Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and President Biden ordered the US to share evidence of Russian war crimes with the Hague. We have a great show today. The Washington Post. Will Sommer joins us to talk ron DeSantis staffers sharing Nazi imagery in a pro DeSantis post. And then we'll talk to Vanity Fairs Nick Bilton about the disastrous Twitter rebrand. But
first we have Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Dana Milbank.
Great to be with you, Mollie.
Delighted to have you. I think of this GOP Congress as doing the work for Democrats in a way, that is, they are literally every day cutting ads for Democrats.
It's really considerate. I mean, can they make a contribution in kind to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But you'll think about it. We've got we just had really good, better than expected GDP members. Inflation is down, the stock markets higher than it's been since twenty twenty one. Order crossings are down, like things kind of look good.
And the economy and the numbers they are economic growth two percent.
It's all looks pretty good. So what are the House Republicans going to do? Well? First of all, they're going to make sure we shut down the government. Yeah, that's fall as of September thirtieth. And then, you know, because a lot of people will be you know, furloughed and won't have anything to do. All the government to shut down, they will have the entertainment of impeaching President Biden on yet to be determined charges. Yeah, so they're forcing votes
on impeachment. They're seemingly headed towards this inevitable shutdown where they're opposing not just the Democrats, and they're opposing the Republicans in the Senate who are actually trying to increase a military spending. But I mean, they just reached you know, it wasn't even like two months ago where you know, this big bipartisan depth ceiling bill, and they've already saying, no,
we're going to renege on that. We're going to cut an additional two hundred billion dollars and we're going to and we're going to laidle on all of these poison pills, you know, restricting abortions, LGBTQ rights, anything, that has the word diversity in it. It's kind of a circus. And then of course they've just proven that there are alien life forms that are here on Earth.
We're going to get to aliens in a minute, but.
First I want to tell myself I'm sorry.
I know, really, first we got to talk about like all of the other weird hearings they've had over the last couple of weeks, besides numerous hearings on gas stoves. This is what happens when Rupert Murdoch is the speaker of the house, really is that you just start Everything you produce is like that. So, I mean, we had gas stoves, we had irs whistleblower, which may or may not have ultimately been he was just confused.
It sounded a little bit like that. I mean, there were well, there were two whistleblowers, but of course the one whistleblower worked together a whistleblower, so essentially they were one whistle blower there. And yes, what that emerged to be was, you know, they disagreed with what the conclusions of the prosecutor came up with, which apparently happened in ninety percent of the cases that this guy was involved in.
So you know, look, I mean, as we saw it in the Botch Plea hearing this week, the auntor Biden case is really messy. You know, he did a lot of crap and it's really kind of sleazy, and you know, I mean the relagents have also they've exposed, if you will, that members of the Biden family have made money over
to the years. What they haven't done, is one of the guys on the houseovers A Committee rather candidly admitted last week, is they have not produced any evidence that Joe Biden was involved in the abyss right right right, which you think would be a rather key element if you are in fact planning to impeach the president of
the United States. But they're so far, you know, sort of plunging towards that they're going to call it an impeachment investigation, which leads to an impeachment inquiry, which then leads to impeachment. They're hoping at some point along the way they will be able to produce some actual evidence of that. Your constructor that Rupert Murdoch is a speaker of asked, I suppose that's right, you know, I think it's more typically Matt Gage and Marjorie Taylor Green in
essence the Freedom Caucus. But of course they're also taking their marching orders from Fox. But you know, they say, we're going to shut down the government, while McCarthy has no choice. We're going to shut down the government. They clamor for impeachment, while McCarthy kind of has to go along with it because he's out of a job if he says no to them.
Yeah, I mean exactly, and he has. Remember, I think an important data point here is that there is this one person motion to vacate. So one person, be it Marjorie Tailer Green who happens to be at least temporarily aligned with McCarthy, or Matt Gates who has been for a long time not aligned with McCarthy. Just one of those people could make a motion to vacate and have put into works a new speakership.
Yeah, that's true. I'm not hearing a lot of noise about that. But they could do something well short of that, they could still grind the whole place to a whole. So this week they said, look, we're going to insist on this extortion of getting cutting another two hundred billion beyond what everybody just agreed to for twenty twenty four spending levels, and if Speaker McCarthy does not agree to our ransom demands, well we're going to oppose the rule.
We're going to not allow these appropriations bills to come to the floor. And they only need five members of the Freedom Caucus to do that, and they brought the entire House to a hole. There can be no passage of spending bills or anything else without that. So in a way, they don't even need it to pose McCarthy. They can just make the House completely effective and essentially just shut it down with just five of their boats.
And there's clearly more than five who were very happy to gum up the works.
Yeah, I mean, just incredible stuff. So let's talk about what it looks like with these hearings. So we had the RS. Now I will let you talk about UFOs.
