Transcript

Tucker [00:00:00] Taibbi is Italian?

Matt Taibbi [00:00:01] It's Italian, by way of Lebanese. It's like the Sicilian. Arabic. Yes. Yeah, but I'm neither. My father's Filipino. My mother's Irish. He was adopted.

Tucker [00:00:13] Oh, my dad was adopted too. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay, so here's my question. You're a reporter. You've been a reporter your entire life. Your dad was a reporter, well known reporter. So you grew up in journalism. Journalism is now justly, I would say, the most hated profession. The Sackler family is more popular than NBC news at this point. Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:00:54] And Congress is more popular…

Tucker [00:00:56] Like Congress is literally. Yeah. People are like, you know, maybe a child molester can be fixed. We don't need to execute them. But NBC news. Okay. So but, so that's bewildering, I'm sure, for you. But for those of us who are having trouble remembering what the media landscape look like in like 1990 when you were finishing college, what were your assumptions about journalism? What did you think you were getting into when you started?

Matt Taibbi [00:01:21] So I grew up around my dad's work. Yeah. He was a TV reporter in. Kind of the heyday of local. Affiliate news, like. Yeah, as portrayed in anchorman. So I used to hang around the newsroom all the time, and my father is sort of a reporters reporter. He's very gifted at striking up conversations with people. He's really good at that aspect of the job, which is. I would say probably the most important thing, which is being able to talk to people and get everybody's perspective. He would be able to go to, you know, any scene of fire or.  

Tucker [00:02:05] Well, what where does that skill come from?

Matt Taibbi [00:02:07] I think you just have to be born with it. Yeah. There's certain lights that are gregarious ness, right? That some people have likes people. Yeah, he likes people. He's he able to, you know, sort of strike up conversations quickly. And I was very shy growing up. So the, the first thing I concluded was I'm never going to be able to do that. Right. So this is you know, this is like a superpower that he has that I don't.

Tucker [00:02:29] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [00:02:29] And I thought I would have to go in a different direction. I also grew up wanting to be a.

Tucker [00:02:35] Fiction writer. Right. I was really obsessed with that growing up. And then when I got out of college, I realized that the only thing I really knew how to do.

Matt Taibbi [00:02:45] Was his job. Because I had watched it so much growing up. And so it was something that would keep me, at least in the writing business. So I got into it, and only over time that I really appreciate. The way they did reporting back then, it was a much different thing than what.

Tucker [00:03:08] You think. It was honorable. Like when you were a kid, did you think, like my dad did something embarrassing or my dad does something important and useful?

Matt Taibbi [00:03:14] No. I thought what he did was important, useful and honest. And, you know. There was something very egalitarian about the way reporters, carried themselves. Once upon a time, they. You know, only now our journalists, you know Ivy leagues and these upper class schools. In fact, you know, I was part of that generation of sort of rich kids who went into.

Matt Taibbi [00:03:41] Journalism when my.

Matt Taibbi [00:03:42] Father went into it, he started when he was 18. Journalism was more of a trade, than a profession. It wasn't necessary to have a college education. And most of the people who went into it. Jimmy Breslin or Mike Royko, the sort of voice of the people, kind of a thing. And so I grew up always imagining that the reporter.

Tucker [00:04:29] I was one, right?

Matt Taibbi [00:04:31] Yeah, exactly. And, you know, my father carried it that way for sure. And, so I did.

Tucker [00:04:37] Your father never went to college?

Matt Taibbi [00:04:38] No. He did. He went to, he went to Rutgers. He had me while he was at Rutgers. That's why he had to go into reporting. He worked at the Home News and, in New Brunswick, new Jersey, and, and then, you know, as soon as, as soon as you graduated, you went to the TV. But, but no, I always you know, people who had graduate degrees. It was for people who hustled, who worked. A common touch. Right? Like, that's kind of the key to the job was being willing to listen to people and all that. So I had a, a very specific idea of what journalism was when I went into it. I just thought I wasn't going to be particularly good at it, because of that. Because I was able to, I spoke Russian already early. I had an advantage over, other American reporters. Then went back as soon as I graduate. Actually, I went back before I graduated and started stringing and working for. A bunch of different organizations there and finally got a job at an expert.

Tucker [00:06:10] So 91 ish?

Matt Taibbi [00:06:12] Yeah. 91, 92, right after the revolution, basically.

Matt Taibbi [00:06:16] Yeah. Which was 91st August. Yeah. Summer. August 91st. Yeah.

Tucker [00:06:22] What was it like?

Matt Taibbi [00:06:24] It was amazing. It was the Wild West, you know? I mean, the funny thing for me is if people ask me, why did I love Russia so much? I mean, the first reason was, is that all my favorite writers growing up are Russians in my, you know, Nikolai Gogol was my hero. I wanted to be a Comic novelist. And the Russians have so many amazingly funny writers as you as you know. Right. You know, from Bulgakov to, you know, to dove. Lots of all these people. I wanted to learn the language.

Matt Taibbi [00:06:52] When I got there, I had been a very depressed, teenager had, you know, struggled socially, behaviorally, all these other things.

Tucker [00:07:10] And, you want a dark Slavic soul, and you didn't even know it.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:13] Yeah, exactly. And and, you know, in America.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:16] There's this incredible pressure on young people. You have to succeed right away. Right?

Tucker [00:07:20] Cheerful.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:21] Yeah. Be cheerful.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:22] Look good. Be in shape like all these other things. Russians. No way that there was none of that and nobody was going anywhere.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:30] And, when.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:32] I got there, that was just incredibly attractive. And, and, and so, you know.

Tucker [00:07:37] Well, I've never heard that take before. That is.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:40] Awesome. No, it was, it was, it.

Matt Taibbi [00:07:42] Was really funny. And because of that, I, you know, I got along with, Russians in a way probably that other Americans didn't. You know, I think, there was a connection there that was that was very natural. And, I really took to the place early on.

Tucker [00:07:56] How did you speak the language?

Matt Taibbi [00:07:58] Well, I mean, it's like any anybody you you like, you come to the United States. If you have no choice, you have to speak English. You'll learn it pretty quickly. So, I studied in Saint Petersburg, but then I briefly went to Uzbekistan. Because I had this idea that there weren't that many stringers in Uzbekistan. So I would get more.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:20] Work and?

Tucker [00:08:21] There was no noticed. I don't know that there are stringers anymore. What's a stringer?

Matt Taibbi [00:08:23] So a stringer is like a person who, is not on staff for a newspaper.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:29] But just sort.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:30] Of sits in a place and waits for something to happen. And then, you know, like the New York Times or the AP will call them and say, hey, can you, can you chase down that.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:39] You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:40] Thing that happened in my case, an earthquake that happened in Kyrgyzstan gave me a an early chance to write a couple of stories. Right. And.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:48] Would you write them for I think I.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:50] Wrote one for AP, in 1991.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:55] I ended up.

Matt Taibbi [00:08:57] Getting thrown out of them because I had a bad visa. But while I was there, I really learned Russian because nobody there spoke English. And I also, was on the Uzbek national baseball team, which was hilarious.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:11] How.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:13] So one day I was walking past one of the colleges, and I saw people playing baseball.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:17] And I was going to keep walking.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:19] And then I thought, I mean.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:19] Who is Becca Stanton? What the what? What is it? That, it turned out that, there was I think it was.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:25] Like a.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:25] Refrigeration school.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:27] And there were a whole bunch.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:28] Of students from Cuba. And, you know, those.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:32] Guys could really play, right? So I just went and asked, you guys mind if I play with you? And, so I ended up being a catcher on a team full of.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:43] Cubans.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:43] With a Russian coach. And, we played other central, Asian countries, and it was hilarious.

Matt Taibbi [00:09:50] Yeah, yeah. We had ground rules. This is going to sound like a fake story, but it's true. We had ground rules. We played in a pasture. If you hit a sheep, it was a double. I'm sorry. If you had a cow, it was a double. If you get a sheep, it was a triple. That is a true story.

Tucker [00:10:06] That anyone ever hit a coward.

Matt Taibbi [00:10:07] No, no, no, no.

Matt Taibbi [00:10:09] We only played, like, two games in that place, so. But, but that actually happened. I was actually playing baseball.

Matt Taibbi [00:10:16] When I.

Matt Taibbi [00:10:16] When I got thrown out of the country.

Tucker [00:10:18] So Uzbekistan in 1991 was not a first world place? No.

Matt Taibbi [00:10:22] It's Becca. Stan was, you know, it's kind of a typical Soviet Soviet satellite country. It was really struggling economically. It had all kinds of problems, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:10:32] And environmentally, you know, used to be at the big cotton producer for the Soviet Union. And then, you know, that sort of dried up for a variety of reasons to see if I was off is is now gone. Right. So, it was a troubled place. There was a war going on in Tajikistan. Right next to us. And so it was an interesting place to be. But, you know. It was sort of my first experience.

Tucker [00:11:01] What did your parents think?

Matt Taibbi [00:11:02] My mother was terrified.

Matt Taibbi [00:11:05] When I when I got.

Matt Taibbi [00:11:07] Thrown out of the country, I got a visit by these people who were, I guess there were for it was the SNB, the. The nazionale, the invisibles in the city, which is just the, their version of the KGB. And, they asked me for my papers. I had the wrong papers. I was there in a student visa that I'd kind of, you know, was kind of phony. And, but I had to send a telegram, telling my parents that I'd been kicked out of the country. So I wrote KGB kicking me out. Well, a call from Moscow, but she got.

Matt Taibbi [00:11:41] KGB kicking me gut. We'll call. I'm going to get beaten to death by the KGB. So.

Matt Taibbi [00:11:49] She was worried, but. But no, it was fine.

Tucker [00:11:53] But your dad was for it.

Matt Taibbi [00:11:54] Yeah, I think he he he thought the whole, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:11:58] Adventure thing was interesting. And then when he finally visited Russia in the mid 90s, you know, and saw what the place was like at the time, he thought it was, you know, a Paradise for journalists, which it was, because there was so much crazy stuff going on.

Matt Taibbi [00:12:15] And.

Matt Taibbi [00:12:16] It was a great place to learn the profession.

Matt Taibbi [00:12:19] Really? Yeah.

Tucker [00:12:20] What was press freedom like then?

Matt Taibbi [00:12:23] It was really interesting. There was a very vibrant community of, really hardcore, great investigative reporters who suddenly appeared out of nowhere because, remember, the press had been suppressed almost completely for, you know, 88 years. Right? And after, as soon as there was a, you know, a little bit of an opening to do real reporting, there were suddenly these very brave, reporters who showed up and, you know, they were they were risking their lives every time they wrote. Because the way the system was set up was that every newspaper was basically owned by a different gangster. And you would get material, they called it selling jeans over there. Right. So somebody would get give you a, a packet of information, you would write it up about the rival. But if they wanted you to pay the price, you would, you know, you might get shot in a doorway or something like that. So there were people who got killed by exploding briefcases. For instance, there was a guy named Diem of Hollywood off who worked for, Moscow. So he comes similar to when I was there who had written about Yeltsin's defense minister. He got blown up in a train station.

Matt Taibbi [00:13:39] But.

Matt Taibbi [00:13:40] You know, the Russians, those guys were my heroes. I tagged on to a bunch of those people really early, and that's really, kind of really learned. The whole investigative journalism thing was from those people.

Matt Taibbi [00:13:54] You know, not.

Matt Taibbi [00:13:54] All of whom stayed in the business for very long, sometimes not voluntarily.

Tucker [00:13:59] You stayed ten years?

Matt Taibbi [00:14:00] Yes. Yeah.

Tucker [00:14:02] How come?

Matt Taibbi [00:14:03] I mean, I love the place I was planning on staying forever. Really?

Matt Taibbi [00:14:09] You know, then things.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:10] Definitely turned weird. When the transformation from Yeltsin to Putin happened. Yes.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:19] You know, we.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:19] All, none of us had any illusions about who Putin was. Putin was a known quantity. He was the deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg when I was a student in Saint Petersburg.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:28] He he was.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:28] Kind of known as. Well, I.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:31] Mean.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:32] There were all sorts of stories that were told about him back then. And when he first came to. To power in Moscow, it was sort of widely understood that he was doing it. And Yeltsin even writes about this in his biography. Because Yeltsin needed help getting out of the country and escaping prosecution.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:51] And.

Matt Taibbi [00:14:53] There there had been some indication that Putin had done that for his previous boss, the mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak.

Matt Taibbi [00:15:01] So, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:15:03] The sort of investigative journalism community was very suspicious of Putin when he when he first arrived.

Matt Taibbi [00:15:10] But the.

Matt Taibbi [00:15:11] Western journalism community loved him and loved.

Matt Taibbi [00:15:14] Putin there. Yeah. And this was, you know, I had already become disillusioned with American journalism before that for because they had misreported a lot of things about post-communist Russia. But that was kind of like the last straw for me.

Tucker [00:15:28] I think traditionally think tanks do a lot of thinking, and the Heritage Foundation still does that. But it also, thankfully has begun doing heritage, has built a massive investigative and litigation operation out of its headquarters to save this country from the corruption that is taking it over both actual literal corruption, financial corruption. There's a lot of that, but also ideological and moral corruption. And to fight back. Heritage is engaging in almost 50 separate lawsuits against various government entities to try and try out information to bring a little sunlight to the process that even Congress can't get. And it's been working. They produced documents exposing the Biden crime family to the rest of the world. You've read those stories and helped kill the sweetheart deal that Biden's DOJ tried to make with his son, Hunter Biden. Harris also developed a comprehensive plan to dismantle the deep state, the swamp, by staffing the next administration with people who know what they're doing. Thousands of Americans who on day one, can start to make this country better. So it's important work. Again, it's not just thinking, it's doing. And if you want to support it, go to heritage.org/tucker push back of one click. What did they miss. Report.

Matt Taibbi [00:16:42] So they would they would send somebody out to some.

Matt Taibbi [00:16:46] Provincial town like Samara.

Matt Taibbi [00:16:48] With they.

Matt Taibbi [00:16:50] With an assignment find the thriving emerging middle class.

Matt Taibbi [00:16:57] Right. And so you'd go.

Matt Taibbi [00:16:58] To a place where there's like a barter economy. Right. And, and people are doing subsistence farming, you know, and they would and they would ask around until they found somebody who had, you know, a VCR who or who had been on a vacation to a beats or wants or something like that. And then they would do a whole story like, you know, transition to capitalism.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:18] You know, flourishing.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:21] You know, the emerging middle classes, you know, everything's happening right on schedule. And meanwhile, the country was really in the Yeltsin years, was really doing very badly. Right. It's in contrast to now, you know, Russia was experiencing sort of record levels of early deaths.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:39] Yes.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:40] All kinds of horrific things.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:43] They weren't telling people back home.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:46] And so I. Because the, the the expat community and you know, I, I don't really.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:52] Know exactly how this works.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:53] But the.

