The Daily Beast Podcast - Steve Bannon Is Just Jealous He's Been Replaced by Trump

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Stave Bannon calling out Donald Trump for hosting white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago reads as jealousy, according to host Andy Levy on this week’s episode of The New Abnormal. Podcast co-host Danielle Moddy also can’t believe she’s agreeing with Bannon: “Do these people not do any type of Google search on who the fuck is coming into Mar-a-Lago? Is there no background check? Also on the podcast, Jared Holt, senior research manager on U.S. Hate and Extremism for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who has a newsletter and podcast called Posting Through It, explains Trump’s intentions for not condemning Fuentes after the meeting. Then, Sarah Kendzior, author of They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent and co-host of the podcast, Gaslit Nation, says Elon Musk’s motives for changing Twitter are part of a bigger strategy: control and “possibly the destruction of the public sphere.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have today. First, we're joined by Jared Holt, a senior research manager on U.S. hate and extremism for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

And he's going to talk to us all about this new fellow everyone's talking about Nick Fuentes. Then we'll be joined by Sarah Kensior, who's the author of They New, how a culture of conspiracy keeps America complacent as well as the co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation. And she's going to talk to us about what she's seeing with Elon Musk. But first, let's have some fun. Hey, Andy. How are you? Hey, Danielle. Good.

How are you? You know, it's been a week of news. It's been a week. It's been a week of news and it's Tuesday. Always a good sign. Let's talk about last weeks of news because it's still bleeding into this week of news. Of course, what I'm talking about is the disgraced former president known as Trump had, It was sort of a Netflix and chill kind of thing.

I guess it was dinner with Yeh, who some people may be more familiar with as Kanye West, but he goes by Yeh now, and I believe in calling people what they would like to be called. Trump had dinner with Yeh, and Yeh brought along his new BFF. A guy named Nick Fuentes, who, if you're not familiar with him, is a full-on, I guess charitably, I would call him a white nationalist. In an uncharitable mood, I would call him a fucking Nazi. You can take your pick. And Nick Fuentes has a lot of,

I don't want to call them interesting things to say because they're actually really uninteresting things to say about Jews, about black people, about people of color in general, about gays. Don't forget the women. I was going to say just if you pretty much assume that he has shitty things to say about anyone who's not a cishead white male, you're in good shape. So Danielle, yeah, so they're having dinner and having a good time down in good old Moralaga. I just don't fucking get it, right? I don't know where to begin with this. First, yay. These people understand how to dominate the media cycle.

You're not saying like, yay. No, not yay. Like, yay is in Kanye, you fucking idiot. And yes, I do believe that you should call people by what they want to be referred to as. But I, for this, I'm just going to call him, yay, that fucking idiot. So how do you go from being like a rapper, being somebody who people call a jeez? for your production and your producing work and all of this. Like, it's not just the medication.

It can't be at this point, right? Like, he has fucking Google. And is it just like to be him? He's like, I'm a free thinker. You're a free thinker who hangs out with somebody that thinks that your people are apes. That is literally what Nick Fuentes has said about black people and worse. But Kanye deciding that this is who his people are now, that's him. being a free fucking thinker. How is it that him and Candace Owens, that their idea of black people,

you know, going against the grain happens to fall in alignment with white supremac. Like, that just doesn't make sense to me. That contrarian type of bullshit, there's nothing good coming from my heart right now. There's nothing good here. Nor should do. Yeah. And Steve Bannon, who I never thought I would ever agree with, I'm agreeing with him when it's just like, who is on Trump's staff? When you're going to visit him. the former president of the United States. Do these people not do any type of Google search on who the fuck is coming into Mar-a-Lago? Is there no background check?

There's a couple of good points there that I want to get into. One is the Steve Bannon thing. To me, that just reads as I think he's just jealous. It's sort of like, you know, these people like to talk about the great replacement theory, and I think Steve Bannon is a little mad that he's been replaced in this case. It's like, oh, Trump is, you know, he's found a new white supremacist asshole to hang out with. And then there's Steve Bannon, who's sort of like his ex white supremacist asshole, just going, really? This guy?

Really? Really? That's what you dumped me for? That should be a new bachelor. This would be a reality TV show that, like, I would fucking get down with. Like, meet my new white supremacist. Guess who's coming to dinner now? Yeah, or like America's next top white supremacist.

something like that. I mean, there's so many possible, you know, instead of the mask singer, you could have the hooded singer. I mean, it's just there's so many ways to go with this. Oh, that is so good. Instead of The Bachelor, how they would give the rose, they just give you a new hood. Yes, I like this show. So the other thing that you said was, like, don't they have Google and his staffing? I mean, yes, Bannon is right about that. And there's a couple of, really, interesting issues there. One is this is a place that not long ago had a lot of classified documents in it. You would think maybe security should be a little better about who they let in. And of course, it's not. And this is one of the reasons why you don't want ex-presidents just taking documents with

them and putting them in their little home office. And the other thing is that, you know, the Trump's whole thing, his response to all of this was that he had no idea who Nick Fuentes was, which I will grant him, I believe, because he's dumb. Really? Yeah, I do think that, you know, Yay says this is my friend Nick and Trump has no idea who he is. I'll give him that.

What I won't give him is he's had a week now to say something bad about Nick Fuentes, and he hasn't, other than saying, oh, I didn't know who that guy was. That's literally all he said. He has not said, oh, I would never have met with him

if I'd known the things he had said or anything even remotely like that. So I have to assume that he has no problem with any of the things that Nick Fuentes has said. This is the same man that said shithole countries, right? When talking about African nations, of course he doesn't care about what Nick Fuentes says, because he says the same shit. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. But the other part of this is I will give Trump the benefit or the doubt that he didn't know who Fuentes was.

