The Future of Political Messaging Is Young and Online

Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

What we know about the world and how we learn what's going on has changed dramatically.

Almost everyone has a diagnosis that boils down to one key factor.

Our media ecosystem has become increasingly fragmented.

When there is no central repository of facts, truth becomes slippery and action feels dangerous.

Personally, as a product of the analog three-station news channels that often curated out nuance and multicultural analysis, I must admit that it's a bit exciting that there are now so many different ways to get news and information across TV, radio, podcasts, traditional newspapers, newsletters, and various social platforms.

But progress always carries its own challenges.

And in a time when unifying behavior seems like one of the only ways to combat attacks on those we love and attacks on our way of life, it is harder and harder to figure out how to reach people consistently.

Disinformation and misinformation run rampant, like the recent Republican reframing of peaceful protests against a paramilitary ICE raid in Los Angeles, framing them instead as widespread riots.

The intention is clear and it's not new.

They want to force a confrontation, create chaos, and scapegoat immigrants and citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Republicans know that if we can be convinced we're in jeopardy, we will concede to ignoring our laws and our norms for a semblance of peace.

In an age of rising authoritarianism, a fractured, rudderless information landscape moves beyond our craving for confirmation bias where we pick our news.

Instead, what's happening now is actually breaking our sense of a shared reality, making us all much more vulnerable.

Finding the right sources for information is critical.

TikTok has been particularly popular with Gen Z for the past few years, and Gen Z is the generation born between 1997 and 2012, folks who are now in their teens and 20s.

It's where they get their entertainment, how they interact with their friends, and more prominently, where they get their news.

And while there is a lot of misinformation that permeates through the platform, as there is on all social media, young content creators are way ahead of the game in using these platforms to increase news consumption and political engagement.

The mediums they use, whether it's TikTok today or something else next year, has become the focal point of angst and strategic planning.

If we can figure out how to leverage these new platforms, then we can shape the future conversations.

But I actually think that's the wrong approach.

The medium is not the same as the message.

Any tool can be leveraged to reach a target audience.

Just look at the warping of Twitter and the confounding resilience of Facebook.

Instead of trying to anticipate anticipate the next social media platform as a means of reaching younger voters, we'd be better served by listening to the messengers.

Today, they're known as content creators, but that, I think, unfairly and unwisely reduces their impact.

If we want to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha before the fall of democracy is achieved, then we must actually understand how communication occurs today.

Because the generations we need for progress are listening, they're they're responding, and they're forming political opinions based on what they see on these platforms and by who they decide to follow.

The current urgency is around how to replicate what the MAGA movement has accomplished with social media.

However, that ignores our recent history.

The rise of the right wing began with mailed newsletters in the 1970s, colonizing talk radio in the 1980s, and taking advantage of Ronald Reagan's decision to end the media fairness doctrine, which gave birth to Fox News.

Yes, the right has been far more effective at using social media to energize its base because they've been at this for decades.

But we're learning the wrong lesson if we try to mimic their technology strategy.

You see, the right has always focused on the messenger and then shaped the medium to fit.

Think Limbaugh, Ingram, and Hannity, and now Rogan, Kirk, Stuckey, and Bannon.

If Democrats want to fight for the future, we need to take the content creator ecosystem seriously, but widen what we mean by content creator.

And that means learning more than the language of these platforms and instead focusing on how to meet people where they actually are, guided by those who already understand why they're there.

That's why this week on Assembly Required, we're talking to two experts who are both adept at navigating the medium, but are even better at articulating the message.

We're talking to two young, successful messengers, two young men who are pioneering political engagement on social media by creating rather than copying.

Journalist and political commentator Aaron Parnas and the Gen Z historian Khalil Green will share how they understand this moment in communication, how they anticipate what's next, and what we all can learn about putting people before the technology if we want them to hear us at all.

I'm so excited to welcome Aaron Parnas and Khalil Green to Assembly Required.

Welcome to the show.

Super excited to be here.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Well, Khalil, I'm going to start with you.

I want to do some quick introductions.

So tell folks what you do and why.

Yeah, of course.

So my name is Khloe Green.

I go by the Gen Z historian on social media, and I make content across both video and text platforms about modern day issues, but framing it within their own historical context.

So I'd like to answer the question, how do we get here when it comes to some of the biggest challenges faced by our society?

Since I've been a content creator for about four years, I've luckily been able to reach wide amounts of young people, older people, and everyone in between with my work.

I'm also a Peabody Award-winning content creator and twice Emmy nominated for my history education.

Well, okay, show off.

Let's turn to the, you know, the Wonderkin who also graduated from law school, I think at the age of 21.

Tell us what you do and why.

And both of you continue to make me feel less than myself.

Okay, go ahead.

It's so good to be here.

Yeah, my name is Aaron Parnas.

My primary content and my goal is to just educate as many people as possible in quick 60, 90 second hits of all of the current events that are really impacting primarily American life and American politics, but sometimes around the globe.

I really got my start back in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

At the time, I actually had family in Ukraine and Kiev, and I would be hearing from them on the ground, what they were seeing outside of their front doors, outside of their windows.

