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- [00:00]
A
We'll just get started. I'm JBL from the Bulwark here with Judd. Is it Legum? Lagoon Legum.
- [00:06]
B
That's right.
- [00:07]
A
Legum. That's so funny. In my, in my. Again, in my mind's eye, as I've read you for the last six years, it's always been Judd Lagoom, which is funny because I, we have a joke that I also always thought that it was Don Lemon and not Don Lemon. And so I, I, I've classed up your last name, Judd Legum, from Popular Information, one of the earliest sub stacks, maybe the first political sub stack, and I think the most impactful of all the substack newsletters like Judd's Judgment. If you don't read it, Judd is the guy who actually gets results. And it's. It's been amazing to watch the growth of popular information. Judd, thanks for carving out some time on a Tuesday to sit down with me.
- [00:52]
B
Oh, well, thanks for having me. That was a very kind introduction as well. So I appreciate it.
- [00:57]
A
Every. Everything is terrible as it always is when we sit down for these things. So just moments ago, the American president started bleeding in response to the retaliatory tariffs imposed by Justin Trudeau, that there will then be reciprocal tariffs, he says. So the idea is, well, they're gonna, we're gonna put tariffs on them. They're gonna put tariffs on. Well, we'll put more tariffs on them. And I guess this is just the world we live in now. But the, the Judd question I have for you is because your sort of specialty is corruption, I think. Is that fair to say?
- [01:43]
B
It's one of my, one of my core interests, I would say that's, that's, that's accurate.
- [01:48]
A
I, I have you. So I've all been very skeptical of Trump and tariffs. Skeptical, meaning that I, I tend to think that he doesn't really mean it. Like, he doesn't really believe in anything. And I viewed tariffs as a way for him to weaponize corruption. Because once you impose tariffs, you can then grant waivers. Is this, do you think? I mean, is he a true believer on this stuff, or is this just another way to get his hooks into everything?
- [02:20]
B
I guess it depends on what your definition of a believer is. Does he believe that this is sound economic policy? I'm not sure Trump thinks that way, but if you look at this, Trump second term in particular, certainly this was true in the first term, but I think it's really been accelerated in the second term. Is there is a constant exploration of how can we maximize the Power of the President as an individual, cutting out Congress, even cutting out in some cases his own, the, his own cabinet officials, you know, because we sort of have a lot, Elon sort of lording over all of them and kind of get eat at all of their business. And I think tariffs fits really clearly into that because it's something that the President can impose unilaterally and then, and it puts him at the center. It gives him the, you know, makes him sort of the power center, especially when you're wielding essentially the US Consumer over all of these countries. So now they have to, the countries that Trump is targeting have to come to him and then they have to cut a deal. And I think obviously that's something he likes to do. You know, let's cut a deal. And in the interim, there will be, you know, I think as soon as this week, from what I've been reading, obviously it kind of depends on what your mix of products are at an individual store and where everything is sourced from. But there's very few things that don't have a connection to China, Mexico or Kim. I mean, just in the global, that's going to be a lot of stuff and you're going to start to see prices go up. And the question is, is what, what moves Trump off of this? Is it the deal? How much pain is he willing to inflict? But in the meantime, I, that's how I view it. I think it's a centering of, of Trump making him even more powerful and having tariffs, extra tariffs imposed puts him at the center of the conversation.
- [04:33]
A
Well, let me, let me, let me see if I can convert you on my corruption theory of this. Trump really has been a true innovator in corruption. And the thing which I've been most impressed, this is like my, my anchorman. I'm not even mad you ate the whole wheel of cheese. I'm impressed. Turning libel lawsuits into vehicles for, for bribery, which is basically what she's done with, with CBS and the abc. Right. He filed, filed defamation suits against the two news outlets for the purpose of being able to allow their parent companies to settle with him as a way of funneling money to him so that he could then, you know, give them what they're. That is truly innovative in its own way, I guess, and, and shows a.