That doesn't extend to Fuentes other sort of fans in the Republican Party like Paul Gossar and Marjorie Taylor Green, both of whom have spoken at conferences that Fuentes either ran or was a fellow speaker at, and they both tried to sort of act like, oh, well, I didn't know who he was. I don't agree with everything that everyone I'm at a conference with says. And no, fuck you. Those people know exactly who Nick Fuentes is. They know exactly what his organization, America Firsters or whatever, and his PAC, AFPAC.

They know exactly what they're doing when they go to speak at things like that. So they do not get that benefit of the doubt because they're just, straight up lying. Trump, I don't think is, I think for once in his life, maybe the first time in his life, he's actually not lying when he says he just didn't know who Nick Fuentes was at the time. But again, the point is he knows who he is now and he hasn't condemned him. And he hasn't said, oh, I, yeah, shouldn't have had dinner with him and I wish I had known. And instead, what we get is reports that basically Trump kind of liked him from the reports that have leaked out. Trump has said things like there was a lot of fawning back and forth between Trump and. en Fuentes? So, no, he gets the benefit of the doubt for not knowing originally, but not for anything that's happened since. I just feel like we give Trump way too much benefit of the doubt. Like, how can the man at one time be the smartest man in the room, right? Like, I alone can fix this. He has actually said that shit. And then also be so fucking dumb. Like, you don't get to be both. You don't get to be, oh, I alone can fix this. I need these nuclear codes because they're my private property. And then

I don't know who I'm going to dinner with. Like, either he's like this feeble-minded fool or you're going to try and be the leader of the free world. But you can't have it both ways. Like, I think that we in the media continue to give this man too much credit. And I also think here he coes a couple of weeks ago. He launches his presidential run. Republicans are not jumping up and down.

They are not dying to go to his rallies. And then a couple of weeks later, he sits down and he's dining with white national. to shore up his base and to dominate the media cycle because no one gives a shit that his actual announcement happened but they want to follow him the way that they do reality TV stars

and we fall for it every single fucking time because here we are having a whole media escape for the entire Thanksgiving holiday that's supposed to be no news but we're talking about yay and Fuentes and who goes to Maralago which is apparently a fucking 7-Eleven that anyone can roll up

into because there's no fucking surveillance. Like, there's nothing. I hope they come back with Skittles or something, you know, I don't know. Yeah, look, I just want to make it clear that I agree you can't have it both ways with Trump. I don't have it both ways with Trump. I think he's a fucking moron. So I agree that there are those who, on the one hand, try to paint him as the smartest guy in the room. And then on the other hand, always have little excuses for him when he does his dumb shit. I'm not one of those people. I just think he's always doing. dumb shit. I sort of resent the implication from you, Danielle, that I have been a champion of Donald Trump and that I have said that he is a brilliant man because I have not said that.

And shame on you for insinuating that I have. Shame on you and shame on you again. You're right, Andy. You're right. He is an absolute fucking idiot. And we're the only ones that will say that because everyone else in the media is like, oh, well, maybe we should just give him another 15-11 chance at showing us who he is. My God, if you can't come out against anti-Semitism, which should be a fucking very easy lift, you can't come out against racism, should be an easy lift. Like I said before, I miss the good old days where people hid their racism. You know, like when they were ashamed of it. Like, I missed that. Now they just make full-on fucking YouTube channels to their white supremacy. And we don't do anything about it except say,

oh, maybe no one will advertise on there. did Elon Mus do the other day? He posted a picture of his gun next to a Coca-Cola. Like, this is America. Oh, who was this morning? Oh, my God. Like, this is America. That's who we are in one snapshot. Coca-Cola and a 9-millimeter gun. That's what the world thinks about us. I do just want to point out that that gun is a, it's a replica of a video game gun from a game called Deus X. It's not real. I don't know if that's worse or better. One thing we should clear, there was two guns on the thing. That's true. I guess there was another gun. So he had, he sleeps with two guns, one that's fake and one that's real?

There's the replica and then there's the newer gun. That just seems like a very weird thing to do. What's wrong with these men? Am I wrong? Look, I feel like, now I feel like I'm insulting a bunch of people out there and I'm going to get nasty tweets from people saying, I sleep with a video game gun replica next to my bed. What's wrong with that? We are Legion, you know, and then I'm going to, there's going to be some subreddit R-slash video game replica gun on my night table that is going to, I'm going to be like public enemy number one.

And so I would just like to apologize to all of those people. So Georgia, folks, I am excited. And this is the reason why, because today alone, or at least at the time of this recording, 85,000 people have. have already cast a vote in Georgia. 85,000. The lines, of course, are ridiculously long because the Republicans and Brian Kemp won it that way. They want to make sure that people are as uncomfortable

in Georgia as possible. So that maybe, you know, that they won't care about their day-to-day lives and they won't care about who represents them and then they'll just, you know, leave a line. But the people of Georgia are resilient and they're showing up in mass. And Warnock's new friggin' ad

against Herschel Walker has got to be, Andy, the most brilliant, that I have seen as of late. It's like, can you, sir, also just take over the entirety of the DNC? If people have not seen this commercial, all it is, is regular people in Georgia reacting to things that Herschel Walker has said at press events, at media events, at his rallies. He talks about the werewolves and the vampires. He talks about bad air being taken out of China and we'll just keep our good air.

