No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Tucker Carlson caught making fatal mistake

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

Tucker Carlson’s secret anti-Trump texts are exposed, resulting in him pandering to Trump on air. Brian interviews Media Matters CEO Angelo Carusone about the company’s complaint against Fox with the FEC, and a campaign to prevent Fox from being able to charge sky-high carriage fees that fund their network. And the writer of "The Holler" newsletter, John Russell, who’s on the ground in East Palestine, joins to discuss how Norfolk Southern has lied about the cleanup, who the residents blame, and how they reconcile supporting a party that’s also pushed for deregulation that leads to derailments like this one.Fight back against Fox: unfoxmycablebox.comShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson's secret text being exposed and what he's doing to pander to Trump as a result. I interview Media Matter CEO Angelo Carousone about the company's complaint against Fox with the FEC and a campaign to prevent Fox from being able to charge sky-high carriage fees that fund their network. And I'm joined by the writer of the holler newsletter, John Russell, who's on the ground in East Palestine, to discuss how Norfolk Southern has lied about the cleanup, who the residents blame, and how they reconcile supporting a party that's also pushed for deregulation that leads to derailments like this one. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So this past week, you heard the major news that thanks to the Dominion lawsuit,

Tucker Carlson had sent some pretty revealing texts about Donald Trump during the whole election theft saga. He said, quote, we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait. I hate him passionately. I can't handle much more of this. And so those texts were revealed, which was damning for both Tucker and Trump onto itself. But what happened next is what I think is pretty telling. because now, coinciding with the release of those texts,

suddenly Tucker's been going all in on this effort to rewrite the history of January 6th in what is like the most transparent and unconvincing way possible. So Tucker's claim here is that January 6 wasn't an insurrection. Here's a quick clip. But the tape that we reviewed from within the building on that day proves it was neither an insurrection nor deadly. And so his position is that it wasn't an insurrection

because what the January 6 committee did, show you was all of the instances where the insurrectionists weren't destroying the Capitol. And I feel like I'm living on a different planet. Showing a video of when someone isn't trying to hang the vice president doesn't invalidate the video where someone is trying to hang the vice president. Like they don't cancel each other out. If you killed your family, and sorry to be morbid here, but bear with me on this one, if you killed your family and it was all caught on video and then you went to trial and you

were like, Your Honor, here's video of me with my family from a vacation where I'm not killing them, what do you think the judge would say? Okay, you're right, case dismissed. You showing evidence of not committing a crime doesn't negate the evidence of you committing the crime, which is obvious, right? This is embarrassingly unconvincing by Tucker, which begs the question, why would Tucker do this? What's the point of an exercise that is so laughably weak? And there are two things that I can think of. First, because the right traffics in overt disinformation and normalizing political violence and manufactured outrage. And so what does Tucker have to lose by trafficking in it some more?

It's insane. And so everyone will talk about it. And in the attention economy, that's worth a lot. And beyond that, there's also people who think that he's telling the truth. Like, was January 6th a tourist visit? Not a chance. Are there people out there who want to believe that it was? Of course.

Does Tucker show give them a permission structure to be able to believe it? Absolutely. But the second thing is that he was caught talking shit on Trump. And Tucker himself said, based on that dominion filing, what he's good at is destroying things. He is the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong. And so this right now is Tucker's penance.

This is Tucker cowering at the feet of a guy who he himself admitted has the power to destroy him. And he's promoting the very narrative that Trump hinged his entire identity on now, which is that the election was stolen and January 6th was warranted because it was a righteous effort to rectify a massive fraud on the American. people. And of course, that's all bullshit. Trump knows it's bullshit. Tucker knows it's

bullshit. But that's the story that Trump is selling. And so because Tucker got caught, now he's helping Trump sell his story. And I'll tell you what, I don't think we'll ever see Trump lash out at Tucker like he does with all the other people who wrong him because Trump knows that he's got power over Tucker now. And he also knows that Tucker's being a good little soldier. And so as long as he'll do his bidding, which he's doing, then Trump's got no reason to destroy him. Trump's got leverage now and he's perfectly content to use it. And just taking a step back, it's amazing here how all of these power dynamics revolve around these politicians and these media personalities, all the while the losers in all of this are their viewers and supporters. All of these people, you know, from Tucker to Trump and everybody in between, they're all just making devil's bargains left and right to protect themselves.

