054: Who the Hell is Matt Taibbi? feat. Eoin Higgins

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
My big one is, is that people voted for the immigration
crackdown. You know, I don't, there are,
there are aspects to it that I don't love, but you know, to,
to, to, to, to just sort of, youknow, not participate in it or

(00:24):
to treat it like it's illegal orsomething like that.
I, I don't know, I I'm I'm having a little trouble
understanding that. Welcome back to posting through

(01:02):
it. I'm Jared.
And I'm Mike. And I'm Owen.
I'm joining you guys from the road today.
I don't know if going to visit my dad in Austin, TX counts as
being on the road, but we're we're going to go with it.
And this week we've got another installment in our Who the Hell
series. This one's about Matt Taibbi,

(01:26):
but before we get there, we've got a couple shout outs to give
for our newest platinum. Members of the Patreon go to
patreon.com/posting through it get a bonus episode every week.
But for those who give a little bit extra, one of the perks is a
shout out. So we've got Mark Malloy.
I know him. Yeah, I.

(01:48):
Wonderful man. You wrote.
I know him and all. I know him.
I've been to shows with with Mark.
What's up, Mark? And we've got Zach Lutz.
Thanks so much, guys. So we're joined on this episode
by Owen Higgins. He was on the show previously
earlier this year. Really great episode.
But today he's joining us to talk all about the subject of

(02:11):
this episode, Matt Taibbi. For folks who maybe hadn't heard
that previous episode or what, could you introduce yourself to
the kind of people of posting through it?
Yeah. My name is Owen Higgins.
I'm a writer journalist in New England.
And I wrote a book called owned how tech billionaires on the
right, about the loudest voices on the left.
It's a kind of a study of Silicon Valley tech

(02:33):
billionaires, how they went to the right.
And it uses Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi as kind of the the,
the way to kind of explore that,like their journey to the right
and kind of the the way that themoney kind of came after that.
And specifically right wing techmoney.
And how do you know their politics either changed or maybe

(02:54):
you know, accelerated I guess tothe right.
Depend on how you look at it. Anyway, good book, check it out.
Absolutely, I highly recommend it.
So you learned a lot about Matt Taibbi when writing this book,
and we're going to go over a lotof it today.
This episode leans really heavy on the work you did for your
book. So if people are listening to

(03:15):
this and they think, wow, Mike and Cher, it sure sounds smart.
This episode is all Owen. He deserves all the credit for
for this rabbit hole we're aboutto go down on.
I've been in the I've been in the Taibbi minds.
Yeah, Taibbi mindset. Before we get started, Owen, I
just want to kind of get your take on why an episode like this

(03:39):
should exist for Matt Taibbi. Because the previous characters
we've covered in this series, people like Jack Posobic and
Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, these are like
bona fide right wing hate mongers in most case.
People that have these just likevery weird, gross backstories

(04:00):
that are at the forefront of like some of the nastiest shit
on the online right. And I don't think Matt Taibbi
really falls into that category,but he does matter a lot to the
political right these days. And I, I, I just want to hear
your take on why he's somebody people should learn about.

(04:24):
Yeah, I certainly would not put Matt at the same level as like,
you know, Candace Owens or LauraLoomer or yeah, any, any, any of
the number of people who you have.
Anthony Cumia. Yeah, certainly not Anthony
Cumia. One of a great episode.
Very disturbing. But I would say that Matt is an

(04:45):
interesting and important figurebecause he's kind of at the
forefront of this host left, kind of these guys who've done a
pivot from being like liberal left darlings in the media and
are now on the right and kind ofdoing this partisan Republican,
I guess, commentary, punditry. You know, he certainly doesn't

(05:06):
report anymore. And I think that, you know, I
mean, Glenn is Glenn Greenwald is similar to this, but he's a
more complex and interesting figure out.
You can listen to the to the last episode that we did
together when we talked a lot about Glenn and that and and not
really so much about Matt at all.
I think the Matt matters becausehe represents that kind of

(05:31):
subsection of people. But I think that rather than
being the type of person who like Glenn is, he's he's kind of
really just completely sold out and become just a mouthpiece for
the right. And he has kind of
simultaneously built his career on being this kind of like hard

(05:54):
charging left wing muckraking reporter, calling it like it is
like, like, like on the left, but, you know, calling balls and
strikes happy to, you know, pushback against Democrats.
Not not really like a both sideskind of person, not like saying
both sides are are equally bad, but saying, hey, you know,
there's, there's enough to go around.
There's enough criticism to go around.

(06:14):
And he has pivoted from that. And of course, we'll we'll go
into why. And in the process of that
happening, But he's pivoted fromthat to essentially being a
toady for right wing power and ajust sycophantic ally of the
GOP. Right.
And he's kind of symbolic in that way, I think because he was

(06:38):
and is pretty famous for a journalist.
He's one of probably the most well known journalist.
I mean, it's a field that doesn't really attract a lot of
name recognition, particularly in print, right?
Broadcast journalism is one thing, but this guy's a print
journalist that a lot of people knew about that everybody was,
oh, Matt Paibi, Matt Taibi said this.
Matt Taibi said that even, you know, really going back to the

(07:01):
Obama years, I think he was, he was, he was really well known.
And now all of a sudden he's like you said, a mouthpiece,
right? But but again, to to emphasize,
he's not a Nazi, as you would say in the colloquial sense.
He's something entirely different.
And therefore, you know, it's sort of a, a pivot from some of
the other people we've covered on these biographical episodes.

(07:22):
I think one thing that you can say is that he is the type of
person who, and I don't know if it's necessarily intentional or
a goal of his, but he's the typeof person who is able to attract
an audience of, you know, kind of independent thinking, maybe,

(07:42):
you know, kind of left-leaning people, but like independent
thinkers, right, who then will be fed these kind of laundered
far right talking points by by Matt and then eventually may end
up in the, you know, the Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens,
etcetera, kind of milieu. Like like they're like they'll
be kind of more open to hearing those arguments.

(08:04):
And so I think from for that reason, obviously I would not
call him a Nazi. I'd like, I want to be clear
about that. I wouldn't call him that that
level of far right, but I think that he does act as kind of like
a gateway drug to that. And I think he's also, and I
think just one other thing is I think he also reinforces their
ideology too. It's not that you have to

(08:24):
necessarily be to start with Matt Taibbi and wind up
somewhere else. But if you come from the right,
you can look like here, this is a guy you trust and he says
this. So therefore that, right?
I think that that's that's part of the role that he plays.
So we're going to talk a lot about Matt Taibbi.
The first either quick word froma sponsor.

(08:46):
Sound off if this has ever happened to you.
You're at home for the holidays.Maybe you've brought along your
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Things are going well and you remember this epic and based
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photos on your phone until you find it.

(09:08):
Yeah, that's the one. Uncle Sam high fiving A Pepe the
Frog while a starving immigrant child cries.
You show it to your folks, but the table goes silent.
You think, what just happened? Now everyone's upset.
Your mom's choking back tears. It's hard to make out what she's

(09:28):
saying, but it it keeps it sounds.
It's, it's like, why and how didthis happen?
Are you OK? Your parents remind you your
childhood best friend was Hispanic.
And they keep asking what's going on?
What's going on? Things are going South pretty
quick and you decide to leave. Months go by, nothing.

(09:51):
Your sister finds your ex account and asks you what?
What's a totally nude griper? You try to explain but she's
just getting more upset. I mean lately you feel like even
the dogs giving you dirty looks.It might make you feel alone,
like there's no one out there that really appreciates your
worldview. You might start to question
yourself and wonder if you really have straight from God's

(10:14):
light, as your Aunt Charlene putit.
Well, before you sit down with those questions too long, I'm
here to tell you there's a placewhere you belong, and that might
be in the federal government of the United States of America.
You're based. You're pilled to the gills.
Sure, you could go to therapy, or you could get paid with a job

(10:35):
in the communications departmentof the Department of Homeland
Security. No experience required.
And that was a parody ad from our executive Club member Matt.
It was pretty good. I I hope I did the idea justice.
Well, he's, it's sort of about like what Paul and Gracia,
right, who is apparently now back, right?

(10:56):
He's just got a new they they brought him back for a new
position in the administration. Oh, dude, I just remember
reading that story about his momgoing around Capitol Hill and
being like, he's a good boy, so I guess she got to somebody.
Yeah, well, with that out of theway, let's get started and try
to figure out who the hell. Who the hell?
Who the hell is Matt Taibbi? It's 1970.

(11:23):
The country has seen an outbreakof protest against the Vietnam
War. These would grow so intense,
eventually it would push the hands of U.S. politicians.
In New Brunswick, NJ, Matt Taibbi is born.
Oh, and tell us a bit about his early life.
Yeah, he's, he's born to 219 year old college students,

(11:46):
Victoria Whelan and Mike Taibbi.Mike will later become ANBC
reporter. His parents were pretty young
when they had him, obviously, and they split up.
He was raised mostly by his mother who brought him up.
I think like generally in the Boston area.
She attended law school at night.

(12:07):
And he's he's kind of it. It's interesting because Matt
has had what by any accounts would be a privileged
upbringing. He doesn't deny this, but he
does kind of tend to intimate and imply at times that that
there was some struggle in the beginning, which allows him to

(12:27):
kind of speak for the working class.
This is my interpretation of of of the way that he he talks
about this stuff. He then has some teenage
rebelliousness as he gets older.Can totally relate to that and
his parents sent him to the Concord Academy boarding school.
Now this is a a pretty prestigious New England boarding

(12:48):
school. If you're familiar with the New
England boarding school scene, they're all I.
Can't. I can't say that I am.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's.
It's a it's a nice place. It's, it's exactly what you
would think it is. You know, I mean like it's it's
it's the all, all of the clichesabout New England boarding
schools are are there for a reason.

(13:09):
And he he said of being sent to Concord quote.
I was confused, lonely, had an authority problem, had really
lost my way in adolescence. And this was a solution for all
of us. So it it it does seem to have
kind of straightened him out. He also worked for a time with a
crew of demolition workers. He said of this quote, I'd

(13:30):
gotten in some trouble. My parents very creative
punishment was to make me do hard labor with a lot of tough
guys in Boston and the first crew I worked with, all my Co
workers were black and some of them were work release prisoners
from Deer Island jail in town. One of those guys gave me some
advice on my last day of work. He said don't go out like a
sucker. I don't know if that's really my
great ambition in life, but it'sa good story and I still do

(13:53):
think about it. And The thing is that I think
that that is kind of his motivation in life, because
that's basically the most Gen. X thing imaginable.
I have two questions. Well 1 is a statement and one's
a question. The first one is Mike Tabby for
NBC News. I don't know anything about him.
I mean, I never thought of Matt.Matt as like a neppo baby in the
journalism world by any means. I just didn't think about him

(14:16):
that way. Was he like a very successful,
you know, reporter? Did he have, I mean, is there
anything about this guy that waswell known or I mean, does he
ever talk about him as as sort of being like growing up in a
family of journalists? You know, he he doesn't talk
about him, but I, I think that, yeah, I mean, MM was pretty
successful and I think he may have won some awards at at at

(14:39):
the very least he was he was relatively well known.
And I I think that it would strain credulity to think that,
you know, his he he didn't adds on some level, right?
Like like help out his son to get a foot in the door to the
extent of how much like that is nepo baby or not.
I think it kind of depends on the way that you see it.

(15:01):
But I think that getting your foot in the door because you
know, you your your dad's in thebusiness and you know, you know,
you have some like built in familial connections is one
thing. I think, you know, getting kind
of like a a really easy ride thewhole way because of your family
connections is another one. And I think that, you know, no
matter what you can say about Matt, his journey was not that

(15:24):
kind of like smooth. Yeah, that's kind.
Of the way I was feeling like healready wasn't like that.
And of course he has he had he had a very distinct writing
voice, which I think is what carried in most of the way.
But I just wanted to ask about that because I didn't know.
And then the other thing you mentioned about the class
issues, I mean, Friedrich Engelsand people like that were do not
necessarily have a claim to the working class, but we're very

(15:45):
concerned about it. I mean, I don't think you
necessarily have to have that. Then you have people who really
do have a working class background and then they use it
to, you know, justify fascism. I knew that's something I wanted
to point out. So Matt Taibbi, as a teenager,
he's getting rebellious. His parents send him off to
boarding school, make him too hard labor.