- [05:25]
B
Lot of foresight, by the way, that he anticipated that we would come to a time, and it's really a sad time when these companies would stop fighting these rather frivolous lawsuits. There really is no, there's no defamation, nothing has happened here, other than people did some very anodyne reporting on things that were true, suing them and then anticipating that. Yeah, at some point down the line, they may just give up and want to send him $10 million or view it as an opportunity to send him $10 million or 25 million or whatever the going rate is. Now.
- [05:58]
A
It's a way to monetize the presidency. Right, like that. That is ultimately what it is. It's a way to monetize the presidency. I have the power of the presidency. And so I'm going to file this suit against you. You'll have to settle because you're going to have, if you're a big enough place, you'll have business before the government. And, and also, by the way, the whole thing gets wrapped up in an NDA. You can never talk about it. It's amazing.
- [06:21]
B
Yeah, that actually is one of the more of all of the things that have happened. You know, you really can't. The Republicans control the Congress, and I didn't have much faith that they were going to exercise oversight. That turned out to be true, at least at this point. You really can only expect Trump to follow through and do the things that he said that he was going to do. He's doing that. But the capitulation by not every major media organization, but a number of major media organizations, both in terms of these settlements and just kind of spewing news coverage to be more favorable to Trump, the editorial pages, etcetera, I mean, that is, that's something that we didn't really see in the first term. Not that the coverage was great or perfect or anything like that. But you, you, you had more of an independent spirit, I think, to the press overall. And you've, you really don't see that consistently anymore.
- [07:34]
A
I mean, let's talk about that a little bit, because it's of interest to the two of us as local DC I'm not in DC Anymore. But you're a, you're a local boy and you're a D.C. guy. What are your thoughts on what's going down at the Washington Post?
- [07:48]
B
It's, it's really, it's saddening because the fact is there are a lot of great reporters who still work there, and every day there's a lot of great, important stories about the Trump administration that continue to be published. So it's not something that I really take any pleasure in.
- [08:07]
A
But, no, nobody should, by the way. Nobody should take any pleasure in this. It's all very bad.
- [08:12]
B
But I think that what we're seeing is if you look at what happened in the first term, you know, Bezos was suing the Trump administration by saying that they're retaliating against him for, because he owned the Washington Post, not giving him blue origin, these contracts. And this is all laid out in legal papers. And I think there's just been a decision and whether this reflects his personal ideology or maybe the evolution of his ideology or what I think is more likely a raw economic decision, which is that this time it's going to be different. We are going to turn Trump into an ally. And I don't care what, what impact it has on the paper and I don't care what impact it has on, you know, my reputation. I'm going to do what's in my economic interest. I mean, you've, you saw NPR has done great reporting on this. 250,000 people, I think, left when he canceled the Harris, the endorsement of Harris. I think the last I saw was another 75,000 who left after this last decision to sort of take over the editorial page or the op ed page. And I think it's really a decision almost like Musk has done with, with X. It's saying, okay, we kind of give up on the idea of making money on this. So we're going to turn this into a public relations, we're going to weaponize it.
- [09:56]
A
It's a loss leader.
- [09:58]
B
Yeah. For, for political purposes and get Trump on, on our side. And you know, and I, and I think, and I think, you know, you can say, okay, well now it's limited to the op ed page. Well, first it was limited to everything. I mean, when he, when he took over, it was, he was going to be hands off everything.
- [10:19]
A
Right?
- [10:20]
B
Then he sort of says, okay, well now I'm going to get involved in just the editorial board. So I'm going to say, no Harris endorsements, no presidential endorsements, by the way. And now he's saying, well, now it's not just the ed. Now it's all opinion pieces and they all have to meet my ideology. And so I think that the thing that's upsetting to me is it's clearly just another half step away to say, now it's everything. Now it's the whole paper. And I think a lot of their very talented reporters are seeing the writing on the wall and moving to other places, moving to the Washington Post, moving to substack, moving wherever they can so they can continue doing their work. And at the end of the day, you're going to have one less really robust outlet that's holding power to account. That's what I think's going on.
