Matt Taibbi: How Intel Agencies Control the Media, Putin’s Rise to Power, and 2024 Predictions
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It's italian by way of lebanese. It's like silly an it's ara. Yes, but i'm neither.

My father, my mother's irish. He was adopted two, really. yeah. Ah wow.

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okay. So here's my question. Your reporter, you've been a reporter your entire life. Your dad was your reporter, well known reporter. So you grew up in journalism. Journalism is now justly, I would say, the mutated profession, the sacks or family, is more popular than nbc news at this point, right? And congress is more popular.

Congress is.

yeah, people like you. Maybe a tribal story can be fixed. We don't need to execute them. But he OK so IT. Um so that's powdering, i'm sure for you. But for those of us who having trouble remembering what the media landscape look in, like nineteen ninety when you're finishing college, what were your assumptions about journalism? What did you think you are .

getting into when you started? So uh, I grew up around. My dad were, yeah, uh, he was A T V reporter in kind of the hay day of local affiliate news, like as portrait and anchor man, yeah, the bad facial hair, all that stuff.

I used to hang around the news or moat time. And my father is of a reporter's reporter. He is very gifted at striking up conversations with people. He's really good at that aspect of the job, which is, I would say, probably the most important thing, which is being able to talk to people and get everybody's perspective.

He would be able to go to um you know any scene, a fire or murder whatever instantaneity get people talking to him interesting him and um what where does that skill come from? I think he just got have to be born with that yeah certainly sort of great area this right that some people have likes people. Yeah, he likes people.

He, he, he's able to know to strike up conversations quickly. And I was very shy growing up. So the first thing I concluded was i'm never going to be able to do that, right?

So this is, this is like a superpower that he has that I don't. And I thought I would have to go in a different direction. I also grew up wanting to be a fiction writer, right? I was really obsessed with that growing up. Um and then when I got a college, I realized that the only thing I really knew how to do was his job because I had washed IT so much growing up and so IT was something that would keep me at least can gently in the writing business so I got into IT and only over time that I really appreciate um the way they did reporting back then IT was a much different thing than what people on I think like .

my dad is something embarrassing or my dad is something important and useful.

No, I thought what he did was important, useful and honest. And you know there were something very egalitarian, the way reporters Carried themselves once upon a time, they only now our journalists univerSally called from the iv leagues and these upper class schools. In fact, I was part of that generation of some of rich kids who went into journalism when my father went into a he started when he was eighteen.

Journalism was more of a trade h than a profession. Uh, IT wasn't necessarily to have a college education. And most of the people who win into IT, they had kind of a natural and antipathy for a people in power. yes.

Uh they uh overwhelmingly cited with the ordinary person, uh, just reflexive vely and they were they told the news from that perspective very often, right? And I was the classic uh, editorialist at the time with somebody like Jimmy brisling or mike royko, the sort of voice of the people, the kind of a thing. And so I grew up always imagining that the reporter was somebody who was on the side of ordinary people.

Uh.

and that is not one right? Yeah, exactly. I know my father Carried IT that way for sure. And, uh.

so I did. Your father never go to college.

No, he did. He went to he wanted to records um he had me while he was that records. That's why he had to go into reporting.

He worked at the home news and um in new brands weekend jersey and um graduate T V but but no, I always had this vision of of journalism. M as this thing that you know IT wasn't IT wasn't for intellectuals IT wasn't for you know people who had graduate degrees. That was for people who hostile who who worked hard and had you know kind of a common touch, right?

Like that's kind of the key to the job is being willing to listen to people and all that. So I had A A very specific idea of what journalism was when I went into IT. Um I just thought I wasn't be going to be particularly good at IT uh because because of that you a deficit right like I didn't have that gift that he had. Um but I started overseas in russia and because I was able to H A progression already early, I had an advantage over um other american reporters at the time here you go to russia so I studied in eighty nine and ninety when I was still soviet. Um you know I might took a year and a half abroad and then went back as soon as I graduate, actually went back before I graduated and started stringing and working for um a bunch of different organizations that rents finally got a job at an .

next part so next one is yeah .

number one ish ninety two right after the revolution, basically, which is ninety one August sumer, August ninety one yes. So shortly after that.

what is IT like IT was amazing.

Um IT was the wild west, you know. I mean, no, the funny thing for me, if people ask me, why did I look russia so much? That would mean the first reason was, is that all may favorite writers growing up, her russians.

And I know Nicole gogol was my hero. I wanted to be A A comic novelist. And the russians have so many amazingly funny writer, as as as, you know, right now, from bog to to love lots of all these people.

I wanted to learn the language. Then when I got there, I had been a very depressed, uh, teenager, had struggled socially, behave really all these other things. I got to late, soviet, russian, everybody's depressed.

And, you know, nobody y's happy. Y and I thought, this is amazing. I fit right in in .

a dark slovic. You didn't even .

know exactly in america. There's an incredible pressure on Young people. You you have to succeed right away here for, yeah, be cheerful, look good, be in shape, like all these other things.

Russia is no weight. That that there was none of that. Nobody was going anywhere. And when I got there, that was this incredibly attractive to the end. And and so you, i've never .

heard that take before. That is awesome. No.

IT IT was really funny. And because of that, I got along with russians in a way probably that other americans didn't. You know, I think there was a connection there that that was very natural and um I really took to the place early on.

How did you speak the language?

Well, that means like any anybody who you know, you come to the nine states, if you have no choice and you have to speak english, you learn that pretty quickly. Um so uh, I studied in same Peters burb, but then I briefly went to use bekie an a, because I had this idea that there weren't that many strangers in his pakistani so I would get more work。

And no, I don't know that there are strangers anymore.

What's a string? So a stringer is like a person who um is not on staff for a news but just sort of sits in a place and wait for something that happen. And then you know like the new york times of the ap will call them and say, hey, can you can you chase down that, you know, thing that happened, in my case, an earthquake that happened in kerg.

Stan gave me an a little chance to write a couple of stories, right? And who do you get them for? I think I wrote one for ap uh in one thousand and ninety one. Um I ended up I getting throwing out of his bike, stan, because I had a bad VISA.

But while I was there, um I I really learned russian because nobody there are spoke english and I also I was on the use big national baseball team which was hilarious um so one day I was walking past one of the colleges and I saw people playing baseball and I was gonna keep walking and then I thought, I mean was bekie an what is that? Uh, IT turned out that there was, I think IT was like a refrigeration school and there are a whole bunch of students from cuba and now those guys could really play right. Um so I just went next you guys modify play with you and uh so I ended up being a catcher on a team full of cubans with a russian coach.

And uh we played other central uh, asian countries and there was yeah we had we had ground rules. This is going to sound like a fake story, but it's true. We had ground rules when we played in a pasture. Uh, if you hit a sheep IT was a double I start, if you hit a cow was a oub, if you hit a sheep .

was a triple. Uh.

that is a true story. I hit A C two games place. But um but that actually happened now is actually playing baseball. Um I when I got thrown out of the country.

so whose pakistan in one thousand eight .

ninety one was not a first world place no as it's kind of a typical soviet satellite country. IT was really struggling economically. IT had all kinds of problems environmentally.

Uh no used to be at the big cotton producer for the big union. And then, uh you know they that sort of dried up for various reasons to see of our office is now gone, right? It's so um IT was a trouble place, there was a war going to je stan right next to us。 Um and so IT was an interesting place to be. Um first experience .

what my mother .

was terrified when I when I got thrown out of the country, I got to visit by these people who I guess there were for what was the s nb the the solution but not seen on the business of business nesty which is just the um there version of the K G B. And they asked me for my papers. I had the wrong papers. I was there in a student fees that I kind of, you know what was kind of phony and but I had the same, a telegram, a telling my parents that i've been kicked out of a country. So I wrote K, G, B kicking me out um work call from moscow, but he got K G, B kicking me good well call when I get to mask .

so he was .

worried um but no is fine but your dad is for IT. Yeah I think he he thought the whole you know adventure was interesting and then when he found me visited russia in the midnight ties um you know and so what the place was like at the time he said he was in a paramus for journalist which IT was because there was so much crazy stuff going on um and that was a great place to learn the profession really yeah what .

was press freedom like that?

That was really interesting. There was a very viBrant community of really hard for great investigative reporters. We suddenly appeared that on and nowhere, because we know, but the press had been suppressed almost completely for, you know, eighty, eighty years, right? And after as soon as there was, you know, a little bit of an opening to do real reporting, they were suddenly these very brave reporters who showed up.

And were they were risking their lives every time they wrote because the way the system was set up was that every newspaper was basically owned by a different gangster. Um and he would get material, they called IT selling jeans over there, right? So somebody would get give you A A, A pack of information.

You would write IT up about the rival gangland figure or politian. And then, but if they wanted to be you to pay the prize, you would, you know, you might get shot in the door way or something like that. So there were people who got killed by exploding brief cases.

For instance, there was a guy named demo hodo who worked for a moscow. He comes some olets when I was there who had written about yeltsin's defense minister. He got blown up in a train station um but you know the russian, those guys were my heroes.

I tagged on to a bunch of those people. Really early and that's really kind of really learn the whole invest journal with something with from those people um you know not all of whom stayed in the business for very long. Sometimes not voluntary.

You stay ten years.

yes.

how come?

I mean, I love the place I was planning on staying forever, really. Um you know, then things definitely turn weird. A when the transformation from yelling the put in happened, yes, we all, none of us had any illusions about who putin n was. Putin was a known quantity was the deputy mayor same Peters burg when I was a student and same Petersburg um he he was kind of known as um but I mean he there are all sorts of stories that we're told about him back then and when he first came to um to power in moscow IT sort widely understood that he was doing IT and yell even write about this in his biography because elson needed help getting out of the country and escaping prosecution and um there there had been some indication that couldn't had done that for his previous boss the mayor saying Peters burgo until I sub check so you know the sort of investigator journalism community was very suspicious of putin when he first arrived um but the western journalism community loved them and love yeah yeah and this was you know I already become the solution with american journalism before that for because they had misreported a lot of things about post common russia but that was kind of less raw for me. I think traditionally .

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So would they would send somebody out to some provincial town like tomorrow with the within assignment um find the thriving emerging middle class right and see you d go out to a place where there's like a barter economy, right people are doing subsistence farming, you know and they would they would ask around until he found somebody you had you know A V C R who or who had been on a vacation to a bits or once or something like that and then they would do a whole story like, you know, transition to capitalism, flourishing of you.