But the people who get fucked are the suckers who trust them, who believe that they're being told the truth. When in reality, the power brokers here, the gatekeepers are just a bunch of millionaires and billionaires looking out for themselves and their own interests. With the irony here being that their marks, their victims, will never know any better because the only people those people trust enough are the ones doing the lying in the first place. That's the tragic part in all of this. So just like Tucker promoted the January 6th truth or stuff to protect his ratings and his profits, he's now doubling down to protect himself from Donald Trump. At no point does what Tucker do serve anyone but Tucker. And yet, that's how the right-wing media ecosystem works. With the biggest losers in all of this being the people

cond into trusting that network in the first place, which is, I think, a fitting transition into my interview with Media Matters, President Angelo Carousone. Now, we've got the president and CEO of Media Matters, Angelo Carousone. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. Now, Media Matters has filed a complaint against Fox with the FEC. So first, can you explain what happened here and also what you hope to accomplish with the FEC?

Sure. I mean, basically what happened is according to the filings and Rupert Murdoch's own acknowledgments, you know, during deposition, his own sort of validation. He said he did this thing. Basically, in the 2020 election, in the right before election day, so late October 2020, the Biden campaign bought a, you know, a series of advertisements of which some of them were on Fox. which meant that Fox had confidential advertising information, so the nature of the ads, maybe where they were being purchased, when they were being deployed. So it's about essentially ad strategy. And what Rupert Murdoch said he did is that he says that he took the advertisements and he shared it with Jared Kushner, who was not only Trump's son-in-law, but he was also a senior advisor to the Trump campaign. And we filed an FSC complaint because that's illegal. And it's pretty clear. It's not even up for debate. So the law is really,

obvious here. It says that corporations can give contributions to these campaigns, so that's the first thing, but it says that contributions are not just money, that a material thing of value also counts as a contribution. And then the third thing is they've determined over the years that advertising, information about advertising, an advertising strategy is considered a thing of value. So our FEC complaint lays out what Rupert Murdoch says he did. lays out what the FEC sort of law is, and it says that, you know, what the FEC needs to do is do their investigation and apply the maximum penalty that's allowable. And what do we hope to accomplish? Well, the incredible thing about this is that unless someone actually nudges the FCC for these

types of actions, they don't really do it proactively. So we were getting the ball roll, and I think what we're trying to accomplish is, one, another small sliver of accountability, but a big picture, the way I sort of see what's come out of the Dominion filings and all these Dominion revelations is that it doesn't just begin and end with defamation about Dominion. I see this is sort of the beginning of a cascading series of consequences for Fox, for the Murdox, and this is just another layer of that cascade. Angelou, Fox will likely point to the press exemption as their defense for this. Why doesn't that apply here? It doesn't apply here for a couple reasons the clearest example and this is also been determined that this is one not a public

action uh this was confidential information so it's not that they were reporting on the ads or or doing anything in their news capacity they were acting in their corporate capacity when they took confidential information and shared it exclusively with the campaign so you know there's other parts of the law that are really technical and convoluted that also sort of undermine that but a big picture, it's that the press exemption doesn't apply. And that's likely what they will point to you. They'll say, and I think it's important to consider this press exemption piece too, because they're making this argument broadly in their defamation case. And they seem to think that because they call themselves a news operation, that because they, even if they were a news operation, which they're

not, but they seem to be making the argument across the board in their defense with Dominion, in this FEC issue, that because they would. purport to do news, they get to basically break the law, break the rules, and the rules don't apply to them. And that's simply not true. You can be a news network and still defame and still engage in slander and still say things that you're liable for. And the same thing here. You could be a purported news operation and still take confidential information and offer an illegal contribution to a campaign. And I think that's the ultimate irony here is that this whole time Fox is hiding behind this claim of newsworthiness. But in reality, the only reason any of this was

actually newsworthy, so to speak, is because they were putting this stuff in the news. They were putting these lies in the news. So it's kind of like this circular logic where they just introduce these lies into the cycle and then point to the fact that these lies are in the cycle as evidence that they can continue reporting on them. Rupert Murdoch agrees with you. And in fact, during the deposition, he acknowledged that his network wasn't just providing a platform for others to talk about this, which would, you know, which is what in theory a news chat. channel would do and that would help their defense. He actually went so far as to say exactly what you did, which is that his host, his channel endorsed the lies, they were promoting them, that they were

more than just providing a platform and they were active participants and distributing them. Yeah. What enforcement ability does the FEC have if Fox is found to have violated FEC law as the result of this complaint here? Like what's the best case scenario for us in terms of what can happen to Fox? So, I mean, big picture, you know, it depends. What's incredible about this is that there's no clarity as to what the penalty could be because what ends up happening is they do an investigation. We don't know how much information was shared. We know that Rupert Murdoch talked about sharing this advertisement. And the other piece of it is what was described as confidential debate information. And beyond that, what ends up happening is the FEC that sort of unpacks this.