- [11:11]
A
Yeah, I think I agree. And the problem is, if you're at the Post, I think you're in an untenable position, and it's just a question of finding yourself a lifeboat to get out as fast as you can. I just don't think in the medium term, the paper is viable in that way. And I don't know, it's all very sad to me. Can we talk a little bit about crypto, which is the other. The other big vector for corruption here? So, I mean, everybody just forget that the Trump coin was launched, what, the Friday before his inauguration. That would have been in any other. In any other timeline, a presidency ending scandal, and now nobody even really remembers it. And he is. He started a strategic, Strategic crypto reserve, which I think is, again, funny, because one of the things that was spread by Russian disinfo about Biden was like, oh, Biden's gonna take the American economy and turn all money into crypto. Which is crazy. Like, it was just. But. And you, you've written a little bit about Justin's son already. You've got more. Can you tell me what the crypto thing is all just scam? Right?
- [12:31]
B
I. I think especially. I think you could. You could actually, maybe. I, I'm very skeptical of all of it. I think you could separate something like bitcoin, which, for better or for worse at least, is decentralized. It's like a thing that exists and it's not under the control of like one or two crypto bros. Right? So put that to one side. You could sort of argue, what is this speculative asset? What's it really doing? It's been around for a while. There's not many.
- [13:01]
A
Is it a security, is it an asset, is it a currency? Right.
- [13:04]
B
But it's not. It's. I don't think it's as corrupt as some of these other newer coins that are centrally controlled. The Trump coin is probably the one of the best examples. He owns almost all of them. The money is all flowing to him. He's taking advantage of his celebrity to make a profit. The interesting thing about this strategic crypto reserve is no one has bothered to explain. I'd love for anyone to explain what the strategic purpose of this would ever be for the United States and the public. Like, you know, like, you have a strategic oil reserve and you could say, okay, yeah, there's a war, you know, by Saudi Arabia, the tankers can't get over and so you need some extra oil to counteract that. Okay, you know, we can, we can say, we can see that there's a possibility. What's the scenario when you say, oh, well, we really need this Ripple token that doesn't really have much of a use case of anything instead of dollars, even though dollars are the world's reserve currency, can be used for now and are used to buy and sell every possible thing. These coins are extremely expensive to use, are varying widely in valuation. What's the scenario? I mean, what's even the hypothetical scenario where we're going to use this? The only people that benefit are the people who own these assets and many of them are huge financial donors to Trump. The guys, the executives at Ripple Ripple donated. And by the way, in Trump, actually the new thing was he expanded and said it's not just going to be Bitcoin, it's going to be all of these very specific, somewhat obscure tokens are also going to be in there. You know, they donated one of the company behind one of those tokens, Ripple, donated $5 million to the inauguration. Also is funding funded on a scale of tens of millions of dollars. This pro Trump super PAC that supported a lot of the candidates and is going to continue to play a huge role in the midterm. So it's really a bailout for these people who have sunk a bunch of money into this or really invested in the idea that these crypto coins are going to be the future. So if you don't own one of these coins, this is not, I can't imagine how this would benefit, you know, anyone. And yeah, it's, it's, it is, it is, it's, it's an amazing scam. And the Trump coin itself, just the fact that it's out there, not only is it a scam, was it a scandal on the day that it was announced? It continues to be a scandal because at any point anyone can transfer a virtually anonymously transfer virtually unlimited cash to Trump by buying up these.
- [16:06]
A
That's all I'm going to do by.
- [16:08]
B
Buying up these tokens. It's, it's really as someone who is, you know, at least kind of been involved for a couple of decades and, and kind of kept track of what counts as a scandal. I mean, this is unbelievable amount of corruption. Just basically unlimited, anonymous transfers of money to the President of the United States.