The emerging middle class know everything is happening right on schedule. And meanwhile the country was really in the yellin years was really doing very badly, right? It's in contrast to now, you know, russia was experiencing the record levels of early deaths yes, um all kinds of horrific things that they weren't telling people back home.

And so because the the expert community and you know I I don't really know exactly how this works, but the there was a monoculture about the reporting there that is very similar to what now in amErica but there IT was sort of cartoon zed. It's a very small community. Everybody knew everybody else and you know whatever the washington post in the new york times wrote about um pretty much everybody else followed their there was almost nobody um among the reporters who even spoke russian, right, that was told you.

how can you cover a country they don't speak the .

language because that was the tradition. I mean, if you people would come in in there for a few years, they would work with translators. They stayed in a little compound on cpus, sky prospect through which is you know right here the center of the city in the soviet days but sort of walled off by by design but they continued living there for some reason that I didn't really understand um and with A A couple of exceptions you know I can think there was a boston global reporter who was fantastic right well I was there um but for the most part you know people came in and they they just treated IT as a you know as a third roll backwater it's like you read the quiet american.

but I don't understand so if you don't speak a language, i've lived here for fifty five years. I speak english as a native speaker. Barely understand.

The country is just too complicated. But if you can speak the language, you just don't understand that at all. You you have no hope of understanding .

and do you that that's what I thought, right? And and this was not just a journalist, but also the diplomats there. But this, the ambassador to to russian Michelle mic fall.

He couldn't. He could barely, to put a sense together in russian. So what is that?

That just seems like a baseline requirement.

So the way was explained to us was that this was something that was a hanging over from um the american diplomatic experience in china before the mouse revolution where the diplomats for game to have been too close to the local population didn't warn uh the people back home what was happening. So uh they made A A habit out of cycling people from spot to spot so they wouldn't become to a uh custom to the culture uh or to a cultural right uh which I can maybe see the rational for a diplomat maybe but for a journalist that makes no sense at all right? So to not to not understand the called the place that are reporting on um so by then is IT doesn't make sense .

to not understand the place for reporting on .

that either. We can agree on that right? Yeah but so A A strange activity that a lot of them more involved in where they they mostly interviewed the english speaking officials in the yeltsin government.

A A lot of them who had gone to harvard and they were getting one very specific version of what russia was going through. What is chAllenges were and at the time, by then I already branched off. I'd left um the x pat paper of the moscow time. I started at my own newspaper, which was like a nightlife guide, and I started doing this thing in opposition to that, which was I would go around the country getting jobs in good places like I I would work as a brick layer in siberia. Uh yeah I I did um worked to the monastery and model a what did you doing the monter .

construction .

you so well need tour the country and kind of find IT exactly how people we're doing, what what the situation was like. And IT was an an amazing discovery because every every place I want, I learned about a new lie that was being told, you know to people back home. And IT IT was deeply dissolution ing for me I mean, I I know you've had experiences like this in journalism too, right where you find out that something you thought is totally wrong and um and that was a real ee opener for me .

completely wrong.

Completely wrong. Yeah exactly. And moreover, that was proven relatively quickly right? There was a massive financial collapse and in ninety eight and then putin came in uh and there was A A huge popular repetition of to the american style version of managed democracy that exists in under yellow.

And that was real, I mean, put put in for all for all of his uh, problems. And I was real critic of putins when I was there. Uh, there was no question that he was much more popular than than Ellen know. The country was very embarrassed by ylang um because he was probably drunk all the time. This functional who are living through some of those emotions now yes.

are shameful .

yeah and and so they wanted to know there would be a single record, right they wanted a strong hand ah who would come in and kind of set things right and and compete with the americans and they didn't like being thought I was a vessel state to the west. This is an ancient conflict for russia and amErica that goes back to the days to Peter the great, the sound of files versus that, the western, uh, know the people, the pro western crew and IT the pencil swung the other way while I was there, you know and that was, you know, fascinating to watch, but ahead, some pretty serious consequences too.

Well, that turned out .

to be right yeah so but .

as for journalism like you, you began to become the solution with the american .

version in the nine yes yeah absolutely while I was in russia and I became the solution both with the format of IT. You know that the kind of neutral third person um version of reporting where we pretend we're not having a point of view, um I didn't like that. You know like Francis, I would get sent out when I was at the moscow, which is a paper I love, but they would send me to all these events were funny.

Things would happen that would come back and write IT up with humor, and they would tell me to take out the humor and write IT in some other way. That was, like, more serious. And I think that's a lie, right? Like, if you if you go to a scene that's funny, like Frances, I had the cover of this ridiculous press conference where prince Philip appeared for, I think, the world wildlife fund, or something like that, and he is giving a speech, told these russians about they're backward attitudes about conservation and everything.

And in the middle of speech, the hotel brings the spread, which includes booze, and all the reporters get up and leave prince Philip talking by himself. They, they just eat all the food and drink and drink all the booze. And to me, that's the story. Yeah, yeah, you know. So I went home and I wrote that up and know they kind of want to me to do something else.

like.

pretended didn't happen, right? exactly. And this isn't right. You know, I mean, I was a kid I didn't really know, but I thought there is something not quite right about this.

What extent to, in retrospect, do you think that western news organizations were taking their cues from western businesses or .

western governments? Oh, I mean, ninety percent, ninety five percent. absolutely. yeah. I mean, if you go back and look at the coverage of new york times, the washington post, some other organizations, you know, the current deputy prime minister, canada Christia freeing, was sort of a colleague at the time. He was part of that whole crew of western journalists there.

What was he like? Well, they were all doing kind of the same thing like that. The basic line was that there was a new group of robber barring capitalists who had appeared um and yes, IT was a messy IT was a messy transition.

The capitalism was the word they used for now actually IT was just pure gangs to most of the people who got rich, did so through absolutely corrupt privatization schemes. Were like, for instance, there was anything called loans for shares, but the government was literally lending the money to cronies so they could buy companies like x on for pennies on the dollar. You know, I mean, like u cos, for instance, was a gigantic oil company worth you as much as any western oil company would be worth.

So they bought IT for nothing, basically for for a pins, because there were piles of the people in government. So they created an instant billionaire class. And that was completely passed over. Nobody reported on that. Um then once these people are out of money, uh, they were treated as sort of legitimate wealth creators and yeah exactly they didn't. They were in even with the robber barrels or at least like the rail like these guys didn't do anything except steel you know they were wealth extractors and um and was amazing watching the hype of uh of these figures the the White washing of yells ons complete this rule is um you know his brutalizing of domestic journalists, right? I mean like there was a ton of that going on in the nineteen, but long before putin n came to office, and even from, yes, there were so many journalists were killed before putin killed under yells, yeah, the guy .

mentioned in killed journalists no.

this started. This started from the very beginning they were doing this. I mean, that guy I told you about what the exploding briefcase that was one thousand nine hundred and ninety four when that happened um you know there were there were a lot. I had a friend, not exactly friend, and somebody I knew well, Alexander hinchey, who also worked for a newspaper there he got thrown in a mental institution.

Uh in the yellow years um there were there were all sorts reporters shot if you go in in, in shot, shot, kill, beaten um you know I had another friend, uh leaned cw talk off uh, who was not only fired every time he didn't expose but you know he would be attacked. He had somebody come through his window one night, if I remember correctly. Um so there was a dangerous profession before putin came to office.

Now obviously they went to a new level once he came in. And know there were people I knew who died right um know in the years after he he became president but IT wasn't an appreciably different vibe for journalists the the difference was that they that putin concentrated yeah government authority in a way that had not been done previously before IT was more like a gangland free for all. Putin came in and he took over the last remaining independent television station and T V.

Um he had the one of the oligarchs arrested lady margus ki and you know the owner of a bank mAnita famously put in jail. They were sponsors of media as well. So uh but the only thing that was different is that the government was exerting sort of over control over over media and they were they were stamp out the individual pockets of opposition. So during the last years, IT was very dangerous as you did still have some freedom to really good work and and that's why those people were amazing like, you know, they were risking everything every time did a story and they were still doing that. They had such balls IT was incredible.

One is just interesting um and .

then the contrast, by the way, with between that and on the americans right was was just so striking for .

me but why would american journalists be providing cover for yelling or ignoring the downside of elson?

So some of IT was cultural. You know, you come in, you don't speak the language is a temporary signal. You're hanging around with a much of other westerners and see, you don't see right like that. That was a very typical thing.

The few reporters who you know to spoke the language and or married russian women, right, or russian men, um they were Better right because they were at leasing to to what was going on in the country. But moscow was still and same period were like a different country compared to what was going on the rest of russia. Yeah you could be in moscow. And IT would seem like a moral as functional place. You go forty miles outside the city, and again, their subsistences farming, you know, and others whole stretches where there is no government and people are just setting up toll roads, you know, there they're putting on camel fatih, creating their own tombs. Um so it's like beyroot yeah exactly and but if you didn't know if you didn't go out, you wouldn't see IT, you know so I think that was IT was a problem of perception for a lot of these folks and but I thought I was inexcusable because you know as as the report of your first job is is to find out, you know to check for yourself.

and how are you treated by government there？

So the we had a unique position because we were publishing in russia. So unlike all those other reporter, american reporters, I was technically a russian new's organization that we had a russian newspaper, we had a russian business, right. So even though we are in in english, we were regulated by um you know the the the russian government.

Um we got visited every now and then by the tax police asking for bribes and then um after after I left the eventually shut the paper down so but they you know they pay attention to us but the IT wasn't the same as um the way they pay attention to you know the new are times and other reporters. I mean, there were people who are part of the off, remember that name? Yeah yeah so he got he got shot right? While he was there。 And I I don't know that there was a russian government interest that that did that, but they were paying attention to coverage that went out overseas. They warn they didn't care so much about what I was doing, what he was writing for people who are in russia and and also we are writing in english. So they got how many russian officials even understanding what we were doing?

Some yeah so how did um well for sure why do .

you leave? Well, IT became harder and harder. The expect community shrank when putin came to power, which killed our advertiser base. The end um I I we had a human newspaper that was sort obviously based on like across between spy magazine and screw and I I kind of thought that we had you know run the course yeah creatively while I was there and you know like h at some point I just wanted to come home but um but also you know what you kind of turn nici.

