Pivot - Mark Zuckerberg and Tik Tok, Friend of Pivot Maureen Dowd on the digital Conventions and… Baratunde Thurston’s Wins and Fails

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Kara is joined by podcast host, comedian, and writer Baratunde Thurston to talk about the DNC, the upcoming RNC, Steve Bannon's arrest, and Mark Zuckerberg stoking TikTok fears. Plus, Baratunde's wins and fails. Spoiler: they involve really cool sneakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. So this is our final week where I am joined by a brilliant new guest host before Scott returns from his vacation. How depressing. He'll be back. No, I'm kidding. I'm looking forward to welcoming Scott back, but I'm so thrilled. Today, my co-host is author, comedian, and podcast host, Baratunde Thurston. Baratunde is formerly of The Daily Show, The Onion, and Washington, D.C., and he currently hosts a show on Instagram called Live on Lockdown. And he has a new podcast coming out this week. Tell us about it. Hello, Cara.

Hello, Pivot World. Yes, the new show was called How to Citizen with Baratunde. And it's for everybody who feels very frustrated by the state of the world and is wanting to do more than scream into a pillow about it. We turn citizen into a verb instead of a legal status, and you should feel better at the end of it. I'm excited. So how do you citizen? What is the key elements of citizening? Key elements of citizening are first to recognize that it's about showing up, that it's active, it's participatory. Second is that it's about relationships and connection with other people, whether those be neighbors or elected officials or even those in your family.

Third, and we have a whole episode on this, it's about understanding your power. I think a lot of us have been taught to think we don't have power, that somebody over there or in Washington has all of it when we actually have it. And the last key element is that we do these things in service and for the benefit of us all, not just for ourselves, not just for the few. And so you roll that all up together and it's voting, but it's a thousand things more than just that. Where's it going to appear? I know you can get it in anyone, but who are you doing? Anywhere. I'm doing this in partnership with iHeart. So I should say you can get this in Apple Podcasts and the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, you have to citizen more than ever right now.

Yes, we do. Speaking of which, there's a couple things I want to talk about before we get to some big stories. All over Twitter, Kellyanne Conway will depart the White House. It's related to her daughter, it looks like, who's been pretty active on Twitter recently, Instagram, TikTok, everywhere. Obviously, a really bad family crisis going on there in full display, unfortunately, and under scrutiny of lots of people. Unfortunately, people are taking really stupid digs that they shouldn't at this young woman. Anyway, that's happening. Any thoughts on that? Like what's happening here? Yeah. And at first I just want to say like,

with regard to Scott's absence, like I love the big dog. I'm also excited for him not to be here, selfishly. So just, I miss you, and thank you for not being here, Scott. As far as the Conway family, a drama within a drama within a drama, I feel at parts very sad. I've seen some of the social media posts of their daughter. I never understood the marriage part. And it was easy for me to look at George and Kellyanne as like an act. But then you realize that there are young, impressionable, dependent lives who need these people to have a functioning relationship. And it's a metaphor for all of us, right? We, as a people in the U.S., have a

dysfunctional parentage right now in terms of our major leadership figure out of the White House. And there's a consequence for that. And that's the way we've seen the painful consequences for their daughter. I am relieved that they're both taking a step back. I am just disturbed by how long Kellyanne Conway has lasted in the role. I don't think it's a testament to anything good that her soul could bear the weight of horrors for this long. Yeah. It's a terrible, you know, it's interesting because it's not just this family, you know, you see Mary Trump recording her aunt. And my girlfriend actually talked about, you know, this family, the Trump family was emotionally impoverished and yet everything is exterior in their lives in terms of how they behave, like the taping, what they really think, what they're really saying. It's just, and then you

sort of become the audience member. It's almost like network coming alive. Like that, you know what I mean? It's sort of like, oh, no, no, no, sister. Even though you're like, yeah, I agree with you, sister. Well, a neighbor friend put it very well to me. She said, this president makes me hate the person I become because I'm so filled with rage and anger and ugliness.

And I think in a very simple sense, this president and those who've enabled him have brought out so much of the worst of us. Yeah. And so you see it ripping families apart. You see the things that I think that I don't even want to tweet, but I think them and I know what's in my head. And it's like, oh, why do I feel that way? Right, right. Because I feel so pushed. And it's all made snackable.

You know what I mean? Like everybody's seen it. It's sort of watching. It becomes entertainment and it's not entertainment. It's something else. No, it's macabre. It's incredibly. Speaking of that,

the Digital Republican National Convention kicks off this week with some of the speakers. And listen, they're fair game. This group is fair game because it's a political event, not personal. And there's some really, speaking of macabre, odd speakers, like the couple in St. Louis that sort of tried to point guns at peaceful protesters and such. Any thoughts given on the heels of the Democratic one, which was well-received? I mean, not hugely watched, but not badly watched. And I think most people agree, a pretty good show. I thought the DNC was a good show. I mean, not hugely watched, but not badly watched. And I think most people agree, a pretty good show.

