The Daily Beast Podcast - The Simple Keywords That Are Setting Trump Off

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy reflect on Trump’s disaster of a debate performance. Plus! Founder and author of The Present Age newsletter Parker Molloy joins us to talk about the media’s efforts to “sanewash” Donald Trump and why people might not be falling for it. Then, we talk to The New York Times tech reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about their upcoming book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.” 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 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 Kedden, 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 an excellent show we have today.

Founder and author of the present age newsletter, Parker Malloy, joins us to talk about the media's efforts to sanewash Donald Trump and why people today might not be falling for him. Then we'll talk to the New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger and Ryan Mack, and they'll tell us all about their upcoming book, Character Limit, how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. But first, let's have some fun. folks, it has been several days since the debate. And while the headlines continue to applaud and hail Vice President Kamala Harris's performance and Donald Trump, whatever it was that he did, there is something that has grabbed headlines, which is incredibly serious and shows you that rhetoric can absolutely turn into violence. So you all remember Donald Trump being on stage, talking about the Haitian immigrants that are in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs.

And there have been so many memes and videos and jokes that have been made about that. But what isn't funny are the recent bomb threats that have come into multiple municipality buildings and have put the police as well as the Haitian population on guard in Springfield, Ohio. And why is that? Because Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, the Republican Party. party continue to spread lies that people are grabbing hold onto and now are threatening the safety and well-being of the Haitian population that is there. You know, we talked about this in our post-debat wrap-up. This was entirely predictable. It's not that we're brain geniuses here

when we said this was going to happen. This was obvious. This was obvious to pretty much anyone with a pulse. And we see this time and time again with right-wing stuff. We see it when lives of TikTok posts about drag queen's story hours or whatever. We see bomb threats to schools. And this is what they do. This is their MO. And then they sit back and say, oh, well, that wasn't me. I certainly didn't tell anyone to call in a bomb threat or to commit violence. But they know damn well what they're doing. They always do. And, you know, this is not even a case where the ignorance is real. I mean, they're ignorant on a lot of things. This is not one of them. They know exactly what they're doing. they are basically, you know, for lack of a better word, they are activating followers to

threaten acts of violence and sometimes to commit acts of violence. And all of it needs to be covered like that. And when Trump or J.D. Vance talks about this stuff and spew, they spew these lies and these completely made up stories, they need to be called out. They need to be, look, I'm not saying they need to legally held responsible for stuff like this because that would be a tough prove, I think. They are absolutely morally responsible for stuff like this happening. And I highly doubt this is going to be the last time we have to talk about this, which is sad. And this is going to happen over and over again. It's going to

probably unfortunately happen again in Springfield. It's going to happen in other places across the country when other false stories are spread. And this is the world we live in, and this is the Republican party we have to deal with. I just want to read this like short piece from ABC's reporting. This is the kind of thing that pisses me off, which is that they write this, quote, though it is not yet known if they are connected, the threat comes after baseless rumors spread online in the wake of viral social media posts claiming Haitian migrants were abducting people's pets in Springfield in order to eat them. The rumors were amplified by right-wing politicians, including former president Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance. Here's my thing. Can we stop with the like brain contortion

that we're doing here? You say hateful dehumanizing things on national television with 60 million people watching. Not all of those people are fully cooked in the head. And so they listen to Donald Trump. We just saw this the other day at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania with a man that was climbing the scaffolding that was protecting the media to attack the media. Why? Because Donald Trump has told them over and over again that the media is the enemy of the people. And then you see the people commit violence against the media. So when are we going to stop with like the equivocation that we don't know if what someone says on an amplified microphone and stage with millions of people's attention on you, that that doesn't equate to violence? And I know what you're saying, Andy, in

terms of like holding anyone accountable legally. I mean, hell, we can't hold Donald Trump accountable legally for any of the things that he's done. Yeah. But the fact is, is that I need the media to do better to make them the cause of why this is happening so that they think twice about what it is that they're doing. But to your point, you know, we know what they're doing. We know that they want violence. We know that they want death because that's what they're able to capitalize on. And we should point out that the bomb threats have now gotten obviously a lot of national attention. But even before that happened, there was a piece in the Haitian times where they talked to several Haitian families in Springfield. And you hear things from these families and they are scared.

And they are reporting intimidation and bullying. And they feel under threat. And all of this is being caused by these completely, again, false stories, these lies that are being spread at the highest level by Republicans, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and on down to all of the conservative media sphere that have been pushing these stories. And then you have idiots like Marianne Williamson tweeting out that Democrats need to stop poo-pooing this because Haitians practice voodoo, and this is what they do. And it's like, no. First of all, you couldn't even spell voodoo, right? You spelled it V-O-O-D-O, which is a complete bastardization of the spelling of the actual religion, which is a real religion.

And no, they don't kidnap dogs and cats and eat them as part of their religion. Andy, can I defend her for a second? Yeah. Crystals for white women are their voodoo, so it makes sense that she would believe this. Oh, okay. I actually thought you were going to correct me

and seriously defend it. I really thought that you were seriously going to defend. And I was going to be like, I'm going to be on my on text being like, Jesse, what the fuck? I know. I know. And Jesse, I know you. You live in Brooklyn and you got your green drink.

You got your green drank and your bone broth. So for all I know, you know, you're staring at a pendant shaped like a pyramid right now. I don't have a clue. But anyway, the point is that all of these people are spreading this vile, awful, untrue stuff and it is having real world ramifications for real people. We can't let this go on. We can't have one of the two main political parties in this country behaving like this. Like there just there has to be something that that is done about this because it's just, it is way too dangerous and it's way too tenuous for democracy.

