Michael Fanone & Douglas Rushkoff

on the aftermath of January six. But first we have author of Survival of the Richest, our favorite tech explainer and also a longtime friend, Doug rush Koff, is here to talk about Twitter and f t X. Welcome back to Fast Politics, our favorite Doug Rushkoff. I'm so happy to be with you. I'd like to think of you as our tech billionaire correspondent. I'm sorry that was so me. No just tech, no billionaire, But in this case we

have a billionaire. Tech in billionaires becomes synonymous, unfortunately, unfortunately, so we got to talk about what is happening here with Elon mush It's so funny. It is a weird week, isn't it. It's like I haven't had a week like this since like that the dot com bust, you know, and like March two thousand, it is it is wild. I mean, we're watching with Musk and it's funny because last time I was comparing him to uh, Charlie Sheen. This is like end stage, you know, Tiger Blood. We

are watching the dissolution of this character. I mean, it's interesting for people who love him and I and I understand why some people do. What he meant. What he was thinking was not to get just to get Twitter and get Trump back on there and destroy the country. He was really thinking of Twitter to become this kind of everything platform. It would be our identity, our money at crypto and as well as a means of social control.

But right it would be this kind of new operating system for society where Twitter isn't just a platform, it's kind of the protocols for this new sort of open standard, accelerationist libertarian future. But it's like Musk can't resist wanting to be the supervillain, you know, we just can't get so instead we get this kind of algorithmic skinner box to to stoke crowd rage and bring on just full crazy. So for him, Twitter is not really the prize. Chaos

is the prize. It's the kind of the socio political turmoil that's generated by Twitter chaos, and Trump is like the driving force for this collapse oriented social change. So let's talk about this for a second, because clearly that is like in his head and he's like into the supervillain idea. And we saw this reporting today where he said we're not moving the business to Texas because it's not going to be right wing, it's just going to be non left wing, which I think is an important

thing he's trying. I mean, again, I don't think what he's saying is true. I'm not even sure what he's saying. He thinks he's true right like it seems to me like but and again it's impossible to know what looks in the hearts and minds of any of these people. But it is interesting to me he can't say he's right wing because he's worried it will undermine the site. So he does still have when he clearly is right, he's only he's only participating in that very small sliverer

of right wing Twitter. So my question to you is there clearly are some financial concerns here, right he's got this Tesla stock. The stock is losing value and the dead it is piling up. I mean, you know, he is not a magical supervillain, so he has bills to pay. So can he this going or does it just crash and burn in a month? It's hard to say. I look at him more as a puppet than a puppet master,

and I don't think he quite interestalizes it. I mean, he's got a lot of money, but you know his second biggest partner in in Twitter is what Prince al Walid been Tellal from Saudi Arabia who rolled over from the earlier investment. So he's got a partner, no, but he added more. What does he want? You know, Saudi Arabia has been trying to get oil off the dollar standard for a super long time. They are certainly no

friends of America right now. You know, this guy, this prince is the one that gave Juliani a ten million dollar check after nine eleven along with advice that America evaluate its own policies in the region. Right, So we

kind of gave it back, right. So here's a guy who wants to get us off the dollar standard, wants to get oil off it and is investing in a guy that wants to build sort of we chat money system total everything for America, and someone who's trying to bring on chaos and become kind of the techno monarch in this new kind of digital authoritarianism. What Musk is showing is that no, these kind of ceo testla skills are not transferable into monarchy, into running everything. You can't.

He can't even run up freaking social network. He's not going to run a nation or or a planet. And that's because really his actual competence maybe was in marketing cars, but not not in this. There's no you know, generic ceo king like genius, where the skills are just are just transferable. Right. His ideas are basically stupid, Right, He's rich, he's not smart, certainly, not about civics, government, economics, society, or human psychology, you know, our public health. Musk is

particularly bad at this sort of the way. Trump is particularly bad being president. I don't think his empire is over. He's still got his rocket ships, he's still got his cars. He's still is just one giant debacle. I guess it undermines the market, the stock market's faith in his continuing ability to kind of pull a rabbit out of a hat. So like, if they see, you know, Tesla sales reaching a plateau, they might no longer believe, Oh, Musk has the mightas touch to get us through this next thing.

And when at CEO loses the mightus touched. You know, if Steve Jobs really lost the mightas touch at some point, I guess he did an Apple, you know, Apple would go down until they brought him back. So that's a really good point. I mean, he sort of can be a wide ranging supervillain until the investors calling the dad right, just like until you know, Trump is a supervillain until

we we vote him out. But then the real question is is he just you know, I always know Charlie Sheen was to you know, it is to Trump as Trump was to Musk. But what about if you think about it as Musk is sort of version one point oh of techno monarch, just like Trump was kind of version one point oh of authoritarian insane president, just as someone like de Santis, say, can come in and be a slightly more reasonable looking and competent version of Trump.

