This week, we invited Tim Miller — the repentant former Republican operative and author of Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell — on the Dead Cat podcast to talk about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the upcoming midterm elections.
Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan and I talk with Miller about Peter Thiel-backed Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. (FiveThirtyEight gives Vance a 78% chance of winning and Masters a 33% chance.)
We discuss the populist future of the Republican Party and mourn the languishing low-taxes-at-any-cost wing of the Republican Party.
Give it a listen
Read the automated transcript
Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe
00:00:05
Welcome. So what kind of salad hey
00:00:13
everybody Welcome to Dead cat Tom and Eric here no Katie this
00:00:16
week she is off electing a new pope so we don't have her but
00:00:21
this week we're talking politics we've got Tim Miller here
00:00:24
political Insider GOP strategist author former Former GOP track
00:00:30
strategists. I'm sorry, we're going to leave
00:00:32
that all in, though. Author writer at large at the
00:00:35
bulwark. I just added that one outspoken.
00:00:37
Trump critic. I mostly pulling from your
00:00:39
Wikipedia. But is there anything else I
00:00:41
should have included there? I have a show on Snapchat called
00:00:43
not my party. I have a I'm a Snapchat content
00:00:46
creator now. Okay, you know, father, Oakland
00:00:50
residents, Snapchat, Snapchat came to me, the dollars.it, is
00:00:54
it is great. It is great.
00:00:56
Actually, I'd love it. I know that, you know, it's not
00:00:58
cool to be, you know. On Snapchat if you're 38 or
00:01:01
whatever. And it doesn't feel like it's
00:01:03
doing that great. But there are many daily active
00:01:06
users who are teens and so if I get recognized on the street
00:01:11
there's only two groups of people that will say hello to me
00:01:13
like 58 year old women and Whole Foods.
00:01:17
Tough to know me from MSNBC, right?
00:01:19
Or Sara otte. Yeah or 16 year old model un
00:01:23
boys who watch the Snapchat shit, I love those.
00:01:26
Those are my two demos. Do you think you have more
00:01:29
influence over? Her like who do you think you
00:01:30
really? I think though I think the mom's
00:01:32
I think I got more inputs over the moms.
00:01:34
Yeah. But I would like to say that the
00:01:36
answer was the 16 year old Bobby on boys, but they're all
00:01:39
independent minded. I think it's the moms who I've
00:01:41
got wrapped around my finger, they all want me to date their
00:01:44
son or daughter. Uh-huh.
00:01:46
That's the best Whole Foods conversation.
00:01:48
Yeah, I want to say, quickly, it may not be cool to have a
00:01:50
Snapchat, show a 38. It is very cool to write about
00:01:52
Snapchat when you're 37 38. So really, I want to, I want to
00:01:55
make that as a bunch of anchor like I concur with that.
00:01:58
Yeah, there. Anyway, so This is supposed to
00:02:00
be our politics episode, we got our midterms preview and the
00:02:04
role that Tech in Tech money has played in the campaign.
00:02:07
But let me, look, we're recording this episode on a
00:02:10
Friday. And at 1900 hours last night,
00:02:14
Zero Hour arrived and the walls of Twitter were permanently
00:02:17
breached. The Barbarians of enter the
00:02:20
gate. He's like he's firing people
00:02:22
heads on Stakes right now, outside Twitter and Market
00:02:25
Street, but, yeah, Ilan owns the company.
00:02:27
Now, the prisons have been emptied, the scores.
00:02:29
Have canceled miscreants are hooting, and hollering and
00:02:33
shooting guns up in the air as they're all being let back onto
00:02:36
the platform. So I guess we should just start
00:02:39
right there. I mean, what do we have to say
00:02:40
about an Elon own Twitter and the free for all that he has
00:02:43
promised to unleash on the world?
00:02:46
Yeah, I think that it's not going to be as fun as you think.
00:02:48
It's going to be though. He seems to have fun and shitty
00:02:50
situations a lot. So maybe he'll make the best of
00:02:53
it but I wrote about. Do you guys are you guys
00:02:55
familiar with the website? Get her very popular, social
00:02:58
media site. Getter I spent all my time for
00:03:01
far-right white nationalist. Yeah, I wrote an article last
00:03:04
year headlined getter by the pussy.
00:03:06
If you want to Google it that, that explored a very
00:03:10
traumatizing, our that I spent on getter looking at all of the
00:03:13
weird porn and like racial slurs.
00:03:16
And the thing is that I content moderation is very unfun, and it
00:03:21
is very challenging, and I think the decisions are not as it's
00:03:25
much easier to complain about content, moderation and to
00:03:28
moderate content. And so I think that Elon is in
00:03:31
for a rocky or time than he expects on that front.
00:03:35
A lot of these decisions are not that clear.
00:03:37
Do you think he will like tear down the floodgates and deal
00:03:40
with it? Or do you think he'll come to
00:03:42
Jesus pretty fast? And be like, oh my God, this is
00:03:44
gonna be a mess if I try really unleash.
00:03:46
Well, he's already having to reckon with, you know, with
00:03:49
advertisers and the fact that if you turn that place into a
00:03:51
cesspool, it's incredibly unappealing to the people that
00:03:54
keep the fucking lights on. So that's all really is.
00:03:57
Always Craigslist, can an unmodified Did cite survive.
00:04:01
I mean, I guess, Craigslist still survives.
00:04:03
But do people use it anymore? Like, no, you know, because it
00:04:06
becomes scam artists and white nationalist and porn, there's
00:04:09
already plenty of porn on Twitter and so I, you know, I
00:04:13
last time I tried to buy tickets for A Warrior's game on
00:04:15
Craigslist. I got scammed.
00:04:17
Okay, so people don't use this shit anymore and people stopped
00:04:19
using Twitter and advertise will stop advertising on Twitter.
00:04:22
So it does become a problem. He's gonna have to decide what
00:04:24
to do about Donald Trump here. You know, I think that they'll
00:04:27
probably do away with some of the stuff.
00:04:29
That I didn't really think that was that valuable that Twitter
00:04:32
tried to do to, you know, calm down critics.
00:04:35
Like, you know, random Twitter fact checks of things, right?
00:04:40
And like, I don't think any of that stuff.
00:04:41
Was that useful in the first place?
00:04:43
I'm sure we'll get rid of some of that and they'll be, you
00:04:45
know, more of a free-for-all to say untrue things about
00:04:49
vaccines. And do you think not as sort of
00:04:52
a whisper of the right who can speed up to the left?
00:04:55
Like, do you think he will win over right-leaning people?
00:04:59
On Twitter. I mean like Trump has a
00:05:01
competing you know, network with true social.
00:05:04
I guess Trump will come back just for the audience but I
00:05:07
mean, do you think he'll be able to sort of keep up the act of
00:05:11
being on team right way? Yeah, I think so because it's
00:05:15
super easy to keep up the act of being on team right-wing right
00:05:18
now because it's just an oppositional nature towards
00:05:22
Elites that trigger, right, trigger.
00:05:23
And so yeah. So he can just kind of focus on
00:05:26
complaining still about other left-wing Elites And that will
00:05:30
keep him in the good. Graces of the maggot types.
00:05:33
You know, he already has replied to cat turd today letting him
00:05:36
know that he's looking into his shadow band sleep.
00:05:39
Everybody like this is on the case he's looking into cat.
00:05:44
Imagine being a mid-level executive at Twitter and getting
00:05:47
an email today from Elan that's like hey could you please
00:05:49
investigate the captured Shadow bam.
00:05:51
It says something sir. At least you finally have an
00:05:54
answer to the question of, what did you get done this week?
00:05:56
It's like, well, I unbanned cat turd.
00:05:58
Oh, we sure can't over Zach. Shadow band or did they just not
00:06:01
have, you know, that engaging of content, right?
00:06:04
The guy has like I think somebody was saying, as 800
00:06:06
followers or something it was like just angry that he's not
00:06:09
getting enough engagement. Well, that's the issue.
00:06:11
I think I mean that, you know, like the Q&A on moment when
00:06:13
Trump finally, you know, had to step down and Biden came in and
00:06:16
you realize that the prophecy wasn't true.
00:06:18
I wonder how much of the prophecy not being true with the
00:06:20
shadow band people. They'll have to reckon with
00:06:22
that, that units, like eels in charge, and I'm still not
00:06:24
getting the engagement. I thought I should be getting,
00:06:26
maybe this wasn't about like a giant left wing so it can Valley
00:06:30
conspiracy. I think they'll find other
00:06:32
things to, you know, feel aggrieved about.
00:06:35
And I think that they probably will be a little bit more of a
00:06:37
bump and engagement because some people, I don't know how many,
00:06:40
but, you know, they always some meaningful number of people that
00:06:42
come back from getter and truth and parlor and either do both or
00:06:47
return to the site. You know, I'm sure that they'll
00:06:49
do I like Tyler. I think has 25 right.
00:06:51
Da. Yeah.
00:06:52
But if you're talking about one of these people, if you're a
00:06:54
conservative media Tweeter you know who like tweets complaining
00:06:58
about the liberal, Idiots and like you are getting 12 retweets
00:07:02
and now you're getting 18 like yo, I got right.
00:07:05
You know my message is spreading now so I I think that they'll be
00:07:08
so modest. Yeah, won't do anything for like
00:07:11
the bottom line of Twitter. The number of people that come
00:07:14
back right before the users, you know, to assuage them.
00:07:17
You know, you already saying today, people feel very gleeful
00:07:20
to like, you know, tweet racial slurs and like make fun of, you
00:07:24
know, tell people to learn to code and all that sort of stuff.
00:07:27
So like they will feel, they'll be as brief.
00:07:29
Bump of endorphins. What do you make of the argument
00:07:32
that moderates tend to like content?
00:07:35
Moderation, more an Elan has positioned this as sort of
00:07:39
simultaneously like a moderate Crusade and a sort of protect
00:07:44
the right Crusade, how do you see those two things
00:07:48
intersecting? Do you think he's going to end
00:07:50
up serving the middle who doesn't want to see like the
00:07:53
n-word in their thieves? Or he's going to know that his
00:07:56
core constituency is sort of the troll crowd and he needs to keep
00:07:59
Pretty close. Yeah, I actually don't know that
00:08:02
there is as much distance as the question would make it seem
00:08:04
because here's why there are two groups of moderates, right?
