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 Donald Trump says he never said locker up about Hillary Clinton. He did, in fact, stay locker up about Hillary Clinton. We have such a great show for you today talking Feds. Harry Littman is here to talk Donald Trump convictions. Then we'll talk to Semaphores Ben Smith about the media's coverage of the election. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson.
Ollie John Fast, and what a beautiful thing it is to talk to you once again, as I do every day.
Ah, it is yet another day of justice. Alito telling Democrats to go fuck themselves discuss.
I do believe that we have a system where the three branches of are separate, our tripartite system, to use a good three dollar word. But I also believe that doesn't mean that he's not being a dick, and that there's not a honestly incredibly troubling and dark underpinning to this which he's basically saying to America, fuck you. I'm gonna do what I can to help my boy Donald.
So let's talk about the second, because there's an oversight question here, right. There are members in the Senate who have oversight over.
This, yeah, over the courts.
Right, Maybe not quite the way they would like, but they certainly do. Let's pretend for a minute that they was reversed and it was a Democrat.
Let's do Katanji Brown Jackson puts up a Black Lives Matter flag? What do you think would happen with Fox? What do you think would happened with the MAGA universe?
And say Republicans controlled the judiciary? H what do you think would happen?
Take those hypotheticals for a moment, and I will describe it to you in the technical term of public affairs and politics, of a screaming, gigantic shit show of the highest possible order. There would be nothing but chaos. And oh my god, the American Republic is dying. How dare she engage in this outrageous, unbelievably undignified behavior that is reducing America's dignity in the courts? And I could almost write the story for you of just how crappy they
would be about it. And you know what, it's not like we don't know what they're going to say. They are nothing if not utterly predictable.
Yeah, so Alito said he's not going to recuse. Robert said, go fuck yourself. What do you think Dick Durbin should do? Now? What would you do if you were Dick Durbin's chief of staff?
Dick Durbin, He's in the horns of a slight dilemma.
Yes, save American democracy or be a good guy.
Well, that's exactly it. It's like, is anybody still pretending that American institutions are robust and the guardrails are fully intact? Because if you are, I have a bridge to sell you or several, because that is no longer a viable position to have in the world today. No one for a moment should think that we live in a world where the institutions will hold, where the rules will be sustained,
where nothing could go wrong, because America is just too strong. Look, and I've been calling the Supreme Court the red Court for a while now. First, with this whole thing about giving Trump all the time he needed to delay the Jack Smith case on the immunity question, and the rest of their actions as an overtly political branch of the MAGA movement have sort of added up. I think it's hard for Americans to kind of admit it to themselves. There are even conservatives who are like, yeah, you know
what if the Democrats did this. There is a little bit of hesitation on this, not a lot, but there's a little bit of like a sense of like, is this really how we're going to end this thing? Because right now it's kind of how we're going to end this thing.
Honestly, American democracy.
Yeah, it feels like we're not in a great spot as a country. You know. Everybody keeps asking me today, like tell me something cheerful, give me some good news. I'm like, I'm a barrel of freaking laughs.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, but let's pause for a second because I want to talk about this. There are a lot of people who want everyone who listens to this podcast to despair and to not bother and to tell you that Trump has it, But in fact, Trump doesn't have it. And I'm going to point to a political twenty twenty four Dave Wasserman tweet twenty twenty four is a tale of two electorates, and again this is something I've written
about ad nauseum. Same Biden leads forty nine forty five among the most reliable voters, betrayals Trump forty one fifty one among low mid engagement voters. So the point is low mid engagement voters are likelier than high engagement peers. They may not turn out. And if you look at the bottom of the ticket, Democrats are brushing the Republican in those Senate seeds and the House seats.
Oh listen, I will give people some good news. The Senate races look increasingly optimistic. I think initially it felt a little bit like Arizona might be a tie ballgame. But now Ruben is starting to open up real numbers. I think there are a number of arguments to be made that the House number could end up being much larger than we even think right now. And I think that there's a weird reverse coattail effect here that we
need to consider. It may end up in some of these states that the Democratic candidates North Carolina being one of them, end up pulling Joe Biden over the line, and it's normally the other way around. But I'll take it. I will happily take it. At this point.
So reverse cotails is an idea that I first heard from Amanda Lippman, who does Run for Something and if you are despairing, Run for Something is an awesome organization that helps candidates everyone from the dog walkers to the state legislators to the House of Delegates.
They're concouraging up and down the ballot.
And her theory of the case was that young local voters would energize the electorate in a way that an eighty one year old incumbent might not look.
