The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jon Stewart’s Children, and Trolling the Press Corps

Episode Date: April 7, 2017

Trevor Noah, Bassem Youssef, the founders of Reductress, and Andy Borowitz talk satire; a far-right blogger in the White House looks for a fight. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Oh, my God. We're not going to get through this. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Andy Borowitz. On today's show, understanding the Trump administration by revisiting an 1881 short story by Guy de Mopasson.

Also, a review of Brooklyn's controversial table-to-farm restaurant. And the creator of Hamilton unveils his much-awaited new musical about another Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. Andy Borowitz, on the nose as always, and very hurtful, Andy. I think I'm not going to recover. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I actually think some of those segments would work great. The Gita Mopassel thing, you put Adam Gopnik into that and you've got a home ride. I think you do. I'm David Ramnik, and today on the New Yorker Radio Hour, what we're really going to do is talk with some of the leading political satirists working today. So I wanted to start pretty close to home with Andy, who contributes the Borowitz report to New Yorker.com. I could probably just read his headlines for the next half an hour, and we'd all be very, very happy. But let me ask you this.

We're about, I don't know, what is it, 80 days into the Trump administration? Is that all? 80 days? Are you exhausted? It's exhausting. It is exhausting. What's been your favorite moment so far on the Trump administration? Oh, gosh.

I think that learning that Frederick Douglass was still alive made me very happy. I think that the way he kicked off Black History Month with Ben Carson's. He's doing a great job. His black friend. And yes, and that's one of the real tricky things for satiris, and this is so hard to improve on the original when he said, you know, Frederick Douglass, he's been doing a great job. He's been recognized more and more, I notice.

And he said it with so much confidence, so much. For a moment there, I thought maybe Frederick Douglas is alive. And it was maybe very happy. And doing a great job. And from a comedy point of view, who's your favorite member of the cabinet? Well, that's tricky. You know, people like Ben Carson and. the forgotten Rick Perry, who's in there somewhere, the Department of Energy Secretary, they seem like obvious candidates except that the two of them are barely sentient, so they don't give you very much. And I actually, my favorite, who I think is still a little bit under the radar, is Betsy DeVos. Why?

Well, I think in comedy, one thing that really makes a funny comedy character is sheer obliviousness. And she seems to have no sense just how out of her depths she is. I mean, she's living on the Amway fortune. So, like her fortune is partially based on a Ponzi scheme to begin with. But she, like so many of the billionaires in the cabinet, it really seems to believe she's qualified. It's really like she looks at her bank account and she thinks that that equals experience and expertise. She, I think, typifies that the most. That she has identified as the number one problem in our schools today,

grizzly bears who are roaming the halls and need to be shot. Now, I don't know if all our listeners know this, but I think now a couple of times in recent months, the Boris report has been taken seriously and literally, not just here, but abroad. This has been a problem. We, and you know this better than anybody. And we now label it.

We have labeled it 15 times. I think after every sentence, we say, just kidding and bold. And yet, nevertheless, what happens? Well, we did a story. It was after... What we. You're already distancing yourself. I did a story after Trump first alleged that Obama had been listening to him.

I did a story about Trump ordering all the phones in the White House covered in tinfoil. And I guess this was a convincing story, at least in China, because the official Chinese news agency picked this up. And the story. involved Trump in his bathrobe roaming the halls, ordering people like Kellyanne Conway to go out to the store and buy tinfoil. I really didn't think that this was one of the many stories I've written that were sort of on the border of reality. This one I thought was so way off in Tatters'U's. This is again, I think, a challenge of writing about Trump and probably why it's best to write about other people like Betsy DeVos, because anything you write about

Trump just seems credible immediately because of who he is and what he does. You know, our colleague Malcolm Gladwell, said recently in an episode of his podcast, revisionist history, that American satire kind of falls short. It's a little too polite to its subject. It doesn't go for the jugular. That was his take anyway. Does that ring true for you? You know, I think the British have like a different edge.

I think the British are more scathing and brutal. And I think what sometimes we call satire in America, I hate to get. into like labels, but sometimes it's more burlesque. A really brilliant example of this would be like Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. It's more like a burlesque treatment where, and he said, Alec has said in an interview, it's like, I'm not really saying anything satirical about him. I'm really just saying what he does and I'm sort of amping it up a little bit. I mean, the one thing I've been thinking is that once the American people made the decision that a game show host should have nuclear weapons, that was really kind of the end of satire. Like you can't really go past

that. That's good. All right. Are we done? You can read the Borowitz report by Andy Borowitz at New Yorker.com pretty much constantly. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. When you talk about contemporary political satire in America, the discussion has to revolve first around John Stewart.

In the years after September 11th, the Bush years, people began to talk about Stewart's Daily Show as a primary source of information, even if John Stewart himself resisted that role. For better or worse, satirist was suddenly a well-respected profession. Now Stewart's descendants are all over television in the web. His successor on The Daily Show was Trevor Noah. Noah was a contributor to the show with an unusual background by American television standards. He was from South Africa, a mixed-race child born in the late years of the apartheid era.

