Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Donald Trump says his two hundred thousand dollars bailed stems from the DA thinking he'd fly far, far away, maybe to Russia and share a gold domed suite with Vladimir Putin. Totally normal stuff, everyone, We have a star studded show today. Semaphores Dave Wigall talks about how the Republican Party continues to tack right. Then we'll
talk to tech journalist Taylor Lorenz. We'll talk about her new book Extremely Online, the untold story of fame, influence, and power on the Internet. But first we have the host of the Laurence o'donald Show, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Lawrence.
Oh, it's always great to be here. This is the way to start the day.
We're talking about the Republican debate because this episode will drop tomorrow, which is Wednesday, which is the day of the first GOP debate.
Okay, well, let's begin with a footnote to the audience. Yes, no one told me this discussion would be about something I don't care about. No one told me what ahead of time. I have not covered this on my hour long program because the program's only an hour. If it was seven hours, I might devote ten minutes to it at some point, but we just have ye No. On
a nightly basis much more important stuff to discuss. And you know, I saw Steve Kernaki last night on the nine o'clock show, on Alex Wagner's show, and I didn't have the sound on, and I just thought like, yeah, I don't know, maybe we'll we'll get to Steve next year, you know, because it's like, you know, this is so early, it's so silly. It's the completely childish section of the campaign where people are going to be learning about people who will become the Mike Huckabees of their lives.
You know.
I mean I remember learning a lot about Mike Huckabee when he was running for president. I knew everything about Mike Huckabee when he was running for president, and man, that was a wasted collection of data, to put it mildly. And if it's anything, it's the vice presidential campaign, right, it's the you know, could I possibly suck up to him enough to you know, end up on the ballot with him. I'll say this to the audience. If you're looking for something to ignore in the mewsuckle, this would
be the thing to pick. This would be the thing to pick. And so I'm actually going to be going uh and I very much want the audience to know this. I'm going to be on against the debate at ten pm. The debate is on some other channel from I guess nine to eleven, and I'm going to be on at ten so I will never have to talk about it. And you know, the network don't don't don't tell anyone this, but the network asked me to come on at eleven, you know, immediately after my show to talk about the debate.
And I said, well, you know, this is an unusual response for TV creature, But I said, well, I can't go on TV to talk about a debate. I haven't seen I know that is that didn't occur to anyone else as being any It's like, how would that get in the way and talking about the Republican debate? And I actually suppose maybe it's what we should do. Maybe that should be the gimmick I go on and I said, wow, I didn't see it. But I think, you know, I.
Think you had a good point, which is it is like a HUD secretary.
Yeah it's no, well it's And also there are these you know, characters, always characters out there who are running for fame, Like you're not going to be confirmed by the Senate for anything ever in your lives, but you're running for fame. And then maybe you know, you can get a podcast and you know, be as famous as as Molly.
Is true Yang yeah, well yeah, you know aim higher like Andrew Yang.
Yeah, and the and you always know, like you can tell it instantly. You know which ones are running just for fame because one of the things they do is that they they say the most outrageous things. You know, Tim Scott knows that the most likely thing that he will next be elected to in life is the United States Senate, and in South Carolina, that's the most likely thing, you know. And then in a happy world, he becomes, you know, the vice presidential nominee for Donald Trump and loses.
And but you know, almost all of the rest of them, you know, Nicky Haley has hopes for a future you know, in cabinets or in office. But you know, Mike Pence. You know, it's hopeless, and everybody knows it's hopeless, and the others are just outright, you know, clowns running for fame and to you know, improve their possibilities of getting a Fox contract or some you know, podcasting thing or whatever.
I want to ask you a question about Nicky Haley and sort of this Republican field and Mike Pence really especially one of the things that Mike Pence really did was he gave evangelicals permission to support Donald Trump, right, he said, this guy's our guy. And he did it so well that then evangelicals were like, well, why do we need you? What do you think like the legacy of that is.
Well, I think actually Mike Pence is the most dangerous thing to Donald Trump in this campaign because what he's eventually going to do is show you the gap. He's done it already, but no one's paying attention, and he's done it really, really effectively. It is the gap between Donald Trump and the religious right on abortion, because Donald
Trump is saying, hey, you went too far in abortion. Hey, you know, the Supreme Court, you know, left it to the states, but the states weren't supposed to do anything. You know that was Donald Trump's deal, you know, on abortion, and Pence has been out there saying Trump is wrong on abortion, he is not a supporter of our position
on abortion, and Pence is right. And to the extent that Pence gets traction on that and actually does show the religious right the giant gap between him and Trump on abortion and between them and Trump on abortion, that will shake the most solid support system that Trump has out there. And of course we know what Trump will do. It'll take him longer than it should because he's stupid, but he will just move over to the Pence position
on abortion. He'll end up over there. And then when he when he goes toward the Pence position on abortion, then you know, he revived, you know, the opposition to him on that issue that should exist in these other you know, in the end, in the pro choice section of Republicanism. I mean, I noticed it immediately in Pence's very very first public comments as a candidate that wow, there's a big problem there. And you know, so it's not just that Pence won't be protecting him and certifying
him on abortion. He's going to be doing exactly the opposite.
But again, Trump has no ideology right, So this is all about expedients and getting elected. And he sort of knows that abortion will kill a mainstream Republican candidate in a in general.