00:08:07
There's my group right, which is the, you know, folks that left
00:08:11
the Republican party over Trump. You know that have generally,
00:08:15
you know, whatever classically liberal moderate Centrist views
00:08:18
and like care about things like democracy and norms and such.
00:08:21
We're not going to like the changes that Elon is making
00:08:24
okay. But when Ilan uses the word
00:08:26
moderate, that's on, who's talking about Elon is talking
00:08:29
about About Joe Rogan moderates, right?
00:08:31
Like people that were like are also for Bernie and kind of for
00:08:34
trying, right? And line.
00:08:36
Good hair. Use that coalesce around random
00:08:41
candidates and like, whatever mood, I have it in me.
00:08:45
That's honestly how most normal people are, maybe not most, but
00:08:48
a lot of normal. People don't really align
00:08:50
themselves to parties or candidates.
00:08:51
They're just like, I believe in. I don't know gun rights and also
00:08:54
that the, you know, we should be nicer to trans people.
00:08:57
Yeah, exactly. So he just so he's like a real.
00:08:59
Canary moderate, right? Which is like I'm questions
00:09:02
about vaccines but I also, you know, I'm not a religious nut
00:09:06
but I also, you know what I mean?
00:09:07
And we can get into this in wear teal and all those other guys
00:09:10
are. So I just I think that it is a
00:09:12
different type of group that he's speaking to, which are
00:09:16
people with like heterodox kind of radical heterodox views.
00:09:19
They are also moderate the same way I am.
00:09:21
But we disagree on everything right, but we're both moderate
00:09:24
in the sense that we're not like in line with, whatever the
00:09:27
generic view is from the Predominant political parties,
00:09:31
but who is the enemy? Then for the right wing.
00:09:33
Now we know at least on Twitter, I mean they had such a perfect
00:09:36
foil when they could say, you know, these are the lives of
00:09:38
Silicon Valley that are stopping me from reaching my, you know,
00:09:41
god-given audience. But at this point with him and
00:09:44
charge, I mean, they need something, right?
00:09:45
I mean, that's the core of I've got great news for you, Tom.
00:09:48
Yeah. Is it me you?
00:09:49
Yeah. Yeah, you you're the enemy now.
00:09:51
That's yeah. She's gonna be huge for my
00:09:53
follower count because I'm the smallest of the three here, so
00:09:56
I'd be glad to bring it on. That's fine.
00:09:58
I don't know if you Particular, but meet the media, I mean,
00:10:01
like, they'll always be people to be aggrieved about on Twitter
00:10:05
that's just not. They will no longer be able to
00:10:07
be aggrieved about the Twitter Executives, but that's just one
00:10:10
category. Okay?
00:10:11
I think that some people will be upset with you on but again
00:10:13
eventually you kind of have to just realize who's on your side
00:10:16
and join that side, right? And I think that there will
00:10:18
probably be some decisions that he on makes it.
00:10:20
They don't like. But the overwhelming majority of
00:10:23
these people are not people that have like broadly defined like
00:10:27
very specific policy views about exactly.
00:10:29
Lee, what type of content moderation should be done on
00:10:32
these big platforms? Like their views are just there,
00:10:35
is this group of people that I hate?
00:10:37
And so I'm going to focus on on that and that is what drives me
00:10:41
and what motivates me and that group of people is not Ilan.
00:10:44
I appreciate that. You're the ex conservative and
00:10:46
your takeaways. Their reasoning is dumber than
00:10:49
you think it is a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean I don't, I
00:10:53
don't always have anything over the past seven years.
00:10:56
The made you think that it was were validating what it's yours.
00:10:59
From the others. There's at least of when he was
00:11:01
once on the other. Dispel just one thing that I
00:11:04
have to say, is that in this speech, he talked about the
00:11:07
concern about the right, going into now Peter, chill smart.
00:11:11
Not like the people that are complaining about twitter.com
00:11:14
and he talked about nihilistic negation and that's just a fancy
00:11:17
way of saying, like we just believe in nothing, we are
00:11:21
oppositional to whatever the, you know, conventional wisdom,
00:11:26
Elite narrative, status quo, whatever buzz word, you want to
00:11:28
use is And like, Peter was right about that.
00:11:31
It was like a self criticism of the right that he is trying to
00:11:34
encourage them to have more, you know, Solutions oriented policy
00:11:38
views. And so what he hasn't quite
00:11:39
realized is that like the people that are supporting and
00:11:42
following all of his like, various projects on this front,
00:11:45
don't actually have that or care about it because he lives in a
00:11:48
like a rich person's bubble on the coasts.
00:11:50
But he identified the problem. I supposed to come up with it
00:11:53
though. I felt like that speech.
00:11:55
Yeah, it's like oh, 90% of it is like him shitting on California
00:11:59
and him. A nihilist.
00:12:00
And then the last like ten percent is like, oh, by the way,
00:12:03
we should probably have like a positive policy View and it's
00:12:06
like, aren't you? Isn't that what sort of the
00:12:08
intellectual? Well, I mean looked I leave.
00:12:10
It's him as you know, the X GOP political consultant isn't that
00:12:13
standard structure for a speech? You know, you want to tear down
00:12:16
the other side and the last two seconds be like and also we
00:12:19
should do good things and that's your applause line.
00:12:21
Know if that's the standard as a, certainly, a standard
00:12:24
structure for a populist demagogue speech, I worked for
00:12:26
moderate technocrats. I didn't write it kind of
00:12:28
speeches like that. But yeah, I mean sure there's
00:12:32
something to that but my point is that like he identified a
00:12:35
real problem there at the end. Right?
00:12:37
But like I think he either doesn't realize or just doesn't
00:12:40
want to admit is that the underlying element of that is
00:12:44
that the people that they're appealing to aren't looking for
00:12:48
the solutions, right? Like that's not what they're
00:12:51
interested in and if he started a, you know, and he has done
00:12:55
some of the stuff like that, you know, teal non-profit for, you
00:12:58
know, populist. He's studying Solutions like
00:13:01
nobody's going to fucking tweet that shit.
00:13:03
All right. Nobody wants to read the white
00:13:05
paper about how they can find a different solution than
00:13:08
California has to solving the housing crisis problem.
00:13:13
The group of people who care about that finding Solutions,
00:13:15
going back to our two different kinds of moderates, are my kind
00:13:18
of moderates, right? Like the technocratic neoliberal
00:13:20
moderates, who are like frustrated, you know who works
00:13:23
briefly aligned with teal and sacks on getting rid of Chase
00:13:28
and you know trying to Change. Some of the ways that some of
00:13:31
the cities are being run. Like they're the ones that care
00:13:33
about Solutions, like the reactionaries that are upset
00:13:36
about Twitter and are said about content moderation.
00:13:38
Like, those people are not interested in that, so you've
00:13:41
given us your moderate sort of framework.
00:13:43
Yep. What is your view of the
00:13:44
Republican Elite right now? I mean I feel it used to be the
00:13:47
case that it was like, okay, the Republican Elites willing to put
00:13:51
up with you know the urbanist Republican an elite especially
00:13:54
is willing to put up with some homophobia and racism in
00:13:56
exchange for low taxes and a sense that That abortion is
00:14:00
never going to make progress. And so like, who cares and that
00:14:03
like anyone who's Savvy knows that this is all about low
00:14:06
regulation and taxes. And if you're the type of person
00:14:10
who's going to get so upset about, like a bunch of people,
00:14:12
like, saying things that aren't even going to be implemented.
00:14:16
Like, you're an idiot, that's sort of how I make sense of the
00:14:19
old Republican Elite, which seems so much nicer now.
00:14:22
I think at the time that I hated them but now I'm like man if
00:14:25
only they were willing to sell out all their principles so they
00:14:28
could pay low taxes at That would make sense.
00:14:31
What is the Republican Elite right now watch?
00:14:34
Because even Peter teal is trying to incite some of the
00:14:36
populism. He's not just trying to do this
00:14:38
just for low taxes, right? Yeah, well, it kind of depends
00:14:41
on what you mean by Elite. Like, at this point, to me the
00:14:45
Mitch McConnell's of the world are like yesterday's men and
00:14:49
some of them realize that in some of them don't and like
00:14:51
those are the people that you are describing who are still
00:14:54
around and like, they were just willing to make greater
00:14:56
sacrifices on the altar of native as Then you know, culture
00:15:01
War. Then like those of us who bailed
00:15:03
over Trump were right. He held the Republic together,
00:15:06
you know. Yeah.
00:15:07
They're all being displaced though.
00:15:08
If you just look at the types of candidates that are running
00:15:11
right now, you know TL coif like Masters your the JD Vance's like
00:15:16
Herschel Walker's ridiculous. But like you know the folks that
00:15:18
are winning primaries, these Republican states, their deal is
00:15:21
different. They're not actually even that
00:15:23
interested in low taxes or you know, smaller government.
00:15:27
In fact, they Dislike capitalism to a lot of extent.
00:15:32
We certainly dislike big corporations.
00:15:34
I mean, that's the reflection of low capitalism though, right?
00:15:38
I mean, that's a Tucker Carlson view that like these guys are
00:15:40
all forcing us to use the pronouns, that we didn't feel.
00:15:43
Yes. We had to discuss all that much
00:15:44
before hand. Yeah, correct.
00:15:45
And so you can see DeSantis trying to embody that even Marco
00:15:48
Rubio, who is part of the older, you know, kind of way that you
00:15:51
describe things Eric isn't it has not changed his rhetoric
00:15:54
towards this. So now like the Primacy of their
00:15:57
fight is the culture War. And this is I think what some
00:16:00
people misunderstand what's happening on the right.
00:16:02
Is a, there's this sense that like, okay, these are just, this
00:16:05
is like the last gasp of these old Boomers, like a culture war.
