Offline with Jon Favreau - An Ex-Tucker Carlson Employee Tells All

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Tina Nguyen, national correspondent at Puck News, joins Offline to talk about her new memoir, “The MAGA Diaries.” The book sheds light on the conservative movement’s college recruitment pipeline, and how it’s propelled a new generation of alt-right leaders to the upper echelons of American politics, courts, and social movements. Tina chronicles how this shadowy network helped her start out in the world of right-wing journalism, what compelled her to eventually defect to the mainstream, and all the MAGA mad caps she met along the way.But first! Jon and Max take a look at Sora, the new AI model that can turn text into video, Jon Stewart, who’s back to hosting the Daily Show after 9 years away from the desk, and Favs himself — when will Jon learn to stay out of Twitter fights? For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The first time I ever met Tucker when I was 22, our first conversation was literally, let me tell you about the time that your high school headmaster offended me back when we were both in high school. And he was just so adamant about telling me how much he hated this guy. And I thought it was really funny. But like every time I've talked to Tucker, there's always this sense of like, let me tell you about someone I really, really, really hate. And that sense of resentment, I think drives a lot of what he does. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. And you just heard from today's guest, Tina Nguyen,

Puck News' national correspondent covering the MAGA movement. So we've talked a lot here about online radicalization and how the internet has helped transform the conservative movement and media ecosystem into a clown show that runs the gamut from trollish reactionaries to neo-Nazis. There's a lot of money in it. Have we considered launching a radicalization MAGA show? I'm keeping that idea on the shelf. So Tina was there when it all started. She was a libertarian from Boston who kicked off her career in the slogs of right-wing media and escaped a few years before Trump arrived on the scene. But she worked with and was mentored by

some of the very worst characters from that world, most notably Tucker Carlson. These days, Tina has turned on her former colleagues and is trying to help the rest of us understand what makes these people tick. Her new book, The MAGA Diaries, is more of a coming-of-age memoir that tells the inside story of how the conservative movement recruits and nurtures young talent, how the media ecosystem evolved, and why its stars keep becoming more trollish and extreme. I talked to her about all of that and talked to her about where she sees things headed and, of course, what she thinks about Tucker. Tina, congratulations on being a recovering MAGA right winger. Keep coming back. Keep coming back. But first, this week, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, unveiled a new AI model.

Oh, yeah. It's really something to see. They can turn text into video. The model is named Sora, and it takes a simple text prompt like, for example, drone video of waves crashing against the coast and turns it into an extremely realistic video up to a minute long. Some of the examples on their website include Pixar-inspired 3D animations,

realistic scenes with convincingly lifelike people on the streets of Tokyo, inventive visuals like pirate ships battling in a cup of coffee, and, quote, historical footage of California during the gold rush. At the moment, the model is only available to a team of testers who are assessing the, quote,

harms and risks of the model. But if you've seen any of these videos, the harms, risks, and opportunities become pretty clear pretty quickly. What did you think? So, I mean, it's impressive. It looks really cool. They show you in their demonstration of it,

they show you the prompts. The prompts are one or two sentences written in plain English. The videos look really sleek, glossy, very passable for what they are trying to be. Like there was one that was a like fake movie trailer and it looks like a fake movie trailer. There's still an element to all of them of like unreality. And they all look like the parody of a thing that they're trying to be. Like they look like the snl parody skit version

of it rather than like actually passing as the real thing but i think there are kind of two things that strike me about both sore in particular and this kind of like moment that we are in generally with ai the first and like i know everybody told this is going to happen but it is still blowing my mind how quickly it's moving. Like it has not been that long. And these look way better than any of the AI videos we saw a couple of months ago. Way better. The second is just how different it is from what we either feared or hoped it was going to be.

It's not producing Hollywood films on demand. It's not an artificial intelligence that, sorry, Ezra Klein, you were going to fall in love with or will fall in love with you. It's not Skynet, but it is really, really good at this very specific thing of producing incredibly good looking, but not quite like very uncanny valley videos. Yes. I mean, this is the, my first time experiencing artificial intelligence where I didn't just think, oh, we're fucked or wow, this is impressive or they haven't totally nailed it yet. I thought it's kind of all those things. But what I really thought was, holy shit, we actually have no idea how much this is going to transform life as we know it. Yeah. And because if we get to the point where you can literally watch a video of whatever your mind can describe, the implications for media, entertainment, film, television, content creators, influencers, education, tourism, enormous.

And so imagine a prompt that's like, you know, show me someone summarizing the top political news of the day with all the relevant video clips and make sure to throw in the latest polls because I'm a poll junkie. Like, will that video be as good as network news or CNN or MSNBC? Maybe not. But two takeaways from that answer, maybe not. One, does it really need to be as good

to displace a lot of this industry that is dying? And two, it makes me think that to displace a lot of this industry that is dying. And two, it makes me think that if knowledge was the currency of the information economy, creativity is going to be the currency of the artificial intelligence economy. Because, again, you're not going, I don't think so far that AI is going to be able to replicate human imagination and creativity. And like you said, it's sort of some of these videos are like parodies of stuff that's much more creative and interesting. But that's still, it doesn't need to do that to still displace and disrupt like a lot of society. I actually, I'm glad that you brought up the kind of hypothetical example of could you use an AI prompt to come up with like a video summarizing the day's news? Because I think that is exactly the kind of thing where AI will never displace the human made version.

Because you're right, it would be able to create a pretty passable version of that. But they're always going to be free to access YouTube videos or podcasts that are going to do the same thing that are going to be, I think, way better, not because AI can't do a lot of glossy production quality. It can, but it's never going to write jokes that are as good. It's never going to give you analysis that you will trust as much. It will never give you the sense of having a relationship and an emotional connection with the person who is reading the news to you or is a podcaster you like because it's not, and it doesn't feel like a real person. But we like that. Does everyone like that?

I think a lot of people do. I think that that is, if you look at the trends in media over the last 20 years, I think people like having, and have always liked having a connection with, and this goes back to the 70s, people like having a newscaster who's a familiar face and voice that they trust yeah that's meaningful to you you like back then a lot of those newscasters didn't really have personalities or at least personalities that they showed during the newscast you know but that is to say that like people now show even more personality and that's like been one of the big changes going to like youtube and podcasts there's like more of a connection with the creators. There's more a sense that like this is something that speaks to me or my identity or who I am.

And I think AI is never going to be able to replace that. I do think the things that it will replace in seeing this, I think it will replace very soon, are advertising. Things where it doesn't need to have that sense of human realness to it, where it can be uncanny valley, can be kind of cheap. And also you're in advertising agency, you're looking to cut costs anyway. And in the entertainment industry and film and television, like a lot of production, a lot of production costs, a lot of like shoots, a lot of people who are behind the scenes, right? Like I actually, I mean, we focus on the writer's strike but i actually think that again creativity writers and sort of actors interpretation of right of what of what writers do and directors right like i do think they're going to be better off than a lot of the other

people who work in that industry who do some of the more technical production stuff so a couple of months ago someone trained one of the uh big image ai makers to create um fake production stills from fake wes anderson movies you know wes anderson he did um rushmore and royal tanner bombs and all that and has a very distinctive look and all of these stills superficially they did really look like wes anderson movies and it was very they like the color palette was perfect and the facial expressions and the composition and it was all just right. But that really just served to highlight how much when you look at it, you feel nothing and there's a lifelessness to it. And also any version that Wes Anderson's actual production team would come up with would be a thousand times better because it would be original and inventive and interesting. So that, to me, really highlighted that the kind of thing it can do is like,

