The Culture War - Tim Pool - Grifters And Bad Actors Have WON, Political Discourse Is DEAD ft. Mike Benz

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00:00:30.160 I mean, this was a big mistake when all the big journalists got on Twitter and they, you know, because we got to see who they are.

00:00:36.480 Yeah.

00:00:36.900 You know, if Walter Cronkite had a Twitter account, all the mystique of it would go away because you know what he thinks about when he's going to the back.

00:00:48.740 You know his opinion on, you know, things he's, he'd be too tempted to be way out of his depth on everything.

00:00:54.360 but it's like we these are the most trollish people of all and i had to bring you in specifically

00:01:00.300 um for this interesting i i wouldn't have seen it unless you put it on my timeline

00:01:05.720 from axios where it's they're saying it's the terminally online news junkies who are detached

00:01:11.680 from the actual reality this is the weirdest like retconning i think i've seen in a long time coming

00:01:16.660 from axios of all people you said you're a news agency posting this online telling us we're

00:01:21.320 detached from reality for reading you. So I had to bring you in to talk about this specifically

00:01:25.680 and this, I guess, like ethos that these journos have these days that, you know, it's the right

00:01:31.020 wing chuds that are really the ones stirring the pot and everything. I was wondering what

00:01:35.500 your thoughts were on all of this. This really started in the 2016 era when Trump won initially

00:01:44.560 on the back of social media. And it was really kind of the first election in which social media

00:01:52.020 was dispositive over legacy media in terms of influence. And that caused, I think, not just

00:02:00.460 financial shocks in the news industry, but also psychological ones. And there has been this kind

00:02:09.060 of idea that, you know, social media is not as, it's still not as important, still not where

00:02:18.240 reality is really made. I happen to think, frankly, it's kind of the opposite. I think

00:02:23.880 actually social media is even more real and scales with much more impact. Frankly, I think

00:02:35.980 unless something trends on social media, regular media almost doesn't matter. But what they cite

00:02:45.220 are statistics like only 21% of the US population uses X and only 10% uses it every day. Well,

00:02:55.340 okay, well, what percent of the population reads the New York Times every day? And frankly,

00:03:03.260 when you say reads the new york times um just because you order it and shows up uh you know

00:03:11.420 at your doorstep doesn't mean that you've really been hit by it uh i think when you

00:03:17.120 you know the feed on something like x and instagram tiktok whatever it is uh it just

00:03:26.640 hits you right away whatever's trending yeah yeah well i mean i mean to your point i mean

00:03:32.060 the majority of people ordering the newspaper nowadays are just doing the crossword chunking

00:03:35.980 it so i mean like um i actually read somewhere that that is true like the majority of the new

00:03:40.680 york times readership is subscribed for the crossword which is really funny um very salient

00:03:44.960 but yeah i mean to your point you know the majority of americans i think are tapped out from

00:03:49.920 the actual zeitgeist but the zeitgeist is being developed on x for the most part nowadays and

00:03:54.680 the proof for that is literally everything that comes out of the trump admin and like the senate

00:03:58.500 democrats it's literally just like the timeline being regurgitated by these figures so you know

00:04:04.800 again people point that out all the time and they say well the majority of americans aren't even on

00:04:08.160 x but the reality is that's where the discourse is being formed and for the 80 or so of americans

00:04:13.560 that aren't on x the talking points they're using that they're throwing at each other were developed

00:04:18.100 on x whether they like it or not there's very rarely are we seeing stories narratives discourse

00:04:22.980 again that's developed independently outside of the online space for lack of a better word

00:04:27.660 I think it was who was who I forget who it was. There's a there's a famous neoconservative who I think back in the 1980s was in a debate and there was an argument that your ideas are unpopular.

00:04:45.740 your magazine only has 2,000, a circulation of 2,000 people.

00:04:52.460 And gosh, I forget who it was who said it,

00:04:55.060 but I remember the person quiped back and said,

00:04:58.560 but it's the right 2,000 people.

00:05:00.320 Yeah.