- [16:33]
A
Yeah, and there's, there's so many. Once you start thinking about the details of the strategic crypto reserve, it gets even crazier. Right. Well, who knows when the purchasers are being made. Right. Because if you know when the purchase is going to be made, then you know when to buy. Right. And then when to sell, because the purchasing is going to spike the price. You have Don Jr. Out there tweeting, buy the dip and stuff and telling people to. I mean, the whole thing is. It's just a gigantic pump and dump scam, but now run by the federal government itself.
- [17:10]
B
Yes.
- [17:11]
A
But, you know, it's astonishing.
- [17:13]
B
One of the things that I thought about, and I think this to me may explain because I think, I think a lot of people are kind of confused about, well, why is Trump allowing Elon Musk to share so much of the spotlight? Like, why is he okay with how prominent he is? Why is he okay with him essentially presiding over the first cabinet meeting? I mean, being the dominant speaker of the first cabinet meeting? And I think that if you look at Trump's actual wealth prior to getting involved in these crypto scams, it has really been exponentially increased as a result of these, these new ventures. The, the Trump Coin, the World Liberty Financial, which is, which is other thing. I mean, he has made more money. You know, a lot of it is on paper now. But you know, there's a. Once you get the. I mean, as Elon Musk has showed, once you have that wealth on paper, it's easy enough to con. Convert it to actual. Oh, yeah, things, you know, you just borrow against it or do whatever you borrow against it.
- [18:16]
A
This is what they all do.
- [18:18]
B
And, and he's made more money off this than he has in his entire real estate career. Right. So he, that's why I think he is so loyal to this crypto group, is that they are doing what he always wanted. They are making him what he's always wanted to be, which is an actual billionaire rather than someone who just claims that he is a billionaire.
- [18:44]
A
God help us. Do you want, do you want to kind of put a quote on the machine about Justin Sun? The SEC has magically stopped investigating Justin Sun. Chinese nationals behind a bunch of this stuff. I guess that's just. Yeah. Like we're talking about all this other stuff and the fact that, that the White House is directing the SEC to stop investigating people. Kind of a big deal. Kind of the type of thing that would have been. Again, we, we have seven scandals a day that would have ended any other presidency and, you know, nobody.
- [19:14]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's all of them. I mean, it's Coinbase, it's Justin sun, it's. It's down the line. Even the ones that haven't been shut down yet. I mean, you can only assume that it's coming. Yeah. Ripple. One of these coins that's in the strategic reserve. They're, they're being sued by the SEC too. And that lawsuit hasn't even been dropped yet based on the fact that they're marketing this co illegally. And now we're announcing that we are going to, as the American people, purchase some unknown quantity of this coin as a strategic asset. But, but yeah, I mean, I think especially the Justin sun thing. He, he was very shameless about it. Just, you know, posting on, on X. Oh, I bought this. And the interesting thing about that is this was a flop before Justin sun came in. Meaning Justin sun came in, bought 30 million tokens in the, at the outset, I think he's up to 75 million. That was more than double the number of coins that were, that were available before, that were purchased before then. And these coins, by the way, are worthless because they just give you some voting rights. You can't, you can't sell them, by the way. They're locked. Their value is locked and they give you voting rights in a company that, as far as I can tell, doesn't do anything other than sell these tokens.
- [20:41]
A
This is the Liberty Financial, right?
- [20:42]
B
Yeah. World Liberty Financial and Barron Trump, by the way, is their crypto visionary. So you have that to.
- [20:51]
A
That I can believe.
- [20:52]
B
Yeah. That you could beg on. But other than that, they're not doing anything. You have some voting stake in them and you have Justin's son. He's buying tens of millions of dollars. And then, oh, wouldn't you know, now he's seen this very serious. And by the way, this was more than just a lot of these crypto companies. They got in trouble because they were, they were selling these crypto tokens and SEC was arguing that, you know, they were securities and that they should have filed. It's, it's kind of a technical argument. Right. Like it's not what you normally think of as a crime. I think there's good reasons why you'd want them to register so that they don't mix up the assets and things like that. Like you said, defraud investors.
