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 has announced his twenty twenty four run. We have the show of shows today. First, we'll be joined by Congressman Jamal Bowman, who will talk to us about how a United Democratic Party can win.
Then we'll talk to the New York Times Jim.
Rutenberg about Tucker Carlson's abrupt firing at Fox News.
But first we have the host of On.
And Pivot, the one the only Cara Switcher. So welcome back, Caro Switscher.
Thank you, thanks for having me.
It's great to have you. Can you just give us the TLDR on what you think is happening right now with Elon Muskat Twitter.
I have no idea, that's it, that's it. How would I put it? It's chaos, Phil, I don't have any idea. I think it's being run sort of by the seat of his pants and things he's deciding, and I think they're, you know, they're rolling out stuff and then they don't actually know what they're doing and they don't have any real marketing or PR or anything else that most product rollouts include for good reason most of the time, so
maybe sometimes excessive. So they're just slapping up whatever they can and it's not working.
The thing with the check marks, I feel like it's going to be something that business school classes are going to staty.
Yeah, if we can get the truth of what happened, right, That's the thing is I think the people running this thing, it feels like cousin Greg is running it, and there's a musk cousin in there. There's I'm sure he's very nice, and you know, I think one of the problems is is that they don't These people don't have any media experience.
They're really good at rockets and cars, which is a very difficult and different thing, but media, this is a media business essentially, and so you can't really offer a product, take it away from your heaviest users, and then yell at them for saying I don't want to buy this.
I just it's like as if.
New Coke said, you know, here's new coke and you're like, no, I like the old coke, and they're like you, like, you know, you have to drink it, and you have to pay for it to drink it or you're in a fan club and they send you fan club teachers or someone you're not a fan of, So you're not a fan of Elon Musk and stuff like that. It's just sort of business Wanner one, and it's kind of fascinating. And numbers don't lie that advertising numbers are down, the
usage numbers are allegedly down. He would dispute it, but many of the outside studies show that he's antagonizing its heaviest users. He's certainly engaging with them, that's good, I guess, but he's engaging by sending, you know, putting up obnoxious pictures or or or accusing them of being jerks, or saying say thank you for the free thing I gave
you that I don't want. There's the implications of false endorsement because right now they took my I had mine for a million many years, and when Twitter came to me, I don't even remember it. But they did ask permission to put a blue check on my thing a long time ago, and they were doing it to one for safety, So you know who is who and the other is because it encourages people to use it. This is the real So if you want to engage with her. So
it was good all around. There was nothing featury about it. It just was a safety and verification system. And you know, he was like, it's lords and ladies, it's whoever was picked, whoever bugged them, whatever, so he takes them all away, which he did. Mine went away on four twenty and haha.
Yeah, that was hilarious.
And then it came back suddenly on the weekend and I don't know why. No one asked me permission, no one told me they were going to do it. I got no emails from them, and then I got all the Twitter Blue features, which I didn't want, like editing and delaying sending tweets and stuff like that. And I had previously bought Twitter Blue and stopped it because I didn't think it was enough stuff, right, it wasn't worth
my money. And then it was back. And then if you click down, it says I bought it, but I didn't buy it. You know, it was just the whole thing. I don't know. I don't know what's going on on.
What I think is pretty interesting about this fiasco is more just here's this man who is the richest man in the world, arguably, who has really successfully started two huge companies. I mean, you can quibble with and he seems like an open wound to may.
Yeah, it is a bit of an open wound. Yeah, I don't know he's mad all the time. You know, he may be kidding part of the time, because he does like to do that. But now it's getting a trifle embarrassing, right, Like at some point it's like, how much look at me could you do? Whether it's in jest or because you're you're someone who hasn't been hugged enough as a child, So I don't know, it's not funny anymore. For sure?
Does this undermine some Silicon Valley successes? Right, because here's a man who there the level of unhinged that he is on the internet. Maybe it's performative, maybe it's real, but it is like, as just a person who owns stock, like I would be anxious about this being my CEO.
Yeah, I think they are.
I think mostly because the stocks have been going down, up and down, but mostly down at Tesla and SpaceX's privately owned, very valuable property, so that doesn't really get affected, you know, I guess I don't think any of it. He thinks he represents anybody. One of the things about Elon is he used to be somewhat funny, right, So it was funny, but it was like a tenth of it, right, a tenth of what he's doing now, and somewhat was obnoxious.
And now it's all like one hundred percent. So I think a lot of people are like, yeah, oh, yeah, what did you do today? You know, I literally just was talking to my son and I go I got to go on and talk about Elon. He's like, what did you do today? He doesn't even know, like he doesn't care. He's someone who admired him right by the way, and is now he seems like an asshole mom that kind of thing.
So I remember touring Tesla in twenty fifteen and thinking like, this is really cool what this guy's doing.
It is really cool.
It is really cool.