Matt Taibbi [00:17:54] There was a monoculture about the reporting there that is very similar to what it's like now in America. But there it was sort of cartoon ized. It's a very small community. Everybody knew everybody.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:07] Else.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:08] And, you know, whatever. The Washington Post in The New York Times wrote about.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:13] Pretty.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:13] Much everybody else followed their lead.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:15] There was almost nobody, among.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:18] The reporters who even spoke Russian. Right. Like that was total.

Tucker [00:18:22] How can you how can you cover a country if you don't speak the language?

Matt Taibbi [00:18:25] Because that was the tradition. I mean, if you people would come in, they would cycle in there for a few years. They would work with translators. They stayed in a little compound on Tuesdays ski prospect, which is, you know, right near the center of the city. In the Soviet days, it was sort of walled.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:40] Off by.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:41] White design, but they continued living there for some reason that I didn't really understand. And with a couple of exceptions, you know, I can think there was a Boston Globe reporter who was fantastic, right, while I was there. But for the most part.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:55] You know, people came in and they, they just treated it as a.

Matt Taibbi [00:18:59] You know, as a third world backwater. It's like, you know, if you've read the quiet American read, it was it was that attitude toward.

Tucker [00:19:05] But I don't understand. So if you don't speak a language, I mean, I've lived here for 55 years. I speak English as a native speaker. I barely understand the country. It's just too complicated, right? But if you can't speak the language, you just don't understand it at all. You either. You have no hope of understanding it. Do you?

Matt Taibbi [00:19:24] That's what I thought, right?

Matt Taibbi [00:19:25] And this was not just the journalists, but also the diplomats there. But, you know, the diplomats.

Tucker [00:19:31] Didn't speak Russian.

Matt Taibbi [00:19:32] Diplomats didn't speak Russian. You know, we we have a, the, the ambassador to to to Russia, Michael McFaul. He couldn't he could barely put a sentence together in Russian. So, it was.

Tucker [00:19:43] What is that that just seems like a baseline requirement.

Matt Taibbi [00:19:46] So the the way it was explained to, to us was.

Matt Taibbi [00:19:49] That this this was something that was a hangover from, the American diplomatic experience in China before the Maoist revolution, where the diplomats were deemed to have been too close to the local population. Didn't warn, the people back home what was happening. So, they made a habit out of cycling people from spot.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:13] To spot so.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:14] That they wouldn't become too, accustomed to the culture, or to acculturated. Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:20] Which I can maybe.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:22] See the rationale for a diplomat. Maybe. But for a journalist, it makes no sense at all. Right. So, to not to not understand the. Place that you're reporting on. So by then. You know, I just it.

Tucker [00:20:37] It doesn't make sense to not understand the place your reporting on that and I think I think we can agree on that.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:41] Right. Yeah. But so, so it was, it was a, a strange activity that a.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:47] Lot of them were involved in where they, they mostly interviewed the English.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:51] Speaking.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:52] Officials in the Yeltsin government.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:54] Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:20:55] A lot of them had gone to Harvard. They were getting one very specific version of what Russia was going through, what its challenges were. And at the time, by then, I had already branched off. I had left. The Moscow Times. I started up my own newspaper, which was like a nightlife guide, and I started doing. In opposition to that, which was I would go around the country getting jobs and weird places, like I was working as a bricklayer in Siberia. Did, I worked at a monastery in Mordovia.

Matt Taibbi [00:21:34] What did.

Tucker [00:21:35] You do in the monastery?

Matt Taibbi [00:21:36] A construction, you know. So. Well, just new tour of the country and kind of find out exactly how people, were doing what what the situation was like. And it was an an amazing discovery because every every place I went, I learned about a new lie that was being told.

Matt Taibbi [00:21:54] You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:21:55] To people back home. And it it was deeply disillusioning for me. I mean, I know you've had experiences like this in journalism, too, right? Where you find out that something you thought is totally wrong.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:07] And, that was a real eye opener for me.

Tucker [00:22:11] But completely wrong.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:12] Completely wrong. Yeah, exactly. And moreover, that was.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:15] Proven.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:17] Relatively quickly, right? There was a massive financial collapse in 98, and then Putin came in, and there was a popular repudiation.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:29] Of the, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:31] So the American style. Version of managed democracy that existed under Yeltsin.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:40] And that.

Matt Taibbi [00:22:41] Was real. I mean, Putin, Putin for all, for all of his, problems. And I was a real critic of Putin's when I was there. There was no question that it was much more popular than Yeltsin. I mean, you know, the country was very embarrassed by Yeltsin, because he was publicly drunk all the time. Yes. Dysfunctional. I mean, I think we're we're living through some of those emotions now.

Tucker [00:23:03] Yes we are. Yeah. That's right.

Matt Taibbi [00:23:04] It's shameful. Yeah. And and so they, they wanted to, you know, their word was a senior ultra car, right. They wanted a strong hand, who would come in and kind of set things right and, and compete with the Americans. And they didn't they didn't like being thought of as a vassal state to the West. This is an ancient conflict for Russia and America. This goes back to the days of Peter the Great. You know, the Slava files versus the.

Matt Taibbi [00:23:32] The Western, you know, the, the pro-Western crew.

Matt Taibbi [00:23:35] And the pendulum swung the other.

Matt Taibbi [00:23:38] Way while I was there, you know, and, that was, you know, fascinating to watch, but it had some pretty serious consequences, too.

Tucker [00:23:47] Well, yeah, the veteran had to be right. Yeah. So. But. As for journalists like you, you began to become disillusioned with the American version in the 90s.

Matt Taibbi [00:23:57] Yes. Yeah, absolutely. While I while I was in Russia I became disillusioned both with the format of it, you know, the the kind of neutral third person. Version of reporting where we pretend we're not having a point of view. I didn't like that, you know, like, for instance, I would get sent out when I was at the Moscow Times, which is a paper I love. But they would send me to all these events, where funny things would happen. I would come back and read it up with humor, and they would tell me to take out the humor and write it in some other way. That was like, more serious.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:33] And I think.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:35] That's a lie. Right? Like if you.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:36] If you go.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:37] To a scene that's funny. Like, for instance, I had the cover of this ridiculous press conference where. Prince Philip appeared for, I think, the World Wildlife Fund or something like that. And he's giving a speech to all these Russians about, you know, their backward attitudes about conservation and everything.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:54] And in the middle of his speech, the.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:56] Hotel brings the spread, which includes boos.

Matt Taibbi [00:24:59] And all the.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:00] Reporters get up and leave Prince Philip talking by himself. What they say? Well, they just eat all the food and drink and drink all the booze.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:07] And to me, that's the story. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:09] You know, so I went home and I wrote that up and they, you know, they kind of wanted me to do something.

Tucker [00:25:14] Else, like pretend it didn't happen.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:15] Right. Exactly.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:16] And I thought, well.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:18] You know, this isn't right. You know, I mean, I was just a kid. I didn't really know, but I thought there's something not quite right about that.

Tucker [00:25:24] To what extent, in retrospect, do you think that Western news organizations were taking their cues from Western businesses or Western governments?

Matt Taibbi [00:25:33] Oh.

Matt Taibbi [00:25:34] I mean, 90%, 95%.

Tucker [00:25:37] Really?

Matt Taibbi [00:25:38] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you go back and look. Some other organizations, you know, the current deputy prime minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland. A colleague at the time. She was part of that whole crew of Western journalists there.

Tucker [00:25:58] What was she like?

Matt Taibbi [00:26:10] Appeared, and yes, it was messy. It was a messy transition to capitalism. Was that was the word they used for? No, actually, it was just pure gangsterism. And most of the people who got.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:22] Rich.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:22] Did so through absolutely corrupt privatization.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:26] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:26] Schemes were like, for instance, there was a thing called loans for shares, but the government was literally lending the money to cronies so that they could buy companies like Exxon for pennies on the dollar. You know, I mean, like Yukos, for instance, was a gigantic oil company worth.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:41] You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:42] As much as any Western oil company would be worth. So they bought it for nothing, basically for for a pittance, because they were pals of the people in government. So they created an instant billionaire class, and that was completely passed over and nobody reported on that.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:59] Then.

Matt Taibbi [00:26:59] Once these people had money, they were treated.

Matt Taibbi [00:27:04] As the sort of legitimate wealth.

Matt Taibbi [00:27:08] Creators and. They didn't they weren't even with the robber barons who at least, like, built railroads. They don't do anything except steel, you know, they were wealth extractors. And, and it was amazing watching the hype of. The whitewashing of Yeltsin's complete misrule, hi brutalizing of domestic journalists. Right? I mean, like the there was a ton of that going on in the 90s, long before Putin came to office and became infamous for McGill. Yes. There were so many journalists who were killed before Putin came under Yeltsin. The guy eventually.

Tucker [00:27:56] Putin kills journalists.

Matt Taibbi [00:27:58] No, no, I know this this started this started from the very beginning.

Matt Taibbi [00:28:02] They were doing this. I mean, that guy I told you about with the exploding briefcase, that was in 1994 when that happened. You know, there were. I had a friend, not exactly a friend, somebody I knew well, Alexander Considine, who also worked for a newspaper there. He got thrown in a mental institution, in the Yeltsin years, there were there. Leonid Kirchhoff. Who was not only fired every time he did an exposé, but, you know, he, he would be attacked. He had somebody come through his window one night, if I remember correctly. So it was a dangerous profession before Putin came to office. Now, obviously, it went to a new level once he came in. And, you know, there were people I knew who died. Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:28:57] You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:28:57] In the years after he became president. But it wasn't an appreciably different vibe for journalists. The the difference was that they.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:07] That Putin.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:08] Concentrated government authority in a way that had not been done previously before. It was more of like a gang land free for all. Putin came in, he took over the last remaining independent television station, and.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:22] TV. He had the.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:24] One of the oligarchs arrested, Vladimir Brzezinski and.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:30] You know, the, the owner.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:33] Of, bank manager Mikhail.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:35] Khodorkovsky.

Tucker [00:29:36] Famously.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:37] Famously put in jail, you know, they were sponsors of media as well. So. But the only thing that was different is that the government was exerting sort of overt over media. And they were they were stamping out the individual pockets of opposition. So during the Yeltsin years, it was very dangerous.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:56] You just you you.

Matt Taibbi [00:29:57] Did still have some freedom to do really good work. And that's why those people were amazing. Like, you know, they were. Everything every time they did a story and they were still doing it. They just had they had such balls. It was incredible to watch.

Tucker [00:30:10] It's just interesting.

Matt Taibbi [00:30:12] And then the contrast, by the way, with between that and the on the Americans right was was so striking for me.

Tucker [00:30:19] But why would American journalists be providing cover for Yeltsin or ignoring the downside of Yeltsin?

Matt Taibbi [00:30:27] So some of it was cultural. You know, you come in, you don't speak the language.

Matt Taibbi [00:30:32] It's a temporary assignment. You're hanging around with a bunch of other Westerners.

Matt Taibbi [00:30:36] And so you don't see.

Matt Taibbi [00:30:37] Right like that. That was a very typical thing.

Matt Taibbi [00:30:40] The few reporters who, you know. They were better, right? Because they were at least in tune to what was going on in the country. But Moscow was still, and Saint Petersburg were like a different country compared to what was going on in the rest of Russia. You know, you could be in Moscow and it would seem like a more or less functional place.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:07] You go.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:08] 40 miles outside of the city, and again, there's subsistence farming, you know, and, or there's.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:14] Whole stretches.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:15] Where there's no government and people are just setting up toll roads.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:19] You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:20] They're they're putting on, fatigues and creating their own toll booths.

Tucker [00:31:25] So it's like Beirut.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:26] Yeah, exactly.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:27] And but if you didn't know, if you didn't go out, you wouldn't see it, you know? So I think that was it was a problem of perception for a lot of these folks. And.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:38] But, I thought it was inexcusable because, you know, as a reporter, your first job is, is to find out, you know, to check for yourself. And how.

Tucker [00:31:50] Are you treated by government there.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:52] So. We had a unique.

Matt Taibbi [00:31:55] Position because we were publishing in Russia. So unlike all those other reporter American reporters, I was technically a Russian news organization. We had a Russian newspaper. We had a Russian business. So even though we were an in in English, we were regulated by. You know, the Russian government. We got visited every now and then by the tax police asking for bribes and then, after after I left, they eventually shut the paper down. So.

Matt Taibbi [00:32:29] But they, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:32:31] They paid attention to us, but it wasn't the same as, the way they paid attention to, you know, the New York Times and other reporters. I mean, there were people who are Porthleven.

Matt Taibbi [00:32:42] The cops remember that name? Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [00:32:44] Yeah. So he got he got shot, right? While he was there and.

Matt Taibbi [00:32:49] I don't.

Matt Taibbi [00:32:50] I don't know that it was a Russian government interest that that did that, but they were paying attention to coverage that went out overseas. They weren't. They didn't care so much about what I was doing, which was writing for people who are in Russia. And, no. And also we were writing in English, so God knows how many. Russian officials. They were even understanding what we were doing. So.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:12] Yeah.

Tucker [00:33:12] So how did. Well, first of all, why did you leave?

Matt Taibbi [00:33:18] Well.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:20] It became harder and harder. The expat community shrank, when Putin came to power, which killed our advertiser base.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:30] And, I.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:33] We had a humor newspaper that was sort of loosely based on. Like a cross between spy magazine and screw and I. I kind of thought that we would, you know, run the course.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:44] Yeah. Creatively, while I was there. And, you know, I.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:51] At some point I just wanted to come home, but.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:54] But also, you know, it it kind.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:55] Of turned.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:56] Nasty.

Matt Taibbi [00:33:57] You know, some of the people who I knew, I like, I vaguely knew Anna Politkovskaya, for instance, who got killed while I was there. And there was another reporter who is sort of a mentor to me. This guy here is like a. He died under mysterious circumstances. Some people said it was a poisoned telephone. I mean, who knows? Right. But, it got kind of unpleasant.

Matt Taibbi [00:34:25] And, you know, I the community.

Matt Taibbi [00:34:29] Was just not as as big as it had been in, in the 90s. I mean, Moscow in the late 90s was an incredible scene. It was like Chicago in the 30s. Mean it's it's very difficult to describe what it was actually like. You know, gangsters everywhere, bodies, you know, all over the place, people being thrown out of windows. There were terrorist explosions happening all the time. It was it was a wild place to be. And you know, that.

Matt Taibbi [00:34:57] That story kind of ran its course while I was while I was there. And the city started to transform into what you saw when you went. Yeah.

Tucker [00:35:04] The most functional city I've ever read.

Matt Taibbi [00:35:06] Which is so it's so amazing for me to hear.