Yes, it's very important. I mean, you can only have so many hearings on transgender Americans. I think we have a few more today, and I think there have been three hearings this week on the border crisis, even though the actual border crossings are down considerably. But yeah, so the House Oversight can be brought in. Guy says he's
a whistleblower. He worked in the Defense intelligence and he has said the most extraordinary things that the United States is in possession of alien spacecraft that either are extraterrestrial or cane from another dimension, That there are alien non human life form pilots, that the United States actually has the remains where warehousing these apparently one of them a defense contractor one of these spaceships came from Mussolini in nineteen thirty three in the United States at the time
got a tip from Pope Pious and was able to intercept that spaceship from the Italians. So okay. So either this guy has just blown the lid off the biggest scandal in the history of the universe, and somehow everybody Democrat and Republican has kept it secret for one hundred years, or there's some kind of you know, wacky business going on here. I'm agnostic. It could go either way, but it's noteworthy that House Republicans in particular, we're giving this,
you know, taking this guy's word as gospel. It's just more evidence of the deep state. So the deep state is now covering up alien life form. So it's like the anti government antipathy has gone intergalact, Like, there's nothing that the deep State will not do to deceive and lie to the American people.
So let's just talk about this for a second, because I think there is a really interesting question about conspiracy theories, and I want to talk about it for a minute because we are in a period right now where there is one political party that is really ruled by a conspiracy theorist, Donald Trump. I mean, this is a guy who really does come from the world of you know,
Obama was born in Africa. Again, you know, with Trump, there's always a question of does he really believe it or does he believe it because it helps his career, right, we don't know and it doesn't necessarily matter, but he
has certainly created a culture. And now we have Elon Musk On's Twitter, and Elon Musk believes that vaccines give you mayocardia, which even myocarditis, even though we know that that's not right and yes there's a small percentage, but you know whatever, So I just wonder, are we worse than we were in the nineteen sev because remember my parents, fully, I mean my parents definitely did not believe that there was only one shooter who killed JFK.
Well, look, there have always been conspiracy theories in a segment of the American public that believed it. The difference now is people in the highest levels of government, during the Congress or during the Trump administration are saying, you're totally right to think these things, you know, bringing RFK Junior into you know, speak to the Weaponization Committee. I mean, this is a guy who says that Wi Fi causes leaky brain syndrome.
Yes, he also believes that chemicals in the water are turning the kids trans.
Right, which fits neatly with all the transgender investigations that are underway. You know, the difference is people are saying in a high level people, you know, opinion leaders are saying it's legitimate to think this stuff. That's that's the real difference.
Now.
Now some of it's really sinister, like that great replacement theory that's you know, white nationalism right there. You know, the up with the aliens. I mean, I suppose if you're going to embrace every conspiracy theory it comes along, eventually you wind up with Area fifty one and Roswell, which, by the way, this guy says was totally illegit Alien landing in Roswell totally legit.
Did Mussolini factor into that, don't know.
It's classified, Molly, so I can't really reveal that. But it was the Air Force debunking of Roswell that was a total hack job. That's the actual quote there. So, I mean, this is old school, this is actually the
tinfoil hat stuff. But you know, if you're going to go with replacement theory, if you're gonna go with RFK Junior conspiracy theory, if you've got to say elections are still on, well, of course eventually you wind up with the aliens are among us, and in fact they're malevolent actors who are doing bad things to us.
One of the things I think is interesting about RFK Junior. I think, and again can't speak to wads in people's heads, but it certainly seems in my mind that these Republicans are trying to elevate RFK Junior because they know that Donald Trump is not growing the electorate so their guy, you know, I mean, certainly some of them believe that Trump won in twenty twenty and so when he runs again,
who went in twenty twenty four. But there are certainly got to be a few people on Earth one here who are like, you know, this guy is not growing the electorate. And when he gets up there for an hour and a half talking about how unfair it is, this is not going to speak to swing voters in Pennsylvania. And so I wonder how much of what's happening here is these people in the Republican Party trying to elevate other candidates in the hopes of hurting Biden.
Maybe that's happening, you know, I think that maybe giving a little too much credit and thought process what's actually happening here. I don't think there's a whole lot of thought process involved. I think, you know, every individual member is reck recognizing that, you know, the way to get ahead individually is to be, as Tom Massey once said,
the craziest sat of a bitch out there. That will get you that you'll go viral with that, You'll get your Fox News audience with that, and that will give you power, that will give you leverage with the leadership. It's also, you know, assures that you will not be out of stet with Donald Trump, because that could be
ruinous to your career. So I think a lot of it's self preservation and as you know, there's no way to really know how many people actually believe the crazy stuff and how many are just going along with it. I think it's probably one third, two thirds or something. But it's a distinction without a difference because they're saying the same thing. But it's selfish, it's self preservation, and I don't think there's a whole lot of strategicy going on.
