The David Pakman Show - EXTRA: The rise of independent media w/ Aaron Rupar

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

David does a Substack Live with Aaron Rupar Follow us on Substack: https://davidpakman.substack.com/ -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership   Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow  Buy David's book: https://davidpakman.com/book   Book David Pakman: https://www.cameo.com/davidpakman   -- David on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/david.pakman   David on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/davidpakman.bsky.social  David on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@david.pakman   TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow/   Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord   Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow  

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, what you're about to hear is a recent sub stack live conversation I had with Aaron Ruppar that I thought was so interesting. We want to put it in the podcast feed. Aaron is a clipper who does independent journalism and rapid reaction to political news of the day. We talked about the state of independent media in twenty twenty five. What's working, what's not, and what comes next? And also talked about the new interest that Democratic elected officials have taken in shows like ours. We talked about the collapse of trust in legacy outlets, how creators are filling the gap and why platforms like Substack are becoming more important than ever. Let's get right into it. All right. We'll we'll do the awkward corporate

Zoom thing of saying, well, you know, like give a minute for people to join. But I thought we would have a little bit of a conversation post-election just about really a couple of things. I mean, one, maybe how our work has changed. And maybe if we're like seeing different things from audiences in terms of how they're relating to independent media instead of corporate. Also, I'm curious to get your thoughts on if and how corporate media is now seeing us differently. I think the answer is yes, all of a sudden, based on some of the conversations I'm having also elected officials would be kind of interesting. But I don't know. Have you been working differently post-election and since Trump was inaugurated the second time? You know, for myself, not really. I mean,

I've been kind of honing my techniques over a decade, really. So the election hasn't totally changed that. I mean, I think if anything, I've put a little more premium on compartmentalizing a little bit just because, you know, it's kind of a hellscape out there. And so, you know, I stare at that eight to 10 hours a day and then try to do other things in the evenings, you know, just to some interesting you know observations i think are true like i've definitely noticed um dem staffers uh reaching out to me a lot more um you know like if there's like a clip clipable moment during a hearing or even some of these town halls that members have been doing you know to kind of loop me in um which is great you know so it seems like there's kind of more cognizance of like people like myself who clip and kind of the role we can play in in getting the word out about things that are happening or kind of, you know, clippable moments, cool things that Dems are up to. And then, yeah, I think there's been a little more interest from the corporate media in the type of work that I do, I guess, especially as a clipper. You might have

seen, I think it was two weekends ago now, the Washington Post did a pretty big piece on ASIN. And, you know, I was quoted in there too. They drew, I'm blanking on the last thing, I think it's like Drew Hartwell or something like that, the reporter who did the piece. But, you know, he and I talked for, you know, a good 25 minutes or so. And I've done a few interviews kind of like that, you know, from outlets trying to gain some insight into clipping and just, you know, kind of this world of online social media journalism. So yeah, I mean, I think there's been heightened interest in the type of work that I do. And then, you know, you also mentioned the independent media versus corporate media aspect. Like, you know, I definitely saw a surge in subscribers, you know, around the inauguration. Granted, there was a bit of a dip right after

the election, because I think there was kind of like, you know, a pretty widespread thought of, like, I need to disengage a little bit from the news i'm going to take a step back away from like you know being immersed in this every day so um you know it's something that kind of changed the the overall trend line of growth that i've had but um you know i certainly think that there's a hunger out there for people like me who you know kind of immerse ourselves in this and then surface a lot of you know kind of highlights or nuggets that people might want to see without like watching an entire hearing or watching a Trump speech. So, you know, in some ways, that's kind of taken me right back to 2017. It's kind of a similar vibe right now, I would say this, this term has been worse, you know, in terms of the impact on the public and the lawlessness

and just kind of the threat that we face, it feels more acute than it did in 2017. But you know, even some of these off cycle elections that have gone well for Dems, you know, it's kind of spurring a similar type of hope that I think Democrats had in like 2017 with some of the elections that happened that year. So there's a little bit of a sense of deja vu. But, you know, I guess I've got a whole term of this under my belt. So I, you know, I think I kind of know how I have to be kind to myself and sort of take it easy at times. But, you know, I think I also have a pretty good feel for, you know, how to do this work in the best way that I can. One of the things that's definitely been different is some of the conversations with the elected officials and the staffers. And, you know, now we're hearing from a lot of people.

And I think there was this feeling after the November election that the left Democrats, whatever, kind of dropped the ball with independent media. And whenever I speak to them, you know, I think one of the benefits of maybe being where we are now is that we can just be a little more like brutally honest. And I'll just tell staffers when they come to me and they go, listen, not with tears in their eyes, usually when they come to me and they say, listen, we want to have our elected official without naming any names on to talk about this initiative. And I'll just be up front and I'll go, listen, that is not going to be the kind of dynamic and authentic type of conversation that I think my audience will want. It'll feel very forward. Like David was told to ask about this bill. I would much rather have a broader conversation. I'm just honest, you know, and the optimistic thing is a lot of them kind of seem to get it

