The first time around, and actually during his campaign, this moniker of fake news was so corrosive.
I really think that was one of the biggest catalysts to kind of where we are today, because when you can't trust the news, when you can't trust what you're reading or what you're watching anymore, or even if you do trust it, but there is just a little birdy in the back of your head that says, maybe this isn't fully right or fully accurate, because Donald Trump says it's not.
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question. Hi everyone. Well, if you're not already, you may soon become one of the nearly six million followers of Aaron Parness, a viral news aggregator his words in the substack slash TikTok universe. And by the way, I've recently joined the substack universe myself, so you might want to check that out. Aaron's school is to take on legacy media. But the question is how and why? So here to tell me all about that is Aaron Parnis himself.
Hi erin, Hi, how are you good? How are you so nice to meet you?
Like Wise, likewise super excited for this.
I feel like I know you already, Erin, just because I watch you all the time, and I'm like, oh, hi, Eron, do you feel like that with people online too?
I do. It's very weird. It's like you wrote these parasocial relationships and then you meet them in person or over zoom, and it's like it's like you've known them for years.
Yeah, it's really fun. Well, I'm excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for doing this, Thanks so much for having me absolutely well. I wanted to start by asking you a little bit about yourself. Erin for tim like, we're having coffee, we've never met before. Tell me your story because you're a brainiac, and you have been since you were very young, right.
I mean, I've had a very unique kind of upbringing. My story really starts actually back when I was twelve years old. At the time, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I didn't know what being a lawyer really meant. So my dad actually sat me down in front of the TV and told me to watch at the time, the case Cy Anthony Trial, which was blowing up all over Florida and.
Really lovely content for a twelve year old.
By the way, you would think, right. I mean, I grew up in a Ukrainian household, so parenting, that's parenting. But so anyway, so she sat me down and he was like, just watch opening statements and you may like this. I ended up sitting myself for thirty one days watching start to finish the entire trial and kind of fell in love with the way the attorneys moved around the
courtroom and advocated for either her side. And that moment there made me want to go to law school and made me want to go in an expedited fashion.
So yes, I'll say expedited. You went to college at fourteen? Right, This is, by the way, growing up in Boca Raton, Florida.
Did you have siblings?
By the way, I have six siblings. Oh my god, I know it. Yes, I am the oldest. I have younger siblings who I love very close to. But yeah, I grew up in Bokertone. Started college when I was fourteen in this like dual enrollment hybrid program.
Where was that? By the way, it's.
Called Florida Atlantic University.
Oh yeah, I've heard of that because I used to live in Miami.
Oh amazing. Yeah, So it's about one hundred kids do it a year. We instead of taking high school classes, you take college classes with college students, and it kind of counts for both high school and college credit. And so I kind of overloaded. Graduated with my BA when I was eighteen, actually a week before technically graduating high school.
And I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer and wanted to go to law school, and so I went straight to George Washington University in Washington, DC, graduated three years later, and then quit practicing law a few years after that.
So let's talk about that pivot for you professionally. Why did you decide after watching the Casey Anthony Trail for thirty one days and graduating from GW Law School at the tender age of twenty one, what changed your mind? Why did you decide suddenly I don't really want to be a lawyer.
Well, so I realized that being a lawyer wasn't necessarily being in a court room every day. I think everyone on TV really makes it like this glamorous lifestyle where you're fighting for these big issues and you're in front of the Supreme Court or you're in front of a jury every day. And yeah, I had my fair share of time in court, but it wasn't an everyday kind of experience. I mean, my dream, truly was to be a public defender for the rest of my life and
just do that. But public defenders, unfortunately in our country, just don't make a livable wage in many areas, and I believe at the time in Miami, public defenders were making about thirty six thousand dollars a year to start, and in Miami you can't live off of that. You just truly can't. So I had to go and I had massive student debt, so I had to go into private practice, and it just wasn't the lifestyle that I wanted to live. And so it wasn't necessarily that I
didn't want to be a lawyer. It's just that I found a different avenue to advocate for the issues and the people that I believe in.
You really had this, I guess, dramatic or significant life change. Let's go back to twenty sixteen. You're volunteering for the Trump campaign. Back then, how old were you then? My maths is not good, Aaron.
So at sixteen seventeen years old?
So what appealed to you about Donald Trump at the time?
So I think it was just different. And I tell everyone my first experience, my first foray into politics was Donald Trump. Just like many people my age, I don't remember the Obama years, I don't remember the Bush years. I remember the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen election cycle. And during that election cycle, I really knew nothing different other
than Donald Trump. My dad had known him in the past, being in the same circles in Miami, and I think I believe he actually worked for Donald Trump's dad in New York as one of his first jobs. And so I just what appealed to me was that he was just a different kind of beast in this political realm, and he just kind of told it like it was
and he was just interesting. And so I personally, I volunteered very kind of haphazardly, like I was still in school and like really wasn't doing much for the campaign, if anything at all, maybe knocked a door to but ultimately didn't really realize what it was like or what it meant to be a quote unquote Trump supporter or even a Republican until love. Yeah, so I always identified at the time. I was like, yeah, I'm a Republican, but I didn't know what Republicans stood for.
And as such a smart kid, I'm surprised that you sort of blindly followed him because he was different or charismatic or unfiltered. That just doesn't sound like the Aaron Parness I've come to know in the last five minutes.
