MTracey podcast - "Worst podcast" March Madness tournament with Matt Taibbi

Episode Date: March 21, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mtracey.netI’m in Miami, and yesterday recorded this hot new “March Madness” tournament intro with Matt Taibbi, as well as a 2-hour discussion with Ben Swann — the guy who’s probably most responsible for popularizing “Pizzagate” in 2016, and recently claimed vindication, given how the Epstein Files prove Pizzagate, or something like that. Amusingly enough, the con…

All right, welcome to today's news, March Media Madness Edition. I'm Matt Taibi. Michael Tracy, at your service. We're both in New Jersey. I'm 695 feet above sea level somewhere to the north of you, I think, Michael. And we are doing, basically, we're crowning America's worst podcaster through a March Madness-style tournament because March Madness is now beginning, the real NCAA. tournament. And since this is what we do and everybody else is actually sportscasting and but just

pretending they're not, I figured we would just actually just do sports casting and make a bracket, putting all of our favorite or least favorite podcasters. We should do the whole thing in our sportscaster voices. John Starks for three, Mark, Marve Albert. Boya! I can't do that stuff. Have you ever called any kind of game or anything like that? Have I ever called a game?

No, Matt. No. Maybe I've ever reported on sports? No, not, not. I mean, not specifically, no. Have you? So, yes, I have been a professional sports writer in many different contexts. Oh, I didn't realize that.

I wrote for, you started for the Russian paper Sport Express. So I covered a lot of hockey once upon a time. There was one time where I wrote for a local little website right after I graduated college that just covered local news. And so I got dispatched to go cover the opening of a skating rink, like a skateboarding place. It was kind of cool. So I guess that might qualify vaguely as some kind of sports report.

I had to familiarize this up with skateboarding culture and whatever. That's at the very edge of the sports biome. I guess, you could describe it. But here, look, this is pro. This is March Media Madness. So we've narrowed it down to a round of 16. You can see the bracket here, and it's also going to be on racket. So if you want to look for all the matchups,

and we've divided it up into four different categories, regionals, just like they do in the real March Madness. The first one's called Conspiracy Buster. I prefer to call it, think of this as the Candace division. And they're also not really busting any conspiracies. They're more like propagating them. So maybe this is a bit of a misnomer category. Yeah, yeah.

We can just call it the Whitney and Candace. People will understand the message. People will understand. It's the conspiracy. Very intelligent crowd listening to us. Right, right. The average degree level of a racket subscriber is. masters and above.

So, look, part of the reason that we're doing this whole thing is that podcasts have become the driving force in American media. And what has happened since that took place, the news has just become more conspiratorial. And the leading voices in the podcasting world are the ones that are the most voluminously conspiratorial. So they may not always even be wrong about certain things, but they are certainly about dot connecting and finding the hidden meanings behind things without. Pattern recognition, like their own little Da Vinci Code adventure. Right, right.

And so the idea in this tournament, whoever's worse. What's so appealing about this is that if you're on this self-proclaimed Da Vinci Code style adventure where you're always on the. the lookout to decipher hieroglyphics and signals and what the next step and the quest will be, your audience can join in with you. So it's like an interactive adventure, which is what I think really bolsters the appeal for independent media because it fosters this kind of parisocial audience engagement. Yeah, we're all in on this together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we're all joining hands together and you can help me, I'll help you. Like we're going to achieve enlightenment as a team. So there's something, there's something, I mean, you can sort of empathize

with the appeal of that in a way. And that was what a lot of stations like MSNBC, well, Fox definitely, but MSNBC too tried to foster that whole idea of a collective purpose. And the other thing is, the other thing is every, every now podcaster who was previously in the corporate media, right, or the mainstream media. We have a category for them, but we'll... Okay, yeah, yeah, but like, you know, Megan Kelly, Tucker being, you know, foremost among them, but there are other examples.

Once they get into independent media and whatever guardrails, however flawed they might have been, that they were subject to at these more traditional media institutions, they get dismantled, right? And so they dive headfirst into this algorithmic incentive world, and that's what sweeps them into, this more conspiracist journalistic approach, let's say, if you can call it a journalistic approach. So it's something that vacuums up almost everybody, no matter what their pre-existing ideological tendency was,

which is sort of an interesting phenomenon unto itself that I haven't seen adequately theorized anywhere. And also another thing that's happening right now, you talk about the algorithmic incentives. There's a reason why all of these people who were formally complete opposites politically believed completely the different things are suddenly all in the same of the same basic belief set. They may be arguing about approaches, but there's the same basic stuff underneath. But let's just start with one matchup that I think is highly significant. I think the first one might even be the most interesting one. I shouldn't say that, but it's very representative of the entire dynamic. We have the two most popular podcasters in America in this bracket.

