The Megyn Kelly Show - Matt Taibbi on the Media, Cancel Culture, and the Democratic Establishment ｜ Ep. 23

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00:00:30.980 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:33.160 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:41.920 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.760 Today we've got Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and also Substack where he is making a killing.

00:00:52.600 We'll get into how and why he's over there as well.

00:00:55.760 But I've been looking forward to talking to him forever.

00:00:57.320 We've never met and yet I have huge respect for him.

00:00:59.500 He is brave and bold and taking on cancel culture in a way very few journalists from

00:01:05.480 the quote mainstream are.

00:01:07.380 So we'll get to him in one second.

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00:02:12.820 And now, Matt Taibbi.

00:02:17.860 Matt Taibbi, thank you so much for being here.

00:02:20.620 How are you?

00:02:21.640 I'm good.

00:02:22.360 Thank you, Megan, for having me.

00:02:24.220 My pleasure.

00:02:25.460 I'm looking forward to this conversation because I think I feel like your politics, I know you're

00:02:31.100 a liberal.

00:02:31.900 I feel like you're sort of center left.

00:02:33.820 I don't think you're far left.

00:02:35.420 And I'm a little bit more center right.

00:02:37.660 And that's I feel like we're in the same tent these days.

00:02:40.500 You know, there's so much in common between our groups as opposed to these lunatics on the

00:02:44.940 far extremes, you know, who have the loudest voices but don't represent the most people.

00:02:49.440 So let me just get a little bit of background on you, since I don't know whether the audience

00:02:53.340 will know you.

00:02:54.700 They certainly read about you.

00:02:56.040 But you grew up in Boston.

00:02:57.940 You now live in New Jersey.

00:02:59.360 Are you married?

00:03:00.320 I am.

00:03:00.780 And I have three little boys.

00:03:02.180 Ah, how old are they?

00:03:03.580 They're six, five and two.

00:03:07.380 Oh, wow.

00:03:08.060 You're in the thick of it.

00:03:08.920 Good luck with that.

00:03:09.440 Good luck with that.

00:03:09.940 But you're you're a writer, you're a journalist.

00:03:13.880 Your dad was a TV reporter.

00:03:15.540 So that must have been back in the day.

00:03:17.240 Like what what was he doing, local news or helicopter stuff?

00:03:20.140 What was he doing?

00:03:21.240 So, yeah, my father was a reporter at Channel 5 and Channel 7 in Boston.

00:03:26.040 So my childhood was basically like the movie Anchorman.

00:03:30.020 A lot of bad facial hair, a lot of stand ups.

00:03:34.840 But he ended up working at the network.

00:03:36.980 You know, he did was on Dateline for a long time and NBC sort of classic down the middle

00:03:45.220 sort of traditional news reporter, investigative reporter.

00:03:49.000 That was at a time when you could look at a reporter and say, I aspire to that.

00:03:56.280 I don't feel like the kids today are looking at us this way.

00:04:01.060 No, they certainly are not.

00:04:02.740 No, he came from a different generation.

00:04:04.660 And actually, I think my father's case is interesting because media has changed a lot in a lot of positive ways.

00:04:14.380 But one of the ways that I think is negative is that, you know, back in the 60s and 70s, when he got into the business,

00:04:21.980 a person who was a journalist was more likely to be the son or daughter of a plumber or an electrician than, you know, an Ivy League educated person.

00:04:30.600 And he belonged to kind of the last, the last wave of that sort of reporter, I would say.

00:04:37.920 I have to tell you, I, I, I get it.

00:04:41.040 I understand exactly what you mean.

00:04:42.260 And I feel like having worked at, I was at ABC for a very short time, but when I first started my career, but most of the time was at Fox and then a little at NBC.

00:04:49.000 And I saw that difference there.

00:04:51.040 I mean, Fox, Roger Ailes hired middle class people, people from middle class backgrounds and no one from elite universities.

00:04:59.180 I mean, I can't think of, I always say like O'Reilly said he went to Harvard, but he went to the fake Harvard, you know, where like you go to the Kennedy School for one year.

00:05:05.760 Right.

00:05:06.460 Exactly.

00:05:07.120 That's, that's not real Harvard.

00:05:08.320 And then NBC, there's a ton of Ivy Leaguers running around and man, you can feel the difference.

00:05:15.540 You can feel the difference in sort of their attitudes toward the audience, toward themselves, toward understanding the news.

00:05:23.640 You know, our goal at, at Fox was always to keep it simple.

00:05:26.520 And so it wasn't because we disrespected our audience, it was because we respected them.

00:05:31.000 We wanted to make it effortless to consume the news and not try to use a bunch of big words to impress anybody.

00:05:37.000 Just keep it real.

00:05:37.740 Yeah.

00:05:38.600 And obviously my politics aren't the same as Fox's, but, but I think that that approach was successful for a reason.

00:05:47.380 You know, it's, you're fundamentally changing your approach when you start bringing in a whole bunch of Ivy League people to cover the news.

00:05:56.020 Because what ends up happening is, you know, the old kind of Seymour Hersh class of reporter, they saw it as their job to challenge people who are in power.

00:06:06.320 And this new group of people who are now in, in the media, they see themselves as being on the other side of the rope line.

00:06:14.720 And, and they view their mission as basically to explain the point of view of people in power to the kind of unwashed masses and, and apologize for them.

00:06:28.400 And so you, I think you, you saw the change, like with movies, like Primary Colors.

00:06:34.360 I don't even remember that, that film about the Clintons.

00:06:37.440 But the premise of that film was, okay, here's, here's the inside look on a presidential campaign, you know, as told to a friendly reporter who heard these stories, you know, over a bar throughout the course of a campaign.

00:06:53.200 As, as, as opposed to, you know, like the, the, the, the blazing hit job that it would have been from an outsider, it was kind of, it was a more sympathetic portrait.

00:07:02.920 And that's, that's what you get these days.

00:07:04.980 So you decide to become a journalist and you moved to Russia?

00:07:10.060 I did.

00:07:10.700 Yeah.

00:07:11.400 There was a, really, I didn't want to be a journalist.

00:07:14.100 I wanted to be a comic novelist when I was growing up.

00:07:17.100 Um, my favorite writers were all Russians, uh, people like Gogol, uh, Mikhail Bulgakov, who wrote, uh, books like The Master and Margarita.

00:07:28.620 So I wanted to learn Russian, learn how to read those books in Russian.

00:07:32.080 And I moved over there after doing a little bit of study in the Soviet Union.

00:07:36.620 And I just, I loved it over there so much that I stayed for like 11 years, basically.

00:07:41.800 Um, but I, I didn't have any, I didn't have any skills apart from the family business, which was journalism.

00:07:48.660 So I ended up doing that, um, as a job while I was over there.

00:07:52.660 And that's how I got into journalism.

00:07:54.720 Okay.

00:07:54.780 So 2004 Rolling Stone, as I, as I looked it up, Almost Famous came out just a couple of years before that.

00:08:01.220 How many times have you seen that movie?

00:08:03.660 Uh, to be honest, I've never seen that movie because I was still living in Russia when it came out.

00:08:10.740 And, um, just, uh, I think I've seen the first half of it, uh, but I've never seen it all the way through.

00:08:20.280 Oh my God.

00:08:20.760 It's like, it's, it's like about a young guy who dreams of writing for Rolling Stone and goes out on the road covering this band.

00:08:26.780 You know what it's about.

00:08:27.400 You've got to watch that.

00:08:28.660 I know it's about Cameron Crowe and, and, uh, and it's got some, some people in there who I worked with.

00:08:35.380 And, uh, I have seen the other big Rolling Stone movie doing, you know, Where the Buffalo Roam, uh, which has Bruno Kirby as my, my former boss, uh, Jan Wenner.

00:08:44.980 He was great.

00:08:45.800 Uh, yeah, he was really good in that movie.

00:08:47.640 Um, but, uh, yeah, I'm, you know, I missed about 11, 12 years of American culture.

00:08:54.220 So, uh, I've had, I've had to catch up a little bit.

00:08:57.400 Like I didn't know who Pearl Jam was when I came home, like that kind of thing.

00:09:00.280 Oh, wow.

00:09:01.000 Wow.

00:09:01.600 So was there in, you're still at Rolling Stone, is that correct?

00:09:06.120 I am sort of.

00:09:06.980 Yep.

00:09:07.360 Um, I, I still have a podcast there.

00:09:09.760 I occasionally will contribute some stuff, but mostly I, I write for a site called Substack.

00:09:15.560 Yeah.

00:09:15.960 That's, that's where I'm reading you now.

00:09:17.700 And we'll get to that too, because there's a reason you're, you're doing that.

00:09:21.340 Um, is there, I mean, you weren't really on the music beat, right?

00:09:25.420 You were out, you did news, you did, you've been on the financial beat, politics.

00:09:29.880 So it's not like, you know, everything about the Rolling Stones.

00:09:33.580 It's, it's, this is where you honed your craft of journalism, real journalism on hard news subjects.

00:09:39.400 Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm basically a traditional investigative reporter, uh, that, you know,

00:09:45.760 but I used, I worked at a magazine, so I was kind of trained in doing, um, the kind of feature

00:09:52.360 length investigative story where you take a complicated subject and try to make it digestible

00:09:59.040 for ordinary people.

00:10:00.400 Classic example was like after the financial crisis where they asked me to explain, you

00:10:06.820 know, what had happened, what things like credit default swaps were, what a subprime

00:10:11.000 mortgage was, how it worked, that kind of stuff.

00:10:13.160 And I did that for a long, long time.

00:10:15.920 Well, I love your, your writings on the financial industry.

00:10:18.540 You really brought it home for me.

00:10:19.480 And the one that I don't know if this is famous, but you labeled Goldman Sachs, quote,

00:10:24.380 a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its

00:10:29.960 blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

00:10:33.820 Yeah.

00:10:34.340 It's funny.

00:10:36.640 Apparently the Goldman guys, um, actually enjoyed that.

00:10:40.300 And there, there's a legend.

00:10:42.080 I hope it's true, uh, that, that their communications person has actually has a brass squid on his

00:10:47.640 desk now.

00:10:48.180 So, um, that would be great.

00:10:52.360 That's how that industry works, right?

00:10:53.880 They would take that as a compliment.

00:10:55.060 Their response to that would be, thank you.

00:10:56.960 Exactly.

00:10:57.580 Yes.

00:10:57.860 That's, that's, that's, that is the way they take it.

00:10:59.820 All right.

00:11:00.940 So you obviously have the background to have a lot of thoughts on media and you've been

00:11:06.660 pretty outspoken about what's happened to us as an industry.

00:11:10.560 I want to get that to that in a second, but let's just talk about the election first.

00:11:13.860 Cause you've been covering it as well.

00:11:15.980 You're not a Trump fan.

00:11:17.280 You think that you called him a clown who seems determined to talk us into a civil war.

00:11:21.360 And you're not really a fan of the Democrats either.

00:11:24.380 You're kind of, you're politically homeless a bit given the way these parties have gone.

00:11:29.040 Um, but I, I read you say that you think Trump by losing may have given the Republicans a future.

00:11:36.080 How so?

00:11:38.940 Well, I think the Democratic Party, the modern Democratic Party has been for decades now trending

00:11:45.940 in a direction, uh, towards marketing themselves essentially as a professional class party for

00:11:53.460 the urban wealthy.