Just to add a fine point on this is there was a young boy who was killed in a vehicular accident. His name is Aidan Clark. And Aidan's father has taken to speaking out, which is just, you know, I just think about the position that the right wing puts families in that are in moments of grieving. So whether it is Newtown and spreading lies about what happened there like Alex Jones and others did, or whether it is here in Springfield and trying to use the death. of Aiden Clark for political gain. And his father, Nathan Clark, came out and said this. And I, and I just like, I want it to sit with people because he does not want his son to be used as a political football. And he said, quote, I wish that my son, Aidan Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my

11 year old son, the incessing group of hate spewing people would leave us alone. Just think about that. Yeah. This man, this family just lost their child. And they're having to hold press conferences because their child's name and memory is being used to spread racist, hateful lies that are harming people, that are making people not feel safe to leave their home because they're, hey, that are keeping Haitian children home from school because they're afraid of what could happen to them. That is insane. And the corporate mainstream media should be holding J.D. Vance and Donald Trump

and the Republican Party accountable for what it is that they are doing. My heart goes out to Nathan and the entire Clark family for having to deal with this. Yeah, it really is something that he had to go out there and say this stuff and call out by name people like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. So let's talk a little more about the debate where Trump spewed this filth. And let's talk in particular about the fallout, the reaction, stuff like that. Post-debate polling shows that Kamala Harris won, and it wasn't close. CNN poll had her winning 63 to 37%.

UGov had 54 to 31. And these numbers are fairly comparable to the ones. we saw after the Trump-Biden debate, but reversed, obviously, where CNN had Trump winning 6733, and YouGov had a similar number to what they have now, actually a little lower for Trump. But it's really interesting in that the reactions that we're seeing from the right are ranging from completely blaming the moderators, which is insane. And Trump himself has said that, I think he said everyone at ABC News should be fired. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. totally normal behavior. Yeah. And then you've got Republican Congress people, mostly as Washington Post reports, trying to hide from the debate performance and not answering questions about it and doing that thing they always do when Trump does something bad and saying, like, oh, I don't, I haven't seen what he said or I haven't read his tweet or in this case, Mike Johnson just walking away without answering a question about the debate performance. And you've got people around Trump. who are saying that they are absolutely stunned by how badly he did and that he was prepped and he was supposed to do various things and he didn't do any of them.

So weird. Yeah. Shocking. It's hilarious that they're stunned by this, Daniel. I'm so confused. These people have been around Donald Trump for nearly a decade now, at least those in the political sphere. Has Donald Trump ever stuck to anybody's script?

Has he ever stuck to any? one's training. He does whatever the hell he wants to do whenever the hell he wants to do it. So it was so easy. I mean, watching the vice president just needle at Donald Trump with the things that we know this small, petty, narrow, weak man would melt down over. And like, if you had had any training, you know, you know, Trump, they're going to try and get under your skin about X, Y, and Z. Don't take the bait. But he can't help himself. So all you have. have to do is say things like crowd size, to say things like weak and loser and people are laughing at you. And he lost his goddamn mind. I don't know why the Hannity's and the Megan Kelly's and like all of those

folks are just like so beside themselves about how bad it was. I'm just like Donald Trump is like a dog with a bone. That bone was Joe Biden and Hunter's laptop. Once you remove that, he does not know what to do because he no longer has the mental acuity to be able to pivot, right? Like we're seeing that in real time happen. It's why the vice president had to remind him on stage, BT-dubs, you're running against me and not Joe Biden. Just FYI. Yeah. And in news that Danielle, I hope you're sitting down. I hope you're not at a standing desk. I'm sitting. It looks like Donald Trump does not want to have a second debate. Oh, my, really?

Yeah. Stop, Andy. And he said why. And I think, you know, we have to give him the benefit of the doubt because he usually speaks the truth and he doesn't lie. He said that Kamala Harris wants a second debate because she lost. So that's why she wants a second debate. But he doesn't need it because he won very bigly.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Look, this is who this guy is. I think even he, I think in his heart of hearts, he knows he lost. In what heart, Andy? In what heart of hearts? One of the very small organs that he has that apparently pumps blood through his veins and does nothing else metaphorically.

I think deep down inside, he knows he lost and he knows that he did a really, really bad job. I really do. And maybe not. I mean, obviously, he is a man of such, you know, people always just. describe, oh, he's got such a big ego. No, he doesn't. He has an incredibly tiny ego. He is incredibly fragile. People that need to be constantly complimented and who need, you know, adoration. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see. To have the tiniest egos in the world, as far as I'm concerned. They have no

strong sense of self. And so they need to hear it from other people talking about how great they are. But I do think inside, he knows he got slaughtered. I mean, well, we know that he knows he got slaughtered because he did something right after the debate that was absolutely wild, which was walk into the media spin room after the debate. Guess what candidates on stage usually don't do? Like ever. Ever is spin on your own behalf, right? Like you have surrogates in that space following a debate to say they won,

to continue to articulate like the, policies and Hammerholm, what was said in that 90 minutes. Donald Trump walked into that spin room, one looking lost, looking like a loser, but also just looking lost and looking for anyone's attention. And it was startling because I think that Claire McCaskill, former senator, she was on air on MSNBC and she was like, oh my. Like, oh my, Rachel, she's talking to Rachel about Donald Trump just walked into the spin room. Rachel, I was like, what? Huh?