00:05:01.220 And that really, I think, gets to the heart of why X

00:05:07.200 is so much more influential than Axios, frankly,

00:05:11.900 when it comes, and why it is that I think Axios 0.75

00:05:14.680 has a little bit of, I guess, penis envy over the reach of social media, which is that it may only 0.67

00:05:25.620 be a fraction of the population, but it's the fraction of the population with influence. It's 0.97

00:05:31.100 every world leader. It's every politician. It's most captains of industry at this point.

00:05:39.580 you know, where this is where press announcements are made. If a company doesn't make a social

00:05:46.580 media statement about, I don't know, a new line of burgers, it's almost like they didn't really do

00:05:52.660 it. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, and this is one of the, I don't know if you agree with this

00:05:57.720 assessment, but a lot of people over the last, like literally this has happened over the last

00:06:01.680 few months. A lot of guys I know who have either have the ear of a lot of top Republicans or at

00:06:07.480 least are influencing a lot of top republicans are growing increasingly frustrated with the

00:06:12.300 direction the discourse has gone um specifically on x regarding political commentary a lot of these

00:06:18.520 guys are tapping out you know i don't want to name names here but a lot of guys are just like

00:06:22.140 i'm kind of done like it's gotten so bad the incentive structure for political commentary

00:06:28.080 has been completely inverted where it used to be like if you presented something novel

00:06:31.520 then people would kind of listen and they'd follow and pay attention but now it's like

00:06:35.540 it's always been this way to a degree but it's really on steroids now is it's like whoever can

00:06:40.660 mr beastify their content the most is going to dominate and they're going to occupy the most

00:06:46.600 space and so a lot of people are just kind of throwing their hands up and they're frustrated

00:06:49.820 because i mean like you said it's about the right 2 000 followers but only so many people can you

00:06:54.400 know pay the bills with uh you know like that limited reach like a lot of these guys are getting

00:06:58.200 frustrated that their potential audience is being captured by um quite frankly a lot of slop

00:07:03.440 well i don't particularly feel the pressure to mr beastify the the content um i can

00:07:13.600 i can see that if you have a a frustration with the direction that politics are trending in general

00:07:21.720 being in the line of business of trying to influence politics

00:07:25.700 um, when things are not going your way is, is a lot less fun. Yeah. Uh, and, and, you know,

00:07:34.260 I, to some extent am, am feeling some of that with some of the events that are happening right now

00:07:40.520 in the world, you know, for at least for the past 12 days, let's say. Uh, and, uh, but,

00:07:49.340 And so I've posted a lot less.

00:07:51.940 My motivation has been pretty not insignificantly hit just because you don't necessarily want to post into a cycle where there might be an amazing story about NGO corruption or some censorship event in Spain.

00:08:17.500 And you put that against what's happening here and you go, is this really what I consider to be the most important thing in the world right now?

00:08:30.600 And I think that a lot of people are feeling things like that, that there were so many other issues, for example, before the past two weeks, whether that's immigration,

00:08:39.380 whether that's the cost of housing, whether that's anything happening in the homeland,

00:08:46.680 whether that's a number of other foreign policy issues, it all gets swallowed in the face of war.

00:08:54.140 And then there are other things, I think, that have been happening around just certain

00:09:00.100 developments within MAGA that leave a lot of the MAGA faithful a little bit disenchanted.

00:09:11.380 I mean, if you look at this rally right now against Thomas Massey, who I think a lot of

00:09:16.480 people in the MAGA base consider to be a hero, he's the one who got us the Epstein files.

00:09:21.440 and in the middle of the iran war uh president is camp stopping everything to

00:09:29.060 fly to kentucky to personally campaign against him and yeah it's like make it make it make sense

00:09:35.900 in a way that we can live with yeah it's it's really frustrating to your point for the mag

00:09:44.200 of faithful because we're the only ones here that don't really have like like there's not really one

00:09:50.560 strong way that we're leaning i mean it's because you you have your neocons who are like over the

00:09:55.600 moon about all this and then of course you have what's been dubbed the retard right now plus the 0.95

00:10:00.240 left who are just going to counter signal every single thing trump does and it kind of leaves the

00:10:04.220 mag of faithful in a weird spot because again i think the number and i i talked about this you

