Bulwark Takes - Are There Risks to Traveling Abroad Now? (w/ David Pakman)

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Tim Miller speaks with David Pakman about his new book, “The Echo Machine,” and dives into the warnings David received from immigration lawyers about leaving the country as a naturalized citizen.

Don't miss the biggest Maytag sale of the year at Lowe's. You'll find the Maytag appliances you need, when you need them, at a great price. Plus, when you buy two select laundry appliances, you'll get up to a $100 bonus via instant rebate. Shop Maytag at Lowe's. We help. You save. Offer valid through 531. See store for pricing and offer details. Advertise savings on all major Maytag appliances through Maytag.com and participating retailers. Prices may vary. Additional terms and conditions apply. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. Hi, I'm Will, and I created IQ Bar to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. Millions of people rely on our protein bars and hydration mixes to win their day.

Turns out Thomas Keller, Michelin star chef of the French Laundry, is one of them. We've teamed up with Chef Keller to craft a bar and hydration mix that marry world-class flavor with exceptional nutrition. Our special edition salted caramel chip bar delivers all the decadence of a fine dining dessert plus protein minus sugar and carbs. And our zero sugar ymango hydration mix packs an authentic citrusy punch and a mental boost from lion's mane and magnesium. The best part? 10% of sales go directly to Chef Keller's nonprofit that supports aspiring young chefs. Great taste, great nutrition, great mission. Total no-brainer. Go to IQBar.com today and enter promo code KELLER20 to get 20% off all IQBar products plus free shipping. That's IQBar.com, promo code KELLER20.

Hey, guys. It's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. I am delighted to be here with, I guess we're calling it a fellow YouTuber. I'm still uncomfortable with the title, but maybe you're more comfortable with it. He's the author of The Echo Machine, How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America. It's David Packman. What's up, man? Good to be here with you. I want to get to the book. But first, you had a provocative video, maybe yesterday, titled, I've Been Warned, Do Not Leave the Country. And I want to be upfront. I was like, when I first saw it come across my feed, I was like,

okay, you know, like, let's not scare people unnecessarily. Like, I don't want to overdo it. I do plan to leave the country soon. And so I was like, we could do a funny video. And it's like, Miller, I do plan to leave the country for vacation. Like, you know, not, not really, not permanently. But as I watched it, I realized your situation is different from mine in a very meaningful way. And so I wanted to talk it through with you because I think that this is something that people are really kind of trying to process and do threat assessment on. And so I just figured we'd work it out. So for people who've not seen the video, give a little summary of why your situation might be a little unique. Well, I was not born in the U.S., so I'm a

naturalized U.S. citizen. I've had citizenship 20-something years, but this is a new world in which naturalized citizens have now been stopped and harassed or intimidated at the border, been asked and told to turn over devices. There was a story of a lawyer coming over, I think it was in Vermont, from Canada back to the United States, a crossing I've done, you know, 30 times growing up, going to Montreal to visit. And I have family in Canada that I visit. And so the casual warning I got from immigration lawyers who don't know each other, but they all know me, is I might not go outside of the country over the next couple of months. Hopefully things are not going to escalate

with these detentions. And I'm using the term detention, not as in you're suspected of a crime, but just, you know, at the border we're investigating, you're not free to go right now. Yeah. Um, and then if you do go make sure, you know exactly which lawyer you would call if you have a problem. Like, don't make it a sort of I want a lawyer because it's a different situation when you're crossing the border. It's know exactly who it is that you would call if that happens. And I think it's a reasonable sort of warning given what's going on right now. So, I mean, do you feel like are you adjusting your plans potentially? I mean, like, do you think that people should? I

don't know. I mean, you're getting, not everybody knows multiple immigration lawyers, you know? So like you've had those conversations after hearing from them. Your takeaway is that it's like a pretty legitimate thing to be concerned about for green card holders, naturalized citizens, you know, people. Yeah. And I would add, because I have such a public presence criticizing the administration, I do think that I'm at more risk than a random naturalized citizen, probably. And part of it is also like, you know, there's not really the capacity to do to every naturalized citizen reentering the United States what happened to these few people. So I think it's just sort of a, it's what I would call a low probability, but high impact event,

