September 8, 2025 • 66 mins
Luke Savage, a writer and political analyst who has written for outlets like Jacobin and The New Statesman, joined the show to talk about none other than Matt “Matty” Yglesias, the influential, centrist pundit with a habit of getting things wrong. Matty also changes his opinions–sometimes abruptly. The “leftist hater brigade” also discussed the current state of liberal punditry and why it feels like we’re being forced back into the blogosphere days of the aughts.
Links for Luke (and Matty):
His newsletter: www.lukewsavage.com/
His Twitter/X profile: x.com/LukewSavage
“The Agony and Ecstacy of Matt Ygelasias” by Luke Savage
“I’ve been right about some things” by Matt Yglesias
Transition music: "Fox River Dream" by Smoking Popes
Patreon link: https://patreon.com/PostingThroughIt
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
The strength and weakness of JD Vance is that he he he he at
least used to be a dedicated reader of the Matthew Iglesias
plug. And it's it's good.
I I to be not like. Because he, you know, secretly
agree with me whatever. But like he is a.
Smart, widely read person who isgenuinely interested in politics
(00:25):
and public policy just like I. Welcome back to posting through
(01:03):
it. I'm Mike.
I'm Jared. And we have a very exciting
episode for you today with Luke Savage, a Blogger, podcaster of
the left, I would say, who is a critic of centrist neoliberal
pundits. He's going to talk a little bit
about Matt Iglesias, a guy who needs no introduction to most of
(01:27):
our listeners because he is arguably the most famous Blogger
of the non Trump MAGA world. I think that's fair.
I'm still hyped up from our first premium episode.
That was so much fun to just kind of take a little bit of the
Sheen off and and just make a little bit more raw of an
(01:47):
episode. Especially the conversation
about Cracker Barrel, just like sent me into a fit.
So good your impression of your mom.
It was so much in that episode was fun.
Yeah. And we'll be recording another
one next week with a little bit of extra stuff from Luke in
there on a discussion about chorus and probably How would
(02:09):
you describe the chorus situation, Jared?
It is a what's the language theyuse?
Like a a Democratic influencer incubator operation or
something. I don't know.
Luke knew more about it than we did, so like Mike said, in
addition to the interview you'regoing to hear today, we also
talked to him a little bit aboutthat, and you'll find that in
(02:30):
this week's premium episode. And we're going to talk a little
bit also about Chicago. I just want to ask really
briefly before we get into this episode, how you're feeling on
the apparent eve of some sort ofmega occupation.
It doesn't feel good. The sense I get from living here
(02:52):
and from talking to some of the people, you know, some of my
friends here is that a lot of people just kind of don't know
what to expect yet. Is it going to look like it
looked in DC? What will the scale be?
Where are they going to be? A lot of stuff, you know, as
we're recording this now is largely unknown.
(03:18):
But if there's any protests or anything next week, I think I'm
going to grab a a field recorderand try to get out in the street
and and bring back some footage for for next week's episode or
something. Yeah, we're going to get on to
our episode, but before we do, we have to do a shout out for
some of our new Patreon subscribers, people who gave a
(03:38):
little bit extra this round. In the Executive Club, we have
Christina Stevens. Thanks, Christina.
And in the platinum we have Michael Bazico.
This one just says the starting pitcher for the Gold team and
the bassist from Secretion. What the fuck?
(03:59):
Thank you, whatever that is. Robinson de Lager and Mia's
Sylveon I. De la guerre.
De la guerre, if I mispronouncedany of those, please send us a
message on Patreon. I'll do it again with the
correct pronunciation. Yeah, it it means the world to
(04:20):
us that that people are supporting the show.
Every time I get the little e-mail notification that someone
new is signed up, you know, it really warms my cold, dead
heart. I love the $5 subscribers as
well. So this is an episode about
professional opinion hammers andare.
We in that category. I don't have any opinions, I'm
just. We're like amateur opinion
(04:41):
hammers. Exactly so Matthew Iglesias,
sometimes referred as Maddie because you put the Y at the end
of Matt. Born May 18th, 1981.
Grew up in New York City and studied philosophy at Harvard
University, where he was editor in chief of the Harvard
Independent. He graduated there in 2003.
(05:04):
But before he graduated, he started blogging about politics
and public policy, which is probably how most people know
about Maddie today. After school, he joined the
American Prospect as a writing fellow, soon became a staff
writer. There he went on to write for
publications like The Atlantic, Think Progress, Slate.
(05:25):
At Slate he authored a column called Money Box that was pretty
popular at the time and in 2014 he Co founded Vox Media with
Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell and he served there as the senior
editor and Co host of the podcast The Weeds.
He left Vox in November 2020 to start a Substack newsletter
(05:46):
called Slow Boring, which now earns according to some reports.
I'm not sure where that's at today, but the ones we found
were $1.4 million annually from his nearly 18,000 subscribers.
He also joined the Niskanen Center as a senior fellow in
2020 and is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
(06:09):
Iglesias has authored books including 2012's The Rent is Too
Damn High and 2020 is 1 Billion Americans.
For someone so successful, you'dexpect Iglesias to have some
pretty good takes. Well, that has not always been
the case. He spends a lot of his time
(06:30):
criticizing progressives. He sort of punches left, I think
is the way to describe what he does.
And he doesn't always land a punch when he throws it.
So how does a guy like Matt Iglesias rise up to become such
an influential voice in politicslike he is today?
The opinion pages of the national press and now a new
(06:51):
rank and file of independent writers have made millions
churning out Milktoast takes just like Maddie has.
Contrast that to so many talented journalists and news
analysts who are out here just struggling in between their one
off freelance gigs, you know, trying to take whatever they
(07:11):
can. What gives?
Was a monstrous thing, grotesqueand inhuman.
I'm floating downstream into thearms of my Box River.
Grave. We're pleased to have on the
(07:34):
podcast Luke Savage, who is not a professional wrestler.
He's a political writer that youmight have read in outlets like
Jacobin, The Washington Post, Toronto Star, New Statesman.
He's the Co host of the film andpolitics podcast Michael and Us.
And he does some independent writing for his own publication.
Luke, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me.
(07:57):
I, I made a joke before we started recording.
We have Matt Iglesias written down in our show notes so many
times that I'm terrified I'm going to call you Matt, but but
I've been reading your work for the longest time and I'm really
excited to to have you on the show.
Oh, cheers and and likewise. And talk about great takes,
(08:20):
great takes. So we're all here today to
discuss our hero, Matt Iglesias,who you wrote a profile of on
your sub stack. Well, not quite.
So before you came in, we did just a quick look at Matt's
career. But I want to start out by
talking and hearing from you about the blogging years of
(08:44):
liberal media, because that is where Matthew Iglesias really
cut his teeth and made his name.This was like Bush era sort of,
you know, I guess social media was around but but what was that
time like? And in what role did blogs play
in media at the time that Matt was coming up?
So like early mid 2000s? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's
(09:07):
really interesting because it feels like everything is
blogging now. So it's like, you know, I guess
this will come up later, but youknow, well, the Free Press and
various other sub stacks that are just, you know, I mean, are
essentially blogs are now also kind of media organizations.
So we need to step back a bit inin time.
(09:29):
All of this feels very anachronistic now, but in the
early 2000s, you know, the blogosphere was greeted as kind
of this, you know, utopian, radically democratic thing that
was going to revolutionize citizenship and, and democracy
and all that. And I think particularly within
(09:49):
the Democratic Party, you know, which was kind of rudderless
through much of the Bush era, people were really looking for,
you know, as they are now in different ways.
What is our what is our one simple trick?
And the answer for many was the bloggers.
You know, the bloggers are goingto save us.
It wasn't just Matt Iglesias. It was also people like Marcos
(10:10):
Melitis actually is a very good piece about this published some
years ago in Jacobin by Dan O'Sullivan about Marcos Melitis.
I mean, he he really captures what this era was like this was
going to be. Just interject, that was the
Daily Coast, right? Daily.
Is that how you pronounce that? Yeah, the Daily Coast or costs
(10:31):
and and this was this was a populist vanguard.
This was going to be, you know, yeah, this, this was going to be
the, the thing that was going tofinally, finally neutralize the
right. And actually the, you know, the,
the, the coast heads had a, you know, they did have one real, if
(10:52):
you know, in retrospect, pretty small political victory because
they, and somewhere I did this on my podcast years ago, there's
a, a, a documentary about it where they primaried Joe
Lieberman successfully. They found a, a guy who I is
possibly currently the governor of Connecticut.
I can't remember Ned Lamont. And they just got him to say, Oh
(11:12):
yeah, I'm against the Iraq War, I guess.
Sure, defeated Lieberman and theprimary Lieberman of course ran
as an independent and and and and and rinse them.
But so that was kind of the highwatermark of like the liberal
bloggers as far as I know, in terms of like a real world
electoral impact. But I was interested in in this,
(11:34):
I suppose, and dealt with it in my piece because I think this
was conducive to a this environment was conducive to a
particular type of writing. And Dan O'Sullivan as well
captures this really well in in that old essay of his because
this really was the birth of themodern take as we understand it.
You know, it was, this is beforeTwitter and social media,
(11:57):
obviously, but it's inherently an inherently reactive way of
thinking about and writing aboutpolitics is just responding to
things very often, very, very quickly.
So it favors a kind of generalism where you never
really become an expert in anything but the people who were
good at it. And Matt Iglesias, in his own
way, was very good at this. They were able to convey a kind
(12:18):
of aura of expertise, right, and, and, and of authority.
And when they were done with onething, they just moved on to
something else and kind of didn't really talk about that
previous thing again. So, you know, 1 morning you wake
up and you're at Harvard. I guess he went to and you're a
(12:38):
pro war Blogger. And then, I don't know, a few
years later, you're a health policy wonk.
And then, I don't know, a decadeon from that, you flirt with
supporting Bernie Sanders and you're like, there's actually an
interview or a conversation withMatt Iglesias and Liza
Featherstone and Vascular Sinkara and an issue of Jacobin,
I think in 2019 or 2020. And you just cycle through this
(12:59):
stuff. And it's, I would say humbly not
not conducive to kind of intellectual consistency or
being right about many things. But at least for some people
that it's been the foundation for a very successful kind of
media career. And in Iglesias's case, right,
it's it's led to real world political influence.
(13:20):
Like, he was one of the guys in the Biden White House, which, if
you read his takes, is kind of an amazing thing to contemplate
and, you know, explains a lot. I also think it's it, it sort of
says something about the Democratic Party in general.
When you look at Matt's, you know, sort of the, the, the way
he flits between different viewpoints, right?
(13:42):
Anyway, he just goes to different places.
This this sort of inconsistency of the Democrats seems to that
seems to highlight be highlighted by the fact that
Matt is a favored pundit. Now I want to ask you about
that, which is, you know, what, how would you describe his
ideology? Are you, I mean, are you able to
do that even? Because I mean, I think that's
one of the the more challenging things he's often portrayed by,
(14:07):
by opponents of progress, for lack of a better word, as being
kind of a liberal leftist. But is that like really what
Matt believes? Is that really who he is?
You know, it's, it's really interesting and it's, I think
this is a question in some ways best left to philosophers.
(14:28):
I mean, it's, it's very. That was his major.
Apparent. Wasn't that his major in
Harvard? Speed department back at
Harvard. This is it was his major, but
not yeah, I don't know what the platonic form of of Matt
Iglesias is. You know, I, I, I think if there
is an ideology, I mean, obviously, and there's there,
you know, there's a crude answerto this, which is his ideology
(14:50):
is just, he's, you know, he's, he's, he's part of the
neoliberal left or whatever you want to call it.
He's a, or he's a yeah, or he's just a neoliberal proper.
But I think his ideology is his ideology, I think is dictated by
his relate primarily by his relationship to institutional
power at a given moment and by the imperatives of, you know, a
(15:13):
media career that is very much has very much been been guided
by the guided by institutional power, by a desire to have
influence within an influential,but in other ways quite
parochial kind of sect of Beltway thinking.
(15:35):
So I think trying to pin down the ideology of someone like
Matt Iglesias in terms of like, fundamentally, this is what his
philosophy is like. Fundamentally, this is what he
thinks about, I don't know, human nature or, or justice or
something like that. I, I, I, I don't, I don't know
if that's possible. But I do think if there's a
consistent through line, it's in, you know, this constantly
(16:00):
shifting relationship to, yeah, to institutional power, to
establishment opinion and that kind of thing.
And I think you see with, you know, his very brief and kind of
only ever partial flirtation with Bernie Sanders, like you,
you can just see in a, in a morebasic sense, there's just,
(16:20):
there's just opportunism there, right?
