Ritchie Torres and Ben Smith: Pride and Priors

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It's Tuesday, June 4th. I'm here with Representative Richie Torres, Democratic Congressman from the Bronx.
He's a former member of the New York City Council. He was elected to Congress in 2020.
I'm pumped to have him here, but wanted to do this for a while. How are you doing, Congressman? It's an honor to be here.
Happy Pride. Let's do it

Happy Pride

I've got some

Pride questions for you coming down the pike here about halfway through. But first, I just wanted to talk a little bit about Donald Trump.
I don't know if you've heard of him. You grew up in public housing in the Bronx, across the street from the site of what was once a garbage dump that then was developed

into a golf course with the Trump's brand name on it. And so my question for you is sometimes do you feel like you're in like a Dickens novel where there's a buffoonish greedy villain that haunts your entire life? Yes, I feel like the ghost of Donald Trump has been haunting me at every point in my life.
So as you said, I grew up in a visual tale of two cities. I grew up in Throgs Neck houses, which is a public housing development right across the street from what was formerly Trump golf course.
And I kid you not, as the golf course was undergoing construction, it unleashed a skunk infestation. So I tell people I've been smelling the stench of Donald Trump long before he became president.
then the ghost haunted me when I became a member of Congress if someone had said to a 50 year old version of myself you know Richard you're going to become a member of Congress during a global pandemic and witness an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol and then vote to impeach the host of The Celebrity Apprentice and all of that would happen within the first two weeks I would have have said that sounds like a movie written by George Santos.
And then what about if they said that your colleagues would then nominate that same reality TV star that did the insurrection? They would support him for president again, three years later? I would have had trouble imagining it until I actually served with these crackpots. What is it like? I mean, you've kind of strayed from your party on a few things, or maybe not from the main body of the party, but for some on the left, you know, you've kind of made alliance on various issues with some Republicans.
What's it like serving with these guys now? I mean, when you're talking to them, is there any kind of awareness that what they're doing right now is absolutely insane? Like, have you broken any of them, you know, gotten any of them after a few gummies to admit the truth to you or anything? Look, unlike the far left, which remains a fringe, Donald Trump is representative of the Republican base. He is essentially the Freudian id of the Republican party.
He is a repository of their basest desires and impulse. And so I have met House Republicans who will secretly acknowledge to me that Donald Trump is an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party.
But these people live in fear of him. Are they still there? Are they like the Mike Gallagher's that are telling you secretly now they're all leaving? There's a much wider universe of people who live in fear of Donald

Trump. Well, I guess the New York delegation, we don't need to start naming them.
I have a few

suspicions in the New York delegation, let's just say. Well, look, we no longer have a two-party

system because you have a normal political party like the Democratic Party, but the Republican

Party is no longer a traditional political party. It's become a cult of personality around Donald

Trump, right? The Christianity of the Republican Party has been replaced by Trumpism. Trump is

Thank you. Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party.
It's become a cult of personality around Donald Trump, right? The Christianity of the Republican Party has been replaced by Trumpism. Trump is the new Lord and Savior.
Watch out. MTG is going to get mad at you for that.
Well, she already accused us of banning Christianity. Yeah, that's true.
He came back to your district for the event in the Bronx. He brought a couple of rappers on stage who are out on bail for gang activity and murder.
Chef G, not one of my favorite rappers. I've got a few others I prefer.
But some of the polls show, I don't know that that absurd strategy is working, but some of the polls show there is some backsliding among working class black and Latino voters, particularly men towards Trump. Like, are you seeing that at all back in your district? Like, what's your sense of that? The honest answer is yes, but at the margins.
I mean, the Bronx is overwhelmingly Biden country and will remain so in November, but Trump has made gains at the margins. He did so in 2020 and he may even make further gains in 2024.
But, you know, keep in mind that the communities of color have never been monolithic in their voting patterns. You know, in the 2000 election, George W.
Bush won 40% of the Latino vote. And the Latino vote in America is highly variegated.
Latinos and, you know, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the South Bronx are qualitatively different from Venezuelans and Cubans in Florida, who are qualitatively different from Mexicans in California, who are qualitatively different from Mexicans in South Texas. And so I know people are shocked by Donald Trump's support in some elements of the Latino community, but it's actually in keeping with the historical pattern.
Like, yes, you know, there's, there's trends that come in and out with these voters,

with all voting groups, right?

Coalition's change, but it's a little alarming, you know, at this moment, given the nature of the threat.

Do you think there's something that the Democrats are doing wrong?

There's something that Biden is doing that is not resonating with this community, something

that you could do that the party could do differently over the next five months to maybe

