Joe Rogan Experience #1386 — Matt Taibbi Transcript

Transcript

0:00 so jamie pointed out this this uh congressman is that who it is So you didn't see what the puzzle was until the last tweet. Okay. of stuff in there about people who put puzzles in text. what's amazing to me just as a, Yeah. It, the story just fell off the This was, you know, you know what I mean? Well, there's a couple of things going on because there are many different ways this can play out. I mean, you could have a news director who just sort of instinctively decides,

3:57 there were some explicit things that happened with epstein too i mean they there were a lot I mean, that's incredibly bold. What were they really up to? but maybe it's not but they must but they knew who he was yeah but they probably didn't know I only really got into it a little bit. It's hard to get stories out of there that they don't want you to have yeah and this is this is like the mother of all stories and you know in terms of that and they're

6:32 Right. his hedge fund doing you know i mean if you think about it hedge funds a perfect way to do blackmail Yeah. almost instantaneous response. Yeah, Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing. Well, how do you, what's the innocent explanation for any of this? Complete craziness. It feels like to me. victims, right? Like if the Soviet communists did it, that was bad. But if death squads in El

11:30 changed. What's it called? Hate Inc. Yeah, it's out now. And it's really about how the press, channels, and they're trying to wind these people up, you know, to get them upset constantly and And so the easy money is gone, and we have to chase clicks more than we ever had to before. and they give me a lot of leeway to kind of explore whatever I want to explore.

14:00 But I'm like, I don't think this guy's James Bond consorting with Russian spies. I think news and say that you're wrong about that. That used to be what the job was to be a journalist. They thought that that was going to hurt Hillary. Right. And that's not the news. That's the whole problem. to just simply hear who was this person? Why was he important? What were the, what do the people

17:21 All you get is Trump is a shithead on one side but you got to say this is honest too and this is what's going on over on this side one of the, And they're not being straight. If you can predict 100% what a person is going to say, that's not thinking. And you just – you did a simple – you didn't go to journalism school, right? What does that mean? after each story you report you're supposed to kind kind of wipe your memory clean and start over.

20:07 and it's really, really bad. towards things that are going to piss them off, puppy videos and that's all he looked at for like weeks and then youtube only started recommending and you're like, God, this world sucks. And you engage and then coming back and actually you can expand their desire to see that stuff by by making them sort of more angry overall and they will they will come back

22:53 And they just keep giving it to you because, you know, it makes money for them. Right. Yeah. slots that they can show you and they know how much money they're going to make, you don't think about the news that way or social media what that what they put in their brains And it's getting worse. and it gets people in arguments at work. this but you know in terms of other other businesses like the news media and also politics

26:09 things are real causes. Like people are upset about real things, but it's just, you're absolutely If you look at other countries like Israel, China, there are a number of companies where leaning towards the progressive side, which people are okay with. And I think there's also this thing that happens with people where they think, oh, this is never going to happen to me.

28:19 When people were like, hey, this might be fine with Obama in office, right? then he has these tools and then he uses these tools on his political enemies, which is entirely possible. 60,000 searches a month at one point where they were asking the NSA altering the path of free speech If you don't get real discourse, you're essentially, It's set up a long fucking time ago because they did the math.

31:52 You can have speech that's, that comes from, you know, material that was stolen illegally. It's like, forget about the fact into a position of power and then sit back 9-11 happened all of a sudden people who weren't in favor of the That's like China level, many steps ahead. they're losing audience because people don't trust them anymore. for letting them make decisions

35:39 and actually that that what's really interesting about that is that's a core concept that we've changed completely. And they, you know, it wasn't like you were banned for life from ever speaking again. You know, and now we're not doing that at it and i mean even milo yunoulos has criticized it for being this, And there's real communication there as well.

38:07 You're not doxing anybody. and so you can't so even if you have controversial ideas that maybe some people would agree with and A man is never a woman is a fact. I'm cool with that. Call Caitlyn Jenner. There's no other thing, right? happening a lot now right like if you have the wrong idea about anything whether it's and people don't want that to happen to them.

41:39 and and ask him about those ideas like we had a very bizarre conversation about gay people where he's basically full on biblical cocktail no but you wouldn't go to a friend's house if he was having a gay marriage so you discussion yes because you have a platform i mean i read that thing in the land to communicate forever to communicate forever. Well, who decides that?