Like if something sort of seems like it's maybe ascendant, some
intellectual or political tendency or or whatever, you
know, he, he kind of thinks. So I want, I want a piece of
this, you know, I maybe I'll just kind of put, you know, put
my toes on this or, or, you know, plant my flag here, at
(16:40):
least temporarily. And then I mean, I think with, I
can't exactly remember when thatJacobin issue was that Iglesias
appeared in, but I mean, within a few weeks of Super Tuesday, as
I recall, he was, he was, he waskind of back to his old tricks,
so. That, that really feel like, I
(17:01):
feel like the Biden years there was this I, you know, there was
this sort of suggestion online or this feeling for, for some
people at least that like we were getting like a, a
neoliberal facade, but it was like a really a Bernie
administration at the core. But I I feel like in retrospect,
it's actually reversed where where there was like there is
(17:22):
like some symbolic Bernie is this around the around the
edges, but ultimately the same neoliberal whatever.
You know, you could somebody could even argue that Bernie
himself is a neoliberal in some ways.
It depends on your your definition of it.
But I want to just read this onething from you, which is you
(17:43):
said vapid contrarianism, off the charts dorkiness.
Love that this is really true. An obtuse penchant for moral and
ideological in curiosity that frequently slides into
intellectual malpractice. These have been the long
standing hallmarks of Iglesias rather insipid style, and for
what it's worth, they form the constituent ingredients of a
(18:05):
very successful and lucrative career.
So. Couldn't have said it better
myself. Yes.
I thought it was such a great description though, like that.
I mean, that's really like the heart of like why?
I was like, Oh my God, we got toget we got to get him on.
It's such a it's such a great description.
And I, I just curious, you know,in your read of the American
(18:25):
public where where, you know, sort of just left thinking is,
is, is is punched, punched upon so, so frequently where people
are just constantly trying. Why is this popular?
Why does he have, you know, why is he so successful?
I mean, the guy has like is, is making a fortune on his sub
stack still. He was able to, he was able to
(18:47):
found Vox, which is a company that still exists.
It's still going. He's really successful.
And, and and you see, like everybody on the from from the
liberal center to the left is really struggling in this media
landscape that is dominated by Trumpism.
So what is it about Matt that's able?
Because. Because everything we've heard
(19:08):
so far is that he's very wishy washy.
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right.
I think that he has been maybe alittle savvier in, in a crass
sort of way when it comes to howhe's maneuvered because
obviously he's always been a liberally coded figure.
And I mean, as we saw, you know,with the, you know, the Biden
(19:29):
era, I mean, he was, he had the ear of the Biden White House as,
as I already alluded to, but I don't think, I think he plays,
you know, his, he, the, his perception is different from
that of someone like Ezra Klein.I think, you know, obviously,
who is his, his colleague at Vox, who I think is more
explicitly or overtly a liberal and, and kind of more like a, a
(19:52):
sort of big D Democrat. I feel like, and, and like
functionally that's what Iglesias has tended to be as
well. But I I think he is much better
at. I think there was a phrase I
used earlier in the piece to this effect.
He's much better at kind of speaking in this register of of
transgressive free thinking. Like, you know, like I exist in
(20:15):
the neutral ground of on the neutral ground of Wong Curry.
And I'm just giving you like thefacts and that's, and then the
facts that the, you know, that, that, that that aren't allowed
or permitted within the sclerotic partisan binary of of
America's political conversationor something.
And then of course, the arguments are just, you know,
they're just often kind of the center right arguments you get
(20:38):
anywhere else or in the Obama era, the kind of centrist
arguments in favor of like why the Affordable Care Act is
actually revolutionary or whatever, you know, whatever The
thing is or why it's better thansingle payer healthcare,
etcetera, etcetera. But I think that that I think
that that style has an obvious appeal because, you know,
(21:00):
there's lots of I guess if I'm being to give a non cynical read
of it, I mean, I think a lot of people who are curious and and
politically interested, you know, they're kind of put off by
the partisan binary the way thatso much of American media
there's is so bifurcated betweenlike team red and team blue.
(21:21):
And you know, a lot of people rightly don't feel represented
by that. They they feel that there's
certain subjects that are, I don't know, taboo or, or that
aren't being discussed properly.And so because of that, there's,
you know, a whole parasitic ecosystem, some of it very good
(21:41):
independent media, some of it, you know, good independent left
media and some of it media that gives you the same orthodoxies
that you would get in kind of the, you know, traditional
Beltway media. But now it's just served to you
with this different gloss where it's this is, you know,
independent mindedness and, you know, yeah, transgressive free
(22:02):
thinking. And I think I think Iglesias has
has been more in that style of pundit than someone like Ezra
Klein or, you know, we came up earlier, Marcos Melitis, right?
Who's you know who once when when was that that he brought,
he brought Nancy Pelosi like 2. How many red roses was it?
(22:23):
You know, I Iglesias. Iglesias will be on the phone
with the White House, but I don't think he would be
bringing, you know, Biden red roses.
You would expect somebody at that kind of stature who's on
the phone with the White House, who, you know, policy aides are
reading the his slow boring blogto have some some pretty
(22:46):
important contributions to the discourse.
And from what I've seen with Full disclosure, I'm not a mad,
you know, a Maddie boy. I'm not I'm not a die hard
subscriber to slow boring or a reader even.
You know, these wonky takes always seem to align with like
(23:06):
the hot take is like, well, according to the data and
whatever, we should let housing developers run buckshot on all
American cities. Or, you know, the situation in
Gaza was completely overblown byhysterical activists.
But now I've seen the data and well, it's not ideal.
(23:27):
You know, in your piece, which is beautifully titled The Agony
and Ecstasy of Iglesias, you, you also talk about he kind of
through this wonkery, through this sort of reflexive surface
level contrarianism. Matt also has this knack for
(23:47):
just being prophetically wrong about things or, or just like
really carving himself out on onpositions.
Can you tell me about that? And also, do you think that sort
of rhetorical style lends itselfto doing that?
Or is this like, you know, starsalign kind of thing?
This guy who happens to have gotten just a lot of really big
(24:11):
issues terribly wrong throughouthis history, is also adopting
this style, Or do you think there's a relationship there?
I mean, I think being completelyshameless about like, like you
argue something with great conviction one day and you say
all the data supports this and then you make a different
argument like a few months laterand you don't really acknowledge
(24:32):
or engage seriously with the fact that you seem to be saying
something quite different. I mean, The thing is in, in the
past that would not have been I,I don't think in previous media
environments that would have served you very well.
I mean, in earlier eras, I don'teven think the technology really
existed to to do that because there were only a few TV
(24:53):
networks and a few newspapers that sort of guided the national
conversation and, and we're really consumed by a mass
public. But now in the social media era
where everything is so transitory, like, like a news
story can be the biggest thing for a few hours and then a day
later, nobody even remembers, you know, what happened.
(25:14):
And meanwhile, yeah, the media itself is so fragmented.
It's so fragmentary. It's so diffuse.
And it's I think that really lends itself to or it makes
advantageous this style of commentary where you can just
kind of say some, you know, you make one argument one day and
then a few months later you say something kind of completely
different. And that's that's advantageous,
(25:37):
right? Because the vibes shift the, the
preferences and the tastes, if you want, of media consumers,
like those are also kind of ephemeral and shifting now in,
in a way that they weren't before.
And so, yeah, it's advantageous.I just don't think it's, you
know, in, in a, in a sort of in the sense of like getting
(25:57):
subscribers and being being talked about and getting media
appearances and so on. And in his case having political
influence. But it's not it's not conducive
to any kind of intellectual or ideological consistency.
And as you're just saying, Jared, I mean it, it lends
itself as well to just being spectacularly wrong.
So, I mean, I run through a few examples in in the piece and I
(26:20):
won't, I won't like read my own paragraph here because people
can just read it for themselves.But I mean, my favorite one just
to highlight it was if you look at the two positions that Matt
Iglesias has taken on the KamalaHarris presidential campaign,
you know, the first was that this is a great campaign.
It's like this is, you know, centrist patriotism, all that
(26:40):
all that wokeness stuff and all that left wing stuff.
And, you know, that there's a slippage with those terms often
in this style of commentary. Like sometimes those are the
same thing, sometimes they're different things.
You know, again, that kind of shifts as needed.
But yeah, at at one point, you know, sort of around the time of
the DNC, so just over a year ago, I suppose, Kamala Harris is
(27:02):
running this great campaign. I think I've got it here.
The this is Iglesias on the DNC.The themes were joy and freedom.
The economic message was aspirational, the visions of
diversity emphasized inclusion and equality, and the discussion
of environmental issues was overwhelmingly focused on clean
air. We got the version of Harris
that we should have had in 2020,the career prosecutor who put
(27:25):
criminals in jail and as attorney general tackled a wide
range of wrongdoing and who fundamentally believes in
imposing sanctions on bad actors.
After he tweeted, Kamala Harris gave a convention speech that
embraced patriotism, reaffirmed the American alliance with
Israel and recommitted the Democratic Party to an ethic of
liberal pluralism in America's top centrist culture war
(27:47):
publication pivoted to economics.
So I'm actually not sure what he's complaining about at the
end there. But then, you know, later he's
says that the Kamala Harris campaign was actually captured
by the groups. You know it was the left wing of
the groups. By the way, a phrase I had never
heard this is. This is great too, and I guess
(28:08):
this is probably a function. How many all like the groups
y'all? Ever heard y'all Ever heard of
groups? This is, I mean, this, this also
speaks to like the, and this is like a feature of I think the
contemporary kind of media environment as well.
And the information environment.There's like a memetic quality
to it. We think of memes as images, but
like they're also just turns of phrase, right?
(28:30):
I had never heard of the group until like centrist apology
after Kamala Harris lost startedcoming out.
It's the same way you see this on on the right.
And like Jared, I'm sure you encounter it in your work all
the time where there's always a new bet noir that's just it's
really the same performs the same function as something you
heard previously. So you know, it's cultural
(28:53):
Marxism, it's critical race theory, it's or you know, it's
2015. It was political correctness.
You know, it's just constantly shifting thing.
But it's this like floating signifier for for for something
that's just kind of the same. And the groups is like that for
neoliberalism, right, Because it's just the same.
It's it's Bill Clinton's like sista soldier moment, you know,
(29:15):
which is all these people know how to do.
It's you win by distancing yourself from the left.
And it's extremely funny that that they're kind of still
trying to repeat that formula ina Democratic Party where the
left is like less powerful than it's maybe ever, ever, ever
been. Anyway, Now I'm now I'm now I'm
(29:38):
digressing. But yeah, just to, I guess to
return to the basic point to, yeah, to sort of say 1 moment
that Kamala Harris is running this great campaign, you know,
that's built around all these things.
And then, you know, I've got thetweet here.
This is March 2025. So this is less than a year
after what I just read you, He says, I understand that leftists
(30:01):
have a self-interest in saying Harris, quote, ran a moderate's
dream campaign, UN quote. But I think a more journalistic
method would be to ask moderateswhether or not Harris ran the
campaign of their slash our dreams.
And it's like, well, we have thereceipts.
We know what you said, we know what you wrote.
And you know, I'm not even to befair, I'm not even saying you
can't sort of change your mind about things or you like, you
(30:23):
can't make an argument for something one day and make a
different argument for the next.We all do that.
That's a necessary part of, you know, this business and of of
writing about politics. But you need to acknowledge it
and engage with the fact that your ideas have shifted.
And I feel like Iglesias is uniquely non introspective when
(30:44):
it comes to doing that. It seems like a different flavor
of Trumpism in a way with different politics.
I don't want people to mistake what I'm saying.
I'm not comparing him ideologically to Trump or even
as a person, you know, to Trump.I.
Will fuck it, we ball dude. Jared over here but.
(31:10):
But yeah, I mean, like, you know, Trump comes in with the
with the hat that says Trump, Trump was right about
everything. That is like the the more fuck
you version of of this not willing to deal with one's
previous statements about things, right?
I mean, it's just almost the same thing.
Like Trump will always just run over anything that he said two
(31:30):
days ago. And just just so you know, he'll
just tell you like, no, the sky is green actually.
And whatever. This is a more passive, softer
approach where he just kind of, you know, just ignores the
things that he previously said and just starts to speak, you
know, write sweetly about his new opinion.
Well, this, this, this analogy hadn't really occurred to me,
(31:52):
but I think you're right that these are these are certainly
parallel things, even if they express themselves somewhat
differently. And I think they are both in
some ways products of the same sort of media environment
because again, everything is so fragmentary and diffuse.
Now, you know, the news is something we go, we get by just
scrolling on the slot machines we all carry around in our
(32:14):
pockets all day. And so, yeah, that doesn't lend
itself to in the in the same waywe've been talking about that
not lending itself to, you know,consistency of of ideas in in
writing. It doesn't lend itself to
political or ideological consistency either in the realm
of politics. And of course, Trump is, you
know, originally just a, a product of, of, of TV, right?
(32:36):
And then later of, of posting like he's a guy who posted his
way into the Oval Office, which my knowledge is not something
any anyone had ever done before.And yeah, now he's a second term
U.S. President.