00:16:09
And like we had a little bit too much progress with a black
00:16:11
president. And you know, as kids using
00:16:14
different, pronouns and gay marriage, and all this stuff,
00:16:16
and now there's a backlash to this, but that will go away.
00:16:19
That's not it. The memes are the ideology.
00:16:22
Yeah, there's the new group that is displacing the old group is
00:16:24
actually centering the culture War even more, right?
00:16:27
And like, that is the The motivating fight for people who
00:16:32
are Republicans right now, it's something that I think that teal
00:16:35
and his crowd get instinctually and maybe they don't like every
00:16:39
element of it but like, they understand it, I think better
00:16:42
than, you know, the old Republican guard does some of
00:16:45
whom who are trying to catch up and I think that we're moving
00:16:48
towards a Republican party, that looks more like what teal wants
00:16:51
and looks more like what European conservative parties
00:16:54
are which are culturally conservative on economic stuff,
00:16:58
you know, maybe? More conservative than the
00:17:00
Socialists but like certainly not you know, free-market
00:17:04
thatcherism or anything like that.
00:17:05
Like that's all gone. You know more government
00:17:08
control, punishing, foes more isolationist.
00:17:11
You know. So look at brexit look at or
00:17:14
Bond. Look at Le Pen.
00:17:16
Like that's where the Republican party is going.
00:17:19
Like it's not going to look like the old classical liberal.
00:17:22
You know, Reagan Thatcher at something and it's moving
00:17:24
towards this. Other thing that jettisons
00:17:26
really, the fiscal conservative element to it, And then
00:17:29
obviously, the Global Leadership element.
00:17:31
Do you think they do, like, you think they can really abandon
00:17:34
low taxes, and you think they would Embrace unions?
00:17:38
Probably not low taxes. They will probably won't
00:17:41
abandon, but I certainly, will abandon like Pro business
00:17:45
regulatory elements, right. And I think that low taxes will
00:17:50
not be Central to it. I don't think that you'll see a
00:17:53
ton of tax hiking except for tax hiking, that owns the libs.
00:17:58
Like, you know, getting rid of The exemption well because
00:18:01
they're also not the technocrats, so they don't
00:18:03
actually have to balance the budget either, so it's so it's
00:18:06
like, fuck that. What's the point of tax hiking
00:18:08
and less you're just going to tax hike, like, getting rid of
00:18:10
the state-based tax deduction, like to own the, you know, those
00:18:14
of us who live in California and New York and stuff, you know,
00:18:17
like, they'll be certain types of targeted tax hikes.
00:18:20
That attack people. They don't like just any taxes
00:18:22
that went towards funding urals. I imagine her in danger at this
00:18:25
point. Yeah, that sounds like a top
00:18:26
issue. You worked for McCain, right?
00:18:28
Yeah, given. You're shitting on Republicans.
00:18:30
Let's remind The Listener a little.
00:18:32
You have some real Republican credentials here or how long
00:18:36
were you on team elephant? Yeah.
00:18:38
Sorry while I'm inside, I was a kid.
00:18:40
I started working in politics in 98, Ron, a Governor's campaign.
00:18:43
That's not age me to. That's not do kind of quick math
00:18:45
on that that I worked for McCain and 08 in 2012.
00:18:49
I worked for John Huntsman in the primary, who is the most
00:18:51
moderate. Yeah, Rhino cock squish
00:18:53
candidate. And that I think that was like
00:18:55
the candidate, the best reflected, my world view, but
00:18:57
also the one who endorsed Trump Early on in 2016.
00:19:01
Yeah we had a we've had a falling out over that.
00:19:03
He also endorsed Mike Lee in a primary this week and I had a
00:19:06
lot of people message me. Like what's your boy doing?
00:19:08
Was like about my boy man, I begged him to join the
00:19:10
anti-trump after I was working on in 2016 refused to do it
00:19:14
because he wanted to be Trump's ambassador to something.
00:19:17
I don't, I don't know. He did, you got ambassador to
00:19:20
Russia? Great job, brother, Donald
00:19:22
Trump's and then I worked for Romney in the general after he
00:19:24
beat us in the primary and then jab in 2016 and I worked on the
00:19:28
GOP, autopsy. In 2012 that was like trying to
00:19:31
tell the party to bring back compassionate, conservatism that
00:19:34
didn't work out too well and I did a bunch of like, you know,
00:19:38
lower smaller races in between all that but those are the
00:19:40
presidential ones. I'm fascinated by the psychology
00:19:43
of conservative. So we sort of we touched on the
00:19:45
elite McConnell T little bit, I mean JD Vance is obviously
00:19:50
running and is a key candidate in the tech Louvre.
00:19:54
I assume you've read hillbilly eligibility.
00:19:58
Thank you. Look or watch the excellent
00:20:01
movie on Netflix, couldn't make it through the movie.
00:20:03
Is there any connection from the book to his like View today?
00:20:07
Or what do you make of the two people?
00:20:10
There's some connection that I think speaks to where the party
00:20:14
is going. And there's this old joke on the
00:20:16
right at least to say to make fun of you commies which was
00:20:19
like true Marxism has never been tried, you know like all these
00:20:23
guys want to be marks it's still sad they're like you know just
00:20:26
happens they all turned into genocides.
00:20:28
Well it was just an Accident like real Marxism.
00:20:31
We gonna try to exactly when you say, that's a joke.
00:20:33
I mean I literally hear that from people on the left, I do,
00:20:35
right? Yeah, I guess I guess.
00:20:37
It's like you guys say it in a mocking enough way?
00:20:39
Where it's like the same thing. Yeah, yeah.
00:20:46
There you go. And so I feel the same way about
00:20:49
conservative populism, which is that true conservative populism
00:20:53
has never been tried and probably is not doable for this
00:20:55
reason the JD Vance, embodies what I'm talking about which is
00:20:59
that Ways, the JD van slyke went on the, you know, Davos tour,
00:21:04
after he wrote that book, like sounded kind of a lot like Joe
00:21:07
manchin, like, in a lot of ways you could almost imagine him
00:21:11
running, it's like a conservative Democrat, right?
00:21:13
He was like, gradually conservative.
00:21:15
We have to care about rural people, you know, we shouldn't
00:21:17
be dismissing them. Telling them that they need to
00:21:19
learn how to code, like they also have responsibilities.
00:21:23
They need to be able to pull themselves up from their
00:21:24
bootstraps, but we need government, you know, level of
00:21:27
government support that kind of free market.
00:21:29
Republicans have been, you know, not willing to give in the past.
00:21:32
I mean, the but to the extent I read it, it's like 95%, this is
00:21:35
their fault culturally, but then to the extent, he has any
00:21:38
solution. The last five percent is like
00:21:41
maybe we could do some things with the government.
00:21:42
It's so realizes that there has to be some government.
00:21:46
Yeah. Right.
00:21:47
That's what solution is. A little bit more of a
00:21:48
government. Like the government can be more
00:21:51
involved, right? I'm element of concert, you
00:21:53
know, but the book definitely, maintained more personal
00:21:56
responsibility stuff than he has now, right, okay.
00:21:58
So, but What is the kernel of this pivot about where the party
00:22:03
is going right? Which is that, like,
00:22:04
laissez-faire capitalism is not popular?
00:22:07
You know, does not work and we can appeal to working-class
00:22:11
voters of all colors, but especially white voters, you
00:22:14
know, by appealing to their grievance and saying government,
00:22:16
Big Daddy, government can come help you too.
00:22:18
And so, when JD started the campaign that is kind of the
00:22:21
underlying element of it. It's like, I can be a more
00:22:24
populist government. The government can play more of
00:22:26
a constructive role kind of cultural conservative the Um is
00:22:30
again going back to the Twitter thing, these people aren't
00:22:33
looking for like policy, white papers about how we can move you
00:22:38
know welfare to work, you know. And that's how we can make
00:22:41
Medicaid more efficient or you know how we can add some tariffs
00:22:46
to certain countries so that we can build more widgets in
00:22:49
Mechanicsburg. Like they're like they don't
00:22:51
care about any of that. What they care about is that
00:22:53
they are mad at people that they feel like have, you know, agree.
00:22:59
I have left them behind and so JD's campaign goes from like
00:23:04
trying to address some of the legitimate Grievances, and come
00:23:07
up with solutions to it, to just mirroring.
00:23:10
They're illegitimate grievances about election fraud and covid
00:23:14
and fucking laugh. You guys are fucked up and you
00:23:16
need to fix your shit. He's like I hear you.
00:23:18
They were like we're not all right.
00:23:21
I did fuck you over the woman is the reason why your that your
00:23:27
life isn't going as well as it should is because Somebody in
00:23:30
Berkeley is saying that they have a day then pronouns, right?
00:23:33
Like, I like that. You don't even want that help.
00:23:35
So I, yeah. And I just think that that I
00:23:37
think the JD vanch like Evolution, kind of shows, like,
00:23:40
kind of where this is going. And as much as there might be
00:23:43
some people who try to put some policy, white papers around,
00:23:46
Maga conservatism like it really is just at its heart, you know,
00:23:50
about you know kind of baby burning people's grievances back
00:23:53
to him. Yeah.
00:23:54
And the people that have tried to, you know, write the white
00:23:57
papers and lend Have to Maga republicanism.
00:24:02
Don't seem to have all that much power within the party, or
00:24:04
they're just not very interesting people.
00:24:05
You know, you have like fuck, what's his name?
00:24:08
Josh, Holly was trying to do that for a while, right?
00:24:10
I mean he had that whole convention around trying to
00:24:12
build theological framework around trumpism and no one
00:24:17
really cares about him and he's probably going to I don't he's
00:24:19
gonna run and 24 either way, he's not going to make it very
00:24:22
far because he has no purchase the tech policy, you guys know
00:24:26
this better than me, but the technology is a great example of
00:24:28
this, right? It's like, oh, we're mad at
00:24:31
section 230 and we should punish the big tech companies.
00:24:34
Right? But then it's like Elon takes
00:24:35
over and he's like wait a minute.