I think there are going to be a lot of voters out there this year that take a long damn time to get home to the reality that this really is not Donald Trump versus Gavin Newsom, or Donald Trump versus Gretch Whitmer or somebody else. They're going to realize finally, it's just Donald Trump. If you're going to vote for Donald Trump as an eighteen to thirty year old, I am not buying it. I'll be perfectly can that I'm not buying that argument at this point. I think that
we are going to see people come home it. Maybe later, but you know, I mean obviously, and as I always tell people, there's no excuse for not every day, getting up to beat the bad guys in the face. But this is not a Donald Trump from twenty sixteen. This
is not a Donald Trump from twenty twenty. This is a diminished and weird and less mentally capable and frankly, I think I have no evidence of this, but I feel this sense with Trump that there's a physical diminishment, that there may be something wrong with Trump more than we know, is what I'm trying to say. It feels like he's.
Sick, right, I mean, people have been saying that for like a million years.
It feels increasingly like this is a guy who's like faking it to get through the.
Day, a man who knows. But I mean, I don't want to speculate about his medical health. Only Republicans do that about Biden. By the way, one of the things I love so State of the Union, so Trump always says Biden is dementias, dementia, he's sww, senile, he's diminished. He gives all these speeches, but nobody watches them because nobody gets verified news. The only clips that ever make it onto social are you know, crazy lists that right,
or that are selectively edited. But I'll be curious after this debate when Biden does really well, because though he is not a gifted orator, he is not a complete lunatic, so he will kill I think he'll do really well in these debates, and Trump will say insane things, and I think what will happen then is Trump World will again say that he's on drugs, which, by the way, if there was a drug that made demented people not demented, I would give it to my mom. Like, this is not a thing, right.
This is an imaginary thing. It is to my mind, one of the great telling points of how broken the Republican Party is right now is that they continue to have this bifurcated view of Joe Biden. Either he is a drooling, senile idiot who can barely stay awake, or he's a devious mastermind running a program throughout all the American courts and legal system to destroy Donald Trump. It's got to be one of the other. Folks. Pick a side, pick a theme.
I'm going to ask you a question here that you're not prepared for, and it's something I've been thinking a lot. I think Gaza is hurting Biden.
You know, I'm going to disagree with you for two reasons.
By the way, I've been told my Biden world that that's not true. I've been told that people don't vote on foreign policy. But I think that it's hurting him with voters.
It's hurting him with young voters who are not voters.
Those are the voters that Trump is winning. Right.
Let's put it this way. If I was to demographically describe the average Trump voter, it's a sixty five year old, pissed off white dude who drives a four out two fifty. It is not a young African American looking at Donald Trump at long last as a as a solution to the political stasis in this country. That's not the real world. And young voters historically aren't voters. You know, just I've lived in politics too long and seen it hyped too
many times. You know, George Bush and Mike Dukakis got a higher percentage of young voters than Barack Obama and John McCain, and Barack Obama was supposedly the singular motivator of young voters in American history. It just isn't real. And those kids you're watching in the college came campuses scream about Gaza, they're not going to vote. I know people want to believe that they're all motivated in democracy. It doesn't matter. They're not going to vote. They are
low propensity voters. They are one to two voters. And if somebody had the secret sauce rock the vote wouldn't still be in business thirty five years later. No one knows how to reliably turn out young voters. They just don't know how to do it. It's a mechanical process with a hard target, and it's much easier to go
out and swap out. And even if you accept the theory right and you say, oh, okay, we're hurting with young voters, Okay, go turn out some more white union members, Go turn out some more African American women in North Carolina. Go turn out people you know how to turn out.
See. I don't think you're right, but I'm going to agree to disagree with you here. But I am curious. Why do you think there is so little movement in the Middle East? Why can't Biden and the war tomorrow?
It is a hard choice. You could say, Okay, we don't like Babe, and nobody likes Boebe Byebe's a global pariah. At this point, as somebody who tried to defeat BB in twenty twenty one with a secular center right candidate, I can tell you how hard it is. It's not easy to get rid of the guy. But even if you said that, you said, Okay, we're cutting off all aid to Israel until they stop doing X. You have not solved the problem. You have not solved the settler problem.
You have not solved the massive problem that Iran has its finger in the pie here. You have not solved any number of the other externalities that are real and that you know. Look, if BB died tomorrow, you're not gonna have Kumbaya in Gaza. Hamas still believes that Israelis should be stacked like Cordwood and killed.
What state do you think Democrats would be focused on right now?
I'm a big fan of pushing Wisconsin and Michigan. Right now, I'm feeling a little better about Pennsylvania, feeling a little worse about Arizona, but not like dramatically, so, not like catastrophically, so I think it's still gettable, winnable, fixable. But you know, I would not take the bait on Minnesota that's going to be It's not a thing.
Yeah, that's Trump's favorite thing that they're going to put Minnesota.
I'm play I know, so I'm trying to make Minnesota a thing. Don it's not a thing?
Yeah yeah, But what about like Florida. If you have a choice between Florida and North Carolina.
I'd go to North Carolina. It's a cheaper state to win. Florida is a very expensive state to try to win. I think the numbers in North Carolina, especially with Robinson at the top of the of the state ticket, are really I think. I think You're going to end up with a guy who is so weird and so cuckoo that it gives Democrats a lift there that they did not otherwise anticipate.
