Satire Is Back With The CEO of The Onion

Summary

In Good Faith With Philip DeFranco
Episode: Satire Is Back With The CEO of The Onion
Date: November 20, 2025
Guest: Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Philip DeFranco sits down with Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion and former NBC disinformation reporter, to dive deep into the state of satire, independent media, news industry cynicism, the failed Elon Musk-Onion bid, and the ongoing struggles—and hopes—of newsmaking in 2025. They tackle the ongoing Infowars saga, AI’s impact on journalism and comedy, America’s increasing sense that “everything is a scam,” the rise of parasocial bonds online, gambling’s societal normalization, and what authentic resistance and hope look like in a fractured media landscape.

---

Key Topics & Insights

The Infowars Acquisition Saga (00:32–02:43)

• Status of Infowars Purchase
  • Collins confirms they’re still pursuing ownership of Infowars, but the process is mired in legal purgatory due to Alex Jones’ obstructions and the “toxic baggage” associated with the brand.
  • Quote:
    “Alex Jones is like the Michael Jordan of being a piece of shit to the court system. He’s relentless in terms of trying to evade justice.” – Ben Collins (00:51)
  • Collins reflects on the unique situation: they’re among the only interested parties intending to use the site for positive change.

Elon Musk’s Onion Obsession (02:43–04:20)

• Musk previously tried (and failed) to buy The Onion, instead “picking off staffers” to start a doomed project named “Thud.”
• Quote:
  “He wanted to buy The Onion because he wanted to be cool, man.” – Ben Collins (03:16)
• Musk’s pattern of acquisition is linked more to ego than calculated strategy.
• Musk's efforts predate his Twitter (now X) purchase but cast a shadow over his current reputation.

Becoming a Disinformation Reporter: Personal Motivation (04:20–08:54)

• Collins was drawn into disinformation reporting after witnessing online conspiracy abuse directed at a friend whose girlfriend was murdered on live TV, the first instance of a murder livestreamed on Facebook.
• Coverage focused on the weaponization of online platforms—conspiracy theories attacking marginalized groups (trans people, immigrants) whose lack of societal power makes them vulnerable.
• Quote:
  “I just never stopped covering those kinds of people. …Conspiracy theorists, people who had really hijacked how Americans consume information.” – Ben Collins (05:41)
• Explains the difference:
  • Misinformation: Spread unknowingly.
  • Disinformation: Deliberate, targeted campaigns to harm or criminalize.

The Impact of Mainstream Media’s Failings (09:11–16:30)

• Satire’s power: The Onion can “say the unsaid things that are rattling around in people’s brains.”
• Declining courage in traditional press:
  • Major outlets (esp. Washington Post, CBS) have “capitulated” to corporate pressure and billionaire owners.
  • Many great reporters have been fired or silenced.
• Quote:
  “The Washington Post is the most egregious. They are doing the bidding of their billionaire owner.” – Ben Collins (10:55)
• “True” reporters face two choices: keep their head down or go independent—Collins sees hope in the latter.

The Rise (and Risks) of Independent Media (16:30–19:40)

• The quality and impact of independent journalism have never been higher, as whistleblowers and sources seek out fearless reporters outside mainstream outlets.
• Classic journalism practices—like alerting targets well in advance—now risk allowing power to “go on offense.”
• Quote:
  “If I am a regular human being whistleblower, I’m not going to go to the guy who gives the White House 2 weeks to comment ... I’m going to go to Marissa at The Handbasket, who’s going to report the shit out of this thing and then call the White House at the very last second.” – Ben Collins (17:27)

AI’s Impact on Journalism and Satire (19:40–22:06)

• Layoffs, Not Innovation: AI has been used to justify firing journalists, but “it cannot call somebody and get information,” can’t build sources, and can’t write genuinely funny jokes for satire.
• Quote:
  “AI cannot write a joke. It’s just straight up bad at it.” – Ben Collins (20:22)
• At The Onion, AI is not used creatively at all; human inefficiency is a core feature, not a bug.

American Life as a Scam: The Satirical Lens (22:43–24:48)

• Collins expands on his view that “everything in American life is a scam”—from gambling to MLMs to boner pills.
• The economy is built on speculation and side hustles rather than substance.
• The Onion’s role is to mercilessly lampoon the absurdities and scams omnipresent in American life.
• Memorable Moment:
  • Revisiting the “Balloon Kid” saga as an early symbol of news spectacle and American gullibility (24:01).

Normalization of Online Gambling & Societal Dangers (26:04–31:22)

• Podcast host Philip DeFranco discusses distancing himself from gambling sponsors after seeing the real harm caused.
• Collins explains how prediction markets, once academic, have ballooned into unregulated, easily-manipulated systems with dangerous real-world incentives—even potentially endangering politicians’ lives.
• Quote:
  “You could nerf a candidacy and just say of a small-time person just to win 100, 200 bucks with just, you know, a random rumor you put on Facebook...” – Ben Collins (28:12)

The Hopeful Case for Independent Creators & Analog Community (31:22–44:20)

• Collins highlights the newspaper revival: The Onion, now the 11th biggest newspaper in the U.S., has 55,000 print subscribers—most revenue comes from physical newspapers, not clickbait ads.
• Dropout (ex-College Humor) lauded as a success story of “good” parasocial relationships leading to in-person, communal experiences.
• Quote:
  “We brought back the newspaper, which had been dead for 11 years—and now we are the 11th biggest newspaper in the United States in a year. …People like getting it in their hands.” – Ben Collins (43:00)
• The push to get people off screens, back into the real world; a “primal sense” of community rising in resistance to manufactured outrage.

Crafting Good Satire in the Outrage Era (45:43–47:28)

• True satire works at “1.25 speed”—just a bit ahead of reality and speaks the unsaid out loud.
• The Onion’s process is “ruthlessly inefficient”: the writers pitch 160 headlines a day to produce one or two, so “The Onion doesn’t miss” publicly because so much is filtered and fought over.
• Quote:
  “Every weekday, 15 writers come in with 10 headlines each… You’re working with 160 headlines. And then they needle that down to, like, one every day… We miss all the time. We miss 159 out of 160 times. ...It's just not public.” – Ben Collins (34:12)

The State of the Right & MAGA Civil War (47:28–52:58)

• The far-right is splitting; Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nick Fuentes seize the “first available offramp to power,” echoing old-school, now open bigotry.
• Collins fears they’re winning because they understand the Internet and information manipulation best.
• Quote:
  “The Overton window has shifted so far… those people have been able to establish a lot of things that aren’t true as true... [They] have incredible power, and I just don’t write them off.” – Ben Collins (51:18)

Who Has “The Juice” on the Left? (53:00–57:11)

• No clear candidate with genuine strength and moral clarity, though “there’s a lot of juice on the left.”
• Collins notes disillusionment and identity fatigue in the progressive base but holds out for authentic leadership.
• On strength:
  “Strength is believing in something and actually believing it. ...I am a Democrat. It's the closest thing to human rights that I can get.” – Ben Collins (57:02)

Pain, Empathy, and the Path Forward (58:50–64:45)

• Trump-era pain may teach empathy and galvanize change, but only if people witness and process the suffering.
• The path out is connection, community, and doing the tough work of rebuilding locally and personally.
• Quote:
  “This is the point of being alive, is feeling the deep, dark stuff and trying to verbalize it and trying to bring it together and bring people around to your cause.” – Ben Collins (63:13)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Alex Jones & Infowars:
  “If you try to buy Infowars, you just inherit the harassment campaign with it.” – Ben Collins (01:27)

• On The Onion’s Staff Philosophy:
  “My job is to make sure our writer’s room at the Onion gets to say exactly what they want to say, and there’s no space pervert above us that tells us not to do it.” – Ben Collins (09:19)

• On Corporate Media Capitulation:
  “...almost all of these mainstream places have to some extent capitulated because of larger corporate concerns.” – Ben Collins (13:36)

• On the Role of the Next Generation:
  “If you’re a young journalist…you’re about to be a very prestigious and well-received journalist when this wave of capitulation ends…” – Ben Collins (31:26)