And yeah, as you say, he's he's just like even his signature
policies and initiatives, he's completely inconsistent about
what the rationale is for them. So I'm talking to you guys from
(32:59):
Canada, where, you know, Trump has variously threatened to
annex the country, make it the 51st state, and then next day
he's dealing cordially over the phone with, like, the Prime
Minister of Canada. Sometimes the justification for
this global trade war is we're going to reindustrialize the
(33:19):
Midwest. Like, factories will spring up
like dandelions if you just put up the right tariff barriers.
Sometimes it's a negotiation. It's a shakedown of other
countries, of US allies. And sometimes it's, it's
supposed to reflect the tariff revenues are supposed to replace
income tax. You know, there's no
consistency. But again, in this environment,
(33:39):
that can be quite advantageous, you know. 100% I, I, I want to
bring up one example that we getinto in your piece, because it's
not Matt going back and forth over the course of six months or
a year. It's him going back and forth
over the course of minutes and and like.
(34:01):
You hate efficiency, Mike. This is this the you think so
boring blog incoming. Don't.
Don't you, don't you think as a writer people should be able to
adapt to an evolving situation? Yeah, he changed his mind.
Mike, what's the problem? Well, well, one thing we get
into a lot on posting through itare these these moments in
(34:22):
recent history that really shiftpeople's brains in major ways.
And obviously October 7th is oneof them.
It's obviously a really dark, a dark moment, but it really
changes you can just the way so many people speak and and
behave. And Matt is is one of them.
And I think he gets really crossed up here.
(34:43):
So I and I feel like this exchange he has on in on Twitter
with Matt Breunig, who's a I guess a policy analyst, is the
best way to describe him. He's he's most famous for he's
got he always had a big Twitter presence.
He's. He's like, he's like, like the
non dark kind of wonk, you know,He's like the good wonk.
And yeah, I mean the socialist, I think he's, you know,
(35:06):
outspoken socialist is a good, good way to describe his point
of view. And they they they kind of get
into it a little bit about Palestine.
This guy Noah opinion, I think I'm just going to call him that
because he calls himself. He says that like leftist
primarily use Palestine as a wedge issue to gain power,
right? Like I said, that's what his
(35:26):
point is. And Breunig, I think accurately
responds by saying that like actually they've been agitating
for it a lot, a lot longer than this.
They've been going back way before October 7th.
It just happened that the issue became much more central in the
discourse really is what he says.
And then Iglesias jumps in to say that quote, leftist don't
(35:46):
really care about anything they talk about.
And then, like after another exchange says actually left
politics relies on idealistic young dupes.
Yeah. So, so, so he goes from being
like, you know, these are some they're cooking up these
strategies, doing all this, you know, adopting these issues
(36:09):
insincerely to pursue their own power.
And then they're like, but it actually they're just a bunch of
dumb college kids. They don't know anything that
that fall for nonsense. And it's like, which is it?
Which is it? Yeah, I.
I found this. Is this a gang of idiots?
Or is it like a powerful cabal you must counter?
(36:31):
I feel like this is this had to have like inspired you doing it
because there's just like it's sort of like an enough is enough
moment when when people when people go into like a psych ward
and stuff like that, it's it's not usually just like one thing
that happens where they go crazyor whatever.
It's usually like a build up of a very long time and then
something hits like a really pitch point.
So I feel like this is like, it's like, OK, I need to blog
(36:53):
because this is he changed his opinion within two posts.
Well, Michael, you are peering directly into my soul because
this is exactly what made me write the piece.
I did not wake up on that particular morning and think I
must write about Matthew Iglesias.
But I saw that and honestly, this unlocked this exchange
really did unlock something for me.
(37:14):
I feel like I understand Matt Iglesias so much better after
seeing this exchange. And, you know, you asked me
earlier about one of you asked me about, you know, what is,
what is Iglesias ideology? And in the last part of my
piece, you know, I, I'm, I'm trying to grapple with that
(37:37):
question just in the last few paragraphs here, because I
really think that, you know, there's, there's a, there's a, a
fundamental, there's an, there is an underlying consistency in
this exchange that he has with Matt Breunig, I think, which is
that, you know, so obviously there's the, the, the, the clear
inconsistency that Breunig points out where, well, we've
(37:58):
talked about it already. I don't need to rehash it.
But I think there's a, you know,there's the consistency is that
Matt Iglesias just assumes that because he thinks and behaves in
a certain way, everybody else must do this too.
So because he belongs to a political faction that sort of
periodically gets together in for, you know, the recent
(38:20):
version of this was Welcome Fest, you know, these sad
Convention Center or hotel ballroom events that are always
sponsored by, you know, venture capitalists or dark money
groups. You know, Welcome Fest.
I think they're, I think MichaelBloomberg was was part of that.
You know, you get together everyfive years or whatever, and
(38:42):
there's, you know, there's a rebrand and you're like now
telling a different story about,you know, the same kind of
neoliberal agenda that you were aligned with before, but now
it's got new branding and these kinds of things.
And and you know, Welcome Fest is a good example of this.
They're quite literally attemptsto build factional power, right?
(39:02):
They are, you know, they are attempts to win factional
disputes, right, right. And and like, and that's what's
so funny, right, because this isthe groups, right?
Like, this was a room full of people whose entire premise is
that the Democrats lose because they are captured by by these,
you know, yeah, these very powerful, you know, this
(39:23):
powerful constellation of like these cloistered kind of
interest groups that make them take unpopular positions.
And like, we need to, we need tobuild.
Like we need to have a response that's based on common sense
then. Yeah.
Meanwhile, it's like, OK. And who's sponsoring this?
It's like, it's like a small constellation of, you know, dark
money. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's
(39:44):
finance capital, it's real estate, it's it, you know, it's
Bitcoin, it's whatever. So, yeah, I mean, so they, it is
very much just the, you know, the the, the, the mirror image
of the thing that they or ratherthe actual image of the thing
that they claim to be to be fighting, but.
Yeah. I think in this exchange, you
(40:04):
really see something really important comes out here because
you see a type of thinking that is unable to understand or
comprehend the fact that like not everybody just thinks in
terms of like immediate factional power or builds their
takes kind of like reverse engineers their takes based on
(40:25):
what they think may be advantageous in a particular
time. And I mean, I think when it
comes to Palestine and Gaza, right?
Like that's the, the seriousnessof that issue and the reality of
what's going on, I think really brings all of this into so much
sharper relief, you know, because like it like Palestine,
(40:46):
Gaza is just another factional fight really.
Like, Iglesias can't comprehend the idea that people feel moral
outrage about, I don't know, death squads, like shooting
people who are getting aid, you know, trying to get aid or any
other number of horrors I could list off here.
So I think that this is a reallyimportant exchange that tells us
(41:08):
a lot about how, you know, some people's minds work.
Well, I want to stay on Palestine for one second because
this one, this one is the one that really that really bothers
me like in a deep way. And I think it's is most
indicative of the, the, the, thereactionary core of this type of
punditry because I just think it's, it's it's really important
(41:33):
to, to, to kind of pull apart here.
So here's here's what he said about Rasheeda Talib, that she's
Palestinian. It makes perfect sense for her
to be mad at Israel and fired upabout it.
What SUS is all the people who aren't Palestinian and seem to
care 1000 times more about this than any other humanitarian
(41:53):
issue. I once met a a a Syrian
Christian who told me with passion and and detail about how
his people had been wronged by American policy and I took it
very seriously. But it would be weird but I it
would be weird if some average college student was obsessed
with this. Now the reason why this is so
upsetting to me? This is not in your piece, but
(42:14):
this I pulled from elsewhere. The reason why this bothers me
so much is, you know, it's like,I am allowed to be upset about
Gaza. My mother is allowed to be upset
about Gaza, but Jared is supposed to be like, oh, that
sucks man. It seems, it seems like the
argument is like the way I should feel about it is like,
damn, sucks for those brown people.
(42:37):
Good thing I'm white. You know, It's like like that
seems to be the thinking or the rationale offered here.
But like, am I not allowed to feel, you know, that's, you
know, something is horrible, youknow, going on in Ukraine.
I'm not allowed to feel that like something for the for the,
you know, for conscripted, conscripted soldiers who were
sent to die in that war, you know, on on both sides.
(42:59):
I mean, like, am I not allowed to feel like something should be
done about it? I mean, that's crazy to me.
And are we not allowed to feel like something should be done
about genocide in general, right?
I mean, isn't isn't it in the most urgent human phenomenon,
right? Like when it starts to happen,
it's a very urgent phenomenon. Like all of humanity when we
(43:20):
find out about it reacts. I feel like that is like the the
thing or should right. That was the whole point of
never again rhetoric, right. So it's.
Just hard for me to imagine him going out and trying to apply
this argument on a different issue like the Rwandan genocide,
right? Is like, imagine if he was like,
(43:42):
why are Americans so concerned about Rwandans?
It would make sense that this Rwandan person is upset, but why
should we care, you know? Or why would people be mad about
that on a large scale? It's just like if you put it in
a different context, I feel likeit sounds even more ridiculous.
Well, I'm interested to hear Luke's thoughts, but I mean, for
(44:02):
me and what I what I hear in this to sort of tee you up is,
is that like there's there are democratic there, there's policy
with the Democratic Party, there's positions of power that
are very closely tied with Israel.
And like, you know, like the let's let's not, let's, let's
not get crazy, like getting too involved in this, in this
(44:25):
matter. It's OK.
We can, we can not throw Arabs under the bus.
That's the nice thing to say. It's the it's that's, that's the
only way this differs from Trumpis.
I mean, yeah, there's a lot thatcould be said here.
And I think there's a number of ways to interpret this.
So first of all, would Iglesias have made that argument about, I
don't know, like Arab, Arab Democrats in Michigan during
(44:47):
like, the last presidential election?
Like, is it was it OK for them to refrain from voting for
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? Like, I don't know this, this
feels like another example of inconsistency.
You know, I suppose that goes without saying.
I think this is also maybe kind of a learned reflex.
You know, this is, this is kind of, this is a sort of standpoint
(45:11):
theory argument that I feel likeyou might have heard in a
different context from like a Hillary Clinton supporter during
the 2016 primary or something like that.
Like only people directly affected by an issue can be
concerned about an issue, something like that.
This was also, I mean, I saw this from kind of Democratic DNC
(45:32):
aligned influencers and commentators and so on.
Like last year during the, the election, like this was kind of
a line that like, while you're allowed to care about this if
you're Palestinian, if you're directly affected by it, if
you're not, like it's, it's weird and it's actually evil and
it's helping Trump. If you don't, you know, if you
(45:53):
if you, if you're outraged that like children are being killed
in, in, in air strikes or, or whatever anyway, like, yeah, the
obviously the the assertion thatyou can't care about something
like this. You know, if you like, if you're
not like directly affected in it, like if you don't have
relations in, in Gaza City or whatever is absurd on its face.
(46:15):
But the entire premise of this is just wrong because, you know,
the US Israeli relationship, the, you know, U S S specific
relationship under both Biden and Trump to what's going on in
Gaza. Like this isn't some peripheral
issue. This isn't some like arcane or
esoteric thing that, you know, students on, on Columbia campus
(46:37):
or people who protested elsewhere just picked at random.
Like this is this goes to the heart of so many things that are
so fundamental to, you know, thethe problems people have with
the US government and with the bipartisan consensus on foreign
policy and on Israel, Palestine especially.
(46:59):
So you know, that all of this isjust is just wrong on its face.
You know, and it's, it's not as if the entire US political class
and the leaderships of both parties don't talk about this
incessantly and don't have a very, you know, say the least
one sided view of it. So the idea that, you know,
people reacting to all of this is, is the problem or is, you
(47:22):
know, illegitimate or invalid ordisproportionate in some way.
You know, that's that's as absurd as everything else we've
talked about here. I want to zoom out a bit because
we've been talking about Matt Iglesias.
He is one of the most successfulpeople to take up this kind of
posture in opinion writing or wankery that reflexive
(47:47):
contrarianism. But there are like a whole
roster of kind of quote, UN quote, anti woke, ostensibly
liberal people that are seemingly beloved by
establishment news media by, youknow, key figures in politics.
(48:10):
And it just kind of it's hard not to get the sense that any
kind of progressive or leftist thinking is treated in major
newsrooms as a kind of riff raff.
And it it seems that speaking out against it or positioning
yourself against it is understood by executives and
(48:33):
leadership and by a bunch of influential people in this
country as proof that of somebody's like neutrality.
Sure, maybe you say the Republicans got this wrong, but
also these college kids are crazy.
Like like then it's you become this like curiosity or this like
sort of it's not a few from nowhere, but it's like it it
(48:56):
makes you more curious, right. And I think a prime example is
some of this reporting that's been going around this week as
we're recording about and this may go through, maybe will not
have gone through by the time this episode comes out.
But CPS Paramount looks like it's going to buy the Free
(49:17):
Press, which is a sort of contrarian, reactionary
publication headed up by Barry Weiss, who used to work at the
New York Times. Should also note, CBS Paramount
settled with Trump for $16 million over a frivolous lawsuit
alleging, I guess, what, election interference,
(49:37):
defamation or whatever. They say an interview they aired
with Kamala Harris was edited. Everything's edited.