Yeah, he thinks that the Pence position for any other candidate would kill any other candidate. But I don't think Trump thinks anything he says about any policy will ever kill the Trump candidacy. And he may be right about that. And by kill, what Trump means is lose votes that he already has. Because Trump is stupid, he does not understand even if he holds on to every vote he
already has, he is going to lose. So he has to do the thing that every winning politician has always tried to do, which is soon as as soon as you win the election, you start working on the votes you didn't get. You know, if you win by fifty one percent, you strongly believe there's another five six seven percent, or you used to believe. You know that there's another five six seven percent that you can pick up on your reelection. You know, Ronald Reagan believed that, you know,
and he did it. You know what's made Trump such an unprofessional politician and profoundly stupid one is from the moment he won the electoral College. I just sat there and waited for him to say something to the voters who didn't vote for him, and he has still never said that. And so you know, he's running what is nothing other than a cult campaign. It's just, you know, vote for me because I'm Donald Trump. And that cannot
win him the electoral College. It can win him the Republican nomination, but it cannot win him the.
Electric and that's a fundamental problem he has. But I'm curious if you were to sort of like game this out. So he's seventy seven years old, many many Republicans have lost their careers on the hope that someday that on the actuarial tables, as I remember reading reporting on. But he does have all of these criminal you know, his for indictments and a super so really five imagine a world a twenty eight, right, I mean, where Trump is no longer a candidate. Maybe he thinks he is, but
he's no longer a real candidate. I mean, does a Republican party can it rise from these ashes?
I mean, well, in twenty twenty eight, that might not be the first post Trump election. He won't be in it. But the question is how much does Trumpism still define how you excite a Republican primary voter. America's problem is not Donald Trump. America's problem is Republican primary voters. They are a minority of Republican voters. Most Republican voters do not vote in primaries ever, not for president, not for anyone. And so the ones who do vote in primaries are
exactly the ones you're hoping don't vote. And so still they are controlling everything at the congressional level because you know, every you know Republican house member is afraid of being primaried by a crazier Republican and so they have to sound as crazy as they possibly can, and that might have an afterburn, But once you get out to the boy, these numbers are weird. To say to twenty thirty two.
That's when you have the first opportunity, I think, clear opportunity for the Republican Party in a presidential election to start over and just start over and say, what's the Reagan version of that, what's the Reagan candidacy? What is the kind of reasonable Republican candidacy? And I say reasonable within their terms, because let me just say, having lived through the Reagan presidency. There wasn't a day when I
thought it was reasonable. It was like to me, you know, the reasonable Republicans were like the George H. W. Bush Republicans, you know, And of course George H. W. Bush had to be defeated and challenged in a Republican primary and then kind of basically defeated by Republican voters because he wasn't crazy enough as presidents, so he didn't get it
to be re elected. You know. Bob Dole was the reasonable Republican and George W. Bush ran initially in two thousand in that reasonable Republican category, and then the world happened to him and that changed things. But that's a winning space, I mean that space of you know, the
Bush presidencies, you know, the Reagan presidencies. I mean there were times during you know, but the the Bush, the Reagan into Bush twelve years of Republican presidencies where there were plenty of think pieces about how the Republicans had won the presidency permanently. So that's an available space. It's you know, it's somewhat to the right of the Democratic Party, and it's for lower taxes, not zero taxes, not crazy taxes,
but lower taxes. You know, it's for less regulation. It's basically a party with less confidence in or sense of dependence on government. Truth is, their dependence on government is at least as high as the Democrats' dependence on government. But they have a sense that they are less and that's a place where you can get you know, you
can actually win a majority of the vote. It's very important to note that there's not a single Republican candidacy that has a theory of winning more votes than Joe Biden. No one has that plan. Trump doesn't have a plan. I'm going to win a million more votes than Joe Biden. Nope, there's no such plan. It is it's only the electoral college.
It's only because the Dakotas are two states. That's the only reason that strategies, the only reason they have that they think they can possibly win a presidency is by winning the electoral.
P in West Virginia. My dad, it's so interesting though, I mean, will you talk to me for two seconds about this Senate map, because you have a really interesting historical perspective. So you remember when the Senate map whatever how many years ago it was that the Senate map was this bad before for Democrats?
Well, it always comes down to individuals, you know, it always comes down as individuals. And so if the Democrats are lucky, if you don't understand this sentence, then you do not understand politics and government and the American design of government. And that sentence is, if the Democrats are lucky, Joe Manchin will win his re election as a Democrat
in West Virginia if they're lucky. And if and then he can appear to torment the Democrats in the Senate when in fact he will have contributed to the most important thing that matters in the Senate, which is the Democrats holding the majority. And so you know, you kind of begin there and work your way around. And you know, John Tester is the only person, the only Democrat who can win in Montana, and he's running in Montana and so so, and you know, normally you would just say,
look West Virginia. Normally you'd say West Virginia is now impossible for a Democrat. Montana is now impossible for Democrat. And then you say, yeah, but the Democrats Mansion and the Democrats Tester, and you go, okay, let's talk about it. So it's always it's always about the individuals and how they run it, as long as they're well supported. And I have to say the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has been run better, you know, in the last few cycles
than I've ever seen. I mean, they're just they're just extraordinary,
you know. In the nineteen nineties, is recently his nineteen nineties, those Democratic Setate campaign committees, Republican said campaign committees they were just sort of irritations in the lives of senators, you know, of like stuff where they like senators that they go to their events and stuff, and then they just kind of complain about not getting enough money from them, and they would be sending you know, those committees would be sending to the campaigns, you know, like twenty two
thousand dollars you know, or you know, and and so it'd be like, ah, geez, just an irritation. Now it's very serious money and they're really professional, really really and I do believe the Democratic Setate Campaign Committee is much better than the Republican SID campaign.