And the person watching the video is like, it's all the same air. They think so little of us. Republicans think so little of us that this is the candidate that they're running. And it is beyond me. It is beyond insulting and embarrassing who he is. But my God, Warnock, Bravo on your latest ads. Bravo. It was better than the dog walking with the shit.

That, I mean, that ad was good. This one is 10 times better. Yeah, it's an unbelievable ad. and it's just, like you said, it's just so simple, which is what makes it so great and so effective, and it's just literally letting Walker's own word speak for him. It would have been really easy to just make an ad that was just a supercut of Walker saying these insane things, but to have the idea of having the quote unquote actual voter side by side listening to it and reacting is just, it's absolute genius.

And I would not be surprised if it's a tactic that gets copied across the country. in the future because it really is just that good of an ad. And the other thing is, there's a couple things yet. You mentioned the long lines for voting, which, as you alluded to, you always have to feel of two minds about that because, A, it's great that people are getting out and voting, but there's just no reason for long lines. And pretty much any time there are long lines for voting, I won't say every time, but pretty much every time, they're artificially created. And the reasons are artificially created in order to make it harder to vote, as you said. And it's generally not an accident that this happens a lot with people of color, and it happens a lot in very black

areas. And I can't imagine the level of gullibility you would have to have to think that that's a coincidence. And yet, they walk amongst us, people who try to pretend that that is a coincidence, or I guess, who are that gullible and actually believe it is a coincidence. But it's absolutely not. I did see an interesting stat. I know there's been like huge turnout for this early voting. there was a really interesting stat that said that I wish I had the numbers in front of me. But there's been a large number of the people voting did not vote in round one on Election Day. And they're voting in this runoff, but they didn't vote in round one. And a large segment of those people are young people.

And that has got to be absolutely fantastic because we know damn well young people are not fooled by the Herschel Walker thing. And maybe it's because they're not old. enough to remember Herschel Walker football star, or maybe they're just smarter. But more young voters got to be better for Warnock and the fact that a lot of them apparently are young voters who didn't

even vote the first time around is great news. And you don't want to carry your chickens obviously, but fingers crossed, this is a good sign for the turnout. And I think that the major victory that the Warnock campaign had in taking Georgia to court in order to get people to be able to vote

on the Saturday, following Thanksgiving, which Republicans somehow in their minds thought was a federal fucking holiday. And so there was going to be no voting on that day for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than the fact that, oh, people, most people are off on the weekends. And that's a good time that you can waste standing in line for eight to ten hours so that you can cast your ballot. But I think winning that judgment on top of these long lines, on top of young people, I don't want to be too excited. Right. I don't want to be too excited because I've had my heartbroken way too many times. But I feel good so far, Georgia. I feel good for you.

So last week, disgraced former President Donald Trump had dinner with disgraced former hip-hop star Kanye West. And West brought along a new pal named Nick Fuentes. Here to give us more info on Fuentes is Jared Holt, senior research manager on U.S. hate and extremism for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. He also has a newsletter and podcast called Posting Through It that you can find at postingthruit.com. Jared, thanks for being here, ma'am. Yeah, thanks for having me. Now that Yeh and Trump have unfortunately raised Fuentes' profile, let's talk about exactly who he is and what he believes. The words you see most often used to describe him run the fairly narrow gamut of white nationalist, white separatist, white supremacist, and, you know, Nazi. Which of these is or which of these are most accurate? I mean, it kind of depends on the day. Typically, I use white nationalist. Nick says a lot of crazy shit all the time.

But one of the through lines that goes back, you know, to when he first came on the political scene is his support for this idea that the government should be used to enforce a white supermajority in the U.S., which is definitionally white nationalism, even though if you call him that or identify him as that, you know, for years, he would sort of roll on his back like a possum and wine and cry. This is so mean, why would they say this about me? But it's because he's saying it, man, it's like what you're saying about yourself. I don't know. Sometimes you hear, especially now, is, oh, but he can't be a white nationalist or a white power guy. Look, he's paling around with yay. Oh, I don't even want to hear that, man. It's the same thing, right, where people look at someone like Candace Owens and be like, how could she be saying racist things? Look, she's a black woman. But like someone's identity or who they hang out with is a different thing than what they are saying or the substance of what they are about. out. The far right draws power from its contradictions. It shouldn't necessarily be seen as hypocritical or contradictory. It's those kind of tensions that they use essentially to kind of bolster themselves or try to provide a little bit of cover for themselves. But at the end of the

day, what matters when we're thinking about somebody like Nick Fuentes is what he is saying, what he is trying to move forward on his agenda item, which in this case is just, you know, undisputably racist. Yeah, let's get into his history sort of. Where does this guy get his start? Nick Fuentes came on the scene, probably most prominently in media at least, after he attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where Heather Heyer was murdered by a neo-Nazi with his car. So he had been doing a podcast and collaborating with this other guy named James Alsup, who, you know, in the year's sense, has completely stopped pretending that he is anything but straight up fascist. and he got really big on YouTube.

Nick also kind of piggybacked with James and got big on YouTube. And then before that, he was at Right Side Broadcasting, which didn't last very long because he called for, you know, CNN host to be hanged and said all kinds of terrible shit there. So his profile really blows up to people outside of this far right universe is he goes to Unite the Right. He comes back home to the Chicago area and sits down for this interview where he essentially whines that his life has just turned upside down since he went to the racist reality where he. where one of his peers killed somebody. And from there, he uses that notoriety to, you know, eventually break away from James Allsup, start his own podcast with, you know, a Twitter profile, a YouTube channel for a long time. It wasn't until a few years ago.