And eventually, he became a popular comedian there. grew up in a world where I had to, and we as people, had to obscure what we were really thinking or feeling for fear of retribution. And this is the story of many black people all over the world. One of the greatest examples is Capoeira, you know, martial arts that was born from slaves who could not practice in the view of the slave master, so they had to disguise it as a dance. That's essentially what many black people did for a long time in South Africa was no different. My family and I, we had to learn how to say what we wanted to say without saying it in a way that would get us into immediate trouble, you know, planting a seed without somebody

knowing what tree would grow from it. And that's the difference in my comedy is I don't come from a world where hitting something head on is always the best solution. Sometimes it's the roundabout journey that you take that gets you to your angle. So, Trevor, as somebody who's coming from outside the United States, you came here and you took one look at Donald Trump and you said, that guy is going to win. You practically predicted it. What gave you the ability to see that? What were you seeing in him? I saw someone who had been successful all over the world. You know, one thing I saw in Donald Trump was charisma. I saw, and I still see, someone who possesses many of the skills that a good comedian possesses, who knows how to read

an audience, feels whether his message is connecting, tweaks the material to suit the crowd, and is very good at working a bit to get it to the place where it crushes in every single arena and space. And that's what I watched Donald Trump do. I was, watch every single time Donald Trump got on TV, I went, man, this guy is good. And I remember people were like, oh, Jeff Bush, he's probably going to be the nominee. I said, but why? I said, well he's a bush and his policies. I said, look. That stuff was lost on you. I was like, let me just, just watching these people on stage, that man is fantastically entertaining and his message is clear, which was more important to me.

I knew what Donald Trump's policies were from the very beginning. And politicians, especially in America, have gotten so good at being obscure with the way they use their language. No one walks away actually knowing what they said. You have a feeling and an idea, but you don't really know they're about you know it's obscure talk about globalization and and tariffs and import duties and tax inversion and this guy just says build a wall just build a wall and everyone goes i i get it do you like building a wall do you not like i that's a simple policy to understand and i i watched him and he reminded me of people back home not just in africa not just on the continent but in the regions that i've done stand up in and i went this guy's got something

You did an amazing segment on the show where you compare Trump to a series of African strongmen, and were it not so horrifying, it would be unabashedly funny. What I'm trying to say is Donald Trump is presidential. He just happens to be running on the wrong continent. In face, in fact, once you realize that Trump is basically the perfect African president, you start to notice the similarities everywhere, like the level of self-regard. I say not in a braggadocious way. I've made billions and billions of dollars.

I made a tremendous amount of money. I'm really rich. I have a great temperament. They love me anyway. I don't have to do this. I've done an amazing job. I was born with a certain intellect. God helped me by giving me a certain brain. I bet that's the one time that God's like, I don't need the praise.

It's cool. That's you. That's you. I'm cool. Now, is that extraordinary level of bragging presidential? Well, let's ask a man who actually was president. Idi Amin, former president and best president of Uganda. The people likes me very much.

I am very popular. I am very powerful. I am the one who has got the money. I have got a very good brain. Now, I'm guessing that maybe John Stewart would not have the same frame of reference to call that up. And he may not have thought he could get away with it in some way. That's interesting. That it might have been a different.

Twitter storm of the kind that we're so familiar with. Is that the kind of frame of reference that's just there for you? Yes. That was born of a conversation we had at the show. People were losing their minds over Donald Trump and they said he's not presidential. He's madness. We've never seen anything like this. And they said to me, surely, Trevor, you are just, your mind must be blown. And I said, no, he's, I've seen this so many times. Because they thought the only African leader you had seen was Nelson Mandela. Exactly. A lot of people, and I got that.

And I said, this is common rhetoric. The best, the greatest, the most tremendous. The best brain. Exactly. Yeah. And I didn't even think it would be that spot on. I mean, what are the chances? Idi, I mean, literally saying, I have the best brain.

And Donald Trump going, I have the best brain. What are the chances? Like, that's how, I mean, Robert Mugabe for years has been running around saying so much winning, so much, there would be so much winning. And that's why he was so familiar to me. What role does your show play in this democratic universe? Wow, I've always questioned that. You know, when it comes to satire as a whole, you go, does it help? Because in some way, it brings attention to what's happening, or does it hinder because it gives people the illusion that something is being done? I think it's a combination of both. I also think, I also think,

think sometimes the effects may not be seen. You think it can hinder. Definitely. How? Sometimes people think because they've laughed at an issue or because they've mocked it. They've conquered it. They've conquered it. And that's not true.

You know, growing up in South Africa, that was a thing my mom and I used to do and my grandfather. We would mock the apartheid government, but we'd still march. You know, we'd mock the apartheid government, but we still went out and voted. Mm-hmm. You know, so the mockery and the satire was almost a replenishment of who we were as people. It galvanized how, well, it galvanized our intention, but our intention was still met with action. Trevor, how do you choose? I mean, I have this problem, too, as an editor.