Idiots like this guy used to work in TV.
Of course he like duh, it's edited.
OK, they have like 5 minutes andthe interview was 20.
It's edited. Sorry, but but I'm just kind of
curious your thoughts about likethe state of the media landscape
(50:01):
And you know, you talked earlierabout, you know, kind of the non
cynical take on why, you know, audiences might be attracted to
this kind of posturing from columnist and writers.
You know, they feel, you know, part of it is this like
forbidden fruit dynamic, right where it's like they're
(50:22):
discussing things that aren't normally discussed or maybe the
audience feels aren't properly discussed elsewhere.
People are are tired of that sort of bifurcation, red versus
blue media stuff. But it in terms of the industry
itself, media, news media industry that also plays a.
Huge role. In propping these people up.
(50:46):
And I'm just curious if you haveany thoughts about that as
somebody, you know, a loud and proud leftist writer who's who's
making it out there? Sure.
I mean. You know, we talked about, you
know, Iglesias lineage in in early 2000s blogging.
And I think what, what you're talking about here also has kind
(51:06):
of roots in the Bush era, right?I have to think more about it,
whether these are the roots of it.
But there's, you know, there's certainly parallels to the
present day because, you know, in the Bush era, particularly as
you know, the, you know, there are all these liberals, writers
and and politicians and so on who quite enthusiastically
supported, you know, the War on Terror in the early years.
(51:29):
They supported the invasion of Iraq.
And, you know, I think to do that was a little uncouth,
particularly if we're talking about media audiences, right?
George Bush was not somebody whowas well liked, you know,
particularly by sort of, I don'tknow, 2000 and two, 2003 by a
lot of, you know, readers of liberal newspapers and, and
(51:50):
things like that. And that was really the heyday
of these sort of, you know, people who came out of the new
atheist movement. They, they were these kind of
right, liberals who were, you know, basically neoconservative
and how they talked about the world.
They, they essentially shared the, the Bush administration's
kind of Manichaean view of the world, but they gave it a
(52:10):
liberal gloss, right? It was about sort of
humanitarianism and and you know, the spreading of
Enlightenment values and it made, you know, the like the
bogeyman was, was a religion, which was useful because it sort
of created distance from the, you know, the would be dim
(52:31):
witted southern southerner president who was, you know, an
evangelical Christian and so on.But it also allowed you, you
know, put a liberal gloss on on Islamophobia as well.
And and I think there's, you know, the parallels could be
questioned or, you know, kind ofinterrogated in detail here.
But I think there's something analogous with, you know, what a
(52:54):
figure like Barry Weiss does. What the people, I'm forgetting,
all the people that were included in that awful New York
Times article about the Intellectual Dark Web, you know,
some years back. Oh my God.
Flashbacks, dude. I I feel my blood pressure go up
because because a lot of these people.
Right. They start out in these pretty
mainstream, like these often liberal, you know, newspapers
(53:17):
like Barry Weiss was a columnistat The New York Times or, you
know, you also have the Never Trump conservatives, which is,
you know, certainly related or Jason phenomenon, though it has,
you know, some some some differences as well.
But I, yeah, I really think what's going on here is this is
just a way you can kind of package right wing ideas for a
(53:38):
liberal readership. And I think that is an
especially useful thing in the present day because Trump is
just such a loathed figure, right?
Like, you can't, you can't be a liberal and like Donald Trump.
But there are also a lot of, youknow, particularly, I don't
know, affluent, maybe older liberals who really don't like
(53:58):
certain things about the Democratic Party.
There's things about contemporary culture and social
progress that they are very suspicious of and and don't
like. They're maybe suffused in kind
of the idioms of the Cold War and of just like earlier eras of
American politics. And I think that creates an
audience that's very primed for,for conservative ideas.
(54:21):
But in this sort of anti Trump package or, or if not explicitly
anti Trump in a kind of package of, you know, I used the phrase
earlier, yeah, transgressive free thinking.
Because you're not, you're not. This isn't Fox News, You know,
this is, this is smart. It's in the New York Times, you
know, sure. I I I think.
Like it, it really makes me think about how challenging it
(54:44):
is to overcome this media environment because there's
like, you know, one, one example.
I don't want to go too deep intohis, his work, but Jesse Singal
is for an example, a guy who's like, you know, superficially,
like liberal, you know, Democrattype, you know, that's his,
that's his punditry brand. And then, but most of his career
(55:06):
is really based on trying to poke holes in, you know, trans
pro trans arguments and, and, and, and that sort of thing.
And he's sort of known for beingan anti woke guy.
And that's really the choice that a lot of very casual people
see if they go into X or something like that.
They're really looking at Nate Silver, a guy who's has has a
(55:28):
perception for people who are not really locked in of being a
liberal right. And Jesse single and and these
guys no opinion. I'm not going to call him by his
actual name. Just keep calling him no
opinion. And you know, these, these these
type of figures. And that's sort of is the
choices that and Jack pozobic and it really has a way of
(55:50):
elevating Trumpism to me because, you know, it's really a
a choice. It it they're sort of the wash.
I've used this metaphor all the time, but the Washington
generals to the Harlem Globetrotters of MAGA, it just
it just sort of kind of just getting their donation money and
and making these little arguments that kind of in in
(56:11):
small ways help help the right. I don't know if that's if you
agree with that analysis, but that's just kind of the way I
feel when looking at the landscape.
Yeah, I mean, I'm familiar with.Single only by reputation.
I haven't, I haven't read his work.
So I, I, I don't think I can comment on that specifically.
I mean, I guess one thing I would bring in here though,
(56:32):
which I alluded to already, was,you know, again, I think the
Never Trump conservatives are animportant part of this story,
even though they are a little bit different from some of the
other things we've been that we've been talking about.
Because, yeah, I mean, they're they're they are officially,
they're officially conservativesin the way that somebody like
obviously Iglesias is not. But, you know, all of these
(56:54):
people like, you know, also given platforms by by big, by
big publications and newspapers,these figures like Bret Stevens
or my fellow countrymen, actually also a former editor or
at least contributor of the samestudent newspaper at the
University of Toronto that I once edited, Mr. David Frum.
You know, these people that theywere, they were anti Trump, but
(57:16):
they didn't want to, you know, they didn't want to say I'm
abandoning conservatism. And I think it's it's really
important, you know, liberals have become their audience.
But I think it's really important to under score that to
to a certain extent, writers like that liberals have always
been like a big part of their audience.
Like these publications like National Review or The
(57:37):
Federalist, which are ostensiblylike, like these are the the
like the, the, the outlets of the conservative intelligentsia.
You know, I think in some ways that's true.
But historically, the the role they've played is is really just
to sort of represent conservatism in this idealized
form with this kind of cerebral intellectual gloss for an
(58:00):
audience that is partly a liberal one because, you know,
there's so. Many.
Kind of. Democrat brain people who even
if they don't like the Republican Party, they also have
all these very like idealized impressions of it and they want
it. They like, they crave a politics
that is, you know, 2 respectableinterlocutors sort of going
(58:23):
going back and forth. And so, yeah, like I said, I'm
realizing this is somewhat unrelated to the other things
we're talking about. But since the general theme here
is is sort of media grifts, you know, this is another one and
it's certainly related. They just wish that like mom and
dad. Would stop fighting and I was
going to say quickly. About your your.
(58:45):
You reference David Frum, I'm just going to give you a little
fact to keep in your back pocketabout him since you have this,
you know, you you guys are countrymen and etcetera,
etcetera. Frum actually wrote a blurbed
Peter Brimlow's book Alien Nation, which is now like a
Seminole text of the racist right.
Brimlow, of course, famous whitenationalist and was just
(59:11):
basically like calling him a genius in so many words.
So a lot of people don't know that.
But I mean, for the Toronto Star, I think I, I was not aware
of that particular. From take I will, I will have to
check it out as a bit of a from aficionado, but you know, I, I,
I don't know how many years ago now, but I reviewed from well, I
(59:32):
think the first of the two sort of big anti Trump books that he
wrote, which was a you know, they were, they were big best
sellers. In fact, I still sometimes see
them. I think they're still in print,
or at least the second one is. And I I think the first one was
called Trumpocracy. That's the one I reviewed.
And this was a book that, you know, some various older people
(59:53):
who are sort of like politicallylike like liberal left type
people in my life. They, they, they got this book.
They like, they approached me with it.
They were like, if you read this, it's really good.
It's a really powerful critique of Trump.
So I decided I'd read it. And I mean, the stuff he he was
able to put in his book that again, the audience for this is
(01:00:15):
entirely like anti Trump liberals.
He compares Black Lives Matter. He says Black Lives Matter and
MAGA are like equivalent movements.
He talks about how like one of his big criticisms of Trump is
that he's such a mercurial figure that, you know, he's not
going to be able to get the, the, the coveted tax cut for,
(01:00:36):
you know, billionaires and millionaires that Republicans
have been seeking for generations.
And, you know, Dave, if you're listening, Donald Trump has you
beat there. They, they got it done.
There's elsewhere a section where he's talking about he's,
he's talking about Bernie Sanders and the, you know,
younger people who are attractedto the Bernie Sanders movement
(01:00:57):
because of things like Medicare for all.
And then he he compares this to the brown shirts.
So, so this was this was a book that like all of our like
liberal, you know, grandparents or whatever were reading and
thinking, wow, this is a really powerful critique of Donald
Trump. And and again, you know, this is
a bit of a different kind of media guy, a different kind of
(01:01:18):
funded than some of the other ones we've been talking about.
But again, and you know, this, this is very lucrative and
influential in its own way. It's almost like if you.
Think less. You can get published more.
I'll have to store that away in the back of my head for my own
future endeavors. I Luke, thanks for spending some
time with us today to talk aboutMaddie Boy and the this sort of
(01:01:44):
realm of media. You know that he is a powerhouse
within. Where can people find your
writing, find your work, yell atyou about takes?
You know, where can the Matt Super fans reach you to say
that? Actually, according to the data
already in the comments of his post by the way, I don't.
(01:02:04):
Know if you saw that, but there's a lot of people rushed
in to to defend Matt well, and we haven't.
Talked about it yet, but you know, I'll do.
I'll give you the plugs in a second.
But yeah, Iglesias, you know, hetweeted about the piece and
actually I just saw this morningor maybe I think this piece came
out yesterday. You know, you guys should look
(01:02:25):
this up because there's no description of it that I could
give that would really fully do it justice.
You need the headline thumbnail combination.
But he's written a piece that is, I guess occasioned by my
piece and also by an essay in current Affairs about him by
Nathan J Robinson. And the piece is called I've
Been Right About Some things. Is Matt Iglesias always wrong?
(01:02:47):
An investigation. And then there's this picture of
him where like, so he's put a picture, so he's referring
himself in the third person. And then he's got like a picture
of himself in his own post on slow boring.
And the picture is, I mean, you have to kind of see it for
yourself. It's like his his face is he's
looking up at like into the heavens and his face is sort of
(01:03:09):
like shrouded in light. And yeah, he looks like a guy
who's just he's he's achieved wonk enlightenment.
He's so cool. He's come back to Earth to to.
Share his. Kind of wonk truths with all of
us, you know, all of us mere mortals.
But I haven't read the piece, but he the you know, he named
drops me. He named drops Nathan.
(01:03:29):
And he says something about how like I'm, I was, I was
plagiarizing Nathan because you know, you can't, there can't
possibly be two pieces about howI'm bad and wrong.
You know, there there's only allowed to be one.
That's that's the rules. But anyway, people can check
that out if they're interested. You can find me on Sub Stack at
(01:03:51):
Luke W Savage. I'm also on the artist formerly
known as Twitter under the same handle.
You can find me there. You can check out my podcast at
patreon.com/michael and us. I think.
I think that's all the plugs. I just looked up this.
The slow boring posts that you referenced and it is truly
(01:04:16):
incredible. I'm gonna have to put a link to
it in the description just so people can see this.
And I like that. In the opening line of it, he
refers to his critics as the leftist hater brigade, which
which I guess this podcast is has entered, has entered the
chat, the new groups. Good to speak.
With you, Luke, and. And join you in this coveted
(01:04:39):
brigade I've heard so much about.
Always a pleasure. It may be a long.
Road. But in 20 years, we will build
the necessary factional power totake over the Democratic Party,
and from there we will. Ensure that high rise condos are
constructed on every street corner.
It's my favorite group. So like we mentioned at the top
(01:05:07):
of the. Show.
We also talked to Luke a bit about Chorus, which has been in
the news. This is a, what would you call
it, a marketing firm, a media operation that has been paying
some left-leaning content creators online as much as $8000
per month to push the DemocraticParty line more or less.
(01:05:32):
He has some interesting thoughtsto share, but if you want to
hear those, you'll have to come join us on the premium feed next
week. Yeah, come join us.