Now, one of them is in this matchup. Our first matchup is the number one seed of the Candace Division, of the conspiracy division, and that is Joe Rogan, who is still the most watched figure. in media right now. Biggest audience on the internet. Biggest audience on the internet. Not just in news, right? Not just in news.

Like, so you can sort of sort of sort of the rankings for top podcasts by news or entertainment or whatever. If you just look at the overall rankings, he's number one on the entire internet, right? Yeah. Candice claims she's tied with him. For overall audience?

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that's true based on everything I've seen. Yeah. Candice claims a lot of stuff. She claims a lot of stuff. So we have Joe versus Whitney Webb in this first matchup. So this is the top bracket in our tourney.

And so Michael, we're going to watch clips of both of them recently. And then you and I are going to try to come to a consensus about who goes forward. Gotcha. The guard deposited money into her account. I saw that. But that doesn't, what does that mean? Okay. Well, she also Googled his name before he's got.

All that's totally, it's like, let me, let me do it. Why are you dismissing? I don't understand why you dismissing this. Because if you're going to pay, but hold on, you are. But hold on, you are. Because if you do have a guard and all sudden this guard acquires several payments, she made several deposits. One of them was $5,000 just 10 days before he died. And then the cameras are cut.

Okay. And then they mysteriously don't pay attention to the cell of one of the most important defendants of any case, any gigantic public case involving enormously famous public figures. And then this guy hangs himself while he's on suicide war. Why would you put a guy who's one of the most high-profile defendants in any case ever in a cell with a hired killer who's a giant gorilla, like this huge fucking jacked Italian guy? The night Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him. New documents revealed Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him.

his cellmate tried to kill him in an incident before his death. Yeah, but we don't... Okay, but... We don't know that's true. Yeah. Profit involved, and there's power involved, and there's control resources involved. Most conspiracies, in fact, turn out to be true, you know? Right.

The more you dig deep, the more you realize, like, there's a concerted effort to make these conspiracies seem ridiculous because you don't want to be taken as a fool. Right. Right. I am a fool. Yeah, I don't anticipate Leslie Wexner, being arrested at any point. He is far too powerful and his money is everywhere. And honestly,

he has extremely deep ties to numerous officials in the Israeli government through his philanthropies. He focused pretty much the bulk of the Wexner Foundation on training up prominent figures first in the U.S. in the U.S. and the Jewish community in particular. And now those fellows, those Wexner fellows essentially run A-PAC. It has an extremely close relationship with A-PAC. It's possible he wasn't interested in the women. There's been rumors for a long time from local Ohio journalists that Wexner is not actually interested in women

and that his wife is kind of, you know, a beard, as it were. Interesting. Which is very possible because in some of these files, there are, I believe, allegations from one confidential human source alleging that Epstein and Wexner engaged in, relations themselves. And that, you know, has been alleged also, I mean, years prior by a local Ohio journalist that covered Wexner and Epstein for a very long time in the 1990s and early 2000s. All right. There are two issues I have with Joe, who I've always liked. I've been

in the show a number of times. But have you ever seen the movie Rounders, Michael? that's the Ben Affleck movie right close or Matt Damon Matt Damon yeah I have not seen it I know of it I remember like guys in college liking that movie I never saw it

okay so one of the It's like a poker movie or something right Yeah it's about no limit Texas hold them right And one of the rules is that the size of your stack in poker is as important as your cards right in other words if your opponent can't afford to take a risk, they will fold much faster than somebody who's got a gigantic pile of chips.

And what happens on Joe's show a lot, and most recently, I know this is not somebody that you like a whole lot, but with Michael Schellenberger, when Joe pushes back on somebody, it's like dropping all those chips on any other media figure. and they tend to back off, right, because they don't want to get in the wrong side of the biggest name and news, basically. But he's also, he's become presumptively sort of the voice of the alternative media, the reasonable alternative media, but he's taken a big jump toward this whole idea that everything is a conspiracy, and nothing is true. And for that reason alone, because he's believed more than other, maybe other contestants, I lean towards him being the more dangerous podcaster.

