Pivot - Tucker goes to Hungary, the Taliban take Afghanistan, and a Friend of Pivot on why Epstein couldn't have killed himself

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Guest host Ben Smith joins Kara to discuss Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban, and what it means for news coverage of the region. And: a new business deal aims to bring movies back to movie theaters. But will audiences follow? Also, Friend of Pivot Julie K. Brown joins us to discuss her reporting in Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a lot of AI systems feel like they're designed for specific tasks performed by a select few. Well, Claude, by Anthropic, is AI for everyone. The latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price. Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems better than any model before. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Scott Galloway is appearing in the new Suicide Squad movie. So this week, I'm happy to be joined by Ben Smith of The New York Times. Hey, Ben. Hey, Cara. I think I have to start to ask you a question about a couple of things. The video sharing site Rumble, popular with many conservative viewers, has announced content deals with

Tulsi Gabbard and Glenn Greenwald. Well, that's a dinner party I don't want to go to. So unlike YouTube, Rumble does not ban videos for spreading medical misinformation. Senator Rand Paul mentioned Rumble as an alternative after he was banned from YouTube last week. If you want to see the video, it's up on Rumble.com. Rumble.com does not censor the news. And Rumble's chief executive, Chris Pavlosky,

claims the site went from 1 million users last summer to 30 million users today, still tiny in comparison to YouTube. What thinks you of Rumble? Well, I guess, first of all, I would totally love to go to that dinner party, particularly if it is in Rio, where Glenn lives. And, you know, I mean, it's a different idea, right? They set themselves up as a competitor to YouTube, you know, but they're a different thing. They're a destination not for regular people who want to figure out how to, like, repair their bathtubs. Yeah, I was descaling my new dishwasher today, but go ahead. Keep going.

Yeah, it's, like, incredible, right? Yeah. You know, it's for people who want alternative political content. Right. I actually think that maybe it is a healthier world in which we go back to the place that you and I grew up in, which is where people who want all sorts of fringy political content can go find it. Exactly. But there's not a sort of well-organized system for feeding it to just sort of morons looking to descale their dishwashers who suddenly wind up having extreme political views. I realize that this is what happened to you. Yes, that's what happened to me. I've just suddenly become, so you think they're going to do well. I mean, they're sort of small sites. 30 million users

is almost what. Yeah, I don't really think that these things are going to be a business. Like, I don't, I'm not sure this is a great business. Right. Well, you know, I've been on Getter for the past two weeks, which is interesting. Same thing. It's rather small. Have you tried Getter out? This is the is the conservative one. Yeah, I spent a bunch of time on its predecessor, the Gab. And the thing is, like, for many right-wing activists, the thing they love to do most is troll, and the whole thing is trolling. And when there's nobody to troll, it's not really clear what social media is for anymore. Right, right. It's interesting because they basically, it feels like a Trump rally, essentially. Like, yeah, yeah. And I could go in there and someone was like, listing all the bad things that happened to Biden this week.

And they're like, don't you miss Trump? I guess Trump put a don't you miss me now thing. And I was like, hard no. And everyone went nuts. I was like, hard no. But it's actually, I'm actually finding some people who I'm having good discussions with on policy, which is nice.

And I'm sort of the liberal in the room, sort of the, what was the guy from, it's Sean Hannity, what was his name? Combs. Combs. I feel like that's me in this situation. Oh, really? No, not at all.

But, you know, it's really interesting to see all these things. And I encourage all of them because these things are too big. But there aren't, you're right, they're not going to be happy not yelling at people like you or me or screaming about the New York Times to each other.

It's not quite the same thing. Yeah, I think they're less social in a way, right? Like, I mean, Telegram is one that I spend a lot of time on. And it really is mostly top-down broadcast from the dear leader, whoever you think he is. And you're getting a lot of information and following it. And you can be very engaged. But it's more, you know, broadcast. Broadcast. So, what do you do on Telegram? I just keep up to date on what Mike Flynn is up to.

Oh, okay. What is he up to on Telegram? Is he not over on Rumble? I don't know. He's probably on Rumble, too, but certainly on Telegram, he's telling people to keep the faith and, you know. Yeah, the reinstatement didn't happen this weekend. I live here in D.C. I don't know if you're aware. Anyway, speaking of reinstatement, let's talk. You're not going to comment at all. Tucker Carlson doing his Fox News show from Hungary, where he interviewed the nation's right-wing populist leader, Viktor Orban. Why did you take a different position on migration from other European countries? That was the only reasonable behavior.

If somebody without getting any permission on behalf of the Hungarian state cross your border, you have to defend your country. Orban pushed anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ policies. He's been pretty okay on the vaccine stuff. He hasn't been sort of anti-vaccine. What do you make of Tucker doing this kind of stuff? Are you watching it? Yeah. I mean, he's doing it in part to get attention from the liberal media,

which is going to predictably go nuts and call him a fascist. I mean, there's just something so threadbare about it. You know, Hungary, like you really want to sell out, go sell out to China, to an authoritarian regime, go sell out to China. He mentioned China and they edited it out of his interview. Right, but in fact, the Hungarians already have. Yeah, yeah. There's just something so threadbare about like, you know, this idea. He has this idea about sort of a European nationalist leader of his dreams and he sort of projects it on Hungary and partly because he like,

you know, because Budapest feels like this great European city. But of course, everybody in Budapest hates Orban. Yeah. There's one point where he was talking about how everybody in Budapest hates Orban. There's one point where he was talking about how everybody in Hungary speaks English better than Americans do, as Tucker said. But of course, those are the people who hate Orban. The people who vote for Orban speak no English. I mean, it's just you get there's sort of this fantasy. He has this, I think, fantasy of some kind of nationalist model for America that Hungary, in fact,

So you think he's just tweaking? I mean, it's part of this. Yeah, this nationalist fantasy that he is certainly trying to drive here. Do you think that's good for Fox viewers? Is that good for his ratings to do that? I don't think anyone wants to hear about Hungary among his, I don't know, maybe. I like Hungarian food. I mean, if you look at those ratings, I mean, he is, I don't know how many multiples of Don Lemon he is, but very, very many. Yeah, very, very many.

