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 Ted Cruz has been caught on tape describing step two of the plot to overturn the election.
We have an interesting show for you today, veeps.
Dave Mandel will talk to us about his new show, The White House Blumbers, which is out now on HBO Max. Then we'll talk to Semaphore's Ben Smith about his new book Traffic.
But first we have.
The author of Lucky, How Joe Biden Barely won the Presidency, NBC's John Allen. Welcome back to Fast Politics, your friend of mine.
John Allen, Wally, what a introduction.
We're very enthusiastic here, team because it is the Sunday after the White House Correspondence dinner weekend bonanza of political journalists and the politicians who don't necessarily like them.
I think that's fair. Uh schmoozing.
I mean it's everybody wants to schmooz, schmoozing, plus a couple of celebrities.
It's pretty brutal. So the celebrities were John Legend and Christy Tegen.
It's pretty good. Celebrities.
I think that's good celebrities. I also saw Jerry O'Connell and Rebecca Remain. Yeah, I saw that Rosario Dawson for a little while. She was very good to her, like very cool.
Let's talk about real stuff, because the only thing more boring than media.
Coverage is media party coverage.
So instead, but it's a good explainer for why John Allen and I might sound low energies that we have stayed it very late and I had to take.
The train home.
But I want to talk to you about pretty interesting mourning. A lot of talk about this debt ceiling drama, so I want to like talk through what happened last week because it's pretty interesting. The Speaker of the House, one Kevin McCarthy, handsome genius, and by handsome I mean whatever, and genius I mean whatever, decided he was going to pass a new budget. Right, He's passed his budget through the House.
He's passed his debt ceiling fix, which is basically to raise the debt ceiling and cut a whole bunch of spending.
Right to twenty percent non discretionary spending.
Right twenty percent, I think discretionary, but.
Yes, not twenty percent of all non military spending.
Does that sound right to you?
I'm not sure, Billy, honestly.
Well, something to that effect. It sounds like a lot.
That sounds like a lot. So I mean, basically, what you've got here is the House moving forward with some it's debt on arrival in the Senate, but it gives the House, from a political standpoint, the ability to stay that they have passed something that would raise the debt ceiling, and so that puts the bonus on the Senate and
the President Biden to some extent to counter. Of course, the Senate and President Biden would like to counter with just raise the debt ceiling and don't cut a whole bunch of programs.
Now again, I want to pause here because even you're a straight reporter, which is one of the many things we love about you. But I need to add here that when a Republican as president, Republicans just tend to pay our bills. I mean, passing the debt ceiling is in fact just paying.
We've already in heard these debts. So the question is will the United States honor its debts and pay service on its debts, or will the United States choose not to honor and pay service on its debts and potentially crash the economy, not only our economy, but potentially the global economy.
Right anyway, Yes, so continue on.
So the goal here as Republicans are to get give themselves cover so that they can't say they didn't try.
Correct. Not only does it give them cover, but I mean they actually have put something forward. Right, So there is something that has passed the House. Right, You've got a pretty simple process and theory for passing laws past the House, past the Senate. Maybe something different passes the Senate. You negotiate between the two chambers, and then you send something to the president. So the House has now done
that initial step. And without having done that step, if they hadn't done that at all, then President Biden the Senate would be able to basically trash the Republicans for not having done anything to raise the debt ceiling. So from a political argument standpoint, they have moved forward. But to the point you were making before, it's not just a debt ceiling increase, but you're talking about three point six trillion dollars of cuts over the next decade, all
in discretionary spending. So discretionary is the spending that's done annually by Congress rather than and the mandatory spending, the sort of autopilot programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Right, And I just want to point out, so, now what happens now with this? They take us a Senate, it dies, They take this to Biden. I mean, this is sort of their hope of like their sort of foray into trying to get Biden to cut spending as a way to not have to crash the economy.
Well, correct, I mean the next step is for the Senate to try to pass something, and that's going to be difficult because you have fifty Democratic senators, and one of those Democratic senators, Joe Manchin, is publicly out there saying very loudly that he believes that the White House should negotiate with McCarthy on spending cuts. So I don't think you can expect that it's likely to be very quick that the Senate would be able to pass a
debt ceiling and increase that doesn't include spending cuts. So there will probably be some internal negotiation among the Democrats where Chuck, Schumer and Mansion sit in a room or trade paper and trying to figure out what it is Joe Manchin can vote for.
So let's talk about Joe mangic for me, because Joe Manchin is in a very precarious spot. He is going to run against Jim Justice or for president.
Oh God.
The West Virginia Republican governor is wildly popular. He used to be a Democrat because everyone in West Virginia used to be a Democrat, as the place is crazy. He is now a Republican. He has a bulldog called baby Girl. People really like him.
Is that fair?
I think all of those things are fair. He's well liked. He has a primary on the Republican side.
He's very rich, and he owns the Greenbrier, and he's like one of the more famous famous West Virginians.
Who is his primary.
A congressman named Alex Moody from West Virginia who is very well regarded by the Freedom Caucus types and some of the Club for Growth conservatives. So there could be a fight in that primary. Justice together, as he said, it's very popular in the state and he's very wealthy, So it would be a surprise if he lost that primary. But it wouldn't be a shock if he lost that primary. I was to say there's a non zero chance that he could lose the primary, but if he wins the primary,
Justice again very popular statewide elected official. Mansion's popularity seems to have been dwindling some over recent years, in part because he supported what Biden called the Inflation Reduction Act last.
Year, which he's now really turned on and he's sort of trying Monday Morning quarterback about.
