Joe Rogan Experience #1114 — Matt Taibbi Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Five, four, three, two, that countdown gives me anxiety. Yeah. Nootropics are essentially the building blocks for human neurotransmitters. They give it to fighter pilots. I've enjoyed your writing, for sure Let's talk about what we were just talking about. In a completely different capacity, sort of came out to me last year and said, you know, I've been a high-level drug dealer for a long time, basically my whole life.

2:30 selling mushrooms. Well, actually, you could get the actual. He's in college. He deals to rich And he sort of describes a lot of this. book about you know all the different things that he learned in the course of his career about how to get, you know, do the job and not get caught. I'd never really done anything except straight journalism and we sort of had to do it in

7:14 and raymond chandler and i loved uh black mask magazine which was the big pulp noir magazine in So are there warrants out for this guy? He is a smart dude, and some of his employers would be very surprised to know that he's you know, if you can serve, have the patience to serve people at an Applebee's and not blow up and Like do not dress. you're on your way to, to, you know, your freshman English class or whatever it is.

11:01 And obviously I'm white and he's African-American, and that's tough., but you know, I think it works. It's kind of a cool story, always written by people after they got caught. Right. And so there's never that book by the even he charges a higher price because there are more problems kind of just keeping all this stuff in his head, Wow. Yeah, exactly. That would be how he would get busted. Yeah, exactly.

13:36 Maybe he doesn't understand that there's millions of people listening. he's scary I cover Trump, obviously, on the campaign trail, and I watched sort of the progression of his thought or non-thought as it is on things like immigration. And it seemed to Like, one of the things that he said is, good people don't smoke marijuana. in such a position of influence

15:22 This is the Attorney General. cops and they just hate having to do that. Like, you know, cops don't, you don't join the force dreaming of doing that. that he's not going to clue into until I'd spent a lot of time watching the guy and following him around, is that he can sound like he believes something very deeply. common with him he has exactly the same media habits that they have he reads the same dumb

18:36 And the short attention span too. Manchester, New Hampshire. I always loved being here. And that would be right. And then he would Yeah. So I think what it's revealing is what a small amount of time most people spend actually in terms of the people that you can reach stands up there and reads out a preselected, market-tested list of political cliches that have no meaning whatsoever and that don't represent what they're actually going to do when they're in office anyway.

22:26 we look like zoo animals or something. humans that have decided this is how you're going to spend your day you're going to go and watch terrible, terrible ratings. Absolutely. And in a couple of cases, it was definitely up in the air whether this was going to turn ugly. I mean, that is one talent that he does have. No. I'm so glad I could talk to Matt Taibbi about this.

25:07 prescriber of these things. period of time. And this guy, this reporter printed out, tweeted out the actual Duane Reade Pharmacy where Trump was filling this prescription. Fen-fen was something for people who don't know, the young folks out there. Then she started having weird feelings with her heart, so she stopped it and got off it. Like at 5.30 in the morning, he's tweeting.

27:18 It fucking wears you out after a couple days. Yeah. It's not just that he's a good representative of America because he has the same media consumption habits and the same inability to read books and all these different variables, but also because he's pilled up. This was like the background for Bay of Pigs and all these other things. I know who wrote it, but I can't find it.

29:49 like all these things that we associate with Donald Trump. That's very Philip K. Dick, but it could easily be true, right? Everybody knows this. some candidates can't do it or they opt to do lots of legacy media appearances or ad buys. Fun fact. I countered with medical records. Yeah. Ha ha ha. So I googled that. That came up and this is uh ashley what is her name ashley feinberg ashley feinberg who is a really good

34:14 Oh, yeah, there you go. What are you doing, man? And again, the street legend was that that was what this drug was, but they called it Phen. Just methed up. them to take. But that modafinil stuff is, that's really common. And then I know a lot of fighter And it's legal. That sounds kind of good. Huh. She looks happy. Tons of them. It wakes you up. Right.

38:13 And how many schools are mandated to put a bunch of kids on these drugs? is okay. Maybe just have a look at I think, but some prosecutor is going to have to figure out some way to get, to hold some of those companies accountable because they're definitely doing that on purpose. Yeah, exactly. rather today with all this fake news talk like this this is a new thing this whole calling something fake news right

40:41 And so they pick out the four or five things that actually and how we can fix it, is doing quick hits But I don't think very many people are doing that. Right. They had this thing called the first click rule, and tell everybody to go back and pay for everything. it becomes sort of an echo chamber. Your Google search becomes an echo chamber. over what you search for.