if you were Wes Anderson's production team, and you want to come up with a bunch of stills to use internally, or be like, let's storyboard this scene, AI is great for that. If you want to make a movie, it's going to be terrible for that, because it's going to have that flatness, that uncanny valley, that lifelessness. So I think that where you are going to see a lot of AI-created art, I think it's not going to be on flatness, that uncanny valley, that lifelessness. So I think that where you are going to see a lot of AI created art, I think it's not going to be on the big screen. I think you're not going to see a mainstream TV series on ABC or NBC that is going to be built out of AI because

it's just going to have that uncanny valley weirdness. I think where you're going to see it is places where the people who are commissioning the work don't care that it has that if you're making ads if you're doing an example that tyler cohen arrived at which is the thing that i kept thinking about when i was seeing these models was corporate hr training videos like anything that involves like stock art stock footage stock video like the ai version that you can have like that is going to look better than the cheap stock art and be free to use or like um i think that you can have like that is going to look better than the cheap stock art and be free to use or like I think something you're going to see a lot of is I think bands that are maybe just starting out and can't afford to hire an entire team to make a music video

they're going to make one with AI and in some ways that's exciting because it means that high quality video production is suddenly going to be available to a huge number of people. In some ways, it's scary because making music videos is how a lot of great directors got their start. And that's going to be a lot of people who are working at the kind of margins of these industries, who are shooting the corporate training videos, who are shooting the like cheap music videos, I think are going to be threatened by this.

So did you read the New Yorker piece about this? I tried. So Joshua Roth you read the New Yorker piece about this? I tried. So Joshua Rothman wrote a New Yorker piece that I probably needed a few more edibles to understand. No, it was good. I'm being snarky. It was a great piece. It was a great piece. And as someone who took cultural studies class in college, cool to see the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein applied for a general audience. Well, to give you a sense of what we're talking about, here's the title. When AI can make a movie, what does video even mean? But the point is, it's a great piece.

I highly recommend. But he talks about the possibility of someday using Sora to create videos of moments with his daughter that he wasn't able to film while they happened and that really i was like okay will those videos right now be the same as first of all i don't think that they have the capability right now but you could see where this is going and if you're basically his point is if if what you can see in a video is only limited by your own imagination and by what your mind tells your hands to type as a prompt, then the implications of that, I think we have not grasped at all. Yeah. I was reading this incredible story about how the music industry

is starting to kind of dance around using AI. And there was this really striking anecdote in it where Google demoed their AI for music for a bunch of like veteran music producers. And one of the things they did is they got this producer and they said, we trained this AI on music that you produced over the last like 30 or 40 years and give it a prompt and it will make something that will sound like something that you made. And he did it.

And this producer gave these quotes to also to the New Yorker where he was like, it's incredible. It was like listening to my own work on its best day. And that I think speaks to both the power and limits of it. It can't create a new producer and a new producer sound. But this producer was like, this is scary because it means anyone with this model can just do what I would do for free. But also, if I have exclusive access to it, that's really cool. And this is what Joshua Rothman was saying about if I train videos on, or if I train an AIM videos on my daughter,, can that help me? And it's like, you know, someone who has produced a lot of writing and hates producing more, but has to for work, the idea of training

an AI on it to produce more is exciting. So I'm like, I think you're probably hearing me. I'm kind of coming around to like, there are some cool potential uses of this, but I think you're right that it's also very scary. And I think something that we are starting to see on the margins is nefarious uses of it. Like we talked about scammers. It's going to get way easier to produce at scale. You're going to end up sending Selena Gomez that money. I want to late crusade. I don't know.

No, I do. Yeah, I've had this thought as I keep reading about more advancements in AI, which is that I'm increasingly of the mind that we are latching on to the current weaknesses of AI models as a way to comfort ourselves that this really isn't going to change life as we know it. Yeah, right. Or we focus on the more apocalyptic predictions to be like,

okay, well, that seems far-fetched. It's not going to happen. But the apocalyptic predictions don't need to necessarily become true to still have this technology become extremely disruptive. And also, in dangerous in a way that, you know, Sora on the website, they're like, well, we're, you know, we're going to make sure we have this trust and safety, you know, guardrails up. And it's not going to be able to know people's likenesses, right? So, there's going to be real people in the videos. Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.

Exactly. And copyright, we're following those laws right now. So it's not going to just, it wouldn't be able to read you all the news of the day, right? Because you have to license that from the news, from the media companies. But like exactly, how long is that going to last? Yeah, well, we're already starting to see, and there was a round of this with taylor swift this problem of people training ai image generators on the likenesses of celebrities to create fake porn using their faces and it's not hard to see how that could be extended into violations of privacy of everyday people blackmail

um one of the things that i'd like i think is reassuring is that every story you read about this, they talk about the incredible amount of computing power that it takes to produce this. And that means that at least for now, the number of people who can create a model like this and use it or the number of companies who create a model like this, it's like you can count it on one hand. Like it's three or four because it costs billions of dollars to get enough computer power to make this. So we are in, and I know that folks in the Biden administration know this, we are in a really important moment where there are, it's consolidated enough in a small enough number of hands that now is the time to kind of regulate what it can and can't do before it gets truly on the loose. Yeah, no, I think that I'm sure that the Chinese government and Putin and Kim Jong-un, you know, they're going to stay away from it. All right. Well, one text prompt that lucky for us won't turn out a realistic video yet. Witty political analysis from aging white guys.

Is that about the offline podcast? That's right. Jon Stewart is back. Oh, Jon Stewart. Okay. That was my Jon Stewart. Also, also aging white guy here. So he's hosting the Daily Show every Monday night now through the

2024 election and people are watching, Max. His first show pulled in 930,000 viewers on the first night. 3 million people over three days. And this week's episode featuring our strict scrutiny hosts, very exciting, pulled in even more viewers, added viewers from the first week, 1.3 million. And that was just on the first night. So those numbers have like seven or eight million. Yeah. So those numbers not only surpass any ratings from

the Trevor Noah era, they rival what Fox News in primetime, Maddow, like all the primetime numbers. And that's with Stewart not just poking fun at favorite targets like Trump and Tucker, but Biden, which has pissed off a few very online Democrats. We're going to get into that. Yeah, well, don't worry. Why do you think stewart is so far succeeding in uh what even he joked is a dying medium and in general what do you think of his return i i will answer your question but first i have to say like it really fucking feels like

we're gonna be trapped in 2016 for the rest of my life yeah like it's like a it's like a real like where let's go black mirror episode like like pulling up the video like it's like a real, like a Black Mirror episode. Like pulling up the video, like it's great. He's back. He's got the juice. It's so great. But also it's like I already felt like I was going to be stuck with the same political leaders for 20 years, for my entire life, to just watch them get older and older. What if Donald Trump lives forever?

It feels like he's going to. Yeah. It feels like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Jon Stewart are just going to be the three faces I have to look at. They're going to be 130 years old. They're going to look like Fu Manchu. OK, to answer your question, I don't actually think it's a nostalgia play. I think everyone is talking about like, oh, it's nostalgia bygone era. And I'm sure that there's some of that. But I think what has actually happened is I think that we are once again for very different reasons in a media and political environment that really calls for someone like Jon Stewart, but not for the same reasons as when it was the George W. Bush era and it felt like the mainstream media doesn't get it. I think that there's just like, I think it's two things.

I think there's a universal dissatisfaction with politics right now. And he is someone who can kind of give voice to that, but without falling into doomerism, which is just like completely saturated. And maybe this is a little bit of a throwback to the Bush era, completely saturated everything about our media. It's just this like intense doomerist vibe that is like, I'm not saying it's unmerited, but it sucks. And it's just nice to see someone who can both give voice to politics across the board feel shitty and bad, but in a way that I have a nice time spending 20 minutes with it.