• On Print Revival at The Onion:
  “If you like The Onion, you should get a newspaper in the mail. …We just shut it off [ads]. …Within three and a half months, we turned those [clickbait ads] off.” – Ben Collins (41:35)

• On Satire’s Role in Hard Times:
  “We’re just going to keep punching up at power. Like we have no, we have nobody telling us no. …If you think something should be in the newspaper and you’re not reading it about the people in power, we’re probably …saying it.” – Ben Collins (45:27)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Infowars Acquisition & Alex Jones – 00:32–02:43
• Elon Musk and The Onion/Thud Fiasco – 02:43–04:20
• Collins’ Disinfo Beat Origin Story – 04:20–08:54
• Disinformation vs. Misinformation Explainer – 07:08–08:54
• Mainstream Media’s Decline & Capitulation – 09:51–14:21
• Hope in Independent Journalism – 14:21–16:30
• Reporters & Risk Aversion in Modern News – 16:30–19:40
• AI and Layoffs in Media & Comedy – 19:40–22:06
• Everything is a Scam, Satirical Lens – 22:43–24:48
• Gambling’s Normalization & Dangers – 26:04–31:22
• Return to Analog, Print, and In-Person Community – 31:22–44:20
• On Crafting Good Satire at The Onion – 45:43–47:28
• MAGA Civil War & the Rising Far-Right – 47:28–52:58
• Who Has the Juice on the Left? – 53:00–57:11
• Pain-Induced Empathy as a Societal Teacher – 58:50–64:45

---

The Episode’s Tone

Ben Collins is sardonic, direct, and darkly optimistic. He balances candid, expletive-laced critiques of media failings, corporate cynicism, and American absurdity, with unexpected hope for grassroots journalism, analog community, real-world comedy, and young people’s potential to build solidarity. DeFranco’s questions probe systemic issues but also dwell on practical realities (addiction, parenthood, algorithmic cynicism), creating a free-flowing but pointed conversation.

---

For Listeners: Core Takeaways

• The future of trustworthy information is becoming more decentralized—driven by independent reporters, satire, and in-person community rather than legacy institutions or AI.
• Everything feels like a scam, from the economy to news to online relationships, so authenticity and human connection (even in comedy) are more important than ever.
• The fight against manipulation, capitulation, and rising extremism is exhausting, but Collins believes the current “rock bottom” offers space for real rebuilding—if people are willing to step up, both in journalism and in community.
• Satire is not dead; it’s essential, thriving, and—when done right—a corrective to both corporate and authoritarian absurdity.

---

Recommended for anyone interested in the crossroads of comedy, media, technology, and the relentless search for truth (and hope) in a cynical age.

Transcript

[Ben Collins]

Hey, everyone.

[Philip DeFranco]

Welcome back to the In Good Faith podcast. My name is Philip DeFranco, and every week I'm talking to people I think are the most important and influential people in the world. And this week, my guest is Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion and maybe soon the owner of Infowars, and also making it even juicier. Before buying the Onion, he was a disinformation reporter for NBC News. You know, we talk about so much the art of satire and if it's still possible in 2025, Elon's failed attempt to buy the Onion and how the Onion is now the 11th biggest newspaper in the world. So, hey, sit back and enjoy. And if you do, give it five stars on Spotify and Apple, or give it a like on YouTube and also leave a comment on what you agreed with, disagreed with, who you'd like to.

[Podcast Host]

See next as a guest. So, Ben, the first thing I have to ask is, where are things with Infowars right now? How far away is there a future where you are the CEO of Infowars? Because there was craziness, and then it's been kind of radio silent for a little bit.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, we're still going for it. There is a future where that happens, and we're planning for that to take place, but we have no idea. Like, you know, Alex Jones is like the piece of shit of. Sorry, the. The Michael Jordan of being a piece of shit to the court system. He is a. He's. He's relentless in terms of trying to evade justice. And we are, you know, or we're standing by trying to find a way to get it, but at present, it's just sort of in, like, very weird purgatory. People are afraid of the government courts and. And they're specifically afraid of Alex. Um, you know, I think in a lot of cases, you know, Alex is the. The court system has been like, why didn't this sell for an amount of money that's real. And it's because if you try to buy infowars, you just inherit the harassment campaign with it. So you're just paying for this. You're paying for all this extra stuff. You're paying to be told that you're part of the cabal or whatever. So that's part of the deal. But we're still going for it. It's the right thing to do. I will say, you know, when we first. It's been almost. It's been a little bit over a year, actually, since we temporarily owned infowars for, like, 20 minutes or something. And it's been a very long year since then. But it was eight days after the 2024 election when we, when this first happened. So we, we were in for this for the long haul. And we also knew that, you know, more than likely we're the only people bidding on this that wanted it to be a different kind of website. So. And, or, or we're not even remotely involved with Alex himself. So. Yeah, we, we knew it would be hard. I don't know if we knew it would be this hard, but, you know, we're. We're at the one year anniversary and we're still fighting.

[Podcast Host]

Well, so something I was interested in there because I forget if it was ever confirmed or if it was just rumors. I mean, was. Was part of the, the calculus and wanting to buy. I mean, was. Was it true that Elon Musk was involved in some way in trying to buy it?

[Ben Collins]

Unclear. He has tried to buy the Onion in the past and that kind of failed. He just had to pick off staffers one by one to try to go get it. There's a series of domos that.

[Podcast Host]

That's what I'm thinking of. Okay. Because I was like. I was like, there's something with the connection there that's so weird and funny. Why did he want the Onion?

[Ben Collins]

Because he wanted to be cool, man. Like he, you know all these guys. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Was this before he bought Twitter to be cool? He wanted to buy the Onion to be cool.

[Ben Collins]

He wanted to buy the Onion. The staff was like, no, thank you. This was in, I think 2016 or 2017. It was a long time ago. And then, then he started individually picking off staffers to launch something that under his, you know, under his eye and just kind of basically forgot about them. Just left them in like a warehouse space in Southern California and they wound up launching a thing called thud. And then they all left. So that's what happened there. Also, Twitter tried to step in to stop.

[Podcast Host]

What a beautiful name for something that failed. I love that.

[Ben Collins]

It is. That's so great.

[Podcast Host]

With a thud.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. I think the people who worked on it, I think they didn't understand what they were getting into. It wasn't at that mode. It was nowhere near that mode of current Elon, so. Right.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, okay.

[Ben Collins]