There are so many glaring stories on a given day or a given week or a given month in this Trump universe. how do you choose which bizarre Trump thing to go after on a given night is it and do you do you get rid of the stuff that's too easy the hair the the tan the tweets well you you you try phase that out what i find is with any leader especially one who you suspect has autocratic tendencies it's always good to have a few of the tropes that you associate with them, you know, like a marker that you can keep on them. It gives you a consistency from night to night. It does. For example.

For example, you know, just like whether it could be Trump's language, just the way he speaks, sad, you know, tremendous, bigly. You know, those small things that you can, that help you build a character, you know, a character profile of who they are. But what I like to do is I see Donald Trump as an opportunity to engage in topics that may have been unfortunately too boring before Donald Trump to get into. The emoluments clause is something that no one wants to talk about. It was not big yucks before. Donald Trump, on the other hand, can make you talk about it.

Yeah. You know, talking about the congressional budget office is, I mean, it's policy wonk talk, budgets, ideas, health care. Oh, geez, let's get into the nitty-gritty. But Donald Trump adds a spice to it. And so what I try and do is, you know, people will go, you guys always talk about Trump. And I go, no, everything is related to Donald Trump. But you can use him like ketchup to digest many meals.

You have been here for a while. Yeah. Trevor Noah, host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central. On today's New Yorker Radio Hour, we're taking a look at the state of satire in America and abroad. In a minute, we'll hear how an Egyptian satirist created his version of a John Stewart-like show and how that landed him in exile. Stick around. I'm David Remnick, and you're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. We talk before the break about the impact of John Stewart's daily show on American

satire and society. But Stewart also inspired entertainers around the world to go hard on politics, sometimes in countries a lot less tolerant than ours. Bassem Yusuf, actually wasn't even an entertainer at all. He was a heart surgeon in Cairo. But he was a fan of Stuart, and he studied what made the Daily Show work. And so after Egypt's government fell in the Arab Spring, Yusuf started his own satirical show called Al-Bernameg, which translates simply as the show.

It was a huge success around the Middle East. Viewers loved it, but the ruling classes, not so much. In its third season, Al-Bernamig, under heavy pressure from the government, was canceled. And Yusuf was forced to flee the country. He's now living in the United States. Basma, I must tell you, I told my mother that I would be interviewing you. And I explained to her that for your early adult life,

until very recently, you were a heart surgeon, you were a doctor, and you dreamed of becoming a comedian. And she looked at me and she said, so he's an even bigger fool than you are, David. Well, yeah, yeah, this is quite a disappointment. for any mother, especially in the Middle East. Is your mom Jewish? She is.

Exactly. And that's exactly my point. We shared the same exact views about everything. If I had been a heart surgeon and then went off to make my living, picking talking dog cartoons. I couldn't imagine the heartbreak. But talk about that first decision of yours to leave a thriving practice and a hospital practice as a surgeon as a thoracic surgeon and become a comedian. I was a doctor waiting for my papers to come from Cleveland because I was accepted to work there

at a pediatric heart surgery fellow and I was waiting for my H-1B visa. A revolution happened. So this is at Tahrir Square. Yeah, this Tahrir Square. The revolution started and finished and then afterwards, me and a couple of friends started to pitch the idea of maybe we need

original Arabic content for YouTube. And it was their idea, but like I came up with the concept as that we should do political satire. And we did the videos. I posted there online. I didn't expect that more than 10,000 people would watch it. Suddenly we had 5 million and less than two months. And I have every single TV station wanting to hire me. But how did you have this talent?

Were you just the kind of funny doctor who made occasional jokes about the patients? I was a regular guy who would just say jokes like the other guy. I was not particularly a clown of the hospital or the class clown. I was just like a regular guy with like the good old regular Egyptian humor. That's it. What was the first episode about? The first episode about it is like how the media was trying to get people out of Tahrir Square, trying to spread whatever rumors there is

to tell them there are people having sex in the streets. There are different kind of nationalities conspiring against the country. That how this is all an external plot orchestrated by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, CIA and the Musad altogether. This one amazing moment in one of your shows where you ask a woman who's brought a kind of shopping bag

full of stuff to Tarir Square and you say, who's helping you buy these groceries or somebody asks her, how do you afford these groceries? Said, well, I get help from the Americans and then with perfect comic timing she said, and Iran, Hezbollah, etc.

And that was so natural because this is what we have been hearing in the media. It drove us furious and mad to see how the media were belittling the people. And unfortunately, many people believe them. There are people from outside so they must be enemies, so this revolution must be bad.