你 38的p who I knew I like I I weekly knew and a public costa， for instance, who got killed but was there her and there was another reporter who was sort from mentor to me, this guy you a shake a chicken who became a um a dement deputy uh, he died under mysterious circumstances some people said that was a poison telephone, I mean, who knows right? But IT got kind of unpleasant um and you know the community was just not as as big as that had been in in the in the nineties. I mean moscow in the late nineties was an incredible scene. IT was like chicago in the third ties, so it's very difficult to describe what IT was actually like. Um you know gangsters ever you were bodies you know all over the place, people being thrown out of windows that were terrorist explosions happening all the time that was IT was a wild place to be um and you know that that story kind of an IT court it's core as well as well I was there and the city started to transform into what you said when you went.

Yeah the most functional.

which is so is so amazing for me to here.

certainly shocking for me. So this winner, standing the kitchen with my dogs and my wife, comes in SHE, just come back from a long walk and SHE has this look on her face, this look of tranquility and joy and peace. And I said, what even doing? And he said, I was praying.

And I said, where? He said on my walk for an hour a half. And IT turns out he was listened to something i'd ever heard of before.

An APP called hello, hello, H A L L O W hello, like hello. And a friend of first gave a tour. And this set off a chain reaction in my family, where pretty much everyone in my family starts to listen to hello. Every, it's a prayer and it's the best way, as you know, to find peace. And this makes IT very easy to set aside the time to deeply pray every single day.

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So you missed in the ten years you were gone, the entire span of the clinkers in one eleven. And so I think is further today was a completely different country in two thousand. Two from water a bit in one thousand .

nine hundred ninety two.

What did you think when you go back?

Um well, I mean, I was I was shocked when I got back and I was thinking about this just the other day because you know I think a lot now about kind of america's fly toward autocracy because I had this vision when the whole time is there, you know, watching the russian government and action, who was like getting this incredible advanced education into other crato craic methods yes, how things work great. Um you know the jAiling of political opponents on trumped up charges or you know black mail and how things are leaked by the intelligence services is like that such as happens out the open there right and I always had the image that, well amErica that doesn't go on um and then I come home to post nine eleven amErica and the the whole via is well we have to start throwing all of our democratic guarantees overboard because as I think, as dick in you put that we have to start expLoring the dark side um because the bill of rights is inadequate to keep us safe we need to start doing you know all these things that I thought we're crazy or the patriot, the authorization use military force right? Like so so moving the authority to declare war out of congress to basic to the White house mass surveilling, uh in guantanamo bay all these things that were really shocking to me and I IT was kind of, I thought, is also ironi C2Come bac k fro m rus sia to thi s dev eloping sit uation.

And so what do you back?

Two thousand and two.

So was this cleared to you then, where the trajectory was headed?

Well, I thought there would be. I was really not even in respect. I thought there. I took all my sort of fellow political liberals seriously when they said they were you ardently opposed to this secretive revolution, right? And the spice state and drone warfare in all these other things and and when brock obama, the constitutional lawyer, came along and there was this believe that a transformer would usan a transformer of presidency that would undo this chiney vision which scared me you know yeah I thought was out of going to undo the schoolhouse rock version of amErica that I grew believing in um and ah I believe believe that i'm kind of a embarrass now I I actually thought that was going to happen that when barack obama got a that all that would would turn back um but in hindi, you know they never had any intention that seems that of changing anything if you go back and look at the statements, you know they were saying things like we're we might not change the status to right away right um and I had you know I ve been very positive with a brock obama. I covered him on the campaign trail um 就是 but my job by the way， when I came back I looked into getting the greatest job in journalism which is covering campaigns for rolling stone right and um and I I was very impressed by barack obama. I thought he was incredible um but he was in disillusioning to see what happened afterwards.

At what point did you realized he wasn't? He thought he was .

so uh right after he got elected and I got a sign to cover because of of the financial crisis and which was funny because I had no background in finance. Have any clue what a morning age back security was, how any that works but one of the first things that happened was that, know I got calls from people in the democratic party who said you should look at the president's relationship, the city group um and know how the city group bailout happens you know he put a city group executive who had been a college body of his in charge of his economic transition during which they give a very you know a sweet heart bailout deal to to to city group and this was an early indication that you know this president was maybe not exactly what I thought he .

was not transforming of .

in the way you imagined and exactly um even though rolling stone couldn't they were over the moon about obama.

right? That was true love. I remember that .

I C E I mean everybody in in liberal media loved obama um but particularly at our magazine where uh the the the people who owned IT were they were they were just still serious about obama and so when I came to them and I I said, look, I have to the story about how this this below situation is corrupt um they weren't please but they ran if you go back and look, you'll see there's a story called obama's s big sell out IT was like a nine thousand word feature that they let me run and um so that was like a year after he got the office but that was kind of the beginning of the P C.

IT basically said obama had run as an economic populist um and had talked a lot about reforming a certain things that have gone on a wall street that had allowed um you know the excesses of the the mortgage bubble to happen. yes. And then as soon as um he got elected he brought in all these accolades um of sorry, the clinton former treasury sector.

Rubin bob man, so there are all these. Rubin was at city group. Obama brought a whole bunch of people close to bob rubin into the government.

And, you know, these were the same kind of people who had caused the crash. Yes, right? So to me, I wrote, that is kind of A A band switch.

No, he ran as somebody. He was going to change a system. He brought in people who were the system. And in addition, there was this bailout deal with city group in particularly that was that was kind of a uh um there were there were people who ended up paying fines in that situation. Um but IT was very critical of basically who obama had brought in to run his economic policy. And the idea was he had run as one thing and he was really another thing so that was one of the first stories of that time.

How did the obama administration react to the peace?

Um they weren't happy. Um if you go back and look there there's there's an interview with obama. They did an official rolling stone interview within years later where he um he sort of brought up the fact that even you're magazine talked about how I didn't do enough um and this was like years after the fact and by the way, I had been incredibly complimentary of him while he was running right so of all of the things that that had been written about him, what he remembered was this one slight you know which I thought was very telling and a sign of his character, you know and but at the time I wasn't paying attention to the other things like about, know the continued prosecution of the war on terror. The drone assassination thing, the killer st you know, terror tuesday is all that stuff I didn't really clue into that because .

because an american citizen was a drone.

Yeah no exactly. That whole thing was incredible. I know I I did a story later about another american who suit the government for because he thought he was only killers um and you know that the government's response was you're not entitled to find out whether you're on IT or not you're the kill was yeah and the whole idea that we even have something called like lethal action that IT might apply to an american citizen that you can do that without due process. And you know, if you go back and looks, they basically invented, I mean, I don't know how deluging this was for you, but they just made up on the flight legal legal justifications for what they were doing that weren't t grounded, any law that was passed or any any court case they just said have wrote themselves White paper, is giving themselves permission to do this stuff, which I think is crazy at to this day, I think it's crazy.

Well, I found a totally shocking, and I think i'm basically opposed the death penalty anyway. But you know, I think reasonable people can support the death penalty.

absolutely. If there's a trial.

that's the point, right? But there's a trial. And the one thing you can never do is murder your own citizens because you exist to help your system is the only reason we have the government, right? Why do we have government is a collective action on our, everyones, we have who is citizen.

So the idea that you could kill an american citizen, and the the first time, I mean, I think actually could quite a few american citizens IT. Turns out I didn't know that, but the first time I became aware but IT was IT was a effectives, a foreigner with the U. S.

Passport, the all lucky crocky. And then .

you know party was like, wow, in american well yes, actually an american citizen. Yes, like that's the whole point. You're rather citizen or not, right? And remember being really shocked by that.

Actually I was glossed over and IT in this weird way, right? People were like, is a terrorism and he's a terrorist .

but or terrorist Jason right .

territory yeah you could probably call limitless but they kill the sixteen year old sun too um and but I so how did .

obama explain that?

So I mean remember he he gave a speech I was looking at this to see other day where he um he talked about, among other things uh they said that all lucky had been tied to the coal bombing and I remember reading that thinking, okay what he's saying that this is punishment for a crime um but there's no trial right uh we're pronouncing him guilty uh and just executing the guy for something that we say he did uh that seem crazy way you know and I remember there was there was another White paper I believe leon pana was involved what were the concept was yes um due process is required but IT doesn't have to involve the defendant as long as there is a process right IT can be unilaterally us just talking about IT and they .

give you post execution exactly.

Yeah but that stuff all it's all madness and I don't know. I mean, be curious ly here what you think. I mean, I think when we when we did those things and didn't make a big thing about IT psychologically, we just cross the line yes, into something else. And I feel like there's no going back once you so .

obviously ing from different polls I guess. Well, IT turns out not. But yes, in one thousand and ninety five we have been on exactly opposite sides.

But I think we both, given our similar age, had the same sort of got level belief, which is whatever the us. Does abroad is in a completely different category from the way the government conducts itself domestically. No, you can treat american citizens like you.

You know the woods est or something, right? There's one centre standard for the way we deal connector form policy with foreigners, and a completely difference time for the way the U. S. Government treats its own citizens who owe the government.

Is their .

government right? I guess what I didn't realize, because I was morally deficient and Young and dumb, was that once you started doing really evil things abroad.

you're gonna do them at home. actually. absolutely.

And you can't defend democracy by severing democracy.

no. And also you're, your, you're basically the nature in the whole idea of democracy. You're diluting IT once once you start murdering people without due process.

You know it's not to moto racing anymore. I mean, they use that term in a very fast or way. Now constantly, uh, we have to protect democracy.

Well, what do you mean by that? You're going to protect democracy by sensor right? Like this. This is the thing that I ve spent the last two years on um if you if that's what you mean, that's contradictory, right? And that thing .

in what sense?

Well, the first amendment says that we don't do that right. Well, like you can't protect the billow rights by violating IT, right? And this this whole switch. And I was, I think, like most americans, I was like you, I we all knew that amErica in the united states was waking people all over the world RAID.

I mean, even though the church committee hearings came along, and we basically said we weren't going to do that anymore, of course we were doing, and right, we are doing all kinds of horrible things. We were probably fixed elections, you know, and half the places on earth, but not here, right? Like that was A A bright line for americans.

Now maybe that show venison to to believe in that, but I was like you, I didn't. I didn't think they would ever acco ss that line and come and bring these ideas home. But you know this is what we're finding out now. I mean this was the big theme of of the twitter files, you know when we tried to figure out.

So where the can you explain for people who didn't follow at the time?

So uh in late twenty twenty two, after elon must required um twitter, there started to be rumors that he was going to open and up the internal communications of old twitter and so to give them to the world right and IT turned out to be true he I got a call one day or I got a note um sort of summer me to france to go from somebody a twitter from that way and um and so I was the first person um who was put on this project of looking rummaging through old twitters you know uh correspondent and I you know I think he said that elon said that his idea was that he wanted to restore trust in the platform by telling people about the different kinds of censorship techniques that we're going on.