Tucker [00:35:08] She will was certainly shocking for me. So this winter I'm standing in the kitchen with my dogs and my wife comes in. She's just come back from a long walk and she has this look on her face, this look of tranquility and joy and peace. And I said, what do you been doing? And she said, I was praying. And I said, where? She said, on my walk for an hour and a half. And it turns out she was listening to something I'd never heard of before, which an app called hello. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Like hello. And a friend of hers gave it to her. And this set off a chain reaction in my family, where pretty much everyone in my family started to listen to hello every day. It's a prayer app, and it's the best way, as you know, to find peace. And this makes it very easy to set aside the time to deeply pray every single day. And I was so impressed by Halo that I tracked down the number. The CEO and I called him and I said, I want to advertise this on our podcast because it's something that I really believe in, and I think you do an amazing job and it's basically nondenominational Christian. You don't have to be Catholic, or you can be, any kind of Christian, but halal will help you focus your prayer in a way. That'll be very obvious to your husband when you walk into the kitchen. I can't promise you that. It's an amazing, amazing resource. They've got, like, 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations, Bible studies. Famously, Mark Wahlberg leads one of them. It's just really, really good. You can download it for three months free at hello.com/tucker. And, I strongly recommend that you do that. Yeah. So you missed in the ten years you were gone, the entire span of the Clinton years.

Matt Taibbi [00:36:47] Yep.

Tucker [00:36:49] And nine, 11.

Matt Taibbi [00:36:50] Nine and.

Tucker [00:36:50] And so I think it's fair to say it was a completely different country in 2002 from what it had been in 1992. What did you think when you go back?

Matt Taibbi [00:37:02] Well, I mean, I was I was shocked when I got.

Matt Taibbi [00:37:05] Back and I was thinking about this just the other day because, you know, I think a lot now about kind of America's slide. I had this vision when the whole time I was there, I, you know, watching the Russian government in action was like getting this incredible advanced education into autocratic, autocratic methods. Yes. How things work. Right. You know, the jailing of political opponents, you know, on trumped up charges or, you know, blackmail and then how things are leaked by the intelligence services like that stuff just happens out in the open there. Right? And I always had this image that, well, in America that doesn't go on. And then I come home to post. Well, we have to start throwing all of our democratic guarantees overboard because I think, as Dick Cheney put it, we have to start exploring the dark side. Because, you know, the Bill of rights is inadequate to keep us safe. We we need to start doing, you know, all these things that I thought were crazy, you know, the Patriot Act.

Matt Taibbi [00:38:13] The the.

Matt Taibbi [00:38:15] Authorization to use military force. Right. Like sort of.

Matt Taibbi [00:38:17] So you're moving.

Matt Taibbi [00:38:20] The authority to declare war out of Congress to basically to the white House.

Matt Taibbi [00:38:26] Mass surveillance, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:38:30] Guantanamo Bay. All these things were really shocking to me. And it was it was kind of, I thought was also ironic to come back from Russia to this developing situation. And then in 2002 I took all of my sort of fellow political liberals seriously when they said they were, you know, ardently opposed to this secretive revolution. Right. And the spy state and drone warfare and all these other things and and when oh, but Barack Obama, the constitutional lawyer, came along and there was this belief that a transfer he would usher in a transformative presidency that would undo, you know, this Cheney vision which scared me, you know, which I thought was was sort of going to undo the schoolhouse Rock version of America that I grew up believing in. I'm kind of embarrassed. Embarrassed? Now, I actually thought that was going to happen, that when Barack Obama got elected, that all that would.

Matt Taibbi [00:39:45] Would turn back.

Matt Taibbi [00:39:48] But in hindsight, you know, they never had any intention. It seems that, you know, of, of changing anything. And if you go back and look at the statements.

Matt Taibbi [00:39:56] You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:39:57] They were saying things like, we're we're not, we're not we might not change the status quo right away. Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:03] And I had, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:06] I had been very positive about Barack Obama. I covered him on the campaign trail.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:11] Because.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:12] My job, by the way, I when I came back, I lucked into getting the greatest job in journalism, which is covering campaigns for rolling Stone. And, and I was very impressed by Barack Obama. I thought he was incredible. But it wasn't disillusioning to see what happened afterwards.

Tucker [00:40:30] At what point did you realize he wasn't what you thought he was?

Matt Taibbi [00:40:34] So, right after he got elected, I got assigned to cover the causes of the financial crisis. And which was funny because I had no background in finance. I didn't have any clue what a mortgage backed security was or how any of that works. But one of the first things that happened was.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:51] That, you know, I got.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:52] Calls from people in the Democratic Party who said.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:55] You should.

Matt Taibbi [00:40:55] Look at the president's relationship to Citigroup. And you know how the Citigroup bailout happened. You know, he put a Citigroup executive who had been a college buddy of.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:07] His.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:08] In charge of his economic transition, during which they gave him a very, you know, a sweetheart bailout.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:14] Deal to, to to.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:17] Citigroup. And this was an early indication that, you know, this president was maybe not exactly what I thought.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:24] He was not.

Tucker [00:41:25] Transformative in the way you imagined.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:27] Right. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:28] And.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:30] Even though rolling Stone couldn't, they were over the moon about Obama. Right? The.

Tucker [00:41:35] That was true love. I remember that, right?

Matt Taibbi [00:41:37] Yeah. It was almost.

Tucker [00:41:38] Erotic.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:38] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:40] I mean, everybody in in liberal media loved Obama.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:44] But.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:45] Particularly at our magazine.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:46] Where.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:47] You know, the, the people who owned it.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:50] Were they.

Matt Taibbi [00:41:51] Were, they were just delirious about Obama. And so when I came to them and I said, look, I have to do this story about how this, this bailout situation is. They weren't pleased, but they ran. If you can go back and look, you'll see. There's a story called Obama's Big Sell Out. It was like a 9000 word feature that they let me run.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:10] And.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:12] So that was like a year after he got, into office. But that was kind of the beginning.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:18] Of.

Tucker [00:42:19] Lot of the PSA.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:20] It basically.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:21] Said.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:22] That, that the.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:24] Obama had.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:25] Run.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:27] As an economic populist. And had talked a lot about reforming, certain things that had gone on on Wall Street that had allowed.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:39] You know, the.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:39] Excesses of the mortgage bubble to happen. And then as soon as.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:47] He got.

Matt Taibbi [00:42:47] Elected, he brought in all these acolytes. Obama brought a whole bunch of people close to Bob Rubin into the government. These were the same kind of people who had caused the crash. Yes. Right. So to me, I wrote it as kind of a a bait and switch. You know, he he ran as somebody who was going to change the system. He brought in people who were the system.

Matt Taibbi [00:43:24] And in addition.

Matt Taibbi [00:43:26] There was.

Matt Taibbi [00:43:27] This.

Matt Taibbi [00:43:28] Bailout deal with Citi, with Citigroup in particular. That was that was kind of malodorous. And Obama had brought in to run his economic policy. And the idea was he had run as one thing and he was really another thing. So that was one of the first stories of that time.

Tucker [00:43:55] How did the Obama administration react to the piece?

Matt Taibbi [00:44:00] They weren't happy.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:02] If you go back and look, there's there's an interview with Obama.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:06] They did an.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:06] Official rolling Stone interview with him years later where.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:10] He, he sort.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:12] Of brought up the fact that even your magazine talked about how I didn't do.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:16] Enough.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:17] And this was like years after the fact.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:19] And and by the.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:21] Way, I had been incredibly complimentary of him while he was running. Right. So of all of the things that that had been written about him, what he remembered was this one slight, you know, which I thought was very telling. Yeah. Design of his character, you know, and.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:36] But yeah, at the.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:37] Time I wasn't paying attention to the other things like about, you know, the continued prosecution of the war on terror or, you know, the drone assassination thing, the kill.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:46] List.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:47] You know, Terror Tuesdays, all that stuff. I didn't really, clue into that.

Tucker [00:44:51] The killing an American citizen with a drone.

Matt Taibbi [00:44:54] Yeah. Incredible. You know, when you. I mean, I did a story later about another American who sued the government for it because he thought he was on the kill list. You know, the government's response was, you're not entitled to find out whether you're on it or not. You're on the kill list. Yeah. And the the the whole idea that. We even have something called, like, lethal action that it might apply to an American Citizen, that you. And, you know, if you go back and look, say they basically invented I mean. I don't know how disillusioning this was for you, but they just made up on the fly legal, legal justifications for what they were doing that weren't grounded in any law that was passed or any any court case. They just sort of wrote themselves white papers giving themselves permission to do this stuff.

Matt Taibbi [00:45:52] Which I think is crazy. And to this day.

Matt Taibbi [00:45:54] I think it's.

Tucker [00:45:54] Crazy. Well, I found it totally shocking. And I'm, I think I'm basically opposed to the death penalty anyway. But, you know, I think reasonable people can support the death penalty.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:03] Absolutely. If there's a trial.

Tucker [00:46:05] Well, that's the point, right? But there's a trial. And the one thing you can never do is murder your own citizens, because you exist to help your citizens. The only reason we have the government, right. Why do we have government is a collective action on everyone's behalf. Who's a citizen? So the idea that you could kill an American citizen. And the first time, I mean, I think they've actually killed quite a few American citizens. It turns out I didn't know that. But the first time I became aware of it, it was it was a effectively a foreign national with a U.S. passport.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:35] The Awlaki kind of wacky.

Tucker [00:46:37] And then, you know, he was like, well, are you really an American? Well, yeah, actually, he's an American citizen. Yeah, like that's the whole point. You're either a citizen or not.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:45] Right.

Tucker [00:46:45] And I remember being really shocked by that.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:49] Act, but it was glossed.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:49] Over in this weird way, right? People were like, yeah.

Tucker [00:46:52] He's a terrorist.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:53] And he's a terrorist, but.

Tucker [00:46:55] We're terrorist adjacent.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:56] Right.

Tucker [00:46:56] Terrorist?

Matt Taibbi [00:46:57] Yeah. I mean, I think you could probably.

Matt Taibbi [00:46:59] Call him a terrorist, but they killed.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:00] A 16 year old son, too. And but.

Tucker [00:47:05] So how did Obama explain that?

Matt Taibbi [00:47:07] So, I mean, I remember he gave a speech.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:10] I was looking at this just the other day where he, he talked about, among other things, they said that Awlaki had been tied to the Cole bombing. And I remember reading that and.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:22] Thinking, okay, well, he's saying that this is punishment for a crime. But there's no trial, right?

Matt Taibbi [00:47:31] We're pronouncing him guilty.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:33] And just.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:34] Executing the guy. And for something that we say he did.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:39] That seemed crazy to me, you know? Yes. And I remember there was.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:43] There was another white.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:44] Paper, and I believe.

Matt Taibbi [00:47:46] Leon Panetta was involved in where the concept was unilaterally us just talking about it, and it. I'd be curious to hear what you think. I mean, I think when we, when we did those things and Didn't make a big stink about it. I had crossed a line. I feel like there's no going back once you.

Tucker [00:48:30] So we were talking with us at dinner last night. I mean, obviously, you're coming from different poles, I guess. You know, probably. Well, it turns out not, but, yeah, in 1995, we would have been on exactly opposite sides. But I think we both, given our similar age, had the same sort of gut level belief, which is whatever the U.S. does abroad is in a completely different category from the way the government conducts itself domestically. In other words, you can't treat American citizens like you would, you know, the Houthis or something? Right. It's like there's one set of standards for the way we deal conduct our foreign policy with foreigners, and a completely different standard for the way the U.S. government treats its own citizens who own the government. Is their government, right? Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:11] Right. Exactly.

Tucker [00:49:12] I guess what I didn't realize, because I was morally deficient and young and dumb, was that once you start doing really evil things abroad, you're going to do them at home.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:22] Actually, absolutely.

Tucker [00:49:23] And you can't defend democracy by subverting democracy.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:26] No. And also you're you're you're basically.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:31] Denaturing the whole idea.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:33] Of.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:34] Democracy. You're you're you're diluting it once you once you start murdering people without due process.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:42] You know, it's not democracy anymore.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:44] I mean, they use that term in a very facile way.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:48] Now, constantly.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:49] We have to protect democracy. Well, what do you mean by that? You're going to protect democracy by censoring, right. Like this is this.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:55] Is the whole thing.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:56] I've spent the last two years.

Matt Taibbi [00:49:58] On. If you if if that's what you mean.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:02] That's contradictory. Right?

Matt Taibbi [00:50:04] And, you know.

Tucker [00:50:05] That's contradictory. In what sense?

Matt Taibbi [00:50:08] Well, the First Amendment. We all knew that America, United States was whacking people all over the world, right? I mean, even though the Church Committee hearings came along and we basically said we weren't going to do that anymore, of course we were doing it right. We were doing all kinds of horrible things. We were.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:41] Probably, fixing elections.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:44] You know, and half the places.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:46] On Earth.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:47] But not here. Right. Like that was a a bright line for Americans. Now, maybe that's chauvinistic to.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:54] To believe in that.

Matt Taibbi [00:50:57] But I was like you, I didn't I didn't think they would ever cross that line, and come in and bring these ideas home.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:04] But.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:05] You know, this is what we're finding out. No, I mean, this was the big theme of the Twitter files was, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:11] When we tried to.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:13] Figure out where.

Tucker [00:51:14] So what are the Twitter can you explain for people who didn't follow it at the time?

Matt Taibbi [00:51:17] So, in late.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:19] 2022, after Elon Musk acquired, Twitter, you know, there started to be rumors that he was going to open up the internal communications of old Twitter and sort of give them to the world. Right. And it turned out to be true. He I got a call one day or I got a note, sort of summoning me to San Francisco.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:43] And I come.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:44] From somebody at Twitter, let's put it that way.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:46] And.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:48] And so I was the first.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:50] Person, who was put.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:54] On this project of looking, rummaging through old Twitter's.

Matt Taibbi [00:51:59] You know, correspondence. And I, you know, I, I think he said that.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:06] Elon said that his idea was that he wanted to restore trust in the platform by telling people about the different kinds of censorship techniques that were going on. It's not clear exactly what what he was up to, but, you know, he seemed sincere at the time. He brought in me. He brought in Barry Weiss. Barry brought in a couple of other people like Michael Shellenberger. Lee Fong ended up being involved. Another reporter. Really good young investigative reporter. Maybe the last one. Right.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:36] Probably, you know, he he appeared.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:40] And so there was a group of.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:41] Us, and.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:42] For about three months, we got to look.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:44] Through.

Matt Taibbi [00:52:46] The internal correspondence of one of the world's biggest, you know, communications companies. And the big thing that we found was that there was this nexus of communication between government enforcement and intelligence agencies and the internet platforms, and they had a very sophisticated, organized bureaucracy that was involved with controlling content, in a variety of different ways.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:14] And. Well.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:15] When we started to try to figure out, first of all, this was shocking to us, we. Seeing all these documents. As said flagged by FBI, flagged by.

Tucker [00:53:23] That's just what just because that's a crime, they're committing a crime by doing that, that's a legal problem. The Bill of rights. I mean, it's just really couldn't be clearer.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:30] Yeah, you would think. Right. You know.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:33] I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but it looked bad to me, right? Certainly it looked like a story.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:38] Yeah. No. No question. Right. But we had to figure out where did this come from?

Matt Taibbi [00:53:44] Like, how did this start? And when we started asking questions, you know, it turned out that a lot of the programs that were now targeting domestic.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:52] Speech began.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:54] As.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:54] Overseas.