- [21:37]
A
I mean, that's right. That's what the SEC is there for.
- [21:41]
B
But it was more of a, there was some legal argument about what are these things? How should you really consider these things? Justin sun was controlling all of these companies and was buying up these coins to boost up their value with one company and then selling them. And, and Pocketing the profits with another one. It was essentially a pump and dump scheme. There were lots of victims. This was, appeared to be from the allegations, clearly fraudulent activity. I mean this was someone who was committing crimes and now through giving up, you know, through giving them enough money was then, was then let off or we don't know if he's going to be let off yet. But all of the prosecution has been paused on request by the SEC and they're going to come to some sort of resolution that Justin sun seems very happy about. So you can, you can kind of guess exactly what's coming next. But yes, this is an all time corruption scandal just from, from A to Z. Watching it play out. I mean, I wrote about it initially with the first purchase and you sort of think, oh well, let's keep an eye on this and see what happens. Because this seems very fishy that you would allow someone. But then within a month it's done. I mean it's just, it's brazen. There's no, there's no, there's not even a cover up. We used to at least have a cover up part of these scandals.
- [23:10]
A
The COVID up is what used to get you in trouble. And now we've advanced the point where people feel like they don't even need to bother covering it up and just do it. Yes. God help us. All right, so I want to do our little AMA game since I don't know you, I, I, I want to ask you, how did you realize that substack was the future of journalism? So for people who don't know, Judd used to be Think Progress. He was an OG blogger. I think you founded ThinkProgress. Was that your baby?
- [23:42]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [23:43]
A
So you were early to blogs and then you left Think Progress. You stood up Popular Information, one of the very first sub stacks. I was, I don't know that I was a Day one subscriber, but I was probably a week one subscriber to you. And the reason I watched you so closely is in addition to like the content, I was very, I was substack curious for the Bulwark because we were not on substack and I wanted to see what happened to you and I wanted to see if you were able to make a go of it. And when you did, your success was a large part of what made me think, huh, maybe the Bulwark could be a good fit for substack too. So what did you see at the time? It was 2018, I guess that made you think, yeah, the marketplace is ready for this to be able to work.
- [24:29]
B
I wish I could say that I saw it all laid out in front of me, but I really didn't. But I did from my experience with Think Progress, which was partially supported by. Through a nonprofit center for American Progress progressive think tank. But also we had to kind of make our own revenue, too. So we were involved in advertising, and I saw just what a horrendous kind of business model that was. Like, you know, the money would come in one month, and then the next thing it would be gone. And you didn't know why. There were all these middlemen and folks who were taking cuts of your money. There was just no. No way, really to run a newsroom off of it because I didn't know how much money you would have from one month to another. So I became. I knew that that wasn't the direction we wanted to go. So I was really became interested in the subscription model. I started offering, just not just very kind of quietly, like a membership model for Think Progress to kind of help support it. We were getting, like, a little bit of traction. I was sort of seeing. I saw a path there that we could. We could account for, like, a lot of our revenue through this member. Like, people seem to be into it. There were enough people who are into it. At the same time, that newsroom had grown. It was 40 people. And I just wasn't doing any reporting or writing. And I was thinking, I gotta move on from this because I need to get back to doing what I like to do. I don't want to manage. I don't want to spend all my time managing people. I was getting exhausted with that. And actually, I just saw a. I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal. I think was one of the first articles about Substack. And it mentioned that Bill Bishop, who writes cynicism.
- [26:16]
A
I love Bill Bishop.