if something like this were to happen. And so I just want to have a plan. I don't know about adjusting my plans right now, but it's definitely something I'm talking about with my family. Yeah. You don't think, because again, like I just sort of processing this, like, and the shoes of most, well, not, you know, we've got a lot of foreign viewers on YouTube, obviously, but like for people that are born in America, American citizens, like at this point, they was hassled. There was the case we just we're talking about on another video about a kid in Arizona who's coming from New Mexico, but had kind of a learning disability. And there's there is a he said he said about, you know, with ISIS saying he said he was from Mexico seems preposterous. But, you know, like, so there are a couple of those situations. But like, for actual American citizens at this point, I guess I think it's important for people who do have the privilege of not having an acute concern right now, that they do not either A, feel like they're imprisoned, or B, more importantly, feel like they shouldn't go and speak out and go to protests and all that. Like, do you have a similar kind of threat assessment to that? Absolutely. And, you know, this is if you study 20th century authoritarianism, you start to see similarities, which is one is creating an environment in which people self-censor and say, I'm not going to go to a protest or I'm

not going to put my name to a certain statement publicly. And then the fact that people are doing that can manufacture the idea that there's more consent for those in power than there actually is, which further emboldens them to try and to get away with more. So it's the last thing that I would want to encourage people to do. Yeah, I totally agree with that. It's crazy that we're here though. Even having to have the conversation is kind of insane. I think it's having to have even having to have the conversation is kind of is kind of insane. I just I think it's important to have it in a and you're a very measured guy and measured way because I just on Fox the other day, Will Kane was out there going like these crazy people over at the Bulwark. Like they think that, you know, Lily from the Upper West Side is the Gestapo is going to bang down her door.

And I'm like, I'm saying like, no, like we don't, like you don't want to also give them that fig leaf to be able to like paint people as crazy. Like there's a broad actually consensus in this country from you to Joe Rogan. It's like, they shouldn't do that. They shouldn't be pulling people off the street without due process. They shouldn't be hassling citizens, right?

Unnecessarily. And the broader we can make that coalition, the better. I agree. And the other thing that I've also been kind of careful of is I'm very honest with my audience. When there is a slippery slope asserted incorrectly, I think it's really important that we recognize that. So like if we go back 10, 15 years and we think about the folks who were lobbying against gay marriage, who would say, you know, if two men can get married, next thing you know, people will be able to marry horses. And it's like, well, hold on a second. Horses can't sign contracts.

That doesn't make any sense. That's not a slippery slope that we need to worry about. That's a terrible argument. We are seeing- There are a couple throuples out there now. We are seeing here that it was supposedly so-called criminal illegals. And then it was, maybe it's anyone who's undocumented. Maybe it's visa holders. Maybe it's green card holders. Maybe it's naturalized U.S. citizens. So we're seeing a progression here that we didn't see with the marrying horses stuff. And so I think it's important to assert that as well. For sure. Okay. Let's get to the book. The Echo Machine. For folks not familiar with it, just give us a little Reader's Digest summary,

and then we'll get into it. Yeah. So three main points. You don't really need to read the book if you hear the three points, right? Okay. But you should get it anyway. Point number one, Trump is really a consequence or an end result. He's like the coal at the end of the rainbow rather than the catalyst for a lot of what's going on. So we trace that story dating back to opposition to the civil rights movement. That's point number one. Point number two, the dearth in critical thinking, media literacy, and epistemology is really a plague in the US that has significantly accelerated the ability of

misinformation and disinformation to spread. So it's sort of like advocating that we've got to put this stuff back in school curricula, probably when kids are like eight years old, seems like a reasonable place to me. How old is your kid? I got a seven-year-old. She's about ready for it, I think. I agree. And we actually look at, you know, in Finland, it's so depressing, but not only are the eight-year-olds good at critical thinking in Finland, their Spanish as a second language is so good that they can do the critical thinking class in Spanish. It's so depressing to see. I mean, it's just it's night and day what's going on over there. And then number three, that a lot of the problems that the U.S. is facing that we are often told we're too big of a country or too diverse of a country to solve these

problems. They've actually been solved in a lot of different parts of the world. And so it's sort of like a tour through political successes as well. Yeah. That's interesting because you broaden that out quite a bit beyond kind of just the right-wing echo chamber part and describing it like that. And I'm glad you did because i want to get to the right wing crazies in a second but like having done the research on this i've been looked at other countries you know when you're assessing the damage here like obviously some of it right is fox and you know the right wing echo echo chamber but is that some of it is also technology right like some of it is also cultural things right? Like some of it is also cultural things

that are happening in the country. So how do you, you know, when you're kind of reflecting on it, like how much do you point at those guys are bad and like how much is it other like bigger issues we need to resolve? It's a lot of other bigger issues. I mean, there's no doubt that I have a perspective and a political bias that's mine, but I'm really looking more broadly. I mean, just to give you one example, there's a Pew study I talk about in the book about whether people can distinguish fact and opinion. Cause even before we argue as to what the facts are, can we even tell whether we're talking about fact or opinion? And Pew did this study where it gave people 10 statements, statements like chocolate ice cream is the best, which we would know, of course, is an opinion. Most people agree it's an opinion. And like Democrats are slightly better