I thought the DNC was a good show. I actually, I've been to several DNCs and RNCs in person, and I like the virtual format. I like the showcase of America's diversity and beauty and pretty good production values for a mostly remote affair. So good on them. And I am very much not looking forward to the collection of racist memes that will be the RNC this week. Is there anything you're looking forward to there? What are you watching for? Because we got the lineup. It's pretty Trump heavy and not very diverse. But is there any one that you're looking at? I mean, away from your opinions. I think Kristi Noem is going to

be interesting. I am so, you know, at this stage, I don't have, I am a partisan. So I wear that. I'm loudly like voting left and democratic up and down. However, this election to me is not about like policy comparisons. Like the Republican party didn't even bother to put a platform together. They get it. This is just about one man who said he was going to fix it all. Clearly hasn't, but we're going to double down on everything he's done. So it's a big co-sign on him. I am mildly interested in the story they tell to justify all the pain that they have caused and all of the offenses and illegality that they've overlooked. So I'm like, what story do you tell yourself and apparently the rest of us that makes everything we know

to tell our children not to do okay for you to sell for us to vote for? I am told it'll be very base-oriented and everyone else just gets to see it, essentially. And it'll be very much made for Twitter, pieces of Twitter and short and that, the same thing. And I do think these conventions like this, both the Democratic and Republican, are effective. They And I do think these conventions like this, both the Democratic

and Republican, are effective. They're effective sort of infomercials, and we'll see, you know, if they get as good as the Flex Seal guy, you know, or whatever. It's just whatever entertains you and gets through stuff. I found the Democratic one surprisingly substantive on topics, which was great, even in the shortened form. So we'll see if, it'd be interesting to see what messages, especially around COVID they have and some others and how they render them for digital. It's really, everything is sort of being rendered for digital, it seems like.

And I'm curious about the musical entertainment. Yeah, who's the celebrity? What's the talent they're going to pull? You know, it's going to be kind of hard to compete with the ladies, the lady MCs of the DNC. Oh, they're so good. I was texting with a Republican who's, who is in the party, who's very active in the party.

And I was like, oh, have a good time. They're like, it should be interesting. And they put it in quotes. And this is one pretty high, should be interesting. They were like horrified. They'll have plenty of like 4chan influencers hosting. Yeah, yeah. I was hoping, I said, keep Scott Chachi out of it

and it should be better. Like you gotta get a good celebrity and you can't have any of the Democrats. So anyway, let's get to big stories. We will look forward to seeing what happens and we'll talk about it on Thursday. Okay, big stories. The Wall Street Journal reports that in October, Mark Zuckerberg stoked fears in Washington about TikTok. Last fall, during a trip to Washington, Zuckerberg joined a private dinner at the White House where he raised concern about

the rise of Chinese internet companies and the threat they pose to American businesses. He specifically discussed TikTok in subsequent meetings on the Hill. And of course, you know, Congress opened a national security review of TikTok. President Trump issued an executive order for ByteDance to divest itself of U.S. operations before sale of Microsoft. I had talked to Mark two years ago where he started this she and me argument that like, it's either me or she. And if you don't pick me, you're going to get the communist essentially. And so he's worried about competition, it seems to me, and then started down this road because I don't think he was suddenly self-aware about the Chinese necessarily. What do you think? And nor was he suddenly pro-regulation.

Right, right. In a deep sense. I think it's a savvy move, first of all. I think it's unsurprising. I think Mark Zuckerberg has shown us before that he is willing to prescribe for others, which he would never accept for himself. Loss of privacy or government accountability, either of those things. And I find myself frustrated because I don't want to co-sign on Zuckerbergian things. But I also, I respect, for example, Tim Wu immensely, who wrote in the New York Times very recently about, you know, we need to have a stronger stance against ByteDance, TikTok, and the Chinese way of trying to internet in a nationalized sense. And so to hold those ideas together is a mental test for me to be like, okay, so maybe the motives aren't good. Maybe the execution is authoritarian in terms of how this president pulls it off. But the underlying premise may

still be solid and sound. And so I can be upset about the hypocrisy with Zuckerberg while also saying he may have a point. And I hate that, but I will say it out loud in an attempt to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think he's trying to stymie competition. That's his, I don't think he has an interest in protecting this country more than he has an interest in slowing down a potential competitor who is actually getting some ground.

Just the way he did with Snapchat or anything else. I think he sees everything like that. Like who's his competitor? When it's opportunistic, I think, you know, if it's about defending the U.S., I think there are also many internal steps that his own company could have taken for years and years and years and years and years to defend the homeland with much more effectiveness than what TikTok poses as a threat. Including Chinese misinformation, which is, you know, it's rife on Facebook around COVID. And same thing with Russian and, you know, these issues.