They would have, right, explain that story a little more so.
This is a guy who believes that women shouldn't vote.
He's black, he was the lieutenant governor, and he's now running for governor, and he's running against someone.
Who is pretty moderate.
Yeah, okay, so go on.
But this is a guy who literally says things like, you know, women are up at they and they shouldn't be allowed to vote. I will say this, On the one hand, it's proof, thank God that our country is now color blind enough to accept insane people of all
races on the Republican side of the ticket. But I know national Republicans, including the Trump campaign, are very nervous that this guy is gonna draw down a sufficient number of Republicans and leave them either on the bench like eg not voting at all, or drive them into the Democrat's arms. And I think if you're a person like that in a state like North Carolina. And again the reason I argue for North Carolina is it is about a third man maybe forty percent of the cost of
operating in Florida. You've got five media markets versus ten. You've got operational cost per week. If you're really doing a campaign there per week in Florida, you're going to spend five million dollars now every week. In North Carolina you could probably do that for a million six somewhere in that member million five And those are back of the envelope math. But it's a legitimate question of how you handle the money assignments in a national campaign. That's
where that kind of thing comes into play. Do you go to Nevada instead of North Carolina? As of now, No, but maybe Nevada's a really fluid state. It's a really weird state. So there's a lot here, Molly In we have one hundred and fifty nine days. Trump is going to absolutely fucking immolate himself any number of times between now and the end of the election. Sometimes it'll matter,
sometimes it won't. The trick is to add up all the times it matters for voters who are still either undecided or uncomfortable voting for Trump.
People say voters have their minds decided. I think that's true only of a small group. I think that the group that has gotten so excited about Trump, from what we've seen with the polling, that group actually is very low information. So aren't those actually hearts and minds that you could change.
I'm much more inclined, by both experience and inclination, to try to go after the votes of those software Republicans, those conservative Democrats, those independent leaning conservatives that at Lincoln we were pretty good at talking to and we're pretty good at focusing on, because those folks are a gettable demo. They are not dug in on Trump and trump Ism at the same level. That's where I'd go.
Rick Wilson, thank you.
You are quite welcome talk to you soon.
Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com. Harry Littman is a former US attorney and host of the podcast Talking Feds. We're doing a little Fast Politics Talking Fed mashup Harry.
Letman Moly junk Fest. What a day we chose for our latest Molly mass out.
How much sleep did you get last night?
It's a fair question. I'm four or five hours. Was a late night, and I had stuff tell the early morning, and it just kind of folded up right on a beautiful New York day, So I could have slept in a little more. But some kind of residual excitement or something for the day before.
So let's talk about what happened. We are talking about the Trump verdict, which came at four point fifteen on a Thursday, when everyone thought that the jury was about to be sent home. First of all, let's just quarterback on ourselves. You and I both have been talking about this on television, but you much more than me, because you obviously are a lawyer and know how to do this. What did you think, I mean, did you think this
was going to happen? Were you surprised? And more broadly, I want you to sort of talk to us about what you thought when it came in and what you thought when you heard it.
I was not surprised, it was They had told us they were going over the day, so I would have expected a verdict on Friday. But it is the verdict I expected. It's the verdict that at the time or maybe even in retrospect, seemed inexorable from the evidence. But
really props to the DA. They really took the tangled story that could have been played as a hush money case and constructed a narrative of election interference that just had a through line from Pecker to Cohen and seemed really cogent and featured a few witnesses that could be assailed like so many witnesses in a criminal case in New York. Not just Cohen, but you know, Pecker is
quite the character Stormy Daniels, but each of them. This was the great thing about being in the court roomly jurys make credibility determinations based on the overall sense, and you know, yeah, it's a really human thing to kind of take the measure of a witness and are they telling the truth? And I think they were, and that that came across, and so I wasn't surprised at the verdict,
including that they ran the table. I do want to say though, at the DEA, I won't say they made it look easy, but the preparation gap was just enormous. Steinlass got up and he went too long shore, but knew every he had practiced it from the overall contours to the sentences and had pauses and drama and coherence, and really the defense who I think you may know this beread than I. There's some kind of backstory of
real bickering among them. They were just didn't have any kind of narrative, and there was part based on the evidence, and part I think they just didn't really ever bear down on a story they could present. That's a shorthand verse.
What I thought, as a non lawyer was the same thing as what you just said, which is and again I am not a lawyer. I don't even have a college degree. I have a Master's of Fine Arts. So few people are less confident. Not true way in the URA system. But what I noticed, what I was surprised by, was this was a case where a lot of us in the media industrial complex had misgivings. And then when they brought out David Pecker, I was like, Wow, this
guy really just has Trump dead to rights. And then you had Hope Picks weeping on the stand because she knew she had him dead to rights. And then you had Madeline Westerhouse on the stand going like this is what this is, and everyone being like wow. And then you had Trump's lawyer attacking Storey Daniels and opening the door for a whole thing that didn't even have anything to do with the case. And so I was the same. I was shocked at what a good job the prosecution did.
