Tangle - RE-RUN: Conservative writer Drew Holden on bias in the media

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Another interview from the Tangle archives while we take a brief break from the the daily pod. Original air date: April 5, 2021.Still want the news? You can read today's newsletter here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Hey guys, Isaac here. I just wanted to drop in with a brief reminder that our podcast is taking a brief interlude until March 14th, when we'll be back with our daily recordings of the newsletter. But until then, while we take a couple weeks off, we wanted to make sure you guys had some content. So we're sharing some of our favorite interviews from the Tangle archives. I hope you guys enjoy. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some reasonable debate, and independent thinking without the hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul. And in today's episode, we're sitting down with a guy I've been trying to speak with for a while now, Mr. Drew Holden. Drew is a conservative writer who has been published in the New York Times,

National Review, The Washington Post, Fox News, The Federalist. Just think of a big publication. He's had some words in there. He is also a media strategist and a former legislative assistant in the House of Representatives, where he spent some time working for Republican Representative Paul Gosar. Drew, thank you so much for coming on the show. Isaac, thanks, sir. I appreciate you having me on. I'm a huge fan of the work that you do. And so any way I can get in on that, I'm more than happy to do. Yeah, so you do a lot of things. And you've sort of got your hands in a few different places right now, which I find really interesting. But the way that I came across you and the way you got my attention was with these Twitter threads that you've kind of become pretty well known for in the political world. Sure. Or in the in the political world. And usually the threads are sort of explicit media criticisms, often from a conservative perspective. And I'm wondering if you could just tell me a bit about how followers or something, and you've managed to make quite a few of these things go viral and kind of grow your following over the last year. I'd love to hear about that.

Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. It's interesting that the first thread that I did was, I guess, a little over a year ago. At this point, I've got like 700 Twitter followers or something, right? I'm like any other small account on Twitter. I get mad about stuff. I'm relatively conservative. So I tend to get mad in that direction. But I remember I was reading the news after Don Imus died. So I saw a bunch of the headlines and a lot of them were very, very sharp. And I saw them and I was like, man, that's... I thought we had kind of gotten away from this thing where we're kind of punching people right after they've died. And I know Imus, obviously, he said some awful racist things. He's super well known and best known for a very vulgar racist tirade about the Rutgers women's basketball team. But I saw it,

and I was like, man, I think he did some other stuff, right? This guy was on the radio forever. And so my first thread was a side-by-side of the way that outlets, mainstream outlets, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, had talked about Imus, particularly in their headlines, and the way that they talked about General Soleimani, who had passed maybe a couple of months before. And so on one hand, you have, and I'm sure everyone remembers the Washington Post revered Islamist scholar of Abu Bakr before that. And they had a pretty, they had a pretty kind of fawning coverage of Soleimani. And I was like, it's very weird, the way that we talk about these things. And so I

looked at them. And I was like, you know, I wonder, I think a reasonable person would look at these two things side by side. And they would say this, this doesn't resonate, this doesn't make any sense. And so I kind of tried to keep doing that. And I noticed, particularly during the Donald Trump years, there were there was just a lot of coverage that kind of went haywire. And maybe when we're all zoomed in on the particular issue, it was something that like it made sense, right? People were jumping hand over fist to be able to criticize Donald Trump, oftentimes for a very good reason. But it didn't actually make sense within the broader context of the way we tended to talk about issues. And so a lot of the threads have been about that. Or it's been about coverage that has aged really poorly, right? We look back three or four years

and look at the way that we talked about the Russian collusion allegations and things like that, that just didn't actually hold up, but no one ever takes the time to revisit. And so I've got a phone that's basically a graveyard of screenshots of stories that have either aged poorly or stories that haven't aged poorly yet, but I think might. And I throw all these into these Twitter threads to try and make a point about the way that in most cases, the media, but then also politicians and other kind of commentary of folks talk about these sorts of issues when we can pull them out of just isolation. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned things kind of aging poorly. I actually just today released a subscribers only newsletter where I went and did a review of kind of all of my

prognosticating for the last year and found some of my more embarrassing writing, which was a pretty fun exercise and something I think not enough people in media do right now, which was why I did it because I have also become frustrated sort of with the punditry class, just being able to basically say whatever they want and then move on to the next news cycle with very little repercussion. Right. And I think it's like, listen, I'm sure that's always happened in some level. First, good on you for going back and doing that, because it's also just a hard experiment, right? Every so often I'll come across previous tweets that I've had. And by doing the threads,