stem some of the exodus or exodus is overstated, stem some of the bleed you know among that voting population look i feel like the president has to focus on the bread and butter issues that matter to voters of color in places like the bronx there are going to be members of the Democratic base for whom abortion and democracy are the pivotal issues that will motivate him to go to the polls. But that's not true of every voter.
If you're a single mother in the South Bronx and you're struggling to put food on the table and pay your bills, you're concerned about public safety, you're concerned about the cost of living, the cost of groceries, the cost of gasoline. And so those are the issues that have to be addressed in order to sustain support among working class voters of color.
Going back to the Dickensian thing, I do feel like sometimes like it's missing. Look, I used to be a Republican.
So this populist economic messaging is not really my sweet know, my sweet spot. But I look at the Democrats right now, it's just like, it seems like there's huge opportunity.
And this is a guy that screwed over working class people his whole career, you know, as a businessman on economic issues. Like the Project 2025 plan is cuts to SNAP, cuts to public services, extending tax cuts for rich people.
people like where is the energy around that message on the left right now like it feels a little bit absent from democratic party talking points and they talk about it there's lip service paid to it but isn't that the way to kind of reach some of these voters look i agree with you um and as you know the we in the democratic Party, our motley crew. And at the moment, we're divided against ourselves.
And we seem to be so divided against ourselves that we have forgotten the enemy is Donald Trump. And we have to coalesce around a message, a unified message against Donald Trump.
I mean, he is benefiting from the divisions that have taken hold within the Democratic Party. Before October 7th, the Republican Party was divided against itself.
The Republican Party was self-destructing after the vacate at McCarthy. But since October 7th, it feels like we are the more divided party and it's operating to the benefit of Donald Trump.
I definitely think there is a divide in the Democratic Party, you know, when it comes to Israel. And that's, that's like the most obvious statement ever.
Is that affecting voting behavior, though? Like, do you really think Joe Biden's losing votes over this on either side of the sector, either on the pro-Israel or, you know, more critical of Israel side? He will lose votes no matter what position he takes. But do I feel like it's the issue that's going to decide the outcome of the election no but i do feel like the media coverage of the divide and by the way the divide in the democratic party is exaggerated because the overwhelming majority of democrats have a clear position on the issue but the media coverage of the divide and the media coverage of all the disruptions that the president has had to face right i feel has a crowding out effect on a unified message against donald trump for listeners who don't know and so you've taken more of a pro-israel stance i've watched a video of you the other day talked about how you're a zionist and supporting our ally israel how do you assess how the president has done on that issue i feel the president is the most pro-Israel president in history.
I mean, he was the only president to go to Israel in a time of war. You know, he sent out one but two carriers to the Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah.
You have to consider what a president does relative to the circumstances in which he finds himself. And there's no one who's had to find himself under more challenging circumstances than Joe Biden.
You know, Israel's waging a war in Gaza under the microscope of 24-7 cable news and social media. And so the scrutiny has been overwhelming.
The international pressure has been overwhelming. And in spite of it all, the president has stood firm where it matters most at the level of policy.

George W. Bush, a Republican president, pressured Israel to end the second Lebanon war after a month.

And to keep Hezbollah in power, which has led to the present security crisis in the north.

I was agreeing with the election.

Right. Whereas Biden has sustained his support for Israel for more than eight months in the face of a massive backlash from the far left of his own party.
And, you know, the lack of gratitude and appreciation that he seems to receive is just shocking to me. Well, we're totally aligned on that.
So you don't have any issues with the ways that Biden has tried to distance from Bibi at times? I might disagree with some of the positions he's taken and some of the pronouncements that he's made. But I look at, you know, I don't miss the forest for the trees.
Speaking of people that miss the forest for the trees. So instead we get back to pride and there is there's a tie in here.
So just bear with me for a second. So you, for people who don't know, were in the first congressional class with non-white, openly gay LGBT members of Congress.
You and your colleague from New York, Mondaire Jones, who's back running again, are both black and openly gay. Well, I guess, hold on.
It is Pride Month, so I shouldn't cut the asexuals out of the LGBT plus community. And so we should give some acknowledgement to Tim Scott as well.
But you're a groundbreaker on this. And despite that, you had pro-Palestine, anti-Israel activists tear down like a Torres pride kind of flag and put up a flag instead honoring queer Palestinians.
What do you make of something like that? So the Fire Island Pines Property Association chose to honor several people, including myself.

You know, whether you approve of my position on Israel or not, the fact is that I am objectively a trailblazer.

You're objectively gay.

I'm objectively gay, and I'm the first black and the first Latino LGBTQ member of Congress in American history blazing a trail that had never been blazed before. And so the association decided to honor me.
And it had majority support, but there were a few agitators who took it upon themselves to vandalize Trailblazers Park and remove the flag honoring me and replace it with a flag in honor of queer Palestinians. Obviously, I welcome a celebration of queer Palestinians, but what is left unmentioned is the fact that Hamas, with which these activists show solidarity, is a barbaric oppressor, a murderous oppressor of queer Palestinians.
I know there's an organization known as Queers for Palestine, Queers for Hamas. I can assure you the love is not mutual.
It is a tale of unrequited love. This is the thing I don't get.
I mean, I am probably more than some of my colleagues and maybe even more than you in various ways. Like I'm concerned about the humanitarian issues in Palestine.
Feel like Bibi is mismanaging the war a bit. Don't feel like Bibi has an end game end game criticism of bb has a safe space here criticism of israel or constructive criticism or opinions about that are welcome here it's this thing that really bugs me though here in pride month and it's like there's this free palestine message and you know it's like okay i'm for free palestine but just like bb doesn't have a path for gaza post-war there's no path for a free Palestine for women and queer people.
You know, you can have a Queers for Palestine sign, and that's fine. But there's no endgame here, even if Israel just put down their arms right now, where you come out of it, where women, gays, lesbians, trans people are living in Gaza or the West Bank as citizens with rights.
The disconnect there and the self-righteousness when making that argument is very frustrating to me and has to drive you up the wall at times. Look, is Israel perfect? No.
But it is objectively true that there is no place in the Middle East where it is safer to be LGBTQ, to be gay,

than the state of Israel. It is far more protective of minority rights, far more

protective of women's rights, far more protective of LGBTQ rights than the rest of the Middle East,

the rest of the Arab world, the rest of the Muslim world, where the standard is autocracy.