I'll be. Caffeinated We record these at
night. It's going to be exciting if you
want to support the show and. Get access to those premium
feeds. We've got a link to the Patreon
in the description. We hope you'll join us there,
(01:05:54):
but I think that about does it for this week.
So all right, guys, we'll see you next time.
Good talking to you. I'm floating.
Downstream into the arms of my Fox River dream.
(01:06:18):
I'm going into you where my truelove lies, waiting for me.
To my Fox River dream. To my Fox River dream.
The strength and weakness of JD Vance is that he he he he at
least used to be a dedicated reader of the Matthew Iglesias
plug. And it's it's good.
I I to be not like. Because he, you know, secretly
agree with me whatever. But like he is a.
Smart, widely read person who isgenuinely interested in politics
(00:25):
and public policy just like I. Welcome back to posting through
(01:03):
it. I'm Mike.
I'm Jared. And we have a very exciting
episode for you today with Luke Savage, a Blogger, podcaster of
the left, I would say, who is a critic of centrist neoliberal
pundits. He's going to talk a little bit
about Matt Iglesias, a guy who needs no introduction to most of
(01:27):
our listeners because he is arguably the most famous Blogger
of the non Trump MAGA world. I think that's fair.
I'm still hyped up from our first premium episode.
That was so much fun to just kind of take a little bit of the
Sheen off and and just make a little bit more raw of an
(01:47):
episode. Especially the conversation
about Cracker Barrel, just like sent me into a fit.
So good your impression of your mom.
It was so much in that episode was fun.
Yeah. And we'll be recording another
one next week with a little bit of extra stuff from Luke in
there on a discussion about chorus and probably How would
(02:09):
you describe the chorus situation, Jared?
It is a what's the language theyuse?
Like a a Democratic influencer incubator operation or
something. I don't know.
Luke knew more about it than we did, so like Mike said, in
addition to the interview you'regoing to hear today, we also
talked to him a little bit aboutthat, and you'll find that in
(02:30):
this week's premium episode. And we're going to talk a little
bit also about Chicago. I just want to ask really
briefly before we get into this episode, how you're feeling on
the apparent eve of some sort ofmega occupation.
It doesn't feel good. The sense I get from living here
(02:52):
and from talking to some of the people, you know, some of my
friends here is that a lot of people just kind of don't know
what to expect yet. Is it going to look like it
looked in DC? What will the scale be?
Where are they going to be? A lot of stuff, you know, as
we're recording this now is largely unknown.
(03:18):
But if there's any protests or anything next week, I think I'm
going to grab a a field recorderand try to get out in the street
and and bring back some footage for for next week's episode or
something. Yeah, we're going to get on to
our episode, but before we do, we have to do a shout out for
some of our new Patreon subscribers, people who gave a
(03:38):
little bit extra this round. In the Executive Club, we have
Christina Stevens. Thanks, Christina.
And in the platinum we have Michael Bazico.
This one just says the starting pitcher for the Gold team and
the bassist from Secretion. What the fuck?
(03:59):
Thank you, whatever that is. Robinson de Lager and Mia's
Sylveon I. De la guerre.
De la guerre, if I mispronouncedany of those, please send us a
message on Patreon. I'll do it again with the
correct pronunciation. Yeah, it it means the world to
(04:20):
us that that people are supporting the show.
Every time I get the little e-mail notification that someone
new is signed up, you know, it really warms my cold, dead
heart. I love the $5 subscribers as
well. So this is an episode about
professional opinion hammers andare.
We in that category. I don't have any opinions, I'm
just. We're like amateur opinion
(04:41):
hammers. Exactly so Matthew Iglesias,
sometimes referred as Maddie because you put the Y at the end
of Matt. Born May 18th, 1981.
Grew up in New York City and studied philosophy at Harvard
University, where he was editor in chief of the Harvard
Independent. He graduated there in 2003.
(05:04):
But before he graduated, he started blogging about politics
and public policy, which is probably how most people know
about Maddie today. After school, he joined the
American Prospect as a writing fellow, soon became a staff
writer. There he went on to write for
publications like The Atlantic, Think Progress, Slate.
(05:25):
At Slate he authored a column called Money Box that was pretty
popular at the time and in 2014 he Co founded Vox Media with
Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell and he served there as the senior
editor and Co host of the podcast The Weeds.
He left Vox in November 2020 to start a Substack newsletter
(05:46):
called Slow Boring, which now earns according to some reports.
I'm not sure where that's at today, but the ones we found
were $1.4 million annually from his nearly 18,000 subscribers.
He also joined the Niskanen Center as a senior fellow in
2020 and is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
(06:09):
Iglesias has authored books including 2012's The Rent is Too
Damn High and 2020 is 1 Billion Americans.
For someone so successful, you'dexpect Iglesias to have some
pretty good takes. Well, that has not always been
the case. He spends a lot of his time
(06:30):
criticizing progressives. He sort of punches left, I think
is the way to describe what he does.
And he doesn't always land a punch when he throws it.
So how does a guy like Matt Iglesias rise up to become such
an influential voice in politicslike he is today?
The opinion pages of the national press and now a new
(06:51):
rank and file of independent writers have made millions
churning out Milktoast takes just like Maddie has.
Contrast that to so many talented journalists and news
analysts who are out here just struggling in between their one
off freelance gigs, you know, trying to take whatever they
(07:11):
can. What gives?
Was a monstrous thing, grotesqueand inhuman.
I'm floating downstream into thearms of my Box River.
Grave. We're pleased to have on the
(07:34):
podcast Luke Savage, who is not a professional wrestler.
He's a political writer that youmight have read in outlets like
Jacobin, The Washington Post, Toronto Star, New Statesman.
He's the Co host of the film andpolitics podcast Michael and Us.
And he does some independent writing for his own publication.
Luke, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me.
(07:57):
I, I made a joke before we started recording.
We have Matt Iglesias written down in our show notes so many
times that I'm terrified I'm going to call you Matt, but but
I've been reading your work for the longest time and I'm really
excited to to have you on the show.
Oh, cheers and and likewise. And talk about great takes,
(08:20):
great takes. So we're all here today to
discuss our hero, Matt Iglesias,who you wrote a profile of on
your sub stack. Well, not quite.
So before you came in, we did just a quick look at Matt's
career. But I want to start out by
talking and hearing from you about the blogging years of
(08:44):
liberal media, because that is where Matthew Iglesias really
cut his teeth and made his name.This was like Bush era sort of,
you know, I guess social media was around but but what was that
time like? And in what role did blogs play
in media at the time that Matt was coming up?
So like early mid 2000s? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's
(09:07):
really interesting because it feels like everything is
blogging now. So it's like, you know, I guess
this will come up later, but youknow, well, the Free Press and
various other sub stacks that are just, you know, I mean, are
essentially blogs are now also kind of media organizations.
So we need to step back a bit inin time.
(09:29):
All of this feels very anachronistic now, but in the
early 2000s, you know, the blogosphere was greeted as kind
of this, you know, utopian, radically democratic thing that
was going to revolutionize citizenship and, and democracy
and all that. And I think particularly within
(09:49):
the Democratic Party, you know, which was kind of rudderless
through much of the Bush era, people were really looking for,
you know, as they are now in different ways.
What is our what is our one simple trick?
And the answer for many was the bloggers.
You know, the bloggers are goingto save us.
It wasn't just Matt Iglesias. It was also people like Marcos
(10:10):
Melitis actually is a very good piece about this published some
years ago in Jacobin by Dan O'Sullivan about Marcos Melitis.
I mean, he he really captures what this era was like this was
going to be. Just interject, that was the
Daily Coast, right? Daily.
Is that how you pronounce that? Yeah, the Daily Coast or costs
(10:31):
and and this was this was a populist vanguard.
This was going to be, you know, yeah, this, this was going to be
the, the thing that was going tofinally, finally neutralize the
right. And actually the, you know, the,
the, the coast heads had a, you know, they did have one real, if
(10:52):
you know, in retrospect, pretty small political victory because
they, and somewhere I did this on my podcast years ago, there's
a, a, a documentary about it where they primaried Joe
Lieberman successfully. They found a, a guy who I is
possibly currently the governor of Connecticut.
I can't remember Ned Lamont. And they just got him to say, Oh
(11:12):
yeah, I'm against the Iraq War, I guess.
Sure, defeated Lieberman and theprimary Lieberman of course ran
as an independent and and and and and rinse them.
But so that was kind of the highwatermark of like the liberal
bloggers as far as I know, in terms of like a real world
electoral impact. But I was interested in in this,
(11:34):
I suppose, and dealt with it in my piece because I think this
was conducive to a this environment was conducive to a
particular type of writing. And Dan O'Sullivan as well
captures this really well in in that old essay of his because
this really was the birth of themodern take as we understand it.
You know, it was, this is beforeTwitter and social media,
(11:57):
obviously, but it's inherently an inherently reactive way of
thinking about and writing aboutpolitics is just responding to
things very often, very, very quickly.
So it favors a kind of generalism where you never
really become an expert in anything but the people who were
good at it. And Matt Iglesias, in his own
way, was very good at this. They were able to convey a kind
(12:18):
of aura of expertise, right, and, and, and of authority.
And when they were done with onething, they just moved on to
something else and kind of didn't really talk about that
previous thing again. So, you know, 1 morning you wake
up and you're at Harvard. I guess he went to and you're a
(12:38):
pro war Blogger. And then, I don't know, a few
years later, you're a health policy wonk.
And then, I don't know, a decadeon from that, you flirt with
supporting Bernie Sanders and you're like, there's actually an
interview or a conversation withMatt Iglesias and Liza
Featherstone and Vascular Sinkara and an issue of Jacobin,
I think in 2019 or 2020. And you just cycle through this
(12:59):
stuff. And it's, I would say humbly not
not conducive to kind of intellectual consistency or
being right about many things. But at least for some people
that it's been the foundation for a very successful kind of
media career. And in Iglesias's case, right,
it's it's led to real world political influence.
(13:20):
Like, he was one of the guys in the Biden White House, which, if
you read his takes, is kind of an amazing thing to contemplate
and, you know, explains a lot. I also think it's it, it sort of
says something about the Democratic Party in general.
When you look at Matt's, you know, sort of the, the, the way
he flits between different viewpoints, right?
(13:42):
Anyway, he just goes to different places.
This this sort of inconsistency of the Democrats seems to that
seems to highlight be highlighted by the fact that
Matt is a favored pundit. Now I want to ask you about
that, which is, you know, what, how would you describe his
ideology? Are you, I mean, are you able to
do that even? Because I mean, I think that's
one of the the more challenging things he's often portrayed by,
(14:07):
by opponents of progress, for lack of a better word, as being
kind of a liberal leftist. But is that like really what
Matt believes? Is that really who he is?
You know, it's, it's really interesting and it's, I think
this is a question in some ways best left to philosophers.
(14:28):
I mean, it's, it's very. That was his major.
Apparent. Wasn't that his major in
Harvard? Speed department back at
Harvard. This is it was his major, but
not yeah, I don't know what the platonic form of of Matt
Iglesias is. You know, I, I, I think if there
is an ideology, I mean, obviously, and there's there,
you know, there's a crude answerto this, which is his ideology
(14:50):
is just, he's, you know, he's, he's, he's part of the
neoliberal left or whatever you want to call it.
He's a, or he's a yeah, or he's just a neoliberal proper.
But I think his ideology is his ideology, I think is dictated by
his relate primarily by his relationship to institutional
power at a given moment and by the imperatives of, you know, a
(15:13):
media career that is very much has very much been been guided
by the guided by institutional power, by a desire to have
influence within an influential,but in other ways quite
parochial kind of sect of Beltway thinking.
(15:35):
So I think trying to pin down the ideology of someone like
Matt Iglesias in terms of like, fundamentally, this is what his
philosophy is like. Fundamentally, this is what he
thinks about, I don't know, human nature or, or justice or
something like that. I, I, I, I don't, I don't know
if that's possible. But I do think if there's a
consistent through line, it's in, you know, this constantly
(16:00):
shifting relationship to, yeah, to institutional power, to
establishment opinion and that kind of thing.
And I think you see with, you know, his very brief and kind of
only ever partial flirtation with Bernie Sanders, like you,
you can just see in a, in a morebasic sense, there's just,
(16:20):
there's just opportunism there, right?
Like if something sort of seems like it's maybe ascendant, some
intellectual or political tendency or or whatever, you
know, he, he kind of thinks. So I want, I want a piece of
this, you know, I maybe I'll just kind of put, you know, put
my toes on this or, or, you know, plant my flag here, at
(16:40):
least temporarily. And then I mean, I think with, I
can't exactly remember when thatJacobin issue was that Iglesias
appeared in, but I mean, within a few weeks of Super Tuesday, as
I recall, he was, he was, he waskind of back to his old tricks,
so. That, that really feel like, I
(17:01):
feel like the Biden years there was this I, you know, there was
this sort of suggestion online or this feeling for, for some
people at least that like we were getting like a, a
neoliberal facade, but it was like a really a Bernie
administration at the core. But I I feel like in retrospect,
it's actually reversed where where there was like there is
(17:22):
like some symbolic Bernie is this around the around the
edges, but ultimately the same neoliberal whatever.