I put myself out there, right? If I'm going to call out people for hypocrisy and I've got these awful takes kicking around, usually I try and service them. So I'm like, listen, somebody else finds it, it's going to look a lot worse for me than if I just put it back on the table. But I think that one of the things that we've seen in the last couple of years is that the discourse on different subjects, big, weighty subjects, emotionally charged and emotionally latent subjects, we move on blindingly quickly. and emotionally latent subjects, we move on blindingly quickly. And so whenever we have this big kind of flashbang of a media moment, even if it sizzles, no one's paying much attention to the correction coming down the pike, three or six months later, a year later, what have you. And so what gets lost is you have all of these people consistently kind of screwing these sorts of things up. And there's no learning or lesson from it when I think the best case scenario would be you screw up, you make corrections, the media ecosystem makes correction, and then they improve for next time. We're not having any of that looping on the back end. So I think something interesting about these threads and sort of what we're talking about now, the kind of undertow of a lot of your commentary that I pick up on is that you tend to note like these

mistakes typically happen in one direction. And I've sort of addressed this in my own writing at various times about this argument that the media has a liberal bias. And I've actually sort of pushed back on that framework a bit in my writing. But I wanted to sort of give you the floor for my listeners, because I know I've sort of pontificated a lot about this to my readers, to maybe make the case to me and our audience that the media does have a liberal bias and sort of, you know, what you're seeing that makes you feel that way. you feel that way. Sure. Yeah. And listen, I think one of the big things that gets lost on a lot of conservatives and conservative commentators is this is a question for debate, right? There was, I think, a study that the American Academy for the Advancement of Science put out not even a year ago that said, hey, listen, we went through with as neutral of a rubric as we could and looked at the different topics that media outlets pick, and we don't actually find a political bias. We don't find them talking about things either in a way that's unfair or picking subjects that are unfair. And so I'm entirely open that

the bias is either at least up for debate or potentially overblown. The way that I look at it is a little bit removed from trying to determine whether or not objective, so-called objective pieces of reporting are actually objective. I think that's a really, really hard case to be able to make. And what I try and focus on a little bit more is who are the people who are bringing us these stories, right? One of the things that we know about the media is that on the whole, they lean a lot more to the left than they do to the right. The kind of definitional survey study that came out of the University of Indiana back in 2013 had about four times as many reporters who identified as Democrats as

did Republicans. It's 28% for Democrats, 7% for Republicans, 50% identified as independents. Okay, just that on its own is the sort of thing where it's like, wow, if only 7% of reporters are self-identified Republicans, even if you split the baby on the independents, you've got a pretty considerable lean there. Where that actually gets more pronounced, I think it's probably even become more pronounced in the last couple of years is campaign donations. You might have Republicans, or you might have journalists who identify as Republicans, but they're Republicans the way I see a lot of Republicans in the DC Beltway. They're super hostile to Donald Trump, they're institutionalists, they, I mean, they're like

pre-Tea Party Republicans, right? And so when you peel apart the donations that are given by journalists or people who identify as journalists to political campaigns, they've always leaned left. MSNBC did a study in the 2004 and 2008 cycle or start of 2008 cycle. They found about 87% of all donations from the people that they surveyed, the journalists that they surveyed, went to Democratic politicians and Democratic causes. The numbers have tended to float around there for a really long time. They've actually become even more pronounced since. There's been a couple of studies, one by the Media Research Center, which is admittedly conservative, and another by the Center for Public Integrity that looked at

donations to Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. And this is where I think my contentions around the media bias, it's not so much Republicans and Democrats, so much as it is Donald Trump and the people who aren't Donald Trump. And so when you look at it that way, it's about 96% of donations go to Hillary Clinton, about 4% go to Donald Trump. And to me, when you look at that, when you look at the fact that most of these outlets tend to be based in very, very Democrat leaning parts of the country, and you have an industry that tends to lean very heavily toward Democratic candidates, it leads me to think that even by what they believe is an objective metric, there are going to be blind spots that tend to be consistent.

And so what my threads try and do is highlight what those blind spots end up doing. And it's not because they're, you know, I think a lot of conservatives have a lot of, there's a lot of anger and malice behind and they're like, they're out there trying to lie to you. The media is an agent. They're the Democratic comms team. And all they're trying to do is tell you lies, which I don't think is fair, right? I don't think that's actually accurate. I just think they tend to have the same sorts of blind spots that come from the same sort of worldview that leads them to think certain things about Democrats and Republicans that is different than what I think the rest of the country would call objective. It was a long answer, but that's... It's a good answer, though. I mean,

I think that is probably the best I've heard the argument articulated. And the case that, you know, these reporters who are coming forward with these stories and responsible for story selection, and these like small nuances in language, all have certain biases they're coming into it with, I think is like a really strong framework to make the argument. And I actually don't, I mean, you can't disagree with that, because it's just based on these surveys and actual donation numbers. I think the argument that I often make, and I'd be curious what you think about this, is that it's not that there aren't more liberals than conservatives at the New York Times. Of course there are. I mean, you're just lying through your teeth.

