The Bulwark Podcast - Amanda Carpenter: Let the Media Dinosaurs Die

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Trump’s head is stuck in the 80s so he may not have noticed that cable is dying. All he can think about is getting his greedy little hands on CNN so he can make them say nice things about him. But independent outlets—like The Bulwark— are changing the media space and are beyond the reach of a corrupted FCC. Nevertheless, our screens are going to be filled with vast quantities of pro-MAGA propaganda. Meanwhile, Mamdani played to Trump’s 80s tabloid obsession to win a favor, which was good, but it was also something that would have the left howling in disgust if Hakeem had done it. Plus, Hegseth is bullying Anthropic because he wants to mass surveil Americans, how states can legally fight back against ICE and the administration’s election meddling, and the irony of cool, edgy, masculine men behaving like women with Mar-a-Lago face.Amanda Carpenter joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes Tim and Andrew on Mamdani's latest White House visit Friday's "Morning Shots" The Focus Group Podcast on Apple and YouTube Protect Democracy's website Protect Democracy's lawsuit against ICE on behalf of Maine residents Protect Democracy on the Universal Constitutional Remedies Act Tim's playlist Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events. Snag the hoodie that will bring you comfort for life, the American Giant Classic Full Zip. Go to https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code BULWARK. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show!

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Friday. Delighted to welcome back, our former friend. She's now a writer and editor at Project Democracy.org, which is pretty important. And this week, she was a guest host on The View. It's all caps Amanda Carpenter. What's up, Amanda?

Wait, hold on. Former former friend? Well, did I saw, is that what I said? You said former work. Just Friday morning. That's a demotion. Like, you guys have best friends. You have all kinds of things.

And I'm former friend. Current friend. All right. Current friend. Okay. close ally you know partner in crime whatever you want to say you're on the view this week can i indulge you for a second in the audience with something that you're you're replacing elissa farra i was filling in let's let's be clear i was a guest for three days um but yeah it's your show dude you're filling in

for lissa farra uh had a new baby jeston congrats to her and um alissa you know look elisa worked for my pants eliza was in there and trump 1.0 So fair skepticism about Alyssa sometimes from people. And let me tell you, that fair skepticism extended to me. When I was writing why we did it, I was trying to analyze the psychology of people who knew better but went along with Trump anyway. So it's kind of hard to pick representative people because I didn't want to do a mean girl's burn book, you know, where I was just like slaying random people and like just choosing based on like past slights from campaigns of your. And so what I decided to do was choose the group that did the autopsy with me because me and one other woman were basically the only people that didn't go along with Trump of the core autopsy group. But the problem was like none of those people like really fit one archetype.

And so I needed somebody else to offer to participate. And I called around to different people. And I didn't know this at all. I never met her. And we met in secret. It was very furtive. You know, she was nervous at the time. You don't want to be.

seen with me. With you? She didn't want to be seen with you? She didn't want to be seen with me. Well, right, because, you know, she's still in a transition period, right? Like, this was, like, right after she had quit. Okay. It was like, right.

It was right after January 6th. But, like, you know, she was like, do I still want to work in Republican politics? Do I just want to burn it down? Do I want to go be a shepherd? You know, like, she didn't know. She's going through it. And so, you know, we're keeping up, optionality, meeting in a random hotel and secret.

We start talking. We vibed out. We both had the Lebanese thing going. And, um, You know, my impression of her was that initially was that like, maybe she got over her skis. It's kind of fake. I don't know. Anyway, I started interviewing her.

We met once. We went twice. We met a third time. Go to her house in Georgetown. And we went for hours. We're just talking, drinking wine. And the thing we kept going back and forth on, which was like the whole point of the book, which was like, why did you go in and why did you quit?

Right. Like, those are the questions we're trying to answer. Like, why did you really do it? Like, not like the lip service reason that you said. You know, like at a deep level, like, why did you do it? So you got her all lookered up. So we got her all lickered up, right? And at the time, she doesn't have a kid.

And they're trying to have a kid, but they're struggling. They got through the whole IVF thing. She's talked about this. And she, like, just gets very emotional and starts talking about her dad. I just had a stroke. And her dad was like a maga, a pre-magga, a proto-maga. media. Well, was it World Met Daily? It was one of the wild ones. And of all the ones, you know, I worked at human events. That was wild for me. Like they were all in on the birther stuff,

as I recall. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. So her dad was really out there. Yeah. Big time. And she starts to get kind of, he just had a stroke. It starts to get a muscle. She says this to me. She was like, since that I've been thinking about mortality and legacy and marrying into a family where I'm so proud of who they are, thinking about my dad and what he could have been, I don't care about money or different things, but I want my kids and grandkids to look back and be like, she was someone who did the right thing. I don't need anyone to pat me on the back. I just want my kids to remember me the right way. And at the time, I was like, wow, we were both a little drunk. So I was getting a little emotional. But at the time, I was like, you don't even have a kid.

Like, that's got, like, that's one thing to say if you have a teenager. What, right? No, I mean, she knew she knew she wanted to have a kid the next couple years. But like, that is crazy. Like, my point is what women think about. Yeah, it's what women think about. Yeah, so the manner from Mars, woman from Venus thing. This goes back to Charles Deuhigg, emotional conversation versus practical. But I just was thinking about that for her this week. And I was just like, she wanted to have this kid so bad. And this, like, the specter of this, the prospect of this and wanting to be a good parent, like, weighed on her. And that resonated with me at such a level, because, like, it's something that I kept coming back to a lot after January 6th in this time, which is like, you people know,

your kids are going to go to school someday. And like, they're not going to care about your spin, right? Like, they're going to be in high school and there's going to be a picture of people storming the Capitol with Confederate flags and Trump flags. And it's going to be two paragraphs in the chapter. And it's going to be like Donald Trump tried to overturn the democracy. They stormed the Capitol. Police officers died. That's what your kids are going to learn. And they're not going to care that you said, well, you know, the Democrats, they woke got a little out of control. You know, and I bring that up to people all the time. And most of them, you know, hum it, hum in a, humming, hum in it.