And then he's also you know, there's other competitors coming up in that area, and that's going to change that. That landscape is still you know, the top one, but it doesn't mean you're going to stay on top. And then the second thing is government's relying on SpaceX and it's a really tough business. As you saw with one of the rockets blowing up, which happened with previous rockets. It's not a fresh horror for them. It's something that
they probably expected on some level. And so you know, he's still got to focus on things that are really hard like that.
Yeah, And I mean there are some like larger environmental anxiety too around that rocket.
Yeah, environmental meaning it dropped and it makes a mess. All rockets make it us.
There's some question of the particles and where they're going and where they're.
You know, I don't know all rockets are like that he's putting. I'm sorry.
I'm blame that on Elon.
He is particularly particles right now.
It's true, it's true.
No, you know, he's doing it for the US government. He's putting up satellites and things like that, right, and commercial people. But he's doing a lot of work for the US government.
I want to ask you about the sort of like cottage industry that surrounds him, the sort of David Sachs crew. These are venture capitalists who were not famous before Elon made them famous. They are libertarians, Republicans. Will you sort of explain to our listeners.
I don't know what they are. I think David sex just backed Robert Kennedy junior. Oh the best you know, and it's making a lot of sort of he's less even less funny than Elon. I'll be watching Fox News drinking a bud light, not like that's where a twelve year old not.
Yeah, you know.
Just I don't know what they are.
I don't.
I don't think they have any ideology of real realness. It's just mad against the world or angry and aggrieved. I think the Party of Aggrievement. But I don't know.
I mean, it seems like they're very rich guys. Some are richer than others. None are as rich as as Elon, Oh not even close. No, who have a lot of people around them who have told them they're funny, and now they've decided they're fun.
I guess, I don't know. It's just they're a grieved They're angry at someone, whether it's San Francisco and yelling at the cops over that terrible murder that turned out not to be what they said it was. They thought it was a crazy homeless person, it was not. He typically never is right. It usually is someone people know in those kind of situations, And of course it turned out to be different and then they doubled down. Well it could have been like okay, all right, that's enough.
Boys like that kind of stuff. You know, I don't think they have any ideology whatsoever. I think they're just aggrieved and they like power, and they like to rant about what's wrong with this world. And you know it's usually liberal left people who are not allowing them to say whatever they want, while they never shut up. So it's kind of an interesting irony in that.
So one of the larger issues that Ilan has been pushing is that he can sort of recreate media by you know that you don't need all of those pesky fact checkers, you just need you. I see him champion both sort of Brian Krassenstein, and you know that these sort of these uh you know, Alex Jones types can recreate the media. You don't need the New York Times. What we need is these I mean, watching this, are you just sort of in disbelief?
I mean, you know, venture capitalists there's a Andrees and Horns tried to create a site called future. They close the media be hard you, I mean like I'm sorry, and it's not very lucrative, so most people just buy it like Jeff Bezos, right right, Mark Bennioff or Louren Powell jobs that kind of stuff that exists. But you know whatever, they can try to make their little media work. I suppose, I guess. I mean years ago, I didn't bury Diller and he said, I like a lot of
user generated content. I've been a big champion of it, and I think it's great. But he he liken citizen journalism to citizen surgery. He's like, sometimes it works out, which I thought was funny. Let me just say, Elon very Dillar is hysterical at all times, never a bed. He's witty, and witty is what he is. And so, okay, how are you gonna make money? Okay, you're just gonna do it?
All right?
Sounds good, Like.
I don't know what to say, Like they're not going to beat the.
New New York Times. Seems to be doing just fine. Yeah, so don't read it if you don't want to. But it actually is accurate. But if you want to get your news that way, go for it. I don't know.
You know, you'll see that, you'll see Tucker.
Carlson starting something on his own, maybe even back by Elon who knows it's got.
To be his first call.
I would bet right when you think I have no idea, but if I had to guess, sure, Yeah.
Like those guys really love to talk about how the media is.
Yeah, they're obsessed.
They're just grievance. It's the same.
It's grievance. They're angry, angry that we don't love them as much as they love themselves.
I don't know what to say.
It's again, I'm like, I'm not I always a couple of them. Someone was like, you're mean to me, which I'm not, Like, it's really not true. And I was like, I'm not your mama, and I bet your mama wasn't nice to you either. That's my guess on this situation. And many of them, I'm not their mama. I'm not there to hug them. Yeah, they're just asking questions. That's Tucker Carlson for Lake Tuckle Carlson.
What do you see? I mean sort of like this has been this weird tack down turn. There's a lot of anxiety about the economy, but you know, still inflationist down. I mean, things are sort of chugging along, chugging along.
Yeah, they'll be fine. Trust me.
These people are never will never have a hard day in their lives for the rest of their lives. So you know, it's the economies. They'll come back find. This AI stuff is added a lot. You know, cyber Bitcoin didn't work out quite as well as they'd hoped, and now they're like running over to AI and I should Actually it's really important, so they'll always have the next thing they do, you know, even Elon let's do a wait and see. And of course he's starting a company, right.
I want to ask you about AI because I've been in so many staff meetings where people are saying like AI is going to take all our jobs? Is AI going to take all our jobs? No, okay, thank you.