And I think most of those independents, even you look back on that 2013 study, are probably left-leaning independents. I mean, I would bet my life on that. Me too. But what I say instead is just that I think that the media as a monolith is so much bigger than those institutional papers. Take papers anyway. You look at the Wall Street Journal, you look at the New York Post, two of the most well-circulated papers in the country, you have Fox News, which, of course, it's sort of standing alone in cable television in terms of being an outspoken conservative voice, but arguably,

I think, actually not arguably, I think almost certainly the most important, powerful news network on TV. And most eyeballs. You can't dispute that they have more eyeballs than any. CNN, once in a blue moon on specific ratings will beat them, but otherwise they beat everybody. Right. And now you have the OAN, the Newsmax coming in the mix. And for all of time since the 90s, conservatives dominate talk radio, they dominate podcasts. They're doing very well on YouTube and Facebook. And so it's sort of more this argument that if you look at the media as a whole, there actually is a balance because these challengers are winning the attention economy right now.

But what I'm curious is sort of related to that question is, from a conservative viewpoint, how important do you think the New York Times, the Washington Post is right now? I mean, I guess the crux of my argument is that they are less important than they were 20 years ago. And therefore, we actually do have this balance because a Ben Shapiro can disrupt the space with a story or a piece of commentary in the same way a Thomas Friedman can now. And I'd be interested in, you know, reflecting on that argument, what sort of comes to mind for you? Yeah, you know, I think that resonates, right? And I think conservative media has very deliberately taken a tactic and approach where what they're pushing to do is disrupt what they see as a monolithic commentariat class of people who get to decide what's what, and they're going to disrupt it

any way you can. And so that's why drive time radio became such a big thing is how do we get listeners who are going to be sympathetic to us? And I think you're right. I mean, I think some of this is, it comes down to how do we define the problem? And so if we define the problem as the amount of news coverage that is read by various Americans, does that lean left or does that lean right? I think there's a really good case to be made that it doesn't actually lean particularly one direction or the other. You've got two sets of people who are essentially existing in siloed information systems. They're consuming media that they like, that they tend to agree with, and that we're probably pulling apart, right?

You probably have more conservatives who are gravitating to even more conservative outlets, places like OANN, places like Newsmax, the people who have rejected Fox News as being too liberal on one hand, and then you have people getting pulled more into the MSNBC, the Young Turks, the people who are saying that what we call the mainstream media is in their rush to be objective isn't being fair, and that they're giving too much time to someone like Donald Trump, and that they need to, you know, Wesley Lowry talks about this idea of moral clarity and reporting, and that what we actually need isn't balance, it isn't this kind of false and superficial balance, what we should be looking

for is a measure of moral clarity from what our reporters are doing when they tell stories, which scares me deeply, fundamentally. And so obviously, we can talk about that too. But I think that when I talk about the mainstream media, and I think when conservatives talk about the mainstream media, we look at an institution like the New York Times and say, actually, they still have enormous ability to shape the conversation. Thomas Friedman is going to find himself trending on Twitter, in your Google algorithm a lot more easily, even agnostic to the content and the quality of the material, or even how punchy or weighty or interesting it might be, is far more likely to find himself popped up by a bunch of various

algorithms than someone like Ben Shapiro is, even though his listenership is way larger. If you Google any issue in the country and you want to get news coverage of it, the first two, three, four pages are always going to be from mainstream media outlets. And so while it's true that conservatives find different ways to be able to reach the listeners who are interested in hearing them, the neutral playing field, right? The things that your Twitter is going to pop up in your trending section or your news section, your Google News section, all of those things do tend to be dominated still by these legacy institutions who have also seen their digital readerships and their listenerships shoot up tremendously. I mean, so many of these places also acquired so many more

readers and listeners and viewers during the Donald Trump years because people were super tapped into political news. Yeah. And that actually brings up another interesting topic that I wanted to ask you about. And we sort of emailed a little bit about this back and forth, but it's kind of this question ofTrump era. And I wrote last week in Tangle about how we're starting to see the ratings at CNN and Fox News and MSNBC take a little bit of a nosedive. And I know traffic is down a lot of websites, even in the Tangle newsletter, I think the average open rate has gone down maybe seven or 8%, which is okay, not a huge deal. But it's clear that people are sort of like coming off the gas a little bit. And you know, I, of course, part of it is Trump, I think part of it is election and political fatigue.