For two seconds, the VIC were never going to worry about a vac after this campaign, like no one's ever gonna But one thing that was a little bit interesting was He talked about how nine to eleven was an inside job and that has led to him, you know, doing well in the Republican polls. Extrapolated for me what kind of trouble we're in from that.
So the good and the bad of it is that the Republican Party has come along to be the administrator of national collective intelligence tests. And I really liked living in the country before I knew how stupid people were. I actually, like, you know, I overestimated the low end of intelligence in America. I had a pretty good sense of the upper end of intelligence, as much as I could understand it, you know, which leaves out all of the sciences, of course, but that lower end, like, how
stupid is it? I know people, and grew up with people and love people one hundred percent as stupid as the stupidest Trump voter. Okay, but I didn't know there were that many of them. I thought I knew most of them, you know. And so and though it's like, you know, it's tens of millions of people who are abjectly and permanently and hopelessly stupid, and they don't go
to classrooms anymore. So there's no hope. It's not like, well, he's doing badly in third grade, but you know, he got into gear in fourth grade and he started to finally learn that there really were fifty states. And you know, no, they're lost forever. They they're outside of the educational system forever for the rest of their lives. And they will you know, collect input, you know, from the vivex and you know the you know, Robert Kennedy's and this horrible
cesspool of the world Wide Web. You know that they will find the stupidest material available on it and embrace it. We didn't know that. You know, they were stupid before Trump ran. They were stupid all day every day before Trump ran. And then Trump ran and they got to step out publicly and said this is how stupid I am. It's like there's something of a public service in that, you know, I mean, it is. I have to say, it's one of those diagnoses that when I saw it,
I kind of wish I didn't know. You know, it's just and as long as you had a relatively disciplined system of nominating Republican candidates for president, it never got revealed, Like mid Romney was never going to reveal to you, there was nothing about his candidacy. That was going to reveal to you how stupid people. It wasn't stupid to vote for mid Rodney, you know, it wasn't stupid to
vote for John McCain. You know it wasn't. And and so you know, we got to kind of happily cruise along thinking the stupid people had limited options more destroying our lives. In fact, it never occurred to us that they could. We didn't know that they were empowered to do that. And so this thing exists only in the Republican Party. It doesn't exist anywhere else, you know, And that's going to be on display in the debates, you know,
where there will be rewards for being the craziest. And by the way, debate is not the word for the thing you're going to see. That's not what you know. It's just it's a sound by Chovo, and there's nothing in it that tests a single quality that is necessary in a present. No debate can ever test a single quality that is in any way necessary in a present. It's not how the presidency works, it's not how the job works. Nobody ever rushes into the Oval office and says, listen,
you've got ninety seconds to explain and decide. It's like no, no, he does. And he's the president. He has as much time as he wants. He can sleep on it, he can think about it, he can read about it, he can listen to advisors, he can convene a meeting. He doesn't have to answer it right now. He's the president, you know. But we do a game show version of the presidency on TV, call it debate instead of game show.
So we think we're watching something meaningful, and you know it's really a television event, you know, made for invented by television. Didn't exist before television, just never happened before television. Whenever you're looking at something that didn't exist before television, don't trust Lawrence.
Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.
I will come back, you know, I'll always come.
Dave Weigall is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back Politics. A person I respect a lot, and really somebody who's like traveling a lot in sort of everywhere he needs to be. Welcome Dave, it's good to be here.
Thank you for having me.
Before we started recording, we started talking about this GOP debate coming up, and there's a temptation to ignore all of the mimeographs who are on the stage. But when we were just talking, you had a really interesting and salient point about the sort of what little policy discussion there is and where it's landing. Talk to me about what you see this stage looking like, Well, we.
Know what the stage is now. It's eight candidates who are not Larry elfare In, Francis Firez, Barry Johnson. And so this is a field of with the exception of vik Ramaswami who's running for his first office, is you know, field of candidates who run for stuff who has crudentials, But it is it is a more conservative field than twenty sixteen, the last time they had open primary, than twenty twelve. Ideologically, it's actually for all the diversity in
this race, and racial diversity too. Really, the only point of contention that tears them apart is is Ukraine. On the rest of it, everyone's running on either continuing the Trump legacy with a couple of tweaks or going to Trump's right, And I almost think that's been overlooked because there's just a way that we interpret a campaign. Trump is running. There end you'll see somebody described as a moderate if they're trying to appeal to voters who Trump
couldn't win. But the thing I've noticed in covering all these people very closely, but none of them are saying, oh, Trump alienated this group of voters. I'm going to get them back. Trump just he had a complete victory on immigration. Everyone's taking his notes and thump prows and to build a wall. Everyone has committed to purging a bunch of federal employees, getting rid of Christoper Ray. With exception of Chris Christy. Everyone is basically saying I'm going to do
a Trump did. And the exceptions are maybe I will support Ukraine more than he's supporting it, and we get into some details. But I feel like this is covering democrats. Last time, you had a few cants saying, hey, I'm going to moderate the moderate things that we can win back some people. Basically, let's go back to do Obama two thousand and eight, that was more popular, and that's
just not happening this time. Nobody's saying I'm going to go back to the you know, Bush two thousand and four, or the last time that the party won a majority of the vote.