But I feel like this is a little bit, I think you should stick to the red meat stuff here in the US of A. Speaking of which, the messaging site Discord is reportedly raising money at a valuation of $15 billion, more than double its previous $7 billion valuation. In April, Discord rejected a $12 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Interesting. Big content play there, actually. Yeah, Discord is, I mean, it's a $12 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Interesting. Big content play there, actually. Yeah, Discord is, I mean, it's a great product, among other things. It's the only way I can communicate with my 12-year-old. Oh, really?

So I'm on Discord a lot. Yeah, people have been using it. A lot of bloggers have been doing joint things together, content and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and gamers have been using it for years for doing what became Clubhouse, actually. Right, right. You know, group audio chats, which amazed us with this technological breakthrough. But it's Marc Andreessen! Right.

Yeah, something gamers have been doing since the days of Leroy Jenkins. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, which has mostly migrated to Discord in that world. And that's just a huge, huge world. What do you think of the valuation? I think I'm not an expert in valuations, and we'll leave that to you. But it's clearly a real, it's a great product that many, many, many people just really use. Well, since you mentioned Clubhouse, another content type of play or social audio, I don't know what to call it.

How do you look at that now compared to how that space is, you know, it got a lot of excitement at the beginning of the pandemic and now is sort of limping. Yeah, I mean, I think it feels like it was sort of the meerkat of the moment, right? Like it was a really well packaged, cool, you know, version of a technology had been hanging around for a while, but that we all got excited about. I mean, just unbelievably cool stuff happened on there. My personal favorite is that there was this Russian journalist who identified Vladimir Putin's secret daughter. She then got into a clubhouse room to complain about him. He then got into that clubhouse room where they had like a dispute, which ended with her saying that, well, in the end, at least he had gotten her more Instagram followers. I mean, like, how does that happen? So amazing. So it did feel to me like there was a period where just wild stuff was happening on there and you kind

of wanted to be on, but I haven't been on in months, but maybe I'm missing out. I don't know. No, you're not. The numbers are terrible. But what happens to something like that? It had a $4 billion, speaking of valuation, a $4 billion valuation, everyone's on it. You know, a lot of the VCs spent a lot of time yelling at tech reporters, which was exhausting and boring at the same time. Yeah. I mean, part of it was like this idea, it sort of rode this wave of hype around planning to destroy journalism with it. And we all gave it lots of oxygen because it was going to be. This got overturned by a judge. And Facebook has asked Lena Kahn, the new FTC chair, since then to recuse herself because she's mean to Facebook. I mean, you know, she is genuinely independent of these companies and has been really clear about what her policy views are. But I think that's why, I mean,

that's why she was appointed. It's absurd that she would recuse herself because she has stated policy views that are the reason she was appointed. So one thing Scott and I talk about is the judges overturning a lot of these cases against the tech companies around speech, around all kinds of things. And most people feel like even if the Facebook puts the amended complaint in, which was a lot of states, this was a lot of states attorneys general and all kinds of people were involved in this, that it's still not going to pass muster with courts. That people feel like there is no move against these large companies, except for, you know, things like Discord or Rumble or things like that. Yeah, and I do think that you're already seeing the just existence of Alina Khan FTC, you know,

changing the way these folks look at mergers and acquisitions. I mean, I think just it's obviously the kind of consolidation that you saw over the last 10 years is going to be much, much harder. And so there are a lot of deals that just aren't going to be proposed. Right, exactly. And we're going to talk about some of those in a minute. Okay, time for the big story. The Taliban has regained control of nearly all of Afghanistan, including the capital city of Kabul. Thousands of Afghans are attempting to flee the country by land or aboard U.S. evacuation flights. The sudden turn of events has put the Biden administration on the defensive.

People are throwing around Saigon themes to it. On Sunday, Afghanistan's president fled the country. The U.S. evacuated approximately 500 embassy staffers. That's what I was talking about, the Saigon, when they took off from the roof of the embassy. The U.S. is sending approximately 6,000 troops there to assist in the withdrawal of diplomats. So, you've been tweeting a lot about this. Tell me, I know that you were joking before, there's all these experts on Afghanistan now, which is always the case. It's always Dr. Google or Dr., you know, Google historian or things like that. So, tell

me what you think of what's happening there, and especially how it's going to impact from a media point of view, the Biden administration. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I am not an expert and don't want to pretend to be one. There's this obvious sort of outpouring in DC media of how could Biden have let this happen when, you know, ultimately, what's happening here is the US lost a war and nobody thinks Biden lost it. But, and it is ending in humiliation, which, you know, is what people elected Donald Trump for and what people elected Joe Biden for. So, I mean, I think that's, you know, it's not good news. And obviously, the Biden administration, I mean, it's been many, many months that people have been saying there, you know, maybe 10,000, maybe 20,000, maybe more people who worked either for directly for the US military or for NGOs, US backed NGOs, or as journalists who are going to be in huge danger. Let's do something about it. Two weeks ago, they finally say, well, we're going to make journalists and I know more

about journalists than about the other categories. We're going to make journalists, which is unusual and new eligible for a kind of humanitarian visa known as P2. You just have to, and it's a common, it's, you know, there's some paperwork you have to put in your paperwork, and then you have to get to a third country and spend a year there while we process your application. So, get out to Pakistan or India or somewhere. Everybody wants to get to India if they can. But the thing was clunky and a little poorly designed, and it was just overtaken by events. And now everyone, and people are just trapped in the country now. And I spoke to a bunch of Afghan journalists yesterday, including the guy who runs the Radio Free

Europe office, who was staying up all night to defend his house from looters. There was just seemed to have no prospect. And this guy's a US government employee. You know, this isn't just a journalist, no prospect of evacuation, as far as he could tell. You know, and just a very strange situation. They had broadcast an interview with the Taliban spokesman the previous day. The Taliban had actually put a bunch of their transmitters back online as they restored power to a lot of the country. But nobody thinks this is going to end well. No, not at all. No, I think the Russians had their time.