And you know, the election's over now. And there's a lot of interest in that. But, you know, I'm interested. I mean, is there another Donald Trump? You know, how much is the media going to keep talking about him now that he's not in office? Can anyone replace him effectively? I mean, we had like the Marjorie Taylor Greene obsession for a week and we moved on from that. But I wonder, you know, what the next year or two is going to look like in kind of the post-Trump media world. Yeah, you know, it's a good question. I think that a lot of forces conspired together to drive down so much of this readership and viewership and everything else. Part of it, absolutely.

It's people who they were jazzed up about the election. They were super interested. They're reading a lot of news. And now they're just kind of burnt out from it, right? They don't want to hear about it as much as they used to. I think a huge part of it, though, that probably doesn't get talked about enough is Donald Trump isn't in the public eye at all. And it's not just that he's not the president anymore. He's not on Twitter. He's not on Facebook. He sends out these press releases that are basically

tweets that he can't tweet, and then they get tweeted out by journalists, and then he kicks up a news cycle of his own. And so to me, what I think it probably comes down to, first and foremost, is does Trump either actually get back on Twitter, right? Does he get his voice and his platform and his 80 million followers back to be able to talk about the things that he wants and dominate news cycles the way that he wants to? Because if he's talking, people are listening. Certainly not the way they did when he was president. But I don't know that the drop off is that steep, especially since we've had a break from him. And I think more

people are probably now in some perverse ways are more interested in hearing what he has to say. And so what happens if he does come back? And what does he want to do next? Is he going to run for office again? Does he want to go take over Newsmax and be like, does he want to be the anti-Jake Tapper or something? And he's just beating up on the Dems and Biden and everything else left and right, because he's the next Rush Limbaugh. I mean, who knows? And so to me, I think first and foremost, what does Trump do? What does Trump want to do? Because if he wants the oxygen, if he wants to be the center of attention, he's going to get it and he's going to find it. Because people want to hear what he has to say, and it's symbiotic with the media. I mean,

Brian Stelter's ratings and CNN's ratings would absolutely love it if Trump came back because he'd have someone to talk about again. And then if he doesn't, then I think the question becomes a little bit more interesting. We've seen a lot from media outlets, I think CNN is probably the most notable one for me, who are still talking about Trump as if he were still in the public eye, right? There was a story, a segment that CNN did after the voting bill in Georgia, where they had a byline to piece, where they said that it was a story, a segment that CNN did after the voting bill in Georgia, where they had a byline to piece where they said that it was a win for Donald Trump. And I remember I looked at it and I was like, he's out of office. Like, how is it?

He had nothing. At no point did he actually have anything to do with this bill. He probably turned on Fox News, saw that it passed and was happy by it. And somehow that became a media segment in and of itself because he gets eyeballs. You have Donald Trump in the title and people are going to click on the link. And so it's how much does the media push on that versus how much do they try and find another Trump? And I think my contention is that there isn't, there cannot possibly be another Donald Trump. And that's in media, that's in politics. I think you only get one of those in a lifetime who comes through. And the only

reason that he exists the way that he does is because of all of the things that he is good, bad, awful, indecent. All of those things come together to make him a both a political force and such a great oxygen grabber when it comes to media cycles. And so you'll never be able to take the Donald Trump mantle and put it on someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who just doesn't move people the way that Trump did. You'll never be able to take that and put it on a guy like Matt Gaetz or Tom Cotton, these flamethrowers who are definitely the conservative bona fides, but at the end of the day, they're politicians. And so I don't think he's replicable. And so I think what's going to end up happening is it becomes a question of,

does he come back? Or do we always pretend as if he's still there when he's really not? It makes me think a lot about the differences in the coverage that Biden is getting and probably will get for the next few years. I mean, one of the things I, I have a lot of conservative readers, despite having pretty centrist. And I think by most mainstream definitions, like center left political views myself, I, I would contend most Americans have really incongruent political views. And I'm one of them, right? It very much depends what the issue is. But, you know, I have people write in sometimes who are big Trump supporters and are very critical of how the media treated him. And my response often is, I actually think how Trump was treated

and the media's posture towards him is how it should be. The issue is that they don't have that posture towards every politician when they should. That it should be kind of adversarial, have that posture towards every politician when they should, that it should be kind of adversarial, it should be dogged, it should be relentless. And of course, there were stories that I even thought were unfair and scoffed at, despite feeling like Trump was often being a ghoul. But now we're seeing Biden in office. What's your read on how the media has been treating him? Do you think the kid gloves have been on? Do you think he's been getting the kind of adversarial posture he should get? And, you know, I guess anything comes to mind in terms of what we're seeing from the coverage