Yeah, I mean, you're right. But when you grow up in a house and all that's hon is Fox News, and that's all you're watching, and that's all you're kind of absorbing, And then when you're talking in family discussions, all you're absorbing is Donald Trump, and when you're with family friends, all you're absorbing is Donald Trump, you don't know any better. And I never really had something about me that people have come to realize that I'm a
very stubborn person. So when people kind of pushed back on me in college, when my friends were like, hey, what are you doing? What are you thinking? Every time they did that, I kind of dugged my heels in further as just being stubborn myself. So it really was a fault of mine for not really kind of doing
my own research and understanding really what was happening. And at the time, I mean, when you think about it, when you look back at the twenty sixteen campaign and you look from start to finish Donald Trump's campaign, I don't know that you can really tell me a policy proposal or two that he really had. He just kind of throughout these big ideas that he's going to make America great again and he's going to do all these great things for the country, and that resonated, I guess
with my sixteen year old self. But when I really learned about his policy agenda when he became president kind of shifted dramatically.
And well before we talk about that shift, I'm curious what was it like being involved in the Trump campaign. Adriana, who produced this interview, had an interesting question about sort of the bro culture, I guess, the nascent manosphere, if you will, that was starting to bubble up I think in twenty sixteen. Can you talk about that and what some of your fellow volunteers were like and why they were attracted to Donald Trump.
That was a long time ago. I mean, like I said, truth be told, I don't really remember much from that time, but b I didn't really I wasn't really ingrained in the campaign that much. I think there was one article that was written that I was a volunteer on the campaign, but that just meant like I knocked a few doors.
Yeah, so you weren't really that invested, but you liked him, and you liked you preferred him to Hillary Clinton. And you say it's really because Fox News was playing twenty four to seven in your house and your dad, who I'll talk about with you in a moment. But what did you have against Hillary Clinton?
I had nothing against Hillary Clinton. It wasn't an anti Hillary. It was more of a pro Trump, right. I had nothing against her, And looking back on it, if my political personal views definitely aligned with her is a lot more so, it was nothing against her at all.
Let's talk about your dad. So your dad had a huge influence on you, and God, talk about a fascinating backstory. Tell me about him and what happened to him and how it contributed to your political ideological transformation. That sounded very aeradite, didn't it?
I little, but it makes sense. I mean, so, my dad wasn't really ever involved in politics growing up. I remember the first time we ever went to a political event was the twenty twelve election night party, and my dad and my family were red for a Republican for Mitt Romney, and you had to wear the wear the colors of either red or blue. I ended up choosing to wear orange because I didn't want to identify with
either side. But other than that, we didn't really do politics at all, and it wasn't until Trump announced in twenty fifteen. About a month or so later, he had a rally in Durell, Florida, and my dad took me there and was able to I don't know how, but we got some kind of pass and we met Donald Trump and kind of one of those step and repeat photo lines, and about one hundred of us met him, and then we went to the rally, and then I thought that was the end of it, But then Fox
News continued to play in the house. Then my dad continued to kind of get closer and closer to the Trump orbit. He became buddy buddy with Rudy Giuliani. He ended up, I believe, co hosting or helping host some type of fundraiser for Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood tape came out in South Florida, and just became very very close to the craziness within MAGA. But I don't even to this day know the true extent of it all.
And wasn't he involved in trying to dig up dirt about Hunter Biden and Ukraine.
He was, but that was post Trump's victory, that really whole effort from what I understand, Like I said, I don't know everything, but from what I understand, that didn't really start happening until twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, when he and Rudy became closer. But during the twenty sixteen campaign, I don't think they were discussing that up.
But after they became close. During Trump's first term, there were a lot of illegal shenanigans going on right.
Erin from what I can see, there were a lot of shenanigans.
Going on that I mean, he eventually went to prison your father, right.
He did, But he went to prison. It was unrelated to anything related to the Rudy Hunter Biden stuff.
What did he go to prison for?
So he went to prison for defrauding a number of investors in a personal company that he was running, and then also for he was convicted of funneling about a half a million dollars from this Russian man into a US superPAC But that was during the twenty sixteen campaign. I believe I don't really know that the true detail clip them.
Okay, so this is fascinating to me, Aaron, You're so smart, You've got a law degree. Your dad gets in trouble, he goes to prison, and yet you're kind of fuzzy on the details.
Yeah, because I between you and me, I mean, I think anyone who goes through something like that, I mean, I say, October ten, twenty nineteen, the day he was arrested, was one of the worst days in my life because it truly was. It's a time period where I have worked my hardest to kind of black out in a way as a coping mechanism. It fractured my family, It changed my life completely, and really we felt the weight of the federal government on our shoulders for several months
over a year, and it was a very difficult time. So, yeah, it is very clumsy, and it's intentionally fuzzy because I don't want to take myself back there if I don't have to.
That's interesting, and I think, on a lot of levels, very understandable. So what is your relationship like with your dad today?
We have a good relationship, I mean, like a father and a son. I mean, it's definitely not as close as it used to be. I think we have went through our own trials and tribulations and it's been tough. But at the end of the day, he's my dad and I love him for being my dad, and that's what I want him to be, just a regular playing dad.
And I'm putting a button on this because it sounds like this is not easy to talk about and dredges up a lot of painful memories for you. But how does he feel about Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump and the whole MAGA movement given what he's been through? Obviously, you said his prison time was not related to that, but I'm sure there was a lot of negative fallout from his political dealings. So where is he right now in his head about all of this?
Yeah, I mean, I think he really felt like they turned their backs on him, right that he did all this stuff for them, He helped them with the Hunter
Biden stuff. He went out of his way and put his neck out on the line for them, and then the moment that he got in trouble, they kind of turned their back on him, and I think he really took it personally He's someone who's very kind of emotionally emotional, and so the moment they kind of turned against him was I remember about twelve days after he was arrested, he kind of called and he was like, I'm done, Like I'm not going back, Like I'm not letting them drag me back into that world.