And she cared about it at a deep level. So anyway, I just, I love this for her. I'm happy she's on a little maternity leave. And, you know, we all make choices in life. But that's something else to be a good, mom. Yeah. Congratulations to her. I hope she's getting the time to really enjoy the time with her baby because there's

nothing else like it. But on the idea of like, you know, what it means to be complicit, you know, this isn't about Alyssa at all. Let's remove that from the conversation before somebody tries to read something into that. But, you know, I've really struggled with the Mike Pence types because, you know, we've had this debate at the bulwark. Like, was he a hero that day or not? And I've always firmly come down on the side of not because he had so many opportunities to stop it before the last minute. It was my working thesis that people like Mike Pence. and Bill Barr really didn't bolt from Trump until the responsibility landed right on their plate.

You know, Mike Pence issued that statement at the last minute before members of Congress were taking their seats on January 6th. If he had done that a week before, a day before, there's a chance that the mob may not have materialized because they wouldn't have thought the plan to pressure Mike Pence would have worked. And so I just, I really struggle with that. And I really think this is the key to explaining why people break, they go along with it while it's good for them until they realize the consequences could blow back on them. And I've thought so deeply about this. I wasn't planning to talk about this, but I've actually, you know, I've written, and I'm shopping around, we're trying to shop around, a whole dark satire novel about complicity. And the person that's a prototype in my

head is like, you know, maybe he looks like Mike Johnson, but, you know, these heritage types who go along with all of these things because of opportunism, because they think they are still protecting their family. There's all kinds of reasons. I'm really glad you did your book because I think we have to understand why people go along with this in America specifically. And I think the absurdity of Trump provides a lot of plausible deniability, which makes the story I write funny, I think, to me, but also really dark.

But yeah, this is a subject I am endlessly fascinated by. And one thing in your book, when it comes to how people cope, and maybe this is funny, but I can't not think about it. I think about it probably every other couple days. My book? Yeah, I do. You talk to Caroline Wren, who was like a donor, like she was adjacent to the donor and banning people. She's like a fundraiser type.

Yeah. And I think she's still in it. But is it true? Am I remembering it right that she took nine Xanax? on January 6th or like a tremendous amount. I don't remember the number off. Yeah, I just read it and I just like, these people are in,

and I don't feel sorry for her, but they're in huge emotional distress, right? Yeah. And so they have ways of coping through it to really just numb themselves to the consequences of what they're doing. And I just like, that's a lot, right? Somewhere in there, you would think that a light bulb would go off,

which is like, man, if I need to, medicate that heavily. Yes. To deal with the consequences of something that I went along with. Maybe I should reflect upon that. Or get out. And maybe that's maybe something in my body is telling me that I'm on the wrong path. Yeah.

Just really quick more thing back to listen. Then we'll talk about the news. But like this was, I should have said this at the start. The archetype I was talking about, the archetype I needed was somebody that went in and left. Right? Because all of the other people that I had talked to or talked about, some of them refused to talk to me. Hi.

Lee Stephanic, but who had worked with, all of them stayed. Like, all of them reluctantly went in and then stayed and even gotten enthusiastic in some cases, right? Like, Alyssa was the one that was reluctant to go in and then left. It demonstrates that she had a deep caring inside her about something, right? And that, like, maybe, you know, you can compartmentalize, you can rationalize, you can justify for all the ways. But, like, if in your heart, like, if somewhere inside there's this thing that is saying to you, no, like, I need to do the right thing, right? Like, I want to make sure that my kid and my grandkid looks at me and says,

okay, well, they weren't perfect. But like, when the chips were down, they did the right thing. That's an important trait, like trying to figure out how to find that trait. Like, you would rather have people that have that trait than the other trait. And that's where I come down, he was a little bit more generous than you on Mike Pence, not as generous as JBL who thinks he's a great American hero. But it's like, what if J.D. Vance was the vice president then? Where are we, what are we doing that?

Do we have our country at all? Like, do we have a democracy at all? No. Like, how many people died that day at the Capitol? I mean, just, who knows, that kind of factual? Anyway, we could do hours on that podcast, but we should talk about the news. Where should we start? I want to start with the DHS stuff.

We're still in a partial shutdown with the Department of Homeland Security. Every day reveals like a series of new atrocities that we're learning about that was being committed by these goons. The one that Andrew Egger wrote about in Morning Shots. this morning. It was this case of neural shalom. It was this Rohingya refugee. It was mostly blind, not totally blind. He was stopped. Border parole agents scooped him up in Buffalo. They learned that he was in the country legally. He was a legal refugee and thus not deportable until, you know, Steve Miller changes those rules to make it so we don't accept any refugees except for white

Afrikaners. But since he was legal and not deportable under our current system, they released him. but not at home in the parking lot of a closed Tim Hortons, five miles from his home. And then in the next couple days, he died. He didn't ever made it home. It doesn't seem like it was very chilly in Buffalo, to say the least, in the past couple months. So that's one example.

I've got a couple others going to talk about, but I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that and how to think about this current shutdown fight. It's very different than the last one, right? It's sort of like, since it's so narrow, So it's not really impacting anything except for, you know, people that want to go faster through the TSA pre-check line, you know, which isn't, which isn't exactly an urgent crisis. DHS is running inhumane programs that have no respect for dignity in human life because they're trying to meet quotas. I mean, where have we seen, where have we seen this movie before?