He says the thing that's on everyone's mind, but is not being said enough or said in shared spaces or media environments because the right has lost its mind. And I do think there's an argument to be made on MSNBC and on Resistance Twitter that everyone is understandably so afraid of what's going on that it is very like, we got to be on message, talking points, we got to, you know, everything is very scary, which I agree it is.

And so you don't get the comic relief, but it's also not the kind of comic relief that you sometimes get in the late night shows, which is still comedy for a broader audience. And so there's the traditional jokes and one-liners. What are the safe jokes we can make that'll, yeah. Yeah, and Jon doesn't really do that. He sort of just talks it through

and it's still funny. But he goes right for it. And it is such a departure from what he was doing between the Daily Show, but last time he hosted the Daily Show, which is the problem with Jon Stewart, where he became like much more of an advocate, which people were like hoping he'd become.

Remember the last time he did The Daily Show, it was like, well, he kind of, he's talking about how bad Bush is. He's talking about how bad Republicans are, but he's just not coming out as a Democrat. He's not coming out as a liberal or progressive, whatever. And he was much more open about his views and sort of interrogating people on when he was interviewing people on the problem. And it wasn't as, honestly, it wasn't as entertaining. It just wasn't. It was interesting, but it wasn't as entertaining. And it's fascinating watching him just slip right back into the same role he picked up almost exactly where he left off, aside from him looking older and our political environment being even crazier,

it is the same, it's the same thing. And that's, I found it, it's a little like comfort food. Yeah. And I think that also speaks to what makes this a good moment for him, but in like a different set of circumstances where he can kind of speak directly to things

because he is taking this like, I'm making fun of everything tone. And I think that is, he is freed from a lot of the, not just right-left cultural polarization, but the intra-left polarization where like MSNBC, there's so much pressure

where you're either gonna cheerlead Biden and champion him or you're supposed to criticize him from the left. It's like everyone who works in progressive media feels this pressure, like take a position and he can kind of, I don't want to say rise above it by criticizing both sides because I don't think that's exactly what it is. It's not rise above it, it's stand apart from it. Exactly. It's stand apart from it. And it's, you don't feel like he has to like advocate for one of these culturally polarized positions because he's just like,

like you're saying, he's articulating what we're all feeling. He's laughing about it. And it's this release valve for kind of what we're all feeling. And I think that there's very few ways to do that in today's, even especially like among the left progressive media environment. Yeah. And it is, it's important to note that we're talking about this. The audience, right, even all three million, they are, I would bet, and I'm interested in demographic breakdowns, but aging millennials. Sure, yeah. And who are probably liberal. Yeah. So it's still a narrow audience, right, of politically engaged or politically curious, probably moderate to liberal, right?

Like that's still and probably older than last time, right? Because we came of age during the first Stewart run of The Daily Show. And I do wonder how many like Gen Zers are tuning in to Stewart. Well, what is fascinating to me about that, because I think you're right. I think that he is speaking to the like us audience but like that audience has changed a lot in the last 10 years. And I would have said before these segments started airing,

I would have said it's impossible to speak to that audience in the way that Jon Stewart used to because the 2016 Democratic primary fractured that audience into never to be reconnected between a live, whatever, when you call it like liberals in the left, the center left and the left, but that it just like there's too much cultural polarization between them. You have to take a side if you're speaking to that audience between one or the other. And so he'll never be able to do it. And it seems like he's found a way. Yeah. Although he, he did piss off quite a few

people by talking about Joe Biden's age. That's true. Including one Mary Trump. This is something I also think that is kind of brilliant about his show, is his old school cable news beefs that used to work so well. He's porting that to the Twitter era by picking up Twitter beefs, but it works perfectly to do it on a show. Because if you tried to do a Twitter beef but make light of it on Twitter, it would never work because there'd be too many people jumping on it, QTing, taking sides. But because he's not actually on Twitter,

but just mocking the Twitter beefs, which are ridiculous on their face 100% of the time, it really works. And it also shows, back to that audience we were talking about of like aging millennial Democrats. It's why so many of them, I think, were angry because they expected. Right. I don't know what they expected because like I remember Jon Stewart criticizing Obama at times when we were in the White House, right?

And that's just what he did. But I think that the viewers have changed a little bit and that they're like, well, Trump is an existential threat to democracy. And so we have to be more serious. And so we have to be more careful about who we criticize and if we criticize our own side. Well, and I think this also is like, there has been, and I know this is like a whole can of worms that we don't have to get into but the like cultural position of how people think about obama on the left has also changed so much in the last eight years right which is amazing also because it has changed and yet if you look at any opinion poll it has not that's true that's point. No, but it's this very weird disconnect where the discourse about Obama, the online discourse on the left is so much different than you throw any poll out in the field of Americans.

They're like, oh, yeah you mentioned Biden's age, John, we have a surprise special segment production team. Tee up the music. Favreau's smart, but he's not too bright. John got into a Twitter fight. Ba-da-ba-da. Incredible. But he's not too bright. John got into a Twitter fight. Ba-da-ba-da. Incredible.

That's the first time I've heard that. Me too. I thought it rocked. It's the jam of the summer. That is fucking hilarious. So John is Twitter fighting again. John is canceled again, frankly. Okay, so this is the most John Favreau shit I have ever seen.

So Ezra Klein, that's right, I know you'll be shocked to hear he's part of this, wrote an essay arguing that when Joseph Biden shouldn't run again because his age has become too much of a liability in campaigning, and you posted on Twitter, which is a big mistake. Sorry, we're starting off at a loss. I know. Arguing that whatever the merits of Ezra's point, that any sort of process to replace Biden would be even riskier than continuing with him.

Both your points and Ezra's were, I thought, like pretty fine grain analysis on the substance, things like polling and electoral process. So of course, immediately got interpreted as like the thing you were both straining not to do, which was intra-left culture war and everyone got very mad at you. So my question is this, John,

why the fuck are you posting to Twitter? Have you learned nothing? Sorry, it's a fantastic question. Forgive me offline for I have tweeted. Well, okay. So like tell us about the reaction and like were you surprised? So here's what happened.

So I like Ezra. I read the piece i thought it was fair and well argued sure didn't necessarily agree with the conclusion but only because i thought i i think he underestimates the risk of letting activists pick the nominee at a convention in a poster biden world and i and so i read it i was like you know what i have a podcast uh I could have said this on the podcast. It's what I usually do when I have nuanced takes about politics that aren't black and white. It was Friday of a long weekend.

I wasn't going to record again until the following Thursday with Dan. I already know what Dan thinks of my take. We've talked about it. He recorded a podcast about it as well, didn't he? Yeah. He talked to Harry Enten for Polar Coaster. Sign up. Crooked.com slash friends.

See? Maybe I can skip that. Emily and I were also stuck at home with... Charlie had a four-day weekend for some reason. Wow. We're blaming the toddler? Yes. Oh, yeah. No, Charlie gets blamed. And our two-month-old. Don't forget that. Wow, we're blaming the toddler? Yes. Oh, yeah.

And our two-month-old. Don't forget that. So four days at home. Stuck at home. And I genuinely longed for a thoughtful discussion about a topic that is on most voters' minds with smart people who may or may not agree. And you thought the place to go for this is x.com. So I sat down during the kid's nap, and I posted almost exactly what you said, what I told you,

on the hellhole formerly known as Twitter, and boom. And I'll tell you, after I hit post, I was like, you know what? I thought about what I wanted to say. It was a whole thread. I feel like I caveated everything in the right way. I'm happy I did it. I'm happy I did it.