Hi.
Everyone, it's Katie Couric. You know I'm always on the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course covering the news, and I know that to keep doing what I love, I need to start caring for what gets.
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So you witnessed all this, how did it feed into your change of heart about Donald Trump being kind of cool and different and speaking his mind to Donald Trump might not be so good for the country. And how much was it influenced by what your dad experienced, or simply by you becoming a more informed citizen.
Yeah, so it's interesting. A lot of people think that my dad got arrested and I switched parties a day after. That's not how it happened. I actually was in law school at the time, in my third year, but over the first two years prior, I really started to shift personally.
I saw thing I really kind of experienced a political awakening by going through day to day life, Like for example, I had a friend who was doing a Mericorp in Miami when I was a summer associate there, and I went to her school and just saw the disparities between what the children in her school had and what I had growing up. And in that moment, I was like, well, one party wants to make sure these kids have equal
access to education. The other party doesn't. Right. So I had lived experiences like those, completely unrelated to my dad that really began to move me away from Donald Trump, and truth be told, being in those circles made me uncomfortable. I just never really fit in to the quote unquote maga circles. I never talked like them, I never acted like them. I just I didn't enjoy being in those rooms.
And so while I stood by my dad while he was in those circles and just kind of kept quiet because I wanted to be a lawyer, right and I didn't really want to be in this political circle. I'd be in that shift a long time before he was arrested.
Tell me a little bit about being in those circles. What was it that made you uncomfortable?
Aeron seem like a lot of people in those circles. Number One, what really got me uncomfortable was the language they used. I just I don't want to say I'm like more proper, but like I don't curse in my day to day life, like I don't demonize women, and a lot of like the older men would do that, and it was very uncomfortable, just very like I didn't like it felt like kind of gross. Sometimes walking out of those rooms, everything was very heavy on, like drinking
or smoking cigars. It was very like bro I felt like I was in a frat house with people over the age of fifty, and that to me, just like never vibed. I just I didn't like it at all.
So you witnessed sexism, did you hear much racism in those circles. I'm just curious.
I mean, I never heard like blatant racism, but there are plenty of microaggressions. I mean, you can tell the underlying thoughts and beliefs of a number of these people for sure.
Well, you have a fascinating backstory. Thank you for spending some time sharing it with me. So you decided to not be a lawyer, and that you couldn't really earn a living in some of these jobs. So what flipped the switch for you to say, I want to help people understand the world. I want to be a communicator.
Yeah, So it was actually February of twenty twenty two. I was about a year and a half out of law school at the time, and when in Russia and nade the Ukraine, and at the time I had family in Ukraine and Kiev on the ground. I had an uncle, a cousin, and an aunt, and I would hear from them what they would be seeing outside of their front window. Right they'd see tanks rolling down the streets, planes overhead.
And then I'd watch mainstream media or cable news here in the United States, and I really saw a disparity in the coverage and mainly in just how fast cable news got the news to us here in the United States. I would hear things from my uncle and then an hour and a half later, I'd hear it on CNN, and I was like, well, I think there's a vacuum here that could be filled. I think that what cable news is doing isn't necessarily as good of a job
as it should be. And so I just pulled out my phone and just started sharing on TikTok what my uncle and my family was sharing with me on the ground. And within about a week I had a million followers who were now interested in what was happening in Ukraine and didn't many of them didn't even know where Ukraine was on a map, but they were interested in what was happening on the ground. And I think in that
moment I realized, Hey, there's something here. I can do this not just about Ukraine, but I can really start kind of educating folks about other topics as well. And that didn't really happen until later on, but I spent about six months every day posting ten to fifteen times about Ukraine and what was happening when Russia was invading.
Did you ever feel any trepidation earon that as much as your uncle was experiencing something firsthand. You know, as an old school journalist, of course, there are things like you know, vetting, double sourcing, making sh sure what you're sharing with consumers is accurate. Did you ever feel like, Gosh, I may need to understand the situation more than simply my uncle's eyewitness account.
For sure. And I think, especially at the beginning, there were times where I would actually hear something from on the ground, like, for example, I remember hearing that President Zelenski there was a story where President Zelensky was either asked to leave Kiev out of fears for his safety or something like that. It was like a bombshell story, and I heard it because Ukrainian media were kind of talking about it from family. And then I was like, well,
I can't necessarily report this. This kind of seems like a crazy story to talk about without any corroboration. An hour later, CNN reported and then I reported it. But I think over time I grew more comfortable in kind of doing my own kind of due diligence and doing my own research and doing my own bedding, and it got to the point where I've kind of established my own kind of set of ethics that I have for anything that I put out was or that. As a lawyer, I would never rely in a brief to a federal
to a judge, I would get disbarred. I would never put something out on my social media that could get me disbarred in a court room. So it's not necessarily the traditional journalistic ethics, but kind of take those legal ethics and really apply them to what I do.
And there's transparency in terms of telling your audience if something hasn't been corroborated yet. I mean, you're very honest about that, and so they understand that something may need to be re reported or adjusted to events that may occur.
Right, Yeah, for sure. And there are definitely times where I get things wrong, and there have been, and there are times where stories have had to be kind of not necessarily edited but recanted and I repost and I say, listen, this was wrong and here's why it was wrong. And I think that all builds to kind of the authenticity
of the platform that I built. I'm not afraid to say when I'm wrong or when a news report that I kind of share ends up being recantid for example, which has happened a number of times.