because they're watching enough of our stuff to know when Trump does the NELC boys, not that I'm the NELC boys, he's just showing up and hanging out. And yeah, he tells a lie every 15 seconds, but it feels authentic and genuine in a way that I think the Democratic Party could really benefit from. So I'm like a little caut bring up, you know, an important thing that I think Dems are still trying to, you know, crack the code of which is, you know, this kind of right coded social media podcasts, you know, part of the secret sauce there is that they don't feel overtly political, you know, and so like you were saying, I mean, they kind of feel like, you know, two, two bros kind of sitting down and shooting the breeze and having a beer or something like that. And whereas I think like the lefty spaces are more kind of like, we're just, you know, we kind of wear our politics on our chest. So that's what we do, you know, and I don't host a show like you do. It's a little bit different than in your line of work. But I do hear from Dems who want to do like Q&As in the newsletter, most of which I agree to, but you know, it kind of depends on what the if there's like a good news peg for it um but yeah i mean i think that's something that would really benefit democrats going forward is having um you know kind of a if there was like a show out there that that

had kind of crossover appeal beyond the people who are really into politics as it is um and i don't think we've totally figured that out yet and it's it's you know it's something that has to be kind of developed organically I've seen a few people kind of speculating this week that it seems like Dave Portnoy from Barstool is like I don't know if becoming more woke is the right term but of course he had that meltdown

over the anti-Semitism at one of his bars which got from Trumpers kind of a mixed response but you know any little inkling of something like that i think you know people get kind of excited over because i i think that's a really big you know kind of um this disadvantage that we have on the left versus the right where they have spaces like um you know whether it's like joe rogan's show or even some of the barstool stuff um you know wwe has kind of

this universe now of like comedians that they focus during the their raw shows that are sitting ringside who are mostly kind of like right-leaning comedians and things like that but we don't really have an ecosystem like that so you know to the extent that we can foster that i think that that will help to get the word out beyond kind of our base to the people who actually decide elections one of the things i'm curious about is you know you've been doing this a while and you've kind of like developed your voice, which I see in like the taglines that you put along with some of your clips. And sometimes there's genuinely funny stuff where I'm just chuckling to myself, like where you'll vary. Like one that recently you did that I thought was funny was when Trump talks about he signed an executive order, but he referred to it as like passing legislation or something like that. And you like very very very soberly

in parentheses just put like this is not how the law works you know it's just like an executive order we haven't passed any legislation this is you signed an executive order how did how did you like shape because it's in a way it is a commentary that you're providing alongside the clips like the clips speak for themselves to a degree but also the context you provide is relevant how you like develop the voice, which I don't know if you would describe it as sort of like dry humor or whatever, but how do you figure out like what works? I mean, I think you have to laugh at some of this stuff because it's so ridiculous, you know, you'll cry otherwise. And I think part of that was like, especially when I was at Vox, there was a big ethic there of like, okayaron like it's cool if you clip trump but like

if he's lying you gotta fact check you know because they didn't want anybody associated with them to be kind of amplifying lies which is totally legit but it gets you know because he said he tells the same lies over and over i mean he's been lying about the 2020 election now for you know four and a half years basically um so when he you know when he says the rigged election like do we still need to debunk that or like do i think people broadly understand that he's lying um you know some of the stuff with the executive orders i mean i hope people understand that these executive orders aren't laws but i don't know maybe some people are confused about that and certainly they try to confuse people in the way that they talk about them like that clip that you mentioned, where, you know, I think Trump, if you watch that clip that

you mentioned, I think he was just, I don't think he really thinks that they're laws, but there might be kind of like a willful, he's kind of like trying to will it into existence kind of thing, or, you know, at least publicly kind of insinuate that these have the strength of laws, these, you know, random documents that he's signing. So guess you know i still try to when i can um include fact checks and that was obviously an easy one that was kind of humorous to include but i mean it does get kind of dicey i mean there was a clip um because actually i i started an account on tiktok about a month ago and i was really you know i i wanted to kind of gain traction there so i was just basically kind of reposting clips that i was posting on other channels but of course like other channels you know x for instance um beyond community notes like there's

really no fact checking anymore i mean they used to put like tags on misinformation or like kind of suppress your account if you were lying over and over but they don't really do that anymore so it was a couple weeks ago rfk jr was on one of the fox news shows actually it was actually a news nation and he had a comment about how the one of the vaccines has um fetus debris was the term i think he used or fetal debris or something like that uh which is obviously like a pretty horrific way to i mean first of all it's like extremely misleading but then second of all it's you know obviously he's doing that for kind of like the shock value and um i posted that across all my different channels and tiktok flagged that for like misinformation so now my account is restricted for like 90 days um so like i i kind of got restricted there before i could

even really get going um but you know it was kind of reminder that like even though these other platforms are kind of the wild west at this point like there still are some that are doing kind of basic accountability um but that was one you know with the rfk one where like i wasn't prepared in real time to fact check that i thought like the statement itself was so absurd that it was still worth sharing so i mean the point simply being that i still have that in the back of my mind when i'm clipping you know these trump administration officials or republicans we're obviously pulling all sorts of sleights of hand with the way they're talking about med these days, or like what this reconciliation bill