That's the hard fact. Yeah, there's some concerns on the internet and Twitter.
I'm seeing some

things. People are coming after you.
I guess you were hanging out with one of Trump's PR people, kind of a far-right, pro-Israel advocate in New York. People are just checking in and making sure that you're not getting red-pilled over this.
You haven't been tempted to hang out with any MAGA. Go down the MAGA rabbit hole over this over this he has the life of an elected official right I'm at a meeting there are dozens of people there there are people want to take picture with me I don't necessarily know every person who has taken a picture with me yeah if I take a picture with you it does not mean that I necessarily agree with you so the gentleman you're referencing asked me to take a picture with his daughter and him am I going to say no no? Like, I don't, you know, what am I to do in those circumstances? Was he wearing like a t-shirt or like, were there any public signifiers that, you know, there was a QAnon? Was there a WW1 WGA? There was no red flag on his apparel.
Or hat, red hat on his apparel. I reject the game of guilt by association.
I feel like we as elected officials should be judged by what we say and do. So hold me accountable for the votes I cast.
Hold me accountable for the statements that I've made. And I'm crystal clear about where I stand on the issues.
I do not shy away from a clear expression of where I stand. But to pounce on me for a photo just strikes me as ridiculous.
I've met thousands of people. I take thousands of photos.
Believe it or not, I'm fundamentally a nice guy. So when someone asks me to take a photo, I will say yes.
It kind of relates to another thing I want to talk to you about. You've written and talked a lot about how you're kind of an introvert.
You suffer with depression, mental health issues. Back when I worked with Jeb, Jeb's also an introvert, unlike his brother.
I think he explains a little bit about their electoral success, but maybe that's for another day. But, you know, he liked to talk about that.
And I would see, I would be moved by the way that it would bring people out of their shell sometimes when he would talk about it. This is not, I don't know if you've been able to tell, but I'm not an introvert.
So I kind of don't, I sometimes struggle to like relate and connect on that level, but I could tell that he could. And I appreciate that he talked about it and appreciate that you've written and talked about it.
So I like to hear you talk a little bit about what is, what's it like, like being a politician in these situations, people are asking you for pictures. People are asking you for your opinion on everything.
People are up in your grill. You got to get up every day and do it no matter what, whether it's a good day or bad day, and how you navigate that as somebody that's had mental health struggles and is not naturally an extrovert.
Life is a political burden for introverts. As you know, there are common misconceptions about, right? Introversion does not mean a lack of sociability.

It means a lack of energy, that we tend to be exhausted rather than energized by social interactions.

And we have a need for, need to replenish ourselves.

You know, for me, the textbook extrovert in American politics was Bill Clinton.

You could tell that social interaction was the air he breathed, that he needed to be around people.

Whereas Barack Obama, who's the most brilliant order of his generation, feels to me like an introvert,

that he's a person who needs personal space to be contemplative and reflective.

And so even the most dynamic, charismatic communicators, right, can be introverts. I remember when I first ran for public office, I had a fear of public speaking.
I had to drink a glass of wine before every speech. But, you know, the more I did it, the better I became.
You know, practice made perfect. And I feel like I've become something of a master of my craft.
And so I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be an elected official as an introvert. And certainly not as someone who had a longstanding struggle with depression.
You know, more than a decade ago, I was at the lowest point of my life. I had dropped out of college, found myself struggling with depression.
I attempted suicide. I even underwent hospitalization.
I felt as if the world around me had collapsed. And so I never thought, you know, about seven years later, I would become the youngest elected official in America's largest city.
And then several years later, become a member of the United States Congress. I would not be in Congress.
I would not be alive were it not for mental health care and the stability that it gave me. I'm sure that when people hear that, you hear from other folks that are going through dark times, that have contemplated suicide.
There's obvious cliche advice for everybody,

but something that's been there,

is there anything from that experience that sticks with you

that you like to share with people

that those of us who have not gone through it

might not think about?

Or a secondary question is like,

somebody like me,

if I hear somebody say that,

that they're having suicidal thoughts,

they're going through deep depression,

what was helpful to you?

First, I would tell them, never lose hope. There's no telling where life will take you.
And it's possible to overcome struggles with mental health. And I stand as living proof.
But I would tell people to seek care. Mental illness is nothing of which to be ashamed.
Like if you're struggling with depression,

you should seek care just like you would seek care if you were struggling with

diabetes, right? It's, it's, it's not a failure of willpower.

It's not a failure of character.