The question is, is TikTok more of a threat than Facebook? Despite the Chinese ownership, right? That's really where you have to go. And, you know, I don't know if they're threatened so much because you don't hear the other companies doing this. They do it quietly, but not in this sort of lobbying style. And do you think that he understands in part that this isn't very substantive, but it's a good story to kind of change what Facebook is as a patriotic entity? Like,

hey, we may have problems, but we're American problems, you know? And you know, that's where I stand regarding Facebook. You can't put Facebook, everyone was like, oh, but look at Facebook. I'm like, it's not the same thing as China. By the way, the issues aren't necessarily WeChat or ByteDance. The issues are much more severe around AI, around spatial recognition. And that's not where the Trump administration is focusing, around 5G, around proliferation of Chinese technology all around the world. That's where the real threats are. And here he is focused on this company and doing it in a way that allows this company to come back and sue them because this is a forced sale. And so that's my issue. It's like, why are you focusing on TikTok and not the other six things? If you really did care, you would care about AI, you'd care about all

these other things that are much more significant, you know, creating this splinter net, which would be, you know, the future dominated by China. And it's just typical of him. It's such a cynical way to do it and small. And I just, it just bothers me. And you're right. I agree, but disagree, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense. It does. And it's also, it bugs me. And I think anyone who's in a tech or company leadership position at that level has to work with this administration. But as we've seen how this administration has dropped the ball, has overstepped bounds, has broken laws, whatever the case may be, to gift this topic to this administration in this way also feels very craven and very risky, you know, very dangerous. He put an earworm in his ear.

Yeah. Like you're playing with fire. Yeah. That's the way Trump works. The last person who told him something like Peter Navarro walks in the office. And of course, they probably got a good hearing from Peter Navarro and other anti, you know, look, we'll talk about Bannon in a second, but he, anti-communism, Chinese communism is really the focus.

And so I think it's a really, like, why not go after Russia? Why not be concerned with Iran or anti-vaxxers? Like, why didn't he put his earworm on that? Because there's no multi-billion dollar threat coming from Russian tech companies. Bingo, bingo, bingo. And we'll see what happens with this. But I think, you know, just from these emails that are coming out, and he was just interviewed by the FTC, I think we're going to see a lot about Mark Zuckerberg's leadership. It's not going to look so great when it comes out in the full light of day. But we'll see.

We'll see. Maybe he's just a patriot. Or Tunde, maybe he's just a patriot. It's always possible. Possible. Maybe we have the whole thing wrong. He's an American. He's an American.

He's been looking out for all of us from the start. He did take that tour of America and sat on a lot of tractors. That's right, when he was running for a human being. That's a good joke. I like that. Anyway, Baratuni, let's go on a quick break and come back to talk about one more big story. And then we'll welcome our friend of Pivot, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, to talk about this week's Digital Republican National Convention. That should be good, the two of you.

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We're talking about a number of things. We're talking about Facebook. Now we're going to talk about something that Baratunde wanted to talk about, which is Steve Bannon arrested and charged with fraud. The former Trump advisor was charged last week with fraud and arrested. The criminal charges surround his fundraising effort called We Build the Wall, which collected more than $25 million under the guise that he would set aside the money for a wall along the Mexican border. He pleaded not guilty to the wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, each of which these charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. So another Trump associate charged with a federal crime,

this one particularly sleazy. What's the word I want? What's the word I'm looking for? Spoily, unctuous, exactly as I might imagine what he would do. What do you think of this? And Trump's remarks, I feel very badly. I haven't been dealing with him for a very long period of time, although apparently he has. Yeah, I stumbled across a meme, which I wish I could take credit for.

But they said, remember when you donated to have the Mexico wall built because you're racist? Those guys stole your money because you're also stupid. And I was like, here, here. It almost felt like, you know, the government suing or in this case, charging a crime is doing so on behalf of people who are clearly okay with fraud as a basic premise. And for Bannon, of all people who I think has been elevated beyond reason as someone worth listening to, this bad Santa-looking, half-baked comedian who's allegedly a genius, but just takes people's money to sell the same idea over and over again, that he would get caught on someone's yacht. Chinese billionaire. Yes, an exiled Chinese billionaire's yacht. Who was being accused of rape and carries around tiny dogs.

The so-called populist is out here chumming it up, palling around with the 0.1% laughing because the people who claim to speak for the little guy have such contempt for all of the little guys out there. And it's just, it's the perfect crime for this sloppy, sloppy criminal. Right. I know. It's really interesting. Do you think it'll have an impact on the election? I mean, he's always been, he's always hovered. Really? Okay. Because people are like, oh, he's kind of skiming. It's, you know, to borrow, I don't know why I feel like a financial metaphor coming on. I think because I'm filling in for Scott. Yeah.

But it's priced into the market, right? Like the stock price has already absorbed the corruption. Yeah. So there's no surprises. Like we all know that this is a crime family surrounded by a band of criminals. So it's like, oh yeah, another crime. Right. Cool.

And we're not, you know, from the law and order party and the law and order candidate. But the hypocrisy is also baked into the stock price. So it doesn't matter. I don't think it has an effect. It adds to the historic ledger of incompetence, offense, and anti-democratic behavior, small d. What happens then?

It just doesn't matter. That's the whole idea. So I was talking to someone last night and they were saying that a lot of people the the people who are against trump can't stack rank these things like it's just there's so many of them yeah like you you get you lose credibility when you're angry over some dumb thing like disinfectant although that's appalling and scary um and not the real stuff like q anon and when when you focus on Bannon, it's like, oh, he's just a scummy. Kara, I think we're beyond focus.

McSweeney's attempted to catalog the corruption and crimes and other offenses, and they stopped at 842. Right. The human mind literally cannot contain all of the broken behavior. How do you stack rank? How do you? So you don't. I think it's a fool's errand to try to keep the list running. I think it's elemental. Right. And I think there's something that we all know, which is right and wrong behavior.