It's awful. It's really awful. And these stories are just coming out in rapid streams happening all over the country. country. But the idea of the DHS shut down and how people aren't really noticing, it seemed like the Trump administration was actually threatening to take away the B-clear TSA status. I don't have any of this, but I understand it's highly important to people to travel a lot. And that was starting to generate some backlash. And I was kind of wondering, is this going to be the thing that breaks Democrats or breaks the public over a fight to fund mass agents in the streets who are kidnapping people? Like, what a decadent society we are if we actually think that's a pain point. You know, like, I've heard people complaining about it. And I understand, like, it's an inconvenience. You paid for this status.

You were supposed to get it. You have plans this weekend. But my God, you can't give up TSA. Be clear for the sake of people getting kidnapped and blind people throw it on the street. Like, what kind of bubble do you live in? And, you know, the Trump administration did roll it back because the people, was too painful, but I just, the populace needs to be ready for this fight. And I just think it is incredible, it is incredible how people cannot see outside their bubbles to understand

what is happening in these communities and will come to theirs and will affect someone they know at some point in time if it is not stopped. If Chuck Schumer called you after this podcast, he listens. I don't know if he listens, actually. That's a joke. And he was like, Amanda, I have it a roundtable of people. And I'm asking them how we should deal with this negotiation, you know, getting people with different perspectives. What would you tell them? The baseline ideas they have, no mass agents, no surveillance of Americans, protesters are free to conduct free speech. I mean, these, yes, fight on those things.

Like, I just don't think this should be that difficult. Make it very easy to, a message. And you know, I'm not afraid of a shutdown fight. I work for Ted Cruz. Sometimes, and this is a narrow one. Go fight it. Go fight this. And go to the floor every single day and say, these are our three demands. You know, I actually thought Abigail Spanberger did a really good job in the Democratic response to the state of the union, even though the format is still like so far behind. Giving that can scripted speech is just, I don't know why they haven't adapted. It's no fault on her. she gave a good address. But they needed somebody to go out there and just talk about three things, ICE, Epstein, and elections.

That's it. Like, can we just put these front and center and they always want to leave a affordability? I understand. Like, that's consultant speak. But if you want to animate people and understand why the people in power are bad and how they're going to take away your rights, those are the three issues I would lean into super hard. I thought it's pretty interesting how much Spanberger talked about ICE. and good and positive and noteworthy.

So I had a friend last night that told me they had a hot take because I've not exactly been blown away by the campaign that Jasmine Crockett is running for Texas Senate. Oh, yes. I heard. They offered a role for her, which got me kind of interested and excited, which was maybe instead of running for Texas Senate,

staying in the house and being the permanent state of the union response person. Sure. That is like, like, let's find somebody that can just, you know, throw some punches, you know, has a lot of energy and just do that and just have a designated responder. I like that idea. I don't even want a responder. I want somebody to go throw bombs as a pre-buttal. Yeah, there you go. Right? Because it was pretty clear to me in the first like 20 minutes, he's just going for records and trying to tire people out. I'm not sure how many people stayed around to watch Spanberger, but if somebody was saying, I want time beforehand, and this is what he's not going to

talk about, and this is what's important. I think that might help. frame it a little bit more, but I just, we've got to be a lot more innovative when it comes to responding Trump. I just can't believe we've been at this time for 10, 12 years now. I've lost count. I really liked what you did through State of the Union with the Mystery Science Theater. That was a tour of duty. But like, that's how I want to watch State of the Union. I want to have some contacts for all this time. We wanted people to do live fact checking, which is incredibly hard. But I think what you did is what the future of covering these events needs to be. Because we can't, how many people tell you I can't listen to him anymore? It is very difficult

to listen to his voice. Even if it's a more boring president. He wants to listen to two hours of that stuff. Nobody wants to listen to it. So I liked it more. Thank you. I appreciate that. For you people, for you people that live in the Midwest of the North, this time of year, a good hoodie is essential. For me, it's gorgeous this weekend. Just a comfy little t-shirt is essential. Either way, American Giant has got you. The American Giant Classic Full Zip hoodie is made to last a lifetime.

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One of those issues that you talked about, that you said that Schumer needs to negotiate over, which is the surveillance of Americans. Talk about that. Yeah. So we found a lawsuit on behalf of Maine residents earlier this week because what they are doing is that they are collecting facial recognition data and license plates

to follow protesters to their homes. There was an incident where one of the people in the lawsuit, you can, I'll link the complaint. online where an officer essentially held a camera to her face and said, if you keep coming out here, you're going to be put on a domestic terror list and we're coming to your house later. Crazy. For just exercising her legal right to observe these agents in a public space. And this is something that my organization feels very strongly about is that we have to protect

civic public spaces in order to protect elections. Because if you cannot be out in the streets, not only protesting ICE, but monitoring and recording what these federal agents are doing, recording is probably the most important act of resistance that we have right now. Because as you know, if there weren't people in the streets of Minnesota, we would not have known how Renee Good was killed. We would not have known how Alex Preddy would kill because Christyne would have got up before those cameras and been believed by too many people when she said that they were domestic terrorists. So we know this is the game plan, but this whole data collection that DHS appears to be doing as a matter of policy is something that has to be challenged

extremely hard. You know, I think a lot of people are worried about the surveillance resources that are being unfurled by the government because we've given this agency so much money. There's so much they can do with, you know, the AI stuff that's has to. happening right now, you see the big dispute that the Department of War is having with Claude. And so this is a huge frontier. And so we're really laser focused on it. I know a lot of other people are. But if we can't protect those public spaces, our ground to stand and run a free election becomes dramatically winnowed. And so you cannot give an inch on this. Another thing that I saw you post about that I didn't talk about this week, I just wanted to mention in this area is this testimony