of him right now? Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, at a high level, I think the way that I feel about the media coverage that he's gotten has been, it very much has the kid gloves on, but it's probably not as over the top as I expected. And so I think one of the things that's really stuck out in terms of the good department is the way the media has covered what's happening at the border. And so I think it took them a little bit to get to a point where they're talking about it. But now you don't go a day without hearing what the new percentage over all of these facilities down in Texas and other places on the border are in terms of unaccompanied minors who are being housed there. And you have a pretty dogged media that is pushing and trying to get access to these

facilities. They're doing walkthroughs, they're talking about the story. I think if the media were as much, if the media were the same as a caricature that conservatives, unfortunately, sometimes I think I get a little bogged down in this too. If they're as much as a caricature as we sometimes pretend, then they wouldn't be talking about what's happening at the border. And they're talking a lot about what's happening at the border, which I think is good and valuable and interesting. But that being said, I think there have been a number of issues where they've just totally kind of put their hands up, taken them off the wheel and said, okay, we're going to talk about this in a way that's really puffy. The few that really jumped to mind, the first is this infrastructure bill that's going through Congress. I think we've gotten really comfortable, a lot of people, with not necessarily

being critical of spending anymore, both in terms of the way that politicians treat it, but also just the way the media talks about it. And so CNN had a piece, an analysis. One of the things I think is really the problem with news media is that they've created this term that's called media analysis, which is the sort of thing that people like you and I should probably be doing from time to time, but not that CNN should be doing. I'm not interested in a place like CNN analyzing the news through whatever lens that they would like to. They should be reporting the news. But so they had an analysis recently that said that infrastructure was an issue for Trump that he used as a bully. And for Biden, it was, quote, a window into his soul.

I remember I saw that and I was like, man, who didn't look at that title and just kind of step back and say, this is laying it on a little bit thick. It's a little bit too much. So that's one issue. The other one that I think is we're a little bit past now, but I was really surprised by, was Biden's lack of addressing the country in a press conference, right? Where there was a really huge narrative when Trump was in office, in terms of the amount of time that would go by between press briefings from time to time. And there were big and important and weighty issues taking place in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, that he didn't address or didn't address sufficiently in the minds of the media, and I think in the minds of a lot of people. And the media were dogging on him.

And I think I agree with your general contention that that's how it should be, right? Like the media should be attack dogs, they should be fighting and kicking and scratching at all politicians all the time. But with Biden, they dropped that. And I think they dropped it in a way that for me was really interesting, because there was objectively more going on. You've got a president who's just come into office in the midst of a national crisis, unlike anything we've seen since probably World War II, maybe Vietnam in terms of the response to the pandemic. He's trying to shepherd through the largest funding package in the history of the country. And he's got his first 100-day objectives after a contentious, incredibly contentious election. And Biden doesn't address the country for the longest period of time of any president

ever when he comes into office. And I think my thought was, this should be kicking and screaming. This should be the ultimate issue where the media is dying to get their hands on a politician and demand answers from the horse's mouth. And we didn't see that. And I think that that sets, unfortunately, a tone where the media can be can be kind of stiff on and kept at a kept at a distance in a way that isn't helpful for certainly for the media, but it certainly isn't helpful for the American people either. So I want to sort of now give you the inverse of that question, which I'm interested to hear, because I think what a lot of my liberal readers would say, and something I've heard from them when I write about Biden, especially when I write critically about him, is that people are sort of reaching to make him some version of Trump. They're going over the top to kind of portray him as being really interesting or divisive

or make kind of a splashy headline because he is actually just good at his job and shows up and is like fundamentally honest and straightforward. And I think one of the, probably the primary example of that and the thing I've gotten the most negative feedback about is anytime I write anything about his age or general appearance or sort of quote unquote cognitive ability. And, you know, the response is very, some people are just saying, I found this ageist and this is ageism. Other people are saying, you know, he has a stutter and you're, you're like, didn't neglect to mention that. And, you know, I, I try and be as level-headed and fair as I can, but sometimes I watch Biden talk and I think, I don't know if this guy totally knows where he is sometimes. I mean,

like I see him lose his train of thought, you know, and it's like, I have grandparents, I have people who are older in my life, and I know what it looks like when somebody is aging in some way. And I don't think that's ageism. I think he's the leader of the free world. And it's a totally right question. And so I wonder, like, you know, do you think there's merit to that, that there's been some stuff over the top about something like his cognitive ability or that now because we're in the post Trump world world and they're trying to find ways to keep the ratings up, the media is actually reaching too far to find something negative about him to hit him on? I think the media has really kept the, I call it the cognitive ability that he has at an arm's length. And I think part of that is

they don't want to be either in truth or in perception ageist, or that they're picking on him because of him having a stutter or what have you. So I think they've actually, they've strayed away from that quite a bit in a way that contrasts, again, very neatly with Donald Trump, right? When we had, you know, there was, we had an entire news cycle about Donald Trump walking slowly down a ramp at West Point one time and grabbing a cup of water with two hands. Once upon a time, when it was someone who we felt comfortable making fun of, potentially, it was all of those questions were above board, and they were okay. And I think I agree with you.