I think once they got there, they're like, something's off here. Yeah. And that's what happened. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Have you, have you ever had any, any run ins with him? Whether it be this life or your previous. Previous life? Because, I mean, you were a disinformation. Right. Wing writer for NBC and the Daily Beast, which actually, before I even get to the Elon stuff. How do you decide to go into such an awful field? What's the mental process there?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I will say. I mean, most people in that field, including myself, I don't think there was, like, a decision made where I was going to be like, I'm going to go and just call Nazis all day long. Nobody does that on purpose. It's been about 10 years. It has been 10 years. But 10 years ago, my friends, girlfriend, I went to college with this guy named Chris Hurst. He was a reporter. Like, we had this really incredibly awful. What would now be called a podcast where we talked about, I think, fantasy baseball for two years. Really rough psychos.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, just really quick. I do. I do fantasy football. You have to be a psycho to do fantasy baseball. That's a job.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, it was a job. Yeah. I don't know. And this was before it was like gambling. We're just doing this because we were nerds. It was a problem, but we. Yeah. Anyways, he was a reporter in Roanoke, Virginia, and so was his girlfriend, Allison Parker. And Allison was shot and killed on live tv. She was the first person to have her murder live streamed on Facebook. It's truly abhorrent, truly awful. And then the weeks after that, I started, like, Googling his name and seeing what his name came up on YouTube. And everything that you would see at that time was that Allison didn't really exist or that Chris worked for the CIA. All this awful stuff. This is when it was not really reported on either. People didn't talk about how people were getting their information and how people were absorbing how the bad guys had sort of taken over the pipes. So I wrote a story about that, and that just never stopped. I just never stopped covering those kinds of people. Conspiracy theorists, people who had really hijacked how Americans consume information. And, you know, those people are now called, I think, like, the Justice Department. I think that's what we would refer to them as. As a collective now. But that is a. Yeah, that. That's how I got into it. And I just wanted to cover stupid stuff the whole time. And unfortunately, that's not how American life has turned out in the last 10 years.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I mean, when you mention the bad guys, I mean, unfortunately, I think we both have a negative impact, but we kind of see the words conflated. Can you walk us through disinformation versus misinformation? And maybe even with that, like, the evolution of what's kind of become the bigger problem, even though both are obviously a problem.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I think, you know, misinformation is people spreading stuff they don't know is wrong. Disinformation is deliberate targeting their campaigns to go after specific people or ideas and trying to get them at this point, criminalized or hurt. You know, I focused on people who were probably most affected on a wide swath that maybe were not, you know, faces weren't put to names. So very frequently I was covering trans people who had been targeted at the start of that, and I was trying to alert people that maybe these people were being used as a stand in because they had no power. Maybe they were being used as a caricature because they had no real rights or lobbies that would stand up for them in the grander populace. You still don't see trans people on talking head shows on CNN or MSNBC or anything like that, let alone Fox News or those other places. But those people are being actively targeted because of that, because they didn't have a line of defense that worked. And then obviously immigrants, and really the lowest, probably the lowest in the totem pole in terms of lobbying power. And those people being used as scapegoats really worked in two elections in the last 12 years. So I covered how they were used. These campaigns were used to drive these people suicide, were used to try to make it so these people could be blamed for all of America's problems. And it got tiresome because then, obviously, if I'm reporting on that sort of thing, you know, they come after me, they come after my family and my friends, and it became too difficult to do, and I just, you know, I hung it up two years ago around this time.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, do you see yourself in a drastically different situation? Because wouldn't like the, the biggest change be you're kind of just more mocking and making fun of rather than. And it kind of accomplishes some of the same stuff, especially with, I think, the failures that we're seeing in mainstream reporting right now.

[Ben Collins]

Oh, my God, yes, we have a lot of. We have a lot more juice right now because we can say the unsaid things that are rattling around in people's brains and nobody's getting in their way. My job is to make sure our writer's room at the Onion gets to say exactly what they want to say. Uh, and there's no space pervert above us that tells us not to do it. Uh, so that is our. That is my biggest job right now. And it's, It's. I think it's working I think right now, where you see all these other places capitulating and trying so desperately to normalize truly absurdist and weird behavior. We are just not doing that. We're just not doing it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Actually, so I wanted to dive into that because I was, I was reading a recent interview that you did and you said all my friends are reporters and they have two choices. Right. They keep their heads down at the outlet that they're working at, they keep their big paycheck, or they go independent, they report what's actually going on. And you added that. I know for a fact that all the media outlets that had a resurgence in the early Trump years either fired all the great reporters or told them to shut up. Can we name some names as far as. Even with. Starting with outlets and companies, because I think sometimes there is protection and there is cover for saying all of them. Right. And because it's a different version, I think of, you know, I'll talk to some of the, the Trumpers in my family and they'll see something that's like egregious from Trump and they'll be like, oh, well, they're all criminals. And it's like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Ben Collins]

Of course.

[Podcast Host]

So if everything's bad, no one's bad. So are there any specific outlets that you think are the, the, the worst places and they've cracked down on the reporters the most. I'd love to hear from you there.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, obviously, the Washington Post is the most egregious. They are doing the bidding of their billionaire owner. They've completely wiped out their op ed page and replaced it with people who are now saying that Jeffrey Epstein is. Me too. Me too. Three. Me too.

[Podcast Host]

Okay. I have to look.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, that's like a thing that's happening now. But like, that is the most egregious thing. And I don't want to broad swap this in the other direction either. There are still great reporters there. Like Drew Harwell is a great reporter doing the best he can in a difficult situation. He covers basically what I covered back in the day. And he's like, he's a dog. He's really good. And the reporters, though, that are still doing good work are, are fighting a two front war. It is, is going to be very difficult. CBS wiped out everything. You saw the guy who ran 60 Minutes for decades, you know, duck out and get out of the way. That's when you know something's up. You know, Marty Baron at the Washington Post knew something was up before anybody else because he's you know, he was, the guy was at the Globe Spotlight team when they did the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. He's one of the best editors in the history of America. And he knew something was funny at the Post and left when he was the editor in chief. There. It, there's, there are a lot of places that are acting like this and some of them are acting like this overtly. The Post is very, you know, they're playing a game. They're trying to, its owner is trying to win favor. Same thing for cbs. They are trying to get deals through that otherwise wouldn't. That would be Monopoly style deals in the past. CBS is trying to the owner of that company, the Ellisons, they're trying to buy TikTok in onus. They are trying, they might bid for Warner Brothers Discovery. They have just merged Skydance, all of these things. They are trying to win government approval. And you hear talking, you know, with Donald Trump where they say that they're on the right track now at CBS for just capitulating. That's what I'm talking about. It's not, this is, that's, that's the overt stuff. The COVID stuff is, you know, I don't want to blow up my friend spot who, you know, where they, they have kids, they have, you know, they have a life. And they are trying to within, keep the wheels on the track to the extent that they can. It is sort of like in the first Trump administration where they were doing that internally. They were real people who were trying to stop him from shooting protesters and doing January 6th and all that stuff. There are people in that, in those roles in newsrooms right now that are less overt. But almost all of these mainstream places have to some extent capitulated because of larger corporate concerns.

[Podcast Host]

So do you think then the, the future ends up being more independent? Because I don't know. I don't see it just with reporters. I see it in numerous fields. We've had a lot of experts going. Pretty much everyone's like just shut the fuck up for the next three years and maybe we can survive this. And maybe there's it, maybe it doesn't go back to normal, but there's some sort of pendulum swing. So I mean, is the future independent? Because I sometimes think on the surface, okay, it's easy to say yes, right? We see the kind of the substack pops, we see the, the TikTok and YouTube shows that, that blow up. But it almost feels like inevitable that it'll get to a Point where it's a business for a number of these places and then it loses that independence.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I, I hate to be hopeful, but I'm going to be hopeful for a second if that's okay. Some of the best reporting I've seen in my life.

[Podcast Host]

Next question is going to go into cynicism. But yes, I want to hear the hope. I want to hear the hope.

[Ben Collins]

Cool. Some of the best reporting I've seen in my life has come out in the last few months and people like Mr. Marissa Cabas at the handbasket who is just a dog of a reporter. Once you give up the ghost of trying to work at these places ever again, you are doing some of the best reporting in the world on a week by week basis. People come to you with real information from the rungs of the government and stuff that they know they can only trust somebody who will report it fairly inaccurately outside of these spaces without going to the White House and trying to. 5050 something awful. That's where the real good stuff is coming. And you know, I talked to my yesterday I'm home and I talked to some people in my alma mater who are fighting this fight. They are. I went to Emerson College in Boston and the president of that college is trying to kick the school newspaper out of their buildings for reporting on Palestine protest last year. They were just reporting on it and they, they didn't toe the line. And I told them, you know, I'm much more likely as the guy who hires and fires some people to hire somebody who got kicked out of college for reporting accurately about the administration than I am for somebody going doing a 50, 50 ball with people who are lying to you. And that's going to come. That's going to happen. The people I will remember from this era are the people who went and asked a murderer in Mohammed bin Salman to their face about how he bonesawed a journalist to death. Those are the people I remember right now. They're playing with fire with their jobs, but they are not playing with fire for the long term. Like we're gonna get through this. There is going to be another side of this. People do not like what is going on writ large. That's available in polling, but it's available when you go outside and talk to people. And the reporters who understand that fundamentally know what their job is to report what's going on and not the in between of what's going on, what your boss wants you to say. Those are the people who are going to stand the test of time in.