00:10:08.860 know at length on the show is the number one issue i think with this war is that it's a gift

00:10:12.020 for like some of these like the worst people in politics and there's just very little in it for

00:10:16.960 the MAGA faithful and so that's why I think a lot of us kind of feel a bit rudderless right now

00:10:20.460 um I wanted to ask you because I mean you would be you know one of the guys that would be in the

00:10:25.800 know on this I mean in regards to wartime propaganda these these sorts of things these

00:10:30.320 sorts of elements I mean there's so many accusations right now um of oh well this person's you know

00:10:35.960 acting on behalf of a foreign country or this person and like it's everyone on either side of

00:10:40.640 the work. How much of that is legitimate? How much of that is real? How does international

00:10:47.540 influence operations, how do they work in a moment like this? Because this kind of feels like a big

00:10:52.660 flashpoint. And again, these accusations are flying left and right. In general, I think state

00:11:00.060 sponsored influence operations tend to be vastly overstated. You do have mostly organic affinity

00:11:09.600 networks that certainly pile up very, very strong. And you see that, for example, even within MAGA.

00:11:21.280 You don't really have the Trump campaign going out and paying influencers to promote

00:11:28.080 Trump. That was never really a thing. You have a few of these kind of influenceable type

00:11:33.820 sure uh you know things are in a couple of these like agencies but that's that's a tiny little

00:11:40.960 pinky finger there but there is a kind of almost organic commercial base in terms of people build

00:11:49.360 their brand as influencers or as journalists covering stories on certain beats and uh and

00:11:58.060 it's the same thing when it comes to state level affinities, whether that's the pro-Israel side

00:12:04.660 or the pro-Palestinian side. And now we're seeing this new emergence. I just saw this in I think

00:12:14.780 the Wall Street Journal earlier, the Iranian disinformation, they're kicking up. This is the

00:12:22.600 whole thing with Russian disinformation was all this kind of state-sponsored internet research

00:12:27.260 agency type stuff. And, you know, now I'm seeing the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which is

00:12:33.020 this big CIA cutout that was, you know, funded by the State Department and USAID, and I think even

00:12:41.740 the Justice Department. And they just came out with this new study about Iran. Oh, here's what

00:12:48.820 it was uh it said that the attempt to dub operation epic fury operation epstein fury was was an iranian

00:12:59.640 disinformation campaign that americans are unwittingly falling for so basically

00:13:06.920 you're almost threatening yeah you know that if you dare say that this has anything to do with

00:13:15.040 epstein and i'm not even making that accusation but the fact is like for example i mean trump

00:13:20.940 flying to kentucky in the middle of this yeah commander-in-chief doesn't have anything better

00:13:26.020 to do than to campaign in a local house race right a local district uh in what was massey's crime it

00:13:36.380 It was the Epstein bill.

00:13:39.240 Yeah.

00:13:40.880 Don't you have epic fury to deal with right now?

00:13:46.340 Why are you dealing with the Epstein guy?

00:13:48.320 Yeah, it's very valid.

00:13:49.940 It's very frustrating seeing him get sidetracked.

00:13:53.480 And to your point, I do agree.

00:13:55.480 I agree that it seems like people completely overstate foreign influence, whether, again, it's people on the right, left, et cetera.

00:14:02.500 because and kind of to the point with the Axios article where they're kind of outsourcing all the

00:14:06.540 blame to like these nefarious algorithms that sort of thing is because I think for the majority of

00:14:11.020 people and this goes into the conspiracy world and these sorts of things is they just need to feel

00:14:15.600 like there's an explanation something is in control like there's something controlling this

00:14:19.020 that this isn't just kind of a random you know ever-changing situation but I think the reality

00:14:25.200 is with this course certainly a lot of these people I know that are fervently like pro-Israel

00:14:30.360 for example and you know they're getting all these accusations being paid i'm like i've talked to

00:14:34.120 these people off camera that's all they talk about that's like their thing trust me they don't need

00:14:38.500 any payment to talk about these things um and so but you know i think it's just it's easier for

00:14:43.600 people to explain as they say well this person's being paid by iran you know it's a spread this

00:14:47.020 propaganda these sorts of things because it kind of gives people a sense of okay well no one could

