Pod Save America - “The RNC: Now, With 5x More Trump!”

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

The Republican National Convention lineup is heavy on Trump and light on policy, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris see their favorability rise after last week’s convention, Trump touts another unproven Covid treatment, and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifies before Congress. Then New York Times reporter Kevin Roose talks to Tommy about Trump’s embrace of the QAnon cult.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Kevin Roos of the New York Times talks to Tommy about Trump's embrace of the QAnon cult. Before that, we'll talk about what's in store for this week's Republican National Convention, how the public reacted to last week's Democratic Convention, and the latest on the postal service crisis. But first, Levitt, how was the show this weekend? We had a great convention special. Senator Brian Schatz, Emily Heller, Naomi Ekperigen, Josh Barrow. We had a great convention special. Senator Brian Schatz, Emily Heller, Naomi

Ekperigen, Josh Barrow. We had a good time. We broke down the speeches. That's all you really need to know. Fantastic. Fantastic. Also, tomorrow is Tuesday, which means there's a brand new episode of Missing America out. Ben talks to an anonymous activist about the daily marches and protests taking place in Hong Kong, and they sound the alarm on the dangers of a growing authoritarian power. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you want to hate watch the RNC with us, we will be on our group thread each night this week, starting at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. Watch with us at Crooked.com slash convention and subscribe to our YouTube channel

at youtube.com slash cricket media. A lot of content this week, boys. A lot of content. A lot of content. All right. The Republican National Convention lineup has been announced and it's real who's who

of Trump staff and family members. On Monday, we got Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend, Kim Guilfoyle, and Donald Trump. Tuesday night, we got Melania Trump, Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump, and Donald Trump again. Wednesday night, we got Lara Trump and Donald Trump again.

Thursday night, Ivanka Trump, and one more time, Donald Trump. The Republican Party also announced that they will not be releasing any policy platform other than to reassert, quote, the party's strong support for President Donald Trump and his administration. Meanwhile, Trump has released a second term agenda that includes bullets like, quote, teach American exceptionalism, drain the globalist swamp and return to normal in 2021.

Love it. I'm not really getting a not me us vibe from this convention. What about you? Yeah, I mean, look, he already started this morning. He went to the podium already today for his uplifting convention and spent the whole time railing against the scourge of people voting. So it's already off to a great start. They already also did their roll call. And we had people all across the country in these magnificent vistas showing the best of America. And it was just white head after white head, just being like, we hate Joe Biden and we're sending Kentucky's votes to Donald Trump. So they're already kind of failing to meet the expectations set over the weekend. Love it. I can't believe you would be this hard on a good step and repeat.

It looked gorgeous. Yeah, it looks like they're on their way into a Dinesh D'Souza documentary. But the other, this is stupid and this is small. American exceptionalism is not something you claim to teach. It's an insult at people who believe America is exceptional. It was coined by Joseph Stalin. If you say, I think the Yankees are the best team, you don't say I'm a Yankees exceptionalist. You think the Yankees are the

best. Other people think you're stupid and don't notice what's wrong with the Yankees. If you love America and think America is the best, it's not because you believe in America and exceptionalism. It's because that's your evaluation of countries. See what I'm saying? Do you see why it's stupid? I mean, look, I'm glad that bothered you. I do think the fact that they have decided to forego a policy platform this year. No, this is a small note. For whatever dear leader wants. That's also one of two things in the that's their education platform, which is absolutely

incredible. Also, one thing I noticed in the platform is repealing Obamacare, not high on his on his agenda anymore. That's gone. That's out of there. So I wonder I wonder I wonder how they're explaining that to themselves. Tommy, what are the what are the potential downsides of having this much Trump? You guys notice they've been calling him the talent in chief. That's a cute little thing there. So it's not totally clear what his role is every night. Jason Miller is out today saying he might just be appearing and not speaking every night. But I don't believe him.

I think it's very hard to drag Trump in front of a microphone and not have him speak. So like on a basic level, his approval rating is 41, 42%, which means your message every night is going to be carried by someone who's deeply unpopular. Yes, there are other speakers, but he's going to lead the news coverage. He's going to lead everything that spins out of this event every night. So I don't know that that's ideal. Normally, conventions are structured to let validators carry the message for you and tell your story because they can often make the case better than you can. And so, you know, look at Michelle Obama's speech, right? She comes into that. She's a 60% approval rating. She's a 91% approval rating among Democrats. She makes a case for Biden's character. She presents this

devastating critique of Trump that makes news in all these different ways and appeals to different audiences. And I think that's more beneficial. I just wonder if this is going to be too much Trump, right? I mean, it's not the same as the daily coronavirus briefing because he's giving a speech. It's not a Q&A, but that did hurt him politically. I also just wonder if it's going to get boring. I mean, he spoke for 45 minutes already this morning. I mean, it feels like too much. So potential upsides. Right. I mean, he has commanded the political debate over the last four years, unlike any president we've ever seen. will be hopeful. My guess is that Trump is just going to end the night every night with another broadside against Joe Biden. And that can add up another upside for them, I guess, if we're being honest, is it's not like they've got a ton of great options, right? And most of the keynote speakers are named Trump. They're just shittier versions of him. It's not like Matt Geitz or Jim Jordan, who have no name ID are going to carry the message. Well, like drunk ass Rudy Giuliani,

an assortment of White House staffers. It's slim picking. So none of this is to say it won't be a successful RNC. It might be. I just imagine it's just going to be a sustained negative assault on Joe Biden. I saw one run of show that said Jim Traffickant, parens, if alive. parens, if alive. Look, I do very much enjoy watching the best laid plans of the fucking goobers who work for Donald Trump

instantly meet reality on the first morning of the convention. Like their job right now is to turn this election into a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and to move it away from a referendum on Donald Trump and his leadership. That's what they're trying to do.