I mean, that is the thing that always shocks me, is how little anyone in Congress is really thinking about stuff. Let's talk about Mitch McConnell for a second. Really, yesterday he had this freeze. We don't know what it was, it really was. I mean I have to say, like, you know, I do not align politically with Mitch McConnell, but I have incredible respect for that guy because he's a fucking killer. He has stolen three Supreme Court seats. I mean, the man isn't at like the Republicans would
be nowhere without Mitch mcconnald. They really would be nowhere as payment they have just been. You know, they basically, you know, the trumpets have been so mean to him, which is fine, I mean, good for them, but he did have this phrase I mean, talk to me.
He has been remarkably and ruthlessly effective, and you know, I think he deserves a lot of the blame for the mess working. I mean, he made Yeah he's no fan of Trump, but he made Trump possible. Is you know his in twenty sixteen sort of a deal with the devil saying okay, we got to windors, this guy got to get our big donors behind him. Had it not been for Mitch McConnell's at acquiescence, I don't think
we would have had a Donald Try Trump. And sure he has stood up against him from time to time, but you know, like notably not when you know, in crucial moments like after January sixth he spoke out against him, but then opposed uh conviction on the impeachment charges. So but look, I mean, you know, compared to Rick Scott or whoever the alternative would be, I mean, McConnell is certainly a force for good, you know, all relatively speaking. But we are at the point where Mitch McConnell, you know,
may well be the voice at reason. So I mean, certainly on it just on the basic human level, you don't want to see that happen to anybody in public or anywhere else. Also, he is you know, one of the very few. You know, I hesit to say hesitate to say moderating forces, but given given where things have gone, he is relatively moderate compared to you know, certainly what we're seeing in the house. You know, he dares to say, well, maybe it's not such a great idea to you know,
plunge ahead with impeachment. So you know, I would wish him health, right, I.
Mean, he's a traditionalist who has also caused the incredible fuckery that we are in back to sort of the like you know landscape right now. I think September is going to be a shit show with the potential shutdown. They have a few more days now. Trump wants McCarthy unless McCarthy can somehow manage not to have this happen, to expunge the impeachment. Talk to me about that.
Yeah, as you know, it's sort of meaningless. It's trying. It's saying that this thing, that this actual historical event did not occur. It's based on an expunge censure. I guess you know Andrew Jackson to see the extent it's based on anything, you know, it has no practical effect. I mean, we were around, we know what happened during
the Trump years. You know what it does do is it will force Republicans, including the ten or so as Republicans who are in Biden One district, to go on record essentially defending Trump in January sixth and everything else for no real purpose other than, you know, Kevin McCarthy antagonized Donald Trump by initially failing to endorse his presidential bit. So now everybody's got to pay the price and go through this expungement. I mean it's you know, fairly revealing
that it's came from. Yeah, it came from Marjorie Taylor Green, but also from a least to fanic, you know, a member of leaderships. So just like with the actual with the Biden impeachment, with the seemingly inevitable shutdown, it's just, you know, another way in which the Republicans are going to have to walk the plank because Kevin McCarthy is a leader in name old and he cannot protect his members.
Yeah, unbelievable. Thank you so much.
It has been a great pleasure. I hope you enjoy your vacation, and more.
Importantly, do not forget to follow Dana on threads.
Thank you, Molly, I aspired to keep up with you.
Yeah, what's your name on there?
It's Dana dot Millbank.
Dana dot Milbank on threads. Go now. Will Sohmer is a media reporter at The Washington Post. Welcome back to Fast Politics. I am delighted to have with us today someone I have known from the very beginning, A Daily Beast alumnus. Are you an alumnus alumni, A superstar, A friend of mine, A very good friend of Jesse. Is the great Will Sommer.
Thanks for having me.
I'm just delighted. So, you know, I was thinking because Jesse and I, you know, we're always booking this show because that's all we do. And we were like, there's a lot of really fucked up shit going on on the internet right now, and who can we talk to you about fucked up shit on the internet. And I was like, oh my god, Will so is the man for this. I do want to also talk to you about what happened to X a little bit. Oh yeah, not on the technology side, but on the sort of
like vibes side. But I first, so let's first talk about the vibes over at X for those of you who are not terminally online like you and I. X is the company formally known as Twitter.
Yeah, and so this is you know, just a few days ago Elon Musk said, okay, time to say goodbye to the bird. We're all transitioning. And it's like wait what oh time we knew the time had to come. We got to grow up and put the bird away. And now Twitter is going to become X and the backstore here is that. For decades, Elon Musk has wanted to call a company X, and so we know when he was at PayPal, he wanted to change it to PayPal and they were like, no, people know the name PayPal.