they get a full scale of what was actually involved, how much information was shared. And then they do a second piece, which is to value it. So they say, how much if you were to pay for this would you spend? Would you spend millions? Would you spend a couple thousand dollars? And then they essentially use that as their baseline to then assess the penalty. And they would do some multiplier depending on the value. What I would say is if you don't need to be a political scientist or a media expert to know that a few weeks before an election,

a now presidential election, having the inside scoop on what your opponent is going to run in their advertisements and when they're going to run them and how they're going to run them is awfully valuable. And so, you know, the penalties could be significant. But I also think more important than that, and this is the part that I think really is worth keeping in mind here with all this dominion stuff, is that everything here is so explosive. All the information we're hearing about the host, all this stuff, even with this illegal contribution thing, that's one sliver. This is only about, we only have a key whole view into what Fox has been doing behind the scenes. We're only looking at what they did in relation to dominion in the election. So what I would say is the

FEC could in theory uncover so many other illegal contributions. And I think that's always been the case with Fox. The corruption is always much more deep once you start to peel back the layers. Yeah. The only reason we know any of this is because they're contending with a $1.6 billion lawsuit, but this stuff has been going on forever. I mean, we know what Fox is just based on these behind the scene texts right now. And so the idea that this is just like some brand new phenomenon that just popped up is assinine. I mean, this is, this is all the evidence you need that this is what Fox does. We only know about it now because of this lawsuit, but this is, this is why Fox exists as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. That's exactly right.

I mean, in fact, it literally is when Rupert, when Roger Ells, who is the co-founder of Fox, wrote his memo describing what Fox News was going to be. One of the parts of it was essentially saying that they needed to create a news network, a cable channel, to make sure that what happened to Richard Nixon, of impeached Republican president, never happens to another Republican president, that another Republican president could never be forced out of office. And that happened. Fox did its job with Trump, right?

I mean, they made sure that despite all the consequences he was able to, retain his power during his presidency, to your point is that's what Fox was. It was always designed to be an appendage of the larger, of a Republican partisan interest. It wasn't really ever designed to be a news network and it's never operated that way. The irony of that, though, is that they've made this person, in Donald Trump, for example, so powerful just by virtue of running defense for him, every single chance they get that now when you have someone like Tucker Carlson, who based on his newly revealed text, we know, was saying, you know, I can't wait until we get to stop talking about this guy. I hate him with a burning passion. Like, he created Donald Trump. That network created

this, like, invincible persona. And so, like, the irony of them complaining that they, that they are forced to talk about this guy who has, like, endless power on the right is just, is just so amazing because Donald Trump wouldn't be Donald Trump without Fox News. It's true. Just moving forward a little bit, You know, a couple years back, you and I did an interview where we discussed unfox my cable box, and that was a way to actually fight back against Fox. So first, can you explain what that campaign is for those who, you know, didn't watch that interview back, I think, it was in 2020. So the dirty secret about Fox and why they seemingly are able to get away with so much

of their extremism, their white genocide promotion, all of the wise, is that the dirty secret is that they don't need commercials. So because you don't need advertising, they don't have to think about whether or not their products are going to appeal to advertisers, which is how most TV channels make their money. They could have $0 in ad revenue and they would still have a 90% profit margin. And the reason for that is that Fox News is the second most expensive channel on everybody's cable bill. ESPN is number one, which makes sense. But Fox News being the second most, almost as if you, almost as much as you would pay for like an HBO, that doesn't make any sense. And the way that that happened is about a decade ago, Fox decided to sort of the way they

leveraged their audience to get them to, you know, drive and infect our politics. They whip their audience up into a frenzy and their audience actually lobbies cable companies. They think they're doing it to protect Fox, but actually Fox is secretly raising everybody's cable bill. And so over the years, they've slowly become super expensive. And what that basically boils down to is two things. One, guaranteed revenue. It doesn't matter how many people watch their channel, how many advertisers they get. They will always get a set amount of money because it's guaranteed to come from the cable companies. And two, we all have to pay for it.

If you have cable, you pay for Fox News. And right now, they get about $2.30 to $2.50 a month from everybody in the country that has cable. That's 90 million people. That's a lot of revenue. And so what on Foxxon CableBox was designed to do was to say, look, cable companies. One, why are you making all of us overpay? Not just pay, but overpay for Fox News. Fox News is probably two to, we're paying two to three times market rate for Fox. And that would change a lot if they were just getting paid the market rate. So the campaign was designed to just do,

as Fox does these negotiations, to leverage the fact that there are consumers, way more consumers. There are 90 million customers, 87 never watch Fox, 3 million watch Fox, everybody's paying for it. to say, hey, stop raising our bill, don't make us pay the Fox fee. And when we talked, Fox was gearing up to do renegotiations, but obviously what they didn't have at the time was they didn't have their renewals yet with the NFL and the COVID was still sort of like out there. So they had all these considerations. And they signed a bunch of extensions. And we got a bunch, your, your audience signed up. A lot of people signed up. And we hadn't had a chance to have a fight until recently just a couple months ago and we actually had our first big fight over a renewal