from the ICE lawyer, Ryan Schwank. One of the things that he testified to on the Hill earlier this week was pretty stark and direct. And I just want to read exactly what he said. I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution. So direct sentence from him. And those orders were about basically these warrantless searches and how they could go into places that they shouldn't be. Yeah, this is something that appears to be a policy. I mean, the guy who's testifying in front of it. And so there was a lot of concern about how GHS was rushing these agents to the streets with not enough training. Not only are they not receiving enough training, they're receiving unconstitutional training, it seems like. And this is happening all over the place just today was the president of Columbia was going on a video to say that they snatch one of their students and refused to provide a warrant. This is their operating belief that they do not have to provide warrants in order to,

to get people who are suspected of being illegal aliens. And so, you know, we've kind of had these discussions earlier. Like, isn't it true that people who are undocumented do sort of have fewer rights, but not when it comes to this because they have to provide a warrant so they know they're not seizing Americans, right? Like, you have to know why you're going in there. So you really can't just say like, oh. It isn't really about the undocumented person's rights.

Actually, in this case, it's about all of our rights. Right. This is why we have this as a rule of law and a. America because it's to protect everybody to make sure that the government is actually seizing who they're supposed to be seizing and have a clear reason why. And they've just wiped the table with that. And so lots of Americans are getting caught up in this. People are being disappeared. You can't find them. They're not getting adequate legal representation. And so thank God you're talking about people who have come out to do the right thing. It's my understanding that this guy was like

a training officer down in Georgia, the incredible risk that he is taking to say, say, yeah, this is a policy, is courageous, but also tremendously helpful because we need to establish that these aren't just one-off mistakes by under-trained officers, that this is a, this is a policy, as we've suspected, because that's the only way we can hope to get any kind of accountability, because this is clearly unconstitutional. Yeah, and shout out to Ryan Schwank. And you guys are pushing. You mentioned what states can do, this universal constitutional remedies act.

Yeah, so this actually isn't. election related, but it is super, super important. It is moving in a number of states in them. Let me tell you about what it does. So in a lot of states where, say, you know, an ICE agent murders your spouse, you don't have the ability to sue a federal officer like you would someone from the state or local police. There's reasons for that. It has to do with something that's called as a cause of action that was winnowed by the Supreme Court. But what states can do, and should do now is address that accountability gap with some legislation that provides residents that cause of action. And so we call it the broad kind of reform bill is the Universal

Constitutional Remedies Act in the states. Many times they have different names. I think the acronym for the one in New Jersey is FUCK ICE, which is very innovative on their part. But we're moving in, I think, 15 states, California, Massachusetts. I can put a link. and my social media for people that want to learn more. But this is something that can be done now. It is being considered. There's strong legislation. A lot of times it's committee, but people who want to do something, you should push your state and local legislatures to be active on this kind of bill, because stuff is going down now, and it's going to continue to go down. And these federal officers need to know that they are not immune from accountability, because right now they think they are.

Right now they think, you know, these ICE officers that are doing terrible things are still on the job. You know, citizens need recourse not only to get justice, but also to put these officers on notice that they will be held accountable for their actions. You mentioned the Columbia student that's now been released after the Zoran Trump meeting. I want to talk about the Zoran Trump meeting here. But this story is crazy. The Columbia president, those five DHS agents, they entered a dorm. with no warrant and lied. They told the RA or whatever,

was at the front desk, that they were police looking for a missing child. The campus officer repeatedly asked for a warrant, evidence of that, or asked for a chance to call their boss. These agents ignored that person, went into the dorm, grabbed the young woman from Azerbaijan,

who I guess apparently the notion was that there was some issue with her student visa. grabbed her, detained her. Crazy. I can sane behavior inside a private university. That was one of the things that Zoran started to talk to Trump about. So we might as to talk about the Zoran Trump meeting. Me and Andrew Eager hashed us out for about 25 minutes last night because my honest view was I woke up from a nap.

You can maybe hear. I have a little bit of a cold. And so I took one of these naps where you like you wake up and it's like you've got cobwebs and you're like, have I been asleep for two minutes or three hours? like what happened, where am I? And I looked down on my phone and I have like three texts with the picture of Zoron and Trump holding up the fake newspaper. And I was like, am I still dreaming? Am I awake?

It was real. And this photo Zoran is like smirking, holding up a fake New York Daily News that says, I don't have in front of me, like Trump to city, we're going to build a bunch more houses. Trump is smiling, shit eating grin. Like he's next to the biggest celebrities ever met. Like it's so crazy. just getting totally framed mugged by Zoran reportedly based on what the Maldani camp says. The request was basically a bunch of new housing for New York, federal funding for new housing.

And then gave Susie Wiles the name of several Palestinian activists mostly who've been wrongfully detained and this young woman from Azerbaijan. And after Trump made a call or something and the one woman has been released that we don't have anything yet on the others. So that's basically what happened in that meeting. I had very mixed views on it. After thinking about it and sleeping on it, I've come more to a good-on-Zeron view, but my view is a little nuanced. What do you think about it?

Yeah, I mean, this is a thing that authoritarian leaders force you to do. You have to go sort of kiss the ring or be friends with them or make good, and then maybe you can get a special request granted. Like Vladimir Zelensky, when he would have to be. have to go to the White House to try to like, he knew he's going to be humiliated. He had to sit there and take it because he wanted to save his people. This is the position that people are forced in. They're in a subservience position where they have to beg for things that they should not have to that should already be given. I mean, so yeah, I'm glad the woman was really, of course, of course.