00:11:55.100 And they have ceded basically the entire rest of the electorate to anybody who's smart enough

00:12:04.700 to collect those votes.

00:12:05.860 And I think what we saw in this last election is that Donald Trump not only, um, got his base,

00:12:13.260 but he started to make inroads among, uh, voters who traditionally voted Democratic overwhelmingly.

00:12:20.800 He did well, he, the only place where he lost support was with white men, um, ironically, 0.74

00:12:25.700 and he did better with, with black men, black women, uh, LGBTQ voters, um, uh, you know,

00:12:34.440 Latino voters significantly, uh, better.

00:12:38.000 And so, you know, there's a, there's a kind of a working class, um, there's an opening for

00:12:45.540 a working class party to arise because the Democrats have rejected that as their profile.

00:12:51.760 I mean, even though they claim it, they have done nothing to earn it.

00:12:56.040 And so Trump is kind of a populist hero.

00:12:59.300 And he, uh, if somebody is smart, they, they, they will, they will be able to harness the,

00:13:05.640 the coalition that he just put together.

00:13:08.160 You, you said, you think this is by design that the Democrats, they wanted wall street

00:13:12.860 money.

00:13:13.660 Bill Clinton made the Democrats.

00:13:15.300 You said the party of Gordon Gekko.

00:13:17.580 How so?

00:13:19.380 Well, the Democrats after losing in 1984, uh, there was a huge sort of internal discussion

00:13:26.640 within the party, you know, what are we going to do to compete?

00:13:29.600 We, we never raise enough money to compete with the Republicans.

00:13:33.260 They're killing us, um, according to basically every metric.

00:13:37.920 Uh, so the, the Democrats made a strategic decision after their landslide loss in the

00:13:43.740 Mondale Reagan election, which was basically, we're going to stop relying on union money,

00:13:49.280 uh, to, to fund our elections.

00:13:52.420 And we're going to start taking money from wall street, from insurance companies, from

00:13:57.740 big pharma, from heavy industry, from, um, um, and, and that fundamentally changed their

00:14:04.920 platform.

00:14:05.560 They became, if you remember, uh, a party that they started using words like the pro growth

00:14:10.680 party, uh, we're going to run the government like a business.

00:14:14.620 Um, and they started bringing in a lot of wall street people.

00:14:17.660 Um, and they started to change their policies that, you know, if you remember NAFTA, uh,

00:14:25.760 which had been opposed by, uh, the union backed version of the democratic party, uh, was,

00:14:31.720 was pushed through by bill Clinton.

00:14:34.760 And, and they, they made this transformation to a party that was socially liberal on issues

00:14:40.340 like, you know, abortion.

00:14:42.240 Uh, but when it came to economics, uh, they were more or less indistinguishable from the

00:14:48.200 Republicans on, on a lot of key issues.

00:14:51.260 And, you know, that, that stuff eventually I think had a major impact on why Trump rose

00:14:58.560 and then also why the Sanders movement rose because they, they're, they're no longer, they

00:15:04.520 don't, they don't really represent the ordinary working person anymore.

00:15:07.820 Their policies are basically the, the, the policies that their big corporate donors want

00:15:13.860 them to push through, uh, which is why they've had a lot of success with free trade agreements.

00:15:19.040 They've had a lot of success with, uh, you know, sort of corporate tax, uh, holiday type

00:15:25.600 packages.

00:15:27.100 Um, they haven't pushed through the kinds of things that unions wanted over the years.

00:15:32.680 Uh, and they've, they've resisted things like, uh, you know, rise in the minimum wage, uh,

00:15:39.980 greater workplace protections, that sort of thing traditionally that they would, they would

00:15:43.860 have supported in the past.

00:15:45.520 So it's a, it's a new democratic party that they're really a party for kind of upscale,

00:15:50.300 uh, urban, uh, college educated and typically white voters.

00:15:57.380 Um, and they've, they've, they don't really have a platform for working class people.

00:16:02.680 Yeah.

00:16:03.180 For quote, regular people, although they did get Biden got 90% of the black vote, even

00:16:07.680 though Trump did raise the number of black voters he got on his side.

00:16:11.800 But it is interesting to see with a surge in Latino voters going for Trump, whether that

00:16:17.460 might, that might carve a path that, that someday blacks will follow because with people

00:16:23.640 like Candace Owens, uh, even, you know, some of the black support we saw like 50 cent go

00:16:29.520 for, uh, Trump or at least talk about it towards the end there.

00:16:32.580 I think there is more of a push right now to encourage black voters to take a hard look.

00:16:38.020 Just don't have a knee jerk instinct to vote Democrat because you've been told for all these

00:16:42.520 years, they're better for you.

00:16:44.620 They, they might not be better for you.

00:16:46.620 And that's how most people are explaining what happened for Trump with the Latinos and

00:16:51.240 some increase in the black vote is that people were voting their pocketbook and not identity

00:16:56.240 politics.

00:16:57.800 Yeah.

00:16:58.400 And this has a lot to do with the way that Democrats, um, view the electorate.

00:17:03.960 They, a lot of the consultants on K street and within the belt, the beltway, they make a

00:17:10.040 lot of kind of blanket assumptions about how people are going to vote based on, um, identity

00:17:14.860 first and foremost.

00:17:16.260 So they, I mean, you heard Joe Biden say during, during the race, um, you know, if you're not

00:17:22.280 voting for me, you ain't black. 0.58

00:17:23.840 Right.

00:17:24.300 And this is, this is like, uh, a thing where I think a lot of the democratic party people

00:17:31.780 assume that, uh, anybody who's black must vote democratic.

00:17:37.260 Um, anybody who's college educated must vote democratic.

00:17:41.620 Uh, and they've stopped coming up with a real rationale in many cases for why that has to

00:17:47.540 be true.

00:17:48.020 Also they don't, they, they just reject the idea that some people, um, think about other

00:17:54.140 criteria beyond race and identity.

00:17:57.060 I mean, there are a lot of people who might see themselves more as, um, you know, working

00:18:02.940 class than, than the member of an ethnic group.

00:18:06.180 Uh, but that's just not part of the thinking of the party, uh, these days.

00:18:10.980 But now the, uh, that same party, the Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself.

00:18:18.020 Um, they have become super focused on identity politics on cancel culture.

00:18:24.380 I mean, they're working together, I think, to push, to push cancel culture.

00:18:27.840 And this is one of the things you've been such an astute observer of it's, I encourage

00:18:32.900 everybody to read, you go to sub stack and subscribe and you can read.

00:18:36.940 It's like, um, you know, the, uh, God, what's his name?

00:18:41.200 His name is escaping me right now.

00:18:42.740 He wrote Angela's ashes.

00:18:43.740 It's like chewing rubies in your mouth, reading Matt Taibbi because really, because you have

00:18:48.520 a way of putting this cancel culture BS into words that make us all feel good.

00:18:53.720 And I, I think it is one thing that's bringing people who aren't that hardly partisan together.

00:18:59.780 I have so many center left friends who are like, they're, they're agonizing over this.

00:19:05.820 They're disgusted by it.

00:19:07.060 And they feel like we're destroying each other, that we're, we're actively trying to bring

00:19:11.700 each other down.

00:19:12.340 And I know you've written about how it seems like that the new mission now of this sort

00:19:16.660 of new movement is to search out thought crime, to search out thought crime and anything can

00:19:23.560 be an offense.

00:19:24.240 You, you cite the, the UCLA professor who got in trouble for reading an MLK letter out loud,

00:19:31.040 right, right, right.

00:19:32.780 Yep.

00:19:33.240 Yeah.

00:19:33.440 Cause it had the N word in it, uh, which, you know, the, the context should matter, but

00:19:39.360 apparently it doesn't.

00:19:40.820 Um, there was, there was another professor who was actually speaking Chinese and a Chinese

00:19:46.700 word that he used sounded like the N word and he got in trouble, uh, for, for using that.

00:19:52.680 Uh, so yeah, it's, it's a, it's a problem.

00:19:55.540 Um, there, there's a kind of hunt for unorthodoxy that's going on right now, um, with, uh, within

00:20:03.000 the democratic party and in the media.

00:20:04.940 And that's, that's a major problem.

00:20:07.380 Uh, you know, I, I grew up, you know, at a time when being a liberal meant being the

00:20:13.920 person who accepted, uh, you know, all different points of view and welcomed the debate, right.

00:20:21.340 So the, the, the, the card carrying member of the ACLU was the person who was, who was

00:20:26.740 proud of the fact that the ACLU defended the Nazis at Skokie.

00:20:30.000 Uh, we were the people who were against, um, you know, Tipper Gore trying to put labels

00:20:36.520 on, on, you know, record albums and that sort of thing, or, uh, or Ed Meese censoring

00:20:43.560 things that he thought were, uh, pornography.

00:20:46.180 Always the idea was like, it was liberal to be in favor of, of, of speech.

00:20:51.340 And there's now basically a starkly opposite new ethos among young people who are coming 0.96

00:20:58.540 up, uh, as Democrats.

00:21:00.820 And that's, it's, it's, it's frightening because, uh, the traditional defense of speech, there

00:21:07.520 just, there just isn't that, that group anymore.

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00:22:41.620 You say in one piece of June, 2020, entitled The American Press is Destroying Itself.

00:22:48.060 It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American

00:22:52.920 left has lost its mind.

00:22:55.740 It's become a cowardly mob of upper class social media addicts, torching reputations and jobs

00:23:02.100 with breathtaking casualness.

00:23:04.360 But why?

00:23:05.680 Like, why?

00:23:06.620 How did the left get here?

00:23:08.520 How did they switch from that old sort of liberal group that fought for free speech to this group

00:23:14.220 that just wants a scalp? 1.00

00:23:15.740 Some of it has to do with some fashionable trends in academia, you know, critical theory,

00:23:21.880 postmodernism.

00:23:23.300 But a lot of it, I think, has to do with the internet and the way that young people talk

00:23:29.540 to each other and organize these days.

00:23:32.260 And these days, there is a kind of a shortcut to believing that you're making a difference,

00:23:39.760 which is by getting somebody fired or getting somebody disinvited to your school or, you know,

00:23:48.300 getting some, costing somebody a book deal or a prominent position.

00:23:53.100 And all it takes is, is like a whole bunch of people on, on Twitter or on Instagram or

00:23:59.080 whatever it is, sort of ganging up on somebody for a couple hours.

00:24:03.380 And that could be it.

00:24:04.560 I mean, you could cost somebody a job that quickly.

00:24:08.100 And I think people have the illusion that this is what political action is.

00:24:13.220 It's really not that at all.

00:24:15.400 It's, you know, politics is actually, when you're doing it right, is a, you know, is

00:24:21.860 a deeply boring, grind, grinded out, you know, grueling kind of organization heavy process.

00:24:29.620 It's not something you can just flick on your phone and do in two minutes.

00:24:34.240 But they've, they've sold a generation of people on the idea that this is progress.

00:24:39.280 And it's, you know, it's, it's become this dangerous weapon, right?

00:24:43.320 Like the, you know, a lot of people are getting caught up in it.

00:24:46.780 And it's also had an effect on our business because now people are terrified to say anything

00:24:52.420 they think might get them in trouble.

00:24:55.160 Yeah.

00:24:55.600 Now I see these guys as bullies.

00:24:58.580 That's what they are.

00:24:59.500 They're just bullies.