fee with fox right before christmas and so how'd that go it did not go very well for fox um and uh the company was direct tv uh and there were 13 000 direct tv customers through the unfox my cable box campaign that called direct tv in the 24 hour period where it mattered the most fox was threatening to turn off access to a bunch of high profile sports at the time and they they lost direct tv said no we're not going to budge we are we are getting more calls from non fox people our customers telling us that they don't want to pay the fox fee because fox didn't just want a renewal fox wanted to go up by another 70 cents to a dollar i mean they really are trying to get big increases here um and it's the first time ever that the murdox

and fox ever lost a renewal fight um it if you just look at what the impact is like let's put money on it somewhere between $4 and $450 million of guaranteed revenue that they were hoping to get was just gone because of the work of the people that were participating in the Fox My Cable Box Campaign. And just as one more little thing, because I really just want to note that is that when we talked, your audience, that interview had generated like probably the single largest concentration of sign-ups to the Unfox My Cable Box Campaign. So it is especially important for the people that are your viewers and your regulars to know that they made a really big difference. And we don't waste people's time. We don't spam them. Like, basically, we only emailed

the people that signed up that said they had direct TV. Like, we weren't trying to even like cook the books or manipulate the numbers. We always said is, look, tell us what cable body you have or your family has. When the renewal and the renegotiation comes up, we'll send you instructions on what to do and when it's going to matter the most. And if you do it, we promise it'll work. That's awesome. And And it's really like cool to know that, you know, there's so many of these campaigns where you just kind of feel like you're shouting into the ether and that nothing actually comes from it. But, you know, a lot of people signed up for that. That's one of those few videos that I've done that kind of stays evergreen. And I'm constantly getting people commenting on that and saying, we just signed up.

We just signed up. So to know that there's like some tangible impact from that is pretty cool. So with that said, I mean, that campaign is obviously still going. Yeah. But also, when is the next negotiation on carriage fees for Fox? because that's going to be the big question that people are going to be wondering here. That is.

And this has actually got a really funny answer. So in theory, it should be in April and it should be Verizon. But I have a feeling that may not happen. Maybe it will. And the reason why I laughed is because April is when the Dominion trial for Fox is going to start. I'm not sure they want to do renegotation with Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson are on the stand. Maybe. But my hunch is that they might try to kick the can a little bit,

but maybe they'll try to speed it up and get it over with. But if all goes according to plan, it'll be sometime in April. And what's nutty about this is this stuff has always been very hard to sniff out. It's always done in sort of secret, very fast. You know, nobody likes their cable company for a reason, you know. And there's, but in this case, they are an important part of this because they are the single biggest enablers. Look what happened with One American News when they lost their cable providers. They really lost their ability to be destructive because they didn't get that revenue.

Box is in a similar position. And they're obviously weak right now, not just because of the public pressure, but their own audience is kind of mad at them. So there's a unique moment here. So if it happens, it'll be April. If not, it will be shortly thereafter. But just for everyone's awareness, all of these renewals have to happen over the next eight months. You know, they don't have the ability to push the timeline anymore. They've run out of their ability to get extensions.

And even today, Lockland Murdoch was giving a speech in San Francisco and he was talking about subscriber fees, carriage fees, their renewal plans, and really trying to get, you know, investors, big shareholders, the industry to sort of feel like Fox News is confident about these renewals, even though so far hasn't been going so well for them. Yeah. And I would just reiterate again, like, if you recognize how, for those watching, if you recognize how destructive Fox has been and will continue to be, just, you know, take a few minutes to just sign up for this. And when that email comes through, depending on who your cable provider is, just take the moment that it takes to,

just make a quick call. I mean, these things obviously matter. And if we have more people calling from our side than they do defending them on their side, then that'll make a big impact here in terms of these renewals and carriage fees. Angelo, do you think that this lawsuit will have any impact as far as these carriers go? Like, do you think that Fox's garbage behavior basically gives these carriers more leverage to be like, you know, screw you. We're not paying you on par with ESPN just to spew right-wing disinformation to people? Yeah, you hit the nail on the head here. You know, when we were gearing up for this campaign, too, we did a lot of work talking to cable executives, former cable executives who've done these negotiations.