It's a condition that requires treatment that requires psychotherapy and

medication. You know, every morning I take a well, butrin XL one 50.
I take the same antidepressant that I've taken for more than a decade. And I feel no shame in admitting it.
And I will tell you that it enables me to be the best version of myself, to be a productive public servant in an extraordinarily demanding and draining political environment. I assume you had a support network.
Were there folks on the outside? Is there anything that stands out for you as something that was particularly helpful? My greatest hero is my mother, who raised three of us on minimum wage, which in the 1990s was $4.25 in the most expensive city in America. So she is my hero and she's achieved mission impossible for me and my brothers and my sister.
And when I won my primary in June of 2020, and when I knew that I was going to be the member of Congress, I publicly said that before I was a congressman or a councilman, I'm first and foremost, the son of Deborah Basillette, my mother, Deborah Basillette. And for me, the greatest satisfaction of public life is the honor of representing the South Bronx, which is full of single mothers who have sacrificed and struggled and suffered so that their children and grandchildren can have a fighting chance at a decent life.
Those are the people whom the Democratic Party should represent first and foremost, because they are the unsung heroes of our country. Amen.
Single mothers, one weekend alone with my child, and I was just like, oh my God, how do single mothers do it? It is absolutely unbelievable. I just throw myself on the ground and just throw flowers at every single mother in my life.
It is an unbelievable skill that they have and an unbelievable challenge, and they deserve all our praise and support. You're right.
Again, this goes back to the initial question. I'll let you go.
Like centering those folks, centering single mothers, centering working class people, like that was a traditionally a democratic strength that I do feel like the party sometimes gets away from a little bit. And I think that part of the question of a little bit of slippage among working class people in communities like the Bronx is because they see the democratic party as being, you know, some of the more frivolous, you know, social justice, kind of more privileged faces being put forth, you know, rather than people like your mother.
I don't know. Do you think that there's, do you have any thoughts on how the party can recenter, you know, people like your mother? Look, I feel like we have to make a concerted effort to speak to people like my mother.
I do worry that the activists and the academics often have outsized agenda setting power in progressive politics. But we have to return to our roots as the party of FDR and speak to the working class and to the lowest income communities of color because we are the only party that represents their interests.
We are the only party committed to defending the social safety net from the far right of American politics. Cheers to your mother.
Do you have any, what are you listening to these days? Do you have any pride tunes? I'm sending people out with pride tunes this month. Do you have one? Do you have a rec? I'm the worst person to ask.
I'm like the, you just listen to podcasts or just listen just listening you're just grinding on podcasts all day i have a friend who who said richie you're utterly lacking in any fashion sense so you obviously heard of the show queer eye for the straight guy he calls himself a straight eye for the queer guy because i have no fashion sense so so you need music racks and fashion racks do you have any traditional gay traits do you have any like you know, are you into knitting or anything? Do you have any tradition? Apart from enjoying men, I have no... Broadway? Not, you know, when I'm invited, I think the last Broadway show I saw was pretty serious, that was parades.
Okay. Well, you know, the only qualification, actually, this is an important part of gay life that some people don't realize that want to stereotype

from the outside.

Liking other men is actually the only qualification.

So you crossed that bar.

Thank you for the time.

Much love to your mother.

Congressman Richie Torres.

Hopefully we can do this again soon.

Up next, we got Ben Smith of Semaphore.

We'll see you soon, buddy.

Take care. of the Mixed Signal Pod with Naeem Arraza.
Previously, he was media columnist at the New York Times and founding editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed. His latest book is Traffic.
It's out in paperback. You can go find it at, I don't know, Barnes & Noble near you.
What's up, Ben? Thank you for all the plugs, Tim. It's very nice to see you.
Dude, I'm plugging. I'm plugging away.
Okay, I want to start here. You know, there are a lot of media conversations over the last nine years, you're probably bored with this conversation about how one deals with Donald Trump.
But I think that a lot of times there are various inflection points that can make us think about it. And I've been thinking about a lot this week in the wake of the trial verdict.
I know it's something you're talking about on the new pod. And I'm just wondering, like, how you would grade how we're doing here broadly in the media because i look at this i just think it's i think that trump is still you know kind of playing a lot of people like a fiddle you know it was a very strange situation for the bulk of the trial like we're down here in lower manhattan and it's two blocks from here and i was like unable to find parking for my kia nero because it's such a circus like a legit media circus of live trucks and cameras and yet there was like this sense it felt like during the trial that like the journalists weren't really sure whether like the wires were connected like whether anybody was listening on the other end of their stories about this trial of the century yeah i guess i thought that the actual coverage of the verdict like this is a big historic story the president getting convicted and it felt that way and the coverage felt that way and i think now the question is you know one of the challenges is that political coverage in general a lot of the decision making about what's covered is made by the campaigns and the trump campaign was totally ready to come out of this say that it was was, you know, persecution and send him to a UFC fight and they knew exactly what they were doing.
And the Democrats really like had no plan. I think a lot of them thought he was going to be acquitted or was going to get a hung jury.
And then the White House in particular seems to basically made a decision to talk very little about it. And so the sort of normal hacky political routine of, well, Donald Trump says he's innocent, but Joe Biden says he's guilty, is replaced by Donald Trump says he's innocent and Joe Biden gave a long speech about the Middle East.
Yeah. How is it that we haven't figured out how to deal with this by now here in the middle of 2024? Because we don't have as much power as we think we do, I think is the fundamental That.
Like, deal with this what? Like, if only you tweeted something a little better? No, I just mean deal with like, not buying, like, Donald Trump's snake oil bullshit so easily. I mean, I was like, a number of people have been out saying, oh, I don't know, do we think this is going to help him? Like Trump and all his people are pitching about how it's going to help him.
And it's like, really? I mean, you cannot even conceive of a universe in which Hillary gets convicted of felonies for her emails and people are on TV the next day being like, you know, this could really be a big boost for the Clinton campaign. Yeah, particular strand of analysis i agree with you was you know was just on its face pretty dumb i guess how do you think about this at semaphore don't you think it's just like it's very challenging to figure out with how to how to think about the flood the river with shit dynamic with him on the plane home from new york i was watching a documentary about the 76 campaign and it's like jimmy carter's big scandal was telling playboy that he cheated in his heart and Gerald Ford's big scandal that campaign was like on a debate stage where he he tried to be a little cute and say that Russia Soviets aren't really dominating Eastern Europe and he was trying to be like well he's not they're not dominating the people the people are still free but he sounded really dumb explaining it those were the big scandals it's just like I mean if Donald Trump had said one of those things in the Bronx.
The people are still free. But he sounded really dumb explaining it.