Like, at the end of the day, there's one person with the United States launch codes, and I would be a lot more confident knowing that they are fully cognitively functioning. And this is someone who's in his mid to late 70s. He's lived a long life. He's been in public office for a long time. And to me, I think the other thing that really concerns me, and a lot of conservatives have a way of pointing this out, is these would be the sorts of things that would probably have been put to bed if the Biden team chose to put them to bed. And I understand that there are other considerations and other things to worry about, but their campaign strategy was basically hide him in the basement. And the first 40 or so days in office strategy was basically continue to hide

him in the basement. And so I think reasonable people can reasonably look at that and say, well, man, our country is going through this incredibly difficult, challenging time. We've just elected a leader who one of his big selling points is that he's a straight talker, and he's honest, and more importantly, he's empathetic. This is a politician, I think Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post is the one who had it, is that he is the griever in chief, right? He is someone who, in part because his life has been dotted with such tragedy, and in part because of the way he has handled public situations before, he's really, really good and really made for this moment. And for people like myself who do believe that that's true, the fact that he hasn't been called upon to do that thing that should be one of his highlights really does make you wonder what's

behind that, especially when we see him lose his train of thought in the debates, in other public presentations and in other time periods. I want to add to, I mean, I was just thinking about it while you were talking. I mean, you mentioned the West Point thing, which is an interesting example because I remember that news cycle when it was all about Trump walking slowly in the two-handed water sip. And I think it was about two weeks ago now that Biden repeatedly tripped and fell while going up the stairs of Air Force One. And I am a politics reporter, and I legitimately did not see that video until a week after it happened. I think somebody sent it in to me in response to something that I wrote. And I was like, oh, wow, that didn't look good. And I had this moment where I thought, okay, this is a sign of absolutely nothing. I trip all the time. It doesn't mean

it. Exactly. Exactly. But if that was Trump, I mean, that would have been a story for weeks. We'd still be talking about it. We'd still be talking. It would be the only thing we'd be talking about. And I think there is something to that criticism. And I'll add to, I mean, the thing that I have said in response to people who have sort of accused me of ageism by commenting on this stuff is like, you know, I write about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Grassley and people who are older than Joe Biden. And I'm not making these comments about them because I'm not seeing the same thing in those people that I'm seeing in him.

I actually happen to think the stuttering argument and that conversation is a totally legit thing. I mean, I read that profile. I forgot who the writer was, but it was a beautiful piece about his experience with stuttering and all the things he saw in Joe Biden that reminded him of himself. And I thought it was really compelling, but there's still just something there that I think is okay for us to prod at without being ageist. So I just want to go on the record. It does not have to do with ageism. It's, I think, a legit question to ask of the leader of the free world. Exactly. And I think it's a legitimate question for the media for two reasons. One, what you've just discussed, right? We need to know, we should know the answer to this.

And two, the hypocrisy. And a lot of my angle is hypocrisy. And so for me, when Donald Trump walks slowly down a ramp and the New York times in their subheader asks what this might mean about his mental health, the fact that two years later, when it's another president with a fall, that is a lot less, you know, a period of walking that is a lot less graceful, let's call it. The fact that the mere suggestion that that could have the same thing to do is written off as something absurd. It sticks in my craw, I think quite a bit.

And I think there are a lot of people out there, conservative and otherwise, who see that and they call BS on it. We have a little bit of time left. I want to move to something that maybe is a little bit more of a sensitive subject. I'm very interested to see where you go with this. But you worked in the office of Paul Gosar for a while. That's right. I write a newsletter that sort of puts a premium on people who are moderates and near the center.

Paul Gosar is not one of those people, at least not today in today's American politics. He is sort of the kind of politician that often draws my ire and that I am a big critic of. And he's also becoming well known on the left recently because his family is like really into making commercials slamming him. Paul Glosser, the congressman, isn't doing anything to help rural America. Paul's absolutely not working for his district. If they care about health care, they care about their children's health care, they would hold him to account.

If they care about jobs, they would hold him to account. If he actually cared about people in rural Arizona, I bet he'd be fighting for Social Security, for better access to health care. I bet he would be researching what is the most insightful water policy to help the environment of Arizona sustain itself and be successful.