[Podcast Host]

This era, I think people are going to be interested to hear you expand on when you say someone has a story, then they go to the White House, they do a 50, 50 poll. Like, can you explain what that is?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. I mean, at all these places, they, there are active conversations about keeping your seat on Air Force One, about not getting sued. So you have to, you know, CNN gets sued all the time, New York Times gets sued all the time for their Wall Street Journal now, as well by the White House for this. And it's expensive. These are frivolous lawsuits. Right. And you know, they're suing them for tens of millions of dollars for ridiculous, obviously true statements of fact. But that doesn't matter. It's still lawyers fees. Like, they'll get thrown out, but that's, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees that could go to reporting. They could do all this other stuff. If you are a person with real information right now, say you are a government whistleblower of some stripe, say you just left ICE because you couldn't handle it anymore. Do you want to go to the Washington Post reporter who, you know, is a good reporter, by the way, but you know that they'll go and they will smear your name because you're taking their information, because that's the rules. They'll take your information and they will drag you through the mud before the story even gets out because they're not playing by the rules. I'm going to go to Marissa at the handbasket who's going to report the shit out of this thing and then call the White House at the very last second. That's who I'm going to go to. If I am, if I'm a regular human being whistleblower, I'm not going to go to the guy who gives The White House 2 weeks to comment and go through the Palantir records on you and then come up with everything bad you did in middle school. So I, I am aware of the situation. I just, you know, the news hasn't adapted in time, and now it's at the point where it's sort of beyond adapting.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so that's kind of interesting to me. So, because I've, I always talk about myself as a news curator and commentator, never as a journalist. And so there are a number of things that, as far as practices that are, that are interesting to me. The, the note of contacting who the story is about kind of last second. Is that, is that a normal practice? And if so, why?

[Ben Collins]

Oh, you have to, I mean, you should reach out for comment from the White House. I think there was a time you might be able to get information out of that, but now they are saying your mom, they reply to emails by saying your mom to you. So you're not getting information. You were just. You're giving them a week to go on offense, basically. And that's fine. They're giving you a week to. But like again, you're kind of asking, you're asking the gun a time for comment. You're being like, hey, do you have any bullets in there? They're going to say to you, you're gonna find out. That's what you're doing. Right. I'm not saying this isn't like good practice. I'm saying that again, if I am, if I'm Chelsea Manning, a reality winner or whatever, right now, I'm going to 404, but that's where I'm going. Which is a great outlet of ex reporters who got laid off in the first wave of like AI layoffs at these medium sized places. That's where I'm going. And I don't know, does these places have had a failure to adapt to the new reality that we live in?

[Podcast Host]

Is that kind of the next big threat you think for or not? Maybe next. Maybe it's the current threat for journalists. Is AI Is that why we're seeing or why we're saying more comfortable or companies more comfortable in laying off the amount of people or. No, it's not really there yet.

[Ben Collins]

My take on AI is that it's done a really useful executive functioning, executive function function in laying off people who they want to lay off without a replacement. In my world, like it, AI cannot call somebody and get information out of people. It can't build source. It can't do all that really difficult stuff. It also in at the Onion, it cannot write a joke. It's just straight up bad at it. And that's because AI at present is the synthesis of all. No knowledge. Right. It's the synthesis of all. Even at a. That's a. I would say an optimistic take. And that allows you to take that stuff and analyze it, Take the information that we know and analyze it in a way that is, you know, hopefully useful. Good satire, good comedy is just sort of the thing, the unsaid thing. It's the feeling in the back of your head and it's very human. And for us, we don't use it at all. Like we. I have not seen anything from AI that was funny on purpose. I've Seen people manipulate AI to. You know, there's a great guy on Instagram, his name's, like, Sergio, but he's a casting director, and he tries to get. He does. Like, he does casting calls, but with AI Right? But AI actors, that's funny because their faces morph and they simply cannot act. They can't. They don't know what being mad is. They just overact all the time. It's very funny, but it's not good. So in both the onions world and in the reporting world, it's been used as a cudgel to lay off lots of people. It's been used as an ability, a good excuse to be like, look, sorry, the revolution's coming. We're getting out ahead of this. And what they've replaced it with is nothing good. I mean, I have not heard the great AI song or seen the great AI Movie. I've seen them add extra fingers in the background to an Apple TV show, but I have not seen the supposedly incredibly positive developments artistically that I've been sworn to with trillions of dollars in boiled ocean that. That is coming.

[Philip DeFranco]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

I don't know. I constantly look at it. I think it's the situation we're in feels bad no matter what. It's either mass firings or it's not what they say it is. And it's just a commercial product. And the market takes just such a massive impact. We see devastating damage. But we'll see once. So that kind of hits on the cynicism that I wanted to ask you about. Um, with infowars, you were asked, you know, what would you do with it? Uh, you said, I would have this site show how everything in American life is a scam. So as a cynic, my ears go, okay, wait, he has to expand on that.

[Ben Collins]

How.

[Podcast Host]

How do you see everything in American life as a scam?

[Ben Collins]

I mean, our. Our economy is sort of reliant on gambling and speculation right now. Uh, and you used to be reliant on, like, hypothetical gambling, but I was literally, like, relying on actual gambling. Like one, I don't know, one in two American male teenagers seems to be spending 80% of their time on DraftKings, which I suppose is better than the rest of the Internet. So, like, it's not a great outcome for us. And I see it everywhere. And even if you're not gambling or part of that speculation, you're being preyed upon by some sort of MLM that tells you they have some sort of miracle elixir that is going to fix Every ailment in your body that probably requires some yoga. So like we are. There's a vast open expanse here for us to at the Onion to comment on this. And in the last 30 years that the Onion has been around, 37 years, we've always sort of like taken up that mantle. Like we went after we created the Onion News Network when it was peak cnn when it was like the, the child was in the sky and what was that? Remember when they. There was like the child who was like in the floating balloon, but then he wasn't. Are you.

[Podcast Host]

Wait, are you talking about balloon kid?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, the balloon kid. Yeah. Yeah. So it was.

[Podcast Host]

I was like, I remember covering it. I remember seeing the documentary in the last year. Like I was, I was, I was all bought in. But yeah, yeah, an incredible metaphor.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, bother me. Anyway, the whole thing was an incredible metaphor for what we're in for at that point. But around that time we created ONN and then we created Clickhole to counter the buz feed upwardification of everything. And now the way that we consume media is this is random people trying to sell you boner pills because it'll fix all your problems. And we have to have some sort of reaction to that as a company. And that's, that's why we were going after infowars. Obviously we would have wished that we would have it by now, but you know, we'll see what happens in the next few months.

[Podcast Host]

God, that was the upworthy PDF that ruined headlines for two to three years. Yeah, it was like, you will. Oh my God.

[Philip DeFranco]

I'll get you right back to the.

[Podcast Host]

In good faith pod in a minute.

[Philip DeFranco]

But first let me say, have you ever gotten a random spam call and think, how the hell did they get my number? Well, it turns out it might be from leaks like this one. A billing platform recently exposed nearly 180,000 personal records, including names, emails and tax IDs. So yeah, someone's secure system. It basically left your data sitting out like an open Google Doc. And tons of businesses, they use tools like that every day. And you'd never know your information's just floating around until it's too late. And that's why I use today's sponsor, NordVPN, to keep my digital footprint locked down. Threat protection blocks malware, shady links and trackers before. Before they even load. While encryption keeps your connection private even when the sites you use mess up. And they use it everywhere, from hotel, WI fi, airports, or random coffee shops that definitely shouldn't have free WI fi. And also it's fast. Like stream your favorite show from another country without buffering fast. You can even change your virtual location to access content or grab better travel deals. So don't wait for your data to end up in some unsecured spreadsheet. Protect yourself now. Just scan that QR code or go to nordvpn.com ingoodfaith for a huge discount on a two year plan, plus for extra months free. That's nordvpn.com in good faith. It's risk free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. Because privacy shouldn't be optional.