00:25:00.580 And it's ironic because we've spent years now in wake of these school shootings and the

00:25:05.900 awfulness we've seen there running these anti-bullying campaigns and trying to make people more sensitive

00:25:11.180 to what the mob ganging up on somebody can do and to paying attention to those feelings.

00:25:17.420 And now the very people who have been pushing those campaigns and trying to educate us on

00:25:21.580 what happens turn around.

00:25:23.180 And they're like the amoeba, they swarm together and it's kill, kill, kill.

00:25:29.320 And, and they, they get a high off of it.

00:25:31.680 They get a high off of getting somebody fired who it's so sick when you think about it.

00:25:38.440 Oh, it's, it's, it's repulsive.

00:25:40.380 And, and it's also breeding this, this whole new mentality where people think that, that

00:25:48.780 it's, it's politically a virtue somehow to always be, you know, in the in group, right?

00:25:58.220 Like, in other words, if you're, if you're the, you know, on the outside, if you're all

00:26:03.740 by yourself, um, and taking a position that nobody else is taking, then there must be

00:26:10.260 something wrong with you.

00:26:11.140 It's only virtuous to be in, in, you know, in the herd and that, and they, and they hammer

00:26:17.820 home that, that idea relentlessly.

00:26:20.780 Uh, you know, and especially with people like myself, but to a lesser, to, to a greater degree

00:26:26.780 life, people like Glenn Greenwald, you'll see that, um, what they, what they say most

00:26:33.480 often is look at how, um, how willing he is to stand outside the crowd and, and not go

00:26:41.360 along with what everybody else is saying.

00:26:43.320 How dare he, you know?

00:26:45.460 And that's what we love about him.

00:26:47.060 Yeah, exactly.

00:26:47.940 That used to be the mark of, of a, of an intellectual who, who, you know, had the deeply felt beliefs

00:26:54.580 and was, was courageous and now we don't value that at all.

00:26:57.580 And now we, now we think that that's a bad thing.

00:26:59.480 And, you know, I think that's a very, very dangerous, uh, mentality.

00:27:03.580 And again, I went to school in the Soviet union.

00:27:06.180 It was at the end of, of that tenure, but I'm very familiar with that mindset of the cowardly

00:27:12.680 mob and, you know, the, the, the individual who, um, you know, who ends up in trouble for,

00:27:19.640 you know, kind of saying the wrong thing and being honest.

00:27:22.600 And, and that's, that's not a good dynamic.

00:27:25.220 Now, to your point about Glenn, who just resigned from the organization, he started the intercept

00:27:32.380 saying, this has gotten out of control.

00:27:34.760 We created it to be a hands-off journalism enterprise where we didn't have pressure from

00:27:39.580 above.

00:27:40.100 And now I and other journalists here are getting censored and pushed to support the democratic

00:27:45.140 party.

00:27:45.720 And I'm not doing it.

00:27:46.860 I'm out.

00:27:47.360 He pieced out of there.

00:27:48.220 But one of the things that separated him from Democrats and liberals was he did not

00:27:55.140 buy Russiagate at all.

00:27:56.860 And neither did you for that matter.

00:27:58.100 And thought it knew it was bull right from the beginning.

00:28:01.520 And he, he used to work for, um, is it, was it salon?

00:28:07.220 Cause Joan Walsh came out and commented on this.

00:28:09.400 And can you just tell folks like, so he gets in trouble with the left because he didn't

00:28:15.280 support Russiagate.

00:28:16.220 He thought it was bullshit.

00:28:17.380 And he was, so he was accused of being like a Russian stooge.

00:28:21.100 Okay.

00:28:21.520 So this is where the left went.

00:28:22.720 Okay.

00:28:22.860 You don't support it.

00:28:23.560 So you must be a Russian stooge. 1.00

00:28:24.660 You're, you're basically working for Putin.

00:28:26.360 And then Joan Walsh, who sees everything, everything through identity politics weighs in

00:28:30.980 as somebody who used to work with Glenn saying what?

00:28:34.580 Yeah.

00:28:34.700 She said that Glenn, Glenn's, uh, views on Russiagate were, were tainted by his distaste

00:28:41.180 for where the democratic party had gone.

00:28:43.180 And she, she said that part of that was the rise and influence of women and people of color. 0.99

00:28:49.940 So essentially she's saying that he doesn't believe in Russiagate because he's a racist

00:28:54.260 and a misogynist.

00:28:56.500 Uh, and it got worse than that.

00:28:58.340 The, the, the New Yorker did a story, um, a, a big feature called the bane of their resistance

00:29:04.860 about Glenn, uh, that hypothesized essentially that he was not buying the Russiagate story

00:29:11.400 because he had a, a tortured pathology growing up as a, as a confused young gay man in America 0.82

00:29:20.960 with daddy issues.

00:29:22.360 Uh, so, you know, you're a racist, a misogynist, uh, sexually confused. 0.82

00:29:28.340 Confused, uh, pathological case if you don't go along with Russiagate.

00:29:34.040 And that's like the starting point of what you get if you cross the herd on, on issues

00:29:39.300 like this.

00:29:40.040 And it's, it's, it's amazing.

00:29:42.620 It really pisses me off.

00:29:43.640 I'm laughing, but it actually pisses me off.

00:29:45.520 Like it makes me angry.

00:29:46.900 And I think people like Glenn, like you and like me for that matter, catch it in a particular

00:29:53.580 way because they don't go after Sean Hannity like this because they expect that from him.

00:29:59.240 But if you're somebody who they thought was on their side, there's a particular ire, right?

00:30:05.620 They're betrayed that you would ever break the party line, which of course is what a journalist

00:30:12.440 is supposed to do.

00:30:13.360 There isn't supposed to be a party line.

00:30:14.820 You're supposed to challenge stories, challenge politicians.

00:30:18.640 Your fealty should be to no one but the truth.

00:30:21.720 And if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who can see it through all the massive dark

00:30:26.960 clouds like Russiagate, et cetera, it's a gift, not something to be shamed because you

00:30:33.200 had daddy issues, allegedly.

00:30:35.040 This is what's happening.

00:30:37.420 Yeah.

00:30:37.920 I mean, again, I grew up in the media at a time when it was valued and I've, I've actually

00:30:45.480 worked very hard in my career not to really let people know where I stand politically or

00:30:50.100 what my actual inner political feelings are.

00:30:53.560 I think that should be a little bit of a mystery to readers.

00:30:56.960 Uh, but in this period, that's, that's totally unacceptable.

00:31:00.780 And they, they went after everybody.

00:31:02.800 And it's, it's interesting that you bring that up, um, about, about Hannity, because the

00:31:09.920 same people who are going after, uh, you know, heretics like Glenn and myself and you, um, are

00:31:17.460 the same people, they're the exact same people who cried foul when the Dixie chicks, uh, had, 0.94

00:31:23.920 you know, had all their albums burned in the Bush era.

00:31:28.000 They're like, Oh my God, look at those people.

00:31:29.920 They're anti-thought they're, they're, they're thugs and bullies and they don't want to let

00:31:33.620 people express themselves.

00:31:35.100 And they're turning around and doing exactly the same thing.

00:31:37.540 It's just that the politics are different this time.

00:31:39.440 Right.

00:31:39.660 Um, it's so frustrating to watch.

00:31:42.880 Yeah.

00:31:43.100 I'm seeing a lot of it just now because, you know, I, I said on Twitter, I wrote on Twitter

00:31:47.720 that I thought Trump won the third presidential debate.

00:31:50.400 Some of these Democrats felt betrayed, like what's happened to you?

00:31:53.740 And then this weekend I was tweeting about, you know, this is kind of a BS call for unity

00:31:57.440 by Biden.

00:31:58.380 It wasn't even a call for unity.

00:31:59.540 He had announced that it had happened, right?

00:32:02.660 He got, he won the election and we are unified.

00:32:06.080 We are strengthened.

00:32:07.520 We are healed.

00:32:08.700 Right.

00:32:09.100 So no, we're not.

00:32:10.380 And we're not going to be.

00:32:11.720 And the only people who are calling for that are the people on the winning side.

00:32:14.620 They want unity because they don't want opposition to their agenda.

00:32:17.380 And this is the point I was trying to make, which is a hundred percent correct.

00:32:20.180 And you know what I got?

00:32:20.840 And I can understand whatever criticism.

00:32:23.220 I don't, I don't really care as people know about getting criticized, but I got a lot,

00:32:28.020 a lot of how could you, how could you say that?

00:32:32.820 Like you are supposed to be anti-Trump.

00:32:36.100 He attacked you.

00:32:37.780 He called you a bimbo. 1.00

00:32:39.280 He said you had blood coming out of your wherever.

00:32:41.080 He went after you for months and months and months.

00:32:43.720 How could you?

00:32:45.280 They felt betrayed by the way.

00:32:46.780 Joan Walsh was one of them, but one of many.

00:32:49.420 And honestly, Matt, I don't think they, they can understand how some of us are able to separate

00:32:55.700 our personal views, our personal experiences from our analysis of the news.

00:33:02.720 Right.

00:33:03.040 And, and it's amazing that they can't recognize that because what all you're doing is your job,

00:33:08.620 right?

00:33:09.420 Like your, your, your job is to separate that out.

00:33:12.500 Yeah.

00:33:12.720 Trump, Trump was horrible to you.

00:33:14.700 I think we all know what we all saw that happen, but that doesn't mean that you're

00:33:19.280 automatically required to take a, you know, to a, to push a narrative, um, you know, on

00:33:26.600 command, just because you might have personal feelings about Donald Trump.

00:33:30.160 That's not how it works.

00:33:31.000 The job, the job requires that you take a step back and honestly call things as you see

00:33:36.200 them.

00:33:36.520 Other, otherwise, what are we doing?

00:33:37.920 We're not, we're not providing any extra service if, if, if we're not doing that.

00:33:42.300 Right.

00:33:42.660 So it's so true.

00:33:43.880 Right.

00:33:44.420 So I looked at it and it happens on both sides, right?

00:33:46.920 Because I think for a while there, the left loved me because they thought I challenged

00:33:50.860 Trump and he came after me.

00:33:52.080 And so I must be anti-Trump.

00:33:53.380 So they're like, okay, great.

00:33:54.240 You're, you're team Democrat, which I never was.

00:33:57.100 And then the right got mad too, because I asked Trump a very tough debate question.

00:34:01.400 I asked them all very tough debate questions.

00:34:03.120 Just Trump made a thing out of his.

00:34:04.960 And then the right was like, you, you crossed us, you crossed him.

00:34:08.680 You're a never Trumper.

00:34:09.880 It's like, I was never a Trumper.

00:34:12.640 Like I was, I'm not a never Trumper.

00:34:14.700 I'm not a pro Trumper.

00:34:15.700 I'm a journalist.

00:34:16.360 And, you know, you look back at my history.

00:34:18.620 I, I punched Dick Cheney in the face rhetorically.

00:34:21.160 I, I, I went after Karl Rove when he talked nonsense on election night.

00:34:24.760 I had a big dust up with Newt Gingrich.

00:34:26.540 I could go on.

00:34:27.200 I've always challenged people on both sides.

00:34:28.800 And it's almost like the viewers just develop an expectation because you're fair that you're

00:34:35.760 always just going to lean to their side.

00:34:37.780 And, and, and I do think people like you, people like Glenn, and especially in today's day and age, that's just no longer okay.