So that's why you got Miller out there and Kellyanne Conway and all the rest of them talking about this hopeful, optimistic convention versus the Democrats' dark, scary convention. Right. Which is like bullshit already. And then they're talking about like it won't be. And then they were talking about like, it won't be. Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman actually said, it's not going to be Trump centric like the Democratic Convention is. It's going to be about real people who've benefited. It's like they know that their strategic imperative is to do that, is to turn into a choice between Trump and Biden and to try to defend Donald Trump's record and talk about the second term. Like they know this is what they need to do. And then about an hour into the convention on Monday morning, Donald Trump storms in, gives a speech longer than Joe Biden's acceptance speech,

where he just rambles on, accuses Democrats of stealing the election, talks about Spygate, talks about Barack Obama, goes off on this thing. And it's just like, it's always about him. And he makes it about him all the time. I would say in what Trump said today. So there's whatever they'll claim about the message. You know, Kellyanne Conway will take a break from Trust Falls with Claudia and George to like, let us know what the message is going to be. Can I say that?

It's fine. And like, Ronna Romney McDaniel will say whatever she wants to say. Um, but like Trump today, this morning, I think actually says what the message will be because you can't put bounds on what he'll do. He'll say what it is. And really what he said today is if it wasn't for me, the virus would have killed millions. Uh, if it wasn't for me, everything would have been worse. I shut down travel from Europe. I shut down travel from China. Everyone told me that that was stupid. None of this is true.

And if you give Joe Biden the reins, America won't come back. He's going to shut it down. Things will be worse than ever before. And so in a way, I think what he's trying to basically do is he's trying to declare bankruptcy. He's trying to say, all right, let's go back to zero. Let's cancel all the old debts. None of that was my fault. I'm not paying for any of it.

We're back at zero because that's what he knows how to do. And his hope is that he can spend a week basically terrifying people about Joe Biden, claiming that America won't come back if Joe Biden is president. I mean, their optimistic message is an apocalyptic message. I mean, normally an optimistic message means painting a better future for you and me. Here's my plan for that vision, or here's my plan for that future. Like, here's my vision.

There was some hand-wringing at the DNC because Biden didn't spend enough time, some people think, talking about his economic plans. Maybe that's right. Maybe I don't know, but Trump's second term agenda so far is 50 bullet points. I mean, if that's all they've got, they have to fill in the rest with just attacks on Biden. Well, also, does anyone think that if asked, Trump would be able to repeat any of those bullet points?

I mean, he was on Fox News Sunday night and the host asked him about his second term agenda and what he would do. And he said, quote, I would strengthen what we've done and I would do new things. He's whipped on that question on Fox four times, literally four times. It's amazing. And that's Fox. That's Fox. It's amazing. What else is it? All right. Let's talk about how last week's Democratic National Convention has been received by the public so far. In a few new polls conducted over the weekend, Joe Biden maintained or just slightly increased his lead over Donald Trump, which is now an average of nine points. But a number of polls have also shown that the favorability ratings for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have risen by a decent margin, especially among independents, black voters,

and Democrats, more of whom now say they're very enthusiastic about voting for Biden. Tommy, what do you think this says about the success of the Democratic convention and how much the convention matters to the overall race? I mean, I think there's this silly discussion about whether or not people get a convention bump that is actually kind of dated. I think the average convention bump since 2004 is about two points. So I think if you look inside those polls, there actually was good news. I think the one you mentioned, you know, there's two that I saw, John. Axios and SurveyMonkey. They showed a 14 point improvement in Biden's net favorable rating with independents. And Biden and Kamala Harris got a five point bump in their favorability with

Democrats. And then CBS did a poll where they said to voters, they asked voters why you were voting for Joe Biden. And the percentage of people who said, because I like Joe Biden, went from 29 percent pre-convention to 38% post-convention. So that makes it seem like they did do an effective job of explaining to people who Joe Biden is, his values, his character, the things he would do for them as president, which I would view as a success. Love it. What do you think? Yeah, that was the number that I sort of stood out to me. It was what we talked about. Actually, Dan, I think actually on the pod set a marker down saying he wanted to see a change in the number of people who were supporting Biden to support Biden versus supporting Biden to oppose Trump. And that 9% shift, I think,

is really important. You know, one thing that has just become clear is that with each passing convention, the number of persuadable people watching goes down. That's just the nature of polarization. And one of the hardest jobs is to reach the kind of people you could persuade but might not be paying attention. Yeah. And I think that has been the trend, as you both point out, generally over time. I also think that this election in particular so far has been incredibly stable despite all that's happened. Right. Like the margin between Trump and Biden has not, has been fairly stable. And I think more people have already made up their minds in this election, certainly than in 2016. I think that the Morning Consult poll showed that, you know, Biden didn't get a huge

bounce so far and neither did, and Hillary got a few points after 2016. But after 2016, I think Morning Consult found the race like 44-40 Hillary over Trump, right, which means there's a lot of undecided voters. Now it's like 51-52-43, which means that Biden's over 50, meaning that a lot more people have made up their minds and a lot of other polls have shown that. So I think what that means for both the Democratic convention and what we're about to see this week is that we may not see a big bump for either Biden or Donald Trump. But I think what the Biden campaign has wanted is a lot of Biden's lead comes from sort of voters who are softer in their support. So they're voting for Joe Biden because they really just don't like Donald Trump.