But when there's a policy coming like this from DHS where people are being snatched, there aren't enough White House meetings to save people individually. And that's the real problem. Here are my two political concerns about the Zoron being that I just want to bounce off you. Like I said, I think on balance, he did the right thing. It's kind of one big political concern, which is, I feel like the main body of the Democratic Party, like the brand is so in tatters, right? And Zoron has this kind of outsider appeal based on his youth and the social media and his positions on Gaza and a wide variety of reasons. And having been dealing with, S.A. And so this narrative starts to form, right? Which is like the Democratic Establishment Party is so weak and ineffective and in league with the corrupt corporate billionaires and blah, blah, blah. And they can't get this done, but Zoron can. And I think that a lot of that resonates with a lot of people, I think particularly other younger people. They like this idea that they're these anti-establishment people that aren't the boring Washington people that aren't part of the court. And that's just a lot of people. And that's just,

just wrong. Like, it's wrong. Like, Trump is more in league with the corporate billionaires than anybody, right? And the flip side, if Hakeememememreys had gone to the White House and taken that same picture, everybody would be up in arms. Like, what are you doing? You're the minority leader in Congress. You're going to normalize Trump and buddy up with him and smile with him in exchange for 10,000 houses and one person being released. And, you know, people would be fucking enraged at Hakeem for doing the exact same thing that Zoron did. And so that's not really Zoran's fault. Like, he's in a different role. Like, he's the mayor of New York. He's not the leader of the party in D.C. That's my, like, one thing that I worry about is that when you play the Trump game, you start to be a little

bit complicit, back to your word, in the narrative that he's putting forth. These guys are outsiders. And the real issue is the corrupt establishment, people like Chuck Schumer. Yeah. I mean, when I see the situation aside from, you know, all the things I said previously, I mean, this is just New York wheeling and dealing, right? Like, large part of the affinity because they're New Yorkers at heart. And I'm not like disparaging New York, but Donald Trump was always very dealt into the real estate market, trying to do things there. And this is another thing I'm always like wondering about is how are so many people so eager to ingratiate themselves with Trump in his New York days? Because you could see what he was then, but everybody went to lunch with Marla Maple.

and he was read into that and hanging around with Ivana Trump. And I just look at that like, why? Why? Why did you guys want to hang out with him all the time? You guys all knew that he was this narcissistic kind of sleazy real estate dude. So why are you always hanging around going to lunch with them and inviting him to your parties? And so I just see this as another expression of that. And I don't know if that's right or wrong, but that's where I am.

In this case, Zoron played him, right? And so I just think those things are both true. Zoran fundamentally played him, and he's got a job as mayor of New York. And also, it feels a little ick. It is. It is. And I just think that's kind of where I land. Speaking of Trump being the one that's in league with the corrupt oligarchs, some big media news yesterday after we took the pod,

which was that Netflix dropped out of their bid with Warner Brothers Discovery because they were outbid by Paramount and Ellison's. Allisans both offered more money, but also basically made the case, Border Brothers Discovery, which on CNN is most notable for this conversation, made the case that they could get regulatory approval and Netflix might not. And like earlier in this week, we talked about how the administration was going after Netflix because Susan Rice is on the board and said something. So like this is just a straight corrupt deal, like straight down the line.

And the end game of it is going to be that the same people that are running CBS also running CNN. And Barry Weiss sent a cheeky tweet about that last night, about how she hears there's some media news. You know, look, now you start to put it all together. You've got Fox and Red the Murdox, CBS and CNN run by the Ellisons. You've got TikTok run by the Ellison's. You've got Twitter run by Elon Musk. Facebook, Instagram is, you know, Zuckerberg is maybe a little more malleable. I think you'd probably go back to being lefty friendly if a lefty took power, but he's less ideological than the others. YouTube, Google, we're on YouTube here.

Hey, you know, that's some oligarchs still, but they have not demonstrated to be as pliant as those others. But like, you put TikTok X, CNN, CBS, Fox. It's a lot of propaganda. It's a lot of power. It's a lot of propaganda. It's a lot of control that will be accelerated through AI and maybe other forms of censorship. But I guess I could be very wrong here.

Okay, great. I love this. Give me a different take. But my gut feeling is when it comes, I have a lot of love for CNN. I was working there as a contributor for years. They were good to me. But there was a time to move on because one, I want to work in other fights. But it was very clear to me that cable is dying.

We all know this. And so on one hand, I think you just have to let the dinosaurs die. The only reason that Donald Trump is able to exercise this degree of influence and control over these mergers is because their legacy media companies. I mean, the FCC stuff that they're threatening investigations only apply to this old form media. And that is not where the growth is. It just isn't, period. And thank God. Thank God the growth is with the streamers where there's much more independence.

I mean, it's the reason why the bulwark is so extremely successful is because it's been innovative and nimble and taken advantage of the new ground that's being plowed. And this is like always the story when it comes to not only media, but America invention in general, is that we evolve. And this is clearly evolving. And so, you know, it's terrible. It's absolutely awful what happened to CBS News. It's awful what's going to happen to CNN, most likely. But there's got to be people who are ready to plow time energy into the new ground. And that's places like the bulwark. I mean, there's no reason there can't be news gathering operations with the same degree of

editorial excellence in news reporting determination as existed in other places. And so that's kind of where I am. And if the government was going to stamp down on these old dinosaurs, let them die. And let's just start the new era. I'm not that far from you on this take. I think there are people that are a little more hair on fire than either of us. us. Here's how I would kind of split the hairs on it. I mean, it's just at the top level, this is a corrupt deal.