[Podcast Host]

But Ben, I want to go back to. I haven't really had a sounding board for this. So I am someone that in the past I had prize pick sponsorship, draftkings sponsorships, to the chagrin of my sales team and my manager. I started like once I actually researched and saw like how fucking devastating it is for people. I was like, oh, okay. I was. I was comfortable with this because it wasn't technically gambling and it was like, it was just fantasy football. And that's a thing that I normally do and I still engage with it on a personal level. But I was like, I can't promote this once I start seeing how devastating it is. But I think also it's another version of the bad. I'm freaked out by what's been so normalized in the past just six months. Even Google's like, I guess going to get involved with Polymarket and Kalshi.

[Philip DeFranco]

That seems so dangerous. Not just for manipulation.

[Podcast Host]

But I don't know, I. Once again, maybe it's a cynical part of my brain. When I started seeing Mumdani in New york as a 9293 favorite and you could go, you could vote. No, it felt like it opens up this horrifying door. And it's not like people need more reasons these days. It feels like it opens up this horrifying door where someone goes, okay, well I'm gonna bet that, that he doesn't. And then it incentivizes some sort of other reason for an assassination attempt. It feels like. And I like when I'm thinking that, I'm like, I'm not seeing stories around that. Am I crazy for thinking that? I don't know if you have any thoughts there.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. I mean, weirdly enough, I started covering this thing called Predict it, which was the progenitor to this. They were. This used to be very, very regulated. So you used to have to have some sort of tie to a university to run a prediction market in the United States. So I think the cap on betting on an election was $3,000. Right. And it was just a way to see if the way betting markets behaved would be better than polling. That's the way it existed. So I remember going to a predicted event on Wall street before the 2016 elections. This was 10 years ago. And I remember talking to a guy and he had thrown all $3,000 you could in every market against Hillary Clinton. And this was after the debate. This was after a debate where Donald Trump ostensibly did very poorly. I thought he did very poorly, but I guess not. And I asked him why he did it and he said it's a hedge against the rest of my life. And I said fascinating thinking, but I, I kind of get you. He's like, well, if I lose, I win like $12,000. If I lose the country, I get $12,000. And it was a really interesting thought, but then that obviously devolved once the kalshis of the world and the poly markets of the world came up. There are so many incentives to do really gnarly stuff, especially at lower levels. Right. Like every single race you can bet on along the way. You could nerf a candidacy and just say of a small time person just to win 100, 200 bucks or something with just, you know, a random rumor you put on Facebook or something. There's just a lot of incentive that are even smaller than assassinations to kill dissent and get money for it. Like it's, it's a very obvious and terrible idea. Obviously, obviously it should be regulated. I haven't heard of the big NBA style gambling ring takedown of, of. Of politicians, but it's certainly happening. There's a lot of incentive to do this and the people who do it first and foremost and then we find out about it two years later. Probably doing it right now.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I mean to that extent I don't know how involved it would be. I mean these days commentators and politicians are. Seem more married than ever. But it does feel like it's prime for manipulation for people that have any sort of reach to be able to have an incentive, another incentive. There's already so many, whether it be access to the administration that we've seen this, this go around and the kicking out of the mainstream. But yeah, I don't know, I feel like that's. People talk about it, but I feel like it's, it is going to ruin maybe close to as many lives as AI.

[Ben Collins]

Yes, I agree and I, I think that there is a, I think that the stories to come, you Know when those, that wave of AI suicides came through, it's obviously that's, that's the next wave of terrible stuff because it just came shortly thereafter. In, in Gambling addiction is a chemical disease. Like we know. We've known this for decades. I grew up in a house. To be real, this is some lore. My grandmother bet on the Red Sox. She had a bookie come to the house. I grew up with my grandparents and my parents. She had a bookie come to the house and she just like threw away money on the Red Sox. She, the Red Sox have never won a World Series in her lifetime. They just, she died in the lifetime in which you cannot win a World Series. So she would just, you know, throw, throw money away at a bookie. And there was no, this is a chemical problem she had. Right. Obviously. And I love her dearly. And it was, that's, that's just what happened. So like we're, we're in for it in a lot of ways. I just, I hate again, I hate to end on a positive note here, but like there's, I know, I love it.

[Podcast Host]

Give it, I, I, I'm like, give it anything positive to me, a gaping.

[Ben Collins]

Moth or good coverage here that if you're a young journalist or if you are a person who sees what's going on here, you're about to be a very prestigious and well received journalist when this wave of capitulation ends, which seems like it's going to be soon. So just get in there, make your YouTube video, get it. Get in there and write a blog and get on Bluesky and yell about it. Because that's how this happened the first time around. I was nobody and I became a reporter in this space just by just tracing down leads. When everybody told me covering the Internet wasn't important or serious and that beat became the White House beat. If you want optimism. The democratization of the Internet created a lot of bad stuff in the last 10 years. It can create a lot of good stuff. You just have to keep a good head in your shoulders and keep moving forward. I know it's really rough, but you, but it's a good time to do it. This is the time. We're at rock bottom. It's the time to get in.

[Podcast Host]

That's the time. Yeah. The market's down societally. Are there other, are there other blind spots that you think that people could inject themselves in right now, outside of that?

[Ben Collins]

Oh, other than journalism? Yeah. I mean, like there's just comedy in general right now for us. I hate to break back to my. To my world. I keep saying this right now. Yeah, yeah. People are getting priced out of LA and New York if you're a comedian. And that includes places to do comedy. That's why people are doing them at Laundromats and all these other places. But it also includes comedians. So they're getting. If you're racist, you go. You move to Austin. And if you're not in with Chicago. I live in Chicago. And there is. I don't know.

[Podcast Host]

I heard, I heard, I heard fascism's not fun anymore. So I don't know, maybe it's okay to go there.

[Ben Collins]

Maybe. Maybe that they're like, wait, this is.

[Podcast Host]

What it looks like.

[Ben Collins]

Oh, I was talking about. I was talking about the immigrants, the character in my head.

[Podcast Host]

I just wanted to say the R word. What the fuck? It feels like that's most of the reactions that I'm just like, okay, Jesus.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. But, like, right now, if you are a sharp comedian and you're not doing crowd work, congratulations, you won the game. If you just do it the old fashioned way. I'm gonna go see you people who are. I call our process here at the Onion ruthlessly inefficient. It is the least efficient way to get to a joke, and it's probably the best way to do it. Every day we. Every weekday they wake up, 15 writers come in with, like, 10 headlines. So you're working with like, 160 headlines. And then they needle that down to, like, one every day, one or two. And when people say the Onion doesn't miss, it's because we. We miss all the time. We miss 159 out of 160 times. And it's just not public.

[Podcast Host]

Or even the public.

[Ben Collins]

It's not public. Not. We just. It's just not even close to public. We do it the old fashioned way. And there is a. I. I don't want to sound like. Like an artisanal granola lady in, like, 1998. I understand how annoying those people were. I grew up around them. I grew up in Massach. It's. I know what they sound like. It's not great. That's not it. I'm saying the quality thing is it's a grind. And once. Once you come out of the other side with the thing that's made from the grind, people are really appreciated right now. Doing stuff in person works. The reaction to AI, in my opinion, that's why I don't want to call it a net societal bad, is that kids are being like, I should Go outside. Like, I'm not learning anything. I feel like I'm getting dumber. I should just go talk to my friends. And I think that's great. Like, it has been, it's been a suicide bomb in American life. And fine by me. The other side of this is like, people are going to go to the bowling alley again.

[Philip DeFranco]

Yeah, man.

[Podcast Host]

Technology, like all the things that I wanted tech to do, it's all the reasons I have an 11 year old that I'm like, you have a phone for 30 minutes a day to be able to text your friends. And he's like. And he's not clamoring for it yet. And so I'm like, okay. I feel like I'm doing something right because I see. I mean, I don't know, my wife did a field trip with them and she was like, yeah, there were like a million kids doing Tiktoks on the bus and all this. And I was just like, oh man, I gotta shield this kid as long as I can before. I don't know. As a parent, you just start seeing the world in good ways and bad ways seep into your kid's life and sometimes that like manifests into all of a sudden this like bright joy is all of a sudden like worried about how they are being perceived. And I'm just like, okay, if that, if I can keep that extent to it and they're not fully involved, great. But I hope that's. I hope that, yeah, we do see more and more people getting away from the Internet. But I don't know, I mean, whenever we talk about Gen Z, at least the ones I see, and it's biased because it's where I'm at. They seem more involved than ever online. And sometimes in a positive way, sometimes in a fucking horrifying way.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, but brother, like, think about, think about the way we grew up. Right? Where'd you grow up?