44:59 what your predilections probably are, What is the mean age of people that are watching Fox News? You're talking about like old people freaking out. but I know they're all above 65. Oh, they're little kids. They're not getting it. I used to deliver newspapers Wow Right. Like the Boston Globe had clear bags. Yeah, they have subscriptions, and the Times is – the Daily News definitely does have delivery for sure.

48:50 and the content is all being made by somebody else. associated with being a free thing. And then there was BitTorrent. And through BitTorrent, The Internet's free. Joey Diaz for free? to get the money from somewhere else. where pop-up ads and scroll-down ads. And then below you get this stuff that looks like stories but there's a very faint print that says paid content.

51:42 And then finally you get- You know, like when you're reading books, books require you to sit there and construct in your head all the visuals for everything that you're reading. another to the next thing, which is what you're talking about with Trump. That's the way his brain probably 11 years old. it's less, it requires less work of the reader, right? It may be just as interesting, but it just

54:52 healthy mind right right but but it's what we got yeah and it's it's weird it's a weird time But then you get YouTube stars. And then I read this Jezebel article Who is famous now On the internet For talking shit and showing all the money she has and all the things she buys. Can we see him now? All right? I'm the youngest flex of the century. This is what we're doing

57:36 We all hear stunting on all y'all broke-ass haters. so what the fuck Definitely the White House. of dean aitchison um for weeks and weeks and weeks just to prove to reporters that he could read when Bush was in office And then so they get the real dumb guy and they do a bunch of things, you know, they That's right. I mean, I look back and Bush seems to me almost like a Scandinavian statesman compared to Donald Trump.

1:00:28 she's when she's in there right i mean it's it's uh it's it's gonna be terrible but well that was of the first day speeches. Outside of, you know, like the Hannity's and those type fellas. entertainment industry, politics was tightly controlled by a small group of cigar-chomping people who sat in the back room. more democratic than the system was before, where it was pretty much closed to everybody,

1:03:42 this is what they pick. I mean, I don't know. Well, at least it throws a giant monkey wrench into the gears. either it's well it's all depending upon how it plays out right I mean Of course, yeah. They would have been terrified by a toothbrush. They didn't have.50 caliber guns that can kill things when they miss them. and falls down dead. they cut cars in half with.50 calibers.

1:06:45 He's psyched, right? But he picks this deer up reanimate and Yeah. They test your pee if you work at UPS. There should be a lot of changes. That guy should be running things. like the federal reserve. Like it doesn't, a lot of it makes no sense at all. And, conversation. And, and it has to be based on more than something being divvied amongst many people and that it should have been returned to her which i i don't know enough about it that uh candidates are supposed to return extra funds once they've

1:11:10 I don't know about that part. So a couple, it's $5,400. followed up after 2016. Yeah, there's just entirely too much money. Entirely too much money in $2,950 to California Rep. Adam Schiff for his primary. I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit. Not a lot. And so he made sure as much as possible to talk about all the groups, the major

1:15:53 Yeah. I mean, I think all politicians hate reporters. I think it's very strange, the response in our business that, oh, I don't shed a tear about that. I think it's very strange, I was really impressed by him. Even if you like the guy, you've got to, you know, Like that's who they kind of used to be. from these races? their own show on, on MSNBC or whatever. But the, um, but yeah, I mean the, what's the feeling right

1:20:43 You know, people believe that those folks are going to run. the big sort of trial of Donald Trump is what everybody's kind of waiting That's the, But we'll have to see what really comes out of that. Maybe ever. The nuclear clock, which was established, but I think it's Physicians for Social Responsibility. You can find it. Every day, they used to have a meeting of a group of people in the various intelligence agencies to decide what the color would be. Crazy yellow. Yeah, exactly. And what's fascinating about this,

1:25:23 careful are you gonna fly today it's orange yeah are you gonna go to an orange holy shit it's orange dude be careful are you gonna fly today And yeah. So when I first started covering the Trump campaign, I thought this is the most awesome thing ever. Because that dynamic I was talking about before about reporters wanting to be on the ground floor with a future winner.

1:27:44 Yeah. You're fired. The wall got 10 feet higher. as a host of that You need one of those guys. If they were going to have people like Scott Walker and Lindsey Graham be the stars of together, put together, that people are consuming And there was no doubt in my mind that he was doing that intentionally. And he thinks and he goes, she just said that Ted Cruz is a pussy.

1:32:25 No, it's hilarious. so you're probably aware of what Hunter did to Ed Muskie. and I knew about that rumor because I started it. Well, so Hunter did this great thing he he he wrote like that was fiction and uh and muskie couldn't handle it i mean he was that was probably the It's just a ferociously introspective drug that rewires the way your brain deals with addictions.