Like, this is not how things should be working in a free country. And so any discussion of the particulars of what happens underneath that, you know, come, you know, under the umbrella point that this is a corrupt country right now. And like the president is doing corrupt deals with it with preferred billionaires. The outgrowth of it on the media, there's a little bit of this like Hungary started this 20 years ago. go. And it's kind of like, thank God that we started this 20 years later. Like, if this was in 1998, like, this would be like a real crisis. Oh, we were a smaller country with fewer people. Yeah, right. Like, you know, you'd be talking about they control 60, 70 percent of the news gathering operations, you know, and they got their eyes on Disney next, right? You know what I mean?

Like, that would be the situation. That's not really the case now in this country. Like, people get their information for better or worse, worse in a lot of cases from like very diffuse outlets, right? Like, it's a lot of consolidation they have. I don't want underplayed. But it's like, is it even half? You know, I don't think so. Maybe, maybe a little over half. It depends on how you measure everything.

So it's a lot that's going to be in control with mega aligned leaders. It's a big problem. I worry more about the algorithms than I do about the cable news, right? To your point, I just like, half the people watching CNN right now are at the airport and like 25% are not going to be alive for the 2028 election. God love you all. We appreciate it. But like, you know what I mean? It's just like the audience, it's not like a really

engaged audience. TikTok is extremely. X is smaller, but it's radicalizing. The algorithmic side of this to me is the bigger concern. And if I'm the Democrats, what I'm trying to regulate and look into if I get back in charge. But it's not great. It's not great. Not great. Good news for the bulwark, though. Bad news for the country. I hate that, though. I want to get into a world where I can align things where good news for the country is good news for the bulwark. That's not going to be for a while, I don't think. Yeah, but I will say, I mean, the one thing where bullwork was really wise is that the membership protects the stream, right? Like, once you are a member to these new media outlets, you were protected from what the algorithm may give you. So subscribe. Subscribe to the board. Thank you, Amanda. A good pitch. subscriptions do make right yeah yeah because if you're advertising based then you're all susceptible like we're not we have a little bit of advertising obviously but like we're subscriber base

the advertising could go to zero and we could still succeed the one other caveat i want to make the one other bad part of the news is it something that's hard for us to do speaking of the book the book is great appreciate it please subscribe you know the scale of reporting around the world and investigative reporting right is like you can't match we can't match right like we can do certain things you can pick certain specialties adrian's work in immigration, John Cohn, and healthcare. It's like, there's, you know, and there are other outlets that have similar expertise. So you can do some things.

But the scale, international, very hyper-local, you know, what's happening on city councils in your community. Like, we're obviously not going to cover it. You know what I mean? Like the loss Washington Post, right? So that is the other thing that is worrying to me. And I will say, you know, I'm going to bring up your girl, Jasmine Crockett. Yeah.

With the winnowing of your independency of the free press, you're going to see more reduced press access, right? So this is becoming more common. She kicked out an Atlantic reporter because she'd written a negative profile about her. Exactly. And so like, what is it? They're kicking out the Atlantic from covering a public event. And so I think that that's something that's happening not on both sides to the same degree, but is becoming more commonplace. Yeah. And you're referencing there, Amanda, Elaine Godfrey is the Atlantic reporter that got kicked out of a Crockett event after she had written a profile of Jasmine that she didn't think was favorable

and she didn't like enough. Interestingly, we have Elaine on the Focus Group podcast, which is out this weekend. We get to hear what the voters think about the Texas Senate race and sometimes we're in a little podcast bubble. The voters, seems like the voters like both of them. So there you go. The other big news item is around what's happening

with the Department of War and Anthropic. People get mad at me. that's like a feedback that's like you should really just call it its real name to the department of defense. I was like, I think it's funer to make fun of the Department of War. I think the point is made more strongly by mocking their fake name than by doing the real name. That's one man's opinion. Your mileage may vary. The Department of War is pissed at Anthropic, which is like positioning itself at least.

I don't want to claim expertise on this. They're positioning themselves at least as the most socially responsible of the AI companies. we'll continue to monitor, you know, when the actions match the rhetoric on all that. You know, Google's motto is don't be evil for a while. So, you know, things evolve. But their positioning themselves is the most responsible. DOW has been using Anthropic and Claude, which is their app for some of their war plans, you know, when they're not using Signal. And putting Jeffrey Goldberg on there.

Darryo Amaday, who runs the company, has said, basically they have two red lines. You know, you can't have fully autonomous weapons. so we're not going to let Claude bomb things. You're like you got to have a human's got to do that. Good idea. Yeah, good idea. And you can't use us for domestic surveillance, mass domestic surveillance. You could use it for surveillance if there's a warrant or a specific isolate.

The Trump administration's response to this, it's a shame that Dario Amadee is a liar and has a God complex. He wants to control the U.S. military and is okay putting our nation's safety at risk. Elon and Higsef then were posting about how Dario hates Western civilization because they had previously their guidance and their model. If you looked at their internal guidance, like how the LLM works, one of the pieces of guidance they had was the AI, the LLM should encourage consideration of non-Western perspectives. And so that shows that I guess they hate Western civilization. So big fight there between Anthropic and the government. You got anything on that? Yeah, but not only that, they're threatening to designate them some kind of threat to the supply chain,

which is normally only reserved for foreign, you know, nations with bad, I don't know, plans for the U.S. I don't, I want to say terrorism, but I don't think that's quite right. But honestly, you depend on this resource so badly you're making these threats that you're going to designate them a threat to the supply chain in order to make them do what you want. I mean, this is just insane authoritarian behavior. It's bullying. Like, you could go to another AI company, but this one is the best, clearly, from their perspective. So they want to just bully them into violating the rights of Americans.