You know, I lived in Moscow in the late Soviet period as things were crumbling. And everybody that was educated and sophisticated had a sense of irony about the official state media. They made fun of it. Jokes were the currency, the main currency of political dissent for ordinary people. But there was also that vast number of people who believed the official media. How many people were believing what the official media? was saying about Tahrir Square, and how many people came to you

and found a kindred spirit and knew right away that you were telling the truth as opposed to the official media? I would say that it's always been 50-50. How does it break down? Well, the older generation has always been like a big believer of the media. Anything that would threaten them,

anything that has to do anything with security. These people hate us, these people hate our style of life, these people want to destroy the country, they would automatically go. Anything that would be propagated by the army, 100% believed. Now, you saw John Stewart as your main influence right away.

I mean, the resemblance and the things that you were getting from him were not hard to see. So what was the power that you saw on the Daily Show? What was the attraction that you had to it? He was making fun of authority, and I liked that. And no one was doing this in Egypt. Not in the, never even in the Middle East. There's nothing. the satire that was allowed to exist was social satire.

It was good if you want to make fun of the people. But never Mubarak, never Sadat, never, never, no. Oh, it's fine with the prime minister, but the presidents, no. I had 30 or 40 million people watching me, 50% this. 30 or 40 million people were watching you. Yeah, towards the end, that was 40 million. I repeat that only because there is not a show in the United States and I can think of that comes anywhere remotely near that.

I think a couple of million people. watch John Stewart on a nightly basis. Yeah, we were the only show in the Arab world that was making from the authority. So at one point in your new book, Revolution for Dummies, you write, I was a satirist, not a freedom

fighter. Don't you think you were a little of both and are a little of both? No. I think this is part of... I mean, John Stewart would make the same protests all the time. He would say, you know, I'm not, I'm just a satirist. I'm just making dumb jokes about Sarah Palin or Donald Trump.

That's always struck me with all to respect and admiration to John as a little disingenuous. I don't think it's disingenuous because when everybody has got a job, a satirist has got one job. What's your job? The satirist is not just to make fun or dumb jokes. The satirist is his job is to bring more people to the table to discuss issues that might, as the be difficult or dumb or dull to discuss. I talked about like how they wanted to bring coal back into and they call it clean coal right? Oh you have clean coal too? Of course and is it any cleaner there? Oh yeah sure I tried to speak about call I tried to speak about

sexual harassment but I was not we didn't have the luxury of changing things because authority is just too powerful there. Tell me what the pressure was like you were getting pressure all the time from the government to ratchet it back to to shut up to calm down to not make jokes about this or that or the other thing and you felt that pressure from one avenue or another what was the effect on you at home with your wife with your small daughter and the pressure took what form the pressure was kind of um uh i was taken for interrogation there was a warrant for my arrest i went to uh be interrogated and persecuted for like six hours.

What was the interrogation like? They were basically asking about my jokes. Did you mean to insult the president? Do you mean to insult Islam? And it was like the most ridiculous interrogation ever. How did you answer questions like that? I tried to be a smart ass. And then my lawyer would just advising me to not say,

this is not your audience, this is not your theater. You didn't get a lot of laughs in the interrogation? Oh, my God. The persecutor didn't laugh. But the people in his office was sitting there. And they were laughing because he was reciting jokes from the show, and they couldn't help it. So that was, but like under the military, the pressure was ugly. There were people at my theater, threatening to kill me.

In the audience. No, outside my theater. They're threatening to kill me, threatening to burn the theater. Show was being stopped. There was like... You had a show stopped. How? They were jamming my satellite signal.

You know, it was crazy. And so this is where members of my family and members of my friends started to hate me because I was speaking against the military. Because the military in Egypt is sacred much more than religion. And until now, there are uncles and ants in my family who think that I am a traitor and I'm a traitor to our military.

That must have been painful. Very painful. People from my own flesh and blood that would actually share from, on their Facebook pages, the hideous stuff that been said about me on the military. Uncles and aunts were sharing things that were attacks on you. Yeah, and friends.

Friends from school. Friends from school that knew me for 20 years. But when I was critical against the military, they just flipped out. They were like, they turned over night to be fascists. And that was hard. Tell me about leaving the country. When and why did this happen?

It's November 2014. there was a big arbitration case that was going on forever between me and my ex-network who canceled me. And then I received a call and my friends told me, we lost the arbitration. You owe them $15 million or $13 million. Which was not exactly in your checking account, $13 million. Not even a fraction of a fraction of that. They told me, the lawyer told me, listen, this is a political verdict. The next step, they would either confiscate your belongings or they would put.

put you on a no-fly list and they will prevent you from going outside the country. I received this call at 2 p.m. 5 p.m. I was on a flight outside of Egypt. And this is when I escaped and I never went back. This was just an instant you knew right away you had to get on an airplane. Yeah, yeah. With your family? No, they followed later. I mean, I always had the hope that they will not go after my wife, which thank God they didn't. When you pick up the paper, as I'm sure you do like the rest of us. Do you see similarities between Donald Trump and Cece?