Those were the big scandals.

It's just like, I mean, if Donald Trump had said one of those things in the Bronx,

like it wouldn't even appear in the semaphore write-up the next day.

You know, like how are we supposed to deal with that as we look forward to the rest of the year?

Right.

With a campaign in which one of the candidates, I mean, and this is an old story about all these right-wing populists, not just Trump, that the things that they say that are outrageous and that the media's reflex is to scold them are like built to travel through our scolding. And that like Trump is saying things that are offensive or outrageous or sexist with like the express intent that we get upset and amplify them and that people on Facebook get outraged and share them.
I think the answer is there's not a simple answer. And for a while you saw this reflex, which was, we're just not going to cover these outrageous things.
We're not going to get played. And then somebody noticed like, hey, did you notice that during that speech, he said he was going to use the National Guard to deport millions of people in his first 100 days.
Like, maybe we should cover that. I mean, I guess to the degree that I think there is sort of a smart, responsible way to cover it.
I think being focused on what he actually says he's going to do as president is the most important part of the coverage. But I don't think that really gets you away from like, you know, do you cover his visit to the UFC event, which is a pretty interesting political phenomenon, right? Like the extent to which sort become the center of the campaign.
Or do you not, because it's a stunt aimed at distracting from the fact the guy just got convicted of 34 felonies? That's a good question. I don't know.
What's the answer to that question? I think if there was a really simple, obvious answer, we would know. Yeah, and the UFC guy in the post-game press conference is talking about how great Trump is.
And so there's this whole ecosystem out there where people are getting those clips, and that's like absent from the mainstream commentary, almost. Yeah, no, I think that's right.
Me and Olivia were talking about this, me and Olivia and Nizzy, because when I was at, we were at one of these TPUSA events, and it's the kind of thing that you send Weel to. And like they were really kind of interesting.
We don't send him. We can barely talk him out of going.
Exactly. We reject those expenses, but he still goes.
Yeah. It's the kind of thing that like, you know, in 2017 people are like, wow, this is fascinating.
It's like an alt CPAC that's even crazier. And a bunch of people went and, you know, and then it's like 2023 and it's only Weig and olivia and me like nobody else is there and we're like well haven't we overcorrected the other way here like isn't it isn't it a little concerning like if trump wins again these are the people that are going to be running things yeah i guess i think those are the stories that are really obvious to tell and smart to tell this um project 2025 stuff where they're really trying to

lay the groundwork for an administration run by catch patel or whoever like that's well that's

real like reportable stuff that you can try to figure out although of course there is also a

layer of everybody at tp usa is going to tell you that they're going to be the secretary of state

in the hopes that you'll quote them trump will see it and learn their name yeah it's just a very

strange ecosystem of which the media you know is part but maybe a smaller part than we used to be

Thank you. hopes that you'll quote them, Trump will see it and learn their name.
It's just a very strange ecosystem of which the media is part, but maybe a smaller part than we used to be. Yeah, no, there's no doubt about that.
It's something that I think about too, those things where it's like, even me, they kind of even want to talk to me. And I'm like, am I being used because they want, like a fight with me is good, you know, in some way.
It's a tough challenge. there was an exchange over the weekend by my quasi colleague george conway my quasi podcast colleague he has a really well-rated podcast with sarah longwell and uh and scott jennings my old colleague from the jeb campaign where george is basically like you're a liar stop lying like why is cnn paying you that Casey Hunt chastises him.
We are back to the same old debate.

It was stop lying like why is cnn paying you casey hunt chastises him you know we are good we are back to the same old debate like it was in 2016 it was cnn was having jeff lord on set giving an absurd you know defense everything trump did and then in 2020 cnn like swung to the zucker model of you know oh righteous indignation and now and now we like, we're back to square one. What would you do if they had you replaced Chris Licht? The thing is, Jeff Zucker is a brilliant television programmer and did the only possible thing from a business perspective, which is that like, there's a limited set of people who watch cable television.
Every day, some of them die of old age. And're not going to find new people they're all it's over but there's a bunch of people over at msnbc this is what sucker saw and our biggest pool of like still living cable news viewers is over there and we have to go get them by being more anti-trump than msnbc and that is what he did and then there were all sorts of highfalutin theories about like, well, maybe we can get the people who are watching HGTV, who just want some fair news coverage.
Like, nope, they tried, didn't work. Cable television is a slow, you know, slowly, but genuinely collapsing ecosystem.
And, you know, some of the people are there to be mad at Joe Biden, and some are there to be upset at Donald Trump. And there aren't other people.

And so you can serve one of those two communities.

Or you cannot devote your life to cable television. I think it is a very good paying job, so I don't know.
But I do think that this is sort of a story about the business of this very strange medium that had its 20 years of dominance and is dying. and when you try to answer it in sort of moral terms

or even journalistic terms,

you're missing the way people who make television shows

are actually making decisions. Somebody sent me the stats on the median viewer of these networks age, the median, what is like 68? Right.
Median. So for every person under 68, there's an older person.
It's a pretty old crowd. And Fox's is older, and they sometimes run into issues with the ratings that they stop rating.
The number stops at a certain age, and so it's hard to develop averages. That was good from a business standpoint.
This is your media businessman now. No, I don't mean to be cynical.
I'm just trying to explain the decision-making. No, no, no, that was good.
There are two parts to this, and that was a very cogent explanation of the decision making now the question of okay the journalistic integrity question which is there's a legitimate debate here i don't i don't want to talk about the there's like a legitimate debate one is like we need to have a conservative viewpoint represented here if we're going to cover what is happening in politics the other side of it is, but what if you can't find anybody that offers that point of view that can do so without blatantly lying constantly in defense of Donald Trump? Maybe there's not a good answer to that question either. Isn't that fundamentally what CNN is dealing with? Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, like, I guess I just reject the idea that we should be looking to cable news as a sort of journalistic lodestar, that that's where the most important ethical decisions in journalism are made.
I mean, I think there are two different kind of important kinds of stories. Like there is the, I think, totally legitimate kind of reporting that's like, well, what is happening? What motivates Donald Trump supporters? What motivates right-wing populism? I think there was some very dumb stories written out of diners that people like to make fun of, but actually that kind of journalism is totally legitimate.