(16:06):
Then he goes to college. Where does he go?
So he goes to NYU, and that doesnot work out for him.
Yeah. The reason that it doesn't work
out for him is that he found himself, quote, unable to deal
with being just one of thousandsof faces in a city of millions.
And he wanted to be a kind of, Iguess, a bigger fish in a

(16:26):
smaller pond. So he transfers to Bard College
in Red Hook, NY. This is just just north of the
city, in large part because the wilderness called look like
paradise. Personally, I find this openness
about his narcissism kind of endearing because I, I, I find,
well, I find it relatable kind of like, like, I get like where
he's coming from on that. You know, it's like you're 18

(16:49):
years old, like you want to like, you know, you're going to
school and then, you know, you're just one of like millions
of people that can be intimidating, especially coming
from a small town like Boston. And you're like in, in, in New
York and it's just like big and like it's, it's different.
And I think that for someone in their teens or early 20s, New
York can be a lot of things. And, and for some people, it can

(17:11):
be intimidating and, and it can kind of make people feel
uncomfortable. So I, I, I get like why he, he
went there. He, he goes to Bard and while
he's at Bard, he goes to the USSR on exchange program.
Or I, I think at that point, I think it was still the USSR, but
it was kind of in the process ofcollapsing into the kleptocracy,

(17:36):
the the unfettered capitalism that it was going to be for most
of the 90s. So he finishes College in Saint
Petersburg and he returns to Bard for graduation in 1992.
He goes right back to to Russia from there.
So he he, he just 180 something about Russia draws him back.
What was that? I, I mean, I, I don't think if

(17:58):
you stopped many people on the street and it was like, you
know, if you didn't live here, where would you live?
They'd just be like the motherland.
Russia is where I would go. I, I, I mean, as a journalist, I
mean, there's a lot of reasons why that might be fascinating,
But, but what's Matt's story? What?
Why does he go back? I mean, yeah, I think he was

(18:18):
just really exciting. He just wanted to be there.
He he wanted to be in this country as he was undergoing
this massive change. And and that's what he tried to
do. He tried to find work as a
journalist. I mean, that was that was his
his number one goal. His, his secondary goal was
trying to to write A to write a novel.

(18:39):
He gets a job at English language Moscow times.
You know, I mean, like this is he he went back.
I, I think when you're, you know, 2223 years old and you
have an opportunity to be somewhere that is under growing
this kind of huge, massive historical change, I, I mean,
why wouldn't you? Yeah, I, I, I completely.

(18:59):
Just it sounds crazy interesting.
I mean there there's so there's a million and one stories around
every block. No, yeah.
I mean, you know, having done reporting abroad in India, I
mean one of the more exciting things about being in India at
that time was just like there was just so much construction
and change. Like it was like the every city

(19:19):
was growing and changing and because this extremely
accelerated way and you felt like there was a story to be
found around every corner. You know, that would be the
reason. I would imagine you would you
would find it there, although I'm sure it's a different
situation than that. Yeah, I think there was like, I
think it was all of that and I think there was just excitement.
I mean, it was it was chaos, right?

(19:40):
Like there was excitement. Obviously we would cover like
the journalistic side of the excitement, but I think there
was excitement for being a youngman there as well.
You know, like that, that the this was a place where there
other people your age are starting businesses or militias
or, you know, they're they're leaving, they're trying to take
advantage of like there's just it's, it's complete, for lack of

(20:03):
a better term, like this kind ofWild West feeling that that's
there. Like there's just there's no,
it's just completely anarchic. There's no government really.
Like everything is. Everything's about money and,
and, and there are tons of Americans there who are just
basically feasting on the corpseof the USSR at this point, just

(20:23):
tearing all the flesh off of it.And I, I really, I, I do
understand the motivation to go back.
So he does that for a few years,then he goes to Mongolia.
What's what's he doing in Mongolia?
A few years later, he's living in Mongolia and he's playing
professional basketball in the Mongolian.

(20:44):
Basketball. Hold on, you said.
He's playing professional basketball in Mongolia.
Yeah, so he's playing. Everything you know about it,
throw it at me right now. So in the Mongolian professional
Basketball League, he is one of the players.
He he's, he's a professional player there and and that's just

(21:05):
what he's doing. He gets pneumonia, though, while
he's there. It's cold place and he almost
dies. So then he moves back to Moscow
and he joins the tabloid living here the.
Safest place to live after you almost die in Mongolia is to go
directly to Moscow. Yeah, yeah, He fled to safety.
Did he bring the ball up? Do we know anything?

(21:26):
Is he a point guard, shooting guard?
Like is he? Like what?
Can he dunk? How tall is Matt Taibbi?
He's he's pretty tall. I think he's over 6 feet.
Do we have like free throw stats?
We should reach out I. Don't have a stats.
I think if we can get them though, that'll be great.
Yeah, this is him. This is him.
In an interview that he did, he said, you know, he he'd been

(21:46):
playing basketball. One of the guys he's playing
with was Mongolian quotes. We got to talking.
He told me there was a league called the NBA Mongolian
Basketball Association. That was the only other pro
league in the world with NBA rules.
Well, so he quits his job. He he goes and he has a try out
with the Mountain Eagles in Mongolia, which and he makes it.

(22:08):
And yeah, he's he's he. He said that he was a national
celebrity. He also says that he was dying
his hair different colors, like Dennis Rodman leading the league
in rebounding, getting them fights.
So, you know, fascinating. Anyway, so he gets he he gets he
has pneumonia, he goes back to Moscow and he joins the expat

(22:31):
tabloid living here where he meets Mark Ames.
Yeah, You got to tell me a little bit about who Mark Ames
is because I I think I probably represent a lot of the audience
who either some people have never heard of this guy or
they're like me, where they never really looked into who he
is and just see he's got this avatar on on Twitter or what,

(22:52):
like now X where it's just sort of a very slack looking face,
right? Where it's like kind of Gray
with big, big eyes. And like that.
I would always see him and it would used to be like he was
like posting a lot about I guessleft wing takes about war.
I remember originally. I don't know if it changed from
there, but that's always kind oflike the vibe of that guy.
Yeah, his his, his profile picture I believe is by Ted

(23:14):
Rawl. It has it has that look to it.
And Mark is a I, I would call him kind of like a cantankerous
older lefty. He's older than Matt.
I believe he might be like 60 atthis point.
He's very much the Gen. X writer type.
He had, he had already been in Russia when Matt got there.

(23:37):
He's a little bit older. Like I said, he moved.
Do you think toppled the USSR? Is it, you know, he?
Might have done Mark games, but we're not sure.
He's It would certainly be a good episode of War Nerd, which
which which I think he appears on pretty often.
So he starts editing living herein 96.
So Taibbi is there and Ames leaves to found the exile.

(24:01):
The exile is meant to be like a competitor to living here as
kind of satirical tabloid that it takes a harsh look at the
American expat experience in Russia, right.
So the, the intention, the stated intention of living or
of, of the exile was to really like send up a lot of the

(24:25):
Vulture capitalists and, and, and whatnot who, who were there
and who were, like I said, picking over the bones of, of
what was left of the, of the, ofthe state and, and, and society
in the USSR. And so they approached it that
way. And the exile was an expression
of kind of like almost like an alt weekly, right.

(24:48):
But it also, it was it was obscene.
It was certainly offensive by today's standards and by the
standards of the time, but it was also highly regarded because
of how it was sending up this stuff.
Because there was like, I think on the part of a lot of the
people who were in journalism atthe time.

(25:10):
And like a lot of the audience, there was an understanding on
their part that what Ames and Taibbi were doing was kind of
coming from a place of wanting to expose this stuff, right.
So I'm, I'm, I'm not making a judgement on it either way.
I'm just saying that that that is the way that it has been

(25:32):
described to me when I was researching the book and even
before that. So it's raunchy, it is poking at
power, at conventions, at what at the time would you would call
political correctness, that sortof thing.
But you have written here and just what little I know about

(25:54):
the exile, it was very, you know, kind of the tongue in
cheek. They would openly write about
doing a bunch of drugs, hooking up with random women in Russia.
Some of that we're going to talkabout later.
And eventually this all falls apart.
What happens? What what you know, the the
exile is showing this promise. It's getting regard from a

(26:14):
certain audience. But I don't think it's still
around today, Is it? I mean the exile, I, I haven't
heard that in forever and it's always been in reference to this
like golden year 20 some years ago.
Yeah, it's definitely not aroundanymore.
I'll I'll get to why that is. But I I think that the first
thing to understand is the reason that Ames brought Taibbi
on was because if Taibbi stayed at living here, living here

(26:38):
would be a more effective competitor to the exile.
I mean, like, like that's how well regarded at that point
Taibbi already was, right? So he he brought Tybee onto the
exile and you know, Ames was like the bad cop Tybee was the
good cop and Ames would write more hardcore subject matter

(26:59):
like death porn column that recounted police reports of
murders and suicides and horror or horror stories.
Review or guide to the Russian prostitution industry by way of
sex workers. Ames said that he had hired.
So there there was, there was certainly that they were doing

(27:20):
lots and lots of drugs. They were partying super hard.
And I think you can kind of see where any partnership like this,
if there's just tons and tons ofdrug use and hunger for fame and
it's just it's, it's, it's doomed, right?
It's it's it's on a collision course.
It gets referenced a lot in the context of it being
misogynistic. That is the that is what what I

(27:43):
see online. That type of criticism, I've
been ready to know myself, but that's what people allege.
Particular critics of Taibbi andnames.
Yeah, so it, it, it was pretty misogynistic.
And there's, there's a quote that I, that I have in the book
that I'll, that I'll read out here and I'll just tell the

(28:03):
audience that this is not an inoffensive thing, right?
This is this is pretty offensive, but this.
Audience can handle it. Yes, this is Matt 1999 to
journalist Anna Blundy. So quote.
Look Anna, I hate to break this to you, but as a man who
appreciates a good conversationalist as much as the
next guy and given a choice between sleeping with Alice B

(28:25):
Talkless, that's a famous feminist and a brainless bimbo
with a shave snapper and melon sized tits, I'll take the bimbo
any day. And you know what?
So will every other man in the entire world.
I mean it. All of us, 100 fucking percent.
Call us shallow, but that's the deal.
The fact is, Russian women with their tight skirts, blowjob
ready lists lips and swinging meaty chests scare the hell out

(28:47):
of Western women. They know that if large numbers
of them were ever to invade the Placid, polite lesbian
literature and designer coffee dating scene of their home
countries, they'd be priced right out of the market.
Russian women may not be emancipated, which I think most
of us agree is a terrible thing,but what they haven't gained in
the professional world they've at least retained in the sexual
arena. Whoa, I The number of times I've

(29:10):
used snapper to describe a vagina is 0, but has anybody
used the word snapper here? I.
Such a no. That's a snapper's a fish,
right? That's a that's a fish bro.
I don't know anyway. Yeah, I mean, like I, like I, I
spent, I spent part of my, my childhood and teenage years in
Ireland. So I've certainly heard it

(29:31):
before. But it's it's not something that
you really hear in in the US certainly.
Well, I've been introduced to something new today.
What I would say to that is I'm sure Taibbi and Ames and
whomever else are probably saying, hey, we were very young,
right? I mean, they were still pretty
young at that point. How old would they have been?

(29:52):
Well, Matt would have been about30 at this point, you know?
Jesus, that's too old. That's too old to get the
apology out. That's pretty old.
Yeah. I mean, you know, there don't
seem to be any extenuating circumstances here, you know
much? Gross.