is going to do, who it's going to hurt. And rather than, you know, just kind of like amplify their BS, I do try to include fact checks when possible, while also being cognizant that in a lot of cases, I think people understand that Trump is lying. I don't think anybody, either you believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and it's kind of like a post-rational belief of yours, or, you know, like you've been exposed to the fact that yes, he's lying, the election wasn't stolen. So in some cases, I don't think it's necessary. But yeah, again, I think it kind of goes back to when I was at Vox and that was like very much a core value where they would tolerate me clipping kind of on work time if, you know, as long as I

wasn't kind of like reflecting poorly upon them by amplifying lives. There's this kind of dynamic that I've noticed start up in the kind of clipping space where, you know, a lot of these town halls that Democratic elected officials are doing. Let me see how I can put this accurately but delicately. It seems as though staffers for Dems right now know to a degree that it's useful to them to generate moments at these town halls, which folks like you and Asen and the Midas guys, and there's a lot of different accounts that in different ways amplify this stuff. It's really great for them if there's a moment at these town halls with their elected official that can be clipped and promoted in the way that you have kind of built the format in a way of the, you know, 30 to 120 second, you know, whatever, like that format. And I think it's

super smart that they're recognizing, hey, let's try to generate some of these clips in the style of what you do, even though a lot of the ones you do are antagonistic of the subject matter rather than supportive, although you'll do some supportive as well. what makes a good clip. And so sometimes I'll see an effort from the staffers of electeds to push content that's like, okay, advocating for a perfectly good policy. I get that. It is missing the emotional salience, I think, to a degree that some of the stuff that you identify has. So I'm wondering if you have thoughts of like, how can Dems adapt the kind of format that you have helped to grow for the benefit of reaching more people? Or is it by nature something where you're going to do better when you're pointing out, look at this horrible thing that's been proposed rather than this good policy idea? Well, you know, there's a lot to that question. And, you know, I think one of the things that can make for a good clip is conflict. And so, you know, for instance, you know, there was a Dem staffer who was pinging me this morning, you know, kind of flagging, you know, this exchange that was going to happen because the member, you know, had kind of planned this at a hearing over anti, over antisemitism today. And, you know, it was an exchange where the day was, uh,

uh, representative Cesar. I hope I'm pronouncing his name right. It's C-A-S-A-R. I think it's Cesar. Who's like, Oh, Greg,

Greg, Greg Kassar. Kassar. Kassar. Yes. My apologies. He's really good. Yeah.

No, he was really good. And, and so, yeah, and he used this moment to call out, you know, some of the Republicans on the committee where it's like,

how can you pay lip service to combating antisemitism when you have, you know, the Jewish the Republicans on the committee where it's like, how can you pay lip service to combating anti-Semitism when you have, you know, the Jewish face later's lady is like in good standing with your caucus. And like, you know, Trump has, has amplified all these anti-Semites and like dine with them and all this stuff. And, um, and, uh, Kassar, um, ended up, you know, he was like, by show of hands, like if you had a problem with Trump saying there were very fine people at the Charlottesville rally, you know, raise your hand and none of the Republican members did. But you know, stuff like that, where there's kind of like conflict, there's interaction, like that can make for a good clip, or if there's like, kind of an emotional impact, you know, like amplifying a story of someone like I remember, you know, when Republicans were trying to repeal the AC the aca you know back in 2017

um you know a lot a lot of clips that really took off at that time were like um you know kind of testimonials of people who the aca had helped save their life in some way and like you know just kind of that emotion of like this is what it meant to me and this is what will happen to me if if you know the aca is repealed so like you can either have the emotional impact or like the conflict but yeah i mean i think you're right that if it's just like someone talking into a camera and it's you know it's kind of missing those elements it's probably not really going to take off and not that every single clip has to and you know um i think i err on the side of like posting more rather than less so i'm not necessarily looking for like every clip to blow up because

sometimes you know things are just newsworthy that i think are still worth like putting out there in the world you know a republican um like a maria bartiromo show explaining that you know they're basically going to try and defund the medicaid expansion and make the states you know either cut benefits or um you know have to blow their own blow their own budgets up to kind of fill the people on the the shortfall there um you know that's not necessarily sort of clip that's going to like do big numbers, but I still think it's kind of worth, you know, putting it out there. So, you know, I guess that's kind of the nice thing with what I do is that, you know, it's not like I have to get a quota of clicks or shares or anything like that. But, you know, I do in some ways kind of miss the relative boredom of the Biden years where like

there was, you know, the White House press briefings were like pretty dull by and large and you know you didn't have dom lucre and uh you know tim pool and these clowns at the briefings um and they were you know a little more kind of like stayed and sober events um but you know we're back in a world where all these kind of normally boring political events whether it be white house press briefings or congressional hearings or like circuses again and that's only as this year continues on with like the reconciliation bill and some of the hearings starting that like um you know i think it's only going to get crazier over the next weeks and months so um but yeah i mean you know i would have to kind of in terms of the example that you bring up with like members dem members who aren't doing a great job with that i guess i'd have to