Michael, Joe Rogan versus Whitney Webb, who you got? Well, I mean, this is a tough call for me, actually, because I would have been instinctively inclined to just go with Joe Rogan hands down. simply by virtue of the enormity of his audience. But Whitney Webb has been so integral in sort of incubating this new ideology that's taken hold on so much of the online media, particularly because she's declared to have been this profit

with respect to Epstein, and that all her most tantalizing warnings have come true or been proven right after the release of the Epstein files. So there's actually a Britney Webb Joe Rogan crossover that I have been made aware of. This was from last month, and I sent in the clips, maybe we can show them, but there was a segment where

an old tweet of Whitney Webb was from April of 2020 went newly viral last month after the latest round of Epstein files releases. And somehow this came across the transom of Joe Rogan, or at least Jamie saw it, you know, burble up to the top of the out of the rhythmic slop heap and he passed it along to Joe. And in this tweet, Whitney Webb says something

to the effect of Leslie Wexner is responsible for the mass rape and trafficking of thousands of American children and yet he'll never be held to account or something like this. And Joe Rogan is shown this tweet from six years ago. And he's like, man, that Whitney Webb chick, she really knows where it's at. I mean, she's so prescient. She's like the most prolific of all the conspiracy there's the most well-read, the one with the most recall, the one that's the most quoted.

I don't know how she's so good at it. We're trying to get her on. I don't know how she's so good and what her background is, how she finds all this information, but she's always way ahead of all this stuff. Yeah, I mean, 2020? That's crazy. That's fucking way ahead of everybody. Crazy.

bro and so that's where my reaction got a little bit more serious about what Joe Rogan is up to lately because it's one thing if he's just doing the standard you know stone gab fest with some comedians and retired UFC guys or whatever and they're yapping I dug that yeah you know I'm I mean I've watched Joe Rogan for years on and off like he does great interviews when they're like entertainment oriented like there's a great interview he did a couple years ago with roger waters whoever and he he has the the poll where he can get people along his snowed and one was great yeah yeah he has the poll where he can get people to come on who like when podcasts were more of a novelty would never have otherwise sat for three hours in an unstructured

conversational format so i'm not totally disavowing joe rogan in every single respect i'm just pointing to an example from the from just like a month ago maybe where he's telling millions of people in his audience the biggest audience on the internet there's this unpunished child rape atrocity that this Whitney Webb chick predicted six years ago that's now been proven unassailably true by the recent production of Epstein files and that I keep saying is probably the most tail- made thing you can tell a mass audience that is likely to trigger something homicidal crazy, meaning if somebody's got a mental disposition towards some kind of instability or what have

you, if they hear this, it's something that's likely to sort of entrance them and incense them and tell them that they need to take some kind of homicidely crazy action to rectify the situation. Hence, not long thereafter, what happened? We had a 21-year-old guy who got obsessed with the Epstein files recently, probably had some predisposition toward mental instability and tried to launch an armed incursion into Mar-a-Lago, and then got shot dead by the security. Now, I'm not blaming Joe Rogan specifically for that, not saying he causally is responsible for that. I'm just saying he is like the prime mover in so many ways of this polluted information environment that all his, like, hangers on or people who want to emulate him in some way take their cues from, and they adopt his

worldview or epistemology that is heavily influenced by the Whitney Webb epistemology vis-a-vis Epstein, right? So I would love to pick Whitney Webb because I think she is like uniquely insidious in so many ways, just given her shockingly outsized influence on online media as it relates to Epstein in particular. And how I just like caught her making stuff up and then she claimed that, you know, she was stressed out. out that day on some podcast she was on. Yeah, she's like, I very rarely make mistakes. And then she lists like five articles where she fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like I had a baby recently. And so give me a break. But she also, she also not only went after you, but she went after Glenn for being part of the Peter Thiel owned conspiracy. That was triggered by me because like. Yeah, that was, it was you. It was triggered by me, but then she also went after Glenn because of something to do with like some feud they had 13 years ago over Pierre Omidyar.

Mediart and the Intercept. And it was a story that he definitely knows more about than she does. Like I was there. I was in this building. And I know that there were actually only two people who had access to that material. But whatever. So even if, you know, Whitney Webb is the source of this, like, radically fallacious claim that has now transmogrified into.

receive wisdom, that there's this child rape, you know, mass scale, child rape atrocity that's been covered up at the highest levels of government. And then, you know, lots of people are going to get the idea that they need to take it into their own hands to do something about it. Joe Rogan being the amplifier of it with the size of the audience that he's got, I think compels me to choose him here, even though I would love to see Whitney Webb advance very far in this tournament. Although I'm not even sure what podcast she has at this point. I know she's a frequent podcast guest. I mean, she's constantly appealed to show up on somebody's podcast.