00:34:45.900 You got to pick a team.

00:34:47.120 And if you don't, you're out, you're out of the circle.

00:34:50.760 Yeah.

00:34:51.500 No, they've made it very explicit.

00:34:53.280 Now.

00:34:54.440 I think it's worse on the left, on the quote unquote left than it is on the right.

00:34:59.000 Um, yeah, it was amazing for me watching Fox news on, on election night and seeing people disagreeing with Donald Trump and, and criticizing him.

00:35:11.160 I mean, there wasn't, there wasn't a ton of it, but there was some of it and you won't see any of that on MSNBC or CNN.

00:35:17.640 But look what's happening to Fox right now.

00:35:19.360 I mean, are you following what's happening to them?

00:35:20.920 Yeah.

00:35:21.160 They're losing viewers by the thousands and they're, they're going over to Newsmax and other places.

00:35:26.980 They're pissed.

00:35:27.880 People are angry at Fox news right now for calling Arizona early in, in many people's view for, for pronouncing Joe Biden, the president elect.

00:35:37.280 And, you know, I think Brett and Martha are at the middle of it.

00:35:39.580 Like, we're trying to do journalism.

00:35:41.820 The decision desk says he's won, you know, we're going to announce it, but that's how divided we are.

00:35:47.240 It's like, you've got to be all in for one guy or the other, or you're going to get your head chopped off.

00:35:53.840 Yeah.

00:35:54.320 And it's so unfortunate because once upon a time, you know, I think if you go back and look at like the, the Walter Cronkite, Jessica Savage type anchor person, nobody would have looked to those people.

00:36:08.380 People with the expectation that they'd be endorsers of, of political views.

00:36:13.440 They, they, their value was, was that you believe them when they said something.

00:36:18.600 Right. And, and that was, that was the entire, um, point of the commercial enterprise that was the news back, back in the day was that you, you trusted the information that came over those.

00:36:32.580 And now who trusts anything that comes out over any of these networks, uh, because they've all, that's why I really think the future is it's individual.

00:36:40.260 It's people like going to subscribe to Matt Taibbi, right?

00:36:43.220 It's, it's people listening to this podcast saying, I trust her.

00:36:46.000 I trust him.

00:36:46.920 I don't think the future is going to be news organizations and individuals.

00:36:51.240 I think it's going to be much more specific than that, but two things.

00:36:55.480 Number one, Jessica Savage is pretty much the reason I became a journalist. 0.76

00:36:59.220 I saw, I was kind of interested in doing it.

00:37:02.360 I'd made a resume tape when I was an unhappy lawyer and I was home one day from my law job.

00:37:07.620 I was still practicing law and, uh, I was lazing around on the couch.

00:37:11.740 I wasn't feeling well in lifetime television, Matt.

00:37:14.940 I don't, I'm not afraid to admit it.

00:37:16.980 On came the Jessica Savage story and it was so good.

00:37:21.420 It wasn't, it was not a reenactment.

00:37:23.920 It was a documentary and it was so good.

00:37:27.220 And, uh, I was inspired.

00:37:29.360 I was like, this woman came up during an age where there were no women in journalism.

00:37:32.520 And if she could do it, what am I sitting here on my couch feeling sorry for myself for?

00:37:36.940 Like, get off your ass, go do it.

00:37:39.040 And that was the day I started cold calling news directors, um, ended hideously with a

00:37:44.380 drug problem and she went off a bridge and died.

00:37:46.740 But let's just table that for now.

00:37:48.680 Um, the second thing I wanted to ask you about was you raised and have been, you know, you

00:37:57.280 seem as moved by the, I think this is the worst story in cancel culture and it's hard to

00:38:02.660 pick one.

00:38:03.020 It really is.

00:38:04.420 Uh, and, but like, I'm terrified by the story of what happened to Lee Fang.

00:38:12.160 Speaking of the intercept, which Glenn just left his, his organization.

00:38:16.000 Can you, can you just tell me, I don't think most people understand who the hell Lee Fang

00:38:19.820 is or what happened to him, but it is the worst story I've heard so far in cancel culture.

00:38:24.580 Yeah, it's complicated.

00:38:25.460 So Lee is a, um, an investigative reporter, uh, at the intercept, a very talented, uh, kind

00:38:34.340 of old school investigative reporter, the kind of person who's really comfortable with like

00:38:38.840 documents and FOIA searches and that sort of thing.

00:38:42.360 And he just occasionally comments on Twitter.

00:38:45.840 He's Chinese American.

00:38:46.920 He's from, he grew up in, uh, the Baltimore area and he had, I guess, tweeted a few things

00:38:54.980 over the course of the last year or so, um, including an interview with an African American

00:39:01.880 man during, uh, the protests over the summer and the, the person that he was interviewing,

00:39:09.780 uh, said, you know, why is it that people only go out in the streets when a cop kills

00:39:17.660 a black man?

00:39:19.080 What, why aren't there protests when, uh, you know, there's, we kill our own, right?

00:39:26.980 Essentially that I forget what the exact quote was, but it was just an interview of that,

00:39:31.660 of this person.

00:39:32.420 It was, why, why does a black life matter only when a white man takes it? 0.87

00:39:37.260 That's what the black man he interviewed said.

00:39:39.680 And then he talked about someone he knew who'd been killed, a black man by another black man.

00:39:44.600 Yeah, it was, it was a family member.

00:39:46.500 Actually, he, I ended up talking to the guy, uh, very smart guy, very thoughtful.

00:39:51.660 And, and, you know, it's, it's not an uncommon thing to hear.

00:39:55.820 I mean, I wrote a book about the death of Eric Garner.

00:39:57.840 And so, uh, and you do hear that sentiment, like, you know, how come there's, there's

00:40:04.240 only this press attention when this, this kind of thing happens and not when other things

00:40:08.240 happen.

00:40:09.340 Um, so he just, he, he ran a clip of that interview and one of his colleagues, uh, essentially said,

00:40:17.340 why are you publishing this racist, uh, point of view?

00:40:23.100 And, and before you knew it, there were like 30,000 people, uh, hitting the like button.

00:40:29.800 Lily had to go to HR. 0.97

00:40:31.000 He had to write a formal apology basically, uh, to keep his job.

00:40:34.900 And, um, you know, he published that and there was a little public mending of fences.

00:40:41.060 Uh, but the, the, you know, the message there is basically like if, if other journalists

00:40:48.040 decide that something you say is racist or misogynist or whatever it is, it doesn't take

00:40:55.640 much for your job to be on the line, like within 10 minutes.

00:40:59.460 I mean, that's basically what happened.

00:41:02.180 And he, he is a, this is a, one of the better young reporters that we have in the business,

00:41:09.660 I would say.

00:41:10.840 Um, and he doesn't particularly do a lot of editorial commenting.

00:41:14.860 That's the other thing that's interesting about this.

00:41:17.060 Which, which he didn't hear.

00:41:18.680 Yeah.

00:41:19.200 Right.

00:41:20.360 Uh, and, uh, you know, and, and also, you know, he grew up in a, in kind of a tough neighborhood.

00:41:27.620 He, he had, it's informed by, in part by his own experience.

00:41:33.360 Um, you know, as a, as a Chinese American and yet none of it mattered, you know, like the, 0.55

00:41:39.280 it's, it's just the, the, the whole episode kind of demonstrated how, how the herd mentality

00:41:44.820 works in this business now.

00:41:46.480 Like if you, if you step out of line, like you're, you could be out in like by the end

00:41:51.880 of the day, that's how fast.

00:41:52.960 And it doesn't have to be somebody like me with a history at Fox news.

00:41:56.140 It can be somebody who's a lifelong Democrat who actually is, is part of a minority group

00:42:02.220 who has been sympathetic to the cause.

00:42:04.400 It doesn't matter one, one false move and F you you're out.

00:42:08.900 And, and what his, he had committed an earlier thought crime, which was he had tweeted out

00:42:14.800 a tweet questioning the logic of protesters attacking immigrant owned businesses that

00:42:21.860 had no connection to any police brutality or anything.

00:42:24.320 And, and that got him in trouble first.

00:42:26.280 So he was on probation, right?

00:42:28.020 Like what, why would you question the rioters burning down businesses owned by immigrants

00:42:33.000 that says something about you?

00:42:34.460 And then the second offense was this one, you know, interviewing a black man who wanted 0.52

00:42:38.940 to raise awareness about there is a black on black crime problem.

00:42:42.680 And that led to his colleague, her name was Akilah Lacey.

00:42:45.940 I'm just going to read what she, what she tweeted.

00:42:48.060 I, I'm at the time I was like, Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

00:42:51.560 She, she, she tweeted out tired of being made to deal continually with my coworker Lee

00:42:56.880 Fang, continuing to push black on black crime narratives after being repeatedly asked not

00:43:03.260 to, this isn't about me and him.

00:43:05.360 It's about institutional racism and using free speech to couch anti-blackness.

00:43:11.120 I am so fucking tired.

00:43:13.220 Stop being racist, Lee.

00:43:15.060 And then all these other people, instead of saying, Lee's not racist, he's trying to report

00:43:22.120 the news, jumped on the bandwagon.

00:43:25.780 You, you pointed out in one of your articles, a former Elizabeth Warren staffer actually tweeted,

00:43:30.020 get him, get him.

00:43:32.320 Yeah.

00:43:32.720 No one defended him.

00:43:34.040 Very few people jumped to his defense because that, that can be fatal too, right?

00:43:39.220 That's the other thing is it's part of this, this new mechanism is if you

00:43:44.940 come to the defense of a person who is, is deemed unorthodox yourself can quickly fall

00:43:52.620 under suspicion.

00:43:53.320 So people just tend not to do that either.

00:43:56.400 Uh, no, Lee's Lee kept his job.

00:43:59.280 Um, but you know, that it's, it's, it's a tough thing to have for people to have to go

00:44:04.480 through.

00:44:04.720 And a lot of people don't keep their jobs in these situations.

00:44:07.080 Uh, so it's, it's, uh, and, and what ends up happening is, is that, uh, all the reporters

00:44:16.000 and I hear from them all the time and it's not, it's not even just about the race issue.

00:44:20.600 It's about all kinds of issues.

00:44:22.440 They all see where the line is.

00:44:24.280 They all see what the narrative is and what they're supposed to be saying and what they,

00:44:28.020 what they maybe want to say.

00:44:30.660 Um, but they just stay far away from where the line is because they don't want to have 0.84

00:44:35.000 to deal with that, that problem.

00:44:37.100 So to just take an example of another reporter I heard from just, just last week, you know,

00:44:43.120 there were, there was a, uh, somebody who wanted to do a little piece on it.

00:44:49.000 If Trump loses, the media might have to do a little bit of a, uh, a reckoning and re-examine

00:44:56.880 why we've lost so much trust in the last four years.

00:45:01.040 And, you know, the, the, the, the idea was rejected.

00:45:05.620 Um, but there's, there's lots of people who are going through that silently.

00:45:09.880 Like, do I say something?

00:45:11.040 Do I not say something?

00:45:12.020 And most people just don't say anything.

00:45:14.200 If you do say something like, you know, you're talking, you're writing about it.

00:45:17.440 I'm talking about it.

00:45:18.300 You get so many messages.

00:45:19.640 I'm sure you do.