Yeah, it's interesting because it's like what you're saying, or at least what it sounds like to me, is that Republicans have they've interpreted or the rest of this field has interpreted trump Ism as a need to go further right, which is what we saw with DeSantis, versus what I think trump Ism was to those people and is, which is a very charis amount a guy who could get them to pretty much do anything right.
And there are Republican governors who won in the Trump years. I'm thinking of Brian tamp especially, who have governed as conservatives and throwing some bones to liberals on education and what have you. But nobody is running on the stuff that Trump did to win Democrats in twenty sixteen. Not really so. Mike Tens, who's been one of the clearer candidates on his policy if he's elected, along with Ron DeSantis Pens has been clearer we need to actually tackle entitlements.
He's brought back some of the Paul Ryan agenda, which Trump won votes by abandoning. Same with DeSantis. There is protectionism that Trump brought into the party for trade war with China, but otherwise what Trump did was drop some of the unpopular fiscal conservative austerity politics and combine it with populism, border control, low immigration, and aggressive trade policies. All that there's also a desire to go further. So Trump in twenty sixteen talked almost I shouldn't say he
almost never talked about LGBT rights. When he talked about it, he would say that he supported them. I mean, he had no problem with trans people using whatever bathroom they prefer based on their gender. And the entire field has moved to Trump's right, where the most moderate position at this point is Asa Hutchinson, who's saying, as governor, I was for banning some of this, but not all of it. That is the liberal squish position, whereas in twenty twenty
it was sixteen I should say, a non issue. And so that's looking at this debate. So much of discussions about Trump, it has to be why wouldn't it be? He's up by forty points, but the party is just there's very little disagreement inside the party about what they stand for, and it's I would zone say, you think this happened with Democrats. After Hillary lost there was a lot of thinking, are there some progressive ideas that were popular that she abandoned that we can get back, they
moved to the left. I think it's significant the Republicans have moved to the right. And if Christian Hutu was running or Larry Hogan was running, it'd be a different conversation. They're not. This is a very conservative feel Aweso.
When you were talking about the bathrooms, I was thinking about Trump on abortion. I mean, that's the terrible thing about Trump is he's actually weirdly very good at this, So he knows abortion is a loser and he said it when the Supreme Court overturned Row. He said, this is a loser for us. So he really is to the left of those guys on abortion too.
Yeah, that's a good point. He is the one who sang the least about a portion. I would say next to him is for Vic Ramaswami, who sang that literally he doesn't see a federal role at all. He thinks
it's divisive. The pitches is kind of like the Ted Cruz pitch in twenty sixteen, which is our idea is if we go even further right, are actually more popular, but we're going to drop a couple that are just not going over And actually, if you talk to pro life Republicans who to be frank, they think they'll have to deal with President Donald Trump or nominee Donald Trump. They don't think they'll have to deal with president fake Ramaswami.
They're really irritated by that. But the rest of the field, the gap is between I would go further than Trump and support a federal limit after fifteen weeks, or I would do that and then continue to go further again with Pence. Some Democrats I was talked to yesterday were describing Pence is basically the Bernie Sanders of this race, and that he is the one, I think because he really cares about changing the party. He's the one trying
to get people on record for more conservative ideas. One of is is we shouldn't have any high promise to appoint a pro life cabinet. I promise all my healthcare appointees are going to be pro life. I'm going to bring back those because remember what happened with Trump and social conservatism is did he run on it? Not really?
Once he was in power and tension was there, Tens was the guy helping pick a lot of the social conservatives running healthcare runners, Seema Verma, Roger Severino, these people who nobody knew their name. I would say, like Indiana
reporters do their name. Some people in dcwer conservatives. He made sure it was a more conservative administration, and that is what he's running on, is this, I'm going to do Trump, and I'm going to do it in a more conservative mindset with less wiggle room, with fewer liberals who get appointed to things and did disobey us.
So interesting, it's pretty crazy. So what the thing I'm struck by, and I'm actually writing about this in a sort of like opinion piece about this debate, is why does it seem to you that these Republicans have so much trouble imagining a post Trump future for the party?
Well, you mean post Trump because he won't be around forever unless he's you know, the god emperor of Doune. But you mean like a party that is building his in his image.
Yeah, because it does seem to me, like, you know, you look at Democrats like wringing their hands about the bench and this and that, and then you have Trump and basically it seems like the base just assumes that this seventy seven year old guy will be you know, president forever or running for president forever no.