It's like, you know, Christmas Day for them if these conspiratoids get her on their podcast. And then another thing with Joe Rogan is, yeah, I mean, I, just like anybody else, would vegetate in front of his podcast on psychedelics or on, like, the Lost City of Atlantis, or something to do with like some quack health. Boxing.

The Hagler-Herns fight. I love that one. I can't get myself that interested in. Really? Okay. But, you know, sometimes I'll, I have listened to his boxing or UFC takes just because I have no interest in those things, really, on my own. But if somebody is really interested in them and are like, have encyclopedic knowledge about them, then there's something sort of interesting about hearing them discuss it.

So, you know, I can dabble. But, you know, I think there was a big shift in 2024 when he came to, became the most coveted political endorsement in the entire country. Yeah. So. Right? And then he has Trump on his show for three hours. It's just an ass-kissing interview for the most part, where Joe Rogan does what he

typically does is in that he just, he just basically ends up agreeing with whoever he's talking to with a couple of exceptions here and there, like with Schellenberger. But for the most part, he simply just kind of absorbs the vibes of whoever. is in his presence and basically agrees with them, which can be a good strategy to conduct the conversation. But when you're talking about the eve of the election, when you have the Republican presidential nominee there, who had otherwise at that point in the campaign not really done very many properly journalistic interviews, but rather had this media strategy where they'd go to all these dopey podcasters or streamers, then, yeah, I do think that there was some obligation

for Joe Rogan if he's given that opportunity to do something that at least resembles a journalistic interview. Now, I know that I always have like the, the baked-in excuse, oh, I'm just a comedian, bro, or I'm a dummy, I can't do it. Like, no, Joe Rogan's intelligent enough that he could have done some kind of journalistic interview. Instead, he just kissed his ass the whole time. And now Joe Rogan's coming out saying, oh, Trump voters were betrayed by Trump going to war with Iran. I went back and listened to some of that interview. The only time Iran ever came up, this is like October of 2024, right, in that three-hour podcast, was Trump himself bringing Iran up on his own volition and claiming that Iran was trying to assassinate him and something had to be done about it.

And of course that flew right over Joe Rogan's head. So I think we're going to, this is going to be our first tiebreaker where we're going to need to use the magic gateball. So I am. And let me take a couple of things in order. Does she even, hold on, you know, point of clarification. Does she, Whitney Webb even have a podcast? It doesn't matter. Okay. This is my show. The rules are flexible. The rules are flexible. So, okay, first about Joe Rogan, like, I think it's actually a legitimate thing to just sit there and absorb the vibes of everybody. As long as you do that the same with everybody.

People do get some kind of information out of it. That's what his podcast has always been about. And he probably would have done the same thing with Kamala if she had come on. He doesn't really have, he never assumed. the you know any kind of pretensions to being a journalist he's never said that so I would give him a break but now now he does pile on to people when they're when he disagrees with them and he disciplines them in ways that he didn't before but all the same I think the issue is Whitney Webb like I'm personally afraid of her I think a lot of people in

in media are. Wait, what do you mean you're afraid? I just don't want to deal. Like, there are people I will mix it up with online. Oh, gotcha. She does have a very virulent cult. Yeah, she has a very, very virulent cult. She has a very long memory.

And she has limitless energy for what, for what has become the main exercise in journalism now, which is dot connecting, right? Like, Whitney Webb is the only person on Earth. So you're scared she could connect. few dots that might put you in an unfavorable light. No, no, I'm just, what are you in getting to here, Matt? I don't want to be, I don't, it's, this isn't about me, like me being afraid to deal with

Whitney Webb. Like, there's a lot of, like, she's in Chile anyway, so like, she can't. She is in Chile. I'm just saying, in general, what makes her fascinating in this particular moment is that she's the only person really who is equipped to do, to, uh, react to the current pace of theorizing and revelation. Like Candace comes close, but her creativity in creating new foes and conspiracies and groups and linkages is basically-

And blurting it out like a mile a minute so you can hardly even follow what she's saying. But like she has this assumption of authority for lots of people. Okay, so can I convince you that Whitney Webb is the more destructive and important person? She doesn't have the biggest audience on the internet, Matt. I know, but as you said, she directly or indirectly impacts pretty much everybody on the internet. I'm sticking with Rogan. So we're going to have to go to the crystal ball or the magic eight ball. All right.

