
clinton
00:27:51
when you know they went away from
00:27:54
relying on unions for financial support
00:27:57
um you know the dlc's big strategic
00:28:01
idea was let's be more competitive on
00:28:04
the fundraising front by
00:28:06
um you know being more pro-business or
00:28:09
pro-growth that was the term that they
00:28:11
used a lot
00:28:12
and you know a couple of decades later
00:28:14
what we what you end up with is a party
00:28:16
that no longer has any real organic
00:28:18
connection to to working people of any
00:28:22
kind and so
00:28:24
you know i think i think that's
00:28:26
that's a massive factor in all of this
00:28:28
is that in the reporting on class
00:28:30
politics has become taboo um all you
00:28:33
have to do is is go to a donald trump
00:28:35
event and you can you can see it clearly
00:28:37
uh that the
00:28:39
the composition of the crowds is vastly
00:28:41
different from what you see at a
00:28:42
democratic event and that's one of the
00:28:44
reasons why they hated the media because
00:28:46
they saw us
00:28:47
as upper class
00:28:50
representatives of the coastal elite who
00:28:53
all live in new york la and washington
00:28:55
which is true for the most part and you
00:28:58
know it it got increasingly hostile as
00:29:01
as time went on and that's why trump was
00:29:03
scoring so many points going after us
00:29:05
because we were symbols of the upper
00:29:07
class and
00:29:09
um that's another reason why i think the
00:29:11
the the divide is no longer neatly
00:29:14
between left and right anymore it's it
00:29:16
has a lot more to do with class than i
00:29:18
never did before okay david
00:29:20
i'm over here to your hey i know you
00:29:22
wanted to take a question or two from
00:29:24
the audience as we were sure yeah let's
00:29:25
take some questions and i thought i
00:29:26
would kick it off
00:29:28
great discussion about the left um
00:29:31
moving
00:29:32
really far left and taking advantage of
00:29:34
uh the trump bump in their ratings i'm
00:29:36
curious you kind of left out fox news
00:29:38
kind of mastering and rupert murdoch
00:29:41
they kind of created this playbook in a
00:29:43
way
00:29:44
and the left copied it isn't that
00:29:46
basically how it happened they people
00:29:48
saw wow
00:29:49
fox media is just making so much fox
00:29:52
news if it was making so much money by
00:29:54
picking a side that the new york times
00:29:56
and msnbc etc all just said you know
00:29:59
what we might as well pick the other
00:30:00
side and just take this playbook and get
00:30:02
the money that's kind of what happened
00:30:03
isn't it
00:30:05
yeah i mean i wrote a book about this
00:30:07
called hate inc um which yeah that's
00:30:10
basically basically the thesis is that
00:30:12
fox pioneered a new way to make money in
00:30:14
media which is sort of like the audience
00:30:17
optimization model like you you pick a
00:30:19
group
00:30:20
um a demographic and then you try to
00:30:22
dominate it by feeding it news that you
00:30:24
know that those people are going to
00:30:25
respond to
00:30:27
that
00:30:28
that was never the the way things worked
00:30:30
before for an ordinary news agency they
00:30:32
would they would just cover what they
00:30:34
thought was important and you know try
00:30:36
to do that has anybody stayed neutral
00:30:38
matt i mean like if you look at reuters
00:30:40
or ap it's clear the new york times
00:30:42
msnbc they've just gone full subscribe
00:30:45
to us if you hate trump
00:30:46
you know we're going to give you what
00:30:48
you want but is there anybody in the
00:30:50
middle still man well i think that's one
00:30:52
of the reasons why you're seeing sub
00:30:54
stack do well right is
00:30:56
it's not so much that it's
00:30:59
left or right or it's just that there's
00:31:02
most people are not partisans most
00:31:04
people live somewhere in the middle
00:31:06
right and and have
00:31:08
opinions that are all over the place and
00:31:10
they cannot stand turning on the
00:31:12
television and knowing exactly what
00:31:15
they're going to say ahead of time and
00:31:17
so they're looking for someplace that's
00:31:19
that's different where you have