And I just picked up my phone, started TikToking, what they were sharing with me on the ground, really blew up overnight.

And the rest has kind of been history.

I'm a lawyer by trade.

I clerked for a federal judge, worked at big and small law firms, and now just try to take what I learned as a lawyer and easily and make news easily digestible for anyone and everyone, and especially those who no longer watch the news, because there's a lot of people in America who just are kind of tuned out now.

The term content creator is often used to describe you.

And I've heard you both describe yourself in these ways.

What are the limits or what's the utility of being known as a content creator, particularly as you pointed out, Aaron, in a moment where people don't traditionally watch the news?

How do you all think about that, that framing?

So, here's my thing.

I think everyone is a content creator in their own kind of way.

I think those on TV are content creators.

They're just sharing it on a different platform, those in radio, those in print, those podcasting.

Everyone is a content creator.

It's just the platform that you're using to share that content.

So, I actually think the term content creator really has no limits and it really is dependent on where you're sharing the content, the type of content you're producing.

And even if you are a private person with one Facebook friend and you're putting out Facebook posts, you're creating content.

So I guess this is the inner lawyer in me.

And I take the phrase content creator very literally in the sense that as long as you're putting out something into the ether, whether it's on TV or on social media, you are creating content.

And I think that a lot of people don't like being called content creators.

They think that it's kind of less than, especially looking at folks like Khalil and I, who are much younger than your average person on TV or in radio.

But at the end of the day, everyone from Jake Tapper to us, we're all content creators.

And when I think of what it means to be a content creator for myself, I think in the traditional sense of a content creator on social media, it lends us to having a certain expertise that I think a lot of people want for themselves, but don't have.

So I imagine that in this conversation, we'll be talking about the elections and politics and the state of the world right now.

And I think that the people who are able to do the most in terms of impact and influence are the people who have a skill of a content creator, who realize that, as Aaron was saying, that anyone can be a content creator and fully embraces it.

We have had to reclaim the term content creator because when it first came out, it wasn't seen as something positive.

And still today, it might not be.

But I think what has changed is the realization that no matter whether or not you like the term or like what we do, we do have an impact.

And I think that's something that I hold very closely and very dearly in terms of what I can do with that impact as well.

Well, I'm going to stick with descriptors for a second because, Khalil, you use cultural moments to anchor political truths.

I mean, you're a self-described historian, but what other descriptors would you add to your bio?

I think the first thing that I would say is that I'm someone who very much cares about integrity.

They think there's a lot of pressure as a content creator to conform to either a narrative that's popular with politics so you don't get quote unquote canceled and or to

maybe not speak out about certain issues for the sake of the brand deals and longevity of the career.

But I think that that's something that is extremely detrimental to society as a whole.

So someone who really deeply cares about integrity, I'd also say that I'm someone who

can be controversial at times, like a troublemaker probably is the best way to put it.

I was in the LA Times article last year because I spoke out against the Biden administration, even as a Democrat, for a lot of decisions that they were making, which led to some drama amongst content creators and White House invites.

So I think a troublemaker is probably one that I'm very proud to describe myself as.

Well, Aaron, where do you put yourself?

And I want to talk about you in the spectrum of reporters and journalists, because you've become one of the top feeds for me when it comes to those who break down and share news.

And do you consider yourself a reporter, a journalist?

How do you think about that conversation, given what you've described as your role?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.

And it's a question that I don't even have an answer to yet.

And the reason why is because it really depends on who you ask and what their definition of a reporter is versus a journalist, versus a content creator, versus a news fluencer.

I mean, it's all these words that are being thrown out there.

And at the end of the day, in my opinion, they all really mean the same thing.

I have personally over the past several months broken several of my own stories with folks sending things into my inbox.

And I share those before the New York Times even shares them.

Back when I started, everything I was doing was firsthand journalism.

I would hear from folks on the ground in Ukraine and I would report that they were my source.

And that's what I was doing.

Now, a lot of the news nowadays doesn't necessarily come from tips in my inbox.

It comes from Donald Trump's truth social page.

It comes from interviews at press briefings at the White House, interviews with elected officials.

And I share what I see there.

So I really think it depends.

But I will say, I think what we're doing now on social media is really just breaking down kind of these cultural norms when it comes to journalism.

Everyone for years thought that journalism meant you have to go to a journalism school, get a journalist degree, spend 10 years in a newsroom and work your way up the ladder before you could ever get kind of your name in a byline.

Things have changed and social media has really democratized the way kind of journalism is nowadays.

Now, Elon Musk thinks everyone on Twitter is a journalist, but that's not true because I believe journalists need to have ethics and integrity.

And I tell everyone that because I was a lawyer at first, I would never put something out on my TikTok that I wouldn't put in a legal brief in front of a judge.

Because if I lied in front of of a judge, I'd get disbarred.

And so I wouldn't do the same on my social media page.

So I have kind of those ethics and hold myself to a higher kind of ethical standard than even, I guess, some, even some traditional journalists do.

And I appreciate you clarifying that because part of my concern is that the democratization of journalism has become the democratization of what constitutes fact.

And this idea that anyone, if I can write it down, if I can say it to a camera, it must be true.