Matt Taibbi [00:53:56] Counterterrorism, sort of messaging programs. Right. So the State Department, for instance, has a has a thing called the Global Engagement Center, which is now. And very much interested in speech both abroad and at home. But they were once exclusively, sort of counter ISIS, platform. In fact, they had a they had a different name back then. They were called the Csrc. But in 2016, Obama rechristened them the Global Engagement Center. And they started to look inward. And when I asked people who, I managed to talk to a couple of sources who who works, at that agency, one phrase really stuck out. It was cwrt the CPP. So that's counterterrorism to counter populism. And the idea was.

Matt Taibbi [00:54:49] Mission abroad of countering ISIS or al Qaeda contracting was it was kind of drying up, right, because those threats had been somewhat neutralized.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:01] But.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:02] Populism, you know, was now a very it was viewed as a very serious threat.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:08] After.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:10] Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring was something that maybe they didn't see as a bad thing, but they certainly saw. Transformative power of the internet platforms. I think that freaked them out.

Tucker [00:55:24] And the virus is communicable.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:26] Exactly, exactly. Then it was Brexit. Then. Then I think Trump was the last, you know, the last stand for a lot of these folks. And and that's when you started to see all these communications like, well, you know, we.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:36] Have to we need to get a more formalized.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:42] You know, control over these platforms. And so, yeah, that's when the War on Terror mission turned inward. And I think that's a huge story.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:52] Right. Of.

Tucker [00:55:53] Well, it's the it's the end of the country we grew up.

Matt Taibbi [00:55:55] In, right? Yeah. You would think, you know, and that's, you know, for me, it's been.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:03] And I think probably for, for.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:05] You too, the, the, this new theme of the sudden.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:11] Explosion of illiberal, tactics in politics.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:16] That.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:17] Even if they're directed at somebody.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:19] That, you know.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:20] Liberals hate, like Donald Trump or Steve Bannon.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:23] How can you not.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:24] Be freaked out by stuff like.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:26] That? We haven't used.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:26] Contempt of Congress to jail people since.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:29] The un-American.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:31] Affairs Committee in 1947.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:33] Right. This is like Third World.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:36] Kind of.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:36] Stuff.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:37] That we're seeing.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:39] You know, accusing the the.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:42] Frontrunner in a presidential campaign of. 100 different felonies. Is that happening? If he's not running for president? I mean, who can honestly say that? Right?

Matt Taibbi [00:56:52] It's, but you can't.

Matt Taibbi [00:56:53] Talk about it now. I mean, if you if you mention it, you're you're out of the club and, and mainstream press now, which is, incredible to me.

Tucker [00:57:02] You may have come to the obvious conclusion that the real debate is not between Republican and Democrat or socialist and capitalists. Right, left. The real battles between people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth. It's between good and evil, it's between honesty and falsehood. And we hope we are on the former side. That's why we created this network, the Tucker Carlson Network, and we invite you to subscribe to it. Go to Tucker carlson.com/podcast, our entire archive. Is there a lot of behind the scenes footage of what actually happens in this barn, when only an iPhone is running Tucker carlson.com/podcast? You will not regret it. And so I mean, it raises so many questions. But, most obviously then if uncovering the abuse of power by the powerful and particularly by government isn't the point of journalism, it's clearly not the point of journalism anymore. What is the point?

Matt Taibbi [00:57:58] Well, I mean, and.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:00] Then you become courtiers, right? I mean, I think that's.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:03] Again.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:04] What's ironic for me is that.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:06] You know, this is, as I saw this.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:09] Process happening full circle. You know, when I got first got to Russia, the first reporters I met had worked at places like Komsomolskaya Pravda and. In the 80s, right? Which were at one time it was the world's largest newspaper and had a circulation of 21 million or something like that. And, you know, I worked in the old Pravda building, when I was at the the Moscow Times and the people there, you know, they would tell me stories about what their jobs were in the 80s.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:36] And that was like that was like taking dictation. There were clerks, basically.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:41] Right? Yes. You know, they they would get the, whatever the message of the day was and they would do it and then go home to their wives and they would go fishing on the weekends. And there was no, you know, intellectual anything involved with it?

Matt Taibbi [00:58:54] You.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:54] Couldn't take it in that direction would be hazardous to your health if you.

Matt Taibbi [00:58:58] If you did. Well, that's.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:00] What journalism is now in America. I mean.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:03] Look what just happened with the Nord Stream thing. Just take an example. Right. Nord Stream happens, and there's no.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:11] Investigation whatsoever in in any of the major newspapers. How can that happen? It's this major, consequential thing that might.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:19] Have an impact on them.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:21] Starting a war with a nuclear.

Tucker [00:59:23] Power. And it just wrecked the economy of Western Europe, like.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:27] And it's a major ecological disaster, which you claim to care about.

Tucker [00:59:31] The largest manmade emission of CO2 in history. Right? So even if you think CO2 is driving the greatest threat that we face, the existential threat of climate change. But then you kind of want to know how that happened.

Matt Taibbi [00:59:44] Right? Wouldn't. Wouldn't be right. Right. You would think, you know.

Tucker [00:59:49] Why wouldn't I mean, it's is in driving. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this because. Like the only person in mainstream news to point out that no, Russia did not blow up Nord Stream and was attacked for it. But I was wondering, like, if I'm at the New York Times, like a lot of people I know, why would I just like, try to report that story out? It's so interesting. Like, why wouldn't they?

Matt Taibbi [01:00:08] Yeah. I have no idea. You know, I mean.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:12] Obviously you're getting a signal from down on high that, you know, that's not wanted in.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:18] But it's.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:20] Different. Okay.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:21] So in the, in the early 2000s, yes. There were high profile instances where people like Jesse Ventura were, hired from MSNBC because they, they mistakenly thought he was pro-war when they hired him. Phil Donahue is getting good ratings, but he's bounced, right?

Tucker [01:00:38] I was there for that. Yes.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:41] Chris Hedges, you know, I know, and Chris Chris was sort of.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:46] A classic example of a phenomenon that Noam Chomsky once wrote about in Manufacturing.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:51] Consent, which is that they don't.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:53] Fire you necessarily, but like, you just don't get promoted if you're considered the wrong kind of personality.

Matt Taibbi [01:00:59] Which is weird because.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:00] Good investigative reporters.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:02] Should be.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:02] Difficult personalities, right? If they're not, they're probably not good reporters.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:07] You know, I mean, just.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:08] Look at who who are great reporters are.

Tucker [01:01:12] They're independent minded.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:13] People, independent minded people. And you and, you know, you want to experience them in little bursts, for the most part. Right. With that. Yeah. But.

Tucker [01:01:22] They're all kind of crazy, to be honest.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:24] Yeah, but that's okay.

Tucker [01:01:26] Which part of the job.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:27] Right. But this.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:29] Is different. Like the there were a few instances like that back then were of people who are critics of the war or whatever. Now it's just this blanket. If you step out of line on any one of two dozen different.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:41] Topics, you're out. You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:44] And I think everybody's gotten that message.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:48] And that's the only thing that makes sense to.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:51] Me is like.

Tucker [01:01:52] What? So there are no brave people in all of journalism. There are no honest men left.

Matt Taibbi [01:01:56] Well, how can that mean? That it can't be possible.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:00] But it kind of is, right? I mean, there are a.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:02] Few people who. Who I.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:05] Think tried to do.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:06] A few things, you know. But just to take a look at.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:10] The Russiagate story, and they made so many mistakes on that, Jeff Gerth.

Tucker [01:02:14] Okay, wait. So before you, I want what's put you at the center of this, because you were one of the reasons for having this conversation is you were one of the only liberals in all media who and you speak Russian, you lived there for ten years. So you have credibility on this question, I would say. And you were the only ones who said, you know, I don't like Trump. I did vote for Trump. But like, I don't think this is real.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:37] I had a book out at the time.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:38] Called Insane Clown President about Donald Trump.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:41] Right? I mean, I'm not a fan.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:43] Of the guy.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:44] Right? But they came to me.

Tucker [01:02:46] So where were you when the Russiagate thing started?

Matt Taibbi [01:02:48] I was at rolling Stone.

Tucker [01:02:50] And what did you think when you first heard that he was a Russian agent?

Matt Taibbi [01:02:53] So, it was in late 2016.

Matt Taibbi [01:02:58] Was right after he had gotten elected. You remember that list that came out proper? Not.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:04] Wrote the Washington.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:05] Post of the story about this weird blacklist that, they had discovered of people who.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:11] The.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:11] Russians were supposedly in league with. And it was this shadowy organization called Prop or Not. And they.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:17] Linked.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:18] To this.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:18] List of, sites and, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:24] Without any evidence at all, they were there were linking all kinds of independent journalists to, to Russia.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:30] And I thought, well, that's crazy. And then then there was this whole thing.

Matt Taibbi [01:03:35] About. I actually had to do a segment, on MSNBC, with Chris Hayes. The other guest was Malcolm Nance, of all people. And it was all about, you know, is is Trump in league before he got inaugurated?

Matt Taibbi [01:03:51] Is Trump?

Matt Taibbi [01:03:54] You know, in league with the Russians? There are but just been a big leak about that. And I thought, well, there's no evidence for this, right. Like we.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:01] We just had.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:02] A catastrophic episode in journalism with the WMD thing where anonymous sources get us in a lot of trouble. If you can't recreate the experiment in the lab, you got to be careful of that story.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:15] Right? And that's all I said.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:17] I wasn't like, he's innocent, you know? Like I just.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:20] Thought. This is a dangerous story.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:23] Let's all be careful with this. And immediately there was this. Reaction. That was just shocking to me. It was like. It was like the shunning thing. It happened to me. It happened to, you know, Greenwald, obviously, Aaron Matea The Nation, there was like a group letter that was written by the rest of the staff.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:43] You.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:43] Know, denouncing him, the, you know, the husband of the editor of the of the nation, also the Steven Cohen. They didn't want him around.

Tucker [01:04:52] Oh, wonderful. Man.

Matt Taibbi [01:04:54] He was. But it was crazy because this was so. And everybody had already predetermined that this thing was true, this extraordinary, complicated thesis. They had somehow already arrived at the conclusion that it was proven.

Tucker [01:05:14] And you just point. You didn't know either way.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:18] I didn't really know other way, but I had a strong suspicion that it was wrong. Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:21] Like this, this, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:24] Journalists have a sense or the sixth sense. It doesn't smell right, right. Like it's kind of like the French Connection, where, where, you know, Gene Hackman looks over and says, that's a wrong table, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:05:34] Like this was a wrong table.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:36] It didn't look right.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:37] And I felt.

Tucker [01:05:37] The same way.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:38] Yeah. And, it was too complicated.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:40] For me to see. I wish I had known at the time.

Tucker [01:05:43] In an in right wing world where I then worked and lived. I felt like everyone believed it.

Matt Taibbi [01:05:49] Yeah, but how is that possible?

Tucker [01:05:51] Well, I remember saying to somebody, you know, I think this is I think this could be like, complete bullshit, like actual bullshit. And my friend goes, be careful, be careful. I think there's something there. I was like, okay, and by the way, I'm, I try to be very open minded, like, I don't know.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:05] Right.

Tucker [01:06:06] If you're actually a space alien, I don't know, prove it to me. Right. I just I really try to keep every possibility open. But I kept asking people like, what? Okay, how do we know this?

Matt Taibbi [01:06:17] Right?

Tucker [01:06:17] Everybody believed it.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:19] Yeah. Why? You know, they hated Trump. That was obvious, you know? But that wasn't.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:28] Enough for me, right? Like.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:30] Just on a superficial.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:31] Level, it didn't.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:32] Fit Donald Trump. You want to tell me he's involved in some mob deal.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:38] To build a casino in Atlantic City or something like that, right? Look, I believe that Donald Trump being James Bond and involved in a five year conspiracy with, the Russian government. You know what? What did Steele call it? A well-developed conspiracy of five years.

Matt Taibbi [01:06:57] That's ridiculous. This is a guy who, if you've been.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:00] To any of his campaign speeches, he.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:02] Can't get through the first.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:03] Sentence of one of his scripts. Like his brain is already off in another direction.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:08] How is that guy going to keep a secret?

Matt Taibbi [01:07:10] It didn't make any sense.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:12] And nobody had any evidence. And then even when things came out, that should have been.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:19] Fatal to the story, like when it finally came out in October of 2017 that the Clinton campaign had funded the Steele.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:26] Dossier. I thought, well, that this.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:31] It's over now, right?

Tucker [01:07:32] It's a Republican donor to me.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:34] Well, yes. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:36] Sort of. Previously. Reddington. Steele. Didn't come on at all till later, but still, once that came out and.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:44] You know, you knew.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:46] That campaign research had ended up in an intelligence assessment.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:51] That should have been it. I thought.

Matt Taibbi [01:07:54] And everybody just plowed ahead like it was still a thing.

Tucker [01:07:57] And so what happened to you in the middle of all. So you're at rolling Stone, you're this famous liberal reporter, one of the most famous liberal reporters, actually. And you make the mistake of saying, well, we don't know for a fact this is true. People start shunning you. Where does it go from there?

Matt Taibbi [01:08:13] So then I started to get angry about it.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:15] And, and at one point I went, why? Oh, because.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:21] You know, I don't like to be told what to do. I don't like to be told that I got to ignore something, right? You know, like, I'm one of those difficult personalities in journalism, right? Like, you know, it just happens that way. But I went to rolling Stone at one point.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:36] I had really.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:37] Good editors there for the most.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:38] Part.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:39] But I went to them and I said.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:42] Look, this story is wrong, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:08:44] And it's going to come out that it's wrong.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:48] Give me eight weeks to chase this down and let's let's be.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:52] The first mainstream organization to get it right.

Matt Taibbi [01:08:55] And, and put it to bed. And it'll be a coup for us, right? You know, let me let me do my thing on this.

Matt Taibbi [01:09:02] And they said no, the first time they ever said no to me, you know, like an investigator.

Tucker [01:09:07] And just to restate, you speak Russian, you can read Russian. So there's probably no one better to do the story.

Matt Taibbi [01:09:14] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:09:14] I would think. Right. You know, I even I even had some sources over there. Right. Who could have chased it down, you know, certain aspects of it down, like, you know, the Trump Tower deal and all that stuff like that would have been relatively easy to, to go through. And I and I had covered Congress. So the, the people who were investigating this, like I, I knew some of those folks too.

Matt Taibbi [01:09:37] And it's a it's a great story. I mean, when it first came out, it was obvious this is either the biggest intelligence.

Matt Taibbi [01:09:44] Coup in history, right? The Russians getting a manchurian candidate in the white House.

Matt Taibbi [01:09:49] Or it's the biggest fake in history, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:09:53] The biggest setup in history. Somebody other telling the biggest whopper ever or or the Russians have just pulled off this the most amazing thing. Except there's there's no other option.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:03] Yes.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:03] Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:04] So if it's not this, it's that. And we might as well be the first to report that. Right. Yes.

Tucker [01:10:11] So what did they say when you said no? On what grounds?