Fuentes started getting any kind of moderation action taken against him. I was able to build essentially a cult following. Nick Fuentes' fans skew, you know, predominantly young. When he hosts events, he hosted on the peripheries of CPAC because, you know, most kids can get their parents to okay them going to CPAC and then they'll sort of split off and go to Nick's thing. But he's really gunning for that demographic that he's also in, which is that late teens, early 20s, internet poisoned, cynical, just spiteful, hateful, aggrieved young man. And with that cult following, he's disrupted Turning Point USA events. He's hosted his own conferences. We're members of

Congress, including Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gossar have showed up and spoken to that crowd and has really kind of emerged as a figurehead of a very sort of specific chunk of the white nationalist movement that is very centered on youth outreach and trying to posit itself as a quote unquote true representation of where conservative youth is at politically. What are his basic beliefs? He's very fond of saying he does not hold truck with the notion of Judeo-Christian principles. He doesn't like the Judeo part, correct? Right. In addition to the white nationalism. Most people know him as just a very aggressive anti-Semite. Not a fan of Jewish people in the least. Speaks very poorly of him just last month was going on this rant saying that Jews need

to get the fuck out of America and all kinds of nasty stuff, which kind of makes sense because that like leads him into the picture with Kanye West or or Ye. I guess he's calling himself now. I listen to him in college. He'll always be Kanye West to me. But, you know, that kind of rhetoric has not stopped him from essentially failing upward, getting members of Congress to sympathize with him, getting the Glenn Greenwalds of the world to sympathize with him. And it's just really despicable stuff, man. He's almost like a cartoon character. It's like if you were going to come up with like Nazi youth and just make this cartoonish

Twitch streamer version of that, that's Nick Fuentes. So is it fair to say that immigration is, I was going to say is the spark for a lot of these kinds of folks, but I don't, that may be giving it too much credit. I don't know if it's a spark or if it's sort of a cover for other things, but they seem to be terrified in general of non-white people and of non-white people coming to America. Is that fair? Yeah, definitely. They do the thing that a lot of conservatives do, frankly, which is they prop up this almost romanticized idea of quote, unquote, capital A, America. And in that vision, the country is mostly white. It is mostly Christian faith. And these sort of antiquated hierarchies are preserved through. the state. In service of that, immigration is a big focus, right? Because if you live in the mind of somebody like Nick Fuentes, a big threat to this white supermajority that you think is owed

the country and is owed all the levers of power, the demographics shifting in the U.S. poses a real threat to you, if that's what you're after. You know, him and his buddies, they like to point back to like the 1956, I believe it is, Immigration Act, which sort of undid racial quotas on immigration. So, you know, they want to go back to a time before that and reinstate those racial quotas. Sometimes they'll talk about just shutting down immigration all together, you know, in hopes that the white supermajority is cemented and grows in some way. Yeah. And this is, I mean, obviously, this is what's been called the Great Replacement Theory. And it's something that people like Tucker Carlson blasts out to his millions of viewers pretty much every fucking night on his

show. You know, you mentioned that he was at the Unite the Right rally. I hate to call it a rally, but whatever. At Charlottesville. Gathering. There was never a rally. Gathering. Okay. Went to shit immediately. Right. Okay. So what was the extent of his participation in the Unite to Wright gathering in Charlottesville and also January 6th? Fuentes was one of the many far right people that went to Unite the Right. Kind of to just be a part of it, observe, I guess, would be the right word. As far as I know, Fuentes wasn't on the front lines, throwing fist to cuffs and, you know, getting in fights, but he was there. He was, you know, yelling the chance, marching along, there alongside James Alsup, who is just aggressively far right, Tiki Torch and all. He was identified

there and then had repercussions and fallout in his personal life. January 6, though, was kind of interesting under the wing of Olli Alexander, who's sort of, I guess at this point, you would say, like a longtime political operative that comes out of the south, sort of a miniature Roger Stone of sorts in touch with Roger Stone seemingly regularly, gets involved in the Stop the Steel movement, which was the wave of protests and social media, propaganda and whatnot, that ultimately produced the capital riot. So Nick was at quite a few of these events alongside people like Alex Jones, Allie Alexander, whatever local activists were there, giving speeches, having the podium, bringing out his cultish following of fans out to these events and populating them with young

faces. And then when January 6 came along, he was out there in the street, surrounded again by those cultish fans, having almost like an entourage with him of these young men and stood outside the Capitol cheering on the riot as, you know, some of his fans went through the doors to the Capitol and accumulated varied federal charges for themselves. Nick has not been charged with anything as far as we know, and I believe this to be true, he did not go into the Capitol. He just kind of stayed outside and spoke about it very positively and glowingly. But there were also repercussions that he faced after that. So, you know, to the extent of what he had left on mainstream tech platforms, those started to go, the federal government, I guess, froze some money that he had and investigated it because he was dropped this enormous sum of Bitcoin in the run-up to January 6th that from some guy who's believed to have killed himself afterward, he's been under scrutiny and investigation and has drawn the attention of the federal government, which even identifies him as a white supremacist in paperwork and whatnot. So it's been a hell of a ride. I guess I could say that. It's just most people would have quit by now, but he's just,

keeps going. And for whatever reason, you know, the March Retailer Greens of the world have taken upon themselves to run cover and advocate for this guy. Yeah, I want to get to that because you mentioned her earlier, along with Paul Gossar. So way before he was having dinner with the former president, these were people who were speaking at these events that he was holding this America First Pack, I guess, AFPAC or whatever, what you were talking about before that he would hold like sort of right outside CPAC. It just always strikes me that, Trump, after the reports came out of the dinner, was like, I didn't know who this guy was. And I said this elsewhere on the podcast.