because they really just don't like Donald Trump. If those people, after a week of the Democratic convention, decide that they like Joe Biden a lot more, they're going to be firmer in their support for Joe Biden. And that's going to harden that margin that we've already seen build over the last couple months, hopefully. We'll see what the Republican National Convention does to that lead this week. So in addition to whatever Trump does at the RNC, he will also continue to make use of his primary strategy in winning reelection, which is abusing the power of his office. He called a press conference on Sunday night to announce that the FDA has issued an emergency

authorization for blood plasma. Plasma, as he said. Why can't he say fucking plasma? Plasma. Blood plasma infusions as therapeutic treatment for coronavirus patients even though fda scientists voiced objections to politico that the plasma has not been quote proven as an effective treatment axios reports that trump administration officials have been putting pressure on the fda just last week trade advisor peter navarro said to officials at the fda quote you are all deep state and you need to get on Trump time. So, Tommy, Trump and his strategists clearly think that any kind of announcements around COVID treatments and vaccines help him politically, which obviously has horrifying implications.

But do you even think that's true? I struggle with this one. I mean, is the average voter happy about Trump's handling of the coronavirus if they're still stuck at home or if their kids can't go to school or if you're one of like 30 million people out of work? My guess is probably not. I mean, we shouldn't underestimate his ability to bullshit his base into just magically thinking things are better. We saw that with the economy, but I have a harder time believing it applies here. Like, are you really going to be like 175,000 people are dead? The economy is decimated.

But I just overheard some moron on Fox and Friends talking about plasma. So now we're good to go. I don't know. I struggle with that one. Love it. What do you think? I mean, some people thought that there was a story in the Financial Times that it wasn't going to be the plasma thing, that it was going to be that in October

they're going to do an emergency use authorization for the Oxford vaccine potentially so that Trump can announce there'll be a vaccine before the election. Like, do you think this kind of thing can work? What do you think? I don't know. I would say that people at this point are used to Donald Trump saying things that don't turn out to be true, that is then dismissed by the vast majority of people and embraced as a kind of proof of how

good he is because he's so good at playing the media by his base who are so smart that they know when he's honest and know when he's not. To me, the thing that makes me nervous is not like basically what amounts to kind of bigging up a incremental advance. What makes me nervous is more of a Donald Trump taking credit for something. And then actually there is follow up of a, because once there is a vaccine that goes into production, it becomes, you know, the biggest story in politics and in the news. And then we are following every single day,

the debates about distribution, the debates about who gets it first. Will it go to nurses and healthcare professionals? Will it go to seniors? Will it go to teachers? That becomes an all-consuming debate that he's very much a part of and taking credit for. So that makes me nervous, sincerely. But I don't know that in October, he'll be in a position to start that conversation. What matters to me is less Donald Trump going to a podium and making a claim and more the kind of follow on news stories that make it seem true. Yeah, I will say, you know, we have the folks at Navigator have done a lot of polling on people's opinions around the pandemic and Trump and on their last poll, people's opinions around the pandemic and Trump.

And on their last poll, even among people who are in high infection states, 57% say they are more concerned about going too far and pushing to develop a vaccine quickly rather than being too cautious and slow. So I think, A, there's that when you hear Donald Trump just like touting a new treatment or vaccine. B, I also find it weird that like, so what is Trump's argument here come October?

Like, vote for me and you'll get a vaccine. Vote for Joe Biden. And I'm taking the vaccine with me. Is he going to hold up the secret recipe with a lighter? Like, what is the what's the pitch? I just don't get why that's a real why that's a big reelection argument, like why that's the big October surprise. I would say right, right.

If you're going to answer the question, it's, I think it's more about Trump saying something along the lines of, if it weren't for me, this vaccine would be months off because I pushed these dumb, deep state, namby-pamby government insiders who are too slow and too cautious and too worried about how it looks. And I pushed them and I pushed them and I got this vaccine done faster. And so because of me, I stopped the virus. I stopped. He'll say I stopped the China virus by keeping people out of the U.S. and then I'm stopping the virus by getting the vaccine done early. And that, I think, is the case I'll make. Yeah. So that's like stick with me and we get this vaccine that I push for and the economy's back open, you go with Sleepy Joe and he probably gums up

the works again on the vaccine and shuts the whole country down. He just only gives it to Elon Omar and Antifa. Nobody else gets it. Becomes a Muslim-only vaccine. We're joking about this now in October.