And he's not listening to you, and he doesn't have your interests at heart. My name is Tim Gosar. David Gosar. Grace Gosar. Joan Gosar. Gaston Gosar. Jennifer Gosar.

Paul Gosar is my brother. My brother. And I endorse Dr. Brill. Dr. Brill. Wholeheartedly endorse Dr. David Brill for Congress. I'm Dr. David Brill, and I approve this message. None of this is pleasant for any of us. It's horrible to have to do this.

To speak up against my brother, it brings sadness to me. This isn't just about Paul. This is about our family. I think my brother has traded a lot of the values we had at our kitchen table. I couldn't be quiet any longer, nor should any of us be. We got to stand up for our good name. This is not who we are. It's intervention time, and intervention time means that you go to vote, and you go to vote. Paul, out.

My name is Tim Gosar. My name is Jennifer Gosar. Gaston Gosar. Joan Gosar. Grace Gosar. David Gosar. Paul Gosar is my brother. My brother. My brother. And I endorse Dr. Brill. Dr. Brill. Dr. Brill. And I wholeheartedly endorse Dr. David Brill for Congress. I'm Dr. David Brill and I approve this message. I've never seen anything like this in politics. David Brill, and I approve this message. I've never seen anything like this in politics. I mean, you're a press guy. Your job, aside from being a legislative affairs assistant, is being a communications guy. And so how would you handle, I mean, this seems like a slam dunk political ad.

I'm just wondering what you make of it. You see these commercials, there's this guy you work for, and he's got like three of his siblings saying, don't put this guy in office. How does somebody respond to that? Yeah. So full transparency, I had actually left his office by the time the first campaign video came out. I had been out in the private sector for probably six months or something. But I remember I saw it and I was like, old man. And listen, I mean, he's, I don't think, I don't think he watched the video and was like, oh, I can't believe anyone from my family doesn't agree with me. Right. He, I think he knew he's got, I think he's one of seven. He has six siblings. All of them were in this video who came out and

said that he is the wrong answer for Arizona and they endorsed his opponent. And so I think you're right for most, for most candidates that would have to be a death knell, right? Where you've got this guy that the people who he's closest to, who are also in their own right, very impressive. I mean, one of his brothers is a really, really well-known and high-powered attorney out West. He's, I think one of his sisters is a pretty well-respected scientist, right? These are well-known intelligent people who are slamming him in an ad for his opponent. And at the end, there's this classic line where they all go to, they all say their name, I'm Mary Gosar, I'm Dan Gosar, and I endorse his opponent. And it was funny because I remember I saw it,

and I was like, I know exactly what his response is going to be, and it'll work. And it might not work on people like you and I, and it probably won't work for many people in DC. But he was like, And it might not work on people like you and I, and it probably won't work for many people in DC. But he was like, listen, all of my siblings live in cities or other places out West or in Montana or where have you. They don't live here. They don't know what's right for Arizona. They've got no interest in what's actually right for Arizona.

They just don't agree with me about politics. And they're comfortable coming out and doing this. And his other line was his mother came out and was like, this is awful. his other line was his, his mother came out and was like, this is awful. Um, and, and said something, something like endorsing the way that he was, he was doing as an elected official. And he was like, I'm mom's favorite. Right. And so it's just the way that he responded, I think was, was probably perfect for his district. And then he ended up beating the guy by like 70 points. Right. I don't think he's ever, I don't think he's ever had a race, at least since his first one, where it was in 50 or 60 points.

He steamrolls people out there. And the people in his district truly, fundamentally do not care what a bunch of well-heeled attorneys out in cities think about him. And so it's actually from a press perspective and from an office perspective, it was pretty easy to back up and push back against. perspective, it was pretty easy to back up and push back against. To explain to my parents, right, who are liberals from Massachusetts, or to attempt to explain to like my predominantly liberal friend base here in Washington, DC, that was tough. That was very difficult. And I didn't have much good other than to say that same shtick about like, listen, his voters don't care. You could show that video to every single one of his constituents, and you would change maybe a dozen minds. Yeah, it's interesting. Which is fascinating. Like on its own, the fact that that's the case,

like that's to me, that's nuts. That's wild. Yeah, it is because I found it. I mean, there were two ads, the one that just came out yesterday in the last 24 hours, and we're recording this on a Friday afternoon, was this ad where they're all just blaming him for the Capitol riots. And the one that came out before the election was all of them endorsing his opponent. But yeah, for me, it was a wildly effective commercial. And of course, I think with my own sort of political biases, he again is a politician who I'm already kind of pre-programmed not to really like. But I was just like, I never seen anything like that in politics. And there's been a little bit of it elsewhere where like a sibling has come out to