Right. I think there's something we know that this is how we want our children to behave. These are the lessons we feel like are worth sharing. And pick anything from a randomized list from 100 or 1,000, and it comes down on the right or wrong side of morality. Right. And we just have to remember that. And we have to remember that we know the difference between right and wrong. And then act on that because we don't need more evidence. The case was made before the

last election. Now it's just proof, proof, proof, proof, proof. And I think it's a flood. It's a denial of service attack on our consciousness. A denial. I like that. That's very techie. Flood us with all this nonsense so that we lose focus. But at the end of the day, the entire entity is corrupt and we don't need an itemized list of offenses. So if we're being flooded, does it work? Does that work? Does flooding work? It does if we continue to play the game of recency, right? And so part of the challenge, I think even with news, is that is a time-based stacked ranking. And so the most recent becomes the most important. And we forget about children in cages. And we forget about grab them by the womp womp. And we forget about tax fraud. And we forget about amorality. And we forget about the Helsinki summit. We need two

to three things that would have sank any other presidency, but this one is so bold and understands our short attention span and the business model of clicks that says just flood the zone, flood the zone, flood the zone. So I called his campaign in 2016 a denial of service attack. And I think it still sticks. Now it's not just a campaign, it's a way of governing. And it's very, very cynical. And it risks long-term damage. Well, it was interesting because Bannon came out and he was like, this is just the same thing, this sort of shameless, I'm not sorry, I took these people's money. It's just an attack on me politically. What was fascinating was then Roger Stone piled

on to Bannon because he, you know, it literally is like watching Goodfellas, like as they turn on each other. Clown car of crime. But it's, you know, because then Stone was like, that asshole. And I was like, go for it, Stone. I'm like, no, wait, I hate you too. Right? And then they got you rooting for one of them. And I was like, oh, you all should be in prison.

Like every one of you. And then you should be like making pasta with each other. I don't care. Just stay in there. Like kind of things. And then the main one, the main monster gets to stay out. Like gets to stay clean. And I think what's painful, and I know there are people who still support this presidency, certainly support some of the rhetoric, thought Bannon spoke for them, is that these men despise the people who look up to them.

Right. And it's the level of contempt, which I even have sometimes too, but I'm like, I'm not claiming to represent you and your interest. Yeah. And so for someone to run out in these streets and be like,

I got you, I'm down for you, I'm going to bring your jobs back and then steal your money. Right. And slow down your mail so your prescriptions show up late and let you die,

that is contempt within contempt. Right. It is beyond disgusting. But it doesn't seem to impact. I have to tell you. Now, my holding is, you know, everyone said there were secret Trump supporters. I think there are secret people exhausted by it. That's, you know what I mean? Like, oh, that's enough of this guy.

Yeah. You know, but I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. We will, fortunately, we will be out of this prediction zone in, you know, scores of days and we will have an updated answer to how many and how low will this country go. I also try to sympathize and empathize and know that, like, I get caught up sometimes, right? Like I just get irrationally exuberant. The World Cup comes around and all of a sudden I'm like, screw you, Germany. Like, I don't have strong feelings against all the German people, but you know, you get into these

matches and all of a sudden I got, I got thoughts about Latvia, you know, like what does that come from? And it's this like team mentality. It's this mob mentality. It's like my side versus your side. And so there's a part of my mind that can understand it and hopes that for some of these, and I know it's not the majority, but just some, that the fever breaks. And that when more of us speak up and say, hey, hey, hey, right and wrong, and you know the difference, that you come out on the other side and you're like, man, I don't, I must have gotten real drunk on that. Like blame the Mexicans, you know the difference. That you come out on the other side and you're like, man, I must have gotten real drunk on that. Like, blame the Mexicans, you know, beer.

That was, I am so sorry. Like, I really lost my mind for like four years there. Yeah, yeah. So maybe 5% of the 35%, you know, percent will. It happens all the time. It's so common. It's so common if you go back in history. It really is.

Yeah, and we're not special. We're just humans. One of the things that I thought was really striking was the efforts to use, you know, in the Kamala Harris attacks, there's a case in San Francisco and she was a prosecutor. She had this program to try to help people from going back to prison. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. It sort of had a 50-50, you know, success rate essentially. And one of them, there was someone who was an illegal alien, so they were combining illegal aliens with people you let out of jail. It was for first-time drug offenders, which seems like smart to do, not to get people into the system in a smart way.

And they're immediately going Willie Horton, and I remember Lee Atwater many years ago when he was, you know, that was the George Bush era. He sort of looks fondly upon the Bushes now, although I don't. Got us into the longest running war in American history, bankrupted us. Yeah, exactly. But I thought Willie Horton, to me, was one of the worst examples of that. You know, the scary, the scary Batman.