That line will probably come out of his mouth. He'll fall asleep during the meeting about it or something, yeah. So on that note, you know, Trump and other Republicans are also attacking Joe Biden for saying he'll follow the advice of public health experts if he's elected. In response to a question from ABC's David Muir about what he would do if scientists recommended another shutdown, Biden said, quote, I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists. We're

going to do whatever it takes to save lives. In response, Donald Trump tweeted, despite biggest ever job gains and a V-shaped recovery, Joe Biden said, I would shut it down, referring to our country. He has no clue. Tommy, Trump and the Republicans are very excited about this line of attack. Is it smart? We just had this debate. We just had this debate. Politicians who took the coronavirus seriously, who listened to scientists, saw their approval ratings go up. Those who didn't were hurt politically.

It's not like a federal thing. It's look at the governors. Governors in Arizona, Texas, and Florida all saw their numbers tank. But Roy Cooper in North Carolina, who took all kinds of shit from Trump because he wouldn't let the RNC happen in Charlotte without social distancing and masks and other health protocols, he his approval rating was almost at 60 percent. Like, look, I can't predict the future. Maybe people are sick of lockdowns and the context has changed. But I still think the safest political ground for Biden or Trump or anybody is to show that you

will follow the scientists and do what they say, because I don't think anyone wants like a chop shop vaccine from Putin in Russia or, you know, to keep the economy open when people are getting really sick. It's like this seems so obvious to me. Love it. I mean, I've been very pleasantly surprised at how patient most of the public has been about this, because, you know, we've now gone through this, as Tommy pointed out, many times where Trump says Democrats want to shut the country down and I don't. And every time it turns out, you know, there's some people who think, oh, that's going to be a political winner for him. And then it turns out people are much more patient because they are scared about opening up the country without a vaccine or without having gotten the virus under control. But what do you think about that? Does that surprise you? Or do

you think that people could finally be sick of it now? This was one where it's beyond Trump. There was a bunch of Republican strategists. Some of the more right-leaning reporters were tweeting this. We'll probably hear this all week at the convention, I'm sure. Yeah, no. So I think Biden is on the best ground when he says you can't actually choose between the economy and your health. The only way the economy comes back is if we take care of people's health. That to me is is incredibly like sort of clear, like popular, obvious. I also do understand why he's saying what he's saying. And I think it's admirable that he's letting the science lead and really kind of delivering a maximal position, right? You know, I will do

what the scientists say. If they say shut it down, I will shut it down. I get that. I also, I also agree that the polls have been incredibly heartening about how patient people and generous people are about this, even now to this day, right? Even as parents are now experiencing the hardship of what happens when schools either have to open and shut or can't open or are partially open. And it's an entire mess. There's the polls have shifted to parents wanting to make sure schools don't open. Right. They understand the stakes of the virus. That said, you know, Donald Trump has made his career on telling people, basically getting people to forget what their minds know is true, to go with something easy, to go with something that feels good. And even as people know instinctively that opening up might be wrong, that Biden's positions are correct,

there's something appealing about a guy going up there and saying, elect me, it's Mardi Gras, right? It's just, you know, give in. It'll all be okay. It's fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it. Don't listen to these naysayers. So like I think he's saying the right things, but I do think there's a head heart issue. It's a little foamy once, though, you know, like you can say that the first time and then we you know, the restaurants all open up and the schools open up and suddenly cases are shooting through the roof. Right. Like I just, I think that the other part of this is that Biden, the question to Biden was

if the scientists say this, right? And so I think Biden is on the best, the firmest ground, as you said, making sure he continues to repeat, I will follow the guidance of scientists. So like, hopefully Joe Biden wins and there's a vaccine or there's a vaccine in development.

It's very close. But like, if it's a choice between do you want to fucking stumble through 2021 like we stumbled through 2020 where we just have these like outbreaks and flare-ups because everyone opens then we have to shut down again or do you want to do four weeks of a real solid shutdown and then actually tamp the virus down so then we can open up for the rest of the year obviously you'd choose the latter but um you just have to make that clear and say that you're going to follow scientists. And obviously, Donald Trump. John, it's really unfair of you to say this. The 50 bullet policy plan they rolled out clearly says

return to normal in 2021 in the COVID section. Please don't lie about his record or his plan. Can you imagine a Donald Trump reelection slogan is return to normal 2021? Just vote for Donald Trump to return to normal. I want to make one more point too, which is they're going around saying that they are responsible for the biggest job gains in history. And it is one of the most idiotic claims.