And before that, the British, the British, the Russians, us. And then I guess the Chinese are the next group to enjoy. Yeah, I think the sense among Afghan journalists is that the Taliban are sort of waiting for the foreign press to get bored and clear out. And then? And then to really shut down any independent voices. Any independent voices. Talk about the independent voices in Afghanistan

over the past few years. There has been a real flowering of that, correct? Yeah, I mean, there's this very fragile but real civil society that includes a lot of journalism, includes commercial media outlets. There's a big television network that, again, you know, as of right now, it's a very strange situation. They're on the air covering, I saw one of the guys there tweeted that they were covering the quote unquote transition. Right. You know, they have this sort of structure and as though they were operating in a normal country, right? That's what they were promised. Yeah.

But, you know, the transition consists of guys with automatic weapons, you know, turning up at the broadcast tower and demanding to be interviewed. And also within the presidential palace, which was, they were actually a lot better behaved than the Americans in the Capitol, I have to say. They sat there. And they've been putting, you know, they've been obviously image conscious in Kabul. Absolutely. But these are guys who they were putting car bombs on journalist cars, you know, last November outside this capital and have murdered a lot of journalists.

You know, I think 70 journalists have been killed. So what is going to happen there in terms of their imagery they're putting out, which is we're sitting here, we're going to behave, we're not going to do it. They're trying not to, even though they've taken the country in a very quick way, going to behave as if they're not going to do anything, correct? From a media point of view. Maybe for a little while. I mean, who knows? I mean, you know, it's not, I mean, they've been, they've been who they are for 20 years. And I'm sure there will be some fantasies about how they're really going to be a moderate sort of normal participant in the international community for weeks or months now. And let's talk a little bit about the, you were talking about sort of the DC

journalists going crazy. There was a pretty clunky interview with Tony Blinken yesterday by Jake Tapper. Talk a little bit about that. How does it affect, or is it just sort of inside the beltway thing and used to score points politically? How does it affect or is it just sort of inside the beltway thing and used to score points politically? I mean, they obviously screwed, horribly screwed up the, you know, the very end of the war in a way that's going to ruin the lives of thousands of Afghans. I thought Tapper was right to be hard on Blinken. I do think that, you know, there's and, you know, it's the Biden administration is part of the inside the beltway conversation. I mean, their big focus reportedly was on not having pictures like Saigon, but I do think there's,

you know, I think, you know, the alternative, which some people will say openly is just permanent American military, you know, not a permanent and American military presence. The casualties were,

had been gotten, had gotten down pretty low since 2015. And I think, but, but there's, but there was no one, there's no political support for that. Right, exactly.

Which, by the way, doesn't mean that Obama didn't manage to keep doing it in the face of having no political support. Right, absolutely. The Afghan withdrawal was popular across both parties. So, do you think it's going to be a big political issue moving forward? Because most people wanted people out of there, including the Trump administration, even though they're trying to say it was a disaster. It's what they were going to do anyway. They just said they would have been tougher, so they wouldn't have behaved badly or whatever. Whatever their argument is, despite the fact that they let out the guy who is the president, who will be the president.

I mean, historically, the voters don't care that much. Don't care that much. Yeah, things like that. So what should the Biden administration do, if anything, from a media point of view here? Just move along? Just we're going to move out? I don't think it's really a PR or media problem, honestly. I mean, they should try to get the people who have put their lives on the line for the U.S. out as much as they can.

And then where do you think the media will focus here? Do you think it'll focus on the women and girls? Or, you know, this is something that was hard fought to get them into schools and things like that. Because from any, I'm not talking about a PR point of view, from a human point of view, this is problematic. I mean, there was, the media and, you know, the various administrations told a story that was, like, you know, in large part false about, you know, that we've built this grand infrastructure of schools all over Afghanistan. Rosa Buzzfeed, a great reporter, Asmat Khan, who went to a lot of those schools and they didn't exist. They called them ghost schools. Right.

So, there was a lot of delusion on our end about what was in fact real there. And that I guess in some way we'll have to get unwound as well as, but also there were a lot of people whose lives were changed and who were living, particularly women, in a totally different country than they're about to live in. And I do think that's a great, you know, that's an important story. We'll get a lot of coverage. All right, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, movies are coming back to the theaters, but will audiences? We'll speak to author Julie K. Brown about her new book, Perversion of Justice, the Jeffrey Epstein story, which is a story about journalism very much so. Stay with us.

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All right, Ben, we're back. WarnerMedia and AMC have announced a deal to bring movies back to the movie theaters. The deal gives AMC an exclusive 45-day window for new releases beginning in 2022. AMC executives expressed concerns when Warner Media previously announced that they would release the film online at the same time as theatrical premieres. Obviously, you and I had long talks about that after I interviewed Jason Kylar. Still, Warner Media says that 10 films will debut exclusively on HBO Max in 2022. Still, will audiences actually come out and shell $8 for popcorn. Obviously, the Scarlett Johansson lawsuit against Disney is amidst this.