- [26:17]
B
So I had. And that he moved his China newsletter over to Substack and, you know, made like six figures the first day. It was a success of some sort. And I had met Bill once, you know, and he seemed like a smart. He just struck me as a smart guy. You know, he definitely do a lot about China. And I just thought, well, you know, if Bill is doing it, you know, it must be. He must. There must be something there. Like, he wouldn't have done it just. So I kind of then just started fooling around with it and got in touch with. With Hamish, you know, one of the founders. And it took me probably another six or seven months. I mean, I had convinced myself for Months, actually, that it would be a bad idea that, that it might work for Bill, because people would pay for this kind of, you know, very specific content about China because I'm sure, you know, there's economic value in knowing what's going on in China. There's a million other political newsletters. Most of them are free. Maybe it won't work. But then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to give it a shot for. For a year. So, yeah, so that's. That's basically. That's basically how it happened. Just finding a place where I could. The combination of. This is set up for sort of a one person. I mean, I have three people who, who work with me now, but at the time, for the first couple years, I just did it myself. And, and then also, I like. I really like the subscription model. I. I thought, to me, I thought, I see how this could work. And it appealed to me.
- [27:48]
A
Yeah, it's a thousand true fans, right?
- [27:50]
B
Yeah.
- [27:51]
A
You get a thousand people who are willing to support you, and then you can do everything else for free. Right. That's the other thing, you know.
- [27:57]
B
Yeah.
- [27:58]
A
If you have a bunch of people willing to support you, it also then allows you what we do, you know, anybody who wants to belong to the Bulwark and. But just can't swing it because, you know, life is expensive. There are people on fixed income, etc. They just email us and we take care of them because we have all these people who volunteer to pay. All right, your turn. Your question?
- [28:18]
B
Yeah, I guess maybe along the same lines. I know that. I guess I don't remember exactly, but I think at a certain point, the Bulwark was kind of half on substack, half not on substack. And then I know that a certain point you transferred everything over, you know, what was it that motivated you to do that?
- [28:50]
A
So when we first came to Substack, the website was on WordPress, and we used Mailchimp, which I'm sure you and everybody else here knows as our email engine. And when we stood up the subscription product, All Workplus, we decided to do that on Substack. But I am. What's funny. So I'm not like, politically conservative, but temperamentally, I am the most conservative person you've ever met. You know, I just like, all change is bad. Anything new is likely to result in doom. And so I wanted to go real slow with Substack. And so I essentially use them as mailchimp. You know, like, we. We moved the email newsletter product onto Substack but like held onto WordPress with both hands and we figured out an integration on the back end to make it look to the world like it was all seamless. But it wasn't. And it wasn't until like it had really proved that it was going to work. And then they, you know, Substack proved like it was viable for us. And once we knew it was viable and we saw that it was growing as an ecosystem so that, I mean, Substack now has real platform network effects for creators. I mean, I see that. I'm sure you see it. I think everybody on Substack sees it and that's real. And once we saw indications that that tipping point was coming, that's when we were comfortable enough to go over. Yeah, and, but again, you know, it's been great for us, but I always, you know, I walk into a room and I look up to see what can fall in my head. And so that's, you know, I think that's right.
- [30:32]
B
All of these platforms, I've been burned by a number of them. Not Substack yet, but I'm definitely, I'm definitely aware that it's possible. I guess. Let me. I've got to, I've got to jump. I know that you, you. I have one more that I was thinking about that I wanted to ask you was that politics has changed fairly dramatically over the course of the Bulwarks existence. And I guess I'm just curious from your perspective and certainly I think maybe the outside perception of the Bulwark has changed as well. But I'm wondering if. I don't know, I think maybe to me, I feel like that maybe it's seen as more kind of unapologetically critical of, you know, elements of the right that it might have been at the very beginning, but that might just be a perception thing. But I guess what I'm really curious about is do you think that kind of the political grounding sort of the base point for the reporting and everything else has changed at the Bulwark or is it just the, the outside environment that's changed?
- [31:52]
A
I mean, I think both have changed.
- [31:54]
B
Yeah.