00:45:20.580 I know I do from people thanking you, people in our industry and outside of it saying, thank

00:45:25.680 God, you know, I wish I could say what you're saying and, but they're afraid to even like

00:45:29.900 a tweet is that you really, you can be fired for liking a tweet.

00:45:34.560 It happened to some guy who liked a Trump tweet.

00:45:36.900 Um, so it's like, people are afraid to make any false move.

00:45:40.580 And to your point about how people won't come out and defend you, you know, I didn't know

00:45:44.800 this piece of the story, but you had written in the, in the Lee Fang case when his accuser,

00:45:50.360 Akilah Lacey was questioned about, wow, this guy's gotten a lot of fallout.

00:45:55.340 You know, he had to, he had to issue a public apology for quote, insensitivity to the lived

00:46:00.120 experience of others.

00:46:02.260 Um, you know, sort of saying to her, like, what do you think about this?

00:46:06.900 She said, uh, look, there is more concern about naming racism than letting it persist.

00:46:13.660 That's what you get hit with.

00:46:14.780 If you try to defend anybody who's been accused, you're focused on the wrong thing.

00:46:18.680 It's not that I may have falsely accused him.

00:46:21.260 It's that he did it.

00:46:22.480 Right.

00:46:22.980 Just trust me.

00:46:23.760 He did it.

00:46:24.840 Right.

00:46:25.340 Yeah.

00:46:26.100 Yeah.

00:46:26.660 And that, that, that is what you'll get.

00:46:29.400 And most people just don't want the hassle.

00:46:31.300 So they just go along, you know, and, um,

00:46:34.880 Well, the reporters are so afraid.

00:46:36.460 Everyone's afraid, but you would expect journalists who used to be, used to be known as kind of

00:46:41.360 tough back in the day in your dad's day, you would expect them to take just to adhere

00:46:47.160 to the facts.

00:46:47.800 That's all.

00:46:48.560 You don't even have to.

00:46:49.580 I guess I would like them to defend people who are defensible, but like, just stick to

00:46:55.540 the facts and they won't, they won't report facts, report facts now that they find troubling.

00:46:59.320 That's what Glenn was saying.

00:47:00.180 He had to leave the intercept because they wouldn't let him report facts that may have

00:47:03.440 reflected poorly on Biden and well on Trump.

00:47:06.220 And so I, you tell me whether we get out of this, let's just stick to journalism for a

00:47:11.060 minute.

00:47:11.300 How do we get out of this?

00:47:12.920 Because most of our industry has surrendered to the woke mob and surrendered to their own

00:47:19.860 progressive biases separate and apart from the woke mob.

00:47:23.820 You know, they're no longer interested in reporting the news straight.

00:47:26.340 They only want to report stuff that's good for the left.

00:47:29.700 And as I look at the landscape, I say they don't come back from this.

00:47:32.100 The journalism industry does not come back from this.

00:47:35.080 Yeah.

00:47:35.160 I don't think the legacy media organizations, unless they reform themselves considerably,

00:47:39.400 can come back from the direction that they've chosen because people just don't believe them

00:47:45.720 anymore.

00:47:46.220 They don't see them as anything other than representatives of a political line.

00:47:50.960 And that's not where the value is in the news business.

00:47:54.040 I mean, Glenn talks about this all the time.

00:47:56.160 The interview that Joe Rogan gave with Edward Snowden had like 15 and a half million views,

00:48:03.020 which is like, you know, 12 times the size of a typical cable news audience.

00:48:09.400 The MSNBC, CNN audience has been massively displaced.

00:48:18.780 And there's a gigantic audience of people who no longer have faith in these traditional media

00:48:26.040 organizations.

00:48:27.720 So I think they've either got to rediscover what their roots are and start seeing themselves

00:48:36.880 as people who can speak out about anything and challenge power and look in all directions

00:48:42.100 or else they're going to become irrelevant.

00:48:44.740 More with Matt in one second.

00:48:47.760 I'm going to ask him about Robin DiAngelo's white fragility, which he has said, quote,

00:48:53.060 may be the dumbest book ever written.

00:48:55.780 You're going to want to hear him on that.

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00:50:18.420 Okay, now, before we get back to Matt and the dumbest book ever written, we're going to bring you a feature that we do on the show sometimes called Asked and Answered.

00:50:27.260 And this is when we bring in the executive producer of the Megan Kelly show, Steve Krakauer, who's been pouring through the questions to find some goodies.

00:50:36.260 What do we got, Steve?

00:50:37.380 Yeah, Megan, we've been getting a lot of questions.

00:50:39.540 And you can continue to email your questions into questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.

00:50:44.860 These are two that came in that were both sort of about the media.

00:50:47.940 So put them together.

00:50:49.020 First, John Gabbartoglio asks, we all know the mainstream media despised President Trump.

00:50:54.440 We also know that the mainstream media benefits from him financially.

00:50:57.380 So the one thing I can't figure out is why do they want him out of office so bad if it actually would hurt them financially?

00:51:03.180 Good question.

00:51:03.720 Also, Jason Goldstein wants to know if editorial boards should pledge to have a certain number of people from divergent political backgrounds, particularly in the results of this election.

00:51:15.480 That's a good one.

00:51:17.100 So, John, I think it's ideological.

00:51:19.560 That's the bottom line.

00:51:20.360 They don't care.

00:51:20.780 They'd rather, you know, that they sort of see it as a higher calling to get him out because they they I don't think they're just calling him racist and all those things.

00:51:29.100 I think they genuinely believe it.

00:51:30.600 I mean, you know, they believe everyone's a racist who's a Republican.

00:51:33.380 So they really believe he's a racist.

00:51:35.940 So I think it's easy.

00:51:36.960 They're like, yeah, he's got to go because he doesn't make me feel good about myself and getting rid of him would.

00:51:41.780 And if it has to cost ratings, so be it.

00:51:44.760 Um, I think the question Jason raised about editorial boards is really interesting, and I would I would love to see it.

00:51:53.520 Even if you got like a token Republican on some of these boards, I think it would help.

00:51:58.900 But I'll bet you they'd fire them soon thereafter.

00:52:01.360 You know, they they say they want to hear what, you know, the other side of the country thinks.

00:52:05.660 But then as soon as somebody speaks up and tells them they get fired or they pull their editorial or you remember the New York Times fired that editor who let Tom Cotton's editorial run.

00:52:15.700 They had to be fired because an editorial on whether we needed a military presence to control the civil unrest this past summer was endangered black New York Times employees.

00:52:27.060 So that's how that goes.

00:52:28.280 That's why, you know, anybody that guy was a liberal, the editor who got fired.

00:52:31.960 Can you imagine if he'd been a Republican, how fast he would have gone?

00:52:34.380 But I'd love to see it.

00:52:36.700 And I'll tell you where else I'd like to see it on school boards.

00:52:39.940 Right.

00:52:40.400 Like, what are you doing, school board, to ensure yourselves that you are representative of if not half the student body and their family politics, then at least some significant percentage.

00:52:52.800 Even here in New York City, I've had to say to our school so many times, you know, you have Republicans at this school, right?

00:52:57.500 Like, you know, after Trump won in 2016, all the letters that went out, like, we understand how difficult this time is.

00:53:05.620 And they had support groups.

00:53:07.500 You know, it's like you understand that not everybody is crazy left in this town, mostly, but not everyone.

00:53:14.840 Like, calm down.

00:53:16.740 I mean, on that subject, isn't it so interesting how quickly the boards came off all the windows, the storefront windows everywhere where they tried to tell us it was both sides.

00:53:23.140 They were worried about both sides rioting.

00:53:24.740 Sure.

00:53:25.140 OK.

00:53:25.460 As soon as Joe Biden was announced, the winner.

00:53:27.660 Suddenly, no more fear of looting.

00:53:29.020 So I'd love to see more balance at the corporate level, at the academic level, certainly at the university level, where they've got something like 4% conservatives in the incoming classes.

00:53:40.520 But I confess, I think it's just a pipe dream.

00:53:43.840 I don't think they really have any interest in understanding half of the country.

00:53:49.600 And it's a shame.

00:53:50.780 What do you think, Steve?

00:53:52.400 Yeah, I would tend to agree with you.

00:53:54.980 I mean, I think that your point about the editorial boards, I mean, you look at the idea.

00:53:59.280 I think that there's certainly political biases that are happening within the media, but there's also geographic bias.

00:54:05.480 And if you've got a media that is, you know, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, even certainly ABC, CNN, CBS, you know, you could walk within an hour and visit the headquarters of all those places in New York City and hit them all.

00:54:20.360 I mean, that's a big problem also.

00:54:21.960 And until you start to look outside of that, you're going to have a lot of similarities in the thinking that goes into the, you know, the executive ranks of these of these organizations.

00:54:30.840 Well, and you know, it's been funny during the Trump era is these organizations are like, well, we have Republicans.

00:54:35.280 We've got Steve Schmidt.

00:54:36.340 He works for the Bush administration.

00:54:37.900 We've got Nicole Wallace.

00:54:39.040 She shepherded through Sarah Palin. 0.98

00:54:41.600 You know, Washington Post.

00:54:42.600 We've got Jennifer Rubin, who hates conservatives with every fiber of her being. 1.00

00:54:47.340 Maybe it wasn't always thus, but that's how they get away with it.

00:54:50.580 They get some diehard never Trumper who's got some used to have some GOP street cred and say, like, we're diverse.

00:54:56.920 We're ideologically diverse.

00:54:59.240 And, you know, people are on to that now.

00:55:01.320 But I do think when I look around at who gets chosen for those roles, that it's OK to be a Republican so long as you loathe Donald Trump.

00:55:09.720 Just make sure.

00:55:10.680 Exactly.

00:55:11.040 And that's that's the thing.

00:55:11.920 That should be the question.

00:55:12.680 Find someone who makes decisions that at least knows someone who who they like and respect who voted for Donald Trump that like start there.

00:55:22.200 I don't know.

00:55:23.000 I think people should start saying it loud and proud.

00:55:25.440 If you like him, don't be embarrassed about it.

00:55:27.560 As you saw, 71 million people feel the same.

00:55:31.820 It's like Dennis Prager was saying yesterday.

00:55:33.960 This half of the country, they're not alone.

00:55:36.500 They're not, no matter how many of the people who control the media and Hollywood and academia and big tech and corporate America tell you, you're not alone.

00:55:47.760 Half the country is with you.

00:55:50.660 So you remember that the next time you try to get shamed out of your POV.

00:55:54.960 All right.

00:55:55.420 So questions, plural, at Devil May Care Media, if you would like to weigh in.

00:56:00.160 We love hearing from you guys.

00:56:01.520 And we'll do this again soon.

00:56:06.500 Part of the problem, of course, is there's no accountability.

00:56:13.080 The media has pursued so many storylines that they told us were awful, awful for Donald Trump, gotten gotten them totally wrong and then never even acknowledged how wrong they were, Matt.

00:56:25.780 It's like the list of so-called bombshells that weren't and that they never went back to clean up is as long as Santa's scroll at this point, right?

00:56:36.420 Yeah, I'm actually I'm actually putting out a little a little movie about that soon.

00:56:43.720 I actually went back and made a list of all the bombshells that had to be walked back or retracted.

00:56:49.780 I mean, what are a couple of your favorites?

00:56:53.860 Just to take a couple of examples, like remember all the stories about George Papadopoulos and how he was he was the beginning of the of the FBI investigation.

00:57:03.740 And that was that was where it all started.