It's been around for a while, by the way. Just there's been really some new interesting advances and some applications that are really interesting, and you should try it.
Use it.
See what you use it for, Like AI bot that follows me around to my zooms.
Oh really it's very bad, right.
Well, it's probably bad, but some of them are going to get better. You can ask it for like give me a keto dinner, and it really does give you a good recipe, right, But it's like Google on steroids, but except with Google you have to search and then you get the link, and then you go to the link and you might not find what you want. This one will yield you exactly what you want. You could
think of all kinds of things. Give me a summary of this book, give me you know whatever you want, give me a thank you note in the style of Shakespeare, give me a you know whatever, like whatever you want, and it can do it. I think it's just sort of like a spreadsheet for text, so way I would put it online spreadsheet for text. They're gonna abuse it. There's gonna be fakes. You've already seen a bunch of
them already. There's copyright issues out the ying and the yang, so that's that's something they need to be concerned about. It's a little more closer to YouTube than it is to Google, but it's sort of in a meshing of the two. So there's copyright issues for sure.
You know, there could be fakes, all.
Kinds of fake stuff, like, but it's just it's just more fake than the fake Internet part. Like, so the Internet, you've already seen it, you know, on the Internet, on Facebook or whatever, and so you're just gonna see more of it, better, faster, that kind of stuff, and so you know, they could they could fake your voice, they can fake you know, you saw that Drake thing, the Dreak weekend thing that was kind of it was cool
and also like oh copyright, Oh what who's this? And so there's going to be a lot of technology saying if this is the real thing too, that there's an opportunity there. So there's that kind of stuff, But in general, no, I think it could be. Really it's just an advancement of the Internet as it is today in a much easier to use and intuitive way.
So what is the thing that's keeping you up at night?
People using AI? You know, people are always keeping me up at night. Anyone who gets their hands on these tools and can think of a nefarious way to use it. I'm not particularly scared of the technology, but it's how people use it, and so the people who are going to use and abuse it make me worried, and especially because many of them are thoughtless, some of them are bad like bad people, and some of them don't realize what they're making, right, so they don't the implications of
what they're making. So people have always bothered me, you know, not any you know, I'm not scared of a car. I'm scared of a teenager in a car, right, So that's what bothers me. The other thing is the creeping authoritarianism again people and the use of these tools to get to those places. Obviously, anyone not worried about climate change isn't hasn't got their heads screwed on, right, right, Really,
it's just we're headed for some really rough times. And of course, because we're people, were will adapt to it. We're like, oh yeah, well we don't have mountains anymore. Oh well, right, they were nice that kind of thing, like whatever trees, remember trees, that kind of thing. Yeah, like, will totally adapt, totally adapt because we're cockroaches.
You and I both have lots of children, and I think of you as very involved in their upbringings, and that's how I feel. I am too, And it is very hard to have children and to not be extremely concerned about where this is all Cai.
Yep, I agree. At the same time, when I was remember when you were a kid, we're probably around the same age with you know, the seventies, everything was going to go off, The earth was going to collapse, and there was that commercial the Native American guy crying. Yeah, it was always Eco day, and you know, there's always something, but this We're at a very severe spot for the climate, and I think I'm really interested in climate change tech and the things we could do to mitigate what's coming
for us. And it's coming for us just like it should, yeah, because of the way we've abused the planet. At the same time, I worry about people who are denying it, like, right, it's not that bad. I'm like, oh, it's going to be bad. I mean that will be real bad.
The thing that's sort of shocking to me is like, you would think a pandemic would cause people to embrace science, but in fact, what's happened has there's been just a radical anti science movement?
Yeah?
Yeah, Well Robert Kennedy Junior vote for him, Please don't, please don't. What happened to that family? Oh yeah, imagine his dad would probably be like, what the fuck?
What the fuck?
They talk?
The Boston accent.
Caris Wishard.
Thank you so much for joining us.
This is great, no problem.
Jamal Bowman represents New York's sixteenth District. Welcome to you, fast Politics. Representative Bowmen, Hello, good morning, Thanks for having me. We're so delighted to have you.
And so I want to ask you first.
About this really interesting thing that happened.
With you and the whether you and a bunch of New.
York members of Congress and our governor, this House Democrats pressure hocal on climate built. Can you talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah, So we just want the governor to go as big as possible on climate legislation so that we can continue to push back aggressively against climate change. So this is about New York public power and the building public renewables at and making sure that we have strong labor protections and lead and put the people in a position to control the climate legislation and the development of climate technology as we go forward. So just wanted to give
the governor a little nudge in that direction. Fossil fuel companies and the fossil fuel infrastructure that's in place has been in place for a number of years, and they're very aggressive in pushing back against our transition to clean, green renewable energy. And this is just all about putting the power of clean green renewable energy in the hands of the public. It would lower utility costs, and it would take us off out of dependency on fossil fuel.
So that was the key there. We just wanted to give her a little nudge.
I mean, it seems really valuable. And as a New York resident myself, it does seem like our governor does not necessarily reflect the values of our bright blue state.