It's not clear exactly what what he was up to, but you know he seems to the year of the time he brought me, he brought in barrie wise, barry, brought in a couple of other people like Michael sheen, burger lee fan ended up being involved. Another report of really good Young investigative report, maybe the last one, right? Probably you know, he appeared.

And so there was a group of us, and for about three months, we got to look through the internal correspondence of one of the world's biggest communications companies. And the big thing that we found was that there is this nexus of communication between government enforcement and intelligence agencies and the internet platforms. Uh and they had a very sophisticated organized bureaucracy that was involved with controlling content um in a variety of different ways. And when when we started to try to figure first, all this was shocking to us. We seeing all these .

documents, me me leg, right. I mean, it's just couldn't be clear.

Yeah you would think, right you know I know i'm not a lawyer, but IT look bad to me, right? Certainly IT looked like a story. Yeah no question. right.

Um but we had to figure out where did this come from, like how did this start and when we started and asking questions, you know I turned out that a lot of the programs that where now targeting domestic speech began as overseas counterterrorism, uh sort of messaging programs, right? So the state department, for instance, has has a thing called the global engagement center, uh which is now uh very much interested in speech both abroad and at home. Uh but there were once exclusively uh sort of counter ISIS uh platform.

In fact, they had had a different name back then. They were called the ccc. But in two thousand sixteen, obama requiring them the global engagement center and they started to look in word.

And when I ask people who am I managed to get talk to a couple sources who to watch um at that agency one for is really stuck out IT was CT to C P. So that's counter terrorism, the counter populism. And the idea was the whole mission abroad of counting ISIS or alka contracting was I was kind drawing up right? Because those threats have been somewhat neutralized.

But populism, you know was now a very city IT was views as a very serious threat uh after um occupy wall street, the tea party. The arms spring was something that maybe they didn't see as a bad thing, but they certainly saw the transformer power of the platforms. I think that freak them out .

and the virus is communicable .

exactly exactly then that was breaks IT. Then then I think trump is the last, you know the last stand for a lot of these folks. And and that's when you start to see all these communications like we know we have to we need to get a more formalized you know, control over these platforms. And so yeah but that that's when the war on term mission turn in word and I think that's a huge story right of well as the .

end of the country we grow up in, right?

You you would think you know and and that's um you know for me it's been I think probably for for you to the the the this new theme of the sudden explosion of the liberal tactics and politics um that even if they are directed at somebody that you liberals hate like Donald from per Steve ban and how can you not be freak out by stuff like that? We haven't used contempt of congress to jail people since the on american affairs committee in nineteen and forty seven.

Right right? This is like third world kind of stuff that we're seeing. Uh you know accusing the the front runner in a presidential campaign of um a hundred different files.

Is that happening if he's not running for present? And I mean who can honestly say that right? Um it's h but you can talk about IT now and if you if you mention that you're you're out of the club and mainstream press now, which is incredible to me.

You may have come to the obvious ous conclusion that the real debate is not between republican and democrat or socialist and capitalist right left. The real battles train people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth. It's between good and evil. It's between honesty and falsehood. And we hope we are on the former side.

That's why we created this network to tucker crossed in network, and we invite you to subscribe to IT go to tucker cross in dot com flash podcast entire archive is there a lot of behind the scene's footage? What actually happens in this barn when only an iphone is running? Talker carson dock com slash podcast, you will not.

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That's eight sleep dog com slash tucker. Better sleep today and look great in your morning meetings as our guys do. So I mean, that raised same question. But uh, most obviously then if uncovering the abusive power by the powerful, particular by government isn't the point of journalism, it's in that point wasn't any more. But what is the point?

Well, I mean, then you become quartiers, right? I mean, I think that, uh, again, what ironic for me is that, you know, this is I I saw this, uh, process happening full circle. You know, when I got first got to russia, the first reporters I met had worked at places like comm, some moscato in the eighties right which were at one time was the world's largest newspaper, had a circulation of twenty one million or something like that and I worked in the old proof the building um when I was up the the moscow times and in the people there they will tell me stories of about what their jobs were in the eighties and then there was like taking dictation.

They were clerks basically right you they would get the whenever the message of the day was and they would do IT and go home to their wives and they would go fishing on the weekends. And there was no, you know, intellectual anything involved with IT. Um you couldn't take IT in that direction.

That would be hazard to to your health if you if you did. Well, that's what journalism is now in america, I mean, we look just happened with the nord stream thing. Just take an example.

North stream happens and there's no investigation whatsoever in in any of the major newspapers. How can that happen? It's this major consequential thing that might have an impact on starting a war with a nuclear power.

And I just wreck the economy of rushing europe.

and it's a major ecological disaster which you planned to care about.

The largest may made a mission of C O two in history, right? So and if you think C O two is driving the greatest threat that we face, the existence of of climate change, then you kind of wondering how that happened.

right? You would think, you know, so why wouldn't I mean.

this is not a thing about this, because, like the only person of mainstream news to point out that, no, russia did up, up, up north stream and was attack for but I was wondering, like, find me in your k times, like a lot people I know, why would I just like try to report that story that is so interesting, right? Why wouldn't they?

Yeah, I have no idea. You know, I mean, obviously you're getting a signal from down and and how either you know that's not wanted you um but it's different. okay. So in the in the early two thousands, yes, there were high profile instances where people like just events are were unhip from M S N B C because they they mistaken ly thought he pro war when they hired right film donny he is getting good .

ratings but he's bound .

strait was yes um uh Chris hedges you know know and and Chris Chris was sort of a classic example of a phenomenon and that no one chm k wce t about in manufacturing consent, which is that they don't fire you necessarily but like you just don't get promoted if you're considered the wrong kind of personality, which is weird because good investigative reporters should be difficult personalities, right? If they're not, they're probably not good reporters. Yeah I mean, just look at who who are great reporters are um there are .

independent minded people.

independent minded people. And you know you you you want to experience them in little birth with. Uh, but they're all .

kind of crazy, to be honest. Yeah but but that's okay.

Part of the job, right? But this is different like that. There were a few instances like that back then of people who are critics of the war, whatever. Now it's just a blanket. If you step at a line on any one of two dozen different topics you're out you know um and I think everybody's gotten that message and that's the only thing that makes sense to me is like what are .

there no brief people on all journalism there no honest men .

left well how can that you mean that I can't be possible but a kind of is right I mean there there are a few people who who I think trying to do a few things. You know um but just to take the look at the russia story and they made so many mistakes on that jeff kay.

before you I want let's put you at the center of this because you were one the reasons for having this conversation is you are one of the only liberals in all media whose and you speak russian you live there for ten years you have credibility on this question, I would say and you were were the only ones you said, you know, I don't don't like trump and involve trump but like I don't .

think this is real I had to book out at the time called insane wn president about, right? I mean, i'm not a fan of the guy, right? But they came to social.

Where were you when the rush gate thing started?

I was a rolling stone.

And what did you think when you first heard that he was a rush agent?

So IT was in late two thousand sixteen years right after he had gotten elected, he members that list that came out proper not um well the washing posted this story about this weird blacklist that the they are discovered of people who the russians were supposedly in league with and IT was this shadow organization called proper not and they linked to this list of sites and without any evidence at all, they were linking all kinds of independent journalists to to russia and I thought, well, that's crazy and then then there was this whole thing about um I actually had to do a segment um on M S N B C um with Chris hayes.

The other test was now commands of all people and IT was all about know is trumping league before he got inaudible is trump um you know in league with the russians uh, there but just been a big league about that and I thought, well, there is no evidence for this, right? Like we we just had a catastrophic episode in journalism with A W M D thing where anonymous sources get us in a lot of trouble um if you can't recreate the experiment in the lab, you've got to be careful of that story, right? And that's all I said.

I wasn't like, he's innocent, you know, like I just like, this is a dangerous story. Let's all be careful with this. And immediately there was this reaction that was just shocking to me, was I was like this shunning thing that happened to me, that happened to Green world, obviously aron mote at the nation. That was like a group letter that was written by the rest of the staff. Um you know 这 两次 应， 这 you know the husband of the editor of the of the nation also Stephen common， they didn't want him .

around wonderful man.

He was yeah absolutely he was a good friend of mine. Um but IT was crazy because that this was so early in the process and everybody had already predetermined that that this thing was true this extraordinary complicated this is um they had somehow already arrived at the conclusion that I was proven and just point you didn't know either way I didn't .

really know other way .

but I had a strong suspicion that I was wrong right? Like kicking you know, journalists have a sense for the six sense that doesn't smell right, right? Like it's kind of like the french connection where where, you know, gene hagman looks over.

Is that a wrong table? right? Like this was a wrong table. I didn't look right and I was placated.

In right wing world, where I then worked and lived, I feel like everyone .

believed IT. yeah. But how how is that possible?

Remember saying to somebody, you know, I think this is, I think this could be like complete bullshit, like action and friend, be careful, be careful, something there is like, okay, but I try to be very open minded, like, I don't know, right? If you're actually A I don't know, no prove to me, right? I really try to keep every possibility open. But I kept asking people like, what, okay? How do we know this, right?

Everybody believed that.

Yeah why you know they .

hated trump. That was obvious, you know um but that wasn't enough for me, right? Like if you just on a superficial level, IT didn't fit down trust you wanted, tell me, is involved in some mob deal to build A A casino when atlantic city or something like that, right? I i'd believe that down trumping James bond involved in five year conspiracy with a the russian government.

You know what is seal called IT, a well developed conspiracy of five years? That's ridiculous. This is the guy who, if you've been to any of his campaign speeches, he can't get through the first sentence of one of his scripts like his brain is already often another direction. How is that? Gonna keep a secret. Um IT didn't make any sense and nobody had any event um and then even when things came out that should have been fatal to the story like when I finally came out in october of twenty seventeen that the clinton campaign had funded the steel dc a um I thought, well, that it's over now right .

the republican donors .

well yes yeah sort of previously right still um didn't come on until till later but still once that came out and you know you you knew that campaign research had ended up in an intelligence assessment um that should have been IT I I thought and everybody just cloud ahead like IT was still a thing and so what happened to you in the middle .

all so you're at rolling stone near this famous liberal reporter, one of the most famous labor reporters actually and you make the mistake of saying, well, we don't know for a fact this is true. People start shunning you. Where does he go from there?