00:57:06.900 I mean, almost every news organization did these big features about Papadopoulos and his secret contacts with the Russians.

00:57:16.240 Well, about a year ago, there there was testimony that was declassified where the FBI, the former deputy head of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, said that they knew by August of 2016 that the evidence, quote, didn't particularly indicate that Papadopoulos had had contact with the Russians.

00:57:39.340 So, in other words, the entire predicate for the Trump-Russia investigation they knew was bogus within about a month of starting that investigation.

00:57:52.140 And nobody went back and reported that.

00:57:54.120 I mean, that's that's hundreds of stories that were out there.

00:57:58.080 You know, you know, the Carter Page stories, right, where they they were reporting constantly that there was probable cause that he was an agent of a foreign power.

00:58:08.860 He was asked about that on television.

00:58:11.320 Now it turns out that the that the the court ruled based on a fraudulent FISA application.

00:58:18.900 So where were the retractions for that?

00:58:21.520 You know, they didn't do any.

00:58:24.300 That's the new thing.

00:58:25.240 You don't retract.

00:58:26.320 You just move on.

00:58:27.400 Or like The New York Times is doing with the 1619 project, which is a lie.

00:58:33.120 She's won a Pulitzer for writing this thing, but it's replete with lies.

00:58:37.480 The very foundation of the piece, which is that America was founded on slavery and to preserve it is a lie.

00:58:43.180 You just take out your eraser and you erase those lines from your piece and you don't disclose that you've done that.

00:58:50.960 You just have to have reporters watching the reporters all the time to do comparisons between the original piece and the piece every day thereafter online to try to catch them taking out their lies so that it doesn't become a bigger deal.

00:59:05.880 Yeah, you have to you.

00:59:07.940 You're right.

00:59:08.700 You literally have to use the way back machine now to compare and contrast the old version of the story with a new version of the story because they are they're doing this kind of silent editing technique.

00:59:21.240 Now, sometimes you'll see at the bottom of the story a note that says, you know, an earlier version of this story said X, Y and Z, but they leave it out a lot, too.

00:59:33.720 And they'll fundamentally change what what the story says just by changing a few words and you won't know.

00:59:41.580 Right.

00:59:42.080 Right.

00:59:42.380 And that's that's pretty scary.

00:59:44.660 That's kind of Orwellian, actually.

00:59:46.360 Right.

00:59:46.740 Well, so that's the lesson is you can just go ahead and misreport willfully or to be charitable negligently.

00:59:54.120 I believe often it's willful.

00:59:56.960 I mean, there's no question that Nicole Hannah-Jones is 1619 piece was willfully fraudulent.

01:00:00.920 They're just the fact that she still got that Pulitzer, even though a group of very esteemed academics professors like Glenn Lowry, who who is also black, but a contrarian, as he calls himself.

01:00:13.760 You know, he doesn't buy sort of the blacks are victims and, you know, they need the white people to bend the knee and all the rest of it.

01:00:20.720 Well, by the way, he's coming on the show soon.

01:00:22.200 So I'm looking forward to that.

01:00:22.920 Anyway, they've called for that Pulitzer Prize to be pulled.

01:00:25.640 And if it doesn't get pulled, it will have no more meaning for the future.

01:00:30.500 But anyway, so so the goal is, I mean, the message is that you can willfully or negligently misreport reality so long as what?

01:00:41.440 Well, you can do it.

01:00:42.520 And without consequence, you can misreport because the news organizations have figured out that if you're, let's say, a blue leaning organization like The New York Times or The Washington Post,

01:00:52.900 and you get something wrong about Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani or whatever it is, who cares?

01:01:00.660 Your audience isn't going to care.

01:01:02.200 And they're not there.

01:01:02.760 So they're not going to see those corrections and they're not going to demand them either.

01:01:06.140 Like it's not important to them.

01:01:07.960 So what there's this drift has taken place in the business where we just don't worry about making sure that we're right in the same way that we used to.

01:01:17.900 Like it used to be I don't know about you, you know, but I used to every time I did a story, I couldn't sleep the day before it was published because I was so worried that I got something wrong in there because it would stick to you forever if you made a bad mistake.

01:01:34.480 I don't think they I don't think the young people in the business feel that way anymore.

01:01:39.920 It's not quite the same approach doesn't feel like.

01:01:43.720 Absolutely.

01:01:44.560 I couldn't agree with you more.

01:01:45.880 I think I mean, there's so many reasons for that, but that's definitely the new normal.

01:01:51.540 And now the question is, what do we expect from these folks going into what appears to be a Biden administration?

01:01:59.380 Right.

01:01:59.580 Like like the CNN's Brian Stelter.

01:02:02.820 I mean, I hate citing this guy.

01:02:04.340 He's never practiced journalism.

01:02:05.620 So nobody's going to sit there and actually be a critic.

01:02:10.980 Of course, it's interesting how his criticisms are only of Fox News, really.

01:02:15.260 Never, never of anybody else.

01:02:17.940 He's come out.

01:02:19.180 Right.

01:02:19.520 He's come out and said, coming soon, a restoration of normal relations between the president and the press.

01:02:27.900 And then he elaborated saying, and this is a quote, the media's adversarial approach that you've seen during the Trump years to demanding truth from power, calling out lies, criticizing indecency.

01:02:40.520 That approach serves us well, no matter who holds high office.

01:02:45.100 If Biden says the blue sky is red, the media must call it out.

01:02:49.540 Of course, different degrees of deception deserve to be treated differently.

01:02:54.160 A slip of the tongue must not be equated with a smear campaign.

01:02:58.020 But in all cases, the media stay on the side of truth.

01:03:04.620 I'm feeling it.

01:03:05.380 You feeling it?

01:03:06.080 I'm feeling it.

01:03:06.600 I got the chill.

01:03:07.180 Yeah, I mean.

01:03:12.100 Who does he think he's kidding?

01:03:14.000 I know.

01:03:14.520 The pomposity is pretty impressive, actually.

01:03:17.660 I got to give him an A plus for that one.

01:03:20.280 He's pretty good when it comes to, you know, that sort of highfalutin prose.

01:03:28.400 But no, look, it's ridiculous.

01:03:30.100 This started even before Trump was president.

01:03:34.800 What I worry about going forward with Biden is that the press is going to collectively decide we're not going to report on stuff that gives the Republicans any ammunition to go after this administration because that will be bad.

01:03:49.200 And that would that might risk another Trump or whatever it is.

01:03:52.740 And, you know, we're going to see pretty quickly how how critical they will or won't be.

01:03:57.300 My guess is they'll be very, very docile.

01:03:59.900 Absolutely.

01:04:00.460 They're going to be defending most of what he does and not criticizing.

01:04:04.760 Ninety nine percent of it.

01:04:06.120 That's I feel like that's clear.

01:04:07.800 So we'll see, Brian.

01:04:10.020 Tucker calls him the hall monitor, also the eunuch, which is mean.

01:04:13.220 But hall monitor is funny.

01:04:16.140 I've got to ask you.

01:04:17.540 It was the most brilliant column ever that you wrote on white fragility. 0.96

01:04:23.520 This absurd book that has been making the rounds since the summer and making Robin DiAngelo, its author, rich as she peddles not only her book, but classes based on her book,

01:04:36.580 along with a message that you can never get over your white supremacy.

01:04:41.020 You have to work on it for the rest of your life, which is very convenient for the person who offers the classes on how you must deal with your white supremacy on an ongoing basis.

01:04:51.160 You call it the dumbest book ever written.

01:04:53.900 And I I love you say it's part of this new sort of anti-racism movement that is a, quote, dingbat racialist cult.

01:05:07.800 What do you mean?

01:05:08.860 So the racial consensus that we lived under for most of the last 50 years was based on, I think, you know, Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.

01:05:19.020 And it was based on the idea that people are people and that even if we have differences, even if we belong to different races, we're all people.

01:05:30.520 And that our goal is should be to try to get along, you know, and and to, you know, even if imperfectly, even if we're not there yet,

01:05:40.620 that should be the goal as a society is for all of us to live together in harmony and and not to worry about our racial differences.

01:05:48.640 This new anti-racism movement takes a completely opposite approach where it says, actually, the problem is, is that we are not spending enough time thinking about race.

01:06:01.540 We should heighten awareness of our differences and people who are white should ponder their whiteness all the time. 1.00

01:06:11.640 And we should be constantly thinking about all the invisible ways in which race and racial perception affects our lives, which is exactly the opposite of what the this Kingian approach to racial relations was.

01:06:28.320 So I think that this it's it's it's remarkable.

01:06:33.160 People like Robin D'Angelo actually have a lot in common, their writings with with people like Richard Spencer.

01:06:40.200 They they are hyper focused on white supremacists on on, yeah, on race, on what the different races and how are and how they how they behave.

01:06:52.520 And as opposed to just seeing all people as people.

01:06:56.300 And I think that's that's the thing that's crazy.

01:06:58.960 Yeah. Well, the difference is Spencer believes that there's something inherently deficient about blacks and inherently superior about whites.

01:07:06.540 And D'Angelo thinks it's exactly the opposite.

01:07:09.920 It's it's no better. It's no less racist.

01:07:12.620 She just switched the races. 1.00

01:07:14.240 And I know you called it tricked up pseudo intellectual horseshit disguised as corporate wisdom and pointed out this is Hitlerian. 0.74

01:07:23.800 It's Hitlerian race theory that says this is a quote from the book.

01:07:27.540 A positive white identity is an impossible goal. 0.94

01:07:31.920 There's nothing to be done except, quote, strive to be less white. 0.97

01:07:37.760 OK, I'll work on that.

01:07:39.640 I guess I'll I'll work on that somehow.

01:07:41.760 I'm not sure.

01:07:42.860 I'm not sure what to do.

01:07:43.480 But Robin's going to tell me how I can be less white, I guess. 0.80

01:07:46.600 Well, right.

01:07:46.960 Look, it's a it's a grift, basically.

01:07:48.880 Right. I mean, these people who who go to they come out of, you know, certain universities and then they go to big companies and they say, we're going to clean up your your workplace toxicity issue.

01:08:01.340 And all you have to do to to to to get there is buy our six thousand dollar an hour, you know, speaking program and have each of your of your employees go through a an endless series of exercises to work on being less white, whatever that means, which is it's it's preposterous on so many levels and insulting. 0.92

01:08:27.180 And it leads to some pretty crazy places.

01:08:29.480 You know, there are lawsuits in in New York City where some of these programs have said things like, you know, white teachers shouldn't be teaching non-white kids.

01:08:43.000 You know, like if you if you extrapolate this kind of thinking out all the way, it leads to some really, really lunatic kind of thinking.

01:08:54.100 So, yeah, it's it's nuts.

01:08:56.320 Blatantly racist.

01:08:57.940 And she is a racist. 1.00

01:09:00.560 That's but she's been celebrated like she's the second coming.

01:09:05.120 You know, Jimmy Fallon fawning over her.

01:09:07.640 She's been on all CNN all over.

01:09:10.000 They all love her because I think they're trying to assuage their white guilt and put some some money into the hostage fund just in case they do something that's considered racist or say something that's considered racist.

01:09:21.600 I had Robin DiAngelo on I was ready.

01:09:24.140 I was ready to confess how bad I was because I was striving to be less white, you know, and this woman, not only is she dishonest, Matt, she's she's an anti intellectual. 0.97

01:09:34.900 You know, you you you wrote a great line, which was she writes like a person who was put in time out as a child for speaking clearly.