Yeah, and honestly, that bill was written to satisfy Joe Manchell because it's the only way they can make it law, right. I mean, you could have called it the Mansion Inflation Bill if you'd wanted to, right.
So I want to ask you, now we have this Joe Mansion.
He's turned on this bill.
He has become sort of the I mean, I don't know if you saw there was a Republican on Dana Bash's show, hersyn show this morning talking about how he's going to negotiate with Mansion, and Mansion was going to be the key. He's become sort of the Republican favorite because I think they think they.
Have him, which they may.
But I want to ask you, like, I mean, this is just nonsensical, right, I Mean, is there some reason why mansion is the go to here.
Well, number one, because Joe Manchin realizes that the fifty Democratic member Senate, he has a whole lot of leverage if he holds down on things right, So it puts them at the center of the discussion.
Right, But isn't it it's fifty one. It's just that one of the senators doesn't want to resign.
Well, it's yeah, I mean the point of the margin is so small here that Joe Manchin has effective.
Right, But you could have fifty one if dii FI would resign.
But I understand that she is eighty nine and has no plans to return, so why should she be pressured to resign?
Continue?
Sorry, going to say the.
Margins very small. Of course, we don't know what Senator Cinema from Arizona will do in any given situation. I mean, there are, for lack of a vetter, trump cats and dogs that Chuck Schumer has to manage in order to get to the majority vote that he needs to pass
things right. And to your point, because Diane Feinstein has gone, you effectively have fifty Democratic senators right now, and if you turn that into forty nine Democratic senators because a mansion or a cinema decides they're not going to vote for a clean debt ceiling or for any other particular thing, then you know you no longer have the ability to pass legislation.
I don't know if you read that McKay copp and Kirsten Cinema piece, but he interviewed her and she didn't necessarily say she was going to run again.
Do you think she's going to run again?
I think she will take a look at what the polls tell her about the ability to win either a Democratic primary or the general election in Arizona, and may ultimately make a decision based on whether there's any chance of her winning. I think it is difficult for her to do both of those things.
So let's talk out this debt ceiling drama. This happens now. It looks like July. The Treasury is saying it happens in July.
What do you think this looks like? Now?
I'm not sure I have family friendly words to describe what this looks like right now?
So good is what you're saying?
Yeah, what I'm saying is that like the word that I would use to describe it starts with cluster. Look at say, July. There's always some ability the Treasury Department to forestall and using emergency measures, extraordinary measures or whatever to forestall default. You never know exactly what's going to come in revenue wise, so not going to affect the real zero hour, meaning if there are more revenues than
they expect in, that zero hour gets pushed back. If there are less revenues than they expect in, the zero hour moves up earlier on the calendar. But Hairess moves slowly. And anybody who thinks that number one, they will resolve this before they absolutely have to, or number two, that it will be easy to do has not watched this process play out.
Yeah, and I mean I think we've really seen that.
I mean, I think there were periods when these Republicans were a little more focused on kind of the sort of more traditional behavior, but now it seems unlikely to make that. These Republicans, they're not really incentivized to make a deal with the Democrats.
Well, the Republican base has become increasingly populist over time, and that's sort of changed the nature of the Republican Party's elected officials in terms of what they see as I mean, it needs and what they're most worried about it at a given moment is that somebody will primary them, sort of from the populist side, no matter how populous
they are. And they are less concerned about what donors, major corporations or on Wall Street think, because while those people fund campaigns, they are not usually in the position to take these members out, whereas the sort of grassroots based elector it is.
Right, So I want to ask you, like, what happens now?
I mean, it's a great question. I've watched the fiscal cliff lay out, yeah, right, like during the Obama administration in particular, and there's at one point like the incentives for everybody where like whether default happened, and actually there was, they briefly went beyond the deadline once. The problem is that there's not an easy answer here that makes everybody happy, or at least makes everybody not curious. So I think the next step is for the Senate to pass something.
If Chuck Schuber can figure out how to pass the dead ceiling with no spending cuts, then he'll do that, but I think that will be very difficult for him to do. So then the question is whether it's spending cuts or tax increases, Like, what is it that they can do to offset future deficits? I think tax increases are off the table because you've got a Republican House.
So are there spending cuts that the Democrats can find that they are happy with that make Joe Manchin happy that in the event Dianne Feinstein is able to come back for a vote or whatnot, But basically make all of the Democrats happy. Can they find that and can they do it quickly so that they can kind of go from whatever their strongest position is, and maybe their strongest position is they just blame the Republicans for a default and watch everything burn. But I don't think that's
really the interests of an incumbent president. I think anybody who's sitting in a position of power at a time and everything burns down is pretty vulnerable. And by the same token, anybody who's not sitting in a position of powers in a much stronger place if everything starts to burned own.
I mean, I think Republicans want to see it burn anyway, because these are people who and again, I know you're a straight reporter, so I'm not going to try to ask your opinion, but it is my opinion that a lot of these people would like to drown the federal government in the bathtub, So burning it down works for that.
If that's your worldview.
Well, I think I would say that there are sort of two different factors or two different things going on here. What is absolutely there's a strong element of the Republican Party that believes what Grover north Christ once said, which is that he would like to shrink government down to the size that he could drive in the baptop, right, like that was what he wanted to do. And I think there is a significant amount of support for that view,
generally speaking, in the Republican Party. But you know, the other piece of it is, I think there are a lot of Republicans who believe that if they are sitting in power, like putting aside the fact that there are a number of Republicans that would like to see the United States not default because they are patriots and want a strong economy and all those things, putting that aside from it just from a political level, like I said, anybody who's in office, if everything crumbles, if there's a
global recession, if the US the full faith and credit of the United States.