Like you do one and what,

what motivates people who are protesting Gaza,

like leaving social media,

talking to people who are committed and engaged in politics,

trying to figure out what's going on.

I think that's really valuable and useful.

That's not Jeff Lord,

right?

That's somebody who likes Jeff Lord's podcast.

And then the other is,

I think it depends to some degree,

like,

do you believe that there's a huge realignment,

political realignment underway in which at some level, like the Bernie people and the Trump people are moving into one party and both parties are fighting really hard to make that their party, by the way, right?

And that the sort of, you know, J.D. Vance on bills with Democratic legislators and Josh Hawley on bills with Democratic senators, we're going to see more and more of that.

And that, you know, that is our politics now. And that whether it's Donald Trump, you know, who knows, but that that kind of right-wing populist movement is real and is something that is going to be a major political force, I think is pretty hard to argue with, honestly.
And I think that you can't be dismissive of it. I mean, these are people who maybe you think shouldn't be on television because they have insane views about the 2020 election, but are in fact co-presenting bills with democratic senators on important issues.
No, I agree with that. And that's, that's really more comes down to maybe they shouldn't have 18 person panels, you know, analyzing the political things.
And that's the problem. Yeah, exactly.
And just interview the newsmakers on there because I think that's totally legitimate. Anyway, that probably doesn't rate as well which speaks to the problem but are the 70 year olds that are dying changing the channel maybe that doesn't matter i don't know i once asked chris ruddy you know newsmax is really the most sort of extreme version of this of just treating its viewers like they're morons and manipulating them particularly around the election i asked chris rud like, isn't it an issue that you're on channel 973 or whatever?

But he said apparently older people now just all talk to their remotes and just so it's fun.

I think that is true.

I didn't know that.

I learned and I last night talked to my remote a bit.

When I moved into this house, I have a very nice neighbor, elderly woman who has lived