She claims simultaneous release hurt her bottom line for Black Widow, which was tied to the theater audience. So give me your, since we talked, Hollywood had its fit, and now we're moving on, and Disney is doing the same exact thing. And so are probably a lot of the other studios thinking about it. So give me your large picture, and then what you imagine is going to happen

here with movie going. You know, when we last talked, your hero, Jason Kyler. It's not my hero. They were thrilled. Disney was thrilled. Everybody wanted to do it. And, and, and sort of, and I think, you know, he, he then promptly got his head handed to him,

but also had really changed the situation for everybody else. And now you're in, you know, the line, the front line in the battle has moved. It's not a total victory for the streamers and the exhibitors retain a lot of power. Everything that was released on streaming bombed for most things. Movies, not TV shows. And so it wasn't this sort of, nobody, I don't think anyone can say, see, we told you so. Well, the movies bomb, but streamers have been growing. So the streaming services. So it didn't bomb. Bombing is depending on how you think of bombing, but go ahead. Right. And it's very hard. And I think the streamers, it's, the ways in which the streamers account for the expenditures on movies and whether this movie, in fact, earned out enough subscribers

is a hazy enough thing. A hundred percent. I think who knows. But they didn't have the kind of cultural resonance. They didn't get seen by as many people as they would have. Absolutely. Much less make the money if they've been seen in movie theaters. And so I think, you know, there's going to be kind of a long slog.

I think there's still a question of whether, you know, there's a way to make American movie theaters better, to make them a place that you'd want to go to and spend more money right rather than like kind of creep along the sticky floor yeah and like eat some stale popcorn the chairs have gotten better the chairs have gotten better yeah yeah yeah but that hasn't really been resolved the idea that like is disney gonna buy out one of these chains and turn it into something fun like hasn't happened but i think this is going to continue to be a tug of war now, but it's no longer sacrilege to say, sorry, we're going to release this movie on our app. Right, which is the whole point.

I think they loved when Jason... The planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers, I always say. California is where everybody went. Some people died along the way, but that's where they ended up. So talk a little bit about that, this idea of new economic deals with celebrities and agents and different things is happening, where you get paid up front, the Netflix method, essentially, of payment. How does that change and who gets the power? And of course, all these

companies are for sale. Imagine is for sale. The branding company by Maverick Carter and LeBron James is for sale. Obviously, Hello Sunshine got bought, not for $900 million, as we all know. But talk about that, what's happening here in the whole ecosystem. I mean, the tug of war between the exhibitors and the studios is coming at a moment when stars have just like more power than they've ever had. And they have, I think, both when Warner broke all those deals, they have wound up getting paid. They wound up extracting what they want from it. Right. And you're talking about production companies, you know, whose real value is that there's one person, whether it's Reese Witherspoon or LeBron James at the center of them, you know, getting these enormous valuations. And I think that really does speak to

just the, you know, the power of individuals and social media is a huge part of that. Well, one of the things is they don't just make one thing. Reese Witherspoon does book clubs, she does clothing. LeBron James has all kinds of branding and merchandise and things like that. So, I don't think anyone can just do these. I think actually celebrities are less powerful. Look at The Rock in this movie, it didn't move at all. You know, I think they have less power than you would imagine going forward in terms of payments and stuff. So, how does that shake out with them being paid? If movie theaters, and I think movie theaters are going to in terms of payments and stuff. So how does that shake out with them being paid? If movie theaters, and I think movie theaters, are going to be one of these things like Broadway,

like it's going to be a nice business, but not a big business. And it was a big business for them. I don't know if you agree with that. Yeah, I think that's probably right. And maybe they make up some of what they lose on volume by charging more. Charging more. Yeah. And be nicer, nicer seats, nicer food. You know, I'm about to interview the CEO of Alamo Draft House, which, of course, went into bankruptcy. And that was a nice experience. But it still wasn't enough.

Yeah, I mean, IMAX is actually the company that's really benefiting. It's not, like, I haven't been to one in a while. But I think that's the style of movie that people are going to come out for. Right, something cool. And something that you can get an experience you can't get at home. Well, the thing is, getting at home is amazing, actually. I just put in a new TV for my kids and they're never going to movie theaters ever.

It's not the pandemic. It's not COVID. They're not worried about stuff like that. They're worried. They just like where they are and they like their food and their tiny little refrigerator there. And I just, getting people to go back

is really something I just don't, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think it's going to be a big business. It's going to be a fine business, but not the kind of business that Hollywood's hoping for. Yeah, I think that's right. So, what then happens to agents in this sort of, you know, daisy chain of money rolling back and forth? I mean, somehow they always find a way, right?

Brian Lord is doing the Scarlett Johansson thing. She's got a lot of people. What do you imagine is going to happen with her? And Disney. Disney is just, Bob Chapik is like, we're just making theme parks and streaming services. And they called Disney a streaming company and not a Hollywood company for sure. And Disney has really more than anyone done something really clever with Marvel, which is have these ensemble casts where if they can't, if they can't agree with Scarlett Johansson, they can leave her out of the next movie.

She was killed. She was killed. Oh, right. Sorry. Not bring her back. Whatever that, you know,

the sister's coming back. I'm a big fan of Marvel, but go ahead. No, no, it's incredible. But also they're very, they,

they tend to, they, they have set up a structure where they're not hostage to a single star. All that said, I think usually these big fights with agents always wind up in handshake deals at the end with some compromise. And I think that Disney certainly didn't win the PR war when the faceless corporation goes out and calls the popular star greedy. Well, is she greedy? Because question, you answer that. Is she? Was she greedy? So I'm sort of supposed to make a moral choice between whether Scarlett Johansson should make

money or whether she should go to Disney corpse bottom line. I guess I would personally rather she got the money if you just, I mean, if that's the choice, right? I mean, most people probably would. I would like her to have a nicer house or something. nice husband. The Disney bottom line is a hard thing to root for. Yeah, but they did it. Why did they do it? They did it for a reason. They're not that stupid. I think they were trying to show they were willing to have a public fight with a big star.

