The Fox News Love Triangle: Tucker, Murdoch and Trump
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From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Great Exodus from Twitter, which is down 5% in just one week. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. Twitter is down. Threads seems up. Are you enjoying it over Mark Zuckerberg's Threadland?

it. I think it's a good product. I'm not thrilled with Mark Zuckerberg in general, as usual, but I think that they're doing a good job at what they're doing, which is trying to knock the stuffing out of Twitter. They've got an opportunity, and Mark Zuckerberg is a very opportunistic kind of

He's a little like Bill Gates that way. And he's moving into an empty space that Elon's left for him. Yes. I'm right now in the splendid hills of Arezzo, Italy, where at the time we're taping this, Europeans have issues with threads. There's no threads rollout available in Europe yet. You may not use it. You may not use it in Europe. Yeah, it's not. They have privacy issues with Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah.

These recent bills they passed, it's not in compliance with them. And so rather than be in compliance, they just don't give it to them. That's all. That's the new methodology of many tech companies, not just meta. If they're not in compliance, they're not going to roll it out there. And we'll see if they get it or not. And we'll see if our country passes any privacy laws. That would be a problem for them. But right now, not so. Yeah.

Maybe there's a world where they meet in the middle, but doesn't seem so. But yes, I've been missing it. Threads is great. I mean, it seems so far, I described Instagram as thirst traps with pictures. This is thirst traps with words. I mean, there's a community, a kind of edginess and excitement about it. But I'm still not seeing the news-breaking or news-making elements of Twitter yet.

Are you? Well, I don't think Twitter is seeing the news elements of Twitter anymore. I don't think Twitter is doing a very good job of that. It used to. You know, I think what the problem with Twitter is that he's let it become such a toxic waste dump that it's hard to see things and it's hard to enjoy it in any way.

Very hard. If you go back between them, if you use threads for a couple of days and go back to Twitter, it's like, what happened to my neighborhood? I haven't gone back to Twitter since I went to threads. Have you? No, a lot of people haven't. And that's why I go back every now and then to look at things like this tweet from Linda Iaccarino. Just don't want to leave you hanging by a thread. Ha ha, Linda. Very funny. But Twitter, you really outdid yourselves. Last week, we had our largest usage day since February. There's only one Twitter, and you know it. I know it.

And then she had a mic, I guess she was dropping it, I suppose. I actually, the numbers do not follow that, but maybe they had one day, their largest usage. Yes, talk about the numbers. It seems a little bit like a defensive. Yeah, I'd like to know the numbers. I'd like to know the numbers, Linda. Yes, we'd love to know the numbers. But the big development in social media, especially as we're approaching an election, is this injunction that a federal judge in Louisiana has placed barring Biden administration officials from communicating with social media platforms about misleading content.

We talked about this a bit with Jen Easterly, who had already, before this injunction, said she was restricting her communications with social media platforms, essentially to avoid the appearance of impropriety. But what does this injunction mean? Well, it'll be a real problem because, as we talked with Jen, she's got to be in touch with these, about lots of things, including foreign interference. I think they have a little out to talk about that, but they'd be very cautious about any meetings whatsoever. And these meetings are necessary to make sure that...

There's not foreign malfeasance, foreign information, cyber attacks, things like that. And so it'll be a real problem. This judge is such an income poop. He's caused so many problems here. It'll probably be appealed and they'll probably move on. But like a lot of these constituencies that people like the Jan Easterly's group serves...

are in need of these tools. Just this week, there was a big story about the ones that have opted out of their election information tools are needing them again. Now they need them because they realize there's a lot going on. And so I think the more discussion between these companies and the federal government, the better. They're also, as we talked about a lot on Pivot this week, there's a real chilling effect on academics studying this stuff too, because there's lawsuits.

It's a coordinated effort on behalf of the right wing to shut down discussion because they hate free speech, from what I understand, according to these lawsuits. And they hate people looking into things. And it's happening at a particularly sensitive moment in the marketplace because, one, all these companies have been laying people off, including people in content moderation teams. Not just at Twitter, but also at Meta, other companies. And, two, we're just at the precipice of generative AI. So...

If 2012 and 2016 were considered the first social media elections, we're gearing up probably for what's going to be America's first AI election, correct? Yes, probably. We'll see where that goes. But it's really important that this thing gets overturned so that the companies can start working with government on lots of these issues. I don't think they like this either because they're going to be blamed for all the mistakes and they're going to get no help from the government. And so it's really important there's coordination there.

You know, as Jen said, it's not censorship to coordinate. There's no insulation from them. Yeah, right. It's not censorship. It's coordination. You know, speaking of threads, Renee DeResta has been writing about a lot of threads, really intelligent. So has Alex Stamos, both working for academic stuff at Stanford. These are Stanford's.

Stanford Internet Observatory. And so they've been talking about this. It's really important to have dialogue going on on these issues, because without dialogue, the bad actors are going to be able to avail themselves to all kinds of tools. Yeah. Well, speaking of dialogue, one place where there isn't a lot of diversity of opinion maybe these days is in cable news. And on Monday, we had a conversation with Jake Tapper about public trust, the future of media, and more. And we wanted to follow that up today with a conversation about Fox News. And

which is, of course, caught up in all kinds of drama at the moment. Yeah, it's important. I mean, Fox is sort of the center of the bad information environment. And there's been a lot going on there. And it's important to think about what's going to happen in the future as they'll be speaking of, it's not just online that's going to be a problem. It's going to be

cable networks, especially Fox, which is the biggest. Yeah, and Fox is not in a good place right now. Since firing their star anchor, Tucker Carlson, in April, Fox News has had historically low ratings in primetime, despite the efforts of Greg Grunfeld over there. They're reportedly laying off staff at the streaming network Fox Nation, and then they have these lawsuits. They settled with Dominion for almost $800 million, of course, but they still have to deal with a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic.

Yeah.

He's just written about Gregg Gottfeld and done this new piece around the possible defamation suit against Fox, which is expected to drop any day now, although it's Monday while we're taping this. We'll see. We'll see. Our second guest is Margaret Sullivan, the former New York Times public editor and current Guardian columnist, as well as host of the podcast American Crisis. She's been a critic of Fox News' impact on journalism for years. Yes.