to see exactly what you're referring to because i'm certainly not seeing everything that you know there's so many members of congress that I can't possibly keep, keep tabs on everyone. But, um, I'd say there's a handful of a couple dozen, um, you know,

between both, maybe a little more than that. Maybe it's probably about three dozen between the, the house and the Senate, you know, democratic staffers who are in my DMs, like pretty much every day, um,

passing things along. And then, you know, sometimes it can be kind of like a race to see who can get things up first, because, um, you know, like today there was this hearing that I was mentioning on the the anti-semitism and c-span didn't even have it because there were like five other big hearings going on at the same

time um so that's kind of you can't possibly watch everything so i'm actually really grateful when i get tips like that because like i would have never seen uh sithar today at this at this hearing um you know which was a really good clip had i not been alerted that it was going to happen in advance. One of the things I think has definitely changed for me is the speed with which everything is moving. You know, I was doing this during the first Trump administration and things moved pretty quickly there. But it's now common that I'll tape something at noon, and it'll go out at three. And by 430, I'm hearing from people that like substantive aspects of what I reported have already changed or been backed off of or been overridden,

or there's been a court decision or something that that changes it. It's just from a logistical standpoint, it does make doing what I do and working with my team and figuring out like what's the right order of getting everything out today. It just makes it more practically difficult because things are so unhinged and moving so quickly that it just for independent creators like us with much smaller teams, it's just a logistical hazard to even keep up with everything in a sane way. Oh, absolutely. And for me with the newsletter, I'm always trying to think a day or two days ahead. Tomorrow's newsletter is on the Trump stablecoin. And I talked with Zach Guzman, who founded

Coinage, which is like a crypto publication. He to write for cnbc and yahoo finance but like you know so it's newsy but it's not like the facts on the ground are going to change so much that by tomorrow um it's going to not be relevant any longer that has actually happened a couple times to me recently with like you know when we're covering legal affairs where there'll be like a filing you know in the evening that that affects something and you have to kind of rewrite it so uh yeah i mean you know especially with show like yours, that is like very topical and like kind of news of the day. You know, I can certainly see that being a big challenge. But I try to kind of factor in for that, you know, as I'm planning the newsletter throughout the week, just because that does stink when it's like 9pm. And, you know, I get an email or a message that's kind of like,

Oh, did you see this filing? Like, we got to change this part of the piece. And it's like, Oh, you know, but I mean, that is kind of uh one of the downsides of being in the news industry but i mean you're right that like the pace the pace of these days is kind of relentless and you know especially with um you know the tariff stuff i mean an example was um you know last night uh besant was on fox and one of the newsy things coming out of that was you know he left the door open to basically the u.s caving on the china tariffs you know he said, I think Laura Ingraham basically asked him, like, you know, as a condition of trying to work towards a deal with China, would you be willing to lower the tariffs a little bit? And he's like, everything that's on the table. Okay, and then, you know, that has an impact on

the markets. And then just before we went live, Trump was doing a little press event today where he was like, No, I'm not lowering tariffs at all. So, you know, just throughout the day, especially with economic policy i mean of course this is something that the investors are craving at this point is certainty and it you know it seems like they almost intentionally kind of keep people on their toes um you know the tariff policy would actually in some ways be it's not the policy itself is damaging but it would be less damaging if they just like put it in place and left it you know but that they keep tinkering makes it worse but also makes it challenging to cover because um you know there's so many different officials who you know have

a role in these negotiations or you know have like a portfolio that touches upon the tariffs and they're all saying different things and then you know the other thing that was very noticeable today with trump was you know he was asked one question was about like whether the administration is sending migrants to libya which i didn't even I guess that's been kind of percolating. I don't know if there's been reports of that effect, but Trump basically said, I don't know. You know, asked a question about what his own administration is doing. I didn't know. And this is kind of I get the sense a lot of times that, you know, we saw this yesterday with the reporting about Hegseth and the Ukraine aid that he apparently unilaterally held up shortly after the inauguration that trump didn't even know that that was going on then apparently mike waltz had to kind of step in

you know and intervene and get the aid flowing again but you know you really do get the sense of this administration that sometimes the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and so it just becomes hard to cover that and talk about it because um there isn't really like a singular narrative to latch on to it depends on who you're listening to and when. I've been kind of talking to people about our space more broadly. And one of the things I'm seeing happening, and I'm curious how you see it is, we do now seem to start to get like a little bit of a stratification. And I don't want to call them tiers qualitatively but the space has definitely become big enough now where there are like you know you you've got a real 80 20 thing happening in terms of like the larger left youtube shows and the larger uh clippers on the left and there's a very very large audience

there and then you've got a lot of creators that are kind of filling out. It's not necessarily literally 80, 20, but it's the idea that you've got some fast growing creators and new people, people entering the space, et cetera. I don't remember the space being as robust at any time in a couple of different ways. Number one, in terms of the number of creators, number two, in the number now of more established, larger entities, you know, those of us in the three to five million follower range and so on and so forth. In that sense, it feels like the left independent space is like by far as strong as it's ever been. On the other hand, we still don't necessarily have like the organization of the right. We don't have the big funders. We don't necessarily have like the organization of the right. We don't have the big funders. We don't

necessarily have like the conferences and sort of like in-person stuff. I'm trying to think about like, do we need that or is the space growing well enough organically on its own? That's really interesting. I hadn't totally thought about that, but you're right on the conferences thing because, you know, I mean, there's been a lot of jokes about this, but you know, there's, it's always CPAC somewhere, right. Cause you know, they have CPAC Hungary and then they have the CPAC in DC and they have CPAC Texas and like, and there's always some turning point USA event going on. Yes. Yeah. And you're, you're right. I mean, even when, obviously, you know, when Biden was in office and, um, you know, the Obama years were mostly before my time. I mean,