Is they're all going to get the blame ultimately, but it doesn't matter. I mean that involves a kind of forethought which a lot of these legislators may not have because there are Republicans. Again, since you're straight reporting, you can just listen and you don't have to agree or disagree. But I'm just saying that if your general gestalt is kill the federal government, that does help.
Molly. I appreciate being window dressing on the show.
So we'll see some kind of response to this in the Senate and then a lot of fighting until.
July, and before you see a response, you'll probably see the White House in the Senate just bash the House, right, I mean, until the Senate can figure out what it's going to do. You're going to have Biden and Schumer and all of the other Democrats basically say that the Republicans' offer is not serious and that they are pushing America toward default because they're not serious. And they will. But
anybody's guesses how the public reads all of it. I suppose most of it will be through a partisan lens as to who's at fault for things. But to the extent that they are persuadable Americans out there the Democrats will do their best to persuade Americans, and the Republicans are playing games with default and not being serious and know what they've passed in the House is pushing the country closer to the fault, not further away from it.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that seems right, John Allen? What is keeping you up at night?
Besides this, I've been traveling with basically following the Republican presidential primary campaign a lot lately. So I was just in Manchester, New Hampshire with Donald Trump on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. He was there Thursday, basically been to a whole bunch of Trump events, a couple of DISSANTUS events. What keeps me up at night is like, how do I cover this?
How do I get to Tallahassee?
Right? I have not been to Tallahassee during this presidential cycle. I have been there before. I'm perfectly happy to go to Tallahassee if and when it's necessary. But what keeps me up at night is like, how to cover this presidential primary the right way and how to cover the general election because I also do coverage of Biden and the Democrats. How to cover this campaign in a way that is most useful for readers.
John Allen, thanks for joining us.
Thank you. John bost.
Day of Mandel is the producer and director of The White House Plumbers. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, my friend and yours.
Dave Mandell.
Hey, I'm back so the White House Plumbers. You're here to publicize The White House Plumbers, which I have actually seen and is incredible. First, I want to ask you, how did you find yourself in White House Plumbers Land?
I found myself in White House Plumbers Land in a really sort of strange way because it really goes back to when VEEP ended, and in a funny way, the last thing I was necessarily looking for was more politics, you know what I mean right, More incompetent, power hungry people.
You know.
It was not what I was looking for. Per Se and two of the writers from VEEP, Alex Gregory and Pete Pike, had been working on and they had put this together with Woody and Justin, and they had put together the first script and they were asking you to put together a little writer's room, which is a very typical thing, which, by the way, is one of the things I believe that the writer's bill will be striking about next month. So I went in to help, and honestly,
I was not mad about this. I want to be really clear, this is this is a thing that's a problem in our industry. But in this case, this is two friends asking me to come help and HBO asking me to come help, both of whom I like and want to help. So I went in to you know, just sort of help them with what they had, and a week later we had the shape of the five episodes and I was the director. And I'm not quite
sure how any of that happened. Yeah, amazing, sort of very ass backwards, but in a great way.
So yeah, so explained us what the journey there was.
Well, it's sort of a two part thing, and obviously there's a small break for COVID as well, because this goes all the way back to before the before the shutdown. So, you know, the director, I'm working with the writers, I'm i'm I'm helping to shape it, I'm helping to guide it. And then as we get going, I start trying to
put together, you know, the team. You know, I'm trying to hire the production designer, the DP, and I'm starting to sort of both think and talk about what I wanted to look like, what I wanted to feel like. And the big thing on this one, among other things, was also the tone, because it's a very unique tone. It's very funny, but it's not jokey like Deep. I mean, you've seen it. It's not we don't write we don't write jokes. There's not you know, there's not those written
jokes that obviously Deep was famous for. This is it's a character thing. It is very serious. It's you know, we're talking about the president of the United States basically committing illegal acts, trying to subvert democracy, trying to subvert the will of the people. And yet at the same time, even though this is serious business, you cannot help but laugh as we sort of dug Deep. We're into the details.
And so when you find out I thought I was a Watergate expert, and all of a sudden, I'm reading and finding out about the fact that there were actually four Watergate break ins, that they actually they broke in, planted the bugs once the bugs didn't work, and they had to go back in, and you kind of start laughing, and it's an uncomfortable laugh, but you are laughing, and I just kind of say, it's a really funny tragedy, but at all times, even though it's funny, again, the
horrible tragedy that well, I don't know, you know, just just the nightmare. That was what that president tried to do. So that's what a director does in a nutshell and you start casting, you start putting it all together.
Is this the first major movie you've directed?
Yeah, I mean, you know, they call it. It's so funny. They call it. Everything has a category in a name, so they call it like a limitary, that's what they call it. Yes, but this is the first time that I've actually sort of I guess it's funny that I directed. I directed a lot of VP and I and I loved directing VP, but it had a house style, you know, it looked VIEP looks a certain way I've directed. Curb
your enthusiasm, it looks a certain way. This is the first time I actually directed something where I could sort of have fun with the look. You know, the seventies and I don't mean fun. You know, we were we get our best to avoid you know, mustard yellow turtlenecks,
you know, the seventies cliches. But I was able to kind of like dig deep into my favorite like seventies movies, like you know, Marathon Man, a Parallax View and of course all the President's men, right and kind of you know, embrace the seventies a bit, but through you in a perfect world, through a modern lens. So yeah, I.