So then I started to get angry about IT and um at at one point I want oh because uh you know I don't like to be told what to do. I would like to be told that I got to ignore something right um you know like one of those difficult personalities just happens that way but I I went to rolling stone at one point um I had really good editors there for the most part but I went to them and and I said, um look, this stories is wrong right and it's going to come out that it's wrong. Give me eight weeks to chase this down and let's let's be the first mainstream organization to get IT right and and put IT to bed and it'll be a coup for us right? You know, let me let me do my thing on this and they said no, the first time they ever said no to me um you know like a .

an investigation but you speak russian, you can read russian. So there's probably no one Better to do the story.

No, I I would think, right you know, I even even had some sources over there, right, who could have chased IT down, know certain aspects of IT down like, you know, the thump tower deal and all that stuff like that would have been relatively easy to to go through. And I and I cover congress so the people who are investigating this like I I knew some of those folks too um and it's a it's a great story.

I mean, when IT first came out, I was obviously is either the biggest intelligence uh cum in history, right? The russian is getting a man canada in the White house or it's the biggest fake in history, right? The biggest set up in history.

Somebody's other telling the biggest wapper ever or or the russians have just pulled off this. The most amazing thing I can't there's there's no other option, yeah right? So if it's not this, it's that and we might just all be the first to report that, right? yes.

So what did they say? You know I don't .

I mean, i'm going to remember what the excuse was. They just weren't enthused about the idea, you know and um and I understood that you know like they look the rolling stone, they have they have an audience that has certain expections but that was a that was a big moment for me you know I think I was nave. I I actually thought they you know that that the the magazine would be interested in in going there because they had let me, you know go against obama before they let me do other things but not on this so um .

so how what is your colleague city cause by this point think IT was becoming public. Anyone was watching like me that you were dissenting from the line .

on this question. I would say glen Green well took the brunt of IT um you know they were stories in the the new yorker profiles you know the pain of their resistance, right? Like why is black Green while being a stick in the murder about this russia thing that was like a feature topic in magazines, like A A bunch of them and, you know and they concluded, by the way, that he was motivated by by his impatience with the rise of women and minorities in the democratic party. A rest I actually had the physical copy of the new yorker they did yeah and I was I was an on the record quote by one of his former editors of all things um the right yes. Well, did he .

isn't patient with the rise?

So when I saw that, i'm like, wow, this is like, what is going on with this right then? Meanwhile, you know, I was getting IT from all angles. There were a former russian, former american diplomats that were going after me online saying I was in lead with putin and you know .

so yeah yeah .

kind of a heavy charge yeah you would think you know and that was becoming increasingly common IT was an implication of a lot of the the back and forth a on social media um you know this person is too close to russia or you know, he loves putin, right? Like that that kind of a .

thing had you ever worked as a secret for putting.

of course not. Y, I am getting .

actually i'm so not. You just said you've left russia because you didn't like the vibe.

And putin, I mean we put putting in the cover of our newspaper like in drag Carrying a dominator sweig you know like a we then put him constantly and um and I I actually even I did some journalism in russian for another paper that was very critical of him and talked about the apartment bombings and mother stuff and um so I was no friend of letting reputations but that became A A A common thing in journalism and it's IT was just so shocking and I I knew at that point at my time isn't limited at the rolling stone which I love the place I really love that place IT was in a great gig to um but there is no way I was going to be able to stay under those circumstances.

How long did .

you last until twenty, twenty I guess so fifteen years roughly. Um you know maybe maybe sixteen I guess. Um so IT was IT was a great time.

So when I became clear that you know the claim that putin had installed trump is the american present, when I became clear that was like malicious fancy was a totally did any of the people who attack to and call you a russian agent apologize or change?

Of course not. Did even apologize to you?

No, but is a little difficult by that point. I was like such an outlaw that, like, I had no expectation of being treated fairly by anyone, ever, other than my wife so I I was, no, i'm seriously that was just like your head changes but you were very much at like everyone like you and I mean, you were not an war for, but you became an outward kind of overnight.

right? Yes, no, no, no, no. My name is sort of you know synonymous with you reactionary tool that you know that kind of thing um and that happened basically overnight is a little test take for a few years there. But um but you know I got over a relatively quickly and moved to sub stack, which was and IT turned out to be a great thing and which is an independent platform and know one of the first people who um kind of left big mainstream media to do the south publishing thing and and I discovered that there is actually you know um a functioning business model there. I mean, I had been in journalism for thirty years and had never seen IT as anything but a dying business.

right?

There was never any money that you are actually out there because people hate journalists and right? Like that's the problem when you're in mainstream meeting, you don't see that there's actually the screaming need for something else uh that people aren't getting uh because they don't trust regular media. So I was I was an early beneficiary of that whole thing.

but I was a default though I mean probably would have stay. And of course, in new yorker or rolling or where you wear rolling stone forever, right? absolutely.

yeah. Had this not happened, I would have been there. You know, I was very loyal to the magazine. You know, I stuck up for them always, even when they were wrong, even the U V A thing you know I said, look, they made a mistake but were we're doing the right thing we're we're self auditing like you know this is a great magazine. We have a great test tradition that I was kind of a company men and embarrassing kind of way um but when the russia thing happened, you know all bets were off and I wasn't the only one there there there are other people in the business .

this this also happened to so um but none of them came .

back the way that you did like you sure? Yeah, no. Well, very few. Yeah, a few. Do you think about just .

hanging IT up and becoming a translator doing something else?

No, I mean, I love this job. A, you know, I after initially not really loving and journalism, I learned to to really love IT while I was while I was at rolling stone you know and uh and then you know now um additionally you I think the country needs journalists.

They need and and the the thing that that you need most of all and journalists to be good at IT is you need to be have some bravery yeah, that wasn't true in american journalist for a long time. Probably no, not since the vietnam days or or the red scare, you know, was their situation where there was a real social Price to pay for. For taking you know a certain stance on things.

Um now there is right and if you're going to do certain cancer reporting, um you're going to lose all your friends. But that's the job, you know and not many people are willing to do that. I am willing to do that.

I could because I I never expected to keep friends in this business. So um I think it's an it's unfortunately an exciting time to be a journalist. But um no, I I would feel wrong to quit now you know you probably feel .

the same feel this is exactly they put yeah yeah if to make friends probably the wrong business.

Church exact.

我 tell us about like having been in institutional journalism at the top of IT， really. And then finding yourself like having to work for yourself, like what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Well first of all, being in institutional journalism, there is a little bit overrated, right? Like I think um because I came from alternative journalism and I I had finance my my own newspaper, I must go on and know I did everything from printing to running the plates to to the printing press and um know selling ads everything so uh the business is is something that i've always been familiar with and suddenly being involved with the bigger organization. It's nice, but I don't see IT as a prerequisite.

Thought I was really funny at the begin of trumps rain when a couple the reporters were complaining about losing their White house press credentials. It's like, cares, right? You're you're supposed to be on the outside, right?

Like what are you whining about? You know, do the job. You have been away, has breathing thing I have yes .

yeah then you know how so killing IT is yeah you learn nothing, you're captive, you eat lunch out of a vending machine. Everybody has got like the most distorted value system, like they're so impressed by their hard passes. And there are also of losers like if you would um we would quit the business, right?

If you had to do that. absolutely. In fact, one of the first things that I was assigned to do when I went to to rolling stone, they sent me on a campaign junket with john Carries.

So I was on the plane with Carried during that campaign for like a month. There's something like that and you it's a similar dynamic to the White house press core. It's the same people every single day.

Um it's very clubby. They have extremely right. So there's even seating arrangements, right? The times get to t in the front and then they they kind of it's something it's like heathers or mean girls, according to how how well known you are in the business, you you have to sit further and further back in the plane right or farther back and in the plane .

at the very back of the car.

Yeah, exactly. At the time they are angry. Alexander polis, because he had film some of them. So he was in the back with a bunch of out, a bunch of piles equipment. But but I got frustrated very quickly by the fact that all they were doing all day line was just taking um you know press releases from flax and then they would eat be given .

the ony and cheese butter fingers .

yeah I want on a hunger strike uh in in my first trip I I had this like epiphany that they're just giving me too much stuff. I'm just not gonna take anything from any of these people.

And I stopped ed eating. I stopped .

checking the press for releases, didn't campaign we the events I would not go to, the events would run a mile in any direction and just talk to anybody about anything but the campaign um because the like this isn't journalism. You're sitting there just being just taking something and then converting into a press release like what is that you know but the White house is even worse because they have they have ears about IT right um and you know even though I haven't done that be you know for I think it's an important beat like you have to somebody has ask the president questions but they don't for the .

most part right I know I ve .

never seen that right so I don't know.

At best you get some reporter whose goal is not to listen information but just to prove that his like a tag is to the president right? exactly. I am you. Thanks, dan rather but IT doesn't advance the story in any meaningful way right right?

Exactly what they want is and that's what what they were upset about the gym costs of the world. They were upset that they were being denied this this um you know silver piece of video where they could stand up and do this you know and just to heal IT um I always wanted a jim acosta who .

I don't know but I always want to give me tell me what a journalist sty was and what of guys we're like this um including some effort with but I A journal okay twenty o comes to trail park give me seven hundred fifty words on that I don't think they are capable of writing a story. Do you think that they could ma cost to actually just write like a new story or even an exposed ory essay?

Well I wonder about that because are they even you know that he wants not that long ger not to be all back in the day about IT? But you wouldn't have gotten a job in the White house pressure you hadn't come through, you know, covering town meetings and all that. The women, no, I did that.

I covered, I covered older men. I covered, you know, the police beat fie stuff like that. You have be able to do that stuff. And that's the basics of the job is, you know, showing up, talking to people on the street, talking to this person, that person, yet to blue crime reporting, you know, and you get to talk to people who are on the other law. All that, I don't think they can do that.

I mean, I remember seeing somebody forget what organism was, but somebody one of the kind of mainstream sort of web and sites one of the columns was talking about how much um he hated the telephone and I thought, what journalists hates the telephone? How can you do this shell if you hate the telephone, right? If you and because the new thing is they decide what they think, they find links that support their ideas, and then they just type the thing where you know, what you're supposed to do is talk to everybody.

then figure out what the story to add information to the story, right? Not just know the snake eating is tail is, but it's just also reference .

actually exactly, exactly.

So you get out of that, you go. So the business model works in independent media.

well, kinda right. So IT works if you are cranking out content. Um what I don't think it's they figured out how to do with how to monodist like investigative journalism, which takes a long time.

Expensive, expensive. And you know you're not producing stuff that's know every couple of days. And even when you do, it's not always the stuff that people like people like reading, you know obeid, that would be strong, takes that you money doing that right?