Matt Taibbi [01:10:15] I don't even I mean, I don't even remember what the excuse was.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:18] I they just.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:19] Weren't enthused about the idea, you know? And. And I understood that, you know, like the look, there are rolling Stone. They have a they have an audience that. Has certain expectations. But that was a that was a big moment for me. You know, I mean, I was naive. I actually thought they, you know, that that the, the magazine would be interested in, in going there because they.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:42] Had let me.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:44] You know, go against Obama before they let me do other things, but not on this.

Matt Taibbi [01:10:48] So.

Tucker [01:10:50] So how what did your colleagues city because by this point, I think it was becoming public to anyone who was watching like me that you were dissenting from the line on this question.

Matt Taibbi [01:11:01] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:11:01] So I would say Glenn Greenwald took the brunt of it. You know, there were stories in the The New Yorker profiles, you know, the bane of their resistance. Right? Like, why is Glenn Greenwald being a stick in the mud about this Russia thing? And this is interesting, I actually had the physical copy of The New Yorker where. I can say that they did. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:11:46] And it was it was an on the record quote by one of his former editors of all things.

Matt Taibbi [01:11:51] The cleanse, the racist. Yeah. Well, they didn't write.

Tucker [01:11:54] Well, he's impatient with the rise of women in the North.

Matt Taibbi [01:11:58] So when I saw that, I'm like, wow, this is like, what is going.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:03] On with this? Right?

Matt Taibbi [01:12:04] And then meanwhile, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:06] I was getting it from all angles that there were.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:09] Former.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:10] Russian, former American diplomats who were going after me online saying I was in league with Putin. And, you know, seriously.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:17] Yeah, yeah.

Tucker [01:12:19] Kind of a heavy charge.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:20] Yeah. You would think, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:24] And that was becoming increasingly common. It was an implication of a lot of the, the back and forth, on social media. You know, this person is too close to Russia or, you know, he loves Putin, right? Like that, that kind of a thing.

Tucker [01:12:42] Had you ever worked as a secret agent for Putin?

Matt Taibbi [01:12:44] Of course not. You know, I kidding.

Tucker [01:12:47] I I'm kidding actually. So nuts. You just said you left Russia because you didn't like the vibe under Putin.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:53] I mean, we we we put Putin.

Matt Taibbi [01:12:57] In the cover of our newspaper, like, in drag, carrying a dominatrix whip, you know, like, yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:03] We we lampooned him constantly and, and I actually, I did some.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:09] Journalism in Russian for another paper that was very critical of him and talked about the apartment bombings and some other stuff.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:15] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:17] So I was no friend of Vladimir Putin's.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:19] But that became.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:20] A common thing in journalism.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:22] And it's it was just so shocking. And I, I knew at that.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:27] Point that my time was.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:29] Limited.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:29] And, you know, at rolling Stone, which I love the place, I really love that place. It was it's a great.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:35] Gig, too.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:36] But there was no way I was going to be able to stay under those circumstances.

Tucker [01:13:41] How long did you last.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:43] Until, 20, 20, I guess so 15 years, roughly. You know, maybe. Maybe 16, I guess.

Matt Taibbi [01:13:53] So it was a it was a great time.

Tucker [01:13:55] So when it became clear that, you know, the claim that Putin had installed Trump as the American president when it became clear that was like malicious fantasy, it was a total why did any of the people who attacked you and called you a Russian agent, like, apologize or change them?

Matt Taibbi [01:14:13] Not.

Matt Taibbi [01:14:13] Of course not. Did they never.

Matt Taibbi [01:14:15] Apologize to you?

Tucker [01:14:17] No, but it's a little different because by that point I was like such an outlaw that like, I had no expectation of being treated fairly by anyone ever other than my wife. So I, I was just no, I'm sure by that, you know, it's just like your head changes, but you were very much at like, everyone liked you. And I mean, you were not an outlaw and then but you became an outlaw kind of overnight, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:14:38] Yes. No no no no no. My name is sort of, you know, synonymous with. You know, reactionary troll, you know, that kind of thing. And that happened basically overnight.

Matt Taibbi [01:14:55] It was a little tough.

Matt Taibbi [01:14:56] Stick for a few years there, but.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:00] But, you know, I.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:01] Got over it relatively quickly. I moved to Substack, which was. It turned out to be a great thing.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:09] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:11] Which is an independent platform. And, you know, I was one of the first people who. Kind of left big mainstream media to.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:19] Do.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:20] The self-publishing thing and, and, discovered that there was actually.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:27] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:28] A functioning business model there. I mean. I'd been in journalism for 30 years and had never seen it as anything but a dying business. Right? There was never any money that you're actually going to make, right?

Tucker [01:15:40] If you're making 100 grand, you're, like, psyched.

Matt Taibbi [01:15:41] Yeah, exactly. And then all of a sudden, it turns out that there's actually this huge market out there because people hate journalism, right? Like that's the problem. When you're in mainstream media, you don't see that there's actually this screaming need for something else, that people aren't getting because they don't trust regular media. So, I was I was an early beneficiary of that whole thing, but it.

Tucker [01:16:05] Was a default, though. I mean, you probably would have stayed at, of course, The New Yorker or Rolling Stone or where you were rolling Stone forever. Right?

Matt Taibbi [01:16:13] Absolutely. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:16:14] Had this not happened, I would have been there. You know, I was very loyal to the magazine. You know, I stuck up for them always, even when they were wrong, even during the Yuva thing, you know, I said, look, they made a mistake, but we're we're doing the right thing. We're on it. We're self auditing. Like, you know, this is a great magazine, we have a great tradition, etc., etc.. I mean, I was kind of a company man and embarrassing kind of way. But when the the Russia thing happened, you know, all bets were off and I wasn't the only one or there and, you know, there were other people in the business this, this, this also happened too. So.

Tucker [01:16:51] But none of them came back the way that you did.

Matt Taibbi [01:16:55] Oh, you mean Glenn?

Tucker [01:16:56] Glenn? Yeah, sure.

Matt Taibbi [01:16:57] Yeah. You know.

Tucker [01:16:59] Well, very few.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:00] Yeah, a few.

Tucker [01:17:02] Did you think about just hanging up and becoming a translator or doing something else?

Matt Taibbi [01:17:06] No.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:07] I mean, I love this job. You.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:08] Know, I, I, after initially.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:12] Not really.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:13] Loving.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:15] Journalism, I, I learned to really love it while I was at while I was at rolling Stone, you know, and.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:22] And then, you know, now, additionally, you know, I think the, the country needs journalists.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:29] They need and they're the.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:31] The thing.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:32] That, that you need most of all in journalism to be good at, it is you need to be you need to have some bravery.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:37] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:37] That wasn't true in American journalism for a long time.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:41] Probably, you know, not not.

Matt Taibbi [01:17:44] Since the Vietnam days or or the Red scare or, you know, was there a situation where there was a real social price to pay for, for taking, you know, a certain stance on things? Now there is. Right. And if you're going to do certain kinds of reporting. You're going to lose all your friends. But that's the job, you know, and not many people are willing to do that. And I am willing to do that.

Matt Taibbi [01:18:08] Because I.

Matt Taibbi [01:18:09] Never expected to keep friends in this business. So.

Matt Taibbi [01:18:14] It I think it's an it's.

Matt Taibbi [01:18:17] Unfortunately an exciting time to be a journalist, but.

Matt Taibbi [01:18:21] You know. You know, I'm sure. You'd probably feel the same way.

Tucker [01:18:25] I do feel this is exactly how I feel like. Right. Nicely put. Yeah, yeah. That's right. If you're in it to make friends, you, you know. Yeah. Probably in the wrong business. Go to church, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:18:33] Yeah, exactly.

Tucker [01:18:34] But, well, tell us about, like, having been in institutional journalism, you know, at the top of that, really. And then finding yourself, like, having to. Work for yourself. Like what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Matt Taibbi [01:18:49] Well, first of all, being.

Matt Taibbi [01:18:51] In institutional journalism is a little bit overrated, right? Like I think, because I came from alternative journalism.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:01] I had financed my, my own newspaper, in Moscow. And, you know, I did everything from printing to running the plates to, to, to the printing press and, you know, selling ads, everything. So.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:19] You know, the.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:20] The business is, is something that I've always been familiar with. And suddenly being involved with a big organization, it's nice, but I don't see it as a prerequisite. I thought it was really funny at the beginning of Trump's reign, when a couple of the reporters were, complaining about losing their white House press credentials. It's like.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:38] Who cares, right? You're out.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:40] You're supposed to be on the outside.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:42] Right? Like, what are you whining about? You know, to do the job?

Tucker [01:19:46] You've been to a white House briefing.

Matt Taibbi [01:19:47] I have, yes. Yes.

Tucker [01:19:49] And you know how soul killing it is? Yeah. Learn nothing. You're captive. You eat lunch out of a vending machine. Everybody has got, like, the most distorted value system. Like they're so impressed by their hard passes and they're all such losers. Like, if you would, you would quit the business, right? If you had to do that.

Matt Taibbi [01:20:06] Absolutely. In fact, one of the first things that I was assigned to do when I went to wrote to rolling Stone, they sent me on a campaign junket with John Kerry. So I was on the plane with Kerry during that campaign for like a month or something like that. And, you know, it's a similar dynamic to the white House press corps. It's the same people every single day. It's very clubby.

Matt Taibbi [01:20:32] They have.

Tucker [01:20:33] Extremely.

Matt Taibbi [01:20:34] Right. So the there's even seating arrangements. Right. The where the New York Times gets to sit in the front and then they, they kind of it's almost it's like Heathers or Mean Girls that they, you know, according to how, how well known you are in the business. You have to sit further and further back in the plane, right or farther back in, in the plane.

Tucker [01:20:53] And at the very back or the cameraman.

Matt Taibbi [01:20:54] Yeah, exactly. And at the time they were angry at Alexandra Pelosi because she had filmed some of them. So she was in the back with a bunch of a bunch of piles of equipment.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:04] But, but I got.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:07] Frustrated very quickly by the fact that.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:09] All they were doing all day long was just taking.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:14] You know, press releases.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:15] From flacks, and then they would eat there were they would be given.

Tucker [01:21:19] The macaroni and cheese. Butterfingers. Yeah. Beer.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:22] So I went on a hunger strike.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:25] In my first trip, I, I had this, like, epiphany that they're just giving me too much stuff. I'm just not going to take anything from any of these people. And I stopped eating. I stopped taking the press releases. I.

Tucker [01:21:37] The only one who didn't get fat on a campaign.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:39] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:39] Exactly right.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:41] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:42] When we got to the events, I would not go to the events. I would run a mile in any direction and just talk to anybody about anything but the campaign.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:50] Because the I'm like, this isn't journalism.

Matt Taibbi [01:21:55] You're sitting there just be just taking something and then converting it into a press release, like, what is that? You know, but the white House is even worse because.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:04] They have.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:06] They have airs about it.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:07] Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:08] And, you know, even though I haven't done that beat.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:11] You know, for I.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:14] Think it's an important beat, like you have to have somebody has to ask the president questions.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:18] But they.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:19] Don't for the most part.

Tucker [01:22:20] Right. I know, do they? I've never seen it.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:22] Right. So, you know, I don't know.

Tucker [01:22:25] At best you get some reporter whose goal is not to elicit information, but just to prove that he's like a antagonist to the president. Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:35] Exactly.

Tucker [01:22:35] I remember, you know, thanks, Dan Rather, but it doesn't advance the story in any meaningful way, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:22:42] Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:42] Exactly. What they want is. And that's what they were. They were upset about the Jim Acosta's of the world. They were upset that they were being denied this.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:49] This.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:51] You know, salable piece of video.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:54] Where.

Matt Taibbi [01:22:55] They could stand up and do this, you know, and just circulate. And.

Tucker [01:23:01] I always wonder why Jim Acosta, who I don't know, but I was wondering if Jim Acosta was always telling me what a journalist he was. And a lot of guys were like this. Yeah. Including some I've worked with. But I'm a journalist. Okay. Tornado comes through trailer park. Give me 750 words on that. Like, I don't think they're capable of writing a story. Do you ever think that, like, could Jim Acosta actually just write, like, a news story or even an expository essay?

Matt Taibbi [01:23:25] Well, I wonder about that because are they even, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:29] Once the not.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:30] That long, they're not to be all back in the day about it, but.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:34] You wouldn't.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:34] Have gotten a job in the white House press office if you hadn't come through, you know, covering town meetings and all that stuff.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:42] I mean.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:43] You know, I did that. I covered. I covered all men, I covered.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:47] You know, all the.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:48] Police beat fires, stuff like that. You have to be able to do that stuff.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:52] And that's the basics of the job is.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:56] You know, showing up, talking to people.

Matt Taibbi [01:23:59] In the street, talking to this person, that person. You have to do crime reporting.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:03] You know, done it and you.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:06] Got to talk to people who are on the other side of the.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:07] Law, all that stuff. I don't think they can do that. I mean, I remember.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:11] Seeing.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:12] Somebody.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:13] I forget what organization was, but somebody.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:15] One of the kind of.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:17] Mainstream sort of web.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:19] Only sites.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:22] One of their columnists was talking about how much, he hated the telephone. And I thought, what journalist hates the telephone? How can you do this job if you hate the telephone?

Matt Taibbi [01:24:31] Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:32] If you. And because the new thing is, they decide what they think, they find links that support their ideas.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:40] And then they just type the thing.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:43] Whereas, you know, what you're supposed to do is.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:45] Talk.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:46] To everybody, then figure out what the story.

Tucker [01:24:47] Is to add information to the story. Right? Right. Not just, you know, the snake eating its tail. It's it's just all self reference, actually.

Matt Taibbi [01:24:55] Right. Exactly, exactly.

Tucker [01:24:58] So you get out of that you. So the business model works in independent media.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:03] Well kinda. Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:05] So it works if you're if you're cranking out content. The what I don't.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:10] Think it's they figured.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:12] Out how to do is how to.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:12] Monetize like.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:14] Investigative journalism. Right. Which takes a long time.

Tucker [01:25:17] It's expensive.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:18] It's expensive. And you don't you're not producing stuff that's, you know, every couple of days.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:24] And even when you do.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:27] It's not always the stuff that people like. People like reading, you know, op eds that with strong.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:33] Takes that you could.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:34] Make money doing that. Right.

Tucker [01:25:36] Also, you whiff sometimes. I mean, a lot of stories don't know what happens to me even now a lot. You waste a lot of time on stuff that's not real or not provable.

Matt Taibbi [01:25:45] Right. Or you think that people are going to go bananas over something and they don't. There's that. Right? Yeah.

Tucker [01:25:51] What stories have you had that you thought would make, a splash have an effect, but that were sort of instantly forgotten?

Matt Taibbi [01:26:00] Well, I don't know.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:00] I've forgotten, but I would say that a lot of the Twitter.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:03] File stuff, I expected that to be.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:08] I mean, I naively expected a lot of that stuff to be to.