Jonah Goldberg noted Fox defector who co-founded the online publication The Dispatch, where he's editor-in-chief. Cara, explain why we wanted to talk to them. We just want to talk to them about where Fox is going, and they're the smartest thinkers on them, some of the smartest thinkers on where it's going. And so it's really important to sort of examine probably the most important cable media outlet who has seen a lot of drama and trouble and where they're going next as we move into the election cycle. All right, let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with Jonah, Margaret, and Jeremy. ♪

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Welcome, Margaret, Jonah, and Jeremy. I'm glad I could get you all together today. So there are lots of issues facing Fox News that we need to dive into first. I want you guys to stack rank the problems, and I'm going to give you four choices. A, secular issues in streaming. B, the rating impact of Tucker Carlson's departure. C,

C, Donald Trump's anger towards Fox, and D, the Smartmatic suit and other suits that are coming. Margaret, let's start with you and then Jeremy and Jonah.

You mean, what do I, should I be worried about Fox? Worried about it. I'm trying, you know, I don't actually, it's hard for me to take on, you know, really being sympathetic and empathetic toward Fox, but I guess I'll try. If you were Rupert Murdoch or Lockheed Murdoch, how about that? I can't, look, I cannot go there, Kara. Okay. But I would say that of those, all of those things, um,

Maybe not the most immediate problem, but the biggest problem is the Smartmatic suit that's coming down the pike because they just paid $787.5 million in a settlement to Dominion Voting Systems. Smartmatic is actually potentially a bigger case. And now that Dominion went the way it went...

It's potentially a very, very big deal, particularly if Smartmatic doesn't want to settle the way Dominion did at the very last minute. So that's a big problem. I mean, losing Tucker Carlson, although it is very good for the world, is very bad for Fox and its ratings. But cable news in general...

you know, I wouldn't say the ratings are doing really well right now anyway. So, you know, that's a problem. I can't remember the other things you said, but those are the... Donald Trump's anger. I wouldn't worry about that too much. In the end, Trump and Fox need each other and they will find a meeting of the...

minds, I guess we'll say. All right. Okay. Jeremy? So I think the lawsuit that no one's paying attention to, which they should, is the suit that's about to be filed by a guy by the name of Ray Epps. He is a two-time Trump voter who was there on January 6th, who somehow became the target of various pro-Trump conspiracy theories, which are

totally outrageous. Like Tucker Carlson was at the forefront of this stuff. He said that Ray Epps is a double agent. He's a secret government plant who incited the January 6th riots in order to embarrass Trump and his political movement. And it's just, it's so beyond the pale. It's so unfathomable to think that like this is actually real. And this guy has the best defamation case according to the legal experts I have spoken to

Dominion because remember like Dominion was a lot of things but Dominion had a lot of evidence right they had episode after episode of falsehoods uttered on Fox News and that's exactly what Ray Epps has now he has a

Example after example for 18 months, Tucker Carlson claiming that this guy is somehow this secret James Bond. He called him Fed Epps, right? Fed Epps. Fed Epps. You're right, Cara. On the screen, on his show, it was FedEx logo that was manipulated to say Fed Epps.

So why, Jeremy, let me ask you, why is that more important? It's just another lawsuit or is it more important than Smartmatic? No, I think it is. The reason it's important is because the evidence is so overwhelming. Like if Abby Grossberg and these people who have like recently settled with Fox News had a case, this guy's case is incredibly powerful. All right, Jonah, what about you?

Yeah, I mean, I think the Smartmatic, look, I know all about the Ray Epps stuff. I'm glad he's suing. That's great. But I don't know how he can claim damages that get you in Dominion or Smartmatic territory. So I don't know that Fox needs to worry about it more than, say, Smartmatic. Okay. From a financial point of view. From a financial point of view. Or a reputational point of view. I mean, first of all, they got rid of Tucker.

And like whatever reputational hit they are going to take from Epps, they've already taken from Abby Grossberg and her dominion in a, in a Patriot purge and all of these things. Um, still I wish Ray Epps luck in the wars to come. Uh, I think, uh,

I think really it's sort of a combination of things. I mean, I wasn't sure what you meant by about the streaming problem, but I think just generally Fox faces the same problem. Nobody's watching cable. Right. Yeah, and I think that's a problem for all cable, but Fox will die the slowest just because it has the largest number of people watching. The thing I would be most concerned about if I were Rupert is it's the pincer move between Smartmatic and, to a certain extent, Dominion, and Trump's problems with Fox, right?

Because the legal environment, including the Ray Epps case, creates guardrails that Fox cannot cross the way it felt it could two years ago, three years ago. And so Trump is going to demand total obeisance and loyalty from a lot of the Fox characters, but

And they can't do it the way they once could because there are now, the moral hazard has been, and legal hazard has been established in a way. And that is only going to exacerbate things because Trump doesn't care. And he's going to say, hey, you used to be so much better to me. It must be because you hate me. And then he's going to attack it and reward Newsmax and OAN and all the rest. So I think it's the combination. Interesting. Jeremy, you cover the network day in and day out. What is...

the lay of the land at the network. They have guardrails now. Is this an existential moment for Foxx?

I mean, I think Fox will follow Trump until it becomes not financially viable for them. Like, that's the bottom line. Like, this is a network that is like any business driven by profit and ratings. And as soon as they see, like the rest of the Republican Party, that Trump is no longer there in their best interest,

Then they will keep promoting him. And there can be this kind of song and dance where, oh, they're fighting. They're not fighting. You know, he hasn't been on the network in 100 days or whatever. But I really do think that what it boils down to is ratings as long as Trump wins.

rates, Fox will continue to have him on. And they have had him on. They've had him on in numerous... He's been on Hannity. He's been on numerous shows. He's going to be on Maria Bartiroma this coming weekend. Like, they see ratings gold in him, just like the rest of the Republican Party does. He is popular. One of the funniest things...

You know, Trump lies all the time, right? But he did say one really true thing a long time ago, which was he called himself a ratings machine. And absolutely true. I mean, he does have that special...

you know, it is a kind of twisted genius that it's very, he's very compelling on TV. I mean, I do agree with that. I think it is worth pointing out. Ratings for cable news are so comparatively low compared to like normal TV or reruns of Big Bang Theory that what constitutes a ratings bonanza for Maria Bartiromo is, is a fraction of what considered a ratings bonanza for QVC, right? And so the,

The danger here, from my perspective, is that those voters overlap significantly with the small donors and the primary voters. And so if you can capture that Fox audience, even though in aggregate terms it's very small compared to the general population, in terms of voters who have a disproportionate influence on the trajectory of the Republican Party, it's very large. So keep investing in them, in other words.