Nut shocked, but I was impressed. And then I was really shocked at what a bad job. I mean, Trump is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on legal fees. And what was clear, and Todd Blanche said this on television later, was that in fact, Trump had basically told him everything he had to do.
Everyone noted what a big problem you had who didn't just meander in his closing. They went after if you noticed, their big point was these records are not false. Michael Cohen actually performed these legal services. Are you leidding me?
You know?
And just so just in general, not only the lack sort of pop and kind of overall it's less the lawyers on a storyteller's art, but they made so many bad choices. Let me talk to you about the verdict from your sort of vantage point, because you know, you wrote in your bed Trump sash money, gully vertics, someone going to make him more dangerous that in the aftermath we knew was coming, and has everything to do with
his habit of lying for his political gain. That he was always going to Trump was always going to try to use candidate Trump to help defending Trump. Surely true, and any verdict was destined to be molded into his brand and narrative of persecution which hunts in a fight against the political system, also clearly true. But do you think in other instances it's things that seemed so meaningful
and pivotal just kind of receded. Do you actually think that he's going to leverage the verdict to fight against the political system and he'll be railing about this in September, when he could just hope that time would put it enough in the distance that he could do. As the rest of his playbook.
Trump World desperately wants you to believe that, right, this is a guy and I'm going to quote Will Hurd here he announced a week after the midterms because he hoped that it would keep him from being indicted. So this has always been a play about Trump not going
to jail. So what Trump desperately wants, what Trump World desperately wants is for you, you and the justice system and the three other cases which are waiting to go forward and may never go forward because Trump has been able to use all this donor money to punt these cases. What Trump desperately wants is for people in the pundit complex to say it's baked in. Voters know they don't
care that he's done crimes. That's what Trump wants, and that's what Mitch McConnell wants, and that's even what Susan Collins wants. Concerned moderate Susan Collins also wants you to not believe that any of this matters, because nihilism helps autocracy and Trump is an autocrat.
Nicely put, we need a button for that.
Okay, Trump is an autocrat, and all Trump wants is for people to say doesn't matter, don't care. And the reality is we have seen and again I fucking hate poles, but we have seen polls that say that swing voters in Wisconsin don't want to vote for a criminal and they don't like this. And the look, Trump has only won one election twenty sixteen. Since then, he has lost every election. He has never tried to grow the base.
Like if you just think of this, like the idea that Trump is constantly trying to get pundits to think in three dimensional chests is really so fucking stupid. That's all I could say. I was going to make a larger case about how autocrats work, but the truth is it's fucking stupid.
Okay, And how does that translate? So right, So what's a canard? Great, give me the conviction. But so do you think that means, in practical terms, Molly, that he will do a pivot from this and try to ignore it, or do you think he'll be beating his breasts about this the whole time? That's a strategy?
Yeah, Because first of all, Remember, Trump has for this entire time thought that being a defendant helps him, and he's thought that. I mean, I really do think Trump. There's so much bullshit here and so many conservatives lying about stuff, but I actually do believe that Trump believes be being a defendant helps him well.
And his poles went up during the trough, So you think that's my foot ships.
In turn, that's not true. His poles did not go up during the trial. His polls were pretty much static. And during the incredible primaries where Trump ran against many versions of him who had no other leg to stand on except he's our guy and we're not as interesting as he is, then he did well. But that is the Republican base, which is again a brain worms contingent of the American public.
Yeah all right, but so you're saying he wants me to but this will actually be a feature, not something to put to the side of the campaign. He'll beat his breast all the way through about New York and Biden and I'm your martyr.
Trump ran against American democracy. You'll remember, even when he lost in twenty twenty. It's a fixed system, it's a rigged system. He was saying that even before he won in twenty sixteen. This guy is an autocrat. He wants to degrade and attack American institutions, that's what. So he's going to run against the courts. But you know, a person with that much legal trouble needs to run against the courts. And remember, for him, this all works out
great because either way he uses that campaign money for lawyers. Right, he doesn't have to pay one hundred plus million dollars in legal fees not coming out of the Trump family irrevocable trusts. And I think that that is a really important point.
By the way, I wouldn't say great in the sense that the endgame might be if he doesn't win, you know, confinement for the rest of his natural life. But you know it's a real risk.
No, but it's still he was going to have that confinement. I see their way. So running for office just gave him free money for lawyers. And I would say that I would be shocked if he didn't try to run in twenty twenty eight. Wow, why wouldn't he There's no It's like, there's no incentive not to. If you can use this money for lawyers, why wouldn't you just keep running until you die.
So we keep asking is there trump Ism after trum but instead there's Trump after Trump? Holy cal I.
Mean I do think there's trump Ism after Trump.
And it's named Donald Trump. Okay, what you got? Bring it?
How are they going to keep this Joey safe?