Sometimes. Yeah, in many ways she does, but in other ways it's just tough because there are entrenched operates, fossil fuel, healthcare lobbies that are in place that have a huge print in New York State politics. Yeah, and the governor has to consistently juggle being responsive to them in comparisons to being responsive to the people of New York State.
And of course, in my opinion, she should first and foremost be responsive to the people of New York State and be a leader in transitioning off of this corporate driven, fossil fuel dependent infrastructure that's in place. So we just want to help her do that and support her in doing that.
I mean, that seems really important. And one of those things that was particularly frustrating to me as a constituent was really Democrats lost the House because of Clomo's redistricting.
Yeah, that was a big part of it. Many have argued, and I I'm in that camp. It's never one answer, right, It's a complicated question. So Clomo's redistricting decisions ten years ago, well, excuse me, his decsions regarding Judge Is many years ago, impacted the redistricting process this year. But in addition to that, you know, we didn't run a strong, comprehensive United Democratic
campaign in New York State. You know, you had you know, the governor over here, Jjobs over here, and then everybody else sort of running individual campaigns when thereas Lee Selden ran a strong campaign for a Republican state wide. Yeah. So he and the party, supported by the mainstream news media, you know, continuing to push out prime crime, prime prime crime and falsely blaming it on bail reform. That narrative caught hold. And so we were weakened by our disunity.
And I hope we learned from that experience going into twenty twenty four.
Why do you think J. Jacobs hasn't resigned.
Because he's too proud and he has too much of an ego, and he's been a privileged white man from a large part of his life, and so you know, when you move from a place of privilege to a place of equity and equality, you know that's going to be a tough transition for many people. And plus because of his pride, and I would argue his hubrists. You know, whatever he's asked about the struggles in New York State, he doesn't take any accountability. He always blames progressives and
the Party to the left and all of that. And I'm like, listen, the Party can't move to the left unless the people move us to the left. You can't just arbitrarily move somewhere without the people. You need the people to support you in that move. So if the Party has moved to the left, it's because the people have moved to the left, and the people want more than a big money in politics and poverty that persists, and underfunded schools and lack of job. People want more
than that. And so it's on Jay Jacobs to either move to the left if you want to use that language, or move on into another career.
But the thing about Jay Jacobs is, and this is a larger problem in establishment politics more generally, is they desperately want to punch left. But the reality is what happened in the twenty twenty two election was a failure on the most sort of micro level of just like them not campaigning and him not doing his job. I mean, you can blame whoever you want, but you know he had the job.
Well, yeah, I mean he he the cham's the state Democratic Party, Yeah, and a state that is blue, we are a democratic state, lost four congressional seats and as a result, we lost the House. That's the bottom line
of it. And so whether it's Governor Hulkell letting him go or him resigning, I believe that chain needs to be made because now as we as grassroots organizers that we on the progressive side, as we try to do the work that we need to do for twenty twenty four, someone like him being in that position makes it more difficult as he continues to push back against what we're trying to do or not work with us. If he were to work with us and we were to work together,
we can do something transformational. But again it's the it's the arrogance and istic shibris where you think, I mean, how can you be in any leadership position and think that you are always correct, that you are the one that has all the answers, and you, you know it must have been someone else, It wasn't you. I mean, that's not leadership. That's actually the weakest form of leadership. And as a party, we don't have we don't have
the luxury to be weak right now. The country needs us to be smarter, more strategic, more unified, and obviously stronger. So let's talk about the guns.
Because the polling is their millennial generations. These people, they don't want to live like this anymore. They want change. One of the moments that really went viral was Thomas Massey. I would argue, the worst member of Congress. If your entire platform is trying to destroy the federal government, perhaps you are not a great person to serve in the federal government.
Talk to me about that.
Republicans love to answer Democrats with this smug we should just arm teachers, right, I mean, it's completely it's obvious they want they don't trust teachers to pick up books, but they want to arm them discuss.
Yeah, it's maddening actually, And you know, I haven't traveled to every corner of this country. I hope to do that one day, but I cannot think that the majority of the country wants us to arm teachers. I mean, that's just not nice, right, I mean, no polling supports this, common sense doesn't support it. And for him to say that is clearly, you know, a talking point for the NRA, Just get more guns into circulation. And what's dangerous about that?
In his position? In the Republican position by and large on this issue is it seems like they're okay with collateral damage related to the proliferation of guns, even if that collateral damage is six year olds and seven year olds and eight year olds and nine year olds. I know they don't care if that collateral damage is disproportionately Black and Latino. I know, because they've allowed gun trafficking
to continue to proliferate throughout the country. But they're sacrificing now our children for the Second Amendment and for the NRA and so and this is why that moment went viral. But it's it's less about Massy and more about us.
We have to organize and knock on doors in every corner, in every crevice of this country so that we can get people like Massy out of office, so that we can win the seats we need in the Senate and hopefully win back to presidency so that we can build a magnificent nation for everyone, and right now we don't
have that. Guns are part of it, and another part of it that's not too far removed from guns is the issue of poverty and inequality, which is something we absolutely have to respond to because we can't reach the deals of our country unless we do unless we do so.