In this case, I actually believe that that's true. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Also, it's the same thing that I think both Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar have said after speaking at his events, they sort of, you know, there's this sort of amazing selective amnesia that happens where they suddenly don't know who Nick Fuentes is. and I don't believe it in their cases. Right.

It's really hard to believe because they come out and essentially do one big old, oh, shucks. Damn it, did I speak at a conference hosted by Holocaust denier? Did I do that? Geez, my bad guys. Kevin McCarthy seems happy to just be like, well, don't do it again. And then they turn around. They let the smoke clear.

And then they just go back to advocating for this guy, mentioning him by name and post. Like, they clearly know who this guy is. I mean, if I'm going to be really generous, maybe they don't know the extent of who he is or didn't at the time. But they've had plenty of opportunity to learn ever since. When Marjorie Taylor Green appeared, that was the third year of that conference. Other politicians had gotten their asses handed to them publicly for appearing at these prior ones. It was one Google search away.

I just don't believe it. The Trump thing I'm willing to believe a little bit more. In fact, I kind of do believe Trump didn't know from what it sounds like. if we're going to take his word for it, he showed up to dinner with Kanye West, and Kanye West just kind of brought Fuentes along. And Trump lives on Fox News and One America News and Newsmax. Like he watches the TV. I've seen people argue over whether or not Trump uses a computer, right? And Fuentes, his personality and his following was built entirely on the internet. And if you're not on the internet all the time, if you don't look at computers and your interaction with

the internet as whatever your aides bring to you, print it out on a piece of paper, you probably have no fucking idea who that guy is, right? Like, he has no reason to have no. And also, Trump just isn't interested in his fans. He shows that over and over again. He cares that they are there. He cares that they love him. And that's about it. Right. So I also don't expect Trump to be, you know, staying up late at night, doing real research to try to really understand his fans either, right? So the opportunities where Trump would actually intersect with Fuentes or like come across a Fuentes podcast is just outstandingly slim. Yeah, but of course it's now been a week since the dinner. And other than Trump's saying he didn't know who Fuentes is, there's been no like condemnation or, oh shit, this guy really

sucks. I shouldn't have dinner with him. There's been nothing like that. Well, it's the same thing that he did with David Duke, the famous KKK leader. He didn't know who David Duke was and then also did not condemn him. It's just this reflex Trump has to not isolate a single supporter no matter how heinous. And this is like another really clear example of him doing just that. And even though I tend to think this was at the end of the day, probably a pretty embarrassing episode for Fuentes. He gets to have dinner with his, essentially his God, fill out, you know, what I'm sure he has dreamed about several nights. And then the peak of his trajectory, Trump says, I don't know the guy. Nope, don't know him. Sorry. Nope. My bad. Nope. But he still doesn't condemn him, right? And that's something that I think is

really missing here. Because even though Trump has like asserted some distance between him and Fuentes, which, you know, like I said, I tend to sort of actually believe him on this one, not to detract from him being what, you know, what I think is the most openly bigoted president in my lifetime, at least. He's still not taking that step of condemning Fuentes. So it kind of acknowledges him without, you know, sending a clear signal that Fuentes is bad to his base. It's probably too soon to tell, but, you know, this is probably the biggest spotlight Fuentes has ever had on himself. And condemnation or some clearer statement could have been really useful. And even without Fuentes in the mix, he was getting dinner with Kanye West after everything that Kanye West has been

saying for the last couple months, right? As if that's like much better. Right. Oh, don't worry, guys. I didn't know who this guy was. I was supposed to meet the Jew-hating rapper for dinner. So, right. And for the record, he didn't say anything like that at the dinner. So. Yeah. And that's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah. Before I let you go, I want to get into just a little bit, one of Fuentes is, for anyone else, it would be their, maybe their most insane belief. For him, it's maybe the least of them. But he calls himself a proud in-cell, which for our listeners who aren't terminally online, insel is short for involuntary celibate, basically someone who just never has sex. What is his deal here? How far does he take this proud in-cell?

He says that he calls himself a proud in-cell, and then when people make fun of him for it, he really explains himself as a vol-cell. Right. Which if listeners haven't heard about that, I run now. Run now because we're getting... So an in-cell is basically somebody who wants to fuck but can't. A vol-cell is somebody that just doesn't want to fuck, right? He says, you know, I'm voluntarily celibate. Right. And to hear him talk about it, it's like it's almost based in...

this purely like egotistical narcissistic belief he has about himself. He sees himself as almost like a deity thinking that he's on some higher path in society, he's on some calling from God to hear him talk about it, and that he just doesn't have time for the ladies who he assures his listeners he is interested in, but doesn't have time for it. It's just like a very bizarre side quest. And Fuentes, as somebody who has produced like hours of podcasts five days a week for five or six years now. There's just like an endless amount of these weird side quests on Fuentes' beliefs. And it's just like the deeper you go, the weirder it gets. And he's just just a weird guy, man, just a weird shitty guy. Yeah. It's just always struck me as weird because, you know, he's sort of this

cultish leader, but usually cultish leaders use that power to have a lot of sex. Yeah. And he tells his fans, too, he's like, you know, the key to solving the great replacement. We're going to do immigration, whatever, but like also you need to go find a nice young lady for yourself and have a bunch of kids and live the traditional life. But not me because I'm podcasting. And obviously that's more important, right? That's the saddest statement I think I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, that one doesn't work on my wife, but it's. You know, I wouldn't imagine. Jared, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

You know, I'm just going to go ahead and put you in the Trump having dinner with Nick Fuentes is bad actually, Colin. Yeah, I think that's a pretty safe bet. Thanks, Jared. Thanks for having me. Joining us now is Sarah Kenziora, the author of They Knew, how a culture of conspiracy keeps America complacent, as well as the co-host of the podcast, Gaslit Nation. Sarah, you are the author of a series of books.