01:09:41.620 And here's the quote of you you wrote of her book when there is disequilibrium in the habitus, when social cues are unfamiliar and or when they challenge our capital.

01:09:52.200 We use strategies to regain our balance.

01:09:55.960 Yeah, I think what she means in human language is like, you know, people find ways to deal.

01:10:01.080 I think I think that's what she's trying to say.

01:10:03.400 But she just used too many words to get there. 0.99

01:10:05.960 But yeah, no, the irony of this is is incredible.

01:10:09.820 Right. Like America is going through this massive national discussion about racism.

01:10:15.140 And what's the first thing that happens?

01:10:17.220 It's a white, clearly disturbed author, racist to the top of the bestseller list because you have all these sort of suburban and upper class white people who are who are full of white guilt.

01:10:34.800 And the way they assuage that guilt is going and buying Robin DiAngelo's book.

01:10:39.220 Right. I love it. She she really wants you to walk in every room as a white person and apologize for the racism that you've perpetrated and that's been perpetrated by your race. 0.58

01:10:47.940 And then if you say anything mildly offensive and God knows what that is in today's day and age, basically anything, anything said by a white person, you're just offensive, just you're walking around offensive.

01:10:56.840 She wants you to say, and I quote, would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism I perpetrated toward you?

01:11:03.280 Can you imagine if people actually behave like this?

01:11:09.400 I mean, this is the shit that you like Jonathan Capehart was saying, but he made him cry.

01:11:13.420 It finally acknowledged his lifetime experience of being a victim over and over and over.

01:11:17.500 And you've got conservative black people saying you've got to be fucking kidding me. 0.62

01:11:22.280 It's just the divide. And yet it's working.

01:11:26.160 It's working. It's working. She has scared the daylights out of the media. 0.98

01:11:31.200 Corporate America has taken the knee on this.

01:11:33.760 I mean, like they're giving out free copies of this book.

01:11:36.480 And also, Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist.

01:11:39.940 Yeah. And look, I I actually agree that there are a lot of these companies do have racial issues and they some of them really need to do do some things to fix.

01:11:52.140 You know, there aren't enough black executives at some of these companies. Right.

01:11:55.660 Like, I agree with that.

01:11:57.380 Or in Hollywood.

01:11:58.180 Or in Hollywood. And there are issues that have to be dealt with here.

01:12:02.860 But this this is not the way to get there is to hire these high priced consultants who who probably in their day to day lives never interact with black people.

01:12:14.500 And I think that's abundantly clear from these books.

01:12:16.360 That's not the way that we're going to get to the promised land, I don't think, is is by buying.

01:12:21.620 Well, but it's scary because not only might your corporation make you read this book, but as you point out, it reflects the orthodoxy of academia.

01:12:29.500 It's certainly at the college level, but also before then.

01:12:32.420 And I just think we're raising we're trying to create racists where they don't exist.

01:12:38.860 You know, if you right now, the messaging is basically if you're white, you have a black friend and you're enjoying each other and you're getting along.

01:12:45.200 That's because you're a racist.

01:12:48.260 Right.

01:12:49.260 Yeah.

01:12:49.760 If you're just thinking you're having a good time with your friend, that's your racism speaking.

01:12:54.620 That's where we are.

01:12:56.080 Yeah. There's a lot of very strange messaging.

01:12:57.940 I don't I don't understand that.

01:12:59.200 I worry about my kids.

01:13:00.620 It's so funny because having kids really disabuses you of a lot of notions about race because you see little children playing with each other and they just don't they have no conception of race.

01:13:12.480 It's just not important to them at all.

01:13:15.240 But as they get older, we're filling their head.

01:13:18.900 We're the people who are filling their heads with negative ideas about race.

01:13:22.620 And I and that's what I worry about is that there's you know, we're taking away that natural joy that kids have around each other and replacing it with something that's worse.

01:13:33.440 Yeah. Now, me, too.

01:13:35.440 I worry about it because it's like I don't I don't want my kids shamed in while they're still in the single digits, mind you, for being white.

01:13:43.640 But then when you start to have a conversation about, you know, the other side to that conversation, you know, like you're not bad just because you're white. 0.74

01:13:50.740 You and your black friends are equal and you should be like then you're on a subject that you just didn't want to discuss with your kid at this age.

01:13:55.980 You know, it's like suddenly you're you are you're part of the problem because you're making it an issue when it wasn't otherwise.

01:14:01.780 You see your kids come up, they they'll describe they'll say like she has brown eyes, brown skin, brown hair.

01:14:07.020 They don't even know that racist that race is a thing that might be extra sensitive versus eye color.

01:14:13.320 But we we make them know the schools make them know.

01:14:17.020 And then it places parents in this position to have very nuanced, complex discussions on race that I just don't think these kids need when they're.

01:14:25.980 Seven.

01:14:27.580 Yeah. And kids and kids are incredibly perceptive and they they pick up on things like people becoming nervous or tensing up when they have to talk about an issue like race, which is the which is not the message I think you would hope that they would send.

01:14:44.720 And, you know, I always think about when I was growing up watching Sesame Street, right, which which presented this image of kind of racial harmony and equality that I thought was really beautiful and positive.

01:14:57.180 And but without, you know, kind of shoving it in your face, you know, and I think that's that's the kind of thing that's not we're not seeing so much anymore.

01:15:09.580 Like we're we're trying to get the kids to think about things that maybe they don't need to when they're that young.

01:15:16.500 Well, that's just your racism talking. But thank you for trying to weigh in.

01:15:20.460 Yeah.

01:15:21.100 You you don't like cancel culture. You you know, obviously, we've talked about that.

01:15:25.980 I wondered, what did you think about you?

01:15:29.300 You must have been at Rolling Stone when they had the whole Virginia fake gang rape scandal.

01:15:36.180 Yes, I actually wasn't there.

01:15:38.360 I had briefly left the company for like eight months.

01:15:41.760 So I missed that whole thing, although a lot of my friends were were involved with with that story.

01:15:47.820 So, you know, I came back to your thoughts.

01:15:50.740 Now, I'm curious your thoughts. So just I'm sure the audience generally remembers this, but Rolling Stone had this big exclusive on UVA University of Virginia.

01:15:58.940 A woman came out and said she'd been gang raped at a fraternity party there and everyone ran with it. 1.00

01:16:04.600 It was horrible. This poor woman. 1.00

01:16:06.800 It turned out to be made up.

01:16:08.900 It was another B.S. story.

01:16:11.140 And Rolling Stone had the egg on its face and people started to question, like, why are we doing this?

01:16:16.320 Why are we running with any story in which somebody a woman says she's been victimized by a man or a black person says they've been victimized by a white person?

01:16:25.260 Hello, Jussie Smollett. Like we keep making the same mistake over and over.

01:16:28.900 And do you think it's all tied in like the the need, the need to affirm the alleged victimization of anyone in a protected class?

01:16:39.200 So that's it's a difficult question.

01:16:40.720 And what happened at Rolling Stone was and just just to preface it so that people understand, you know, I worked there for probably a decade before that happened.

01:16:50.580 And I had I had actually become exhausted by the fact checking process.

01:16:58.200 I was probably spending more time fact checking on my articles about Wall Street than I was writing those pieces.

01:17:06.880 The we had a very we were one of the last news organizations in New York that had a pretty sizable fact checking department that went through every single line.

01:17:19.600 And so when this happened, I was really shocked because I it was seemed impossible to me that it could have gotten through the department.

01:17:29.640 But what it turns out, what happened was the source in the story didn't want to be fact checked in the traditional way, didn't want to have to answer those questions.

01:17:40.340 And for a variety of reasons that I think a lot of those editors, you know, regret looking back on on the situation, they kind of turned off the usual fact checking process.

01:17:54.120 And I think they thought they were being sensitive to the victim in the case or the ostensible victim.

01:18:01.420 But in reality, you're not being sensitive and you're not helping people in that position by not vigorously fact checking them because you end up putting them in an even worse position by publishing something that's not true.

01:18:19.240 And they become and they become and for the rest of their lives, it follows them around and it becomes it becomes this thing that that's going to define their lives.

01:18:27.540 So I think there's a there's a little problem in the journalism business where, you know, you're in in the in this new culture, we're kind of trained to believe the victim.

01:18:43.300 Right. And and I understand that.

01:18:45.980 But you can't take away the rigorous fact checking process because that actually doesn't help them.

01:18:51.540 In addition to being, you know, terrible, terrible, obviously, for the person who's accused, it doesn't help anybody to turn off that that process.

01:19:00.860 No, it's it's it's it's one thing if you do an interview with someone who says they're a victim and you ask tough questions and you probe the story and you present it to the audience as saying, this is this person's allegation.

01:19:16.000 And here is what the defendant has said or the person being accused has said, if you if you are open about the fact that you've you've gotten this interview, you're going to tell the audience what the person has to say, that you reach out to the other side to give them a chance to respond.

01:19:30.080 That's one thing. But to do an in-depth expose of a story, which is presented very clearly as the story.

01:19:36.880 This is what happened is a totally different ballgame.

01:19:41.340 And, geez, you have to be so careful, you know, and even now, you know, the news media has a way of reporting these things and telegraphing their belief.

01:19:49.180 That's what happened with Jussie Smollett before they know what's happened.

01:19:52.540 You know, you look back on the initial reports about him.

01:19:54.820 You guys know who he is. He's the guy who made up the fact that he had been attacked by two two guys who with a rope that they attacked.

01:20:03.520 They I can't remember the details of how he said he was attacked, but it was a racial attack by two MAGA hat wearing guys.

01:20:10.260 And at 2 a.m. in Chicago, in the middle of the the cold storm, you know, the the deep freeze that they went through, it was baloney.

01:20:19.840 And the police came out very clearly and said not only did he hurt himself, but he hurt every real victim of racial attacks, of hate crimes, because now people are there less likely to believe them.

01:20:30.080 And that's that that's the woman's real crime in the UVA case is it's I don't really care that she has to deal with this following her around for the rest of her life. 0.99

01:20:38.060 But I do care that now legitimate victims of sexual assault are going to have to overcome her lies in in being believed.

01:20:46.400 No, no one deserves a presumption of the truth.

01:20:48.400 No, no one. Some women lie. 1.00

01:20:51.000 Some black people lie.

01:20:52.820 Every person on earth lies sometimes.

01:20:54.400 And our job as journalists is just try to get to the facts straight.

01:20:57.220 Right. Yeah, you're you're right.

01:21:01.000 It's ultimately the people who are going to suffer most from an error like that are the are the people who are who have real stories to tell and who are not going to be believed the next time.

01:21:14.940 I mean, another another example of that phenomenon that that was really amazing was the the Caliphate podcast by The New York Times.

01:21:23.800 Oh, yeah. Where they this was recent where they had a six part series that was based around a guy who claimed that he you know,

01:21:34.160 he joined the ISIS army in Syria and was doing all these crazy things like crucifying people and stabbing them to death.

01:21:43.520 And it turned out to be, you know, he was arrested for hoaxing in Canada and The Times just didn't check the story enough,

01:21:51.340 you know, which a lot a while ago would have been a significant scandal in the media business.

01:21:57.140 But, you know, now it is it's like a two minute story because this happens so often now.

01:22:03.740 A couple more questions with you about where you are.