at figuring out the, in this study, the opinions versus the facts, but not really by that much, you know, it's like, it's clearly a country issue that we have here. So a lot of the, you know, the policy ideas I favor are certainly more associated with the political left than the right. But the problem is I diagnose it as a much broader than just a right-wing problem in this country. Yeah. The fact for us to be anything is funny. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who was, there is an increasingly familiar as a former Republican comment I hear from folks on the left who are consumers of media. They're like, oh, the mainstream media is terrible. They're out to get us. We have to push back on them. And there's areas where I agree with that and areas where I disagree. But an important part

of this is this distinction, actually, the opinion versus fact. I was saying to this person yesterday, I said, the New York Times, I might not love the way they handled Donald Trump, right? So I might not love all the opinions in the opinion section, but like they're reporting on the health outcomes in Africa. It's like pretty fucking good, you know, and David Pakman and Tim and, you know, we're not in bulwark and like, we're not, that's not in our remit, you know? And so we can't like totally throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I don't know, somebody who's like kind of in this is like an independent media person. Like, how do you sort of we're kind of losing, which is the investigative journalism, because it's much easier to sit in an office rewriting stuff someone else has done than to actually go out and do the work. So yeah, I think you can kind of do a critique that recognizes the influence of advertisers and the need for revenue, while at the same time

recognizing that there is investigative journalism that is difficult to do as an individual with no budget and no resources. And so that some of these legacy media outlets are also better positioned to carry it out. But at the same time, you might not agree with the editorial page. We need to be able to do a more kind of holistic critique of the environment and then layer on top of it how the salacious stuff is much more likely to be shared and reshared because of algorithmic reasons than a good piece of investigative journalism about something happening in the Congo, for example. So these are multiple layers to it. Yeah. What about, going back to the solutions, any of the ones that you go into cover the tech

side of it? I mean, obviously there's an education problem, as you mentioned. But, you know, to me, like having been in the right wing echo chamber for a while, I kind of was there as the Internet and the phones were emerging. Right. Like I had my first job in politics. It was like basically this conservative talk radio and Fox was around. But like the consumers of it they might have watched fox some it was kind of before the zombie fox watchers had really started um and they might have listened to rush but at night they watched dan rather you know or they watched a local news anchor and now those same people you know are fully subsumed by like a right wing ecosystem in their phone. And it's like, they're not getting any regular. And so to me, like the technology really

hypercharged this, you know, something that was like maybe a little problem in 1999 or whatever, there's like a big, big problem now. So anyway, what's your, what's your view of that? And are there any kind of technological solutions that have happened to other places that you think are interesting? You know, I delve into that a little bit. It's actually going to be essentially the total topic for my second book, which I'm starting to work on. So, you know, check with me in a year. We can work it out live. We can like, you know, we're sort of drafting it right now. There's, you know, this is another area where it's very easy for left and right to end up in algorithmic echo chambers. So, so there's a bipartisan aspect to that.

Yeah. More pointedly though, we did see in recent elections that that benefited the Republican party more in so far as narratives that were untrue, but beneficial to the Republican candidate did spread more on platforms, including Facebook and others. You know, that recent study in November found that TikTok was the only platform that was politically sort of 50-50. I think in terms of the politics, it was like 54-46 leaning to what are traditionally considered like more left-aligned views, but all the other platforms, like we know Facebook, if we're on it, we've seen what's happened with X, YouTube in Q1 2025, the left is actually growing more quickly, but that's the first time that that's ever happened. We know that most of these platforms really have been dominated by the right. And the

reasons for that, including the funding of it, I talk about extensively in the book. Yeah. So let's hear a little bit more. Well, if you go back to when the first the origins of right wing radio go back to religious groups starting to buy up low power FM and also AM licenses, which were then consolidated into right-wing radio networks. That, even though it feels very distant from like Turning Point USA and The Daily Wire and PragerU, it's sort of the inkling that first said there's a reason that it's a really good idea to pour money into this stuff. And what we're seeing now is that there's just no equivalent on the political left to what some of these networks have been able to build. And they've done it straight through. Like this is pre Reagan throughout Fox launching in 96. And then some of these new on campus and online groups, they're just more willing to fund it where for whatever reason.