Yeah, so everybody. To warn the next one. To warn the next one. All right. So where do you, finally, before we get to Julie, is where do you imagine the streaming wars going next what is the next big thing because there's people are pushing forward in these i i have all the streamers not everybody does but i was adding it up and i pay less for streamers than i would going to movie theaters and that's fine because i get a lot of the stuff i want to see i mean i i don't think

normal people have as many subscriptions as you and me yes that's true um i mean the two two the two things that are, I mean, the two different things are happening is I think there are some people who are seeing people kind of use it in more an a la carte way. Like I subscribe to Apple TV to see Ted Lasso and then promptly unsubscribe. Okay. And I don't really see myself as having a relationship with Apple TV. Right, right. I see myself as purchasing a show for a minute. Right. And that that's not really a subscription. Right. I mean, I think, you know, the other thing is, you know, are there going to be, you know, that I think these things are going to start getting sold as bundles,

or at least some of them are. And, you know, will you get the CNN? You kind of get it now with Comcast. I just signed up for a new Comcast. I got Netflix, HBO, they all came in a group to me, which was interesting. Yeah, and who's bundling, right? Is it Comcast? It was Comcast. Or is Netflix going to say, hey, we. Yeah. And who's bundling, right? Is it Comcast? It was Comcast. Or is Netflix going to say, hey, we're going to allow you to bundle with

some news channel or I don't know. I mean, I think there's tons of space for that sort of thing and tons of different levels at which it could be done. Your phone company could be doing it. So what happens to Netflix? Who is the winner here? Is Netflix continue to be on top? They're going to be, they're getting a lot of pressure. They're obviously moving into gaming. They're moving into lots of things. They have run the track around these companies for years, and now they're all here. I tend to think that the content matters more than the technology. Like, the tech of streaming a movie, it's not that complicated. You play a video, you watch it, you enjoy it. Although HBO, like, seems insistent on proving that wrong. Because when it, like, you know, if it really just breaks

or starts in the middle, or like keeps crashing and giving you weird error messages, this isn't complex technology, or maybe it's I mean, it may be tough on the back end. But I think Netflix's edge and having better tech. I don't know, I'm gonna watch the better show. And I do think that Disney and Warner and actually Warner as they when they eventually get their acts together, you know, are going to be more and more competitive with Netflix. But Netflix just is a huge lead. Right, right. And so you think in a couple of years,

could Netflix be under threat by these companies? I don't think it's a, I mean, I guess I don't think it's an existential threat. I just think that it's going to be a more head-to-head competition. It's going to matter more if you've had a hit. Right. All right. We're going to bring on our friend of Pivot. you've had a hit. Right. All right. We're going to bring on our friend of Pivot.

She's the award-winning investigative journalist with the Miami Herald and the New York Times bestselling author of Perversion of Justice, the Jeffrey Epstein story. Welcome, Julie K. Brown. I love the K part, by the way, Julie. Well, there's a lot of Julie Browns in the world, so I had to differentiate myself some way. I always enjoy it. I don't know why. Anyway, your 2018 three-part series, Through the Epstein Case, Into the Spotlight, Leading to Federal Indictments, The Downfall of Jeffrey Epstein, the new book, recounts the case, the victim's fight, and how Epstein managed to avoid prosecution for a decade. I'm going to start off, because I think one of the things that I was really struck by is this is a lot about journalism, this book. It's, of course, about Epstein and what you've done. I'd love you to sort of talk about that at the top.

And then Ben will have a million questions, of course. But talk a little bit about what, because it was a journalism struggle to get the series in. And then also you recounted it really well in the book. Well, I didn't have a lot of lead time with this book, quite frankly. I only had six months to write it, which is very, very short turnaround time. So I wasn't going to have a whole lot of time to go out. This story was so mammoth to go out and try to get new information on Epstein at the same time, write a book that's, you know, 100,000 words in six months. So I thought, you know, speaking to my editor, they thought that I should try to put some of the story behind the story.

And I sort of was fighting about that a little bit. No reporter likes to really be the story. And I guess my first couple of drafts, I was resisting and resisting. And my editor kept asking me questions, quite frankly, about how I did what I did. And it occurred to me that, you know, as journalists, we don't write a lot about how we get the story and all the steps and the blood, sweat and tears that sort of goes into putting together a story. And especially at a time, this was happening during when Trump was saying, reporters are the enemy of the people, etc. I thought maybe it would be good to tell,

explain to the public all that we go through in order to get these stories. I thought that was gripping. I think your editor was right in terms of understanding how difficult it was to get the story done in the first place, because, you know, you sort of revived a story that he had slipped out of prosecution, essentially. Right. And a lot had been written about, you know, I sort of got hammered about from some in the media about how this had been out there and it had been out there. But and I knew that, but I felt like I needed to take it apart and put it back together in a way that maybe help people understand all the moving parts that had happened over the years.

Cause there were a lot of different things that had happened in the 10 years since this story happened. Yeah. Also, I love the, I mean, just sort of sort of reality, just how complex and real your relationships with your sources are.