Should Joe Rogan advance in this tournament? As I see it, yes. Ah, thank you. So Joe Rogan advances. Maybe we can swap out like a boring tournament. pick with Whitney Webb at some point in the future since we know we make the rules or you do and I'll convince you to just change the rules arbitrarily I just don't want to deal with having Whitney Webb like mass spamming me for the rest of my life

but well then why would you pick her then why would you like keep her front and center yeah I'm like I can't I mean I can't help it it's true right so I just think I think it's it's a fact but anyway okay we can do like you know how the NBA just launch that new sort of like mid-season tournament or like the whatever that tournament's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can like just throw in some like little ancillary tournament like that or like, like a runner-up tournament maybe. So Whitney can square off with whomever.

Yeah, we'll have the podcast cup later. Let's advance. Joe Rogan is the top seed. He continues to be the top seed in this practice. Congratulations, Joe. Correct. Congratulations Joe. Your hall of achievements.

But he is going to have one way or another a formidable opponent in the next round because our next matchup is Candace Owens versus Nick Fuentes. So let's roll tape. And the moment that Charlie was shot, I knew what happened to him was not random. Okay. He was betrayed. Charlie Kirk was the first casualty of the war in Iran. I'm certain of that.

And it's deeper than that. I am now of the opinion that he was likely sacrificed. And I want to see why I got there. You guys know if you're part of my book club, I've been doing a lot of research into Freemasonry. So I want you to note that in this Freemason Bible, it illustrates that a sacrifice must be made in the center of a Pentagon. That's a Pentagon, five sides, like a house.

And I thought, how curious that Charlie was indeed seated in the center of a Pentagon when he was killed. Let me demonstrate that for you. You can see that right there. The entire world is responding to Trump and saying, this is an illegal war, why are you doing this? And he is just saying, well, we're in a habit. This is what we do.

We just, we bomb Muslim children. Well, sometimes the black pillars know what they're talking about, okay? Sometimes they predict absolutely everything exactly months, years in advance. So we get the Epstein file cover up. All the files are redacted. Then we invade Minneapolis just to kill a couple of hippies and immediately surrender. Then Trump comes out in a press conference and says, lighten up. We don't need to deport all the illegal aliens, just the criminals.

Now we're in a regime-change war within Iran. Just when you thought it couldn't get any better in our golden age, Iran is fighting for all the goyam here. Because the open-ended question is, does Israel control the whole world? If Iran vetoes that, then the answer is no. If Iran falls, then the answer is yes. If Israel can destroy a regime that's fortified inside of a mountain behind thousands of missiles and proxies and a million soldiers,

well, they could get anybody and they can have anything they want. And if they can't, it means the world is still free. First of all, Nick Fuentes, we don't like to bring these things up, but there's a word in German, Beck-Fifeng gisicht. which means possessing a punchable face. Yeah, I don't like to bring that up because people often say that about me. And so I could easily get myself socked in the face if I started going around making that kind of comment about people.

All right. Candice or Fuentes, who do you have? This to me is Candice hands down. Yeah. I'm with you on this one. Let me just quickly give a partial defense of Nick Fuentes. or a semi-apologia of Nick Fuentes from this standpoint. Okay, as I've experienced him,

Nick Fuentes is actually like pretty intelligent and he's got some talent as a broadcaster. Now, so does Candace. But Nick Fuentes, you know, developed that talent through his own initiative completely, right? He was a total startup. He started out as this kind of like somewhat precocious, you know, teenage kid who started streaming and was definitely pro-Trump.

That was his whole identity. And he got himself into some hijinks that I definitely criticized him for and fought with him. Hitler is cool, that whole thing? I'm more thinking of when he became one of the Stop the Steel Stooges in 2020, along with his little sidekick Ali Akbar, and they went around basically fleecing despondent Trump voters to give them money with the idea that they could somehow switch the election. electoral votes in Georgia or whatever.

So that kind of stuff. And he was definitely an ardent and style work to an almost kind of like dead-end Trump supporter for a long time because that was central to his identity. That's how he got involved in US politics. And he is ideologically anti-Semitic, you could say, in that he's not even bashful about it. I mean, he has like, he has an issue with Jews,

qua-Jews, or he thinks there's something intrinsically, various about Jewish influence, not just Israel, not just somebody getting criticized unwarrantedly for criticizing Israel, right? And then they get tarnished as anti-Semitic. It's so sad that his openness on that front is actually a positive now. I mean, I think it is actually. If that's your actual belief, that you might as well just state it up front and let the chips fall where they may, right? That's true.