Also, you have sometimes, I mean, a lot of stories don't happens to me, even now a lot, you waste a lot of time on stuff is not real or not provable.

right? Or you think that people are going to go bananas something and they done that, right? Yes.

what stories that you had that you thought would make a splash fact but that were so still forgotten well.

I don't know forgotten, but I would say a lot of the twitter file stuff um I expected that to be I mean, I not easily expected a lot of that stuff to do.

So example of what shocked you that you discovered during .

that reporting so uh one of the things was that twitter, uh, heading into the twenty twenty election, had worked out a system with the FBI and the department of holland security and the office of the director of national intelligence, whereby they had what they called in an industry meeting where once started off once a month, then IT was once a week where these intelligence officials were meeting with twitter and about two thousand and other internet platforms and briefing them on things that they might expect in the information landscape and then there was a system by which um basically twitter was receiving a recommendations about content from the federal government through the FBI and then from the states through the depart of homeland security was IT was that organized? They had worked IT out that like if IT comes from you know a local police department, it's gonna come from the D H S.

If IT comes from the hs it's gonna through the FBI right like so they had a very organized system of flags that um where you you would see the F B I say you know for your consideration, here are some accounts that may violate your terms of service and they're be an attached spread sheet with four hundred account names on IT and that was just happening constantly. IT was a an industrial process that they had worked out. Um I thought that's a huge story, right? Like this.

Here's the FBI that's devoting resources to looking at social media accounts of ordinary people and worrying about terms of service violations like what is that? Why are they are not looking for china? Child predators, right right. And so what was that? Well it's it's part of this sort of spiring sparling thing where a whole series of government agencies are very intensely interested in what's online and who is reading what and and in developing new ways of um you know a suppressing content, the amplifying other things with cover. There was a really, really intense effort to uh to create rules about what couldn't couldn't be seen, what you know they were they would decide the things were one of the key concepts that I thought I was really, really disturbing was, uh this whole idea that anything that promotes vaccine hesitancy is a kind of disinformation even if it's not uh, factually incorrect. So if somebody dies after they get the shot, right, that may be true um but internally at the company but no.

we convert people to take shot .

and they looked at that as a kind of disinformation even though it's true um one of the this information .

doesn't mean untrue correct exactly .

IT Carries the connotation like in the definition involves falling right or misinformation even right it's this information is like the intentional spreading of lies right um but even misinformation the the the home and security has something they called the M D M or they had at the m dm committee which is misinformation, disinformation and mall information committee and mall information is it's just material is true but kind of politically wrong right um or inconvenient that could be something that promotes vaccine hesitancy you um you know we have the supreme core case now morphy missouri that's partly related to the twitter files and the planters and H A couple of three of the planets in that case are doctors who were who had publish true research about covered um but we're suppressed were being amplified they were put on you know in twitter there were put on trends black list because you know their research tended to go against federal policies about lock downs and that vaccination and all kinds of things so to me that's what the first one minutes, therefore, right like we do not want the government in in a role of deciding what's true and untrue because once you do that, the government has monopoly on this information. The only protection against that happening is absolutely unfeared free speech and they are messing went that you know um because I think there's just as gradual moving away from belief that all the concepts and the public rights work and so this but we what we looked at in terms of the censorship um which is very much in evidence there where they just don't believe that the first member works, I don't think .

but there are the government they exist to protect the first moment. That's the whole point of having a government, right? So again, that seems like a primary facial crime to me and as you said, IT very leased.

A huge story, right? What happened to tool? right? The washington imposed their first story about the twitter, about the twitter files, described me as conservative journalist .

matt beg to differ.

呃， this is ridiculous. And then, and you know that that was the line all the way through, even though the reports really, they weren't really about suppression of one political party or in other, they were really much more about this process, which is just so scary, right? And nobody, nobody in the regular press really picked IT up.

And that was a shocker d to me because I thought, well, somebody's got to be interested in this, you know um and they weren't, you know, how long are you there? Um it's a twitter doing this story. Um you know three and a half months, I would say. Um so we got a lot of stuff we ve got you know probable I mean not a lot, two hundred thousand email, something like that attachments we have we still haven't gone to roll all of that. But uh, the big thing was that there is just lots of evidence of this interplay between government and these platforms.

I think you on at one point said publicly that there were um intel OA is working and cook at twitter rather lots working there.

lots of them. And that was another thing we didn't understand you we first got there were like, why why is there A C, C I, A person here? Why is this person of former national security council Operative? Like what value do they bring to a tech company? A tech company? I couldn't understand that.

but they actually working there as employees.

and they were making a lot of the big decisions about content to um in fact, one of the biggest emails that we found well there is a debate about whether or not twitter had the ability to say no to in this case IT was a state department request about content and the the former acy a employees says, you know our window on that is closing as our government partners become more aggressive in their attributions, right? So what they were basically saying is we're on our ability to like push back is is evaporating, you know and that I think has turned out to be true, uh, with these platforms.

So they are increasingly just injured twined with got with the state. yes. So state media, yeah. And this is another continuation of the war. And terrible because they began by demanding that these companies fork over, you know, information about jail location of users and other places around the world, even in the united states um but now they're venturing into content and the content domestic that people see. So google is the biggest.

of course, of all these companies in by for the most infantile and surge, which is your window into all information, right? If we were ever to see what goes on internally, google, what do you think we would? I think we .

would find that there they're massively change the formula for, right? You search returns. I mean, they they even talked about this in two thousand and seventeen and two thousand eighteen when they they had the single project at all um which was designed to change the the parameters of of the search uh towards something they called authority。 And authority was basically the way I was explained to me when I talk to somebody at google was like, if you search for baseball five years ago, you might have seen your local little league team.

Now you'll see M O B dot c come up first, right? And um you know you've probably noticed this when when you do a google search, you know the first forty or fifty results will all be of a certain type and you'll have to it's much, much harder to find kind of this counter narrative version of reality. Now even if you know exactly what you're looking for a type in the the title of of the story, uh, it's made be reporting harder, don't you think?

I know yeah I mean it's uh yes IT IT actually chAllenges to understand that. Like what is reality? So um mean the potential for mind control. In fact, the reality of mind control by the state and by infiltrated actors, depending the state, are living in the sembrich relationship, the state, it's like it's almost impossible to have independent thoughts.

yes. If if if most people are getting their information through these searches um and through social media exchanges and those things are heavily heavily you know um managed um then everybody's getting a cute version of reality and that's onna change the way that they think about everything. Um I think that's really dangerous.

Uh obviously knew it's it's not a new concept because we all read about IT or well and you know all this toxic and all these other books. But um you know what happens to people when they're getting their information in a way that's completely in organic and false. And you know I think we have to get to the bottom of of that. I don't know. I think it's scary.

Do you think um there's been any slackening of anywhere in the middle election season right now? Pretty clear that the people in charge in both parties will do anything to stop trump and for reasons probably nothing to do with the trump actually but bigger story but whatever the cause they're told, determined to control the outcome of this .

election yeah well.

can you have a democracy under those circumstances?

I don't think so. Um so there was a supreme court case. There's one that still going on Matthew, missouri and originally the lower courts ruled that. The federal government can't be you doing that back and forth with all these platforms. And from what I understood, there was a little bit of a backing off point, right where they weren't so intimately involved.

But just a lot of month ago, senator mark Warner had had a talk and he said the essentially the companies have begun um talking to the agencies again. This was after the supreme court held a hear, you know the hearing on that case and IT didn't look so good for the free speech advocates afterwards. So um you know that that tells me that they're already you know thinking of coming up with another program.

I know for a fact um for stories that i'm that i'm working on that there are a couple of different contracting ideas for new A. Content review programs that would be partnerships with government in the same way that there were the last time around like the last time around we had this thing called the election integrity partnership was run out of stanford, but IT was done in partnership with the apartment home security and the global engagement center which is the state department um and the university washington and some other partners. But that was a you know a thing where there was a big organized content flagging Operation that involved the government.

They're gone to do something like that. Again, this is the question of like who is going to do is what the method is going to be in. My understanding is that there, you know, it's going to be more aggressive this time around.

So there have been a number of war games, right, where academics, N G O officials, government officials is all sort of this blog is kind of hard to disaggregate but um have gained out very selection scenarios and IT IT does IT sounds a little more to me like contingency planning than like academic exercise. But tell me what you know .

about that words interesting that you bring that up um so you may have noticed in the news lately um that there been a lot of um stories warning about A I deep fix. Yeah this is the new if russia was the the the excuse for getting involved in content moderation in twenty, twenty or even twenty eighteen A I and deep fix. Are the new a buzzword in washington?

And I just the way to explain away your porn tapes.

That's great. Yeah exactly. I didn't make this a it's a deep fake um but this is a something that somebody took me off to you know this is not like a like a secret.

It's actually public, although nobody has brought IT up. There is a website that's out there. But this is a game, especially elections and dragons. It's made by in Q T. You can see the I Q T here, which is the venture capital ARM of the CIA.

And in a great stop, why does A C I A have a venture firm ARM?

Because the to develop technologies that the would otherwise probably be prohibited um and you know because there's a lot of things that they get into that maybe our money good money making ideas mean part of what being in the intelligence businesses about is getting out and making money, right?

So so but that I mean that's kind of a problem. If your intel agencies have venture arms, yes, right.

you would think that would be a problem. Um so this is .

A C I A funded election game. Yeah.

it's a CIA funded election game. Just just to start. Just like dunes and dragons and IT has funny dice, this is the ten side to die.

the remaking this up as this real.

this is real. This is real. Hey, wire is the name of the game. And um if you roll the inutile symbol, right? IT says, on my lap is so dark, IT says on the back, um if you roll basically the whole, the premise of the game is that you are trying to avoid a haywire situation, meaning inga and A I and do disaster.

Will voters get what they want?

basically? yeah. So if if you roll the initial logo, IT says, hey, wire reverted. So basically, if you roll C, I, A, you win.

Now the cii venture logo looks a little bit like the the symbol for nuclear power.

That does look a little bit like that. yes. So this is this game is used to train, from what I understand, it's used to train people in government to working out scenarios that may happen, right, which is why, uh, this is so some of these scenarios are so incredible.

like if an orange populist, or to somehow become president again.

well, right. And uh, when I went through these and I size, just open this box, but I, but I have another one um the one that really jumped out of muses and called the purple disappeared .

the purple disappeared.

If you can read out what IT says. Swing states .

appear safe on the national electoral map polling later, IT emerges that A I driven election forecast were wrong because the data this overlooks significant parties and differences that make swing states highly competitive. Discuss your response plan, then draw two injects real world, harmon says the bottom misinformation slash social bias, heightened stress, anxiety and depression.