Maybe you know, I'm more scared of a desantist president Trump. What if someone like Peter THEO comes in and is musk two point Oh, you know, Teal could use Musk kind of as the beta test and sacrificial lamb to use Teal's no language of scapegoating for his own strategy to be a techno monarch. But most of these guys, I think once they get in charge, they kind of reveal themselves as having these weird child brains. You know.

It's like, no, I mean that is the thing you know that's been so disappointing to me is that I've for so long thought being married to a nice VC that technology would solve all our problem this and I think like this guy is one of the great brains behind it, Elon Musk. We're all in a lot of trouble. So we need to talk about this text message, right. We don't know who it's from, this uh text message congratulations. The article about was laying at some of the things

that might happen. Step one, blame the platform for its user, Step to coordinate pressure campaign, Step three, accodus of blue chap, step forward platform NG, it will be a war. Let the battle begin. What do you think this means? I think it means they think that somehow there's a left wing conspiracy trying to fight the truth and justice. You know that Alan Musk is trying to bring to our world.

But it's not right, I mean clearly. But the thing that I'm curious about here with this is Okay, So the idea here is that he brings back and we've already seen he's bringing back Trump. He brought back this uh Andrew whatever his name is, this British boxer who had been taken off the platform. He's brought back a lot of those kind of people. He won't bring back Alice Jones because he had a baby that died, so like, you know, it's a right wing but with like a

little bit of like wacky billionaire with the backstory. And then, by the way, that was an amazing interaction where he was like I had a baby that died. At all the comments were like how dare you not bring Alex Jones back? Like instead of like we're so sorry you had a baby that died. I mean, like incredible stuff, right exactly, No, no, well deserved, but like you, the Leopards are more than happy to eat his face. But the thinking here is he's gonna bring all the right

wing people back. But what I don't think he understands. And again I could be wrong, but this is just my sense. If you're you have CBS posing tweeting right, because of the fact that there's now you know, they're all these blue checks who are you know, not necessarily verified, So there's no sense like you could certainly have an imposter who would just look like you and there'd be no way to verify it, and they're is not. You know, he's cut average. You know, he's cut the people who

deal with advertising. He's cut the people who deal with technology. Right. So my question is when we're in this world where we have so few of the people that advertisers would need and also news outlet its would need, if he brings back all those people, won't we see less and less news outlets And won't that lead to just sort of him taking Twitter and making it truth social? Yeah, if he could, I mean that's the thing. But Trump

doesn't even want to join. Oh my god, it's like they signed on, you know, Howard Stern on x M, and then he goes, I'm not going to do the show. So it's like all this all this stuff. I mean, Trump was going to be as headliner. That's like getting you know, Brittany and Vegas or something. It's like, now you've got nothing, What are you gonna How are you

gonna open your hotel? Didn't he know that? Because Trump has this deal with true social where he has to appear on that platform eight hours before or twelve hours before. You would a thunk so right, But these are again, these are like children with post it notes up in their little brains. They're they're not thinking, and so you think he just thought, I'll just get it'll be too much of a he'll want to do it, and he won't care about the money. Of course, it's too tempting,

it's too many millions of people. He'll fold in. He'll he'll do an auto thing where maybe he'll be on his own thing, but every one of his tweets will you know, automatically robot onto Twitter or something. You know. I'm sure he was thinking, thinking that and thinking that that that he would save it. But it's odd. It's like aln Is turning Twitter whatever it was, some sort of you know, bastardized news thing into you know, full on Jerry Springer. I think in the belief that you know,

and he said this entertainment wins. Whoever is the most entertaining wins. So even if it's a car crash, people won't be able to not look. They will come. And I think people are kind of because the whole world is a car crash. I think we are sort of not looking. It's like enough already. I mean, if we learned anything from the mid terms, I mean that's the mid terms, we learned that the American people don't like it. They don't like Trump, they don't like carry like, they

don't want those people. You know. Yes, in Mississippi you can a lack whoever you want as long as they're Republican, but in most places it doesn't fly. So I mean, I just wonder, like basically Elon's you know, move is to double down on Trumpism, and I'm not sure that's a winner. No, And it's it's odd and there's there's like a confluence of events that are working against him,

you know. Musque and Teal were also part of this sort of long termism idea that you can do whatever ship you want now as long as you know it's gonna make you money, you know, so that you can you can pay a little bit of money to charity. You know, that's their effective altruism thing. And it doesn't matter what happens now as long as you're getting the money and stuff you need for the rocket ships or artificial intelligences or whatever it is. It everitor is in