00:14:51.680 actually hold that position it's just someone's in control that's what's going on things people

00:14:55.500 are being paid when i'm like the reality is you know again with the internet information has been

00:15:00.000 democratize people are going to have a wide range of disagreements on a variety of topics and

00:15:05.460 i mean i'm sure it does exist to some degree to your point i mean it's just i think it's

00:15:08.940 overstated to say the least it's a cope that yeah gives you something easier to deal with

00:15:17.220 than the truth yeah it's if you can contextualize your opinion being unpopular as being this kind

00:15:26.660 temporary glitch. Right. That's, that's only, that's artificial. You didn't really lose in

00:15:32.720 the marketplace of ideas. You didn't really, you know, you're not really sitting alone at the

00:15:38.700 lunch table. It's only that the cool kids have synthetically generated 12 of their friends.

00:15:45.360 Yeah. You know, that makes me feel a lot less alone. And it's, I think you have a lot of that

00:15:53.580 going on. And also the fact it does just straight up delegitimize the other school of it. So it's

00:16:02.760 a way to try to use kind of a dirty trick to argue that the entirety of the argumentative framework

00:16:14.300 against what you want is illegitimate because it's synthetically produced because of state

00:16:21.680 propaganda or something. And what's so funny is, you know, these will be the same people who tell

00:16:26.780 you that USAID needs to spend $10 billion a year on propaganda because journalism, you know,

00:16:35.140 journalism saves lives. And so we need, we need our state sponsored propaganda.

00:16:40.560 Yeah, I know. And people are just like blaming the wrong things for situations where, okay,

00:16:45.460 maybe there is a thumb put on the scale and like a situation on like a certain side of discourse.

00:16:50.500 they refuse to say the issue which i primarily see on x which is the entire third world now has 0.83

00:16:55.880 smartphones and they're like weighing in on american topics and so they're again like you

00:17:00.220 have a billion and a half indians and they're generally in agreement on everything regarding

00:17:04.800 american politics and so yeah they're gonna like weigh in on one side or like the entire like a

00:17:09.740 country like indonesia they're all on x now like but no one ever talks about that they're like

00:17:14.140 because i guess that would be like mean or xenophobic so they'd rather just again blame like

00:17:18.040 oh they're botting like no these are real people they're just like not americans

00:17:22.420 yeah i don't think anyone i mean have you ever had the experience of having this

00:17:31.560 months-long colloquy with an account right you later discovered it was a bot i mean this would

00:17:38.240 be like dating a girl and finding out she's a robot uh you know six months into the relationship

00:17:43.300 literally you know the bots when you see them yeah they are like it'll like appear instantly

00:17:50.220 after you because they're all like do a tweet and there will be like a stock you know account

00:17:57.580 that'll be like this post makes makes the point that sunshine and rainbows are really you know

00:18:06.180 it's not really raining today it's this and and it's like okay you was you managed to do this

00:18:12.340 like 279 character tweet within a microsecond you're the first comment uh your avatar is like

00:18:20.480 some japanese you know like i don't know it's it's these things are obvious this attempt to

00:18:30.180 delegitimize people by saying that they're they're bots and and the the fact that they even conflate

00:18:36.180 that with trolls they'll say bots and trolls yeah i know right yeah well it's like wait well

00:18:40.940 one of these things is not like the other uh everybody's a little bit of a troll yeah if you

00:18:48.160 have you ever seen a professionally journalist when i mean this was a big mistake when all the

00:18:52.580 all the big journalists got on twitter and they you know because we got to see who they are yeah

00:18:57.460 You know, if Walter Cronkite had a Twitter account, all the mystique of it would go away because you know what he thinks about when he's going to the – you know his opinion on things he's – he'd be too tempted to be way out of his depth on everything.

00:19:16.060 But it's like we – these are the most trollish people of all.

00:19:19.320 Yeah, literally. 0.78

00:19:20.340 I know.

00:19:20.640 I'm like – yeah, that's good.

00:19:22.720 They lose all their like aura.