What social BIOS mean?

Actually.

I have no idea, but but that certainly sounds to me like the asking the game players to come up with you know with the a plan for um some kind of reaction to election results that don't necessarily square with what the polls were indicating, right? Mean, that's basically what they're saying.

And in that scenario um here's another one mind games um and easy to use voice model helps create a viral video suggesting that one of the candidates may have dementia. Discuss your response plan and draw to injects. Ah so it's just full stuff like this. And this you know we started to hear about is this idea that there were people in this information management slash censorship slash uh content moderation space that were deeply involved with you know finding new ways to manage uh information that people see um you back in two thousand and ten the army actually got rid of the terms set up because they thought I had negative common connotations. They brought IT back in two thousand and seventeen because there there was a wideband belief that um we have to engage in uh influence Operations, that because russia is already doing IT, because china's already doing IT, we need to do IT and it's the .

same their own population .

yeah and that's the thing we did this before. Previously we we created phony social media counts in arabic and pashto. Right now, that's something we've understood.

What's different is that they're now doing this in english, right? And they're now aiming this domestic population, I think was illegal. I would think it's illegal.

I think a lot of this this behavior is just unregulated, not looked at. I mean, who's who's gona go in and tell them they can't do this? What body is going mean your types .

to washing post democracy dies in darkness? I mean that that that is the role of the press.

yes.

is to expose excesses and rolling back by exposing them.

But the, but the problem is that they see, they see france in Donald trump, and you know, the trump movement as an extension of what they what they might call the russian information ecosystem. This, like the global engagement said of the state department, has this concept of information ecosystem. So if you're two in alignment ment with russian foreign policy views on, say, ukraine or something like that, you are you you can be part of the ecosystem even if you have nothing to do with that country.

So the idea, the know know, the first head of the global engagement center is a former editor, time magazine, uh, rick tankle hero, a book called information words that we all had to read when we were doing the twitter files because we didn't know about this organization, you know, talked openly about how he thought, uh, the trump campaign. He in IT, he recognized the same techniques that he saw from ISIS and from russia. So they are now they see all this is all part of a peace, you know, and that is what I think is dangerous. Is that where we're sort of bringing the ethos of military counter messaging from the war on terror or bringing that home and the enemy is now the domestic voter.

But right. okay. So military messaging, but the purpose of military to kill people in the end and to the true war by the thread of killing people, but basically it's killing.

That's their business killing, yes. But also trying to .

discourage recruitment. Fundamentally, if you were to say, like what's the purpose of military, it's divert force physical hse so if the U. S. Military is turning its sights on the country, like that is not that far. Use the nature of organizations and mission creep from there to like hurting .

people exactly exactly. And and they they actually you you'll find nato we nato papers that talked about how they found the american belief in um inform, not influence or in truthfulness that that was actually as part of an an an old nato memo about influence Operations that we have to you you can tell untruths um the more modern belief is that that's outdated that because the russians don't do that, that we have to um we shouldn't have those restraint.

So we have to worry now about sort of phony influence Operations in the united states. And if you look at IT in the things through that lens, suddenly things like russia a start to make a little bit more sense, right? Because you can imagine somebody in the intelligence service is saying, well, Donald trump is part of this um nexus of um anti american forces and and anything's fair game against that kind of person so what what russia is .

central to all of this in the minds of the people doing IT and from my perspective, as someone who's never been that interested in russia, the country, you sort to wake up one day and you know twenty five years after and the cold war, and realized you required to hate russia. And I just refuse to go on with that in principal, because I love russia.

I do kind of like russia actually having been there, but I didn't have anything about IT a year ago, right? And but I just have adult and I want to be told to think, and i'm gonna be a period under any circumstances because i'm not a slave. So but the answer is the question, like why? why? Why is that a requirement of living in the united states? So i've live my whole life hating russia, like what I have to do with anything, like how do we get there of all countries?

I I don't understand that either. And also you don't. I mean, what especially compared to when russia actually was a major I mean, wasn't nearly this intense the seventies and eighties .

and here was not right first that people said, I mean, russia was actually running actual cy ops against the united states. Aides was created for me to black people like that. That was a russian .

active measures campaigns.

big time. And and of course, there are all these proxy words going on even then and be get like actual and um the prevAiling view among people I knew was you know so via are bad of course no one persevere in Normal personal but I would become nice to be a piece in nuclear words really scary and like to avoid that. I mean, that was the view that I remember as a child, right?

Sure, we had telling us the russians love their children. Who came the ene? I remember very distinctly people saying, um you know that we have to find a way to get along with these people like the that we're spending too much money on um on defense and that this this is this is costing both of our societies uh but that's not what where we're at now and and utterly enough the current american government IT feels a lot like the. Soviet government of the early eighties, right where you know joe biden would would have fit in perfectly .

uh in the of .

the early right in the dottery old physically did leader, yes, who still has A A title because you know he hasn't actually inspired presiding .

over a decade cynical society that no longer believes in the slogans.

Right in the russians have a joke where where garbage f gets in the limine he's late for work so he drives too fast. The cops pull him over um and his corporate al driver is drunk passed out in the back um so he had to drive himself he gets stopped by the police and the cop season salutes goes back to the car and the other cops says, who is that and guess I don't know the garden chop with as driver and that's how you feel about amErica now who who's running this country? Does anybody know .

who is running the country .

is a jack Sullivan. And I mean, you'd have to make a guess what you when you mean somebody has to have the final say about these things and I can be I just got a very weird thing to not know and no one .

seems curious about either.

right? Where are the stories about that? Who's that well in the street to the story about that? They they broke the seal on that.

But it's kind of a silly dishon a story. But but in IT were um critics' ly distant strait up, but whatever, but there were certainly things in there that had not been invoked. Ry.

journal of big paper before, right right? They they take they did the toe in the lake there. But still, you know you in a real country we would be scrambling to find out, well, the president is clearly not capable so what's going on you know um nothing there is not a hint of anything which is just it's it's so bizarre. Well and especially .

given the consequences of this nineteen ninety five, you could try of and sort of runs on an autopilot and you know tim cook in the captains of industry and pitching and sort of keep us on the track or I am that would be the view, right? But now we are on the brink. We're closer nuclear war than we've ever been closer er in the human crisis right now, right to total nuclear notion.

And if the commander in chief is non compass menus and I mean work to the ship as the listing is on its side, where are the people saying, you know, I hate trump I look by positive stating matter at this level were on the verge of nuclear war. That's not acceptable. Let's pulled back. I have not even heard any person say that. What is that?

I don't know. Where is the public concern about that either. I mean, if this were one thousand eighty six and we were at this level of antagonism with russia, if there had been an exploded pipeline, if there was a shooting war, uh, in ukraine, right, or some kind of proxy territory where our weapons were killing russian troops in place versa um because you know some of us were over there. Two um quite a few and you know people would be panicking right because at any minute, you know we're all relying on somebody like putin being rational, which is already, you know uh I made that mistake and thinking that you would never invite ukraine and um so what are we banking on the on the idea that if you know we if we launched some kind of a weapon into the russian territory that are not going .

to here is what do .

you think mean I I think the people who are who are prosecuting the conflict from our side and very familiar with their mindset because I I knew a lot of these folks when I was in russia. They're not it's kind like all the the president's men. These aren't very bright guys yeah and things we've gotten that at hand.

And I I think that day they have no idea what they're doing and this could easily get out a hand very, very quickly because they they're messianic about this. They know they think they think they must um continue this conflict. Um where is the one thing that I thought black obama was sensible about thing? What is always going to be more important to them .

than that is so very important to other .

exactly these people.

including you, is based or ukraine and but many others just blindly announced that what we're going to take crimea uh and that again, I don't have strong things about me i've ever been there, but I I think I know is a factual matter that that is a trigger for nuclear war .

right there for sure, for sure. And IT, it's kind of a je ball also like, you know, should that place be.

I think russian at this point.

but right and it's been russian historically. I mean there's a lot of weird stuff about ukraine's history like know the fact that they gave the they created the territory is um sort of want to win you know in in middle the soviet period uh the lines are very arbitrary. They're not drawn along you know real linguistic ick or cultural lines.

And if you if you've been to the place you'll find that it's it's very russian in some parts, in very ukrainian others. I'm sure that's changing now. But um but the people who are who are pushing this, they um they have no knowledge of that whatsoever.

It's the same thing as when I when I was in russia, they they've been told one thing and so you know ukraine to them is like switzerland and we're saving IT from russia. Where is the reality that it's it's nothing like that in reality. And I don't know how dangerous do you think that. Do you think they are?

I think they are crazy. I think they're most dangerous. I think they're seized by hubris.

I think there is a messy and inequality to this. I think the entire leadership class of the country is determined to commit suicide. I think that they've box themselves in their criminals.

They know that they will be exposed as such. And they've also reached kind of the apogee of american empire. Anyway, it's all downhill from here.

I do think that they feel this and and I think they want to extinguish the society. And I do like as that such an incredibly dark thing to say has said even to say. But I don't see a rational explanation for any of this behavior at all.

I don't think of advanced anyone's aims, including their own. I don't believe that Larry think is like orchestrating all this. So blackrock and get even richer. I think they want to get richer. Think everything is bad guy, obviously.

but I don't think you are a lucky maris.

The defense contracts, that's all true on one level, but that's not the explanation. No, no, it's way deeper than that. I think this is a spiritual thing, and I do think societies kill themselves just as people do.

And I think that's what we're clearly, that's what we're seeing. I mean, tell me how that's not overall seeing, and I think that's just such an ugly idea. Again, IT IT hurts me to articulated. But you asked, so that's what I honestly .

think what I mean, what are the explanation is there? What kind of right? I mean, I I I, I i've kind of run out of I made the mistake, I think, for years of trying to think what's the angle in this way. You like there's gotta some n game that they're going for um and the only way to make sense of this is to give that up, I think and because um there's something darker are going on.

Yes, in the culture of people who run this country, um it's inaccessible if you're trying to like a sign motives to IT right they could easily like just take with the problem trip, they can easily defeat Donald trump as a political entity if they just if they were thinking as political consultation did in the nineties or eighties, right, like they would just make some subbed adjustments. They would throw a bone to to working people and um you know they would put up four to canada who is you know physically dead and they would win right but now the for them, I think it's a principle that a certain kind of voter not have a saying things and I don't that's just totally counter intuit to me. I know I just understand that you know um but so in other is it's .

it's not just trump is the idea that the people who like trump, those people might have power or be rewarded.

right? We cannot legitimize the negative feelings of those voters um is is how they think whereas it's incredibly obvious if you go out in the campaign trail and talk to people who who vote for trump, that they do IT for a million different reasons, right? You know, ranging from, you know, the town that I live and used to be a bombing economic center.