It was an ugly moment of race baby. And they were doing it again with her. You know know it was really like nothing changes and it's in it i wonder it works so well in the non-social media era how does it work here you know i'm watching for that story to see if it takes off not just on fox news because they're going to obviously employ that but elsewhere and so that's to me an interesting thing is bringing back kind of golden oldies of hatred and seeing if they can make them work today. I think that'll be interesting. die. So their campaign methods and their propaganda tools as such on their own are not that interesting. How we receive them is a little more interesting. Do they still work

in this reality? We'll see. I think they do. Well, we'll be talking about that in a second with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, because one of the things that last to talk about here is that poll that showed Republicans, 57% thought the loss of life was acceptable, which I thought was amazing. I thought that was an amazing, that was the most despairing number. But then I thought, well, propaganda works. And also, to me, it's inseparable from whose lives. Yeah. Yes. 100%. And we have this multiple of Black and Latinx and incarcerated and indigenous people. And this is a party that embraced disposing of all of those people from the highest levels. So it's not entirely surprising.

I was still struck by it. I didn't think they would go quite that far. I thought it would be maybe in the 40s, as I think these things tend to be, but a 57 number is real. So where does your hope, where does that come from? My hope? That surprise. Not hope, but to me, I read it as hope. Oh, yeah, you're right. I'm still surprised that a majority are okay with it after all we've seen. Like, what are you holding on to that makes you think, oh, that disappointed me? I am tricked by the persistent idea that we have a better country than we do, which we don't, which history shows us we do not. That's what it is. Anyway.

Okay, Maratunde, we're joined today by friend of Pivot and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Maureen, welcome to the show. Thanks, Cara. So we want to talk about the conventions. I mean, if you want to talk about the last one, the DNC, or would you like to talk about the upcoming one first? We want to talk about all of them with you and how you think they're doing. Yeah, I thought the Democrats did what they needed to do. You know, I was never that big of a fan of conventions in modern history because they weren't really making any decisions. So it was

just a kind of a bad reality show. So to me, there wasn't that far to fall. I thought they did okay, the Democrats, but I am much more looking forward to the Republicans. Why? Tell us. Tell us why. Well, for one thing, we are going to see something that you're a fan of, which is Melania giving a speech in her new rose garden. Right? Oh, God. Oh, no. I think we've been tweeting about that. What used to be the rose garden?

Yeah, exactly. What was formerly known as. But I have to disagree with you, Kara. I did love her goth Christmas. If I could decorate my house that way, I would definitely do that. Okay. All right. But what do you expect from them besides Melania's shitty garden? What do you- Or plagiarized remarks. Steve Scalise was on Fox this morning and he said they are going to present a picture of Trump that behind the scenes, he is very caring and informed, and that you might not always realize that. So that's a pretty daunting task they've set up for themselves. And they're saying it's going to be very optimistic, not quote unquote, dark,

like the Democrats. But of course, you know, it's going to be like the red wedding. It's going to be he Trump is already on trashing all the usual suspects this morning. He just talked for an hour trashing Bezos and saying we're going to be a socialist state. And, you know, basically, it's not so much about their policies as it is about just pissing off the media and owning the libs, as some Republicans said in a Tim Alberta piece today. Maureen, what do you think? This is Baratunde. Hello. Nice to meet you. What do you think about the focus just on Trump, the idea that he is going to speak every day, most likely that essentially people are coming out not in support of the Republican Party or a particular platform or some policies, but a person. Yeah. I mean, in a way it's inevitable because the whole country has been subsumed to basically his id. Like we're all like living in his id. So this is the natural conclusion. First he he beheads all his opponents. Then everyone thinks some principled Republican is going to stand up to him and get their party back, but that never happens. So now he is sort of celebrating the fact that he is the party.

It's like when Oprah or Rachel Ray put themselves on the cover of every single magazine, It's like when Oprah or Rachel Ray put themselves on the cover of every single magazine. Everything this week is going to be him and his family. And didn't Napoleon crown himself emperor after he was already in charge of France? It's like that. It's going to be like crowning himself the emperor of chaos. And is that a good thing? What are they aiming for?

If he's trying to be like, I saw the Mark Meadows thing. I can read. He can read. I've seen him read more than anybody. Like, they have to go over the top, which is really kind of odd. They can't just say, yes, he does read. Of course he does. When you're defending the president of the United States' abilities to read, you've already lost something. Yeah, that was the least surprising thing from the leaked tape of his sister that he doesn't read. Well, we'll get to that in a second. There was a hilarious thing early on when he first got in the White House that his aides, in order to get him to read briefing papers before he would go on foreign trips, would have to put his name in every sentence or every graph because otherwise he would just totally lose attention.

You know, it's just going to be les tassement. Right. So what of the others do you think are going to be interesting? Melania will just be like, it is what it is. She'll borrow Michelle Obama. You've got to admit, Cara, it's the greatest troll of all time. She is indeed. She does the Rose Garden and turns it into a Marriott Conference Center.

Right. All right. So who do you think is going to be interesting of the ones that are speaking? Who are you looking at? Yeah. Last time, Ivanka, I called her the fabulous, fabulous, because she presented this very sunny picture of her father in an otherwise very dark, dark, you know, hailstorm of a convention. And so she's obviously going to try that again. But it's even, you know, it's more absurd now than it was the last time. And what about other politicians that are not Trumps? There's a lot of Trumps. There's a lot of Trumps. Yeah, the McCloskeys, who are the Bonnie and Clyde of St. Louis, you know, who waved their gun at the Black Lives Matter protesters, will be there to, I guess,

rev up people about cancel culture. And will they be carrying their guns as well? That would be great if they came on stage with their guns. I think they will, right? Don't you think, Berton? I think it's a requirement. Yeah, yeah. No masks, though. Yeah, no masks. I mean, it is weird that we're going to have a presidential election that, in a large degree, will be decided by this medical accessory.