Yeah, there's no great answer from the criminal justice system. They are not going to go into witness protection program, et cetera. You know, I have to think, are they really the villains in the eyes of the maga faithful, even the crazy maga faithful, the kind of you know, Loan Wlos who went in and shot up the Cincinnati FBI. You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I was half the kind of subtext, wasn't it, of don't put him in jail,
that maybe they come after you. It's folly to think that their identities won't be known by people who want to diligently do it. So the short answer this used to I come up. Well, you know, in terrorism age, I was a US attorney and judges would say, what happens if some crazy person wants to come and tear us and blow us up? And the answer really was, well, then they'll blow you up. You know, I think it will reduce to a marginal risk. I don't see why they would be the target, but there's no way to
forget criminal justice. The entire justice system can one percent prevent and now, of course they could one hundred percent go after it would be very serious crime. So it's the same kind of disincentive as how do you get keep a judge or a US attorney. You know, we used to have Marshall protections, et cetera. But it's it's I have no good answer for you.
They can't send them home with security.
Sure, Oh no, no, no. When I say good answer, I mean fool. How are they going to keep them safe? I mean literally, if Trump world they're what they want to do.
Is starts boxing them or something.
That's all I'm saying. Of course, they're the equivalent of double locks on the door and burglar alarms and buzzers and stuff. But I think that the literal answer to your question is they can't. They can just they can reduce the risk, and you know, these guys could leave New York, but no one's hopefully gonna do that. I just think that during these few weeks, there's been a few of our peers who have been distinguished by the glowers they seem to draw personally from Trump and the
personal messages. You know, it's kind of a resume builder. But there's been real questions among our are we in danger? I don't put myself in that category. And the short answer is, you know, look, if some crazy person hears from channels with aluminum foil the voice of Donald Trump saying.
Go, got that out, we don't need to tempt fade here. You go, Okay, ask me a question.
Go so, I'm really intrigued. You said, you fucking hate poles, and I do too, But I also think I but we as really don't fucking understand poles, and we're gonna make so we're gonna learn a lot about it, just social scientists over the next several years, but especially this whole problem that it seems like all the action for Trump is at the level of social media and things that just don't actually register in the typical polls. But you said, I'm talking now about your piece, really great piece,
by the way, the Vanny Fair piece. Everybody checked. It's out the panic of the polls. But anyway, you said, look, Nikki Hagey's zombie campaign still getting more thin ten percent of the vote. Biden seems to be pulling better among those who are likely to actually show up. But just I want to zero in on the point that the polling industry just doesn't seem to have the real precision of access to, as you put a people's political persuasions
and habits that tech companies do. So, you know, are these are the pollsters you think overestimating mega members commitment actually shown up for their guy? You know? Is does that lesson? I don't think we can calibrate it yet, but the do you think in general it points toward hidden good news for Biden.
Yeah, so this is what I would say, Yes, pollsters have a big problem.
It's actually a good question.
You were going, yeah, no, Well.
It's actually something I spent a lot of time thinking about. So posters don't have a great pulse on what's happening, but what's happening here is actually something different. So in twenty sixteen, and again, posters will tell you they weren't wrong, but they were wrong. They were really, really really wrong. They were wrong. And from that they extrapolated Hillary Quinn as a ninety nine point nine percent or an eighty nine percent chance of winning.
And then during the evening eighty seventy you watched it like the oxygen level dropping it.
Yeah, so that was a real polling error. And since then what they've done and part of the reason that was a polling error, not to make excuses for them, but this is actually was not their fault. Was that Trump voters were a group of low frequency voters who you couldn't pull because he didn't think they existed. And that was what Kelly and Conway said about these hidden Trump voters. They were hidden because they weren't voters. They
were just people who usually didn't vote. But Trump had this populist message which they responded to, and that happened in twenty sixteen, and that also happened in twenty twenty. But it doesn't happen in the midterms. Those people don't come out for anyone else. Trump Ism does not scale.
So you know, maybe you win a primary, but like a really good example is Jade Vance in Ohio, Ruby red state running you know, trumpy Trump and trump Asaurus running ten points behind the partisan lean because ultimately it doesn't work for anyone else. It only works for Trump.
Yeah, I mean in Ohio, the guy who was just a friend of mine lost the U to the wine had more votes than anybody who's ever had, but the wind somehow, these hidden Trump voters came out and just new voters put the wine over the top.
Same thing with Vans, right, but usually that doesn't happen, right, and Vans still ran behind the partisan lane. So what I would say is that my guess is what these posters are doing. And Nate Cohen wrote very smartly about this other times, they're trying to estimate whether or not this group comes out. I think they will come out.
But the question is because you know, remember a million Americans died of COVID, and even if I know, that was three years ago, so no one remembers, but that was a million people, and so maybe a lot of those people were older. It doesn't matter. If your grandmother refuse to get vaccinated and then died of COVID, do her five grandchildren run out and vote for Trump. It's
an open question. Maybe they think COVID is a you know, racist can I mean, maybe they have some racist way to make it work for them, but you could see that that could actually theoretically hurt him. But the other thing that I think is really still possible. It's just really hard to square what the unpredictable voters will do.