That's a good point. What's happened here is what's happened to a lot of the let's say Western world, there's a better term for these days. But all over the world you look at the Brazil had this last year. There are people who The current Conservative coalition includes a lot of people who were maybe voting for the left
party before. They were working class people, part of labor unions, and they moved right for a number of reasons social issues, and it changes from country to country, but Trump is the first Republican candidate who has moved those people into the tent and after a few elections it looked, it looks permanent. And one reason there's such a discussion on the right about Brian Kemp and a little bit about Glenn Youngkin because he did some of this, is that
they did not run as Trump acolytes. They actually were kind of embarrassed. They tried to run. In Kemp's case, he beat a Trump pat Can in a primary, but they held onto those gains. They did better with rural white voters than they ever had, and the idea fair
is really okay. We have a new coalition. The party is going to be built in that mold, kind of like what Democrats did after FDR, and they had the FDR coalition for decades and decades saying like, this is the president who brought that black voters into our coalition, who brought this these working class farmers who didn't trust us. That's kind of it. It's just that there's still this disagreement about why they voted for him, and so you
were saying, yeah, because of his unique talents. They think it's actually this combination of conservative policy ideas. Once you get people into the tent, they don't want to go back. You see some of them again, some of these countries, like in the UK last round of elections, a lot of the stuff the Conservatives gained and these working class areas went back to the Labor Party on all of it.
The idea is, we have an agenda now that is popular, that is going to keep on our tent all these white working class voters who were Democrats for like fifty years. That's still unclear because we had midterms last year and some of those voters didn't come back. They didn't want the Trump agenda. Where Democrats did really well, we're suburbs there, there are a lot of voters who had been Republican until twenty sixteen, certainly until twenty eighteen, you know, suburban Detroit,
suburban Chicago. You find on the right this attitude of okay, well, we can cut them loose, we don't really need them. It's a reverse of what you heard about Democrats in twenty sixteen saying, well, we're going to do a little bit worse than working class whites, but we're going to make it up in the suburbs. The Republican answer to this is we're going to do worse in the suburbs, but we can make it up with working class whites with this agenda. And yes, the agenda has not formed yet.
One data point I'd add to this is the Fox newspole from last week that showed, you know, Trump losing Diviiden by little. Every Republican did worse. Every Republican was unpopular. There's no evidence that there's a Republican running on the
trumpetenda without his brand that is selling this. They have not been able to convince people, Okay, we figured out how to run the country, low taxes, high deficits, trade wars, They've retained a lot of the ground and immigration they've adopted this idea that I thought was a reach, but I think it's stuck with Republicans in twenty twenty, which is, hey, remember how good things were under Donald Trump? If you subtract the last eleven months or I should say, like
ten months of down Trump. That's sort of the theme of all the Republican campaigns is Trump got it right. We need to restore exactly what he did, and the fact that things were actually pretty lousy for the last year of the Trump years. It's really just disappeared. If everyone agrees to something they went through positive thinking, they can make it so. And that's what's happened. On the right is hey, we fixed everything, we just need to go back to this. I don't find that with Democrats.
I have not found Democrats say Barack Obama fixed everything, let's reboot it. There's always an idea that we need to improve. We lest some stuff on the floor, we need to pick it up. We maybe alienated more people than we needed to. Is that, you know, hangdog apology at a democratic nature. On the right, it's not Nope, we only lost because we didn't go hard right enough. If only he had fired Purge the DJ on day one instead of trying to forgit the end, we would have been more successful.
Is this the unreality of I mean, is that what's happening here? Because the elites in the party, the donors, maybe the people who are involved in you know, the political consultants don't care because they make money either way, But the people who donate the money do seem to be furious that these candidates can't win. Do you think everyone else is in that unreality? Is unreality element here?
No? I don't think it's on reality. But I think of what DeSantis often says on the trail, or where Kim Reynolds says in Iowa, which is, if you look at the last election there, we were expecting a red wave, but and it only happened in Iowa and Florida and a little bit New York. That's different. That was more of a backlash. The only places where Republicans gained a lot of ground when they ran everything was Iowa and Larida and the idea there is and the media was
telling us, you know, to be stricter about COVID. The media was telling us that signing these abortion bills was not going to be popular. Look at us we won. We wiped the Democrats off the map. The evidence of this is that we can just do that across the country. Why why be so timid? That's the sort of the case. Now you might listen to that and say, what about
the other forty eight states. That's kind of what's missaying is that in a lot of the country it was the worst I mean, relative to expectations, the worst midterm performance ever. I mean, anyone who's in a newsroom on that election night started to see stuff come in, It's like, wait, really, yeah, the inflations this high and they're not voting for re holingans, what's up? And that has been just kind of wish passed.
Whereas Democrats in twenty eighteen had a good midterm, they gained a lot of ground, they gained into Western governorships, and they said, Okay, that's the model we should use. Whereas in this race, it's okay, we had two good races. We should use that model and run that around the country.
But so isn't that on reality?
Maybe I'm disputing your premise too much because it's selective. It is taking something and I covered this on the left. I mean, there'll be cases where progressive wins a closed seat, and there'll be arguments on the left. This proves that any of you in anywhere can run on medicare for all. Right, there'll be an incumbent really wins with this and the Remagan tax at work and scale it up, you know, test it against a billion dollars in any events, and
it doesn't. Throughout what works. Sometimes a party will win under random conditions. There really is no effort. If you're a suburban woman who's pro choice, who would love it to vote for Republicans again and think they've gone too far right, your offer is no trust us. We're going to keep going in that direction. The closest you get to a compromise really is I'm going to let if you live in Alabama, I'm going to let your state ban abortion. It's a free country. You can move now.