I moved to D.C. in 2016 and started covering national politics like early that year. So, you know, I was at the very tail end of Obama. But yeah, I guess the left has never really kind of rolled like that. Right. I mean, I don't know why that is that, you know, like the right, they love these conferences and getting together and, you know, people, whether it's kind of the big shots who are like, you know, U..s senators or congress members or like the influencers um you know cpac they're all kind of represented in different ways and you know there's really nothing totally equivalent i guess like there's like net roots maybe would be kind of the closest thing i've never gone to one of those personally um i don't think it hurts that you know just to kind of build those connections i mean you and i

met in dc a number of years ago and um you know it's always good to just kind of make connections like that rather than just always having interactions i think that might have been like i think that might have been like 11 months ago but i know it feels like oh that yeah i guess that was like early uh yeah was that last year i think you know i think it was march of 24 so it's been like 13 months okay yeah yeah last year was a very long year as it turned out um mainly the latter half of it. Everything was pretty much fine until I guess the debate was the big turning point, right? Where everything kind of started going off the rails at that point. Yeah. But yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I don't feel a huge need like, you know, if there was some big lefty conference, I mean,

I guess, you know, if I was invited to be like on a panel or something like that, I would go. And I did go about a year ago was shortly after my trip to DC, I went to Italy for a journalism conference where I was on a panel there. And that was really cool, too. I met a number of people who I follow on social media. And you know, it's just always good to shake hands and kind of get a coffee with someone. But you know, you are right, because like, you know, when I moved to DC, I was working at ThinkProgress. And you know, that's kind of in some ways, ThinkProgress was kind of old fashioned, because that was a newsroom that was inside the Center for American Progress, but they had a lot of funding you know it was a very well-funded newsroom and a lot of staff but like it was also you know we had a big audience

and um i think that really filled kind of a a need for like a democratic of a friendly to the democratic party media outlet that had credibility and good writers and funding and yeah there's kind of a you know that isn't really there in the same way now i mean i guess midas would be kind of the closest thing and you know you mentioned them a couple times already but like you know it's really great that they have enough poll now where i think it was just last week um where they had like the the town hall event with the various democratic governors well participated and like you know the fact that they're able to get all those people to say yes to doing events with them, I think really speaks to like the vital role that they play in the, in the lefty media ecosystem, um, kind of beyond just being like a show, but also

kind of, um, almost like a platform that electives will come on and, and not only, you know, be interviewed, but also kind of, you know, make news on their shows and, um, and kind of be like, you know, recurring guests. So that is really important to have, you know, channels like that. And I do, I think something like ThinkProgress actually is really kind of be like recurring guests. So that is really important to have channels like that. And I think something like ThinkProgress actually is really kind of like sorely missed in a way in our kind of lefty media ecosystem these days. And there's no reason why something like that couldn't exist because you're absolutely right

that we probably don't have the same scale of funders that people on the right have, but we do have a lot of wealthy lefties who are willing to throw money around and CAP is still really well resourced. the same scale of funders that people on the right have but we do have a lot of wealthy lefties who are willing to throw money around and cap is still really well resourced but um you know i guess maybe that's kind of where you and i come in like you know being independent and you know kind of punching above our weight in terms of like the resources that we have like i don't have a huge staff you know i'm assuming you don't have a huge staff and so you know we kind of do the best that we can with

what we have but you know we do have big audiences and um and so yeah i mean you know, we kind of do the best that we can with what we have. But, you know, we do have big audiences. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're right to highlight that discrepancy between the left and the right. And, you know, if you ever want to invite me to be on a panel with you at a conference, I'd probably go for that. If I was not a panel, I probably wouldn't go to the trouble. But, you know, yeah. I want to get your thoughts as to if and how worried you are, given that a lot of elected officials now monitor. I don't say monitor in the like kind of conspiratorial way. They're just like aware of what you're posting and what you're clipping and using your content as a source of amplification. How worried you are about possible repercussions from the current administration?