That's a clear indication of how bad he thinks that he did that he doesn't trust his own surrogates to be able to carry the water on this. And I mean, apparently he doesn't even talk to Jady Vance, which, by the way, we never mentioned the fact that we're asking. I know. I was just thinking the same thing. Yeah. No, I was just thinking the same thing that I wanted to bring that up

because we didn't really talk about it in the post-debate episode. and the fact that he just basically could not have been more dismissive of his own vice presidential and just saying, I haven't talked to JD Vance about that or I don't talk to J.D. Van, whatever it was, he said exactly. But it was like, dude, you pick this guy who is supposed to be the guy who takes over for you if something happens. And you're not talking to him? And the way that he said it was almost as if, you know, remember the debate with Mike Pence with the fly on his head? it was like that, like needing to just swat the flyaway.

Like the question was like, oh, well, J.D. Vance said that, you know, X, Y, and Z on a national abortion man. He's like, I don't really talk to J.D. Vance. Like, it was almost like, who is that guy? Yeah. On the other hand, we've seen a lot of J.D. Vance over the past, however long it's been since he became the nominee. I think most people don't want to talk to J.D. Vance.

Yeah, particularly those that work in stores that he walks into. So I feel you, Donald. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal Parker Molloy, who is the, I would say what, the founder, the creator of the present age newsletter, as well as a writer at the New Republic and just brilliant on all social media platforms. Parker, I have been quoting, commenting, sharing and telling everybody to read your piece at the New Republic entitled, how the media sanitizes Trump's insanity. I think that it was the first time in roughly, I'm not exaggerating, eight friggin years that I didn't feel like I was being gaslit when I went and read an article about Donald Trump

and what the media has been doing. And I've been saying it, but I did not have a name for it. So talk to us about sane washing and this piece that I think really, again, gave language to what it is we've been experiencing. I know that we've been using the term a lot, you know, gaslighting. We, you know, that that became, you know, a regular part of our lexicon.

But tell us the difference in your mind. Sure. So this piece came about, I got an email from Jason Lincoln's over at the New Republic. He was like, so hey, I know you've written about this in the past because I wrote an article about this in 2020 around the time of COVID. And he goes, I had this. I had a tweet. where I pointed out, you know, what Trump said versus what got published in the paper,

would you be interested in writing about this? And I said, sure, of course. I'm happy to take that up. And so basically what this is is it's something that we've, that he and I called coherence bias. Mm-hmm. Sanewashing caught on, but coherence bias is another kind of term that we were using. And so basically, it's this idea where it's natural for journalists to want to make things sound normal to be grammatically correct. And I think that's a good thing in 99% of cases.

Like if you're interviewing someone whose house was just washed away by a hurricane and they're giving you some rambling quote, you might summarize it by writing something like John Smith, who lost his house and petfish in the hurricane said he was, quote, devastated, you know, something like that. But when it comes to Donald Trump, employing that same strategy has a nasty side effect of sanitizing what he's actually saying. In his case, when you're cleaning up his words just to the core information, you're excluding what. makes Donald Trump Donald Trump. Right. And so, for instance, CNN reported that Trump had accepted the terms of the ABC debate by writing, former President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he has, quote, agreed to an agreement, unquote, to participate in the September 10th debate with

Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that, quote, the rules will be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone. But what it didn't note was that those words were buried in a rambling wall of text that included him using the terms radical left Democrats, Comrade Kamala Harris, crooked Joe Biden and calling ABC News ABC fake news while also pushing a conspiracy theory about Harris maybe being given the questions in advance. And so readers who aren't following him on truth social, which is hopefully most readers, you would hope, they come away misinformed. They don't know any better. And so that at its core is sanewashing. In the first example that you provide,

That makes sense. It makes sense for people, particularly those that are not fluent in how to speak to the media. You're being interviewed for the first time. You don't necessarily have media training. And so I need to make sense out of what is being said here. To the point that it's been done over the last eight years with Donald Trump, I think that I was most jarred. And I believe it was last week when he was at the economic club in New York. And I am listening, as I'm certain millions of other people did, to the question being asked on child care and the economy and Donald Trump's two-minute rambling answer. And then I look to the AP Politico, the New York Times, and other outlets, and they talk about some supposed economic speech that Donald Trump gave. And I'm thinking to myself, on what planet was that a speech on the economy? And that right there is kind of why I think this sanewashing piece of mine kind of took off because it just happened to coincide. Like it happened to be a day or two before this perfect, perfect example of it.

And people's response to it was to be like, why are you sanewashing him? The two-minute answer was just so all over the place, just even the first sentence. Well, I would do that and we're sitting down. I was somebody we had Senator Marco Rubio. Right. You know, it just kind of, it goes off. all these directions where he doesn't actually answer the question. He's just trying to buy time.

It's very like fourth grader book report for a book that you didn't read kind of answer. And, you know, it ends up being sanitized to New York Times in a jumbled answer. He would prioritize legislation on the issue, but offered no specifics insisting that his other economic policies, including terrorists, would take care of child care. And it's like, that doesn't really sum up what he said. It doesn't sum up that he was clearly unprepared. That he was rambling, that he didn't seem to grasp what the actual question was. And I think that it's good to see people pushing back on this.

Because those of us who are plugged in enough to know that Donald Trump gave a rambling two-minute answer are not the people that we need to worry about. The casual news reader, the casual politics observer is not seeing these things. They're not watching Trump rallies live. You know, they're not watching his speeches at economic forums. And I think that that right there was kind of why it was a good thing when during the debate, Kamala Harris said, go to a Trump rally. Listen to the things he says. That was good.