And it's sort of a topic maybe for its own discussion. The left has not been willing to pour money in in the same way. Yeah. So when you kind of assess then the problem of what is happening on the right, I mean, we're not we're not going to be able to unwind it. Right. And as you're kind of alluding to, the left or the pro-democracy movement, whatever you want to call it, could build their own echo chamber. And there's value in that though it's not a solution in itself right uh and so like is there a puncturing what do you think about the idea of puncturing their echo chamber and maybe unfortunately maybe that is unpleasant but something that is the is something that people should do i mean pete i saw pete budaj was on this andrew schultz kind of bro podcaster today, I think it was, or yesterday. And, you know, I already saw it like,

while I was like, you know, sitting in traffic, I already saw on TikTok, like some lefty TikTok are like criticizing Pete for going on that. Right. And so, you know, there's, I think, a genuine view maybe from some people people like you shouldn't do that. Like that is only helping their echo chamber. That's only validating it. On the other hand, if it's like going to exist and it's creating all these problems, like maybe that's the best of the bad solutions. I don't know. What make you of that question?

I tend to lean towards the latter. And I think actually the key is, you know, we kind of have like a pretty low glass ceiling in the overtly political space because no matter how many of us do the overtly political thing that we're doing, a lot of the country just doesn't consume this type of content. They're not going to consume the overtly political podcasts or watch the overtly political YouTube shows. So actually reaching the, what I call blue coded sociocultural spaces is critical. When Trump showed up and did the NELC boys for however many hours he did it, he told a lie every 15 seconds, but it did not matter because it was unstructured and authentic in a way that resonated with people and did much more to help him than the fact that he

told four lies a minute did to hurt him. Cause that was sort of like already baked in. And a lot of these spaces have become red coded. If you go on Tik TOK, if you're looking up how to wholesale houses or how to be a better car salesperson or fitness stuff, 90% of it is red coded where it might not be overtly part of the subject matter, but it's like, these are kind of right wingers. They're sort of loosely in the magosphere. The left needs that. And I don't know exactly, you know, I'm in an overtly political space, so I don't know exactly who does it, but I think that that's critical. Could not agree with that more. What do you make of the Gavin strategy? I think slightly different than what I was saying with Pete, because he's hosting people

on his own platform. You know, my reaction after the first episode was, I don't know that I totally understand the play, even if the idea is to set himself up as more moderate for a 2028 presidential run. Like, let's assume that that's what it is, which many of my viewers believe that it is. I don't know if what there is to gain by hosting Charlie Kirk in a sort of pseudo-friendly manner and conceding quite a bit. I don't know if the moderates he will gain will supersede what he stands to lose. Since that first episode, I'm now sort of open to the idea that maybe he does know what he's doing.

I just don't know. You know, I have to acknowledge. Nobody knows what they're doing is a pretty good baseline. Maybe no one knows what they're doing. Right. As someone who's in this space, I acknowledge that my view on how the average voter will be affected by this stuff is probably completely warped. So I'm open to the idea that this is potentially a disaster and potentially brilliant. What do you think is the most pernicious thing in the right wing echo chamber of the time that you spent analyzing it? Well, I think it's the speed with which the mis- and disinformation

spreads completely uncritically and the complete lack of a desire to correct it, where I don't want to pretend that the left goes out of its way to correct everything that facts were just wrong or like they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, that that whole thing. They just kept going with it no matter how much the facts pointed in another direction. No, it starts to become funny, actually. They start to become like it's like a knowing joke, wink and nod for the content creators where they will keep saying the lie, wink. And like the consumers, my assessment is like maybe half of them are in on the joke and like half of them still think it's real or maybe worse than that, honestly. That's right. And then they also vary – when we would send correspondence to Trump rallies during the campaign, Luke Beasley was one that would do it. He would ask people, hey, what's your reaction to

when Trump said if he decides he should suspend the constitution that he should be allowed to do it? They'd go, he never said that. And he would be ready. He would pull out the Troth Central post and show it to them. And they would go, no, that's clearly Photoshopped. That's been doctored. You just could not get through. You could not get through. Do you have, if you want to know what's happening in the echo chamber, do you have a favorite? Do you have a guilty pleasure in the echo chamber? You know, I really don't.

No guilty pleasures. I don't consider myself a connoisseur. Yeah, got it. Okay. You know, when Jordan Peterson breaks down sobbing over either a misunderstanding or something completely inconsequential, maybe that would be the guilty pleasure. It is fun to watch Jordan Peterson cry.

All right. I think that's a good place to leave it. David, thanks for popping on. Everybody go check out the book, The Echo Machine. And, you know, check out his YouTube. And, you know, we'll be chatting. Thank you.