So let's talk about poverty and inequality, because it does seem like this younger generation is done with trickle down economics and really wants to see real change.
What do you think that looks like? That looks like corporations paying their fair share, which they don't. That looks like the wealthy paying their fair share, which they don't. That looks like making it easier for those who live in poverty to access the resources that will support them. You know, I read something recently where one hundred and forty billion dollars is left on the table every year just because it's so challenging for those who live in
poverty to access the resources. That also deals with those who avoid taxes. If they stop avoiding taxes at a one percent clip, that could raise another one hundred and seventy billion dollars, and so that helps to get money into people's pockets, right and helps to get them some
form of self determination and self efficacy. But in addition to that, and this is probably even more important than just the cash payments in the corporate tax and all of that, we need to build a system where unemployment is unacceptable, right, where underemployment is unacceptable.
And where we brain in price gouging and corporate greed and market based economics when it comes to basic needs like housing should be a human right.
It shouldn't be tied to a market that is up and down and all over the place. Housing should be a human's right. Tenants need protections. Healthcare should be a human right right. The cost of utilities should be three percent of one salary, the cost of childcare should be free or more than three percent, and the cost of housing should be very very low, no more than twenty
five percent. We argue, so the restructuring of our entire economy to deal with the issue of poverty in the present and long term.
So I want to ask you one of the most successful experiments we saw in the last couple of years was the child tax credit, yes, it brought a lot of children out of poverty. I think even some Republicans would agree that we should not have children who go hungry in this country. And you'll notice I say some Republicans it expired. I mean, do you think there's a world in which that you guys can bring that back?
Oh? Yeah, absolutely, if we vote the right people into office and the wrong people out of office. For sure. I mean, you're so right about the child tax credit. It lifted fifty percent of the nation out of poverty for a year. That year showed us what was possible in terms of dealing with this issue of poverty. But we allowed it to expire and we didn't take to the streets to keep it going. But you're right, like absolutely, we need to end child poverty in this country. The
child tax Credit is part of it. The earned income tax credit is part of it. But again, this is not about short term fixes. This is about for the long haul. And so you know, when you invest in our children, whether it's the child tax credit, universal chilcare, pre K, paid leave, all these things America doesn't have as a wealthiest stational nerve. When you addressed in our children, those children will then go on to work amazing jobs, to create amazing jobs, and to contribute and grow the
economy to a place we've never been. That's the kind of vision we need for our country.
I want to talk to you about universal pre K because I am a strong believer in the importance of community colleges to your colleges and a like, And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that because you know, part of what I think has happened is you know, and trade schools.
I mean, can you talk a little bit about that? Of course, I mean I'm a former educator. Actually I'm still an educator. I'm always an educator. So education is a pillar of any healthy society. It's a pillar, like like one of the top pillars, right, education, healthcare, safety, jobs, right, like the family. To me, like, those are pillars of any healthy society. So when we talk about education, education
doesn't start in kindergarten. It starts at conception. It starts and it doesn't end by the way, right, So you and I we are educated every day based on some we based on someone we talk to. So when we talk about universal pre K, that's a program where once your child is three years old, they have access to quality, free kindergarten care and education. Right. But see I talk about childcare, I'm connecting into the pre K continuum because
early child education is birth to age eight. So we need to make sure we are take care of taking care of our children during that time because you know, Molly, if we don't and our children experience trauma at that time, the brain doesn't develop properly. People don't notice the brain is. The growth of the brain is literally stunted by the trauma that babies go through between the age of birth and age three stunted. So we have to get that
right now. If we get that right, you know, one can argue we can almost be on cruise control through k to twelve because they're they're hitting the ground running when hit when they hit kindergarten. But to your point about two year colleges and post secondary opportunities, you know, I was sold and my students were sold. You know, four year university. Everyone's built for college. Everyone's going to college. And the whole college movement. What the colleges do because
of capitalism, they're waking crisis. They can make crazy profits. They got people in the debt and now we're looking to cancel student dead Well, we need is ongoing learning opportunities that helps communities, particularly marginalized communities, to continuously develop skills towards not just employment, employment, but lifelong skills. E Colleges are hubs for this. Whole secondary opportunities are hubs
for this. And the last thing I say is we shouldn't have to pay to go to college, especially to your college. You should be paying us to go because guess what when we go, we make the economy better. Right.
We pay into social security.
We pay into social security, and you don't have to pay as much for jails and prisons and police, and you don't have to pay as much for healthcare because we have better health outcomes. So you know, you put a gun to my head. What's the what area you want to focus on? Jamal? I'm going to say education, but I'm going to talk about it from cradle to grave.
But I do think that there should be a push in trade schools because a lot of those trades are actually you can make a ton of money.