Most recently, They Knew, how a culture of conspiracy keeps America complacent. And, you know, I want to talk about your book because obviously there are so many layers that are there, your more recent book. But I also want to talk about how you have been discussing what is happening with our world's town square, what is happening with Twitter.

And I think that the threads that you have been offering where mainstream media seems to want to believe that Elon Musk is somehow in the same vein as Donald Trump, somehow completely incompetent, but also a genius that we must all sit on the sidelines and just wait for him, you know, to make the big move with Twitter. And your threads have offered so much insight to the contrary. And so I just want to give you an opportunity to kind of lift up why we should not just be shrugging off these mass firings, the Twitter poll that he did most recently to get Donald Trump back on the platform.

that this is part of a larger strategy. Yes, I think a lot of people don't understand what's happening because they're mistaking a fight over power with a battle over money. They seem to think that Musk has a profit motive, whereas the reality of the situation is that Musk is a plutocrat who can flow above the regular economy on a cloud of money and is willing to spend an enormous amount

for something much more valuable, which is control and possibly destruction of the public sphere. And that's deliberate. You know, this is not incompetence. This is not bumbling around. And it's not that hard to do. You know, a lot of times when I suggest this, people say, oh, that's such a wild conspiracy theory.

However, could, you know, he have done something so complex. It's not hard at all. You fire the people who work there. You stop paying them. You lock the doors. You release the trolls. You know, maybe a more complex aspect is messing with the algorithm to try to suppress people, although I don't necessarily see that

happening as much as a sort of free-for-all any voluntary flight off the platform that I think is premature. I see people leaving, and what we're in is an information war. And you should not cede territory in an information war, especially when vulnerable people, marginalized communities that have relied on Twitter for a long time will be the way. ones who suffer most as a result. So I think folks should kind of wait it out and also just stop treating him like the king of Twitter, you know, like you don't have to retweet or respond to everything he does. You can observe it. You can analyze it. You know, I pay attention to it as a matter of, is this platform about to implode and what should I screenshot and save? But I don't care. I don't

care about his opinions. I don't care about his polls. I don't know why other folks are quite so invested in the personality cult aspect of it all. I love the fact that you use the term seed ground, because that's a conversation that I have been having with regard to the language that we have seeded to the right. We allow them to use words like patriotism and freedom and liberty and have allowed them to be able to formulate their opinions based on what it is that we are not.

We are not patriots. We do not care about liberty and freedom, instead of providing the context for how those words are being used. And I think that that's similar with what you're saying with regard to fleeing this platform and then trying to figure out, well, where are we all going? Right? Yes. The beauty of Twitter, at least for as long as I have been on it,

which I think is pretty much since it was created, has been the idea that you wouldn't get a deep understanding with the damage and the horror that is happening in Ukraine. You wouldn't understand what is going on in real time with the women of Iran. If not for Twitter, you wouldn't have had the social uprising in 2020. And so I think that to your point, all of those instances, and those are just three, there are so many more, right, that have happened over time with people using Twitter as an organizing tool to be able to organize and provide real time information on what is happening on. on the ground. So can you speak to the fact that people have really lost focus that Twitter is not just about a place to share memes and bullshit. We have a window into what is happening in some of the

most oppressive regimes because of what is seen on Twitter. Yes, absolutely. And you're hearing directly from people on the ground in those regimes. You know, I joined Twitter in 2009 during an Iranian uprising and now the site is collapsing seemingly during another Iranian uprising and there have been countless uprising since then. And I think the best thing about Twitter is that you don't need to rely on the mainstream media. You know, you get primary sources in terms of government figures who you can then criticize directly to their faces. And of course, they don't like that. And that's another reason they want it shut down. But you're also hearing from the people on the ground themselves, from activists, not from some sort of interloper, not from some sort of white translator in the United

States when it's dealing with civil rights protests. You're hearing straight from people about their experiences, what they're witnessing, their perceptions, and it's an equal playing field to some extent. That's another thing that's bothering the Elon Musk's of the world. They do not like voices who they see as beneath them being amplified and gaining a kind of structural power, at least within Twitter itself. It doesn't necessarily extend off of Twitter, but you know, you cannot deny that it is influenced public perception of our political reality. It's often influenced policy decisions as well. You know, it is a powerful medium. And so, of course, they want to crush it and they want to split it down into parts. And there's so many different

groups that would be invested in this happening. There are plutocrats and oligarchs. There are dictatorships, you know, whether it's Iran or Russia or China or countries that commit human rights violations like Israel or Turkey, you know, all of which are documented on Twitter. So it's not surprising that they want to destroy it. It's almost more surprising that they waited this long. Again, one of the conversations that isn't being included as part of this isn't just about how the dictators and the authoritarian regimes would benefit from the absence of a centralized World Town Square. But there is also the fact that we're not really associating how Elon Musk came to be. We don't really have a lot of deep conversations. And I started to see Nicole Hannah-Jones is