01:22:07.060 So you are still writing for Rolling Stone, but you're on Substack now.

01:22:10.200 So why? Why go there?

01:22:12.820 And is it a question of Rolling Stone not not wanting you to express your full opinions like we saw with Andrew Sullivan?

01:22:19.280 No, I've always had a lot of freedom at Rolling Stone and they've they I've always had a good relationship with the people there.

01:22:27.700 That's really not it so much as I kind of think saw the direction of where the business was heading.

01:22:35.700 I was a huge fan of I.F. Stone growing up.

01:22:39.220 Um, and I he was a reporter who basically put out a newsletter out of his basement and reached a lot of people.

01:22:48.220 And I just thought that this kind of subscriber based journalistic model might be a little liberating in some way.

01:22:55.160 And my and also, you know, because Rolling Stone, I obviously I get along with them.

01:23:01.860 But they, you know, if you read their content now, it's it was very, very heavily like pro-Biden and pro-Democrat during the last couple of years.

01:23:14.160 And, you know, I did feel a little bit of tension there, maybe because I'm more or less apolitical in my approach to the job.

01:23:23.400 So I thought this would be a better choice.

01:23:27.980 And you've done very well there, right?

01:23:29.680 I mean, people use you as an example of the future of media, because what I read in the papers is you tripled your income just by going direct to consumer.

01:23:39.280 Is that true?

01:23:41.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's probably true.

01:23:43.120 Yes.

01:23:44.660 And I think people like Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald will tell you the same thing that that Substack is a model that can work for certain people.

01:23:55.640 I think you have to have some profile already before you make that move.

01:24:00.680 But and so I don't know that it's going to be a solution for, you know, to support the entire independent media, but it definitely works.

01:24:09.480 And and there's a lot there's a huge audience out there of people who are just kind of tired of the old thing.

01:24:15.320 So I strongly encourage anyone who's thinking about making this move to not be afraid to do it because it does work.

01:24:23.620 Do you worry about big tech cracking down?

01:24:26.000 That's there's some musings right now publicly that that's going to be the next place they go, that suddenly you are, quote, accountable because big tech is going to say, I didn't like that article.

01:24:38.380 And you're you're you're deplatformed.

01:24:41.380 Yeah, I'm very worried about that.

01:24:43.400 I mean, Substack is a service that is kind of designed to circumvent that because the your primary means of getting the material to your audience is by email.

01:24:53.260 So once you have a list of stuff, a list of subscribers, you're just sending them personal notes, basically.

01:25:01.520 So even if they even if I were to be taken off, you know, say Twitter or Facebook, I could still reach my audience.

01:25:10.360 But I am really worried about that because clearly the things that I write could easily be censored in the same way that a lot of other people are being censored these days.

01:25:24.300 It's like you got to own it.

01:25:25.240 That's why that's why I wanted to own Devil May Care Media.

01:25:28.120 I didn't I didn't want anybody else's money.

01:25:29.780 I didn't want to partner with anybody.

01:25:31.680 I use Red Seat Ventures just to sort of get the show on the air because I don't know how to do that.

01:25:35.480 But I'm the boss and it's my dough and no one can fire me.

01:25:38.080 And right, honestly, like if somebody cancels you out, I'll publish you.

01:25:42.120 I just I feel like that's my dream is just like I hate I hate what's happening and screw big tech and screw all these people who are trying to censor legitimate journalists and thought leaders from having a contrarian viewpoint.

01:25:55.580 It has to stop.

01:25:57.000 You know, if we don't stand up and fight, then no one will.

01:26:00.580 And then the audience is so ill served by this monolithic voice, which, by the way, we just saw that the country split right down the middle.

01:26:07.820 Well, you know, it's seventy four million, seventy one million to Biden, Trump.

01:26:12.180 It's split right down the middle and there there is not uniformity of viewpoint in the United States.

01:26:17.020 And the media should reflect that.

01:26:19.540 Absolutely.

01:26:19.800 Absolutely. And, you know, the media also should be very, very worried about speech restrictions.

01:26:26.580 And they're not at all, which really, really freaks me out.

01:26:31.220 You know, I I wrote an article before the election talking about how I I didn't particularly feel like voting for either candidate.

01:26:38.200 And the original headline I had for that piece was going to be vote for neither.

01:26:43.480 But I I didn't do that because I knew that that would have triggered a response from probably Twitter, which has a rule against any kind of material that it might be seen as suppressing the vote.

01:27:01.720 So there's all these new rules that you have to worry about when you're when you're doing this stuff now and you never know when they're going to decide to, you know, to take you off their site or to put or to suspend you or to to to block your content or to do what they did to the New York Post and lock your Twitter account.

01:27:21.280 I mean, that stuff is scary.

01:27:23.340 It's very Orwellian.

01:27:24.280 You said earlier that you normally never said who you, you know, like what your political leanings were and tried to just keep the vest up on that and that now you don't think that's realistic and your approach is changing.

01:27:40.160 How so and why?

01:27:42.900 Well, I still try to do that.

01:27:45.120 Um, but but but the problem is in the modern landscape, they're pushing you to be more and more open about what your political leanings are.

01:27:55.500 So there you don't see very many people in the traditional mainstream media who about whose politics you don't have an idea like you pretty much know who everybody's voting for.

01:28:09.980 Right. I mean, can you can you think of a major journalistic figure whose vote was a mystery, you know, in the recent cycle?

01:28:19.140 There aren't that many. And it used to be not true.

01:28:21.840 It used to be considered a virtue to if the audience didn't know anything about your personal life or your or your personal politics.

01:28:30.060 The reason you want to you want to stay a little bit of a mystery to your readers is because it may at some point become necessary to criticize, you know, this or that political party.

01:28:42.480 And if if you've already publicly declared yourself to be on their side about things, it makes it harder to do that.

01:28:50.060 So I always try to stay a little bit coy about that. And if if I have to say something nasty about a politician, well, that's OK, because, you know, I haven't already announced myself as and to the contrary point.

01:29:07.520 If you say I'm for Biden and I'm and I'm against Trump or I'm I'm for Trump and I'm against Biden or whatever, if you say something nasty about the other side, it means less.

01:29:20.620 Right. Because because you've already declared yourself to be a partisan.

01:29:25.660 So I think there's a lot of value in trying to to hide a little bit from from the audience and just just say just make observations and have people judge them on the merits.

01:29:35.660 I mean, I find it interesting, of course, because this has been my own history.

01:29:40.200 You know, I'll challenge anyone you put in front of me.

01:29:42.580 I don't really care whether they have a D or an R next to their name.

01:29:46.020 And I have a proven history of that.

01:29:48.280 But what I found in my past is that I will say it's more with the left.

01:29:52.520 They find it very frustrating.

01:29:54.100 They really want you to tell them that you're on their team and I'm not on their team.

01:29:59.340 I'm not on the Republicans team either.

01:30:01.120 And I never have been.

01:30:02.120 You know, I'm not a registered Republican, nor am I rooting for anybody because they're a Republican.

01:30:05.880 I've I've been pretty open about the fact that I have I have center right leanings, but I have some things on the center left that I'm more aligned with as well.

01:30:13.960 And and that is as much as I'll say, because that's what's true for me.

01:30:18.140 Being fair is easy because it's just my natural ideology.

01:30:21.380 Like I'm open minded and I want to be convinced either way.

01:30:23.980 I but I do think about it.

01:30:26.020 You know, I know, for example, Lester Holt is a Republican, but I have no problem with seeing him anchor a debate involving a Republican because I think he's fair.

01:30:34.840 Um, but I know, of course, that like Don Lemon is it is it is just a, you know, diehard progressive.

01:30:44.940 He's a leftist and I would never want to see him anchor a presidential debate because there's zero chance he would be fair to the Republican.

01:30:53.280 And I feel like I don't know.

01:30:55.600 I mean, I obviously have anchored five presidential debates.

01:30:58.560 They're all Republican primaries, but I've, of course, got no problem throwing punches at Republicans.

01:31:04.780 I just wonder what the future of the of the industry looks like now that I because I think I agree with you more and more people are having to declare where they stand.

01:31:13.460 And does it disqualify more and more journalists from staying in the fray?

01:31:18.440 I hope not, because I think with more of us having columns, having podcasts like I have here, you have to have that authentic connection with your audience and you have to be honest about how you see the news.

01:31:28.500 That's why they're coming to you for news commentary more and more.

01:31:31.040 And I don't think it should disqualify you from journalism, from hard hitting journalism.

01:31:36.000 Absolutely.

01:31:36.840 Yeah, I agree with you.

01:31:37.660 And the last thing I'll say about that is the press derives all of its institutional power from the perception that it's separate from politicians.

01:31:49.980 And every time it announces itself as being in the fold with a political party, it loses power.

01:31:59.360 So I don't know why people do that voluntarily.

01:32:04.020 You know, you should you should you should try to retain as much influence as you can.

01:32:08.380 And in order to do that, you have to be you have to be above the frame, like fair and willing to go after both both groups.

01:32:16.500 They can't help themselves.

01:32:18.360 They're not they don't mean to openly declare it.

01:32:20.000 It's just their their news coverage betrays them.

01:32:22.460 They're they're not above the fray.

01:32:23.440 They are the fray in the fray.

01:32:24.980 That's that could be the name of Brian Stelter's next book.

01:32:29.160 Matt, it's a pleasure.

01:32:30.740 I hope I get to meet you in person sometimes.

01:32:32.640 Absolutely.

01:32:33.180 Yeah.

01:32:33.360 Well, after the pandemic, we should do that.

01:32:35.520 That's right.

01:32:36.200 Well, thank you for being here.

01:32:37.820 Thanks so much for having me, Megan.

01:32:39.020 Take care.

01:32:39.620 All the best.

01:32:40.060 Our thanks again to Matt Taibbi, who is a great guest with great insights.

01:32:48.020 Before we go, I want to tell you that today's episode was brought to you in part by Super Beats Soft Chews.

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01:33:01.640 While I have your attention, would love for you to subscribe to the show.

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01:33:13.000 Love hearing from you guys in the reviews saying, you know, you have it on the automatic notification or you check every day.

01:33:19.180 We work hard to get these shows on the air and make sure that they're hopefully seamless.

01:33:23.060 Your experience is seamless.

01:33:24.660 I'll tell you, it's been fun reading the reviews.

01:33:26.220 I saw a couple of old friends in there.

01:33:27.740 My old pal from Jones Day where I used to practice law, Patty Carroll, saw your note.

01:33:32.120 Thank you, lady.

01:33:32.840 Miss you.

01:33:34.020 And a guy I used to have on the Kelly file all the time, Dennis Michael Lynch, wrote in.

01:33:37.760 Does anybody remember him from the Kelly file?

01:33:39.520 He was he was so good.

01:33:41.460 He he'd have his camera.

01:33:42.980 He'd go out there.

01:33:43.660 Any sort of happenings at the border.

01:33:45.340 He was on it.

01:33:46.000 He was fearless and he was riveting television.

01:33:49.800 He could like every time he was on the ratings would go up because just the way he tells stories.

01:33:53.600 My team was always so good at finding great guests like that.

01:33:56.800 And he was one of them.

01:33:57.520 So anyway, I am still reading them.

01:33:59.600 Love hearing from you.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - November 11, 2020

Matt Taibbi on the Media, Cancel Culture, and the Democratic Establishment ｜ Ep. 23

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