And it's fracturing our reality.

People have a hard time figuring out what is real or what's not.

And one of the reasons I wanted the two of you on this show is that you both have audiences that look to you.

And I love the fact that you both use integrity.

They look to you because you're authentic, but you're also intentional.

And I want to know, do you focus on what you think your audience wants to know?

Or do you focus on what you want to know and you let everyone else sort of overhear you?

And is there a difference?

I think they really can be one and the same.

When you start off on social media, you have no idea whether or not you're going to get even a single view on your first video.

So you kind of have to just create the content that you want to see.

That's the advice I always give to people who want to start out in content creation.

It's like when you're scrolling down your feed and you see a new TikTok video,

what do you wish showed up the next time you swiped up?

Like, what do you feel is not there?

So for me, the first time I ever made a video was actually on Martin Luther King Jr.

Day back in 2021.

And I I had been really interested in the history of anti-civil rights sort of targeting during the civil rights era.

So I made a video about how the FBI had tried to get MLK to commit suicide through blackmail, something that one of my professors discovered.

And that was just really interesting to me.

I thought it was a crazy story.

It felt like a conspiracy, but it was true.

And that got a million views in the first day alone.

So for me, what always worked well is finding out what I'm interested in and then putting it out there and my audience comes to me.

And I think as you grow as a content creator, the relationship becomes more symbiotic and that, okay, I'm putting out these videos, I'm seeing the comments, I'm getting requests in my DMs, but we are a huge community.

We have shared interests.

So we have this sort of relationship with each other that allows us both to build in our knowledge, both my community and myself.

Yeah, I mean, I completely echo all of that.

I think that for me, it's a little different in the sense that the content that I put out is content that I can understand within a few minutes of reading.

It's not necessarily content I agree with or I enjoy.

Most of the time, it's just content that I see and I could digest.

But I will say I have built now kind of more of a community following in the sense that we have these kind of, especially on Substack, we have a chat feed where we kind of communicate.

throughout the day and I hear what they want to know about more and I kind of do deep dives based on like what the feedback they're giving me into some stories and other stories.

So it really has become a give or take, a give and take in a lot of ways.

But at the beginning, yeah, I agree with Khalil.

I mean, it was just putting out content just to put out content and whatever blows up, it blows up.

You really don't know what the algorithm is.

Aaron, you mentioned that you go to Truth Social for a lot of information.

One of my missions in the work that I do, whether it was when I was in politics or the work I've done in the

sort of public service sector or in the private sector, is I try to learn from those who don't agree with me.

I try to learn from those whose belief systems are diametrically opposed to mine.

And I do my level best to

consume as much information because I can't understand what they want and therefore what I should be responding to.

But it also just helps me further refine how I present myself to the communities that do share my values.

So I'm going to ask both of you, and I'll start with you, Aaron, who in the right-wing ecosystem do you see as a peer?

And, you know, is there someone you've learned from or someone that you think other people might learn more about who we are and what's happening on that other side of the divide if they paid attention?

Yeah, I think that's interesting.

I mean, I think there's no, in my opinion, there's no one person that I would view as a peer.

Rather, I would view a number of people in the right who on certain issues can be viewed as a peer, right?

Do I think that

Alex Jones is a peer by any means on any issue?

No.

But for example, it's also not necessarily people that you may know.

It's like, for example, I have family, like I have an uncle, right?

Who is technically, he's a registered Republican and he's on the right, but him and I agree on several issues and we could find common ground on several issues.

And I could talk about accurate information and he appreciates it and he understands it.

I get about 30% of my followers are.

registered Republicans.

They want to consume news, even if it's not necessarily something they agree with or disagree with.

As Ben Shapiro says, facts don't really care about your feelings, and they don't.

And so, I think it's not necessarily one person on the right that I look to, it's more of like multiple people, and from a family member to someone like Mike Lawler, who's more of like a moderate Republican from New York and Congress, and really everyone in between, just to see kind of where they are and how we can kind of bridge that divide.

There are the extremes on both sides, but I truly believe, and I've said this for a long time, that 80% of the country can find common ground on issues, even if they don't agree on everything.

Khalil, what about you?

Is there a Khalil Green sitting in the right ring ecosystem?

Yeah, I mean, I like to think I'm one of one.

But to answer your question very directly, there are specific names of people that I do think about when I'm sharpening my own ideas or wanting to learn, okay, what is the sort of opposing view on this?

One that comes to mind right now, there's a guy named Colin Hughes.

He recently wrote a book around like the sort of anti-DEI.

He's a young black male.

Yeah.

And he's seen it, he's often uplifted as a very

accomplished intellectual within like right-wing communities.

I don't think he would describe himself as right-wing, but I think that's a ploy in and of itself.

But yeah, so he's he's someone that comes to mind.

But I would say, beyond him, there's actually a growing

cohort of young TikTok and Instagrammers on the right who have been empowered, especially after Trump's election.

I would recommend anyone watching this to go check out an article.

It talks about how TikTok funded a party shortly after Trump's inauguration or right before Trump's inauguration with a series of right-wing creators invited.

And on that, you will find a list of like the sort of up-and-coming people.