Wondered if you could talk a little bed about I want to say the lessons from Watergate for.
Me, what I think, and this is this is America. America has a problem which it has sort of like know, short term memory loss, which is different than the short term memory loss I have in my real life at this point, which is to say, yeah, I mean I literally you know, it's like I'll sit there and be like, who's that person? And then I'll think about it for a while, and then when I think about something else, I'm like, oh, now I remember their name. But anyway,
here's what happens. I mean, it's again, it's sort of a little history lesson. We had Watergate and they you know, they found out about it, and you know, we elected Jimmy Carter, and we passed a whole bunch of ethics things, you know, epic new ethics laws, you know, in the in the house and stuff. And then I think there's this just mistake of thinking we fixed it, we sanded it, and it's kind of you know, it's kind of like Obama. It's like we elected Obama and we solved racism. Yeah,
and guess what it turns out you do. And so there's this thing that kind of went on with Trump. And I'm sure you were you you heard it a thousand times from people where when Trump sort of popped up, there was this sense that like from people of like, oh my god, this is new. We've never seen anything like this, this is this is oh my god, this where did this come from? All something? It's never been like this? And the honest answer is it has it has been like this. And we can just draw a
direct line from Watergate, right too, Donald Trump. The same paranoia, the same war on the press, the same abuses of power, and in some cases abuses of power where you didn't
you didn't even need to bother abusing power. One could make the argument just and I guess the honest answer, the lessons of Watergate in a perfect world, or at least of this project are maybe and this is kind of what you know, you and John actually were talking about the other night on TV John Allen is to hopefully one remind people what Watergate was, this even happened, because I think there are people that you know, don't
know Watergate, don't know Nixon. Maybe they know the word gate, but you know, to them it's like I don't know Kanye Gate or whatever. You know. We did an episode, we did an episode of Meat that was all about Gates, and of course we did ours was the Gate? See you next Tuesday Gate? Yeah?
Yes, but I give.
Away the end.
They all said it.
Sorry, they all said it exactly. But you know, we did lots of talking in that episode about it. It's not a gate, it's a gate. It's not a gate, it's a gate. Well what is a gate? Well, here we are Watergate. So I don't know. I guess My honest answer is to a hope people remember this went on, and you know, and in the perfect world, remind people
about like what it means to abuse power. I know that that for me is the biggie and then the other thing to me when I look at Watergate, when I look at Hunt and Liddy, because this is very much you know, this is the story of this is.
Really the Hunt and Liddy story.
Yeah, yes, exactly like they to me, and I don't know it's the fawn bird. But to me, the other big topic that I want people to take away from this is this the sort of the birth of true believerism.
That these these people who in the name of in this case Nixon and the Republican Party and whatnot, put their their lives and family secondary to the cause that they they're so there's such you know, holy warriors of this sort of Nixonian cause that they don't even realize the damage that they're doing to themselves, let alone the country. And I just think this is you know, we talk about partisanship right now in America, but it's more than partisanship.
It is this crazy true believerism that just polluted the waters. And so that's another thing that I guess I kept thinking a lot about as we were doing this thing.
Yeah, I mean, that seems really clear when you watch it. And the other thing that I'm was drunk by was, you know, the little bit of a difference between the two men.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Hunt was kind of a has been I mean, that's the busiest way of saying it. He had been important, and now there's this sort of almost desperation to matter again, and that's kind of what drives him a little bit. You know. On set, we talked a lot about almost like a Willy Lowman as kind of death of a salesman, desperation to be important, and Lyddy is almost the flip side. Lyddy's a a never was, but he's equally desperate to matter, you know
what I mean. He's bounced around, he failed out of the FBI, he kind of you know, tried running for government. He kind of just wanted to be important. In some ways, he's an incredibly modern figure because in nineteen seventy two he's a guy that wants to be famous and doesn't care even if he becomes famous. For the nineteen seventy two equivalent of getting out of a limo and flashing his ball, you know what I mean, Like he didn't Yeah, he didn't care how it happened. He just wanted it
to happen, and that he wants to matter. He also, in that desperation that kind of pours out of both of them, is just like a like a dangerous TNT kind of you know, kind of mix I don't know. So that's that's one of the things that I think kind of interesting. And by the way, in the end, and I guess we are jumping to the end, but again I like to you know, one of the things we joked a lot about is there's no season too.
Everybody goes to Dale except Nixon. He resigned. But in the end, Lyddy such as it is, gets what he wanted in a way. He becomes sort of infamous and famous and he's a you know, he becomes a punchline on Johnny Carson for sticking to his insane guns. That's well, do the Hunt family. Hunt just ruined his family and you cannot watch again. You cannot watch what these guys do, and your brain just jumps to the you know, the Michael Cohnes of the world, these guys that he's gonna
take care of me. He loves me. Oh you know, I'm his favorite. He gave me a gold star on you know, there's a moment in the show in episode four where things are starting to go wrong, you know, think the public has found out about it. Things are starting to the walls are starting to close in a
little bit. But they're watching Election night of course, you know, Nixon is destroying McGovern and you know, Lydia is bragging to his family about a memo that he sent the president that he's heard second hand as the President gave
an a plus two. And it's like a small little boy, you know, in a very very sort of I don't want to say sad, because we should not have sympathy for these guys, but it is sad, you know what I mean, like like maybe occasionally a little empathy if we did our job, but never s empathy, if that, If that.
Makes sense, Yeah, yeah, I want to ask you, let's talk about the writer's strike because this is super interesting.