00:24:36
Now you know they say on that letter that was sent out.
00:24:38
He's like I realized the importance of section 1030,
00:24:41
right? It's like they don't have any
00:24:42
actual. What they really want to do is a
00:24:44
moat and say that I feel like the big red guys are being mean
00:24:48
to us. Like they don't well have actual
00:24:50
like, oh, I think we should reform text and X y&z ways and
00:24:54
the people that do want that, you know, end up, you know, just
00:24:57
being extremely minor players. What's so funny about it to me
00:25:00
is I was just noticing and you know Google released their their
00:25:03
cue and in it they put in a new risk factor of all the different
00:25:06
regulatory legislation that could affect their business.
00:25:09
They added list like all the different things that have
00:25:11
passed in state houses, that could affect their business in,
00:25:14
some way or another. And I noticed that one of the
00:25:16
things in there was the DeSantis field that allows people to sue
00:25:19
tech companies for D platforming them.
00:25:21
I actually didn't even remember when that passed, it was
00:25:23
sometime last year but you know, like, look, this is a thing out
00:25:26
there, it could affect us. And I mean, there's no question
00:25:28
in my mind. Like if someone actually did Sue
00:25:31
under this law it would get appealed all the way up to the
00:25:33
Supreme Court and someone would need to make a, you know, a
00:25:36
judgment on whether or not. This is a violation of the First
00:25:39
Amendment which in my mind there's no way that it's not a
00:25:41
violation of the First Amendment.
00:25:43
You know, being allowed to sue someone for D platforming.
00:25:45
It's So absurd. But I don't know how fully they
00:25:48
thought any of this through, right?
00:25:49
It just felt really good at the time to sign a bill and tweet
00:25:52
about it and anger a bunch of what they assume.
00:25:54
You know, this idea of lives in Silicon Valley.
00:25:57
Yeah, DeSantis has signed like a cup.
00:25:59
Bills that are like this, that are certainly going to get
00:26:01
overturned. And that's just one of them if
00:26:03
you look at the examples of legal experts, but their PR
00:26:05
releases as bills, and the other thing is just, the whole thing
00:26:08
is preposterous and this is where I get even Crossways with
00:26:11
the left-liberal criticism. I've plenty Christians have big
00:26:14
Tech on the margins but the populist left criticism of like
00:26:18
how we need to, you know, use antitrust against that all those
00:26:21
things. It's just like, our on it.
00:26:23
Yeah. It's like I'm sorry.
00:26:25
We just have went through this huge test actually about whether
00:26:29
the Big tech companies are monopolies that need to be
00:26:32
broken up. And the answer is obviously, no,
00:26:34
this is like the Golden Age of Nazi social media sites, like
00:26:40
people who get, who given whatever D platform to have.
00:26:44
I like, they started three competing for competing media
00:26:47
companies that are all that all are doing bearings degrees of
00:26:52
fine. As far as businesses, maybe they
00:26:53
don't have, they are the size of whatever.
00:26:56
But, there's certainly, some market capitalism.
00:26:59
Arms are prolific. Yeah, therefore let Freddy.
00:27:02
This is the Golden Age of them. I mean, are they doing really
00:27:04
any worse than RC Cola is doing? Or like the smaller Niche Cola
00:27:08
companies competing against Coke and Pepsi?
00:27:10
I don't think so like they're doing fine.
00:27:11
So as you know, anyway like this is like it's all just
00:27:14
Preposterous but that's like they're not they don't run to
00:27:20
Santa's doesn't care if it is. Right.
00:27:22
If it you know if the law actually is upheld, do you think
00:27:26
the Republican Elites are I want to be fascists at the moment.
00:27:31
They know this mob is out of control, doesn't make any sense,
00:27:35
but they want to ride this thing.
00:27:36
You have already invoked or Bond.
00:27:39
Like do you think this is semi fascism full fascism or
00:27:43
obviously? Tyler Cowen wrote that piece
00:27:45
sort of analyzing the new right recently where he sort of I
00:27:50
thought he was almost he was too friendly.
00:27:52
I mean he he sort of concludes that the new right is totally
00:27:55
incoherent like we are but he's sort of like bed over backward
00:27:58
to read. Sort of anti elitist argument
00:28:01
through it that was meant to make sense.
00:28:04
I think there's no one really thinks.
00:28:05
It makes sense like anyway but it but do you think there are
00:28:08
fascists? It depends like you know, we get
00:28:12
into a semantic debate, right? It's like is Viktor Orban, a
00:28:15
fascist. I mean, I guess kind of use a
00:28:18
semi fascist. He's fat, he's fascistic in a
00:28:21
way that he's not like Putin or she, you know, I mean like there
00:28:25
aren't any Weger camps and Hungary, right?
00:28:28
And like, you can still Bill, you're not getting arrested for
00:28:31
tweeting. I don't like Viktor Orban in
00:28:33
Hungary, you know, and there's definitely some corrupt ability
00:28:37
of the courts and the media, right?
00:28:38
And more government control. So Jonathan Chait of the New
00:28:41
York Magazine went to the National conservative conference
00:28:44
where t l spoke. And I think in wrote about this
00:28:46
very smartly and he's like there's a lot of space between
00:28:49
like Reagan and Putin. I forget what the fashion to
00:28:53
Hitler maybe he is I forgot what the fastest example is like
00:28:55
there's a lot of space inside my passions space.
00:28:57
Right? And so yeah I think The
00:28:59
Republican Elites want to move to something like that.
00:29:03
I mean just finishing Disney. I get taken away Disney's tax
00:29:07
breaks because they you know had a lesbian kiss in a movie like
00:29:11
is that fascistic it's fresh its dick I guess it fascism.
00:29:15
I don't you know do the Republicans actually want to put
00:29:17
Lids in camps. Like I don't think so right.
00:29:19
But do they want to use? We should have to live in this
00:29:21
world where we're counting on like the goodness of their
00:29:25
hearts. We're at the end of the day,
00:29:27
they won't go too far. I mean I Feel like as soon as to
00:29:30
their hearts and efficiency of their, like, operationalize
00:29:33
them, right? It's like, I feel like they
00:29:35
would want to get a lot of this stuff done, but they literally
00:29:37
don't know how to motivate and like, operationalize.
00:29:40
The troops to do anything beyond, you know, Yas and I
00:29:43
don't mean to downplay that, right?
00:29:44
Like I think that that or bonds hungry is horrible.
00:29:46
Right. So I'm not trying to down but
00:29:48
I'm just trying to say like when you're trying to give a fair
00:29:49
assessment of what they want their goals are you know, it is
00:29:53
it is a like a quasi minority rule, you know, I know the
00:29:57
Republicans are not won a majority of popular.
00:29:59
Since 2004. So it's a quasi, minority rule,
00:30:02
it's controlled the courts. It's punishing enemies using
00:30:06
kind of tax code and Regulatory stuff.
00:30:07
It's demonizing marginalized groups, right?
00:30:10
So I call that stuff is bad, you know what I mean?
00:30:13
But I think that sometimes when people say oh they want fascism
00:30:16
they're like no, I literally they want to be Putin and I'm
00:30:19
like not sure. That's true.
00:30:20
I think that there's certainly some people you know Steven
00:30:23
Miller is pretty as prove out as fascistic as you can get the
00:30:27
look into you know what do you want to do?
00:30:29
With child separation and all that.
00:30:30
So, you know, there are elements of it but I think that that what
00:30:33
DeSantis is doing in Florida, is moving towards or bananas on as
00:30:38
kind of what they see as the future.
00:30:40
Yeah, we can have Paxton on next week to break down the anatomy
00:30:43
of fascism and and you know what falls into what definition, what
00:30:47
Robert Paxton, he wrote a kind of a seminal book about the
00:30:50
anatomy of fascism and helping to define the term in the 20th
00:30:53
century. It's a spin-off to look too
00:30:54
smart for this show. Yeah, Berto Echo.
00:30:58
Yeah, I read. You know, I Like a lot of books
00:31:00
for like a month after 2016 and so I vaguely remember, authors
00:31:04
and titles but that's a be kind of rely on all you rely on that
00:31:07
one month to sound. Smart.
00:31:08
Don't ya gasps. Yeah.
00:31:09
And like, it's fading more and more as days go by.
00:31:11
So don't ask me a single question about these books
00:31:13
Paxton is like 89 years old too, he's not coming on.
00:31:16
Okay, so we've already talked a lot about the candidates on the
00:31:19
right specifically, JD Vance and, you know, I mean basically
00:31:22
Trump picked him off of the scrap Heap in Ohio in or not the
00:31:26
scrap Heap. But he basically like pushed him
00:31:27
over the line in a way that He wasn't going to make it up to
00:31:30
that point. So he's clearly, you know, at
00:31:32
this point indebted to Trump and then the other obvious person in
00:31:35
that list who's also a Peter teal, acolyte is Blake Masters,
00:31:39
who we haven't talked that much about.
00:31:41
I want to have it set on the podcast here because I've said
00:31:43
it in group DM's and Eric is annoyed with me.
00:31:46
I think he's going to win in Arizona.
00:31:48
I know this is going against conventional wisdom and the
00:31:50
polls but I just find that to be the most absurd outcome, midterm
00:31:54
selection and making predictions.
00:31:55
I feel like I don't do you think there's Lakes Masters could get
00:31:59
A reservation at dorsia. I heard even get that reference.
00:32:02
Now you've ever its American Psycho, right?
00:32:05
Well, I'm very excited. Have you ever watched American
00:32:08
Psycho? Tom?
00:32:09
Yeah, let's just watch the movie.
00:32:12
He it's very creepy. His parallels with Patrick
00:32:14
Bateman the main character from American Psycho, just just
00:32:18
physically, or just like everything.
00:32:20
Just is actually the way he carries himself, not just yeah,
00:32:23
I don't know that it lies on any murders but yeah, no, no
00:32:28
emotions, the lack of Emotional. He's a Crazy Character to me
00:32:32
because, you know, in the tech world we were all aware of him.