If you, what's actually happening is you have the most precipitous job drop in history and a tiny little recovery, like just a dead cat bounce, this like tiny bit of increase. And the idea that they're going to campaign on the fact that it went from having lost, what, 50 million jobs to 45 million jobs is astounding. I can't believe they think they can get away with that. Yeah, it's wild. All right, let's talk about the latest developments in the great post office crisis of 2020. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is testifying before the House today. He was in front of the Senate on Friday where he said, quote, there has been no changes to any policies

with regard to election mail. The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's election mail fully on time. He said he's pausing any additional changes in advance of the election, but he refused to reverse changes he's already made, like removing mailboxes and sorting machines. House Democrats also passed a bill with the help of 26 Republicans that would provide $25 billion to the post office and, according to Roll Call, prevent it from taking any action that would reduce services or impede timely delivery during the pandemic. So, Lovett, McConnell and Trump have refused to support this bill. Trump was tweeting, you know, voter fraud conspiracies again this morning. He was talking about the convention already. How useful do you think this vote by Democrats in these hearings were? someone like DeJoy is to shame and ordinary politics. But I will say that some of the moments that have broken out from the hearings today, we're recording this Monday, and there

may be more and we may have missed some stuff. It's happening in real time. But I thought the two most interesting things that came out of the hearing were, one, DeJoy basically flat out denied that there were overtime that he was responsible for the overtime cuts and and some of the some of the other changes in policy that caused the delay, even though there is just like documentary evidence, just physical evidence that he actually did, which tells you he's really nervous about this and trying to evade responsibility for some of these changes. And the other thing was Ro Khanna pushed DeJoy on the elimination of some of these sorting machines and whether they could come back on. And it got a little bit tense. And DeJoy said, give me a billion dollars and I'll set them back up, basically. So it tells you that this has gotten to DeJoy. and it tells you that getting them the money

removes a key argument that DeJoy and his allies are making about why these service changes were necessary. Tommy, do you have any big takeaways from the hearing? And do you think we should be relieved that DeJoy has agreed not to make any more changes? I'm not relieved. I mean, look, you know, being out of power sucks. Good for Pelosi and the House Democrats for holding this hearing. Good for them for passing a bill. I think people are much more aware of what was happening with the Postal

Service than they were before. I think that 26 Republicans voting with Democrats is a big deal. It's a big crossover. And hopefully it creates even more pressure on Republicans in the Senate who are up for reelection. I think bigger picture Democrats can argue and should argue, we're here doing our jobs. We passed a major bill to bail out the post office so that veterans can get their medications. We passed a major COVID relief bill. Where the hell are you? Where is Mitch McConnell? Because a few weeks later, we now know that Trump's bullshit stimulus EO is not working. One or

two states are actually paying the $300 stimulus. The rest are caught up in bureaucracy. You're not going to do it or who knows. But consumer spending is now collapsing. That will lead to more job losses. States are broke. They're going to lay off people. We're in a historic crisis. Everything is getting worse. It does allow Pelosi and the Democrats to put pressure on Republicans to come together and do something. I'm not saying it's going to work because the Republican Party is broken, but like they're doing the right things to position themselves to have that chance. Yeah, I think that the hearings are probably more useful than I even thought they would be because it does seem like they're doing everything they can to hold DeJoy accountable.

They're saying come back with a plan and exactly how you're going to make sure that you can process all this election mail. They got DeJoy to say that he was going to like send out a letter to every American in September to talk about like election deadlines and when they should be getting their ballots in and all this kind of stuff. So if they can keep up the pressure on DeJoy and haul his ass back in there in a couple of weeks, if things haven't changed or things are still bad, then like I do think that can have some effect. But I do think the biggest effect of the entire all these hearings and, you know, bringing Congress back from recess to do the vote, if nothing else, if it just lets people know to vote early, to request your ballot early, to get it back in as early as possible, that there is potentially some problems with the postal service, that they're delivering mail too late, that there are delays, that there is reduction in service. If everyone, if more people in the country are aware of this and can

act accordingly to get their ballots in as early as possible, then that, I think, will be a win. Because we've had Mark Elias on. There's plenty of lawsuits out there. It doesn't seem like legislation is going to happen. It doesn't seem like Trump is going to do anything about this. So the only option we have is to request your ballot early and drop it off early. That is the most important thing we can do right now. All right, when we come back,

we will have Tommy's interview with the New York Times' Kevin Roos about QAnon. I'm so excited to talk to our guest today. He's a New York Times technology columnist and the host of the podcast Rabbit Hole, which I binged as fast as one can binge anything. Kevin Roos, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. So we are here, unfortunately, today to mostly talk about QAnon. I wish that was not the case. I feel like I've been watching and reading about the growth of QAnon for several years now.

But if you ask me to explain it to someone for the first time, still, I don't know how to summarize it quickly. Can you recreate for me the moment when you had to describe QAnon to some big shot editor at The New York Times and why this was worthy of going in the newspaper? big shot editor at the New York Times and why this was worthy of going in the newspaper? Yeah, if only it were one singular moment. I feel like I've spent most of the past year trying to explain QAnon to just befuddled editors and other people. But the basic nuts and bolts is this, right? QAnon started as a 4chan post in 2017 by someone calling themselves QClearancePatriot, who claimed to be a high level insider in the Trump administration with access to classified information about this secret battle between Donald Trump and this global cabal of elite pedophiles. So that is Q. And Q has continued posting almost 5,000 times at this point. And over the course of those posts has unspooled this big, sprawling conspiracy theory about how Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, all of these people are

in on this global conspiracy. Usual suspects, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Who you think of when you think of evildoers in this country, who are all not only part of this global sex trafficking ring where they're trading children and molesting them and things like that, but they're also cannibals. They are literally eating the children in order to extract this supposedly life-extending chemical from their blood. So that's the sort of nuts and bolts of the conspiracy theory. I call QAnon the Swiss army knife of conspiracy theories