You know, you could somebody could even argue that Bernie
himself is a neoliberal in some ways.
It depends on your your definition of it.
But I want to just read this onething from you, which is you
(17:43):
said vapid contrarianism, off the charts dorkiness.
Love that this is really true. An obtuse penchant for moral and
ideological in curiosity that frequently slides into
intellectual malpractice. These have been the long
standing hallmarks of Iglesias rather insipid style, and for
what it's worth, they form the constituent ingredients of a
(18:05):
very successful and lucrative career.
So. Couldn't have said it better
myself. Yes.
I thought it was such a great description though, like that.
I mean, that's really like the heart of like why?
I was like, Oh my God, we got toget we got to get him on.
It's such a it's such a great description.
And I, I just curious, you know,in your read of the American
(18:25):
public where where, you know, sort of just left thinking is,
is, is is punched, punched upon so, so frequently where people
are just constantly trying. Why is this popular?
Why does he have, you know, why is he so successful?
I mean, the guy has like is, is making a fortune on his sub
stack still. He was able to, he was able to
(18:47):
found Vox, which is a company that still exists.
It's still going. He's really successful.
And, and and you see, like everybody on the from from the
liberal center to the left is really struggling in this media
landscape that is dominated by Trumpism.
So what is it about Matt that's able?
Because. Because everything we've heard
(19:08):
so far is that he's very wishy washy.
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right.
I think that he has been maybe alittle savvier in, in a crass
sort of way when it comes to howhe's maneuvered because
obviously he's always been a liberally coded figure.
And I mean, as we saw, you know,with the, you know, the Biden
(19:29):
era, I mean, he was, he had the ear of the Biden White House as,
as I already alluded to, but I don't think, I think he plays,
you know, his, he, the, his perception is different from
that of someone like Ezra Klein.I think, you know, obviously,
who is his, his colleague at Vox, who I think is more
explicitly or overtly a liberal and, and kind of more like a, a
(19:52):
sort of big D Democrat. I feel like, and, and like
functionally that's what Iglesias has tended to be as
well. But I I think he is much better
at. I think there was a phrase I
used earlier in the piece to this effect.
He's much better at kind of speaking in this register of of
transgressive free thinking. Like, you know, like I exist in
(20:15):
the neutral ground of on the neutral ground of Wong Curry.
And I'm just giving you like thefacts and that's, and then the
facts that the, you know, that, that, that that aren't allowed
or permitted within the sclerotic partisan binary of of
America's political conversationor something.
And then of course, the arguments are just, you know,
they're just often kind of the center right arguments you get
(20:38):
anywhere else or in the Obama era, the kind of centrist
arguments in favor of like why the Affordable Care Act is
actually revolutionary or whatever, you know, whatever The
thing is or why it's better thansingle payer healthcare,
etcetera, etcetera. But I think that that I think
that that style has an obvious appeal because, you know,
(21:00):
there's lots of I guess if I'm being to give a non cynical read
of it, I mean, I think a lot of people who are curious and and
politically interested, you know, they're kind of put off by
the partisan binary the way thatso much of American media
there's is so bifurcated betweenlike team red and team blue.
(21:21):
And you know, a lot of people rightly don't feel represented
by that. They they feel that there's
certain subjects that are, I don't know, taboo or, or that
aren't being discussed properly.And so because of that, there's,
you know, a whole parasitic ecosystem, some of it very good
(21:41):
independent media, some of it, you know, good independent left
media and some of it media that gives you the same orthodoxies
that you would get in kind of the, you know, traditional
Beltway media. But now it's just served to you
with this different gloss where it's this is, you know,
independent mindedness and, you know, yeah, transgressive free
(22:02):
thinking. And I think I think Iglesias has
has been more in that style of pundit than someone like Ezra
Klein or, you know, we came up earlier, Marcos Melitis, right?
Who's you know who once when when was that that he brought,
he brought Nancy Pelosi like 2. How many red roses was it?
(22:23):
You know, I Iglesias. Iglesias will be on the phone
with the White House, but I don't think he would be
bringing, you know, Biden red roses.
You would expect somebody at that kind of stature who's on
the phone with the White House, who, you know, policy aides are
reading the his slow boring blogto have some some pretty
(22:46):
important contributions to the discourse.
And from what I've seen with Full disclosure, I'm not a mad,
you know, a Maddie boy. I'm not I'm not a die hard
subscriber to slow boring or a reader even.
You know, these wonky takes always seem to align with like
(23:06):
the hot take is like, well, according to the data and
whatever, we should let housing developers run buckshot on all
American cities. Or, you know, the situation in
Gaza was completely overblown byhysterical activists.
But now I've seen the data and well, it's not ideal.
(23:27):
You know, in your piece, which is beautifully titled The Agony
and Ecstasy of Iglesias, you, you also talk about he kind of
through this wonkery, through this sort of reflexive surface
level contrarianism. Matt also has this knack for
(23:47):
just being prophetically wrong about things or, or just like
really carving himself out on onpositions.
Can you tell me about that? And also, do you think that sort
of rhetorical style lends itselfto doing that?
Or is this like, you know, starsalign kind of thing?
This guy who happens to have gotten just a lot of really big
(24:11):
issues terribly wrong throughouthis history, is also adopting
this style, Or do you think there's a relationship there?
I mean, I think being completelyshameless about like, like you
argue something with great conviction one day and you say
all the data supports this and then you make a different
argument like a few months laterand you don't really acknowledge
(24:32):
or engage seriously with the fact that you seem to be saying
something quite different. I mean, The thing is in, in the
past that would not have been I,I don't think in previous media
environments that would have served you very well.
I mean, in earlier eras, I don'teven think the technology really
existed to to do that because there were only a few TV
(24:53):
networks and a few newspapers that sort of guided the national
conversation and, and we're really consumed by a mass
public. But now in the social media era
where everything is so transitory, like, like a news
story can be the biggest thing for a few hours and then a day
later, nobody even remembers, you know, what happened.
(25:14):
And meanwhile, yeah, the media itself is so fragmented.
It's so fragmentary. It's so diffuse.
And it's I think that really lends itself to or it makes
advantageous this style of commentary where you can just
kind of say some, you know, you make one argument one day and
then a few months later you say something kind of completely
different. And that's that's advantageous,
(25:37):
right? Because the vibes shift the, the
preferences and the tastes, if you want, of media consumers,
like those are also kind of ephemeral and shifting now in,
in a way that they weren't before.
And so, yeah, it's advantageous.I just don't think it's, you
know, in, in a, in a sort of in the sense of like getting
(25:57):
subscribers and being being talked about and getting media
appearances and so on. And in his case having political
influence. But it's not it's not conducive
to any kind of intellectual or ideological consistency.
And as you're just saying, Jared, I mean it, it lends
itself as well to just being spectacularly wrong.
So, I mean, I run through a few examples in in the piece and I
(26:20):
won't, I won't like read my own paragraph here because people
can just read it for themselves.But I mean, my favorite one just
to highlight it was if you look at the two positions that Matt
Iglesias has taken on the KamalaHarris presidential campaign,
you know, the first was that this is a great campaign.
It's like this is, you know, centrist patriotism, all that
(26:40):
all that wokeness stuff and all that left wing stuff.
And, you know, that there's a slippage with those terms often
in this style of commentary. Like sometimes those are the
same thing, sometimes they're different things.
You know, again, that kind of shifts as needed.
But yeah, at at one point, you know, sort of around the time of
the DNC, so just over a year ago, I suppose, Kamala Harris is
(27:02):
running this great campaign. I think I've got it here.
The this is Iglesias on the DNC.The themes were joy and freedom.
The economic message was aspirational, the visions of
diversity emphasized inclusion and equality, and the discussion
of environmental issues was overwhelmingly focused on clean
air. We got the version of Harris
that we should have had in 2020,the career prosecutor who put
(27:25):
criminals in jail and as attorney general tackled a wide
range of wrongdoing and who fundamentally believes in
imposing sanctions on bad actors.
After he tweeted, Kamala Harris gave a convention speech that
embraced patriotism, reaffirmed the American alliance with
Israel and recommitted the Democratic Party to an ethic of
liberal pluralism in America's top centrist culture war
(27:47):
publication pivoted to economics.
So I'm actually not sure what he's complaining about at the
end there. But then, you know, later he's
says that the Kamala Harris campaign was actually captured
by the groups. You know it was the left wing of
the groups. By the way, a phrase I had never
heard this is. This is great too, and I guess
(28:08):
this is probably a function. How many all like the groups
y'all? Ever heard y'all Ever heard of
groups? This is, I mean, this, this also
speaks to like the, and this is like a feature of I think the
contemporary kind of media environment as well.
And the information environment.There's like a memetic quality
to it. We think of memes as images, but
like they're also just turns of phrase, right?
(28:30):
I had never heard of the group until like centrist apology
after Kamala Harris lost startedcoming out.
It's the same way you see this on on the right.
And like Jared, I'm sure you encounter it in your work all
the time where there's always a new bet noir that's just it's
really the same performs the same function as something you
heard previously. So you know, it's cultural
(28:53):
Marxism, it's critical race theory, it's or you know, it's
2015. It was political correctness.
You know, it's just constantly shifting thing.
But it's this like floating signifier for for for something
that's just kind of the same. And the groups is like that for
neoliberalism, right, Because it's just the same.
It's it's Bill Clinton's like sista soldier moment, you know,
(29:15):
which is all these people know how to do.
It's you win by distancing yourself from the left.
And it's extremely funny that that they're kind of still
trying to repeat that formula ina Democratic Party where the
left is like less powerful than it's maybe ever, ever, ever
been. Anyway, Now I'm now I'm now I'm
(29:38):
digressing. But yeah, just to, I guess to
return to the basic point to, yeah, to sort of say 1 moment
that Kamala Harris is running this great campaign, you know,
that's built around all these things.
And then, you know, I've got thetweet here.
This is March 2025. So this is less than a year
after what I just read you, He says, I understand that leftists
(30:01):
have a self-interest in saying Harris, quote, ran a moderate's
dream campaign, UN quote. But I think a more journalistic
method would be to ask moderateswhether or not Harris ran the
campaign of their slash our dreams.
And it's like, well, we have thereceipts.
We know what you said, we know what you wrote.
And you know, I'm not even to befair, I'm not even saying you
can't sort of change your mind about things or you like, you
(30:23):
can't make an argument for something one day and make a
different argument for the next.We all do that.
That's a necessary part of, you know, this business and of of
writing about politics. But you need to acknowledge it
and engage with the fact that your ideas have shifted.
And I feel like Iglesias is uniquely non introspective when
(30:44):
it comes to doing that. It seems like a different flavor
of Trumpism in a way with different politics.
I don't want people to mistake what I'm saying.
I'm not comparing him ideologically to Trump or even
as a person, you know, to Trump.I.
Will fuck it, we ball dude. Jared over here but.
(31:10):
But yeah, I mean, like, you know, Trump comes in with the
with the hat that says Trump, Trump was right about
everything. That is like the the more fuck
you version of of this not willing to deal with one's
previous statements about things, right?
I mean, it's just almost the same thing.
Like Trump will always just run over anything that he said two
(31:30):
days ago. And just just so you know, he'll
just tell you like, no, the sky is green actually.
And whatever. This is a more passive, softer
approach where he just kind of, you know, just ignores the
things that he previously said and just starts to speak, you
know, write sweetly about his new opinion.
Well, this, this, this analogy hadn't really occurred to me,
(31:52):
but I think you're right that these are these are certainly
parallel things, even if they express themselves somewhat
differently. And I think they are both in
some ways products of the same sort of media environment
because again, everything is so fragmentary and diffuse.
Now, you know, the news is something we go, we get by just
scrolling on the slot machines we all carry around in our
(32:14):
pockets all day. And so, yeah, that doesn't lend
itself to in the in the same waywe've been talking about that
not lending itself to, you know,consistency of of ideas in in
writing. It doesn't lend itself to
political or ideological consistency either in the realm
of politics. And of course, Trump is, you
know, originally just a, a product of, of, of TV, right?
(32:36):
And then later of, of posting like he's a guy who posted his
way into the Oval Office, which my knowledge is not something
any anyone had ever done before.And yeah, now he's a second term
U.S. President.
And yeah, as you say, he's he's just like even his signature
policies and initiatives, he's completely inconsistent about
what the rationale is for them. So I'm talking to you guys from
(32:59):
Canada, where, you know, Trump has variously threatened to
annex the country, make it the 51st state, and then next day
he's dealing cordially over the phone with, like, the Prime
Minister of Canada. Sometimes the justification for
this global trade war is we're going to reindustrialize the
(33:19):
Midwest. Like, factories will spring up
like dandelions if you just put up the right tariff barriers.