Right, Well, let's talk about this transition a little bit more and about legacy media, because I know you go on a tear about legacy media and it sometimes hurts my feelings. I'm totally getting, but I think there's a lot of things wrong with legacy media myself. But I want to ask you about something you wrote on your substack. You said, for years, legacy media outlets have painted Donald Trump as a threat to our way of life. But once he won, they changed their tunes. Suddenly he wasn't
a danger to democracy anymore. It was as if a switch flipped and legacy media became concerned about Trump's potential to impact their financial interests. And that's exactly why my platform has seen such rapid growth since the election. All Right, So let's take a look at what you said that and investigated.
A little bit further.
Tell me a little more about what you mean and why you think legacy media has really lost the room, so to speak.
Well, I think legacy media or media generally, has lost started losing the room the moment they started putting money first. And I think it goes back to a long time ago. It's not recent. It's when the Washington Post first went from a free paper to one that you have to pay ten cents for and then thirty cents for. Now
you have to pay several dollars a month for. When you put money above the stories and you put stories behind a paywall, and you look to your bottom kind of line more than you do to what you're reporting, I think you lose trust in the viewers and the viewers that you're kind of trying to reach.
But newspapers have charged for a very long time, errand and they did maintain the trust of their readers, and broadcast news really maintained the trust of their viewers. I mean, they do have to pay their employees, and journalists have to make a living, and they can't necessarily do it through advertising alone. I feel like something more significant and nefarious has happened actually in recent weeks in terms of the trust factor. So you're saying news should be free,
which is a very difficult model. I have to be honest and not really tenable.
I tend to agree with you, and I think there needs to be a solution. I mean, my dream is for all news to be free. I realize that that's not necessarily always realistic, but I do take your point in that, especially recently, especially over the past I guess since November, but really since twenty sixteen, since Trump first ran, I mean, the moment he started attacking the press as the enemy of the people. I really think we have seen kind of a change in the tune of the press.
But it really wasn't until I guess the past six months where he actually went after the press legally that we've really seen a dramatic shift.
I think talk about those two phases erin because I'm so fascinated by this as well. I think that earworm that he incorporated early in his administration, the first time around, and actually during his campaign, this moniker of fake news, yeah, was so corrosive to media because it instilled this lack of trustworthiness and this dismissiveness of anything that was reported about Donald Trump that was negative. But it was incredibly effective, wasn't it.
It was? It was I mean, it turned a large swath of people away from cable news, away from even
reading anymore, and it really hurt our democracy tremendously. I really think that was one of the biggest catalysts to kind of where we are today, because when you can't trust the news, when you can't trust what you're reading or what you're watching anymore, or even if you do trust it, but there is just a little bird in the back of your head that says, maybe this isn't fully right or fully accurate, because Donald Trump says it's not.
And I think that's also contributed to the rise of right wing media, because he only says the journalists he claims are enemies of the people, or the news that he claims is fake is only content that is critical
of him, So people get an extremely warped perspective. And the way he's taken on journalists and these sort of oval office gaggles, whether you're talking about Caitlin Collins and insulting her Peter Alexander, I couldn't believe how he unleashed on Peter Alexander, who's not only an incredibly nice person but a really experienced, intelligent reporter, was just honestly appalling to me. And so I think he has really instilled this disdain, honestly for media that is not lauding him
or celebrating him. And then, as you mentioned, Phase two was a whole new level where he was actually suing these media outlets for quote unquote offenses that most experts say could have been defended in a court of law, starting with ABC News and George Stephanopolis and then moving on to other news organizations and most recently CBS Paramount in sixty minutes. So, talk about that and how you felt as a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer. My late husband was a lawyer, so I used to talk to
him about all this stuff. But how you have felt about this new level that we're seeing Donald Trump unleash on traditional journalism.
Yeah, I mean listen as a lawyer, and it's not just traditional journalism, it's on law firms as well well.
Yes, of course, right.
And as a lawyer in law school and just in practice, you're taught to kind of be a zealous advocate for your client, for the issues that you're fighting for. If these cable news shows, these legacy media companies don't fight back and don't have lawyers who are willing to fight back, what does that say for when you're going to need someone to fight for you. It's slowly kind of eroding at the trust of the legal profession. In my opinion, it's slowly eroding at the trust of the media apparatus
in our country. And I will say it's a very dangerous path that we're on. I tell everyone that Donald Trump two point zero is so much more dangerous than Donald Trump one point oh for the simple reason that he's not facing reelection. He has complete immunity for any official acts by the Supreme Court. He doesn't need to
win another race in four years. He doesn't really care what happens on a day to day, and he's willing to push kind of the bounds of the United States Constitution, the bounds of the law, to see what he can do, how far he really can go. And when you capitulate to that, when you will allow him to win in a case that probably is winnable for yourself. I mean, ABC News could have won that case, CBS News can
win this case. If they capitulate to him, it just gives him permission to do it again and even worse. And I think that is a dangerous part. Every time someone folds and doesn't fight back, he's emboldened to do more. And we're seeing it time and time again.
And clearly with the CBS situation. It is a quid pro quo for the Paramount Skydance merger, and it's really all about money and people not wanting to stop this merger, specifically Sherry Redstone. And there used to be such a strong division between these corporations who own these media companies. When I was at NBC, I would never listen to someone at GE who owned us at the time, telling me what to do or how to do an interview
or criticizing something I did. I mean, I was in a position of power because I was on a very successful show, and I basically told them to pound sand and stay in their lane, I mean, which is not necessarily a position a lot of journalists might find themselves in. So now you have a lot of anticipatory obedience on the part of these journalists who are afraid to come down too hard. And indeed, we've seen ABC used executives telling the people on the view to tone it down.
We've seen other examples of executives, corporate executives telling their journalists to take it easy. W NET I read took out a part of a documentary where somebody was very critical of Donald Trump. Do you think people appreciate how fed up and dangerous this is.