For so long, for nearly a decade now, we have been force-fed this idea of both sides, that the media must present both Republican and Democrats equally and neutrally, which to me is just total bullshit and a lie. Like you have one side that is amplifying violent rhetoric. You have one side that has just lied over and over and over again about actions such as January 6 that we all saw with our own eyes as well as the 2020 election and so on and so forth. And then you have another party, imperfect as it may be, but that believes in the Constitution, the rule of law and the standards of democracy. Yeah.

And what I see is that because. of this lie that the media is in fact liberal, there has been this overcompensation for making sure that you present Donald Trump and the Republican Party as if they are this normal, sane, regular 1980s, 1990s version of the Republican Party. You're inside of this industry. Why? Like, why do we continue to do this? And why has there been a lack of learning or desire to learn over the last eight years. Yeah, I think that when you really look at this, because we saw a perfect example of it during the debate, when ABC actually fact-checked Trump on some of his more outlandish claims,

you know, about people eating pets and for instance. Yep. And the crime rate and stuff like that. The reaction from the right was so over the top. There were people who were pretty influential on the right, calling for ABC executives to be tried for election interference or something. And it's just completely bonkers. And I think that that's part of the plan. That's part of why this works. Because the right has such a strong media apparatus in place. There are so many right wing sites out there. There are very few lefty sites that really match it.

That get the same kind of traction. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because you see things like that tenant media getting $10 million from Russia. But getting $10 million. is not out of the ordinary because there are all these billionaires on the right who will fund things. You know, that's how Ben Shapiro's site got set up, you know, funded by an American billionaire. That's how a lot of these things get started. But on the left, there's just not that structure in place. So I think there's some real fear when it comes to how journalists will sort of respond to, respond to all of this, how they'll respond to being criticized because it's so loud on the right. And so there's this idea.

And Dana Bash, when she interviewed Harris and Waltz, you know, she said, well, people on both sides were mad at me. So clearly I did something right, you know, to paraphraser. And it's that sort of attitude where the right is always going to be mad. The right is always going to say the media is biased against them. I think that now the left is starting to speak up a little bit more. Now more mainstream people are starting to speak up more. And hopefully it'll it'll force, you know, news. outlets to actually go and start, hopefully it'll force news outlets to start to treat actual facts

as the things to work around rather than trying to avoid the appearance of bias, because I think that's part of it. Part of the reason that you don't see just straightforward reporting that, hey, if Trump lies 20 times and Harris lies twice, you're going to have 10 times as much Trump lie coverage. I think one of the reasons they avoid that is because there's this urge to avoid the appearance of bias. I mean, my feeling is avoid the appearance of bias. One, there is no, there's no such thing as being neutral. And to me, I'm like, that is the biggest lie that has kept people of color, queer people, like out of C-suits and media rooms because of this idea that the only people that can be neutral are white people. And I've said that since like the beginning of my

media career. Like, you go into these rooms and nothing has changed in terms of who is inside them that is making the decisions. And it is a fallacy to present neutrality as something that we should all strive for. That being said, I feel like one of the ways that you could actually avoid whatever it is that you're trying to do, whether it's not get folks on the right or on the left upset, it's like, why not just present Donald Trump's ramblings in just a basic transcript? Like, here's the, here's the transcript. Because I said if you were to just read that two minute answer that he gave at the economic club or just read five minutes into his, you know, rallies, you would say to yourself, oh, this person is not okay. Like, this doesn't make any sense. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean,

I think that there's this reluctance to do large block quotes in written media. And when I'm writing my newsletter. One of the things I love about writing my own newsletter is that I can just go, here's a transcription of what Trump said and include four paragraphs of him rambling for two minutes. And I wish the newspapers would do that. I wish that they would say, okay, here is what he said word for word. We're not going to clean it up. We're going to give it to you straight, you know, and you'll just get that. But I think that there's this, you know, trying to follow these old school kind of rules when it comes to how something should read, how a newspaper should come across. And if you have lengthy Trump tweets and Trump speeches in there that are just incoherent,

it makes the article itself look incoherent. And I think that there's a fear that it'll make the final product look less professional. But the truth is when you're covering someone like Donald Trump, you need to put all of that in there. It's important because otherwise the Donald Trump that, we're getting is a version of Donald Trump that appeared on The Apprentice, which was similarly edited down, similarly made more coherent. You know, and that's something that I touched on in my 2020 piece, which was about how every episode of The Apprentice would have something like 30 or 40 hours of tape. And they would take that and they would cut it down to an hour and make it seem coherent. Make his decisions on who to fire make sense because they didn't make sense on their own.

I mean, that's just wild. It's like we have all been pulled into this kind of reality TV type of handling and smoothing and editing to make Donald Trump palpable. And the reality is, is that over the course of the last eight years, he has deteriorated in terms of like watching what he was like in 2016 versus watching what he's like now, there is a clear, clear difference. And I'm not a doctor by any means or trying to play like armchair cycle. But there is something that is very, very different. And if you're not covering that, I feel like that is journalistic malpractice. Yeah. That's something that there was a ton of coverage of Biden slipping from how he sounded in 2016

to how he sounds in 2024. There was so much of it that, you know, it essentially drove him out of the race. And people complain about that coverage. But really, I think that that coverage is what we should have been seeing for Trump as well. It's not that covering Biden that way was wrong. I think that that was actually the correct way to cover him. But I think that Trump should have also been given that same coverage. But there's this fear of it because if you're writing these pieces that are just that say he's, he's, oh, he looks old, he's incoherent, he's lost a step. Because yeah, if you look at these old clips of Trump speaking in

2016, he speaks a lot faster. He speaks more in complete sentences, even though he was still Donald Trump back then. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed to make more sense. He wasn't, he wouldn't go off on as many tangents as he does now, you know, as people have noticed, you know, now he talks about Hannibal Lecter and windmills and electrocuting sharks and stuff like that while trying to come back to some point about the economy. You know, it's one of those things that I wish that we wouldn't see more straightforward critical coverage of Trump. But, you know, we've got less than two months left. And so it's possible.