And if you look at the bottom of the ticket, which I think is really where the action is happening, these Democratic senators are running way ahead, like I saw Tammy Baldwin running twelve points ahead and swing state Wisconsin, so I think there's some sorcery going on and trying to measure these Trump voters. I have a lot of trouble imagining a voter coming out voting for Tammy Baldwin and then voting for Trump. Not impossible, but feels like a stretch.
Yeah, you know, Mollie, like well as always, I think we cover from the what you cover, from the sort of daily to the more profound national trends and really that you know, the things that are growth. Sorcery is is such a perfect word for what seems to be going on. You know, presumably the magic will reveal itself not to be magic, but right now I'm not sure how and why. So that'll keep me biting my name else for the next six months.
And you and I both agree that we don't know what we don't know, and we'll know a lot more in.
November, there's an end. Look forward to the next Molly mashup. Thanks a lot and a big week.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Ben Smith is the editor of Semaphore. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ben.
Smith, thank you so much for having me back.
You're here ostensibly to promote a podcast, but I'm going to ask you lots of out the questions, but first you can tell us about the podcast. It's a media podcast.
Yeah, the people seem to care a lot about media.
The last gasps of a dying industry. I it's like a snuff film.
Oh god right, Molly, No, it's I like, I kind of hate that whole like colagulating journalism thing. No, I mean, I think the thing about media is that it is both grim and boring if you think of it as a sort of small, dying industry. But it's in a huge story if you think about it, as it cuts into politics, into culture, into technology, and it lends on all of those stories. And so we're launching a show
called Mixed Signals. Naima Raza and I will be co hosting it some help from Max Tani, Samaphore's great media editor, to sort of tell those stories about what is happening behind the scenes, as it affects things that actually matter, as it affects national politics, as it affects Hollywood and the culture and things we really care about. And I think that's you know that to me, that's really one of one of the biggest stories of this media age,
and so we're excited about it. And I think there is this sort of lingering sense that I think everybody has that there's some kind of conspiracy that media is a bit of a conspiracy, that people are making decisions that are in some sense manipulative, or that something's happening
behind the scenes. I think what's so interesting about covering it is that in some ways media is a conspiracy, but often it's particularly a conspiracy to make money and not a very good one, and actually understanding how decisions are being made is often very interesting and often very different from what you would think from the outside.
I listened to on the Media that podcast from w Andy See, which is really really smart. They had a podcast yesterday, but I think it was like two weeks ago or whatever, because you know, the timing of when these drop is not, you know, it doesn't totally line up and they talked about how much a lot of tech journalism has been really celebrating advancement without providing a lot of pushback, and then most AI coverage seems to do a similar like AA is going to change our lives.
AI is fire and not been critical enough. That strikes me as like maybe a larger problem too when it comes to coverage.
That strikes me as a pretty broad generalization and maybe a story that was true fifteen years ago. I mean, the sort of interesting story about tech coverage, I think is how hard it turned against the technology industry kind of during the social media era and during the Trump era, and kind of how hostile the industry has become to
the people who cover it. I mean, I agree with you, there is a certain amount of and honestly a certain amount of justified like, hey, this shure is coverage of AI, because you know, at the core of a lot of technology coverage is and ought to be an excitement about technology,
and a lot of tech reporters have that. But I actually find that we have sometimes imported the criticisms of social media into coverage of AI in a way that doesn't make all that much sense, Like they're just very different the threats posed b AI are quite different.
So i'd actually I think I don't buy that.
In fact, it's like one of the great things is that you can just have an avatar go on podcasts so you don't have to. I'm really a big fan of AI, and particularly for that use case.
I think you're kidding, but I can't.
Tell I'm kidding. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Sorry, Okay, how do you think that's unfair? A pushback on something that none of us really know what it's going to do. I mean, I'm just curious, Like I love when people come on my podcast and I'm happy to have you and not your AI version.
Yeah, that's the thing. Podcasting is the last use case for humans.
Actually, again, like that would make AI kind of bad. I mean maybe I am just not as smart as you are, but I just assume that being replaced. I mean, we're seeing these summations now of pieces written. You know, now there are summaries of pieces. I mean, doesn't that strike you as like the beginning of the end.
You do, know?
I mean I think I guess from my perspective when it comes to journalism, particularly like again, I think there are lots of really scary things. I think some of the kind of really growth tesque sexual harassment and defix that AI can do are just incredibly disturbing. The sort of you know, I think there's a sort of general undermining people's broad shared idea of truth that is incredibly disturbing.
I think there are there are really negative things. But also when it comes to journalism in particular, journalists you know, have been complaining about the birth the growth of new technology since you know, probably the printing press. But the main thing I use AFI for every day is transcribing interviews. I suspect you guys too, Like my least favorite part of journalism was doing an interview for an hour and
that's spent two hours typing it up. I don't think anybody feels that that is a great loss to the profession that you're not doing that. I suspect there's editing of this show that gets you.