What is going on over there.
Well, you know, they're negotiating right now as of I think last week, the Writer's Guild, which I am a member. I'm a member the Writer's Guild and the Director's Guild and the Screen Actors Guild oddly enough, but right now we'll talk about the Writers Guild. We have voted to allow our we've approved the strike by an overwhelming percentage, and in some ways, from what I can tell, that's when the negotiations actually begin. When everybody realizes you could strike,
is when the negotiations begin. But you know, there's a lot of issues. Since the move to streaming, among other things, shows have gotten way shorter, so number, you know, like now your average show, you know, it does like you know what, six episodes or something like that, as opposed to the twenty two you used to do. Studios are increasingly doing rooms and mini rooms where they'll put a room together and really almost come up with the six episodes then not hire a staff, not bring people in,
you know, not. So your average writer is working on shows that are on TV, but they have no residuals because they're on streaming. They don't actually give you a decent paychecks or not a lot of episodes. Maybe it's figured out in this mini room, which is a flat see, you know, it's all this, it's these various things, so that writers are just not you know bring you know,
are just not being able to. In some cases, writers that I've known for a long time, guys in their fifties that are no longer earning the living that they were able to make. And I'm not talking about Hawaiian vacations.
These are the bread and butter writers who are not famous.
Yes, exactly, exactly, Yes, and then there's the things that we're not even really talking about yet, which, of course, is AI right, which is, if you don't think that studios are trying to figure out can AI write a script, you're wrong. I'll just leave it at that. And they're going to do what they always do, which is they claim anything that's new. They always go, oh, it's new technology,
don't worry about it. It's of course, And the honest answer is they're they're you know, they're they're pleading a little bit of poverty with studios because of obviously the stock prices are down, and the stock prices are down because they've made certain business decisions. They went all in on streaming, they've done these giant mergers and all these things, and you know, I didn't tell them to do any of those things, so you know, I don't remember the
writers getting a vote on any of that. So anyway, I think rightly in the sense of I don't know any other way to make a difference in these negotiations than to strike. However, I am not looking forward to the strike, but I will strike, and I don't know house to put it. So that's kind of where we are.
The studios want the strike though, too, because then they can do force majure.
That is obviously our own paranoia, which is it allows them to get out of a lot of deals that they don't want to be in, and again it clears the debt sheet. You know, you start doing that kind of stuff because look, at the end of the day, they're just you know, it's stock price, stock price, stock price. It's sort of a very strange kind of ghost of I don't know, like Jack Welch's late eighties ge of, like it's how do we get the stock price up?
Who cares if we destroy research and development? You know what I mean? So I don't know. That's as someone not involved in the negotiations but obviously is trying to pay attention. That's my sense of it.
How long do you think this strike is going to last?
For whatever reason? The last one was fifteen years ago, which I oddly remember, we can't actually, Yeah, it's a strange one. My daughter was born during it, and so oddly it was a very strange thing that not having work dealt well for the birth of my daughter, helping my wife after the birth, so she was a fan. But that one went on a little bit you know that was God, is that like seven months or something
like that, or I think something like that. I may be wrong in my memory that's what it was, but I'm sure I'm wrong. I guess I just imagine it will be. It will be something like that.
Again.
The interesting difference here is the Director's Guild. Again, as I said, I'm also a member or who are finding some of the same issues, especially in terms of the shorter shows and things of that nature. Their contract runs out in June. And while of course neither I find that neither guild ever really wants to help each other in this case, the fact that these things have lined up might be something that helps perhaps bring it to an end.
But who knows.
You know, very interesting. So what's next for you? Can you do another politics show?
Please?
I mean, this is the funny thing, you know, As I said to you, you know, when I got involved in White House Plumbers, it wasn't the goal and I can't I.
Know we needed.
I'm sorry to whine gone.
No whine away. I know you know you know I love it and I'm final way. I'm sorry to get to see you in New York. But after we did the New York screening. We went down to DC and it was.
No I know, I heard it was amazing. Everyone I know was there and said it was incredible.
It was crazy. But I do have to say this. Can I tell you one little story about the screening in DC?
Please?
I'm not making this up. And it was so nerve wracking. Sally Quinn and Bob Woodward at the screening to watch our little Watergate show. How insane is that?
Yeah? Why not?
Yeah? And that to me was far more nerve racking than the New York screening, where, of course everyone that I ever went to, like harras Man with you know what I mean? You know, Bob Woodward watching your watching mister Watergate, watching your Watergate thing, you just you feel like an idiot. But they both dug it, which was really cool. But I love DC. I love the world.
The honest answer is much in the way I think this is related but different to meep it would be about finding something that was, you know, a different take on things, you know what I mean, I've had this. I don't know, I have this bit of an idea that almost goes the other way about people that and I'm not talking west Wing, but I'm talking about people that actually are trying to get something done, if that makes any sense, A little bit.
Like the state level or something.
What it's like but but yeah, but at the same time, not parks and wreck either, you know what I mean, but something about what it's like to try and take a project on like and rying get something done, but at the same time one of these projects that's kind of impossible, like how like like if it was about like fixing education or solving homelessness, you know what I mean, where inherently there is both a perhaps a sadness and a funny sadness to the whole thing. Anyway, I don't
that's ay. Those are those are bits and pieces of nothing that I'm pitching you. Will you buy it? Do you like it? No?
But I mean yes, I'll buy it. And it's good because I have no money so.
Perfect that's I don't be on strike anyway, so it's fine. Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing that you realize when you're in DC is that most of these people came there to do something good.