Other than both are being played by Putin? Yeah. They're like they're both of it's the same thing. It's the same empty rhetoric. The non-facts, the alternative fact, the blatant lies, the victimhood that like

we have been wrong by everybody and the demagogy that like we are going to prevail and make Egypt and make America great again. It's the same thing. What does it tell you about the direction that this country is going in

now that you live here? Well, I wouldn't go that far and be dramatic and say direction because at the end of the day, you guys lost an election, just one election. And hopefully you still have institutions. People have to have faith

at the 400 years of democracy because if Trump single-handedly brings down democracy in this country, then your democracy was very fragile. And I hate to think that. So I was Uncle Bear, and he asked me to give him a diagnosis, and that was during the primaries. And I told him, well, America's body of democracy is still very healthy,

but they just have a big orange mole on its ass. So after Trump being present for two months, he asked me, so, doctor, what's your diagnosis now? And I said, I think people should stop trying to diagnose the mall. Nobody understands the mole. The mole could be a benign mold, a malignant mold, a Russian mole. Stop trying to understand the mole and focus on getting rid of the mole. So that was my diagnosis.

Bassem, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you've done and will do. Thank you. Bassem Yusuf's new book is called Revolution for Dummies. Beth Newell and Sarah Papillardo are writers and the founders of a really funny humor site called Reductress. Their sweet spot is to parody the magazines that offer women

miraculous crash diets and amazing sex tips and a pretty reductive view of feminist empowerment. Here's their version of a sort of history lesson. Reductress presents a timeline of the waves of feminism. 1939 to 1945. The We Can Do It Wave of Feminism. When Rosie the Riveter took a selfie and captioned it, we can do it. She literally broke whatever was around before the internet. Unfortunately, a lot of men thought it meant more work on top of our existing housework. 1960 to 1970. Madmen, we guess. This is the wave where your mom did stuff in an office. Some complicated shit went down during this time. Most of it can be figured out by watching Mad Men, asking your mom what happened, or just asking your mom what happened on Mad Men.

1970 to 1995. Shoulder pads and bangs. After strong fictional women like Laverne and Shirley and Murphy Brown entered the workforce, the real world was never the same. These brave ladies showed us that a woman could do any job a man can do, as long as she skipped to that job while singing or throwing her garments into the air. 1995 to 2001. Girl power.

Girl power was the battle cry of the tiny pink spaghetti strap top. top wearers of our youth. Finally, everyone knew what we wanted, what we really, really wanted. 2009 to 2013. Who run the world? Girls. Now, with Beyonce as our figurehead and Michelle Obama as our arms, there was no stopping us from running shit. Unfortunately, several feminist issues were left unresolved during this time, such as, can women play video games and can women wake up like this? 2014 to present. I woke up like this. I woke up like this. Women of the world, you woke up, Beyonce said, like this.

At last, we took back the a.m. Whose morning? Our morning. That was Beth Newell and Sarah Papalardo, the founders of Reductress. We published the piece you just heard, The Waves of Feminism Timeline in the fall of last year. Recently, Papalardo and Newell sat down with the New Yorkers, Emma Allen. I've seen Reductor's described, in a lot of places as the feminist onion

as a sort of probably sloppy shorthand. And I was wondering if also as a way to sort of describe what it is you guys do, you could say what's right about that and what's wrong about that. So what's right about it is that we personally are feminists. The content can feel feminist

because that's what informs our worldview and why we exist and what we do. Yeah. Also, it seems like anytime women do comedy with any sort of female bent or just reflecting their own identity as women or experiences. People like to call it feminist

regardless of what they're doing. We are feminist, but it's like sometimes it just feels like you're saying that because we're women. Right. And it's like The Onion, because as the Onion satirizes, sort of newspapers,

this started pretty specifically as something that satirized sort of women's magazines. Well, a big thing early on for us, I think was that there was this trend of empowering women's media and this empowering tone in women's media that was still being used to sell things to women and prey on their insecurities. Yeah, like, you know, an ad campaign using all differently sized women in order to sell firming lotion and just kind of these gaping contradictions and in messaging that were constantly happening. Yeah, always like all these elaborate tricks to please. your man and no mention of your own pleasure whatsoever.

Meanwhile, like, men are incredibly easy to please sexually. Like, why were we given all these directives? So much wasted ice. So then you guys sort of over time have expanded the world of sort of mommy blogs and, like, other women-centric internet spaces. I feel like there's this whole sort of rah-ra sisterhood type of feminism that turns very quickly when you don't agree with the very specific opinions of the people in the group. Yeah. I think a lot of women think that they're pro-women when they're actually just pro

their very specific needs as a woman. I think it's also part of our own internalized sexism, even like the most feminist among us. Like if a famous man screws up, we're like, oh, but, you know, he was really good on cheers or something. You know, like we're like, we can view it in context, but when a woman does it, we're always like, she's not feminist. screw her. Like, I'm done with her. And like burning her books and everything. It's like, we just can't understand that women are flawed. Yeah. Yeah, well, one thing in the sort of world of satire post-Trump is this crazy conflation of fake news and satire and confusion about the distinction between fake news and satire. And I thought it was interesting because one of your

slogans is the one and only fake women's news magazine. And have you guys had any sort of like weird confused backlash. Yeah, we definitely had some people who thought our pieces were real. One was before the election. If Trump wins, I'm moving to Alaska. And somebody wrote, I think, like a 6,000-word think piece about why Alaska's in this country, I guess. All these words, just to say Alaska is in the United States. Yeah, yeah.