Yeah, I mean, I think Jeremy's entirely right. Fox is not addicted to Donald Trump. Fox is addicted to its viewers. To the money. And its viewers are addicted to Donald Trump. And if they could break that addiction, they would have an intervention with their viewers tomorrow. Because I don't think Rupert wants to be stuck in this bizarre, dysfunctional relationship with Trump any longer. But he can't quit him until the viewers quit him, and the viewers aren't quitting him. All right, Margaret? Yeah.

We always have to remember that the way Fox News makes its money for the most part is not through advertising and not

through some direct relationship with viewers, but through carriage fees, through cable carriage fees. That's where the money comes from. So when all these places say, oh, we need to boycott this show or that show and get the advertisers to walk away, none of that matters because that's not where the money comes from. But the fact that Fox viewers are so vehement and fervent in their views

in their loyalty to Fox is very important because that allows Fox News to say to the cable companies, you've got to have us. In that vein, you wrote about Tucker's firing and you noted it threw the whole right-wing media ecosystem into a tailspin. Explain

his centrality within the right-wing media ecosystem. We'll get to where it is now and why his firing was so consequential. And then, Jonah and Jeremy, I'd love you to comment on that, too. Tucker is a very compelling figure to people. He

interesting history where he wasn't always the right winger that he is now, but he looms large and he's all in on this stuff. I mean, he loves autocracy now and

did a broadcast from Hungary, you know, to show how great life is in a budding authoritarian state, which used to be a democracy. So, I mean, it's always hard for me to explain that, you know, why people find him so wonderful, because I certainly find him horrible, but they do. I remember when I was a college journalist,

And working for the Michigan Daily, I went to the University of Michigan, and I was on John McCain's Straight Talk Express. And that's the first time I ever met Tucker Carlson. And he was working for Talk Magazine. Remember? Tina Brown's Talk Magazine. And he was a totally normal, very good writer. Like, he was known for his magazine profiles. He was, like, just a different person.

person than the guy that you see now, which tells me that he's basically contorted himself to be a television caricature, right? He knows what his audience wants. We know from the Dominion lawsuit, Cara, that he hated Donald Trump, despised him, called him a demonic force, a destroyer. But

To his audience, that never was apparent because he was playing a role that he knew he had to play in order to get ratings and profit and the money that flows from that.

So, Jonah, you were involved with Fox for many years. Megastars like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly left the network, even Roger Ailes, the mastermind behind The Curtain, was thrown out and then died. He isn't around. And yet it continues. Why is Tucker different then, even if he's co-splaying a new Tucker, which I don't think he is, but...

I would argue with you, Jeremy, but Jonah, go ahead. Yeah, I'm more on Jeremy's side on that. I've known Tucker for 25 years. He used to be a neighbor of mine. I knew him when he was at the Weekly Standard. I have many friends who were very close friends with Tucker's. Tucker's changed a lot. Or I should, there are parts of Tucker that were a small part of Tucker. There are now all consuming parts of Tucker's, I think the way to put it. He always cared about entertainment. He always sort of really liked being on TV. And I think the thinking of himself as an entertainer

took over big parts of his lizard brain. But I don't really know that Tucker is different. If Tucker had had these kinds of ratings that he had 10 years ago in the sort of Glenn Beck era and he left...

Uh, I think the, I mean, the pattern that has been the established pattern at Fox for years is people stay for the network, not for the personalities and everybody, every personality who thought that they were going to take their viewers with them failed, you know, and part of the joke is, is that, you know, there's a certain segment of the ratings that is attributable to the fact that the nurse won't change the channel on the remote. Right.

And people have Fox on all day long, all the time. And I think what has changed is the timing on the right. First of all, there are alternatives to right-of-center television that there weren't in those previous times. And part of it is the broken brain of the populist MAGA right is there's a thing going on on the right, which is very frustrating to me, which is that

winning is proof of surrender. Winning is proof of failure. If you look at the recent House Freedom Caucus deal, McCarthy got a deal. All the political pundits were like, good for McCarthy. That's surprising. He wrangled all these House Freedom Caucus guys. He got a deal with only fourth seat majority. And it is because it was a success that there has been a revolt because there is this assumption that's been in the bloodstream for a while, but it's now metastasized. Going back to the Jim DeMint days that says,

If you actually get any political wins, that's proof you sold out to the establishment, that you sold out to the left and all that kind of thing. And you're part of the elite. That's right. And so there is a certain corruption is assumed from success. And the only thing that's noble and pure is failure. And that's new. It used to be that a lot of people watched Fox because they were basically rooting for the Republican Party.

And that's not the case anymore. The base of the Republican Party hates the Republican Party in much the same way a big chunk of the base of the Democratic Party hates the Democratic Party. That's the weird thing about negative polarization. So, Jonah, you left because of one of the reasons was the Patriot Purge, his January 6th propaganda special. I don't know what else to call it. Were you surprised when they threw him out?

I was. Everyone I know was surprised. It was shocking. For all the obvious reasons, he got good ratings. They'd already paid their damages and all that. And I'm still a little dubious about some of the cover stories or the popular explanations for it. Saying terrible things in private text messages does not strike me as the...

straw that breaks the camel's back for the board. I was also surprised with the summary nature of it, right? I mean, this is like

Doing a show on Friday, I'll see you Monday, and then he's gone. I do think there was some really profoundly bad lawyering going on at Fox. All right. So, Jerem, why don't we double click on that? He was obviously fired in April. What Jonah was referring to were racist text messages and a lawsuit alleged he was anti-Semitic and created a hostile work environment. What's the latest then? Is there more to it?

Because there's a tense battle between Tucker and Fox over their exit agreement and his aspirations to make stuff either on his Twitter show or a new media startup he's raising money for. No, you're right. There's all these ulterior motives. And I agree with Jonah that it doesn't quite add up. And I'm the reporter among my colleagues, Mike Schmidt and Jim Rutenberg, who broke the story about why Tucker got fired with this racist text. And-

I think what it boiled down to was a liability, a business liability. That's what Lachlan Murdoch said to the board. That's what he said to his colleagues. Like, look, Tucker is no longer in our best interest. He's costing us money. And that's what the Murdochs do. They run a business. They're not running a charity.