And I'll just anecdotally mention a couple of things. In Trump's first term, nothing that ever happened on my show made it to any like official Trump account. An interview I did with Kathy Hochul recently was immediately seized upon by the official Trump rapid response X account. And then Charlie Kirk was on. So like it wasn't something i said it was something she said but they they were paying attention in a way that they weren't before there's been this email floating around that appears to have been trying to get amazon to strong arm amazon to drop my book along with a list of about nine other books still became a bestseller fortunately but actually maybe

because of that to a degree, Amazon has not dropped the books, but sort of like pressure as far as that goes. And so like to zoom out, I think the question is, as is there like a moral hazard, whereas some of our platforms get bigger, the risks get bigger of getting on the wrong side of someone as horrible and vindictive as like a Stephen Miller, where we now have to worry about that. Yeah, I mean, I think that's valid. You know, I went through this in his first term as well. You know, there was actually one and I'm regretting that I'm blanking on the the member of Congress's name. Her name is like she's a California rep. It's like Calamer hyphen Damager or something like that. Do you know what I'm talking about?

I'm getting her name. I'm going to look this up so I can get the story right quickly here. Because I feel bad that I don't remember her name, but Calamer... Okay. I feel like I'm getting her name totally wrong here. Hold on. Hold on. I know. It's so wrong that even spellcheck can't figure out what you mean.

It's so wrong that even on Google, they're kind of having another way. Okay, it's Kamlager Dove. Kamlager Dove. Yeah, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, but she's from California. And anyway, so there was a hearing, this was about a month ago,

where she used her opening statement. So backing up a step step this was yet another hearing that republicans held on the twitter files like the you know like the 12th one um so matt taibbi was one of the witnesses and she this representative in her opening statement um called him a sex pest or you know something i believe the quote right here is um let me see if i can find it because it was a clip that kind of took off um i'm gonna look this up it's not right at the top of my results but but anyway she she called him a sex pest um i think it's pretty much a direct quote and so then um about two weeks later i was at a baseball game like taking you know i was kind

of taking f and off and um david neer who's the guy that i i do a sub stack live with on Fridays, texted me and he was like, and he's a lawyer. And he was like, did you see this? It pertains to you. And I was like, Oh my God. And Matt Taibbi sued this rep over the statement at the hearing. You know, he made a big show of it with like an article that he published on his, on his Substack. And like the big exhibit in the lawsuit was my tweet. So he was, you know, and he being like a lawyer was, you know, kind of like, you know, you might want to talk to a lawyer over this, which I wasn't sweating it too much. But because, you know, I mean, I guess I don't know. See, it gets into kind of a weird legal and I'm not a lawyer, but it's like, do I have legal exposure there? Even though I just clipped something that this representative said, I mean, you know, I mean, this is a public hearing, obviously. But so I mean, that's a little bit that's not like a Trump administration thing,

but it did kind of, you know, remind me that I have to be careful. I mean, in this case, thankfully, I just did a direct quote. So I think that kind of protects me a little bit. But like, yeah, I mean, with people who are litigious, and, you know, are trying to find ways to sort of silence us, you know, or, you know, kind of take us off the playing field, so to speak, that you do have to be careful, you know, make sure that you're not, you know, posting something or saying something that could open you up to legal action. Because, you know, I went through this about a decade ago, and I was at a publication in the Twin Cities called The City Pages, and I was sued by Larry Klayman, who's

like a, you know, famous right wing lawyer. For reporting I was doing on legal filings pertaining to a divorce that he was going through. And that lawsuit actually got to Discovery. And, you know, because I was working for the Village Voice company at that point, they own the Village Voice and they own the LA Weekly and the City Pages. They had a lawyer who flew into Minneapolis, but had to like coach me on being deposed, you know, because that's like kind of a big deal. And Klayman's legal strategy at that time was to ask really embarrassing questions in hopes that he could kind of catch you in a lie. So it was like, who was your roommate two years ago? Oh, and did you ever have a romantic relationship with him? And it was like, no, you know, but the whole, the whole idea was to like ask you these really invasive questions

in hopes that you would say something incorrect. And then they could, you know, kind of impugn your credibility for other things that you were saying that were pertinent to the case it was an expensive and kind of like a big hassle it wasn't expensive to me but it was expensive to the company and so having gone through that you know like especially being independent like a nuisance lawsuit like that could be really devastating so that's the last you know this tidy article that he that he published was the last i heard of it this is about a month ago so i was kind of like waiting for a week or two like my name like served a lawsuit here and you know i guess it still could happen it seems like it'd be pretty flimsy but yeah i mean i've noticed like the trump rapid uh response account a couple times

um has been like in my mentions or like they've engaged with stuff that i've posted and you mentioned um you know kind of i've noticed that a lot of the videos they post they kind of they kind of ape the format that i use sometimes with like reporter colon trump you know and it's like yeah are they were they inspired by my posting year to kind of do like the same the same tweet format that i always do but um but i try not to worry too much about stuff like that but i think you're right that you know maybe on on the democratic side um it does create you know because like i want to be with members who are friendly to me i want to be friendly to them but that doesn't i think necessarily always absolve them for from criticism

or um you know that doesn't mean i'm never going to post anything negative about them and then that can kind of get you in trouble sometimes too where um you know staffers will end up feeling kind of burned that you're not totally loyal to them. Yeah, well, let's talk about that a little bit. That's just kind of source maintenance. That's any reporter, you kind of interact with sources like that. I want to talk about that a little bit.