Maybe this will be the wake-up call that people need. But I think that there's also a fear that if Trump wins, he's going to seek retribution on the press. So there's this fear of covering him accurately as well. Do you think that if Donald Trump loses that the media for once and for all will move away from him or does he remain the cash cow clickbait that he has been? I hope that they move away from him because I think that he'll still be an influential figure in right-wing media and on the right generally. But I don't think he'll be the 2028 presidential

candidate. He won't be the Republican nominee in 2028 or I hope he won't at least. And that alone might be enough to kind of knock him down a peg, knowing that he won't return to power. You know, And so I feel like as soon as it becomes clear that he won't run in 2028, that'll be when his influence will kind of fade out in the media. And they'll have to look to another figure on the right, you know, whoever kind of fills the Trump void. I perish the thought. I have no idea. Parker Malloy, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal folks. The piece up at the New Republic is how the media sanitizes.

Trump's insanity, and you can also follow Parker's writing at her newsletter, The Present Age. Appreciate you and hope to have you back again soon. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I made an offer. This four-word tweet from Elon Musk marked what New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mack call the inevitable culmination of two storylines they had pursued for decades as journalists. And it's a story they tell in their ridiculously good new book, character limit how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. It's out September 17th. Kate, Ryan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Something you write early on in the book is that no one was prepared for Musk's hyper-aggressive campaign and no one could stop him. He saw Twitter not only as a

business, but as an ideological tool, a weapon that was being wielded by San Francisco liberals who suppressed views he enjoyed. So my question is, how much did ideology play a role in Musk wanting to on Twitter. I mean, I think it played a huge role. He was so upset by a lot of the content moderation decisions that the former Twitter team was making, you know, and I think wanted to have the influence that comes with the platform. We talk about this purchase almost as like a midlife crisis purchase, you know, and usually we see people, well, men of a certain age, but cars, yachts, things like that, just to kind of give them the clout of owning the fancy thing. A certain age and a certain net worth.

Yeah, exactly. And I think when you are the richest man on earth, the sports car just really is not the same as like buying an entire social media company for clout. But that's what Elon did. Couldn't he just get hair plugs? Oh, wait. So prior to buying Twitter,

you say that the pandemic and then the Black Lives Matters protests really changed Musk politically. And were maybe even, what made him publicly political. Talk about this because it seems to be a common thing among a certain segment of the population, including a lot of people in the tech world. The point you made of being publicly political is very important. I think Elon Musk has always had a libertarian bent to him. He's ever been overtly political. If you look back at his political donations throughout the years, he's supported Democrats and Republicans. He likes to make a point of this. He's very close to Obama.

He's been close with Gavin Newsom in the past. But it was really in recent years, that we saw him become more publicly political, especially on his Twitter feed, and publicly political towards one set of values, one set of beliefs. COVID really changed him. He, you know, was going through this period at Tesla where he couldn't manufacture cars at his factories because of the California shutdown due to COVID and fighting the spread. And that really upset him. You know, he called those shutdowns fascists.

He really rebelled against them. He made some pretty horrible predictions about COVID. During that time, he always, also was going through some personal stuff. He had a daughter who was transitioning, and you get this kind of backlash from him against this kind of amorphous enemy of wokeness that comes from that. And that kind of creates this cocktail that in some ways radicalizes him to the point where he is tweeting almost incessantly about politics, as we see now. It was like the post-pandemic, or I guess post-lockdown period anyway, where he makes his initial move

on the company, right? Right. So he starts buying shares in Twitter secretly in January of 2022. And is slowly accumulating more and more of the company at the point that he passes 5% ownership. He's supposed to disclose that and he doesn't. And then comes all the way up to 9% before he announces himself in the stock. I want to ask about this one, that point you just made where he didn't disclose it, even though he was supposed to. Throughout the book, there are segments where you talk about an FTC investigation into Musk. And even though I knew it wasn't coming, I kept waiting for the shoe to drop. And it just sort of never does, does it? It's kind of a larger theme of this book, the theme of the lack of accountability for someone this rich and this powerful.

I think of something even like in 2018 when he tweets that he's going to take Tesla private out of the blue, you know, really surprises investors, creates a maelstrom in the market. stuff like that has to be disclosed when a momentous kind of piece of news like that breaks. And he just does it on his Twitter feed, goes through this whole lawsuit from the SEC, ends up settling, gets a slap on the wrist for $20 million. Well, what is $20 million to a man that is worth $250 billion? You know, that's a traffic ticket. And we start to see this pattern play out over and over again where he just can't be held accountable

by any kind of regular means, by the government, by advertisers. there's nothing that really will keep him in check. And this plays out throughout the Twitter acquisition. And the thing that is key about this is that he realizes this. He knows that they can keep him in check. And because of that, he acts accordingly. And we have parts in the book where, you know, for example, his lawyer, Alex Spiro talks about, you know, he's not worried about laws. He's not worried about fines.