(30:13):
Also it's also, it's like, you know, Russian is not like a
race, it's a nationality. But this is pretty disgusting
just about Russian women becauseit does.
It certainly does not represent the many Russian women who do
not fit this description he's making.
No, it doesn't. I mean, it doesn't fit the
Russian women who I bet certainly anecdotally and

(30:34):
considering the reaction to thisthat has continued to be quite
negative whenever anyone brings it up.
I would assume that that that this is just not the case in
general. So so that can kind of give you
a flavor that you know, both what Ames was writing and you
know that quote of Taibbi's. I think there we'll, we'll
probably do another quote or twofrom from back then when we get

(30:55):
to the cancellation. But that's the kind of stuff
that they were writing. They were parting super hard.
I think that he, I think Tybee referred to it in an interview
with Ross Park and it was like abacchanalia that, you know,
Knight would hit a certain point.
The drugs would be everywhere, alcohol at these bars, like, you
know, the floor would be just writhing with people having sex

(31:16):
and and and dancing and partying.
So to the extent of how much of this stuff is true, they have
said that it's satire now. You know, I, I think that where
I kind of come down on it is, yeah, OK, like maybe some of
it's satire, but I think that it's obvious that they were
partying pretty hard and they were doing a lot of drugs.
Yeah, one of those drugs. This is like, I don't want to

(31:40):
give off the perception of like,attacking anybody over drug use
or anything. This is important because it's
like part of Taipei's lore and the story he tells about
himself. When he's in Russia and they're
partying, going crazy, he gets addicted to heroin, right?
Yeah, he gets addicted to heroin.
Aims is also on drugs. I'm not, I'm not sure exactly

(32:01):
like what he was on at this point.
You know, maybe it maybe like a mix of everything.
Maybe, you know, maybe he was more into coke or, or you know,
whatever. I'm, I'm not going to speculate,
but I but Matt was on heroin. Their relationship was really
deteriorating by 2001, and Ames leaves to work on his book Going

(32:23):
Postal, Rage, murder and rebellion from Reagan's
workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and beyond.
So Tybee stays on, and he manages the exile.
Ames returns in 2002. Tybee leaves for good.
He goes back to the US going to Buffalo to start the Buffalo
Beast alternative paper. But he also spends time doing

(32:46):
that while while he's doing thatto get clean from heroin.
He tells Barkan that he never, like, shot it, he never shot
heroin, but that he, you know, he was, he was still pretty
addicted now. So I mean like he he snorted it
like the Pulp Fiction. Yeah, I mean, you can sort it,
you can, you can smoke it, you can, you know.

(33:09):
Yeah, you can smoke it too. Rebase it.
I've known a lot of heroin addicts in my life, known a lot
of people who have struggled with addiction to heroin.
And you know what he's saying about it.
Not like he was, he was very addicted without having to
shoot. Is is is certainly not something
that's alien to me to hear aboutthat he he compared getting

(33:33):
clean to, to trains to to Trainspotting to that kind of
famous like getting clean scene there.
Relinquishing junk Stage 1 Preparation For this you will
need one room which you will notleave.

(33:54):
Soothing music Tomato soup 10 Tindall mushroom soup 8 tins off
for consumption called ice creamvanilla one large tub off
magnesia milk off 1 bottle paracetamol mouthwash vitamins
mineral water leucate pornography.

(34:16):
I know that this this is jumpinga little bit ahead because I
know that we're going to we're going to kind of follow Matt's
journey, but just to kind of close the door on the exile
stuff. It closes in June 2008.
It's a victim of a political crackdown from the Putin
government. The Rasas Kran Kultera, which is
the police for culture in Russiaaccused it of, accused the paper

(34:38):
of violating Article 4 for its extreme content glorification of
drugs and pornography. Ames was in California.
He came back, government agents came, questioned him, and then
they the publication just followed because the investors
all pulled out or had. I think he had already summered
ties with Tybee at that point. He said that Tybee had betrayed

(34:59):
the exile. Do we know what he might have
meant by that? Was betrayed it.
He betrayed 'cause he 'cause he left.
Oh, OK. He left.
He he left. He left.
And you know, Ames came back. And like you said, Ames came
back in 2002 and when he came back, Tybee was out.
He was out of he he, but he left, he left the exile.
And they have kind of both talked about each other in media

(35:22):
over the years. And the overall way that I would
kind of describe how they talk about each other would be to say
that Tybee seems still like he'sopen to some sort of like
rapprochement and, and Ames justlike, fuck this dude.
I hate him. So this guy, James Rainey for

(35:44):
Vanity Fair, interviews Tybee in2010.
And there he's he's at a restaurant and he meets him for
for coffee. And it just turns into this
massive fight. And Varini says that the book
is, quote, redundant and discursive.
And you guys left out a lot of the good stuff you did.

(36:06):
Tybee says fuck you, throws his coffee in Varini's face and just
and stomps out. So Rene cleans himself up.
He goes outside. He tries to calm him down.
And Tybee yells, fuck you. Did you bring me here to insult
me? Who are you?
What have you ever written? Fuck you.
And then so Rene's like, OK, well, like, you know, fuck this,
I'm, I'm, I'm going to get out of here.

(36:27):
And he tries to get out, but like he knows like, like Tybee
is kind of like stalking him forlike half a block after that.
So this is a a, a good a good way to kind of just shut the
door on on the exile, the rush of the early life stuff.
But just to say that you kind ofsee that this guy has a bit of a
temper at this point. A bit of a temper and a bit of a

(36:48):
vision of himself that is very grand and very like entitled in
a way is maybe a word I would use.
Well, it's all that time in the Mongolian Basketball League.
I mean, you would also get a fewrebounds in that league and it's
all. You don't know who I am.
Look up my clips dude. I mean.
I will say like, like he's, I'venever been in the Mongolian

(37:09):
Basketball Association, so. Dude, I'm not even sure I can
make a free throw. So he goes from the Buffalo
beasts to the New York Press. And I just want to just quickly
interject something. New York Press was a was an
interesting newspaper in the sense that like you would
sometimes get commentary from New York Press that you would
get different from somewhere else.

(37:31):
And I remember being at the time, although I miss the
Village Voice, I used to get really irritated with the
Village Voice. It had like a very like
uncritical liberal perspective all the time.
And at the time, you know, that,you know, during the 90s there
was, you know, there was a lot of tension around Clinton and
just every, everything was just uniformly around Clintonism,

(37:51):
right? And the New York press would
sort of go around it a little bit.
It had like an early contrarian streak.
And one example of that is Armand White would do the film
criticism. If anybody knows.
Armand White was really brilliant at times early in his
career and then became more and more reactionary and then
completely became just like a pro Trump critic, even though
he's a gay black man. But he like that's that's the

(38:15):
New York press. It was kind of like the early
contrarian thing, even though itplenty of leftist point of views
in it too wasn't a conservative thing.
It was. It was odd.
I don't want to derealist too much, but I would say that for
the alt weeklies, right, there were always kind of like 2
general strains, like 1A kind ofmore mainstream movement, more

(38:37):
like Village Voice, right? Mainstream liberal magazine.
And then the other kind, right? The kind that was like a little
more critical, like like New York Press.
Metroland up in the Capital Region is another example of
this. I would argue that the stranger
of, you know, in Seattle. And we mentioned that because
Katie Herzog worked there until she became Persona no Grata.

(38:57):
Yes, and and and you know, I'm not crazy about Dan Savage, but
but but the stranger was definitely like of of the kind
of not of the village voice. I think persuasion of of all
weeklies, although I'm sure thatsome people would disagree.
So if you disagree, just yell atme.
Don't don't yell at at at and Mike and Jared but.
Yeah, we'll put we'll put Owen'shandle in the description of

(39:19):
this episode. You can go yell at him and
argue. But after New York Press, Matt
goes to Rolling Stone magazine. And this is where, at least in
my life, like I he he is writingfor Rolling Stone magazine at a
time that I'm in school, learning how to be a journalist

(39:43):
and reporting the news is fun. But what I really love to do
whenever I get a chance to do itis narrative, non fiction.
And Matt Taibbi, for everything we're going to go through, is
when he's focused and gets the space, like in a magazine story.
A fantastic writer, very vivid storyteller, Very, just a very.

(40:08):
You know, people when he were was at Rolling Stone, people
were like, this is the new Hunter S Thompson.
This is our generation Hunter S Thompson.
So it's like this is where he breaks out.
Can you tell us a bit about the Rolling Stone years?
Yeah, I would, I would say just just before I, I do, I would

(40:28):
just say I, I agree with you. And I think that it also shows
the benefit of him having an editor when he has an editor and
when he has focus. Like I will say, if you read
Matt's Substack today, I wonder where that writer went.
Because the guy I was reading inRolling Stone, I was just like,
this is brilliant. I, I hope I can write like this
someday. But you go to that sub stack and

(40:50):
it's just like it's, it's not bad writing necessarily, but
it's, it's completely unremarkable from my perspective
anyway. It's, it's, it's certainly not
what he was doing in Rolling Stone.
So he, yeah, he goes at the end of O4 after Bush is reelected.
He moves from the New York pressto Rolling Stone.

(41:10):
But I think that there is one inhe covers the campaign for the
New York Press. And he has this experience in O
4 that I think it's kind of instructive to understand, like
how he generally feels about journalism.
And it's the social dynamics, right?
So the cool kids, the established papers sat in the
front. They enjoyed greater access.

(41:31):
And he says the most toxic thingabout the campaign plane was how
cool everybody thought that theywere.
So there's this sense of like high school social dynamics that
I think that we see with a lot of these guys that everything
kind of comes back to, to, to high school.
Everyone feels like they're, they're, they're back in high

(41:51):
school having to, like, prove themselves in the same way.
It's just thinly veiled resentment really, I think.
Yeah. Like that whole height.
The high school worldview is just like resentment for people
who you think have it better than you but don't deserve it
like you do. Yeah.
And, and, but I think that I think that that is an

(42:11):
understandable feeling and I think that a lot of people have
that without it having the same high school social dynamic
aspect to it, which is I think what makes it unique like this
kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Right. So it's, it's, it's, it's not
that like I don't care if something good happened to you,
it should have happened to me. That's a kind of a normal thing

(42:32):
to feel. I don't care if something good
happened to you. It should have happened to me
and only happened to you becauseyou're friends with all of the
cool kids is a kind of more specific, like narrow thing that
the that Matt and a lot of theseguys I think have.
And I think that's the distinction that I would draw
that if that makes sense. He goes to Rolling Stone.
He does a lot of great narrativenonfiction, a lot of a lot of

(42:54):
reporting. His career just really just like
explodes at this point. And then 2007, 2008, financial
crisis hits, and that's when it just, it goes to the
stratosphere. Just a quick thing to put in so
you can help people understand. So he's like mostly like a anti
war Bush like type thing. Is that like where he was mostly
at that time? I wasn't reading him week in and

(43:15):
week out at that time. He's doing that and then he did
that. The financial crisis hits.
Yeah, he's he's he's definitely doing the I would say the Tybee
is doing an anti war pro civil libertarian.
OK. Similar to what Glenn is doing
at this. Time.
Yeah, I was about to say cause 'cause when you were on him
talking about Glenn Greenwald, it's a very similar type thing.

(43:36):
They're both in that space of just sort of like stay off of my
data and my information. Yeah, he's, he's, yeah, he's
definitely reporting on that explicitly like, like saying
like, you know, you shouldn't belike spying on us from this
stuff, like the the stuff. Urgent perspective at that time
also, right? I mean, it was, it was
important. But, but I, I would also like
the, the things that he's doing now like this, which, which

(44:00):
we're going to get into with this Twitter Files thing like,
oh, the censorship industrial complex and all this stuff like
that isn't coming from nowhere, right?
Like there, there is this backlog of like 20 years of him
writing about and around this stuff a little bit.
And at this point, like that's what he is doing.
He's doing reporting, but he's also doing some commentary with

(44:22):
it. And then when the financial
crisis hits, then he kind of goes more into this non
narrative, non fiction commentary, but it's still
reporting. I mean, he's still, what I think
was really great about his writing at this time was that he
was able to break down these really complicated financial
concepts to allay audience in a way that was entertaining and

(44:43):
made sense. And I'll, I'll give him credit
for that for sure. He was, I was in, in college at
the time and he was not like my,my, my favorite writer.
He wasn't somebody that I would consider myself a fan of at the
time. But you know, I, I certainly
like, appreciated what he did. And my, my friends who were
more, I think my lefty friends who were more like into the

(45:09):
economic side of things liked him a lot more.
Like they were like, oh, that's,that's our guy.
And and that led to a book of his, I was like Griftopia, I
believe it was called, which I think is his most famous book,
or at least the one that I thinkmost people you know, most
closely associated with him. Yeah, Griftopia.
And then he also coins the referring to Goldman Sachs as a

(45:30):
great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,
relentlessly jamming his blood funnel into anything that smells
like money. I mean, he really went after
Goldman pretty hard during and and like, good fuck Goldman,
just like, just to be clear. But, you know, and, and this was
what he was doing and, and he was doing quite well that he was

(45:51):
selling books. He was he, he had a respected
column. You could basically write about
whatever he wanted. I mean, he had a lot of power
here. And that's kind of the dream.
Well. We got a clip of him.
He was, if you remember those those big big think videos back
in the day. I don't know if they still do
them. Do they still do big think?
It was a very Obama era type YouTube content.