They're using it as a verb. You know, we have this great recognition. Why would we call it X. And apparently his reason is it's cool. It's the coolest letter. And so now he owns the company, now he owns Twitter, and so he can do it. It is truly, I think I think we've seen so many baffling moves sreen lawn munks, but I think this might be the most baffling.
I always am a little interested in motivation. Do you think this is because no one has ever told again more Monday Morning quarterbacking. We don't know what goes on in Elon Mus's brain, but if we were to be the Sigmund Freud of this situation, do you think that what happened here is that no one has ever told this person now, I.
Mean, I think that's it. I think he owns the company and he has sort of like I think, terrified whoever remains at Twitter. I mean, you know, one one just really strange aspect of all this is the speed with which it happened. There were reports of inside Twitter offices just you know, the handyman just rapidly taking the signs down. You know, they were the sign outside of twitter San Francisco headquarters when down so fast that the police stopped it because they didn't have permits. You know.
Someone on Twitter said, you know, why is this happening with the urgency of a coup? You know, like it's just like we got to get this stuff out of here. And so, you know, Elan has said, you know, he's posted these pictures of himself with the letter X, and he says, everyone knows I love X. And so the larger takeaway from this, besides just that we're kind of locked in this room with this guy and you know
he's he's just doing whatever he wants. Is that, you know, apparently this is part of this larger plan to make Twitter into this sort of world spanning app. This idea that you know, you'll do your banking on Twitter and you'll do really all of your this is the one app you'll need, you know. And of course given that in the past all of the things he's seen fit to do with Twitter, including let random substackers, you know, just go diving through the emails for whatever they want
to find. I mean, maybe not the folks I would trust with my bank account.
Yeah, I mean I wonder like so yeah that. So he hired this woman, Linda Jacarino is right, and she came from NBC and was very legit. She now has the words job in the world, which she deserves for taking. But you know, she was saying, it's going to be a payment company, it's going to be we chat, it's going to be this, it's going to be that. I mean, you know, if you're just making up these valuations, if you add more functionality, you can make up a higher valuation.
But the idea that you know, they they can't keep advertisers who actually were on the platform let alone. I mean, I just wonder if even like Iran de Santis would give his bank information at this point.
It is fascinating. One of the changes he's made to Twitter is that, of course people can pay for blue checks now, which come with being promoted higher up and replies. And so we've been introduced to this world of the much more the Elon brained fanboy, right, and these guys, we are like, yes, the time is now for X. We've all been waiting for it. You know, it's X is the future. So these people seem very into it. But I think there are may be a couple thousand
of them. I mean, I think the average person. I mean, it's just very very bizarre. And as you said, I mean this Linda Yakarino, who's coming from NBC, who is apparently a pretty legit executive there and now has to say, Okay, it's X time. I love this idea. This is great. Actually, it's really something to behold these blue.
Checks, and this is something I am asking for my own notification. We know these are real people and not bots.
Well, I think in some cases they probably are. I mean and and you know, I think that's a good point, Molly, because I certainly prefer to think that their box's real. I honestly, I feel like I take psychic damage when I read these people's tweets, and I have to remind myself that, like, not everyone in the world is like this, because I'll heading, what everyone loves this Elon's crazy new idea and why why do I do this and all this stuff. But the thing is, I think a lot
of them are not bots. I think there really are people who just whatever Elon does, they love it. And I think they have this kind of like slavish devotion to a guy just because he's really rich.
Thank god he can't run for president. I myself wonder, like, you know, I used to really read Twitter for the discourse and to see what people would say about an article and to see but it does seem and again, we don't know about this, and there's not so much transparency about how algorithms work, or at least I have not seen that it's such a radically different experience using Twitter versus using threads or versuss using the Blue Sky. You know, three social networks that are largely meant to
have the same experience, and they're radically different. So clearly the algorithms in these three sites work differently, right.
Yeah, definitely. I think a big issue with Threads has been that they're very insistent on doing this kind of algorithmic stuff, so that I'm seeing some random like prankster
team Prankster in La. It was just like, like, just this is epic, Whereas on Twitter, you know, you look at your for you page, which is the algorithmic side, and they're just like, you want to see a video of a guy like getting hit by a bus, and you know, I don't, but you know, that's that's really that's what these companies are pushing.
I like the suit Guy.
Oh, I love the suit Guy, Molly, and I just have to say, you know, I'm I'm kind of a amateur men'swear guy myself, and I've been following suit Guy long before the algorithm picked him up. I love it, and people are they crave a backlash. I find that guy's content so useful, and people are just like, aren't we all sick of men'swear Guy? But you kidding, He's the last good thing on Twitter.
Yeah, And that was my thinking too. I was you know, I have a husband and two sons, and I was sending one of the sons the thing about the King of Greece, the King of Spain, the King of Spain and his tailoring and you know how, because the truth is men'swear, like nobody knows how that's supposed to look anyway. So but anyway, we got to talk about Nate Haffman. So let's I'm just going to give you a little bit of the scene here. The most terminally online presidential
campaign ever. Is this soon to be over? Ron Desanta's campaign continue.