They run a media empire that is supposed to maximize profits to shareholders and their own pockets.

And that's what they did. They saw Tucker as somebody who was costing them more money than he was making them money. There were no advertisers on his show anymore. Like, MyPillow was like the blue-chip American Express advertiser on that program. Right, but that check cashes in any case. I used to say that about a lot of advertisers on my early podcast, The Check's Cash. Where does it stand right now? So, like, you know, Kara, like, they've...

Elon Musk fudges these numbers with these Twitter, but like 80 million people watch. No, they didn't. They didn't. Like his Twitter quote unquote show has not been as successful as he'd hoped it would be because nothing is once you leave that platform where you have 3.5 million people watching you every single night. Real people. Real people. Exactly. Right.

You know, we'll see. Maybe Twitter's going to find a way to monetize it because we're forgetting about the fact that people aren't watching it. There's no monetization of that. Like they are not charging viewers or advertisers for that stuff. So it's not been successful at all. And I think that he's, you know,

This is my gut feeling and only anecdotal, but Tucker is not in the conversation anymore. Right. Or very little. Like, I don't know. I don't know what outrageous things he said.

The last time he did his Twitter show, I have no idea. No one's talking about it. It's not people aren't writing little gossipy news stories about it. He's dropped. Why do you think that is as a media? Because it's exactly what, what Jeremy just said. It's that there's one, it's one thing to be on TV every night in front of an audience and,

And it's another thing to be on a failing social media platform that's got its own set of terrible problems and is tanking. I mean, I'll give you an example. I mean, Carrie, you should appreciate this because your mom is a Fox News viewer. She is. So is my dad. And my dad was like,

I'm not going to watch Tucker on Twitter. Like, I have no idea how to find him. I can't find it. Yeah, my mom can't find it. This is a – I mean, you have to remember who the Fox audience and who the cable news audience is for the most part, which is they're older. They're not really – it's a different crowd altogether. Yeah, it's very difficult. I can say old because I'm old. Okay, that's fine. I am too. Yeah.

But before, Joan, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, but before that, where is the state of their discussions, the negotiations? What are they going to let him do? Are they just going to let him sit on the bench the entire president? Presumably him being successful is not in their interests either. Jeremy?

I think that what it boils down to ultimately is how do the Murdochs continue to make money, right? And they're not going to make money from these mealy-mouthed propositions of – Jesse Waters is a perfect example of this. He believes in nothing, I think. Jesse Waters is basically a crisis actor.

He is somebody who is going to go on television and say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear.

And that's the new Fox News. So what does Fox do with Tucker? They just hold him back so he doesn't succeed elsewhere, presumably? I think, so I will tell you what I've learned about their negotiations is there are none lately. Like they have not spoken recently. There's been no negotiation back and forth. I think basically Tucker is, as you would imagine, happy to be paid $25 million a year.

Through 2024. And he can kind of do whatever he wants. And you can see it like in these Twitter episodes, like he's not putting his all into it, right? Like these are not, these are not compelling episodes. So I think like, wouldn't you be happy if you were making $25 million a year to do nothing? Not if I was, two things I would say is having been on left-wing,

Rupert Murdoch, we were very nervous about legal things for a long time, that they would do things. And we were told by many people that they just might, even though we were quite small at the time when we left to do our own thing. And so we're very careful about how we did so. And the second thing is, I think he wants to be relevant. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I think he could make a lot more money, you know, with a bunch of tech money behind him, for example. Jonah? Yeah.

Yeah, I think both things can be true. I mean, Tucker has become quite...

bunkered over the last few years. You know, he hasn't been in the studio in the DC Bureau for years. He created the studio out in Maine. He created a studio down in Florida. He does most things virtually. He fishes during the day. And, you know, I thought it was funny. It was like the only other legal action that he's taken recently was to send a cease and desist order to the people trying to draft him for president. And I never thought that that was going to happen anytime soon because he's just, it's too much work.

And I'm not saying Tucker's lazy, but he had kind of curated his life the way he liked it. Rant for an hour in front of a camera and then go home. Let's face it, it's a great life. Yeah, it's a great life. And so my understanding about why Tucker started to become the way he did when he got his own show was in part because he despised Sean Hannity so much that he was willing to do anything it took to beat him in the ratings.

Now, the problem is it's sort of a me chain kind of thing. You look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. The process of doing the things that he thought were necessary in terms of venting his spleen and his grievances and coming up with all these paranoid conspiracy theories changes.

changed him to where that actually became the dominant sort of mode of how he looked at politics in the world. And I still think that that sort of vengeful, I'm going to get even kind of thing is motivating him, and he will come back and try to have a

a position of influence out there, I think the model for him is probably going to be the Joe Rogan thing. Yeah, yeah. And part of the Joe Rogan thing is constancy, right? It's geography. It's like appointment. People know how to find Joe Rogan and listen to Joe Rogan or watch Joe Rogan. And the Twitter thing was just stupid because...

most of his hardcore fans couldn't figure out how to do it. But that's a solvable technological problem, and my sense is he's going to be back. Going to be back doing a part, if he's allowed to. Now, Margaret, if he were to run, which they say he's not, how do you think he'd do now? I mean...

Look, I always say that journalists are bad at predictions and should not make them. However, you're asking me a direct question. Good answer. You can hate the question. I think that Trump is going to, unless something really insane happens, something more insane than what we've already seen, I think Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. And that's that. So, period. I don't know. Do you guys disagree with that? It seems so obvious to me. I will say this. Like,

I heard from some of Trump's people that they were very worried about Tucker Carlson and what he might do to throw his lot in for DeSantis.

So that's a real thing. Yes. And Margaret, I 100 percent agree with you. Trump's hold on the Republican Party is as strong as it's ever been. However, this is in 2016 and they're a little nervous. Right. And they think that it can be disruptive. We'll be back in a minute.

All right. I want to talk about the candidates who are next in line for the throne because you said they work through these people. Bill O'Reilly, who's that? Megyn Kelly is screaming on some podcast somewhere. Glenn Beck is doing whatever he does. But they move on. And as far as I know, Roger Ailes is still dead, like Francisco Franco. That's a Saturday Night Live joke from a long time ago. So let's do a lightning round.