one of the people that also had a really thoughtful thread with regard to his upbringing in apartheid South Africa. And the way in which the government of South Africa at that time under apartheid utilize misinformation in order to uphold that regime. And this is a part of his upbringing. What do you think about, again, the lack of context that is provided in how one understands information and understands the power thereof? Yeah, I think Musk is somebody whose background has been revealed in new ways because of Twitter and because of threads like that going viral. And this also includes more recent revelations about his personal life, about his family, about his finances, and so forth. You know, I do think it is interesting, you know, that he has this South African

apartheid background, as do many of his powerful backers, because this is sort of a, you know, colonialist move. He's trying to, you know, buy a venue down and chop it up and make sure that the most marginalized and struggling people, people who are full of fight, you know, who are trying to take down their oppressors are silenced and scattered. So I think that that does motivate it. You know, I would look beyond just the South African biographical angle to the other people who are attempting to control Twitter. One thing I've noticed is that, you know, for a while, Twitter was very advantageous to

extreme right-wing movements, especially to Trump because they did what a lot of countries that are, you know, authoritarian have done, like Azerbaijan and Russia used to do this, which is networked authoritarianism, where you leave things open just enough to let propaganda through, to smear people, to libel people, to make people give up on their quest for the truth. And then once they succeeded in that goal, they'll shut things down entirely. And it's alarming to me as someone who studied those types of regimes for a long time to see that kind of tactic being used on a global public sphere. This will have far-reaching implications around the world for the economy, for media,

for activist groups for public safety. There are a lot of people who alert people of natural disasters, things like that on Twitter. And it's interesting to me that there isn't more of a backup plan for cases like that. It's just every man for himself is sort of the vibe I'm getting from this. That is so right. That is absolutely the vibe. It's like, oh, if you can manage to get your information out, then, you know, go forth and kind of cross your fingers with the millions upon millions upon millions of people

that utilize this again as a public utility. That I think is the difference, again, in the conversation that we're having. This isn't just a social media platform. I feel like you would be having much different apprehension if it was Instagram. For instance, as opposed to what Twitter has become and what Twitter means in the journalism and media and news realm. And that's why this attack, I think, needs to be discussed as such and not just this, oh, here is this genius taking over this platform and let us all watch with ooh as an

Oz as we did his space takeoff. I feel like, again, there is this deference that is given to cis white, hetero, wealthy men, to be able to kind of pick up whatever toy they want and break it if they so choose. And the rest of us are just left on the sidelines watching. Sarah, one of the polls that Musk had put out recently was to reinstate Donald Trump to the platform. Donald Trump, the twice-impeached disgrace president of the United States, has said that he's going to stay on truth social. His far right-wing social media platform that he's scraped together since he's been kicked off of Twitter and other social media platforms. You know, in your book, they knew how a culture of conspiracy helps America complacency. I'm just curious what you think about the fact that Donald Trump can pop back on with his continued conspiracy Q&ONS spree that he's been on and how that will affect our already Tinderbox political situation that we have.

I was kind of out on a limb on my perspective, you know, when his account was deleted from Twitter because I thought it should be preserved as part of the historical record. And this is actually something folks should think about with Twitter broadly, you know, all these revolutionary. movements that we have described, you know, the records of them are on Twitter. And if Twitter goes down, then we lose all of that history. I was annoyed that Trump's account was deleted because it's a series of confessions. You know, it's evidence of his crimes in his own words, the planning, you know, all of it. And they did the same thing with, you know, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn. I thought that they should freeze the account, you know, leave it exactly where it is and then not let him tweet anymore because the reason that, you know, they were deleting him allegedly. It was because he kept fomending coups. He kept calling for

violence. He kept threatening people. But he did that the whole time he was on there. He was constantly threatening people. So I wasn't sure exactly why that moment and time mattered. But what it did, it marred collective memory. People began to have difficulty remembering Trump's role in January 6th because there wasn't accountability from the DOJ. There really weren't meaningful hearings about it until way into 2021. And a lot of people had forgotten. and what they'd witness with their own eyes. In a way, it's good that the account is back in terms of the old tweets. And if he's not going to use it anymore, then guess I've gotten my wish.

I don't necessarily trust this. I think he may change his mind. I actually don't trust it, right? Like, I think that it's one of those things that the minute that Trump sends out his first tweet, we're going to go right back to 2016 where every single thing that comes off of this man's head, it becomes major news. Yeah. And the main sign I'll get from that.

does return is that Musk's goal isn't demolition of Twitter. I've gone back and forth to between does he want to completely destroy it, which is what it seems to be happening in terms of the way he's treating workers, that there are so few workers left to even run the infrastructure of the site. But if he wants Trump on it, it is to use it as a propaganda bullhorn. And what's depressing is that people are acting as if the last six years did not happen, is if they didn't learn anything. You know, you don't amplify him. You don't fall for every one of his little propaganda moves. You don't treat him as an idiot.

You know, both Trump and Musk are much savier than they let on. And they put on this veneer of incompetence or stupidity or vulgarity in order to cover up actual criminal plots in the case of Trump and just, you know, elicit and complex business behavior in terms of Musk. I'm not sure I could really make a criminal case for Musk here. But, you know, they know what they're doing. I think they're good at it. I think Musk understands Twitter.