Well well, of course, and so first of all, the skills that you learn in a trade school are the twenty first century skills that you need for the current economy. But we talk about a green new deal. We need people who are fluent in the technologies of the twenty first century. That happens in the tree aid space. That happens as we come to hard when we look at hardware and when we look at software. That happens when we talk about technical skills, and when we talk about
adaptive skills. And oh, by the way, creativity is a central part of this as well. And so and the last thing is learning with your hands is the best type of learning because you're learning by doing. And we have millions of kids across the country, tens of men, maybe one hundreds of men who are sitting in classrooms. Their heads are buried in books, and what they want to say is just show me how to do it.
Do it, and then I'll show you how to do it better after you show me how to do it it up and work with their hands, which is a beautiful thing.
This idea of punching lashed that we see again and again, it's just like some kind of floy on the part of the right to keep the progressive. I mean, so you saying, what is it, Well.
It's not just the right that's the problem, right right, I mean, and the center, it's the center, it's the slightly right, and it's the far right. All punching left not just ont progressive, but go on to the American people, because like when we talk about housing as a human right, universal healthcare, low cost utilities, childcare, fully funding public schools, jobs, reparations, immigration reform, these are all of the issues that the left is fighting for. And these are all issues that
pull incredibly well with the American public. And when I say incredibly well, I mean well over fifty percent, it's up over sixty and over seventy. So to fight against that, you're fighting against progress, You're fighting against the American people, and it's such a waste of time and energy. You know, like you know understand that the left is simply, to quote Primelegiz Paul, we are just the first to the
better ideas anyone. And so you know, IIL, I understand there's some things you want to be conservative with, right, I get that, But if you're conservative just to protect white supremacy at white patriarchy and colonial hegemony in terms of foreign policy, we're not going to be supportive of that. And when I say we I mean the majority of the American people. So it's tough for leadership that can lead a new American revolution towards the best version of ourselves.
And so that's where we need to go. Twenty twenty four to twenty twenty eight. M beyond Thank you, Congressman, no problem, thank you.
Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large the New York Times. Welcome to Path Politics, Jim, Helloather, We are here and we're going to talk about what is happening in American media.
Yesterday was kind of shocking.
Were you shocked?
I was definitely shocked. I will say this, and a bag of nuts gets you nothing. I always wondered throughout the whole dominion voting saga, at some point would they cut Tucker?
Why?
He was a lot of trouble his rating, He was no longer always the number one show.
Right, the five right was taken over.
Five was taking over. Now we did. My newspaper did report this week that his ad revenues were very good.
How is that possible?
I have to say that I was sort of surprised to see that because he has lost a lot of sponsors, but he creates turbulent with sponsors. It's clear that he embarrassed them in dominion. So at what point does the cost benefit analysis start changing? So I didn't think it would happen before there was a trial, and then I thought it kind of wouldn't happen. The thing I will say is that after the settlement, I thought, Okay, well, we'll see whether they really changed, make any major moves,
or make any big changes. And I didn't see it. Then It's almost like I considered it more earlier than I did after this.
First, I want to ask you about those text messages because so there are a number of theories out there about what was the final straw. We may never know, we may know who knows, they may never know. I mean, it's an unknown as I think it's Don Rumsfeld says the known unknowns. But I want to ask you. We saw some of the Tucker calls and text messages where he was, you know, criticizing the management. But there theoretically are more right.
Well, there were some redactive material in all of the material. There were concerns on the box side about keeping that stuff redacted highly sensitive, and we do know that as well that there's an upcoming on the same vein and well, let me rewind the things that weren't redacted. We saw some really nasty language about people management. Sure, Sidney Powell, a really bad word was used by Tucker and they kind of word where I think my job will be in jeopardy y if I ever used it that way.
So any reasons in a normal world for this to have happened far earlier, right, But so we know that exists. We know that Tucker always used to sort of well, we hear this, We purported this. That Tucker was known to share the support he had from the Murdocks, and it had been clear over more than a course of more than a year that that support was flipping, and there was they were getting a little tired of some of his antics and his trotting their name out to
justify the antics or survive the antics. So there's a lot that we can a lot that we know, no matter what is in the mix, whatever, if there was a precipitating event, we know all of this is at play.
Right, And then there is another lawsuit, and the.
Other lawsuit by Abby Grosberg, former chief booker for him, had been a witness in the dominion case because she had worked for Maria Bartiromo immediately after the election, when
Maria was pursuing this dominion voting boat switching conspiracy. But she is more problematic than maybe some of us appreciated who were down in Delaware covering the trial, not for the obvious reasons that were coming up in Delaware there she was alleging that her earlier testimony was coerced by Fox, but more to the point of more evidence of nastiness
and a toxic climate inside Tucker Carlson's offices. And this is a company that really made some major moves to try to shed the idea that you know it was this ugly locker room frat house. They lost their chief founder, Roger Ayles, because of sexual harassment allegations. They got rid of Bill O'Reilly, their biggest star before Tucker Barbier star for a far longer time. Bill O'Reilly over over actual
sexual harassment. This is workplace. We don't know the full extent of what Tucker did or didn't do, but Lochla Murdoch was part of the cleanup regime and he definitely would have no tolerance for this stuff getting out for sure.