Twelve half of them.
Yeah, I think that's but you know, and they really are idealistic.
No, came to do something, yes, exactly and they still have that idealism and then of course, sadly there is that other fifty p.
Yeah, but it's amazing.
Yeah.
So whoa.
I I'm so delighted to get to have you on the podcast. I'm such a fan.
Oh my god, And thank you for watching the whole damn thing. I really meant so much when you watched it own.
Oh no, it's so good.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.
Yeah, I love it. I'm a huge, huge fan.
And you and Julia have both really thrown yourself into like doing important work for democracy, and you know, you've been involved in Wisconsin and all these small state area fights that have really that will really add up to something.
That is the hope, and we keep hammering away together separately. One of the good things aside, I mean, there were many good things that came out of this last cycle. Some of them were the fact that for the first time, it feels like Democrats are starting to focus on the state level and realizing how important it is, you know what I mean, and how a single a single Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin can make a difference. And hopefully that helps because you know, shows like yours that you
keep telling the audience this is important. This is important. So thank you right back at how about that?
Oh so mutual? Thank you?
Thanks Hi, It's Mollie 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 with our incredible designs.
We've heard your cries.
To spread the word about our podcast and get a tow 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.
Ben Smith is the editor in chief of Semaphore and the author of Traffic, Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the billion dollar Race to Go Viral.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Ben.
Smith, thanks so much for having me, Mala.
We're delighted to have you. You are the editor in.
Chief of Semophore and also the author of Trump Pick. First of all, why did you decide to write this book? And where were you working at the times? Where were you when this happened?
Yeah, you know, when I left BuzzFeed in twenty nineteen to go to the New York Times. I mean, there was this pandemic, and so we all had a little extra time on our hands, and I suppose time to reflect, and I guess I sort of wound up thinking like, huh, what was that? Like what just happened? Like what was this whole era we all just kind of lived through? And yeah, and I guess it sort of had a little extra time on my hands because of the pandemic to report it out, and so spent a lot of
time digging into kind of the origin. What I see is sort of the origin story of this moment.
So I want to I ask you, first of all, I mean, this book is just about to come out or has just come out, right.
Yeah, traffic's out. May second, explain.
To our listeners what happened with BuzzFeed and where it is now, because that and it just happened and it seems relevant.
Yeah, I mean, it makes me really sad they had made the decision to shut down BuzzFeed News, which I helped start in twenty twelve last week.
I think, you know, I.
Would say we did not you know, when I was there, we were this venture backed startup that was focused on growth and not on making money, and by the time I left, we were the news department was attempting to make money and it was not something I was perfectly
good at. I think, you know, they were making some progress on building a business, but at the same time, the fundamental issue is that we'd built this media company for social media, for this, for the for the social media age, which is clearly drawn to some kind of an end, and I think, you know, I think our fundamental bed at Buzfeed in some ways was that the social networks in twenty twelve were what kind of cable had been in the eighties, this new form of distribution,
and that there was going to be a new wave of content that came with this new form of distribution. I think that metaphor didn't kind of quite play out that way.
It's pretty interesting. Also, I'm married to a venture.
Capitalist, so every day he's like, media companies are terrible, they're terrible businesses, They're terrible, and I'm always like, this is what we all do, right, So I'm just curious, like, was this sort of fantasy that social media would somehow make regular media more profitable.
No, I think The idea was that not a fantasy, that social media would dramatically change society and would be where lots of people got their information, and that if you built, you know, the way cable had, and that if you built a news organization, say that was focused on getting the word at through social media, you could reach a big audience. The question of how you would make money off that, I think obviously was not something
we exactly solved. And I think you know, the cable companies, as you think about it now, created an ecosystem which they made money, but you know ESPN makes a lot of money too. The social media companies prefer user generated content, which is free to anything professionally created. And I think actually one of their problems was they got if you look back now at their decline, is they kind of got stuck in this world of low quality content while we all went off to watch Netflix and HBO.
It's interesting because you see this again and again with whatever psychodrama Elan is acting out on Twitter, where he's like, you know, we can just have people do it. We don't need to pay for content. So you do definitely see he's sort of doubling down on that.
I mean that's not just elon. Twitter never wanted to pay for content. They flirted with it here and there. But you know, the beauty from the Twitter perspective was we were all working for them for free. I don't think Elan is doing a particularly good job running Twitter, and it's obviously pretty off the rails. I do think that it was already decline. It like it was losing its cultural relevance. The company was losing we had not figured out a way to make money even at the
peak of its cultural relevance. I think has probably kind of accelerated its decline and given it a shove. But you know, the thing with these social networks is they're kind of you know, they're social institutions. They're like bars or nightclubs. You go to it for a while because all your friends are there, and then they all leave and go to podcasts, and so you go there.
I don't know.
It is an interesting problem that's sort of like because so much, so much of content content distribution, and certainly this is not true for the New York Times of the Washington Post, but it's it's true for pretty much everybody else is on these social networks. And also aggregation sides, right.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean I think I think you know less than it used to be, but certainly, yeah, I think you know they were. If you think about it, it's not just sort of news, right. If you think about the extent which the social networks just sort of like splashed through societies and family life and everything politics and everything else in the twenty tens, it's pretty amazing.
Because I don't feel this way, but I think some people really do. Do you feel that the social media was kind of a blight?