Jonah, Jesse Waters, which Jeremy mentioned, obviously got Tucker's 8 p.m. spot. Do you think he has what it takes to capture his numbers or anything close to those? Or is he the empty suit crisis actor? I doubt he'll be able to recapture. I mean, look, the unstated thing in all of this is that Tucker's really smart. Yeah. Tucker's really talented. Yes, indeed. Jesse Waters is different than really smart. And it will show over time. But he'll be able to say the right words for a while. What is different than really smart?

He's orthogonal to smart. Sean Hannity is a major intellect compared to Jesse Wiles. Okay. All right. So no. So that's a no. Okay. All right. Jeremy, I'm going to give you Laura Ingram. Just got moved to seven out of prime time. Is that a punishment after Dominion?

but I don't know that Laura had that much to do with dominion. Like, I think it just had to do with the fact that she wasn't as tendentious. Like she, she didn't have a strong point of view and like, whatever you say about Jesse waters, like she,

he at least follows the audience. And that is what the modern Fox News is. It's following the audience. So I don't think that she is the type of person that- Not the star. Exactly. Margaret, Sean Hannity, I'll give you Sean. He remains a key figure, continuing to the nine, the choice, the Einstein of this group, continuing in this 9 p.m. slot. Do you think he's got the ability to grow or just staying power of he's just there? I think

that among all the people we've talked about that Hannity is probably the one who has the most popular appeal. So I suppose he's the

The leading light here. The leading light. In what way? The ability to grow or just staying power? Yeah, I guess in the, I don't know, ability to grow, ability to capture the audience and remain very tight with the audience's concerns. So he's their biggest star at this point. Do you have any other...

Anybody else? I mean, I can't think of who is a bigger star with Tucker Carlson gone. Tucker Carlson gone. Jeremy, what about Greg Gutfeld? He's been doing his shtick at 10 p.m. He's not unfunny, even though he's completely tasteless. He's beat Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, occasionally even Stephen Colbert. It's unusual for a cable news channel to beat broadcast networks in late night. Yeah. That's so wild. Jeremy, tell us what's going on. And in your article, you wrote an article about Greg Gutfeld saying,

He quote, I was very anti-Trump until when he won, kind of reminds me of Tucker's text that he hated Trump passionately. So explain why this happened.

And how much is the WGA strike, which is another element here that writers- No, you're right. Since the WGA strike, Gutfeld's ratings have improved. However, he was beating Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert before the writers' strike. So that's a wake-up call. I think that-

The fact that the most popular guy on late night television is Gutfeld, somebody who probably most of, I can say this confidently, New York Times readers have never heard of this guy. I would imagine that most of your podcast listeners have not heard of this guy, that he is the most popular figure in late night television. That's a real wake-up call. That's a real disconnect.

Jonah, what are your thoughts on that? And also, he was on The Five, the popular political combat show. He went head-to-head on Twitter a few times, the show's lone liberal, Geraldo Rivera, although I can't believe I'm saying that, who has since quit or left The Five. Any thoughts, Jonah, on Geraldo's exit and Gutfeld?

No, I've never been a fan of Geraldo. I've known Greg for 20-something years as well. I'm not a huge fan of the show. I don't think that it's... I think it's kind of funny to talk about it as a wake-up call because to me it is sort of analogous to Fox's success overall. If you watch late-night comedy shows, particularly since Trump...

They are very political and they are all, it is a monoculture. It is sort of derivative of the Daily Show kind of thing. Mock Republicans, celebrate and kid glove Democrats. And you can scan back and forth between the opening monologues of those shows and hear basically the same jokes.

And Gutfeld is the one that's different. And that was the original secret of Fox's success. Fair or not, we can argue about liberal media bias. For a lot of people who thought liberal media bias is real, and I'm one of them, Fox was the alternative to it. It was, this thing is not like the others. And now we're seeing it in the realm of late night comedy. That's very smart. I think one of the mistakes that the late night shows did that was really a bad idea is break from sort of the Carson Leno model of not politicizing their content. Mm-hmm.

And now they can't pull out of that. And so in a world where late night comedy is supposed to be politicized,

Gutfeld gets the people who want to laugh at Democrats and the rest of the crowd has to share, has to split the vote, the viewers who want to laugh at Republicans. All right, Margaret, you get the last one, Brett Baier. One man who's not leaving anytime soon. He seems to be in a limelight. He did a quite a good interview with Trump, a tough one. Yes. Which put the CNN town hall to shame. Is he a rising star or is his peak? What do you, how do you look at him in there? I mean, he's a different, he's sort of a horse of a different color. He's not an opinion host. He's not a,

He's a news guy, basically. And he is capable of doing a tough interview. I mean, I don't think he has that kind of

He's not in the same kind of category of the other people we're talking about. I mean, he serves a very important purpose at Fox, which is that he's the guy that their PR points to when you say, oh, it's a right wing network. They go, but Brett, you know, and it used to be, but Shep.

but Shep couldn't take it anymore and Shep Smith left. Is that important? Is that an important thing to have? Seems to be important to them. How do you look at it? I think that Fox News is a detrimental force in our society for it. So it's hard for me to, you know, sort of,

gee, how can it do best? I don't want it to do best. Okay, good point, fair point. But you didn't see that at Fox, that kind of, it wasn't an attack on the president, it was a tough interview. Did that surprise you, Jonah? No, I mean, look, I'm friends with Brett Baer. I was on the special report panel for years. I have my disagreements with Brett about all sorts of things, but I think he's an honest and serious journalist and a reporter. I probably agree with a lot of Margaret's criticisms about Fox and its total role in society, but I would describe that

A lot of the problems that Fox represents are because, um,

And I know this is a weird thing to say because I think we can all agree that Roger Ailes was a deeply flawed human being. But Roger Ailes at least understood the importance of the news side in terms of maintaining the credibility of the overall brand. And in the post-Roger Ailes world, the news side got sidelined continuously in favor of the opinion side. And one of my disagreements with Brett, and again, he's a friend and I respect him.

But his attitude, as far as I can tell, internally at Fox was, I must protect my show. Same thing with Chris Wallace, who's now a colleague at CNN, right? I must protect my thing. My integrity is expressed through the integrity of my product. And I understand that impulse. The problem is, if you're always on defense, the only possibility is either maintaining the status quo or incrementally losing territory.