Now it's it's dead right now. IT looks IT looks like a uh a third real country too. There there is an functioning hospital within three hundred miles where I live. The wall mart is now the only place where you can buy anything for fifty miles like there's a million reasons um and then there are some social issues too um but once upon a time, I mean, I remember not so long ago even bill clinton talking about trying to replan some of those working class voters and that was a like legitimate to be one.

West Virginia. He won every county, west Virginia, imagine, and every county, every county in the Virginia next two, two. And of course, I think he lost california. wow. And so imagine a democrat winning any county in west reginia.

Well, they wouldn't want to win. I mean, they go over these scalding attitude, like learn to code like what's wrong with you um like there's a punitive attitude about IT, which is the as you know, if you've covered campaigns you not win and if you if you if you have .

have towards the the I know I know right .

that was immediately apparent from his first campaign is that he he got up there and you know, people say, what is a billion are having common with, you know, ordinary people. He is like them in a lot of was he he has the same, probably does the same thing in the spare time. He goes to the same .

websites and .

we right exactly know. So when he opens his mouth, people think that, you know, I can connect with this guy now it's a lot of IT is fake, right? The policy prescriptions may not make any sense, but you can understand .

why the level level vision at the like he's he is affection and they have hate. And I think that that's the thing that shocks me most like I I think i'm way to artistical or something that to understand a lot of things are happy. And now IT, I think in terms of like, well, you know outcomes, and that's not what any of this is about.

And the thing that shocks me most is that actual hostility that people in dc were effectively from have for the rest the country. They hate the people in the country. They do, they know, just have down on them.

I thought I was just like looking down on them in a snobs h way. What's a hostile when they die? You saw the string. He didn't get actually died. Glad he did like .

i'm glad he died, right?

I'm not happy when a gang member dies in the service. Chicago, no, I am serious. I couldn't be more opposed to. I don't know. It's like it's a human being american like I think its sad actually .

oh I mean the hostility during the copy thing was also IT was unbelieved to yeah I mean mean, Jimmy kiel does this whole any of that Barbie thing where it's just it's the worst kind of Cosmopolis looking down at at the hike kind of a thing and they they hate these people right? I don't understand. You know like you once a again not long ago, entertainers wanted to connect yeah with ordinary people. Now they don't like that audience. They wouldn't want to get a plot. Its from that audience and audience um and politicians don't either they want to be elected by the right people or they they want to do without the help of they are wrong kind of voters but they can't because they're number you know um so I it's a crazy time but but but I do think you're right that if you try to figure this out by assigning rational motives, would to any of this, that doesn't make any sense. That won't work.

So we're honest slide, as you said, the very outset into thora arian government, a different certainly different form of government, not a democratic at all um and some kind of older archy i'm already there is that is anyway to arrest that slow down. Is that inevitable? Like what if you could project what what do you say?

I mean, I don't think so. Um part of the reason that i'm so spin up about a lot, a lot of the stuff that's happening and this because I got to I watched what happened when you know speech freedoms, even limited ones like the ones in russia, they disappear, they don't come back. You know like that's kind of what happens and uh they don't .

come back that is true is not right.

And and you know in the united states, uh there was a reference once for for um the first enema for the whole billet rights. The IT just doesn't exist anymore. There's this kind of like the food or unbelieving attitude about IT. And let's been another revelation of working on stories like the twitter files is finding out that people don't really they don't have the same feeling about the first moment that people did in the eighties and nineties or even the early two thousands.

I mean even rob reiner does the american president right and it's all about how um you know the A C L U and you know being allowed to burn the flag and yes and his no he's on the other side of this thing now right like and so what happened to all those people? What happened to that? That belief in, uh, the system may mean for all of them? Uh h you know you mention that you and I came from probably from different political uh, places one point in time.

I think we're probably both share a belief that amErica on something worked right and I had all kinds of flaws um but you know immigrants came here from all over the world. They built good lives and they chose to stay here. Mean my family came from different parts of the world.

And um this this country is screw up. I like the fact that I screwed up. Uh but IT works.

This system um has has been a great thing and people don't believe that. I think that y've lost that belief, I think um which is so sad. Um I know do you feel that I mean that ah .

I feel that really strongly and I and I also feel that um any sembLance of national unity or common belief, shared culture, even shared language, but particular culture um is gone. And I noticed IT and talking in you because actually, you know, maybe you vote for one guy, voted for the other, but our core beliefs about the use articular right there, i've never doubted that a day in my life.

I just didn't, you know, cause like amErica screw up in a lot of ways, of course, first, huge. So of course, it's screwed up. Everything big is screwed up, sure but the best this is that works. And um I don't feel that there's a national consensus on that more and IT seems to have evaporated very, very fast to am a question how yy that's problem with being in your fifties, things change and you didn't see the change coming.

Yeah that's still a mystery, right? Like where did that happen there? There had to have been a moment in time where.

well, so you part of what happens is the people who are deputized to defend IT refuse to and extinguish world who was supposed to be he was literally the first woman is at a road time magazine and all next thing you know, he's a federal official working for obama against the first diamond and your like, well, that's a direction of duty. That's a major thing. I think it's a crime.

I think you should be punished that actually you can allow that. I mean, if you're in A A battle and the officers desert that is shot for that and no have to do that, like you need leadership in order to preserve whatever is that you have, right? And so I blame the leaders one hundred percent. And without leadership, of course, things fell apart and no one's willing to stand and be like, no, you know, the dignity of the average person is not just a good thing, is the core of the enterprise is essential. You give that up or done and um you're not able to do this .

period yeah I I agree um and you now now they know the role the role the media I think is an important one in american society. Um we were given a very important responsibility to um tell the public when things aren't going right and to do that um continually no matter what you know which way the political winds are blowing to stick to that. Um and so now it's kind of more important than ever to keep to keep dealing that. I mean, you ask me like what how does this get turned around? I don't know, but the only thing I know is I think you know the you have to keep doing this stuff and telling people about in the hopes that I will get turned around.

So that question you um you spent ten years within a society that you know punish journalists physically at times for telling the truth. Uh you're watching political figures go to jail and whatever you think of the charges or convictions, whatever in every single case, you know for a dead certain fact that person hadn't been in politics on the wrong side, people go in a jail, that is the fact. So they're using jail as a political instrument. How long until that comes to journalists like you worry that at this great like you wind .

up and died I i've started for the first time to worry about that um because because I spend so much time in russia, I knew people who you know physically suffer for what they did right whenever ver people talked about taking risks as a journalist the united is I always said look please o in other parts of the world that .

they actually goes .

through hard show yeah try that in mexico is exactly see what happens um you but it's gotten we are here I mean even looked even even the ban and story there's an element of that where IT may not be as much about as a political figure as IT is about war room necessarily what's one .

hundred percent that right? And no wants to say that. But at this point in his life, as of today's ban journalist, that's what he is. Disagree them relative. He say, talk show every day like, what is that in .

the most influential? Yeah I know right and a year people like rick Wilson are getting up and saying, yes, it's four months but it's it's four important months. It's where it's four, six months he said, you know, like the republican strategist, he said that a link .

project yeah .

the lincoln project guy in the former dictionary age you know like I I saw that not like, wow they are kind of saying that out in the open you know and um even even my point look lucky had the fines of thing happened um when I did the twitter files and I asian showed up in my house while I was testifying to congress um so that's absolutely crazy yeah no I I thought I had to be so I don't think no you IT is I do worry about that. I mean, I I I haven't even shared this with my wife yet, but I thought I might be time for us to get another house some other place that doesn't have an extradition treated yeah there many you know um yeah which is the problem aware of that yeah yeah yeah and um I never had those thoughts even even a year ago but uh, you must have had them.

I had a i've had experience, you know, pretty shocking, I would say um not IT was in time about a bit yeah for sure really, really shocking. But it's still kind of all hard to believe. I guess it's always that way, right? When your society changes, it's hard to believe it's actually happening.

Well, it's happens slowly like um somewhere along the line I became conscious the fact that obviously somebody must be listening to yeah you know the people who I have in my context listed, a lot of them are out of the country you are running from the law or on the wrong side of the intelligence services and you know there is no way that somebody is not uh aware of what's going on. No of what I do and that's that's unnerving on one level but yes, this this recent thing about you know even the stuff involving the epic times and um alex Jones, you know I was never a fan of his he had some choice things to say about me but I think this whole thing started with uh the decision to take him off um the internet and um that's troubling you know like they clearly see in journalist and information is a threat and I don't think it's an accent then there aren't that many places left to publish and uh there aren't that many people left doing real journalism. So yeah I think twitter .

will stay open for the duration .

of the election yeah IT is probably will um but you know trumps not on any more trusted twitter account is what one I think twenty six election uh and that was one of the reasons I think journal hatem is because um he proved that they in the internet age you don't need reporters extra fewer politician and they couldn't stand that I mean I listen to those conversations say they they were very resent for the fact that they he didn't have to go through their approval system you know um but he's not on twitter anymore and you know did. I mean, it's extraordinary, the job by, and the only candidate in the election who hasn't been sensor in some way, R, F, K, S, been censored on a swales got had been booted off, linked in for periods of time. I mean.

like joe, for you time.

we found her in the twitter fell SHE was on a on a list called is under score russian which was, yes, her he can they hear himself?

I mean, can they? By the way, I I like josten. And no, just not against joe. But if you find yourself thinking that jill stein, doctor jill stein is the threat to america, like you're A B phone .

too but they they think that right and they have the hostility towards jill stein, uh, the same way they had a hostility to our health nature once and once in the day. And the difference is now if you're jill stein, they see you as part of the trump apparatus. You're no different from trump to them a sage, uh, jules stein, you know, I is .

whatever they're .

together. Snow, exactly. So IT is a crazy times.

Um what is there anything you can .

get you to stop? Um no, I mean, i've got kids, so i'm obviously not completely invulnerable. But but I I think I think the world, amErica needs journalists. And again, our first the first thing that we have to be is um you know tough about IT right and so you you got to get knocked off before you you give up I think you shouldn't give up right? I mean all my heroes and journalism didn't didn't do that so I am not going to do that, I don't think um but mean you were not would you under .

any circumstances, right? exactly. Let let me be. Thank you.

Thanks so much. I appreciate.

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