I do not, Like, I mean, I think that there's always this impulse to sort of romanticize what came before and this golden age that's gone. I mean, I think social media did a lot of harm. But also I think it's a little hard for people to remember now how like sclerotic and corrupt the American media of like
the Iraq era was. Do we think social media to anything quite as bad as cheerleading the Iraq war image interesting question, I think if you think about like just sort of you know, this is sort of maybe a dumb thought experiment, but it's interesting to think about what it would have been like to try to lead the country into war with Iraq with iraqis on the ground tweeting videos of what they were seeing, when Bush was saying, well we believe there's a yellow cake refining site in
this place, or if the sort of marginal voices who got who only could get into the conversation by way of McClatchy had been making the case in the sort of like often bizarrely level playing field of social media that I think.
Is ultimately the big question, right, is he is a closed system less problematic than an open one?
Right?
I think it's all pretty problematic. Well, you know, like I think people like to imagine that well we can just solve that. We just he'll just solve this whole thing.
Yeah, there's a lot of antagonism towards new newness, right the printing press, the newspaper. So I do agree that it's certainly true. You talk about gawker Nick Detton, is I mean I know him a bit. I'm curious, like, you know, you see him now and he's just a.
Completely different person from that experience.
I am curious what your sort.
Of take on that, if you could talk about that.
Yeah, I mean Nick was one of was this pioneering figure of the early Internet who had started something that kind of was almost Google Reader, yeah, in the early early aughts in San Francisco, and then come to New York to kind of I mean, he had in some ways quite dark vision for the Internet, that it was a place where, you know, where both journalists could say the things, say the kind of like dark searing truths that they would never print, but that they you know,
would say to each other in bars that that's what could be on the Internet, and that people who pretended to care about high minded policy or whatever could actually see the kind of prurient gossip that's what they really wanted, and that the Internet would sort of free the kind of you know, more elemental parts of human nature, which is probably true, and built this media empire kind of around that idea, and Gawker was the signature, you know,
the signature brand of it, you know, with this sensation on the New York media scene in two thousand and three, four five.
Yeah, So what do you think now?
And I mean I also think like Drudge, but I want to know more is to sort of aggregate aggregation kind of situation.
But I want to know, what do you think now? Is the sort of future of this.
I mean in a way, I don't know how we could go backwards.
There are weird little ways, and things feel like they specifically are going backwards. Like the Drudge Report you mentioned is which which had sort of been swamped by the scale of the of Facebook, is now back to being kind of the biggest you know, political refer on the internet.
Right.
And I have to say, even as you know, a pretty partisan opinion columnist, I have a big place in my heart for Drodge.
So go figure, oh, a genius editor.
Right.
And you know, people who you remember as bloggers, Matthew, you know, Matt Iglesias Andrew Sullivan are now sending sub stacks that are in some ways very much in that tradition.
But I actually think, in a way like the reason that they're working now, and the reason that shows like this work is that, you know, back in two thousand and three, the challenge that everybody was trying to solve is like, wow, like I'm stuck reading two newspapers and if only I could have more opinions and more diversity of opinions and all sorts of different people talking to me all the time, wouldn't that be cool?
Right?
Yeah, I found it was fun, and.
Now I think it's like, oh my god, shut up everything, and now it's everything everywhere, all at once, and people, regular consumers and you and me probably feel totally overwhelmed and are looking for voices we can trust and kind of get where they're coming from, to give us new information and to sort through everything out there and help us know what to look at and what to read and to some degree what to trust.
Yeah, yeah, certainly that's what it seems like. I want to ask you about what you're doing now with some.
Before so some forurs very much rooted kind of that perception of what people of what's driving people crazy about the media right now, which is the sense that you're just overwhelmed by incoming and that a lot of it
has motives that you can't totally figure out. And so what we're trying to do is say, it's very kind of human exercise if like I cover media, you know, if I'm writing about media, like I'm going to tell you what the scoop is that I got, you know that you know, Fast Politics is about to be acquired by NBC News or whatever, and then I will tell you what I think about it, which is that it's obviously a catastrophic mistake for NBC News.
They'll probably destroy the whole thing. But I'm not like, but I'm also going to struck.
We literally structure articles in a way that says this first part is true and the second part is my opinion, and I could be wrong somebody else who thinks it's a great idea, and so and here and by the way, and there's this other behavior, and I think it's a real opportunity, which is, I don't know, if you find this, I'll read an article in a publication I love and
trust and think, ah, this is probably true. But I'm going to go ahead and google the subject and read seven more articles on it so I can triangulate what really happened. Right, And so we're also trying to do a really good job of curating, you know, news and journalism around the things we're writing about so that you don't have to do that.
I mean, I think about that all the time, right, Like, you know, I'm on the opinion side. But my problem is not when I read opinion columns. My problem is when I read straight news. I'm like, what does this person really think? And what are they leaving out and what are they putting in that might not even be germane and just because it's what they're interested in.
And you're a sophisticated reader. But I think a lot of readers are pretty sophisticated and do read an article in a newspaper and think, huh, like this reporter obviously knows a lot. They probably have an opinion. I don't know what it is, but I can kind of guess what it is based on which quote they chose to use and which fact. And I kind of rather they didn't play that game and just told me so.
I feel like I'm not that sophisticated reader. I actually feel like I'm very naive. But one of the issues I always feel because I'm on the opinion side, it's over for me, right.
I can't write straight news, everyone would think go as.
Bias, And you know, I can interview, but it really has to be in that.
Sort of opinion sphere, which is fine.
But when you have your reporters writing these opinion parts, doesn't that mean that they kind of can't go back to straight news after that?