When I first saw that, I actually ended up following all of them to see their content.

So like one is Rake is right, who's the leader of Make America Hot Again, which is like a Gen Z sort of women-led MAGA cohort.

So there's, there's a number of creators who I think are my peers or sort of like the parallel version of me and my friends on the quote unquote left.

And what I've done is I've followed all of them and I wish the content was better.

Like I thought I was maybe my mind would be changed in a certain way because like their arguments would be so great.

But I think in following them, you start to see that so much of their movement is really just clickbait.

Of course, like anger farming and really demonizing marginalized communities, making fun of people online and getting support from that.

So that's my story in terms of seeing where the other side of the aisle is.

I'm curious, Stacey, for you, who do you look to on the other side?

I follow, I actually will follow Ben Shapiro.

I think he's

I think he's wrong about so much, but he's thoughtful about how wrong he is.

He doesn't realize he's wrong, but he spends a lot of time trying to explain to you why he's not wrong.

And I find that to be useful.

I think Steve Bannon is a way to understand

the world that we too often dismiss.

And because his architecture creates so much of what we experience, it's important for me to understand what he's doing.

I think it's Allie Stuckey.

She's an interesting thinker.

Not my favorite person, but I learned from watching because to both of your points,

I believe that you have to know what you believe, but you have to know what the other people believe if you want to build those bridges or know which bridge not to cross because it might be booby-trapped.

So

like for me, it's important to navigate that.

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Learn more at challengerschool.com.

When we started this conversation, I

mentioned to both of you, you know, there are a lot of think pieces and conferences and studies that are trying to replicate what the right has done with social media.

And I think, as you said very appropriately, Khalil, a lot of it's clickbait, but clickbait clickbait works.

And where I'm afraid is that I think Democrats aren't asking the right questions.

And luckily, I have a podcast, and this is a platform where we get to tell people what we think they should do.

So I'm going to start.

I think if we aren't asking the right questions, we are not going to get information that's useful.

So I love the fact that you both gave people that you listened to.

I love the fact that you lifted up your uncle, Aaron.

But my question to you two is: you know, what questions do you wish Democrats were asking about this moment and asking about what you do?

I'm going to be honest with you.

I actually, I'm going to push back a little bit on the premise of the question because I don't think Democrats should be asking questions anymore.

We're now eight months from November 5th, right?

In eight months, we have been talking about pitch decks, consultants,

how to spend $20 million to talk to young white men.

We haven't spent a dollar.

We haven't allocated any money.

We're not doing anything.

So we can continue asking questions.

And I think that we should be asking questions about how best to incorporate the already existing kind of sphere of influence that is present within the Democratic Party.

Because yes, the Republican Party has been building this for a decade while the Democratic Party really has been behind on things.

And I think, Stacey, you know this as good as anyone.

I tell everyone, what happened in Georgia when you almost won was no fluke because you were building it over a long period of time.

And you can't go in Florida right now and try to flip that state blue because there's no infrastructure and there hasn't been and no one's trying to build that.

And I think that we should be asking, how do we build that infrastructure?

But while asking already doing, start spending the money, start investing in creators, start

really kind of putting money where your mouth is.

I've spoken to people who kind of have been saying, like, oh, well, why should we invest in creators like you, Aaron, when you're already doing the work?

And I'm like, well, Ben Shapiro was already doing the work back in 2015.

So was Charlie Kirk.

If they didn't have any investments, then they wouldn't be where they are today, really becoming this big thought leader for millions of people.

And so if you're not investing in creators now,

we're just kind of in the same kind of cycle.

And then come October of next year, we'll throw in $100 million into a few swing states and hope that that wins a month before the election and do this all over again.

And I think that's kind of just the problem with where we're at.

Yeah, I mean, if I would recommend them to ask a question, I would say, like, what are the values and ethics of the party at this point?

And I think that comes about in two ways.

And one, I think it's just like for messaging's sake, there's a very coherent, or at least during the campaign, there was a lot of coherent language and values communicated amongst the right, amongst MAGA, that worked very well to unify the movement.

Once again, I don't want to delve back into what they did right, what Democrats did wrong in the previous election so much.

But I would say the other way that this comes about actually is just the sort of practicality and the reality of what social media is and understanding that like you'll have to lose some sort of ethical points to do well on it.

So when oftentimes when I'm presented with the question like what can Democrats do to win the election?

I kind of coil like recoil a little bit because from what I know on social media, what works well, whether it's the clickbait, the rage bait, demonizing people, insults,

just like generally stuff that riles people up and further polarizes them.

That is what works well on social media.

Like social media has systemic issues where these algorithms and these companies are trying to sell ad dollars by keeping you on it as long as possible.

And the way to do that is to put forward content that will evoke a very strong emotional response and better a negative emotional response because that keeps you hooked longer.

So for the Democrats to tap into that.

They'll have to realize that there's a lot of biases on social media against people of color, against people who are on the left.

There's censorship.

I get videos taken out about black history all the time, especially now that the tech leaders are cozying up with Trump.

At least most of them were.

We saw the big breakup recently.

But beyond that, that's all to say that, yeah, like these, these social media platforms are actually made for the worst of the worst to thrive.