[Podcast Host]

Not to little all over it. No, no, a little over. So I was like up and down the east coast. So it was like New York and then Asheville, North Carolina, and then Tampa, Florida. I was all over.

[Ben Collins]

Exactly. And like the escape for you was magazines and then the escape for you became the Internet, right?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, absolutely. I was like looking for any sort of friend.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, exactly. And I think we are living through the great inversion of that where the Internet right now is not going to provide you a friend. What world in which is the Internet going to provide you? That's where I found my people. I was hiding in the magazine rack at the Virgin Megastore and reading Spin and Rolling Stone and all those things and trying to be like, where are my people? And then the Internet came along and it made a lot easier. And that's where I found my people. Really? Right now they're telling. And they told me all along that my people were on the football team. And I was like, I'm not sure they're on the fucking football team. Like, I just. I just, like, don't think that that's the case. And I think all. All culture is made of people trying to escape the place that they tell you where your people are. And the culture is telling you that your. That your best friend is a robot right now. Like, just go on the thing and talk to the computer. It's gotta be fine. And all good culture. All good Ajita. All good emotion comes out of the fact that, like, I don't know, man. I just don't know if that's my friend. I think my friend is somewhere else. And right now, your friend being somewhere else means in the real world, outside in the woods, like, doing donuts in your. In your Toyota Camry. That's what it means. And, you know, because the worst people in the world have, in fact, taken over this space. They have tried to annex the space where culture is made, which was, you know, the popular Internet, where culture is going to be made now is outside. And I am. I am of the opinion that they have left the outside world to us. And how fucking cool is that? I hate to be optimistic about stuff.

[Podcast Host]

I'm just saying, don't worry, I'm going to pour water on it in a second.

[Ben Collins]

But, yeah, like, if you go out there, you're actually less surveilled in person than you are on the Internet. You're less, like, you're less aggressively marketed to in person than you are on the Internet. And that's where the cool stuff can happen again. I just, like, I am optimistic that people will find that out in their own way. Just as I found it out, I found out my own way at the magazine rack on, you know, on Angelfire.net 15 years ago or 20 years ago, whatever, you know, your kid's gonna find that out too, I think.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I want that. Yeah, I really want that to be true. Because, I mean, when you're talking about, like, their friend is a robot, I mean, what was it? Parasocial is like the word of the year, right? So their friend's a robot. And their friend is also, for some people, me for some people, Nick Fuentes, for other People like. Like, it's. And so that I get scared of, like, how many of the relationships are that how many of the relationships are people, like, watching their favorite Twitch streamer going like, here's $5, friend. And so I'm hoping I'm rooting for your version of the future, because I think it's the only way back to some sort of normalcy.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. Can I give you some data points that might help you feel good?

[Podcast Host]

Hell, yeah. I love data.

[Ben Collins]

Do you know Dropout? Do you know those folks?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, they're great.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, they're amazing people. Right? So they just. For a. Here's a scene setter for everybody. Dropout used to be called college humor, and it used to be part of a big corporation called iac. I used to work at IAC to work at the Daily Beast. And they also own, like, Expedia and a bunch of other stuff that you. I don't know. It was a hodgepodge of random Internet bullshit, basically. And a couple of days before the pandemic, they were just like, I'm done with this. And IC gave the company to one of its employees, Sam Reich. And they had to start with basically nothing. And they were like, well, if we're going to do this, we're going to do this in our own way. If we're going to go out, we're going to go in a ball fire. So they made a streaming service and they just leaned into the things they liked to do. And that was like, they had a bunch of game shows and they loved to play D and D and all these things. And their whole streaming network now has, like, millions of viewers from just that. They filled Madison Square Garden two nights in a row playing D and D. And that's communal experience. That's the positive side of parasocial relationships. These people are good people. And people have. They. And those good people with those parasocial relationships have been saying, go join an improv group. Go get together with your D and D people. It's not just us. Right? And same thing for us. Like, we've been trying to our. We've saved the Onion through the analog. Right? We. When I took over the Onion two years ago, we were a business that was 70, 80% like boner pills. It was like those auto generated ads underneath.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Okay.

[Ben Collins]

So like the business strategy was to make slideshows so people press refresh in the next page button, which is not great for the Onion. It doesn't make any sense. We're headlines. We're headlines. And then the silliest 600 word story you can read, right? So when we took over, we just shut it off. We didn't have revenue for a month. My favorite ad in that space underneath it, just to give you an example of the quality of the ad, it just said, meet Larry Bird's repulsive wife.

[Podcast Host]

Oh my God.

[Ben Collins]

Like, that's how we're making money, is getting people to click on that. And that page going through sold you like sciatica drugs or something. And I was like, I just, I just feel gross accepting money from this. So within three and a half months, we turned those off and we're like, if you like the Onion, you should get a newspaper in the mail. So we brought back the newspaper, which had been dead for 11 years and now we are the 11th biggest newspaper in the United States in a year. Crazy. We brought back, we brought back 55,000 people all throughout the world get the Onion now shipped to their mailbox. And that's how we make our money. Like, people like getting it in their hands. Even if they don't like getting in their hands. They like the idea of what we're doing. And they get, you know, or they, they get access to like, we made a movie about Jeffrey Epstein called Jeffrey Epstein Bad Pedophile. We, we put it, we put it in theaters throughout the country and people went to that. Wow. Where we're not, I'm not being like a, trying to be a neo reactionary to every technological idea right now, but I am saying there is this real, almost primal sense that we have to be around each other, we have to do stuff in person again. And we're leaning as far into that as we can.

[Podcast Host]

So it is more than a nostalgia play. It is, it's a returning to something else. What is that something else you would say?

[Ben Collins]

I don't know, just being a person. I, I, I'm not learning anything on the Internet, right? Like, everything seems to be, it's like an outrage casino. And I just feel like I get more upset as I'm on there. I don't know. I, I don't fully believe necessarily that every, everything that we did in person was better, that everything artisanal is better. I am a product of Hershey's bars and like all mass produced bullshit. I love it, I truly do. And I don't want to sound like one of those, like, magazine like zine cranks who was reading alt weeklies from like 1990s, but I am telling you there's, if you, if you're a business person. There's a market here and it's a, it's a lot cleaner than like laundering your money through Palantir or whatever like we are. It's, it's an easier life to go to sleep to, to deal in real actual human beings giving you money for goods and services.

[Podcast Host]

Are there other possible or other expansions on the horizon for the Onion?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. So like, you know, in fours in the back of our mind, one way or another, we're going to do something in the next year along those lines. If these judges keep stalling this out and there's no clear path, we'll, we'll do it our own way. But we, we want to do right by these families. So that's a big thing. And we're, we have a bunch of, we have several big projects in the next year that are along these lines where we think that there is abandoned space or we think there is new space where other people are not playing and we want to give the people what they want. Like it's kind of nice being in the fan service industry for your own thing. We, we have a lot of stuff. We just like them to be surprises. Like Infowars came out of nowhere. People didn't know a nice thing could happen. We like to provide people a nice thing when they don't think it's possible. And we're just going to keep punching up at power. Like we have no, we have nobody telling us. No. I would be the guy telling the staff to not do something. And if they come to me with a big idea, I enable them probably to the extent that it's dangerous. So that's the biggest thing that we do is like we will. If you're, if, if you think something should be in the newspaper and you're not reading it about the people in power right now, we're probably, it's probably us that's saying it and we try to find the biggest and wildest way to say it on a day to day basis.