00:31:21
differences of opinion and that's that's
00:31:22
why i think independent media is doing
00:31:24
better than ever i mean the most
00:31:26
influential person in in media even
00:31:28
though
00:31:30
the the
00:31:31
part of the media never talks about him
00:31:33
because he's not part of them is without
00:31:36
question joe rogan he speaks to more
00:31:38
people who are under you know 85 years
00:31:41
old
00:31:42
which is the cable audience than
00:31:44
anybody on television by far and it's
00:31:47
because as matt just said you cannot pin
00:31:49
him down ideologically nor is he does he
00:31:52
have fealty to any one political faction
00:31:55
or certainly to any political party he's
00:31:57
just a curious person sometimes on the
00:32:00
left and sometimes on the right and
00:32:01
sometimes neither exactly like most
00:32:03
americans i mean it's such a great point
00:32:06
glenn and in fact if you were going to
00:32:08
pin him if you just looked at how he
00:32:10
voted he'd be a democrat and the fact
00:32:12
that the democrats have
00:32:15
joe rogan and elon musk having been
00:32:17
their
00:32:18
supporters and voting for them for
00:32:20
decades and they're too stupid to pull
00:32:22
them into their party
00:32:24
is just sure if they do the opposite
00:32:26
they say
00:32:27
no joe rogan we know that you love
00:32:29
bernie sanders the most far-left
00:32:30
candidate ever to be viable in decades
00:32:33
but even though you love him we're going
00:32:34
to demand that you're our enemy and call
00:32:36
you a far-right fanatic even though you
00:32:39
don't think you are yeah we're going to
00:32:41
demand that bernie sanders
00:32:43
renounce joe rogan's endorsement
00:32:48
that's our plan for winning the election
00:32:50
exactly i mean sacks
00:32:53
as much as you and i go at it with like
00:32:55
how absolutely horrific the republican
00:32:57
party is i mean the democrats are so
00:33:01
incompetent to not court the two most
00:33:04
influential people in america today joe
00:33:07
rogan and elon musk
00:33:09
i mean it's
00:33:10
they're they're alienating them they're
00:33:12
radicalizing them away from them is it's
00:33:14
even worse i mean is there any i mean
00:33:16
sex is just flabbergasted but is there
00:33:18
any way glenn you can comment on this
00:33:19
and explain what you think the democrats
00:33:21
are thinking
00:33:23
or are they just not thinking
00:33:24
strategically about winning elections
00:33:26
i you know i think i think in addition
00:33:29
to what you guys just talked about in
00:33:31
terms of nbc or msnbc and cnn copying
00:33:34
the model there has been a radical
00:33:36
change in the composition of the
00:33:37
republican party ideologically because
00:33:39
of trump not because trump is some sort
00:33:41
of like
00:33:42
disciplined political theorist or deep
00:33:44
thinker but because
00:33:46
he ushered in as david was saying
00:33:48
earlier he ran in 2016 in opposition to
00:33:52
bush cheney foreign policy in opposition
00:33:54
to reagan economics he railed against
00:33:56
the power of large corporations at the
00:33:58
expense of the working person something
00:34:00
you never would have heard from reagan
00:34:02
but he also ushered in a lot of
00:34:05
hostility toward agencies like the cia
00:34:07
and the nsa and the fbi
00:34:09
something that had always been the
00:34:11
province of the left and so now you have
00:34:13
an enormous amount of space open on the
00:34:15
right for
00:34:17
all kinds of views that had previously
00:34:19
been closed and i think there's just a
00:34:20
lot more vibrancy on the right a lot
00:34:23
more internal debate whereas in the
00:34:25
democratic party it's just a very much
00:34:27
you're either with us or you're against
00:34:28
us mindset and any deviation as we were
00:34:31
talked about at the beginning
00:34:32
automatically results in them
00:34:34
proclaiming either enemy which doesn't
00:34:35
seem like a very effective way of doing
00:34:37
politics to me okay let's take a quick
00:34:39
question from the audience let's talk
00:34:41
about elon behind his back before he
00:34:43
joins what's your guys's take is he
00:34:45