I think people often watching, you know, Washington dramas, imagine that these relationships are these very transactional relationships with two-dimensional people. And I don't know, you really capture just how complicated and real it is. To go back to something you just said, that you have a passage in the book, I think kind of suggesting that you thought a lot of media was in some way complicit with Epstein or assisting in the cover-up. I mean, and I wasn't quite sure how to read it. And I'm curious if you could elaborate on that a little,

like that there was, you know, I mean, obviously the media allowed this story to drop off the map, but how do you understand how that happened and why that happened? Well, I think there's a lot of different factors. It's not one thing. And I didn't mean to imply that they were complicit because I don't think that they, you know,

all journalists want to get a story. I don't think that that was it. What I thought was the problem with this story is that it mostly, the journalists that had written it about in the past had mostly written about the celebrity political aspect of it. The Lolita Express, Clinton on the plane is Trump related. It was so frenzied in the celebrity gossipy part of the story that the part that was to me wasn't really examined was how did he get the prosecutors to let him basically off the hook. And so I put blinders on, like I purposely really didn't write much in the book about Clinton or in the series either

about Clinton and Trump and, you know. Who visited the island, whoever, yeah. Yeah, and who was on his plane and all that kind of stuff. I wanted to really zone in on the criminal justice system. And that's what I think that the media didn't cover. I don't think it was a, you know, a purposeful thing. I just think that we tend to,

you know, focus on sometimes the thing that we think readers want to read. So talk about that a little bit, that process, because, you know, Trump's labor secretary, Alan Acosta, gave Epstein the original sweetheart deal plea in 2018, 2008, excuse me. And then he stepped down after Epstein was arrested again in 2019. Talk a little bit about that, how Epstein squirreled himself out of prosecution for so long. Well, you know, as I go into detail in the book, I think I more finely connect the dots between all these people. Edstein was masterful in how he picked his attorneys, very strategic. You know, one of the attorneys he picked, for example, had dated the head of the criminal division in Miami. head of the criminal division in Miami. There were lawyers who had ties to Kirkland and Ellis,

who Acosta, of course, had worked there before. And in fact, these lawyers were with the Federalist Society, which, you know, Acosta had dreams of becoming a Supreme Court justice and the Federalist Society really is behind a lot of the nominations for the Supreme Court. So he was masterful and strategic in how he picked his lawyers, people who had some kind of ties to other prosecutors in the system. And socially too, to give himself image, he was all over the tech people. He showed up at TED. I never met him there, but he was near me. He was at these dinners that they had. And it was interesting because he invited a lot of them to his island, for sure. I know a lot of them who went there, and I don't think they were doing what he was doing. But it was interesting how he moved into the tech sector quite a lot more, including at MIT and other places. And at one point,

one of his PR people said, would you like to come meet him at his mansion and I was like no he's a convicted pedophile I think like I didn't want to I wasn't covering the story I was like he has nothing to do with tech which is was he just and he was like this person meets him this person meets him so when you think about how he did that why why did people give him a pass after that original, you know, the plea deal happened? Well, remember, he got, he pleaded guilty to solicitation of just a single really charge of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor for prostitution. And, you know, we all think of prostitution is really not that big of a deal of a crime.

And so he could easily point to people, look, I got caught with a prostitute. I didn't know how she was so, she looked 18. I think that was one other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the idea that he had, and remember, especially when he got out, it took a while for that plea agreement to become public. It was sealed. And it was like a year before that became public. And even when it did, it was unclear what does co-conspirators both

named and unnamed mean? What does this really mean? And you couldn't tell really how many victims there were. It took a while for this whole thing to kind of unfold where you realize what the depth of this crime was, you know? So initially, it was just a prostitution crime, or at least that's what he could tell people. One of the things, I mean, I sort of picked up the book in part hoping that it would like resolve all remaining mysteries of the Jeffrey Epstein case, And, you know, which is perhaps a lot of high expectation, but it seems to me sort of hanging over all of this. And the thing, you know,

if you sort of talk to regular people about Epstein, the, there is a belief that not just, he wasn't just a rich felon who kind of paid people off to get himself off the hook. He was the leader of some kind of sex trafficking ring. And that, and there are obviously suggestions all over the place in sort of popular culture that he was blackmailing prominent people to whom he had

supplied underage girls. And I think, you know, reading this, it's, I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? Is that true? Well, here's the thing. There's no doubt he had cameras in his houses. We know that that happened. And we know that right before they served the search warrant, they pulled out a lot of computers from his house. So he had his places pretty wired. So if you were a guy that went to his house, and maybe you did something that you shouldn't have done, it is now how many years later, you know, over a decade later, you might still be worried about whether there might be something out there. So in my mind, it's not even material whether it really exists. And in what format does it exist? Because it was back in 2008. And our technology wasn't as great back then. And who knows. But just the fact that it's possible is enough to make these people not sleep well at night, I would think,

because you just don't know whether it is. And he probably did have some tapes at some point, whether they still exist or not. I mean, we don't know what they took out of his vault, out of his safe in his house when he was arrested. We don't know what the FBI has. has. But I don't think, I've never heard that he actually blackmailed people. But like I said, if they were there and they were doing something they shouldn't have, the chances are, there is a good chance that there's a recording of that somewhere. So where does that go? Where do those recordings go now? Well, the FBI would keep them. I mean, the FBI has never released even its original investigation from back in 2007. They've never even released those files. The files they've put out there are so heavily redacted and full of gobbledygook, you would never really be able to understand them. You know, there's

really nothing there because they still, you know, it's still not released to the public. And when will it be or what will happen to it? I doubt it. I don't know unless maybe a member of Congress, members of Congress demand, but I don't know if there's a stomach for that. Who knows what's in that file? You know, it will open up a lot of can of worms, I'm sure, and I'm not so sure if the FBI wants to go there. Right. But one of Epstein's longtime accusers, Virginia Giuffre, filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew last week claiming that he took part in the abuse. What do you make of this? And he's suggesting photos of him and her and Ghislaine Maxwell are fake. Does that bring out this information?