I mean, those are the two red lines. We don't want to survey Americans and violate their constitutional rights, and we don't want to have fully autonomous weapons. And they are going crazy because they want the right to survey Americans and use autonomous weapons that are not. not tested yet. I mean, that's, that is, it's dangerous. I mean, it is so insanely dangerous that they want to use this untested technology to do both of these things. I'm actually an AI enthusiast. I think it's here. I think he has the potential to make, you know, life-saving leaps for medicine and all kinds of other technology, but not if it's going to be abused and misused by governments in this way. And so I am very happy to see Anthropic take a stand on this and make it known to everyone that these are their red

lines because we need them. Interestingly, Open AI, which has been a feud with Anthropic, just this morning, Hadass Gold asked them what their take was on this and they said they have the same red lines as Anthropic. That's intriguing. They decided to weigh in on that. That's great. Honestly, if what came out of this fight is that the entire AI community was in alliance on these two issues, that would be a really great thing. Because, you know, we're, through our work at Protect Democracy, we're always looking to build these coalitions. And usually it's really hard to build unity among competitors, right? And these people are fiercely competing for the future of technology and how we live. And if they could get on the same baseline in these issues, that would be tremendous.

The way that the government is treating private enterprise, the combination with, okay, we're going to bully CEOs, okay, into letting us flout the law, basically, like use their products to fault the law. And we're going to bully them. We're going to trash talk them. It's thuggery, right? It's like... The Godf Complex joke was funny considering it's coming from the Department of War. Exactly. It's total thuggery in service of a desire for mass domestic.

domestic surveillance. Yeah. So there are a lot of people that don't like mass domestic surveillance. Who does? Oh, hold it. Who is in favor of it? I want to. Are there a champions for it?

Oh. Yeah, Lindsay Graham. I think it's a big champion. In some ways, this is very dangerous in the short term. But I do think of the Democrats can take it. It's a political gift for them. Yes. Because I've said this several times and I want to keep repeating it.

The Democrats, after Obama, from the period after 2008 after the Iraq war, got into the position where they were kind of always on the side of the man, you know, and of the institutions and all the those are good reasons because they're under threat but like being able to use this as a way to kind of recapture the spirit of like wait a minute no it's the other guys that want to fucking spy on you and they're the deep state actually it's a way to kind of win back some cranks and winning back some cranks is very important because you can't win elections of the country if you don't have any cranks the other concerns we have related to this the spying around the elections yeah this is obviously a

you guys are really focused on protect democracy. There was a story report this week that Protome activists who say they're in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page executive order draft that claims that China, China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock more power over voting. So that's what they're working with. It's not the Venezuelans anymore. It's not the Italians with their satellites.

It's not the woke. It's not the deep state. The Chinese put Joe Biden in power. Yeah. And so now they need to take control of elections. Why didn't the Chinese do that again in 2024? Unclear. I have to read the memo.

Very unclear. But yeah, this is the big setup that's coming. The big setup is going to be some kind of national emergency on false pretenses. They're going to target some immigrant community that they say is responsible. They're going to scream voter fraud, and then they're going to try to find a way to deny the results. I assume you got this question, but is Donald Trump going to cancel the upcoming elections? No, they're not going to be canceled, but they're going to mess with the playing field so much that it's going to be very difficult to win in certain areas. That's what I see happening.

And it's the same playbook that they ran before. They're going to tell all these lies to deceive voters about what is happening on the ground to disrupt the process, whether that's that's through mail-in voting, whether it's messing with election day times to deny the results. And so we know the playbook. We know how this is going to look. And so people are always asking, well, what can we do about it? The states have to be very active in protecting their constitutional rights to run the elections. The Trump administration is desperate to get voter data. If you look at any kind of legislation that they have been pushing the lawsuits that they're filing against states on a frequent basis, it's to get the voter rolls. They have no business having voter roll data.

There was a press conference a few weeks ago where it's supposed to be, you know, I think I kind of think of it as a three-headed monster. Christy Nome representing DHS, Pam Bondi representing Department of Justice, and Tulsi Gabbard representing intelligence. And they were supposed to speak to secretaries of state about election threat. Now, that visual will is so bad, I think that they didn't end up showing. And that's because none of those people have any business with election administration or process. Christy Noem, as the head of DHS, has no business getting involved in voter rolls or what Secretary of State should doing because there's no threat at all. And if you look at the Save Act legislation, which Donald Trump made a huge push for after he declared J.D. Vance, the new head of the war on fraud, There's a provision in the SAVE Act to give DHS access to voter rules.

I mean, it's supposed to be about voter ID, but it's just, if you look inside any effort that they're pushing, they're trying to find a way to do that. And sure enough, you know, J.D. Vance is going to end up targeting the Somali communities, the Haitian communities, because they think if they can find an immigrant population to scream voter fraud, that is their access into those states and cities to do bad stuff. One of the things that has made me a little less alarmist on this is that a lot of these key states are run by Democrats. And so how do you think about that, right? I mean, like, there's a lot of races in California, New York, at least in the House, Pennsylvania, you know, a lot of the target districts. You know, the Senate's a different kettle of fish, as David Trump kept saying, which is now stuck in my head, because most of those are red states. but what do you see as potential opportunities for Democrats, Democratic states on protection?