- [31:55]
A
So, I mean, the Bulwark did not do very much reporting at all in. I mean, it was, it was originally gesture of opinion and analysis. We slowly started adding reporting and we've, we've again, it was just conservative. Right. What we were doing was working economically. The market was a good product market fit. I was willing to dip our toe a little bit more into reporting to see if that made Sense. And as. As it did. And we got good feedback from the market on this. Like, people liked it and were willing to support it. We have been doing more of it. And so we, we have been bringing in. We just brought in this week Lauren Egan, a great reporter from Politico, who was going to write a newsletter called the Opposition for us, which is going to just focus like a laser on, like, what's actually happening inside the Democratic Party. And this is going to be heavily reported. We've got Joe Perdicone, who covers Congress for us. And so, again, it's all been very slowly. It's like, you know, one step, make sure the market is there for it, then take another step. It's gratifying to say, to hear you say that you think the public perception of the bulk has changed. I don't feel that way, but maybe that's my neuroses. I feel like we're going to be described as the never Trump conservative media outlet, the bulwark for the rest of our lives, which isn't.
- [33:19]
B
Yeah, I don't actually, I don't. I don't think I, I think it has changed. I think that, you know, coming from a. Coming from sort of the, you know, my popular information says it on the about page. It's a progressive publication. You know, I've always sort of identified as a, as a progressive. I, I really just like stories. So I'm gonna tell this. I'm gonna tell the stories that I find. But, but that's, you know, that's my, that's my politics. But I think among progressives, I think to me, I feel like maybe three years ago, two or three years ago, there might have been sort of a dismissal maybe of the bulwark stuff to some degree saying, oh, yeah, it just is the never Trump conservatives. But I feel like that has changed. I feel like now people are just like, oh, there's this, you know, there's a good story for. There's a good story for the board. I mean, that's just my, you know, from my little kind of quarter of the world. That's the change.
- [34:15]
A
That's very nice to hear. My, My inspiration for it has always been that I want us to be the junior varsity for the Atlantic. Like, I, you know, I'm, I'm a. I don't know if you. I don't know if you're a magazine. Like, I'm a magazine guy in my bones. Like, I love magazines. I love the history of magazines. You know, Like, I. The old Michael Kinsley, New Republic is a thing that I would read and really cherish. I've read histories of the New Yorker like, you know, what it was like back in the Wallace Shawn days and stuff. And so I really, really. I've long been a partisan New Yorker. I think what Jeff Goldberg has done at the Atlantic over the last decade has been, like, the most important thing to happen in American magazines probably in my lifetime. And the. He's turned the Atlantic into the indispensable American magazine for this moment. And so I, you know, like, I know we can't do that just because of resources, and so, you know, we're different. But I like to think of this as a JV version of it. All right, so here's a, here's sort of a slightly depressing question for you. As I said from the top, like, popular information is all about impact journalism. Like, you do stories. And then people actually, like, change their behavior in the real world because of it, which is amazing. And I love, I love watching. I, like, I paid to. I became a paying subscriber to you before you started locking anything, just because I am a subscriber junkie. And, like, I just want to support everybody. And so I just, you know, like, I spend $5,000 a year on magazine subscriptions and stuff. But, like, for instance, after January 6th, you went very hard at the corporations who had ties to Republicans, and you got them to change their behavior, which was amazing. And then four years later, all these people buckled back under, and they did it because the American people actually don't care. How do you deal with this? Like, it is. It is. You know, like, there's a question like, well, what's the problem? Is the problem the corporations or the people? And the answer is, like, both, but ultimately the people, isn't it?
- [36:27]
B
Yes. I mean, I think that's right in that. And I think just the, the evolution of this kind of shows. I mean, people were upset about January 6th for a while, and it's the.
- [36:40]
A
Saddest thing I've ever heard.