People get pretty riled up. Yeah, I got an email from someone that was like, your piece about Beyonce being a member of the Illuminati, I'm trying to source this. And if you could provide me with the clips and like very studious about it. But to put that into context, we also get emails asking for sighted sources for headlines like, we ask these 10 women how they found success. And most of them said pretend to be a horse. Yeah. We do, we'll get like angry tweets online that are like, you're fake news. news and then you click on the people's profiles and they're just like the most openly sexist,

racist people. So you're like, yeah, I'm okay with that criticism. So in the whole, in the whole realm of clickbait versus real news, are you aspiring with your satire to like lead people toward the more complicated ideas or is it like satire can also just exist as diversion? It's a mix of both. I think in a perfect world, our goal is to try to like lead people to the truth and be sort of ethical about our satire in a sense. That said, I think we all need diversion at a certain point. And it's been an exhausting year for satirists like us, I think. It's work, you know. And so sometimes we just have to blow off some steam and make a dumb poop joke. Well, I mean, also like satire historically getting people to laugh at a thing

before you get people to look at the deeper, stagnating issues is a pretty good in. Yeah, especially because a lot of what we write asks the reader to kind of look within themselves and the things that they do. Humor is a really important way to kind of break that wall. People don't love being criticized. Yeah, I think when it's done best, I think it's done with at least a small element of love. The New Yorker's Emma Allen talking with Sarah Papillardo and Beth New Yorker. of the satire website Reductress.

You can find more of their work at New Yorker Radio.org. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and you're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. Andrew Moranz has been reporting for the New Yorker on the new brand of conservatism that the Trump administration has brought

to Washington, and these are people who are formerly on the very fringes of the right wing. One of those is a young blogger named Lucian Winrich. Last year, Wintrich began writing for the pro-Trump website, The Gateway Pundit. And a big part of what he does is trolling, basically. He'll mock women, minorities, overweight people, trans people, liberals, you name it.

Winrich himself is gay and made up the hashtag Twinks for Trump. Pretty much anything to generate a little outrage. That's his game so that you never know how much of what he's saying is real or sincere or not. Lucian Winchrich is now right at the center of American politics as gateway punitive. it's White House correspondent. He has no professional experience in reporting at all, and he writes a lot about his confrontations with other White House correspondents. Andrew Moran sat down with him in our studio. It is clear, and I don't know that you would deny this, that your beat as a White House correspondent is a little bit different from other people's beats. I mean, I think most people

from the sort of more traditional media, they're going in there having sort of background conversations with high administration officials, trying to get to the bottom of what's happening at the White House. what their connections may or may not be to the Russians. You're not doing that stuff, right? Well, here's the thing. If you have an entire room of reporters who in almost a humorously synchronized way are asking the exact same questions over and over and over,

essentially performing to the American people and telling the American people what they need to be asking, I'm obviously not going to do that. And I do think that a lot of, if you actually observe that room, and these sort of old guard media people, it's a room full of performance artists. So what exactly am I doing that differently,

aside from not complying to the sort of narrative or national plot line that they're working off of? Well, one thing they would say is they're pursuing the truth. Do you put any stock in that? The reason Sean Spicer had those gaggles is because he didn't want journalists performing on camera. And so I really don't see any more legitimacy in what they're doing than ideally what I'm doing. And I will note that I haven't even asked a question yet.

At this point, my trolling, so to speak, is literally confined to just being in the room, which apparently really triggers them. Well, let's say I take your point about the performance aspect. So let's take that out of it for the time being. Let's say we're on an off-camera gaggle. what would you do if you just got to talk to Sean Spicer right now on background off camera? You know, Sean, I think the media has been very unfair to you. I think you're doing a great job. I liked your St. Patrick's Day outfit.

So your job in that room is not to dig up new information? Is anybody's job in that room to really dig up information? Has anybody been able to find out something that hasn't been already printed? did a million times in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, able to actually get new information from those briefing room. And they didn't even interview us. So they interviewed everybody. Wow. I have to say, Andrew, let's just stop right here and ask this question. There's a caveat that a lot of White House reporting has nothing to do with the briefing room, first of all. What is this guy doing there?

So I think of trolling as trying to incite a specific reaction. And so a lot of what he's doing there is just by being there, he is getting people to react. act and that has been successful. I think part of his premise is true. There is a performative aspect to that briefing room. A lot of the real journalism doesn't happen in that room. And so by showing up, he's kind of doing almost a send-up of the serious journalist persona. But there doesn't seem to be much beyond that.