the few. Sure, And when f t X the cryptocurrency went down, it was kind of like, oh, wait a minute. You know ft X is you know, run by Sam bankmn Freed, this SPF guy, who's another one of them, right, he's another one of the guys. But they are saying, well, Sam is a Democrat and so it's different, but he really is that same kind of idea, and isn't Ellen

heavily invested in crypto too? Of course, this was an exchange, except instead of working like crypto was supposed to work, where everybody kind of has wallets of their own stuff, it was working like a bank. Right. It wasn't even a brokerage house that was holding the crypto in people's accounts. It was just taking people's money and then betting on other stuff. You know, thirty two billion dollars disappear, and and they were pretending they were like a robin hood figure.

They were pretending they were like Alan Musk, you know, empowering the little guys with crypto against the big banks. But but they basically were a big bang ache, you know. And all you have to do when you have a big bank that is built on nothing, which is what they what they had, is undermine the trust in this kind of socially constructed value pyramid and then it collapses because there's nothing in them. Right. And this is where you know, and where the Democrats and the and the

crazies are kind of at odds. The Democrats use real money, right, the government there's a difference. Well except for the Democratic senator who got involved in this. We will save her for another time. But yes, continue on. I guess what I'm saying is crypto. And I understand crypto. Believe me. People say doesn't understand. No, I understand crypto better than they do. The difference between crypto and money, Yes, both

are Fiat invented currency. But you need to pay your tax with money, and because you have to, it means then that everyone has to convert in two dollars in order to you what's real, which sorry, which is paying your taxes, death and taxes are real. Right, So if you have to pay your taxes with money but nothing else, it means that in order to pay your taxes, at some point you've got to take your poker chips and go to that cashier's window and turn it into money.

Until then it's chips. If the casino goes out of business, your chips are worthless. There's no window to go to write. The crypto are like these sort of you know, match sticks in a prison camp. They only work in the camp on the poker table. Right. If you take the poker chips and then go to the store, they will not give you cigarettes, right, so you know you could. The only reason you were at one point able to

pay for Tesla's with bitcoin. I don't know, I think he allows that anymore, was because all that really meant was that someone could buy a car without cashing in their chips, likely because they're a drug lord or an arms dealer, or want to launder their money by purchasing things. Right. So the real story with FTX is that a journalist mentions, you know, I don't think they're really capitalized. Wow, this doesn't seem to be good, and then their competitor, Binance

are the ones that took them down. You know, they basically pulled a Musk. Remember when Musk, you know it was gonna buy Twitter and then he wasn't, and then Twitter stock kind of crashed. That's what they did. What finance did and said, oh, you know, we're gonna maybe help FTX out or maybe we'll buy them. And then they popped the hood and they go, oh my god, this is terrible. Right, they knew what was going on, and then they announced, oh, we can't invest in this.

And that's what crashed them, is that their competitors said, oh, we're pulling out all our holdings. That is incredible. I know, they took him down, right, they took him down. But all of these guys, and this is this is the part I think that makes us so sick that all of them are part of this effective altruism movement, you know, which is basically saying, do as much ship as you want, you know now, as long as you pay to do good things later. Right. But I Han is not part

of this effective altruism. Well, he's part of the long termism movement. I mean he considers himself to be. But I mean you don't see I mean he and he's sort of trolled with the world hunger stuff, but he never did it right. But he is a long termist. He's a person who believes that the forty trillion post human cyborgs out in the universe in the future matter more than the eight billion people alive today, you know.

So he's in that same ends justifies the means quasi eugenic, you know, vision quest that the other ones are on ignore conditions on the ground, you know, get filthy rich through whatever you have to to build a universe for the post human robot people, you know. And it's all that I'd gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today. All right, So Doug, let's do a little prediction. You have to get this right now. I promise not to bring it up next time you come on. But I mean,

just like, pretend with me. Where do you think this goes? I think it's all good. No, but I mean with Twitter, Like, so Ellen now has he has all this debt, he's bringing back Trump, He's trying to drive traffic. He thinks traffic will save him. Will traffic save him? No? These are ghettos. Look at Facebook is already like my space right or friends stir? You know, no, this is over. This is over. When Twitter was over. The minute that that, Mark Zuckerberg went on TV and said Web three is

going to replace Web two, Web two was over. It's a graveyard. So what do you do? You know now he's basically staging demolition Derby's on there in order to get some eyeballs, right, you know, it's if you're gonna see you know, live snuff. God knows what they're going to stream there to try to get the last views. But no, there's no it's just gonna take more people like us saying, you know, I actually have no I

have no reason to be there. You know I don't, and that it's okay, you know, And that's the other thing. A lot of people have got a podcast. I gotta stay on Twitter because otherwise, you know, no one's going to find me on my discover ability in law and you don't think so, I really don't, you know. And also the discoverability on there, it favors discoverability of your of your competitors rather than you. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't really, I don't know who it really it helps.