00:19:23.800 like you know there's this thing among zoomers zoomer men where they like glaze ryan gosling 0.98

00:19:29.040 like they're in love with ryan gosling yeah and i think the primary reason for that is because he

00:19:32.480 doesn't have like no one knows anything about the guy like he pops up on a talk show every six

00:19:35.960 months and that's all you really get and i'm like that's how these journos should be i actually

00:19:40.220 would respect them a lot more if i wouldn't hear for them very often like i lose so much respect

00:19:44.940 for piers morgan who otherwise like has put together an impressive product because of his 0.92

00:19:49.320 twitter like it's just so bad i'm like wow this guy really is just kind of like a bonehead

00:19:52.960 And it's a shame because, like, you watch his show and you're like, it's a really interesting kind of product he's putting together.

00:19:58.700 And I don't really care what he thinks, but he's good at, like, kind of getting the panel moving and that sort of thing.

00:20:03.060 But then he just throws something up on Twitter and I'm like, dude, what is wrong with you?

00:20:07.740 It's crazy.

00:20:09.040 I kind of like it.

00:20:10.200 It kind of humanizes, like, peers and other people to me.

00:20:14.820 even when I see their kind of, you know, lowbrow, petty, you know, just random thoughts of the day.

00:20:24.400 But I mean that more in the sense that we know you're not holier than us.

00:20:30.880 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

00:20:32.620 You know, it's...

00:20:33.580 That's why the struggle sessions fall short when you have an oral loss like that.

00:20:37.720 Right. I mean, all this tongue wagging about, oh, you know, the internet dogpile

00:20:44.740 and these troll accounts and it's like then you see all these all these journals i mean this just

00:20:51.040 happened to me john oliver just attacked me in this segment two nights ago on his whatever hbo

00:20:58.420 show and i only found out about it because another news outlet which is supposed to be the it's called

00:21:06.180 the occrp the corruption reporting project the world's largest consortium of investigative

00:21:11.700 journalists. Every year they win all the awards. They are the ones who publish the Panama Papers

00:21:17.980 and things like that. 50% of their paycheck came from the U.S. State Department and USAID. Their

00:21:24.340 seed money came from a CIA cutout. Their initial funding came from the State Department and INS,

00:21:31.900 the intelligence wing of ODNI. And it's like, I found out about this hit piece about me from

00:21:39.600 john oliver because this outlet funded by my tax dollars wrote this super petty post uh saying uh

00:21:47.540 john oliver has i uh has identified the source of the problem far right activist mike bends

00:21:54.820 who campaigned against us it's like you know it's like what you said like the the aura lost

00:22:01.740 negative 10 000 it's like okay that's the sort of thing that like i would expect my kid sister

00:22:08.540 back in like high school to write about like a girlfriend yeah that you know like

00:22:15.260 you know didn't call her back on a wednesday or something it's like this is uh like i it's fair

00:22:25.940 fair game i suppose i don't want to be paying for tweets against myself that feels a little weird

00:22:32.120 i'd like the government to give me money so that i can retaliate yeah you know against against them

00:22:37.920 but uh leaving that aside it's it's like you don't get to talk about trolls now uh you're

00:22:45.360 doing like these personal petty this is not breaking news uh you this is like some random

00:22:52.260 john oliver segment yeah it's like settling scores except we don't care so it's like just

00:22:58.000 just doesn't work at all uh yeah i don't know anyone that watches john oliver so it's a miracle

00:23:02.940 that you even saw that in the first place.

00:23:05.380 I wouldn't have seen it other than that part of my beat

00:23:08.880 covers the corruption reporting project, ironically.

00:23:14.780 Well, good for John.

00:23:16.160 I'm sure the 10 viewers that saw that

00:23:17.780 were completely scandalized by your work.

00:23:21.600 Where can people find that fantastic work?

00:23:24.840 Well, you can find me on X at MikePenCyber,

00:23:27.880 also on YouTube, IG, Rumble, everywhere pretty much.

00:23:32.440 i love it well thank you so much for hopping on it's fantastic to talk to you

00:23:36.240 likewise thanks for having me see you

The Culture War - Tim Pool - March 13, 2026

Grifters And Bad Actors Have WON, Political Discourse Is DEAD ft. Mike Benz

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