in the house for like 60 years, who is when I walked down the street the first time she saw me she was like you're the boy from 728 whatever the channel is i was like yeah that's me we've had we have a nice little exchange now one thing i wonder as as you think about the new pod and media coverage in general i've just made this mistake i'm about to ask you about which is like there's this obsession with what on in the dying platforms. And meanwhile, increasingly between YouTube and TikTok, like the amount of political news that people are getting that is just totally almost unnoticed by the DC New York media is pretty astonishing.
I mean, I go on Brian Taylor Cohen show all the time. He gets like a million views, the YouTube thing, you know, there's destiny.
There's a right wing media monitoring universewing media monitoring universe out there. But every once in a while, I'm scrolling through TikTok, and I'll come up on something, and the person I've never heard of, it'll have a million views.
How are you guys thinking about that? It's interesting, because the thing that kills me about that is there's so little original reporting and new information being provided by that ecosystem, but a lot of opinions. That's a great point.
You know, I think the big story right now of media in general, it's a very hard one to cover is just fragmentation. The biggest stuff, like the really big, big, powerful, important stuff, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, whatever, is mostly getting smaller.
The New York Times, Washington Post, smaller, not going away, but doesn't have the power it once did. And then there's a lot of medium, small and medium sizedsized stuff that's kind of getting bigger but it's not going to be as big as those things were it's just and so you have this ecosystem that's like very very fragmented the most interesting stat in this is that there was a pew did a survey a couple years ago about podcasts and they asked people you know what's your favorite who's your favorite podcast host what's your favorite podcast and obviously everyone the majority said you but of everybody, the number one was Joe Rogan.
But the most interesting thing was the that number one slot was just 5% of people who say they have a favorite podcast host. So that's an unusual market, where the top shares 5%.
And we're used to markets like search where Google has 99%. And so it's this very, very fragmented universe where people are getting information from a vast array of different places.
And you don't know where the other people are getting information from. And it's hard to generalize.
And it shows how tiny most of those are that Joe Rogan, despite your kind comments is like 100x me. It's a very interesting market in that there is app Joe Rogan at 5%.
And then there's like a cut down to another group of people, you know what I mean? And then it's... And most of the consumption is happening kind of in the middle of the tail yeah i think really for better and for worse like we're coming out of this world we're really we were all on one of two giant platforms all seeing the same stuff if i saw if somebody was like on twitter in the height of the 2020 election and i looked over their shoulder on the subway they were like reading the same tweet i had just read if i'm on the subway now seeing somebody listening to, I have no idea what it is.
And is that healthy or less healthy? I don't know. The last time around did not work so good.
So this takes me to one of the book topics I want to talk to you about. The book Traffic was about the downfall of this model of we're going to try to get as many eyeballs as possible.
It was a race to go viral. We're going to pay for this via advertising dollars by the just unbelievable amount of eyeballs that we're getting.
And as you flip that to a model now that is more fragmented and subscriber-based, where people are, in a lot of these cases, people are paying the individual platform or the individual content provider that they are interested in, the one that they're a super fan of, right? And I was just saying today, I was like, even MSNBC is doing this now. I got to promote today, like the MSNBC Plus.
We've been doing it for a while, the Bullwark. And so doesn't that eventually lead to its own kind of problems? Yeah, right, right, right.
That as we swing toward an ecosystem where where media is paid that all the free stuff is garbage and that you can pay for quality and otherwise you get garbage and misinformation i think that's to some degree where we already are that's happening so you don't have deep thoughts on that that's just our reality i do think that we who are in the business like to think about the supply side but actually in fact as there was a survey where they offered people in boston free subscriptions to the boston globe and nobody would take them the barrier to people reading what we think of as quality news is not always money like people pay for spotify they pay for things they want and a lot of people don't consume what you and i never did think of as quality news meanwhile do watch local television which from time immemorial has just kind of ripped off the front page, the local paper and read it out loud, which is great. So it's a little complicated.
I mean, I do think more broadly in the media business, there's an impulse to say like subscriptions are immoral because they shut out the population or advertising is immoral because it is corrupting and melts your brain or whatever. But functioning successful media businesses tend to find models where they do some of both and have some of the stuff that's available for everybody and and build these pretty complicated mixed models so i don't know i'm not that ideological about it this is kind of depressing though the demand side argument i had derek thompson on last week he made the same argument about the demand side problem is that people want controversial.
People want conflict. And that's what they're drawn to.
Yeah, they want to be entertained. Yeah.
But my question is, in an old world, if people on the demand side wanted to go buy tabloids, if they wanted to watch wrestling or whatever, they were still, just by the nature of the limited number of options, like being force-fed vegetables at certain times during the day you know we'd be whether it be the local news or whether it be tom brokaw or whatever and it's like now that they don't have to be ever fed vegetables ever so like i know you get brought to these little you know media confabs where goody two-shoes people try to solve that problem like is there is there a solve to the demand side problem in a world where there's unlimited supply i don't know i do not know i mean i i guess i think that that when you add up all these small podcasts and shows and some of the tiktoker commentary is very good you do i think that one way or another a lot of people a majority want to be informed it may not exactly be the thing that you and I want, but it's also, they don't want to be lied to. I think you can underestimate the kind of intelligence and curiosity of regular people who aren't necessarily into this podcast and this style of podcast or into thousand word articles.
But this whole system of ours really fundamentally depends on the intelligence and curiosity of some decent number of our fellow citizens. And I do think if you look, I mean, I think Joe Rogan's a decent example.
It's not like my favorite program. And he says some stuff I think is nuts.
But it's also largely kind of long form interview. He's curious.
He's curious. He's in his way trying to be fair.
He has sometimes quite interesting people on talking about interesting stuff. I mean, it's not perfect, but the person who's listening to that isn't saying, I want like a 14-second montage of violence or please lie to me, right? Like there's another impulse there.
I worry less about please lie to me as maybe a little more of like, please explain to me why all the people I hate are wrong. That's the impulse that I think is hardest to break in that cycle.
I think, and maybe I'm horribly optimistic. I think the sort of peak social media of like 2016, 2018 was really like perfected that because the thing it turned out to be best at was finding the most grotesquely expressed view of your enemy and bringing it to your attention.
These new formats that are now popular, newsletters and podcasts and surprisingly long YouTube shows, actually aren't really built that way. They tend to leave some space to breathe and to have reasonable disagreements.
I don't know if I share your dewy and rosy optimism there, but I like it though. We'll leave it on that.
I want to ask you about one news item today. I always pronounce it the Epoch Times until I wrote a long-form article about them and realized they call themselves the Epic Times.
I think maybe it's a little bit of a translation error. An epic, by the way, meaning like an age, right? Like an era.
Yeah, like an epic. Bill guan the publisher of the epic times was indicted on monday on charges of participating in a massive money laundering scheme 67 million this is another example of one of these things right that it's it's like the epic times is everywhere as it's advertising in the subways it's advertising on youtube they had newspapers that were going out everywhere you You know, there was some oversight from time to time.
People would write articles about it, but kind of outside of the view of the mainstream political culture was like advancing a lot of kind of kooky, wild-eyed views. It turns out to have been a grift, I guess, which was pretty obvious to anyone that was looking that closely.
Do you have any big thoughts on the Epoch Times? I mean, only that this is just one of the great weird media stories ever i mean because it's not i mean honestly the notion that their real revenue stream was allegedly stolen phone cards or something i mean it just seemed total cryptocurrency it just seemed i i read the indictment and i'm still confused but it didn't seem like it was media related fraud it seemed like the stream wasn't from the ads or subs? They were laundering money from some other, basically they had some other criminal enterprise, and the media business was like a restaurant through which you launder your money from your gambling and prostitution operations if you're the mafia or whatever, or drug dealing. The media was just the storefront.
And what a weird store yes it was it was trying to make itself as kind of like the pro-trump new york times and really more deeply than that the anti-china new york times because the other thing to know about the epic times is that it is i would say i've written about this and it's complicated people have written controlled by or run by but i think linked to is maybe the right way to say it. Falun Gong, which is this dissident Chinese spiritual practice, which the Chinese government claims is a cult and has cracked down on incredibly brutally and is in exile running a pro-Trump, anti-China newspaper, because why not? And also allegedly doing some money laundering the whole thing is so bizarre even before the money laundering story it was bizarre the thing about this whole operation is it just screams like people who believe that the ends justify the means but i've totally lost track of which are the ends and which are the means here like are they really deeply pro-Trump and allegedly committing crimes in order to get back at China or is that actually the facade and their do that facade is in order to get the money through the alleged scheme very very very confusing and amazing I feel that way about Miles Guo the guy that was funding all of the animals what incredible story because he's also he's a Chinese dissident supposedly but then it's like it's not 100 clear if if he's a real chinese dissident that was taking money from expat chinese and feeding them to steve bannon to attack china or whether he's like a double agent pro chinese asset who was like using steve bannon to to foment unrest in the american political environment like it literally could be either or neither it's real like john le carré stuff just sort of game of shadows i'm totally unclear what people's motivations are there's an amazing new yorker piece on guo like including maybe unclear to guo day to day like maybe he's just living in the moment surviving fascinating we'll put a link to that one in there i i'd read part of that one and I think got distracted as I sometimes do on the internet and my Epic Times, the Epic Times thing I did, like these ads you have to watch.
It's like children of the corn ship, their ads. And it was very strange.
Lastly, my last thing for you, I've been dying to ask you this. You're running Semaphore.
We are running a media outlet here. What is the point of it? Why? There are a lot of media outlets out there.
What are we serving? I don't know what you're serving. And I think there's space for many different kinds.
And genuinely. I'm saying as somebody who's doing a startup media company, this is a question we ask ourselves.
And I'm saying now I'm asking it to you. No, I appreciate it.
And I actually think one of the nice things about the media we've been talking about is that there's space for a lot of different kinds of things in a way that's a bit new. I mean, for us, I think we're trying to talk to an audience who is deeply engaged with the things we write about with global politics, U.S.
politics, finance, technology, media, and often reads or watches or listens to stuff in the establishment media and is sophisticated enough to know, like, feels in some way that it's not totally on the level that the publication for sort of formal traditional reasons can't just come out and tell you what it thinks that the writer is sort of harboring certain views and a lot of expertise that they're keeping out of it and there's sort of a blurring of fact and opinion and i think we're trying to do an opinion and they call me it's like when one of these journalists calls me and they're like will you give a quote for the thing that I think about this thing so that I can put it in the article? Yeah, this is the standard article. It's like, who, what, when, or why? Journalists' theory disguised as fact.
Quote from Tim Miller restating that. And so I think we're trying to sort of pull that apart and say, here are the facts.
Like, we're sophisticated enough and you're sophisticated enough to be able to say, these are the facts. Here, I've been covering this a long time.
Here is my view. But also Tim Miller has a totally different view.
I'm concluding his quotations calling me an idiot because you're going to actually trust me more, not less if you know that I'm open to the possibility that I'm an idiot. So, you know.
So we're trying to be transparent in the way we present news, trying to keep it at a pretty high level and trying to take a global view. Because I do think a lot, most of the big stories in the world, including the rise of right-wing populism, are kind of hard to understand if you don't see them globally.
Yeah. How do you feel like that model's worked? Not like the business model, but the straight article, the deconstruction, if you will, of the article? People like it.
Yeah, the feedback is good? Yeah, the feedback's been really good. Broadly good.
I don't know, some professor told me he's teaching it to his students, which made me kind of happy. That's nice.
I'll tell you, as a consumer of it, what I like is sometimes I really just want to know what Dave's view is. Yes.
You know, Dave Weigel's view. And so I'm like, I know the facts.
But I'm like, Dave is actually there and following this stuff. So so I'm just looking for his view on this the only time I don't like it is sometimes it feels like the reporter has to give a view I feel like you need to evolve it to an option where it's like the reporter's like you know I don't really know about this and maybe that does happen sometimes I just didn't read that article you know it's funny we do we in ways, often we'll just sort of quietly remove the view section