Tucker [01:26:11] Give us an example of what shocked you, that you discovered during that reporting.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:16] So, one of the things was that Twitter. Heading.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:21] Into the 2020 election. Had worked out a.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:25] System with the FBI.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:28] And the Department of Homeland Security and the office of the Director of National Intelligence. Whereby they had what they called an industry meeting.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:37] Where once it.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:39] Started off once a month, then it was once a week where these intelligence.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:43] Officials.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:44] Were meeting with Twitter and about two dozen other internet platforms and briefing them on things that they might expect in the information.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:52] Landscape. And then.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:54] There was a system.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:56] By which.

Matt Taibbi [01:26:59] Basically Twitter was receiving, recommendations about content from the federal government through the FBI and then from the states through the Department of Homeland Security. It was it was that organized like they had worked it out. Like if it comes from, you know, a local police department, it's going to come from the DHS. If it comes from the HHS, it's going to come through the FBI. Right. Like. So they had a very organized system of flags that, where you would see the FBI say.

Matt Taibbi [01:27:31] You know, for your.

Matt Taibbi [01:27:33] Consideration, here are some accounts that may violate your terms of service. And there'd be an attached spreadsheet with, you know, 400 account names on it. And that was just happening constantly. It was a an industrial process that they had worked out. And I thought, that's a huge story, right. Like this.

Matt Taibbi [01:27:52] Year, the FBI.

Matt Taibbi [01:27:54] That's devoting resources to looking at social media accounts of ordinary people and worrying about terms of service violations, like, what is that? Why are they not looking for.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:04] Child.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:05] Predators? I was like.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:06] Right. And so what was that? Well, it's it's part of this sort of.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:12] Spiraling, sprawling thing where a whole series of government agencies are very intensely interested in what's online and who is reading what.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:22] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:23] And then developing new ways of, you know, suppressing content, amplifying other things. And with Covid, there was a really, really intense effort to. To create rules about what could and could not be seen.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:39] You know, they were they.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:41] Would decide that things were.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:44] One of the key concepts.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:45] That I thought was really, really disturbing.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:48] Was, this whole.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:50] Idea that anything that promotes vaccine hesitancy.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:54] Is.

Matt Taibbi [01:28:54] A kind of disinformation, even if it's not, factually incorrect. So if somebody dies after they get the shot.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:03] Right, that may be true. But, yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:08] Internally at the.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:09] Company there.

Tucker [01:29:11] But knowing that might convince other people not to take the.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:13] Shot.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:14] Exactly. And so. They looked at that as a kind of disinformation, even though it's true. One.

Tucker [01:29:22] Of the disinformation doesn't mean untrue.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:24] Correct, exactly.

Matt Taibbi [01:29:26] It it carries the connotation like it did in the definition involves falsity, right. Or misinformation even. Right. So disinformation is like the intentional spreading of lies, right? But even misinformation that Homeland Security has something they called the MDM or they had the MDM committee, which is misinformation, disinformation and Mal information committee. And Mal information is it's just material. It's true, but kind of politically wrong. Right. Or inconvenient. And that could be something that, you know, promotes vaccine hesitancy or you know, we have the Supreme Court case number five in Missouri that's partly related to the Twitter files.

Matt Taibbi [01:30:14] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:30:14] The plaintiffs in this, a couple of the three of the plaintiffs in that case are doctors.

Matt Taibbi [01:30:19] Who were who had published.

Matt Taibbi [01:30:21] True research about Covid, but were suppressed, were amplified. They were put on, you know, in Twitter, they were put on trends, blacklists.

Matt Taibbi [01:30:31] Because.

Matt Taibbi [01:30:33] You know, their research tended to go against, federal policies about lockdowns and vaccine vaccination and all kinds of things. Therefore, right, like we do not want the government in in a role of deciding what's true and untrue. Because once you do that, the government has a monopoly on misinformation, right? The only protection against that happening is absolutely unfettered free speech. And they're messing with that, you know. The concepts in the Bill of rights work. And so this what we what we looked at in terms of the censorship, we it's very much in evidence there where we. They just don't believe that the First Amendment works, I don't think.

Tucker [01:31:27] But they're the government. They exist to protect the First Amendment. That's the whole point of having a government, right? So again, that seems like a prima facia crime to me. And as you said it very least a huge story. What happened to that story once you reported it?

Matt Taibbi [01:31:43] I was denounced as. That's a right wing.

Matt Taibbi [01:31:47] Tool, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:31:49] The Washington Post, their first story about the Twitter, about the Twitter files, described me as conservative journalist Matt Taibbi.

Matt Taibbi [01:31:58] And then they they did a silent I.

Tucker [01:31:59] Would I would beg to differ.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:01] Yeah. This is this is ridiculous. And then and, you know, the that.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:06] Was the line.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:07] All the way through, even though the, the, the reports really they.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:12] Weren't really about suppression of one political party or another. They were really much more about this process, which is just so scary. Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:20] And nobody, nobody in.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:23] The regular press really picked it up. And that was a shocker to me because I thought.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:27] Well, somebody's.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:28] Got to be interested in this.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:30] You know?

Matt Taibbi [01:32:31] And they weren't, you.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:32] Know, how long were you there?

Matt Taibbi [01:32:34] It's a Twitter doing the story.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:38] You know, three and a half months, I would say.

Matt Taibbi [01:32:41] So we got a lot of stuff we got, you know, I mean, not a lot, you know, 200,000 emails, something like that. Attachments. We have. We still haven't gone through all all of it. Was that there's just lots of evidence of interplay between government and these platforms.

Tucker [01:32:59] I think you on at one point said publicly that there were, Intel operatives working at Google, at, at Twitter, rather.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:06] Lots of them.

Tucker [01:33:06] Working there.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:07] Lots of them. And that was another thing we didn't understand. You know, when we first got there were like.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:13] Why? Why is there a CIA.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:15] CIA person here? Why is this person a former National Security, council operative? Like, what value what do they bring to a.

Tucker [01:33:24] Tech company, a tech.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:25] Company? I couldn't understand that.

Tucker [01:33:27] But they're actually working there as employees.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:29] Yeah, and they were making a lot of the big decisions about.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:32] Content, too.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:34] In fact, one of the biggest emails that we found was there was a debate about whether or not.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:40] Twitter.

Matt Taibbi [01:33:41] Had the ability to say no to in this case, it was a State Department request about content. And, the former CIA employee says, you know, our window on that is closing, as our government partners become more aggressive in their attributions. Right? So what they were basically saying is we're running our ability to like, push back is, is evaporating, you know, and that, I think has turned out to be true, with these platforms, I think they're they're increasingly just sort of intertwined.

Matt Taibbi [01:34:12] With the government, the state. Yeah.

Tucker [01:34:15] So state.

Matt Taibbi [01:34:23] Demanding that these companies fork over, you know, information about geolocation of users and other places around the world or even in the United States.

Matt Taibbi [01:34:35] But now.

Matt Taibbi [01:34:35] They're venturing into.

Matt Taibbi [01:34:37] Content, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:34:39] The content domestically that people see.

Tucker [01:34:41] So Google's the biggest, of course, of all these companies, and by far the most influential is Monopoly on Search, which is your window into all information.

Matt Taibbi [01:34:50] Right?

Tucker [01:34:51] If we were ever to see what goes on internally at Google, what do you think we would learn?

Matt Taibbi [01:34:57] Why I think we would find that there. They've massively.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:02] Changed.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:03] The formula for, you know, the search returns. I mean, they even talked about this in 2017. In 2018, when.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:11] They they had this.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:12] Thing called Project Owl.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:14] Which was.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:15] Designed to.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:16] Change the.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:19] The parameters of sort of the search, towards something they call the authority. And authority was basically the way it was explained to me when I talked to somebody at Google was like, if you search for baseball five years ago, you might have seen your local little league team. Now you'll see MLB.com come up first. Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:37] And, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:35:40] You've probably noticed this when you when you do a Google search, you know, the first 40 or 50 results will all be of a certain type and you'll have to it's much, much harder to find kind of this counter narrative. Version of reality. Now, even if you know exactly what you're looking for, type in the. The title of the story. It's made reporting harder.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:06] Don't you think, you know?

Tucker [01:36:07] Yeah. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's it it actually challenges your understanding. Like, what is reality? Right, right. So, I mean, the potential for mind control. In fact, the reality of mind control by the state and by affiliated actors, depending on the state, are living in a symbiotic relationship with the state. It's like it's almost impossible to have independent thoughts.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:29] Yeah, yeah. I mean, if the if the if most.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:31] People are getting their information through these searches, and through social media exchanges and those things are heavily, heavily, you know, managed, then everybody's getting a skewed version of reality and.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:47] That that's going to.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:48] Change the way that they think about everything.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:53] I think that's really dangerous.

Matt Taibbi [01:36:56] Obviously, you know, it's it's not a new concept because we all read about it and or. Well, and, you know, all this Huxley and all these other books, but, you know, what happens to people when they're, when they're getting their information in a way that's completely inorganic and false.

Matt Taibbi [01:37:13] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:37:15] You know, I think we have to get to the bottom of that. I don't know, I think it's scary.

Tucker [01:37:21] Do you think, there's been any slackening of it? I mean, we're in the middle of an election season right now. It's pretty clear that the people in charge in both parties, will do anything to stop Trump. And for reasons probably nothing to do with Trump, actually, but bigger story. But whatever the cause, they're totally determined to control the outcome of this election.

Matt Taibbi [01:37:43] Yeah, well.

Tucker [01:37:44] Can you have a democracy under those circumstances?

Matt Taibbi [01:37:47] I don't think so.

Matt Taibbi [01:37:50] So there was a Supreme Court.

Matt Taibbi [01:37:52] Case in that.

Matt Taibbi [01:37:53] There's one that's still going on. Murthy V in Missouri. And originally, the lower courts ruled that.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:04] The federal.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:05] Government can't.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:05] Be.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:07] You know, doing that back and forth with one all these platforms.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:11] And from what.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:13] I understood, there was a little bit of. A backing off point, right where they, they weren't so intimately involved.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:20] But just about.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:21] A month ago, Senator Mark Warner.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:24] Had a talk, and.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:25] He said that essentially the companies have begun. Talking to.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:32] The.

Matt Taibbi [01:38:32] Agencies again. This was after. The Supreme Court held a here, you know, the hearing on that case, and it didn't look so good for the free speech advocates afterwards. So, you know, that's that tells me that they're already, you know, thinking of coming up with another program. I know for a fact, for stories that I'm done, I'm working on that. There are a couple of different contracting ideas for new. Sort of content review programs that would be partnerships with government in the same way that there there were the last time around, like the last time around, we had this thing called the Election Integrity Partnership was run out of Stanford, but it was done in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security and the Global Engagement Center, which is the State Department. And University of Washington and some other partners. But that was a, you know, a thing where there was a big organized content flagging operation.

Matt Taibbi [01:39:35] That.

Matt Taibbi [01:39:35] Involved the government. They're going to do something like that. Again, it's just a question of like, who is going to do it, what the method is going to be. And my understanding is that there, you know, it's going to be more aggressive this time around.

Tucker [01:39:48] So there have been a number of wargames, right, where academics, NGO officials, government officials, it's all sort of this blob is kind of hard to desegregate it, but, have gamed out various election scenarios. And it does. It sounds a little more to me like contingency planning than than like an academic exercise. But tell me what you know about that.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:12] Well, it's interesting that you bring that up.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:15] So you may have noticed in the news.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:17] Lately, that.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:19] There have been a lot of, stories warning about AI deepfakes.

Tucker [01:40:24] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:25] This is the.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:26] New if Russia was the the the excuse.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:31] For getting involved in.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:33] Content moderation in 2020 or even in 2018.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:39] AI and deepfakes are the new, buzzword in Washington. And I thought just.

Tucker [01:40:45] A way to explain away your porn tapes.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:48] That's right. Yeah, exactly. I didn't make this up. It's it's it's a deepfake. But this is.

Matt Taibbi [01:40:55] Something that somebody took me off to. Now, this is not like, a, like, a secret. It's actually public, although nobody.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:02] Has brought it.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:03] Up. There is a website that's out there. But this is, a game. It's basically elections and dragons. It's made by In-Q-Tel. You can see the AI act here, which is the venture capital arm of the CIA.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:17] And it is a right stop.

Tucker [01:41:19] Why does the CIA have a venture arm?

Matt Taibbi [01:41:22] Because the to develop.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:24] Technologies that that would otherwise probably be.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:27] Prohibited. And, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:30] Because there's a lot of things that they get into that maybe are money, good moneymaking ideas. I mean, part.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:34] Of what being.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:35] In the intelligence business is about.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:37] Is.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:38] Getting out and making money, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:41:39] So.

Tucker [01:41:40] So but that's I mean, that's kind of a problem if you're Intel agencies have venture arms.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:47] Yes.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:47] Right. You would think that would be a problem.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:50] So.

Tucker [01:41:51] This is a CIA funded election game.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:53] Yeah. It's a CIA.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:54] Funded election game.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:55] And just just to start.

Matt Taibbi [01:41:58] Just like Dungeons and Dragons, it has funny, diocese is a ten sided die.

Tucker [01:42:02] But if, for the record, are you making this up? Is this real?

Matt Taibbi [01:42:04] This is real, this is real. Haywire is the name of the game.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:07] And, if you roll the.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:11] In-Q-Tel symbol.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:13] Right, it says, oh, I am.

Tucker [01:42:16] Laughing so dark.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:18] It says on the back, if you roll, it's basically the whole.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:24] The premise of the game is that you were trying to avoid a haywire situation, meaning a, an AI induced disaster.

Tucker [01:42:31] Where the voters get what they.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:32] Want.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:33] Basically. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:34] So if if you roll the.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:37] In-Q-Tel logo, it says haywire reverted.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:41] So basically if you roll.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:43] You win.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:44] Right?

Tucker [01:42:45] Yeah. The CIA venture logo looks a little bit like the, the symbol for nuclear power.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:53] It does look a.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:54] Little bit like that.

Matt Taibbi [01:42:55] Yes. Yeah. So this is this game is used to train. From what.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:01] I understand, it's used to train people in government to wargame out scenarios that may happen.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:09] Right. Which is why, this is so.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:14] Some of these scenarios are so incredible.

Tucker [01:43:16] Like, if an orange populist were to somehow become president again.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:20] Well, right. And, when I went through.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:23] This and obviously I just opened this box, but I had but I have another one.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:28] The one.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:28] That really jumped out at me is this thing called the purple disappeared.

Tucker [01:43:32] The purple disappeared.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:34] If you could.

Matt Taibbi [01:43:35] Read out with it.

Tucker [01:43:35] Says swing states appear safe on the national electoral map and early polling later, it emerges that AI driven election forecasts were wrong because the data scientists overlook significant partizan differences that make swing states highly competitive. Discuss your response plan, then draw two injects real world harm and says at the bottom, misinformation slash social bias heightens stress, anxiety, and depression. What's social bias mean?

Matt Taibbi [01:44:08] I am actually, I have no.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:09] Idea, but. But that certainly sounds to me like they're asking the game.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:15] Players to come up.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:17] With, you know, with, a plan for, some kind of reaction to.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:26] Election results that.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:27] Don't necessarily.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:30] Square with what the polls were indicating, right? I mean, that's basically what they're saying and not in that scenario. Here's another one. Mind games.