And the one through line, no matter which entity we talked to, was that they all dislike the Murdox, not on a personal level, but because the Murdox lie about them too. They always run these campaigns called Keep Fox, and they say, you know, your cable company is trying to censor Fox News and take it away, which they never. ever are, but they lie and get their audience whipped up into a frenzy. And look, these are all business people. The end of the day, this is about money for them. And the Murdox have always been able to leverage their audience and use a bunch of other heavy-handed tactics to force these cable companies to pay a lot more than they wanted to. And so in a way, this is a chance for some comeuppance, where the cable companies, you know, everyone will use it in their interest, just like the My Pillow guy. You know, he runs ads on Fox News now, but he's getting a,

a better rate because he knows that there's very few advertisers and then they need them more than ever. So everyone will always take a little bit of leverage. And for this, this is a pretty significant piece of leverage. And I do think that cable companies, you know, everyone's cord cutting. So they have to, they're sort of racing the clock too. And, you know, they have a really strong reason to do it and that public pressure against them hurts. And the other thing is dropping the veneer of journalism, you know, when it feels like you're doing this against something that everyone is now calling a political operation, it does make it a lot easier because it can't seem like they're punishing a news outlet. Now, that's always been a sensitivity. Right. That's a great

point. And we know based on the email that Brett Bear sent out, for example, when he said, oh, we should just, you know, forget about the blowback. We should just pull Arizona from the Biden column and put it into the Trump column. I mean, Brett Bear, Brett Bear is their straight news guy, right? Like, so if that veneer of legitimacy is gone, then what does Fox have left to point to? If Brett Baer is the same as like Sean Hannity when it comes to this stuff, then you have nothing to hide behind in terms of calling yourself a legitimate news outlet. That's exactly right. That's it.

No, obviously a big problem here, and this is just more on the political side for you, but a big problem here is that you want Fox viewers to know that they're being lied to, but the gatekeepers to reaching those Fox viewers are the liars themselves. And so have you found that there's any effective way to get through to these people who were otherwise, like, being shielded by the Sean Hannity's and Tucker Carlson's and Laura Ingrams and Maria Bardo's? So, I mean, the truth is there's a very large segment of the Fox audience that they, it's not that they want to be lied to. It's that they've made a decision that the ends justify their meets. Because for them, Fox lies for political power

for some greater purpose. And so for them, it's like, yeah, of course they lie because we're trying to win, right? And so if that's what it takes to win, fine, I'll take some lies. That's said, there's a difference between lies and betrayal. And some of the things that we've seen in these messages are betrayals, to the audience, to the people, to the ideology. And it is really hard to reach them. Like, they are in a bubble. But what I would say is that some of these betrayals, and it's already beginning to filter out. So, you know, Tucker really ripping on Trump, it's not just expressing outrage about one instance, but really basically showing his true colors about how much he didn't like him or, you know, how much of these Fox hosts

deriding their audience and complaining about how their audience is forcing them to cover certain things. What ends up happening, though, is that other right-wing hosts, other personalities are pointing to this as evidence. Because remember, these are all media figures. They're competing for audience, right? And so there are people right now, including former Fox hosts, that are talking about how Fox News actually hates the Fox News audience. And so they're going to end up being the messengers for this. And I'll make one more point. All we have right now is written text, right? We had that before the Alex Jones trial too. But when Alex Jones was on stand and there was that video and that visual of him talking about these things, it reached a much different

audience. To me, I want the Fox audience to see this now and to hear it. But what I would just note is that there will be a trial. There will be Tucker Carlson on stage, having on stand, having to account for the things he said. And that stuff is going to be a lot harder to keep outside the bubble and away from Fox people as well. So I do think that's going to be a little bit of a slow burn. There are a lot of a lot of them that won't care, but the point of an echo chamber and a bubble is that it's a bubble. And once it bursts, yeah, you still have all the consequences. It's still a bit of a mess, but it doesn't create that same insulation. And I would say I've been doing this a long time that this does feel like a real significant, you know, fulcrum and pivot point

in our democracy, in our media culture. Well, on that exact point, and we'll finish up with this, you know, Fox has long had a credibility crisis with people outside of that bubble that you were referring to. Do you think that this time has any staying power in terms of it being different? Or at the end of the day, like, Fox has always been a propaganda outlet and just getting this confirmation from these Fox host

based on their text isn't actually going to change anything. Like, which, how do you think Fox comes out of this? Do you think it's going to be just more of the same and just the people who knew what Fox was are going to continue knowing what Fox was? Or do you think that there is some degree of like, okay, maybe Fox had plausible deniability before because there was an ever overt evidence like we have now? And so you'd have the other news outlets, the NBC's, ABCs, CBS is kind of like rallying behind them because they had the occasional Brett Baer.