because yes, of course,

often you report some facts

and have no idea what they mean.

Maybe we just have a check mark

that's just sort of like a shruggy emoji.

Yeah, that's what Dave's view on this.

Shruggy emoji.

Come back for more.

I feel like that so often.

Same.

Ben Smith, thank you so much, man.

It's always good to see you.

The new podcast is Mixed Signals.

Mixed Signal or Mixed Signals? Mixed Signals. Mixed Signals with Naeem Arraza.
And, you know, go check out Semaphore. He's got a newsletter.
A bunch of other people have newsletters. And we'll be talking to you again soon.
See you, brother. Thank you, Tim.
Yo, we off the block this year. Went from a load to a lot this year.
Everybody mad at the rocks that I wear. I know where I'm going and I know where I'm from You hear locks in the air Yeah, we at the airport out D-block from the block where everybody air force out With a new white T, you fresh Nuthin' phony with us Make the money, get the mansion, bring the homies with us I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block Used to have a little, now I have a lot No matter where I go, I know where I came from

Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got

I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block

Used to have a little, now I have a lot

No matter where I go, I know where I came from

From in living color to movie scripts

To all my six to J-Lo to this headline clips

I stay grounded as the amount's rolling I'm real, I thought I told ya I'm real even on the bruh We are the only one who is the only one who is the only one who is the only one who is the only one who is the only I'm still, I'm still, journey from the block Used to have a little, now I have a lot No matter where I go, I know where I came from Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block Used to have a little, now I have a lot No matter where I go, I know where I came from Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block Used to have a little, now I have a lot No matter where I go, I know where I came from Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block Didn't have a little, now I have a lot Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got I'm still Jenny from the back The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.