Maybe that's where the party is always going to be. If you're pro life party, that's going to be your position. But there there is not attempt. And look, Democrats do versions of this there. I think they are actually much kind of describing it before. It's very apologetic and looking for ways to win back win the voter they lost. But you know, the party of ten twenty years ago said yeah, sure you can. We're not going to go for gun control. Now it says it can. But they've
won elections recently. They've won a bunch of elections with this platform, despite a president who's not very popular, and Republicans lost some elections, despite some candidates who are in a good position. No one's moving off, and also the money in the party is not demanding to do this. The only kind of donor revolt you see is some of the big donors who plan to support Ron DeSantis going to the media and saying, I wish you wouldn't
assigned that six week abortion bill. The rest of the party is saying no, the next Republican president is facing the midnight. However, we need to dismantle the administrative state. And there's not much conversation happening with voters who aren't in on that. The assumption is the entire Trump coalition once that's almost enough to win the election. I'm going to be less unlikable than him, and that's going to
be enough to win me the election. There is no reckoning with Is there some stuff that we're talking about that's not popular?
So interesting? I mean, it really is. They're so intractable in a strange way that I never thought Pod will drop on Wednesday. The debate is Wednesday night. I mean, what are you watching for?
I'm actually a fan of the hated show of hands question. I think there's a bunch of questions you could ask candidates that would reveal where they are on that. I mean, from the basic one, you know, did Mike Pens act the right way on January sixth too? Will you change those security for future retirees and Medicare? Would you block grant Medicaid? There's just a bunch of conservative policy they
left on the ground I'd like to see asked. I think what you're going to get is, frankly, just from talking to campaigns or last couple days, there's a lot of irritation with the vig Ramaswami just getting interview after interview and going off the dome and coming up with policy. He's a very smart guy, but he's coming. Why is he in day seven of talking about nine to eleven?
For example? It's baff ley and so I think there will be an effort to kind of draw him out because people think he is rising quickly because they'll say anything and they want to That happens to somebody. You're the candidate, will say anything, you make a GAF, you're done. But I'm really interested in what ends up happening on Ukraine because you have candidates who've only really Tim Scott who's had to take votes on Ukraine in the Senate
and has voted for funding. You've got pens who's defended it. You've got Christy and Pence who've visited there. You have Haley who's defended the funding, but she's always trying to find like a place in the middle. And then you'll have some DeSantis who's been unclear. So I kind of is it the biggest issue facing Americans every single day? Ukraine?
Maybe not. I think it's a digression. I would love to get some clarity though, on if the candidates want to fight inflation, how they do this, Because one, they're all still talking about inflation. Not to get too weeky on this inflation. The inflation rate is way down. There are individual products that cost more months to month, and gas costs more now, so everyone kind of fits inflation as an issue into the box of what they want to talk about. I want to talk about any energy
exploration today. I'm going to say, hey, I just great news. It turns out my plan to let sure drilling happen everywhere would decrease your gas prices. That would help inflation. But there's more to ask. Would you continue all these tax cuts because that wouldn't help deal with inflation? Would you fire the FED chair and force him to lower interest rates? What's There's a lot of economic stuff about how the country's actually run that has not been asked. I'd love that to be asked.
Thank you so much, Dave. I hope you'll come back.
Oh no, it's great to be here. Thank you.
Taylor Lorenz is a tech journalist and the author of Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet, which you can pre order now. Welcome to Ast Politics, Taylor Lorentz.
Great, how are you grave good?
Excited to have you here to talk about your book, which is in pre orders. Let us talk about this book. Yes, what's it called?
Tell us about Yeah, it's called Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. It's about the rise of the content creator influencer industry and kind of how we all became extremely online and on social media.
So let me ask you. You have been extremely online also, like myself, we're both I think very online. I've actually read your book and I thought it was excellent, Oh my god, and you talked about this sort of how it all started. I would love for you to like give us a two minute talk of like how we got here.
Yeah, definitely, I know.
I feel like, well, I mean, my book is sort of about the rise of like social media and kind of how these platforms emerged and competed and the power users on them. I think a lot of people kind of just like look up one day and are like, how did this whole Like, you know, how are their influencers? Hellover, how are you know people making millions on TikTok? Like why am I, you know, posting like an influencer, you know, like just putting ourselves in photos and kind of like
being cognisant of our following and stuff like that. And it seems like it happened overnight, I think to a lot of people, or they think it happened maybe you know,
in the past couple of years. And I kind of talk about how it all started with the rise of blogging and my space, you know, back like a really long time ago, how people started to like share themselves online, put more of themselves online, and kind of how yeah, how like the social media content creator industry emerged, Like, I mean, one thing I talk about my book is kind of Facebook versut MySpace, and how Facebook sort of taught people to post publicly for an audience with the
launch of New Speed. And then also yeah, how like mommy bloggers were kind of the first to really commodify their personal brands online and the businesses they built around that in the backlash they got for it.
So one of the things I was thinking about is because I'm incredibly old and I come from the nineties and I wrote for magazines when I was young, I think about that moment in the nineties when it was clear that we were losing the market share, that it was that everything, that people were no longer going to pay nine bucks for a magazine like, and it was
this moment. And it's funny because I was talking. I was on a panel with someone we were talking about it in the break, someone who had come from one of these magazine places. He had said, there was a moment where it became clear that we were about to lose, like that this sort of tech had figured out a way to go around journalism and we didn't see it then the way we've seen it now now. I actually would argue that they've never been able to reproduce what
we in mainstream journalism have done. But I mean, you know, Brian Krassenstein is not the same as the New York Times ed page, but there are a lot of tech bros who do think that they can get there. I'm curious, you know, you and I are both at mainstream outlets. I'm curious what you're thinking when you look that is, and you know, is there a way for these media outlets to be able to really succeed in tech in a way they may not have?