The biggest threats are going to be blue cities and red states for the reasons that you outlined. And so I think it's incredibly important for the mayors of those cities in other people in election administration to be very clear. Yeah. Yeah. To understand what is going to come at them. But in terms of what Democratic states can do,

it's just you really got to be on the ball about the election process. process stuff, really be protective of voter data, anything that can be turned against you by the federal government. And I think people are pretty keen on this, but being fiercely protective of your data and keeping it secure and not giving any kind of opening, you know, be very clear about the process. If you're going to do mail and ballots, understand that those are going to be more closely scrutinized than anything else. And just be really active talking with people about the process and how it's safe, because I think the bigger threat through this, Tim,

is actually that people, when we talk about the threats, they get scared that their vote won't count. And so they need to communicate with them. Turn out. Your vote will be counted. This is why you can trust us to do this. Do your best to keep those lines moving fast efficiently. Those long lines, people should, that helps restore trust in the process

when they can get it processed quickly, but just don't be in hiding. I mean, this is the big theme, I think, for the midterm elections is that if you want to have ground to stand on now, if you want to be able to exercise your rights on Election Day, you have to exercise them now. This isn't like this is a use it or lose it situation. Just because we get to do right wing stuff and we're together. Can we do something fun? I feel like it's been, it's Friday. Let's have something fun.

We've got to send people off. Yeah, yeah. So I have popery of various crazy right things we can talk about. All right. We could talk about my friend, clavicular and the looks maxing he's done. And how his grandmother told him that he'd be nicer to J.D. Vance. And he said, no, grandma, I'm not going to do that because he's subhuman and has a recess side profile.

We can talk about that. We could talk about Candace and Erica Kirk. We could talk about, I guess isn't really that fun to talk about the like, little Nazi guys. So we probably, we're probably Candace or clavicular. Let's see the seats. Because I'm happy that men are sort of getting into Maralago face.

Okay. Like, it's time. How old are your boys? I have one boy and he is 12. My daughter's 14. Okay, that's right. So we're not there yet.

But I do wonder like what you would think if he came to you and was like, I'm considering bone smashing. Oh my. I'm considering bone smashing, mom. I want my, I want my. I want my cheekbones to break and then grow back stronger because it's critically important that I bog the other boys in my class. How would you think about that as a mother?

I would cancel the internet. I would take him to an Amish farm and he would never go online again. Haven't you already done that? Yeah, I know. I tried. Don't you basically do that already? Yeah, but that's kind of my answer to everything. Okay.

My take on like the whole looks maxing thing is just women have been doing this insane stuff to their bodies for a long time. And so I'm kind of humored by the fact that men are getting into it. And then they're acting like, oh, this is something new and cool and edgy and masculine. Like, no, you're doing crappy plastic surgery to yourself. That's what you're attempting. But also just the idea of like, I got to tell you this. So, you know, there's the Mar-a-Lago face. It's real, right?

You can recognize it. The thing that I can't get out of my head, I want your reaction to this, is that when you see it on women, it's like women impersonating drag queens impersonating women. Yeah. Right? Yes. Yes, there is a drag. Because they do what drag, like the big eyelashes, all the same kind of enhancements. There's a drag aesthetic to it.

Right. For sure. Yeah. It is totally. really drag. For sure. And straight women are really into drag. I actually went to a drag thing last night. You're not a straight woman and I've never been to drag. I know. I know I know I know I'm not a straight woman. I'm very comfortable with my gender identity, Amanda. Just let me finish what I was going to say, which was that 10 years ago, if I went to a drag thing, it would have been

like mostly gay dudes with like a couple of, we're going to have to beep this out for YouTube, but what we would have time have called faggags, which I can say, but you know, some of the rest of you can't say. We would have. We would have to beep this out. We But that would have been the crowd at a kind of like the thing that I went to last night, an alternative drag show. That is like flipped now. It was like all women there. And, you know, they're like five gays.

And whatever, okay, that's fine. So there's something about this, I think. And Kerry Lake was very, was one of the leaders here in the Arizona space of being a woman who was very interested in drag. and then now is like doing her face like she's a drag queen. And I think that that has proliferated. I think this is a smart observation by you. I think that for some reason, conservative women are interested. I think it's a MAGA conservative women, though.

Yeah, sure. I mean, but it's in here's what I think is humorous, though, the women who do Mar-a-Lago face, which you can see it in your brain, right? Like big cheek implants, the thick eyelashes, the heavy foundation, the lip liner you can see like penciled on. They don't like drag queens, right? They're the whole ones like, we can't have transgender people. They are the ones doing the war on transgender stuff.

And they're the ones impersonating drag queens. I just think there's something deliciously funny about that. What is the psychology of that? I'm interested. Give us your feedback. Give us your theories, listeners. What is the psychology of that? Yeah, I don't know.

They're definitely impersonating drag queens. It's funny that you said that about the looks maxing boys, about how they're just doing it. I do feel like for women, there has to be like an element of, okay, well, I don't want my sons to do this. But like, there's something a little delicious also, just about like, oh, you're being judged on your looks now.

Oh, there's a kick. Like, you guys might try to bro it up by saying that there's a kick ranking for the most, Magogable Chads in America, but like all that is is fucking the swimsuit edition. Like, and for a different generation, it's like women have been judged just based on shallow side profile percentages forever now. And now the boys have self-selected into doing that. Enjoy.

Enjoy how that goes. We'll see if how you like that. These supposedly hyper-masculine boys are expressing all the. the most inxy insecurities of any teenage girl in taking the most dramatic action you can to rectify something that is only a problem if you were insanely insecure about your looks. So have fun with that, boys.

Good luck. It's not as great as it seems. Being judged only on your cheekbone circumference and the cheekbone to, what do they call the, I'm going to call the... There's some, like, isometric, the perfect triangle or something. Yeah.

I don't know. Go starve yourself skinny, like all the girls had to do in the 90s. Have fun of that. Yeah, yeah, that is Amanda Carpenter. What a show. We covered a lot of territory. Y'all have a wonderful weekend. Don't bone smash your face.

No. You know, find some joy out there in this world. It's my husband's birthday, so I'll be out in about on Saturday. So maybe I'll see you around in New Orleans. Yeah, everybody else. We'll be back Monday with Bill Crystal. See you all then. See, Amanda.

Peace. The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.