These are not long tail you know, decentralized things. I think people are going to do better. Gosh, I mean, where do people really spend their time now? You know the kids, they're in discord servers. They're small communities. You know, even Mastodon sort of does that better than a single generic global platform. People are realizing it's just not that much fun. You know, who knew who needs it. It's

so interesting. We have to cut you off because this is the longest I'm ever allowed to go, and Jesse's gonna have a total heart attack, but he likes you so much that we've known the emperors had no clothes for a super long time, and now they're like ripping them off right in front of us there, non closed. So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,

thank you. Michael Phenone is a January six Insurrection survivor as well as author of Paulled the Line, The Insurrection, and One Cops Battle for America's Soul Welcome Too Fast Politics, Michael, Thank you guys for having me on. So I want to talk to you about your incredible arc in your life. You were DC police officer. You know, how are you feeling now? How recovered are you? I mean, like I said earlier. I'm getting by and then I wish I had, uh,

you know, more upbeat or positive response for you. But I'm fortunate I recovered from the physical injuries I sustained on January six. I've come to terms with that day, and I'm proud of what I did and what hundreds of other police officers did on January six one. But you know, I'm still kind of circumnavigating my life after that and trying to figure out, well, one, what the hell am I going to do to earn a living? Number Two? What the hell did I do all this for? Yeah,

I want to talk to you about that. So you're young, you found yourself surrounded by these rioters, you were teased so many times, you had a heart attack and beaten with a Blue Lives matter of flag. If that isn't like the peak of irony, I don't know what is. I mean, you must have like physical repercussions from this experience, right, I mean as far as the injuries themselves, no, I mean if you're talking about mental and psychological ours, yeah, absolutely.

I mean it was a horrifying event, and it's you know, only exacerbated by the fact that the people responsible have not been held accountable, and I don't see the Department of Justice moving in that direction in a way that I feel is responsible or reasonable. Quite frankly. Yeah, So let's talk about that. You know, you voted for A Trump in two thousands sixteen, and you then were injured by these people who wanted Trump to stay in power

even though he had lost the election. You've testified and testified and testified and sort of put yourself on the line to sort of be able to provide testimony, et cetera. So I'm curious to know some of the lower level people have been punished. I mean, the people that were there that day that committed crimes on the Capitol grounds. They've been indicted, arrested, Some have been tried and convicted.

Others have pled guilty. So yeah, within the four corners of the event um that is the insurrection at the Capital on January six there has been a limited amount of accountability. That's not why testified before Congress, and that's not why I've continued to speak out. It's to hold those who orchestrated that event responsible. So let's talk about that.

Who who are those people? Listen, I've sat through every single one of the Select Committee's hearings, and at the beginning, even on January seven, I would have told you that I felt Donald Trump was morally and ethically responsible for the events at the Capitol on January six. Having heard the evidence as presented by the Select Committee as a result of their thorough investigation, it was clear to me that Donald Trump and his allies bear criminal culpability. They

engaged in an effort to defraud the American people. Their intention was to call the election fixed and a hoax long before the first ballot was ever cast. And that effort to defraud the American people, in conjunction with some of his allies, namely Roger Stone, and his coordination with members of the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and Three per Centers, also showed me that part of that plot was to engage in violence on January six to disrupt Congress's certification

of the electoral votes. It is sort of interesting. I think a lot of us are hoping that the d j will act, you know, will indict that sort of higher you know, the people that are sort of higher level who helped organize I mean, do you think they will know? And I get a lot of criticism when I come out and say that I think that Merrick Garland needs to grow a pair and pursue justice in this case. But I think a lot of people forget I was a cop for twenty years and I worked

in the District of Columbia. I was a street cop. I worked in narcotics. The prosecutors who prosecute crimes in Washington, d C. Are the Department of Justice. The United States Attorney's Office is our community prosecutors. For lack of a better term. I'm well versed in the way things work within the United States Attorneys off US, and I know how political things are in the upper echelons of that agency,

just like any other government bureaucracy. And I think that now, even more than ever, there's less likelihood of Donald Trump being prosecuted criminally because I think that many people feel as though Donald Trump has already suffered political persecution in that the mid term elections were a rebuke of his brand of politics, and so you know, rather than risk a divisive trial of a former president of the United States, they'll simply put it in the rear view mirror, just

like the American people put the officers of January six in the rear view mirror. Explain to us why you think that's bad. Why what's bad? Put by I mean, I agree with you, but like why this put this? Putting it in the rear view mirror and not prosecuting