Just do the thing that he wants, you know, because he is all powerful. Yeah, it's an incredible similarity to Donald Trump in that sense. and obviously Trump's famous quote that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, it's definitely a similar attitude. There were a bunch of different times in the book where you describe similar reactions to Musk from people. When Morgan Stanley put together a pitch deck for investors in Twitter, it had a ridiculous forecasts in it for how Twitter would grow under Musk. But you say the investors wanted to place their faith in Musk and that his appeal went beyond normal logic. And then at another point in the book, Twitter CFO, Ned Siegel says, there was the bombast he'd seen on stage, ranting about population decline,

but Siegel still thought there might be a more reasonable musk somewhere behind all the showmanship. How did all these supposedly very smart people convince themselves that the emperor actually had clothes? I mean, I think the cult of personality around Elon is so powerful. And you look at his accomplishments, right, building Tesla, building SpaceX, and all the success he's had there. And I think people assume there must be some explanation for it. He must have, you know, this ornate plan that he's consulting behind the scenes. And, you know, we see this crazy behavior, but that's, that can't be the real guy.

And so you see people come up against that realization throughout the book when they are looking for the more reasonable version of Elon or the version of Elon that has a plan and they're having a hard time finding it. But I think there's something to Musk's personality, too, that lends itself to this and helps drive that assumption in people in that he can be kind of like a chill person, you know, like when people describe meetings with him or one-on-one conversations, there are moments where he, you know, seems very quiet, very kind of relaxed, very contained. And so, you know, I think people see that in his personality and think, okay, like, this isn't the person that we've seen screaming and yelling on Twitter. Like, there is kind of a calm adult demeanor behind that online

persona. When you see him speak publicly, he's very reserved. He's almost like sleepy in a way. And you watch that and you're like, I read about him. I see him on Twitter. He's bombastic. He's, he's yelling. And then you see him speak in your life. And it's very like relaxed and show and in some is rational. I think the best way to explain it is, you know, there's different aspects to him and different sides to him that come out depending on the situation. And sometimes you just don't know what you're going to get. Is it possible that another way to explain it is that it depends on the dosage? I mean, I think that that is something that you could probably speculate about. I mean, I've been a lot of reporting about his drug use. And he's talked about that publicly.

But I think one of the things that we've really seen in our reporting is that he does not like to be challenged or feel like he's backed into a corner. And those are the moments where he has these really kind of strong outbursts. And it seems like, at least from what we've heard, that his drug use stays fairly separate from his time in the office. And so I don't know that we could say like, oh, this part of his takeover was like explicitly influenced. by that. Yeah, I was mostly joking. There's numerous times in the book where you write about, you know, while this takeover is in the works and then after he takes it over, how often he just seems to be operating on, I guess, the kind way of putting it is gut instinct. One of the things you talked about is that he refused to sign any nondisclosure agreements during negotiations

with the Twitter board. And that turned out to be not the most brain genius move in the world, right? Right, because he then can't receive non-public information to then assess whether or not this is a good deal for him. You know, these transactions take months, sometimes more than a year, to close. And he wants this done at the speed of light. He doesn't want to do due diligence. And he wants to accelerate this thing.

What's so funny, too, about that decision not to sign the NDA when he's negotiating the deal is that it's influenced by the fact that he wants to tweet. And there's so much of the decisions that Elon makes in his career that are based around wanting to post. He's a true poster. And when he was trying to join the board initially at Twitter, they had asked him to sign a non-disparagement agreement, basically saying he wouldn't bash the company while he, you know, was on the board and had a fiduciary duty to protect it.

And he really balked at that. He didn't like that they were trying to control what he. was saying. And so I think when they came back to the deal and handed him another NDA, he was like, oh, absolutely not. They are, you know, the board isn't going to silence me. And I think kind of missed the fact that this would have helped him do diligence on the process. Right, which was where a normal person would have lawyers say to them, no, Elon, this is why you sign a non-disclosure agreement, but because he likes to do everything, you know, based off his gut, I get that didn't happen. It's a key understanding about him.

He likes to reduce things to first principles and understand, like, why can't I do things that way? Why isn't my gut instinct the right one? You have to defend you, the lawyer, you the banker, have to defend why this is the best way to do things. And if you can't, then we're going to do it my way. And my way is the best way. And that line of thinking has got him through Tesla.

It's got him through SpaceX. And it kind of led him through this deal. And it just led him to make many, many mistakes along the way to the point where he, he basically signed an agreement without doing diligence on the deal. And you mentioned a similar kind of thing when he was coming up with Twitter Blue that he wanted launched ASAP, Twitter Blue being where people would pay to have the Blue checkmark. And you write that the longer the Blue Team worked under Musk's direction, the more they realized his decision making was driven solely by gut instinct, and that his success in building Tesla and SpaceX had given him the belief that he was the alpha when it came to product decisions.