And you have to kind of stoop down to that level.

Though I don't think necessarily it's along a line with my personal ethics, my like very bleak hot take is that it's what you have to do to do well.

And we're seeing it on the right.

I mean,

I appreciate both of you saying that.

And I want to pick up on two threads.

The right has not just started this.

They have been at this.

They colonized talk radio.

They were the first to send out newsletters, only they sent it out by mail because they couldn't get mainstream magazines to do what they wanted.

So they would actually, you know, paper communities, they would pull these lists together.

They created the first mass mailing list.

They were the ones who got Reagan to remove the fairness doctrine, and that's why we got Fox News.

And so part of my

concern is that we're trying so hard to to master a medium instead of mastering who we are and i think that's the second part and khalil this is part of what you were saying and and i would tie it also to you aaron i think we're spending too much time trying to win elections instead of trying to win people elections are markers They're not the only thing.

And part of what we did in Georgia, Georgia took a decade when I got started and I built on other people's work and I wasn't alone, but it took us 10 years.

And it wasn't about every big election.

It was what were you doing in between elections?

And you got to test your theory with elections.

And I think we've now shifted to this idea that everything is about how we win the election instead of how we win the people.

So tell me if I'm right or wrong, or if you have a different way of framing it.

You're 100% right.

I mean, back when I lived in Miami, Dade, and I grew up in South Florida, and I would knock doors.

And I first came into Miami politics during COVID, during like about six months before the election.

And at that point, they weren't really talking about spending money on ads or mailers or anything.

They were like, it's COVID.

Like, we don't want to do anything.

I was like, okay, I get it.

You don't want to do anything.

You don't want to, you want to wait to spend all your money and do voter contact in October?

Fine.

But how about just go knocking doors and just say, how are you?

Do you need water?

Do you need supplies?

Like, what do you need?

Like, we're the Democratic Party, yes, but we don't care if you're Republican, a Democrat, Independent.

We don't care who you are.

And they didn't do that.

And Miami-Dade County is is now red.

If you don't organize year-round, but not in the organizing of like a, hey, make sure you're registered to vote, but rather like, hey, this party is here for you.

We are here to help you.

Then yeah, I agree with you.

Why would people want to vote for someone who doesn't, who they don't, who they don't feel like they care about?

And I mean, at the end of the day, I personally don't think the 2024 election was that, it was, was that far apart.

Like it was a pretty close election by all numbers.

It was about 200,000 votes in three swing states that ended up costing Democrats the election.

And in 2028 and 2032, and all the elections moving forward, you're going to have about a 50-50 split Democrats, Republicans, no matter what you do.

So it is about winning people over, and it's about winning people over when it's not election season.

I think that's, that's so critical.

From my perspective, just seeing especially how the political winds change so abruptly from like the 2020, everyone's woke, um, your favorite ice cream company and your favorite what, like sofa stories, like supporting black lives all of a sudden to like the the rise in right-wing um caulking points and right-wing conspiracies and right-wing beliefs do you feel that even if you put in the work in between and you were seeing people touching like using them as touch points keeping them updated

that even then with what social media can do and just media in general, that like all of that can come crashing down so fast.

Like, how do you build up faith for that sort of work when you know that people are getting fed disinformation and misinformation all the time in a way that could just really unravel everything?

Like, how do you, how do you weigh those two sort of means of getting people on your side and stay faithful towards like the first one, the longer-term organizing?

I'm the daughter of pastors, and the work my parents did,

they're both retired now.

It's a long-term, it's a long game.

You can't presume that the lesson that they take from church on Sunday is going to last till Saturday.

And you can't believe that because they got baptized at 15, they're going to remember that at 35.

And so, part of the responsibility in my faith tradition, which is Christianity, is that it's a constant renewal.

And I think that part of what happened with

the

peak of Black Lives Matter.

And

if you add in what happened during COVID with the attack on the AAPI communities, the longer conversations that we've been having about Hispanic communities,

we have a frame of reference that says that when it's popular, we will service the marginalized, but we are easily distracted because service that requires consistency becomes difficult.

And it's easier to default to the easiest patterns in our nature and in our society.

And so when it was popular, you had these companies that amplified what they did, but you had a lot of companies that as soon as the cameras were off,

their stated commitments went unaddressed.

It was this administration that finally gave them permission to just say, now we're not going to do it at all.

But this has happened over and over again.

I mean, you know this, Khalil.

The civil rights movement was not popular.

Martin Luther King was not popular.

He's,

now quoted by everyone or misquoted by many, but when he was doing his work,

he was not popular.

Gandhi was not popular.

For everyone who now

pays homage, we forget how hard it is for marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

to hold attention because to hold our attention means to hold our complicity, to hold our responsibility, and to hold our compassion.

It's possible, but it requires a consistency that we just haven't been willing and able to generate as much as we would like.

But that's not to say it can't happen.

And I think that's one of the parts of social media that's so exciting to me.

It's because we now have multiple ways that we can bring that responsibility to bear, that we can

reinform and reassert who we think we should be.

I will say part of it is also like Democrats love to say no and love to find issues with things in the sense of like, we don't stay ahead of the eight ball when it comes to anything.