No, I don't. I don't think people, especially people my age, don't realize it because we've never lived through something like this. A lot of I guess my parents' generation may appreciate it a little more because they're coming from My parents immigrated over from the Soviet Union, right, This was more common in Russia. This isn't common in the United States of America. People my age don't appreciate it, and they
won't appreciate it until it packs them directly. And I think that's a very dangerous part in all of this.
Do you think a lot of Americans don't understand basic civics?
I do, and it's not their fault. I think it's the fault of our education system. I think the fact that we don't have mandatory Civics education in every school across the country is a problem. I think that we need a baseline Civics curriculum. But the fact is, the fact of the matter is we're in a situation now where Oklahoma is teaching is forcing its students to learn about election denihalism in the twenty twenty election, and that's to them, that's civics to them, and that is dangerous.
So if we don't have that baseline curriculum, it's it's going to be bad.
Hi everyone, it's me Kittie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Bennie Blanco, Jake Cohen and Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman and Ininagarten. So I started a free newsletter called good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katie Couric dot com slash good Taste. That's k A t I E C O U r I c dot com slash good Taste.
I promised your taste buds will be happy you did. I wanted to ask you about a recent tear you went on Aaron about Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book, accusing them of being part of a coordinated effort to smear Joe Biden. Why don't you think that's a legitimate news story? And you know I interviewed Jake and Alex. I've known Jake Tapper for a long time. You know, we're kind of contemporaries, and I'm curious why you didn't think that was a subject worth exploring.
I never said that it wasn't a subject worth exploring. I think it was a subject worth exploring. I think how it's gone about in terms of presenting to the
public is the problem a couple things. Number One, I think if you have all this evidence and you're learning all this information about President Biden's allegedimental decline during the twenty twenty four election, as a journalist, to responsibility to release it when you have it and when you vet it, and that's during the election, so that the public is aware. That's number one. And a number of facts came out afterwards, I know, but there were a number of facts that
they learned of on the campaign trip. So that's number one. I think Number two is the way it's being presented now. President Biden is no longer president. He is not the commander in chief. He is not making decisions. You can go and sell your book all you want. I have no issues of Tapper and Thompson doing that, But when you turn CNN into Tapper's book agent every night, and
every single interview asks about Tapper's book. That to me is a problem because that seems like CNN is just trying to sell the book of one of their biggest hosts,
not necessarily kind of doing honest and honest journalism. And so that's my biggest critique, and I think that the way it's kind of been presented publicly is this kind of US versus them mentality of like, we want to push this narrative that every Democrat running in twenty twenty eight needs to answer what they thought about President Biden in twenty twenty four, when that's not where we are as a country. That's not what everyday Americans care about.
They care about who's in office right now and what the person in office is doing, and if your coverage isn't focused on that, then that's a problem in my opinion.
Well, I agree with you on a number of points, but just as my personal rebuttal, I think you're right. I think they were obligated to divulge any information they've discovered during the campaign. They would say, ninety percent of what we learned that was going on behind the scenes we learned after he dropped out and after the election. I also think that the should have divulged it at
the time. I agree with you wholeheartedly. There was something gross and unseemly about the way Jake was hawking his book every day on his show and holding it up and telling people to buy it and using it as a platform to sell books. I thought was really yucky. I do think that he has aggressively covered Donald Trump, so I don't think it's an either or situation. And I guess finally, many people would argue Joe Biden and his inner circle of enablers, and by the way, I
know Joe Biden. I like Joe Biden, but they actually are the reason we have Donald Trump, because had he dropped out earlier and allowed a primary process to go forward, the best candidate would have emerged to beat Donald Trump. And leaving Kamala Harris as the heir apparent with only one hundred and seven days to campaign was just not an adequate amount of time to introduce her to the
American people. And that the judgment he and his inner circle showed got us in this situation where democracy is so much in peril.
So that's what I would say to you about that.
I mean, you might be right. Hindsight is obviously twenty twenty. But at the same time, I have my own kind of small rebuttal to that and.
Your move, sir, Yeah.
I mean listen, My rebuttal to that is, Kamala Harris didn't lose this election. Donald Trump won the election. And I truly, personally, I don't know a Democrat that would
have beaten Donald Trump in twenty twenty four. Whether Biden dropped out six months earlier, a year earlier, the political headwinds were so strong against any Democratic nominee, whether it was Vice President Harris or Governor Newsom or Governor Whitmer, and arguably more so strongly against someone who is not Biden or Harris, because they're just not as well known to the country.
Yeah, but they would have had time to introduce themselves, and I mean you're right, could have, would have, should have. Hindsight is twenty twenty, but there is I think a pretty powerful argument to be made that things might have and will never know, turned out differently if Joe Biden had stepped down earlier, as he said during his campaign that he was going to be a bridge to the next generation. Flanked by Corey Booker, Gretchen Whitmer, and Kamala Harris and then he reneged on that.
Yeah, and listen, I'm not defending President Biden. I'm not saying that he should have stayed in the race as long as he did. I don't know, and truth be told, maybe it would have been better. But at the end of the day, hindsight is twenty twenty, what happened happened. And now I think it's important to look forward because Democratic Party isn't unning against Donald Trump anymore. It's not
running against necessarily the MAGA movement. It's going to be running against a completely different form of Republicanism come twenty twenty eight, and I think that the party needs to look forward, not backwards.
Okay, let me ask you about legacy media a little bit more, because I know you say Earn News aggregator that you're not an investigated journalist, and a lot of your videos are regurgitating breaking news headlines, giving them context and perspective, granted, and your take on them. But isn't the work you do made possible by legacy media and all the reporters out in the field, And don't you have to be careful about disparaging their work too much? Because without them, you wouldn't have a job.