Tucker [01:44:40] An easy to.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:41] Use voice model.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:42] Helps.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:43] Create a viral video.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:44] Suggesting.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:45] That one of the candidates may have.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:47] Dementia.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:49] So just discuss your response plan and draw two injects.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:55] So it's just full of stuff like this and this. You know, we started to.

Matt Taibbi [01:44:58] Hear about.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:01] This idea that there were people.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:04] In this information management slash censorship. Content moderation space that were deeply involved with. Finding new. Manage, information that people see. You know, back in 2010, the Army actually, got rid of the term Psyop because they thought it had negative common connotations.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:30] They brought it back in.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:32] 2017 because there was a widespread belief that, we have to engage.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:39] In.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:40] Influence operations, that because Russia is already doing it, because China's already doing it.

Tucker [01:45:46] We need to do it. And it's it's the.

Tucker [01:45:48] Same aimed at our own population.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:50] Yeah. And that's the thing we we did this before.

Matt Taibbi [01:45:54] Previously we we created phony social media accounts in Arabic and Pashto. Right. And that that's something that we've understood. What's different is that they're now doing this in English. Right. And they're now aiming this at domestic population.

Tucker [01:46:09] I thought that was illegal.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:10] It, it I would think it's illegal.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:13] I think a lot of this, this behavior is just unregulated, not looked at. I mean.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:17] Who's, who's going to go.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:18] In and tell them.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:19] They can't do this?

Matt Taibbi [01:46:21] What body is going to mean? It's a New.

Tucker [01:46:24] York Times, the Washington Post. Democracy dies in darkness. I mean, that's that's the that is the role of the press. Yes, but to expose excesses and roll them back by exposing them.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:35] But the but the problem is that they see.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:39] They see, for instance, Donald Trump.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:42] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:43] You know, the Trump movement as an.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:45] Extension.

Matt Taibbi [01:46:47] Of what they, what they might call the Russian information ecosystem. They like the Global Engagement Center. The State Department has this concept of information ecosystems. So if you're to in alignment with Russian foreign policy views on, say, Ukraine or something like that.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:04] You are you can be.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:05] Part of the ecosystem even if you have nothing to do with that country.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:10] So the idea that, you know, you know, the first.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:14] Head of the Global Engagement Center is a former editor of time magazine, Rick Stengel. He wrote a book called Information Wars that we all had to read when we were doing the Twitter files, because we didn't know about this organization.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:27] You know, talked openly about how he thought the, the Trump campaign, he in it.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:34] He recognized the same techniques that he saw from ISIS and from Russia. So they're.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:40] Now they see.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:41] All this is all part of a.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:42] Piece, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:47:44] And that is what I think is dangerous, is that we're sort of bringing the ethos of military counter messaging from the war on terror. We're bringing that home. And the enemy is now the domestic voter.

Tucker [01:47:58] Right. Okay. So military messaging, but the purpose of military is to kill people in the end and to deter war by the threat of killing people. But basically it's killing. That's their business.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:08] Killing. Yes, but also trying to discourage recruitment. Right. Of course. Right, right.

Tucker [01:48:13] So but fundamentally, if you were to say like, what's the purpose of military. It's to exert force, physical force. So if the US military is turning its psyops on the country, like, that's just not that far. You know, the nature of organizations and mission creep from there to, like, hurting people.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:33] Exactly, exactly.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:35] And and and they they actually you'll find NATO.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:38] We found NATO papers that talked about how they found.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:42] The.

Tucker[01:48:42] American.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:43] Belief in, inform.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:46] Not influence or.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:48] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:48:50] Truthfulness that that it was actually that's part of a. An old NATO memo about, influence operations that you have to you can't tell untruths. The the more modern belief is that that's outdated, that because the Russians don't do that, that we have to, we shouldn't have those restraints. Have to worry now about sort of phony influence operations in the United States. And if you look at it in that, that things through that lens.

Matt Taibbi [01:49:20] Suddenly things like Russia, you.

Matt Taibbi [01:49:23] Start to make a little bit more sense. Because you can imagine somebody in the intelligence service is saying, well, Donald Trump is part of this.

Matt Taibbi [01:49:35] Nexus of.

Matt Taibbi [01:49:37] Anti-American forces, and.

Matt Taibbi [01:49:40] Anything's.

Matt Taibbi [01:49:41] Fair game against that kind of person.

Tucker [01:49:43] So what what Russia's central to all of this in the minds of the people doing it? And from my perspective, as someone who's never been that interested in Russia, the country, you sort of wake up one day and, you know, 25 years after the end of the Cold War and realize you're required to hate Russia. And I just refused to go along with that on principle, not because I love Russia. I do kind of like Russia, actually, having been there, but I didn't have any feelings about it a year ago.

Matt Taibbi [01:50:08] Right.

Tucker [01:50:08] And but I just I'm an adult man, and I don't want to be told to think. And I'm not going to be period, under any circumstances because I'm not a slave. So but unanswered is the question. Like why, why, why is that a requirement of living in the United States, where I've lived my whole life hating Russia? Like, what does that have to do with anything? Like, how do we get there of all countries?

Matt Taibbi [01:50:27] I don't this I don't understand that either.

Tucker [01:50:29] And also you don't.

Matt Taibbi [01:50:30] I mean, well, especially compared.

Matt Taibbi [01:50:33] To when Russia actually was.

Matt Taibbi [01:50:36] A major. I mean.

Matt Taibbi [01:50:39] It wasn't nearly this intense in the 70s and 80s. I was.

Tucker [01:50:42] Here. It was not.

Matt Taibbi [01:50:43] Right.

Tucker [01:50:44] Oh, it was done. In fact, people said, I mean, Russia was actually running actual psyops against the United States. Aids was created at Fort Meade to kill black people. You know, all these things. That's that was a Russian. Active measures campaigns, big.

Tucker [01:50:56] Time. And and of course, there were all these proxy wars going on even then in Mozambique. And, you know, there were like actual wars. And, the prevailing view among people I knew was, you know, Soviets are bad. Of course, no one's pro-Soviet in normal person world, but it would be kind of nice to be at peace. And nuclear war is really scary. And like, let's avoid that. I mean, that was the view that I remember as a child, right? Sure.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:21] Yeah. I mean, we had we had staying and telling us the Russians love their children too.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:26] And which is true.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:26] And, you know, when when Gorbachev came on the scene, I remember very distinctly people saying, you know, the we have to find a way to get along.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:37] With these people like that.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:39] That we're spending too much money on, on defense and that this, this is, this is costing both of our societies. But that's not what we're we're at now. And oddly.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:50] Enough, the current.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:52] American government.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:54] It feels a lot like the Soviet.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:56] Government of the.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:57] Early.

Matt Taibbi [01:51:58] 80s, right. Where, you know, Joe Biden would would have fit in perfectly, in the Politburo of.

Tucker [01:52:04] The Earth fresh. Now, if I thought. Right any time.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:06] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:06] I mean, he's he's the doddering old.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:09] Yes, physically dead.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:10] Leader, who is who still has a title because, you know, he hasn't actually expired.

Tucker [01:52:16] Presiding over a decade cynical society that no longer believes in the slogans.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:21] Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:21] And the.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:23] Russians have a joke where Gorbachev gets in.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:25] The.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:28] A limousine and he's late for work, so he he drives too fast. The cops pull him over, and.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:34] His.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:35] Gorbachev's driver is drunk, passed out in the back. So he had to drive himself. He gets stomped by the police, and the cop season salutes goes back to the car, and the other cop says, who is that? And he goes, I don't know. The garbage officer's driver.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:50] And.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:51] That's how you feel about America. Know who who's running this country? Does anybody.

Matt Taibbi [01:52:55] Know.

Tucker [01:52:56] Who is running the country?

Matt Taibbi [01:52:58] Is it Jake Sullivan? I mean, no, I mean, you'd have to make a guess, would you? Wouldn't you? I mean, somebody.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:03] Has to have the final say about these things, and it can't.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:06] Be Biden.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:08] I just think that's a very weird thing to not know.

Tucker [01:53:11] And no one seems curious about it either, right?

Matt Taibbi [01:53:13] Where are the.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:14] Stories about that? Who's that? Well, I mean, then the Wall Street Journal just did a story about it. They they broke the seal on that.

Tucker [01:53:20] But it is kind of a silly, dishonest story. But but in it were, quite a silly diss on a story, I thought, but whatever. But there were certainly things in there that had not been in the Wall Street Journal or big paper.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:32] Before, for sure.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:32] Right, right. They they took a, you know, they did the toe in the lingo. Right? Yeah. But still, you know, you in a real country, we would be scrambling to find out.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:44] Well, the.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:44] President is clearly not capable. So what's going on?

Matt Taibbi [01:53:49] You know. Nothing.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:52] There's not a hint of anything, which is just.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:54] It's it's so.

Matt Taibbi [01:53:55] Bizarre.

Tucker [01:53:55] Well, and especially given the consequences. I mean, if this were 1995, you could sort of see it and sort of runs on autopilot. And, you know, Tim Cook in The Captains of Industry can pitch in and sort of keep us on the track. I mean, that would be the view, right? But now we are on the brink. We're closer to nuclear war than we've ever been, closer than the Cuban Missile Crisis right now. Right to total nuclear annihilation. And if the commander in chief is an unconscious menace, and I mean work to the ship is listing its on its side. Where are the people saying, you know I hate Trump. I love my politics don't even matter at this level. We're on the verge of nuclear war. That's not acceptable. Let's pull back. I have not even heard any person say that.

Matt Taibbi [01:54:38] What is that? I don't know. Where's the. Where's the public.

Matt Taibbi [01:54:41] Concern about that either? I mean, if this were.

Matt Taibbi [01:54:44] 1986. Yes.

Matt Taibbi [01:54:47] And we were at this level of antagonism with Russia, if there had been an exploded pipeline, if there was a shooting war.

Matt Taibbi [01:54:55] In.

Matt Taibbi [01:54:56] Ukraine. Right, or some kind of proxy territory where our weapons were killing Russian troops and vice versa. Because, you know, some of ours are over there, too.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:07] Quite a few. And, you know, people would be.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:10] Panicking, right? Because at any minute, you know, we're all relying on somebody like Putin being rational, which is already.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:19] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:20] I made that mistake in thinking that he would never invade Ukraine.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:24] I thought that, too. And, so.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:29] What are we banking on, on the idea.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:31] That if, you know.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:32] If we launch some kind of a weapon into the Russian territory, that they're not going.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:36] To hit us. What do you think? I mean, I, I think the people who are, who are.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:43] Prosecuting.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:45] The.

Matt Taibbi [01:55:45] Conflict from our side. I'm, I'm very familiar with their mindset because I knew a lot of these folks when I was in Russia. They're not. It's kind of like all the presidents, presidents, men. These aren't very bright guys. Yeah. And things have gotten out of hand.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:00] And I, I think that they they have no idea.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:05] What they're doing. And this could easily get out of hand very, very quickly because they're messianic about this. They know they think.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:12] They think they must.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:15] Continue this conflict. Whereas the one thing that I thought Barack Obama was sensible about was, you know, when the Crimea thing happened, I look, it's not you know, it's always going to be more important to them than it is to be.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:27] Yes, it's it's right.

Tucker [01:56:28] Very important to them, by the way.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:29] Right, exactly.

Tucker [01:56:31] I hear these people, including the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and but many others just sort of blithely announced that, well, we're going to take Crimea. And that again, I don't have strong feelings about Crimea. I've never been there. But I think I know as a factual matter that that is a trigger for nuclear war right there.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:48] For sure. For sure.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:49] And it.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:50] You know, it's kind of a jump ball.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:52] Also like.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:53] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:54] Should that place.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:54] Be.

Tucker [01:56:55] I think it is Russian at this point. But.

Matt Taibbi [01:56:57] Right. And it's been Russian historically.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:00] I mean, there's a lot of weird stuff about Ukraine's history, like the, you know, the fact that they.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:04] Gave the.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:05] They created the territory as, sort of on a.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:08] Whim.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:09] You know, in the in the middle of the Soviet period, the lines are very arbitrary. They're not drawn along, you know, real linguistic or cultural lines. And if you're if you've been to the place, you'll find that it's it's very Russian in some parts and very Ukrainian on others. I'm sure that's changing now, but.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:28] But the people who are, who are.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:30] Pushing this, they, they have no knowledge of that whatsoever. It's the same thing as when I'm, when I was in Russia. They they've been told one thing. And so, you know, Ukraine to them is like Switzerland and we're saving it from Russia. Whereas the reality is that.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:47] You know.

Matt Taibbi [01:57:48] It's nothing like that in reality. And I don't know, how dangerous do you think that do you think they are? I think they're crazy.

Tucker [01:57:55] I think they're the most dangerous. I think they're seized by hubris. I think there is a messianic quality to this. I think the entire leadership class of the country is determined to commit suicide. I think that they've boxed themselves in. They're criminals. They know that they will be exposed as such. And they've also reached kind of the apogee of American empire. Anyway, it's all downhill from here. I do think that they feel this. And and I think they want to extinguish the society. And I think that's such an incredibly dark thing to say. I hesitate even to say it, but I don't see a rational explanation for any of this behavior at all. I don't think it advances anyone's aims, including their own right. I don't believe that Larry Fink is like orchestrating all this so Blackrock can get even richer. I think they want to get richer. I think Larry Fink is a bad guy, obviously, but I don't think an.

Matt Taibbi [01:58:41] Or Lockheed Martin.

Tucker [01:58:43] That's exactly right. The defense contractors and that's all true on one level. But that's not the explanation. No, no, it's way deeper than that. I think it's a spiritual thing. And I do think societies, kill themselves just as people do. And I think that's what we're and clearly that's what we're seeing. I mean, tell me how that's not what what we're seeing. And I think that's just such an ugly idea. Again, it it hurts me to articulate it. But you asked, so that's what I honestly think.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:11] What I mean, what other explanation is there.

Tucker [01:59:15] Well, kind.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:15] Of right I mean, I.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:18] I've kind of run out of, I made the mistake, I think, for years of trying to think, well, what's the angle on this one? End game that they're going for. And the only way to make sense of this is to give that up, I think. And, because. There's something darker going on. Yes. In the culture of people who run this country, that is, it's inaccessible if you're trying to, like, assign motives to it.

Tucker [01:59:47] Right.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:48] They could easily, like, just stick to.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:50] The problem of Donald Trump. They could.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:51] Easily.

Matt Taibbi [01:59:53] Defeat Donald Trump as a political entity if they just if they were thinking as political consultants did in the 90s or 80s, right. Like they would just make some subtle adjustments. They would.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:06] Throw.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:06] A bone to.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:07] To working people and, and, you know, they.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:12] They would put forward a candidate who isn't, you know, physically dead and they would win. Right? But no, for them, I think it's a principle that a certain kind of voter not have a say in things.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:26] And I don't know.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:27] That's just totally counterintuitive to me. I don't I just don't understand that.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:32] You know.