(46:12):
And here he is talking about comparing Wall Street to the
Russian oligarchy. I was continually struck by how
much it reminded me of a lot of the dynamic that I had seen
covering the Russian government and the Russian state where
there was this, you know, the oligarchical system that they
had over there. There were a very tiny

(46:35):
collection of super connected industrial figures.
These oligarchs, they were bankers mostly, and there was
this circular process of government gives tons of money
to banker, banker then scams thepublic and returns money to
politicians who in turn keep giving money back to the

(46:56):
bankers. And that whole circular process
is very similar to what what's going on here in the States now
where we have, you know, a smallgroup of very, very politically
connected banks who give massivecampaign contributions to both
parties and they're rewarded with selective regulation and
bailouts, and then the money comes back again.

(47:17):
So he's out Rolling Stone for a while, but in 2013, what
happens? So Pierre Almadiar poaches him.
And he and he's like a tech has a ton of money, funds a bunch of
today, like a bunch of like liberal nonprofits and that sort
of thing. There's a lot of organizations

(47:38):
in in the like nonprofits especially, like online research
space that Omidyar supports. He has big conferences, supports
journalists, all kinds of things.
That's what he does with his money.
Yeah, he, he at this time, he had just founded First Look
Media, which was supposed to be this alternative media, like

(48:04):
left-leaning media, like really like serious stuff, right.
They had already approached and gotten Jeremy Scahill, Glenn
Greenwald and Laura Poitras to start The Intercept and they
wanted Matt to start the racket.Well, which he called the
racket, which is going to be kind of a continuation of his
economics reporting with with, with a whole team around him.

(48:25):
So he's he's like at the peak ofhis career.
Sounds like he's set up to do pretty good.
How's it go? Yeah, So it didn't go well.
It it completely falls apart. There are this stuff is kind of
foggy, I guess I would say I talked to a number of people who
were around involved and tangentially of all involved in

(48:51):
what went down here. The bare bones that I think is
that there were some accusationsof mistreatment of staff and
1st. Look mad, mistreated staff or.
Yeah, that he was abusive and not like verbally abusive, like
nothing. Nothing physical, nothing,
nothing beyond that. They, they did a full
investigation and they found nothing to really substantiate

(49:14):
it. So they were like, great.
So yeah, let's let's move forward.
But he was so outraged that he had been investigated in the 1st
place that they had dared to investigate him that he quit
before they published a word andhe went back to to Rolling
Stone. It's nice that he was able to go
back, I mean. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean,

(49:37):
he's a pretty big name. You know, I think that it was, I
think it was kind of perceived by a lot of people, a lot of
readers. It's just a leave of absence.
And then he was back. It it.
Alex Perrine had Matt's back on this one.
The Intercept wrote an article about it and you know, they,
they, they talk to people about it, about what happened and

(49:57):
Perrine. But I think Perrine like put out
a statement saying that the issue was interference by first
look in the 1st place. And that that was like really
what had done it. And, and that, you know, if it,
if, if first look had kind of like gotten off their back and
not gotten involved, like there wouldn't have been a problem.
I think there are two important things to understand here.
One that they found nothing, right.

(50:20):
So the accusations were were, you know, essentially without
merit. I mean, I think that's what
happened. I, I think it's safe to say that
if, if, if you make an accusation, you have an
investigation and you don't findanything, then they're without
merit as far as it applies to the organization doing, doing
the investigation. Not saying that they're
completely without merit. I don't, you know, I don't 100%

(50:43):
know like everything that happened here, but I'm saying
that as far as like legally and let you know, they, they were
found not to be able to be substantiated.
But I think the second thing is that he got so angry about even
being challenged that he just left.
He just said fuck you guys, not only said fuck you guys to first
look, but said fuck you to everybody who he had brought on

(51:04):
to the racket. Everyone who he brought on to
the racket to work with him werethen out of jobs because the
thing couldn't exist without him.
So he basically torpedoed like, I wouldn't say people's like
careers necessarily, but I wouldcertainly say they're paychecks
for a while. Towards the end of his Rolling
Stone career, or sort of his, his time as a darling liberal or

(51:25):
left, whatever you want to call it, he was getting a lot of
traction by covering the 2016 campaign, particularly the
Republican ticket. He would recall, I think the
Republican clown car. I think was was was the phrase
used. And you know, I just remember
the vividly remember the drawings of the Republican
candidates. We all remember Ted Cruz, Marco

(51:47):
Rubio, Trump, etcetera. And then just centering Trump
and making Trump look ridiculous, sound terrible.
And I remember this very vividlybecause my father, who was about
to turn 80, would send me links.To.
Matt Taibbi articles would be like.
Look at this. This is.
There, there you go, another Taibbi banger.

(52:09):
You know, I don't think he woulduse the word banker, but you
know, he would be like, you know, he he loved it anyway, you
know, and the reason I bring it up is because it was just it was
a punchier, slightly more bitey version of MSNBC coverage in
some ways. And he was that that that's like
sort of isn't that kind of the last moment where where he

(52:30):
before departure where he sort of starts to drift rightward?
No, but we'll get to that. OK.
But anyway, I just wanted to point that out because I
remember it very vividly. Just he was doing a lot of
traction with those articles. He, he was and, and I think
that, I mean, 2016 election was something that broke a lot of

(52:51):
people's brains. I think the beginning of Matt's
shift to the right came with hisrejection of the Russia gate
conspiracy theory that basicallydominated media after Trump was

(53:11):
elected. Yeah, yeah.
So this is post 2016 election. The Hillary Clinton campaign
spokespeople go out, you know, looking for blame, point to
Russian interference in the US election, which itself is not a
conspiracy. Russia did attempt to influence

(53:36):
public opinion. You know, this is well
documented. People were indicted for it.
You know, they were trying to reach the Trump campaign.
They were going online trying tomanipulate public opinion in the
US, but but it's like the question is causality, right?
It's like, yes, Russia did a lotof this stuff, but a lot of

(53:58):
research into it, minus maybe the campaign contacts that could
be open for debate. But the online stuff, at least
what I'm familiar with, I think the general consensus as the
years went on is, yes, they tried it, but they were
incredibly ineffective. A lot of people remember the
like jacked Bernie Sanders meme and it's like, but did that, did

(54:18):
that get any traction really? Well, that's the thing.
So if if you look at the numbers, they were like, oh,
well, look at all the numbers that this stuff did look like,
like look at this. And it's like, yeah, that, that
didn't. I mean, if, if anybody who was
in media at any point, I think over the last decade and has had
to look at social media engagement numbers, we'll be

(54:43):
able to tell you that like most of the stuff was like nothing.
It was nothing. And a lot of like what Russia
was doing at that point was the same thing that a lot of other
countries or I don't even want to say Russia, like a lot of
things that groups based in Russia were doing at that time
were the same thing that groups based in China, India, UK, even

(55:07):
in the US, we. Do this shit.
Yeah, Yeah. Just like finding.
Like, just look at what's going on in Venezuela right now.
We do this shit all the time. We do worse than this.
Oh my God, dude. But I'm saying like some of this
stuff I don't even think was like necessarily like influence
campaigns or I, I, I don't really know, like what to call
them, but they were like start and they were making Facebook

(55:28):
pages of like different, like sides of different debates.
But it didn't matter like what the debate.
They were just doing it to get more page clicks and more
attention. And I don't know if it was like
an influence campaign or not. But I'm what I'm saying is that
like they were doing this and a lot of other a lot of groups in
like other countries were doing this as well and all of this

(55:49):
stuff. And then but then there was like
also like the Russian, like intelligence was like reaching
out to the Trump campaign and being like, hey, you know, we
want to like, you know, talk to you about this and that and all
this stuff is getting smashed intogether to make this big huge
conspiracy theory of this like long, powerful plot coming
straight from Vladimir Putin to put Trump into office.

(56:13):
A lot of that was on Rachel Maddow's show.
She would kind of weave those things together.
I should say they're also there's a lot of anecdotal
evidence and things to to suggest that Russia or Russian
intelligence did probably support some of the white
supremacist groups and activities and things like that
there. But this is we're talking about,
I mean, I saw some of it first hand, but you know, there,

(56:36):
there, as you pointed out, we'redoing things like that or
they're doing things like that. It's just more that I think
Russia clearly had an interest in the in creating division and
stocking, particularly white supremacy, which was like the
big thing. Yeah, and I mean.
That scared people a lot at thattime because of what Trump was
talking about. Yeah, I mean, that's been their

(56:57):
MO for the longest time, is to identify existing social
divisions in a Western country that they're targeting and then
amplify sometimes not even the division themselves, but the
perceptions of those divisions. They want people in those
countries to think, Oh, my God, my neighbors hate me.
We all hate each other, that sort of thing.

(57:18):
And it has a destabilizing effect is the idea.
But again, there's a question oflike, causality.
And then there's a question of like, there's a lot of reasons
Trump won in 2016. And, and how does that break?
I, I would not put it anywhere close to the top, but Matt
Taibbi to get us back on track, zeros in on this, right?

(57:39):
And it makes him kind of a pariah at the time in liberal
media. I mean, he went from being this
liberal media darling to being the guy who's like your favorite
MSNBC host is full of shit. There were a lot of people in
the media, both people who were prominent and well known, like
like Matt, like Glenn as well, who rejected this.

(58:02):
And there were other people likemyself, like Adam Johnson, media
critic as well, who also rejected this and and and were
also like, this is bullshit. Like Trump won election because
this is America and that's like.He's the natural conclusion, the
last five decades of American politics, Yeah.
Right. And then, you know, as the media

(58:22):
hysteria around this like increased, it was it, it became
this kind of like like a snowball effect almost because
it was like, especially at MSNBCI think was like the worst
offender on this Rachel Maddow as as Mike just said, look, it
was, was the worst of them of ofof them for for promoting.
And it makes sense why she promoted because the ratings

(58:43):
were great. And the more the ratings were
great, the crazier the conspiracies got and the
craziest conspiracies got, the better the ratings got,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Right.
But then like, as they're doing that, then like, you know,
everybody's like writing about how crazy this is.
And that's like generating like back and forth thing.
I mean, at this point, this is back when, you know, like media
was was a lot more I guess, likesomewhat centralized, I guess

(59:05):
for the Internet. But like, you know, like there
was like a discourse and like Twitter hadn't been assidified
by Elon Musk yet. And so into this bedlam
basically is Matt Taibbi as one of the main people pushing back
against this. And what happens is kind of two

(59:27):
things. So first of all, he's kind of
banned from liberal society, polite society, media society,
right? He still has this calm it
Rolling Stone, of course, but he's not invited on MSNBC or CNN
anymore to talk about his stuff.He's not he's he's being yelled
at online, which is a a great radicalizing Oh.
I just want to interject something here and maybe help

(59:48):
you to get to this point. He was also kind of associated
with Bernie, like the Bernie vibe.
I don't know if he was like a public Bernie supporter, but
there was a good like a cluster of journalists who are kind of,
you know, kind of Clinton critical, just retweeted by the
by the people who were pro Bernie.
And I think that that that carryover gave him a kind of a
hardened thing, you know, onlinein his personal branding.