I make it clear that I'm a commentator. I'm not a reporter. I'm not a journalist. I'm operating in a different space. And I'll be upfront. We had Gretchen Whitmer on last week. And I said, I'm a fan of the job that Gretchen Whitmer has done. When I think about interesting folks to maybe run in the future, I'm not saying she's obviously the best person to be the nominee, but it's like Gretchen Whitmer, you've got a lot of things going for her. Fine.

And also I wanted to talk to her about what was up with this, you know, the Trump handshake, and then you're in the Oval Office, and then you cover it up, and then why not just not cover up, or why not go into the Oval Office? And she answered the questions, and my audience can sort of determine whether it's to their satisfaction or not. But where it does, I think, get dicier is, I'm not going to do stories that are not stories I genuinely want to do for my audience. And staffers, God bless them. They're doing their job. They're trying to get the person they work for attention. And so they'll, they'll send me stuff and I have to just explain to them that this is super interesting. It's just not something anyone

would expect to see on my show. And so it's just not going to make it onto my show. And sometimes it gets a little awkward, but if I start doing stories that are not actually the fits for my program, it's opening up a door that even as a non journalist, I just don't want to open up. Yeah, I'm with you. And I got a little bit of that, you know, with the Whitmer situation, because I posted a couple things critical of her surrounding that. And then with with Newsom as well in his podcast, you know, we did a whole newsletter that was critical of him. And, you know, some staffers weren't thrilled about that. And then even with Mayor Bowser, the D.C. mayor, you know, when she was in the Oval Office, I didn't really post anything necessarily critical.

I just posted a video. I was like, look at her reaction. You know, because she was she looked kind of aghast, you know, as Trump was ranting and raving and she was standing behind him and then got a lot of people pointing out which I think is the valid point that D.C. is in such a unique situation because of the budget cuts that Republicans have tried to impose on the district that she

kind of has to play ball with Trump a little bit more than maybe another Democrat would have to because her constituents are so directly impacted by what's going on in Congress. You know, the Whitmer one, and then, you know, the Oval Office stuff with I didn't think that was great. And then, you know, she appeared on stage with Trump like a week ago in Michigan. I didn't think that was great. You know, she does have her defenders who will, you know, who will point out that I believe Trump was in Michigan to kind of tout that they're not

actually closing this military base that was planned to be closed. And so that was important to Whitmer as well. And so, you know, I had Michiganders kind of pointing out that, you know, actually she kind of secured a win for her state here. And so you have to kind of give her some grace there. I mean, I just, I think, I would hope that there are ways to do that that don't involve like participating in photo ops with Trump and sort of validating him in that way or having the image of you, like, shaking his hand, appearing on the stage with him. So, you know, I think that reasonable minds can kind of disagree on that. And hopefully it's constructive in nature because, you know, we need to have kind of constructive relationships with people who are on our side.

You know, the Trumpers stick together pretty good these days. But again, you know, I think just because someone has been a good source for me or will talk to me, that doesn't mean that I'm always going to be positive about everything that they do. Because then that's kind of torturing my own credibility, you know, if I'm not willing to kind of cause they see it. So, you know, I'll continue to do that while trying to be respectful and not kind of go scorched earth and, you know, poison good relationships and make them kind of toxic and adversarial. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, when I had news from on a couple of weeks ago, I said, I thought the first couple episodes of the podcast were an absolute disaster and explained to me why I saw it wrong. And he explained it to me from his perspective. I don't know if staffers liked it, but I know my audience is thinking about that. I know a lot of people saw the Charlie Kirk interview as the first episode

and said, this is, this is bad in every single way. So, you know, I asked about it. This gets me a little, I guess to like the last thing, maybe we'll talk about how fractured, if at all, do you think the left media space is right now? Because I do see, you know, I don't get involved in the picking fights with people. I just cover the issues I think are important. But I also am aware of the fact that there are folks, you know, that you've also had public interactions with or commentary where they used to be sort of considered firmly on the left, whatever the left is, people like Jimmy Dore or Glenn Greenwald and others, where now they seem to me to occupy what I would call a like reactionary, libertarian, contrarian type space that doesn't, it's certainly not left in any way that that

kind of like relates to my politics. Do what do you think of these like splits and shifts and fractures that have happened or do you think it's just sort of like a normal background baseline amount of people's politics shifting around maybe i think i would tend to go more toward the latter explanation that it's kind of normal i mean i am kind of heartened that you know if you pull up like the substack politics leaderboard you know most of the top publications like pretty solidly left um you know you will get i think glenn has left glenn has no longer even on substack i think he basically does his rumble show but um you know it's um it's like the midas people it's you know midas bulwark is up there the new um the contrarian is up there um of course you do have like the barry weiss you know free press is up is up there, too. Ah, yeah, I'm looking at it now. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Substack for being a platform that kind of, you know, people assume is kind of like the the tech bro kind of libertarian, right leaning, you know, a lot of the big hitters on there are, you know, pretty solidly left, I would say. But I, you know, I think part of it is to kind of, you know, bring a full circle is that, you know, I think a lot of people who traditionally consumed a lot of mainstream coverage whether it be the washington post new york times um i think felt kind of burned by how the election played out and how some of the coverage went and like bezos's stewardship of the washington post and kind of you know torching the editorial page you know making it kind of this very republican friendly space um you know some of the times this coverage of like biden's age i think kind of alienated a lot of people and so as a result i mean i got a lot of subscriptions right after like