Well, I mean, I think you know, there are a lot of different flavors of journalism. The kind of stuff we're doing is really a lot of it is beat reporting, where I'm not asking them to say my opinion is that these people are discussing monsters, right, I'm asked them to say my analysis is that the collapse of SVB means that this other bank is the next one to go.
It's more more and I would say more analytical, although I think that these sort of boundaries between analysis and opinion are pretty pretty porous.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like analysis is like just a way to trick straight journalists into giving their opinion and then getting in trouble.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I guess I think that.
To me, what's really important is that supporters are trying to figure out what's going on, and it really open to the possibility that they're wrong, Like, and I mean not on the reporting on the facts, but if you're going to have a provocative piece of analysis, it might be wrong.
If there's no way it.
Could be wrong, it's not interesting, it's been all and people and I just I want people who are open to that possibility, and I do think that limits my pool a bit.
Can you sort of explain where you sort of see sebafore going.
Now, Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we feel pretty good about how people, you know, the reception we've had, and I think we're going to I think in our sort of like long term vision of the place, we do really think these are global questions and that increasingly global people are going to want to get outside a kind of parochial news environment and understand the relationship between the US and China and.
Things like that.
But we also justin and I like, have not been through this a few times and are being very careful not to bite off more than we can chew. And so we've launched in two places in the US and its Sub Saharan Africa, and I think in the medium term, I think there's a lot of opportunity elsewhere, but are also trying to really just try to get good at what we're doing.
Right now Africa.
It reminds me that there are a lot of places in America that have these kind of news deserts, and you see it more and more, and you see, for example, this child labor story, which I'm obsessed with, is happening all over the country, but it's happening at the state house level, and it's happening very quietly, and so because we don't have the same level of local coverage that
we used to, things are happening and much faster. And this is my central anxiety in life, is that I'm just missing something that's right under my notes that like the George Santos story where you know, the American people in Nassau along Island elect as serial fabulous and know what notices.
Do you have that anxiety or is it just me?
Yeah, oh yeah, And I think, you know, it's interesting like people often say journalism is declining, news is declining. You know, look at all these jobs being destroyed in journalism, and it's not. That's actually not broadly true. Like in lots of spaces, podcastings booming, you know, or wasn't till recently. I think Washington reporting, financial reporting, tech reporting are all
in great places. Local journalism is a catastrophic situation and a very specific problem, which is that in the United States, specifically, the sort of way the country was structured, the way the business is structure. These metro newspapers in every small, medium, large city, we're just incredible businesses that could hire hundreds of journalists. The Internet just pulled the rug out of that.
I mean, the basic thing was if you wanted to sell a refrigerator and Clearland, the only way to reach refrigerator writers in Cleveland was the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and they could just make incredible amounts of money and employ lots of journalists. It's very hard to see a path
back to anything like that. And there are these very I think good projects to rebuild small local things, local nonprofit things, but I think people like don't quite understand the scale of how incredible a business it was, and how many people it employed, and what kind of major, major part of civic life. These great newspapers with these huge buildings downtown play and I think, I mean, I feel nostalgia for that, but I also just do not see a path back.
Yeah, I feel nostalgia for that too. I mean the anxiety I have now we're just doing therapy for me, but it's very useful for me, so listeners aren't too bored. But the anxiety that I have about our current situation is like I came from magazines in the nineties and I lived through the just incredible, I mean spectacular meltdown of you know, these places that I thought of is like great institutions that.
Are now you know, tiny fragments.
So it does scare me, but I also do think I mean, are you a person who thinks AI is going to just completely put us all out of business?
No, the things that are most interesting about journalism, which are new and gathering new information, you know, from sources and putting it in a kind of in a thoughtful context, are sort of the hardest things for these large language models to do. I think things like copy editing, it can be a very useful tool, But I don't think anybody looks at grammar lay, which is a great service, and says this is going to destroy journalism.
Oh, my husband's obsessed with grammarly.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, I'm not sure if that is technically artificial intelligence, but there'll be AI tools that do that better and better. But I don't think having fewer typos is going to destroy I mean maybe, I don't know, might even improve things, but their production roles that I think that'll probably affect. And then on the other end, I think there are huge opportunities. We've been using these AI tools for a nation and videos, which is prohibitively
expensive for news organization. To do, you know, three four or five thousand dollars a minute if you're if you're trying, and so no one does it. And now we're working with this artist in Australia to do it in a way that I think makes the stuff better and is something we can afford.
And so in sort of.
The old fashioned internet ways, democratizing certain tools, and so, I mean, you know, I could I could be wrong. I've obviously been wrong before in this book, largely about that. But I think there's a lot of opportunity and I don't really see your job as Molly is particularly in danger.
We will see hopefully you're right. Thank you, Ben Smith.
Assuming this is Molly the moment full Jesse.
Cannon Mai Jung fasts. So this Supreme Court, one might describe them as glacial moving. As old as they are.
They're slow.
Look, the truth is that if you are so busy, like my my friend and yours, Justice Samuel Alito, with finding the leaker who you're sure you know and it's certainly not you, and then you, like the one the only Justice Clarence Thomas, are so busy vacationing with billionaires, it's very hard to get the job done, but they're moving slowly.
Honestly, when I saw this article, I thought, good, I'm slowing even more.
Good point.
Should we really be complaining that they've only done fifteen percent of cases and seventy five percent of the cases are still undecided.
Take a load off, Get on Harlan Crowe's jet, have a little vak.
Tom Thomas, we don't need you right now. You may be our moment.
Of fuck Gray, but we suggest you take a vacation. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics make 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.