Well, so I'll push back a little bit. About fifty to sixty percent of the stories that I cover are actually stories that I source myself. It's not necessarily aggregating other breaking news headlines. I have notifications on for every single member of Congress, every single world leader. When Donald Trump posts something on truth social I read it and I report on it. I don't wait for the New York Times to read it, report on it, and report on what the time said. Right. I watch c Span religiously.
When I see something on c Span, I kind of throw it out there. I get tips to my email inbox daily from federal employees for sending me memos and any information that I cover as well. So that's about half the work. The other half the work is made possible by legacy media, for sure, and.
By investigating and you know, investigative reporters who spend weeks, if not months, digging in, you know, filing Foyer requests, et cetera, et cetera.
One hundred percent, and I will I would never degrade the work that they're doing, especially the work that local journalists are doing. The ABC affiliates, the NBC affiliates on the ground, and I have top time and time again about the amazing work that they do and how they need to be uplifted. I think where my gripe with legacy media is I guess maybe framed wrong in the sense of my gripe is with cable news media and the hosts that are on it and the way news
is portrayed on television rather than an individual reporter. I think the Washington Post has some brilliant reporters, but I have a problem with the Posts as a brand because of the influence that its owner has. Right, So I have I have a problem with kind of the overall media apparatus rather than any individual reporter.
Right.
And what is your beef, particularly with cable news. Is it that it's the way information is framed or putting context? And do you have a beef with all cable news or do you have a beef primarily with Fox News?
So my primary beef comes from CNNMSNBC and Fox those kind of the big three in a way not necessarily like there's some great like David Muher does great work, Like there's some really good kind of cable news hosts. But I think when I'm watching CNN at the ten pm hour and it's Abby Phillips Show. And Abby is great. I think she's amazing. But when it's a roundtable discussion of politics rather than just giving me what I need to know from the day, that to me upsets me
because it's no longer fact based journalism. It's an opinion talk show hosts. It's the view, but just at ten pm. And I'm not watching CNN at ten pm personally to get opinions from Scott Jennings or on the left. I'm watching CNNA ten pm to get information about what I missed during the day, and I just don't get that anymore.
Yeah, and what about Fox the way they frame everything? I mean, to me, it's fascinating to watch MSNBC. And by the way, a very small audience is watching all of these cable news networks at this point. But I'd like to see how a story's framed by MSNBC versus Fox. Now I'm more aligned with the way MSNBC is framing the story. But Fox, I remember when the stock market
was crashing, they took down the ticker. You don't hear about a lot of things that Donald Trump is doing on Fox News, and if you do, it's framed in a very positive way and not sort of a holistic look at whatever action has been taken.
Oh for sure. I mean I think I remember when the birthright Citizenship Executive Order was struck down the first time. Instead of talking about that, they were talking about plastic straws for fifteen minutes. And I was watching that and I was like, this is just you're doing a disservice
to the people that are watching your channel. Just be honest with what's happening in our country and what the courts are saying and what the president is doing, and let them decide for themselves whether or not they agree with it or not.
Well, their motto used to be, we report, you decide, but I don't think I always say it's like we retort, we deride.
No, you're you're right. I mean, it's bad how they've kind of framed it. And I mean, I don't think at least anymore they pretend to be, at least at night with like the Hannities of the World and Laura Ingram I don't think they pretend to be a new show as much as they pretend to be kind.
Of they're a talk radio on TV.
Really, that's really what it is at this point.
Does your family still watch Fox News?
No, they do not, not from what I'm aware of. I haven't been down there in a little while, but probably not.
Let me ask you a little bit about your process. You post twelve to fifteen tiktoks a day, Aaron, you post five to six times a day on substack. How much time are you spending on social media and following the news every day? And how do you unplug? If ever?
I don't unplug work life balance doesn't exist for me. I'm twenty six years old. I feel like I can work as much as I can until I start having kids, and then I'll have to slow down a little bit. I am online, truthfully all the time, unless it's Friday nights for Shabbat, I try to unplug and kind of be off my phone for several hours if possible, But
otherwise I'm monitoring at twenty four to seven. Like I said, I have notifications on for every time a member of Congress tweets, so have I wake up to two thousand notifications every morning that I score grew to see what I'm like missing, So I'm always online.
I want to ask you about Ukraine because of your family connections there. I mean, there's so many news events I'd like to talk to you about, but let me just do run down a few right now. Do you think people understand how strange it is that Donald Trump did a complete about face on behalf of the United States of America when it comes to support swarding Ukraine versus Vladimir Putin? And how do you, as someone with such close ties, how do you make sense of it?
I don't. I mean, I don't want to speculate, right like, there are so many people out there speculating that Trump is in Putin's pocket. There was even like a TikTok trend people talking about how Trump was being a Kremlin agent, and I think all that's BS. Like, I don't buy into the conspiracy theories or the speculation. I think truth be told. I don't know that this is as much Trump as it is about Vance and those around him, and this kind of America first mentality of trying to
abandon anyone overseas. It's not just Ukraine, right, We're seeing them pull foreign aid from countries across the world, and America's soft power has been weakened tremendously.
Since the jsaid right exactly.
So I don't know that it's just Ukraine. I think Ukraine is just a hot button issue because it's the war where American dollars have been spent on. But I don't know. I don't know how to reconcile it. It's very scary. And maybe, I mean, listen, maybe Trump is coming around to the idea that Putin doesn't want peace. He's been Putin crazy lately and.