We're not trying to find a new way of communicating with voters.

We're trying to now master social media, which they've already mastered 10 years ago, right?

Now they're about to use AI for bad.

They're going to, it's already all over the internet.

All these like,

what is it called?

Fake AI videos and et cetera.

We can use AI for good and we can figure out ways to use this technology that's going to be around whether you like it or not.

But unfortunately, there are many in the party who will probably, some will say, no, it's bad for the environment, so we don't want to touch it.

I'm like, great, it is bad for the environment, but they're going to use it to spread misinformation.

Why don't we use it for good?

And there are others in the party who are going to say, I'm too old for this.

I don't even know what AI is.

And so while they're kind of mastering like new technologies and they're ahead of the eight ball, we're so far behind.

And I think that's a big part of it.

Like, yes, everything we built can fall apart in an instance, but our country is a pendulum.

It does swing to the right, swing to the left.

Democrats are not going to be in power forever.

They're not going to win every election.

It's not, we shouldn't expect that to happen.

But I think our country really course corrected to the left pretty far in 2020.

I think it course corrected right back

to the right in 2024.

And I think it's going to balance out in the center at some point, but I just don't know when.

So I'm going to take that and expand it a little bit because I think what we describe as the center is a very elusive construct.

I think the danger of the center as a narrative is that we don't know what we're talking about because I've met folks who say they're in the center, but who think it's perfectly appropriate to kidnap immigrants right now.

And I don't think that's a centrist belief system.

And so

I want to take that and actually tie it into another question for you guys.

So I have two feeds.

I have my Stacey Abrams feed and then I have a private feed.

And my FYP differs dramatically from one to the other.

And so as you might imagine, my Stacey feed is much more political and my other feed is much more cultural and social, but politics bleeds in.

If you were to look at my private feed, you would see me as a centrist if you just looked at my feed and nothing else.

If you look at my Stacey Abrams feed, you're going to know

I'm a pretty progressive person, although in some places I'm not considered progressive enough.

And in other places, yeah, well, that's a different conversation.

But I would imagine, and Aaron, I'm going to start with you because I think it's an important dynamic that you raised, that the average feed of younger users is a lot more like my private feed.

And how would we understand

what is centrism and what they actually need?

How do we adapt given just how widely differential the center can be depending on who you are?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's issue specific.

And I think instead of telling the story of what's happening in DC, you tell the story of what's happening in communities and to people across the country.

So I was a Republican growing up when I was 16, 17 years old.

I don't hide that.

And I switched parties because through lived experiences, I had a healthcare scare and at the time I didn't have health insurance.

And I realized, well, one party cares about me and wants to make sure I can go to the hospital and not have to pay $100,000.

And the other party, well, they want me to pay $100,000 and never be able to recover from it.

I think it's through lived experience.

experiences, through stories, individual stories and community stories, that that's how you kind of define what centrism means for everyone, in my opinion.

Like, I don't think you go look on Capitol Hill and say, this is a Republican on the center right and this is a Democrat on the center left and there's your centrist because that's not, I agree with you that that's not fully accurate.

I think issues like immigration, issues like healthcare, issues like education, I think the average American, you saw it in Missouri the other day where a woman who was there for 20 years in a small Missouri town that voted for Trump by 80%,

she was working as a line cook at a local waffle house and they detained her.

And that town that red town that farm town came out and was like we didn't vote for this like we don't support this

and you have trumper saying that so i think it's issue specific i think you have to tell the stories of the people in the communities and how uh these policies are really impacting individual people and individual families um and and

and and that's kind of in my opinion of how you kind of find that center Well, and Khalil, and you can answer the centrist question, but I want to add another dimension because one of the things that I find so fascinating about your content is that while it has a culturally specific lens,

it's intentionally accessible by anyone who wants to know more.

And how do you think about that in this broader conversation of who we're talking to and how you curate an audience for what you do?

Yeah, so I'll just start with the maybe like poking a little bit of a hole in the

thing that you said earlier in terms of like probably most people might have that quote-unquote centrist feed.

I do strongly believe that the way that social media is set up, that your average person will probably have a feed that leans one way or the other, perhaps issue specific, as Aaron was saying.

But I mean, we know on YouTube, there's been a lot of studies that show that if you're just like a young male and you just get onto YouTube and you want to watch a video about your favorite video game, let's say it's Minecraft, that like...

through recommendations, you're not 10 videos off from like getting some form of some Manosphere, maybe Andrew Tate content, maybe Ben Shapiro debate content, maybe Charlie Kirk owning some blue-haired lib on a college campus.

So it really is set up for people to be radicalized.

Oftentimes, if you're a young male to the far right, I think that's a huge issue that we have to just like really contend with.

And then when it comes to my content and like how I try to make it accessible for people, I mean, one thing that I always do is I never tell a history lesson randomly, right?

Like I'll always tie it to something that's happening right now.

I'm very lucky and fortunate enough to have a lot of connections to professors at my Amamata Yale University.

One of the professors is actually famous right now for leaving the United States to flee Trump in light of what he's doing.

I got to interview her, Marcy Shore.