because it's got a lot in there. Like it's got a piece about aliens and the JFK assassination. And it basically encompasses every major conspiracy theory of the last 50 years. But the piece that is sort of the most agreed upon piece is this global cabal of elite pedophiles that Donald Trump in their telling is about to put a stop to. And we are we are laughing because it's easier than crying on a podcast, but we'll get to the serious part in a bit. So one thing that confuses me a little bit, so my understanding is that QAnon was not the first Anon poster on 4chan. There was CIA Anon, there was FBI Anon, I think there were others. But what's interesting or surprising maybe is

that QAnon has persisted. It's grown enormously to the point where QAnon protests were marching in dozens of cities over the weekend. There were people marching a couple of miles from my house in Los Angeles, despite Q constantly getting things wrong, right? He predicted Hillary Clinton would be arrested in October of 2017. Clearly that did not happen. Why do you think the QAnon theory took off? And how has it persisted in the face of not coming close to being accurate? Well, those are two interesting questions. Well, let's take them one at a time. So first, why has QAnon taken off? You're right.

There have been other Anons posting on 4chan. I think part of why this took off is that there's sort of a growing conspiratorial minded view in America more generally. I mean, we have, you know, political leaders who believe in conspiracy theories. We have, you know, lots of people getting their news from alternative sources, from social media, things like that, you know, distrust in mainstream institutions. But I also think there's a technical piece of it, which is that in 2018, just after the first Q posts started appearing, Facebook changed its algorithm to promote groups. I don't know if you remember, but there was this period after the 2016 election where they were putting up all these like billboards and signs in the subway and stuff that were talking about Facebook groups and how you could,

you know, build a community and find people with similar interests. And so they started ratcheting up the spread of groups in the algorithm for News Feed. And that coincided with the formation of all these QAnon Facebook groups. And what Facebook was trying to do was to promote like healthy and vibrant communities where people with similar interests would talk about their shared experiences. But that also promoted QAnon because in these QAnon groups, there was social interaction taking place. People were trading tips and trying to decode these mysterious posts together. It looked to the algorithm like genuine social

interaction, and it was. And so they got promoted and promoted and promoted. Yeah. I want to talk more about this social media element of this because it's so important. It's also dovetails with some other things you covered in Rabbit Hole. But before we get there, I mean, so there's the funny part of this, right? They're like, look, people think JFK Jr. faked his death to join Trump's secret evil fighting organization and today is posting as QAnon. That is insane. Other parts are not so funny. Like the FBI has warned that conspiracy theory driven domestic extremists are a growing threat.

And they specifically mentioned QAnon. Can you talk a little bit about why the FBI and others led to this? What led to this warning? Were there specific incidents? Was it a collection of things? Yeah, there have been a number of incidents over the past couple of years that I think have really sort of made law enforcement wary of QAnon as a movement. There was an armed standoff on the Hoover Dam Bridge between a QAnon supporter and

law enforcement. There have been at least a couple murders alleged by QAnon, people who believed in QAnon and sort of carried out these killings in Q's name. There have been abductions, there have been vandalism, there have been any number of sort of crimes committed by people pledging their support for QAnon. Someone was arrested with knives in their car saying that they were going to go take out Joe Biden because Q had sort of had turned this person against Joe Biden. So it's really it's it sounds funny when you first hear about it. And I think a lot of people have sort of dismissed it as like, you know, ha ha, can you believe? It's like almost like a lizard people kind of thing.

But this is creating real extremist energy in the country. And it's turning violent in a lot of cases. Yeah. Yeah. And so even more disconcerting is I don't know when QAnon went mainstream, so to speak, but it has now been fully embraced by the Republican Party. So, you know, last week, Trump was asked about QAnon at a press conference and far from denouncing it, he just fully embraced the theory and and his role in it as some sort of savior of

the world, savior of our children. And he said that QAnon adherents love our country. Before that, he had retweeted QAnon accounts hundreds of times. On top of the Trump administration, the Washington Post counted 11 candidates running for Congress who expressed belief in or support for QAnon. There's been a subsequent surge of news coverage about the theory. What do you think the impact is of this political embrace and sudden attention to the theory? Does it help it grow? I think it probably does. I mean, it's emboldening QAnon supporters after Trump's press conference last week when he basically declined to denounce the QAnon movement. I went into some of the QAnon groups that I lurk in and they were celebrating. I mean,

this was a big moment for them that they seem to have gotten the endorsement of the president. And I think just in general, I mean, I've spoken to a lot of historians over the past couple of weeks talking about previous conspiratorial forces in American politics, things like the John Birch Society. But with the John Birch Society, you had prominent conservatives denouncing them and pushing them, trying to push them out of the movement. And now what we see is that QAnon is being embraced by people who are part of the mainstream conservative movement, who are maybe not on board with all of the facets of QAnon, but who don't want to detract from the energy, the groundswell of sort of pro-Trump support that these people

are offering? Yeah. So I'm glad you mentioned John Birch. So, you know, looming large here, obviously, is the role that social media companies play in the spread of this stuff because, but, you know, QAnon is also not the first conspiracy theory. I mean, when I read about it, it sounds very similar in some ways to me, to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is a vile anti-Semitic text that purported to detail Jewish plans for world domination. And it included details about Christian children being sacrificed at Passover dinners, right? Like very similar stuff. It was a total fabrication written by anti-Semitic secret police in Tsarist Russia. It has been discredited. In fact,