And actually like the way in which AI is actually.
Manifesting itself in newsrooms, I mean sort of more sophisticated spell checking. Like I don't think anybody thinks Grammarly is going to be on the street corners murdering people. But you probably did reduce the number of copy editors in the business.
Right right now, the.
Way these tools are being used in newsrooms is really helpful and allows us to do more of the kind of stuff we want to do, which is trying to figure out what's really happening, talking to other human beings and leaving the boring stuff to the AI. And I guess I don't really think that either your job of helping people figure out the world and explaining it to them in a nuanced and human way, or my job of trying to get people to tell me information are
really at risk. And maybe that's sort of self centered, but that is how I see it.
No I agree, and Jase uses in AI software to edit this and to get rid of noise, and I certainly agree. As a dyslexic who is violently very dyslexic, the improvement in spellcheck has been humongous for me, so I definitely agree with that.
So you also welcome our new overlords.
Basically, my question is more like, should we be pushing back more all the time? For example, I had on this podcast Jim Hines, who I really like and who is a Democrat and who is very smart, and who comes from Connecticut and lives in coscop And I said to him, you know, you guys don't regulate anything, right, you didn't regulate any technology. And you know when you say that to a member of Congress, they always say, well,
the First Amendment. And I'd say, the First Amendment doesn't have anything to do with regulating technology.
You say, what about the Second Amendment?
Right?
Right? Exactly?
No.
But I mean the reality is Congress gave up on trying to regulate technology. And they did that because they were like low key, they didn't want to. It was too many problems. If you look at Europe, like there's actual fullsome regulations, they haven't stopped some of the problems. And look, Europe is a much different regulatory environment. But like to a certain extent, Congress has fallen as sleep on the switch in certain ways.
It's a strange story.
Imagine a world where technology started. You know, we went onto the internet, we lost newspapers, and Congress said, okay, two percent of all pre tax earning or even post tax earning that tech companies make must be put in nonprofit funds for local news like something, you know, one percent, zero point five percent of the five hundred billion dollars
that Elon Musk made. I mean, because remember Elon Musk made all of this money on these sort of regulatory tax bonuses for doing environmental stuff right like he has. He is like a guy who got government handouts. But the government handouts went to oil companies and went to people like Elon and didn't go to people like the main daily reporter. I'm just saying, like Congress had an opportunity to not crush the news industry, right, and they didn't take it.
I hate to say this as a journalist, but I'm not sure this is totally about us in the news industry. And to me, the core deal, which is a pretty weird deal, is that we both got all of the companies, all of the jobs, all of the growth, and all of the wealth created, and we got to be the like laboratory where all the damage got done. And then the Europeans came in got, by the way, none of the wealth, none of the great job growth, none of
the companies. But also they get to write they regulate us and themselves, and that is essentially the unspoken deal is that we get we get the business and the companies and the damage and they get neither, I think, and I do think that's fundamentally the deal that Congress made with not regulating these companies. It has costs and benefits, and I think they're both pretty substantial.
So let's talk about the election coverage right now. You know, we're a country of three hundred million plus, right, three hundred and fifty million, three hundred and thirty million. It's a lot of people, like maybe at most twenty million people read in newspapers, magazines, maybe a little more than watch cable news, you know, maybe a little more than that watch network news. So do you think we have any influence on them anymore?
It's such a strange question this election. It's interesting because I'm also obsessed with this and for this first episode of Mixed Signals, I just just this morning went down to the courthouse just a couple of blocks from here, where there's a massive, you know, classic trial of the century media circus with you know, dozens and dozens of
cameras and dozens of fifteen satellite trucks. And we went and I went and found our old friend Maggie Haberman, who's standing online, you know, at seven in the morning, task through that like you know, is anybody learning anything you go into this court and you cover this trial, and then and then what right is there anything new?
Is it change? Is anybody's mind being changed? On our own mind being changed?
Or does everybody in America basically feel one way or the other that you get who these people are, you get who Donald Trump is, and so you're not paying that much attention to this incredible, historic, dramatic spectacles. Very I agree, it's an utterly strange situation.
So how do you think these people are getting their news? Which people it's three hundred and forty five million people on the storytry who don't read the New York Times. How do you think they're getting their news?
That is a harder question to answer than it has been since the nineteenth century because they're basically from the kind of proliferation of newspapers, penny dailies and things in the second half of the nineteenth century through not that long ago. The big story was consolidation, was more and more people
getting their information from fewer and fewer places. You know, big national television networks replacing local ones, big national newspapers displacing local ones, and then big social media companies and big centralized platforms replacing everything. And then the story of the last few years has been this crazy fragmentation and people moving out to.
Smaller and smaller places.