Yes. So there's a fascinating thing going on with the Desanta's campaign, and that's there's this generation of young Republican activists who often style themselves as the New Right. They're allied with people like JD. Vance. I think a lot of their ideas, when you boil down to it, are basically fascism.
Right. Chris Rufo is like this right, I mean, this is that crow.
It's sort of like in a lot of cases, it's like kind of like they want like a Catholic theocracy, like Francoism perhaps, And so it might say.
Laugh because it's scary and they believe it.
Yeah, basically your idea is the right of you know, let's say George W. Bush, we don't like this, or Jeb Bush, we don't like this because this idea that the government is kind of taking a hands off approach to the economy has allowed wokey corporations like Disney to run a muck and so we need now, we need a government that's really going to punish our ideological enemies and like outlawed drag shows and all these kind of like diysantasy issues. So a lot of these guys have
been attracted to DeSantis. Nate Ackman is very interesting character. This guy is still i think, like twenty three at this point. He's really young, and this is a guy who came out of this Claremont Institute. These like really what I think people on the left off and call wing nut welfare, sort of like you graduate from college and the Koch Brothers or someone else hands you a fellowship and says, hey, kid, just keep pumping out these articles. Your life is made. And so he's an interesting guy.
I think he's part of like the DC Rational Review Crew exactly, like a bunch of fellowships, like what the neighborhood in DC called the wharf where it's like, you know, all these kind of Maggie New Right types hangout. And this is a guy who frankly had it made. He wrote, I think when he was like twenty one or twenty he had a huge like a front page in the Sunday Times review section about like the new Right and stuff,
and he was quoted a bunch of the Times. He could have been the face of the new right, coasted into book deals and whatever in this kind of like proto fascism, like the friendly phase of that, but he was too online. This is a cautionary tale.
For you and I and mostly for Nazis. But yes, continue a lot.
Of these guys they talk a lot about optics or they talk about what they call hiding your power level.
This is real in cell talk here, right.
And so like you can look at something like Charlottesville and which they came to see is a big mistake, not because someone was murdered, but because it is something that for a normal person you can say that guy march in Charlottesville and they go, oh, geez, that guy's a Nazi, right, And so they blew a lot of
their identities essentially, But for someone like Nate Hawkman. He first he screwed up before joining the Desantas campaign because he was caught on a Twitter space And you know, Jesse does this our this podcast, but the amount of like random right wing career immolation that goes down on
Twitter spaces is truly crazy. This is where they talk about like he's having sex at TPUSA in like the lobby at TPUSA conventions, all this stuff, and almost no journalists listen to it, and then I'll just drop in and be like, well, this is crazy. So he was praising Nick Fuentes, who's the white nationalist leader, and saying, you know, oh, maybe he's got some good ideas or whatever. So I think he got fired from a job over that.
He ended up on the Desanta's campaign, and he has now been tied to these meme videos that Desanta's campaign was creating and then kind of laundering through third parties, which someone CALLEDNBC because you know, this idea of covering up these campaign ads. But the first one was the really anti gay one. We all saw where it would be,
you know, Donald Trump's cool with drag queens. And then here's DeSantis and he says we're going to shut down this gay stuff and then cut it with American psycho right.
Both homo erotic and anti gay.
Yes, yes, and Peaky Blinders. And you know, the thing I want to underline there is that they were doing this, Molly, do you know what a sigma male is now?
And if I don't, then our listeners also don't. No offense to our listeners.
So a sigma male, it's like, you know, we think of the alpha male, the beta male, the previous right wing obsession with these hierarchies. A sigma male they see as a man who sort of goes his own way and it's sort of a lone wolf. And so in this case they have these like Sigma male memes like from Peaky Blinders or what have you. And so they had this very bizarre video. And then more recently the reporting revealed that Nate Hawkman, when he was working for
the Dasantas campaign, put out this video of Dysantis. It was sort of like DeSantis is going to institute a new Reich where they had this sort of a Florida themed son and rat and this is a neo Nazi symbol. This is pretty crazy stuff for the Desanta's campaign to be creating and then ultimately he was fired.
I mean obviously not unsurprising, but I mean I guess they did fire like two thirds of their staff, so it makes sense. But from very early days we saw this. This DeSantis campaign had a really pretty extreme cyber bullying arm led by Christina Poushaw.
Yeah, I mean the Disanta's campaign really is. I will say they're pretty good at Twitter fights. They don't think he's so good at winning primaries. I mean they get in these like quagmire battles with the Trump people online and the Trump campaign, you know, people watch Dune. I mean they have these like online like Sarto car like
death corps who will just debate with Desanta's people forever. Now, the genius of the Trump campaign is they outsource this, right, Like they have just a bunch of lunatics who will will argue all day. But this is on the Disanta side. They have actual like Dysantis people in the campaign doing
it and it's just not a great look. Christina Poushaw got in this like a really intense argument with like a sixteen year old or something, and you know she may have had a point, but you just don't want your you know one of your time lieutenants arguing with teenagers online.