And there was nobody who was going to stand up. And it was designed this way. It's not really a super criticism of them so much as the way the forces arrayed that there was nobody there who had the institutional clout in the post-Ailes world to defend the prerogatives and integrity of the news side. And so it died. I don't want to say it died because there's still people doing good work there. But all of the problems that we've seen at Fox are

that are really important all come from the opinion side, you know, and the opinion side is the respect the audience side and it created enormous problems for the news side that the news side is still grappling with. And that's how you get Jesse Waters hosting the EPM show. True.

All right. Let's talk about the coverage then, Margaret. Let me start with you. The Dominion lawsuit obviously aired a lot of dirty laundry about the hold Trump had on Fox viewers. Is there a case from a media point of view that Murdoch smells blood in the water after the night and could find a new audience? That's been, you know, CNN tried to do it from the other side.

from the other side. What's the new? Oh, you mean, the more the more conservative, the more right wing audience? Could they abandon it and go the other way in any way from your perspective, given this? I mean, from my perspective, the effort to find this kind of reasonable middle for opinion coverage as CNN did, if that's what was going on, I mean, that's not exactly a great description of it. But to kind of

Take things down the middle. That's not what cable news is about. Cable news is where the viewer goes to get his or her or their outrage on. And so that just simply is a bad business idea. So I know I don't think that's a good I don't think that's for that for to move against Trump. Jeremy, you've done some reporting on this. Do you see them thinking like this?

I think the business model for cable news is very different from the business model of, say, a New York Times, right? Like, the New York Times has staked out its position as being independent. Like, we are not going to put our finger on the scale. We're going to report...

And regardless of whether or not we think our audience is offended by this stuff, that's the exact opposite of Fox News and cable news in general. So neither of you thinks there's going to be a course correction in any way, nor should there be, correct? Right. Again, I cannot myself in the position of saying what should Fox do to be successful. No, no, no. But you don't see that happening because of their business model.

I think Chris Licks. Well, hold on. I think there has been a course correction. Okay. I mean, they fired Tucker Carlson. They did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did a lot of things that pissed off their audience. Now, did they have to do it because, you know, Dominion attached a pain collar to Fox and was zapping them? Sure. But like when you see things like Dominion stuff come up on Fox, you get a whoa, whoa, whoa, that didn't happen. Right. And, you know,

Marie Bartiromo, I am sure, would love to still be talking about how the cyber ninjas were actually paid by the Pope to screw up the recount stuff. Well, you know, that's well known. But she's not allowed to say that stuff. Go ahead. I'm kidding.

My only point is, I think there has been a course correction. It's not what I would like. But you did note that he wanted to get out of this dysfunctional relationship. Now, there's lots of ways for him to get out of it, including he's very old. But does he want to get out of it or does he not care? Oh, I think he would love to get out of it. I mean, I think Jeremy is right that he would not at the price of not making money.

But, you know, the network has been very good to Ron DeSantis and gives him a lot of cover and a lot of airtime. And, you know, the fact that The Five is actually the most profitable show on the network, you know, at once sort of tells you something because it's not, it's just not as hardcore about that kind of stuff. And...

I think Jesse Waters will take orders in a way that Tucker wouldn't, which is one of the reasons why he got on the show. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of Murdoch, Margaret, how much power then does he have over American politics now vis-a-vis Fox News? I mean, he's powerful because he has powerful media outlets. You know, Fox News being the primary one, but it's not the only one. You know, he's got the New York Post, which serves its purpose in his world.

And the Wall Street Journal, which is important and very different, you know, but powerful. And I mean, I think that Wall Street Journal's editorial page is a great window into Rupert Murdoch's politics, maybe more than anything else. So how powerful is he? He's powerful, very powerful. And the question in my mind is how much actual effect will these huge lawsuits have

actually be. You know, if one of them resulted directly or indirectly in Tucker Carlson's being fired, I think they're a pretty big deal. All right. Jonah, you recently wrote about your dismay at seeing conservatives turn against, quote, the free market, constitutional originalism, limited government, internationalism, Ronald Reagan's presidency, and the idea that character matters. So he still has power, though. Murdoch does, and Fox's role in the unlikely evolution of this.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with Margaret that if you want to understand Rupert Murdoch's head, you read the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. And if you understand his heart, you look at the New York Post. And, you know, let me just sort of back up from the stuff I was writing about and just make a broader point.

Trump has been incredibly damaging to conservatism, broadly speaking. I think he's actually been very damaging to a lot of left of center institutions because a lot of left of center institutions lost their minds about Trump's norm breaking and then violated norms in the process. You know, one way to think about it is.

We spent a decade talking about the corrupting influence of big money and billionaires and big donors and all that kind of stuff. And fine, there's legitimate arguments to be had there. It turns out that the real poisonous force in American politics are small donors. I mean, like the whole, so many institutions on the right have embraced populism. I've been writing against populism for almost 20 years.

All I got was nodding heads and attaboys from conservatives. And then all of a sudden, when populism became the new flavor of the week, everyone was like, oh, you're a cuck, you're a liberal, you're a rhino, you're a sellout. My point is that...

Every institution, starting with talk radio, but also places like the Heritage Foundation, you can go down a very long list. Any institution that was organized around monetizing large audiences or large sets of donors, of small donors, over time basically caved into Trumpism and nationalism and populism. Mm-hmm.

And you could see it happen in real time with Rush, where he tried to push back against Trump. Then he saw that his audience was going the other way. He flipped. He totally flipped. That's what Rupert did. If you have to have one heuristic about that explains what has happened to a lot of these institutions on the right, it is the caving to populism. I would argue the Democratic Party came very close with the Bernie phenomenon of making the exact same mistake.

We've been in a populist moment for a while now. I think a lot of the stuff we're still seeing today in our politics is downstream of what happened in 2007, 2008. And then you add in the pandemic and it's a lonely time for people who say, you know, norms matter, rules matter, procedures matter, because our politics now is basically about the assertion of populist power and

and then pretextual arguments about what the rules should be later. And organizations like Murdoch followed them. But Jeremy, Rupert won't live forever, despite all appearances to the contrary. Play out the succession drama. His power is achieved through a dual-class stock structure that is very similar to many internet companies, which means he has complete control, despite shareholder unhappiness.

which they did push back at one point recently. But what happens next? There are four kids that matter. It is a real-life succession in a weird way. Where do you see it happening? What's going to happen? I mean, as Margaret said, journalists are terrible at making predictions and we shouldn't do them. But I do think that...