Saying now he's actually acting like a petulant, jilted teenager on truth social talking about Putin now and how disappointed he is and how he's crazy. But it strikes me as like just reeking of naivete.
It is, I mean it is. I think really Trump tried to portray himself as someone who could come in as a deal maker and really end this war, and Joe Biden couldn't do it. So Trump is going to do it. And I think with each passing day he gets more and more frustrated that he's realizing, hey, one side to this doesn't actually want to end the.
War, and maybe foreign policy is a little more complicated than he thought. Maybe maybe let me ask you about the big beautiful bill. I know that I believe you or somebody I read so much to Aaron, I kind of get mixed up at some point. But someone said, I think maybe you did how it was going to basically turbo charge income inequality in this country, exacerbate it as never before. Maybe that was someone else, was that
you erin I may have said something. Anyway, do you think people understand truly what is in this bill and how will impact the least fortunate Americans?
No, not at all, I mean, and I think the reason why is because the messaging just isn't there. I mean, I could say the Congressional Budget Office, the non part is in Congressional Budget Office says the bottom ten percent will suffer the most, in the top ten percent will suffer the least, or will benefit the most. But ultimately, this bill is hundreds of pages in length. Your average
American is not reading it. Your average American doesn't know that on page five hundred and sixty two there's a paragraph that limits a federal court's ability to enforce contemp proceedings against the administration. Right like the average doesn't really understand what Medicaid cuts mean, what work requirements for Medicaid are and how that can be implemented in states around the country. So the impacts of it won't be felt,
truthfully for a while, for several years. Maybe that's what they want because by that point, if you look at the bill, many of the cuts and the work requirements don't start until after the midterm election, So the impacts really won't be felt for a lot of people until twenty twenty seven, and by then Republicans could run on the fact that they just cut a bunch of taxes
and look, Medicaid's still fine, everything's fine. And then January first, twenty twenty seven comes around and thirteen point seven million Americans are without healthcare.
So what do you think of the fact that RFK, Junior and HHS and the CDC and basically are saying that pregnant women and children no longer need to get the COVID vaccine. I mean, that has been so politicized, and medical news was never sized in this way.
It's unfortunate. I mean, here's the thing. If that is what doctors believe, and if that's what the research suggests, then great, go forward with it. Remove it off the communization schedule for pregnant women and healthy children. But it's gotten to the point where anything RFK Junior says is distrusted by a majority of the American public because of the things that he had said in the past about
this vaccine. So it's an unfortunate situation where medical decisions are now politicized, where the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you ask the average American who was the HHS secretary under Biden or under Obama or even under Trump won, no one would know. Maybe one percent of one percent would know. A lot of people know who RFK Junior is. And that's a problem.
If you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com.
Aaron, how do you book guests?
Because you recently napped an interview with Corey Booker after his twenty five hour filibuster. Do you just reach out to their teams? Do they know who you are? You know, I'm lucky because I've been doing this for a long time, a lot longer than you have, and so I was able to establish a name for myself before the media landscape was so fragmented. But for you, you're relatively new to the game. How hard is it for you to secure these interviews with people like Corey Booker.
It's hard, but I really hustle. I mean, I DM people, I cold email them, I cold text them, I try to get information wherever I can people's contact information, and I just kind of I bug them indeceptively until they say yes.
And I'm sure now that they know about your reach, the fact that you are the number one news and politics substack in the world, and I've just joined substack, so we'll have to do some conversations like that on that platform. But you know they must be like, oh, yeah, I know Aaron Parness. I'd be happy to talk to him. And you're reaching this audience of much younger voters who are really turned off by a lot of other news sources.
Yeah, for sure. And I think it's gotten to the point where, like I now have a personal relationship with like senat or a book like you build relationships with not just their staff, but they're the member themselves as well. When you speak to them on numerous occasions and you talk them off the record and on the record, and you kind of just develop those relationships and it's it's been great. I mean now I get messages every day from members wanting to come on.
Oh that's well, they're calling you instead of you reaching out to them. That's a very enviable place to be. I wanted to know, how do you make money eron because you don't charge for any of your content And my parents always told me it was impolite to discuss money with people, But how do you earn a living?
Erin? So I don't charge for any of the content, but I earn a full time living from people who just want to become paid subscribers and support the work even though it's all free. So make a complete, full time living on Substack and also the platform TikTok YouTube. The platforms themselves pay out through creativity funds that they build out for creators, so they pay out through that as well, and that's kind of how I make a living.
But people are willing to pay for even free news because they support me and the work that I'm doing.
That's great.
You know.
It seems to me that there's been a lot of conversation about right wing media and how powerful it is. I interviewed Michael Tomaski. He's the editor of The New Republic, and he wrote in a piece quote, once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beach ball and the right wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media is the size of a volleyball, and the right wing media is the size of a basketball, which, in case
you're wondering, is bigger. Twenty twenty four was the year in which it became obvious that the right wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It's not just that it's bigger, it's that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treason as elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against
your son coming home from school as your daughter. Why do you think the right wing media has been so effective? And do you see this surge of media on the other side that is starting slowly but surely to counter some of the messaging right wing media is spewing on a regular daily, if not minute by minute basis.
Well, I think to the first point is because they got it right, like they know how to do. They know how to play the game right. So you'll have someone will put out a tweet saying that mister Potato has is actually transgender. That'll be the tweet that comes out. It'll get blown up on Twitter because Elon musk Quote tweets it. Then we'll Chamberlain on Fox News. We'll feature it during the day, then Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity
will talk about it at night. Then it'll be on Ben Shapiro's podcast and Megan Kelly's podcast the next day. They will talk about the same talking point across whether you are one follower or ten million followers, and they'll beat it as much as they can do.