serious is he going to buy it and what
00:34:47
is you know what do you think the
00:34:48
fallout's going to be you know i don't
00:34:50
know if he's going to buy it or not i
00:34:52
think that
00:34:53
i haven't really gone into the details
00:34:55
of that but what i do think is
00:34:56
fascinating is the reaction
00:34:58
uh by people in media to even the
00:35:01
proposition that he might
00:35:03
uh by twitter these are people who have
00:35:05
been absolutely comfortable with you
00:35:08
know a handful of people controlling uh
00:35:12
you know 95 to 98 percent of the media
00:35:15
distribution
00:35:16
in this country you know for years now
00:35:18
they never ever once complained about it
00:35:21
at any time you ever complain about
00:35:22
censorship they say oh that's not
00:35:24
censorship that this is a private
00:35:26
platform they can do whatever they want
00:35:28
uh that's that's always been the
00:35:30
response suddenly elon musk comes along
00:35:32
and it's oh my god the the the threat of
00:35:35
an oligarch taking over a media platform
00:35:38
what are we ever going to do there are
00:35:40
columns like that in the washington post
00:35:42
which is owned by jeff bezos
00:35:44
i mean
00:35:45
exactly
00:35:46
the idea
00:35:48
and isn't the
00:35:49
new york times run by a family
00:35:52
for
00:35:52
that's not really that poor yeah
00:35:55
five generations all right we'll take a
00:35:56
final question from the audience
00:35:59
so i actually agree with a lot of what's
00:36:01
been said here
00:36:02
and one of my questions is you know we
00:36:05
were talking about is trump even
00:36:06
ideologically a republican
00:36:08
my question is as long as
00:36:10
one of them is winning the republicans
00:36:12
or the democrats aren't both of them
00:36:14
winning like do you guys have any
00:36:16
thoughts on that okay i didn't hear the
00:36:18
quote as long as one as long as one of
00:36:20
them the republicans or democrats are
00:36:21
winning are they collectively winning i
00:36:23
guess shouldn't there be a third party i
00:36:25
mean isn't that the issue that we're
00:36:27
it's such a binary polarized system
00:36:30
i think uh glenn said in the middle that
00:36:32
we're really all more moderates that's
00:36:34
my belief but uh just curious no it's i
00:36:37
mean it's a great you know i think um
00:36:39
probably the worst media myth is that
00:36:41
the two parties
00:36:43
can never get along there's no more
00:36:45
bipartisanship they're so radically
00:36:47
different they can't agree on anything
00:36:48
when the reality is they agree on most
00:36:50
things this is that the only things we
00:36:52
hear about are the times when they
00:36:53
disagree
00:36:54
but overwhelmingly on foreign policy on
00:36:56
economic policy obama himself said
00:36:59
the two parties are essentially playing
00:37:01
within the 40-yard line so the entire
00:37:03
rest of the playing field is basically
00:37:05
not part of the political process
00:37:07
because they have the same fundamental
00:37:08
beliefs and i think one of the reasons
00:37:10
why trump was such a shock to the system
00:37:13
was not because the trump administration
00:37:15
itself was a deviation from american
00:37:17
political tradition it wasn't but
00:37:19
because some of the things he said like
00:37:20
questioning nato and whether it has
00:37:22
viability
00:37:24
was designed to undermine that
00:37:26
bipartisan consensus but i think in
00:37:28
general you're right that the
00:37:30
establishment wings of both parties are
00:37:32
far more in agreement with one another
00:37:34
than they are different um and i think
00:37:36
you're also right that as long as those
00:37:39
two
00:37:40
wings of each party continue to trade
00:37:42
power the rolling cost in the united
00:37:44
states is is very happy
00:37:47
all right let's give it up for glenn
00:37:48
mack thank you everybody
00:37:53
let your winners ride
00:37:55
rain man david
00:38:00
said we open source it to the fans and
00:38:02
they've just gone crazy with it
00:38:03
[Music]
00:38:12
besties
00:38:15
[Music]
00:38:36
we need to get
00:38:38
back
00:38:41
[Music]
00:38:46
i'm going on
00:38:48
[Music]