Sometimes it's a negotiation. It's a shakedown of other
countries, of US allies. And sometimes it's, it's
supposed to reflect the tariff revenues are supposed to replace
income tax. You know, there's no
consistency. But again, in this environment,
(33:39):
that can be quite advantageous, you know. 100% I, I, I want to
bring up one example that we getinto in your piece, because it's
not Matt going back and forth over the course of six months or
a year. It's him going back and forth
over the course of minutes and and like.
(34:01):
You hate efficiency, Mike. This is this the you think so
boring blog incoming. Don't.
Don't you, don't you think as a writer people should be able to
adapt to an evolving situation? Yeah, he changed his mind.
Mike, what's the problem? Well, well, one thing we get
into a lot on posting through itare these these moments in
(34:22):
recent history that really shiftpeople's brains in major ways.
And obviously October 7th is oneof them.
It's obviously a really dark, a dark moment, but it really
changes you can just the way so many people speak and and
behave. And Matt is is one of them.
And I think he gets really crossed up here.
(34:43):
So I and I feel like this exchange he has on in on Twitter
with Matt Breunig, who's a I guess a policy analyst, is the
best way to describe him. He's he's most famous for he's
got he always had a big Twitter presence.
He's. He's like, he's like, like the
non dark kind of wonk, you know,He's like the good wonk.
And yeah, I mean the socialist, I think he's, you know,
(35:06):
outspoken socialist is a good, good way to describe his point
of view. And they they they kind of get
into it a little bit about Palestine.
This guy Noah opinion, I think I'm just going to call him that
because he calls himself. He says that like leftist
primarily use Palestine as a wedge issue to gain power,
right? Like I said, that's what his
(35:26):
point is. And Breunig, I think accurately
responds by saying that like actually they've been agitating
for it a lot, a lot longer than this.
They've been going back way before October 7th.
It just happened that the issue became much more central in the
discourse really is what he says.
And then Iglesias jumps in to say that quote, leftist don't
(35:46):
really care about anything they talk about.
And then, like after another exchange says actually left
politics relies on idealistic young dupes.
Yeah. So, so, so he goes from being
like, you know, these are some they're cooking up these
strategies, doing all this, you know, adopting these issues
(36:09):
insincerely to pursue their own power.
And then they're like, but it actually they're just a bunch of
dumb college kids. They don't know anything that
that fall for nonsense. And it's like, which is it?
Which is it? Yeah, I.
I found this. Is this a gang of idiots?
Or is it like a powerful cabal you must counter?
(36:31):
I feel like this is this had to have like inspired you doing it
because there's just like it's sort of like an enough is enough
moment when when people when people go into like a psych ward
and stuff like that, it's it's not usually just like one thing
that happens where they go crazyor whatever.
It's usually like a build up of a very long time and then
something hits like a really pitch point.
So I feel like this is like, it's like, OK, I need to blog
(36:53):
because this is he changed his opinion within two posts.
Well, Michael, you are peering directly into my soul because
this is exactly what made me write the piece.
I did not wake up on that particular morning and think I
must write about Matthew Iglesias.
But I saw that and honestly, this unlocked this exchange
really did unlock something for me.
(37:14):
I feel like I understand Matt Iglesias so much better after
seeing this exchange. And, you know, you asked me
earlier about one of you asked me about, you know, what is,
what is Iglesias ideology? And in the last part of my
piece, you know, I, I'm, I'm trying to grapple with that
(37:37):
question just in the last few paragraphs here, because I
really think that, you know, there's, there's a, there's a, a
fundamental, there's an, there is an underlying consistency in
this exchange that he has with Matt Breunig, I think, which is
that, you know, so obviously there's the, the, the, the clear
inconsistency that Breunig points out where, well, we've
(37:58):
talked about it already. I don't need to rehash it.
But I think there's a, you know,there's the consistency is that
Matt Iglesias just assumes that because he thinks and behaves in
a certain way, everybody else must do this too.
So because he belongs to a political faction that sort of
periodically gets together in for, you know, the recent
(38:20):
version of this was Welcome Fest, you know, these sad
Convention Center or hotel ballroom events that are always
sponsored by, you know, venture capitalists or dark money
groups. You know, Welcome Fest.
I think they're, I think MichaelBloomberg was was part of that.
You know, you get together everyfive years or whatever, and
(38:42):
there's, you know, there's a rebrand and you're like now
telling a different story about,you know, the same kind of
neoliberal agenda that you were aligned with before, but now
it's got new branding and these kinds of things.
And and you know, Welcome Fest is a good example of this.
They're quite literally attemptsto build factional power, right?
(39:02):
They are, you know, they are attempts to win factional
disputes, right, right. And and like, and that's what's
so funny, right, because this isthe groups, right?
Like, this was a room full of people whose entire premise is
that the Democrats lose because they are captured by by these,
you know, yeah, these very powerful, you know, this
(39:23):
powerful constellation of like these cloistered kind of
interest groups that make them take unpopular positions.
And like, we need to, we need tobuild.
Like we need to have a response that's based on common sense
then. Yeah.
Meanwhile, it's like, OK. And who's sponsoring this?
It's like, it's like a small constellation of, you know, dark
money. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's
(39:44):
finance capital, it's real estate, it's it, you know, it's
Bitcoin, it's whatever. So, yeah, I mean, so they, it is
very much just the, you know, the the, the, the mirror image
of the thing that they or ratherthe actual image of the thing
that they claim to be to be fighting, but.
Yeah. I think in this exchange, you
(40:04):
really see something really important comes out here because
you see a type of thinking that is unable to understand or
comprehend the fact that like not everybody just thinks in
terms of like immediate factional power or builds their
takes kind of like reverse engineers their takes based on
(40:25):
what they think may be advantageous in a particular
time. And I mean, I think when it
comes to Palestine and Gaza, right?
Like that's the, the seriousnessof that issue and the reality of
what's going on, I think really brings all of this into so much
sharper relief, you know, because like it like Palestine,
(40:46):
Gaza is just another factional fight really.
Like, Iglesias can't comprehend the idea that people feel moral
outrage about, I don't know, death squads, like shooting
people who are getting aid, you know, trying to get aid or any
other number of horrors I could list off here.
So I think that this is a reallyimportant exchange that tells us
(41:08):
a lot about how, you know, some people's minds work.
Well, I want to stay on Palestine for one second because
this one, this one is the one that really that really bothers
me like in a deep way. And I think it's is most
indicative of the, the, the, thereactionary core of this type of
punditry because I just think it's, it's it's really important
(41:33):
to, to, to kind of pull apart here.
So here's here's what he said about Rasheeda Talib, that she's
Palestinian. It makes perfect sense for her
to be mad at Israel and fired upabout it.
What SUS is all the people who aren't Palestinian and seem to
care 1000 times more about this than any other humanitarian
(41:53):
issue. I once met a a a Syrian
Christian who told me with passion and and detail about how
his people had been wronged by American policy and I took it
very seriously. But it would be weird but I it
would be weird if some average college student was obsessed
with this. Now the reason why this is so
upsetting to me? This is not in your piece, but
(42:14):
this I pulled from elsewhere. The reason why this bothers me
so much is, you know, it's like,I am allowed to be upset about
Gaza. My mother is allowed to be upset
about Gaza, but Jared is supposed to be like, oh, that
sucks man. It seems, it seems like the
argument is like the way I should feel about it is like,
damn, sucks for those brown people.
(42:37):
Good thing I'm white. You know, It's like like that
seems to be the thinking or the rationale offered here.
But like, am I not allowed to feel, you know, that's, you
know, something is horrible, youknow, going on in Ukraine.
I'm not allowed to feel that like something for the for the,
you know, for conscripted, conscripted soldiers who were
sent to die in that war, you know, on on both sides.
(42:59):
I mean, like, am I not allowed to feel like something should be
done about it? I mean, that's crazy to me.
And are we not allowed to feel like something should be done
about genocide in general, right?
I mean, isn't isn't it in the most urgent human phenomenon,
right? Like when it starts to happen,
it's a very urgent phenomenon. Like all of humanity when we
(43:20):
find out about it reacts. I feel like that is like the the
thing or should right. That was the whole point of
never again rhetoric, right. So it's.
Just hard for me to imagine him going out and trying to apply
this argument on a different issue like the Rwandan genocide,
right? Is like, imagine if he was like,
(43:42):
why are Americans so concerned about Rwandans?
It would make sense that this Rwandan person is upset, but why
should we care, you know? Or why would people be mad about
that on a large scale? It's just like if you put it in
a different context, I feel likeit sounds even more ridiculous.
Well, I'm interested to hear Luke's thoughts, but I mean, for
(44:02):
me and what I what I hear in this to sort of tee you up is,
is that like there's there are democratic there, there's policy
with the Democratic Party, there's positions of power that
are very closely tied with Israel.
And like, you know, like the let's let's not, let's, let's
not get crazy, like getting too involved in this, in this
(44:25):
matter. It's OK.
We can, we can not throw Arabs under the bus.
That's the nice thing to say. It's the it's that's, that's the
only way this differs from Trumpis.
I mean, yeah, there's a lot thatcould be said here.
And I think there's a number of ways to interpret this.
So first of all, would Iglesias have made that argument about, I
don't know, like Arab, Arab Democrats in Michigan during
(44:47):
like, the last presidential election?
Like, is it was it OK for them to refrain from voting for
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? Like, I don't know this, this
feels like another example of inconsistency.
You know, I suppose that goes without saying.
I think this is also maybe kind of a learned reflex.
You know, this is, this is kind of, this is a sort of standpoint
(45:11):
theory argument that I feel likeyou might have heard in a
different context from like a Hillary Clinton supporter during
the 2016 primary or something like that.
Like only people directly affected by an issue can be
concerned about an issue, something like that.
This was also, I mean, I saw this from kind of Democratic DNC
(45:32):
aligned influencers and commentators and so on.
Like last year during the, the election, like this was kind of
a line that like, while you're allowed to care about this if
you're Palestinian, if you're directly affected by it, if
you're not, like it's, it's weird and it's actually evil and
it's helping Trump. If you don't, you know, if you
(45:53):
if you, if you're outraged that like children are being killed
in, in, in air strikes or, or whatever anyway, like, yeah, the
obviously the the assertion thatyou can't care about something
like this. You know, if you like, if you're
not like directly affected in it, like if you don't have
relations in, in Gaza City or whatever is absurd on its face.
(46:15):
But the entire premise of this is just wrong because, you know,
the US Israeli relationship, the, you know, U S S specific
relationship under both Biden and Trump to what's going on in
Gaza. Like this isn't some peripheral
issue. This isn't some like arcane or
esoteric thing that, you know, students on, on Columbia campus
(46:37):
or people who protested elsewhere just picked at random.
Like this is this goes to the heart of so many things that are
so fundamental to, you know, thethe problems people have with
the US government and with the bipartisan consensus on foreign
policy and on Israel, Palestine especially.
(46:59):
So you know, that all of this isjust is just wrong on its face.
You know, and it's, it's not as if the entire US political class
and the leaderships of both parties don't talk about this
incessantly and don't have a very, you know, say the least
one sided view of it. So the idea that, you know,
people reacting to all of this is, is the problem or is, you
(47:22):
know, illegitimate or invalid ordisproportionate in some way.
You know, that's that's as absurd as everything else we've
talked about here. I want to zoom out a bit because
we've been talking about Matt Iglesias.
He is one of the most successfulpeople to take up this kind of
posture in opinion writing or wankery that reflexive
(47:47):
contrarianism. But there are like a whole
roster of kind of quote, UN quote, anti woke, ostensibly
liberal people that are seemingly beloved by
establishment news media by, youknow, key figures in politics.
(48:10):
And it just kind of it's hard not to get the sense that any
kind of progressive or leftist thinking is treated in major
newsrooms as a kind of riff raff.
And it it seems that speaking out against it or positioning
yourself against it is understood by executives and
(48:33):
leadership and by a bunch of influential people in this
country as proof that of somebody's like neutrality.
Sure, maybe you say the Republicans got this wrong, but
also these college kids are crazy.
Like like then it's you become this like curiosity or this like
sort of it's not a few from nowhere, but it's like it it
(48:56):
makes you more curious, right. And I think a prime example is
some of this reporting that's been going around this week as
we're recording about and this may go through, maybe will not
have gone through by the time this episode comes out.
But CPS Paramount looks like it's going to buy the Free
(49:17):
Press, which is a sort of contrarian, reactionary
publication headed up by Barry Weiss, who used to work at the
New York Times. Should also note, CBS Paramount
settled with Trump for $16 million over a frivolous lawsuit
alleging, I guess, what, election interference,
(49:37):
defamation or whatever. They say an interview they aired
with Kamala Harris was edited. Everything's edited.
Idiots like this guy used to work in TV.
Of course he like duh, it's edited.
OK, they have like 5 minutes andthe interview was 20.
It's edited. Sorry, but but I'm just kind of
curious your thoughts about likethe state of the media landscape
(50:01):
And you know, you talked earlierabout, you know, kind of the non
cynical take on why, you know, audiences might be attracted to
this kind of posturing from columnist and writers.