But like now that we know, do you think that there's going to be any difference here? Do you think it's going to be more of the same? Yeah. So I think that, and I am not just saying this because I feel like I have to. I really believe that this is a moment where the assessment of Fox and the language around it will change. And it's going to require additional nudging to make sure that that sticks, that people don't just change what they say, but change what they do, which means you have to start treating Fox the way you treat Info Wars, the way that you treat places that you know are disreputable. So like, and I think the President Biden, before all this came out, demonstrated that when he didn't, when he didn't do a pre-super Bowl interview with Fox News hosts, right? So, and that was before any of this was revealed, it had started to change. And I'll just give one anecdote. I remember back in 2009, the Obama administration very early on had, they just said that Fox News was a little bit biased toward the administration and had more. the news media rallied around Fox and just defended them.

The same people that were defending Fox News then, the same people, I could point to them, are calling Fox News a political operation today. And that is a really big evolution on the part of some of these more establishment media figures. So, yeah, I do think that it will create. It's definitely changed the way they talk. We have to make sure it changes how people interact.

In the short term, though, I will warn that Fox News is going to burn brighter and hotter. that's the other part of the takeaway here is it's very clear that they do not have a path forward as a business unless they burn brighter and hotter and try to capture and keep and do everything possible to keep that audience. And so they will be scarier, but in a way that's going to help our case. I don't want that to happen because the consequences are real. But Fox is going to burn brighter and hotter. And I do think the rest of the media will start to see and talk about Fox News differently. Yeah. Well, and I think it's important to remember, too, that they're not doing

this from a position of strength, they're going to be doing this from a position of weakness. And that's just a testament to the fact that, you know, they are against the ropes here. And these revelations are hurting them. And hopefully with these carriage fees, fights that they're going to be contending with in the next eight months, that can have like a real tangible impact here. So we'll put the link in the post description of this video. Angelo, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. And thanks everyone for your participation. Okay, now we've got John Russell. He's a reporter. He writes a newsletter called The Holler. John, thanks so much for taking the time. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Brian, excited about it. So you've covered the situation in East Palestine extensively.

More Perfect Union, who I've worked with in a number of videos, they just released a collaboration with you to kind of go in detail on what happened there with the train derailing. You're also from that area in East Palestine. So first of all, I guess, how is it going there? Because Norfolk Southern is claiming, you know, now that it's all, good, there are no contaminants, everything's fine. Is that the case? Well, no. This, I think what's being said, on one hand, it just doesn't match up with what

people are experiencing. And unfortunately, that's been the case since this derailment has happened. You know, almost immediately, it was not a very long time until the agencies were saying the air and water are no different now than before this train derailed. But that has never matched up with residents experience. I mean, we spent, you know, I'm from this area. We went up there to cover it for about a week. We talked to countless people. And, you know, folks are breaking out in rashes, experiencing headaches, you know, hives, all kinds of medical ailments at the same time that they're being told that where you live is safe. So it's kind of a believe your own eyes situation in regard to, you know, the testing and the communication from officials on the scene.

And so how do you reconcile that difference there? I mean, like, I know that for one, that they had told Norfolk Southern to basically clean up their own mess. And so it's like a tale as old as time, right? This is like going back to the Aaron Brockovich days, who I know also spoke in East Palestine. I guess how does that get reconciled here? Because, you know, when you have the company that's responsible for the mess that's charged with the cleanup of their own mess, of course there's going to be that disparity. They have every incentive in the world to lie about what they're doing, to, cut corners here. Yeah. So I think you're hitting on an unfortunate reality that we've seen

in every disaster that's happened like this. I mean, there are a lot of things that are straight out of the corporate playbook here. You have a massive company, a $55 billion company that is making money hand over a fist in the business that they run, that created a lot of disaster for humans in a certain area that is only held accountable by kind of ineffectual agencies that are run by politicians who accept a lot of money from the company. You have testing agencies that were on the scene in these palatine first that were hired by Norfolk Southern. You can look at where those agencies, you know, C-T-E-H is one of these agencies, is usually

showing up to any Norfolk Southern disaster or, you know, we saw them. and Flint and other ones where the tests that they put out are dubious at best and sometimes debunked years later. But unfortunately, this is kind of part for the course for these disasters. And, you know, this is why we have movies like there in Brockovich movies or Dark Waters or anything. And I think the reality of the situation is we're going to find out how bad this is over the long term. And a lot of people feel something that is true. You're kind of on your own here to make this right. And it remains to be seen how that unfold.

Well, you know, there's a lot of political blame being thrown around. And so as a result of that, you know, you would think that, for example, the EPA is going to turn up the pressure even more just to compensate for the fact that there's all this spotlight on this and they don't want to be, you know, the Biden administration doesn't want to be blamed. Is the EPA doing anything to compensate for, you know, this shoddy cleanup job that we're seeing coming out of Norfolk Southern side? Yeah, the EPA, you know, has their protocol for this.