But for me, it was important to like put it into a nice 45-minute bow on my sub stack, have it accessible, and then turn it into a TikTok afterwards that even more people could understand.

Because I think the only way that we can combat that inherent radicalization that happens on social media is to get people curious and aware of their own thoughts and better at critical reasoning so they can come to their own conclusions and not be influenced either way by some nefarious code in the back of these social media apps.

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Well, for both of you,

we see creators like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughan, who seem to have made an impact in the last election.

And as you pointed out, Aaron, the Democratic Party is planning to spend millions of dollars.

One of the areas of interest is learning more about the attitudes of young men and creating a progressive Joe Rogan in a test tube.

I first met Joe Rogan on Fear Factor in the early 2000s.

I used to watch him convince otherwise sane people to eat cockroaches and play with spiders.

And I will tell you, I was shocked when I was hearing about Joe Rogan and his radio program and then his podcast.

And I'm like, wait, the same Joe Rogan,

that guy?

And

so I want to bring together two things that you guys have pointed out.

One is

there's this sort of cross-partisanship appeal, cross-generational appeal, but there's also this idea of authenticity.

And then there's just where we're willing to spend money.

And so I'm going to ask Aaron to start because you mentioned that we need to be spending money.

How should we be spending it?

Be really specific.

Like, what should we be doing?

And then Khalil, when I come to you, I want you to talk about what does it mean to try to create your own Joe Rogan in a test tube?

Is that something we should be trying to do?

Or is that a fool's errand and we should be thinking about something else?

Well, I'll say this.

I think, and I'll say this for my personal, for myself, where if someone came to me and was like, here's a blank check, where can I spend money on you today?

I would say, I don't need money to pay a a salary i need money to hire a producer to build out like a legitimate show to maybe hire an employee who can do fact checking and research for me money should go to resources that support the work that existing creators are doing that's number one and then after that if you still have money left over then yes go to smaller creators and try to build them from the ground up but don't go to a lifestyle creator or a cooking creator and say you need to have hakeem jeffries on your platform tomorrow because it doesn't seem natural so whatever however you're going going to spend money, it has to seem natural.

And I will, I do just want to answer that Joe Rogan test question because I don't think the left needs a Joe Rogan on the left because Joe Rogan is one of one.

Joe Rogan has been doing this for 20 plus years.

He endorsed Bernie before he endorsed Trump.

He's not a political figure.

He's a lifestyle figure.

So we don't need a Joe Rogan of the left.

We just need to support the creators that are already on the left and build them up, in my opinion.

Yeah, I think in my opinion,

there's some issues that throwing money at them will solve when it comes to like literally like the logistics of video production, as Aaron was saying.

I think that's like one of the hardest things for a creator is like managing that ourselves.

I will say, though, there's like two types of sort of content creators that really helped the right this previous election.

There were the Joe Rogans who were very organic.

I don't think Joe Rogan had funders from political organizations.

Like he just had a very robust sort of private funding Spotify deals just from who he was and what he was talking about.

That's like the sort of organic thing that I think if we were to have someone on the quote unquote

progressive side that would be like that, we would have to find someone who's outside of politics, who just has a large platform and just flood them with politicians that are actually charismatic that can actually talk about these issues.

And then on the other side, I think probably to more to what Aaron is saying, there's, for example, someone named Brett Cooper.

She's a young woman on the right who's funded heavily by Ben Shapiro's company, Daily Wire.

The same thing happened, I think, with like Candace Candace Owens and a few others.

And what the goal of those creators is not to organically try to like win people over, but it's their messaging and their branding is on point and in line with what the right wing wanted.

So, we need, to Aaron's point, people just funded who are in line with what the Democratic Party's goals are.

I think the big issue, which I don't necessarily have a solution for, is that

the popularity and the sort of

respectability of of creators um can ebb and flow i think a lot more on the left and progressive the progressive side of the aisle than it does on the right i mean we're seeing it now with the right with like this is not what we voted for for trump and elon and trump falling out um but i think once again for the campaign it was pretty unified now though like there are creators who were the darlings of the Democratic Party during the previous election that like nobody wants to hear from.

A lot of these people, nobody wanted to hear from at the time, but like because they were so wrapped up in the Democratic Party, they were the ones who were propped up.

But I think the only thing that I would caveat is that

to say is that you can't just stick to the same people.

You have to really keep an ear to the ground.

And I think that's why I would say we should start with smaller creators as well.

I think there should be a large fund for the smaller creators because we have to like try a lot of different things.

We can't just choose the top dogs and just make them even bigger.

So I've got one last question, and then I'm going to pitch it to you guys for any closing comments and thoughts.

So my other major concern is that, you know, conservatives didn't avoid Twitter when it had stricter content guidelines.

I have a two-week old sub stack and it already has a very committed cohort of haters.

But progressives seem to issue Truth Social and Rumble, and I'm not sure who holds Dominion on Reddit.

How should we think about different platforms in terms of audience and reception?

And should we go everywhere?

Or should we only go where the conversation aligns with our values?

Not everyone has to go everywhere.

I think the people on the left, there should be people on the left on Truth Social and Rumble and all these other platforms, but that doesn't mean anyone, any average person watching this has to be there.