big chunks of it were just plagiarized. But the thing spread like crazy, right? Especially with, I think, individuals predisposed to have anti-Semitic views. For example, Henry Ford had a half a million copies printed here in the US. Thanks for that, Henry. So, you know, I guess my question is, QAnon doesn't exist without 4chan where it originated. But when you look at, you know, the Facebook groups, the YouTube algorithm, like how key do you think those elements were to spreading this theory? They were absolutely critical to it. I mean, I don't think QAnon becomes a mainstream phenomenon or anything close to it without mainstream social networks promoting it. I mean, your average Facebook user is not going to wade into the depths of 4chan to like,

go look for the latest Q post, but they will join a Facebook group, they will subscribe to a YouTube channel, they will, you know, follow people on Twitter who are QAnon influencers. So these platforms have been absolutely essential to the growth of QAnon. And not only because they sort of give it a platform, but because for a while now, they've been actively recommending QAnon content to because they went looking for it, but because they were in, you know, a parenting Facebook group or a natural health Facebook group, or because they subscribed to, you know, some person on YouTube who they thought was just talking about economics, but it turned into a thing about QAnon. So they've been very good at kind of creating these algorithmic on-ramps to QAnon that I think are drawing in a lot of people who otherwise never would have found it. I just sort of assume that someone is making a bunch of money off of this theory. Is there any evidence of who or if anyone is making money off

of QAnon? There is money being made, certainly. I mean, you can buy Q merchandise. I went to a Certainly, I mean, you can buy Q merchandise. I went to a Trump rally late last year in Florida, and the people, you know, selling Trump merchandise also had their Q merchandise right next to it on the table. And in a lot of cases, the it's not commercialized in the same way that other, I think, political movements have been. I don't know. We obviously don't know who Q is or what their stake in this is, but clearly it's something, is sort of bigger than Q at this point. I mean, there's an entire media universe of people, you know, with YouTube shows and Discord servers and Facebook groups, all of which are generating just a ton of engagement and probably some money, too. Yeah. So you had this fantastic podcast that came out a couple months ago, six months ago. Yeah.

Time is a flat circle it explores all the ways people can get pulled into social media platforms and fed uh increasingly radical content especially racist right-wing content it's called rabbit hole everybody should listen you looked at four years of youtube search history of a guy named caleb kane uh god bless you for doing that can you tell us about that experience and like what did you learn from that history and about how these algorithms work? Well, I should mention that I did not look

through his four years of history on my own. We had a great production team of people who helped me come through that. That's more than any one person can take on. But we went back through four years of Caleb Kane's YouTube history. He provided it to us. He was someone who had started off as a pro-Obama liberal and then kind of through his YouTube recommendations got increasingly served more and more extreme right wing content, ended up sort of sympathizing with the alt-right and then kind of had this weird thing happen where he kind of came back to sort of the far left. So we just wanted to figure out like what the heck is happening here and what role is YouTube playing in this? So it's really interesting when you start looking at

someone's actual YouTube history and doing a kind of a forensic analysis. It's not at all straightforward, but there are these kind of gateways, these people who talk about, you know, things on their YouTube channels that are not politics, that are not extreme right wing. They talk about, you know, positive psychology or they do self-help or they talk about, you know, cryptocurrency or something. And then they start transitioning into kind of more extreme right wing politics and they kind of bring their audience with them on that journey. And that's kind of what happened to Caleb Kane. He got very into this YouTuber named Stefan Molyneux, who was helping him with, you know, depression and was talking about all these issues that were important to him. And then he kind of veered off and became a far right influencer. And Caleb went with him. So you see these periodic announcements from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, where they'll ban InfoWars content, or you'll see these periodic announcements about efforts to crack down on QAnon content. Are those working, do you think? And I know that's a big question, a lot of different pieces, but do those sort of bans and deplatforming, does that work in your view? But do those sort of bans and deplatforming, does that work in your view? It depends what you mean by work. I mean, does it decrease to zero the amount of extremist content

flowing through these pipes? No, but it can slow the growth for sure. I mean, just taking QAnon content out of recommendations is a step that I think could slow the growth. It's not going to make the people who currently believe in QAnon stop believing in it, but it could sort of make their recruitment and growth harder. I do think deplatforming works in certain cases. I mean, when was the last time you heard from Alex Jones? But I think it can also, for certain people, sort of, you know, embolden them. Obviously, we just saw Laura Loomer win a Republican primary for Congress in Florida. Laura Loomer, of course, is she calls herself the most banned person on the Internet. She's been banned by like every major platform, including some that aren't even like Teespring banned her, which I didn't even know it was possible to get banned from Teespring. So that's a case in which I think that ban, you know, those bans have been worn as kind of a badge of honor. But I think in a lot of cases,

people just kind of disappear. So just stepping back on the tech platforms, I mean, I lived in San Francisco for a couple of years. I worked with and around a bunch of tech companies. The majority of people I met were great, like well-meaning, often brilliant. But I was always a little weirded out by the pervasive myth-making around these companies, right? Like every company had to be mission-driven for some reason. The narrative is always about the world being a better place. It's not like ride sharing because drunk driving is bad. You know what I mean? Let's eliminate it, right? Like there's some of these simple messages.