Tucker [02:00:34] But so in other words, it's it's not just Trump, it's the idea that the people who like Trump, those people might have power or be rewarded.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:44] Right?

Matt Taibbi [02:00:46] We cannot legitimize the the negative feelings of those voters. Is is how they think.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:54] Whereas, it's it's.

Matt Taibbi [02:00:56] Incredibly obvious. If you go out on the campaign trail and talk to people who who vote for Trump, that they do it for a million different reasons, right?

Matt Taibbi [02:01:05] You know, ranging from.

Matt Taibbi [02:01:07] You know, the town that I live in used.

Matt Taibbi [02:01:09] To.

Matt Taibbi [02:01:10] Be a booming economic center. Now it's it's dead right. It you know, it looks it looks like, a third world country to there there isn't a functioning hospital within 300 miles of where I live. The Walmart is now the only place where you can buy anything for 50 miles.

Matt Taibbi [02:01:26] Like there's a million reasons. And then there's some social issues, too. But once upon.

Matt Taibbi [02:01:35] A time, I mean, I remember not so long ago, even Bill Clinton talking about trying to reclaim some of those working class voters. And that was a like a legitimate one.

Tucker [02:01:46] West Virginia, he won every county in West Virginia.

Matt Taibbi [02:01:49] Imagine every county that's in.

Tucker [02:01:50] Every county in West Virginia in 1992. And of course, I think he lost California. Wow. And so imagine a Democrat winning any county in West Virginia.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:02] Well, they wouldn't want to win. No. They say right. Which. Right. I mean, then they they go in there with this scolding attitude like learn to code, like, what's wrong with you? Look like there's this punitive attitude.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:17] About it.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:17] Which is the as you know, if you've covered campaigns.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:21] You cannot win. If you if you if you have hostility towards the voters.

Tucker [02:02:24] That's Trump's secret is he doesn't hate them.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:26] He loves them.

Tucker [02:02:27] I know, I know.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:28] Right.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:28] And that was immediately apparent from his first campaign is that he got up there and.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:34] You know, people.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:34] Say, well, what does a billionaire have in common.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:36] With, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:37] Ordinary.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:38] People? He he's like. He probably does the same thing in the spare time. He goes to the same websites and.

Tucker [02:02:46] We to the same restaurant. We know that.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:48] Right? Exactly. Yeah. And you know, so.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:50] When he opens his mouth, people.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:52] Think, yeah, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:54] I can connect with this guy now.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:56] It's a lot of it is fake. Right.

Matt Taibbi [02:02:59] And the policy prescriptions may not make any sense, but you can understand why.

Tucker [02:03:05] The level at the, at the, you know, at the level of visceral at the like, he's he has affection and they have hate. And I think that's, that's the thing that shocks me most like I, I think I'm way too autistic or something to understand. A lot of things are happening right now, but I think in terms of like, well, you know, outcomes. And that's not what any of this is about. And the thing that shocks me most is the actual hostility that people in D.C. more effectively and from have for the rest of the country, like they hate the people in the country.

Matt Taibbi [02:03:34] They do.

Tucker [02:03:35] They don't just look down on them. I thought it was just like looking down on them in a snobbish way. Right? No, it's like a hostility, right? When they die. And you saw this during Covid or he didn't get the vaccine. He died. I'm glad he died. Like I'm glad he died, right? American. Right?

Matt Taibbi [02:03:48] Right, right.

Tucker [02:03:49] I'm not happy when a gang member dies in the South Side of Chicago. No, I'm sure I'm serious. I couldn't be more opposed to gang members in Chicago, but, like, I don't know, it's like a it's a human being. American. Like. I think it's sad, actually.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:01] Oh, I mean, the hostility during the Covid thing was awesome. It was unbelievable to watch that.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:07] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:07] I mean, I mean, Jimmy Kimmel does this whole anti-vax Barbie thing where it's just.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:13] You know, it's the.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:14] Worst kind of.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:16] Yeah, a cosmopolitan. Looking down at the, at the, at the hick kind of a thing. And, and. They hate these people. Not long ago, entertainers wanted to connect. Yeah. With ordinary people. Now they they don't like that audience. They wouldn't want to get, plaudits from that audience. Your audience.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:41] And politicians don't either. They, they.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:44] They want to be elected by the right people.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:46] Or.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:48] They want and they want to do it without the help of the wrong kind of voters. But they can't because they're outnumbered, you know? So I.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:56] It's a.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:57] Crazy time.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:58] But but it but I do.

Matt Taibbi [02:04:59] Think you're right that if you try to figure this out by assigning rational motives to any of this, it doesn't make any sense.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:07] It won't work.

Tucker [02:05:08] So we're on a slide, as you said at the very outset, into an authoritarian government, a different certainly a different form of government, not a democratic government at all. And some kind of oligarchy. I'm already there. Does that. Is there any way to arrest that? Slow down. Is it inevitable? Like what? If you could project? What? What do you see?

Matt Taibbi [02:05:30] Or. I mean, I don't think so. I'm part.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:34] Of the reason that I'm so spun up about a lot of, a lot of the stuff that's happening is because I.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:39] Got to.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:40] I watched what happened when.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:42] You know, speech freedoms.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:44] Even limited ones, like the ones in Russia, they disappear, they don't come back, you know, like that's that's kind of what happens. And.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:52] They don't come back. That's true, isn't it? Right. And, you know, in the United States.

Matt Taibbi [02:05:59] There was a reverence.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:00] Once for, for.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:03] The First Amendment, for the whole Bill of rights, that it just doesn't exist anymore. There's this kind of, like, defeatist or unbelieving attitude about it. And that's been another evolution of, you know, working on stories like the Twitter files is finding out that people don't really they don't have the same feeling about the First Amendment that people did in the 80s and 90s or even the early 2000. So, I mean, even Rob Reiner does the American president, right? And it's all about how, you know, the ACLU and, you know, being allowed to burn the flag. And.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:36] Yes, and he's, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:39] He's on the other side of this thing now, right? Like and so.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:43] What.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:43] Happened to all those people? What happened to that, that belief and, the system, I mean, for all of them.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:51] You know, you.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:51] Mentioned that you and I came from probably from different.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:54] Political.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:56] Places at one point in.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:57] Time.

Matt Taibbi [02:06:58] But I think we probably both share a belief that America on some level worked.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:03] Right. Well, it.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:05] Had all kinds of.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:06] Flaws.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:07] But, you know, immigrants came here from all over the world. They built good lives, and they chose to stay here. I mean, my family.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:15] You know.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:15] Came from different parts of the world. And.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:18] This this country is screwed up. I like the fact.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:22] That it's screwed up. But it works. This justice system, has been a great thing. And people don't believe that. I think they've lost that belief.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:31] I think, which is so sad. I don't know. Do you.

Matt Taibbi [02:07:36] Feel that? I mean.

Tucker [02:07:37] I feel it really strongly, and I and I also feel that, any semblance of national unity or common belief, shared culture, even short language, but particularly culture, is gone. And I notice it in talking to you because actually, you know, maybe you voted for one guy, voted for the other. But our core beliefs about the you just articulated them right there. I've never doubted that a day in my life.

Matt Taibbi [02:08:01] Right.

Tucker [02:08:02] I just didn't, you know, because, like, yeah, America. Yeah. Screwed up in a lot of ways. Of course. First of all, it's huge. So of course it's screwed up. Everything big is screwed up, sure, but the best the system works. And, I don't feel that there's a national consensus on that at all anymore. And it seems to have evaporated very, very fast. And I'm not quite sure how. Maybe that's the problem with being in your 50s. Things change. And you didn't see the change coming.

Matt Taibbi [02:08:28] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [02:08:28] And that's still a mystery, right? Like where did that happen? There had to have been a moment in time. Where?

Tucker [02:08:34] Well, I'll tell you, part of what happened is the people who were deputized to defend it refused to. And mixed angles of the world. Who was supposed to be. He was literally a guardian in the First Amendment. He's the editor of time magazine, right. And all. Next thing you know, he's a federal official working for Obama against the First Amendment. And you're like, well, that's a dereliction of duty. That's a major sin. I think it's a crime. I think he should be punished for that. Actually, you can't allow that. I mean, if you're in a a battle and the officers desert, they get shot for that. Not to do that. Like you need leadership in order to preserve whatever it is that you have.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:05] Right?

Tucker [02:09:06] Right. And so I blame the leaders 100%. And without leadership, of course, things fall apart and no one's willing to stand and be like, no, you know, the dignity of the average person is not just a good thing. It's the core of the enterprise. It's essential you give that up, we're done. And, you know, you're not allowed to do this period.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:27] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:28] I agree.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:31] And, you know, not now.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:33] You know, the role, the.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:34] Role the media and.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:36] I think is an important one in American society. We were given a very important responsibility to.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:44] To, tell the.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:47] Public when things aren't going.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:48] Right.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:49] And to do that.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:52] Continually, no matter what, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:55] Which way the political winds are blowing. Stick to.

Matt Taibbi [02:09:58] That.

Matt Taibbi [02:10:00] And so now it's kind of more important than ever to to keep to keep doing that. I mean, you asked me like, what? How does this get turned around? I don't know, but the only thing I know is I think, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:10:11] You have to.

Matt Taibbi [02:10:11] Keep doing this stuff and telling people about it, and in the hopes that it will get turned around.

Tucker [02:10:17] So last question. You, you spent ten years within a society that, you know, punished journalists physically at times for telling the truth. You're watching political figures go to jail. And whatever you think of the charges or convictions or whatever, in every single case, you know, for dead certain facts, if that person hadn't been in politics on the wrong side, he would not be going to jail. That's just a fact. So they're using jail as a political instrument. How long until that comes to journalists? Like, do you worry that it at this rate, like you wind up indicted?

Matt Taibbi [02:10:56] I've I've started.

Matt Taibbi [02:10:57] For the first time to worry about that.

Matt Taibbi [02:10:59] You know, because because I spend so.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:01] Much time in Russia and I knew people who, you know, physically suffered for what they did. Right. Whenever people talked about taking risks as a journalist in the United States, I always said, look, please, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:12] Like, yeah.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:12] In other parts of the world, they actually go through hardship.

Tucker [02:11:16] Yeah. Try that in Mexico.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:17] Yeah, exactly. See what happens, you know. Yeah. You know, but it's gotten weird here.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:23] I mean, even.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:24] Look, even even.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:25] The ban and story, there's an element of that where, you know, it may not be as much about him as a political figure as it is about War Room, necessarily. Well, it's.

Tucker [02:11:36] 100% that.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:37] Right?

Tucker [02:11:37] And no one wants to say it. But at this point in his life, as of today, Steve Bannon is a journalist. That's what he is. And you may disagree with him completely. He hosts a talk show every day. Right. It's like, what is that?

Matt Taibbi [02:11:48] Right.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:49] And the most influential one.

Tucker [02:11:50] Yeah I know.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:51] Right.

Matt Taibbi [02:11:51] And, you know, you hear people like Rick Wilson, getting up and saying, yeah, it's for months, but it's for important ones. It's worth it's four key months. He said, you know, like.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:02] You.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:02] Know, the Republican strategist, he said that.

Tucker [02:12:05] The Lincoln Project.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:06] The Lincoln Project guy, and the former Dick Cheney aide. You know, like.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:09] I.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:11] Saw that and I was like, wow, they're kind of saying that out in the open, you know, and.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:16] And even even.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:17] My experience look like you had the Pfizer.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:20] Thing.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:20] And, when I, when I did the Twitter files, an IRS agent showed up at my house while I was testifying, to talk to Congress.

Tucker [02:12:29] So that's absolutely.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:31] Crazy. Yeah. No, I, I yeah, I thought it had to be a coincidence, but, I don't think I now no, no longer think it is. And I do worry about it. I mean, I, I haven't even shared this with my wife.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:42] Yet, but I thought it might be time.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:43] For us to get another house and some other place that doesn't have an extradition.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:47] Treaty.

Tucker [02:12:48] Yeah, well, there aren't many.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:49] You know? Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:51] Which is a problem.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:52] Oh, I'm aware of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And.

Matt Taibbi [02:12:56] I never had those thoughts even, even a year ago, but, you must have had them.

Tucker [02:13:02] I've had some thoughts. Yeah, I've had some experiences that, you know, pretty shocking, I would say. Not interested in talking about it, but. Yeah, for sure. Really, really shocking. But it's still kind of all hard to believe. I guess it's always that way, right? When your society changes, it's hard to believe it's actually happening.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:19] Well, it's it's it's it's happened slowly.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:24] Somewhere along the line, I became conscious of the fact that obviously somebody must be listening to.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:30] Yeah.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:31] You know, the people who I have in my contacts list are a lot of them are. Out of the country, or running from the law, or on the wrong side of the intelligence services. And.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:44] You know.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:45] There's no way that somebody is not. Aware of what's going on, you know, the of what I do. And that's that's unnerving on one level.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:54] But, yes, this.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:55] This, this recent thing about.

Matt Taibbi [02:13:57] You know, even even the stuff involving the Epoch Times and, Alex Jones, you know.

Matt Taibbi [02:14:08] I was never a fan of his. He had some choice things to say about me. But I think this whole thing started with, the decision to take him off, the internet.

Tucker [02:14:39] I think Twitter will stay open for the duration of the election.

Matt Taibbi [02:14:45] Yeah, it prob it probably will. But you know Trump's not on any more. I mean to.

Matt Taibbi [02:14:53] Trump's Twitter account is what won him I think the 2016 election. and that was one of the reasons I think journalists hate him is because, he proved that. That's right. If you're a politician and they couldn't stand that, I mean, I, I listen to those conversations. They, they, they were very resentful of the fact that they he didn't have to go through their approval system, you know. This extraordinary that Joe Biden's the only candidate in this election who hasn't been censored in some way. RFK has been censored from a swami's had been booted off LinkedIn for periods of time.

Matt Taibbi [02:15:38] I mean, like.

Tucker [02:15:39] Jill Stein for that.

Matt Taibbi [02:15:40] Man, Jill Stein.

Matt Taibbi [02:15:42] We found her in the Twitter files.

Matt Taibbi [02:15:43] She was on a on a list called is underscore Russian, which was Jill Stein. Yes. Yes. Her and she and they hear them.

Tucker [02:15:52] So I mean, can they by the way, I like Jill Stein and no Jill Stein. I'm not against Jill Stein not voting for. But like. Right, fine. But if you find yourself thinking that Jill Stein, doctor Jill Stein is the threat to America like you're a buffoon to.

Matt Taibbi [02:17:11] Shouldn't give up. Right? I mean, all my heroes in journalism didn't do that, so I'm not going to do that, I don't think. But, I mean. You wouldn't, would you.

Tucker [02:17:21] Under any circumstances, right?

Matt Taibbi [02:17:23] Yeah, exactly.

Tucker [02:17:25] That's how you will be.

Matt Taibbi [02:17:25] Thank you. Thanks so much, Tucker.

Matt Taibbi [02:17:27] I appreciate it.

Tucker [02:17:32] Thanks for watching. You can go to TuckerCarlson.com for our entire library of everything we've done. And we hope you will.