Yeah?
Basically, I mean so much of this book is also about sort of like this shifting media landscape, exactly what you're describing. I mean, I started as a blogger in the late oughts, and I mean I think that blogging and content creators have already provide, you know, higher quality content than the New York Times in certain areas.
Obviously not I come.
From content creatorville too in a certain way, or or I feel that I do. I don't know if that's accurate, but I do think like the reporting even from the sort of you know, the Boston Globe, like a local paper, is still going to be vetted. And I mean it's one thing to be on the opinion side, like I am, but it's another thing to have a team of people and lawyers. And I mean, so I'm curious, Like this is an unsolvable question, but I'm just curious.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think we've like witnessed the death you know, because of the rights of social media and these tech companies. Obviously, it's gutted local news. And I do think that we're in a bad place in terms of reporting. Like I think so much of what happens on the internet is commentary, it's not reporting. People
don't really understand the difference. And yeah, it's a bad situation that we're in in terms of like I think for those of us that work in journalism, you know, there's just not the jobs that there used to be, there's not the money that there used to be, there's at the resources you have like these few national publications, which are great in some ways but horrible in others. So I mean I think the media has been asleep
at the wheel for a long time. I actually I think I think they're still in deep denial over kind of their relevance and the sustainability of their business model. But I don't think that means that everyone needs to be a content creator, you know what I mean?
Yeah, this is a very interesting thing you just said. I'm gonna I would like to keep going with it, if it's okay. What it seems like, what I've been watching. What it seems like to me, and you can tell me if you think this is nuts. Is that it's sort of like the way that these tech platforms work is they elevate a person more than a brand.
Yes, it's all about sort of individuals and you know, individual personalities and building trust directly with your audience as an individual rather than a sort of faceless corporate brand that you are then sort of you know, lots of faceless people work for.
So like, one of the things I've seen with podcasts is that podcast publishers don't seem to have the same kind of prestige that major media outlets do.
Yeah, I mean I think major media outlets probably, I don't know how you feel certainly. The reason that I decided to work in mainstream media is just sort of like having that like badge of approval, I guess, and like, I mean, obviously I'm there as well for all the resources that we got reporting in my colleagues, so I love but it means something. It's very hard to build a brand that sort of rivals a lot of these judicial brands, but I think they're degrading every day.
I mean, just all legacy media.
I was literally just listening to something about ESPN last night and like their struggles, you know, and that's that used to be like the brand in sports media and it's struggling, and so you know, it's just it's happening across the industry, not just in news media, but fashion media and sports media because people have channels like Dude Perfect or other. You know, like the media environment is
so much more crowded and distributed and niche. It's just hard to kind of get those mass audiences and monetize a journalism brand.
Yeah, I think that's right. And also, I mean it's just a sort of interesting unseen consequence of the Internet. So let me ask you, where are we right now with this sort of content creator platforms. I would love you to just sort of give me a like a sort of overview of what it looks like.
Yeah, I mean, I would say the pandemic in twenty twenty truly kind of pushed everyone online. And that's when like the Silicon Valley people finally started to really pay attention and realized that the influencer industry is a major economic force. And so that's why you saw them calling it the creator economy and dumping all this investment in twenty twenty one. But we're at this point where there's
there's sort of competition between platforms. You have TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Substack, Patreon, Like there's all these different platforms where you can grow an audience and monetize, sometimes directly through subscriptions, sometimes through ads, sometimes through things like a creator fund on TikTok, which is just like one big pot of money that they kind of split among content creators that are accepted into
the program. And I would say it's just getting easier and easier to monetize and to build a media business. You know, if you want to start out, you can easily launch emerch shop on Shopify. You know, like there's also this sort of simultaneous rise in DIY like e commerce that's facilitated a lot of monetization, so you don't just have to rely on deals. You can launch your own product line. But I do think that we're still
at the beginning of all of this. I think there's only sort of like a vague recognition of it from kind of like legacy institutions, like it's happened in the past few years. It's still like early days in terms of the shift in To.
Me about what it looks like with the.
TikTok, Yeah, I mean TikTok has obviously exploded since launching in twenty eighteen, and it was musically, which is what TikTok was prior to that. I talk about this in my book about I don't know like why musically took off and why people didn't take it seriously. I Mean, one's funny kind of theme in my book was just like tech founder is not really knowing how their products will be used.
But TikTok, you knows.
Short form video app that's become kind of the most popular, fastest growing app, I guess, the fastest going social platform in the sense that like you know, took Facebook quite a while to take off. Same with YouTube, TikTok became quite popular, and that's because of the algorithmic discovery. Unlike all the other social platforms that force users to kind of like get on there and build followers and kind of I mean, you know, discover content through manually hunting
people down and following them. TikTok distributes content solely through this or primarily through this algorithmic feed that just delivers the content that you want to see. You don't have to follow a single person to watch content. And also you don't need any followers.