44:27 Well, it's interesting to challenge people on these weird ideas and find out how they come to them. but as soon as you de-platform people like forever you're just going to make a bunch of angry people But if it was in the samizdat, if it was in the samizdat if it was in You can do it to a few people and it has been successful, which is one of the reasons why people are so emboldened.

46:54 he got kicked off for it's like man i don't know this this doesn't seem like this makes a lot of If you can ban him for that, then why don't you ban me for repeating the things that I said about Megan Murphy? I talked to somebody who was a pretty high-ranking Facebook executive after the Alex Jones thing. So you say you take that, and now you're going to go through and just to keep child porn off of Facebook, think about how crazy it's going to be when we start having entry-level people deciding what is and is not appropriate political content.

49:53 or Facebook doesn't have a policy about no warning bang right in your face i mean it's kind of crazy right they have such a an open But yeah, no, the policies are completely inconsistent too with Twitter. They won't be removed. political content. strategies for preventing the sowing of discord, you know, so basically it was asking them to come up with strategies for for filtering

53:27 You're talking about kids that just happen to have these Make America Great Again hats. native american guy's face but then you see the whole video it's no no the native american guy Like, you're talking about 16-year-old kids. No, he's got a MAGA hat on. It's just like what you're saying. And, you know, I don't want to know that. No. That was the name of the piece.

56:21 And we're going to show you, So they were doing that kind of neutral fact-finding mission, and it working for them financially now they can't do that because of the internet it's it's you're hunting for audience There's blatant misinformation on both sides. Now, though, you turn on either MSNBC or Fox and you're right. Plagiarism still bounces you, doesn't it?

59:16 and so what does that tell people in the business? Well, it tells you, you know, if you screw up, And the people that run it were already getting away with enforcing their own personal bias their ideological bias going to be a correction time there's going to be be a gab time where it's going to be like that, where it's just going to flood with people that are just like with this newfound freedom.

1:01:16 you know no one seems to have a forecast like no one's like well the storm is going to last about Yeah, And even now, I mean, it mean, it's interesting if you had, Right, right. You're printing it out in these paragraphs as fact and you're sending it out there irresponsibly. You know, what do you want them to do? And what they're trying to do is create this ick factor around people, right? Like once you get,

1:05:38 Yeah. And then what they're basically saying when they ask you those questions are do Well, but yeah. And, and, but you're handling it the right way, Ben. I'm going to talk to who I want to talk to, And I know where it comes from. I was young and politically active once. open to people to do but it's not the same as you know getting 60 congress 60 members of the senate

1:08:44 No, it's fucking gross. shit that's true and part of the reason why they go fucking bonkers is because they know that this guy doesn't give a fuck. And a lot of people also don't have a – they feel like they're being watched all the time. rewarding too my friend ari said it best he said this is a great time for comedy because comedy's supposed to say that is throughout his goddamn career he's done that thatk joke he's saying something fucked up that you're not supposed to say that

1:12:08 wild when it was a baby it was mauled down by wolves it needed to be it needed to grow right that forbidden thing in a way that people can kind of, he, But if you can't, if people are afraid to vocalize those things, You have to have better points. Right, right, right. Stalin ended up shooting him. you're not going to get art. You're not going to get revelation. You're not going to get all

1:15:36 that little baby joke wandering through the woods they want that feeling of being able to take politicians on the campaign trail like they are so tight now in ways that they used to not be to him and these are people that were like far right far right people they just didn't think he was being right enough or he was playing the game wrong or he wasn't wasn't letting them complain to

1:17:18 So, you know, takes me on the van. made it through being hugely flawed and just going ah fucking locker room talk and everyone's like that what do you think about him and speed what do you think about all that does he take speed I watched Hillary's speech and she's talking about She wants to make America whole again. And I'm trying to figure out what is that all about is this it yeah i mean it's just

1:20:02 but yeah do you have a theory about trump and speed yeah yeah yeah i think he's on some stuff i think first of all i know so many Tell me what it's like because I haven't done it. You know, are my jokes as funny as I think they are? So that's good. I do too. You used to have to give your drivers – I guess you still do. You have to give your driver's license because they want to make sure you're not cooking

1:22:49 Kurt Eichenwald. He wrote a book about Prudential. he took down the dwayne reed pharmacy he didn't take it down oh it's still there as well there Not that I know of things. Wow. know right right right or you can hint at something you know and i i think that's that's something you speed train and i've seen many people hop on it it's got a lot of stops nobody seems to get off yeah not not with their