you know after the election leading into the inauguration where you know people can leave notes as to why they're subscribing that were like i'm reallocating my dollars from corporate media to you know independent people and like you're one of the people that i read so i'm going to support you and um so i you know i think that has kind of made that, you know, our little ecosystem even healthier in certain ways. But, um, you know, that's, I guess, kind of one of the the interesting dynamics of our time is that your Republicans have all the power in Congress, obviously, they control the White House, but you know, I still feel like there's on the independent level, you know, especially on the big sub stack publications, like there's a very healthy, democratic, friendly media space these days. And, you know, I think if anything, the election and the way that the coverage of it played out kind of reinvigorated that even more. So, you know, a guy like Glenn, you know, I'm almost kind of embarrassed to admit that he was the first, like he was one of the first columnists that I read religiously, you know, during the George W. Bush years when I was in college, like I used to read everything that he wrote for the Guardian. And, you know, there's been a couple times that I just don't have time to like go back and revisit those. But I kind of wonder if I if I read his columns again from back then, if like, you know, how much he changed or did the times just change? Like what exactly happened there? I mean, I tend to think of like the Snowden stuff as being kind of what, you know, seemingly what pushed him a little bit further to the right, or at least kind of alienated him from the Democratic Party. But

then again, maybe he always kind of didn't like democrats but it was easier to to sort of elide that when bush was in power and most of his columns were about bush at the time so you know i think maybe he's kind of a unique case but um there's there was a little boomlet of like the matt taibis and the greenwalds and you know these these former kind of lefty personalities that moved right but i feel like I haven't seen too much of that. You know, I think that the way Trump came into office and all of the damage that he's done and the people that he's alienated have kind of coalesced people against him. And a lot of the fishers that I think really played a role in Trump winning last year,

I think people are kind of looking past those a little bit more and kind of staying unified against Trump. Now, you know, we'll see as we get closer to 2026, especially 2028, you know, as a primary starts to emerge, like, you know, I'm sure we'll see more kind of infighting on the left. But at least in my little corner of the world, you know, my sense has been that the left is a little more unified now than it was a year ago. It's a shame that that that Trump returning to power is what it took to kind of make that happen. But at least my mentions seem a little bit healthier than they were a year ago. And I think that's at my mentions. It's actually, it's both a sad and liberating state of affair, I think is the way that I

would put it, but a lot has broken on that. Are you active? I believe I follow you on BlueSky, but do you post much on there? You know, I need to post more, but yeah, I mean, I'm active on there. Yeah, I've moved a good amount of my follower base over there, and to the extent that I'm putting out

kind of like short-form quips and whatnot, I am active on there. Yeah. And you're active on TikTok as well. Oh yeah. TikTok. We actually, we just surpassed a 1.1 million on TikTok. And this is, this is so crazy. TikTok, even though we I'm doing accordion hands, even though we only, um, we've only been on TikTok a couple of years, we get about a hundred million views a month on YouTube. TikTok's already up to, I think it's like 40 or 45 million, even though we've been on there a fraction of the time. I mean, the growth on TikTok is crazy. And interestingly, my audience is like very male skewed on just about every platform on TikTok. It's the closest to 50 50 male female of any platform that I'm on.

So, you know, I'm making no commentary about China or the ownership structure or data management. I'm just saying it's very interesting that fastest growing and close to 50 50 gender split. So we're reaching a lot of different people there. And are you basically just kind of cutting up clips from your show and putting them on there? Are you doing kind of exclusive? Okay. Occasional exclusive, but mostly just vertical cuts of stuff. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's heartening to hear because yeah, I need to rethink my strategy there because, you know, it's kind of like, oh, this will be great. I'll just kind of repost

news clips. People use my clips on TikTok all the time anyway. So this will be great. But then it was like, no, my account was like immediately restricted so i think i need to do more obviously original content and like i said i'm doing a every friday sub stack live now so that would at least be some grist for like kind of original stuff because you know i do i'm very impressed with you know people who are good at tic tac and i see i know they have tools where you can do kind of basic video editing um or you know even people who are doing commentaries and news articles will just have like the image of the article behind them and then it's their video editing, or, you know, even people who are doing commentaries and news articles will just have like the image of the article behind them,

and then it's their face. But even that, you know, the production that goes into that is like almost too much for me, which is, I guess, kind of ironic since I do video, but I don't really produce stuff. I do clips, you know? Yeah.

But yeah, something to aspire to. That's great to hear that you're blowing up on there. Well-deserved. Well, listen, Aaron, it's been a pleasure. Make sure, if you're one of my viewers who's here watching, make sure you're subscribed to Aaron's public notice. If you didn't totally despise my presence here and you're one of Aaron's readers,

feel free to check out my sub stack as well. And let's do it again soon. Yeah, we'll have you on my show sometime and really appreciate the invite. Nice seeing you again. And thanks for having me on. Awesome. Thanks so much.