It sort of seems to be that's the schick. So why is he important at all? People are listening to what he says. The Gateway Pundit, in the run-up to the election, got a million page views a day. So it's a really big site. It has a lot of influence. The Drudge Report links to it a lot. It has readers.

And while the newspaper is running a boring story about health care economics, you know, the Gateway Pundit is running colorful stories with heroes and villains. And Lucian, therefore, when he lampoons the traditional media, when he points out their flaws, he is casting enough doubt and kind of muddying the waters to the point where it allows readers. who are so inclined to sort of throw their hands in the air and go, oh, forget it. I don't know who to believe. There are sort of two different distinct portions of what I should be doing. And one is actually examining policy and relatively dry writing, which I'm going to be doing more and more of. I think simultaneously, while I'm doing that, I want to be attacking the media for not doing their job. And I think that combination can be a wonderfully enlightening one for a lot of people.

And why? I mean, break that down because when we were there, you know, Andrew Mark, Marcus was talking about how this goes back to the 90s. Like, why is this the strategy to attack the media and to delegitimize them? Because we're able to do what these, again, it's almost the American Revolution, where the Brits are playing these old military games, where you have to assemble in a certain formation. That's how the old media plays, those constraints that, oh, we'll write a piece that is attack. I mean, come on, the Gateway Pundit has been continuously attacked by the mainstream media. And so they're doing it in information. Now, what we're doing is I'll write an article against them,

and then ideally I'll intermix that with actual articles about policy, whatever else. But it won't just be that. Then I'll take to Twitter and Snapchat and use all the new media entities at my disposal to make a brander, more disorienting case and play a little bit of guerrilla warfare against them, which they're not used to. Right. Well, and what they would say is, in addition to sort of being old-fashioned and behind the times, and not knowing how to get on Snapchat,

I think their argument would be, well, yeah, part of our formation is things like fidelity to the truth and not calling people names. If I had a dollar for every name, the mainstream media called me and every label they've given me, come on. I mean, that's disingenuous.

They're babbling dirty, but they're babbling in formation. But you call people pedophiles on Twitter, you allege that they're affiliated with PizzaGate. Like, that's a level that they don't go to. I didn't really. I just, with that specific, I know what you're referring to, with that specific writer, he did have someone of a pito mustache. And my, I just asked the question.

And good journalists do ask questions. And my question was, could this writer be a pedophile? No, no. I never said he was. Good journalists don't ask questions like, given this guy's mustache, is he a pedophile? That's not what they do. A good article and good journalism comes from first asking a question. and then either seeing if that question is true and plays out or if it's proven false.

Yeah, but come on. This is a good troll, but like you don't believe what you're saying. You know, I just, I'm a very curious person. Curious is not the word that first leaps to mine. And how can calling someone a pedophile be considered journalism? Or even interesting performance art. Can you explain a bit about where he comes from, what this, you know, what's this phenomenon source? He just, he sees it as a fight, right?

So he grew up in Pittsburgh. He went to Bard, you know, very progressive liberal arts college. Let's not blame this on Bard. Well, he does. He says that when he was there, he was kind of turned into a conservative. Did you like Bard? I had a very love and hate relationship with Bard. I was sort of disgusted by the crazy sort of progressive.

progressive views that I was exposed to more and more, which actually got me to sort of renounce the entire progressive movement. Like what? Well, I mean, one of the first instances for me was I was caught listening to rap music, and I'll say caught because a black student confronted me. And he said, well, you know, this music wasn't meant for you. And I said, okay, well, I mean... At Bard. But where in your room? Yeah, yeah.

Well, I was, okay, so the full story would be, I had a radio show briefly. I played a rap song on the radio. And my gosh, there might have been, again, college radio. I probably had three listeners. But one of those listeners was a member of the Black student organization. He took incredible issue to me playing a rap song. And, again, for me and the three other people listening. What was the song?

Do you remember? Yeah, it was a Nas song. I forget exactly which one, though. And you were just playing it? I was playing it and singing along. Singing along. And I think at one point you told me you were singing along and you were singing along

while he said the N-word and you said the N-word with him. I don't think he... Well, he said ending with an A, yeah. That inward. And you said it with him. Yeah. So that's a little bit more than playing a rap song. Singing along to it?

Yeah. Well, it's a different... You know, I personally, I also don't think... I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I was called a faggot. I really don't think that words have any power if you don't give them power. But again, with that specific instance, they didn't even mention me singing along to every word of the song. The problem that they specifically had incited was that that music wasn't meant for me.

And I'll never forget that. And so do you not believe that there's such a thing as hate speech or a speech that can hurt people or be offensive to people? I don't know. I mean, you know, I've been recently the actual small groups of 15-year-old white nationalists in this country have been attacking me relatively relentlessly on Twitter. It's annoying. Do I think that am I incapacitated and not getting out of bed because of it? No. It hurts, right, to be called names? It's obnoxious. It doesn't hurt.