Jelaine Maxwell are fake. Does that bring out this information? Well, yeah, if it goes, you know, they're going to go into discovery and he, you know, he's going to have to show where he was. I mean, there is a date that that particular event happened, that she was with him. And so he, you know, there's going to be discovery around this, and I'm sure that he's going to have to show exactly where he was and when and you know they're you know that's part of it they're going to try to prove and that's exactly what Virginia tried to do with the Maxwell suit she sued Galen Maxwell Epstein's uh ex-partner now uh awaiting trial and sex trafficking charges uh in New York herself but there there was an extended, very lengthy, bitter lawsuit between Virginia and Maxwell that led to an awful lot of material involving, became more of a lawsuit into

showing what Maxwell was doing. So I theorize that's exactly what this lawsuit with the prince is going to do. They're going to try to prove in this lawsuit that he actually was involved. One of the chapters of the book is titled, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. Why do you think that? You know, I covered Florida prisons for a long time, for four years. I know the way things happen in prison. And some of the things that they said happened just don't make any sense to anybody that follows prisons. Look, it doesn't matter what I think. The fact that his lawyers who had seen him up until the time this happened, his brother, and the forensic pathologist that was at the autopsy don't believe he killed himself.

That's one side. And then the other side is we have this medical examiner in New York who wasn't, by the way, the one that made the decision was not the one at the autopsy there was another medical examiner at the autopsy who agreed with Biden that she she was saying I don't think this looks like a like a suicide but the medical examiner who's off who wears the you know the hat so to speak, in New York. She ruled it a suicide, but has provided no evidence otherwise, you know, to dispute what Baden has said, which he believes for a number of reasons that he didn't commit suicide. Now, I think it's possible he could have had help in that, you know, he was a guy who probably didn't even tie his own shoelaces.

He had butlers doing everything for him. I just don't see him doing this by himself, even if he is alleged to have done, which was, you know, tie this around the top bunk and pull himself with such ferocity that he would have broken three bones in his neck. So which way do you go that he hired someone or you just don't know? Well, I just don't think he could have done this by himself. Right. You know, and the fact that, you know, look, we have, you know, the video wasn't working. The cellmate was pulled out an hour and the cellmate wasn't just pulled out for the cellmate was taken to another facility for whistleblowers. Okay. The cellmate was taken

out hours before the videos weren't working. Then you have not one guard, but two guards, essentially falling asleep at the wheel. You know, then they take his body out. That's crime 101 is you don't remove a body. You leave it as it is because it's a crime scene and you've got to preserve the evidence. So they don't even have a picture of, you know, they have to take whoever's word for it on exactly how his body was found. So it's just so problematic that I think that it deserves another look. And certainly the Justice Department is looking at it for two years. We still don't know the results of their investigation. But Ghislaine Maxwell is still living and

certainly has a lot of information, presumably. That's right. She's got, I think she knows everything. Yeah, she does. I think you probably know more about her than most people. Do you think that she will ultimately tell whatever her story is? Is there, or are the prosecutors so set on throwing her in jail forever that she has no incentive to? I don't think it comes down to her. I think it partially comes down to whether prosecutors want to go down that road. And I quite frankly, don't think that they do. I think that they want this to go away. And one of the ways they can do that is to just prosecute her and then say they did their job. Do they really want to go down the path of trying to prove all these other people were, you know,

involved when it's really Ghislaine trying to save herself in a sense. How credible is that going to be unless she has some other evidence to back up what she would tell them? Are you going to go back to the Herald and at some point pick up another big investigative project? Well, I hope to. I mean, I'm still with the Herald, but I'd like to get off of the Epstein story eventually. I mean, the way that I look at it is, you know, I find what I find most rewarding about what I do is being able to expose injustices that other people aren't paying attention to. And obviously, everybody's paying attention to this story right now.

I don't know that it needs me to stay on it. I think that I'd like to move on to something else that someone that to help up someone else, perhaps, who isn't getting justice. Well, I think you have changed the way society looks at sex workers and trafficking victims. Absolutely. You know, and how power is easily manipulated by people, no matter what awful thing they do. It's a real credit to you. Much more so than I think you realize. Maybe you realize it. I think a lot of people feel.

I actually don't. I kind of, Emily Michaud is my videographer on this project. I'd like to get her name in because she, her documentaries really were probably powerful story itself. But we often, even now, say that we can't believe that it happened. I mean, it just seems amazing to me that, I mean, we're just still in shock, I think, of everything. You know, it's like a domino effect. You know, one thing after another thing after another thing.

It's kind of, it's kind of crazy what happened. Wonderful journalism. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Julie K. Brown. Ben? Yeah, thanks. And I just, another thing is if you are somebody who wants to be a reporter looking for a book to read about what to keep your, just about keeping your eye on the ball, and there's a bunch in there that I really related to and loved about how you did not spend a lot of energy trying to be the most popular person in the newsroom, but spent all your energy trying to do good stories.

And that is so important. Yeah. But Ben is the most popular person in the newsroom, just so you know. It is hard. You know, you, nobody beats myself up more than me and it is kind of hard, but I, I've tried to get a little nicer in my, my old age, you know, nobody beats myself up more than me. And it is kind of hard.

But I've tried to get a little nicer in my old age, you know, kind of get learned. Don't do it, Julie. Don't do it. Don't growl as much as I used to, I guess. Don't do it. It's better to be feared than loved. Double down. Double down, Julie.