They're tasking Norfolk Southern to clean up with their own mess. But, you know, if it doesn't meet certain criteria, the EPA can take it over and then bill Norfolk Southern for three times what it costs to clean this up. But is there any sense that the EPA is going to be an effective overseer of this? We're talking about, like you said, a $55 billion company. Does it seem like the EPA is really going to be able to put their fist down when they need to? The short answer is no. And there's evidence in other disasters like this where they've fallen far short.

And in fact, that's usually how these things operate. And certainly if you talk to the people on the ground there, they're not trusting what's coming out. I mean, they're being told one thing and then their symptoms, you know, suggest something completely different. You mentioned the people on the ground. I'm curious what the residents have to say in terms of who's to blame for this. Because from like the 30,000 foot view, everybody's got a political agenda here. But what about the people who actually are in East Palestine? Who did they blame?

This was one of the most interesting parts of covering this story. And I'm going to try to make a long story short here. This area of the country is unlike any other politically. So this sits in the six congressional district and no other congressional district in the country underwent a change in voting behavior further or faster to the right than the one where this disaster happened. This used to be the headquarters of union working class Democratic voters. Now it's the headquarters of MAGA territory.

You know, to fast forward to this disaster on the ground. It was really so big and shocking that it did scramble the politics locally. I was witnessing play out in the media about the politics in the political conversation happening was totally different than what residents were saying to me. I mean, I talked to people who were wrapped in Trump flags who would tell me a pretty clear-eyed view of who's responsible here. They would say the CEO is making millions of dollars a year. He lives in an 8,000 square foot house. He's afraid to come out to our town. He doesn't care that he polluted because he doesn't have to because they hold all the power. That's the kind of thing that I was literally hearing from

people attending a Trump rally in East Palestine. So I think that's a key part of the story that sometimes when something like this happens, the politics really scrambles. Is there any acknowledgement, though, that like when you have these people who are wrapped in Trump flags and so much of Trump's presidency was predicated on deregulation, is there any, I guess, is there any, like, reconciling those two things? Because that wouldn't seem to, like, play into Trump's strength here that we're seeing, like, these accidents that are exacerbated by deregulation now happening, and yet these people are still, like you said, wrapped in their Trump flags. That's for sure, but, you know, in a system where there are two choices, really,

if you're not Donald Trump, then you have to show up here, right? And, you know, Pete did show up. Biden didn't show up. But frankly, you know, there could have been a lot of, there were pretty clear sides here. There was a massive, greedy company on one side, and there's a town full of working class people that were victims to a horrible disaster on the other. For any party that wants to be the party of the working class, there's a lot to work with here. And I think the politics of truly showing yourself and the side of working class people, and we can rewind to the rail strike that never was. I mean, rail workers were warning about a lot of the factors that caused East Palestine before it happened.

They wanted to go on strike. They should have gone on strike. Congress should not have, you know, imposed a contract on the rail workers. But the point is there's a lot of political opportunity. We know Donald Trump's going to show up here and throw cheeseburgers around, which is exactly what he did. But there's a lot of opportunity to pass the pro act, to stand with rail workers when they say this railroad's being run, not safely, and to immediately show up when these things

happen, and I would have liked to see all of those things. Do you think that if the Democrats were able to actually do any of the things that you're referencing here, if they're able to pass the pro act, if they're able to prove themselves basically a party that's willing to stand with workers, do you think that that's enough to basically overcome the partisan allegiances that we see today? Like our partisanship is so calcified right now that like even if you're able to take like legislative remedies that you hope are going to change people's lives for the better, do you think that's enough to like overcome? Like, these people are wrapped in Trump flags. Do you think that's going to be able to bring them over to the other side?

Well, look, a lot of those people I talked to wrapped in Trump flags were pretty clear-eyed about the cause of the problem. They were angry at short-term profiteering that resulted in a train detonating in their town. What I can assume is that if you show up and you do truly care about changing this situation, I mean, really the cause of this was short-term profiteering by the railroads, not doing maintenance, cutting staff, cutting all the safety measures that could have prevented this. If you show up and you brawl for the working class and you really go toe to toe with these companies that feel like they can detonate a train anywhere they please

and go right back to operating as normal, it might not be a complete turnaround, but it's certainly going to help. We're up against, if you're looking at the prospects of the Democratic Party, you're up against 50 years and billions of dollars of right-wing media that has firmly tacked devilhorns onto the head. of anybody there's to call themselves a Democrat. But I think reversing that really starts with showing up brawling for the working class,

especially when tragedies like this happen. You've mentioned the phrase showing up a lot. I'm getting the sense that Biden wasn't physically there in East Palestine does carry a lot of weight for these. From I guess from my perspective, it's more about like what's being done in response to this, what legislative remedies there are, you know, if we can impose regulations, if we can start to pass some of these bills that would impact some of this. But it seems like a big part of this is the act of Biden just going.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think it does count. You know, there's kind of the immediate politics of this. And then there's the question of, you know, what really caused it? How do we address it? But for the immediate politics, yes, I think recognizing that this was going to be a really big deal and showing up instantly before anybody else gets there. And, you know, I can rewind for this.