You know, I mean, so much of Biden's convention came down to making that contrast. It's just a very odd historical thing. I wanted to know, and I know you wanted to talk about the RNC, but before we are subsumed into the deeper version of the id torturing us all, what stood out to you from the DNC?

Substantively, was there a speaker? Was there a moment? Was there something emotionally that got to you in a way through this format that might not have happened with the funny hats at a big crowded convention center? Yeah, I loved the teenager who met Biden because he had a problem with stuttering. To me, that's the best convention moment I've ever seen. When Biden was vice president, a friend of mine was a top aide to him. And I said to her, you know, Biden could be a lot better speaker if he would stop repeating the same phrases over and over. And she goes, he does that because he had a stutter and it's a way to hold on to one thing like a banister until he gets to the next phrase. And that was why he'll say things three times. And I never had realized that. And, you know, that shows it's amazing that just the simple decency of what Biden did with that kid

is such a contrast to the president we have. And I thought Biden's speech, which was very Biden, you know, sentimental, Irish poetry, hope in history, and light and dark, I thought, you know, not going too deep into policy and making it a contrast between light and dark was to me very effective. You know, it's Star Wars, it's Lord of the Rings, that light and dark, you know, the light father and the dark father, you know, the bad father and the good father. Will that work? Or are we dark people? You know what I mean? Are we like the Empire Strikes Back people? Well, Kara, you would be able to answer this because what I always try and figure out is,

you know, has Trump made us meaner? Or did the internet make us meaner and lay the groundwork for someone like Trump to be successful? I mean, always, the image of America was strong and silent, you know, greatest generation, and then somehow now what we're mean and chatty. you know, greatest generation. And then somehow now what we're mean and chatty, you know, I think we're mean. You know, the whole thing that's playing out with Claudia Conway, and, you know, Kellyanne Conway, and George Conway, all of these sideshows, Steve Bannon, you know, there's and now Melania's former aides that she has taped Melania and Mary Trump taping Trump's sister. There are these crazy sideshows to the circus, which tell you from the very beginning, Paul Manafort was the convention manager last time. And, you know, from that time, everything has been a casino game beneath Trump, everybody running their own casino games. And that is just intensified now with Bannon and

all these people taping everyone. You know, that's going to be wild. So, Baratunde, what do you think? So, one, I think all these new people are copying Omarosa's playbook. We let us not forget. Well, actually, let us forget her name. I'm so sorry. I re-invoked her. I think this whole light, dark thing.

So I recognized and loved the Jedi-ness of Biden's tone and speech. That's what I love. That's great. He elevated the stakes. Yes. This is not about marginal tax policy. Yeah, I love that. This is light and dark. I and dark. And so I did appreciate

that. I think in terms of who the American people are, we are, and have always been, both. We are a nation, as most humans have ever been, of contradictions. I don't think we are solely a dark people destined for doom, but we're just not a city on a hill providing light to everyone else out there. During all those times we were doing that, we were also interning the Japanese and not letting women vote and suppressing Black people through formal terrorism and disenfranchisement. So yes, to both. And then the question in this moment is, which way do we tip ourselves? What do we try to evoke from ourselves and have dominate in our personality, but we can never fully extinguish either side? Let me ask both of you a question. This is what

I do with tech people all the time is you are either a Star Trek person or a Star Wars person. In Star Wars, no matter what happens, the dark side always wins or it comes back. The empire strikes back. And then when you beat the empire who strikes back, then another empire shows up, you know, I mean, it's just as bad. And even at the end of that movie, it wasn't good. You know what I mean? It just wasn't, it didn't end happily. And Star Trek's on the other hand, they have a team of people who are the most diverse people on earth and they go off and they fight villains who they then either shift towards them and make better or defeat, but they're complex victims and interesting and worthy villains, excuse me, not victims.

And then you always end up having hope and we're going to go out and meet people and we're going to diversify and we're going to like make everybody love each other. There's two versions of America that are Star Trek versus stars. And the question is, which one are you? Which one do you actually believe? I think our country is Star Wars. That's what I think. I think our country and our tech people and everyone else is Star Wars. Well, you know, Star Wars was based on the template of Joseph Campbell, which is the hero myth of the hero goes out in the world, makes his way, and then he comes back and makes love to his mother and kills his father.