00:32:34
We knew of him as the guy that I think he wrote 0 to 1.
00:32:37
Right. And you know he was elected the
00:32:39
notes for or whatever. Yeah.
00:32:41
I mean he's basically a professional blogger and kind of
00:32:44
I don't know what the word would be for Peter to what is your
00:32:46
take on Blake Masters to me, he's an incredible case of just
00:32:50
I mean he's an absolute zero you know no Charisma.
00:32:53
You know if he wasn't really a figure and it is running against
00:32:55
like an amazing candidate, right?
00:32:57
Mark Kelly. We're closed.
00:32:59
It's pretty good. He was an astronaut.
00:33:01
I don't know if he's an amazing. Wasn't it has an astronaut I
00:33:03
mean I haven't watched these debates but I would just think
00:33:06
an astronaut that's your dream candidate.
00:33:08
Yeah. I mean Mark Kelly isn't exactly
00:33:10
mr. Charisma himself.
00:33:11
He's okay. He's pretty fine, he's fine.
00:33:13
But he's obviously has a much more accomplished and better
00:33:15
life story than like Masters who took notes for Peter teal as
00:33:19
best we can tell. But ya know, he has zero cause I
00:33:22
went to see us doing the circus. It's show time show and we
00:33:25
enough said in Arizona, and I went down there and watched
00:33:28
Masters Arie Lake. And then Ted Cruz speak at
00:33:31
events and like, at mean, Masters makes Ted Cruz.
00:33:36
You know, look like one of the great orators of all time.
00:33:39
Oh my God, Asters has like, has literally nothing going from a
00:33:43
Christmas standpoint but Kari Lake is super talented and super
00:33:46
fasci and I think that she could maybe carry him across the line
00:33:49
a bit though. Just the crossover voting.
00:33:51
These days is pretty small. So depends on how she wins by.
00:33:54
So I've everything Masters could win, though.
00:33:56
I don't know if I'd be ready to predict that I I think both
00:33:59
those races are gonna be pretty close.
00:34:01
And yeah, I find him interesting because he is, he's done a
00:34:05
really good. You can tell that like Blake
00:34:08
Masters is like a dude from California who like has probably
00:34:14
like some like mainstream conservative views and like a
00:34:19
few weird, you know, contrarian takes just like all these
00:34:22
fucking Tech Pros do, right? But is trying to now fashioned
00:34:26
himself into like what he thinks.
00:34:28
I'm a God. Person should say right.
00:34:30
And so, you know, this is how you seen him struggle on the
00:34:33
abortion thing. You know, on the on the election
00:34:35
fraud Cindy was old like blog posts is like, a young
00:34:39
libertarian, right? Yeah.
00:34:41
We had no in sort of direct contrast, I mean, yeah, he's
00:34:44
like a monarchy and that right. Wasn't that is he dude, he was a
00:34:49
contrarian, bro, posting on message boards like for CrossFit
00:34:53
like that's all it was right, like he was probably just got
00:34:56
through, they were CrossFit message ways.
00:34:59
What's the reason for that? Like what it was the last
00:35:02
Bastion of free speech? He was their social Community.
00:35:05
Yeah, you feel you have a dog CrossFit but it's the most
00:35:08
uplifting Community, you can imagine.
00:35:09
No, he is searching for community.
00:35:11
And there are a lot of P. The CrossFit to Fascism pipeline
00:35:14
is actually pretty well-educated.
00:35:15
Yeah, I got Taylor dream so I didn't green, is also CrossFit.
00:35:19
That's true. That's yeah.
00:35:20
And shit across the store anyway.
00:35:24
Masters to me is like trying to figure out right?
00:35:26
And so the did you see the humiliating video of Tom Calling
00:35:29
him to tell him that he wasn't Tough Enough on the election
00:35:32
fraud. I want to drop that audio into
00:35:34
this podcast because it's really something.
00:35:36
I mean basically you know, he has Trump on speakerphone and
00:35:39
they're doing like a post debate recap and Trump.
00:35:41
Who I don't even think watched it other than the fact that he
00:35:44
said you know is like you weren't strong enough about
00:35:46
saying the election was a fraud. Yeah.
00:35:48
Yeah. How is your family?
00:36:00
She says, the election was rigged installment, you'll lose
00:36:04
if you got sake, Lose That Base, I'm not going soft.
00:36:08
And you can just tell that Masters is like despite the fact
00:36:11
that I can barely move Patrick Bateman, like, he's not a total
00:36:14
sociopath like Trump. Right Ike, he knows that the
00:36:17
election wasn't really stolen and you can just kind of see him
00:36:20
in the photo, intellectual way, like, trying to, like stretch to
00:36:25
find a way that you can say, the right thing without like totally
00:36:28
embarrassing. Seeing himself and just being
00:36:30
like, yes, I think that the Chinese bamboo ballots you know,
00:36:33
were at to blame here in Arizona.
00:36:35
Even though there have been five audits run by Republicans that
00:36:38
have all said it was fine, right?
00:36:39
Like like it's hard for him to get there and so he's struggling
00:36:42
to navigate it. But I think that the key insight
00:36:45
though for Masters is that he is at least not playing the game
00:36:50
that Eric was talking about at the start or it's like I really
00:36:53
care about tax cuts and and you know, all this other stuff is
00:36:57
fake and support of that like Is that what he's doing?
00:37:00
I key really cares about the the beasts that's best deal world
00:37:05
and the PayPal Mafia have with the woke cultural Elite.
00:37:09
And like, that's what he actually cares about.
00:37:11
Can't do anything else is just in support of, they're not even
00:37:14
going to like the legit Eric. Wemble, just like admitted that
00:37:17
he, this is a total tangent, but like, he admitted that he was
00:37:20
like afraid to criticize. The tomcod not bad.
00:37:23
Like, I just feel like whatever fires, they have burning about
00:37:26
cancel culture are like burning out right now.
00:37:29
You say that. But at the same time, you know,
00:37:30
Tucker Carlson label Taylor Lorenz, the ideological you
00:37:34
know, chief of the Biden White House.
00:37:36
Glenn Greenwald just tacked on Ryan Mac because Ryan Mac like
00:37:39
laughed at him on Twitter. You know it's amazing that it's
00:37:42
so proximate that it's just like Glenn Greenwald.
00:37:45
Just has to yell at you and then all of a sudden is fucking on
00:37:47
Tucker Carlson for the Hulk. I don't know what.
00:37:52
Yeah, dude. What is your greatest strength
00:37:53
of our own walls? Yeah.
00:37:54
Like what? Something like nine tweets about
00:38:00
me the other day because I appeared on Joy and read show
00:38:03
and he said he felt like that showed grave hypocrisy.
00:38:06
Why? Because Joy had said some
00:38:08
homophobic tweets or something a long time ago and then I kind of
00:38:12
did you think you could be making a lot more money?
00:38:14
Now if you double down on them like stuck with the Trump thing,
00:38:17
like sometimes I think I'm a sucker, I should just like go
00:38:19
in. I could be crushing it and
00:38:21
conservative world because it's such a low caliber of person.
00:38:25
Like, you could be running circles around these people and
00:38:28
yet, we Side to compete against other Democrats and it's like,
00:38:31
oh my God like it's too much competition.
00:38:33
I don't like I did you think about sticking it out?
00:38:36
I never thought about sticking it out with Ides.
00:38:39
I fucking hate down, I am like I have pulled Trump derangement
00:38:42
syndrome, like I hate him. I hate all these two, all these.
00:38:44
And I'm gonna be the old around the old man, and a senior
00:38:47
citizens home pointing my bony finger at other person in the
00:38:51
cafeteria being, like, that person was for Trump and I'm not
00:38:53
sit with them in the cafeteria and 2082, but so I would not but
00:38:58
that's And I just I preface this by saying I do not I do not want
00:39:03
or require any sympathy, I'm doing just fine.
00:39:04
I have a wonderful life in Oakland that the amount of money
00:39:08
that it was left on the table, by bailing is like extremely
00:39:11
substantial. And my friends who stuck around
00:39:14
you know, they like literally one was just telling me that the
00:39:16
day he was like dude you have no idea.
00:39:18
He's like people that are idiots are millionaires.
00:39:20
All right? That's because you know just the
00:39:23
amount of money flowing through these campaigns.
00:39:25
Also like the no competition thing is part of it.
00:39:29
But the amount of money that's flowing through these campaigns,
00:39:31
you know, both bottom up from Mega donors who are now spending
00:39:36
way more on small dollars than they were for Mitt Romney.
00:39:38
Like the amount of small dollar money coming into these
00:39:40
campaigns are to figure out some parties.
00:39:43
And yeah. And then and then top down from
00:39:45
the billionaire class and I like contrarian billionaire class.
00:39:48
So so you know they're doing they're doing well but that's
00:39:52
just part of life. That's part of, you know, I'm
00:39:55
supposed to be costly. I guess it's sort of.
00:39:57
It's how you get to feel good about.
00:39:58
That's ok, I'm going. Yoga and just kind of dealing
00:40:00
with that. Yeah, things happen to bad
00:40:02
people. That's you know, that's part of
00:40:04
life. It's a good life lesson.
00:40:05
Have you spent time with Peter to know?
00:40:08
I get a lot of calls for everybody that wants to write
00:40:10
Peter teal stories. They're just like you're gay.
00:40:12
You were a republican are, didn't you ever get invited
00:40:14
over? I don't know if I was Twinkie
00:40:16
enough for Peter to get invited to the house.
00:40:18
When I see pictures of the little crowd that surrounds him,
00:40:20
they have more muscles and our blonder than me.
00:40:24
So I just I don't know that I was ever picked out read a lot
00:40:27
into that question everybody. Ori or fossil.
00:40:31
He just knew that I was, I'm kind of the enemy.
00:40:33
You have to understand for these people should have spent more
00:40:35
time with Barry's Bootcamp. Apparently that's I should have
00:40:37
spent more time berries for these folks like the teal crowd,
00:40:41
like I'm really like the enemy like as much as the left is the
00:40:45
enemy Like the quote unquote neocon kind of like
00:40:49
establishment. Like I said we're both were
00:40:51
moderate and I don't say Peters moderate but our views are
00:40:54
different in opposite ways, right?