and basically that he just believed no one was better or more qualified. We see this over and over again. Yeah. It reminds me of a quote he had when he was talking to this group of people. He said, we're going to be shooting from the hip in real time when they're launching this very momentous product. You know, the main product that he wants to drive new revenue for the company, we're going to be shooting from the hip. I mean, that kind of just says it all. I think of also another decision he made to kill these other badges that they were going to put on accounts,

these official badges that they had discussed for a long time to delineate, you know, government accounts and politicians because everyone was going to be able to buy these verified badges. So they needed another badge to signify like the actual important ones. And he woke up one morning and saw a tweet from a Nikki Minaj fan account. I kid you not. That said, these official badges are stupid. I don't understand them. He sends that to the team and is like, this is why we're killing the official badge. And he says it and then it's gone. So it's like, this decision-making happens in like an instant, sometimes without thought, and it has real consequences. I mentioned it earlier, but throughout the book, I just kept thinking about the

similarities between Musk and Donald Trump, the various loyalty test, the paranoia, the constant role-playing as a victim, seeing the world as full of people out to get you, Musk's obsession with Twitter engagement, the way ratings are always an obsession with Trump. And then near the end, you wrote something that really drove at home when there was sort of a stale me between the two of them in terms of Trump coming back to Twitter. You said that it boiled down to one thing, a desire for control. Musk wanted Trump to play in his ecosystem and Trump preferred his own sandbox. And then the thing you wrote that I thought was really, really insightful, he said what Musk may not have realized was that he had long ago replaced Trump on the platform.

He was doing all the things that Trump sort of became known for doing on Twitter, the rallying against illegals, sharing conspiracy theories, all that kind of stuff. And I just thought, man, that is just so true. He really is the Donald Trump of Twitter. Yeah, I mean, he's really become that person that drives so much of the attention and conversation that's going on on the platform, you know, and I think when Trump was really engaged on Twitter, you know, people would talk about you could do a daily news story off of his tweets. And the Twitter story, I think, coming out of the presidential debate the other night, was, you know, the fact that Elon had responded to Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris by offering to

impregnate her. Oh, my God, yeah. And so that's sort of where X has gone and where Elon is sort of the main driver of outrage and shock and conversation rather than Trump. Yeah. There used to be this effect on Twitter when Donald Trump tweeted something and everyone would screenshot it or reshare it just for like outrage, you know, and I can't believe he said this or had they had their own comment.

Terry. That's exactly what's happening with Musk's tweets now. Like everything is just recirculated again. He fulfills that need, I guess, or that space, it's continuing to happen at a faster rate. And one of the things you write is that what was once called the Digital Town Square, Twitter, is becoming Musk's mirror. My first thought when I read that was working as intended. And I think that's right, though, right? That's what he wants. Yeah, I think he's done a lot to boost the kinds of content that he enjoys and wants to see on the platform, you know, whether that's selling verification checkmarks, which people who support him and like his views tend to buy, you know, or just replying and quote tweeting the accounts that he's enjoying so they get elevated to his nearly 200 million followers. So yeah, I mean, it's really just become a place where he is, I think, a pretty satisfied user. and it's not clear what the rest of the users think, and it's not clear that what they think matters. Yeah, for sure. I only have like a minute left, but I want to ask you about something

that happened recently, the current situation in Brazil. One of the things you point out in the book is that Musk actually gave into demands from the Indian government to take down accounts of dissidents, to take down accounts of people who were critical of the Modi government.

How do we square this with what happened in Brazil where Brazil ended up cutting off access to Musk because he wouldn't do something similar? So it's interesting. I think that so much of it, again, has to do with his personal politics. And the demands that he's receiving in India, I think don't really square with what he wants to see geopolitically there. But in Brazil, you know, the accounts that are being ordered to be removed are ones that are generally supportive of Bolsonaro who's been an ally of his. And, you know, he's talked about working on Starlink projects with Bolsonaro. So, you know, I think when he sees those demands for takedowns, it feels personal. And it feels like those are political viewpoints that he wants to defend. And he's willing to, you know, lose access to the entire

country in order to do so. Yeah. No, I mean, it all really does come down to whatever the God King wants, right? It's this weird view of free speech, right? He came in championing himself as the saver of free speech. And he talked about, you know, what does free speech mean? Well, it means Twitter will abide by whatever local laws are in each country. And I don't know, that's a weird view of free speech, in my opinion. But also, he hasn't done that. You know, in Australia and Brazil, for example, he has fought the law to keep up tweets or return or prevent suspensions of accounts. Whereas in India and Turkey, he has complied. And so even by his own standard, he has been inconsistent. And it's just, it really just comes down again to his personal politics.

I think that's 100% true. There's so much more I can talk to you all about, and I'm sorry I don't have the time, particularly the most disturbing thing in the book, that Musk really hates the Oxford comma. We can do a whole podcast about that. How about that? Oh, believe me. Believe me. The book is Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroy Twitter. For our listeners, I read this book in one sitting. It is just a fantastic book. And there's, believe me, also when I say that we barely scratch the surface of what's. in this amazing book. It's out September 17th. Kate Conger and Ryan Mack. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. This is so fun. Thanks, Andy. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. All right, Danielle, we are rapidly approaching the end of this fine debate week. Who's your fuck, that guy? So I don't necessarily talk to him, and that's what Donald Trump and I have in common, but we talk about him often, particularly in this segment.

and it would be the one and only J.D. Vance. And for what this time, well, let me tell you. So it was, I don't know, Andy, because time is a construct. But Donald Trump's social media team or Donald Trump himself tweeted out a while ago an AI version of Taylor Swift looking like Uncle Sam and basically saying that it was like an endorsement. And Donald Trump's response, quote tweeted or quote socialed or quote lied, whatever, said, I accept as if Taylor Swift's, this AI version of Taylor Swift was endorsing Donald Trump. And after that, so many people, both fans of Taylor Swift and just fans of reality, were like, what the hell is this? And why doesn't she come out and sue or say that this isn't right or this is not what she's doing? And so for weeks, we're all

wondering what's going on with Taylor Swift. She endorsed Biden in 2020. Well, come to find out that minutes, minutes after the debate ended on Tuesday, she takes to her Instagram with like, oh, I don't know. She has the following on Instagram of like multiple countries, right? Like it is like almost 250 million people follow her on Instagram alone. And with her cat endorses Kamala Harris, tells people that they need to register to vote, gives the reasons following the debate as to why she's done her research and why she's choosing Kamala Harris. In that time, 338,000 people have registered to vote via that link.