Look at what happened with Disney, right? Like the Murdoch sold off a huge portion of their company, 20th century Fox, the most profitable and recognizable part of their business. I would not be surprised at the end of the day to see something like that happening again. Like, you know, Fox news is not going to endure forever. Its audience is older. Um,

That makes them less likely to cord cut, too. So it kind of cuts both ways. That's true, John. As long as it lasts. Yeah. And eventually their cord will be cut. But go ahead. I think this idea of a Murdoch dynasty going forward is not true.

going to be the truth. So a sale, you're essentially saying a sale. Margaret, let me ask you then, Elon has tried to step into the breach, trying to create a kind of a media organization or an alternative. By the way, the Wall Street Journal has been attacking Elon quite a bit, which is interesting to watch.

That editorial fight go on. Is there an alternative? You mean, is there an alternative to mainstream? Yes, is there something else to Fox? Did the mainstream... Fox has led the way in this conservative way. There's other efforts at Twitter, but now they're getting the stuffing kicked out of them by Mark Zuckerberg, who is quite centrist, I would say. How do you look at how that's played out from a media point of view? I mean, I don't see...

social media platforms like Twitter or Threads, you know, being a direct competitor to Fox. I mean, it's a big, complex media ecosystem and each sort of has its role to play. I don't think we know really what's going to happen with Twitter fully right now. It sort of seems to me like Threads is taking a lot of its role.

you know, power away from it. But I don't know a lot of people who've actually come off Twitter entirely. So I have, I quit. Okay. Was there anything replaced? What replaces Fox News when Fox News, what, gets sold or something else? I'll leave that to Jonah. He may know best. I have no idea. I mean, you could just as easily ask, you know, given the same trend lines,

What replaces CNN or MSNBC when they go away? I actually, I do think Fox will outlive them. And there may be a thing called these things for a very long time, right? So it's the substitution effect. You have young people who just never got acculturated into watching cable news. And so they don't feel like they're replacing cable news with YouTube or whatever. They just think that's their thing, right? And I suspect...

It'll be more like a lot of these lamentably gone newspapers. It's not like people replaced those newspapers with other newspapers. They stopped reading newspapers. And that breaks my heart, but it will break my heart less if people stop watching cable news. There's lots of being willing to defend intellectually or whatever. But at the end of the day, TV is an entertainment medium.

And people who use TV as a way to actually understand most complex political issues are getting a poor diet nutritionally, you know, intellectually. And guess who understands that the most? Who? Donald Trump. Yeah. So let's – so we're going to end on him. He's still calling Fox fake news. He says he'll skip the primary debate. Does Fox need Trump more than he needs them or does –

what media does Donald Trump need? You can either answer either one of these. Jonah, you go first, then Margaret, then Jeremy. I think it's a hard question to answer for 2024. I think 2016, Trump needed Fox a hell of a lot more than Fox needed Trump. It's sort of like saying...

It's a strained analogy. Does Frankenstein's monster need Frankenstein anymore after he's already been brought to life? Right. It's just, it's like Fox created into a certain extent, the political entity that is Donald Trump, not the celebrity, but the political entity. And now he's got the audience, right? He has stolen the audience from Fox and less he dies or gives it back in some way. Fox needs Trump back.

or nationalist populist politics more than Trump needs Fox. Margaret? I mean, it's an interesting question. I think that to a large extent, Trump is sort of his own media. He takes it directly to the people in many ways, whether it's in a rally or whether it's on his social media platforms.

platform, you know, he doesn't really need the kind of the traditional interpreter or gatekeeper that mainstream media, and I'm including Fox in that, has been. So I guess I'd say that Fox needs Trump more. Jeremy, where do you see the media landscape going, especially with the conservative media? Where does it go to? Where does it flow to? I think you need to watch Fox. As long as Trump...

is rating in their numbers, as long as they see him...

As the most popular presidential contender in their polling, they will continue to have him on. So Fox is your best barometer for whether or not Trump is going to be the nominee. I contend to this day, as I did after January 6th, this guy is going to be the nominee. And anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

Okay. I do have an actual last question. Margaret, you've written that, quote, cable news is where viewers go to get their outrage on. I say something similar about social media, that engagement equals enragement. I'd like each of you to answer this in a very pithy way. Do we think the world post-cable news is better, worse, or just as bad? Well, I mean, I don't accept the premise. I don't think cable news is going away. But is it a positive force in society overall? No. Okay. I'll say that much. Jonah?

I think if the history of the last 50 years has taught us much of anything when it comes to these kinds of issues, we make wishes with a monkey paw and then they're granted and then things are worse. So I see a world where people are getting their engagement from weird social media streams and stuff where there's no chance for the wider public to true squat any of it is worse than even the worst things about Caitlin. Jeremy?

I see a world not that dissimilar from what Jonah was describing, a world of copycats. And I think that people are copycatting Fox News and they think that's what viewers want. They want this increased polarization, this increased anxiety and anger and anger.

Entertainment as opposed to politics, and I get why entertainment works better than politics, but it's really distressing that when for all of his flaws, Chris Lick taking the helm of CNN, trying to make it as a straight news organization is.

didn't work because that's not what people want. Or he made it too much the Chris News Network. That could be anything. But you guys didn't mention AI. I mean, what could go wrong? I think I'll end on that. Anyway, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. It was a really fantastic discussion and I appreciate all your thoughts. Thank you, Cara. Thank you. Thanks, Cara. It's on!

Orthogonal to smart. Yeah. But more to the point, we discussed kind of three big personalities in that conversation. Trump, Rupert, Tucker. So let's discuss them in that order. We ended on this question of who needs who more?

What do you think, by the way? I think they came around to the Fox needs Trump more, and they built him, and now he's running the show for them, and he has his own media, and I think that's correct. I think he can attract any media he wants for the group he wants to attract. The question is, if he goes to a national election, does he need them more? He obviously does because he doesn't have, you know, independence. But the numbers are pretty clear. He absolutely doesn't have Democrats. So in his small group of people, it matters, obviously.