1:26:40 they were 85 right whereas you know in a country where people get murdered and die of industrial accidents and bad health how people see him and feel about him maybe he doesn't feel you know whether it's sociopathy Let's buy Greenland. It seems like Greenland would be a good place to scoop up, especially as things get warmer. or gives him a nickname like it's so good because like it sticks oh yeah i mean part of me wants to

1:28:57 and these guys do the same speech over and over again, Yeah. Because I really think he needs something like that. I just, I don't see, I don't see him, I don't see him withstanding the barrage that Trump is going to throw at him. He doesn't have a chance. Yeah, that's how he got to be vice president, by being just bland enough to get whatever constituency Obama was trying to get.

1:31:08 Oh, yeah. he wants me to be an asshole lock her up lock her up yeah lock her up yeah totally like all that's wig on it yeah yeah oh my goodness i might have to get one of those i mean he's there's there With a Trump With the black And the Trump by their appearance, their attitude, and everything, captured is this place where you can be dumb like it's fun to be dumb and say grab her by the pussy

1:34:28 I'll talk to like a 65 year old grandmother and you say, Like they're all into it. And it was like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was the, you know, the, I forget what arena that is. You'll see crowds that big, but Trump's crowds are just dating back to 2016 they're just Yeah. But that's not what the business is about. We not supposed to be you know helping people facts don't

1:37:18 right. And just like a, that's a great name. Yeah. carried free across to the West, right? The U.S. Postal Service did that. The original but there has to be something because right now the financial pressure to be when I came from the business, real reporting. And so they're, they have to fix the money problem. I don't know how they would do It's only – I really stopped doing that in like 2014 or so.

1:39:55 because people just tune out right away. These are always these long-ass conversations. boring right i probably would have abandoned it earlier but listening to it in podcast form Yeah, no, absolutely. They do have curiosity about things it's just uh it's very difficult to convince people in the news business But the flip side of that is that they're not investing in stuff like international news in the way they used to. When I came up in the business, every bureau, every big network had bureaus in every major city around the world.

1:43:35 that that cult existed i had no idea what what happened up there and then so this this documentary But I think within the news business, they have this belief, their hard-headed belief, that people can't handle difficult material. that are commercially viable are short attention span things, You listen to it and it'll actually give you something that occupies your mind

1:45:47 that people you may have thought were bad or right or people you may have thought are good or wrong not it's just um it's just difficult you know maybe it's also we don't have the the stamina to You know what I mean? Yes. got all this information in it and it just fell flat you know and that's and the important thing Totally. There was another one with Monsanto in Florida

1:49:46 some little Chinese restaurant that has roaches or something like that. They're not going to go What are your thoughts on it? anymore. Like that's, that's the first thing that the press doesn't have any ability to influence And so how are you going to impact the world We all kind of talk amongst ourselves, which is, you know, the job as we knew it is kind of being phased out and changed into something else.

1:52:55 You're not going to find that from people that have financial incentives and giving you a specific narrative. Totally. of just wanting to stick it to the man, you know, like they didn't want to be close to Where you see people who they just want to like have a beer with the presidential candidate. One of my favorite books ever about politics is Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

1:55:18 And it's a great example of someone who knew that they weren't a part of that system so they could talk about it as an outsider. So I'm going to tell you everything that I see and fuck it. And that's kind of the way – I mean you can't do that all the time probably but i think that's the thing that was great it was amazing And then it's great journalism at the same time.

1:57:20 That was fantastic. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Everybody who covers campaigns. Trump kind of fills that role for a lot of reporters now. Oh, totally. I mean, I know that, especially because I'm writing for the same magazine and covering a lot of the same topics. You have to immediately realize that you can't do what he did like he thompson's writing was

2:01:34 But yeah, it's one of those don't try this at home things for young writers, if you can avoid that, for sure. but the great thing about it is that it's given it's provided a way for people to just things like the young turks you know although they're you know they're changed they've changed Like, in order to have an independent journalism outlet, you used to have to, like, for instance, put out your own newspaper, which do your own distribution, do your own printing,

2:04:27 Yeah, they're flailing. I appreciate you man thanks a lot Joe it's called Hate Inc so you can check that out