[Podcast Host]

Well, it's because I was going to ask you with that. I mean, what, what do you think is the, the key to good satire? And maybe it's a two prong question. Good satire in general and good satire in whatever the hell we're living through right now.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, it's, I think a lot of people assume it's just like invert the joke or do like do it at two times speed, but we do everything at sort of like 1.25 speed. So people think we're prescient, but we're just like kind of saying what everyone's thinking at the end of the day. Also, as Paget Powell once wrote this, he wrote a book that was entirely Questions once. And I always think about this. It's either you are either basically doing, doing 1.25 speed or you're doing the complete inverse of that. So like when we wrote Jeffrey Epstein Bad Pedophile, we knew that we wanted two things to happen. We wanted it to be of the moment, but we want it to kind of last forever. And there's a really hard way to do that. So that's why in Jeffrey Epstein Bad Pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein is on the 1997 Chicago Bulls with Donald Trump. It just became a total like it went after the schlockumentary industry instead of going after Jeffrey Epstein himself. Hard satire is just hard won, I would say. And we, we do it the old fashioned way. We try every single day. When we, when they go in there, the fights that I have that they have with each other about if things are too on the nose or if this verb is correct, it's more art than science and I'll just let them duke it out. That's the answer.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, that's I think, yeah. As a leader, sometimes that's the best bet. Right? Enable and get out of the way.

[Ben Collins]

Exactly. Right. Yeah. And then I'm just, I just see what comes out of it and I'm aghast at the sentences each time.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, so. Okay, so I don't know how familiar are you right now with the. Some people go by this label, others don't. The MAGA civil war that we're seeing play out. How familiar are you?

[Ben Collins]

Unfortunately, extremely. Yes.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, good. I was like, I just need to make sure you're extremely online. Who do you think is winning out and if it's sides or anything from what we're seeing because I, I have I think an unpopular opinion. I think with certain people they're like, oh yeah, that's obvious. But some people are think that there's pushback. So before sharing mine, I want to know your thoughts.

[Ben Collins]

I'm kind of interested in yours. I think, I think there's several things going on right now. One, you're starting to see some people realize that this president is in fact a lame duck and that there's going to be have to be something after this on the Right. And the earliest people to do that are usually the crankiest people. Right. So that's how you see Marjorie Taylor Greene going. Like, that's why I'm very uneasy when Democrats are complimenting her about stuff is because they're not, she's not attacking him from the left. He's finding, she's finding a. She's like galactically far to the right to the extent that you can't even really see where she's coming from. But you're going to see it. It's basically Nazism. It's not good. It's the, it's criticizing Israel from old fashioned anti Semitic tropes that people like. There's criticizing Israel and that is probably right and then there's criticizing Israel from like the Protocols, the Elders of Zion stuff. And that's really where she's coming from here. Those are the people that Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson types that are, that see an avenue and see a line to power. And they are, they are taking the first available off ramp to try to get that power. And that first villa off ramp is almost always bigotry and hate. They are masking it pretty well right now. It's not going to be pretty if those people win out. And I think that they, honestly, they, they understand how the Internet works. They understand the information environment better than most people. I'm very afraid that they're going to win. And I think that, I think they, I think they're in the driver's seat, to be honest with you.

[Podcast Host]

Agreed. Absolutely. So, yeah, I, I've had this conversation and a lot of people have disagreed with me. I think it's just not publicly or maybe understood in the mainstream. But if it's not a Nick Fuentes, Marjorie Taylor Greene I think has alienated people to a point where there's still enough people that are learning about this new version of Nick Fuentes that like the, the, the clip machine behind him whitewashes a lot of the, the really gnarly stuff. And it's like I care about Americans and I disagree with Israel killing people in Gaza. And everyone's like, yeah, that makes sense, of course.

[Ben Collins]

Yes.

[Podcast Host]

And then, and then you see a random clip and they're like, when was that?

[Philip DeFranco]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

So I've been having a lot of really interesting conversations, not just people online, but people in real life of like, hey, are you familiar? And then just letting like hearing them out. But I think that's there. And if it's not, if it's not yet a Fuentes, then I think it has to be a Carlson, who I kind of saw his interview with Fuentes as him bending the knee, but I think could also be seen as him trying to have a Non Trump coalition, where it's like, I mean, we kind of saw that with Trump. A lot of people go and like, I don't like what that is, but I'm not going to vote for the other. Right. So it felt, it feels like a possibly more extreme version of what we've already seen with Trump.

[Ben Collins]

Absolutely right. I think he's, he is trying to define that Overton window. Tucker is. Tucker is RFK Will, if he hasn't already. And I think JD Vance is going to be like the Gavin Newsom type figure that tries to like bring it all together.

[Podcast Host]

I think he falls, though, right, J.D. like J.D.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

It feels like he doesn't actually stand for anything except like, I'll fight you based off of whoever is giving me money.

[Ben Collins]

That's exactly right. I don't think he doesn't have the juice, I don't think. And I, He. I don't think he knows that he doesn't have the juice, but I think he's going to try to be the. That's how far the Overton window shifted though, right? Is that that guy is going to appear kind of moderate walking into this thing.

[Podcast Host]

Famed moderate J.D. vance.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. Like, if I had to put money on, I think it would probably be somebody like RFK going in there and trying to split the difference. But the honest to God answer is that tent is going to include Nick Fuentes. He's not going to be the guy.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. It can't not.

[Philip DeFranco]

It can't not.

[Ben Collins]

It can't not. You know, I firmly believe that those estimates that a third of the young men in the party are driven by the Andrew Tate, much more than that. Probably driven by the Andrew Tate and Fuentes reactionary, effectively neo Nazi set of beliefs. And they're not going to be able to avoid them. They're going to be too loud. And I'm hoping that's going to be off putting to a lot of people, but I'm not sure. Like these again, when you, when you own the pipes, which they do. And their friends, the Tuckers of the world, the Fuentes of the world, their friends of the people who do nothing but manipulate the Internet and play by no rules, those people have been able to establish a lot of things that aren't true as true. Over the last few years, they've been able to install J.D. vance as Vice President and RFK is the HHS secretary. They have incredible power and I just don't write them off. That's all I got to say.

[Podcast Host]

No.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, good.

[Podcast Host]

No, I agree. I Was like, I was like, I mean, honestly, I could talk about that for an hour. So as far as who has the juice? Bring it to the other side. Does anyone on the left right now have the juice?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. That could.

[Podcast Host]

All that also can legally win a presidential election, right?

[Ben Collins]

My girlfriend. I'm a cape for my girlfriend. My girlfriend cannot run a run or win a presidential election because she's not old enough. But it's a horrifying sentence. But her name is Kat Albuzale. Everyone should vote for it. She's wonderful and great. But you guys, there's a lot of juice in the left. Unfortunately, they're just not eligible to be president. Zoron's incredible. He is one of the best campaigners I've ever seen in my life in any capacity. I met him and we talked onion headlines for 10, for 10 minutes straight. It was great. Recited them from memory. Good human being. But there's, there's a lot of juice. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to shake out though. I know a lot of trans people who just straight up will not vote for Gavin Newsom and will just will not happen. And there are, there are other parts of the party that I think they don't know if they're ready yet. And they probably are, but they have the millennial brain disease of themselves telling themselves that it can't possibly be me that's in charge now. And I have that too. But, you know, sometimes you just, you gotta walk into the fire. So I think there's a couple people along those lines.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

Maybe talk themselves into it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. I go back and forth.

[Philip DeFranco]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

So like if you look at the God awful markets or you just kind of talk to people, it feels like Newsom has juice now. Can you hold that till a next presidential election? What is the weird. The only reason I've been of a mindset of maybe he can hold it and maybe he could split. The difference of people that are vehemently against him is there because of Trump. And it's, it's kind of that you always see that, that swing in the other direction because of Trump. It's like, it feels like people have, well, have very much welcomed, like, can we just have a fucking bully? Can we just. I'm just tired of getting hit in the back of the head, can we have a bully? I will. And the question becomes what percentage of the electorate and what percentage of the base will go? And I'll turn a blind eye to other issues because there is a Greater good or a greater thing to go after? I don't. I don't know. I mean, I've talked to a few people, I found, and we haven't had certain people on because I'm trying to spread it out. But it's like, I had Wesmore on. I was very disappointed that I actually believe him when he says that he wouldn't run, because I'm like, you're a very impressive man.