(01:00:12):
I mean, I think it's, it's, it'stotally true to say he was.
I mean, Matt Taibbi was like a guest on shows like Chapo Trap
House and stuff. I mean, the guy got around left.
That's right. He was.
Yeah. I don't.
I don't know if he still is, buthe was.
Yeah, I don't think he is anymore, but but but he
certainly was. I mean, yeah, I I think that

(01:00:33):
just kind of understanding his position.
I don't want to like pre litigate the 2016 or the 2016
after aftermath for my own sanity here.
But and, and, and liberals kind of reject him.
And I, I just want to digress just a second to say like kind
of what happens with Glenn at this point is Glenn starts to
just basically be kind of anti anti Trump, right?

(01:00:55):
Like he his, his perspective becomes kind of this is this is
kind of how Glenn ends up where he is now, but he's just like,
no, like if you're opposed to Trump, that's bullshit.
You're only opposed to him because, you know, you're you're
liberal slime and you know, likeit's, it's only because you
believe in Russiagate and RachelMatt, blah, blah, etcetera.
So, but Matt is not like that. Matt is he's rejecting the, I

(01:01:18):
guess, MSMSNBC evocation of the liberal discourse and the
reasons that they're getting forClinton losing.
But at the same time, he's he's not anti anti Trump.
He also doesn't like Trump. And he's he's making that very
clear. And one of the things that he
does in order to kind of try to reset himself with liberal

(01:01:44):
audiences is he writes a book called I Can't Breathe, which is
about Eric Garner, who was murdered by police, choked out
to death. And the book is about that.
It's about Black Lives Matter kind of in general.
And this is going to be like Matt's like re entry into polite
liberal society. And I think the book came out in

(01:02:06):
like October. And so he's he's he's like ready
to go. Like this is this is about.
And then in August, me too kind of really drops and it becomes a
huge thing like Harvey Weinstein.
You know, it becomes a national movement, right?
It becomes a really, really important part of politics.
And arguably like still is. I mean the, the, the effects of

(01:02:29):
it I think are still are still with us or or at least the
vicious backlash against it. I mean, is, is means a dominant
strain on our culture and explains, like so much of the
acceptance of Trump. Yeah, I.
I think that's true, but. I think that also like there
there. There there are some positive
aspects of it too, right? Which is that like, even even

(01:02:51):
though the backlash has one for now, like it did the kind of
empower and and and put people into politics and feel like they
could actually change toothpasteis out of the tube now, even if.
They're smearing it around the room.
It was undeniably positive. And so essentially what happens
is that. Matt is about to do his his book

(01:03:15):
tour and outcomes this Mike thisthis kind of campaign led by in
part, Mike Cernovich, weird Mike, who's kind of like
deploying the me too movement inorder to smear like one of his
old enemies. And it this this being Matt

(01:03:36):
Taibbi. And so as Matt is like, really
like, like trying to reset like his his relationship with with
liberal media, then this stuff comes out and and it is it is
stuff from his time at the exilecomes, comes back.
And specifically this columnist Kathy Lally from the Washington

(01:04:00):
Post recalls like when she was in Moscow as a correspondent for
The Baltimore Sun. Just I mean, just think about
that through the Baltimore Sun had a Moscow correspondent back
in the 90s. Remember what they took from us.
At a different time. She she said that Tybee and
Ames's behavior and blinding sexism often targeted me.

(01:04:22):
She criticized their publicationin a message board in 1998 like
a private like or like semi private like message board for
journalists in 1998. And they just like went after
her in the exile ridiculing her and they went after her in the
in the memoir as well. So the attacks were there and

(01:04:43):
they were making like, you know,she wrote about this in the
Washington Post. I mean, like they they were,
they were having some success. And Tybee's book tour basically
just like collapsed and Eric, the Eric Garner book, just kind
of like when it it, it just kindof disappeared.
You know, I I'm sure that it's sold OK, but it just wasn't like
this like kind of reset. And The thing is as well that

(01:05:06):
liberals were not like willing to forgive and forget for him
because they were so mad at him about what he had written about
Russiagate that their reaction to this was to basically say,
no, fuck you. Like, this is like an example of
why you're a bad guy. And so this kind of like, this
is the beginning of him kind of turning against liberals in the

(01:05:29):
left, which I think he might have already kind of been on the
path to. But this is this really like,
like hyper accelerates it. So in 2018, Matt Taibbi.
Starts self-publishing. He moves over to sub Stack.
His sub stack has gone through afew different iterations, a few
different brandings. Today it is called Racket News.

(01:05:54):
A little call back to First LookMedia and he is kind of done
this right word turn. But if you ask Matt Taibbi,
he'll say that he's the same, but the rest of the world
changed. There was a 2021 profile of Matt
Taibbi, I believe it's called What Happened to Matt Taibbi?

(01:06:17):
Where he gave an interview for it.
And he said, quote, I feel pretty strongly that the only
thing that's changed is that theNew York media world once agreed
with things I was saying, and now they don't.
And he identifies the 2016 election as sort of the pain
point. This is where like things

(01:06:39):
started to fall apart in mainstream media and in liberal
media saying that, you know, once Trump won, all of these
publications were chasing clicks, respectable newsrooms.
We're we're going along with political commentary instead of
questioning politics, that sort of thing.

(01:07:00):
And that his writing, he views it as a contrast to that, which
is why people get upset with it.That's what he says.
But oh, wait, I, I mean, this drift to the right.
He he's going independent. He's writing his own newsletter.
I guess my question for you is, when you were looking at it, did

(01:07:22):
it seem like all at once or did it feel gradual?
I mean, he he made this play to to get back his, you know,
liberal media friends, media partners, acquaintances,
whatever you want to call him and he is just rejected, right?
Even though Matt Taibbi does notfit the mold of other who the

(01:07:43):
hell episode subjects, these events of like deep rejection do
come up in a in a lot of these episodes as like heel turn
moments for people. So I'm just curious your
thoughts your read on it of of was this gradual?
Was it kind of the dam broke andhere he is garbling Republican

(01:08:05):
talking points. What happened?
I think it happened very gradually and then all at once,
if that makes. Sense So 2018, like you said,
like he joined Sub Stack and he's still writing for Rolling
Stone, but he finds a loophole in his contract.
And the loophole is this. He can write on Substack and he
can write a book on Substack andhe can write it in a serial form

(01:08:27):
and that will not clash with what he's doing for Rolling
Stone. So that's what he does and he
writes this book called Hate Incorporated.
And the general thesis of Hate Incorporated is that liberal and
conservative media have done equal levels of damage to the
country. That's a take.
The cover is Sean Hannity. And Rachel Maddow.

(01:08:48):
Both sides do it. Both sides do it now.
Look if you want. To say that at this point in
American history, right, that like Rachel Maddow was doing the
same level of damage to her audience's brains as Sean
Hannity was doing to his audience's brains.

(01:09:09):
I'm willing to entertain that. And I think you could make an
argument for it. But if you're going to make the
argument that MSNBC is doing as much damage to the world as Fox
News is, I'm sorry. I just, I just don't think that
I should say also, you know? Rachel Maddow.
Particularly egregious during Russiagate as we discussed

(01:09:30):
there. Have you seen like her recent
things I think she does Mondays and stuff like that.
I mean, mostly the most of the time she's reporting on things
that are real about that. She's compiling a lot of things
that happened around the Trump administration that would be
interesting to our audience. There's good research and
reporting in it. And it doesn't have that same
conspiratorial flavor that the first iteration of Trump had

(01:09:53):
during during coverage. So it's possible that she heard
some of the feedback and adjusted.
I'm not sure if that's the case.I don't watch her every week or
anything like that. But from what I've seen, I don't
see Sean Hannity changing or trying to, you know, adapt to A
to A to to any kind of feedback.No.
And I'd, I'd also say that like,you know, before she.

(01:10:14):
Went all in on on Russia and kind of the latter half of 2016
or latter quarter of the last quarter of 16.
The stuff that she was mostly doing was comparing Trump kind
of historically to segregationist figures and stuff
like that, which I think is finepoint even actually.
Yeah. So.
But he writes this book and I think that.

(01:10:35):
And. And I remember reading it and I
remember reading it and thinkingtwo things.
Like the first thing I remember thinking was like, this guy
needs an editor really badly. Like, really like, like.
And I'm not saying that every writer needs an editor.
I need an editor. I mean, I'm saying to be a
little bit pitchy, but like, yeah, I need an.
Editor like without without an editor, like my writing is not

(01:10:55):
very good. You know, like I, I If you get
to the point where you think youdon't need an editor, I think
that's when you need one the most, quite honestly, like, and
this book is an example of that.Like it really shows that, you
know, he he wrote it himself on sub stack and didn't really have
a lot of editor oversight. And the reason I bring that up
is just kind of a call back to what I was saying earlier about

(01:11:15):
him. But also the second thing that I
noticed about was that like it was making this argument that I
just didn't think was particularly legitimate that
both sides do and both sides arebad.
So I think that that is something that has kind of
carried through even to now where he still kind of says this
kind of stuff on occasion when he will occasionally criticize
conservatives at this point. But that book comes out in 2019.

(01:11:38):
We're rubbing up to the 2020 election, and then COVID hits
and this is when Matt loses his mind.
I'll just read a 2020 tweet from.
Matt, if woke leftist spent moretime arguing against the war and
less time trying to punish speech infractions, I'd be a lot
less hostile to them. Yeah, that was a reply to

(01:11:59):
somebody who was. Talking about that general
topic, but I think it's interesting, you know, that it's
just this sort of self justification of of the
obsession, right? We're just like all these these
censorious people are trying to ban like Hitler 1488 on Twitter.
But couldn't they have done it the way we did it in our day

(01:12:20):
when we were going against the Iraq war and so forth?
Which I guess we can. We can talk about that context
later when a genocide takes center stage.
Yeah. And to be fair to Matt here.
Around 2020, 2019-2020, there was a lot of stuff being taken
offline. A lot of the platforms, Twitter,

(01:12:41):
before Elon Musk spotted Facebook, YouTube, were in
response to what was happening in the world, the rise of
movements like Q Anon, the string of white supremacist mass
shootings. I mean, just so much crazy shit
that seemed to be, you know, it's like every terrible thing

(01:13:01):
that happened. Now their company is in the news
of like, wow. So this just festered here for
like a year and nobody noticed anything or said anything.
A lot of these platforms were developing these policies,
trying to think about that. Also in wake of the 2016
election, a lot of platforms were also thinking about foreign

(01:13:25):
disinformation, misinformation campaigns and trying to
inoculate against that kind of thing.
So Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to get dragged in front of
Congress and look like a lizard person in front of the American
public, right. So it's it's not like it's not
like it was only like based Pepe1488.
There was a lot of stuff being taken offline and not everybody

(01:13:46):
felt great about it. But what Matt and so many people
on the right did was kind of take it a step far.
Like like used it to justify a political belief rather than
attacking it on itself, if that makes sense.
So that's my read of it. It does make sense.

(01:14:08):
And I think that the other thingis that. 2020, especially during
lockdown was like the most online people have like ever
been. Some people never thought and
some people made a podcast. About it called posting through
it exactly see some some good came out of it.
But you know, like, so that's kind of like the the scenario
that he's responding to like last time trying to punish

(01:14:30):
speech infractions. I mean, this is like it, it
just, it, it, it's just seems socrazy.
Like, why would you care that, you know, Pepe 1488 got like
taken offline? But of course, also what he's
saying here is that like there'spushback on the platforms for
allowing disinformation about COVID and disinformation about

(01:14:52):
COVID cures that, you know, could maybe harm people or, you
know, you can take different positions on whether or not
that's good or acceptable or, you know, censorious or not.
But I think that basing your entire political belief, as you
say, Jared is like, not really like where I would go with this.