Trump is why it's bad. What are the sort of larger implication I mean, aside from the fact that it was one of the most outrageous and embarrassing moments in our history as a country, it is bad because it sets an unbelievable precedent that a president sitting president can engage in criminal activity at a large scale involving multiple levels of the government, and that that criminal conspiracy can come to fruition in the form of, you know, a

great deal of violence directed at members of our government, and that he can walk away unscathed. Yeah, I want to sort of get back to like your experience. So, I mean I think of like all the people I've known who have had these experiences where they've had like normal lives and then Trumpism has come in and really made them like an inadvertent celebrity, right, Like, there are a lot of people like that, from the vin Men's to how is that for you? And what is it like?

And do you sort of wish that you had never had this happened to you? I mean, I struggle with that all the time, but I don't have any regrets because I can't imagine myself knowing me doing things any other way. I regret the way that what I have said was received. I began speaking out in the aftermath of January six for one reason, and that was to

advocate for the officers who I fought alongside of. I believe that they deserved recognition for their actions, and I wanted a true accounting for what happened and what officers experience was like that day. Unfortunately, in doing so, I've managed to alienate the greater law enforcement community, including many of my friends and former colleagues within my own department.

Than along came the Republican Party and their attempts to downplay, whitewash, dismiss, or just simply lie about the reality of January six, And so I felt I was uniquely positioned in the fact that I had the experience that I had that day, and that it was all captured on bodyboarn camera footage, and so I felt like I had a unique opportunity to counteract that messaging, which was quite frankly hurtful to a lot of police officers in ways that Americans have

yet to fully comprehend and understand. Can you say more about that? I mean, there's a lot of police officers from January six who are struggling with the reality that they could do something like that, participates in something like that, and then be vilified by half the country for doing nothing other than their job, and then have it play

out day in and day out in American politics. If you thought police officers were jaded and cynical before January six, you can't even imagine what that does to someone who dedicates their life to public service for not a whole hell of a lot of pay and certainly not a lot of thanks or gratitude. In the aftermath of that, I've spent a lot of time talking about indifference within the law enforcement community and what we can do to

avoid those pitfalls. Well acknowledging officers when they do things well and exceptionally well would do a great deal to combat the indifference that Americans have instilled within the law enforcement community. There were police officers who killed themselves after January sex. Yes, and some of them were my friends.

They are ultimately casualties of January sex. They are. It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting to see the way that people have characterized the officers from January six and the officers who took their own lives as somehow being weak or incapable of handling the job or the difficult teas of the job. You know, that's not said about the hundreds of thousands of members of our military who take their own lives. And you know it hasn't been said about law enforcement

officers in the past. But the way that police officers have responded to the capital have had to endure this um level of ingratitude and uh, really disgraceful reaction from people in this country. It makes me sick to my stomach. You have been a victim of a crime, right, You've been in law enforcement, You've testified, so you've been on a lot of the different sides of something like this. So I'm curious, like, what do you think that the

government could do. I mean, what we really want, ultimately is for something like January six to never ever happen again. But but what do you think the government, what would you like the government to do. I want to see a criminal investigation into the orchestrators of the jay where a sixth insurrection. I think it's time that Donald Trump was named a target of that investigation. I think there's

clear and convincing evidence to support that. I think that it's important that his allies and sycophants, individuals that engaged in pushing the lies about the election also be investigated. In addition to that, I think that it is important that the legislative efforts of the Select Committee make their

way through Congress and be passed into law. You know, they have all stalled, and so the Select Committee's sole purpose, at least officially, was to ensure that the insurrection could not happen again, and we can't even get Congress to pass that into law. I think that the officers of January six need to be recognized in a grand fashion that's befitting of the sacrifices that they made that day and many continue to make by upholding their oath to

the Constitution on a day when so many disgraced it. Yeah, I'm so sorry that you had to go through this, and I'm so sorry that things are not moving the way they probably should. Yeah, it's just a sad time for for this country, and I mean unfortunately the midterm elections. While I think the media and many in the Democratic Party and Republican Party have tried to spin it in a positive light that you know, democracy one, democracy was

on the ballot. Well, yeah, democracy was on the ballot I think, and maybe in some races, but in a lot of them, democracy one by point one percent of the vote, which is a horrifying thought. Yeah, exactly right. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back, yes man, thank you for having me. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Day to your 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. H