I think you have to go where you feel comfortable.

I'm on Truth Social.

I don't have an account, but I am on there.

But just because I'm doing it doesn't mean someone else has to.

So, but I think that at least some people have to.

I will say when it comes to a platform more like Twitter, for example, I thought the mass exodus from Twitter shouldn't necessarily have happened the way it happened, right?

Because I do think when you leave so fast and so many people leave one platform, you leave a bit of a void for misinformation to fester.

And now Twitter is just a hub of misinformation.

And the same thing, I don't necessarily think like if it's your thing to just like be on blue sky and just like hear and listen to everything you agree with and just be prop your ideas be propped up.

That's one thing.

But I like to have my ideas challenged.

So I'm on blue sky, I'm on truth, I'm on Twitter and I'm everywhere.

So I think we should be everywhere if we can be.

Yeah.

And I think there's also a little bit of an aspect of like when you're running the race, you need to be like looking forward and not to the side at what this person is and how far behind you or in front of you that person is.

And just sort of just do your own thing.

I think for innovation for the Democratic Party, I think like for all the consultants I know they spent so much money on these past few months,

I'm sure everything will boil down to the same thing is that like they're, they're just trying to, as you said, replicate what Republicans did.

But I think at the end of the day, like you kind of have to innovate in your own space.

You just have to like really use TikTok, use Instagram, use Spotify, find the new app.

Substack, I think, can be a very strong, very, very strong

sort of like

hub for progressive thoughts and progressive leaders because I mean, you have to read and you have to be someone who's willing to read to even be on Substack.

So we already have the advantage in a lot of ways.

And I will say this, like Kamala Harris should not have been on Truth Social, but she should have been on TikTok before Donald Trump was on TikTok.

Well, the last thing I'm going to ask you, this is what we love to do on Assembly Required, is give people something to do.

You both are so aware of what's happening in the world, both politically and culturally, and the intersection of the two.

And so I'm going to start with you, Khalil.

What's your call to action?

What should our audience be doing next and include in that where they should follow you?

Yeah, so I'll start with where they should follow me because it actually leads into my answer.

But my number one thing right now is my sub stack.

I mean, Aaron, I'm sure will tell you sub stack is probably the most exciting platform, I think, for a lot of us, just from how we're able to own our audience.

My sub stack is called History Can't Hide.

So if you go to historycanthide.substack.com, you'll find my work.

And within my substack, I do not only a book club, but I also publish reading lists.

So my call to action is for everyone to get off of social media for a time, get to your favorite babybookshop.org or Amazon, wherever it is, and buy a physical book about politics and read it.

I think one that I think is really interesting is On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.

I think you'll see a lot of what is happening in the world right now reflected in that book and also the means for how to change and fight against it.

So just get a physical book, get off of social media and read it so you have a better perspective on what's going on.

I need to take that advice because I haven't read a physical book in years.

Yeah, my call to action is, it's actually coming up.

And I don't know when this podcast is going to come out, but June 14th is a No Kings Day protest.

I really think that a lot of folks around the country are feeling disenchanted, feeling tired behind their phone and on social media.

And my whole thing is: get out there and go make your voice heard on the ground.

Go talk to people that believe in things that you believe in and build community on the ground at these protests, at these demonstrations, whether it's on the 14th or elsewhere.

The real organizing happens, in my opinion, on the ground, not necessarily online.

And so, do that.

And yeah, follow me on Substack.

It's just aaronparnes.substack.com.

And then you'll get inundated inundated with my many fun emails.

Aaron Parnas, Khalil Green, thank you both so very much.

And I will now go follow some new people and start doing my homework.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

As always on Assembly Required, we're here to give you real, actionable tools to face today's biggest challenges.

First, be curious.

Getting your news from social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Blue Sky, or Twitter isn't wrong.

In fact, it can be a fast and convenient way to stay informed throughout your busy day.

The key is to follow credible creators you trust, like Aaron and Khalil, and always take a moment to fact check what you're seeing.

Stay curious, but stay smart.

Secondly, solve problems.

Skip the doom scrolling.

What starts as, quote, just a few minutes on TikTok can quickly spiral into hours lost in an endless feed of chaotic news.

It's the point.

So break the cycle by sandwiching your screen time with something grounding.

Take a walk, read a few pages of a book, or unwind with a new show or movie.

Give your mind a reset.

Number three, do good.

Support your favorite content creators and messengers beyond the scroll.

Many political commentators have blogs, websites, or Substack pages where they dive deeper into stories that they summarize in under a minute.

And recognize that not everyone who does political commentary considers themselves a political commentator.

So follow all of them on these platforms to help you get the full picture and help them keep doing what they do best.

For example, you can follow me on my new sub stack, Assembly Notes, where we dive into some of the topics we cover here and topics that come up in between episodes.

If you like what you hear from me or anyone, rate the show and leave a comment.

And please continue to tell us what you've learned, solved for, or want to hear about next.

You can send an email to assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail.

And you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams, and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts and our associate producer is Farah Safari.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Photopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, Ben Heathcote, and Priyanka Muntha for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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