Now, people responded a couple different ways. There's a bunch of people who simply didn't read and thought that I completely agreed with Ezra. Really? Oh, yeah. Just like basic reading comprehension issues. Because you introduced it by saying a nice thing about him. Right. Because I introduced it by saying it.

Which is funny because Ezra emailed me and he was like, hey, thanks for your thoughtful objections to my piece. Right? So there's that. Then there's people who may or may not have read, but came to the conclusion that I'm either an Obama bro who is jealous that Biden is a better president than Obama. Wow.

Oh, yeah. Is this a thing? Well, it's a thing because it's David Axelrod. Also, people are very mad at him because he's talked about the age. And so they think that all of us are like annoyed with Biden, which is absurd. We love Joe Biden. Wait. Famously, Barack Obama picked him as his vice president.

Right, exactly. That was the whole thing. Yeah, right. And then there was like, I'm an Obama bro who's, you know, privileged and racist and sexist because I didn't in the thread say that. I guess if Biden steps aside, then obviously Kamala Harris would be the nominee. Oh, I see. Of course she may be. Wow. But instead I mentioned. The K-Hive came for you. Oh, the K-Hive came for me big time. And it's only because I mentioned Gretchen Whitmer and Raphael Warnock and Josh Shapiro as politicians who have won, Democratic politicians who have won in really tough, in the toughest swing states and are quite popular in those states as potentials. I didn't name everyone. I also didn't name Gavin Newsom because he wasn't someone who wanted to swing state. Right. But anyway, who cares? The category I want to focus on is people who thought that we shouldn't even be talking about Ezra's piece or Biden's age because all that's doing is pushing a harmful media narrative that gets reporters clicks and makes Republicans happy and more likely to win.

And yeah, everyone is a meta media strategist now who likes to police what you should and should not talk about because how it will be reflected through the media, which it's not how any of that works. And this is why I want to talk about this because it's not forget about who's yelling at me. I don't know. I really whatever, whatever. It's the biggest divide in politics right now. I've said this a million times on Wilderness, especially on Pod Save America.

It's between voters who regularly consume political news and voters who don't. And the voters who don't regularly consume political news are the majority. And that majority includes nearly every voter who hasn't yet made up their mind about who to vote for or whether they're voting at all. And those voters, they aren't reading the New York Times. They don't listen to Ezra. They don't listen to us. They don't follow Twitter debates. And if they think that Joe Biden is too old to run for president again, it is not because the media or the Republican party told them. It is because they have eyes and ears. And that doesn't mean that they're not ultimately going to support Joe Biden.

Like, they very well might. I hope to God that they do. But it does mean two things. One, it doesn't fucking matter what me or Ezra or Jon Stewart or anyone in our political news junkie world is saying about this. And two, to get them to vote, and this I think is more important, to get them to vote for Joe Biden, we will have to acknowledge their concerns about his age instead of telling them that they are stupid or wrong or being brainwashed by the New York Times or whoever else. And I am a little – and I understand why people feel this way because I do think that the media environment in 2016 was different.

And I think that the coverage of Hillary's emails was different and had a different effect on voter opinion than it would today or this issue with Joe Biden's age does today. And I think that's the case because back then in 2016, there was more of a media monoculture. People were, it was still pretty splintered back then, but people were consuming more of the same news. And so if the New York Times had a headline about Hillary's emails, it traveled pretty far and stuff like that. It is just a different environment today.

And these conversations that we're having on Twitter, like they're just not reaching a bunch that we're having on Twitter, like, they're just not reaching a bunch of undecided voters who are like, oh my, what? Joe Biden is old? And Ezra Klein is saying

he should step aside? Whoa. I'm not going to vote for him. Yeah, right. I'm MAGA. I'm Trump. Who are the undecideds in Michigan who are flipping based on that?

Yeah. I just, I don't, but the reason it worries me is not, Biden White House can handle themselves, whatever, but like we have to, our job, if we want to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president again, is to go find those undecided voters, again, undecided about who to support

or whether they're going to vote at all, and talk to them about like how to get them to the polls to vote for Joe Biden. And a bunch of them, we know this from every single poll that says like upwards of 87, 80% of people are concerned about his age. They're going to say to us, Oh, I don't know. Joe Biden's too old. And what are you going to say to someone in your life who, who, who has that objection? Are you going to say, fuck you? Well, I yelled at people on Twitter to make them not talk about it. No, you're going to say, yeah, I get that. But you know what? Here's what Donald Trump has done as president. Here's what Joe Biden's done

as president. Here's what Trump wants to do. Here's what Biden wants to do. And I think Joe Biden's pretty sharp, actually. But like, you're going to make all these arguments, but you're going to understand them. And the fact that the Democrats online are too afraid to even acknowledge that is, I think that's going to be a challenge and it's going to make it harder, not easier for us to win. I think that what feels to me like is actually often going on when people do this kind of very emotional litigation of like what my favorite media outlets and media personalities should and should not talk about on the platforms that I listen to. I think often what that actually reflects is a sense that politics

are very scary right now. And it feels very out of control. And it feels like there are many ways in which we really struggle to have agency over our politics. You know, there's nothing I can do about the fact that, or directly, it feels like there's nothing I can do about the fact that Donald Trump is a crazy fascist and that the Republican Party has taken this hard turn towards authoritarianism. That is really scary. Do you know where I can have agency and can feel like I'm having some effect? I can yell at the media outlets that I have an existing relationship with because they have to listen to me.

I can go yell at Jon Favreau on Twitter. I can yell at the New York Times because I don't like the way that they framed the eighth paragraph of a news story that otherwise supports all of my pre-existing political beliefs and biases because that feels like I can reach these people and I can affect them and that will make me feel like I can make some kind of a difference. And I completely get that. I do too. That's why I like a lot, some of the people, you know, the people with a lack of reading comprehension, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. But for a lot of other people who are like, don't say this.

Headlines batter this. I totally get it. I've done that myself. I still do that myself. Because we are all scared. We all should be scared. I get that. But I think in addition to feeling like you have agency by doing that, it is also it is easier work than the work of figuring out how to persuade undecided voters. This would happen every time Trump would do something bad, which was quite often where you would see so much of the energy on like liberal left wing Twitter would go towards.

We have to yell at Maggie Haberman, who wrote the news article informing about the bad thing that Trump did because we don't like the way that she phrased something in the headline or whatever, because that is the place where we feel like we can direct our energies. And I think a lot of that, honestly, even though I get it, is self-soothing. And I think that's why you see the same, like, what do we do about the fact that Biden is the incumbent and his age is clearly some sort of a campaigning political liability? I don't know what do we do about the fact that Biden is the incumbent and his age is clearly some sort of a campaigning political liability? I don't know what I can do about that. Well, I can yell at Jon Favreau on Twitter for talking about it in a way I don't agree with. And social media makes you

feel like it makes politics seem easier than it is. Yeah. You know, like, oh, I can post and then I did it and then we're good to go. And it feels validating. A lot of people agreed with me, so I must be making an impact. Right. And what I've come to see is like, I did not post that because I thought I was like having a, I was like, that's going to help Joe Biden get elected or help do the work. That's like aside from the work that I know that we need to do that I want to help do as well to get him elected. That's like, hey, we're still on the stage and this group of people, this highly engaged group of people who are going to be the volunteers that go out there, we're still at the stage where we got to talk amongst each other and