So it was never like a cheery, you know. Thank you for that. It was never like a cheery vision for a nation, right? Yeah. Okay. Back to Trump. Oops, sorry. So when you're looking at the election coming up, I want you to make some predictions, Maureen. What is your wide view? What's going to happen in the next 90 days? And then how will this be remembered in a decade? Ordinarily, when a president has a huge crisis, the American people have a sense of fairness. And they say, okay, we're going to give you another term to straighten this thing out, like W and 9-11 and the wars, and then Obama and the financial crisis. But in the case of COVID, it's a different thing,

because people are looking at his incompetence. And, you know, it's Russian roulette, whether to send their kids to school, and whether they can keep their parents alive. And I'm not sure they will give a longer chance or a second chance to Trump on that. He's trying, you know, he's doing this emergency FDA thing and he's trying to find a vaccine. But basically, it's very hard to get beyond the fact that he had a completely incompetent anti-science response. Yeah. And 20 years. how do you look at it? 10 years, 20 years? In 20 years, how we'll see this, you mean? Well, I'll be dead, but go ahead. Yeah. Well, it's hard to say. It's interesting because this convention is being produced by

producers of The Apprentice. The Apprentice is the reality show that allowed Donald Trump to present himself and frame himself as a leader, a fake leader. And now it's sort of some meta thing where the convention is continuing to, even though we have all this evidence to the contrary, present him as a strong leader. And so, you know, it's one guy from The Apprentice who was a Miss Universe judge and one guy who did the comedy roast, comedy. In other words, the best. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we'll have to see whether we'll look back and Donald Trump will be this crazy clownish aberration or whether this was the moment where entertainment and politics fused and social media and it just became a different creature a chimera is that how you

pronounce it you know yeah half of this a third of this and um trump is just a genius at that form of communication and you know now that people are used to being entertained and reporters are getting 20 amazing stories a day, are they going to want to go back to old school kind of boring politics? Some will, some won't. All right, Bertunde, last question. Yeah, I want to, Maureen, offer you a chance to weigh in on some of the stakes. And the setup is this. We have federal law enforcement bludgeoning, kidnapping, harassing members of the public. We've seen the use of the military to exercise violence against peaceful protesters right

outside the White House. We've got an attorney general who has become the dog, the attack dog of the president that he has always wanted. And we've heard this term authoritarianism used a lot, but I would love your take on not the entertainment, not the media frenzy, but the real world consequences of the risks of authoritarianism and what that looks like should this president stay in power? Yeah, I guess, you know, I do think he tries to be an authoritarian and is in some ways, but I guess I don't get as scared as other people because I feel that he is so self-destructive that he self-destructs with every breath he takes, he diminishes himself. You know, I told our

publisher once we could probably just put a nanny cam on him and get to the same result because like with the post office, he'll eventually just spit out exactly what he's trying to do. And then you can try and combat it. Whereas to me, someone like Dick Cheney was much scarier because he came in this form that Washington was used to of old style Paul, you know, that everyone respected, and he'd been a source for a lot of reporters. So when he began to create this illegal war, it took people a long time to realize what he was doing because he was so highly respected. Like Trump, at least, self-immolates in real time. Then you can mobilize against him in real time. Huh. So we're worried about a very smart Trump.

A very smart Trump. Then we don't have to worry, right? Right. Yeah, that's true. Unless he's got a partner in Mitch McConnell or his chief of staff or the Department of Justice or the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Homeland Security or the Republican Party. Yeah, yeah. It's called enablers. Yeah, yeah. I haven't seen so much Shakespeare.

Trump is just a walking bundle of fatal flaws who self-destructs at every moment of the day. You know, so it's hard for him to be an effective authoritarian, I think. Except surprisingly resilient and surprisingly effective for an incompetent person. So we're lucky is what you're saying. We're lucky. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see what's to come. Maureen, we really appreciate you for coming. And I know there's a rainstorm going on outside in D.C. because I can hear it from my window. It's very atmospheric. It's very atmospheric. It does feel, it feels like King Lear. So he's King Lear, right? If we're going to pick it. He's howling at the moon. That's what he's

doing. All right. Anyway, Maureen, thank you so much. We look forward to watching the convention with your thoughts and mine. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Okay. Thank you. All right, Baratunde, excellent job. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. You already know that AI is transforming the world around us, but lost in all the enthusiasm and excitement is a really important question. How can AI actually work for you? And where should you even start? Claude from

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Okay, we're back for wins and fails. Let me have you go first. I don't have as many this week, but let's talk about yours. Let's start with a fail. My fail is in the Republic of California, in which I now reside, which initially did okay with the coronavirus. Then the governor stopped attending to the numbers he himself held as a standard. But within that, we started having these fires. And these fires are raging

wildly. And it turns out that the great progressive liberal state of anti-Trump California depends on prison near-slave labor to fight its fires. And pays these prisoners $2 to $5 a day, labor to fight its fires and pays these prisoners two to five dollars a day, offers reduced sentences and just a break from the general dehumanizing confines of life in the yard. This is a travesty. It should not be allowed in a nation that calls itself free, much less a state that calls itself the beacon of freedom within that nation. And now that these fires are raging, these prisons are also not being evacuated. So we have a crisis of humanity of our own, and especially for those who call themselves woke and ready and progressive, do better, California. Do better. Agreed. Agreed. I don't know if people, you know, it's been written about if you live in California,

you're aware of this and it's been debated, but in this particular fire, especially combined with COVID, because these, these prisoners are really getting not treated in any way, just left to die and, or get very sick or get, you know, extraordinarily sick. And then the idea that we would put them in harm's way even further is really, you know, I think the generalized idea is one that's like they're looking for workers everywhere, but how it's manifested itself, I agree. It's really do better California is a great way to put it. Yeah, thank you. And what about a win? a neighbor, neighbor of mine, five-year-old little girl who noticed that I had new shoes. And she said, Bertina, do you have new shoes? I said, yes, I do. And this is so meaningful