00:40:55
Like I was drawn to Republican stuff by like the US should A
00:40:59
Force for good in the world. You know, we should have less
00:41:02
government in our lives, like Peter was drawn to it for like
00:41:05
we should have culture War. The US should do less.
00:41:09
We should punish our enemies, right?
00:41:11
And so they looked at the like establishment Republican types
00:41:14
as the real real enemies and so, no, I don't.
00:41:17
We didn't have a leader like the bombings Parts.
00:41:21
Yeah, the we are on opposite sides of all those primaries.
00:41:23
That's rude. We're on opposite.
00:41:25
Sides of all those primaries back in the day.
00:41:27
Let's just play it forward by the The way this episode is
00:41:29
coming up before the midterms, this might be our most topically
00:41:32
relevant episode top. So proud of us for doing
00:41:35
something ahead of something. I usually, it comes out like a
00:41:37
week after the story is like a past winner.
00:41:39
Anyway. So, you know, I assume that the
00:41:41
Republicans will win the house. I guess the Senate is sort of a
00:41:44
toss-up, you know, if they're in play, you know.
00:41:48
And assuming they try to push some sort of legislation as far
00:41:51
as Tech goes. I mean, what do you expect to
00:41:53
see given the makeup of the, the current GOP?
00:41:57
I think the Republicans will take the Senate to Just will
00:41:59
allow in the production business but they're going to do nothing.
00:42:02
They'll be some brinkmanship on the budget and they will
00:42:06
investigate Hunter. Biden will probably try to
00:42:08
impeach secretary mayorkas. If secretary mayorkas doesn't
00:42:11
resign, what the Homeland Security, man.
00:42:15
I don't even know some of this story lines they have going on.
00:42:18
I don't need this stuff. Like what parlor man?
00:42:20
Now, anyone who doesn't understand and this is good for
00:42:23
everyone who has a friend who like, you know, it's kind of
00:42:26
unhappy about inflation and thanks elon's funny.
00:42:29
He isn't as dabbling in right. You know republicanism I signed
00:42:32
everybody one hour of Steve, bannon's podcast.
00:42:34
Oh my God. You just gotta listen to it for
00:42:36
one hour and if you like what you're hearing, then go ahead
00:42:39
and put on the hats, which teams.
00:42:41
But that is to understand what's happening.
00:42:43
You need one hour, Steve Banta. This part of the argument of why
00:42:46
letting Trump back on, Twitter could be good for Democrats,
00:42:49
where it's like, at least like get people's moderates back in
00:42:52
touch with what Republicans they actually send out.
00:42:56
I don't think I mean there's this thing called speak.
00:42:58
This thing that's been And secret Congress, which like does
00:43:02
things that are that are just going to not in the headlines,
00:43:05
you know, and make incremental change to various things where
00:43:08
things can get past and reproductive, right?
00:43:10
That's yeah. So there could be some I'm a
00:43:12
little bit out of tech policy for my days when I was doing
00:43:14
that work. So I don't exactly know what
00:43:16
could fit under that rubric but like the idea that there's three
00:43:19
big sweeping you know change to you know section 230 or to
00:43:24
addressing these like big controversial, you know issues
00:43:28
around Just etcetera. Like, there's not, it's just
00:43:31
not, it's just gonna die. There's not there.
00:43:32
They're not gonna kind of do yeah, nobody's cutting a fucking
00:43:35
deal on that over the next two years between.
00:43:38
Yeah, the next Presidential. Yeah.
00:43:40
So No One's Gonna Champion, one way or the other.
00:43:42
The like, you know, carried interest loophole loophole, or
00:43:45
anything that like would actually have.
00:43:47
Yeah, actually matter to our audience are going back to sort
00:43:50
of the did you know, the Neo cons and and the Republican are
00:43:54
sort of the new right hating neo-cons the David Sachs and
00:43:57
Peter teal, support the war in Iraq.
00:43:59
Like, I feel like David Sachs is on Twitter.
00:44:01
All the time being like, the war in Iraq, was such a mistake.
00:44:04
Well, but like that guy definitely support had right and
00:44:07
I can't I can't find. I'm like I've lazy find any
00:44:11
evidence for this. How many just wasn't that?
00:44:13
It wasn't much of a person? I can't find evidence.
00:44:15
Either way, you know, they just become more famous black.
00:44:18
People are prolific. I mean, they're like, fucking,
00:44:20
you know, like I was in her hand.
00:44:21
If anybody has evidence, the David Sachs supported the war in
00:44:24
Iraq, sent it to me, charcoal, I guess, I guess you wouldn't see
00:44:27
David Sachs on a CrossFit. Message board, but maybe check
00:44:30
out some, I don't know message boards, the body milk eggs.
00:44:34
Yeah, but see if he's Steve see where he's posting.
00:44:38
I'd have to assume so that he had been.
00:44:41
But again, I, as I was saying, these guys like that is, you
00:44:45
know, sort of the cheat code for like, drawing the type of
00:44:49
audience that they want, right? Which is that we are not part of
00:44:53
the elite establishment and so in order to do that, you know,
00:44:57
to go down this contrarian path. You just have to look at well.
00:45:00
Okay. What were the things that the
00:45:01
elites did that were wrong? Like the Iraq war is obviously
00:45:05
example 1 and so, you know, all of them like criticize that now.
00:45:10
But you know, there weren't a lot of people like the looks
00:45:12
like David Sachs at the at the code pink protest and Crawford,
00:45:16
right? Am I to my recollection.
00:45:17
So the idea that these guys are not Elites, like the whole Elite
00:45:20
conversation is the most inferior, like anybody just gets
00:45:23
to call somebody else and we'll eat.
00:45:25
And then I mean, with the whole Kanye situation in the rising
00:45:28
like Anti-Semitism. It feels like even more coded
00:45:31
when it's like you're a billionaire and yet you're
00:45:34
calling other people. Elites.
00:45:37
What is that? Watch.
00:45:38
I think it's fairly straightforward.
00:45:39
If you are influencing elections, then you are an
00:45:41
elite. If you are influencing an
00:45:43
election and also have a podcast with other people in which
00:45:45
you're criticizing Elites, then you're not in the lead because
00:45:48
you're criticizing them and you're aware of the hierarchy
00:45:51
and being aware of the hierarchy removes you from that.
00:45:54
Therefore you are clear to do that without being responsible
00:45:56
for the system. I think, if you are a one
00:45:59
Percent owner in the Golden State Warriors and get chastised
00:46:02
for saying, rude, things about the uyghurs and saying nice
00:46:07
things about the Chinese, then you are not an elite because the
00:46:11
Real Lead is the majority owner of the Warriors, who has more of
00:46:15
a stake in the basketball team, and can can wag his finger at
00:46:18
you, right? Or the people that are on
00:46:20
Twitter, you can use, you can find one person more Elite than
00:46:22
you. Find about the elites, right?
00:46:25
Yeah. Look to your left.
00:46:26
Look to your right there. Not more Elite than you than
00:46:28
you're in big trouble. Ville.
00:46:29
Okay, the last section of the podcast here we have spent a lot
00:46:32
of time talking about the types of people who are extremely
00:46:34
critical of the mainstream media and I guess Eric and me and
00:46:38
people that represent that. But you were also a central
00:46:40
figure in the Facebook Stories from a couple of year.
00:46:43
No central figure. You were a figure in the
00:46:46
Facebook Stories from a couple years back and kind of, you
00:46:48
know, in your time with definers and Advising that aren't so
00:46:52
Cheryl specifically or just Facebook on, you know, policy
00:46:56
and presentation and how to kind of work your way in through
00:46:58
Washington and Yeah, they were kind of pointing to definers and
00:47:01
maybe even use specifically, as I don't know, kind of a
00:47:04
nefarious, part of running a corporation and pushing through,
00:47:09
I don't know misleading, talking points and legislation and
00:47:11
things like that, and then your time specifically, I mean,
00:47:14
looking back at that whole period, which I think did, you
00:47:16
know, affect you in certain ways.
00:47:18
I mean, what's your take on that whole episode, and the way that
00:47:22
the media can occasionally glom onto a narrative and, you know,
00:47:26
see it through. I know this is going to be
00:47:28
really A complicated answer. And so it's going to challenge
00:47:31
people's priors and make people really you know uncomfortable
00:47:35
but like the media can be not perfect and also right do their
00:47:41
best to this. Try to get the story right and
00:47:44
figure it out, I know. Wow.
00:47:45
And this is really challenging, I mean, you know, I always say
00:47:48
like some people on the right, get mad at me and they're like,
00:47:50
why aren't you more mad at the left you were canceled?
00:47:52
And I was like, I was, I'm doing okay, I've got more Twitter
00:47:55
followers than Tom and I'm here on the spot.
00:47:59
Cast right now. So I'm doing.
00:48:00
Okay, I was criticized as criticized, the work we're doing
00:48:03
for Facebook. I think some of the work we were
00:48:05
criticized for was totally fair. You know, I write about this in
00:48:09
not to do a book Vlog while I'm not doing bad things I did.
00:48:11
But like, I write about this in the book where I look back.
00:48:14
What's the title? Same title, it's got a why we
00:48:16
did it. I look back in the choices that
00:48:18
I made, even though I bailed on Trump and I think I made some
00:48:20
bad choices. You're, when you're in this
00:48:22
ecosystem of playing this political game or political
00:48:25
adjacent game in the game of like public affairs, PR You
00:48:29
know, there's a lot of incentives that push yourself
00:48:31
to, you know, want to help to get clients when I hope to get
00:48:34
good stories for your clients, want to help support your, you
00:48:36
know, the people that are paying you like make you do some shit,
00:48:39
not make you, but that leads you to do shit.
00:48:42
That is in a gray area. Ethically speaking, and I think
00:48:46
that in the bubble one of things I want to write about in the
00:48:48
book I think is so important is in this bubble like the people
00:48:52
who criticize you for that are bad.