figure out the best messages and the best strategy to go out there and persuade voters. So we're sort of having a conversation here. And in that conversation, we kind of need to be pretty honest, at least with each other. Because all the people that were posting, all the people that were replying to me, they're either Biden voters or maybe there were a few Trump voters. There's no undecided people who were posting. No undecided people, I promise you. So I know you said you didn't want to talk about

who happens to be yelling at you, but there is actually an element of this that I did really want to ask you about. Because we kind of live in this era when there is enormous pressure from audiences for everyone we follow or like to very loudly advocate the like quote-unquote correct position on every issue we care about and to be like an avatar of whatever cultural political tribe we identify with and this is something that we always really struggled with

when I was at the New York Times because we had to report something that we knew would make some segment of the audience upset because it didn't quite affirm with or align their priors, their preferred worldview. We'd have to like really think about how to frame that. You see it with like people getting mad at Taylor Swift for not taking a position on Gaza, like the enormous pressure that we put on our cultural avatars. Yeah. And it's been on my mind with Jon Stewart coming back and like trying to please an audience of Democrats that since the golden era of 15 years ago have split pretty sharply. We were talking about between liberal left wing camp and, you know, like the Pod Save America audience, like the audience has had its own journey in the years since you launched the show. And I feel like the Biden age question is maybe putting pressure on the ways that that audience has

changed or evolved or divides within that audience. So I guess my question is, how do you kind of think about navigating those cross-cutting pressures from the audience when things like Biden's age are such a like hot button issue for it? Yeah, it's a great question and one that keeps me up at night and tweeting all the time. When this is going to be very unsurprising, the way that I'm going to start this, when we were working with Obama. Did you work with Barack Obama? I didn't know that.

Sorry, everyone. i'm sorry no but he sometimes when like a speech wasn't great he would just be like okay let's just put all the rhetoric aside like let's start with what is actually true whether we can say it or not like what is true yeah and so i i have been thinking about that like what is what is true joe biden is old yeah he and he looks and sounds older than he did even in 2020. So some of you, a couple of people are like, no, he doesn't. I'm like, okay, if you don't believe that, that's fine. Yeah, sure. Sure. Great. Good for you. God bless you. God bless you. I wish. Right. But, um, I, I think he looks and sounds older, right? Do I think he is a, uh, a better

choice than Donald Trump? Yeah, obviously. Hopefully most people do. Is it true that there's a bunch of people who don't necessarily know if he's a better choice than Donald Trump? Yes. And the other problem I'm having is like, I don't know how many polls keep coming out and then like the reaction to the polls from some Democrats is either like, don't worry about those. Those polls are wrong. It's too early. And it's like, we could also say maybe the polls are wrong, but maybe they're right. And if they're right, we need to figure out how to address the concerns that voters have so that we can win this election.

And if I'm going to make a case about Joe Biden to people, again, I'm going to start with what is true. Is that like, well, I'm lucky enough that I've had personal experience with him and I can say, I think he's still sharp. I think that all the things he's done so far, he's been a great, he's been an even better president than I expected. There are places where I disagree with him. I disagree very much so on the Gaza policy. And, but then even if I play that out, right. It's like, I want everyone to continue to pressure him to change course on Gaza. There is not another option of any candidate right now that is going to win this race,

that is going to have a better policy on Gaza than Joe Biden. It's just the case. There's third party candidates aren't going to win and Donald Trump's going to be worse. And that's not to say, fuck you if you have a concern about Gaza, because I don't think that's helpful either. But it is laying out the honest stakes of the election. And also, if you have a problem with the ZDF or Gaza, like, we have to understand that, and we just did the Pod Save America that Dan and I recorded this week, was very dark and scary because we talked about the Christian nationalist agenda that could seep into Donald

Trump's White House, the IVF issue that's happening in Alabama, the deportation plans that Trump and Stephen Miller have. And the reason we're talking about that is because those are very real consequences of a Trump term that we're not just painting a dystopian future. They could actually happen. Here's how they can happen. And I want to give people that information so that then they can make a decision. Having all the good information, maybe I don't like Joe Biden, maybe I'm upset with him,

but I know this is what's going to happen. I know this is a choice. And then let people make their own decision. Because I do think at the end of the day, you can advocate, you can give people good information, but you have to let people make the choice themselves. Because if we scold people, and if we yell at them, it is not going to work. It's not going to be effective

because think about your own life. It's not effective when someone scolds you. That's just human nature. And so I keep going back to the persuasion and how to achieve effective persuasion. And the best way I know how is to first tell the truth and address people's concerns as they are and then push them somewhere else, right? You meet people where they are, but you don't leave them there is basically my thought on the matter.

Do you feel like it's getting harder to kind of meet the audience where it is? Because like I hear you talking about like, you know, having to acknowledge the age thing, having to acknowledge like our criticisms of his position on Gaza in Israel. And I feel like part of what I'm hearing, I'm not saying this is a bad thing at all, is that maybe there is more pressure from the audience or more of a dissatisfaction from the audience with Biden that kind of gets pushed onto us. Yeah, there's some of that. I mean, in some ways, that's been the case since we started, right? It was the Bernie bros in 16, and then again in 18 and 20, that faction of the party. So there's been them. There's been, I mean, it's just been all over the place, right? The K-Hive,

still mad at Lovett for something I can't remember. So this has been the case. I will say that as much as we're joking about the Twitter fight, I have realized, and I've realized this

because we do live events and we meet people and we go do campaign stuff and we knock on doors and we talk to organizers and those people also disagree with us at times right but it's just always more and like constructive talking to them yeah and they get it and so like i i do i know that the group of people who were hardcore online posters do not represent most of the people and to that point i sat down monday night after just four days of pure punishment and i was like okay i'm gonna do something else and then i was like i wonder if i should i should check the crooked discord i should check the friends of the pod discord i'm like why

are you doing that to yourself you just you stop you stopped Twitter. We love Friends of the Pod. Well, because I have no willpower. I checked it. Okay. And it was lovely. Everyone was like, who let John tweet again? Why didn't they take away his phone? They're right.

And everyone was like, and I was like, you know what? These are, that's actually the audience that, not the only audience I care about, but those, it's my hope, and I think it's true that a lot of people in those audience will be the volunteers. They'll be knocking on doors. And again, my only, like my only goal here is to arm people with information and hopefully effective messaging that can help them persuade undecided voters to vote for Joe Biden. That's it. Yeah.

Well, I'm thinking a lot about this because, again, I really want to stress that the idea of pressure from the audience, I do not think that's a bad thing. I think that that is a really important part of being in the media is speaking to your audience, hearing back from them. Yeah. It's an important part of knowing if you're doing a good job or not. Tell us we're wrong. Tell us why. Tell us we're being stupid. Right, right. The one thing that, and this has been true of every outlet I've ever worked at, that is really hard is sometimes you do feel trapped by the assumptions that people bring to how they read your coverage or listen to your coverage based on just who you are and how they believe your position in the culture. Like to give you an example, I wrote a lot about Israeli-Palestinian conflict before I went to the Times. And I always

took a position that I don't like to say pro-Palestinian because it's very narrow, but like was very critical of the occupation, was very critical of Israel. And as soon as I started writing the exact same things at the New York Times, all of the people who had been following me, agreeing with me, suddenly just assumed that I was a pro-Israel shill because that was their assumption of what the New York Times does, which I think used to be true, but has not actually been true for a long time, but that's a whole other can of worms. Yeah. But it was really constricting because you would feel like you were constantly trying

to prove to the audience like, no, no, I get it. I see the conflict. I understand what's happening and I'm pushing things in the direction that you and I want them to be pushed. But you never feel like you're able to prove it because people bring so many assumptions to you and to your coverage because of who you are. And it makes me curious about like you thinking about how to tackle the Biden age thing

because that is such a fissure point and a conflict point within what I think of as the kind of crooked media pod Save America audience. I don't know if this answers the question, but this is what's been on my mind a lot is the one thing that has changed about me since i since we started crooked and pod save america is i am much less concerned about um personally being attacked or criticized as evidenced by the fact that you tweet ever but like to the extent that I have

all of these frustrations and I'm posting and I'm yelling about all that kind of stuff, it used to be because I was like, don't attack me. I don't like all this criticism.