- [36:41]
B
And people were. And people were responding and people were responding to that. And then now kind of the vibes have changed and the corporate behavior has changed. I think I am not when it comes to politics. I don't think I'm overly optimistic about where we're heading. You asked me what's going to happen in the next four years. I'm not really a predictions person, but I really wouldn't have a lot of great things to say about where we're going and, and about all this turning around very quickly. But I'm also not a cynic. I do think that over the long term that good things can happen and that behavior can change. And so I think the way I look at that, I knew immediately, even. Even as it was very. It was kind of exciting. As a reporter, when you're reporting, you know, you. You start reporting it and then one company does it. And I think, you know, companies or whatever ended up, you know, changing their policy. So it was, it was pretty.
- [37:50]
A
I don't know, people, people listening to the stream realized, like, Judd made that happen. Like he was. He was the guy on the beat. And it was amazing. It was amazing to watch.
- [37:59]
B
Well, I appreciate that, but I think even at the time I knew, like, this is not the end of this story. We have to track this. And we actually maintained on Substack, a tracker. We did it for a full two years, updating it monthly for a full two years, keeping track of every corporation who made that pledge. And there was a lot of backsliding well before.
- [38:23]
A
Yeah, right.
- [38:23]
B
You know, Trump kind of reemerged from the, from the ashes here. And the way I look at it is that I think it is in some sense disappointing that more corporations didn't kind of stick to their principles. There are a handful. I, I think we actually did that a few months ago. We're like, well, are there any left? Yeah, there's a few left. But it's good to get them down on record saying these are the things we say we care about, because now we know that they said that and that this is a, this is a violation of their pro. Their promises. And I don't know what that means for the future, but I think it's. When you know more about how a organization or a company acts, I think that can be important in the future. Certainly we're going to. I think everyone is going to be more skeptical if this current kind of tide turns and all of a sudden, you know, people care about racism again or they care about misogyny again. If those things aren't. Aren't like widely sort of accepted as okay again, that we're going to. People may want to demand more than just the statement from these companies and that, that over time can be poured. So I sort of, I kind of take the long view of it. And I also recognize as a reporter, you're not. You don't have much. You don't have control over 99.999% of things. So all you could do is just try to chip away and maybe get things out there. Get things out there that are true. You hope that people take that seriously and act. But then there's all sorts of stuff that's going on that you don't have control, but you just keep on churning away and obviously, like you don't do it just yourself. But the whole, as a, as a group of people, as a whole society, if enough people kind of are caring about trying to get the real story out there, that over time that's going to maybe create a slightly better world than it would have been had it all remained under darkness. And that's what's kind of. I think, to me, that's what's the one thing that's really invigorating about this time, is there is so much going on that is behind the shadows that it's. I mean, it's overwhelming to me just how many messages I get on a daily basis of people are saying, oh, you need to look into this. You need to look into this. Here's an email, here's a document. I mean, so much is going on and I do think it's important, you know, I'm not be able to, I'm not able to even deal with 10% of these things, but I do think it's important that as much as possible, that that's important gets out there.
- [41:22]
A
Sorry, I'll give you my last question since you did a row. Who's more dangerous right now, Trump or Musk?
- [41:32]
B
It's Musk. I mean, to me.
- [41:35]
A
Tell me more.
- [41:37]
B
1. I think that, I mean, we'll see what happens. But I do think that Trump is, is. Trump's pretty old. So that's, that's one thing that's a time limiter on him. And he's also, I think you. I hesitate to say this definitively, but he is term limited. So he does have a. He does have only a few. A few years left. I mean, obviously you never know what's going to happen and I'm not predicting it, but I think that if I, I think that chances are better than not that he, this is his last term and as a result, he's limited. He also.
- [42:15]
A
Ah, we lost Judd. Well, that's too bad, guys. We went really long. These things were originally supposed to be 20 minutes and they just keep expanding. So. Good show. Long show. Thanks to Judd for being here. If you're not onto popular information, go and hit subscribe on the substack. He really does do the Lord's work. It's original reporting and it's holding power to account. It's great stuff, guys. We'll be back next week with another one of these. I think I have Noah Smith next week. No promises. Catch you then.
- [42:52]
B
Bye.