I mean audio is actually the most interesting example of that, where tens of thousands of people listened to an array of shows where they're each you know, finding people who they really find valuable and helpful, but there's no dominant player. In fact, there was a Pew study that said they asked people, who's your favorite podcast? Among people who have a favorite podcast, what's your favorite podcast?
Pictively? The answer was Joe Rogan.
But the most interesting thing about that was it was Joe Rogan at five percent. So you got a market where the number one player is five percent and everything else is smaller. And that's just a situation which you get on the subway and you have no idea what the person sitting across from you has in their ears, whereas five years ago you get in the subway and like,
it's Facebook, right, and so they're ten years ago. And so there has I think been this big shift that makes the landscape way harder to understand because you just it's it's splintered.
So how do you think people get their news. I mean, Joe Rogan is millions of people, right, just.
So like Fox News and the big broadcast networks you know, will reach between maybe three and ten million a night, and that's that's something Rogan, you know, maybe a vaguely similar number. Lots of people a bit fewer than that.
So say, Joe Rogan is twenty, Fox is four.
Right, But these listens, I'm just listens, Like what gets counted as a view on YouTube is much much smaller.
Okay, Howard Stern is eighteen.
Those are much smaller numbers than what gets counted as a view on television. So there's it's hard these numbers don't really make sense to either. But nobody is anywhere close to the scale of what CBS News had twenty years ago. Everything is smaller.
Right, So there definitely are millions of people on TikTok.
Enormous numbers of people on TikTok, but again being kind of micro targeted with the thing that they're looking for and having the news reflected to them as what TikTok is great at telling them exactly what they want.
By the Chinese government.
Yes, by our friends that by dents, yes.
Which is owned by the Chinese government.
No, mostly it is just holding a mirror up to you and telling you exactly and giving you exactly what you want.
That's what that machine does.
Maybe it hasn't been proven the Chinese government puts its thumb on the scale would not particularly surprise me. But if young people are being told that the Palestinian side is correct, it's mostly because that's what they want to hear. And I don't really think the idea that tip people are being brainwashed on there. We're all kind of the beauty of social media as we get to wash our own brands.
I don't think anyone thinks that people are being brainwashed. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there are people who think that, but I mean, with all of this, it's not just TikTok, it's also Instagram and Facebook. I mean, there are opportunities for transparency with the algorithm that we have not been given. Right.
No thinks have been getting less transparent for as long as I've covered these companies. In twenty twelve, there was a site called your open Book where you could search Facebook and see what people were talking about on there.
And Facebook cut that.
Off from the API and progressively, all of these companies have released less and less and less data because they don't like the media coverage of what is actually happening on them.
Right, we have so many people in this country, So say there are three hundred million people who are just not interacting with traditional news at all. I mean at least one hundred and fifty million of those people will vote.
Yeah, but the biggest sources of sort of non big mainstream media are the local television news, local radio. I mean, voters are disproportionately older and being reached by these older forms. So like, among the biggest of these small and medium sized things are still, you know, along with deranged streams on rumble or YouTube, are a lot of fairly normy stuff.
You know, a lot of targeting stuff.
Moms on Instagram, a lot of it's just you know, it's splintering without I think the social media age really elevated hyperpartisan voices, and that was what worked for the sort of engagement metrics of Facebook. I think that's less
true enough. I think it's just a legitimate sprit splintering that's spreading further probably further right, further left, but also all along the middle of that spectrum in a way that if you're writing about it, you are sort of operating in the dark in a way that is disorienting for me a list.
Do you feel that the traditional media though we have become such an incredibly small piece of the pie, right and we have such a small reach.
It's funny that we're saying we you a podcaster, me running a new website.
Well, I am an editor of Fanny Fair. I'm a true official correspondent at a Condie Nast magazine.
You got to foot in both worlds.
My podcast is from a podcast company called iHeartRadio, So I mean, I don't think that's true. Is not that? And you worked at the New York Times for many years and have a media startup called Temophore. So if we're not the mainstream media, I don't know who is, man.
I think it's the New York Times.
Molick, No, But I'm just saying I think there's a there's sort of a wide spectrum and a lot of and even the question of what is mainstream is is kind of disputed. Like you know, the like iHeart is a great example, Like that's a company that does a bunch of great podcasts that built around the House Stuff Works podcast. That's sort of what built that company at first, and where the sort of people running it come from, which I think I don't really think of a mainstream
or political right. That's just sort of a great popular show that I hope is running promos for this podcast on its big network, and I think the lines have really blurred, actually quite a bit between what's what's considered traditional media and what's new media, making all of this more confusing.
Thank you, Ben Smith, Yeah, thank you.
No moment Jesse Cannon by John Fast the reaction to the trumpert you predicted it hot. I mean, you don't have to be a psychic to know exactly how this is going to go. Donald Trump will degrade the rule of law, rail against the judiciary, say the judge was corrupt, and in fact he did all of the things we thought he would because Donald Trump has about four plays and he always does pretty much the same thing, no matter what the situation is. And that, my friends, is
our moment of Fuckeray. 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.