[Ben Collins]

He's absolutely running for president, brother.

[Podcast Host]

He tricked me. Then he's a very good liar. Then maybe that's also good for a politician. But I was like, I haven't believed. Like, when Pritzker dodged the question, I'm like, okay, no, no. You're tricking no one. But with Wes Moore, I was like, when. If you lie, if you run, I would. I would have a day where I would be like, that liar. That liar.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. I'm okay with people lying about that. I will say, like, there. What I. What I do. I know there's no question there. I just want to jump in because.

[Podcast Host]

No, do it.

[Ben Collins]

I think people in the months after Trump got elected misunderstood the concept of strength, and they were like, we're not strong. What does it mean to be strong? And they came to the idea that strength means I had to be able to bully some people. I had to be able to bully some people to the left and to the right. Right. I had to be able to bully the Nazis on the right, But I also have to be able to bully trans people because they're weird. And that's not what strength is. Strength is believing in something and actually believing it. Right. Going out there and saying what you actually think and not capitulating based on what the other bullies are saying. Right. And I think that's how most people will come to their conclusion in 2028. Is. Is that person who they say they are and are they really willing to stand up for people? I. I am. I have been saying this. I'm not a Democrat because, like, the colors are cool and, like, I want people. I want my side to win.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

I'm a Democrat. It's the closest thing to human rights that I can get. Like, and knowing that my. My civil liberties will be protected on this side because there's an active, protective effort to do that. And the closest person to talk like that and really mean it and really say it is who I'm going to vote for. And when you start throwing people off the ship, when you start throwing people off the bus because you're worried they might affect your coalition, what it looks like and sounds like to other people. And when you start trying to seek out people who look like, you know, they spent the whole day duck hunting or whatever. Fam. No, not for me. I am, I just want you to try to protect the least among us because I'm, we're all going to be the least among us at some point if we live to be 90, God bless us. But we're going to need help. And I am aware that that's everyone's reality. You know, my girlfriend Kat always says that if you're not disabled now, you will be. Like, if you make it your whole life without being disabled in some capacity, you're, you didn't live a long enough life, probably. And I, I want everybody to know that I not to go back to the buzzfeed and upward, upwardly thing. But there is one great headline from that era in the Huffington Post and it said, it was an op ed and it said, I don't know how to convince you to care about other people. And I think about it all the time. And the politician that can convince people to care about other people is who I'm going to vote for. Like, I don't, I, I'm all right and I'm going to make it. But there's a whole world out there that is being targeted and I want them to care about them.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, the truth is the politician that's most capable of doing that right now and not on purpose is Donald Trump. People, I mean, we've gone back to this and I won't cheer it, but people have to experience pain. The only way that I've made changes in my life, and it's anecdotal, is experiencing pain and fear at a level where I was like, this is something that is untenable for the long term. Right? And so I think, yeah, Donald Trump, depending on how, especially depending on how the next two and a half years go, is largely setting that up. I think that there are limits to that because we saw that I'm not Donald Trump is not a good enough message to win in 2024. But, yeah, I, I, I will, I will have, I will have hope. But it's like, how do we educate people to, to go, okay, masculinity, strength is not cruelty. And the stuff that you're like, it's not nice to see, but it's, you know, that there is strength and masculinity. To look to a trans person and go, my initial reaction be, should be to Protect them, not protect from. Because they're other. And that's. I, I mean the easiest way is for a person to meet a trans person in real life and not just base it off of some weird fucking random, often out of touch or out of context clip from like Libs a TikTok or something. But that's how a lot of people are getting it.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. I, I'm just going to quote another thing from the Internet, I believe from Brandi Jensen. She said, I find myself having to side with people I find annoying over people I know are dangerous. And that's our coalition, unfortunately.

[Podcast Host]

That's beautiful. Oh my God. I've never connected to a quote so much.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. And that's how I feel right now. And I am. People are being confronted with that reality. I live in Chicago and Chicago is under attack and there's no other way to put it. I walk around with a whistle all the time and all of my friends do. And I've never seen solidarity amongst a city like this in my life. And it's because even if you were Republican at the start of this we talked to Republican. When I'm out with Kat, we talk to Republicans all the time who are confronted with. I didn't know they literally met the tamale lady. Like they who are just seeing it now, it's clicking and that's going to happen everywhere. People are, are losing people they know into, into the darkness. They are seeing people getting kidnapped and disappeared and you don't hear from them again. And that is a level of that. That's the end of all this stuff. And we're gonna, we're gonna live through a couple more years of it. It's why you got. He is deeply unpopular. You would not know this from the news. I know I complained about it a lot at the start of this podcast, but this guy is not popular. And it's because it's affecting people who got, who got laid off from their government job or their family member did. The person that they know from down the street got kidnapped in front of their eyes. Their Halloween parade in Chicago got tear gassed. This is not hypothetical anymore. This is what fascism looks like and feels like. And I think at the end of the day, if there are real elections in 2028, whoever is on the opposite side of that will win. There are going to be people on the right who distance themselves from some of that stuff. But they were there all along and they were rooting for it to start. And we're living through the hard part now, man. And it's really, really difficult, but I'm seeing people come around. Why am I being so optimistic? What is wrong with me? I got to stop doing this. It's really rough.

[Podcast Host]

No, I need it. I need it. Well, because I was like, I do three things right. So this is to. To learn and meet people. I have my main show and then I have my crashing out vent. Like, oh, my God, everything's horrible. So it's good to have a small injection of like, hey, it might not all be bad. Like, we're treading water and trying to gain some steam to get somewhere and not just to go off the edge of a waterfall a little later.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, it's a great time to accidentally learn that you're a leader and that you actually believe in stuff. It's much better believing in stuff. Right when you know that it's dangerous to do so. It's almost like liberating to feel this way. And I do welcome anybody else who wants to say out loud what they're actually feeling about this and say, that's a sad and difficult time and admit it to yourself and collect the people around you who feel the same way. It's. I. This is. This is the point of being alive, is feeling the deep, dark stuff and trying to verbalize it and trying to bring it together and bring people around to your cause. And I am. Yeah, I don't know. There is. There is hope and unity in this thing, in this really, really dark moment. Like I said, I never thought I'd be walking around with a whistle with eyes wide open as I just walk down the street in my neighborhood. But that's where we are. And it crystallizes a lot of things in your life, and it makes everything very clear. And once that happens to you in your neighborhood, I hope you start looking around. People are disengaged from the news. People are upset that they're not getting the news from what they want, but they're not disengaged from what's going on. They've moved from, I want to watch my neighbors get tear gassed over and over again on TikTok all day. To be like, actually civic action. How do I. How do I take this anger? How do I get outside? And it's the first time in my lifetime as an American I've seen people go from being like, disaffected angry to, okay, how do we rebuild? And it's. I don't know. Again, hate to be hopeful, but that's the feeling that I feel in the middle of Chicago right now. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

It's times like these that really show you who you and the people around you are. But I think on that note, Ben, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate this conversation. I'm going to be getting a physical subscription to the Onion.

[Ben Collins]

Oh, yeah. And.

[Podcast Host]

And yeah, in the next year, we definitely got to have you back on.

[Ben Collins]

No, absolutely. It was really nice to talk to. To a guy with his brain firmly in the middle of his head. Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Mostly.

[Philip DeFranco]

And that, dear listener, is the end of today's podcast. And if you're listening to me here at the end and you're somehow not subscribed, what are you doing? Definitely subscribe. I've got weekly conversations that come out, usually Tuesday or Thursday. If you like this one, I definitely recommend you to try. Check out one of our last two. No matter what, let me say thank you for watching I love yo faces, and I'll see you right back here next week.