To go viral, right right, right right, which is so interesting too. So what do you think now we have Elon controlling X, we have Threads, we have TikTok. So TikTok is like constantly in danger of being shut down by the American government, which hates it because if you're going to steal data, you can't be a Chinese company, you have to be an American company, which you know, I respect that we have Threads, which is you know, sort of on the move. But again, Mark Zuckerberg is
nobody's idea of a hero. And then we have Elon, who is trying to turn X into banking brain scal and also fascism. I mean, where do you think the sort of everybody goes or do you think we are in this period of decentralized social media?
Now?
Yeah, I think we're moving to sort of a more decentralized landscape, but not like in the way the crypto people say it necessarily. But I mean, I think there's just more platform competition that's coming up from smaller platforms, from things like Discord, where people could kind of build communities specific you know, hyperniche communities and monetize there if they want. I think Twitter X whatever you want to
call it, is essentially irrelevant. I mean, I just think Elon's alienated every top user and creator and you know, he's just the sort of the stowing tens of thousands of dollars on any kind of stickupent that will praise him, but he doesn't understand anything about running up functional so you know, social platform. He fired the whole creator relations team that was sort of doing a lot of great
work there. I don't think there's going to be a one to one replacement with Twitter, like I know everybody wants that in media, but I just don't think that's happening. I think I wrote a piece on this a couple of months ago. But a lot of the core functionality of Twitter has already been replaced by TikTok, just in terms of like TikTok is where people go to follow big news events, it's where you go for cultural commentary.
It's just it's replaced so much.
Yeah, so you think it'll be sort of Twitter, I mean Twitter will be TikTok.
I think it's already happened even you know, it was happening even before Elon, but I think Elon's accelerated it. And yeah, I think the use case for Twitter, for average people's use usage of Twitter has already been replaced by TikTok. I think journalists have a specific use for Twitter, and I don't think you can replace it as easily. I don't particularly like TikTok.
I mean, it seems fine, but it's like it's hard for me to imagine like that you could get more of this sort of like you know, how do you get an article in the Washington Post from TikTok?
Yeah, Well that's the problem is, like Twitter, what are the last places where you could link out Obviously threads you can link out now too, but social platforms generally don't like linking out as we saw I reported just my colleagues did too, like just yesterday that Elon's throttling links to the New York Times. You know, like, I don't think people necessarily a lot of people want to
read articles. You know, if you can get all the information in a short ten second video that summarized see article, they're happy with that, or they'll google the article and try and find more information about it, or watch a long form thing on it. I think there is a
place for writing and links on the Internet. I mean, there are newsletter platforms and things like that, But I don't think I just don't think that like that structure of Twitter and that one to one feed is ever going to like be completely replicated because most people aren't journalists, Like most people using Twitter like they're just kind of going to keep up with general news and topics. I
think sports Twitter is a real thing. That's another thing that's going to be hard to replace, like that real time kind of collective watching Pope.
We'll see, we'll see what comes up.
So interesting, So Taylor, let's do another sort of minute or two on like, so threads, blue Sky, all this sort of Twitter e tech s based socials. I mean, do you see a future for Threads?
Okay, I'm rooting for Threads, hate root for Mark Zuckerberg, but I really like it. I find it a very easy to use product, and I think it's like a It's a good product, but it doesn't have the functionality that Twitter has. But I'm hoping that media people use it. I think Twitter was such a good sort of platform. It's like this group chat for you know, journalists, and that has not been replicated.
What do you use Threads?
I use Threads. I like it fine. I wanted to have some of the functionality that Twitter does.
Yeah, they're able to like roll out a lot of that step sooner rather than later.
And do you think that they can create off a lot of users.
I think they're going to have to quickly keep going and pivoting, like the needs to have dms. Somehow the comments feel siloed the way that the Instagram comments feel siloed. I like to interact with comments on the Internet. I like to interact with people because I am like one of those people who loves to talk to random people, and I mean not all the time, but a lot of the time. So I feel that it's sort of siloed in a way that makes it a little bit
hard to use. So I don't like that. One of the things I love about social media, and perhaps this is my own moral feeling, is that there's no barrier to entry, right. You can write to anyone, they can write to you. It's just a free for all. And it feels with threads like there's a little bit of a like velvet rope, and I don't want that. I want to be able to just do the world through the Internet.
Yeah, I get what I mean. I think it's also less anonymous and the different culture than Twitter. I mean, Twitter has a very specific culture and modes of interaction.
But I don't know.
I mean, I do reply to people on threads, like I do, feel like I check the activity feed and I feel it's somewhat similar, but it's more sanitized for sure.
And I miss the messiness of Twitter too.
Yeah, I mean that's the thing that is sort of like the messiness of Twitter is what I love too, though probably healthier just to be in our corporate threads. Bubble Taylor Lorenz. Thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And I hope people pre order my book.
I think anybody will find it interesting if you're interested in any of these sort of the battles between tech platforms and how people use them.
No more perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my junk Fast This John Eastman guy.
We are all like who is this guy at first, and now we're starting to learn O.
My man is Sip, the cool aid of crazy.
John Eastman is the second defendant to surrender in the Georgia election interference case, which those of you keeping track at home, is a reco case that has eighteen defendants, one of which is the one the only forty fifth President, Donald J. Trump, and one of which is our favorite America's mayor, though he really was never that Rudolph Jiuliani anyway.
John Eastman is a fancy lawyer, and John Eastman and I think this is the height of the fuckery continues to lie about the twenty twenty election, and for that he is 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.