So, J.D. Vance, of course, then comes out on Fox News, he says this, quote, we admire Taylor Swift's music, but I don't think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of hers are not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most Americans. Now, for me, if you just remove Taylor Swift's music and then the pronoun hers, it's pretty much like he's talking about Donald Trump. Yeah, that's amazing. which is amazing.

And the fact is, oh, so now, when the real Taylor stands up and endorses Kamala Harris, now all of a sudden her endorsement doesn't matter. But the fake AI version that the right was retweeting because of Donald Trump, that's the one that was going to have impact and make a difference. So their, like, the hypocrisy is just like so loud. And J.D. Vance knows, just like Megan Kelly, who is also having a meltdown over this, that Taylor Swift's power, whether you like her music or not, is enormous. 338,000 people and counting have registered to vote because of that post is extraordinary and can't be ignored, regardless of how J.D. Vance tries to spin it. So for that reason, he is my, fuck that guy.

Yeah, I mean, that quote is incredible that he would say that and have absolutely no clue what it sounds like. I also want to highlight we were talking about this before we started recording, Megan Kelly, who was very, very upset that Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris. And she said, Taylor and Travis Kelsey are the epitomies of elite snobs. Because she's a woman of the people. Yeah. A, how many millions did it?

NBC pay you not to be on their air? 60. Yeah. The idea, and I'm the only one on this podcast who will understand this, but I think our listeners will. The idea that Travis Kelsey is some kind of elite snob is hilarious. I mean, if you've ever seen him, if you ever watched him do an interview, if you've ever listened to or watched the podcast he does with his brother, Jason, elite and snob are the two last words that you would ever think of when you think of Travis Kelsey. It just goes to how poisoned the brains are of people like Megan Kelly. It's honestly sad what has happened to her and so many others, but it's also just, it's a little bit funny. Just I never thought I would hear the name Travis Kelsey

in the same sentence as elite snob. So fuck all those guys. So, Andy, I believe that you have a good one for us to close out the week with. And I'm just so excited for you to tell the people what's happening. Yeah, I have a super serious one that is not at all funny. No, I take that back. It's fucking hilarious. Marjorie Taylor Green, who we all know, makes a lot of appearances on this segment. And Laura Lumer, who is, I think, less well known, but is a total right-wing nut job. People may be aware of her. She chained herself to Twitter headquarters many years ago in protest over, I don't know if I can't remember if her account was deleted or she just didn't think she got enough likes on a tweet or something. She apparently has been advising Donald Trump and apparently talked to him a lot before the debate, which is fantastic. And she is a loon. She is Islamophobic. She is racist. She has a lot of these things. All that said, I hope she continues to advise Donald. Trump because she couldn't be worse at it and he apparently listens to her. So anyway, these two, Laura Lumer and Marjorie Taylor Green, are in a bit of a Twitter beef. Laura Lumer tweeted,

if Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand. So, all right, the standard, idiotic, racist, you know, references to Harris's Indian heritage there. Marjorie Taylor Green, of all people, quote tweeted this and wrote, This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. Doesn't it?

I was so... She said, this does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever. Laura Lumer should take this down. So that, in and of itself, to hear Marjorie Taylor Green being upset at something that is racist was, you know, a mind-blowing moment. And of course, Laura Lumer was not going to let this lie. And she sent a couple of replies, one of which was, it's really funny how Marjorie Taylor Green, and then in parentheses, a raging anti-Semite who said Jews use space lasers to control the world, wants to pretend like I'm a quote-unquote racist because I made a funny joke about Kamala Harris

making cooking videos and buying curry spice at an anti-Trump spice shop. Okay, that's not what you did. But more importantly, she went on to say, hey, MTG, speaking of racism, one of your former staffers told me you have a favorite word that starts with N. What if the staffer has a video? She then went on to say, along with being an anti-Semite, MTG is also a poor excuse for a Christian. Her marriage failed because she couldn't keep her legs closed while she was a new member of Congress and was too, oh yeah, and was too busy screwing some guy from her CrossFit. It went on from there, and she brought up the screwing a guy from CrossFit again.

It got absolutely wild. And look, as an ally, I never like to see the girls fighting. But I am willing to make an exception in this case. If this hurts my reputation as a great ally, I'll have to live with that. But it is absolutely wild to see these two unhinged lunatics going at it with each other, trying to compete for who is the bigger racist or who is the most supportive of Donald Trump. But I repeat myself. Who's going to prom with Trump?

Yes. And basically, right, Jesse, which one of them is actually going to prom with Trump? So they both get my fuck that guy for this week, but they also get my LOL check these guys. out for this week. I mean, the fuckery knows no bounds. The irony in all of their comments back and forth to each other, like they just don't even see it. Like one's flirting with Nazis and getting shut down and the other one like wants to stand pious, but like is an absolute lunatic and I said some of the most egregious things. I don't know. Only the best people is all I'll continue to say. That's who Trump has and his stable.

None of them are actually stable, though. No, it is really something. But, you know, folks, check it out. And bon appetit because it is some popcorn popping shit over there. 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. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder.

Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.