Did it hurt you when you were younger? I mean, Oh, yeah, I mean, being called names always hurts, I think, younger kids. But, I mean, I did grow up in the inner city of Pittsburgh where you're relatively frequently, even though I wasn't out at the time, very frequently called a faggot, very frequently called a honky and a cracker. So, you know, I sort of personally became desensitized to name calling. I know that other people haven't had that luxury, and so I feel sorry for them, but that's not, again, It's not really my problem.

Andrew, you've been doing a lot of research into and writing about for the New Yorker the phenomenon of the alt-right and white nationalism. Where do Lucian's politics fit into all of this? And if it's all just a big, giant joke, is there any danger in it? So he's careful to distinguish himself from the white nationalists. He doesn't like Richard Spencer. He enjoys watching the video of Richard Spencer getting... Richard Spencer, who's essentially a neo-Nazi.

Yes, and who got punched in the face and there were memes made out of it. and Lucian actually enjoys consuming those memes as much as liberals do. He's very careful to distinguish himself from any form of neo-Nazism. But I do think he engages in some slippery slope kind of rhetoric where when it's all a guerrilla war, when it's all a sort of narrative and a counter-narrative, a lot of stuff gets lost, context, truth, reality. This conversation is dragging us into the twilight zone when it comes to truth and lying, when it comes to civic conversation and political conversation.

Not to be a big, big old stick in the mud, but that's where we are. What the hell has happened? Yeah. No, I know, and that's part of the strategy, is that then this wing of the right... And to befuddle people like us. Yeah, to befuddle people and to make us clutch our pearls and say, oh, no, this is so serious. And then they can say, look, we're the fun ones. We're the rabble rousers.

One could almost call it sad. Sad exclamation point. Yeah. Roll tape, is that. say. When I get the move of trolling, I get the move of scoring rhetorical points, but like, just truly when does the spin stop and when does the trolling stop? Or do we just live in a world where that's all there is? I don't know. I mean, you can ask the left. The second they stop pushing narratives, the right probably won't either. So it's not like there's somewhat of a symbiotic

relationship, I think, between political media. And, and, and, and, and, political affiliations. And I don't know. I mean, yeah, the second, the second, they stop poking, we'll stop poking back. So it's just a nan and poohoo. You did it. I can do it too. No, I mean, there's definitely, I think media right now in America is somewhat of a battlefield where the left is trying to control the narrative and the right is trying to control the narrative. And there's always going to be that back and forth. There always has been. Is it all just narratives? I mean, isn't one of the narratives more true than the other one? Like, if the left wants to push the narrative. You've said this couple times that the left wants to push

the narrative that the Trump campaign was in bed with the Russians. Whether the left wants to push that narrative or not, isn't that a separate question from whether it's true? Well, rather than screaming about Trump and the Russians continuously, I mean, Hillary, there were also articles talking about how Hillary Clinton's campaign had far more and deep ties to the Russians than Trump. And why hasn't that been all over the papers? But that's a talking point. Like literally, I'm asking you as a human being, don't you worry about whether it's true? Don't I worry whether or not it's true. Don't you stay awake at night worrying about whether the Russian government has compromising material on our president that's going to cause him to act erratically?

I mean, you know, until I see something, I mean, that's like saying, don't you lay awake at night, scared that Trump might be from outer space. No, it's not because there's evidence for it. The FBI is investigating it. They're not investigating whether he's from outer space. But yeah, they're investigating it at the behest of Democratic senators. No, no, no, no. They're the FBI. They're doing their job. There's evidence that they're tracking down.

No, I'm like literally asking you as a human being. I get what your role is as a media gladiator, as a guerrilla fighter. But as an American citizen, when do you just want to uncover the truth rather than playing your side in a guerrilla war? You know, I think that, yeah, everybody is going to be naturally continuously curious. I, um, based on, again, I, this is sort of a boy who cried wolf scenario for me with the media, and they've been claiming these Russian connections and providing little to no evidence. Um, the, uh, whether or not, um, the FBI, uh, was able to sort of dig anything up when they, uh, when they, uh, were monitoring Trump. Uh, I mean, they, they didn't, basically. And that's why they had to put the, uh, the request in a second time because the first time it wasn't justified. If tomorrow the New York Times reported that the FBI has found linkages between the Trump campaign and the Russians, you would write a post saying you can't trust the New York Times and you can't trust the FBI, right?

It depends what they, it really does depend what they exactly uncovered. If it's, if it's that a lower level official or a strategy official during Trump's campaign colluded, then would we post that? I mean, that's going to be all over the news. So, I mean, from a media perspective, we might, but you're going to be able to get much better in-depth reporting. Because we, I mean, for the most art, our articles are relatively short form. And a story like that, it would require, say, a longer piece in the Law Street Journal or any number of these other fake news entities. That's White House correspondent, Lucian Winchrich of the Gateway Pundit. talked with the New Yorkers, Andrew Morantz. And that's it for today. Next week on the show,

a conversation with Margaret Atwood. I'm David Remnick. See you next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.