00:48:55
And those of us who are just trying to do our job, you know,
00:48:58
running cover for the Companies are these politicians are like
00:49:02
you know we're just part of the game.
00:49:03
Like I don't like get off our back, right?
00:49:04
Like this is just you know part of our job and like that culture
00:49:08
I think is very creates problems, you know and I think
00:49:12
creates bad incentives and I think that it allowed a lot of
00:49:16
people to justify going to work for Trump because they've been
00:49:19
doing work that right? They self Justified for a long
00:49:22
time that they knew part of it was not real and of Ethics is
00:49:25
that it might be inconvenient to you.
00:49:27
The idea that it's just your job is.
00:49:29
Is not an out like that. That's sort of exactly what the
00:49:32
point of sort of more exact, that is exactly right.
00:49:34
But I think my point is that, in this culture in, d.c.
00:49:37
particularly on the right there, was this, your kind of buddy,
00:49:41
you know, culture in which we don't have to deal with those
00:49:43
ethical questions because like, you know, this is, this is just
00:49:47
part of, you know, what we do, right?
00:49:48
And so, anyway style, be Savvy like play that we're Sammy,
00:49:52
right? We get it.
00:49:53
We get it. These other fucking whiners on
00:49:55
Twitter and their basement complaining about his, don't get
00:49:57
it. So, anyway, that's that's a
00:49:59
Enjoy the point of like the actual Facebook.
00:50:00
So we're Consulting for Facebook.
00:50:02
A lot of the work that definers was doing.
00:50:04
I look back on and feel gross about the actual Facebook thing
00:50:07
that the original story was about is like, not really one of
00:50:10
them. I think the work that we're
00:50:12
doing for Facebook was kind of just basic blocking and tackling
00:50:15
do it, running PR, and I guess maybe working for Facebook and
00:50:18
past like the actual thing that they picked on 28th like this.
00:50:22
Yeah, it's like we put together backgrounders for all of the
00:50:25
people that criticize them, right?
00:50:26
It was just like here is why that person is Did a lot of
00:50:29
times, you see people on the right, all these people we've
00:50:31
been talking about, right? I'll do who had fake
00:50:33
cancellations who said we were Shadow band, you know, diamond
00:50:36
and silver testifying in front of Congress and I was putting
00:50:38
together background or being like diamonds or not Shadow
00:50:40
band. Actually, they're doing great on
00:50:42
Facebook, maybe Facebook should be banning them more actually.
00:50:45
And so, you know, we did similar for Lefty critics and the one
00:50:49
example that the X keyed in on was the idea that like there was
00:50:52
a background on who is funding? You know, some of the left-wing
00:50:54
critics of Facebook and George Soros was one of the funders and
00:50:58
so I sent them Times this background, I was like there's
00:51:00
nothing here like we're just looking into who the various
00:51:03
people are that are funding the anti-facebook work and then they
00:51:06
sat on it for six months and the Tree of Life synagogue thing
00:51:09
happens. Unlike the story runs four days
00:51:11
later, which is like, Facebook has hired Republicans to like
00:51:14
smeared, you know, to be like, you know, make up this fake
00:51:17
thing about George Soros. And then, the next year, the
00:51:19
times runs an op-ed from like Soros Foundation.
00:51:23
That's like, we are looking into Facebook, it's all I guess is
00:51:26
true. So anyway, I like music.
00:51:28
Come out aggressively attacking Source itself.
00:51:31
No, nobody had come out of dress.
00:51:32
We do a background has come to an assessment that I think Soros
00:51:36
is involved in it. Yeah, there was a list of all
00:51:39
the different potential, liberal groups and organizations, and
00:51:42
like sources, like the flashy name, because that's what people
00:51:44
talk about. So I get it, you have to be
00:51:46
sensitive around Soros, because there is a lot of anti-Semitism
00:51:49
systematic attacks but like, literally this was what I did.
00:51:52
All the time is a PR guy, which you have you don't do anymore,
00:51:54
which is like, hey, we did some research.
00:51:56
I send it to a bunch of reporters, probably not.
00:51:58
Eric new, Omer. And it was like, hey, will you
00:52:00
look into the see if this is true etcetera?
00:52:02
The thing never went out like it never was published in every
00:52:06
census, Rose things to reporters.
00:52:08
Yeah. It was like a background Iran,
00:52:09
like these funding, the left wing, Auntie Facebook stuff.
00:52:13
So anyway in retrospect, I probably not great because of
00:52:16
surahs like we probably should've been more sensitive
00:52:18
even on the background or, but like nothing went public.
00:52:20
I just think that the reaction to it was overwhelming, but
00:52:22
because the reaction was so great and large part because the
00:52:25
proximity of the Tree of Life thing, which was fucking
00:52:27
horrible, and there was a ton of sores Misinformation was
00:52:29
happening at the time about the Caravans and stuff, which I was
00:52:32
criticizing. Like they looked into other
00:52:33
shit. Definers did.
00:52:35
And like, yeah. And we were all these people
00:52:36
that were talking about right now the right-wing media types.
00:52:39
Like I was feeding them shit, you know, to write stories
00:52:42
about, you know, on behalf of clients.
00:52:45
And like I Justified that because I was like, you know,
00:52:48
whatever like the stuff, I'm sending them isn't racist,
00:52:50
right? But you know it's going to live
00:52:52
on these like Maga websites and and I like, I shouldn't been
00:52:57
fucking playing footsies with those assholes.
00:52:59
You know, I shouldn't even do like why till I get paid extra
00:53:02
money but on by Qualcomm like all that stuff was you know,
00:53:05
regrettable and some of it was listen if not even really real,
00:53:09
right? But that's part of doing PR and
00:53:11
I kind of wish I wasn't. I hadn't been doing that.
00:53:14
Yeah, I mean what's interesting to me as a tech reporter during
00:53:17
that period, is that it seemed like this was fast.
00:53:20
Realization for a lot of tech reporters that the companies
00:53:23
they have gotten had become very political in the way that they
00:53:25
ran their PR operations. And I'm not saying the reporting
00:53:28
was Or wrong or we shouldn't be critical of the fact that this
00:53:32
was the new Norm in the way these companies were run.
00:53:34
But it just seemed like there was a nun familiarity with, in a
00:53:36
lot of tech reporters. When you see things that are
00:53:39
standard within the DC world. Now, you could argue that it's
00:53:42
not okay for it to be standard within the kind of the political
00:53:44
world, but they're just seemed like it, you know, it felt like
00:53:47
foreign territory for a lot of reporters and you see something,
00:53:50
yeah, I feel like a, a challenge with reporting sometimes is
00:53:54
sometimes you can have great reporting that comes in and says
00:53:57
something that's like Obvious to every other reporter but the
00:54:01
public doesn't understand and people will go while because the
00:54:06
public know it, even though right.
00:54:08
Right. Like it's like, this is my thing
00:54:10
on the Facebook thing is like, it was crazy.
00:54:12
Everybody's like now looking at like oh my God, this firm that
00:54:15
has Republican guys is working for Facebook.
00:54:17
This is shocking. I was like every report or knew
00:54:18
we were right? I remember I we weren't doing
00:54:20
like they tried to pay. They did paint it in a way and I
00:54:24
don't really think this was intentional, but like, it made
00:54:26
it seem like, oh man, like we're on.
00:54:28
Covering the dark arts thing when like really like we were
00:54:31
just like doing basic public affairs for Facebook.
00:54:35
I like I said, we were doing some more so we were doing some
00:54:38
dark arts up for some other companies, which is why maybe
00:54:40
Facebook should've hired us and maybe we should never work for
00:54:42
Facebook. I grant all that.
00:54:43
But yeah, I I do think that there was there is sometimes a
00:54:46
sense of kind of a babe in the woods tribe.
00:54:48
Attitude, the New York Times uniquely is able to just be like
00:54:52
both because they're good at Framing and writing and because
00:54:55
they have such a huge audience and just like turning the whole
00:54:58
world on to The issues they write about it, but to me that
00:55:01
the framing was always with bothered me about a lot of those
00:55:03
stories because you can criticize the tactic in general.
00:55:06
And the fact that all these companies use these things.
00:55:08
But I remember there was a, you know, a lot of stories saying
00:55:11
Facebook had operatives that were going into Trump HQ and all
00:55:14
their campaigns and giving them data and helping them, you know,
00:55:17
work on Facebook a lot more. So that and it's just like,
00:55:20
well, yeah, because they're spending a lot of money on
00:55:22
Facebook and that's their job as a company that makes money is to
00:55:27
make sure the people that are spending money.
00:55:28
That there were a lot of stories written about that and in one
00:55:30
sense, it's like, okay. Yeah, I mean that does sort of
00:55:33
suck if you want to talk about any, you know, platform having
00:55:38
some sort of relationship with any kind of client.
00:55:40
I would love it. If these things were all just
00:55:42
like, you know, software the people we just plug into and
00:55:44
there wasn't as kind of hand-in-glove approach to
00:55:46
things. But the fact is there is and
00:55:48
it's constant specifically within politics.
00:55:50
And I just think you need to have an awareness of that if you
00:55:52
want to have a smart opinion on it rather than just feel like
00:55:55
ooh that really smells bad to me and you can frame In that way
00:55:59
and I don't know the story. Just didn't hold up in my
00:56:01
opinion, you know, they were splashes at the moment and
00:56:04
looking back at them, they just look really thin.
00:56:06
Yeah, I so I think there are two elements, I think there was a
00:56:08
Facebook moral panic at the moment it apart because like
00:56:12
they thought that their Facebook's fault that Donald
00:56:13
Trump won, you know, because we're on the Prussian, the
00:56:18
platform and like none of that like has held up as being really
00:56:21
true. Like the I got the Russia, the
00:56:23
stuff that happened in the mainstream media.
00:56:25
This is the other thing I'm mad. I did get mad at the Times about
00:56:28
I was just Like you gotta fucking with like we're the ones
00:56:32
to blame well that emails on the amount of Impressions that
00:56:53
the New York Times got was significantly more than like the
00:56:56
weird little Facebook groups that they said.