because I didn't know many of these neighbors before I'm new here. I've been taking these walks. There's more people home than ever. I'm in a neighborhood of Highland Park in Los Angeles. And little neighbor girl was paying attention. She was focused. She kept her eyes on the prize and she recognized my kicks. And they are amazing and they look good and they feel good. And she was the first to notice. So in the spirit of neighborliness, in the spirit of recognizing my shoe flex, and in the spirit of getting to know the place where you live, because what else are you going to do when you can't go anywhere else? I give a big win to Lowell Neighbor Girl. Nice. What shoes are they? I actually know shoes because my son is a sneakerhead. So I actually... They're actually

their Under Armour cross trainers. They're a turquoise and orange. They're the brightest sneakers I've had in 12 years. They make me feel young. You know what? Good for you. Good for you. My winner fail. Well, then I'll have to do my, my son is in NYU in quarantine and cannot leave the room, which is kind of an interesting way to live. You know what I mean? Like the fail is obviously the food, which everybody does talk about, but the win is my son is a really good chef and smartly brought himself in bags of food and is cooking for himself. And what he's sad about is he can't cook for the other kids who are getting sort of city deliveries. It's kind of interesting. I think that, all joking aside, my kid is a privileged

person and he's going to college and we'll see how it turns out at NYU. But I still do think this rush to get kids back into schools, kids and their parents are facing a really tense time, especially people who do not have means. And, you know, it's affecting everybody, by the way, but it's like people that don't have internet connections, people that don't have free rooms, people that don't. We have still not handled this in the way that needs to happen. And the crisis in New York, where they're sending them back to schools, just being there for a short time, you know, the arguments between teachers and students and parents is really, we just need, speaking of do better, we need to do better for our educational system. If we're going to have crises like this,

we should, we've had six months to prepare for this, or at least the full summer to prepare to get better. And it seems like it's still, no matter where you are on the spectrum, and especially if you're down at the bottom, without full access to things things, it's a lost year. It's a lost year of education, and we already don't do well with many people. There's a great epidemiologist I've been following throughout this, Dr. Michael Osterholm, and he says it's a COVID year as far as education is concerned, and we're going to have to make our peace with that because we didn't get a handle on this disease in the way that other nations did. It's always a good reminder that this hasn't hit everybody the same, and for all the resources we have, we're the fail. Right. But in the education stuff, we could do better. There's tech companies that could have

gotten involved much more heavily. There's all kinds of things, and we knew it was coming. And I see going into September, just know, just not great for so many kids and not able to do anything about it because we haven't been able to handle COVID. In something we do have control over, we've done nothing, not enough, and especially protect teachers who deserve better. Everybody does. Yeah. And the bus drivers, the staff, it's a bad situation for all. It seems like a no-win situation right now. Indeed it is. Do better.

Do better. Do better. That will be her speech. If she says it is what it is, I think I will literally run over. I'm in D.C. I will run over the White House and go, I don't know who you are, but you're such a troll. It is. This garden is what it is.

It is what it is. Anyway, Bertunda, you've been great. I look forward to having you back on Thursday. We're going to talk on Thursday. It's going to publish Friday, but get ready. Watch the convention. I'm sorry. I know your eyes are going to hurt. I know. It's my homework. I hate this assignment. You have to watch it. You can avoid the Tom Cotton one. Okay. You get one out. I don't know which one you want out. Eric Trump. Tom Cotton and I are the same year from Harvard University, class of 1999.

I did not know him then, but it just, it brings extra shame and anger and frustration to know like, could I have said something to him in the dining hall way back then? Was this preordained? Did the prophets foretell this moment for his life that he would become such a terrible leader.

Yeah, I don't think there anything good he could have done. You could have thrown something at, like a piece of pie. Violence is not the answer, Kara. Just a light pie. Like, I'm not talking about like a pie. I'm not talking about hitting. Like a key lime, like something with a lot of fluff. Just a little toss of the key lime, you know, tossed into something like that. Something light, meaningful, and at the same time, not violent, but just expressing your feelings. Anyway, I know I don't, I agree.

I don't agree with violence, but I have to tell you when that guy threw a pie in Rupert Burdock's face, I felt fine. I felt okay. You felt good. Yeah. Something, your soul was left burdened. I was fine. It was not. That's a fair admission.

I live with that every day and I'm good with it. I'm good with that feeling. Anyway, by the way, we have been loving our live stream series. Scott has not gone away. How can we miss him? He won't go away. It's called Pivot Schooled. You can still get tickets for next week's show at pivotschooled.com. This week we have on Sundar Pichai from Google, which should be interesting. And Tim Wu, who you just talked about. I did. That's going to be a fun battle. It's going to be a great battle. Anyway, today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis and Camila Salazar.

Fernando Finete engineered this episode. Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks again to Baratunde for co-hosting with me this week. And I'm glad to have him back for our next taping later this week. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android listener, check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

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