I would say the same thing about the John Deere strike. I covered a strike at a company in West Virginia called Special Metals. It was owned by Warren Buffett, unionized by the steel workers, in West Virginia, where Joe Mansion is. Those workers were on the picket line. When I went there, the only politician I saw was a state senator, Republican, handing out hot dogs. I mean, we should be there, right? And I think that helps with the immediate politics.

I feel like the legislative remedy. I hope we can talk about that, too, because there's a lot to clear up as well. Yeah, and I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Can you just expand into that a little bit further? What would you like to see? Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of the conversation around this was kind of the Obama-era regulations that Trump rolled back, the Biden kind of failed to pick up, right? Those are very important, but I want to put a marker down on this story. Those are secondary concerns, in my opinion, for this story. Those regulations should be in place. They would have helped. They would have made

this less bad. But the focus, I think, from talking to rail workers about this story should really be on a corporate practice that is in place across all the railroads. That's called, maybe your listeners have heard of it, but precision scheduled railroading. This is a profit seeking practice. It cuts everything important. Less staff, less inspections, less training, less maintenance, longer trains, faster trains, less downtime, this practice runs everything about American railroads. And just to give you an instance of why it's so harmful, the train in East Palestine derailed because of an overheated wheelbearing. On every single rail car, there are 200 points to inspect for safety. The standard for union workers to inspect those cars was three minutes.

Now with PSR, it's been whittled down to under a minute. to inspect 200 points in a car, including the axles. So this direct short-term profit-seeking and the pressure on people inspecting these cars to not hold up the train is why they're going down the tracks with so many flaws. We see a derailment happen every three days. So really, it's at profit seeking

we need to dial in on not so much this regulation that never really went into effect in the first place. But I think we should broaden it out and say, We've got to take a much broader look at how these companies operate. And obviously, these companies look at instances like this as just the cost of doing business, right? Like you ruin these people's towns, you contaminate like the water supply, you, you lead to immediate, dangerous health consequences for these people. That's just factored in because it's still going to be less expensive for these companies than just

using the initial safety measures that were in place that were shown to do a good job. So, you know, this isn't the end of this, obviously. to be these residents have to deal with this stuff for months or years down the line now. How do you reconcile that with the way that the media works where the story is quote unquote over as far as like national attention goes? That is an unfortunate reality as well. I think these companies usually factor this in as a cost of doing business. And it's not only the rail railways. This part of the country was devastated by the opioid crisis, and there you see the same thing, too.

I mean, more people killed by pills than Vietnam, and the best you can expect is a payout from a class action lawsuit. There's been a class action lawsuit filed in this case. It'll work its way through over the course of many years, and we'll find out what the payout is from that, and that's probably the next time the media will come around, and that's the most likely story to be written here. But I would pay attention to what organizers are doing on the ground. There's an organization called River Valley Organizing. I've been in politics for a minute. I know that, you know, nonprofit political organizations can be, you know, the home for people that

are in between political campaigns. River Valley organizing is made up of people who I wouldn't want to be in a bar fight with. These are local people from these Palestine that are making demands and going to keep the heat up. So we'll see how that unfolds. Now you were able to bring a lot of the story into the spotlight on TikTok. There's legislation being introduced that would ban TikTok. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I don't think that's very good. TikTok has put the power to make news into the hands of people where news is happening. What happened with this and actually there's another TikTok and made a great point. This train derailed and then the stock price of the company

dipped a little bit. But then it leveled out and it even went up a little bit because it hadn't really exploded on social media yet. And then you see it explode on social media. You see people going out into their backyard videotaping fish kills or livestock kills. And then it really started piling on because of social media, getting more press, forcing legacy media to cover this. And the stock price of Norfolk Southern resumed its downfall. So there's clear power here. There's free speech implications. I think news should be democratized, and we should keep these apps around. Great.

Well, with that said, where can my listeners hear more from you? On all social media, the handle is at Hey John Russell. And for the longer form stuff, I write a newsletter called The Holler. That's the holler.com. Class politics for rednecks and hippies. It's a fun time. Go find me there. John, thanks so much for what you're doing and for taking the time to talk to me today.

Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me on. Thanks again to John. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera,

and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels. Thank you.