I speak for yourself. I think that was what Lincoln did. Jesse just texted me that we have to talk about the Sound of Freedom. Just give our listeners the TLDR on the Sound of Freedom.
Well, Sound of Freedom, move over, Barbenheimer. The movie Sensation of the Summer is Sound of Freedom, a movie starring Jim Caviezel, who people may remember as Jesus in the Passion of the Christ.
Nobody remembers that.
I went to Catholic school. BALI was a big deal. You got extra credit if you went to see it.
It's funny because it's like anyone who spends a lot of time on Twitter has been like, you know, you've been approached by some blue chack who has said, you know, you were so upset by the Sound of Freedom. I was like, I have no idea what that is. Like, I was like, I don't know what it is, but I've worked really hard not to know what it is. But I guess I'm going to find out right now.
Right. So Sound of Freedom is about It's the It's sort of a fictionalized account of this guy named Tim Ballard who launched this group called Operation Underground Railroad that purports to rescue children from child sex trafficking. And so the VICE has done a lot of great reporting on his claims, which here in many cases to be exaggerated.
But this is sort of the very heroic version of this. Now, if all of this sounds a bit QAnon adjacent, you're not wrong because Jim cavisl while the movie itself doesn't mention QAnon, Jim Cavizl is like incredibly QAnon build. I mean, he is Marjorie Taylor Green levels. In twenty twenty one, I was at a qnon themed convention in Tulsa and he got up there and I thought, that's kind of weird. A guy of this prominence is at this QON convention.
And he said, I got this movie coming out. It's called Sound of Freedom, and it's about how we're rescuing kids from having there a drina chrome drained by the global elites, so you know, these satanic rituals and stuff. And then he pals around with a JFK Junior impersonator. They went on away, you're that guy.
Yeah, yeah, what's that guy's name?
It's actually a second one. I think you're thinking of a different guy.
Oh, I was thinking about the crazy guy who doesn't look anything like JFK Junior.
This guy doesn't either. Vincent Fusca is the guy you're thinking. And he's like a relatively nice guy because he just kind of hangs out.
He is nice. Yeah, I mean nice relatively speaking.
The Jim cavizl Wan is a guy named wan O Savan who had this like almost successful scheme to gain control of our elections. He's very deep in it. And the reason people are talking about Sound of Freedom is because it's box office has been huge. I believe it may have surpassed the new Mission Impossible movie at this point. It beat or roughly beat the Indiana Jones at the
box office one weekend. But there's kind of a backstory here, which is that they have it set up so that you can buy just huge amounts of tickets for other people, and then they can go redeem the tickets online. So people will go to these screenings and find that they're quote unquote sold out, but actually the theater is totally empty. So it's not I wouldn't say it's like an organic phenomenon.
Oh that's interesting. So this is like buying, you know, twenty thousand copies of Don Junior's book.
Yeah, it's very similar to that. The other funny aspect of this is people will go to these you know, kind of these people who are looking to at red bills on QAnon. We'll go to these screenings and there will be some issue where it's like the sodum fountain wasn't working or the ac is off, and they'll say, you know, the global cabal is trying to prevent me
from seeing Sound of Freedom. And so there's all these videos of people saying like, Hm, the employee didn't open the theater up quick enough, Soros.
Much, Oh wow, that's really stupid. All right, Well, I mean, am I pretty depressed. I'm mildly depressed from this interview. I hope you will come back in the fall so we can talk about the continual death of our democracy.
Well, there's so much to talk about. Molly, thanks for having me.
Thanks Hi, It's Molly, and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts hats, hoodies, and toe bags are incredible designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a toe bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks
for your support. Nick Bilton is the author of Hatching Twitter and a special correspondent at Vanity Fair. Welcome to Fast Politics, Nick Belton.
How's it going?
You know, live in the dream, So let's talk about X.
Let's talk about actually, like, should I have a Mitch McCollum moment where I just stopped talking for twenty seconds and we just stand there in silence, and then afterwards I make a joke about it.
I mean, yes, for sure that it was. You were sandbagged. I'm going to sand bag you right now. What is happening?
What is happening with X dot com? The update since we've last spoken is that Mark Zuckerberg created a quote unquote Twitter killer that has not necessarily proven to be a Twitter killer called Threads, and now Elon Musk has changed one of the most recognizable brands on planet Earth from Twitter to X. The letter I mean I guess Elon probably this is a word. But the letter X is something that goes back for Elon many many many many years in fack decades, and it's something he's been
obsessed with. Weird, it's so bizarre. One of his kids is called X. It's you know, it was the first X dot com credit card from PayPal. You know, he just is obsessive that there's the Tesla Model X, but the four Teslas that he sells, that the model S, the Model three, the Model X, and the model why spell.