And also, I don't want to be canceled and the whole thing could come crashing. I actually care a lot less about that. I think it's less true than it used to be. I think getting yelled at at Twitter

does not have the same consequences as it used to. It does, but also I'm just like, I've come, I'm like, life's too short and I'm going to say what I believe. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. But what gets me frustrated is it's the, it's the activist and organizer in me more so than the media personality, if you will. Cause I'm like, I just, I want us to win and I want people to do what is like, I just, I want us to win. And I want people to do what is like, I want effective messaging and effective organizing. And I want to do whatever I can to help that. And if I'm wrong about it, then then great, someone proved me wrong and do something, but that's totally fine. But like, I just I want people to, like, I want people to

look at the at the data and under and listen listen to other people because the data in politics is just listening to other people who are the ones who are going to vote. And the people who dismiss a focus group or a poll or anything like that, I'm like, this is democracy. 300 million people in this country, we're the ones who are going to vote. There's no other people that are going to save us. It's just us. We have to figure out a way to do this together. And we have to figure a way to actually persuade our fellow Americans. And like, that's it. At the bottom of everything, that is it. And when, honest inquiry of the truth and long-term kind of, you know, political good. That is something that will, I think the audience wants above and

beyond whether or not you reach the quote unquote correct conclusion that they want to hear. Moral of the story, a lot more Twitter fights for me in 2024. I can't wait. Fiverr texted me as this was going on and he was like, I remember our New Year's resolution episode and I didn't think your resolution was to become the main character on Twitter every couple weeks.

I'm going to start actually calling in COVID scares to Charlie's Daycare just so that we can get more of these segments because I don't know. Let us know if you think this is interesting. I think this stuff is fascinating because I think that it is so important how the way that media outlets and their audience relate to one another is changing. I think really matters. And let us know what you think. Yeah, please. But only if you only agree with us. Yeah, tweet at me. Tweet at me. Tweet

at John and John alone. All right. Before the break, as you probably know by now, love it. Tommy and I wrote a book called Democracy or Else? How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. We're only four months away from you all having a copy of the book in your hand. But maybe the lure

of a reasonable page count loaded with illustrations isn't your thing. We've got you covered there too. We are all about to hunker down for what is going to be a, let's be honest tedious eight hours

we will never get back to bring you Democracy or Else as an audiobook that's right Max come on it's gonna be great I know but like recording an audiobook everyone who's written a book have you did you record your audiobook?

no they got a pro to do it who added some weird accents to big stretches of it that did not require that. So we're doing it ourselves soon enough. But anyway, it's perfect for the avid listener who loves the pod, but just wishes it could be four hours longer.

Head to crooked.com slash books and pre-order now. And if you're looking for a more civilized Twitter-free discussion on Biden's age and physical fitness, check out the latest episode of Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. See, I told you.

Dan talks with Harry Enten, host of CNN's Margin of Error, about the increasingly infamous Ezra Klein piece. Come on. And what voters are saying about the two old men running for president. Sign up for access to Polar Coaster and other great exclusive pods at crooked.com slash friends. Okay, John, and I am so excited to announce my new podcast series with Aaron Ryan. It's called How We Got Here, and it airs on the feed for

What A Day. Every Saturday, Aaron and I explore a big question behind the week's headlines and tell a story that answers that question. This week, we tell the weird and fascinating story of a newly rising movement on the right called Christian nationalism, where it comes from and how it is taking over the GOP. How We Got Here with Aaron Ryan. It airs every Saturday on the feed for What A Day. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. All right. After the break, my conversation with Tina Nguyen about what Tucker Carlson was like before Fox News and how she escaped the right-wing cult.

Tina Nguyen, welcome to Offline. Thank you so much for having me. So I've always been fascinated with the world of right-wing media, which you know very well. I'm especially interested in sort of the life experiences that shape people's political views. You grew up in Massachusetts, like me. You went to Milton. Know a few of those alumni. Started this company with one.

In the book, you describe your high school, college self as a libertarian. Like, how did you develop your political beliefs? What drew you to libertarianism? It was sort of around the time where a whole bunch of political moments happened at once. And when you're in high school, it sort of lands in a more like undeveloped, instinctive, emotional way. So not getting into various colleges, which is really kind of devastating when you go to a fancy prep school of that caliber, along with, oh no, Obama's coming into office. What is he about to do with all of our tax dollars? Oh no, there's a huge financial crisis. Oh, no, we also hate the war in Iraq. What on earth do I do?

How do I go about this way in the world? Wait, the Ron Paul moment's happening over there. I like this. So the idea that everyone could be motivated by rational self-interest to create a perfect society and you didn't need someone at the top telling you what to do. And it would be based purely on merit and ability rather than credentials, race, whatever. When you're 17 and didn't get into a good college as, you know, that level of society deems a good college, you're like, yeah, this is, this sounds right. I'm going to go this way. That's funny. I didn't, I didn't get into any Ivy League schools. And so I ended up at Holy Cross, which, you know, I was like, fuck those people. But I also went to it and I, you know, Holy Cross actually had, I had a lot of conservative professors in the political science department, the student body, there were some more conservative

students. So it was actually in college that I sort of learned to debate politically. And I was like, I appreciated that I had other perspectives that weren't mine because I realized at the time that I was liberal, but you ended up at Claremont McKenna, which is out here east of LA. Uh, it, it is a more conservative school. You start meeting some people who were influential in the conservative movement. This is around 2008, I believe. Um, and you've likened your early experiences to right-wing summer camp. What's right-wing summer camp like? Oh, boy. So one of the things I go deep into in the MAGA diaries is the college activism recruiting pipeline. And this is something the left absolutely does not have. And whenever I

describe it to people outside of conservative world, they're like, what the hell? This is a thing. But over the past several decades, conservative activists, starting from like Barry Goldwater through Reagan to now have been throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into identifying young students at the college level who they think will be good conservative chess pieces in their attempt to reshape the federal government, state government, whatever. So you'll have really young kids who want to go into philosophy and academia. There's a program for that. You go to right-wing summer camp for philosophy. You want to go into law school, maybe become a lawyer or a judge. There's right wing summer camp for young lawyers.