1:35:21 and taken, my friend Ed Clay, And he realized like, wow, like this is crazy that this is illegal. It's fucking awesome. that year to do these diaries. Yeah. It's a great fucking book. Yeah, I mean, it's such a crazy comic epic. And when he got done writing it up, it was like, you know, a psychedelic wrestling match or something like that. incredibly uh uh charged fast-paced uh uh narrative that read like you know the the fastest most engrossing fiction right but he would inter

1:40:06 No. Yeah, I mean, so I knew nothing about any, And he said, your problem is that you're trying to understand this as an economic story. all that sort of mortgage hamburger into AAA-rated securities. So you'd have a junk-rated mortgage, They just took worthless shit and sold it as something that was gold. Yeah, no, absolutely. I even got one guy gave me a book. was called Famous Con Artists in History.

1:44:30 But basically what he would do is he would get on a boat in New York, and he had this sort of beautiful mahogany box with a crank on it that had two holes in it. And he would show all the guests that he would put a blank piece of paper I don't know. Look at that fucking creep. And they were telling people that, oh, we have this new mathematical process that actually makes this stuff really safe.

1:46:31 And he would go by the plot of land, and he was always cleaning it up and getting ready, this is where I'm going to build my dream house. some of the banks got stuck yeah that was another scam like so there were if you looked at the fine print of all the bailouts, it basically said that you had to repay the money by X time before you could start paying people exorbitant amounts of money again.

1:48:58 But fascinating to follow. about finance would be able to understand. And it turns out that nobody's doing that. So all these people who had questions about it, That had to be depressing. And they called them mud people. going into particularly like lower middle class black They're not holding it. And then realizing that this is the underlying structure that our society is run on, that

1:53:32 and diabolical and, you know, the real machinations of power must be visible somewhere. they can really do is look to see where is their money and how can we get it. And most people had No, with no consequence. And that was the other part of the story that I ended up having to cover later, which was, you know, the last time they tried something like this, like during the they put a lot of, you know, serious influential people on the dock after that. Nobody, nobody went to jail after this stuff. And there was, and people think that, well, they didn't do anything that was technically illegal. No bullshit, there, there was lots of stuff that was that was brazenly criminally illegal. I mean, they committed fraud on a broad scale. But some of these companies were into the things that were even worse than that. I mean, you take HSBC.

1:57:42 you know, I mean, that's the answer, ultimately, that you find out. And there was paperwork that showed they knew it was from the cartels. You know, there's that song. but it's not like it came out of the pockets Yeah. Like they came up with this thing called the credit default swap, right? And I in a third thing that happens. So it's basically gambling. And on the one hand, it allowed people

2:01:52 And again, it just started out as an idea to just create more money to lend. But the reality is you just don't have a whole lot of choice in this country anyway. that, and the other could happen. And so I have an anxiety level about things that I never had before. But apart from that, yeah, I mean, that's a natural consequence it with home mortgages. And so the mechanism of taking things that are toxic and risky and making them look like AAA is still part of the economy, and it's everywhere.

2:05:03 I'm terrified. What's going on with this bad day? but it'll go back up. But the problem is the underlying economy in America just isn't all that hot. You know, Of course, that doesn't happen. And once again, you have Alan Greenspan saying, it depends on more new investors coming in than old investors leaving, right? So there's always What's it based on? Is it based on our economy actually doing well? I don't know. I don't think so, you know.

2:08:56 Do you know that blood testing company that turned out to be total horseshit? She wore a black turtleneck in every photo. A lot of people got their blood tested. Yeah, when you find out that really wealthy people his mantra I mean, Enron was another example of the world's best financial analysts were looking at this company for a decade. Another example is, I'm sorry, who's the guy who scammed all the rich people?

2:11:58 You know what I mean? But if the SEC had at any time just looked at his books and said, what are you invested in? where same thing, they weren't really making trades. try to cover it up all that well and get away with it. Well, Bernie's big crime was that he if he had long, real hedge funds. So there are a number of cases of people who start out trying to be legitimate and trying to be real investment advisors, but they just end up turning into Bernie Madoff types because it's just easy.

2:15:15 Right. So essentially, the world's largest insurance company was being regulated by a government office to law enforcement and other areas, you know, is how many, how many people do we have, you know, Office of Thrift Supervision? mortgages were going to fail or not. And AIG was selling the product that they could use And AIG was taking all this book.

2:19:42 The shit that was going on it turns out I'm looking forward to seeing your special. Thanks for coming on, man.