Out sexy right, very stupid.
So he's got this kind of like it's a very kind of childish view of brand and things. And I think that this is just another step in that direction. I think where things are going to get typicult is that I don't think anyone's going to adopt it. They're not going to call it X. They're going to continue to call it Twitter. And a perfect example of that is, you know Google renamed itself alphabet, Like when do we talk about Google is alphabet?
Right?
You know, Facebook rebranded itself meta. We still call it Facebook. And I think that this will be the same for Twitter, and he'll call it X and he'll reference it as X, and the rest of the world will call it Twitter.
Let's talk about that. So he wants to call it X. So it's just because he likes the letter. There's nothing else. Well, it's partially he has.
This vision for what he and I think this goes back also back to the PayPal days, but he has this vision for what he calls the It's almost like the everything stores. It's a little bit like Amazon, if you if Amazon had a social network and way you
can do anything on one website and there. And the reason for this is, like I think, I think personally, he's seen there are instances of these kinds of technologies in Asia where you have an app we chat, Yeah, we chat and things like that, where you have an app that you do your banking, you chat, you read the news.
It's everything.
And I think that Elon kind of has had this dream of making one of those and I think that that's what he's trying to do with Twitter. And what will happen is he'll probably integrate all those things. There's no question about that. You know, you will see some sort of banking in there, You'll see some sort of store power, you know, all these different things I just don't know if people are going to use it, because he has really burned so many bridges with consumers and
distanced himself from so many people. I can't imagine I wouldn't be using the x dot com banking system when Elon can be as kind of emotional and angry over nothing as he is.
Right, there is no sense behind any of this. I mean, like, you have taken a brand, you have platformed of people who would not otherwise have been platformed, and now you want people to give you their money.
The thing about Elon that's really interesting is he has these obsessions, right. It's extreme OCD where he's like, Oh, I want to build an electric car and a driverless car, and he spends his entire life obsessing about how to do that. That can work out really fucking well for him. He built the biggest car company on the planet and changed the entire car market to drive others to make electric cars, which they would never have done had it not been for him, So we need to give him
that credit. At the same time, he was like, I want to go to Mars and I want to build rockets to go there, and he obsessed and obsessed and obsessed until he did that, and he will do that, and there's just no question that that will happen. But there is also a downside to that kind of side of his personality and like this and the X branding, of course, is one example of that. In the nineties, he wanted to change the name PayPal to X and
replace it. He's kind of talked about since the early two thousands that it's such a novel and intriguing an open ended term.
Because I don't know.
He's just obsessed with this letter, and that obsession is something that he is going to drive until he breaks it.
You know.
I don't know what his end goal is here. Honestly, I think that I think he was he accidentally purchased Twitter. I think it seemed like a good idea at the time because he was pissed off with the CEO at the time, and I think and then he was forced to do it because he signed the contracts. And now I think he's just trying to figure out what he can make this thing into that saves space for him. And I think that this direction of this new X dot com is the direction he's going to go.
That seems like what we're looking at so explain to me why why he doesn't. I mean, he just is going to take this to broke. I mean what happens now?
I mean, I think that Elon is is capable of a lot of things, but he is not capable of breaking Twitter. You know, there used to be the saying that that Twitter the company you couldn't kill. I think that a lot of people have tried, accidentally or intentionally. Jack Dorsey was arguably one of the worst CEOs I've ever seen, who did nothing. His philosophy as a CEO was that if he had to make a decision, he failed. That doesn't seem like leadership to me. That just seems
like passing the buck. He was the person who oversaw the company during the Trump era, where he could have had a huge impact on society in the world, in the company, and chose not to until the very last minute and actually perhaps the last minute, and the company survived. It made money, and it was worth billions, and it
had thousands of employees, and it continued to work. And I think that Elon can elon his way through anything, and he'll say silly things, and he'll piss off half his user base and he'll do whatever he wants to do. But when push comes to shove, whenever there's a big breaking news event or there's an earthquake or a ride in the street or whatever it is, people in and
go to Twitter. It kind of has become a part of the fabric of society, and there's nothing that he can do to completely break it until something bender comes along. And I just don't think that we're in an age and society where people want something better. I think that this is the thing with to go back to Mark Zuckerberg and threads, there's an irony that to the fact that Zuck called threads threads because the term comes from
of course, like the two versions of it. The first version is when someone makes a thread on Twitter and you know, they do like seventy five tweets and they're like, threat, check this out. The second version, which I think is more appropriate, is that we all have these threads on our phone, so like our group chats of people we talk to all the time. And I think that that is what is actually replacing Twitter slowly. It's that being public, it turns out from most people, is not as fun
as we thought it would be. And so the I Messages to me, Apple's I Messages and these other chat platforms are the new thread They are the new Twitter. And I think that's where most of the most of conversation is now happening. It's not happening on platforms in public.