Facebook and Twitter were big in that space. They were big on connecting people. There was some truth to it, right? Like the Arab Spring is the example that Twitter folks always point to. But they always talked about connecting human beings as like it's some unequivocally good thing, forgetting all the awful

things we do to each other, the world wars, the bigotry. How much blame or rather, how much rethinking do you think they are doing about maybe the naivete early on and the downside of creating ways for humans to spread lies, harass each other, like without any guardrails whatsoever? I think they're doing some rethinking of this. I think obviously it's kind of core to their business model that people should be able to share whatever they want with, you know, basically whoever they want at any time. So that's not going away. But I think they've gotten a little savvier about the ways in which their platforms can

be misused. And I think there's a problem of naivete still, but I also think there's, I like to think of it as kind of a problem of empathy. With something like QAnon, for example, I've talked to a number of people who believe in the theory, whose family members and friends believe in the theory. And it always seems to stem from a place of social isolation and from material deprivation from people who are down on their luck. They're not having a ton of, you know, things go right in their lives. They're alone. They're spending all their time on the internet. And then QAnon comes along and promises to fix that for them. It gives them, you know, a group

of friends to hang out with on the internet. It gives them a mission. It gives them hope that maybe the good guys are going to win. And it fills a void in their social and material conditions. And I don't think the tech companies properly appreciated that under the right conditions, something like QAnon could become genuinely important to people. That if you think about what's important to someone who's living in Silicon Valley and has a great life and a great family and things are going right for them, they're obviously not going to be attracted to something like QAnon. But I think if what you're measuring and what you're optimizing for is something like engagement or even something

like social interaction, trying to get people to connect more, I think it's a failure of empathy to not be able to understand the various things that could fill that need for people under the right conditions. Yeah, well said. So last question for you. I mean, rabbit hole is hopeful in that you talk about some ways that people could be, you know, de-radicalized, de-programmed, whatever you want to call it. But I'd say when I look at QAnon, I feel like the horse is out of the barn and has been for a while. It's here to stay. Trump is embracing it. Q followers seem to find a way to explain away every post that doesn't come to fruition, every prediction Q mix.

So I guess I'd find myself increasingly worried about the potential for people in these groups to do violent things or act in the real world. Like you said earlier, COVID is making us all more isolated and seemingly more susceptible to this stuff. Have you seen any successful examples of people walking away from QAnon being convinced that it is wrong, that maybe we can learn from and maybe learn a better way to approach people who believe it rather than, I don't know, my default is to mock them probably. Yeah. I mean, we spoke to one former QAnon believer for the podcast in the last episode,

former QAnon believer for the podcast in the last episode. And she had had sort of an interesting experience of sort of basically seeing a Q post that had a Bible verse in it and sort of being sort of snapping out of it. It's kind of saying like, wait a minute, like, is this a, you know, marketing scheme? Is this someone trying to like bring Christians into QAnon? So I wouldn't say that's a typical experience. But it certainly is the case that some people just kind of de-radicalize themselves kind of on a fluke. But I think more cases are harder. I mean, you don't get through to people by telling them about all the failed predictions that Q has made or the various, you know, things that they believe that quite obviously aren't true. I think it comes from sort of personal interaction. I think it comes from engaging with people,

trying to be empathetic to the role that QAnon or something like it is filling in their lives, and then trying to figure out healthier ways to meet those needs, whether it's, you know, giving someone more social support, whether it's, you know, giving someone more social support, whether it's, you know, getting them off their computer and out into the, you know, physical world somehow, strengthening their ties to community organizations. It really, I think we've, we imagine that we can just debate something like QAnon out of existence, but I think we've proven that that's just not true and that we actually have to take a much different approach to something like it. Yeah.

Well, again, well said. Kevin, thank you so much for doing the show today. Everybody should follow you on Twitter. Read everything you are writing at The New York Times and subscribe to Rabbit Hole because it is a truly great podcast that helped me better understand how all this shit is spreading online because I don't think people get it and it's a little scary and i'm glad we have experts to turn to like you thanks for having me thanks to kevin ruse for joining us today and uh we'll see you on group thread tonight

and we'll see you on the pod on thursday and then we're gonna we're just gonna have another big we're just gonna never stop streaming. One of the things we didn't talk about is that there's kind of a QAnon bullet in his agenda. What is it? In his 2021. It's the one where he said, yeah, take on the international organizations

that hurt Americans and drain the globalist swamp. There's a real, there's a QAnon vibe on those bullets. There's, I talked about this with kevin a little bit i know we're in the outro but you know hey congrats you stuck around who cares but like hey we got some time it's free it's free turn us off if you want there's everything we do for you is free there's some real like historical echoes going back to like the protocols of the elders of zion that gets wrapped into these q anon like the roth child like it's this is some dark dark shit are you saying this is not the optimistic hopeful message that we were promised where we

go when we go all yeah you're right it's really exciting we're united can't wait for that this sucks all right everyone we'll see you on the group thread pod save Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support.

And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.