What's interesting, though, is that a lot of people would use Tucker's relationship was the young Murdoch as the reason why they would not let him go, right, because it was always well, Tucker is close with Lochlan.
That is true, but there were sort of smoke signals I would say, over the past again more than a year, that Lochlan was not pleased with Tucker trotting him out by the way his.
Support out ooh.
Interesting.
And also we know that Lachlan, for instance, was among those of the network who were caught off guard when Tucker Crossing introduced on his show a promo for his very controversial streaming special, Patriot Perch.
How did they not know?
Well, I think that was a question.
At the time.
So it kind of went to the autonomy and the independence that Tucker had within the network, which, by the way, oddly, in very legal and technical terms, that autonomy would have helped Fox in defamation suit in Delaware, right, because the case law has it that if you know, if you have to prove control. So the Murdoch said, we don't control these shows. That management could even I imagined and was expecting this that they would have said, you know, Tucker,
these guys all call their own shots. Well, now they don't. I mean, now this is a sign that they're not going to let it run that way.
It's really interesting.
Now we're all in suppositions, right because Tucker's not talking, the Murdochs aren't talking, so you know, we're just sort of getting information where we can get it, right.
Is that right? Yeah?
I mean obviously everybody's reporting a way to try to get more here, but yes, right at this moment, absolutely correct.
So I want to ask you, I mean, do you think and again this is my theory, so also completely not. But I'm just wondering how much of like what happened with Tucker and also perhaps what happened with Don Lemon, is that.
The these guys were really expensive.
Well, definitely in both cases, but no Tucker's case as long as the investment was worth it. I mean, he was bringing in much more than his salary and ad revenue, so that becomes more of a factor if they feel like he's costing them in other ways.
Right, the world of cable news is much leaner than it was at the time when these men started.
And CNN even more so because box one thing a secret about Fox is or an open secret, is it it never It was never CNN in terms of what.
It's meant on editorial.
Right, right, right, So they've always been a bit of a leaner operation and they make they still make so much on their cable carriage fees. Right, The cable carriage fees are huge. By the way, you know, speaks to Rupert Murdoch sort of risk taking that in the beginning of all this, the way they got on cable in the first place was they paid these cable systems to carry them. Now Man reportedly they're going to try to demand war Still.
Yeah, do you think this will hurt them with that negotiation because they're negotiating a third of their cable company revenue.
This might in the law run help them to the extent that any of those cable systems we're going to say, well, look how toxic Tucker Carlson.
Is, right, and now we don't have them.
So way, and those those deals are so shrouded and complex and fun fun up leverage. I mean, if you remember Direct TV had to stand off with Newsmax off the Direct TV and they add leverage to get so, I don't know, be pretty hard thing to do. Say for Brian Roberts, of Comcast there in Philadelphia.
Right to get it Fox off.
Its system, so they have that sort of leverage. But it's look, it's all matters.
And Fox wants three dollars a subscriber, which is you know, I mean right now, it's the second highest after ESPN, which seems insane to me.
Yeah, just the fact that we can speculate about it. Fox doesn't need that. They don't need to have to worry about an extra X factor in their cable carriage negotiations, especially we have quart cutting cableish universes breaking, so this is a bit for them to squeeze war out of what they got, and they don't. They definitely did not need any extra complications. That's just no two ways about that.
I have a cock eyed optimist take, and I want you to tell me where I'm wrong or maybe I'm not wrong, though I think I really am. The five is more popular the five. While there are zelots on the five, it tends to be more back and forth and less like terrifying monologue about how like you know, white nationalist talking points. I'm asking you this question with every caveat you can add. Could this possibly be a sign that the Maga movement is not getting the same kind of juice of Fox News.
That used to.
It's a hard one because, look, I struggled with this. I wrote about this last night, and I struggled with it because no matter what, Okay, Tucker Carlson being off their prime time is a walk back and is a sort of a pulling back from the edge.
Whether it's intensional, whether they want to.
Nobody had pushed boundaries really ever ugly and false boundaries the way that Tucker Carlson did often. So that's no matter what they have pulled back from that. Now, if they had like new Cooke, Newtucker right, which could happen, could do the same thing but not walk into defamation suits. There's a history of that in conservative media all the
way back to the old Russia Limbaugh days. He got his start and away because other conservative new conservative radio hosts imploded, so went too far in the old Fairness Doctor days. So whatever gets ratings, as we've been writing, and as we saw in this dominion case, that is always going to win. The day where it loses a day is once it becomes it's no longer worth it. I don't want to be predictive, but right, this is what it is. You can't downplay this is a gigantic change.
And yes, the five is they're hot at show right now, and it has some semblance of balance.
I mean, I mean for Fox, they were debating screaming at Jessica.
Right and you know data Burrito will bring the hammer down. Yeah, they would have debates during the post election period that we've been talking so much about ever since it happened in twenty twenty. They would debate whether the election was stolen sometime it's not a topic or.