And in my case, I wanted to be a journalist. And at that point, the Koch brothers and a whole bunch of other conservative donors were like, we should have journalists who are libertarian and conservative. So we're going to send out all of these applications into the ether for, quote unquote, liberty minded students who want a career in journalism. Also, it's paid and it's 2009 and no newsrooms are offering paid internships. And of course, this lands in my email inbox and I go, whoo, this sounds great. So I apply for it. I get the internship. And the thing that I have to do in order to get the internship like, hey, isn't it weird that the mainstream media doesn't actually want to question why it is that the Affordable Care Act is possibly unpopular with a large section of the country? You know, someone should write about that in journalism. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And that part is obviously kind of terrifying. But the thing that really makes the movement gel is having all of those kids there for a week, hanging out with each other, building bonds and relationships and like, you know, smoking cigarettes outside of the dorm at

night, which I think is more of a psychological glue for this movement than just having the camp itself. Yeah. So we have nothing like that on the left. And I imagine that conservatives think, well, a lot of academic institutions lean left anyway. A lot of professors are liberals or leftists. And a lot of media organizations and think tanks and places in government that are like explicitly liberal or for partisan purposes, at least. Oh, for sure. Academia and journalism do exist in a world where they're like, yeah, these are explicitly what we're going after. It just so happens that our community is liberal. You enter conservatism

as someone who believes in a certain thing and then find a career path in order to push that thing forward. And the thing that you mentioned about placement is so ingrained into being a conservative and being a professional conservatives, particularly like I'll be having conversations with high powered, uh, Republicans and positions of great influence. And they will just be saying things like, I have these young people that I've been mentoring, but I have no idea where to place them. And just the idea that people you work with can be moved around like game pieces is just like when the first time I heard that I was just it kind of made everything click for me. Yeah. I mean, I've interviewed a few people on the show about how a lot of these

right wing spaces, especially online, can offer some pretty lonely people, often young men, a sense of community. And I thought about that when I read your book, because you write a lot about the sense of community and close friendship that you experienced and how that leads to, I think you use the term organic loyalty in the movement. And I don't know that liberals or other people who aren't in the conservative movement necessarily get that part when they wonder like, well, then why didn't they just speak up? Or why didn't they because it's the sense of community and friendship that seems to really gel at a young age. Oh, for sure. Like, if I had stayed in that movement, I probably would feel like it would

have been my friend group, it would have been my friend group. It would have been my professional circles. It would be like everyone I hung out with after work. And losing that sense of like stability and community is so hard for people because like those are built explicitly on ideological ties too. And the moment that you go, wait, actually, I don't think what we're all doing is okay. I'm not, I'm not down with this. The backlash is so intense that I, that, and like, I've just never seen that anywhere else. Um, I did end up leaving conservative media and hopping over to the mainstream and watching Trumpism and this like split within the Republican Party happen from outside of that world, I think gave me a better

viewpoint into watching these like social bonds fracture. Weirdly enough, I do always feel this weird sense of disloyalty whenever I report on the movement too, because I'm like, look, like people in this movement were kind to me. I remember having like fun ass drinks with them. I like, they did me a lot of professional favors. Tucker Carlson literally gave me his personal phone number. So my mom could call him if she was worried about me. And now it's like, oh my God, you are powerful and I am reporting on you. And like, I can't forget that these, that you were like a person in my community once. This is weird, but I got to do it. Yeah. I was going to say, can you talk about why you left? Cause you, you left conservative media before it became MAGA. And is it like, how much was your political beliefs changing? How much was the conservative media political beliefs changing?

How much was it just other factors that caused you to leave? Like what what what finally made you realize like, I got to get out of here? It was a combination of a lot of things. I don't think there was one particular moment where I was like, it is this factor, I'm leaving. It was just like a culmination of things. So the first moment was when I started realizing that even though I wanted to enter the world of journalism, the caveats that being in this movement placed on me were like completely antithetical to being a journalist at all. Like my editors would be asking me to write things with a certain angle, even though I'm like, that's not true or relevant to what's happening right now. Uh, why is it that you want to attack the Democrat? And they're like, oh,

it's because the media always attacks the Republicans. So someone's going to attack the Democrat and like, but the Republican and the Democrat. And they're like, oh, it's because the media always attacks the Republicans. So someone's going to attack the Democrat. And like, but the Republican and the Democrat are doing the same thing. Like, this is hypocritical. And two, I started realizing that the network that had given me all of these opportunities were pushing me further and further into being a hack. And these were people that I had trusted with my like growth and career and the idea that they were trying to use me was just awful and and I this and the third one about like what it is that I believe politically has always been something I'm asked a lot and I honestly think it's because I always approached

right wing stuff academically, rather than having it be a part of the community I grew up in. Like my parents were Vietnamese refugees, who were Buddhist, and we sort of crash landed in America after the war and tried to make our way up. But boy, I just never had the context of, say, Christianity being the cornerstone of my identity, family, whatever. I was just like, huh, you know, St. Augustine's kind of interesting. I'm going to take some notes on that. So not having that attached to

my own personal growth and beliefs, I think just made me realize, oh, wait a second. I can't just be sort of frivolous when it comes to changing the world like this. Yeah. So I want to talk about the difference between conservative media and now progressive media. I run a progressive media company.

We are very open about our political views. We actually do political organizing. But we really try to give people factual, reliable information. And if we make mistakes, which we often do, we try to correct them. And even more importantly, I think, I always say to the staff that we started Crooked to be a place where all parts of the anti-Trump coalition should feel welcome. Democratic socialists to never Trumpers. And we criticize Democrats when we think they're wrong. It feels like conservative media is a lot more homogeneous in its views and single-minded

in its goals. And then also is sometimes not as open about what it's trying to do as a way to kind of like, you know, sort of coax people into it. Do you think that's right? Am I close? Or how would you characterize it? I think that conservative media literally lives in an alternate parallel universe of facts and logic and like base beliefs about how the world works and how society works

than mainstream media or Democrats do. Half of my job literally is trying to explain a mindset, like the MAGA mindset to everyone else, because they're like, this is insane. No one could possibly believe that. And I'm like, all right, let me go way, way, way back into the origin of conservative movement media. And if you start investing in having conservative journalists who interpret facts in a conservative manner and start in like advocating for a result that just does not match what the Democrat slash mainstream does, then it's completely logical and factual and right over in right wing universe world. So I think one of the best examples of that was when I first started reporting on MAGA stuff back in 2017, right around the time that James Comey had gone in front of Congress and said, here's what, here's Trump trying to

pressure me. This is horrible. I was asked, all right, go figure out what it is that conservatives think about this stuff. And I swear to God, the first thing that a source of mine told me, and like this woman was super smart, law ivy league degree and she went oh that's an issue i thought the seth rich thing was more important and and the moment and i just started thinking okay yeah that makes a lot of sense this they've been like harping on seth rich for almost a year at this point that's the only thing that's been playing on fox and bright bart and all of these right-wing media outlets. Of course they're going to think that Seth Rich outweighs James Comey.

And she genuinely believed that. It wasn't just like she was peddling the bullshit. No, no, no. She genuinely believed that. So I'm interested about the transformation in the conservative movement that you have had a front row seat to. You came of age when it was about free markets, tax cuts, small government, axis of evil, Koch brothers, Tea Party. That's now represented by, you know, Nikki Haley and maybe her 30 percent of the vote that she's getting in the primary. Everything else is right wing mega populism.

What do you think drove that transformation? And did it make sense to you? Like, I'm always wondering if the seeds were always there in the conservative movement to become MAGA and to have a lot of these sort of authoritarian tendencies we're seeing from Trump and others, or was it a real departure? Ooh, man. So do you mind if I go way, way back to the 60s for a little bit? Please do. This is a theory I've been developing that I call the infinite fringe. So what I always asked in the early Trump administration was like, oh, God, there's populism happening. But here's what the conservative movement that I knew would say in response to that. Why is it that we're not seeing a moment that happened back in the 60s? So William F. Buckley was the editor in chief of National Review, very buttoned up, very proper intellectual paper. but the conservative movement as it was at the time was being taken over by this group called

the john birch society which uh to put it bluntly is basically 1960s q anon like they believe that every government agent was a secret communist and that communism was an illuminati plot like that kind of wacko yeah but the entire time buckley was okay, we can't have from the Birchers. These guys are nuts. And eventually the Birchers just lost a lot of influence and they kind of disappeared into the woods with ham radios and pamphlets. And I was wondering whether that moment would be replicated during the time of Trump, but that just did not happen because what would happen instead was that these conservative media institutions like Fox and National Review would be like, no, this is not conservative. We're going to kick out these people. But then those people would go somewhere else on the internet and they'd make their own site and they'd be like, no, the right is trying to cancel

our point of view. Come over here. We're building our audience and maintaining our influence. And even in those worlds, if someone was too crazy and they'd get kicked out, they would go somewhere else on the internet and build this community again. Someone would get kicked out there, they'd go further, on and on and on and on. So there's just no gatekeepers to what's considered conservatism anymore. And the people who I knew in the conservative media growing up definitely had those crazy beliefs. But there would be more powerful people who would say, we don't like you. You're done. You're quiet. Go away. But that just doesn't happen anymore.