endorse somebody's appointment. And he has like eight brothers and sisters or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's got a ton. Yeah. He's one of seven or one of eight. So before I let you go, I guess my last question, which is kind of tangentially related to Gosar, is that I do think he represents a certain wing of the current Republican Party and conservatism right now. And we are in the post-Trump era, and there are some divisions and lines being drawn on the Republican side of things between people like Liz Cheney and Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump and Mitt Romney. And, you know, I'm interested for your perspective on where things are going from here for the party, what you're kind of watching in this power struggle. You know, there's part of me that thinks the Gosars, the Gaetz, the Trump, that they are clearly winning and have a stranglehold on the party. the Gates, the Trump, that they are clearly winning and have a stranglehold on the party.

But it's tough to count out the other, you know, these really experienced politicians like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell and, you know, Murkowski, who I think a lot of people see as being a bit more moderate or traditional Republicans. And I'm wondering, you know, what your view is on that from where you're sitting? Yeah, yeah, you know, it's a good question. And I think one of the things that I struggle a lot with when I try and think about this is, where do I think the party is actually headed? And where do I wish it would be headed? At the end of the day, I am a, I think, slightly right of center type of person. My preferred Republican Party is very much, in many respects, the party of Amit Romney, or maybe even Elisa Markowski. But it's far more of that establishment wing, right? Like my bones are all in that party.

And I think the reality is, for reasons both good and ill, that party is in the process of losing, and maybe losing slowly. And there's a lot of vested interests between just money, institutional support, and an institutional levity that is behind this kind of aging and dying system that unfortunately is losing of its own accord, right? I think what you've had for a really long time is a Republican party that doesn't particularly serve the people who vote for it all that well, and they're mad. And they've been mad a few different times, right? You had the Tea Party that brings guys like Congressman Gosar to office, you have the rise of Trump, and now you have the Post. And I think that there's a reckoning going on right now that is very much between the establishment and the newer kind of guard who are ascendant,

and I think will probably win. But I think a lot of this comes down to where do you give and where do you not? And so I think what the Republican Party is going to end up doing is, in a lot of ways, it's going to give in two areas. One is the way that it treats with people who don't like it. So I think you're going to have a lot more Donald Trumps. You look at someone like a Ron DeSantis down in Florida, who is openly and unabashedly totally fine to tell the media that he is not interested in whatever it is they're asking about. And he does not think that they're fair. I think Republicans have been very critical. The base has been very critical of the Republican Party for a long time and with good reason for wanting to look like the good guys. And so when I think about it, I think almost of these people I call the brunch Republicans. There are a lot of Republicans, both within the system and how it works and people in elected office, who I think one of their biggest concerns is how do they defend the Republican Party to the people who are at their brunch table or the people who they go to the country club with, who don't agree with them. I think those

people will lose. And I think that one of the big ways that they'll lose is they'll lose on that issue of being the nice and pleasant losers. And they're going to fight the way that Trump fought, one, because it's effective. And two, because morally, I think people are starting to think that this is okay, we're fighting about things of consequence. And so if we have to get a little dirty, then we should just get better at getting dirty. And then I think the other place where you're going to see a lot more of an uptick is this kind of populist nationalist, people are still struggling with the word and what to call it. But you're getting away from an old guard that is institutional support for big business and low taxes and rich people. And I think it's going to be a Republican, a more guttural

Republican party that looks at these sorts of things, that looks at big corporations like Amazon or what have you, and they say, you're not our friend. You don't see the world like we do, and you want us dead the same way the Democrats want us dead, the same way the media wants us dead. And there's embellishment in all of that. But I think you're going to see a Republican party that starts to animate around those things now that Trump has knocked the board over. And so you're going to see a lot fewer of the nice guy Mitt Romney's, and you're going to see a lot less of this embedded interest with the big traditional interest of the Republican Party. And I think what that ends up meaning is people like Cheney fall by the wayside and people like Gates rise up, change a little bit, but stay a lot more fundamentally the same.

Drew Holden, thank you for the time. People want to keep up with your work, find some of those Twitter threads we've been talking about. Where can they find your stuff? Yeah, best way, I really get to get a website or something out. But right now, best way to find me is I spend way too much time on Twitter. It's Drew Holden 360. And yeah, that's where you can find the threads. And whenever I have writing, I share it there too. Awesome. Drew, thank you so much for the time. And I hope we get to do this again in the near future. Pleasure's mine, sir. I appreciate you having me on. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by edited by bailey saul sean brady ari weitzman

and produced in conjunction with tangle's social media manager magdalena bakova who also helped create our logo the podcast is edited by trevor eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by diet 75 for more from tangle subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com.