Debate, right, good, Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's a very good point. So let me ask you another question about this weirdness. I mean, so we don't know who replaces him, and we don't know if it becomes someone who's worse. But do we think that Tucker goes off and streams, you know, and becomes the sort of next Russell Lombard?
Now maybe?
I mean, first of all, there it's a question of does he have a noncompete right second, there's a question would he try to go to Spotify and via Joe Rogan? Would Spotify have him with a musical acts flip out? If they did try to have him. Could he do
what Glenn Beck did? There's actually there's an interesting series of messages between some of the hosts of Fox complaining about their news side colleagues BacT checking election fraud conspiracies, and they're sort of daydreaming, and they talk about Glenn Beck, who we all think about, right, is he lost his giant Fox perch. But they're talking about what he has
done is he's built his own subscription based business. They may not get the numbers that Glen Beck got on Fox News, but still enough for him to make a lot of money. So does Tucker start his own thing, the subscription based.
Because he did start the Daily Caller.
He did start the Daily Caller. So I highly doubt we've heard the last of Tucker Carlson. But we also know, okay, so Glenn Beck's making money. Is Glen Beck the weights in American politics that he was.
In that first of a term. I don't think so, certainly not so.
Tuckerlson has been fired from PBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Netfox right, yep. One of the things I read was that he has that much of his career is based on revenge. Right, I mean, do you see like a world in which that ends up being the sort of mo I mean again, we're just speculating here, of course, sure.
I mean look at what got Box into the most trouble in the fall of twenty twenty was the anger that its core viewers had at the network for calling the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, thus undermining Trump's attempts to claim he wanted no matter what the outcome was, and that anger was really it was very real. It clearly panicked key people at the network, if not everyone there, And so that's that's something for Tucker Carls to work with because those they're still a part of their audience
or former audience. It's angry because I recently did a piece for the magazine here that was about Rupert Murdoch's model of giving the people what they want. And the problem they add in twenty twenty is what the people wanted was something Fox was ambivalent about giving them. Ultimately gave them enough to get them into this crazy lawsuit, but some people were very angry that they wouldn't give them everything they wanted, the full fantasy version of the world.
So Tucker could go there and He's so perfectly comfortable, right, operating in that environment.
Right. I mean, it's just it is just it's such a strange and incredible kind of weirdness.
Now I want to ask you.
There were a lot of other media sort of stories yesterday, so there was Don Lemon, did that seem like a surprise?
The timing was surprising to me because I thought to Don Lemon, if you recall made these awful comments about Nikki Haley, like just so offensive that well, she's not a prime women to be in the prime you know, camp be or whatever, I don't evenre so ridiculous and that's it. And I thought, well, you know, traditionally and the world is changing, but I grew up covering television as a reporter that the morning television audience is women
in the age group that you offended. So I was like, how could they on earth Hold on day and we've seen people brings more?
But they did.
But I cast it in today's paper as you know, look, he's very different than Tucker Carlson, but there was that was, Uh, you can't even compare them. It's just there's no equivalents. But CNN was making a move away from what its current leadership under its new president, Chris Lick thought was a part of rank partisanship up the previous era, the Trump era, and Don Lemmon was the base of that
more bative anti Trump nighttime thing. And Don Lemon was moved to the morning because specifically in part because Chris licked c andm president wanted to move him out of that role, and then the morning wasn't clearly not a great fit, and here we are. So it's sort of a n and version of pulling back. And that's more openly what CNN says it's doing. CNN says he might disagree with what they're doing and whether they really were
partisan or calling balls strikes. You know, some people argued that, but either way, that's what they see themselves as doing. In Don Lennon's career in some regard was victim to that.
There was also Nate Silver is out at ABC. Can you talk about that for two seconds?
Yeah, well, I guess five point thirty eight is now owned by Disney ABC, so its founder is out. We're on his way out apparently, and that's sort of stunning. I mean, Nate Silver separated from the brand he created, but you know, he's He's argued he had a great, perfectly fine midterms. They did have some of their individuals sort of tracking polls and states. Some have argued, help help say it, say it. What do you want me to say?
I want you to say what we're all thinking about polling.
Well, we've had our debates over the years, Jim.
I hope you'll come back.
I wish him well, and I do appearing No, I really do, of course, why not. I wish everyone well, of course, but thank you for having me.
No moment, Jesse Cannon, I drunk fast.
I hear somebody's got a little file on somebody.
It's absolutely the most Fox thing ever, right from the network that brought you Roger al and Bill O'Reilly, two of the worst we hit men media history. There is a story today from our friends at Rolling Stone with eight sources eight that's more than two, three, four, five, six or seven eight sources that says that Arena Braganti, who is a very famous, very famous, very terrifying publicist of Fox News, is probably gonna call me and yell
at me after using her name on air. It's like Rumpelstiltskin. She has compiled. This is the reporting and APPO file of Tucker's misdeeds so that she can use it if Tucker tries.
To hurt the network.
I just want to enter this in to the record as our moment of fuckery. 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.