(01:15:13):
And and it is for him especiallylike COVID and vaccines and
stuff like that. He goes off the deep end on this
stuff specifically basically becomes an anti vaxxer by by the
time 2020. Yeah, he uses it to justify all
this resentment towards. The left because the right at
that time is like, I don't know,why don't you eat horse

(01:15:33):
medication and give that a shot instead of taking a vaccine.
And the left is like, that is bad.
People might get hurt. Maybe that shouldn't be a viral
post. I I don't think this is a
particularly slick veil over Tybee's beliefs here.
And before we just get into the Twitter Files.

(01:15:56):
And the, you know, the censorship industrial complex
thing a little bit deeper here. I just want to point out that
there is this sort of niche industry that's kind of backed
by Silicon Valley money, really this little journalism field,
right? This kind of anti woke thing
starts popping up. And you have all a lot of people
are doing the same thing Taibbi's doing.

(01:16:16):
It's not like he's the one guy who started on the left and,
and, and went right. But there's Bacha Ungar Sargon,
who's sort of a late bloomer in that now she's like got her own
TV show and everything and Jessesingle.
These are like different. They're very they're all
different from Taibbi, but they're all the same kind of
folks in in, in in many ways. They kind of were in a liberally

(01:16:39):
space, were criticized and then,you know, kind of retreated to a
very reactionary position. Yeah, I I think, I think Taibbi
stands out because Taibbi. Had a reputation and some
legitimate chops you know, that a lot of these folks simply just
don't have on the page yeah, that he he has that and he you
know I was going. To like mention people like

(01:17:00):
Jimmy Dore, but they're, you know, they, they disqualify
themselves the minute that they open their mouths.
But yeah, this kind of like general I, I it, it had already
started in the alternative media, I think after 2016 and
had been building for a while and then 2020 really opened the
door for this. So Matt by the end of 2020 has

(01:17:20):
really established himself as atleast like a right wing friendly
voice, if not a just a total right wing voice at this point.
Like people like the transphobiaand the anti vax stuff.
We didn't really get into transphobia, but it's it's it
it's becomes an increasing concern for him like like other
people's personal lives in the same.

(01:17:42):
And the reason I put it that wayis because a lot of his writing
about cultural issues used to beagainst this, used to be against
people like inserting themselvesinto people's personal lives.
And then all of a sudden, like now that now he wants to do that
because of this trans issue, that he, that he just doesn't
like trans people for whatever, whatever reason, doesn't it's,
it's completely irrelevant what the reason is.

(01:18:03):
I mean, I think we all we've, we've all seen this happen with
with figures. But that being a critic of the
left who came from the left who doesn't like trans people and
has questions about COVID in thevaccine put him perfectly in
line with the politics of Silicon Valley right wingers at

(01:18:26):
the time. You know, people like Marc
Andreessen and specifically ElonMusk, who buys Twitter and over
a number of events that we don'treally have time to get into.
But basically, it's just one PR nightmare after another because
the man is an idiot. And he decides, like, a good way

(01:18:46):
to kind of take the heat off of him is to release certain
internal documents to a friendlyreporter who will then report
the stuff out on Twitter and on Twitter first at least, and do
so in a way that will make Elon look good.
These were known as the Twitter.Files So if the Rolling Stone

(01:19:10):
years were a climax of his notoriety in left wing spaces,
the Twitter files will become the climax of his notoriety in
right wing spaces and kind of set him up to where he's landed
today. He's it seems like he's still
coasting on that. So like you said, the Twitter
Files were a collection of internal documents like emails,

(01:19:36):
screenshots of dashboards and stuff that were handed off to
Taibbi, handed off to people like Barry Weiss.
There was kind of this hand selected group of reporters.
Some of them were flown out to Schwitter's headquarters in
Silicon Valley, where they were given this material and like you

(01:19:58):
said, they could report on it. They could write about it.
They had to post it as a Twitterthread first, but then they
could, you know, post it elsewhere.
And immediately this started raising a lot of questions.
To his credit, Lee Fang, I'm notthe biggest fan of Lee's, but
like to his credit here actuallydid confirm in his reporting

(01:20:22):
what a lot of folks suspected asthey started to come out, which
is that these writers were not invited into Twitter to have a
poke around, but that these wereactually, you know, kind of
packaged up with a bow on top for them.
It was like, here, here you go, Matt, here's something that we
would like you to report. So it's sorry, I just want to

(01:20:45):
say this is really important because.
What happened was that when Mattfirst started reporting the
stuff out, he said, I'm not going to tell you anything about
how like this. I'm I'm not going to tell you
who my source was because that would be exposing my source,
which is like, we know who it was, man.
But OK, you know, it was, it wasobviously Elon, but you know,

(01:21:05):
he, he, he, he doesn't want to reveal that for some reason.
He then like he tries to play coy with it.
Weiss, I think, does the same thing.
But because Lee is writing for The Intercept at the time, they
have certain standards. And so Lee in his article

(01:21:25):
finally says, yes, I didn't haveunfettered access.
I was allowed to look. I was, I was allowed to look
through whatever I wanted withinwhat they gave me.
But they, but I would have to ask to look at things and then
they would decide like whether or not I could look at it.
So that those that was the context that this stuff came
from. And it's important to note that

(01:21:46):
like, not only did Matt not likecome out with this and like,
like be honest about that, but he also like, as, as I said, he
never said that it was Elon until of course, we, we, we find
out later. But he also his first articles
about the Hunter Biden laptop story, which is like this right
wing fever dream. It's the thing that leads Glenn

(01:22:08):
to lead the intercept. Basically this guy reports that
he has Hunter Biden's laptop. He says that there you know that
that there's some information onit.
It comes out like right before the 2020 election, it's Joe
Biden versus Trump. It's such an obvious rat fuck

(01:22:28):
that pretty much like nobody will touch it and even like
then. And the thing with with what
happened with Glenn is that he wanted to write about it, but
the intercepts editors actually said like we we can't like let
you just we don't know like where this came from.
It later turned out, I think that it was actually accurate,
but that but it that's irrelevant to this because at

(01:22:49):
the time they had no way to knowthe all they knew was that Rudy
Giuliani basically had like given this to like the New York.
Yeah, yeah. The story was like Hunter Biden.
Left his laptop at a repair shop.
Something, something, something.Now, Rudy Giuliani has it.
Rudy Giuliani not exactly being the most straight shooting
political guy in the Trump yearsfor sure.

(01:23:11):
But yeah, so when this story comes out, I think it's the New
York Post gets it first. They're the ones, you know,
they're shopping. The story around the New York
Post being a tabloid, they're just like, fuck it, let's go.
They run a story. And a lot of tech platforms,
including Twitter, including Facebook, pump the brakes on it
and they do it. I, I want to say it was just for

(01:23:33):
like a day or two. They suppress the link, I
believe for like less than a day.
I. Think it was 16 hours so they
they suppress the link it is. Not directing out on their
platforms, trying to curb the spread of the story.
And like I said earlier, these are platforms that have been
trying to figure out the contentmoderation question, which

(01:23:57):
they've since basically given upon at this point.
But like, at the time, they're still thinking about it.
They're getting these warnings from, you know, these briefings
from places like the FBI and whatever that are just like,
hey, listen, we think, you know,Russia is going to try to
circulate stuff again. We think you, you know, these
kind of things are out here. Can you help us keep an eye on

(01:24:20):
it? And out of an abundance of
caution, they pump the brakes ondistribution of this New York
Post story. And that sends right wing media,
right wing politicians absolutely a wall to them.
This was proof that Big Tech wasin the pocket of the Biden
campaign and was censoring content to achieve a political

(01:24:44):
end that was anti Trump. This was like something they had
said for years, but this was like to them in their eyes, this
is like aha, we've got the smoking gun now.
How does he justify what you just?
Mentioned Jared. It is very clearly used like
this is a propaganda campaign. Anybody can see why they're

(01:25:07):
being released. It's a propaganda campaign to
justify this creepy, unpleasant takeover of a social media
platform to control the flow of information and to say, like,
look, the bad guys were bad. And we need people to help paint
that picture so that way other people warm up to X.
Because everybody's getting really mad about X right now,
and we needed to stay doing whatit does, right?

(01:25:30):
So we need people to feel that way.
And we need somebody to come outthere and make the old regime,
which was problematic, no doubt,look completely heinous, and
then they come into the arms of Elon Musk.
That's a crazy thing compared tohis old branding as a reporter.
Well, I think the way that he justifies it is kind of related
to. Like what what Jared was saying
about the the Hunter Bine laptopstory and and this kind of like

(01:25:53):
right wing fever dream about it,right?
Like they decided this was the greatest moment of censorship
imaginable because like, insteadof it being somebody trying to
rap fuck Biden, now it was, it was that the social media
platforms were trying to rap fuck Trump, right?
So now it's like this huge like thing about censorship.

(01:26:13):
And then it's so that's why I mean, I think that's why he
comes out with this is the firststory.
He just embraces this. I mean, he, he, he, he talks
about Trump's suspension from Twitter, conversations between
the FBI and Twitter. Like that's, I mean, I think
that's interesting. I think I mean this stuff,
here's the thing that talks about it is that like the
documents are interesting. It is interesting to see how a

(01:26:34):
social media company makes thesedecisions.
It is interesting to see how a social media company talks to
the government about how they make these decisions.
Like that stuff is interesting. It is worth it.
It is not, however, on par with the Snowden leaks.
And that is how he tried to likeproject it.
He tried to basically say like, this is like the new huge, like

(01:26:57):
this is going to be a huge revelation on par with that this
is an information regime, the censorship industrial complex.
And The thing is that it just doesn't land, because it's not
even like the revelation, like the secret.
Internal documents of a local police station involved in
corruption in in many ways. It's interesting for sure.

(01:27:19):
And it's interesting probably tobe folded into a book about
Twitter and like, you know, how it evolved into a kind of, you
know, a pretty hate machine, which is what it is now.
No offense, Trent Reznor, But yeah, I mean, like, it's it, it,
it is really not that. It's it, it's not that
impactful. It's interesting for sure.

(01:27:41):
The quote that you brought up before.
Is that it's a red flag if the call is coming from the official
as opposed to the reporting calling the official, reporter,
calling the officials. The average intelligence
official wouldn't stop to tell you if your child was on fire
when they start cold calling agencies and or rotating scoops
by doling them out to different outlets and papers each week.
That's a huge red flag. Now the great thing about this

(01:28:03):
is that on the Lever News podcast, David Sirota and Jordan
Ole had interviewed Taibi and Ole read this quote to him and
said isn't that what you're doing?
And Taibi freaked out, absolutely lost it on him.
So Matt would go on to. Publish ultimately 19

(01:28:24):
installments of the Twitter Files.
He'd cover Trump's suspension from Twitter after the capital
riot. Conversations, like you
mentioned, Owen, between the FBIand Twitter.
COVID-19 issues, communications from nonprofit groups that were
concerned with election disinformation.
That's where one of my former employers comes in.

(01:28:45):
I didn't work on the project. They took a big issue with the
election integrity project. I, I was off doing my own thing
in extremism land, But I, I saw people that I worked with
fucking hauled in front of Congress and shit, which is very
weird. But throughout this, and you
also mentioned this, Owen or or Mike, maybe you did.

(01:29:07):
Matt has managed to botch the facts about this supposed
censorship industrial complex, and when he's called out on it,
he just kind of digs his heels in.
He doesn't correct himself. In my opinion, that right there
is enough to disqualify calling what he does journalism.

(01:29:28):
I'm a very opinionated person, outspoken person.
I'll tell you what I think, But if I get facts wrong, I, I will
like do a backflip to correct myself because I, I was taught
that what that's pretty important, pretty important when
you're doing journalism. But I want to play a clip just
because I think it exemplifies this really well.

(01:29:49):
Mehdi Hassan, who we had on the show earlier this year, actually
called out Matt on these factualinaccuracies in an interview
that went viral at the time after the That's your words you
take to quote. You after.
Public uproar. Pause the Orwellian
Disinformation Governance Board.Stanford created the EIP.

(01:30:09):
That's wrong. Well, that's what they say.
I, I I've. You could check you don't need
sources Matt. You could check the EIP website
it. Says it was created in 2020.
Well, that's the date that I just said and the the
disinformation. Board was 2022.