He certainly understands how to draw attention to himself and weaponize it. But also, you know, folks who allegedly oppose fascism, who allegedly oppose these two individuals are giving them everything they want, whether it's packing up and going and leaving the account that Musk wants them to leave or just showering them with endless outrage and attention. Like, you can pay attention to what they're both doing without. amplifying their words and turning yourself into a megaphone for them. And I don't know why six years later, so many folks haven't picked up on that. Last question for you, Sarah, like on that note,

which is, what do you think that either mainstream media needs to be doing as they are, the pivots that they need to be making in order to deal with these two men that have a vice grip on our body politic in order to alert people to the danger that our democracy and our ability to have free speech is in right now. Well, they should focus on the people who will suffer from the consequences of this. Instead of going on and on about Musk, they should talk to all of these activists and organizers and revolutionaries and also just communities that depend on Twitter. You know, disabled people, for example, depend on Twitter a great deal. Like, that's the real story. And I think if you focus in any situation on who is getting hurt, you're going to get a

fuller picture of the coverage. And I guess the final thing is that, you know, Twitter is a site that manages to circumvent the narrowness of the mainstream media. And I think the mainstream media is becoming even more rigid and narrow in recent years. There have been all of these firings, in particular of women, in particular of people who aren't white, rearrangements of major networks like CNN or political or what have you. If you lose Twitter, it's happening in that context. It's happening in a broader move towards the right that will benefit corrupt right-wing political actors, which is I think why it's happening now. So the folks should be aware of that as well. Sarah, I can't thank you enough, one, for making the time to join the new abnormal. But for your

consistent vigilance that you are having, I think makes us all recognize that no, we cannot continue to seed ground to the far right and just abandoned shit before it actually goes down. So I appreciate you for that. Oh, thank you for having me. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. So Danielle, who is your fuck that guy for our first show post Thanksgiving? So, you know, he remains a fuck that guy for me always, but particularly today, Ted Cruz.

And why do I say that? Because there's so many reasons to say fuck that guy about Ted Cruz. because he found himself recently on his podcast referring to Joe Biden as the godfather, saying that the Republican Party needs to stop going after Hunter Biden's laptop. He said, quote, it's not about the poor schlub who got caught. And he's referring to Joe Biden as the godfather. I am so fucking confused by Ted fucking Cruz. Like, what are you talking about?

What planet is he on? He literally worked for Kissed the Ring of the fucking godfather of Maga, right? Like who he let talk shit about his wife and then still went and caped for that man after he called your wife ugly. But it's Joe Biden who's somehow the puppeteer. I don't get how they overlook everything and then are just hammers in search of a nail that just doesn't make any fucking sense to me. So he is my fuck that guy every day all day. But for this, Joe Biden, the godfather, Ted Cruz, sit the fuck down. See, this is where they can't have it both ways.

Because on the one hand, they like to portray Biden as like this senile, daughtering old fool. And then on the other hand, he's the head of this unbelievable crime family. And that's where I think you can't have it both ways. And yet they try. But yeah, fuck Ted Cruz forever because he knows better. Is he? I think he does. I think Ted Cruz is not stupid. I think anytime you hear Ted Cruz say something dumb, he is choosing that, which is worse, by the way, by far. But I think he's choosing that to play to a base. Somehow, I think he still believes he's going to be president someday, which in that case, he is really dumb. But for the most part, I do think, like, he knows Joe Biden is not the head of a crime family. And he knows Donald Trump is. But he knows that that's not what pays his

bills. So that's what he says. Because he has no soul. He has absolutely no soul. That's my opinion on Ted Cruz. And I do agree, fuck that guy every day a week. Andy, who is your fuck that guy? So my fuck that guy is Ben Shapiro. Again, he's another one who any episode, he could be the guy. But he has outraged that Donald Trump met with both Yeh and Nick Fuentes. And he tweeted, a good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don't know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know, meaning yay. And, okay, it's not that I disagree with that tweet. It's that Ben Shapiro can fuck off forever for pretending to care about racism and things like that.

Yes, Ben Shapiro does care about anti-Semitism or his narrow definition of anti-Semitism because he certainly has no problem saying that basically Jews or Democrats are bad Jews. He'll say shit like that until the sun sets on the Sabbath. But I'm sorry, you do not get to be the guy condemning anti-Semitism when you are homophobic, when you are homophobic, when you are all different kinds of phobic, and I'm sick of it. And if you don't realize as a grown human being that all this shit is the same, that racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, it's all the same shit. Just because you apply it to one group and not another, you're the same person.

You do not get to call out anti-Semites when you say the shit you do about gay people or about trans people. I'm sorry, you just don't, in my humble opinion. Because you're cut from the same cloth. That cloth is used to make hoods. And I don't want to hear it anymore. I don't want to hear Ben Shapiro. and I don't want to see people saying, well, I have to give it to Ben Shapiro.

You do not, under any circumstances, have to give it to Ben Shapiro. He doesn't deserve it. He himself says the most vile, hateful stuff. So for him to now be upset that Donald Trump dined with someone he is going to call a vile, racist, an anti-Semite, no. You don't get to do that because you made your bed, and it's the same big bed that all y'all sleep in. So fuck that guy. You're right. And it is all the same.

homophobia, transphobia, like anti-Semitism, the racism, the Islamophobia. It's like, it's the Venn diagram of fuckery. And they always try and like part and parcel it out like, oh, this was a step too far. I just keep wondering, what is the step that is actually going to bring them over the cliff? What is the step too far? Because if it's not dining with anti-Semites, if it's not dining with racist, if it's not calling places, shithole countries, if it's not putting together Muslim bans, if it's not putting immigrant children,

in cages, what is the step too far for the Republican Party? Like, I just, I want to know. I want to know what it is. They're like, to me, the roadrunner, over the clip. The feet still moving, but they're over the cliff. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if Trump is the nominee in 2024, Ben Shapiro will cast his ballot for him. Happily. They all will. That's their guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going.

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