It's working for you. Anyway, we really appreciate it so much. It's a really, really wonderful book. And everyone should read it. It's called Perversion of Justice, the Jeffrey Epstein story by the very fantastic Julie Cabra. Thank you. Well, she is quite a legend. I don't think she realized how important she is as a journalist. And that was some story she wrestled to the ground, essentially. All right, Ben, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

back for wins and fails. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. You already know that AI is transforming the world around us,

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commitment to an ethical approach that puts humanity first. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash clawed. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. Okay, Ben, wins and fails. I'm going to just let you have that this one this week. You know, on the win side of the ledger, I suppose, a really interesting story in the Times about how the essentially right- wing backlash publishing business is just minting money right now. And I think it would be safe to say that in the media business, the backlash is basically winning. Meaning? Explain that. I mean, these, you know, book, anti anti racism books about how terrible critical race theory is

that whole universe of media is just exploding right now. Why do you think that is? I think big gains in civil rights are always followed by a really vicious backlash, and that's, I think, where we are right now. But I think it's still kind of ramping up. And if you sort of look at this story and just look at the sort of sales figures, I mean, it's probably not a surprise. And, you know, looking's probably not a surprise. And, you know, looking at Fox News's ratings, you see it too. But I think that's really, it's a real window, I think, into where the country is politically right now.

All right. Fails? Fails. I mean, I think Twitter experts on Afghanistan had a pretty rough 24 hours. It's depressing to say. Why? You were you got off the covid doctors the doctor googles yeah i don't know i mean you know they like we this is this very complex and horrible conflict that's been going on for 20 years and you see people trying kind of glibly to fit it into the politics of this particular moment on twitter to get some

retweets and it's like you, you know, it's depressing. It is. I always love getting my, for example, vaccine advice from venture capitalists who seem to enjoy doing it. That's always my thing. You know, the venture capitalists, they were, you know, it's funny because like everybody else at some point, they were actually early on, they were so on it. And they were very early to think that shaking hands was dangerous. And I remember in February going into a room full of VCs and them saying, like, no handshakes, no handshakes. And then, of course, we sat inside in this room for an hour. Right, right.

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, they lost their minds. All right, those are good ones. Those are good ones. So, Ben, that's the show. But what are you working on? What are you working on right now? What interests Ben Smith? I mean, I think that, you know, that it's so media so often the story of this pendulum that is swinging and wherever

you decide that, well, it's all about small scale subscription businesses, you know, whenever that consensus is reached, it's almost immediately wrong. And, and then it's, it's sort of the moment to be like, Oh, look, actually, it's like giant advertising businesses like Red Ventures, which I wrote about this week. And in general, I think, you know, I'm sort of interested in how that sort of pendulum is going to swing away from wherever we think it is right now. I mean, obviously, there's also this just real decline in, I mean, everybody's subscription, either their subscriptions are falling or their subscription growths have slowed post-Trump. And I think for a lot of publishers, that's a really complicated, interesting challenge. And then the other thing that I hope one of your listeners will tell me how to write this column.

I mean, just the world's biggest open secret is the sort of shameful Hollywood capitulation to China on everything at every moment. It's become sort of a boring story because it's you write the story, you say, well, Apple has a rule that they're not allowed to say anything mean about China. And everybody shrugs and moves on. And I'm sort of trying to figure out how do you write a column like here's how to stop the media business from doing this. And I don't really know the answer. It is a really interesting thing because every time I've been writing about problems with China for years in terms of tech and things like that, which is usually sort of a Tucker Carlson zones, you know what I mean? Like going after China. And it is usually sort of a sort of Tucker Carlson zones being,

you know what I mean? Like going after China. And it's a really fascinating thing to get the reaction to it. Like it's, it's quite now I'm like, they're, they're the menace of the next century to us at least for sure. And they're very good at it.

It's not like they're the stumble bums of Russia. You know what I mean? These are very good at what they're doing. It's an interesting issue. John Cena thing made me sad for days. I have to say. Yeah, the John Cena thing was loathsome. And there's no professional consequence for him for that.

There's no consequence for the studio. And there's obviously a strong argument that, well, on balance, it's better for the US that Chinese consumers are seeing these American movies and buying these American movies. Better for Disney Chinese consumers are seeing these American movies and buying these better for Disney that they're buying these American movies. I guess that's the argument. It doesn't teach them. It doesn't teach them anything.

It's a, it's when I called China surveillance economy, people go nuts. I'm like, it's a survival. Yeah. I'm not sure. It's like,

it's that sort of straight. I mean, I'm sure there are lots of different factors at play, but you would think that you could shift the incentives so that Disney was not rewriting its movies to please the Chinese government. And I think, you know, it then does raise the question, should you have companies that both operate theme parks in China and make movies? Or should that not be allowed? That is a very good question.

I mean, one of the things, if you remember going back, Murdoch at News Corp had that. It goes back a long ways. And there was another Disney movie that they did the same thing to. It's almost persistent. And tech companies, when they get there, they have all those issues or they don't go there at all. And in the news business, I think people have really found that you cannot both do news and business in China. 100%. 100%. Anyway, really smart show, Ben. I really appreciate it. You can check out Ben Smith's column, The Media Equation at the New York Times. Come back Friday when I'll be joined by guest host Casey Newton, the tallest man in Silicon

Valley. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the Pivot podcast. The link is in our show notes. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. And if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or 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. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. I would like to also thank everyone for listening to something from Vox Media. I've never had that opportunity before. Thank you, Ben. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. It's not always easy to harness the power and potential of AI. For all the talk around its revolutionary potential, a lot of AI systems feel like they're designed for specific tasks performed by a select few. Well, Clawed by Anthropic is AI for everyone.

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