They have this big editorial god who's sending them like talking points every day because Roger Ales used to do that at Fox News and they probably still do.
Probably, I mean, but they are so coordinated when it comes to messaging. If they want to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop, that's all you'll hear for days from everyone. And I think that's where they get it right. As far as whether it's kind of building on the left,
it isn't it isn't right. I think that there are definitely media kind of companies and media personalities that might as touched, for example, that are really doing great work on the left and they are building something really big there, But outside of them, I think where the left gets it wrong is that they're just looking to replicate what the right does. But you can't do that because the
messaging isn't the same. Because on the left, if you say talk about reproductive rights, and everyone talks about reproductive rights, you're not going to get everyone to talk about that. Someone's going to talk about climates, someone's going to talk about small businesses, someone's going to talk about like criminal justice.
You're going to be all over the place. And until you fix messaging, it doesn't matter whether you have one hundred million followers or a million followers or one follower, you're just not going to get anything across. So they are building I just think that they may be building it.
Wrong, building it wrong because they are not sticking to one message.
It's about messaging because they don't have a good message. Not necessarily sticking to one message, they don't have a good message that resonates with voters right now, So.
What should their message be.
I don't know. I mean, I am not in the position yeah make that decision.
That's above your pay grade. Well we don't know that, but it is above.
My pay grade. And I think that where I tell everyone, twenty twenty four was not a bloodbath. It was not an election landslide the way some on the right had painted it out to be. It was two hundred and ten thousand votes in three swing states. That was the election, And ultimately, if the election were held a month later, it could have swum. If election were held two months earlier,
it could have swam. I don't know. And I think to say that there is such a disparity between the right and the left right now in America, it's not fully accurate.
It just as there's sort of this massive swath of people in the middle too.
And there are a lot of young people who we need the left needs to get better at talking.
To, and also people need to help them understand the issues. Someone wrote in I know the rage gets clicks, but I'd like to see the Dems move forward with the plan. You know, we're talking about sort of progressive media, but
what about the Democratic Party in general? I mean, I know you're not a Democratic strategist, and I think it's important to delineate what you do and what sort of people who are coming up with, you know, talking points and sort of the ethos and the future ethos of the Democratic Party.
But what would you like.
To see more of come from Democrats and not just the people covering them.
Well, I'd like there to be a leader, right Like I'd like the Democrats to find a leader to unify around. That's number one. And whether that's someone like Pete Budhjed or Hakeem Jeffries, whoever it is, I'd like to them to find someone who has that voice that speaks for the party, because I don't think the DNC should ever be speaking for the party. It's more of just kind of inner party minutia that they decide. So I think the Democratic Party needs a leader number one, and then
number two. I think once they have a leader, what I would like to see is just like ordinated message on a few main issues. We shouldn't be hitting Donald Trump on everything he does, because he does so much stuff that if you're just hitting him on everything, you're never going to be able to put forth your own message on things. And so I think we need to find coordinated messaging on key issues, whether it be immigration
or form, reproductive justice, whatever it is. I mean, figure it out, figure out what polls well, I don't care, and just start hitting those and put forth your own agenda rather than just this we don't like Trump agenda.
Well it's interesting because I do see a lot more Democrats showing up on social media, talking straight to camera, telling people what's going on. But it seems to me there should be somebody who says, Okay, everybody today on social media, let's focus on this so in aggregate they could communicate their message and really get it across. Before we go, I wanted to ask you about the MPR lawsuit against Donald Trump and everything that good Lord is happening at heart. You know, as a lawyer, how do
you see all of this kind of shaking out? And do you think the judiciary is going to stand up for NPR and Harvard And if they do, do you think it will have any impact on what the administration does, because so far they don't seem to be paying a lot of attention to judges.
Yeah, I do, I mean, I really do trust our judiciary. I clerked for a federal judge who has confirmed one hundred to zero. Back when federal judges were confirmed unanimously and I saw the judiciary from the inside out, I really do have a lot of faith in the judicial process. It's slow, it's mainly focused on gridlock really and obstruction within, but that's mainly what the system is meant to do and meant to be, and it protects the American people.
And I think when it comes to NPR, when it comes to Harvard, when it comes to these lawsuits, I think the judiciary will rule in accordance with the law, and yeah, well, Trump will win on some grounds in some cases. I'm not saying he's going to lose every single case, but they will uphold the law. And I think that's ultimately what needs to happen. Trump is right or whether he is wrong, the law needs to be upheld.
And if they uphold the law and Trump chooses not to follow the law and play fast and loose with the law, then I think where the new judiciary needs to go is it needs to be more explicit. Donald Trump, with this whole Abrago Garcia Supreme Court debacle, the Supreme Court said you need to facilitate his return. They never said you need to get Kilmore back. They were very intentionally vague in the word choice of facilitate, because facilitate
could mean a number of things. And Trump is now saying, you know what, I am facilitating it. I am maybe we asked behind the scenes the government of l Salvador to bring him back or whatever.
And they're refusing, you know, yeah.
Exactly that. But that is facilitating in his mind. And by being intentionally vague, the last thing judges want to do is make precedent. I've learned that, and so they are intentionally vague to kind of allow for these legal maneuvers. And I think the judiciary needs to become more explicit in its rulings to prevent what happened with Killmore Brayogarcia from happening to NPR or Harvard or any of these other institutions.
Well, Aaron Parness, I have kept you over an hour and you've got a lot of news to cover, so I'm going to let you go. It's such a pleasure to meet you, Erin. I really appreciate your time, and keep up the good work, and thank you so so much for talking with me.
Thank you so much for having me. This is amazing.
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
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