And it's the lack of gatekeepers, I think, is revealing this boiling populism that was always in the conservative movement that just people who were deeply involved in it never wanted to acknowledge. the media, the fact that the media is more atomized than ever before. And if anyone can sort of build their own following and not have to rely on an institution like Fox News or the Weekly Standard to give them a career or have to worry about them firing them, then they can sort of say whatever they want. And whether it's genuine beliefs or whether they're just saying it to get clicks and attention, you know, the effect is the same. Oh, man. Yeah. There's a joke that goes around conservative world of like how the Fox bookers were the most powerful people in conservative media. Yeah. Yeah. Not anymore. Well, speaking of transformations, I want to talk about Tucker.

You worked for Tucker at the Daily Caller. And it's so funny, you were writing about the Daily Caller. And I remember when the Daily Caller started. And I remember they were like, we're not going to be conspiracy theories and this and that. We're going to be conservative or we're going to be factual. And then, of course, it just went nuts. But what's your explanation on Tucker, on what has happened to Tucker? Because I know people in D.C. who've known him in D.C. I remember him on CNN and MSNBC. And he was, he always seemed like a jerk on TV, but he was like your traditional conservative. And now he is this, you know, right-wing MAGA populist conspiracy theorist embracing replacement theory, all that.

I know in the book you wrote that part of this explanation was he moved to Maine from D.C. and he got out of D.C. It's hard to believe that that's it. That's the only explanation. So what do you think happened to him? The first time I ever met Tucker when I was 22, our first conversation was literally, let me tell you about the time that your high school headmaster offended me back when we were both in high school. And he was just so adamant about telling me how much he hated this guy. And I thought it was really funny. But like every time I've talked to Tucker, there's always this sense of like, let me tell you about someone I really, really, really hate. And that sense of resentment, I think drives a lot of what he does. And he does tend to go to like really extreme Bridge Burney lengths when someone goes against what he believes

or worse, insult him. And when I reached out to him for the book back in 2022, this was before he left Fox. I wanted to talk to him about whether he believed that conservative media still existed. And part of that line of inquiry was, all right, what are you reading these days? How do you get your news? And he told me that he literally just stopped reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and all of the mainstream publications altogether because he just didn't trust them anymore. And he thought they were elitist institutions and just hated them and talked for a long time about why they sucked. But then he also mentioned that he got all of his news

from his friends. They would just text him what they'd read and he would read it and be like, oh my God, that's so interesting. And when you cut down your friend group and expel everyone that you think has wronged you and you stop reading newspapers because you think they're awful and you just rely on a group of people

who are reflecting your worldview so deeply and over and over and over again, like it makes absolute sense that he now exists in a world where he didn't realize how Vladimir Putin was going to treat him during that interview he recently did. Like, if he had taken into account, like years and years of Russian scholar of scholarship on Russian politics, he probably would have known, okay, Putin really just loves to sit there and drone at people about Russian history and he'll just try to kick your ass the entire time.

And Tucker just went in there not knowing what was about to happen and just got his... I was talking to my colleague, Julia Ioffe, who's a Russia expert, and she was just like, yeah, this was so obvious. But do you do you think he like, did he not expect it? Or does he believe in sort of the agenda that he's pushing on his show so much that he was going to fit the facts of the interview and what he saw in Russia to his worldview. Because when I'm,

you know, Jon Stewart did the funny segment on Tucker in the grocery store or in the airport, right? And he's talking about like how beautiful things are. And he's like, and, you know, inflation is so bad in the United States and things are so cheap here, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, come on, man. Like like you know that the reason things are cheap is because people aren't making much money at all and they're still spending a lot of their income on their groceries and there's not a lot of people are enjoying living in russia right now like you know that he's smart enough to know that so i'm just wondering like i always wonder with him how much is how much is him pushing an agenda that he deeply believes, even though he knows it's bullshit, and how much is it just his brain has been pickled by his information environment?

I would say like 80% of the latter, and then 20% of him like, I have to believe this is true, otherwise everything I believe is going to collapse around me, so I'm just going to like force the facts into this mold. Um, like there's an incentive for him to not collapse and admit that he was wrong at this point. Like it goes against everything that he's been building for himself ever since he got kicked out of Fox. Um, he's got a company that he's trying to launch now. He's got this massive revenge plan to take down Fox and the Daily Wire and all of these other corporations that are offending him personally for whatever reason or another.

And if you say, hey, maybe I'm totally wrong and the basis of what I'm doing might not be factually accurate, then you lose your audience, too. of people who feel individually aggrieved and resentful because of something that happened in their life. Or they got canceled or they got fired or a significant other dumped them for some reason or a friend group kicked them out, whatever. They have some kind of grievance and resentment.

And then when they find this community of other people who are also resentful and have a lot of grievance and resentment. And then when they find this community of other people who are also resentful and have a lot of grievance, then they get stuck in that information environment because now you can do that with the internet and social media. And it just keeps going and going and going. And all of these political theories and ideology, stuff like that, it really just comes down to a bunch of really aggrieved people who found community. And it does seem like some of the characters in your book that you came across fit that description. But last question to you, what do you think about that? No, I think that's fairly accurate. No one's been able to ever articulate a smart version

of what MAGA actually is. They're border conservatives, they're fiscal conservatives, they're people who are like, I would like the government to look this way, and so this is what I'm going to do with the government. The problem with Trump, though, is that he has no coherent ideology, and he taps into that deeply emotional part of people who feel like they've been screwed over for one reason or another. And I don't know if that is a governing coalition eventually. But one of the things I cover right now for Puck is the dysfunction in the House GOP. And if you talk to any single one of those people, they would all be like, yeah, of course, I'm supporting President Trump no matter what he does. And then they're all trying to tear each other's faces off. Like the, like the Jim Jordan tea party

Republicans are against the MAGA Republicans, even though those guys feel like they should be like united like this. Everyone hates Mike Johnson, even though he literally wrote the brief that said Trump should still be president. And he's super duper Christian nationalist. Um, the New York Republicans are probably like, yeah, you know what? I like Trump too, but I want to get reelected. And now that we have such a slim majority, we can impose our agenda onto literally everyone else. And it's an ideological bloodbath that really has no relationship to what Trump actually wants. And honestly, if you want to see a preview of what the MAGA movement post-Trump would look like, it would kind of look like that.

Yeah, I mean, it does seem like what he wants is revenge on his political enemies, which does seem to be the only thing left in the Republican Party, in that people may have policy preferences. They may be border conservatives, fiscal conservatives, but all policy preferences are subsumed to, we just want revenge on our political enemies. That seems like that's the only thing

that's holding them all together. You would not be wrong on that. Yeah, so, well, Tina, it was a fascinating book and thank you so much for joining Offline. And we'll keep reading your stuff at Puck with interest. So thanks for coming on. This was awesome.

Thanks for having me. Take care. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor. Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vasilis Fotopoulos provide audio support to the show.

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