00:56:58
To create like the amount of add money.
00:57:00
They start was really small. So anyway, it doesn't mean it
00:57:02
was good. There should have certainly been
00:57:04
reporting about all that but like, there was this like more
00:57:07
like everybody kind of got cozy being.
00:57:09
Like, it's Facebook's fault that Donald Trump won, and like that.
00:57:12
Like Facebook did you know stuff that in retrospect?
00:57:15
They, you know, they should have cracked down on, but like there
00:57:18
were a lot of actors or complicit in the Wikileaks stuff
00:57:21
in particular and the Russian op on our elections in 2016.
00:57:24
So that did bother me and I think that like had you know,
00:57:28
you Early taken this exact same story about what we're doing for
00:57:31
Facebook and like we had been doing it for Apple.
00:57:34
Well, I could literally, wouldn't it would have been like
00:57:36
a half a day story, right. Like people just wouldn't have
00:57:38
cared like you laughter there. Was it that?
00:57:41
Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of, you know, because people are
00:57:43
doing that for Apple by the way, they're still doing it to this
00:57:45
day and for Google and for whatever.
00:57:48
And so I think that there was just this moment about that and
00:57:51
I think that that some of that was obviously overblown and led
00:57:54
you have a, my dr. Solis and it's okay, I would
00:57:57
like to read it And the other, the other element though is I do
00:58:02
think that the Trump thing woke people up and we were kind of
00:58:05
some shrapnel to that a little bit.
00:58:07
And there's an element of this that I do agree with.
00:58:09
And I think that these challenges are hard for
00:58:11
reporters for anybody, which is like things that were sop, you
00:58:15
know, when Mark pain was doing her shit from Microsoft.
00:58:18
Yeah, things that were standard operating procedure when Mark
00:58:20
pain was doing the ship from Microsoft.
00:58:22
Like is that really appropriate in the Trump era, right?
00:58:26
Like, is it really appropriate after the Van, you know, like he
00:58:30
proposes a Muslim ban to go do white glove service for them.
00:58:34
I don't know the answer to that, I think that's worth looking at.
00:58:36
Like, then on the other hand, like, should companies really be
00:58:39
saying, well, we have random red lines of people that were
00:58:42
willing to give, you know, we'll do it for Liz Cheney but we
00:58:45
won't do it for for Donald Trump.
00:58:47
Maybe that doesn't. Like, I do think that there's
00:58:49
some there's some ethical questions associated with that,
00:58:51
the just like the absurdity. And just extent of Trumps, you
00:58:57
know, fucking corruption and Get tree.
00:58:59
Like I made things that in a different time might have seemed
00:59:04
like not that big of a deal and to feeling like a big deal for
00:59:06
like some good reasons. So I think that that is also an
00:59:10
element of this moving away from companies for a second like just
00:59:12
like as a you know looking at the Democrats for a sec.
00:59:16
The formula fucker. Yeah exactly.
00:59:19
Like I feel like there's one view that like Democrats aren't
00:59:23
cynical enough like your you got to Fight Fire with Fire.
00:59:26
Like the Republicans are so good at like trying to win and we're
00:59:29
all just like a bunch of like Earnest people running around be
00:59:32
like, what, why do they do that? On the other hand, I feel like
00:59:36
there's an argument that it's like, if you're going to play
00:59:38
like moral piety, you should like Stan, you know, rise to the
00:59:42
occasion. I don't know.
00:59:44
Do you have a general like leaning one way?
00:59:46
Whether the Democrats should be more, pragmatic, more ruthless,
00:59:49
try to win against the Real Enemy or if you're going to be
00:59:52
The Virtuous player, you got to be virtuous and like stick to
00:59:55
that. I've I mean, I can They do both.
00:59:59
I don't know. I may either going to be times
01:00:01
of moral, where there are things are ethically gray, you know?
01:00:05
I don't know. Like, I don't know.
01:00:06
What's the answer to this? This is another scam.
01:00:07
I was associate with Facebook stuff.
01:00:09
But what and stuff we were doing when we were working for PR,
01:00:12
like we would run these like, kind of not really news things,
01:00:16
that kind of look like news, right in order to promote, you
01:00:19
know, certain things. So it wasn't like fake in the
01:00:21
sense that we made up the facts but it was fake in the sense,
01:00:23
like, you made something look like news.
01:00:25
It's actually a PR op that's just like, something that
01:00:28
Millions. Ian grass tops.
01:00:29
People have been doing ever since they were mailing fake
01:00:31
newspapers, you know you'd have a website that will be like, oh
01:00:35
yeah, the Lynchburg Gazette like tell you know, you know, reports
01:00:38
this fact. And so like you sort of
01:00:40
reframing article that was written by a, you know, credible
01:00:43
Outlet like make it as inflammatory as possible and
01:00:46
then do promote it adds to it that sort of thing, right?
01:00:48
So, Democrats are doing this now.
01:00:50
Republicans have been doing it. Democrats are doing it and it's
01:00:52
like, should Democrats not be doing that because they should,
01:00:56
you know, practice what they preach or should Democrat.
01:00:58
Let's make sure to use every tool at their disposal to
01:01:01
compete against the threat and that's why I'm asking you, you
01:01:04
don't ya know, I don't know. I'm giving that as a confused.
01:01:06
I'm giving that as an example that I think, is I really?
01:01:09
I don't know. I'm not an ethicist and I don't
01:01:12
think that if you read my book, Eat anyone would want me to be
01:01:14
there at the session? So I'm doing the best I can.
01:01:17
I think that's a confusing one and I think that they deserve to
01:01:19
be criticized for it, but at the same time I get it.
01:01:22
I think that the thing that bugs me more about the Democrats is I
01:01:26
do think that one difference between the right and the The
01:01:28
left in a way, that's nice and pure about the Democrats, but it
01:01:32
is hurting them, is that the actual people that staff these
01:01:34
campaigns like really Earnest, really, really.
01:01:38
All right. And God love them.
01:01:39
Like the people that run Republican campaigns are
01:01:41
nihilists, and I think that this, like I said, we're paying
01:01:44
with a broad brush obviously, but like the generally, there's
01:01:47
something to this and I see Democrats like using messaging
01:01:51
and things, because they think that it's the right thing to do
01:01:54
and they don't want to hurt anybody's feelings on their team
01:01:57
and stuff that Actually hurting campaigns, and if you look at
01:02:01
their paid advertising, Democrats, paid advertising is
01:02:03
like pretty good. Like if you look at Tim Ryan's
01:02:06
paid advertising in Ohio, like you might think that he's a
01:02:08
republican, like, it's pretty good.
01:02:10
In the sense that I get is, I love it is.
01:02:12
Yeah, with his wife, it's like, well, you don't have to agree on
01:02:15
everything with your own wife. You don't, why would you have to
01:02:17
agree with a politician? Like yeah.
01:02:19
So, I mean some of the stuff that you used him with Tucker
01:02:22
Carlson and so I think that like the paid, you know, but who's
01:02:25
running paid advertising? It's like older, gray-haired
01:02:27
like Democratic strategist. Like who's running the Twitter
01:02:29
feed his right in the face with who's dealing with the candidate
01:02:31
did today and I just I worry that Democrats are leaving stuff
01:02:35
on the table and like losing Races they should be winning.
01:02:38
I've written just this week with the Arizona Governor's race like
01:02:41
which is a fight clusterfuck. I'll get fetterman.
01:02:45
You know, I see this hole for the Federman discourse.
01:02:47
It's like guys, it might be able list, it might hurt his
01:02:50
feelings, you know, it might not be appropriate to criticize.
01:02:54
But if we had a real talk realpolitik discussion about
01:02:57
fetterman after his stroke, Like shouldn't they really have tried
01:03:00
to find another candidate? Right?
01:03:02
I give you wasn't going to be up for it.
01:03:03
I'm like that's not ableist, it's just like re it's just
01:03:07
reality, right? In saying that Federman can
01:03:09
never run for anything again and he should be insulted or mock to
01:03:11
the people that have Aphasia should be insulted or mocked
01:03:15
your Doug. Hug you, what's?
01:03:17
Yeah, but like what is the? But this person is can have a
01:03:20
senate seat for six years and they're going to be a puppet for
01:03:22
Donald Trump. Maybe we should like do what he
01:03:25
can to win. So I like that.
01:03:26
Is the part. I do think that Sometimes
01:03:29
Democrats, pull punches because they're trying to do the right
01:03:31
thing or feeling like don't want to do the right thing in ways
01:03:34
that is harmful and that concerns me.
01:03:37
All right? So we should, we should probably
01:03:38
wrap it up there. But thank you for coming on.
01:03:40
I hope you feel, you know, more morally pure in your, and your
01:03:44
movement away from, you know, being in PR, and promoting other
01:03:47
companies to being in media, promoting yourself, which is the
01:03:50
light, which is the truth of the way.
01:03:53
And well, the nice thing is about about it.
01:03:58
That I am just promoting should I actually think is true, so
01:04:02
that's a good step. It's not, it's a not morally
01:04:04
pure but it is an important step in living a fulfilling life.
01:04:09
And so I do recommend that and you know that I'm still, I'm
01:04:12
still a fallen angel, you know, I'm trying to do my best so
01:04:15
maybe eventually I'll move one step over from promoting myself
01:04:18
to like, promote, oh, then you're immediately, good?
01:04:20
Thanks, okay. Well, let me know.
01:04:24
I don't think the priesthood is for me but maybe if you find
01:04:27
something a little more pure, I'm He to take feedback.
01:04:29
All right. Thanks Tim.
01:04:31
Thanks for joining. Thanks a bunch.
01:04:32
This is great sale. Cool.
01:04:35
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:04:46
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:04:47
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:04:49
Goodbye. He to take feedback.
01:04:29
All right. Thanks Tim.
01:04:31
Thanks for joining. Thanks a bunch.
01:04:32
This is great sale. Cool.
01:04:35
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:04:46
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:04:47
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:04:49
Goodbye.