(01:30:30):
OK, all right. Well then that is an error.
So. In.
April 2020. Three, around this time, Elon
Musk's Matt type source for the Twitter Files is censoring links
to sub Stack. One might say the same, you
know, not to the same degree, but you know, for somebody so

(01:30:53):
concerned about the New York Post getting adequate web
traffic for their story, yeah, Elon Musk starts basically
penalizing Post that have outbound links to sub Stack.
And that's a problem for Matt because Matt is publishing on
Sub Stack and he claims in April2023 he's leaving Twitter.

(01:31:15):
Mike, did Matt leave Twitter? No.
What a surprise. He did receive a fell for it
again. Award.
Yeah, the next year in 20. 24 Taibbi would reveal that him and
Elon Musk had a severe falling out.
They do not like each other anymore.

(01:31:36):
Matt says that Elon Musk messaged him quote, you are dead
to me. Please get off Twitter and just
stay on sub stack. I mean, even then, this is maybe
a tell of the audience that Matthad developed and his awareness
of that audience at this time where even in posting that, even

(01:31:58):
in like kind of trying to make some hay out of this feud with
Elon Musk, he still kind of goesout of his way, right, Owen, to
be like. But just to be clear, I'm not
like attacking Elon. OK.
So wherever you read, that is not true.
Yeah. I mean he, that was his.
MO the entire time these messages were from April 2023, I

(01:32:22):
think like, you know, an hour before he said he was leaving
Twitter and the one thing that he revealed that he sent to Musk
was like Elon, I've repeatedly refused to criticize you, which
is just disqualifying. He's just totally disqualifying
and refused. I think refused is an
interesting word there. I I remember.
Watching his sub stack. Subscribers increase as the

(01:32:45):
first Twitter Files thing was coming out.
I mean, they were all, I, I assume that they were mostly
conservatives. He was promoting it as if it was
like, you know, like there were going to be more revelations,
help us do this work kind of thing.
You know, Barry Weiss did the same thing.
And I think that, you know, for him, Twitter and Subsac being
tied together was, was just suchan important part of his

(01:33:07):
revenue. And so when basically what Musk
has done to Subsac links on Twitter is that now like they
don't even like make a preview. You can't open them in app.
And the reason that he did this is because sub stack made like
this little Twitter knock off thing.
It it it's just, I mean, it's, it's like the I mean just this
Musk is the smallest man alive until like you see, like, you

(01:33:30):
know, Taibbi's text to him and then Taibbi's the smallest man
alive and then you remember whatit's about.
And Musk is small. I mean, they're just like, and
also Barry Weiss in the middle of this.
I mean, we, we, we, she will. Hey.
Hey, Mike, be careful. You're talking about the.
Editor in chief of CBS News here.
But I was she's going to get herown.
Who the hell is? I'm sure.

(01:33:51):
It's, I mean, well, Barry's smart though.
I mean, that's, that's the big difference.
Between her and Matt, Barry's smart, Matt's not like and, and
and so Barry's able to like spingetting subscriptions from
Substack off of doing a couple of Twitter files.
She sees where things are going with Musk's behaviour and she
she leaves Twitter or she doesn't leave Twitter, but she

(01:34:14):
she cashes out of the Twitter files.
She rebrands as the Free Press and she says we're going to do
work. And she gets to basically say
like, you know, his Musk's censorship being the reason that
she was doing it. She gets to maintain some
mainstream credibility. I mean, she's she's just a lot
smarter and in knowing kind of when to cut bait on this stuff,
which which Matt did, Matt wanted to keep on doing it for

(01:34:36):
forever, you know, So the Twitter Files another thing.
To know about that is that it made him into a star witness for
Republicans on Capitol Hill. Matt Taibbi.
I'm the editor of the independent site Racket, and
I've been. Covering digital censorship
issues since 2018. The fictional ones on March

(01:34:56):
14th, 2016, Barack Obama signed executive order in March 2023,
testified before the House Judiciary.
Committee about his Twitter Files post.
He testified again that Novemberabout the government's
interactions with social media companies.
In February, April and Septemberthis year, he has appeared

(01:35:19):
before Congress, mostly still living on the Twitter file
stuff, although he recently got into that.
I'll be honest, I haven't been paying much attention.
Whatever that shit is that Republicans were obsessed with,
where it's like, this is proof the government was spying on us.
And now some of them are trying to sue the government for money
the same way Trump's doing. Where he's like, now that I

(01:35:40):
control the government, I'm going to demand a multimillion
dollar settlement for crimes against me, you know?
Yeah, They found I I think he did find one thing that.
Seemed interesting. I didn't really look too into
it, but like Tulsi Gabbard was like on a no fly list or
something, which seems crazy to me.
Like she was before, not now, but like, you know, before.

(01:36:04):
It's like that's, that's kind ofwild for a member of the
military who was doing special OPS in Africa as recently as a
few years ago. No fly list to the federal
government. So.
Big chunk for her, yeah. So I mean before Congress, his.
His shtick is that he was like, and, and we've seen this so many

(01:36:24):
times, you know, he's the good liberal, but the left just like
went too crazy, got too censorious, got too woke,
whatever. And he basically exists there to
validate whatever the House Republicans are saying, whatever
they are trying to claim about tech companies, whatever they're
trying to claim about nonprofits, that sort of thing.

(01:36:47):
We got to keep it moving here. But there's something else here.
On April 1st, 2025, April Fool'sDay, US Representative Sidney
Kim Locker Dove accused Taibbi of being a serial sexual
harasser. Oh, and tell me about this
because Matt really lost it. And if it.

(01:37:09):
I mean, to be fair, this is a member of Congress calling you
this in committee. I mean, I would probably lose it
too. If I, if I went before Congress
and someone was like, this guy'sa sex pass.
I'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
I I, I don't think that this waslike the smartest.
Thing to do because it was I don't really think that I don't

(01:37:31):
really think she can back it up.But serial sexual harasser is,
is a, is a is a pretty strong claim.
However, it's not it's not the kind of claim that's going to
stand up to a $10 million libel suit.
I mean, you know, under normal circumstances with, with, with
the normal legal system, who knows, maybe, maybe it'll work.
But what's frustrating for me when I watched these hearings

(01:37:52):
that he's on is that the Democrats just always whiff on
attacking him. Yeah, they, they don't know what
to do with him. They just don't understand.
Him. They don't understand what
they're actually dealing with. And also, I would say for folks
who cover the right and have been doing it for a long time,
you know, the threat of lawsuit looms with almost everything you
say. And that's why you use language

(01:38:13):
that is specific, right, where you'd be like, you know, some
people said this about you on a forum and that will sound bad
enough. You don't need to necessarily
make a broad claim like that. We'll have to leave that there
with the time we've got. Left.
I want to talk just a little bitabout what Matt is up to these
days. Like I said, he's still doing

(01:38:34):
the like Republican star witnessthing on Capitol Hill.
He's hosting a podcast called America this Week with Walter
Kern. He's mostly punching left.
He punches right occasionally, mostly on free speech issues,
but the theme is still largely Republicans are bad but

(01:38:55):
Democrats are worse. And there's a 2024 article also
in New York magazine, another one, where Taibbi tried to
explain his method, his approach.
And the way that I read this is that he sees Republicans even
now seemingly as they have a vice grip on the federal

(01:39:16):
government, as underdogs. In a way, this is what he said
to New York Magazine. The Democrats ambitions are
significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans.
From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and
enforcement agents, these central players in domestic
governance, all plans being executed globally as well as in

(01:39:40):
our one country. They are thinking on a much
bigger and more dangerous scale than the Republicans.
And then also from that article,again, this is 2024.
The Republicans have very littleinstitutional power nationally.
It is not their point of view. Prevailing in schools, on

(01:40:00):
campuses, in newsrooms. Parentheses were over 90% of
working reporters Vote Blue. And especially in the
intelligence and military apparatus, which is openly
aligned itself with Democrats. Even if Donald Trump were a
threat to democracy, he lacks the institutional pool to do
much damage. Which can't be said of

(01:40:21):
Democrats. Talk about shit that doesn't age
well just in, but even then justcompletely insane.
I'm sorry, the the the intelligence military apparatus
has openly aligned itself with Democrats.
You've got to be kidding. What are you talking about, man?
What are you? Talking the famously.
Liberal institution. The Central Intelligence.
Agency. It's just so clear that, like

(01:40:44):
he. And and I think Glenn as well, I
know we're not talking about Glenn, but you know, just just
to bring him up as another example of this.
I mean, like, they really seem to think that the institutions
of the federal government are completely controlled by the
Democratic Party and by liberalsand that and that they are that
that the Republicans are the last possible bulwark against

(01:41:09):
like them just taking over everything.
And I don't even know, like whatit looks like.
It's just so frustrating to readthis stuff because it's so crazy
and it's not reality, even in 2025 when the administration.
Is out there blowing up boats randomly.
They don't seem to have any kindof like they seem to.
The idea of a deep state is gone.

(01:41:30):
They seem to have almost total control over everything.
I will also just say this is like a.
Super intellectually lazy argument.
You don't even put yourself in aposition of trying to defend
Republicans. You just say, but think about
can you Can you imagine? You OK?

(01:41:52):
Sure. I I just kicked the dog, but
like, Can you imagine the boogeyman under your bed?
Think of what he would do to thedog.
Oh my God, the boogeyman would eat the dog.
Like it's just it's it completely is glazing over the
back. You just kicked a dog, right?

(01:42:12):
It's it's probably not a great, great way of explaining that,
But no, I think, I think, but I think that's right.
And I think the other. Thing too is, and I know we have
a couple of other things to run through.
So I'm just going to say this iskind of like a general statement
about like his writing on sub sack in his Twitter account now.

(01:42:34):
OK, so it does kind of three things, right?
It plays the hits for the Twitter files.
It plays the hits for the anti vax stuff.
And then the other thing is thatit just says this all this
culture war stuff against Democrats.
And if there's something in the news like about say Donald
Trump, that's that's that's likethat's negative.

(01:42:56):
He just ignores it. He just straight up ignores it
and puts out stuff right now. November 13th, 10:49 PM.
Yesterday, the House Democrats in the House Oversight Democrats
released all of these files, allof these files related to
Jeffrey Epstein where he talks about his relationship with
Donald Trump, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

(01:43:17):
Now, Matt Taibbi, somebody who, you know, covers politics,
someone who is interested in powerful people, right?
His most recent tweet is from November 12th at 9:55 AM.
So before this stuff was released and it's about the I've
had it podcasters who are these two blonde women from the South

(01:43:40):
who are, you know, basically kind of like, like lefty Liberal
Democrats who have gotten this gotten the following over the
last year for for kind of their their type of kind of
confrontational. I guess, like, like liberalism,
right? Like this is what he's writing
about and he's not writing aboutit.
He's not writing about Epstein because the thing about Epstein
right now is it's reflecting poorly on Trump and he knows

(01:44:01):
that his audience is like partisan Republicans.
So there's absolutely no way he's going to do it.
And I think that just kind of like really sums up where he's
at. What I've what I've I've also
seen is him sort. Of throwing shade at Momdani,
right? I heard a podcast with him and
Walter Kern and just sort of trying to, whatever they were
talking about there. And then he, I read the top part

(01:44:22):
of his, his sub stack about it. And it was just sort of like,
well, you know, sort of saying, well, the, the, you know, the
political institutions failed and Momdani won and that sort of
thing. No recognition of the fact that
Momdani would be the exact type of person he would have been
championing in New York at the time of the financial crisis or
even 6 years ago. You, you get.

(01:44:43):
You get. Or six or seven years ago, you
could see him at least like being somewhat more open to it.
But he's just become a crank. I think that's what it is.
He's just become a crank. And and he's, and I, if it was
just, if he was just like sitting on his porch being a
ludicrous asshole, like I don't think this would really matter.
But it's the fact that he has anaudience and he's still able to

(01:45:05):
kind of funnel people into this right wing stuff.
Like I wrote about in January atThe Nation, I wrote about
Taibbi's connections with the Mahab movement.
And like all these, like far right conspiracy theorists, he
did this rest wasn't there like a big rally on the National?
Mall that he. Yeah.
So he goes to rescue the Republic Rally.
He's with, He's with. Tulsi Gabbard, Russell Brand,

(01:45:26):
Jordan Peterson. Yeah, Yeah, this one.
I remember this junior. Yeah, you know, he says.
I grew up a Liberal. Liberal Democrat and can't
remember having even most of thesame beliefs as my friends.
Now millions of alleged intellectuals claim identical
beliefs about vast ranges of issues.
It it was not a huge rally there.
There was not. Yeah, it was a it was like kind
of a dud. He.