Let's talk about that. What does that mean for threads? Threads got a huge bump and then all of a sudden it got exhausted.
Yeah.
Look, I think the reality is we want something from these platforms. We want them to give us something. They do give us these connections, they give us information and so on and so forth, but they also have a vapidness to them and a staleness to them a and the algorithms are too good. The reason the algorithms are too good is because, you know, it's funny. I don't really use social media that much anymore. I haven't posted on Twitter and god knows how long, and I haven't
posted on Instagram in a couple of years. And I think I used threads two or three times. I can't even remember the last time I posted on Facebook. But every once in a while I'll download them and like kind of see what's going on, just because what I have to do for work and I downloaded Instagram recently and I clicked it, like surfaced a video of like a plane landing, like from a pilot's perspective, and I
clicked on it. I was like, what is that? And then I clicked off and now that's all of my feed and I'm like, what, I don't care about that? Why are you showing me that? And I think that what happens is the algorithm thinks, oh, you like this, so you're going to like more of this. It becomes exhausting, and I think that the algorithms are too good, but they're also bad at the same time, and they don't know what it is we like, so they think that they know what it is we like, and that ends
up driving consumers away because it gets exhausting. And I think that Zuckerberg thinks that he still hasn't solved the social media proxy platform, whatever it is. He hasn't figured out what it is yet. And I think the reality is that we don't want them. I think that they provide something for a short period of time and then we get bored of them or they make us feel bad, because they do make us feel really really bad, all of them, and people quit and they they're like, oh,
I'm done with that. And I think that he thinks that he can just continue you to solve it, and I just don't think it's a solvable thing. I think again, a place like I messages where you have ten different threads, where you can be different personalities to different threads. So if I have one a work, I'm going to obviously be a lot more polite and not you know, send
silly links and say silly things. If I have a thread with my family, I can obviously say certain things to them that you know are appropriate or not appropriate. And the same thing goes for threads with my friends, where I can say something that on Twitter I would get canceled for or I would lose my job or whatever. Like I could share a link to something that I don't feel like debating with five hundred people, but I
can debate with three friends. And I think that that's why so many people have moved over to these insular private chats, because they're safe and they are with people you know, And that to me is why threads will never work, and.
They couldn't just make it more like Twitter.
Well, I do, only Twitter works either, which is why there's only three hundred and thirty million people on it, versus you know, there's four billion people on social media. There's five point something billion people that use these chat services around the globe. So if you look at it from that perspective, Twitter doesn't work. It's more into a big news platform.
And I do think.
What Elong will end up doing is shifting it to be more of a media company, because I think that he will realize that getting new users on Twitter is it's not just a branding problem. It's hit its peak. Everyone on the planet knows what Twitter is, but they don't sign up or they don't use it because they
don't like it. And so I think that what he'll end up doing is kind of the thing that you're seeing where he's got people like Tucker Calls and others using it as a video platform and then it becomes a media conglomerate like a Fox News and with public chat.
Oh god, it's so crazy, Nick, What else are you watching?
I'm paying attention to all of the terrifying things that are going on right now with AI, which is very very scary stuff. And I have been working on a big story for fans fair about that will come out later this summer. We're at this kind of inflection point with technology where it is about to you know, we think that social media had a negative impact on society. Wait, so you see what AI does?
You know AI.
It'll have positive impacts, is no question. It'll cure cancer, and it'll help us explore the universe and all these things. But at the same time, it has the potential to destroy humanity. And I don't say that to be hyperbolical. This is a fact of what AI researchers have been
talking about for decades. And yet in the same way that we that social media was thrust upon us by the nerds, we are about to have it thrust upon us by the you know, AI, by the by the bigger nerds, and and the repercussions could be disastrous.
Yeah, unbelievable. Thank you so much, Nick.
Of course, thank you so much. Happy to do it anytime.
Noo.
Jesse Cannon Molli joung fast that Rudy Giuliani not want to be known to be telling the truth, whether it was when he was a mayor and lying about crime statistics and these days lying about elections.
Well, he was America's mayor and now he's America's criminal. Rudy Giuliani has conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming two election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss were not in fact passing drives to each other, they were passing gingermins to each other. And Rudy Giuliani has formally recounted his lying and despite the fact that he has we repeatedly pushed these debunked claims. So, of course the world of the Gateway Pundit will never see this retraction.
It will not air on Fox News, it will not be on the cover of the New York Post. Oh I'm not sure what the use of it is ultimately for these two poor women who have had their lives destroyed and had people show up at their houses. But that is the state of America right now, and for that it is our moment of Houck Gray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics
makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.