When it comes to the larger election, I don't know. I don't know if the power shifts back. I think it probably does. I think they're absolutely correct. Rupert is not happy to be in this marriage and has been trying to get out of it, but can't unless he doesn't care about the money. And of course, he still does. At the advanced stage in his 90s, he still doesn't have enough money. That brings us to the second personality, Rupert. I really appreciate that point by Margaret that Rupert's heart is in the New York Post and his head is in the Wall Street Journal. And I don't know, is it his pocketbook at Fox News? Mm-hmm.

His gut. His pocketbook and his gut. Yeah. Yeah. I get that Murdoch wants out of this dysfunctional relationship with Fox, but the exit paths weren't very clear. It seemed like Jeremy was saying that don't discount a crazy action. Oh, I think they're absolutely going to sell. The kids don't agree on anything, and especially James and Lachlan. And I suspect the two sisters are probably with James more than Lachlan. And so they'll sell it. They'll get the money and they'll move on. Yeah.

Who knows who could... There's lots of buyers. Joe has said something really interesting about Roger Ailes kind of understanding the importance of the news side and now...

post-Ailes leaning into opinion. Other people have said something similar, but it's weird to think of Roger Ailes as a gatekeeper of journalistic principle, which is probably a step up from what he was saying. Well, I mean, anyone who's met Roger Ailes, and I have, he was brilliant at what he did. You can appreciate someone's brilliant and understand how evil he might have been or his terrible influence and his terrible behavior, obviously. But he really did understand the importance of

balancing it. And he thought, obviously, the opinion was what set them apart and made them different. At the same time, he had to, you know, lead with the news because that's where he came from, but he was also a propagandist ultimately. So even though he favored news more so than they do now, he thought it was important to combine the two and he was right.

I wonder if he would be surprised by the evolution or devolution, as the case may be, of Tucker Carlson. Oh, I don't know. I think he would have also gone down the right-wing path and become more red-pilled over time. He was already paranoid and demented and...

a sexual harasser of women, rapist, you know. Yeah. I think he would have been just, he would have gotten worse. He was paranoid and moving that way and obviously unhealthy and everything else. So I think he probably would have just degenerated just like the rest of the Republican, that particular side of the Republican Party. It's hard not to drink the Kool-Aid or eat the red pill when you're manufacturing the Kool-Aid or the red pill as well. That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. This brings us to our third personality, Tucker Carlson. Um,

Jeremy said Tucker was costing them more than he was making for them for Fox News. And they all thought that Tucker was the loser. He lost a cushy job, and now he has to push all these little parts of his career together. But when Jeremy was talking about Trump being worried about Tucker specifically going over to DeSantis...

Jonah was nodding. Did you notice that? No, I didn't. But I mean, of course, they're worried about that. You know, he attacked, Trump attacked Kim Reynolds of Iowa, the governor of Iowa today, because she seems favoring of DeSantis. Donald Trump is a paranoid person, as he should be. And so he's going to attack anybody who wants. It's also a statement about the power of Tucker, though, right? Yeah.

No, I don't think he is powerful. I think he's just like Bill O'Reilly was a big deal. So was Rush Limbaugh. So they either die or they die in the ratings. And so eventually someone like Tucker doesn't get a second chance. He had his chance. He had his platform. And

Good luck. He'll probably be a podcaster, but he's not funny like Joe Rogan is. Tucker Carlson is exhausting, and in a different medium, it might not work. It worked there for that moment in time, and unfortunately for a lot of media people, that's what happens. And then you go on to something else. He may make more money in a new environment, but it's certainly not going to have the same influence. So we'll see. We'll see. Less relevant, more economics. Yeah. Tucker, I'm sorry. He's also old. Oh.

How old is he? He's old. He's old for the, it's not we're young people. He needs new audiences. Is he like 50, 60? It doesn't matter. His audience is dying.

And so he needs a new audience. And I don't even know. Then there's another Tucker Carlson headed our way in some format. And we'll see who that is. Although no one could identify him in our lightning round. Well, they can't because they don't know. You don't know who it's going to be. They wouldn't have guessed it of Carlson for sure. They all thought he had changed rather precipitously. Oh, I thought that was so interesting. The story Jeremy told of being a college kid and meeting Tucker at John McCain's Straight Talk Express. Yeah.

And Jeremy and Joan, I thought that Tucker was kind of cosplaying a role to some extent or taking on a role. You said you disagree. Why? What is your evidence for that? I think because I watched Elon's red pill. Elon was not like he is now. He just wasn't. Just wasn't. Unless it was one big fakery. But it wasn't. He was much more centrist. He was much more reasonable. But he had those elements for sure. All the paranoia, all the stupid juvenile puerile behaviorists.

But they took over, just like this guy. I think he's—most of all, something happened to him in his youth where he was victimized in some fashion. In his case, there's a long history and stories about his mother leaving them and everything in Tucker Carlson's case. And I think he's still playing out the pain of his childhood. And it just took over. And his anger just grew. I don't know. I just—it seems—

Pretty classic to me what happened to Tucker Carlson. So you're arguing by analogy kind of Elon and Tucker in a similar category. Yeah. We'll be watching his downfall, I guess, on Twitter. We'll be watching what happens to Tucker on Twitter, I guess. But the last question I want to ask, and probably the right person to ask it to is you. Social media is not a competitor to Fox News. That's what Margaret said. Do you agree? Yeah.

Or to cable news? I think cable news is a dying, secularly dying eventually. And that's not what young people use. And so whatever take, I think it's going to be dissipated everywhere. I think social media is now not imploded but exploded and it's everywhere. And so I'm not so sure there's going to be a centralized place the way there has been four or five cable networks. There's going to be dozens and dozens of places people will get news. And they're going to curate it themselves. Right.

So, you know, we'll see if that's a good or bad thing, but I don't think there'll be one central thing. And it looks like Mark Zuckerberg's putting a good fight up for his threads. They could make a lot of money with that thing. Indeed he is. It'll be a lot. And he's good at ads, and he's good at data, and he's good at technology, and he's good at social media. So you may not like all of it, but I think he's learned his lessons, and I think it will be interesting to see how he presents threads over time.

Well, let's see what happens with threads. And in the meantime, we'll let you get back to threading and read us the credits, please, Kara. Okay, I will.

Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Nishik, Christian Castro-Rossell, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're smart. If not, don't be orthogonal to smart. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us, the Vox Media Podcast Network.

We'll be back on Monday with more.