(01:45:47):
Sorry, this was before the election and.
And then on the eve of the election, he worked with the
Glenn Becks the Blaze on an article just going over like the
Glenn Beck who who he who he referred.
To in 2011 as. A screeching media dill weed.
He was right, but you know, and.And then like he, it's just all

(01:46:08):
like reactionary politics. He's like, he's, he's, he's, he
was joyful about the Trump WhiteHouse banning The Associated
Press because they wouldn't follow the president's renaming
of the Gulf of Mexico. The once great AP becomes became
journalism's world word police and humorously is now claiming
to be a victim of censorship. It's like, I mean, I don't even
know where to start with that sentence.

(01:46:29):
Like word police is ridiculous because they didn't
automatically want to change it to the Gulf of America and how
they were writing about it, but also like humorously is now
clear. I mean, he just like he's giving
this so much more importance than it deserves because that's
all that he has. It's just like this relentless
culture warrior stuff. And and and I think that it's

(01:46:50):
him giving all of this stuff so much importance.
And and I count the I've had it podcast ladies with this as
well, right, that I just mentioned.
He gives this stuff so much importance, but when it comes to
Republicans like cutting down onpeople's free speech over
Palestine, right? Which which he at least doesn't

(01:47:11):
have really a much of A positionon or, or I think kind of softly
supports. Or if it's, you know, the GOP or
the Trump White House doing any,like putting forward any kind of
any number of laws that restrictpeople's personal freedoms and
make their lives harder. He, he just has nothing to say
about it. It's not that he like even

(01:47:32):
endorses it. He just doesn't even talk about
it. All that matters is just this
relentless culture war bullshit.I want to hit pause and rewind
real quick about. The Israel Palestine stuff, can
you say more about that? You have here in the show notes
stuff about Barry Weiss. I, I'm, I'm curious to for you

(01:47:54):
to expand on that a little bit. Yeah, I so I think Taibbi and.
Barry are, if not like close friends, they're certainly
aligned on a lot of things. Taibbi's speeches and you know,
him getting awards from, you know, kind of like marginal
fringe right wing groups for hisreporting have been reposted in

(01:48:15):
the Free Press. Barry has given him space to do
this, so obviously he does most of his writing on his own sub
stacks. So she's just like reposting his
speeches, but they're obviously aligned on a lot of this stuff.
They did the Twitter files together or you know, quote UN
quote together, whatever. And October 6th, 2023, Matt goes

(01:48:36):
on Gutfeld where he's, you know,serenaded by by Greg and you
know, he's, he's joking around with him.
And then of course, October 7th is the next day.
And then two weeks after that, he or two or three weeks after
that, he goes on to Newsmax, which is like this gutter right
wing channel that's like, you know, lower.
It's, it's, it's really just garbage.

(01:48:56):
I mean, I'm sure that most of your audience knows what Newsmax
is. And in in that appearance, he
basically says that student protesters against what Israel's
doing in Palestine are kind of like almost like the victims of
there are professors who are notteaching them how to think, but
teaching them what to think. That's just basically like

(01:49:18):
that's the right wing anti woke.Line.
That is what Dave Rubin would say.
That is what Barry Weiss would say.
It was almost explicitly like what Barry would say.
Yeah, I think that's a perfect. Example.
Yeah, helping to set up, of course, the Trump's.
Pressure campaign on universities, like not far after
that. I mean, I think it's one of the

(01:49:39):
only things that he really didn't ever criticize.
Biden on was his response to thethe student protesters and to
Israel and Palestine in general.And he's been called out about
that a lot. I mean, he's, he's, I think he's
lost a lot of supporters who were with him up until 2023,
like Rihanna, Joy Gray, who I'm not a fan of and she's not a fan

(01:50:02):
of me, but like, like she's certainly gone after him a lot.
Or Zed Jelani is, is another onewho has gone after him about
this. And he has essentially said that
if you criticize his lack of a stance or lack of speaking out
about free speech related to Palestine or about the the
genocide in Gaza, that you're engaged in censorship because

(01:50:24):
he's not going to, he's not going to play your game.
Basically. He's like trying to trying to
take that high ground on that. And I and I think that that's
just obviously bullshit. And I also think that it's it's
it's self-serving because he hasthis relationship with Barry
Weiss in general where he seems to be transparently riding her
coattails. He never criticizes her.

(01:50:45):
He has nothing to say about her.That's that's negative.
They they, they work together. It just seems like he wants a
job, I guess at CBS or he at least wants to stay on her good
side, which, you know, I mean, she's again, she's a very smart
and savvy person. She's at a has had a huge level

(01:51:05):
of success for how for how little talent at actual
journalism. She's the mother of the anti
woke movement in many ways. I mean, I want to be clear,
she's very talented at getting. Rich people to give her money
and power. I like I I do.
She has that same stripe that JDVance has.
Where? It's like Hillbilly Elegy
whatever fine book, but what JD Vance is really good at is

(01:51:29):
serenading the rich and powerful, which is what Big
Weiss does and 100% more and more these days.
Just how far? That can get you in media as so
much of it crumbles to the ground.
I mean, here's The thing is thatlike, I mean, I, I hate to say
this, but I. Do kind of respect that about
her. She has 0 principles she has.

(01:51:51):
She has no morals at all. She knows what she wants, and
what she wants is to have power and she's getting it.
All right folks. Well, if you've made it this
far. You've been with us for a couple
hours now talking about Matt Taibbi.
We've learned a lot thanks to our guest Owen Higgins.
We're going to put a link to Owens book, which you absolutely

(01:52:13):
should go get. It's about time to call it a
wrap on this one. So we're going to end it how we
end all of our Who the Hell episodes, Mike Yes, after
everything we've learned. All the knowledge that Owen.
Has shared with us here today. Who the hell is Matt Taibbi?
Well, I just one point I've beenplaying around with.

(01:52:34):
In my head, which is the this year, maybe another year and it
goes by and we wouldn't even be able to do this podcast anymore.
Because the reason why Taibbi isof interest is because people
knew him from before his change.And for an entire generation
that's growing up, he's just going to be some crank Blogger.
Yeah. And he really, you know, who is

(01:52:55):
not? Who is not really quiet.
Like, he's not like the Daily Stormer, right?
It's not like, Oh my God, he's stirring up like, you know,
terror attacks all over the country.
He's not, he's not that at all. He's a crank Blogger with a
rightward perspective. Now, what makes him interesting
is his he'll turn and ultimatelywhat the heel turn says to me is
this is a guy with not many principles who valued or his

(01:53:19):
perception of success, I should say is was really based around
financial success and attention.And I think that's that's where
he wound up the way he he was ultimately, because if he if his
ultimate value, his primary value was to deliver journalism
that speaks truth, you know, speaks truth for the people

(01:53:43):
against the powerful, we never would have been here.
And he's lost all credibility. But Jared, who the hell is Matt
Taibbi to you? I think I've got a pretty
similar take. You know what I was listening
to? Owen tell us about his early
life and and and especially the parts where he would talk about

(01:54:03):
himself and even today how his sort of self story.
He strikes me as somebody who considers himself very important
and before he even had his career off the ground, seemed to
think of himself that way. And I think that he is chasing

(01:54:24):
the money of course, but also I think a lot of it is it strikes
me at least as ego driven, right?
It's he is taking the angle, doing whatever he can do to
fulfill this drive or or to chase this dragon of wanting to

(01:54:47):
feel important to the public. And I think that was like the
big motivator on the Twitter Files, why he tried to keep, you
know, the air of mystique going around it for a little bit.
So yeah, in addition to the money that he's chasing, I also
think he is, you know, just justchasing any opportunity that can

(01:55:09):
increase his profile, even if it's not with the audience that
maybe he thought he was going toget it with initially.
But that's 2 takes from 2 podcast hosts.
What do we know? Owen Higgins?
Who the hell is Matt? Taibbi.
You know, I think, I think you guys are both right.
For me, because I think because I wrote a book about him and

(01:55:32):
I've been thinking about him so much over the last few years
because of that, you know, I tryto be as empathetic as possible
to anybody I write about. Honestly, it's good practice.
To whatever extent I can, I can.And there's a lot.
Of mad story that I think is, isrelatable and, and something
that I can feel empathy for, youknow, being being a, a super

(01:55:54):
rebellious teenager, angering people with your writing,
putting yourself out there in, in, in ways that will make
people think. Hopefully.
I mean, like these are things that I, you know, hope that I do
at times. But I think that where, where
Matt really seems to have fallenoff is, is just what you were

(01:56:16):
saying about this endless drive for success that has led him
down. I think what, what is kind of
like a, a pretty dark path. And I think there's some kind of
sadness to his specific story because I think that for him,
he's sold out like any possible principle that he may have had
for access to power. And where that's left him is not

(01:56:40):
having kind of, he doesn't really have anywhere to go.
Someone like Greenwald can stillpivot on some things and still
have some credibility with his former audience because he's
willing to kind of be a contrarian.
And then I think people like that, you know, some people like
that, right? Barry is able to pivot from

(01:57:01):
quitting The New York Times in ahuff to founding the Free Press
to being the editor in chief of CBS.
And Matt was able to become kindof, like you were saying, like
the Hunter S Thompson, right, ofhis generation.
And then that just kind of turned into whatever this is,
this kind of sycophantic partisan Republican politics

(01:57:22):
that he does now. And I, I, I think that there is
certain, a certain cautionary tale here.
And it would be kind of just something to kind of look at and
think, wow, this is kind of sad and a, a, a cautionary tale.
But the fact that he had such a huge audience before and the

(01:57:43):
fact that he can funnel this audience into, into the right
wing and act as a gateway drug to it is why I think that what
he does is actively harmful. I don't know if he's even able
to have the self-awareness to realize that.

(01:58:04):
But at this point, I don't even know if it matters because I
don't know if he can really pullhimself back from the brink of
like where he's at. And, and I, I think that it's,
it's, it's just very unfortunateto see what's happened here.
And I think that his, his story is kind of the story of, of
falling for this stuff because of fame and, and, and trying to,

(01:58:24):
you know, chase success and, andtrying to see like how he can
pivot on this stuff. And I think it's also a story of
self radicalization as well. And, and I think just just don't
be that online, I guess. And look, what about Mahmoud?
Khalil for in terms of censorship, right, there's been
this tremendous right? Your your major career on

(01:58:45):
censorship. You can't even really talk about
it. And to the point about the anti
woke stuff. This is something that Jared and
I have kind of we we started talking a discussion about this
around Jesse single. We did a very little thing on
one of our premium episodes justbecause he came up.
And I think it's something we'restill pouring over just where
these guys go from here because I really think it is the like

(01:59:06):
they have. They have reached in many ways,
a dead end. Yeah, yeah.
Where? Where do you go when?
Your posture is no longer against power, right?
Like like what Taibbi said in 2024, his whole argument was
like, well, Democrats have the power, so that's why I focus on

(01:59:27):
them so much. But what now that's not true
anymore? I mean, that's extremely not
true anymore. So instead you just become a
toady for the most powerful people on the planet, for the
commander of the largest army onEarth.
Like I don't know what I think that the thing.
Is though. That it it every little.

(01:59:48):
Bit helps right giving it he's he's he's giving them
credibility even if it's just a little bit with just a few
people it's still he's still giving them some credibility and
and I I think that that's just if I may end this episode
quoting. Laura Ingraham I think maybe
Matt should have stayed in Mongolia and shut up and

(02:00:11):
dribbled. Thank.
You we'll see you next. Week.
Thank you very much. Adios.

(02:00:57):
The.

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