You know, they feel, you know, part of it is this like
forbidden fruit dynamic, right where it's like they're
(50:22):
discussing things that aren't normally discussed or maybe the
audience feels aren't properly discussed elsewhere.
People are are tired of that sort of bifurcation, red versus
blue media stuff. But it in terms of the industry
itself, media, news media industry that also plays a.
Huge role. In propping these people up.
(50:46):
And I'm just curious if you haveany thoughts about that as
somebody, you know, a loud and proud leftist writer who's who's
making it out there? Sure.
I mean. You know, we talked about, you
know, Iglesias lineage in in early 2000s blogging.
And I think what, what you're talking about here also has kind
(51:06):
of roots in the Bush era, right?I have to think more about it,
whether these are the roots of it.
But there's, you know, there's certainly parallels to the
present day because, you know, in the Bush era, particularly as
you know, the, you know, there are all these liberals, writers
and and politicians and so on who quite enthusiastically
supported, you know, the War on Terror in the early years.
(51:29):
They supported the invasion of Iraq.
And, you know, I think to do that was a little uncouth,
particularly if we're talking about media audiences, right?
George Bush was not somebody whowas well liked, you know,
particularly by sort of, I don'tknow, 2000 and two, 2003 by a
lot of, you know, readers of liberal newspapers and, and
(51:50):
things like that. And that was really the heyday
of these sort of, you know, people who came out of the new
atheist movement. They, they were these kind of
right, liberals who were, you know, basically neoconservative
and how they talked about the world.
They, they essentially shared the, the Bush administration's
kind of Manichaean view of the world, but they gave it a
(52:10):
liberal gloss, right? It was about sort of
humanitarianism and and you know, the spreading of
Enlightenment values and it made, you know, the like the
bogeyman was, was a religion, which was useful because it sort
of created distance from the, you know, the would be dim
(52:31):
witted southern southerner president who was, you know, an
evangelical Christian and so on.But it also allowed you, you
know, put a liberal gloss on on Islamophobia as well.
And and I think there's, you know, the parallels could be
questioned or, you know, kind ofinterrogated in detail here.
But I think there's something analogous with, you know, what a
(52:54):
figure like Barry Weiss does. What the people, I'm forgetting,
all the people that were included in that awful New York
Times article about the Intellectual Dark Web, you know,
some years back. Oh my God.
Flashbacks, dude. I I feel my blood pressure go up
because because a lot of these people.
Right. They start out in these pretty
mainstream, like these often liberal, you know, newspapers
(53:17):
like Barry Weiss was a columnistat The New York Times or, you
know, you also have the Never Trump conservatives, which is,
you know, certainly related or Jason phenomenon, though it has,
you know, some some some differences as well.
But I, yeah, I really think what's going on here is this is
just a way you can kind of package right wing ideas for a
(53:38):
liberal readership. And I think that is an
especially useful thing in the present day because Trump is
just such a loathed figure, right?
Like, you can't, you can't be a liberal and like Donald Trump.
But there are also a lot of, youknow, particularly, I don't
know, affluent, maybe older liberals who really don't like
(53:58):
certain things about the Democratic Party.
There's things about contemporary culture and social
progress that they are very suspicious of and and don't
like. They're maybe suffused in kind
of the idioms of the Cold War and of just like earlier eras of
American politics. And I think that creates an
audience that's very primed for,for conservative ideas.
(54:21):
But in this sort of anti Trump package or, or if not explicitly
anti Trump in a kind of package of, you know, I used the phrase
earlier, yeah, transgressive free thinking.
Because you're not, you're not. This isn't Fox News, You know,
this is, this is smart. It's in the New York Times, you
know, sure. I I I think.
Like it, it really makes me think about how challenging it
(54:44):
is to overcome this media environment because there's
like, you know, one, one example.
I don't want to go too deep intohis, his work, but Jesse Singal
is for an example, a guy who's like, you know, superficially,
like liberal, you know, Democrattype, you know, that's his,
that's his punditry brand. And then, but most of his career
(55:06):
is really based on trying to poke holes in, you know, trans
pro trans arguments and, and, and, and that sort of thing.
And he's sort of known for beingan anti woke guy.
And that's really the choice that a lot of very casual people
see if they go into X or something like that.
They're really looking at Nate Silver, a guy who's has has a
(55:28):
perception for people who are not really locked in of being a
liberal right. And Jesse single and and these
guys no opinion. I'm not going to call him by his
actual name. Just keep calling him no
opinion. And you know, these, these these
type of figures. And that's sort of is the
choices that and Jack pozobic and it really has a way of
(55:50):
elevating Trumpism to me because, you know, it's really a
a choice. It it they're sort of the wash.
I've used this metaphor all the time, but the Washington
generals to the Harlem Globetrotters of MAGA, it just
it just sort of kind of just getting their donation money and
and making these little arguments that kind of in in
(56:11):
small ways help help the right. I don't know if that's if you
agree with that analysis, but that's just kind of the way I
feel when looking at the landscape.
Yeah, I mean, I'm familiar with.Single only by reputation.
I haven't, I haven't read his work.
So I, I, I don't think I can comment on that specifically.
I mean, I guess one thing I would bring in here though,
(56:32):
which I alluded to already, was,you know, again, I think the
Never Trump conservatives are animportant part of this story,
even though they are a little bit different from some of the
other things we've been that we've been talking about.
Because, yeah, I mean, they're they're they are officially,
they're officially conservativesin the way that somebody like
obviously Iglesias is not. But, you know, all of these
(56:54):
people like, you know, also given platforms by by big, by
big publications and newspapers,these figures like Bret Stevens
or my fellow countrymen, actually also a former editor or
at least contributor of the samestudent newspaper at the
University of Toronto that I once edited, Mr. David Frum.
You know, these people that theywere, they were anti Trump, but
(57:16):
they didn't want to, you know, they didn't want to say I'm
abandoning conservatism. And I think it's it's really
important, you know, liberals have become their audience.
But I think it's really important to under score that to
to a certain extent, writers like that liberals have always
been like a big part of their audience.
Like these publications like National Review or The
(57:37):
Federalist, which are ostensiblylike, like these are the the
like the, the, the outlets of the conservative intelligentsia.
You know, I think in some ways that's true.
But historically, the the role they've played is is really just
to sort of represent conservatism in this idealized
form with this kind of cerebral intellectual gloss for an
(58:00):
audience that is partly a liberal one because, you know,
there's so. Many.
Kind of. Democrat brain people who even
if they don't like the Republican Party, they also have
all these very like idealized impressions of it and they want
it. They like, they crave a politics
that is, you know, 2 respectableinterlocutors sort of going
(58:23):
going back and forth. And so, yeah, like I said, I'm
realizing this is somewhat unrelated to the other things
we're talking about. But since the general theme here
is is sort of media grifts, you know, this is another one and
it's certainly related. They just wish that like mom and
dad. Would stop fighting and I was
going to say quickly. About your your.
(58:45):
You reference David Frum, I'm just going to give you a little
fact to keep in your back pocketabout him since you have this,
you know, you you guys are countrymen and etcetera,
etcetera. Frum actually wrote a blurbed
Peter Brimlow's book Alien Nation, which is now like a
Seminole text of the racist right.
Brimlow, of course, famous whitenationalist and was just
(59:11):
basically like calling him a genius in so many words.
So a lot of people don't know that.
But I mean, for the Toronto Star, I think I, I was not aware
of that particular. From take I will, I will have to
check it out as a bit of a from aficionado, but you know, I, I,
I don't know how many years ago now, but I reviewed from well, I
(59:32):
think the first of the two sort of big anti Trump books that he
wrote, which was a you know, they were, they were big best
sellers. In fact, I still sometimes see
them. I think they're still in print,
or at least the second one is. And I I think the first one was
called Trumpocracy. That's the one I reviewed.
And this was a book that, you know, some various older people
(59:53):
who are sort of like politicallylike like liberal left type
people in my life. They, they, they got this book.
They like, they approached me with it.
They were like, if you read this, it's really good.
It's a really powerful critique of Trump.
So I decided I'd read it. And I mean, the stuff he he was
able to put in his book that again, the audience for this is
(01:00:15):
entirely like anti Trump liberals.
He compares Black Lives Matter. He says Black Lives Matter and
MAGA are like equivalent movements.
He talks about how like one of his big criticisms of Trump is
that he's such a mercurial figure that, you know, he's not
going to be able to get the, the, the coveted tax cut for,
(01:00:36):
you know, billionaires and millionaires that Republicans
have been seeking for generations.
And, you know, Dave, if you're listening, Donald Trump has you
beat there. They, they got it done.
There's elsewhere a section where he's talking about he's,
he's talking about Bernie Sanders and the, you know,
younger people who are attractedto the Bernie Sanders movement
(01:00:57):
because of things like Medicare for all.
And then he he compares this to the brown shirts.
So, so this was this was a book that like all of our like
liberal, you know, grandparents or whatever were reading and
thinking, wow, this is a really powerful critique of Donald
Trump. And and again, you know, this is
a bit of a different kind of media guy, a different kind of
(01:01:18):
funded than some of the other ones we've been talking about.
But again, and you know, this, this is very lucrative and
influential in its own way. It's almost like if you.
Think less. You can get published more.
I'll have to store that away in the back of my head for my own
future endeavors. I Luke, thanks for spending some
time with us today to talk aboutMaddie Boy and the this sort of
(01:01:44):
realm of media. You know that he is a powerhouse
within. Where can people find your
writing, find your work, yell atyou about takes?
You know, where can the Matt Super fans reach you to say
that? Actually, according to the data
already in the comments of his post by the way, I don't.
(01:02:04):
Know if you saw that, but there's a lot of people rushed
in to to defend Matt well, and we haven't.
Talked about it yet, but you know, I'll do.
I'll give you the plugs in a second.
But yeah, Iglesias, you know, hetweeted about the piece and
actually I just saw this morningor maybe I think this piece came
out yesterday. You know, you guys should look
(01:02:25):
this up because there's no description of it that I could
give that would really fully do it justice.
You need the headline thumbnail combination.
But he's written a piece that is, I guess occasioned by my
piece and also by an essay in current Affairs about him by
Nathan J Robinson. And the piece is called I've
Been Right About Some things. Is Matt Iglesias always wrong?
(01:02:47):
An investigation. And then there's this picture of
him where like, so he's put a picture, so he's referring
himself in the third person. And then he's got like a picture
of himself in his own post on slow boring.
And the picture is, I mean, you have to kind of see it for
yourself. It's like his his face is he's
looking up at like into the heavens and his face is sort of
(01:03:09):
like shrouded in light. And yeah, he looks like a guy
who's just he's he's achieved wonk enlightenment.
He's so cool. He's come back to Earth to to.
Share his. Kind of wonk truths with all of
us, you know, all of us mere mortals.
But I haven't read the piece, but he the you know, he named
drops me. He named drops Nathan.
(01:03:29):
And he says something about how like I'm, I was, I was
plagiarizing Nathan because you know, you can't, there can't
possibly be two pieces about howI'm bad and wrong.
You know, there there's only allowed to be one.
That's that's the rules. But anyway, people can check
that out if they're interested. You can find me on Sub Stack at
(01:03:51):
Luke W Savage. I'm also on the artist formerly
known as Twitter under the same handle.
You can find me there. You can check out my podcast at
patreon.com/michael and us. I think.
I think that's all the plugs. I just looked up this.
The slow boring posts that you referenced and it is truly
(01:04:16):
incredible. I'm gonna have to put a link to
it in the description just so people can see this.
And I like that. In the opening line of it, he
refers to his critics as the leftist hater brigade, which
which I guess this podcast is has entered, has entered the
chat, the new groups. Good to speak.
With you, Luke, and. And join you in this coveted
(01:04:39):
brigade I've heard so much about.
Always a pleasure. It may be a long.
Road. But in 20 years, we will build
the necessary factional power totake over the Democratic Party,
and from there we will. Ensure that high rise condos are
constructed on every street corner.
It's my favorite group. So like we mentioned at the top
(01:05:07):
of the. Show.
We also talked to Luke a bit about Chorus, which has been in
the news. This is a, what would you call
it, a marketing firm, a media operation that has been paying
some left-leaning content creators online as much as $8000
per month to push the DemocraticParty line more or less.
(01:05:32):
He has some interesting thoughtsto share, but if you want to
hear those, you'll have to come join us on the premium feed next
week. Yeah, come join us.
I'll be. Caffeinated We record these at
night. It's going to be exciting if you
want to support the show and. Get access to those premium
feeds. We've got a link to the Patreon
in the description. We hope you'll join us there,
(01:05:54):
but I think that about does it for this week.
So all right, guys, we'll see you next time.
Good talking to you. I'm floating.
Downstream into the arms of my Fox River dream.
(01:06:18):
I'm going into you where my truelove lies, waiting for me.
To my Fox River dream. To my Fox River dream.
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